A Child's Garden of Death (21 page)

Lyon coughed, pinched the bridge of his nose and smiled at his wife. “There are times when I wonder,” he said.

They walked on, their footprints making slight indentations in the packed sand. “Over there,” Bea said and led him by the hand toward a protected rift in the dunes. They sat in the sand, their shoulders touching, and looked toward the sea. The small semi-circle, surrounded by dunes, opened to the sea, and they lay back against the side. “Hungry?” she asked.

“Not yet. In a little while.” He placed the small rucksack at their feet and kissed her on the forehead. Protected from the winds, they were warmed by the sun as barely perceptible water sounds swept across the sand. They had known the Cape wouldn't be crowded during early spring, and with spent emotions had wordlessly driven half the night toward their secluded destination.

Bea's shallow breathing told Lyon that she'd fallen asleep and he laid his jacket across her. They had spent their honeymoon near here, which made it a fit place to return to for the nursing of recent wounds. The previous night's arguments surrounded him.

“
IT
'
S OVER, OVER, OVER WITH
!” she had screamed.

“No', damn it! Not yet.”

“It's wrong and all tied up with Sandra. You're trying to expiate some imaginary sin by this obsession. The murder of a little girl thirty years ago gives you nightmares about your own child. We had almost forgotten, Lyon. It was gone and didn't hurt so much anymore.”

“I hadn't forgotten,” he said aloud.

Beatrice sat up on the sand. “What did you say?”

“Nothing. I'm sorry I disturbed you. You know, I think I am hungry now.” He opened the rucksack and took out sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs and a small bottle of wine. “In fact, I'm starved.”

They ate quietly and drank Small cups of Rhine wine. Lyon sensed her looking at him. “We could adopt a child,” she said. “I've wanted to for years. I could even stay in the legislature—it only meets a few months a year—and I'd have plenty of time to care for her.”

“I'm not ready for that yet.”

He knew what his books were, and as long as he created children's fantasies she was there. He wrote them for her, to her, and because of that she still existed for him.

“There are so many children who need a home,” she said.

He put his arm on her shoulder. “Please … let's walk some more.”

In late day when they approached the cottage at water's edge they were as tired as they wanted to be. The man in the shadows of the small porch propped one foot on the porch railing as he leaned the chair against the wall. Lyon and Bea were at the porch steps, still oblivious to his presence when he spoke.

“I think I know how it was done,” Rocco Herbert said.

“Oh, my God, he's haunting us,” Bea said and fled into the cottage.

“How in hell did you find us? No one knew we were coming here,” Lyon said.

“Put out an APB to locate a material witness, and I've certainly given you enough traffic tickets to know your marker number.”

Lyon sat in the chair next to Rocco. “I'm not interested. I've half-promised Bea that I'm through with it.”

“Can't blame you. You've had enough grief over this mess.”

The descending sun darkened the water before them. Wordlessly, Bea served drinks and disappeared back into the cottage. Occasionally Rocco shifted his injured leg with a quiet grunt, while Lyon looked across the dunes.

“All right,” Lyon finally said. “I can't stand it. How was it done?”

The small brass plate on the front of the brownstone house near the state capitol told the passing world that Saxon, Giles, Renfrow and Hoppelwite, Attorneys at Law, occupied the building. Immediately inside the door a claw-leg table with highly polished top supported the tired elbows of an elderly man.

“May I help you, sir,” the older man said, his rheumy eyes seeming to stare through Lyon disdainfully toward the elbow patches on his suit jacket.

“I have an appointment with Mr. Giles. My name is Wentworth.”

He followed the ancient retainer up the narrow, winding marble staircase to the second floor. Old prints and maps decorated the hallway, while similar doors opened into antique-filled offices.

The office of Thomas G. Giles II clearly had the hallmark of a very senior partner in the firm. Its corner location overviewing the park and state capitol, and the fine clean-lined early American antiques gave off an aura of subliminal ostentation. The office occupant was a ruddy-faced man of fifty with a shock of carefully groomed white hair. A well-manicured hand with Harvard class ring was extended.

“Wentworth!” Giles said. “Farmington Prep—Lacrosse—Captain 1948.”

“Dobbie Giles, you were captain when I was a freshman.” Lyon slipped easily into the almost-forgotten, but never-lost, mantle of “Old Yankee.” They laughed as long ago days on sunny playing fields assumed vibrancy and the dire enemies of Choate, Petty and Andover assumed reality again. A nagging thought concerning the old adage that the battles of the British Empire were won on the playing fields of Eton came to mind, and as Lyon viewed the pretentious man before him, he felt he knew why the Empire had been lost.

Giles settled back in his seat. “… and then Harvard, V-12 of course during the war.” He paused as his mental shift was made. “You wanted to see me concerning the Houston matter.”

“Yes, I did. I've been indirectly involved with the Houston Company on a matter, and his death …”

“Bothers you. Off the record, I don't mind telling you that it does me too. Not in character at all. There's really not much I can help you with—the attorney-client relationship still exists.”

“Of course, Dobbie, but a little information off the record would be of invaluable assistance.”

“That might depend on what it is. Exactly what did you want to know?”

“Why did Houston want to see you?”

Dobbie Giles tapped a slim gold pencil on the desk. “He said it was urgent, so much so that I canceled two previous engagements to make room to see him. He did say that our meeting would concern two matters.”

“Can you tell me what they are?”

“No, not completely; but off the record, Lyon … one concerned breaking the employment contract of a highly placed officer in the company.”

“The other?”

“This is really off the record, and if it gets out I'll deny it. It was a domestic relations problem. That's all I can say.”

“Do you know who Roger Hackman is?”

“Is that important?”

“It could be. He was one of the last people to see Houston.”

The staccato of Giles' tapping pencil increased. “That might explain his call. Roger Hackman is a private investigator.”

From the offices of Saxon, Giles, Renfrow and Hoppelwite to the office of Roger Hackman, Confidential Investigations, was a true trip through the looking-glass. Hackman's office was two flights up old wooden stairs in a theater building that now showed X-rated movies.

In the dimly lit hallway, Lyon paused at the head of the stairs. A credit bureau a dentist and Hackman's office entered off the hall. The stained half-glass door opened with a creak as he entered the office.

Hackman was a short, squat man with deep-set eyes and a gravel voice that now growled into the telephone. “That's the story,” he rasped. “The beauty parlor and then the art gallery. You want me to say she went to a motel, O.K., but we can't prove it.”

The squat man slammed the receiver down and with myopic eyes looked at Lyon for a moment and, evidently deciding he was a potential client, smiled and motioned him to a chair.

“Mr. Hackman?”

“Yes.”

“I understand that you met with Asa Houston the night before he died.”

The pudgy man's eyes dimmed as shutters clicked down. He slowly lit a cigarillo as he studied Lyon. “I might have.”

“I know you did.” Lyon smiled.

“Houston hired me a couple of times to do confidential work.”

“You prepared a report for him recently.”

“I might have. Those things are confidential. You must know that.”

“I assume you are available for an assignment.”

“I might be; depends on the job. My rate is $100 a day plus expenses.”

“If you already had a recent report on someone, you'd be a bit ahead of the game, now wouldn't you?”

“I might.”

Lyon placed a hundred-dollar bill on the desk. The wages of crime detection come high, he thought; but after all, in a sense it was Houston's money. “I just wonder, Mr. Hackman, if you don't have a report already prepared on Mr. Jim Graves.”

The money quickly disappeared as Hackman appeared to be thinking for a minute. “Nope. And like I said, my rate is $100 a day plus expenses. How much of a report do you want?”

Lyon placed another hundred on the desk and inwardly cringed, his natural Yankee frugality objecting with a cry. “I'm really in quite a rush; do you just, happen to have a report on Mrs. Houston?”

Again the money disappeared. “It just so happens that I do. Now, since you have hired me to represent you, I can certainly give you a report, right?”

“Of course.”

The report appeared on the desk as quickly as the money had disappeared. As he glanced at it, Lyon had an urge to reach for his pen and insert a failing grade. The two pages of single spaced typing were filled with misspelled words, strike-overs and unbelievable syntax. “I'm glad neatness doesn't count,” he mumbled.

“You're getting a real bargain. That's a two-week surveillance, and you only paid for one day. I ought to charge you one big one.”

“I appreciate your special rates, Mr. Hackman,” he said and glanced through the report again. “You guarantee the accuracy of this?”

“Sure. I even got pictures, but that'll cost you extra.”

At “Sarge's Place” Rocco was so excited that he didn't notice two cars running the stop sign and a band of motorcyclists without crash helmets. With glee he finished the surveillance report and slammed the table.

“We've got the bitch,” he said.

Lyon shook his head. “I can't believe it, although it's probably true. I've met the woman, Rocco. She's a cross between Garbo and Bergman … womanhood personified, cool, well-bred, vibrant … why this …” he waved the report, “muck.”

“The way the Goddamn thing reads, she'd worked her way through the whole crew of the submarine base and was starting on the Coast Guard Academy. Listen, old buddy, I don't care what she seemed. I could tell you stories 'bout junior league members in little Murphysville that would send you to a monastery.”

“I feel very naive.”

“It all fits,” Rocco said. “Houston gets the investigator's report and hits his wife with it that night. The next morning he makes appointments with his lawyers, accountant and banker. Obviously he planned to dump her.”

“We could probably prove that.”

“Wifey-poo sees the bread ticket going out the window and knocks him off. Christ, it's practically a text-book case.”

Lyon tried to imagine the cool woman he remembered in the drawing room inhabiting a hotel room on many afternoons, while young men at the downstairs bar flipped coins to see who got firsties, seconds and sloppy thirds. A picture of that laughing woman at the head of the long dining table discussing Brecht and Piscator merged with the naked body on soiled sheets, laughing in lust.

“Do we have enough to go to Pat with?” Lyon asked.

“We're getting close,” the Chief replied.

“What next?”

“Time for your visit to Miss Helen.”

“Because if you go you might get your ass in a sling,” Lyon said.

“You read my mind.”

“There's just one thing, Rocco.”

“What's that?”

“Every time you send me off to see someone they end up dead.”

The cemetery behind the Church of the Redeemer is of sufficient antiquity to attract tombstone robbers from the farthest corners of New England. Lyon parked at the rear access road, away from the main segment of the funeral procession. He stepped over the low, wrought iron fence and curved his way through the older portion of the cemetery. The faces on many of the upright slabs had been worn smooth by years of rain and wind, while others, judiciously cut deeper into the granite, still held their inscriptions. He never failed to notice the myriad smaller stones clustered around the graves of long dead women—the graves of children, dead in childbirth or ravaged by disease in early childhood.

Lyon hurried away from the older portion of the cemetery toward the new section where neat stones, subdivisionlike, were aligned in mute uniformity. From a distance he could see the funeral entourage, a tableau of several dozen mourners standing with bowed heads. The Governor, a U.S Senator, and a member of the cabinet stood with others in appropriate condolent manner at the burial of Asa Houston.

Canon James McFarland, known amongst the Episcopal diocese as being short on theology but long on fund-raising, and known unaffectionately by young curates as “The Cathedral Builder,” read from the Book of Common Prayer.

Helen Houston stood next to the Canon. Black became her. As the final words of the service drifted through the trees the mourners eddied away from the grave in small groups, many of them going up to Helen Houston to say a few words of condolence.

Lyon stood next to the lead limousine as Helen Houston moved slowly through the crowd toward him. As she approached the automobile Lyon opened the car door. Expressionless, she glanced up at him and then stepped into the car.

He sat next to her on the wide seat and closed the door. The car started, the uniformed chauffeur slowly weaving the car through the departing mourners. Helen Houston rolled the dividing window up and turned toward Lyon, her eyes appraising him disdainfully.