Death Benefits (28 page)

“It sounds as though it could take months.”

“It could,” said Mary. “If you go into those places acting like a skip-tracer—or an insurance investigator—it would. You just have to endear yourself to somebody who knows the system and get them interested in helping. I’ve already started being endearing, and it’s gotten me my first introduction.” She squinted at the clock, then looked a second time. “I’d better get going.”

Walker sat on the bed and watched her with the same sense of bereavement that he had felt while he’d watched her prepare to leave his hotel room in Los Angeles. Seeing her pull clothes over that smooth, white body was like watching the moon being obscured by dark clouds.

She said, “Don’t sit there ogling. Get up and get dressed so you can buy me breakfast.”

When they left the hotel room they walked past Stillman’s door. It opened and he emerged. He nodded to them without a change of expression and said, “Morning, Serena.”

She answered in the same tone, “Always a pleasure, Max.” She was Serena again.

He walked with them to the restaurant, then selected a booth along the far wall. As soon as they had menus in their hands, he looked over the top of his and stared at Serena. “Did you bring something to the party?”

She said, “I’m trying to find out who the cousin was, so you can see what’s in his house. Is that what you want?”

“That’s what we want,” said Stillman.

“I’ve made a contact, and that should speed things up.”

His eyebrows bumped up, then down again. “A contact?”

“Yes,” she said. “I called the Bureau of Vital Records and talked to a lady. She knows another lady who lives on a farm outside Jaffrey. She’s an amateur historian who knows about the families and the little towns around here. I called her, and I’m going to see her this morning.”

Stillman said, “Take your boyfriend with you.”

She smiled and glanced at Walker, then back at Stillman. “I don’t think so. Night with the girls, day with the boys.”

“Take him,” said Stillman. “He has his limitations, but he’s big and strong, and if anything’s after you, he’ll throw himself in front of it.”

Walker glared at Stillman, then looked at Serena to find that she was studying him speculatively. She made a decision. “All right. Just let me do most of the talking.”

32

The farm had not seen a plow in at least a generation. The fields surrounding the small rise where the old white house had been built had settled into a man-smoothed, grassy expanse of lawn. A long fieldstone fence had been laid along the edge of the farm beside the road. Walker imagined the first farmer stopping his horse each time his plow turned up a stone, then prying it up with a pole and staggering with it to the edge of the field to add to the fence. Here and there big, stubborn rocks had been left in place, undefeated by the farmers, and now a few trees had grown tall in the middle of the field.

There was no gate anymore, just a gap in the fence and a concrete driveway that extended only twenty feet in, then changed to a gravel strip leading up to a small barn that had been converted to a garage.

Walker turned Mary’s rental car into the driveway and then let it crawl onto the gravel and up to the house. As soon as it reached the wider turnaround near the barn, he parked.

“Silvertop alert,” muttered Mary. “Smile a lot. It may not be enough, but it will be something.”

He could see that she was already working her face into a demure smile that went with the modest blue summer dress she was wearing. He glanced toward the house, and he saw that the front door was open. A woman appeared in the shade behind the screen door. She was wearing a dark suit and a white blouse, as though she were on her way to work at a bank. Her hair was white, like spun floss, and she was staring at them expectantly.

Walker got out and opened Mary’s door. As she got out, she whispered, “How gallant.”

“I’m just afraid to go first,” he whispered back. “Kick your way in, grab the tea, and run.”

They approached the door along a flagstone walk between rows of tall purple irises that all seemed to Walker to be full of bees buzzing ominously. The woman pushed the screen open a little, and Mary said, “Mrs. Thwaite?”

“Who else?” called the woman. “Come in.” Her voice was a resonant soprano that sounded as though she might have once been a singer. She swung the door wide as they reached the porch, and they stepped over the threshold.

Mary was already busy impersonating herself. “I’m Mary Catherine Casey, and this is John Walker.” As she fell into character, her smile warmed.

Mrs. Thwaite shook Mary’s hand and then Walker’s. “I’m delighted to meet you both,” she said. “We’ll have tea in the sun room.” She led them through a parlor. The ornate wallpaper was obscured by heavy antique furniture, and gilded frames with big paintings of dark mountains under brooding cumulonimbus clouds, then under an arch into a white sun porch with walls that were rows of windowpanes looking out on a rose garden. In the middle was a table set with teacups and silverware.

Walker waited through the elaborate, leisurely tea ritual. Mrs. Thwaite was not inclined to abbreviate it, or to forgo any of the antiquated formalities. Mary Casey seemed to have prepared herself for this. She sat with a perfectly straight spine that never touched the back of her chair and responded with fierce, immovable correctness. She saw everything Mrs. Thwaite did, and heard whatever was behind the voice, things not said but simply understood by women of a certain sort. Mary was helpful without actually doing much helping, because only certain motions could be performed without presuming upon the prerogatives of the hostess, who must do the steeping, pouring, and serving. She moved delicate china objects into her reach, but never too soon or too late, then made them glide to their proper places. Always, she kept up a fluttery patter about the garden outside the windows, the china, the tea, the tablecloth and napkins, and even the angle of the sun, as though Mrs. Thwaite had cunningly contrived to plant the giant oak two hundred years ago to shade the windows today.

When the tea and cookies and pastries had been distributed and all formulaic utterances exchanged, Mrs. Thwaite’s face assumed the contented softness that indicated her gods had been appeased. She said, “How do you know Myra Sanderidge?”

“I don’t, really,” said Mary. “I was just doing a little research and I talked to her on the telephone. She said that if I wanted to know anything about this part of the state, I should ask you.”

Walker surmised that this Myra person must be the one at the state archives. How could Mary know her? He couldn’t imagine that this had been anything but a purely formal trap—an opportunity for Mary to claim a false legitimacy, but Mary had effortlessly converted it into a compliment.

“Well, you should know Myra,” pronounced Mrs. Thwaite. “I like her, and you would too.” Walker could tell that this was her announcment that Mary was one of
us,
not one of
them.

Mary gathered in her winnings gracefully. “I’m hoping to meet her in a day or two. I’m driving to Concord to do a little research. Mrs. Thwaite, I was—”

“Ivy,” interrupted Mrs. Thwaite. “Call me Ivy. Now, what are you doing research for?”

Mary’s smile grew to a grin. “I suppose it’s because that’s what I do best, so I always fall back on it when I’m in a new situation. John was already here on a trip with a business friend. He liked it, and I had nothing to do, so he talked me into joining them for a few days. I couldn’t do much reading at the last minute, so I used my computer on the plane to see what I could find out, and now I’m hooked.”

Ivy’s eyes strayed to Walker. “What did you like about it?”

Walker began to sweat. “Well, I . . .  the country, mostly. I came into Keene, and I liked the look of it. Then Mary told me she’d found interesting facts about the area—scenic routes, history—and so my friend and I drove around a bit to look at some of the small towns around here. We went up the Old Concord Road through East Sullivan, Munsonville, South Stoddard, a few other places.”

Mary prompted, “But the place you liked best was Coulter, wasn’t it?”

“Oh?” said Ivy. “You were in Coulter?”

Walker struggled to make as many of the lies coincide with the truth as he could. “It seemed like such a peaceful little place. I was curious about it because it seemed kind of remote, so far off the highway. Then, when we got there, it seemed active, friendly, and—”

“Wealthy?”

Walker smiled. “Well, yes. It seemed to me that all the houses were pretty nice. I wondered about the people who live there.”

Ivy looked at Mary, and some understanding passed between them. It was only a second before Mary revealed what it was. “It sounded like a nice place for children.”

Ivy’s face looked thoughtful. “It’s an interesting place. It always has been.”

“It has?”

“I gather that Myra told you local history is my weakness. I was a history teacher in Jaffrey for thirty-two years. But I didn’t start out to be that. I met my husband in Manhattan, only it was Manhattan, Kansas. I was fresh out of KSU, and he was a young second lieutenant stationed at Fort Riley. You know how those things go.”

Walker caught himself nodding in exactly the same rhythm as Mary. “Was this where he was from?”

“Yes,” she said. She looked wistful at the memory of it. “When he told me about this place, I secretly thought he must be some kind of aristocrat. His family came to this part of New Hampshire with William Pynchon in 1636. They ended up precisely here a little later. After they’d sold off the trees for lumber, they became farmers, probably by default. They stayed put a long time, but the Thwaites were never rich.”

“Did any of them settle in Coulter?” asked Mary.

“Never,” said Ivy quickly. “Never in Coulter.”

Walker was surprised by the certainty, the finality. He ventured, “It seemed like a pleasant place, but so is this.”

“Yes, Coulter probably always was pleasant. But it had an odd reputation. After Randolph and I had been married for a short time, I began to hear a peculiar tone when it was mentioned.” She put her hand on Mary’s forearm and said, “I’m just like you. I hear something, and I want to know all about it.” She withdrew her hand and looked at them knowingly over her teacup. “Well, people implied that it had sort of a racy reputation.”

“Racy?” Mary raised her eyebrows. “That would get my attention.”

“Me too. I was a Kansas girl, from the rough-and-ready West, and I’d been to college. When I heard that, I thought it must be houses of ill repute, at least. I wasn’t used to the New England sensibility yet. I was from a place where you talked with your mouth wide open, and used your finger to point at what you saw. When I couldn’t get anything much out of anybody, I went to look for myself.”

“You went there alone?” asked Mary.

“Sure,” said Ivy. “What I saw was . . . ” She smiled and paused for suspense. “Pretty much what you saw.” Her smile turned into a laugh. “I was so disappointed, all that morning. I walked up and down staring at people, looking into their eyes for signs that they had hidden depths. Nothing. Of course, in those days, it wasn’t as well populated as it is now, or as well-heeled.”

Walker said, “It wasn’t? The houses all looked as though they had been there for a hundred years or more. There were a few new ones, but they all seemed to be in the middle of old blocks, where there would have been something else before.”

Ivy’s eyes sharpened. “You’re a good observer. And you’re right. In those days, all the houses were big and fancy and old. Most of them were run-down, and quite a few looked as though they hadn’t been occupied for years.”

“Odd. I wonder why.”

“So did I. All the little towns around here have a few big houses like the ones in Coulter. At one time there was lots of industry—pottery works, glass factories, furniture factories, textile mills, shoe factories, granite quarries. A lot of people made fortunes, and built houses to let passersby know it, right up until 1900 or so. But those were business owners. There were a lot more laborers than owners. I didn’t see any tenements or workers’ cottages in Coulter. I was trying to get a sense of this area, and Coulter was just part of that. I remembered, when I was asking questions of people, to ask about Coulter too.”

Walker said casually, “Did you find out anything about the people that built the houses? Family names or anything?”

“I was an outsider asking prying questions, and people around here didn’t always take that well. Finally, one of my students took me to meet her great-grandfather. His name was Jonathan Tooker. She said he had lots of interesting stories about things, and that I was the one to hear them. The old gentleman was—I think—ninety-eight at the time, and that was fifty years ago.”

She stared out at the garden as she spoke. “Jonathan said the people there grew rich as what used to be called ‘Yankee traders’ when that was not necessarily taken as a compliment. They were itinerants, tinkers who fixed, sold, and traded things. But they were crooks. They sold cheap goods disguised and labeled as first-rate. They traded for old machinery, shined it up, and sold it as new. Jonathan said that while they were on the road, they bought stolen goods, and even sometimes stole it themselves. He said that if they got their hands on something that really was first-class, they would use it as bait: they’d take cash deposits on orders and never deliver, or just use it to get into houses.”

“I don’t understand,” said Mary.

“Well, there were certain items that were the genuine article, superior goods. An example would be the McCormick reaper. There were dozens of kinds of reapers, but now nobody can name one, because the McCormick was best. They would have one on a wagon when they came to a town. It made them seem like respectable merchants. People would trust them, invite them into their houses. While one man was making a sales pitch or luring the farmer outside to watch a demonstration, another would be pocketing the silverware or jewelry. Jonathan said there were all kinds of schemes and tricks. He said that later they traveled by rail, and that let them extend their range to Ohio and Indiana, Michigan and Illinois, but the pattern was about the same. They’d come home at the end of summer and spend the fall and winter working to make old things look new, cheap goods look expensive, and disguising stolen items for resale. Did you see the mill while you were there?”

“The old mill?” said Walker. “It’s been made into a restaurant.”

“That’s where all that tinkering went on.”

“A textile mill?”

“It wasn’t that. People used ‘mill’ in the British sense, to mean factory. But it worked the same. It was on a stream because water power could be used to turn a lathe or a wheel to grind or polish. And they could take base-metal cutlery or vessels, silver-plate them, and dump the chemicals in the stream. After I heard it from Jonathan, I went and looked at the place. I didn’t see any reason to believe he was wrong, but of course, the evidence was long gone.”

Mary said, “I suppose it must have been. And you said there weren’t as many people?”

“Jonathan’s theory was that Coulter’s whole repertoire of tricks and swindles required farmers with money to spend. When hard times hit in the 1920s, the victims didn’t have enough money to keep Coulter in business. Jonathan was a great admirer of simple explanations, but maybe it’s true.”

Walker said, “And the people moved away?”

She nodded. “Looking back on it, I guess you could say the town pretty much died. When I was there fifty years ago, I’ll bet two-thirds of those big houses were empty. I don’t know where the people went.” She brightened, as though a new idea had amused her. “I suppose they went out West with new swindles.”

“Then you believe what Mr. Tooker told you?” asked Mary.

“I’ve come to. Over the years, I heard bits and pieces of it again. A painter from Stoddard I hired about twenty-five years ago had the worst old truck I ever saw, and he was always grumbling about it. He said that when he bought it, he’d been ‘Coultered.’ I perked up my ears, and he told me some of the same things Jonathan had. It seems that around here at one time, people would call anyone who was a cheat or swindler a ‘Coulter.’ I was thinking of doing an article on the place at one time, but I never got around to it.”

Walker said, “Did you ever make any notes, or anything?”

She stared out the windows at the garden, “Well, yes, I did. I remember writing things down when I was in Concord, looking up the names of early settlers . . . ” She stopped. “But that’s all gone now. My investigation never turned up any primary sources on the swindling. It was all just old stories. I didn’t keep the notes.”