by Lila Shaara
“You didn’t tell me he killed your mother. Oh God, Maggie, I’m so sorry.”
“There was no evidence. Maybe he wasn’t responsible for the hit-and-run, but I’m pretty sure he was.”
“Why?”
“He knew my mother’s address outside Mobile. He was gone from here when she died. He probably just wanted to chat with her, charm her, see what dirt he could find out about me. No one saw anything. She liked to walk on lonely country roads, like me. I’m guessing he just saw another opportunity and took it. Right after that, his mamma bought him a new car. Oh God, Harry, what are we going to do?”
“We’re going to have to live our lives as though he wasn’t out there. I think it would be a good idea to make your former life or identity public knowledge. Maybe we can get the local press to do a story on it. That way, his relationship with you will be better known. That should buy you some sort of protection, make him have to think twice about rigging something too terrible. But at least you can go back to work now.” He thought about Dan Polti’s comment about the productive years of the average physicist and felt a pang of sadness for her lost opportunities. She was looking out the window at the passing hills. Then she took in a deep breath and said, “I think you’re right. It’s time I faced Fay.”
Jonathan was back in Stoweville by early evening. The air was moist and cool, and the sun was painting the sky with all sorts of improbable colors. Emily would know everything about that process, he thought, how the light breaks apart as it tears through the sky from the dying sun. So would my father. I’d miss him if I really cared that much about how it all happens.
He stopped his car by the shrine just for a moment because he didn’t want to be seen there. Serena had called his cell phone and told him that the nephew-in-law had been formally accused of shooting it up but would probably only pay a fine. He was claiming distress. Distress my ass, thought Jonathan, although you had to have some sympathy for him; all that land, all that money sitting there, useless in the hands of a cult-crazed old biddy. And besides, he thought, considering the broken heart at the top of the now-ruined stairs, somewhere in the man lay a poet.
He made his way down the driveway of the Purple Lady’s house, driving easily over the chain lying in the dirt. Her last visitors had left it down; probably the niece and her moneygrubbing husband, he thought. They probably wanted her to be attacked or vandalized or at least harassed. But he had no intention of harassing her at all; on the contrary, he expected the whole encounter to be pleasant for both of them.
He parked his car at the rear of the house, out of sight of the road, although it was unlikely that anyone could see through all the pines, especially in the dark. But the outside of the house was well enough lit that it was possible someone would spot it if he parked in the front. It was probably unimportant, since he didn’t intend the old lady any harm, but you never knew when an opportunity might come along; you never knew when it was better to slide out of a place leaving no mark at all. He patted the handkerchief in his pocket.
They sat in the parking lot of a restaurant on the outskirts of Godfrey Lake. It looked a lot like Crane’s, and Harry imagined that the menu was the same sort, laminated and dominated by burgers and familiar sandwiches. Harry had suggested that they go in and eat something before calling Fay, but Maggie had hesitated and finally explained that she could see the fluorescent lighting through the windows.
“Sorry. I forgot.” He told her to wait in the car and went inside to get some food to go. Before he left, she thanked him so sweetly and so apologetically that he almost couldn’t leave her there, big, tense eyes gazing at him through the open car window, pale hands clutching the edge of the door like Kilroy. He walked back at once, kissed her mouth, then turned to complete his mission. He was starving.
When he returned, the bags he carried already darkening with the grease from two cheeseburgers, she looked even more grave. “I can’t bring myself to make the call,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Harry took the cell phone, remembering Josie’s words again. “It’s all right. I will,” he said. The phone was still turned off; he pressed the On button. “I missed a call from Dusty. Okay if I call him back first?” She nodded. Dusty answered right away. After hearing his news, all Harry could say was “Jesus Christ, Jesus Christ. Throw it out. He might have dusted it with anthrax or something.” Then he made his son bring Ann to the phone. He gave her a simplified account of who and what Jonathan Ziegart was. “Don’t let him anywhere near you or Dusty again.”
She yelled at him for not giving them some advance warning, which he bore even though he hadn’t had any himself. After an awkward pause, she said that they had police protection of a sort anyway. When he pressed her, she reluctantly told him that she’d been seeing an assistant district attorney. “I can make sure he’s around the house a lot.” Harry didn’t bother asking how long she’d been seeing him; he’d known from Dusty that she had a man in her life, and he was sure now it had been going on long before Ann had made that plea to get him back. He felt no twinge of jealousy, which was a relief, but he threatened her with everything he could think of if she let anything happen to their son. “Take him back to your parents’,” he said. She hung up on him.
“Oh God,” Maggie said.
“Jonathan gave him a copy of Lord of the Rings. He was pleasant.”
“He wants you to know that he can get to Dusty.”
They debated about the value of returning to Stoweville, of flying or driving to Orlando that evening. Harry could tell that Maggie was looking for an excuse to forget the visit to Fay Levy. He thought some more, then said, “I think he’ll be okay. I hope so.” He rubbed his chin. “I’m not sure what good it will do us to run down there right now. At least Ann and her DA boyfriend know who to look out for.”
“But not what,” Maggie said.
“No. But neither do we.” He felt his stomach rumbling and fished the burger out of the bag. He was surprised he was still hungry. “Dusty’s actually kind of psyched to be in on things this much.” He took a bite. “I think we should keep to our plans. I don’t know what else to do.”
They finished their burgers, and then Harry called Fay Levy. He got the answering machine after the second ring. After leaving a cryptic message and his cell number, he turned to Maggie. “We could just go to her house, but I don’t know if it’s a good idea to ambush her.”
“Let’s get it over with,” she said.
When they pulled up to the little brick house, the windows were dark. There was a lamp on a pole by the front walk that was shaped like an old-fashioned lantern. The light it gave off was dim, and Harry felt like a criminal staking out a future robbery as they sat in the car, watching the moths batter themselves against the metal and glass of the light. Neither one of them had an opinion on how long they should wait for Fay to come home, so they sat in an uneasy silence with the car windows open, the crickets chirping loudly in the dusk. At least Harry thought they were crickets, but when he mentioned this to Maggie, she said, “Tree frogs. This time of night, they’re out trying to mate. They make a big racket.”
“So I hear,” he said. “I’d rather be trying to mate right now myself.”
This got a smile from her at least, though not a big one. Then the street rumbled with the sound of an approaching car, headlights brushing them. Harry wondered what their faces looked like, if they were even visible in the brief wash of light. A compact car pulled into the short driveway to the house; its engine went silent and the lights died. He recognized Fay Levy’s silhouette as she got out of the car. Harry glanced at Maggie, then opened the driver’s side door.
“Fay?” he called softly, trying not to startle her.
The woman turned and gave the impression of recognition, although it was impossible to see her face clearly in the dark. He said, “It’s Harry Sterling. I left you a message, but I assume you haven’t gotten it yet. Do you have a few minutes?”
“I didn’t expect to see you again,” she said,
opening her car’s rear hatch and bending in, then standing up with canvas grocery bags dangling heavily from her hands. “You could help me get these into the house.”
“I’d be glad to. But I’ve got someone in the car who wants to see you.” He imagined peanut butter jars and cartons of milk crashing to the ground the moment Fay set eyes on Maggie. “I think it would be a good idea if you put the bags down first.” Fay obeyed him, resting the bags on the concrete of the driveway, where they settled and rustled when she removed her hands from the handles. “Isn’t that your son with you?”
“No,” he said as the passenger door opened and Maggie got out.
Harry was glad he’d made her put the groceries down, for she surely would have dropped them; she seemed to lose control of her knees for a moment, falling into the car, her hands splayed out on the hood. “Emily?” she said.
Maggie nodded and walked slowly toward the car; Harry imagined it was the way you walked toward a UFO when you were being abducted, with slow steps to somewhere you didn’t really want to go, but all volition had been zapped from you.
“You’re alive,” Fay said in a funny voice, trembly and high. Maggie’s mouth opened, but Fay spoke again before she could. “You lied to me. You lied to me about being dead, for God’s sake.” She stood up straighter. “I can’t believe you did such a terrible thing.”
“I’m sorry,” Maggie said. “I’m so sorry, Fay. Can . . . can we talk? I’d like to try to explain what’s been going on.”
“For six years, I’ve thought you killed yourself. How could you possibly have done that to me?”
“In a way, I was dead. As good as, anyway.”
“Don’t play word games with me.” Fay turned to Harry, the twilight making her face into a muddy mask, her features appearing to twist and shift as bits of light swam in and out of the topography of her face. “And you knew all along, you son of a bitch. Were you laughing at me? You and your son?” She came around the car toward Maggie, pushing against the hood with her hands as if her legs weren’t working right.
Maggie said, “He just found out. Believe it or not, I was trying to do you a favor.”
“A fucking favor?” Fay’s voice was stronger now, and considerably louder. She pushed off from the car, moving toward Maggie with renewed strength in her legs. “Am I supposed to thank you? I cried for a solid year. A whole goddamned year. I gave up graduate school, I gave up everything because I thought you had died, I thought that they’d beaten you, and if you could be beaten, what chance did someone like me have? But they didn’t beat you, you snuck off like a goddamned snake into a bunch of rocks or something.”
“Fay.”
“Don’t you ‘Fay’ me, like all you have to do is say my name and it’ll be just fine, all forgiven, no harm done.” With that, Fay moved toward Maggie with one arm raised and hit her in the face with a closed fist. Maggie staggered back a pace as Harry lunged forward in horror; he’d expected crying and hugs, or maybe a few recriminations and then tearful forgiveness. He’d never expected Fay Levy to want to beat Maggie senseless.
He reached Fay before she had a chance to strike Maggie again, catching her wrist and holding it in the air as though he were proclaiming her the winner. Maggie was still standing, one hand to her eye, but she made no sound, no defensive movement. Fay ripped her arm from Harry’s grip, then stepped back, making a sound like a growl. Harry said, “No one’s laughing. It was life or death, and I think you should listen to what she has to say.”
Fay turned to him, so angry that Harry could hear her breath fighting its way in and out. “Life or death my ass. I think you should both leave right now. If you come back, I’m calling the police.”
On the way back to the hotel, Harry stopped at a small grocery store. He left Maggie in the car since the lights inside it were even more gaseous and bright than the ones in the restaurant. He came back in a few minutes with a bag of frozen peas. “Put this on your eye,” he said. She obeyed without a word. Then he said, “It’s not your fault, you know. She seems a little crazy.”
“Most people thought she was a lot less crazy than me.” She shifted the bag of peas and leaned her head against the window. “When Dee sent the letter to the department about my supposed suicide, all I thought about was Fay. I felt so guilty about abandoning her, but at least I figured she’d be safe. Maybe I was a coward. I guess I was.”
“You’ve never seemed cowardly to me. All we know for sure is that Jonathan Ziegart didn’t come after her. It’s possible that you saved her life. Besides, you learn to live with guilt,” he said. “She may calm down later. Or not. We can’t do anything about it, one way or the other.”
She said, “Let’s go home. I never want to see this place again.”
57
THE HANGED MAN
REVERSED
Denial of spiritual truth. Hard work with no payoff
“Ma’am?” he said. “Miss Tokay?”
“Yes?” she said. Her voice was faint and croaking, barely audible, as if her lungs were too old to work right, not enough muscle power to get the air all the way down to where it could do its work properly.
“My name’s Jon. I’m an old friend of Maggie’s. I don’t know if she’s mentioned me?” It was a critical question, he knew, but he had a sense that she’d kept her former life quiet; it was unlikely the old lady knew much about it.
Miss Tokay regarded him for a moment, blinking her damp gray eyes. “My memory is so unreliable.” She said it apologetically, and he was starting to get the flavor of her accent. Nice and slow. “You’re a friend of Maggie’s?”
“Yes,” he said. “An old friend from when she was at school. I don’t know if you knew her then.”
“Not so well as now, of course, but that was a while ago. It’s nice to see old friends; I don’t have so many left nowadays. Not from school. Not from all that time ago.”
“Yes, ma’am. May I come in?” He smiled again and pulled out his identification from his long-ago internship. “May I talk to you? This isn’t official, mind you. It’s just that I know that my bosses at the bureau are trying to decide whether or not to see Maggie as a ‘person of interest.’ I was hoping to talk to you because all this unpleasantness happened on your property, and Maggie’s a friend of yours. I thought maybe the two of us could put our heads together, see if we can piece together what really happened. Maybe with your help, I can put their suspicions to rest.”
“What suspicions?” Miss Tokay’s voice rose a little, the tremor strengthening. “Of Maggie? They can’t possibly think she had anything to do with . . . what happened?”
“Well, ma’am, the sad truth is they’re looking to lay blame. It’s all politics and paperwork, to be honest. You and I know that Maggie is the nicest girl under the sun and would never harm anybody. But that’s the way the wind is blowing in the bureau; I’m being candid with you here. I want to try to set things right. I was hoping you’d help me.”
“If you’re a friend of Maggie’s,” the old lady said, “you’re welcome to come in.”
She led the way through a warmly lit hallway into a pretty room illuminated by what appeared to be genuine Tiffany lamps. It was cool in the room; he could hear the welcome hum of air-conditioning. He paused in his progression across the parlor, as he named the room in his mind, to examine the shade of a floor lamp with a pattern of hummingbirds pieced together with bits of emerald and ruby glass. “Ma’am, I think I see a chip here. Was there gunfire in this room?”
“Of course not,” said Miss Tokay. She had been in the process of sitting down on her sofa, rewrapping her enormous purple shawl around her shoulders before bending her knees. This stopped her. “What chip? That lamp has been on that spot for close to eighty years, and it’s never been damaged.”
It also looked as though it hadn’t been cleaned in at least thirty, he thought; the dust was as thick as his finger. “Come see for yourself, Miss Tokay.” She made her way back across the room, fingers tight on the hem of
the shawl. Her steps were slow, each foot lifting only a fraction of an inch above the floor so that her shoes made a swishing sound on the wood; to Jonathan it sounded as though someone was using a broom, sweep, sweep. She came near the lamp, and he pointed to a spot near the crown where the dust had been smeared by his index finger.
“See, just here?” he said. “It looks like it was slightly tipped by a bullet. Just glanced off it. Of course, if it had been a more direct hit, it would have been blown to bits. It’s just a nick. Are you sure there wasn’t any event involving a gunshot in this room?” As she shook her head in confusion, he looked around the room as though searching for other evidence. “Maybe a stray,” he said. “You’d be surprised how far they can travel. I know that not all the slugs were found by the crime scene folks.” This was untrue, but Jonathan doubted Miss Tokay had read the incident report. “Did they look through this room much?”
“They searched it, looking for God knows what,” she said. “There was no call to look at the furniture the way you’re doing. No one was in here when the . . . when it happened.”
“Just as I thought,” he said. “If a bullet came through the door and glanced off the lamp, no one would have known about it.” He nodded confidently and pulled a magnifying glass from his pocket. He turned to the lamp shade, peering at the imagined nick. “I can see it here. Yes, it’s definitely something.” He pocketed the magnifying glass. “I hate to say this, ma’am, but I’m going to have to take this to the lab to be processed. It’ll be returned to you.”
“How long will it take?”
“No more than a couple of weeks,” he said. If anyone asks me, he thought, I can say the nephew must have stolen it; I bet he’d love to get his hands on this. “That’s enough about guns for now. Please sit down.” He touched her under her elbow, which caused her to start. He wondered when a man had last touched her who wasn’t a doctor. But she seemed to relax at once and allowed him to guide her to the ornate sofa. He kept his hand on her arm all through her bottom’s rickety progress onto the seat. When she was finally ensconced, her shawl carefully repositioned around her, he asked if he could sit as well; at her nod, he took the chair across from her. He said, “Maggie told me that the workshop is actually hers. I’m willing to keep that information to myself, but there have been some suspicions about Crawley’s story. I know the previous investigators looked through the papers in your garage. I was wondering if you’d mind if I took a look as well.”