Body Language (45 page)

Beaming, I finally asked, “
Well…?
”

He looked at me, then at Neil, then back to me, asking, “Well, what?” His blank expression told me that he was not being coy—he was clueless.

“
Doug,
” I said, tapping the editorial in front of him, “didn’t you see my column?”

“No”—he laughed—“I didn’t”—he stopped short, reading the headline. Picking up the paper, he broke into a broad smile as he flumped back into his chair to peruse my endorsement of him.

Watching as he read, I wondered how he could possibly have missed the editorial page earlier that morning—public officials invariably flip to it first, breath bated, wondering if anything has been said about them. Clearly, Pierce had not yet seen the paper that day. Then I noticed his clothes. Though it was Saturday, he wore a sport coat, dress slacks, and button-down shirt, as he would for the office, but without a tie. Though the collar of his shirt was open, little wrinkles radiating from the top button signaled that it had been worn before, with a tie, presumably yesterday. Focusing on his collar, I also saw that he was overdue, once again, for his daily shave. His chipper mood, his day-old clothes, his unread endorsement—it all added up. I was afraid to guess where he’d been overnight, but it was obvious that he hadn’t woken up at home that morning.

“Mark,” he said, putting down the paper, “how can I thank you?”

“By beating Deputy Dan and getting reelected.” I raised my coffee and clinked it to his, Neil joining the skoal—a silly gesture, perhaps, but it seemed appropriate.

Pierce’s expression grew pensive. “I assume this endorsement was prompted by the report of the County Plan Commission?”

I nodded. “That’s why I ran it when I did, but you needn’t doubt for a minute that the
Register
would back you, whatever the timing.”

Neil was crumbling his muffin on a plate, picking out berries, popping them into his mouth; his fingertips were stained inky blue. He asked Pierce, “Do you suppose this Dr. Tenelli has a political agenda at work? I know you said he’s a revered old guy who’s dedicated his retirement to public service, but isn’t it a little fishy to call for a crackdown on porn in the name of ‘tourism’?” Neil had read details of the Commission’s report in the morning paper, and we’d both had a laugh over it.

“A political agenda…” Pierce mulled Neil’s notion. “I can’t imagine what it would be. To the best of my knowledge, Dr. Tenelli has no connection to my opponent or to anyone in Dan Kerr’s family. And I’m sure he has no taste for Miriam Westerman’s campaign on moralistic grounds. Tenelli is a highly principled, ethical man—not a book burner.”

“Hm.” I traced a finger around the rim of my cup. “Maybe it’s time we met.”

“Maybe it is,” Pierce agreed. “I think you’ll like him, in spite of this obscenity business. So if you’ve got a slow day sometime next week, give me a call, and I’ll take you over to his place and introduce you.”

“Thanks. He sounds like an interesting character.”

Neil interjected, “The interesting character
I’d
like to meet is the Frenchman, Bruno Hérisson.” To Pierce, he explained, “Mark said he visited the
Register
yesterday. Trouble’s brewing in the refined little world of miniatures.”

I was glad Neil had steered the conversation in this direction, as it might lead Pierce to drop some clue regarding his involvement, if any, with Carrol Cantrell.

Pierce seemed confused by Neil’s comment, asking, “Trouble’s brewing? What do you mean?”

Neil explained, “Bruno claims to have signed agreements with an elite group of artisans to become their exclusive distributor in America.”

I added, “Glee Savage sniffed a juicy story there, and I think she’s right. We’ll try to see Cantrell this weekend and get his side of it.”

“But Carrol said”—Pierce stopped himself, rewording—“Cantrell said that he alone acts as distributor to all the big-name artisans, including Bruno.”

Uh-huh. I asked, “When was that, Doug?”

“Just last”—again Pierce stopped to reword—“the other day, I guess. Sure, it was Thursday, Thursday morning right after he arrived. He mentioned it to me on the stairs while we were all helping him move into the coach house.”

I had been there, of course, and recalled no such conversation. They had discussed this some other time, on their own.

So. I knew. I was sure: Dumont’s chief law-enforcement officer, Sheriff Douglas Pierce, whom I had just publicly endorsed for reelection, had been buggering the king of miniatures.

Or vice versa.

Either way, the mind reeled.

Driving away from the house later than morning, I planned to spend an hour or two at the
Register
checking the wire services, meeting with Lucille Haring about the makeup of Sunday’s page one, and generally catching up at my desk. Turning off Prairie Street and heading toward First Avenue along Park Street, I passed the park itself and a succession of side streets—Durkee, La Salle, Trevor. Not quite conscious of my surroundings, I was immersed in thoughts about the obscenity issue. Was I blowing it out of proportion? Was my obsession with the First Amendment merely academic, out of touch with the real-world concerns of a great many citizens? Should I keep the paper out of the debate, merely reporting the issues as argued by others, or should I commit the
Register
to an aggressive editorial stance in defense of civil liberties?

These thoughts were broken as I approached the intersection of Tyner Avenue, the street where Grace Lord’s miniatures shop was located. Slowing the car, I glanced down the street and noticed activity there, with cars parked in both directions. My reporter’s instincts kicked in, and I turned from my intended route to check out the action.

The congestion (if that term can apply to traffic anywhere in Dumont) was thickest in front of Grace’s shop, The Nook. The miniatures show would open a week from that morning, but a mob of exhibitors had already arrived to set up for the meeting and to claim prime spaces for their booths. Cars and vans jockeyed to park near a service drive; I spotted license plates from Illinois, Minnesota, and Iowa, as well as Wisconsin. The people themselves—most middle-aged, most wearing windbreakers—ant-tracked their wares from the vehicles to the building.

The Nook, which looked something like a dollhouse in both its cutesy decorating and its diminutive scale, was far too small to accommodate this invasion, and the transformation of the adjacent space of the long-vacant Rexall store was by now in full swing. A crew of volunteers was unsoaping the plate-glass windows, revealing a buzz of activity within. Outside, more workers attempted to hang a banner across the space once occupied by the Rexall sign, but they were having a difficult time of it, thwarted by a brisk autumn breeze. Though this operation had a farcical quality, I quelled the urge to laugh, fearing that someone might fall from a ladder.

Cruising past this commotion, I assumed that Grace Lord was there in the thick of it, but I couldn’t spot her low-set figure in the crowd. It would have been easy to pick out Carrol Cantrell’s lanky frame, but I didn’t see him either. With my curiosity satisfied, I decided there was no need to stop, so I drove a bit farther toward the Lord house, intending to turn around in the driveway and head back to the
Register.

Approaching the drive, I noticed another car parking there at the curb, well removed from the crush near the shop. It was one of those drab sedans assigned to city and county officials, conspicuous in its anonymity, like an unmarked squad car—yes, it was tagged with “Official” plates. I thought at first it might be Doug Pierce, but his sedan was a lighter shade of beige. A man was driving, and he had a passenger, but I couldn’t discern their features through the sun’s glare on the windshield. So I pulled over to the opposite curb, cut my engine, and busied myself with a few notes, waiting to see who’d emerge from the other car.

I recognized the passenger as soon as she stepped out onto the parkway. A gust of wind caught her cape and furled it over her head, making a further mess of her ratted gray hair—she looked like a wayward witch making a clumsy landing from Oz. It was none other than Miriam Westerman, founder and leader of Fem-Snach. Attempting to unruffle the cape, she clattered a giant primitive necklace that weighed heavily upon her flat bodice.

Then the other door opened and the driver stepped onto the street. The sun gleamed blue on his jet-black hair, which was surely dyed, worn in an outdated pompadour. When the pesky breeze got hold of it, he looked like a poodle in a suit. This was Harley Kaiser, Dumont County’s distinguished district attorney. While closing the car door, he tried to finger-comb his hair, but without success—now he looked like a poodle with a Mohawk.

Admittedly, my vision of these two characters was tainted by prejudice.

Miriam was the woman who had tried to steal custody of Thad from me. She was the woman who had instigated a hate-mail campaign against me when I first moved to Dumont, branding my homosexuality an “abomination against Mother Nature”—never mind her own past flirtations with lesbianism, which was just dandy in her book, since it didn’t involve men. She was the woman I had bodily thrown from my home one evening when she invaded a family gathering and spat epithets at me, including the rather clever “penis cultist.” And she was the woman who sought to violate the civil liberties of an entire community because pornography, in her view, was tantamount to “violence against women.” Miriam Westerman openly hated me. In the face of such irrational animosity, I could only return the sentiment.

Kaiser was a different matter. As an elected official, he was instinctively sensitive to public opinion, accountable to every voter, or at least to fifty-one percent of them. Further, he was smart enough to recognize that he stood nothing to gain by antagonizing the publisher of the local paper. So he at least made an attempt to behave cordially to me, in spite of our polar disagreement regarding the enforcement of obscenity standards. As far as he was concerned, I had no grasp of political reality. As far as I was concerned, he’d landed on the wrong side of the issue, period, and I marveled at his lack of principle in selling out the First Amendment for the sake of some presumed political advantage. My friend Roxanne Exner had hit the nail on the head in her succinct appraisal of the district attorney: Harley Kaiser was a hot dog.

I had previously called Kaiser and Miriam “strange bedfellows” in their alliance to rid Dumont of porn. Now, watching them from my car, I found their pairing all the more unlikely. What were they up to? Why here? Why now?

They were doubtless asking themselves the same questions about me. Standing at the curb, they spoke over their shoulders to each other, glancing at my car, which anyone in town would recognize. So I let them continue wondering for a few moments, hoping that my presence would unsettle them. Behind tinted windows, I wrote a few last notes, then capped my pen, returning it with the pad to my jacket.

Opening the door, I got out of the car, donning a pair of sunglasses (the autumnal slant of midmorning light was not especially bothersome—in fact, I enjoyed it—but I figured the dark glasses might make me a tad more menacing). Pretending to notice them just then, I called to the opposite curb, “Miriam, Harley—what a pleasant surprise.” It was a good act, but in light of our past run-ins, they could guess I was lying.

Kaiser crossed to meet me in the middle of the street, extending his hand to shake mine. “Morning, Mark. Didn’t know you harbored an interest in dollhouses.” The remark could have been intended to question my masculinity, but his tone seemed innocuous enough—he was just inept at small talk. If his words carried a hidden message, he was really trying to ask, What are
you
doing here?

Strolling with him back to the curb, I bulled, “Wherever there’s news, there am I.”

Miriam had made no move to acknowledge me, so arriving where she stood on the parkway, I dispensed with further pleasantries and asked her bluntly, “What are
you
doing here?”

“One might ask
you
the same,” she snapped back with a defiant stomp of one foot, but the gesture lost its punch—her clog merely mashed the turf.

“Actually,” said Kaiser, attempting to keep things civil, “we’ve come to see Carrol Cantrell. He’s a distinguished visitor to the city, and we both wanted to wish him welcome.” He smiled, as if that explained everything, wrapping it up.

“What a coincidence,” I fibbed. “I was just on my way to see him myself. We’re working up a feature.” It would be Glee’s story, of course, but for the moment, there was no harm in letting Kaiser think I was there on assignment. I found it unlikely that both he and Miriam were inclined to roll out the welcome mat for the king of miniatures as a simple matter of civic courtesy. Still, I had no theory that would better explain their visit. If I stuck with them, their motive might become plain to me. Brightly I suggested, “Let’s all pop in on him.”

Miriam and Kaiser exchanged an uncertain glance; in my presence they did not feel free to discuss my proposed intrusion. Miriam looked vexed, Kaiser wary. He hawed before relenting, “Sure, why not? Do you think he’s at the shop?”

“Actually, no.” I waved my arm up the street—“I drove from that direction and got a pretty good look at the mob. Carrol Cantrell is at least six foot four, so I’d have noticed if he were there. I think our best bet is the coach house.”

Kaiser and Miriam were aware of Carrol’s lodging arrangements, but neither of them knew the lay of Grace Lord’s property, so my presence proved helpful in that I could guide them. The three of us walked in silence as I led them up the driveway beside the house, our feet crunching the gravel. Watching the DA and the feminist as they trudged toward the coach house for purposes not known to me, I found it difficult to imagine that they had grown up with Doug Pierce—their lives had taken such radically different directions.

Out on the street, with all the activity surrounding setup of the convention, there’d been a sense of merry confusion. But here, in the shadow of the house, all was still—save for us, save for the rustle of a bird somewhere in the soaring limbs of old trees. The bright day had taken on an eerie quality, and I instinctively removed my dark glasses, pocketing them. Our lack of conversation, prompted by nothing more sinister than distaste for each other, now seemed to radiate an active malice borne of tight-lipped silence.