In a Dark Season (24 page)

Chapter 29

Tea and Small Talk

Tuesday, December 26

T
his is one strange scene,
thought Phillip as he sat in the cluttered living area beside the Troll.
It’s 3:05 in the mother-loving a.m. and she’s back there in this old drunk’s kitchen, making tea and small talk like things are normal.

“I’m warming a little milk for Mama Cat while I’m back here—is that all right?”

Phillip looked at Blake, who seemed now to be almost completely recovered from his brief exposure to the smoke and flames. The walk through the cold air back to his home had cleared the last of the alcoholic slurring from his tongue, and he had been profuse in his apologies and almost manic in his conversation.

“I do appreciate your solicitude, good sir,” he had said as Phillip steered him toward the brick building. “May I have the pleasure of knowing the name of my supporter? Hawkins? Ah, a venerable surname from Mother England—one recalls the redoubtable admiral, Sir Francis Drake’s own cousin, who comported himself so bravely in the time of the Armada.”

Blake had continued on in this garrulous strain as they entered the building that was his home, explaining how he had happened to notice the pregnant cat’s absence and had gone outside to look for her in and under the junk cars that stood around the building.

“Some heartless person abandoned the poor creature beneath the bridge only a few days ago. I saw her and brought her in but she is not yet accustomed to me and my other friends.”

Blake had gestured at the seeming dozens of felines that prowled about the room and crouched or curled on every available surface. “It was obvious that the moment of her
accouchement
was fast approaching and I knew she would be seeking a place to nest. When I saw the flames up at the Gudger house, my heart sank—I felt a pang, first of apprehension and then of certainty, that she had sought refuge there. After calling 911, I dashed up the hill, having first taken the precaution of wetting a blanket to shield myself from the flames. I mounted the steps, taking them two at a time, and plunged through the open door—”

“The door was open?” Phillip interrupted.

Blake nodded. “The back door, yes. Wide open. Puzzling, as it’s been padlocked for years. I confess, in my haste I neglected to note whether the padlock had been forced or—”

“Excuse me, Blake—I need to give the sheriff this information.” Phillip stood. “Lizabeth, I’m going to step outside and see if I can raise Mac on my cell. He needs to look for that padlock. Back in a few.”

It had been maddening. He could see the sheriff, not a hundred yards away, moving about in the lights of the fire trucks as the weary crews packed up and prepared to leave the old inn, could see him but, in the ever quirky mountain conditions, could not get a cell connection. Remembering at last that the sheriff had called the bridge a “dead zone” as far as cell phones were concerned, he had plodded back up the hill, only to learn that Mackenzie had found and bagged the padlock.

“It hadn’t been forced—but it had been tossed over in those brambles. Pure luck that it caught my flashlight’s beam when I scanned the area.”

Fingerprints would be unlikely; they agreed on this. “And since there’s no way of knowing who might have made copies of the key in the past…” Mackenzie had sighed. “It’s a dead end, Hawk. All we can say is it probably wasn’t just random mischief.”

“What about Blake? He was first on the scene. You know—”

But the sheriff was shaking his head with weary certainty. “I don’t think so, Hawk. That individual’s what you might call a troubled soul but he’s no arsonist.”

“I put the box with the cat and her babies in the bottom of that big cupboard back there and left the door open. Maybe that’ll make her feel safe. She’s had plenty to eat and drink and the babies are all nursing again.” Elizabeth handed Thomas Blake a mug of steaming sweet tea. “I hope this is all right. I thought we could both use something hot.”

Gently pushing a gray and white cat off the woven seat, Elizabeth took the tall straight-backed chair near the sofa. Blake, his face pasty white behind the smeared soot, slumped wearily over his tea.

“That was really brave, to go looking for that poor cat. Not many people would risk their lives that way.”

He waved aside her words. “I fear that mine was a spirituous bravery—had I not been quite inebriated I would never have attempted so foolhardy a rescue. But still, one small good deed in a naughty world…”

A single tear traced its way through the dirt on his cheek. He drained his tea and tried to rise. “Mrs. Goodweather, I must ask to be excused. I have arrived at that stage of my drunkenness where I become tediously lachrymose. If you would forgive me, I think I shall retire.”

“He insisted on going upstairs to his bedroom but, Phillip, he started crying so hard, he could hardly see to stagger. In the end, I helped him up this claustrophobic enclosed staircase—there’s a door to it back in the kitchen area—and got him to his bed. He flopped down, still weeping, and began babbling all kinds of disconnected stuff. It was really hard to listen to—I have a pretty low tolerance for maudlin drunkenness and I was about to make my getaway when he said, very clearly, ‘Of course, Spinner was gay. Poor boy, he just wasn’t ready to admit it.’”

“You sure he said ‘Spinner’?” Phillip had his arm around her as they walked back to the car. On the hill above them, two cruisers from the sheriff’s department remained and the fleeting beams of flashlights behind the shattered windowpanes showed that Blaine and his men were still at work, searching for evidence that might explain the blaze.

“Oh, he definitely said ‘Spinner.’ Absolutely. So I sat down and waited. He was talking about all kinds of stuff but he kept mentioning Spinner. It seemed to be tied in with the abandoned cat—something like he had a weakness for helpless and abandoned creatures but he’s been more successful with cats than anything else.”

“So what all did he say?” Phillip unlocked the car. “Did you ask him where Spinner was now?”

“I tried to. But he launched into a long story about how he’d always been an outcast and that gave him a fellow feeling for other outcasts. He said he’d failed his family when he was forced out of the service.”

Thomas Blake had tossed to and fro on his rumpled bed in an agony of confession that had brought no catharsis. “It was the calamitous termination of my military career that taught me to seek oblivion in a bottle. I tried to help a young corporal under my command, and ended by destroying us both. He was grieving at the loss of a comrade killed in a training mishap. And I, instead of telling him to buck up and be a man and a soldier, I, soft, foolish Thomas, put my arm around him to comfort him. I swear that was all.”

Blake seemed to have forgotten her presence as he continued, words tumbling over one another as they escaped him. “I only made it worse for him. A self-important fellow officer, coming upon us at that moment, chose to misconstrue the situation. Rumors began to fly and my commanding officer was eager to be rid of me. And when I was discharged and returned home, my parents’ shame was so deep that they would have almost nothing to do with me. And so I drink.”

Blake had lapsed into silence, broken only by gasping sobs. When the worst of the crying jag had passed, Elizabeth spoke. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Blake. I wish I could help you.”

They were just words but she found that she really meant them, even as she wondered if, after so many years, help was
possible
for the Troll.

The storm of drunken sobs passed. Blake lay still now, flat on his back, his face hidden in the crook of one arm.

“Mr. Blake,” Elizabeth said gently, “you mentioned someone named Spinner. Was his last name Greer?”

His reply had been muffled. “Greer? Possibly…it has a familiar sound. Spinner was an outcast too. But he vowed to face what he was and what he’d done like a man. I applauded his resolution and urged him to take the final step.”

Blake lowered his arm and gazed up through his smeared glasses. “I thought he had done the thing; I believed him redeemed and safe; but I have recently learned that he reneged on his promise. In the end, I fear he was as big a coward as I—he ran away.”

“And then Blake just fell asleep—or passed out. So I came downstairs to wait for you.”

Phillip was preoccupied for a moment with adjusting the car’s heater. When at last it was working to his satisfaction, he said, “Mac told me some more about Blake’s past. Evidently this episode Blake mentioned—him with his arm around the soldier—well, it seems the soldier
was
gay and some of the roughnecks in his unit, once he’d been written up, decided on a little retaliation for quote ‘besmirching the honor’ unquote of their unit. Things really got out of hand. The young man was beaten severely and sexually assaulted with a—with an object, as well.”

He reached over and gave her hand a reassuring squeeze. “I’m sorry, sweetheart; it’s ugly. But it goes a long way toward explaining why the poor guy stays drunk all the time.”

Chapter 30

Emerging from Darkness

Tuesday, December 26

T
he words came and went too quickly. Just when she had one forming at the tip of her tongue, it swirled away.
Like those fortune-telling eight balls my classmates brought to school…
Yes…No…Sometimes…Maybe…Wait and See…Never…The words and thoughts floated lazily up through her murky consciousness and disappeared again before revealing themselves.

And that is a simile—using the word “like.” It is not a…not the other one where the comparison is direct. If I said “My mind is a fortune-telling eight ball,” that would not be a simile buta…a…
The word swam away, laughing over its shoulder at her. Years and years of teaching the basics of poetry and composition to bored freshmen, drilling into them the simple terms, and now she couldn’t even remember…was it “dactylic”? She was sure there were three syllables:
dah, dah, dah.
No, dactylic was meter: the waltzing three-beat of “THIS is the FORest primEval/The MURmuring PINES and the HEMlocks.” The elusive word peeked out at her, then dodged away.

“Here’s you your juice, Nola, and your pills. Sit up like a good girl…or do you need a helping hand?”

Nola struggled to obey. She’d learned that Michelle’s “helping hand” was harsh and left dark bruises on the tender flesh of her inner arm. But she said nothing, staring straight ahead, letting her jaw hang slack. From the corner of her eye, she could just make out the other figure standing
like lurking death
near the closed door. Without her glasses, it was difficult to be sure, but when she heard the voice, her question was answered.

“I brought some more of her meds. You should have enough now for the rest of the month. After that—”

“Do you guys realize it’s almost nine-thirty! Mum, you never sleep that late. And where did you guys go last night anyway?”

As Elizabeth and Phillip made their somewhat shamefaced entrance into the living room, Laurel turned from the sketch she was doing of her older sister to glare at the late-risers. Rosemary, her dark hair falling like parentheses on either side of her serene countenance, was elegantly sprawled across the love seat by the fire, engrossed in one of the books she had received for Christmas.

At the sound of Laurel’s voice, Rosemary looked up with the somewhat bemused expression of the reader who must make the not-always-welcome transition from the enthralling world on the printed page to the mundane demands of the here and now.

“Morning, Mum…morning, Phillip. There’s coffee made and I brought the bowl of ambrosia up from the basement refrigerator. And we filled the bird feeders and let the dogs out. Where
did
you all go? I heard the jeep going down the road in the wee hours this morning, so I came downstairs to see what was happening—”

“And while it was nice that you left a note, Mum, ‘Back soon’ doesn’t really cover the ground, now does it?” Laurel added a few more lines to her sketch, frowned in an accusing manner, and erased them.

“You’re right, sweetie. But we were in a hurry and there just wasn’t time to explain.”

Feeling properly chastened, Elizabeth began to describe the events of the previous night while Phillip headed for the kitchen in search of coffee.

“Then the old house didn’t actually burn down?” Laurel squinted at her sketch. “Rosie, would you put your head back the way it was…down a little more…there.”

Rosemary complied and, still holding the pose, asked, “So, how do they think this fire got started?” The question was directed at Phillip, returning with a mug in one hand and a plate in the other.

“It was probably deliberate but—”

“Like that Hummer that burned up—maybe it was the same people—trying to scare off the developers.” Laurel broke into Phillip’s reply, only to be quashed by Rosemary’s quiet voice.

“That doesn’t make any sense, Laur. Why would the people who’re trying to
save
the old stand from the developers want to burn it down? I think it’s more likely it was some bored teenagers ‘hoo-rahin’ around,’ like Miss Birdie says. They’d just see a creepy old house, not a historical landmark.”

Creepy old house.
The words echoed in Elizabeth’s head.
Someone had called it that not long ago. Someone who—

“Wait a minute. Nola’s
niece
said something about the sooner they tear down that creepy old house, the happier she’d be. And now that I come to think of it, that presentation by those developers—by RPI—about their plans for the Gudger’s Stand property—it talked about a historic
recreation.
I’d been assuming they were going to turn the old stand into the centerpiece of their development but—”

“You could be onto something, Lizabeth,” Phillip said. “What if it was in RPI’s best interest to get rid of the stand house—not have to hassle with preservationists and folks like that who wouldn’t go for major changes at the Gudger house? It’s happened before—a piece of property that was inconveniently historic and too expensive to restore or maintain
and
in the way of progress suddenly burns to the ground.”

The day after Christmas is not the best time for getting information,
thought Elizabeth as she looked at the list she had made:

1. Nola/Ambien

2. Call Gloria re Spencer Greer

3. Bam-Bam?—call Debbie at River Runners

Phillip had left shortly after breakfast. “I told Mac I’d come back and give him a hand with looking around the Gudger place again. And I’ll stop in and check on your drunken friend—he probably feels even worse than I do this morning.”

For once the little office was empty—the girls had already checked their e-mails and had gone to visit Miss Birdie. There’d been no sign of Ben and Amanda this morning, but that was not unusual. Only the dogs were there, crowding the floor of the tiny room with their sleeping bodies.

Elizabeth studied the brief list, trying to decide what to do first.
Nola—she’s my main concern at the moment.
Phillip had spoken with Mac as promised and Mac had suggested that she call Adult Protective Services.

“There’s nothing he can do, Lizabeth. You have to go through Social Services and, yes, they’re probably closed today. Why don’t you go visit your Miss Barrett this afternoon and see how she’s doing? If she’s been overmedicated, but has started refusing the pills, she may be able to communicate better now. And if that’s the case, maybe she’ll be able to take charge of her own affairs again.”

I hope so. Wouldn’t it be great to walk into that awful little room and have the old Nola look at me and say “Get me my glasses and get me out of this ridiculous place! And what
butcher
is responsible for this travesty of a hairdo?”

She put a question mark by Nola’s name and wrote down the number of Social Services after it, with the admonishment “
CALL
!!!”

Bam-Bam. God, what a dreadful nickname. At least, I sincerely
hope
it’s a nickname.
Elizabeth punched in the numbers for the proprietors of River Runners and was rewarded with an almost immediate answer.

She began to explain who she was and what she wanted but was interrupted as soon as she mentioned Ben’s name.

“Oh, hi there, Elizabeth. How are Ben and that gorgeous girl of his? Tell them we’re goin’ to do another moonlight run on the twenty-eighth, if the weather cooperates. How can I help you?”

As Elizabeth had expected, Debbie remembered the girl named Bam-Bam. “She was a good guide. Small, but tough as nails. We were hopin’ she’d come back the next summer but never heard from her. No surprises there—most of the folks who work for us are free spirits—they like to keep movin’. Still, she left without botherin’ to pick up her last week’s pay. She was hitchin’ and probably got a chance of a good ride with someone at that last party and didn’t want to wait around till the next day. Of course, considerin’ she took with her a really good down jacket I’d lent her, I guess we’re even. But, damn, I still remember that jacket—almost brand-new, green and purple—really nice lookin’.”

Bambi Fleischaker was the girl’s real name. Debbie had checked her records to be sure of the spelling.
F-L-E-I-S-C-H-A-K-E-R.
Elizabeth carefully tapped the name into a Google search and was rewarded with a mixed bag of information ranging from the search for extraterrestrial intelligence to the Alaskan Malamute Annual and several sites devoted to unusual baby names.

And one site called “Bambi, Come Home.”