The Book of Old Houses

by Sarah Graves

  “So this morning I looked it over again,” Ellie said. “And this was inside.”

  She lifted it and a folded sheet fell out, a flyer listing the dates of recent and upcoming meetings of a writers’ group. It said Ann was scheduled to read some of her work at an evening meeting at a restaurant in Orono, the night Robotham died.

  Which we’d already known, more or less. But now Ellie’s look said she’d come up with a new slant on the information.

  “Try this idea,” she said. “What if Jason did kill Horace to get the book?”

  “But then how would Ann have ended up with it?”

  She raised a finger. “I’m getting to that. But first back up a little. Maybe Jason could hit someone over the head and run, and maybe somebody would ask him to. I’m okay that far. But would you send him into a strange house to look for something right afterward, to steal it?”

  “He was just a kid. Something unexpected came up, he might lose his head. I’d want someone who could stick to a plan, stay calm, improvise if he had to, and . . . oh.”

  “If Merkle sent Jason to do the real bad-deed part, and Jason did it, then Merkle couldn’t very well leave Jason walking around and able to talk about the whole thing afterward, could he?”

  In other words, Merkle might want to eliminate Jason. “But,” Ellie added, “what if that’s all Jason did? What if Merkle had two people doing his dirty work that night?”

  I looked at the flyer again. The writers’ meetings lasted from seven-thirty until ten. Say half an hour of schmoozing in the restaurant bar afterward . . .

  “Ann would’ve had time to get there after the so-called mugging and wait for a chance to get in,” I said. “No guarantee the house would be empty right away, but—”

  But sooner or later there was a good chance that it would be. “They probably asked Lang Cabell to go identify the body at the hospital,” Ellie agreed.

  “So you could expect he’d at least be gone for that long.” In other words, long enough, and Ellie’s theory provided a motive for Ann’s death, too.

  To shut her up, just as Jason had been shut up. “But, Ellie, it means Ann knew in advance that Jason was going to . . .”

  “Not necessarily. Who knows what Merkle might have told her? And even if she suspected, people can manage to ignore a lot of things when they’re getting what they want.”

  And want was Ann’s middle name, lately. “The story about someone mailing her the book could’ve been a lie, then,” I said. “And the envelope could’ve just been window dressing, something she could show in case somebody pressed her on the subject.”

  Down in the boat basin a couple of teenaged boys hopped into a wooden dory, hauled a cooler off the dock into the boat with them, threw the line off, and rowed away. Moments later they were out past the breakwater, heading for open water. “Coming over to my house to demand it could’ve been part of the plan, too,” I added. “So I’d think she didn’t have it. But if the idea was for Merkle to get it, then why did she, still? And why brag about it later?”

  Ellie looked troubled. “I don’t know. Maybe she realized what had really happened, once she learned Horace had died? And with that she had something to hold over Merkle. To make him let her keep it?”

  Or so she’d have thought. Until it was too late. The bell over the door tinkled and Merrie Fargeorge entered the store, and spotted us through the sliding-glass doors leading to the deck.

  “Good morning, Merrie,” I began in my cheeriest tone. Might as well at least try keeping things light, I thought.

  But no dice. “Hmmph!” she sniffed. “Maybe for you. I want to know when you mean to put a stop to that man’s awful snooping!”

  So much for the party cheering her up permanently. “Merrie,” I began a little less sweetly, “I’m afraid that I’m not the boss of—”

  She glared at me. “I don’t care. You’re the only one with a connection to him at all so you’ll have to handle him. Do you,” she demanded, “have any idea how difficult it is to get some of these Eastport old-timers to open up and talk to a person?”

  I couldn’t say I’d ever had difficulty in that regard. My most recent visit notwithstanding, on most days just trying to get through the IGA in a timely manner was like swimming through soft tar, what with all the conversations involved.

  But Merrie’s research meant learning who’d slept with whom nine months before so-and-so was born way back in 1849, and never mind what baptismal records said. And the way people felt about family stuff around here, a blot on great-great-grandfather so-and-so’s honor might as well be branded on their own foreheads.

  “He’s making people nervous,” she insisted. “And I want it stopped.”

  “Really.” I kept trying to be polite. But I was suddenly very glad she hadn’t been my high-school teacher and she must’ve sensed it.

  Her plump face hardened. “Of course you must do as you think best, Jacobia,” she said tightly.

  Then she turned on the heel of her orthopedic shoe and tootled away, practically chuffing steam.

  “Gosh, what do you suppose brought that on?” I breathed as we disposed of our soda cups on the way out of the store. Skippy waved a plastic spatula at us in farewell.

  “No idea. If I had to guess, I’d say she’s either seen Dave DiMaio again or heard from someone who has, and that’s what’s got her all fired up,” Ellie replied.

  And then, surprisingly, “You know what, though? Maybe it’s time we let go of all this.” She peered at me. “Because you look beat, and we’re just not getting anywhere. Besides, you’ve got it, haven’t you? Your book. Don’t deny it, I saw it in your face last night.”

  I hadn’t meant to deny it. And she was right; we weren’t winning this one. Not even close.

  And not that it would be a big disaster for me if we didn’t. If Merkle came after the old book I could call the cops. If that didn’t work I could pay him a visit. Bring the Police Special and if that didn’t work, the Bisley.

  Or Wade. And believe me, only a guy with a death wish would ignore Wade. So life would go on.

  And Jason Riverton’s mother would go on believing that she’d killed her only son.

  “Yeah, I’ve got it,” I said. “Has Margot Riverton moved back into their house yet?”

  “No. She didn’t want to stay at Merrie’s, either. Bob told me she said Merrie’d gone to enough trouble trying to help Jason and look how that turned out. So she’s in the assisted-living home for

  now.” Ellie sighed. “She can’t be on her own and she has no close family. She depended on Jason and from what I hear, she’s afraid to live alone.”

  “Does she have any money?”

  “Social security. She had Jason’s disability income, but now that’ll be gone. And some rental income, I think, some little piece of property she owns somewhere that she’s been renting out practically forever. But it’s losing Jason’s monthly check that’s really going to destroy her.”

  “Great. So there’s another life ruined.”

  I felt furious, suddenly; maybe at Merrie Fargeorge with her imperious demands and air of being entitled to have them met, no questions asked. Maybe at myself, because there was a connecting thread in all this somewhere and I wasn’t seeing it.

  Or possibly I just understood too well how Jason’s mother felt, thinking her son’s death was on account of something she did.

  Or didn’t do. In Sam’s case, so far it was a potentially fatal illness and not his actual demise. Still: somebody you were and shouldn’t have been, somebody you should’ve been and weren’t.

  Something. Let the experts say differently, but go ahead; try not feeling that way in your heart.

  “If the cops have already as good as said Jason’s death was an accident, I don’t suppose they’ve gone through the house. Not the way we would,” I ventured.

  Ellie shook her head.

  “No one,” I went on, “has confronted Bert Merkle about all this, either. As far as we know.”
/>
  She fell into step beside me. “Nope.”

  “About killing Jason to keep him from implicating Bert in Horace’s murder, sending Ann into Horace’s house for the book, killing her to keep her quiet about it and get the book back . . .”

  It was just past noon and the sun, newly slanting in these last warm days of August, turned the island of Campobello across the water to a gleaming gold bar. Sailboats cavorted in the wind, and on the breakwater an ice-cream truck played the same innocent song over and over.

  “Only I got to the book first, which he didn’t plan on,” I said. “Listen, Ellie, what would you say to one more day? Would George go along with that, do you suppose?”

  But both of us knew that if Ellie said she wanted to go to Mars, George would be out renting the rocket ship. “I was going to head home,” I said, “try getting some things done in what’s left of the afternoon. But instead . . .”

  Instead it was time for a little more breaking and entering.

  Emphasis on the entering part.

  Installed in a cheap wooden hollow-core front door, a keyed doorknob lock keeps you from having to walk around thinking Darn, I left my door wide open again.

  But unlike the Block-manufactured behemoth Ann Talbert had installed, it doesn’t do much else. The Rivertons’ front door swung open; I dropped the tiny screwdriver back into my bag.

  “What’re we looking for?” Ellie whispered.

  The front hall smelled musty. A path worn in the rug led to the living room, where the TV remote still perched on the arm of Mrs. Riverton’s chair. Grime on the remote, dust on the screen; even though nobody else was in here with us the atmosphere in the house felt heavy with silent sorrow.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered back. Suspecting that someone had crept in and set up a poisoning death made even the ratty old sofa, crocheted afghan, and age-stained drapes seem ominous.

  “But if no one’s really checked around in here thoroughly, then maybe we should at least look at that computer again. Just in case Jason got e-mail from Merkle, for instance,” I said.

  “You think he’d have written anything incriminating?”

  Mrs. Riverton’s ChapStick lay on the table by the chair, beside a half-finished cup of tea. In the kitchen a bundle of laundry stood by the washer; on the counter were a group of small orange plastic pharmacy bottles and a vial of eye drops.

  “She didn’t take her pills along with her?”

  “I imagine they’ve given her new prescriptions,” Ellie said. “After what they think happened they wouldn’t want her taking any of these.”

  Right; in case strawberry syrup wasn’t the only thing she’d gotten mixed up. From a tiny screened back porch the tumbledown shed at the rear of the small yard was visible, its swaybacked roofline looking ready to fall at the least excuse.

  Behind the shed, a back alley ran along the rear of all the properties on this side of Water Street. The Rivertons’ car was still pulled into the yard at an angle from the alley. A couple of well-worn ruts beside it showed where visitors parked.

  I opened the cabinet under the sink. Nothing in there looked unusual now; no strawberry syrup, no antifreeze jug.

  A phone hung on the kitchen wall. But there was no answering machine and no caller ID so I couldn’t check on calls they might have gotten, and the wall calendar held a reminder for a doctor’s appointment but nothing more.

  Jason and his mother had lived quiet lives. No wonder he’d been open to whatever weird excitement—or even just the plain old variety—that a friendship with Bert Merkle might offer.

  I peered into the breadbox, the silverware drawer, and the sugar bowl. Nothing. “Jake?” Ellie called from upstairs. “Um, you want to come look at this?”

  I found her in Jason’s room. It seemed even smaller and shabbier than it had with him in it. Black walls and woodwork that badly needed repainting, pine-board-and-milk-crate bookcase full of tattered paperbacks, and his desk . . .

  All just the way we’d seen it last, even the wine bottle and the poison handbook. “Cops didn’t think these were strange?” I asked.

  Ellie sat, turned the computer on. “Bottle’s unopened,” she pointed out. “And he had a lot of unusual books.”

  “Uh-huh.” I still thought a poisoned kid with a book about poisons and their antidotes on his shelf was interesting. But if anything it bolstered a suicide theory, which they’d discarded.

  “Password?” I asked.

  Her fingers moved on the keyboard. “No. You can get right into his e-mail. I don’t see much except spam, though.”

  “Maybe he deleted things?” The room smelled like teenaged boy, which is only a pleasant smell when it’s your own teenaged boy.

  That, and the fruity reek of strawberry Slurpees, which was an aroma I knew I’d never enjoy again. Ellie’s fingers flew.

  “Nope again. He had a software program on here that he could use to recover deleted things, including e-mail.”

  We waited. A line appeared on the screen: Number of Files Recovered = 0.

  “How come you know so much about computers?” She’d looked up Dave DiMaio on the Internet, too, I recalled, which now that I thought about it was also more tech-savvy than I’d have expected of her. Ellie’s life consisted of real things, not pixel-images.

  Small laugh. “Lee’s reading picture books already. Getting curious about chapter books.”

  That is, with lots more words in them. “So any minute she’ll be on the Internet, herself.”

  She nodded. “To stay ahead of her I need to start now, or I’ll be like those other parents who have no clue until the kid runs off with some pervert they met in a chat room.”

  She hit return. Lines began scrolling down the screen; she hit pause and leaned back in Jason’s chair. “Here’s a log of the programs Jason’s run recently.”

  “Those Internet slimebags’ll have no chance against you.”

  “I hope.” The screen quit scrolling. “It’s a short list,” she added. “E-mail, web surfing, music, and the one he used most, for games.” She pointed at the screen. “This Shock Jock module had to get loaded each time Jason started a new session of game-playing. By the look of it, he’d leave it running all day, then load it up again the next morning.”

  “I get it. But help me out, here. Your skill in finding all this is very impressive but I still don’t see—”

  “It’s what you don’t see that’s interesting,” she explained. “Something Merrie Fargeorge told you made me think of it—that Jason had never used a word-processing program in his life.”

  Not even when Merrie had tried to pay him to do it. “What about the word-processing program itself? Does it show things that got created with it?”

  Ellie typed. The screen filled with the two-letter message that had been there when we found his body: DD.

  More keystrokes. “Only one word-processing document. Created yesterday, two fifty-nine P.M. Could he still even have been conscious when this was written?” she wondered aloud.

  “It hardly seems likely, does it? His mom called Bob Arnold about four.”

  A sound from downstairs interrupted us. Not a loud sound or even a threatening one . . .

  Maybe nothing at all. I strode to the hall and looked down. “Someone there?”

  No answer. Halfway down the stairs I peered left and right, saw no one and heard nothing, then spotted the TV remote on the carpet where it had slipped from the chair’s upholstered arm.

  But no one was in the house. When I got back to Jason’s room Ellie was shutting down the computer.

  “So why’d a kid who never wrote a word in his life struggle out of a fatal coma to fire up his word processor?” I wondered aloud.

  She shrugged, moving the computer mouse on a black mousepad whose gold-and-red script read Shoggoth Lives.

  And who, I wondered irritably, was Shoggoth? “And write,” I added, “a message that no one can figure out what it means?”

  “Oh, I’m sure someone c
an,” said a voice from behind me, and I just about dropped dead of fright right there, first on account of anybody being behind us to say anything at all; I’d been sure the house was empty.

  And second, because it was Bert Merkle. “What are you doing here?” I demanded.

  Yeah, pretty lame. But it was all I could think of on such short notice. And besides, I really wanted to know the answer.

  Dirty fingernails, scruffy thinning hair . . . to look any more like a Halloween scarecrow the man would have had to have straw sticking out of his cuffs, and as for those teeth—

  “I could ask you the same,” he pointed out.

  But even more than a scarecrow, what he really reminded me of was the fact that there was no other way out of this room.

  “I happened to be passing, noticed the front door ajar,” he said, his fingertips pressed together so that his curved, unkempt nails resembled the spines on a Venus’s-flytrap.

  “So I decided to check,” he finished. But he was lying. We hadn’t left the door ajar. He’d tried it and found it unlocked so he’d come in.

  And found us already inside. His eyes were pale gray, like a couple of pickled onions. I totaled up the number of negative factors in this situation: evil guy, scene of a murder, no one knew we were here.

  Et cetera. But then Ellie spoke up. “Mrs. Riverton asked me to make sure Jason’s computer was shut down properly,” she lied smoothly.

  “And,” she added, “to lock up when we left. Which we are doing.” She moved purposefully toward the Merkle-blocked door.

  With an ironic leer, he stepped back to let her pass. I followed, holding my breath and tensed for sudden movement on his part.

  None came. But on the stairway landing I halted.

  “Coming?” I asked. Because from the way he was waiting for us to go, it was clear he didn’t intend to.

  But eventually he followed us grudgingly downstairs and out the front door, where he ambled away with no farewell while we walked in the opposite direction.

  “I wonder what he wanted,” I said once he was out of earshot.

  “Me, too.” Ellie turned abruptly. “But I’m not finished with that place,” she declared. “There’s still that shed out back, and I want to know what’s in it.”