by Sarah Graves
My assumptions so far consisting of the certainty that, in the universe of romantic possibilities, Kris was a black hole and Sam was being sucked in, never to emerge.
And I didn’t see how any rethinking on my part was going to change that. Meanwhile there was another topic on my mind, and now was my chance.
“Dad,” I said after we had worked in silence a while longer. “Have you ever thought about getting back in touch with the home folks?”
The ones, I meant, who were planning to descend en masse in a little over twenty-four hours.
“Nope,” he said tersely, squeezing another dose of plastic wood into yet another screw hole.
Deftly he removed the woodworker’s syringe, wiped the excess with a red bandanna wrapped around the end of his index finger, and inspected the result.
“Pesky stuff,” he commented. “Too thin and it won’t dry, too thick and you can’t get it all the way to the base of the hole.”
“Right,” I said. His laconic answer had taken me aback.
“The thing is,” I began again, “I know it’s been a long time since you’ve seen any of them. . . .”
Over thirty years, actually. Being a bomb builder for a crew of bank-robbing, social-justice-demanding anarchists wasn’t the career path they’d have chosen for him, probably, though being an impoverished clan of hill folk they’d have surely held plenty of revolutionary opinions themselves.
For instance, that rich folk victimized the poor, that the legal system ran on infusions of cash, and that visitors from any branch of government whatsoever should be met with closed mouths, narrowed eyes, and loaded shotguns.
But they’d have drawn the line at bank robbery, and at the blast that destroyed a Manhattan town house, shattered windows for blocks around, and killed my mother.
For much of my life I’d believed that my father had done it, made some stupid mistake that had ruined all our lives; or worse, that it had been on purpose. When he’d shown up here in Eastport years later, sure I would reject him, he’d watched warily from a distance for a long time before approaching me.
He hadn’t set the bomb off. In the end the FBI realized it, too, and quit spying on his relatives in case he got in touch with them. But now it seemed maybe he hadn’t even wanted to.
And still didn’t. “It could be a nice thing,” I ventured, stirring drops of turpentine into the plastic wood.
“For all of you,” I continued, adding a touch more turps.
The hard-and-fast rule of working with plastic wood is that the stuff dries hard and fast where you don’t want it to, slowly where you do.
“I mean catching up on the news. Talking over,” I persisted, hearing my own note of desperation, “the good old days.”
My dad set the woodworker’s syringe down on the picnic table and turned to me. “They think I killed your mother,” he said.
At the look in his eyes I was struck silent.
“They still do,” he insisted. “Everyone back there does, and there’s no way I can ever prove to them that I didn’t.”
My dad hadn’t only been the explosives genius of the bunch; he’d been the pacifist as well. Bombs were for distraction, not human destruction, he’d said. But one of his pals had disagreed and the blast had been to discredit my dad, or kill him.
That guy was in a witness protection program now. So no one would ever be prosecuted and my dad would never be officially cleared.
Still . . . “Look, I can see why maybe Mom’s folks would blame you,” I said.
The ones who’d taken me afterward, hating me because I looked like him. Talked like him, too: big ideas, sassy mouth. But they were all dead now, gone to glory right along with the snake handling and the speaking in tongues.
“Jake, I couldn’t have taken you with me, you know. Me on the run with no address, always keeping out of sight . . .”
“I know,” I said, regretting my remark about there being no one to stop me from marrying Victor. “Don’t worry about it.”
Half the time with my mom’s folks I’d wanted to put my hand in the deadly snake cage just to get it over with. Victor was just another version of the snake cage, but that’s a different story.
“The thing is,” I began, gathering my courage.
Whereupon I was finally about to tell him that all the blood relatives either of us still had were coming to Eastport. And that although they hadn’t mentioned the subject, it didn’t sound to me as if they thought he’d murdered my mother.
But before I could, my father looked up and stopped what he was doing. Slowly, his gaze fixed on something behind me, he put down the woodworker’s syringe full of plastic wood.
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” he said quietly. “Turn your head a little, to where I’m looking.”
So I did, and then I saw it, too, in the forsythia bushes at the back of the yard.
Huge, unbelievable. It was magnificent.
It was the moose.
“Did you know a moose can roll its eyes in two different directions?” I demanded of Ellie. “Independently of each other?”
The moose had stood looking at my father and me while also watching a cat stalk a sparrow at the far end of the yard. It had a long horsey face, nostrils the size of grapefruits, and a pendulous lower lip that looked as if it might be about to speak.
Finally it had ambled away toward the woods behind Hillside Cemetery. Deer lived there, and foxes, and there were rumors of a lynx. So it would be a good place for a moose to hang out.
“I don’t care that he was eating the forsythia,” I enthused. “He can eat the whole yard, I’ll buy more geraniums for him . . .”
I stopped. Ellie’s look at me was patiently long-suffering. “What?” I demanded. “Why are you . . . ?”
“You didn’t tell him, did you? Your dad. You didn’t tell him about the visit.”
“I was on the verge of it. I was about to. But . . .”
“Right. Pretty convenient. Moose shows up, ends your whole conversation.”
To hear her, you’d think I could summon wild animals into my presence anytime, like Dr. Doolittle.
“I am going to do it,” I said. “I got started. But then—”
“Where’s Bella?” Ellie interrupted, letting me off the hook. It was mid-afternoon and the kitchen was oddly peaceful.
“I sent her home after she showed up with a pressure washer. She said before she got started on inside housework she wanted to clean the dirt off the outside. She was insistent about it.”
Manic, actually, was a better term for what Bella had been. It was a project I could have gone along with, except that on my old house the paint would have dissolved along with the dirt, and under that paint was two-hundred-year-old clear cedar siding that the power washer would have saturated with water.
“So I gave her the day off. It was the only way I could get rid of her. And after we saw the moose my dad went over to her place, too. He needed a break from the shutters, so he’s helping her put some more locks on her doors. Ones,” I added, “that don’t have handy keys hidden on the porch.”
Not that it would do any good. I was starting to think our mysterious note writer should switch to smuggling gold bricks out of the Federal Reserve Depository.
For one thing, it would get him—or her—out of my hair. “You load that cedar siding up with water and the house might as well be draped in damp newspaper,” I went on. “It’ll never really dry. You’ll never get paint to stick to it again.”
Which was not what most house painters said about the idea of pressure-washing old houses, but that was because most house painters weren’t up for grinding it off with a grinder. The only useful wood/water combination I’d ever heard of was pykrete, the ice-and-sawdust mix Sam had told me about. Speaking of whom:
“Hi,” he uttered crisply as he came in.
“Hi,” Ellie and I both replied.
He went to the refrigerator, pulled out a chicken leg and a bottle of soda, and went up to his ro
om with them.
“Hmm, I see we’re doing really well in that department, too,” Ellie commented.
“Yeah.” I told her about the ring at Kendall’s. “He’s being a butt-head,” I concluded.
Ellie didn’t answer. “My dad thinks I’m worrying too much,” I went on. “And I suppose you think I ought to leave him alone about it, too, don’t you?” I accused, seeing the look on her face.
“I think maybe you’ve pushed him into a corner, is all.”
From the Snugli carrier strapped to Ellie’s body, Leonora opened her eyes and uttered a syllable of infant contentment. In her pink stretch-knit sleeper and little white booties she looked sweet as a lollipop.
“Just wait till she starts acting up,” I fumed.
But then I was struck by a new insight: My dad was right. I’d turned out halfway decent despite ghastly early decisions. And in the end Sam’s decisions might not be ghastly.
Hey, it could happen. But even if it didn’t, probably I should quit trying to exert control I didn’t have.
And couldn’t get. “You know,” I said slowly to Ellie, “maybe it’s not Sam who’s being the butt-head around here.”
She was dressed in a pink sweater that matched the baby’s sleeper. With it she wore a red turtleneck, chartreuse leggings, a gold-flecked hair ribbon, and the kind of gentle smile she often displayed when I showed signs of not being an idiot.
“How long have you known?” I asked. “That I’ve been . . .”
“Pounding your fists and stomping your feet and acting as if your son’s behavior was all about you?”
I stared. That pretty much summed it up, all right.
She shrugged. “Couple of weeks.”
“And how long were you planning to let me get away with it?”
Another shrug. “Until you got over it. I knew you would.”
She put her hand on my arm. “I,” Ellie pronounced with radiant simplicity, “have confidence in you.”
They’ve got her picture in the dictionary, I hear, beside the word friend.
“Anyway,” she said, “I think we should get back to work on the Jim Diamond thing, the way we planned.”
Instantly my defenses snapped reflexively up again. “But Ellie, they’re coming and my dad doesn’t want to see them . . . and the guest rooms . . . and Sam’s still hanging out with Kris, and—”
“You’re waving your arms around,” she observed placidly. “Put them down before you hurt yourself, Jake.”
So I did, whereupon she explained to me what we were going to do for the rest of the afternoon. And I will admit her ideas were smarter than anything I could’ve come up with, given my state of mind.
But they also led to something more dangerous than either of us planned on encountering.
Lots more.
Chapter 11
Azenath Jones was a short, fortyish woman with long, wavy chestnut hair, an engaging smile, and a figure that went beyond plus-size.
Way beyond; Azenath was what Victor would have called a time bomb of avoirdupois, while getting out his blood pressure cuff. Still she carried her size with dignity and aplomb, even humor.
Her eyes, summing me up in a glance as I entered her office with Ellie, were a peculiar shade of light golden brown, and so intelligent I felt as if my bone marrow was being scanned.
“Hello, ladies,” she welcomed us in her gravelly voice. For her work that day at the Gopher Baroque agency she wore a vast purple silk paisley caftan, black harem pants, gold sandals over fire-engine-red toenail polish, and masses of copper bracelets on both plump freckled wrists.
“Lovely child,” she added, inspecting Leonora, but having paid this compliment she dismissed the infant instantly from her attention.
Babies clearly weren’t high on Azenath’s list of interests. “Now, what can I do for you?” she asked us.
The office was on the top floor of the Hixton Building, a newly rehabbed nineteenth-century structure overlooking the water. One wall was exposed brick, two were whitewashed barn boards, and the third was glass sliding doors leading onto a sunlit deck.
Azenath’s desk was an old oak table whose rich finish was partly covered by a leather-bound green desk blotter. “Well, as you probably know, I spoke with Dinah,” I began as we sat across from her.
Her businesslike expression softened. “Yes, she told me. I hope Bella hasn’t given you any further—”
“No,” I interjected hastily, “she hasn’t.”
The last thing I wanted was more trouble for Bella, whose whole future depended upon her remaining employable in Eastport.
Assuming, that is, that she stayed out of jail. “But we need to know what you learned about her before you hired her,” Ellie told Azenath.
Because as Ellie had realized, working in people’s houses was a tricky business. The clients and the employment agency had to trust the employee completely, and if that trust turned out to be undeserved everybody could lose big-time.
And Azenath hadn’t just fallen off the pumpkin truck. “Some specific information you were looking for?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.
“The name of the firm Jim Diamond defrauded with his check scheme, for one thing,” I put in.
We could have gotten it out of public records, or Bob Arnold might’ve remembered. We could have asked around town, too, or questioned Bella. But the former would take a trip to the Machias courthouse, while the latter would betray our ongoing interest.
And I wasn’t kidding about keeping a low profile, even with Bella herself. Besides, as Ellie had pointed out, Azenath would know. She’d have dug up everything about Bella before sending her out to work under the auspices of Gopher Baroque.
“And anything else you can tell us about the whole case, for another,” I finished. “Because . . .”
I searched my mind for a plausible reason. While I was doing so, Azenath came up with a real one.
“Bella’s in trouble,” she said simply. By now, word of the housekeeper’s being a suspect would have gotten out.
“Yes,” I admitted. No sense screwing around with Azenath. Besides, as Ellie had also realized, Azenath wouldn’t gab to anyone else about Bella’s problem or our interest in it. After all, Bella was still an employee of Gopher Baroque.
And like bank manager Bill Imrie, Azenath knew mud rubs off.
Unfortunately that meant she might not gab to us, either. In fact at first it didn’t seem she would; instead she just went on gazing at us from behind that big desk.
So I gave her some incentive. “Bella’s a good worker. I like her a lot. She’s a little bit nuts and I enjoy that in a person.”
For the first time Azenath’s smile became warmly genuine, showing white teeth. Her office smelled faintly of patchouli oil.
“And?” she inquired. “I agree about Bella, by the way,” she added.
“And if I can keep her out of trouble, I’ll keep her on,” I promised rashly. “It would mean an ongoing commission for Gopher Baroque and an ongoing success story for your business, too, a long-term local placement.”
I’d remembered what Dinah had said about summer being their busy time. What they needed was business during the winter. By my promise I was volunteering to be the poster girl for that, and taking it on faith that once the current difficulties were over I wouldn’t have to keep Bella in line with a whip and chair.
But I could worry about all that later. “So to help me keep her out of trouble, what I want in addition to what you learned is what you thought about it all,” I finished.
“Who else,” she deduced accurately, “was in on the scheme?”
Just then Dinah came in, dressed as if she’d just gotten off the subway in lower Manhattan: contrasting tank tops in black and turquoise, a gray zippered sweatshirt with a silver thread in the fabric, black jeans faded to the right shade of gray, and black high-top sneakers with little white ruffles poking out.
“Oh,” she said to Azenath, nodding briefly at Ellie and me. “I didn�
��t realize you had . . .”
The information in the glance that passed between them could have filled a book; War and Peace, maybe. At the end of it Dinah nodded, went into her own office, and closed the door behind her.
Which only confirmed my sense of the closeness between these two. If one got the hiccups the other drank backward out of a glass. I didn’t know how they’d found each other; there seemed not the slightest hint of a romantic connection between them.
But I knew not everyone was capable of being that kind of friend, and respected Azenath for it. Moments later she confirmed another of my opinions about her, that she wouldn’t hire the Archangel Gabriel without doing a background check.
Ten minutes after that, we had what we’d come for: more facts on what Jim Diamond had done to get sent to prison.
“And the name of the business?” I asked.
“That I don’t know,” Azenath said. “It was a mom-and-pop lumberyard and building supply business, now defunct, I know that much,” she said, confirming what Bill Imrie had told me.
“The owner was ill when Jim Diamond went to work there,” she added. “Likely that was how he managed to get his scheme going. The boss being half out of the picture already, I mean.”
I agreed that it was a logical conclusion. An illness or family crisis made small businesses especially vulnerable to such things.
“Do you know what he did there? I mean what his job was?” Ellie asked.
Azenath nodded. “He was a salesman. And that’s what puzzles me. If he’d worked on the office side, I could see how he got at the accounts, and even how he could steal blank checks. If the owner trusts you, you can steal a business blind before anything trips you up, assuming you have hands-on access to the books in the first place.”
Again I agreed. “But a salesperson wouldn’t have had that kind of access in the normal course of doing business.”
“Correct,” she responded a little patronizingly, as if I were a bright student. I wasn’t used to being addressed that way.
But from Azenath it was all right. “So there’s a pair of mysteries still unsolved,” she added. “How he did it, got the checks he forged and fiddled the books to cover his tracks.”