Death Through the Looking Glass

by Forrest, Richard;

  When the last child, small legs pumping rapidly, ran for the school, Rocco walked toward Lyon.

  “I didn’t know the town’s police chief doubled as a school-crossing guard.”

  “Last day of school, and Hinton’s on vacation. Meet me at the station for coffee.”

  The Murphysville town hall, off the green, included the selectman’s office, the town clerk, library, police station and health inspector’s office. The police station was on the ground floor, in front of the library. Lyon entered the small suite, waved at the dispatcher, and went into Rocco’s office to start the coffee maker.

  He’d made two cups and had his feet on the desk when Rocco arrived. “Well?” he asked as his friend gratefully drank the coffee.

  “Nothing new. Norbert’s kept me advised on the investigation.”

  “My visitor Gabriel?”

  “We were able to set bail at fifty thousand, but he still got out. I don’t know that I can make his connection with Esposito stick, either. Once his lawyer arrived, he wouldn’t say a word.”

  “What did the state people say when we established that there had been a phone call from the lake house?”

  “Norbie feels that Karen knocked her husband off at the cottage and then called her boyfriend to come out and help her get rid of the body.”

  “It didn’t happen that way.”

  “Because you got a call from Giles?”

  “Not just that. Whoever killed Giles tried to establish a false lead with the Carol Dodgson identification.”

  “Karen Giles, the pilot, or Esposito could have done that.”

  “Bea pointed out that there were cosmetics in the handbag along with the ID, but no mirror. Karen Giles wouldn’t have made that mistake.”

  “But a man would have?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, the way it sits now, Norbert leans toward the Giles woman, and I’d put my money on Esposito or his hired gun. But where in hell do we go from here?”

  Lyon brushed a forelock back from his brow. “Let me think about it, and maybe I’ll have something when I see you tonight.”

  “Tonight?”

  “We’re having people in for cocktails and barbecue.”

  “I hope you have a lead by then, Lyon. This damn thing is playing havoc with my quota of speeding tickets.”

  “And also my dolphins, Rocco.”

  Lyon ritualistically sat at his desk before the typewriter and glanced into the machine to see whether there was an adequate amount of ribbon on the carbon spool. He adjusted the yellow second sheets on his right and the unfinished manuscript of Danny on his left. A glass of ice water sat on the far edge of the desk. He had found over the years that this almost sacramental preparation aided him in breaking out of mundane trains of thought and involved him almost immediately in what some called the “magic circle of writing.”

  He glanced out the window as a transient thought teased his consciousness. Robin sat on the patio with a sketch pad on her bare knees and her head tilted back to catch the sun.

  It wouldn’t have been quite so disconcerting if she hadn’t been wearing the damn bikini. The dolphin of wise thought retreated deep into the inner recesses of his mind.

  He walked slowly out onto the warm flagstones and kicked off his sneakers. She looked up and smiled. “Hi.”

  “We thought you’d be gone for days checking out the airports.”

  “Like you guys say, negative all the way.”

  “Forty airports in half a day or so?”

  “Twenty-three in the circle you drew. This swell guy out at the Murphysville airport did it for me. I went out there first, and when he found out what I wanted, he radioed around and saved me that long trip.”

  “Did he take you to his A-frame for ground-school lessons?”

  “Yes; how did you know? He had me on the couch when the police came and took him away.”

  “Robin, that was Gary Middleton. He is a suspect in this case and not the person to ask for help in tracking down a possible lead.”

  “Well, no one told me he was the one.”

  He looked down at her drawings. “And besides, your dolphins look more like fish.”

  She tore out the page and wadded it up. “I know. Truth of the matter is, I’ve never seen a dolphin.”

  “I’ve got a set of Britannicas in the study.”

  She let the sketch pad fall from her lap. “I don’t believe that real things can be learned from books.” She looked into his eyes. “I was thinking it might be more helpful if we rented a cabin cruiser and went out to sea.”

  “I wouldn’t know where to look for a school of dolphins,” he said hastily.

  “We could try. Even if it took three or four days, and I know Bea has a lot to do at the state capital.”

  “Robin, no girl, even from the mountains of North Carolina, is that naïve.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Let me explain.”

  Bea Wentworth stepped from the shower, wrapped a large bath towel around herself, and went humming into the bedroom. She slowly began to dress, savoring the anticipation of tonight’s party. She donned a light red pants suit. They’d use the long outdoor barbecue and serve corn on the cob smothered in butter and wrapped in foil, quartered chicken with barbecue sauce, and of course the ritual steak for the conservatives. She mentally ran over the contents of the liquor cabinet and found them adequate.

  They were sitting below her window. Lyon held both Robin’s hands as he leaned forward to talk intently to the young girl.

  She watched them silently for a few moments, her eyes clouded. Then she stepped backward to sit heavily on the edge of the bed.

  There was a knock at the door, and Kim stuck her head inside. “I have the chicken. You pick up the steaks and salad?”

  Bea nodded. “In the refrigerator,” she said absently.

  “Are you all right?”

  Bea pointed to the window. Kim strode across the room and stood looking down at the patio. She finally turned to Bea. “You want me get ma’ razor and cut on her?”

  “Knock it off, Kim.”

  “You trust him, don’t you?”

  “I trust Lyon implicity.… But I’m not sure for how long.”

  “Then send her home—that is, unless you plan to adopt her.”

  “I’ve tried. It’s hard to keep her on airplanes.”

  “You know the trouble with you middle-class whiteys? You’re so damn polite that you forget where things are at. Come right out and say it, for God’s sake. Use a little ghetto language on the little bitch. Tell her to get her little ass back where it belongs.”

  “That sums it up nicely.”

  “You want me to lay it on her?”

  Bea looked up and blinked back a tear. “Would you mind terribly?”

  Bea stood at the sink, shucking corn and wrapping it in aluminum foil, as Lyon entered the kitchen. “What in hell is up with Kim?”

  “A message for Garcia.”

  “She stormed out, and for a moment I thought she was going to push me off the parapet.”

  “She’s delivering a message for me.”

  Lyon pointed an ear of corn at his wife. “You sicked her on Robin.”

  “Exactly.”

  “I was getting things in hand.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  They watched Kim shake a finger under Robin’s nose. Robin, with downcast eyes, talked in an inaudible whisper. Kim’s hands went to the girl’s shoulders.

  “Robin is from the South; you don’t suppose …” Bea said in a soft voice.

  “Better than South Boston. But Christ only knows what Kim will say when she gets going.”

  As they watched, the two women fell into each other’s arms. Robin buried her head in Kim’s shoulder, and then broke away and ran for the house. The kitchen door banged open. Robin stopped and stared at Bea and Lyon a moment, broke into a sob, and ran for the stairs.

  Kim entered the kitchen slowly and sto
od by the doorway.

  “What did you say to her?” Lyon asked.

  “I told her to get the hell back home, and then she …” Tears coursed over Kim’s cheeks. “And then she told me how it felt, how much it meant to her, what it was … it was a lovely, sweet, innocent and beautiful thing.…” Kim choked and ran from the room.

  “I don’t think the ghetto makes them as tough these days,” Bea said and handed Lyon thirty-two ears of corn to husk.

  The lieutenant governor stood in the center of the patio beneath the gently swaying lanterns and brought his hand down in a long chopping motion. “… and then she said, ‘Today we unlock the pay toilets, and tomorrow the world.’”

  There was laughter from the surrounding group as Lyon moved away from the periphery of the crowd toward the long barbecue at the far end of the patio. Rocco Herbert, looking slightly ridiculous in a high chef’s hat, brought a large steak impaled on the end of a fork over to the barbecue and delicately dropped it onto the coals. He looked up at Lyon. “How’d I get snookered into this?” he asked as he flipped over the steak.

  “I think your wife volunteered you,” Lyon said, “and unless you’re feeding a lion, you had better flip that steak back again.”

  “How about another drink?”

  “I’m psychic,” Lyon said and handed his friend a double vodka.

  “Does being a great raconteur help in politics?” Rocco gestured with the long fork toward the lieutenant governor.

  “About as much as money, which is to say a lot.”

  “What about Bea?”

  “She’s one of the few with causes.”

  “Have you come up with any ideas on the Giles killing?”

  “I’ve tried to work on it, but things have been diverting around here today.”

  Rocco glanced toward the kitchen door, where Robin, dressed in a misty blue dress cut deep at the neckline, was talking with Damon Snow. “I hope they weren’t too diverting.”

  “Speaking of Miss Diverting, she checked out the airports with Gary Middleton.”

  “Oh, God!”

  “Can you recheck?”

  “I’ll put some men on it tomorrow morning. With school closed we have more manpower.”

  Lyon felt a hand on his shoulder and turned to face Snow. The toy manufacturer’s eyes were slightly out of focus, and he walked and talked with the great care and articulation of the nearly drunk. “I believe your friend the lieutenant governor is dominating the party, and that he is bombastic, and how am I going to make out with the chick?”

  Lyon frowned and looked toward Robin. “Make out?”

  Damon blinked. “She’s a lovely young lady, and I wish to learn her views on many topics.”

  The heavy voice of the lieutenant governor boomed over the patio. “Now, I’m not saying who this certain U.S. senator is, but his brother was president.” There was appreciative knowing laughter from the group surrounding him.

  Damon Snow stood solemnly erect. “He is now maligning a U.S. senator from an honored family.”

  “It’s just an anecdote,” Lyon said.

  “The Walking Wobblies,” Damon replied with a raised finger.

  “What?”

  “Wait and see.” Damon hurried toward the house.

  “He’s getting a snootful,” Rocco said.

  “He was the first to arrive and insisted on a double for openers.”

  Kim snatched the fork from Rocco’s hand and quickly turned the steak. “The rest of us don’t like them burned, and when are you going to bust those jokers wandering around town in the white robes?”

  “The Blossom people?”

  “I don’t know what they call themselves,” the black woman replied, “but anybody in white robes is on my list.”

  “They’re a perfectly harmless religious group.”

  “Didn’t they buy the old Claxton mansion on Plank Road?” Lyon asked.

  “Right. I went out there and checked them over. Bunch of religious nuts, mostly kids, who believe that Doctor Blossom is the reincarnation of John the Baptist or something. They have a school bus, and every morning they truck the kids around the state to panhandle.”

  “If they were black you’d have the health inspector and building inspector close the place down,” Kim said, and flipped the steak onto a platter.

  Rocco sighed. “If they were black, Kim, we’d have a baseball party.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Twenty-two guys with baseball bats do a number on them.”

  “You go …”

  They turned in unison at the whirring sound of a tick-tick. Damon was taking three-foot-high Wobbly dolls from a large box. When he threw a small lever in each doll’s back, it began a slow march toward the lieutenant governor, who was holding forth at the center of the patio. Damon had also inserted a fork in the paw of each Wobbly. He started the last of the six dolls and stood to watch them proceed toward the unsuspecting politician.

  “Sic ’em,” he said, lurched, and grabbed the door to steady himself.

  They sat in the study with drinks in their hands and stared soberly at the blackboard filled with Lyon’s clumsy printing. “I could sum the whole case up in one word,” Rocco said and pulled at his vodka.

  “Exactly,” Lyon responded.

  Outside the room, swirling through the study window, the party din rose and fell in tidelike waves. The two men were quiet, each mulling over the death of Giles: Rocco in a pragmatic proceeding manner, from one plateau to another; Lyon through a haze of memories. Now and then an individual voice or laugh would isolate itself temporarily from the party group on the patio, and Lyon seemed to hear Tom Giles from a year before.

  “You know, Went, someday I’m going to mount a machine gun on that crate of mine and shoot you out of the sky. You’re a menace.”

  “I don’t buzz people’s homes at six on a Sunday morning like some I could name.”

  “You couldn’t buzz a Christmas tree. And to think I once thought there was hope for you. That’s what comes from being friends with a Townie.”

  “Townie? Good God, Tom. I’d almost forgotten the word.” But he hadn’t. “I sometimes think you’re sorry you ever had to leave Greenfield.”

  Tom had stood at the edge of the patio, looked down at the river, and spoken quietly. “I think maybe I am. Funny how those days seem more real to me than the true world. Everything went right then—everything worked; now, everything seems like the White Rabbit, always late for a very important date.” He had turned and the spell was broken. “What the hell? Hey, you know, we don’t see each other enough these days. Have to correct that.”

  They hadn’t, and now Tom was dead and the debt still outstanding. An old debt of pubescent gratitude—perhaps the most important kind. Lyon sighed.

  “You’ve got something.”

  “No. I was just wondering how you felt when you beat up Gabriel What’s-his-name.”

  “Ring in the Civil Liberties Union,” the big man muttered sullenly into his drink.

  “I’m grateful that you saved us from a sojourn in the hospital. It’s just that you’re paradoxical. That morning I saw you directing small kids across the street, and I saw how you looked at them. That doesn’t fit in with my trespassing visitor getting the hose treatment in the driveway.”

  Rocco shrugged. “I still feel for the kids, but somewhere along the line they become teenagers, hop cars, take drugs, break into the A & P. Maybe that’s why I want to get out of this work. It brutalizes you. It can’t help it, even in a small town like this. God only knows what it does to you in a large city, where you face the crap every shift.”

  A girl’s scream carried to them from the patio. Rocco stood up instinctively.

  “Take it easy,” Lyon said. “Probably nothing but fun and games.”

  “NOT HARDLY,” Bea said from the doorway. “Damon is attacking Robin.”

  “What’s wrong with him tonight?”

  “He’s zonked,” Bea said and placed a restr
aining hand on Lyon. “No knights. Let Rocco handle it.”

  Robin stood wild-eyed in the corner of the patio, her bodice ripped down one shoulder, as Damon held to the parapet with both hands and leered at her. “He wanted to see the barn,” Robin said, “and then he …”

  “Come on, Damon.” Rocco put an arm around Damon’s shoulders and led him firmly toward the house. The party voices, which had stilled for a moment, rose to their former level.

  Once inside the kitchen, Damon broke away from Rocco, swiveled across the floor, and fell heavily against the sink. “You didn’t have to shove.”

  “How about some coffee?”

  “Screw the coffee. Gimme a drink.”

  Bea silently poured a large mug of black coffee and placed it on the counter next to Damon. “You’ll feel better,” she said.

  “Another drink and I’ll be all right.”

  “How much has he had?” Rocco asked in an aside to Lyon.

  “He had a snootful an hour ago, and God only knows how much since.”

  “A drink!” Damon demanded.

  “No,” Bea said firmly. “Coffee and something to eat.”

  Damon groaned. “You want to make me sick?”

  “I want to make you sober.”

  “All right, if that’s the way it is.” He pulled himself erect and carefully planted his feet apart. He stared at them with dull eyes, his face slack. “I can take a hint. No booze here. I’ll go to a bar.” He peered intently toward the door as if sighting a course, and then began to move laboriously across the room.

  Rocco caught his arm. “Give me the keys, Damon.”

  “Take your hands off me. I am perfectly capable of driving a car.”

  “Nope. The keys.”

  Damon shoved Rocco’s hands away and backed against the wall. “Try and get them, big boy.”

  With resignation, Rocco looked over at Lyon and then stepped resolutely toward Damon, who now held his arms defensively in front of him. As Rocco stepped closer, Damon’s fist lashed out. It was caught in Rocco’s hand and bent behind his own back.

  “Right-hand trouser pocket,” Lyon said.

  “Right.” Rocco flipped the keys from the pinned man’s pocket to Lyon, who tossed them to Bea, who tossed them inside the refrigerator freezer.