He gave me a long humorless stare. "I've noticed that myself."
My cell phone rang and white-heat anger and agony came spearing down directly through the center of my brain and ignited Mrs. Devington's chunky putty face. Lowell came over and pressed a couple buttons on the phone and said, "You can adjust the volume."
"Jesus Christ, thanks."
I answered. Katie sounded sleepy and eager for company, and I didn't know what the hell to tell her about my hideous night and what had happened to the shop. I decided to wait and did my best to act unconcerned, praying she wouldn't worry. I flubbed it. I heard the rustling of her covers as she shot up in bed and said, "What's wrong?"
"It's okay. It's nothing."
"I hate when you say things like that. Now I'm really scared."
It took a couple of minutes to ease her mind enough to where she'd let me off with the promise of having breakfast with her.
Broghin pushed Anna toward us, and she had to reach down and grip the tires to brake herself or he would've shoved her right into the divan. My grandmother smiled sadly and took my face in her hands the way Katie sometimes did. I liked when they were willing to do that for me.
She looked at Lowell and said, "How is he, Deputy Tully?" She knew he was incapable of lying, even to soothe feelings.
"Lucky."
She shifted in the wheelchair and asked me, "How do you feel?"
"Lumpy."
"Yes dear, I'm afraid you're quite correct."
Her fingers worked softly through my hair, and Lowell let out a huff. He needed to get answers. Oscar Kinion stood behind the sheriff and leaned forward on him, and Broghin leaned forward onto the wheelchair. They both teetered a bit and stared at the rest of us as though we were speaking Mandarin Chinese. I got a pleasant thrill at imagining Broghin passing out and snoring loudly at the murder scene. Alice Conway continued to sob, standing alone and occasionally glancing over at Shanks' corpse, waiting for somebody to do or tell her something.
Anna kissed my cheek, waiting-like Lowell-for me to start telling it. She had more resolve than anyone I'd ever met, and I wondered what that, coupled to Harnes' calculating nature, could do in the world. She continued smoothing my hair as I told Lowell everything that had happened in the house. I kept out the fact that I'd picked up Nick Crummler outside of Harnes' estate and said I'd met him on the road much closer to town. I could feel the silky strands of secrecy wrapping around us, with my grandmother unwilling to let me in on whatever it might be she was keeping to herself.
When I brought the situation up to the moment Nick answered my phone, Anna stopped rubbing my head and sat staring at me. I stared back and we came to the silent understanding that when we got home the rest would have to be unraveled.
"Who the hell is Nick Crummler?" Lowell said.
In a faraway voice, as if he were trying to struggle back into himself and couldn't quite get there, Broghin said, "Zebediah Crummler's brother. Thought he'd be dead by now."
"Crummler has a brother, and everybody knows this except me?" Lowell called Roy over and passed on the information I'd given him.
"Haven't seen him in damn near fifteen years," the sheriff said sleepily. He was breathing only out of his mouth, taking large gulps of air like a hooked trout tossed up on the dirt. "He ought to be dead."
"I don't think you'll catch him," I said.
"Why?" Lowell asked.
"He reminds me too much of you."
"That's about as left-handed a compliment as I've ever been given."
His attention turned to Alice Conway and she drifted over like she'd been called to the head of the class. She worked her large, pouting lips, the deep brown circles under her eyes looking like they might eventually scrape bone. He said, "Do you know anything about what happened here tonight, Alice?" He wasn't really asking. He wanted answers and knew she probably had at least a few of them. A man had died in her living room and a friend of hers had bled so much that the wood of the floor would be permanently stained.
Anna said, "Take your time, dear."
Without further prompting, the sentences rippled from between her sobs. "Mr. Harnes drove my father out of business. Daddy put up a hell of a struggle but it didn't come to much. We lost everything less than two years ago. When my parents died last year there wasn't even any insurance. My father had been driving drunk. He drank a lot at the end."
Anna drew a short, noisy breath, and perhaps I did, too. My parents had died in a car accident, initially blamed on my father's drinking before we discovered that his best friend and business partner, my Uncle Phil, had actually rigged the brakes and murdered them. Anna had been in the car and crippled in the crash that night.
Alice sat on the divan where Brian Frost had bled, and the camera flashes went off in the other room, capturing Sparky's corpse from every angle. "Mr. Harnes doesn't care about anyone or anything, but most of you know that already. Look at this place." She made a sweeping gesture to show the extent of the house's emptiness. "He took it all. I'm telling you, he killed my mother and father, really. Really, he did. You should have seen them, how happy they were. How they used to dance, they loved to waltz, right here in this room. He's evil."
Lowell opened his mouth to ask a question but Anna put an arm around the girl, cradling her gently. My grandmother said, "And you and Brian plotted against him?"
Lowell's gaze flitted from Anna to Broghin and back again, and he must've found it more troublesome than not to get all of us out of here at this point. His cheeks and forehead had the barest touch of red. Anna liked words like "plotted" but Lowell sure as hell didn't. Neither did I. It sounded as if she might be defending Harnes.
"Teddy loved his father," Alice said. "He tried talking to him, to stop him from driving my dad out of business, but it didn't do any good. Mr. Harnes didn't even care that Teddy and I wanted to get married. Teddy tried getting some capital for me so that I could keep the house up, but that wasn't any good, either. He never actually had any of his own money. It was all his father's. Teddy didn't understand, he could afford to play around with art and philosophy, he'd never had to pay a bill in his life. Brian started arguing with him constantly after my folks died. Brian was only trying to help me."
Broghin and Oscar both had their eyes closed and had pinioned themselves against each other, nearly asleep standing up.
"Help you in what way?" Lowell asked. He looked proud to have sneaked a question into his own investigation. His face grew even more crimson, and I could tell he felt the whole night slipping even further out of his massive hands. He needed to interview Alice, but his eyes flicked constantly to Wallace handling Shanks' body, the other deputies searching for physical evidence, taking samples and bagging. His fingers trembled slightly because he knew he'd have to catch the sheriff soon. "What was he going to do?"
Alice couldn't answer right away. Her weeping had gotten so out of control that she was on the verge of hyperventilating. Anna pressed the girl's face to her shoulder, making shusshing sounds hoping to quiet her. It took a while. I sat there with the towel on my neck, and Lowell and I looked at each other, both of us feeling lost. A part of me remained suspicious enough to wonder if Alice was actually only biding her time in order to get her story straight, but her sobbing was as real now as it had been at Teddy's funeral.
Finally Alice could continue. Her voice took on a harder tone. "I was desperate," she said. "That bastard . . . that rotten bastard. Nobody would help. I was losing the house. Teddy turned out to be useless. We broke up, more or less, but I was pregnant by then. Brian stood by me through it all."
"You poor child," Anna said. "What you've been through, alone." Alice Conway looked nothing like Diane Cruthers, but my grandmother, patting Alice's back, peered at her as if seeing her long-lost bridesmaid.
"Brian thought if I had the baby then Teddy or his father would feel obligated to care for it. For me. Teddy would want to, I knew, but he didn't understand how things worked. He loved his father too much to s
ee what kind of a man he really was. Mr. Harnes wouldn't feel any responsibility, but I tried talking to him anyway."
I picked up on how she kept calling Harnes "mister." Like Dr. Brennan Brent calling Sparky "Mister Shanks." Even angry, or scared, they showed proper deference.
"Brian wanted me to go to the papers and cause a stir. We knew Mr. Harnes had had lots of difficulties and bad publicity with women before, but never where Teddy was concerned. It was wrong. I know it now. I knew it then, but I didn't see any way out. Brian threatened to go to the papers and we said we'd cause trouble. Teddy was devastated." She frowned and shrugged off Anna, and an even sharper edge entered her voice. "He was so stupid, he just didn't get it. What it was like to have creditors calling all the time, county taxes, they were going to foreclose. Look at this place, just look at it. Falling apart. Even the man who'd cut my parents' tombstone threatened to repossess it, can you imagine? Taking back a gravestone? Can they do that? Why would anybody want to do such a thing?"
"What happened when you approached Theodore Harnes?" Anna asked.
"Nothing. Nothing at all. He didn't even get mad or anything. He's a man who enjoys a standoff. He said he liked me. That drove Brian crazy. Brian said we should go to the papers and say Mr. Harnes and I had an affair. Brian used to be Teddy's best friend, but he learned to hate him so much in almost no time."
"Why were you at the gathering tonight, Alice?"
"Mr. Harnes invited me," she said. "Maybe to scare me. I was already scared, way too frightened to say no. After Teddy died I wanted to tell him we wouldn't do anything. Brian and I wouldn't cause any waves, we'd let it all drop. I guess he didn't believe me. I lost the baby. I just wanted somebody to help me a little."
"Did Frost know Shanks?" Lowell asked.
"Is that the dead man? I don't know him. I don't think Brian does, either."
"Shanks never threatened you?"
"Nobody ever threatened us."
"Why don't you get along with Daphne Kupfer?" I asked.
"Oh, that. She liked Brian. She likes lots of young guys. She was always running after him."
Such a simple answer, so much more believable than when I'd let my imagination snag me into thinking that everybody I knew was Harnes' bastard kid.
Why would anyone cut off his face?
I didn't believe Teddy had faked his death anymore, but I needed to gauge her reaction anyway. "Was Teddy hiding here?" I asked.
"Teddy?" Alice's bloodshot eyes rolled and focused on me. "Hiding?" She looked at me as if I were insane. She wasn't alone. They all looked at me as if I were insane.
"Do you think Brian might have killed Teddy?" Lowell asked.
One on one, down at the police station in his office, the question would have had a greater impact, but the rest of us diffused the situation. He was hoping to pull her off-guard and see how real her tearful act actually might be. It failed miserably, with Anna's arm around Alice as the girl's shoulders shook. Lowell undermined himself as well, forced to suddenly reach out to grab Broghin and Oscar firmly by their elbows before both men went toppling over. Each of them snorted loudly and blinked at him.
Anna breathed softly, "Oh, my heavens."
"No, no, of course not," Alice Conway said, frowning. "Brian couldn't have. He wouldn't have."
"You said he learned to hate Teddy."
"He was angry about everything, but he never would have hurt anybody."
I thought about roid rage, how I could almost feel Brian Frost's venomous thoughts wishing me to die the day I'd visited. I thought he could have very easily murdered Teddy Harnes, and that Alice could have made him do it by simply asking. I looked into her eyes and thought I saw the fangs of the dragon there.
No wonder Nick Crummler had been afraid of Felicity Grove. All of us who lived here seemed to possess the beast, or to have been bitten by it.
TWELVE
I lay on Anna’s couch with another ice pack on my head, Anubis sitting rigidly beside me as I stroked his back.
Bitter crimson early morning sunlight foisted through the one window with open curtains. More reporters would probably be around today after what had happened last night, but I thought they might be tired by now of getting nothing besides a close-up of Anubis' snout. I watched the dawn trickle through the thickets across the street, patchy frost on the panes slowly burning off.
Lowell had driven Broghin and Oscar home last night while Anna took me to get a CAT scan. After sitting around the nearly empty emergency room for over an hour, I'd decided that if I wasn't yet smelling odors any stranger than Oscar's aftershave or hallucinating that my eyebrows were threatening to eat Cleveland, I'd probably be okay. Anna, knowing how thick the head of a Kendrick could be, agreed.
As in times of past crises, for some reason I felt more comfortable sleeping on the couch. Maybe because it reminded me of my parents, or because I found a certain solace in the books and photo collages. Anna and I always slept only six hours, and virtually nothing could change our internal clocks. We both quietly got dressed as though afraid to alert the other to our presence.
The swelling had gone down a little, leaving only a few crusted abrasions and sore knots the size of peach pits. I emptied the lukewarm water from the ice pack and refilled it with ice. At his worst, loaded every night, my father used to hide gin in the rubber bladder, and despite the years it still smelled faintly of liquor. Anubis caught a whiff and snorted happily, tongue poking out an inch and his tail thumping loudly. I always suspected my father didn't like to drink alone.
I heard nothing more from my grandmother's bedroom, and sat wondering what kind of revelations might be heading my way and how bad they would be.
Before leaving the Conway house, I'd had a brief but compact discussion with Lowell on everything that had happened during the day. He stood with a completely stone countenance, the way Nick Crummler might have, and silently seethed as the bodies in the Grove piled up. Sheriff Broghin got sick all over the floor before they'd even finished bagging all the evidence. Keaton Wallace, another drinking partner of my father's back when they'd wandered home together, shirtless and singing "The Loveliest Night of the Year," looked pleased with himself; even at his most intoxicated Wallace had never fouled up a crime scene or vomited across a chalk line. Lowell listened to me, the muscles in his jaws looking hard enough to withstand a thrown brick, knowing he had to get Crummler out of Panecraft, but realizing they were both too mired in the system.
Thinking about some of that, still stroking Anubis, I fell asleep.
When I awoke the second time Anna sat reading Charles Williams' Go Home, Stranger in the living room. I checked my watch: 7:30. Over an hour had passed, but Anubis still sat at my side and my hand was still on his back. He turned and looked at me inspecting the damage, or wanting more gin. He didn't shove at me to take him for a walk the way he used to do. I had a feeling he'd never want to go for a walk again.
Anna said, "Good morning, Jonathan. How are you feeling?"
I sat up and my neck cracked so loudly that it echoed in the kitchen. "I don't think I can honestly answer that in mixed company."
"How is your vision? Blurred at all?"
“No."
"That's reassuring. Still, we should not have been so hasty to leave the hospital last night. Such a ridiculous place, to keep us waiting over an hour."
She took the ice pack into the kitchen and refilled it with even more cubes, returned and placed it on the top of my head. I felt significantly silly. Anubis wagged his tail some more, thinking there was another few shots in it for him. My grandmother took my face in her hands the way she had last night, and I got that same sense of my adulthood crumbling between her fingers until I was a little boy again. "Do you feel hungry? Would you like some breakfast? There is an egg-white omelet and French toast still heated on the oven."
"No, thank you, I'm going to have breakfast with Katie."
"Good, you haven't seen her much the past few days."
"I need t
o talk to her. I need to talk to you, too."
She dropped the open book in her lap, bending the spine in a fashion that made me cringe: the dry, dissolving fifty-year-old glue gave up the long battle of holding in yellowed pages. She loved to read but, like Teddy, didn't love books. "Have you decided on definitive plans for your future with her?"
"No," I told her, and felt foolish saying it, as if the woman I loved and our unborn child deserved only my fear and not enough of my time. "I need to tell her that someone broke into the shop last night."
"There is such a thing as a floral thief?"
"Vandals."
"Oh dear, was there much damage?"
"Lowell says no."
She didn't even have to consider it for long. Sunlight drifted over her legs and caught in the spokes where it danced, giving her a silver sheen. "And you believe it might be your former teammate?"
"Arnie Devington, yeah."
Anna sighed, something like a sound of defeat, but not quite. It scared me a little anyway, and I perked up in my seat. She must have also smelled the gin, and been thinking some of the same thoughts as I was, the dead past always clutching like inflexible fists. "Do you plan to wallop him further?"
"I think I've had enough of that lately."
"I agree. Despite his fixations he is someone more deserving of pity, from what you've told me."
"Maybe. It's a moot point, more or less. He's gotten a few extra licks in, maybe he's flushed it out of his system."
"Perhaps you have as well, Jonathan. You don't appear nearly as agitated as before."
"I said what I had to say, but instead of cooling him off I may have just pushed all the wrong buttons. He hit the shop, but not when Katie was there. I think he must've realized he was breaking the rules. Same as when I made that crack about his wife."
"And you feel, after all this time, rules must be applied."
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