Bag of Bones (41 page)

“The ones who stay bought?”

“Yeah. Oh, and I saw one of Devore's potential star witnesses in the Case of the Runaway Child. Royce Merrill. He was over by the equipment shed with some of his cronies. Did you happen to notice him?”

I said I had not.

“Guy must be a hundred and thirty,” John said. “He's got a cane with a gold head the size of an elephant's asshole.”

“That's a
Boston Post
cane. The oldest person in the area gets to keep it.”

“And I have no doubt he came by it honestly. If Devore's lawyers put him on the stand, I'll debone him.” There was something chilling in John's gleeful confidence.

“I'm sure,” I said. “How did Mattie take getting cut dead by her old friends?” I was thinking of her saying that she hated Tuesday nights, hated to think of the softball games going on as they always had at the field where she had met her late husband.

“She did okay,” John said. “I think she's given most of them up as a lost cause, anyway.” I had my doubts about that—I seem to remember that at twenty-one lost causes are sort of a specialty—but I didn't say anything. “She's hanging in. She's been lonely and scared, I think that in her own mind she might already have begun the process of giving Kyra up, but she's got her confidence back now. Mostly thanks to meeting you. Talk about your fantastically lucky breaks.”

Well, maybe. I flashed on Jo's brother Frank once saying to me that he didn't think there was any such thing as luck, only fate and inspired choices. And then I remembered that image of the TR crisscrossed with invisible cables, connections that were unseen but as strong as steel.

“John, I forgot to ask the most important question of all the other day, after I gave my depo. This custody case we're all so concerned about . . . has it even been scheduled?”

“Good question. I've checked three ways to Sunday, and Bissonette has, too. Unless Devore and his
people have pulled something really slippery, like filing in another court district, I don't think it has been.”

“Could they do that? File in another district?”

“Maybe. But probably not without us finding out.”

“So what does it mean?”

“That Devore's on the verge of giving up,” John said promptly. “As of now I see no other way of explaining it. I'm going back to New York first thing tomorrow, but I'll stay in touch. If anything comes up here, you do the same.”

I said I would and went to bed. No female visitors came to share my dreams. That was sort of a relief.

*   *   *

When I came downstairs to recharge my iced-tea glass late Wednesday morning, Brenda Meserve had erected the laundry whirligig on the back stoop and was hanging out my clothes. This she did as her mother had no doubt taught her, with pants and shirts on the outside and undies on the inside, where any passing nosyparkers couldn't see what you chose to wear closest to your skin.

“You can take these in around four o'clock,” Mrs. M. said as she prepared to leave. She looked at me with the bright and cynical eye of a woman who has been “doing for” well-off men her entire life. “Don't you forget and leave em out all night—dewy clothes don't ever feel fresh until they're warshed again.”

I told her most humbly that I would remember to take in my clothes. I then asked her—feeling like a spy working an embassy party for information—if the house felt all right to her.

“All right how?” she asked, cocking one wild eyebrow at me.

“Well, I've heard funny noises a couple of times. In the night.”

She sniffed. “It's a log house, ennit? Built in relays, so to speak. It settles, one wing against t'other. That's what you hear, most likely.”

“No ghosts, huh?” I said, as if disappointed.

“Not that I've ever seen,” she said, matter-of-fact as an accountant, “but my ma said there's plenty down here. She said this whole lake is haunted. By the Micmacs that lived here until they was driven out by General Wing, by all the men who went away to the Civil War and died there—over six hundred went from this part of the world, Mr. Noonan, and less than a hundred and fifty came back . . . at least in their bodies. Ma said this side of Dark Score's also haunted by the ghost of that Negro boy who died here, poor tyke. He belonged to one of the Red-Tops, you know.”

“No—I know about Sara and the Red-Tops, but not this.” I paused. “Did he drown?”

“Nawp, caught in an animal trap. Struggled there for most of a whole day, screaming for help. Finally they found him. They saved the foot, but they shouldn't have. Blood-poisoning set in, and the boy died. Summer of ought-one, that was. It's why they left, I guess—it was too sad to stay. But my ma used to claim the little fella,
he
stayed. She used to say that he's still on the TR.”

I wondered what Mrs. M. would say if I told her that the little fella had very likely been here to greet me when I arrived from Derry, and had been back on several occasions since.

“Then there was Kenny Auster's father, Normal,” she said. “You know that story, don't you? Oh, that's a terrible story.” She looked rather pleased—either at knowing such a terrible story or at having the chance to tell it.

“No,” I said. “I know Kenny, though. He's the one with the wolfhound. Blueberry.”

“Ayuh. He carpenters a tad and caretakes a tad, just like his father before him. His dad caretook many of these places, you know, and back just after the Second World War was over, Normal Auster drownded Kenny's little brother in his back yard. This was when they lived on Wasp Hill, down where the road splits, one side goin to the old boat-landin and the other to the marina. He didn't drown the tyke in the lake, though. He put him on the ground under the pump and just held him there until the baby was full of water and dead.”

I stood there looking at her, the clothes behind us snapping on their whirligig. I thought of my mouth and nose and throat full of that cold mineral taste that could have been well-water as well as lakewater; down here all of it comes from the same deep aquifers. I thought of the message on the refrigerator:
help im drown.

“He left the baby laying right under the pump. He had a new Chevrolet, and he drove it down here to Lane Forty-two. Took his shotgun, too.”

“You aren't going to tell me Kenny Auster's dad committed suicide in my house, are you, Mrs. Meserve?”

She shook her head. “Nawp. He did it on the Brickers' lakeside deck. Sat down on their porch
glider and blew his damned baby-murdering head off.”

“The Brickers? I don't—”

“You wouldn't. Hasn't been any Brickers on the lake since the sixties. They were from Delaware. Quality folks. You'd think of it as the Warshburn place, I guess, although they're gone, now, too. Place is empty. Every now and then that stark naturalborn fool Osgood brings someone down and shows it off, but he'll never sell it at the price he's asking. Mark my words.”

The Washburns I had known—had played bridge with them a time or two. Nice enough people, although probably not what Mrs. M., with her queer backcountry snobbishness, would have called “quality.” Their place was maybe an eighth of a mile north of mine along The Street. Past that point, there's nothing much—the drop to the lake gets steep, and the woods are massed tangles of second growth and blackberry bushes. The Street goes on to the tip of Halo Bay at the far north end of Dark Score, but once Lane Forty-two curves back to the highway, the path is for the most part used only by berry-picking expeditions in the summer and hunters in the fall.

Normal, I thought. Hell of a name for a guy who had drowned his infant son under the backyard pump.

“Did he leave a note? Any explanation?”

“Nawp. But you'll hear folks say he haunts the lake, too. Little towns are most likely full of haunts, but I couldn't say aye, no, or maybe myself; I ain't the sensitive type. All I know about your place, Mr. Noonan, is that it smells damp no matter how much
I try to get it aired out. I 'magine that's logs. Log buildins don't go well with lakes. The damp gets into the wood.”

She had set her purse down between her Reeboks; now she bent and picked it up. It was a countrywoman's purse, black, styleless (except for the gold grommets holding the handles on), and utilitarian. She could have carried a good selection of kitchen appliances in there if she had wanted to.

“I can't stand here natterin all day long, though, much as I might like to. I got one more place to go before I can call it quits. Summer's ha'vest time in this part of the world, you know. Now remember to take those clothes in before dark, Mr. Noonan. Don't let em get all dewy.”

“I won't.” And I didn't. But when I went out to take them in, dressed in my bathing trunks and coated with sweat from the oven I'd been working in (I had to get the air conditioner fixed, just
had
to), I saw that something had altered Mrs. M.'s arrangements. My jeans and shirts now hung around the pole. The underwear and socks, which had been decorously hidden when Mrs. M. drove up the driveway in her old Ford, were now on the outside. It was as if my unseen guest—
one
of my unseen guests—was saying ha ha ha.

*   *   *

I went to the library the next day, and made renewing my library card my first order of business. Lindy Briggs herself took my four bucks and entered me into the computer, first telling me how sorry she had been to hear about Jo's death. And, as with Bill, I sensed a certain reproach in her tone, as if I were to blame for such
improperly delayed condolences. I supposed I was.

“Lindy, do you have a town history?” I asked when we had finished the proprieties concerning my wife.

“We have two,” she said, then leaned toward me over the desk, a little woman in a violently patterned sleeveless dress, her hair a gray puffball around her head, her bright eyes swimming behind her bifocals. In a confidential voice she added, “Neither is much good.”

“Which one is better?” I asked, matching her tone.

“Probably the one by Edward Osteen. He was a summer resident until the mid-fifties and lived here full-time when he retired. He wrote
Dark Score Days
in 1965 or '66. He had it privately published because he couldn't find a commercial house that would take it. Even the regional publishers passed.” She sighed. “The locals bought it, but that's not many books, is it?”

“No, I suppose not,” I said.

“He just wasn't much of a writer. Not much of a photographer, either—those little black-and-white snaps of his make my
eyes
hurt. Still, he tells some good stories. The Micmac Drive, General Wing's trick horse, the twister in the eighteen-eighties, the fires in the nineteen-thirties . . .”

“Anything about Sara and the Red-Tops?”

She nodded, smiling. “Finally got around to looking up the history of your own place, did you? I'm glad to hear it. He found an old photo of them, and it's in there. He thought it was taken at the Fryeburg Fair in 1900. Ed used to say he'd give a lot to hear a record made by that bunch.”

“So would I, but none were ever made.” A haiku
by the Greek poet George Seferis suddenly occurred to me:
Are these the voices of our dead friends / or just the gramophone?
“What happened to Mr. Osteen? I don't recall the name.”

“Died not a year or two before you and Jo bought your place on the lake,” she said. “Cancer.”

“You said there were two histories?”

“The other one you probably know—
A History of Castle County and Castle Rock.
Done for the county centennial, and dry as dust. Eddie Osteen's book isn't very well written, but he wasn't dry. You have to give him that much. You should find them both over there.” She pointed to shelves with a sign over them which read
OF MAINE INTEREST
. “They don't circulate.” Then she brightened. “Although we will happily take any nickels you should feel moved to feed into our photocopy machine.”

Mattie was sitting in the far corner next to a boy in a turned-around baseball cap, showing him how to use the microfilm reader. She looked up at me, smiled, and mouthed the words
Nice catch.
Referring to my lucky grab at Warrington's, presumably. I gave a modest little shrug before turning to the
OF MAINE INTEREST
shelves. But she was right—lucky or not, it
had
been a nice catch.

*   *   *

“What are you looking for?”

I was so deep into the two histories I'd found that Mattie's voice made me jump. I turned around and smiled, first aware that she was wearing some light and pleasant perfume, second that Lindy Briggs was watching us from the main desk, her welcoming smile put away.

“Background on the area where I live,” I said. “Old stories. My housekeeper got me interested.” Then, in a lower voice: “Teacher's watching. Don't look around.”

Mattie looked startled—and, I thought, a little worried. As it turned out, she was right to be worried. In a voice that was low-pitched yet still designed to carry at least as far as the desk, she asked if she could reshelve either book for me. I gave her both. As she picked them up she said in what was almost a con's whisper: “That lawyer who represented you last Friday got John a private detective. He says they may have found something interesting about the guardian
ad litem.
”

I walked over to the
OF MAINE INTEREST
shelves with her, hoping I wasn't getting her in trouble, and asked if she knew what the something interesting might be. She shook her head, gave me a professional little librarian's smile, and I went away.

On the ride back to the house, I tried to think about what I'd read, but there wasn't much. Osteen was a bad writer who had taken bad pictures, and while his stories were colorful, they were also pretty thin on the ground. He mentioned Sara and the Red-Tops, all right, but he referred to them as a “DixieLand octet,” and even I knew that wasn't right. The Red-Tops might have played some Dixieland, but they had primarily been a blues group (Friday and Saturday nights) and a gospel group (Sunday mornings). Osteen's two-page summary of the Red-Tops' stay on the TR made it clear that he had heard no one else's covers of Sara's tunes.