Cloudland (16 page)

Both men were wearing sun visors and canvas gloves, bent over and weeding the vegetable patch that had been put in earlier in the spring.

I decided not to waste words and to catch Wade off balance. After approaching and exchanging the necessary pleasantries, I turned to him and said, “So, am I on your side or not?”

He looked puzzled. “Come again?”

Aware that I now had Paul’s attention, I continued calmly, “Are you trying to dig yourself into a deeper hole,” indicating a patch of freshly spaded ground.

The furrowed look on his face slackened with recognition as it dawned on him what I was referring to. “My personal life is my personal life,” he growled.

“Well, no longer, if it’s got a bunch of cops and detectives crawling up your ass.”

He shook his head with disgust. “I never thought she’d say anything.”

“You’re being naive, Wade. People cooperate in these sorts of situations because otherwise they fall under suspicion themselves.”

“Well, I guess I’m different,” he said. “I keep my yap shut whenever possible.” In momentary frustration he tossed his trowel a short distance.

“To your own detriment,” I remarked.

“What’s going on here?” Paul demanded.

I gave Wade a look to mean “Does he know about any of this?” Wade shook his head. “Another brilliant move on your part.”

“I’m just full of them, aren’t I?”

“Keep it up and you’ll find yourself occupying the glorious position of suspect number one.”

Wade glowered at the ground. “I don’t care anymore, if you want to know the truth.”

I let a moment pass and then said, “I don’t believe that.”

“Let them suspect me.”

“What are we talking about?” Paul persisted testily.

“Oh, we’re talking about—”

Wade interrupted me and said to Paul, “I lied to the cops about where I was the night of the blizzard.”

Paul looked dumbstruck and then managed to ask, “Why?” and “But you said you were at your office. Weren’t you? I thought that was already a problem.”

Wade barely shook his head. “I was in my office but then I left.”

“Where did you go?” Paul’s voice croaked.

“Visited a friend of mine in town.”

“Who?” Paul said.

“Her name is Hannah.”

“Hannah?” Paul said with incredulity. By the befuddled look on his face I could tell the fact that Wade had been with a woman took his adoptive father by surprise as well.

“Before that I was at the office.”

“I don’t understand why you didn’t just tell them where you were,” I broke in to keep the conversation on track. “At least somebody would have been able to vouch for your whereabouts.”

Wade reminded me that he’d arrived at Hannah’s house just after ten-thirty at night, which still would not account for his activities earlier in the evening.

“You’re such an idiot,” Paul blurted out crossly. “You do things that make no sense to me!” Had Wade perhaps misled Paul about the nature of his sexuality?

“I don’t discuss my private life with anybody,” he announced.

“No kidding,” I said. “Where’s all the shame coming from?”

He stared icily at me. “Nothing to do with shame. I’m just not comfortable divulging it.”

“Why? We all want intimacy. We all want love.”

“If I knew
why
I wouldn’t be lying about it.”

And it dawned on me that for Wade, lying was a knee-jerk response that went back to his blighted childhood. Unfortunately, as an adult this trait was hardly going to help him to diminish the level of suspicion that he’d already generated. Then it occurred to me that perhaps he was afraid that disclosing any relationship at all might threaten his adoptive father. Maybe he was paranoid that Paul might disinherit him, another subliminal reason why he didn’t mention it to me?

Leaving that thorny thought and attempting to ease some of the annoyance they were undoubtedly feeling toward each other, I confided in Paul and Wade, “Well, you’re not the only one they’re looking into. Remember I told you—”

“Yeah, who is it, anyway,” Paul said. “You can tell us.”

“Okay, just keep it under your hats. Hiram Osmond.” Although both men expressed surprise, they felt this suspicion made sense. I went on to say that Anthony’s report of the visit to the farm portrayed Hiram as unnerved to the point of panic.

“I’ve known him for most of my life,” I said. “And I feel bad. I’d like to go and pay him a visit.” Turning to Wade with a smirk, I added, “I was thinking you should come with me. Both of you can’t be the killer, so I figure that I’ll be safe one way or another.”

Wade considered the proposal for a moment and then said, “All right.”

“How about after work tomorrow,” I said.

“That’ll be fine.”

*   *   *

I picked him up the next day and we began driving along Route 12 toward the Osmond farm in the town of Hartland. It had been raining on and off the entire afternoon and the macadam road had taken on a glaucous sheen. “I have to be honest with you,” I said to him. “The news of your affair took me completely by surprise.”

He turned to me and I could feel his caustic stare. “How so?”

“I honestly didn’t think you were into women.”

“Why, because I used to be fascinated by Mother’s dress patterns?”

“Not at all,” I lied. “We’re very good friends and you’ve never talked about your love life.”

“Exactly. So why presume?”

“Because people who don’t talk about their love lives usually have something to hide.”

“But if I were gay, why would I hide
that
?”

“You might not hide it in a city but you would in a rural area like this. Anyway,
I
think you’ve sent out lots of mixed signals.”

“Not true. I just play my cards close to the vest. And nobody—even Paul—knows me very well in
that
way.”

“Clearly,” I said, and thought, How sad. “For all I know, you could have children scattered all over the world.”

“As if,” he said.

We fell into a sullen silence and finally Wade said, “So what’s the upshot with Hiram? You said he took the lie detector test.”

“It wasn’t conclusive.”

“Great!” Wade exclaimed, crossing his pale, sinewy arms. “All I need to hear. They’ll be asking me to take a lie detector test next. I’m sure I won’t do any better.”

“If you’re so innocent why are you worrying?”

“Isn’t Hiram worrying?”

Wade turned toward me, raising his lower lip and nervously pulling one point of his flimsy mustache into his mouth. “Any kind of test gets me agitated. Even the driver’s exam pushed me over the edge … and let’s face it, I have a permanently guilty conscience left over from all the bad shit I did when I was a kid.” He swiped his hand over my dashboard and disdainfully looked at the dust that collected. “Honey, you need to clean this sucker.”

“Lay off me, will you?”

Wade burbled something inaudible in response.

We were now following the Ottauquechee River, whose rapids were low and brackish, passing a rope swing hanging from a tall tree high up on a bank. Just as we drove by, a shirtless boy was swaying out in an arc and then caroming into the water. “That brings back memories,” Wade said wistfully.

“Good ones?”

“Not really. Getting teased for being scrawny. When kids want to be cruel, they are unmerciful.” He reflected for a moment. “They did use to call me ‘gay’ when I was in high school but only because I didn’t play sports or seem to date anybody, although I did.” I could feel him glaring at me. “I just didn’t brag about it like everybody else did.” He cleared his throat. “I just never belonged in this place, in this town. If it weren’t for Paul I’d be so gone from here.” Then he explained that Paul’s main dealer in New York City had recently called to request that Wade take over cataloging the artwork, because Paul, with his dimming short-term memory, kept losing track of his inventory.

“Well, one day you’ll inherit everything and … the rest needn’t be said.” I looked over to study his expression.

Wade exhaled sharply. “We’ll see. If he doesn’t drive me crazy. Like that Prozzo guy who loves to keep in touch. He’s like a shadow on my kitchen wall.”

“You brought this on yourself by lying, Wade.”

“How many times are you going to make your point?” I had nothing to say in response and finally he went on mockingly, “And you know, what the fuck … about
Anthony
?”

“What about him?’”

“Where was
Anthony
the night Angela Parker disappeared?”

I glanced over at him. “Claims to have been home with his wife and daughters.”

“Convenient, don’t you think?”

“I agree. I suppose if it came down to it … they could be asked to substantiate his story.”

“Yeah, but now they’re in North Carolina. Anyway, why did
she
leave if
he
was the one having the affair?”

“I’ve wondered the same thing. He said she’d been after him to move south. So in one sense he played into her hand.” I paused for a moment. “But I concur it
is
rather unusual that a parent just lets their spouse move out of state with the children. There’s something—I don’t know what it is—about their whole separation arrangement that doesn’t add up to me.”

“Hiram let
his
wife move out of state,” Wade said as we turned into the long dirt driveway of the Osmond farm.

“No, the court granted that. She screwed him.”

We went around a bend and were able to finally view a mishmash of fading white outbuildings, connected to one another with awkward Quonset hut–like passageways. We crossed over a brook on a small wooden bridge that groaned under the weight of the car. “God, this place has hardly changed,” I said, “from when I was a kid.”

“I couldn’t tell you because I’ve never been here. But it certainly looks like the dump that I expected.”

“Believe it or not there are beautiful antiques inside. Or were.”

Wade looked dubious. “Come on.”

“I kid you not. Picture this: dirt floors with good Empire furniture perched on little wooden blocks.”

“How many times have you been here?”

“Only a few. People—even Hiram’s closest friends growing up—didn’t come often. It wasn’t exactly a welcoming place, although the parents couldn’t have been nicer.”

Back in the late seventies Hiram’s mother worked as a laundress, and when her husband was out on farm errands with the family’s only car, she’d walk a mile or more to pick up and deliver clothing. During the summers when my mother and I would spend July and August in Vermont, often driving we’d come upon Mrs. Osmond walking with bundles strapped to her back and stop to give her a lift. Once when we picked her up, Mrs. Osmond invited me to visit their farm because a pig had been born with two heads.

I was around thirteen at the time. I rode my bicycle down their long dirt driveway and on arrival had to pass through the door of a chicken-wire fence with which the Osmonds surrounded the entire house in order to protect their fowl from predators like fisher cats and coyotes. It was a surreal, bizarre farm: pigs and chickens milling around amongst the carcasses of cows and sheep and horses that were just open-air curing, waiting to be rendered.

On that particular occasion I’d been expecting Hiram to answer the door, but was greeted warmly by Mrs. Osmond, a diminutive woman with onyx-dark eyes who was said to be part American Indian. She ushered me into the parlor, where period antique chairs and tables were positioned on a raked dirt floor. She told me to sit down on a finely brocaded divan. I asked her where Hiram was and a moment later he entered the room grinning ear to ear, clutching a large pickling jar. Inside, maybe eight inches long, floating in formaldehyde, a tan-colored piglet body with two heads was delicately magnified in the solution. I was shocked and frightened by this diminutive monstrosity. “I thought this was going to be alive,” I said to them. “I thought we’d be seeing it outside.”

“A two-headed pig can’t live,” Hiram said in a patronizing tone.

I was nevertheless disappointed.

Mrs. Osmond offered me homemade molasses cookies; slightly nauseated by what I’d seen, I politely declined and waited an appropriate amount of time before saying that I needed to get home. Hiram ushered me out, but instead of bringing me in the way I came, he led me through a different entrance. Not ten feet away lay a dead black cow, smelly and festering with huge pink sores and swarming with flies. I stopped, afraid to walk past it. Hiram took my hand and was leading me when suddenly I saw a small young pig scampering out of the cow’s belly.

“What’s it doing there?” I cried.

“What do you think, it’s eating,” he said.

“That’s really sickening!” Wade exclaimed when I finished telling him the story.

The main section of the two-story 1700s Cape was partially caved in, and a makeshift standing seam gutter had been built to overlay where the roof had collapsed. It was hard to imagine that this jerry-rigged contraption could completely protect the interior from rain or snowmelt. The chicken-wire fence once used to circumscribe the main house had been taken down. The farmyard itself was overgrown with tall, limp grass. There were no live animals wandering around as far as I could see; the place was a lot less chaotic than I remembered it. But then again, this man was living alone now, probably with more time to organize his life. From where we stood we could see several large, dark hides hanging from a clothesline, a collection of enormous femurs leaning against the thick trunk of an ancient, gnarled maple. There was a chemical tang in the air, something both acrid and metallic; I assumed it was whatever substance Hiram used for rendering. Then, on the far side of the property, I spied the alpaca pens and the strange-looking space-age creatures. “I wonder why he’s raising those,” I said.

“You got to be kidding,” Wade said. “It’s potentially huge money. But let’s not go any farther. I don’t want to see anything dead.”

Hiram came out a moment later wearing deeply stained tan Carhartt worker pants and a grease-marked T-shirt lettered with
POMFRET PULL,
advertising a yearly competition between local teams of oxen. He was tall and lanky and I could tell he probably ate poorly, the bare minimum to sustain the enormous physical labor of ferrying around dead carcasses. As he’d gotten older his bright red hair had darkened to silvery auburn and he wore it long and clasped in a ponytail. He had his mother’s exotic-shaped Indian eyes, but they were pale and watery, the eyes of his Welsh father. His face was several days unshaven, his fledgling beard sun-bleached blond.