Cascade (31 page)

“I don’t see how Jacob can be charged with anything. So what if he was at Pine Point? People walk it every day.”

He pulled a pipe and lighter from his breast pocket, tamped down the barrel of the pipe, and flicked the lighter. Then he told her what Dot’s oblique comment must have referred to. Then she knew the real reason Dwight and Wendell were taking a closer look at Jacob. Attorney Peterson was probating Addis Proulx’s will. And it was only a matter of time before everyone would know that the partners in the Cascade Valley Golf Club built the course with an eye to the money they would get when the state was forced to buy it from them at assessed value.

“The land was the doctor’s part of the investment,” Lowell said. “Nearly two hundred acres of abandoned farmland that wasn’t worth much as it stood. The other two put up the money to build the course and they built it cheap, and how?” And now, Lowell spoke like a politician. “They built it on the backs of men grateful to earn a nickel for a dollar’s work, and those two crooks—well, let’s just say they know what’s what. That land was assessed at fifteen hundred dollars before they built the course. Now it’s assessed at thirty-seven thousand. We have to pay assessed value to all property owners. The investors stand to make a tidy sum, and when we go ahead with eminent domain proceedings, proceeds from Dr. Proulx’s portion of the sale will be disbursed to the beneficiaries of his will.”

“I don’t understand what any of this has to do with me or Asa or Jacob,” she said uneasily.

Lowell clamped his teeth against his pipe and looked up at the night sky. He put both hands in his pockets, obviously enjoying the tension he was creating. “The doctor’s primary beneficiary is ‘the artist Jacob Solomon.’”

No. She felt unsteady, as if Lowell had pushed her. No. Jacob could not have known; he would have told her. She knew this. And she knew Dr. Proulx. “Dr. Proulx was a generous man, a philanthropic man. He would certainly have kept such a thing to himself. Jacob reminded him of his son, Paul, he liked Jacob. You don’t think—?”

“You know how talk spreads.”

“Jacob had no idea, I know it.”

“Calm down,” Lowell said. “I’m guessing Dr. Proulx found out that the golf course was a scheme. After all, the man did, out of character, so everyone said, commit suicide and no one really knows why. If he was as honest as his reputation, then the thought that he played a role in something underhanded might have troubled him. I don’t know. I’m sure there are a host of reasons why someone commits suicide.”

“You do believe he did?”

“I do. And so does the doctor who attended to him, but unfortunately for Mr. Solomon and his reputation, and the reputation of his friends—” He rubbed at the back of his head. “Look, he’s been at the scene of two deaths. First, he finds Dr. Proulx. And then there’s the fact of him up at Pine Point two days in a row. You must see how bad that looks.”

“How could closing the dam or causing Stan’s accident, as ridiculous as it sounds to even voice that, possibly benefit him?”

“If he knew about his inheritance, then he might try to sway us. Choosing Cascade means buying out the golf course.”

So that was the root of the gossip. It was preposterous, yet her mind turned back to Dot King and Popcorn’s mother, and Lil, and people gossiping over coffee at the Brilliant, all ready to believe the worst. She thought of Mrs. Smith and her suspicions.

Lowell puffed on his pipe, the stem clicking against his teeth. “Let me
tell you something, Mrs. Spaulding. This incident is, quite honestly, getting in my way and on my nerves. I’ve got a job here, a reservoir to build, and I want this mess swept up and behind us as soon as possible. Now, I’m going to ask you outright. Are you that man’s alibi?”

She saw what was happening, saw that this politician could smooth things over, fix them. Yet the answer lodged itself in her throat as she realized how completely her “yes” would change everything. She would have to face Asa and maybe his sense of anger would be so great that he would be driven to use the playhouse as pawn.

And yet she couldn’t betray Jacob.

Best to be honest and face the consequences.

“Are you?”

She looked over her shoulder, instinctively lowering her voice, as if someone might hear. “I am. We were in the woods, and we found the dam, and yes, we closed it.” Her rate of speech sped up. “But Jacob knew nothing about it being Asa’s land, and it would really be better if my husband didn’t know either—”

He held up a palm to stop her, observing her with a lazy smile. “That’s all I needed to hear.”

Really? It was as easy as her word? “You’ll let him go?”

“Let’s just say I have some influence. I do think the whole incident was an accident and it’s pointless to turn this into something it’s not. We have a project to get on with and I don’t want this to slow us down. I’m curious as to why you closed it, though.”

“It was an impulse. He wanted to see how it worked, we both did. The pulleys. I don’t know.” She didn’t want to explain herself to Elliot Lowell.

“Well, I am going to recommend this.” He lowered one finger onto his left hand to make his point. “You go on home to that husband of yours and you take care of him. Because he’s going to be upset. He opened that dam for obvious and pitiable reasons, and I’m sorry for him, but—” He lowered his voice. “We are taking Cascade.”

A quick, harsh noise—a noise that sounded human—caused them both to spin around. Dez peered into the night. Wind fluttered across her shoulder blades, lifted her skirt.

“Night birds,” she said, shivering and instinctively looking up, imagining, already, the water overhead. So it was going to happen. It was finally real.

“We’ve had to kind of go through the motions—play politics. Well, you know. Your father understood these kinds of things.”

Her first reaction was bristling, naïve. She almost said,
My father understood such things but didn’t approve.
Then she realized that he’d approved of every political move that had kept the state and its reservoir out of Cascade.

“Stan told me it looked like Whistling Falls would be chosen,” she said.

“Well, Stan was a talker and we wanted people to believe that we were seriously weighing the two options. He wasn’t really in the know.”

“I see.” She slipped her hand into her pocket and wrapped it around the tight roll of the award.

“So I’ll do my part to quiet things down,” Lowell said. “I will tell the policemen here that I’m satisfied that everything is as it seems. I’ll tell them the two of you were in there sketching—that might keep the gossips from talking.”

She nodded intently but she was half listening. They were taking Cascade, and if they were taking Cascade, then she wanted to go to New York. She wanted to get out while there was still a way out. Like Abby had said,
no babies means you can leave
. And wouldn’t Asa be better off, eventually, with someone who wanted what he wanted? If Lowell kept quiet about her involvement in the dam closing, she could wait until the water committee’s formal announcement. Then, when all would be turmoil anyway, she could let Asa know, as gently as possible, that she was leaving.

It was a relief to have come to a decision, to have a plan of action, even though her resolve was still on the raw, new side, with underpinnings of doubt and trepidation.

“Mrs. Spaulding.”

Lowell was looking at her in his infuriating, mildly amused way, and it dawned on her more fully: the extent of her naïveté. “Why are you telling me all this?” she asked. “Helping me. Why me?”

“You’re William Hart’s daughter, and I can see that you’ve got smarts. And I would guess from this
American Sunday Standard
business that you are ambitious. And practical.” He let his words settle while he tapped at his pipe, reached into his pocket, pulled out a plug of tobacco, relit it. “I plan to run for the U.S. Senate next year.”

“Ah.” So he wanted something he thought Dez could give him. Music drifted down the street. “Pack Up Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile,” taking her beyond the common, and across the country that was so full of trusting people believing in Memorial Day and band concerts and
The American Sunday Standard
.

“We plan to announce the reservoir decision on July twenty-sixth,” Lowell said. “That’s a Friday. And what happens when we make the announcement? The rest of the state’s happy. They’re going to have water. Your issue comes out the next day, and I make you and your magazine look good because your page includes ‘A Letter from the Commissioner.’ Which I will give you, explaining that this reservoir is for the good of the majority, which it is. I get all those Massachusetts voters who read me on Saturday night, Sunday morning, feeling good about the fact that their state’s in good hands. They’ve got the water they need. They remember that when they go to the polls. And there’s nothing wrong or bad about that.”

And there wasn’t—really. Sometimes politics did make sense, because someone had to be in charge, and better it be those who made an attempt at working toward the common good.

And shouldn’t she play politics, too, now she had the chance?

“About the playhouse,” she said. “You said you could probably find a way to move it.” With Lowell involved, Asa might not dare threaten it.

“I’ll see what I can do.” He removed a card from his inner pocket. “All
the information you need to reach me is there. In the meantime, where shall I send the letter?”

She thought of her detour down Wrong Turn Path. Now the path itself was forking yet again, and the way to go was clear. New York. “To the
Standard
’s offices, I suppose. Care of me.” How strange to say that. “One Hundred West Forty-third Street, New York.”

A
t home, stepping into the familiar, the everyday, the decision to leave felt immediately implausible. It was hard to hold on to her resolve. She was rattled, too aware of herself, her presence, the sound of her footsteps moving around the house, turning on lights, fingers turning the dial on the radio and the Ben Bernie Orchestra flooding the room. Too loud, jarring. She switched it off and the room reverted to silence.

The worst of it: Asa had no idea of any of this, not an inkling. No idea that his wife had decided to leave, that another man had said, “
I would love it if you were in New York
.” No idea that Cascade had already been chosen. That Cascade would be disincorporated and its buildings depopulated and razed, its acres scooped out, flooded.

She wouldn’t ask for a thing.

She could support herself. Aside from the playhouse fund, she now had the seventy-five-dollar check from the
Standard
. Seventy-five dollars could last weeks, and next week there would be another seventy-five
dollars, and for weeks after that, she would get the kind of money any family man would be grateful to earn.

As for her things, all she needed were her painting supplies, a few photographs. Portia’s casket. Everything else could go into storage at the playhouse.

The clock chimed eight thirty. Asa and Silas would be talking, having a cup of coffee or two, then Asa would pack up for the three-hour drive back. He would be eager to see the award. She unrolled it and read a few words—
In appreciation for your great efforts
—before letting it curl up with a snap. She was a fraud, but she hadn’t intended to be a fraud.

In her studio, she stood by the east window and looked out, willing the truck to appear. Jacob would surely have been released by Dwight and Wendell as soon as Lowell went back inside. But all was quiet, moonlight illuminating the lilac hedge, making a white ribbon of River Road.

She sat down at her worktable, one ear cocked toward the road, trying to sketch some ideas, in pencil, for the next set of cards, but her mind kept wandering. When the clock chimed nine, she realized it was too late, he wouldn’t come. He wouldn’t risk running into Asa. And though she knew it was hopeless, she gave it another half hour.

At nine thirty she put her pencils in their cup and got up from the table. Miles away, Asa would be driving through the night, the Buick making its steady course north. It would be hard to tell him, and hard, these next weeks, until the formal announcement, to pretend.

She moved around the house, turning off lights, climbing the stairs, changing into a nightgown. As she brushed her teeth, she caught sight of the bottle of sleeping tablets that Asa kept on hand as a hedge against insomnia. Impulsively, she spat out the toothpaste and swallowed one, wanting oblivion. She crawled between the sheets, where it seemed strange to share Asa’s bed, considering her intentions. That thought set up a fluttering chain of doubts and what-ifs until the sleeping pill did its work.

Hours later, she felt the panic of the drowning person—trapped, struggling. At first she didn’t know where she was and who was hurting her. She knew the sheets, white with embroidered daisy-chain hems, but
the man on top of her was a shadow smelling of a roadhouse, with hands that forced her knees apart then pinned her arms to the bed.

“Whore,” he said, to a tumbling of memory and panic. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to blank her mind, but his hot breath was all over her face, and when she turned from it he forced his tongue into her mouth, the bristles on his face scraping her chin. When he stopped and rolled over, she couldn’t tell if he’d finished or given up. Her stomach felt wet and her ribs hurt. After a minute, she dared crack open her eyes. He was a heap in the dark, reeking of whiskey, curled onto his side, arm flung out, mouth open.

She had never known Asa Spaulding to go to a roadhouse. She wondered which he had heard—truth or gossip—and lay awake, her heart thudding, until the tablet, still slugging through her blood and brain, sent her back to sleep.

She woke to immediate dread, to a room full of sunshine, to an urgent bladder. The sheet lay flat and empty beside her, but her dresser drawers had been pulled open, her clothes tossed all over the floor. She limped over to the window and looked down. The driveway was empty.

In the bathroom, she took stock of the shiny raw red patch on her chin, the six small bruises, three on each fleshy bicep. On the toilet, she had to hunch over and wince through the stinging. There was little doubt she was in a fertile time, and the thought filled her with the kind of dread she usually staved off by shutting herself away in her studio.