“Mr. Butternut told me about this house you were talking about: Brokedown House, I think. And he wondered if maybe someone might be—” Here a dilemma presented itself: I wanted the Sheriff’s help, but if the person who might be using Brokedown House was Ben Queen, I sure didn’t want to go leading the law to the door.
The Sheriff leaned toward me and broke the silence. “Someone might be what?”
I shrugged. “Using it, maybe?”
“Butternut didn’t mention that to me. And that’s where he took me. That’s where he’d last seen this girl he called us about.”
I should have known we’d get around to that again.
He said, “I doubt she was ever lost, not really.”
“Brokedown House,” I said, ignoring the lost girl. “Did it look to you like somebody might be living there?”
“We weren’t looking for that. What makes you think somebody is?”
“I’m not saying it. Mr. Butternut was saying it.” I certainly couldn’t tell the Sheriff about someone shining a light in my face. But if Ben Queen were hiding out anywhere around here, I’d think he’d use the Devereau house, where I’d seen him. He might have gone to Louise Landis’s. Her house was about the most private I’d ever seen. She’d have to be a pretty good actress, though, not to give anything away when I was there.
It was Maud who said, looking at the Sheriff, “Maybe you should take a ride over there, Sam. Maybe we should. Then you could drop me off at my house.”
He looked at me. “You know, you ought to get together with this lost girl—if she ever gets herself found. You’re two of a kind.”
31
Lazy days at the Rony Plaza
Two of a kind. Those words stayed with me. The Sheriff was kidding, but still it set me to wondering. I thought again about that day in Cold Flat Junction when I’d looked across the railroad tracks at the bench where I’d been sitting and thought I could make out myself on the bench, or maybe a ghost of myself. Could we have ghosts of ourselves before we’re even dead? And if we can, are those ghosts like the ghosts of others who are dead? Not that I believe in ghosts; I was only wondering.
Fingerprints, footprints; the scent of perfume left behind; or charred paper, ashes of letters burned in a fireplace; a light moving in an empty house. Could the ghosts of us leave behind, like suspects in a crime, evidence we’d been there? Evidence for someone extremely smart in the ways of ghosts and suspects to decipher and track us down? Like the Sheriff or Father Freeman.
This would be a good question to ask Father Freeman, whose ability to see ghosts and spirits is a lot better than mine, his mind having been brought up, you could say, in the ways of the invisible.
All of this was making me hungry as I lounged in the Pink Elephant, so I ate the chicken-breast sandwich the beach waiter (Walter) had brought me as I studied the pop-up book of palm trees while I sunned myself on the Rony Plaza’s beach that afternoon. I had found this book in the children’s section of the Abigail Butte County Library. I was amazed to learn there were over four hundred varieties of palms. Comparing the pop-ups with my tree (its fronds moving gently in the sea wind), I decided mine might be more of a coconut than a royal palm, but if it was, it should have coconuts under the fronds and it didn’t. So I decided I’d been right in the first place.
The book also had a pop-up of a hotel surrounded by palms but the hotel didn’t resemble the Rony Plaza, for it didn’t have the same kind of entrance and looked like it was farther back from the beach. I compared it with the big picture on my wall. Still, I thought the pop-ups were quite clever, even though they weren’t realistic, and that children would probably like the book.
I watched the sun go down behind the Rony Plaza. It was after eight o’clock and all the sun and swimming and sea air had made me sleepy. I was glad the dance was tomorrow night as I honestly don’t know how I’d have stayed awake for it tonight.
As I waited for Walter to get down here with my cocoa, I could hear Ree-Jane throwing a tantrum because she hadn’t been invited to the dance by the hotel management. I did not know why (not yet, anyway). I thought about the dance minus Ree-Jane. Although anything minus Ree-Jane made me happy, in this case I wanted her to attend. I know that seems very generous of me, but it is not. If she doesn’t go, I won’t have the pleasure of dressing her in mud brown or watching her do numerous foolish things that will certainly not add to her popularity. I was too tired tonight to discover what she’d do, but it wouldn’t be pretty, I was sure. So I saw myself leaving the beach where the floodlights had just come on and going to locate the manager—who had silver hair—and saying to him, “Look, it’s the hotel’s dance and all, but would you mind inviting the others in my party to it? I kind of hate to be the only one.” The manager said he understood “absolutely,” and the other members of my party would be welcome, although they couldn’t “stay after midnight.” I found that a peculiar rule and asked why. All he said was that only a very select group could stay beyond midnight. He did not tell me why.
At least my mother would get a new dress out of it. Lola would, of course, have to wear one of her old ones.
32
Scent of grass
As the next day wore on, I grew more and more excited, waiting for evening. Maud had called me to find out if I could drive with Sam and her out to White’s Bridge Road, as she had suggested the day before. I was really astonished that the Sheriff would do this; on the other hand, as Maud had said, what did he have to lose? It was the crime scene, after all, and he’d found out precious little about who shot Fern Queen (which is what Maud had said to him, and which I didn’t think was the most diplomatic way of getting him to agree to what she wanted).
Anyway, we were to meet up at the Rainbow that evening at seven o’clock. That was when Maud finished her stint. The Sheriff never seemed to finish his. He could be up until all hours on police business, as he had been when Mr. Butternut called in about the lost girl.
That brought me skidding to a stop in the dining room as I was going to Miss Bertha’s table to put out the butter. If Mr. Butternut showed up when we were there—and didn’t he always?—he’d certainly say something to the Sheriff about me being the girl he’d walked to Brokedown House with, the one who’d “disappeared.” I pondered: could the Sheriff have guessed it was me? His description of the girl it might have been fit me, except for the “stubborn” part.
I found a rock-hard butter patty in the bottom of the bowl of ice and plopped that on Miss Bertha’s bread-and-butter plate. Then I searched the butter on top until I found the softest one and dropped that on Mrs. Fulbright’s.
I had made arrangements with Walter to serve them their dinner that evening and he said he thought he could manage. There was something put-upon in his reply and I figured he was just imitating my mother, who was always pressed for time but who also just “managed” whatever it was she was called upon to do. I said to Walter I was sure he could, as he had been smart enough to make my chicken sandwich out of white meat. Sometimes it’s best to butter people up; in some instances I’ve never known the truth to help.
Maud and the Sheriff were standing on the sidewalk outside the Rainbow Café as the taxi rounded the corner. She was wearing her old brown coat, flared in a feminine fashion and buttoned at the neck with one big tiger-eye button. The Sheriff had one stem of his dark glasses hooked in his shirt pocket and I hoped that meant his mind was off duty. Not off duty in the sense he wouldn’t be as smart as usual, just that he wouldn’t be as suspicious as usual.
I caught this glimpse of Maud and the Sheriff through the window as Delbert slowed the taxi down and before they knew it was me. It jarred me, the way they were turned slightly to each other and how deeply involved they were in their talk. Even if the talk was just their usual banter, and though they stood in the wide, bright main street, the meeting still looked secret.
As I said, it jarred me. I hardly ever saw the Sheriff’s wife; in fact, I had almost forgotten she existed u
ntil I saw her a little while ago in the Rainbow, buying pastry. He had been there too, coming in for his regular cup of coffee, and when I remembered that now, I thought it strange. For their meeting had looked accidental, like acquaintances who hadn’t seen each other for some time. Florence was dark and stormy looking, her face shut down as a house would be in a storm, windows closed, doors bolted. But Maud’s face was as clear and placid as lake water, so open you could have slipped right in.
We all piled into the police car, Maud remarking it was the first time she’d ever got a ride in one, and the Sheriff responding by saying it wasn’t a taxi, after all, and me responding to his response that not even Axel’s was a “taxi” as I never saw anybody in it.
“Fern Queen was in it,” said the Sheriff.
Yes, and that made Axel’s movements all the more mysterious. I reflected on this as the countryside flew by, as the same cows near the same fence looked at us curiously. It was rare being with people who didn’t have to talk all the time to feel comfortable with one another. For there were stretches of silence as we drove the highway to the lake. It was rare and I liked being part of that rarity.
I saw the sign of the Silver Pear right after we turned off the highway and felt I’d spent a large part of my life by now at White’s Bridge. Inside of another five minutes we had crossed the bridge and were bumping along past Mirror Pond.
There was no sign of Mr. Butternut. The windows of his house were daubs of gold in the dusk. He liked having the lights on. This road had grown so familiar to me that I felt more than just a visitor; it was as if I’d been away and now was on the road home. No, not home exactly, but I think it’s how much you feel when you’re in a place that puts your personal stamp on it. Why Brokedown House should make me feel this, I honestly don’t know.
The front door was stiffer than I remembered and I wanted to creep back when the Sheriff pushed at it. said we could use the side door and he asked me how often I’d been here; I seemed to know it pretty well. As we three filed in, I saw how unlived-in and run-down it looked, with its possessions strewn about. The light coming through the fly-specked windows now was ashy and gave the walls and floorboard a gloomy look.
The small fireplace mantle had pulled out from the wall. It was some sort of marble, but after years of its bathing in fire and smoke, I couldn’t tell whether the veins in the marble were green or black.
“It’s cold,” said Maud, drawing her coat closer about her. “It’s the kind of cold a furnace wouldn’t warm up.”
I nodded. “I know just what you mean.”
“It’s the kind of cold you hear about that’s on the sills of doors you walk through.”
“The cold ghosts make.”
“Oh, for God’s sake,” said the Sheriff, sighing. He was running a finger across the spines of a row of books. There were built-in bookshelves on both sides of the fireplace. Looking at one of the dusty books, he said, “The cold’s different because the place hasn’t seeped up any human warmth for a long time; the warmth has leaked out.”
“Oh, sure,” said Maud, disbelievingly.
“It has,” he said. “Probably there isn’t any heating except for space heaters. It used to be a nice summer cottage.”
On the way here, the Sheriff had told us he had the county clerk look up the deeding of the property. The earliest information she had found showed the house had belonged to a Marshall Thring, had passed on to his heirs, then gone through the hands of several owners—Reckard, Bosun, Wheat—bought and sold, sold and bought, the last people being named Calhoun. I was familiar with none of these names, except for Calhoun, which is the name Mr. Butternut had said. The other names were useless to me in the solving of this mystery, would be soon forgotten. I think I wished the house itself had been plunged in mystery, that the Sheriff, for all of his searching through titles and deeds and documents, had found nothing, and that the owners were nowhere. Or that it had never changed hands after the original owner, a tall, black-bearded man named Crow, who, it was reported, had murdered his wife and put a curse on the house ... well, something like that.
The furniture was wicker, similar to our own green wicker on the front porch but here a dirty white. The cushions were covered in cretonne, my mother’s favorite material. The rose and lilac pattern was faded now, and dusty.
There were three bedrooms, one of them the one Dwayne and I had investigated, still with a trace of that green scent in the air from the half-full bottle of cologne. I only noticed it probably because I knew about it. The scent was very faint.
The Sheriff was looking over the letters on the bureau and had picked up one of them when he looked around and asked,
“You wearing perfume, Maud?”
“Me? No, I hardly ever do. I forget to put it on.” She was sitting on a footstool, looking at the stuffed animals and dolls. She was holding one, studying it.
I picked up the bottle of toilet water from the dressing table and waved it under his nose. “This?”
He sniffed. He nodded. “Yeah, that’s it.” He took the bottle from me, held it out to the quickly fading light of the window.
I said, “It hasn’t been sitting around long. At least not all these years. It would have evaporated.”
“You want to join the force? I could use a crime scene expert.”
I had, as they say, the grace to blush. I wasn’t about to tell him the idea had come from somebody else. So I just shrugged, as if such crime-scene-expert powers of mine were for me an everyday occurrence. If I kept up the way I had been lately, maybe they soon would be.
The room was dimly lit, as if only a vapor of light hung in the air and, like the trace of that grassy scent, evaporated as the minutes passed. Outside the light grew dimmer. Maud said, looking at the window, “I hope we have a flashlight. All I’ve got is this little penlight thing.” She was searching in her canvas shopping bag.
He pulled a flashlight from the inside pocket of his jacket and held it up wordlessly. He appeared to be as interested as Dwayne had been in the collection of stuff on top of the bureau. He was looking at the ring with the dark blue stone set among tiny diamonds. “Lapis lazuli.”
“What?” Maud turned from the doll collection.
“This ring. It’s beautiful. Semiprecious, not valuable, still ...”
I said, “Are those diamonds around it?” I could hardly see the ring from across the room, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“I doubt it. Pretty, but not diamonds.” He picked up one of the letters.
Do men with guns all go woozy over a few pieces of jewelry and somebody else’s old love letters? If they were love letters. I never got the chance to read them, which was very annoying; I was the one, after all, who’d started investigating this place. “Do you think you should be reading other people’s mail?”
He had rested a forearm on the bureau and angled his flashlight down on the paper. “In the line of duty,” he said, without taking his eyes from the page. It might even be the same letter that had fascinated Dwayne.
“Well? What’s it say?”
“Here—” He held it out. “You want to read it?”
“No. I don’t read other people’s mail.” If I could ever get my hands on the hotel mail before Ree-Jane got it, that would change.
“Someone’s very unhappy about leaving. I don’t know if it’s the leaver or the left.” He had resumed his reading posture.
In spite of the cold, the growing dark, and my irritation that the Sheriff, and maybe Maud, too, were getting so much enjoyment out of this visit when I was gaining next to nothing, despite this, a warmth stole over me, stealthily, as if fearing rejection by my stiffer, glassy-eyed self. I did not know what the reason for this was.
Maybe there was a similar feeling when I was around Dwayne and the Woods and Mr. Root. The thing is, I did not have to bow and scrape to these people. Not that I’m much of a bower-and-scraper anyway, but I know I’m expected to be for Mrs. Davidow, Ree-Jane, the hotel guests, and people i
n La Porte like Helene Baum and the mayor. I could divide up everyone into the people who expect me to bow and scrape and the ones who don’t. Most adults don’t realize my feelings are just as important to me as theirs are to them. So maybe it’s not so much not being taken to Florida, it’s that no one wanted to listen to my feelings about not being taken—
The dance! The dance! It was to be tonight. But it didn’t start until ten P.M. It couldn’t have been more than eight, so I had plenty of time.
“What dance?” asked Maud.
I had said it aloud. That was so embarrassing. “What? Nothing, nothing. I was only thinking.”
She just looked at me a moment longer and smiled.
Now, that’s another thing about people who aren’t like Maud, the ones you have to bow and scrape to. They don’t really want to know how you’re feeling, they want to know you’re feeling the way they think you should be feeling. That’s what they want to know.
I got annoyed with myself. Here the Sheriff is investigating—well, he’s reading, so I guess it’s investigating—and Maud is helping, in her way, and all I’m doing is going on to myself about myself. Can’t I think of other people sometimes? But that question doesn’t sound like me. What sounds more like me is wishing Shirl would slip on one of her banana cream pie banana peels and land on her butt right in front of everybody in the Rainbow. My wish list is long and murderous and I can only square that with my better self (I guess I have one) by saying, “They deserve it.”
Maud was holding the doll on her lap when I saw her glance stray over my shoulder and heard her draw in a sharp breath. “Sam! ” He turned to her; her finger pointed at the window. “There was a man out there, looking in.”
Dwayne. I bet it was. Was he that stupid to be out there poaching with the Sheriff’s car, clearly marked POLICE sitting right on the road? I positioned myself at Maud’s side (for my sake, not hers).
The Sheriff went to the window and raised it. Now came sounds of a loud thrashing, like an elephant hurtling through the bushes. The Sheriff picked up his flashlight, slid his gun from its holster, and went into the front room. We followed close behind.
Cold Flat Junction Page 21