Body Language (20 page)

This was starting to get interesting, so I got up and crossed to the desk, looking for paper. “Mind if I take a few notes?” I asked Pierce.

“Be my guest,” he said, rising to face me.

I slid a sheet of white bond out from a drawer in the work-table, then sat at the chair, uncapping my pen. Sketching the chronology Pierce had just related, I said, “You mentioned on Monday that Harley Kaiser and Miriam have forged some sort of political alliance. What was that all about?”

“The story fast forwards to a few years ago,” he explained, “when Miriam spearheaded a campaign to pass a local ‘obscenity ordinance.’ The idea was to shut down some adult bookstores you may have noticed along the highway on the outskirts of town.”

I rolled my eyes. “Porn shops?” I asked.

“Exactly. Miriam and Fem-Snach took the position that pornography is (get this) ‘violence against women,’ so they sought to write a Dumont County ordinance duplicating a statewide law that had recently passed judicial scrutiny. Earlier attempts had been ruled unconstitutionally vague, but the Bible thumpers eventually managed to get something to stick in Madison.”

“If there was already a state law,” I asked, “why would Miriam bother with the local ordinance?”

With a frustrated toss of his hands, Pierce answered, “Miriam wanted it debated locally so that county board members would have to go on the record, for it or against it—she was trying to identify her future targets. Needless to say, most board members didn’t want to get
near
such a volatile, no-win issue, so the county executive deferred to both my office and Kaiser’s, seeking opinions regarding the practical, administrative implications of the proposed ordinance.”

Guessing the answer, I asked, “What was your position?”

Pierce approached the desk, standing opposite of where I sat. “I told them outright to forget it. I doubt that I need to detail my reasoning for you.”

Looking up from my note taking, I reminded him, “I’m a First Amendment kind of guy, Doug.”

“I am, too, and as far as I could always tell, so was Harley. Believe me, he had never been even remotely religious, and since these censorship campaigns are typically the work of the right-wing Christian crowd, he had no taste whatever for the ordinance. So he originally responded to the county board that he was philosophically neutral on the issue but that such a law would be difficult and expensive to enforce.”

“A sane response. Then what happened?”

“He began to sniff political pay dirt. Miriam’s radical feminists had gone to bed, figuratively, with the conservative Christians, so Harley capitulated and found sudden enthusiasm for so-called family values. He stood by quietly as the ordinance passed by a lopsided margin, then sought to enforce it with a vengeance. Off the record, Mark, the man sold his soul.”

I stood, shaking my head. “Somehow,” I predicted, “this guy and I just aren’t going to get along.” I stepped around the worktable and walked to the Palladian window, looking out over the town where this political drama had been enacted.

Pierce’s tone brightened some. “For whatever it’s worth, Harley’s hotdogging hasn’t paid off so far. He’s used my department to collect evidence that these stores are dealing in obscenity—we’ve bought a few videotapes—then he’s hauled them to trial. But he’s had a tough time finding juries who agree on what’s ‘obscene.’ The community is starting to lose patience with this nonsense, and he’s responded, without much savvy, by yapping to the press like some guardian of public morals. Common sense should tell the man that he should distance himself from Miriam now, but, instead, they’ve been closing ranks.”

“Huh?” Something caught my eye from the window. “Speak of the devil.”

“Harley’s out there?” asked Pierce, stepping beside me for a look.

“No,” I said (I’d never set eyes on Harley Kaiser, so I wouldn’t have known him if I’d seen him), “it’s Miriam Westerman, and she’s snooping around my car.” There had been some jockeying of vehicles back near the garage last night, so I’d left my car in the driveway, up front near the street. Miriam’s nose was pressed to the driver’s window. “What the hell is
she
still doing here?”

Pierce laughed, explaining, “That’s a magnificent automobile, Mark. We don’t see many like that up here. It’s drawn a lot of interest.”

Though the sun would not set for another hour, it was already reduced to a dim glow in a gray sky, lolling near the southwest horizon. Damp and bleak, the day had nonetheless warmed some, blanketed by thick clouds that clogged the afternoon.

Shortly after three, Parker Trent returned to the house from his day of digging in the
Register
’s morgue. I was in the kitchen, on a coffee break from the den, when Parker clomped across the back porch and swung open the door, whipping off his cap. Neither of us quite expected to encounter the other, and we shared a grin that made me realize we were both happy to have each other’s company.

We were eager to report on our day’s activities—his research and my meeting with Pierce—but before we could open that exchange, Parker suggested, “Why don’t we go for a run? There’s still some light, it’s not too cold, and we can talk.”

I hadn’t run in three days, since Sunday with Neil, and I had missed Monday’s run with Parker. “I’ll meet you in the front hall in five minutes,” I told him.

But it took us only four minutes to change, and we met on the second-floor landing, emerging from our bedrooms. Once again, Parker wore those flattering gray fleece sweatpants. I, too, wore sweatpants that day—everyone seemed more dismayed than impressed by my bravado of wearing shorts in December. I also wore a zippered jacket over my T-shirt, while Parker wore a sweatshirt with a towel tucked around his neck.

Out on the street, we fell into a comfortable gait together and turned without comment in the direction of the park—I assumed Neil had shown Parker the route when they ran without me on Monday. Curious about Neil’s assessment of Parker as a well-trained runner, I picked up the pace and found that Parker had no difficulty matching it. I could have gone faster still, but there was no point in it. This wasn’t a race, and, besides, if we ran much faster, we wouldn’t be able to talk.

“How’d it go at the
Register
today?” I asked him.

He turned to flash me a self-satisfied smile. “I may be on to something. Yesterday afternoon, I came up dry, but I was still getting the hang of their systems. Today went much better. I’m starting to reconstruct the sequence of materials that Suzanne was researching, but I’ll need more information before I can make sense of it. It’s just a matter of time.”

“Time is the one commodity that may be running out for me,” I told him.

“Why?” His tone carried genuine concern. “What happened?”

“The meeting with Sheriff Pierce this morning was less than encouraging. The DA is itching for an arrest, and I’m still his most politically expedient suspect. Fortunately, Pierce and I are armed with some other possibilities.” I reviewed for Parker what we then knew about Miriam, Hazel, Thad, and Thad’s father, Austin Reece. “For whatever it’s worth,” I concluded, “Miriam Westerman is convinced that I’m not the culprit. She’s accused Hazel of the murder, but her story is weak.”

We were reaching the perimeter of the park, and I slowed to a more leisurely pace, preferring to enjoy the serene surroundings unencumbered by the grind of aerobics. Parker’s instincts matched my own, and he slowed the pace further, walking at my side. A wintry fog hung over the grounds, and distant banks of trees receded into layers of gray, with pines pointing black into the dusk. We both gaped a wordless appreciation of the hushed setting, its quietude broken only by our panting and by the crunch of icy gravel beneath our treaded soles. Watching the movement of Parker’s feet, the scissoring motion of his legs, the general character of his body language, I was again reminded of my cousin Mark. Like my nine-year-old self, I just wanted to… touch him. But of course I wouldn’t. What was I thinking?

“I was thinking,” Parker’s voice cracked the silence. “As long as Neil is coming back to Dumont this weekend, maybe you could invite Roxanne and Carl back as well—they could share the ride.”

We were approaching a pavilion near the frozen lagoon. There were some benches arranged in a lit alcove, sort of an open porch, offering a sense of shelter from the falling night. We sat next to each other, huddling leg-to-leg—a natural thing to do, a means of conserving our warmth, but I was well aware that it carried an erotic overtone, and I enjoyed the feel of his calf and thigh muscles against mine, buffered by the soft layers of our sweatpants.

Regarding his suggestion to invite Roxanne and Carl up for the weekend, I told him, “I’d enjoy having everyone at the house again. We could have a proper New Year’s party. And let’s face it: our big Christmas weekend was a flop, to put it mildly.” We both laughed, grateful to find some shred of humor in the situation.

Then Parker told me, “A party would be great, but the weekend would also give you and Roxanne some time together to do some serious planning. I mean, logistics—if worse comes to worst.”

That
wiped the smile off my face. Had I been taking the district attorney’s prejudices too lightly? Was it obvious to Parker that I should line up some high-powered legal talent? After all, Roxanne had offered to return and defend me…

“Hey, gosh, I’m sorry, Mark.” From the tone of Parker’s soothing words, my face must have told him that I was shaken by his suggestion. “Look”—he placed his hand on my knee—“I didn’t mean to upset you. We all know that you’re innocent of this crime, and you’ve got a lot of people on your side working to help you, myself included. Doesn’t it just make sense, though, to recruit someone like Roxanne for your team?”

I fixed him in my stare. “I loathe sports phraseology,” I told him. Though my tone had the ring of humor, I couldn’t have been more serious. “Don’t ever let it creep onto the editorial page.”

“No, sir!” he said, grinning. Laughing, he added, “It won’t happen again, coach.” Then he lifted his hand from my knee—I saw it coming, as if in slow motion—and he playfully mussed my hair.

I felt the warm touch of his fingers on my scalp as my hair parted and clumped. I felt the instant onset of an erection burning the folds of my sweatpants. I felt transported in time, sucked back to the confusion of my boyhood when I first met my handsome older cousin and tried to be clever, telling him brightly, “We’ve got the same name.”

My cousin smiled and said, “How about that?” Then he mussed my hair with his hand, and I really liked the way his fingers felt on my head. I’m usually fussy about my hair—but I didn’t straighten it out for a while.

Christmas came and went. Uncle Edwin and I phoned Mom in California to ask about her visit with her sick sister. She said that the weather was like summer (who’d want to spend Christmas
there?
) and Aunt Edna was worse.

In the days that followed, my cousins Mark and Suzanne spent lots of time away from the house with their older friends; Joey spent every waking moment with
me.
I was grateful for his company—to a point—but I missed the private time I always had at home in the late afternoon, when I could think about things, maybe do some writing. So I told Joey that there was a school project due after vacation and that I needed to spend some time working on it alone.

“You’re going to the
library?
” he asked as if he’d rather eat glass.

“Nah. I’ll just work on it upstairs. May I borrow your typewriter?”

And I did. Each afternoon I climbed the back stairs and claimed that big attic room as my private world. I imagined living there and pretended to make phone calls, inviting unnamed friends over to see the place, asking Mark up for lunch, telling my mother she simply
had
to drop by the next time she flew in from California. Then I would settle into a chair at the worktable under the curved window and type things—sometimes poems (they didn’t always rhyme), but mostly little stories. They looked sort of strange, with the type both red and black, instead of just black, but they looked much neater than if I had written them by hand. I wrote about my trip. I wrote about my new home, “Upstairs on Prairie Street,” revealing gory secrets of its past. And I wrote about Mark, including the way I felt when he mussed my hair, but I changed his name to Marshall.

On New Year’s Eve, I stayed upstairs later than usual, as it was the last full day of my visit. When I came down the stairs around five-thirty with Joey’s typewriter and my folder of stories, Uncle Edwin was in the hall outside his bedroom carrying a tuxedo in a cleaner’s bag (big party that night). He said, “Hi there, Mark. Care to keep me company while I get this monkey suit together?”

“Sure.” I’d always been comfortable with adults and was glad to spend the time with Uncle Edwin. I hadn’t realized that he and Aunt Peggy had their own bedrooms, which was nifty—I’d hate to share
my
room.

He showed me all the goofy stuff that went with his tuxedo—shoes like bedroom slippers, jewelry for buttons, and this sash-thing he called a “crumb catcher.” He told me about growing up with Mom and Aunt Edna. And he told me how everyone had enjoyed my visit. “Joey tells me you’ve been working upstairs on a project. Something for school?”

“That’s right,” I told him (okay, I lied a little). “Some poems and stories.”

“Really?” Uncle Edwin seemed surprised—and pleased. “Creative writing can be somewhat personal, but is there any of it you’d care to share with me?”

Happy that he was curious, I said, “You can read it
all,
if you want,” and handed him my folder. “I won’t need it back till tomorrow.”

“Not till tomorrow,” said Parker, “but I’d be happy to give her a call for you.”

“What?” There on the park bench, we were discussing Roxanne, but I’d been absorbed in the memory of my cousin, and I could recall, line for line, parts of the story I had written about him thirty-three years ago. I recalled the exact wording I used to describe what I felt when he mussed my hair—feelings I could not possibly understand. My uncle Edwin, however, was to read that story during the last night of my visit, and he would understand it perfectly.