"Oxrun's finest," Vic whispered. "Big-breasted, big-hipped, with the lungs of a stevedore."
"Cut it out, Vic," she said.
He snorted and leaned back, his head resting against the wall. She saw he was about ready to launch into a mocking and thoroughly accurate history of crime in Oxrun Station, was trying to think of a way to stop him, when Fred Borg came out of the left-hand corridor almost at a run. He headed for the desk, but when he spotted Dale and Vic, he veered and came through the gate. They stood immediately, and the two men shook hands.
"Fred, what's up?"
"What can I say, Vic? A million things going on at once. We got kids throwing late parties on the park hill after hours, complete with bonfires nobody sees until it's too late; we got a couple of women who got into a bottle-throwing argument at the Inn. And now we have this. Dale," he said, lowering his voice, "I'm sorry you had to wait, but Chief Stockton kept you here until the Campbells left, the back way. You can understand. She, Milly, is taking it remarkably well. Too calm, if you ask me, though. But Dave's already blaming the village for lack of supervision at the pond, the field, and anyplace else he can think of." The thin man wiped his brow with a sleeve and smiled wanly.
Not a policeman, she thought when he turned to call something to the desk sergeant. Even in the blue uniform he looks more like a priest or something.
"Come on," he said, taking her elbow. "Let's get this mess over with." But when Vic moved to accompany them, he was motioned to the bench. "Really, Vic, unless you can say something a dozen others haven't already, rd rather you'd stay out here, okay?"
When she looked, she saw a cloud darken the teacher's face, but it passed with a bravely false smile and a brisk nod.
"I'll be fine, honestly, Vic," she said. "Abe's not a monster, you know."
He said nothing, and she almost wished he could come with her. But Fred moved too quickly for her to react to the impulse, and they were soon walking down the corridor past the row of narrow benches that looked blindly up at a series of presidential portraits meticulously spaced on the opposite wall. All the seats were empty, and it could have been midnight for all the activity she'd seen, but there was no time left for comment. Fred knocked on an unlabeled door, opened it and stepped aside.
"Smile," he whispered when she passed him, and despite her nervousness, she did.
The room was unexpectedly small, the white walls cluttered with photographs of Abraham Stockton shaking hands with men and women she didn't recognize, Abraham receiving awards and trophies, holding the hands of two of his four children. A solidly square desk centered the bare floor, and behind it a window with drawn green drapes. Stockton was standing by the only armchair in the room other than his own. He nodded, shook her hand without speaking, and retreated behind the desk to sit and shuffle papers. He was drawn, obviously tired, and his half century showed more than she'd noticed in the last dozen years. What was left of his red hair wisped behind his ears and made more prominent the large nose, jutted chin, the stubble of unshaven beard that divided his jaw from the loosely wattled neck. He pulled self-consciously at those folds now, and she waited patiently.
"Dale," he said at last, his voice only a husky memory of the basso that had made him so impressive when she was a child, "this is a rotten time to see you again."
"I know, Abe." She lifted her hand, dropped it when there was nothing for it to do. "I don't know what to say."
"Yeah, I know. I just had Milly in here with Dave." He slammed a fist onto the desk. "I wish I wasn't that boy's godfather!" And just as suddenly as the explosion came, it vanished and he was as close to his official role as he could get at the moment. "Dale, I'll have to ask you what you saw, heard, anything at all. This will go into a report I'm making myself. And you'll probably have to repeat it at an inquest."
She glanced away from the eyes staring uncomfortably at her, concentrated on a monochrome print of racing greyhounds while she recited what she had done after hearing the first scream. Up to and including the moment Vic had taken her away to calm her down.
"Blake's a good man," Abe said, nodding. "My girl has him for history. I think she's in love with him."
"From what I hear, half the girls in the school are."
"Yeah. Well, listen, Dale, are you sure you haven't left anything out at all? You didn't stop on the way to call for help or something?"
She frowned, not in concentration but in puzzlement. "I don't understand, Abe. It happened just as I told you. Why? What's going on?"
Stockton dropped the folder he'd been holding and leaned back in his chair. Still he refused to meet her eyes. Instead, he picked up a pair of wire-rimmed glasses and perched them so the bridge was at the tip of his nose, looking over them at the door, through them at something noted on a pad by his hands.
"Dale, I'm not saying that you're not telling me the truth—"
"Well, of course I am, Abe. That's a terrible thing to imply here."
"—but it seems to me that there's a misstep in timing here. The pond's not all that big, as you know, and your running should have gotten you to the boy in time to pull him out. But you said he didn't respond to mouth-to-mouth, nor did he respond to anything the ambulance boys did, either." He scratched at his nose, rubbed the back of one hand along his neck. "Now, he did hit his head on something under the water. A rock, maybe. Stunned him, most likely. But though it doesn't take much more than a couple of drops, theoretically, to drown a man, drowning takes time, Dale. Willy shouldn't have drowned, even with that lump on his head. He shouldn't have. But he did."
She was confused now, and took a moment to search for something, anything that would dispel her bafflement. It was beyond belief that Abe would be trying, however diplomatically, to say that she somehow had a hand in Willy Campbell's death; it was also implausible and she said so, angrily, so frustrated she was ready to cry.
"Look, Dale, I know that!" he said without dropping his official pose. "Lord, I'm not saying you're a murderess—"
"Then why do you keep on about Willy not having time to drown. I mean, I didn't clobber him, if that's what you think. In fact, if you do you can ask the children. They'll tell you."
"Some children," he said sourly. "One says a green frog got him, another says the ducks. They all corroborate your story, there's no doubt there. But I was hoping, see, that you might have seen or heard something that would help me get rid of this itch I have in the back of my mind."
Dale stared down at her hands, saw them kneading her purse tightly. She willed them still, waited for them to relax before she looked up again. Abe was watching her now, openly and without a trace of suspicion. And the fact that she'd expected to see that suspicion rekindled her indignant anger. Carefully, forcing her breathing to steady itself, she returned his stare until he blinked once and rose, swept open the drapes, and turned his back to her, a shadow now in the brightening sunlit room.
"Dale, I'm ashamed of myself."
She wanted to say: I should hope so; bit the inside of her cheek to keep from speaking.
"Really ashamed. We're not exactly friends, but I've known you and your folks, bless them, for a long time." His hand drifted to the butt of his holstered revolver, rested there. "I'm not a big town cop, you know that, and I wasn't hired to be one, either. But I got this itch like I told you, and Dave Campbell's got one, too. He insists Willy could swim like those stupid ducks. Even if I let go, he isn't going to. I almost think he's scared, he's so insistent." Abe turned. "Dale, the fool's demanding an autopsy."
"My God, Abe, what's going on around here?"
He stepped around the desk and she saw the weary resignation in his face. "I don't know, Dale. If I did, I'd be God, and I don't want that job, either." He held out his hand and she took it, was led to her feet and to the door which opened as soon as he rapped a knuckle on the glass. "Fred," he said to the waiting patrolman, "do me a favor and take Dale here . . . where? The store?"
"Forget it," she said, her smile only for Borg. "
Vic's waiting. He can walk me the couple of blocks. Besides," she added as she moved into the corridor, "it wouldn't look very good, would it? I mean, little old me escorted around in a police car."
And without waiting for Abe's reply or Fred's company, she strode to the front and, with a brusque wave to Vic, nearly ran outside.
Whatever happened to that good day of mine, she thought. And when she could no longer take the stares, the whispers of an abrupt influx of browsing customers, she closed up the store. Mrs. Inness bustled out behind a flurry of solicitude, and the door was locked behind her, the shades drawn in the display windows, and the only illumination came from a small wine bottle lamp by the register. She sat on the high stool, shoulders slumped, hands restless in her lap. Vic had left her grudgingly after extracting a promise of a call later in the evening; but she had no intention of making it. Not even Vic and his mockery could drain the sack of righteous pain that had settled in her stomach.
She wanted to close her eyes, but she was afraid that Willy's image would rise ghostlike to haunt her waking hours; she wanted to call Chief Stockton and demand some sort of apology, extract a humbling admission of police error, but she admitted with great reluctance that he really couldn't have acted otherwise. It was—and she could think of no other word for it—humiliating. To be connected even for an instant with the possible murder of a little boy was more of a nightmare than anything she'd ever had as a child. But at the moment she had nothing but her own denials which she had, of necessity, kept to a minimum lest she thought to be protesting too much. To wait, then, was her only recourse, wait until the inquest and the results of that ridiculously demanded autopsy.
"Confound it, this isn't fair!" she said loudly.
A temptation surged to call the Campbells to see if they were harboring any suspicions, but the notion died instantly; they had their own sorrow, far worse than hers. She had met them as a pair only once, at an open house she'd held at the store two Halloweens ago. Milly was a dour, hard woman who reflected physically the hardships and sacrifices she'd made to bring her family over from the poverty of the Highlands; David was burly and quick-tempered, solemn most of the time, which made his smile all the more delightful. When he brought his carvings to the store to be sold, she made it a game to make him grin. A superstition: to part his lips would mean a good sales day; and she'd never spoiled it by counting the receipts. There were four, she recalled, in the Campbell household: Dave, Milly, Will, and an aunt—father's or mother's she never knew. They lived somewhere on Chancellor Avenue, her street, beyond the park where the houses were few, old and poor introductions to the estates that followed. Campbell's woodwork—chessmen, statuettes, intricate children's toys—seemed to be their only source of income, but the prices she was able to ask, and the prices she always received, were probably more than enough to keep them going; at least, she'd never heard Willy complain of hunger, nor had to endure Dave's grumblings about bills past due.
No, she thought, calling them was out. She only had to wait, and stop herself from seeing damning accusations each time someone looked at her without a smile. That, she decided, would be easier said than done; the people who had come in that afternoon only wanted to see the woman who'd discovered the body, to cluck their ghoulish sympathy and depart with some unimaginable dollop of gossip.
In a deliberate attempt to sidetrack her mind, to find something less morbid to dwell on, she wandered the aisles, straightening a box here, a carton there, finger-dusting a doll and poking a stuffed animal. And then she began to wonder about the note in her purse. It made little difference how it had gotten there; what she wanted to know was who its author was. She grinned and allowed a short laugh to keep her company. Vic was probably right; it was a love note, most likely from one of the many children who came regularly to the store, if only to talk to her because she was more than willing to spend time with them.
Obviously, one of the boys had developed a crush, much as he would for a favorite teacher or pretty young librarian. In a way, she thought, it was rather flattering, and she scolded herself for actually preening at the idea. But in a quite different sense, it would be a difficult matter to deal with. She'd have to locate her secret admirer somehow and try to ease him down from the cloud he was riding.
Let him down gently.
She laughed, loudly and long this time, tears welling and brushed away with the back of a hand. How often had she been forced by circumstance to perform that delicate operation on men her own age? She tried counting, could not. Ever since the store came into her hands, and her hands became eager, she had been too busy, and too many of the men who sought more than her temporary company were too bluntly hostile toward the idea of maintaining a business other than their own. It was, however, an unalterable condition of whatever future plans in matrimony she might make. To sell the store—now or ever—was unthinkable, would have been unforgivable.
"Love me, love my toys," she said as she checked the rear door lock and set the burglar-alarm systems. "Take me, you fool, I'm yours, but you'll have to take my dollies, too."
By the time she had slipped into a light cardigan and grabbed her purse, hints of good humor had flushed her cheeks, dispersed the clouds that the sky hadn't seen. She tested the doorknob, turned away from the store, and headed left down the street. Shadows were already crawling toward her as the sun set slowly toward eight o'clock. Only one car passed her. She was amazed at the time, had to blink and stare closely at a clock in a jewelry store to be sure she wasn't seeing things. She'd been alone three hours after Bella had left, then, three hours that she would have sworn were only a dreadfully slow-moving one.
It was two blocks to Chancellor, a left turn and a brisk walk across Park Street and Western to reach the corner house her parents had left her. Traffic moved slowly by in both directions: west for those heading for the highway and the entertainments to be found in the larger towns some distance away; east for the inevitable Saturday-night parties that seemed integral to the affluent life for which Oxrun was known among those who knew she existed.
The house was smaller than its neighbors, a simple Cape Cod with a narrow front porch and an abundance of trees that made the structure seem twice as small. She stood on the top step and stared across the street to the high iron fence of the park's perimeter. Had she the miracle ability, she could have seen through the closely spaced trees straight to the lower, western tip of the pond; and indeed, during the late winter, she was able to make out the gaily dressed skaters when the light was bright in early afternoon.
Now there was nothing but green and the shadows therein, and as she turned to fit her key into the front lock, she wondered who it was she would have met had she gone to the pond and waited. Nobody, probably, she thought. If Willy's death hadn't frightened them off, the sheer boldness of her response probably would have.
Another one missed, Mom, she thought, but I don't think I'm quite that desperate yet.
The foyer was small, barely large enough to hold a side table on the left, coat rack with an oval mirror set into its back on the right. She dropped purse and sweater onto the table and shuffled into the living room where she kicked off her shoes and turned on the television, two movements habitual, nearly ritual. Then on into the dining room and, behind that, the kitchen where her kettle was waiting. Too tired to contemplate cooking a complete meal, she grabbed a frozen dinner from the refrigerator and tossed it noisily into the oven. Back through the foyer, then, and into the sitting room on the right which she had turned into a greenhouse experiment. Dozens of plants from violets to ivy on shelves, hanging in multicolored bowls from the ceiling, propped precariously on the front and side window sills. The air here was perceptively sharper, and as she drifted from one plant to another with mister in hand, she spoke to them, cuddled them, tsked and scolded. Originally, there had been three rooms on this side of the house: the sitting room (the living room is for company, her mother had decreed) and two bedrooms. When Dale moved in to stay, she'd knocked o
ut one wall to enlarge the room for her plants, designated the back bedroom a study where, because of her upbringing, she had planned to put her books and TV. That worked for only a few months, however, when she decided that to walk all that way just to sit down and relax was ridiculous. The change, then, and the greatest adjustment to being alone.
She also felt safer with the bulk of the house behind her.
When the plants were done and settled, she hurried upstairs to shower and change into jeans and a man's white shirt which she tied just beneath her breasts. Then she ran down again to take out her dinner and slump on the couch in front of the television.
It was dark.
Cooling.
She dumped the aluminum tray into a wastebasket and was searching through the program guide for something more than situation comedies when the doorbell rang.
"Not now, Vic," she muttered, yanking the shirt's knot open and tucking the material into her jeans. A quick look in the foyer mirror and she opened the door, caustic quip ready. She swallowed it.
"Miss Bartlett?"
The porch light was off, and the tiny figure on the welcome mat could easily have been a child were it not for the almost theatrical cackling in the aged, high voice.
"You are Dale Bartlett, aren't you? Have I the correct house, then?"
Dale quickly brushed a hand over her face and smiled, stepped aside and watched amusedly as the little figure scuttled into the living room without invitation and fairly climbed onto the armchair next to the couch.
Eighty, Dale thought as she took her place on the sofa; a year's salary she's no younger than that.
The Sound of Midnight - An Oxrun Station Novel Page 3