No Way Home (23 page)

“You’re older.”

“Fifteen years. Is that too much?”

“I don’t know. Ask her. Then ask yourself.”

“She was friends with a doctor. I checked up on him. He’s my age, and his hair’s gray. Mine’s not.”

“There’s your answer.” She drove slower and kept to her side of the road, too much so, for the tires on his side crunched gravel. “Another thing,” she said. “On the investigation. If you told me what you were doing, maybe I could help.”

“If I knew everything I was doing, Meg, I might not be doing it.”

They approached the center of town and began to make the swing around the green. Malcolm Crandall was talking with Dr. Skinner outside Tuck’s, and two women from the Heights were entering Roberta’s, which opened on Sundays from one to four. A door hung open at the Congregational church.

Looking at it, Morgan said, “Maybe we should seek guidance.”

“In there?”

“Why not?” he said. “Unless you’re still a Catholic.”

She was a lapsed one, with little regard for priests, whom she considered black-bound volumes of misinformation. Ministers she ranked lower.

“I’ll walk through that door when you do,” she said.

Morgan, who had not been in a church since his wife died, said, “That means we’ll have to wait till hell freezes over.”

• • •

“Some of the paper’s missing,” Calvin Poole said from the patio. Christine was a statue just inside the house. She made herself move and went out to him. “The comics,” he said, “and I don’t know what else.”

“They must not have packed everything in,” she said, examining his face but not meeting his eyes. Then she did. “Is there anything you want to ask me, Calvin?”

“Ask you?” he said, and she felt herself drowning in her own words. His she hardly heard. He busied himself looking for missing sections. “Such as what, dear?”

“Has anybody been here? I mean, while I was gone?”

“No, nobody. You weren’t gone long.” He dropped the thick classified sections beside his chair and kept the rest of the paper in his lap. “Who were you expecting?”

“Nobody,” she said and let her bare arms hang loose.
He knew.
Everything in her sensed that he did. Or was she wrong? She did not want to step irredeemably over the line, for she was only beginning to realize how much this second marriage meant to her. Yet she could not go on this way. “Calvin!”

He hurled his face up from the business pages and presented a facade — formal, hard, inerrant — in which she read agony.
What have I done?
she thought and shivered. Scarcely hearing his response, she slipped back a step with an agony of her own and a face shot with embarrassment. “What is it?” he repeated.

A friend in common, a woman, had introduced them. The woman, an irrepressible classmate of hers from Wellesley, had confided in her ear: “He’s a straight arrow, old school, wouldn’t say shit if he had a mouthful.” Later she and Calvin had exchanged deep looks, and each had seen comfort in the other.

“Are you feeling all right?” he asked, and she watched him lift a pant leg and scratch a hairless calf, which made him seem more vulnerable.

“A touch of the sun,” she said quickly. “Maybe I’m going through the change.”

“You’re too young for that.”

“No, Calvin.” Her voice drifted as she moved back toward the house. “No, I’m not.”

• • •

Chief Morgan borrowed Meg O’Brien’s car and drove to Felix’s Texaco, on the east side of town, near the line. Felix, who serviced many of the expensive foreign cars from Oakcrest Heights, was a master mechanic, humorless and direct, with a thin black mustache Morgan’s grandmother would have associated with a snake oil salesman. Though it was Sunday, he had his two sons laboring in the stalls, one with a Mercedes on the lift. Morgan’s car was still strung to the tow truck. He was wiping his hands in a rag when Morgan approached him at the pumps.

“That shitbox of yours,” he said, “ain’t worth fixin’, but I’ll fix it. You need a new radiator, and the fan belt ain’t pretty. I bill the town, I don’t wanna wait six months for my money.”

“How long do you wait for the folks from the Heights to pay?” Morgan asked.

“Those rich bastards,” he said, lowering his voice, “you gotta squeeze ‘em for every dime. My wife says they’re anal.”

“When can I pick up my buggy?”

“Tomorrow if you’re lucky, and you probably won’t be. I gotta hunt up a radiator.” He tilted his head. “See that silver-gray Mazda over there? The woman in it, she’s waitin’ for her husband, but she’s lookin’ at you.”

The Mazda was parked in the shade of a maple, and the woman was Arlene Bowman. “Yes, I know her,” Morgan said.

“Figured you did,” he said slyly.

Morgan ambled over to her. Despite the heat she looked cool as spring water. Her door opened, and she got out. He remembered the morning they had met. She had showed him scratches on the lock of the outside sliders leading into the kitchen. She was sure someone had been trying to get in. Perhaps. Busy, she moved agilely about the kitchen in her tight designer jeans and spoke to him with her behind. The next day he came back on his own.

Her smile now was no different from then. She said, “That’s my husband in there. He’s telling the mechanic exactly what’s wrong. He doesn’t trust the boy to see for himself.”

“I had a car like that, I wouldn’t either.”

“But you’ll never have a car like that. By the way, he knows.”

“Knows what?”

“What do you think?” Irony floated into her smile. “No, I didn’t tell him. One of your townies did. I didn’t catch his name.”

There was a knock in Morgan’s head. “Describe him.”

“Thirty, thirty-five at the most. He had the eyes of a sniper. They go through you.”

“Are you in trouble?”

“No, you are,” she said with greater irony, her dark eyes pinned to him. “My husband’s of the opinion you don’t know your place. He does have a point, doesn’t he, James?”

“What are you telling me?”

“He intends to cut your balls off. Perhaps he already has, but you don’t know it yet.”

Morgan’s mind raced. “Are you talking about my job?”

“Exactly. Take that away from you and you’re a zero, a big nothing.”

“As far as I know, Arlene, I’m still the chief, and I don’t plan to step aside.”

“You may not have a choice. Gerald’s a powerful man in case you’ve forgotten.”

“In a town like this, his power might not reach down.”

“I wouldn’t depend on that.” Her eyes taunted. “Would you like to give me a farewell kiss, old time’s sake?”

He glanced away. The day was brilliant, even the dust was bright. “You always did like to play it close, Arlene. I figured you were looking to get caught.”

“Don’t analyze me,” she said. “You’re not that smart.”

Gerald Bowman came out of the stall, for a moment blinded in the blaze of sunlight. Morgan had never met him, had glimpsed him only from afar, though he had often gazed at the formal photograph of him framed and hung in the master bedroom. Arlene stepped slightly away. Her legs were tapers.

“One small thing, James. Something that’s bothered me. How could you go from me to that old bag Christine Poole?” Then her face altered and brightened, and her voice rose. Her husband was upon them. “Darling, I don’t think you’ve met James Morgan. He’s our police chief busy solving murders, though obviously not at the moment.”

Behind his rimless glasses, Bowman’s eyes were lilac. His neat dark blond hair looked as if each strand had been individually barbered. Nothing moved in his face. His wife’s smile went back to Morgan.

“Gerald has heard things about us. Perhaps you’d care to give him your side.”

Morgan said, “I don’t have a side.”

“Get in the car,” Bowman said to her quietly and walked around to the passenger side. Opening the door, he spoke over the roof, “I once had a cat like you, Morgan. He didn’t know enough to crap in the box.”

The door closed, hard. Arlene opened hers and smiled with meaning. “It’s what I told you, James. He thinks you don’t know your place.”

The car slid away, sharklike, through a rinse of sunshine. Felix, who had not moved from the pumps and had overheard bits and pieces, came over to Morgan. “My wife had a cat like that too, Chief. I made her get rid of it.”

• • •

Randolph and Suzy Jackson had had dinner at the country club and were now driving around the village green. As they passed the town hall Suzy spotted Chief Morgan. “Go around again,” she said, “there’s the chief.” He looked at her unwillingly. “You might as well get it over with,” she said.

“Not now,” he said. “Tomorrow.”

“Do you want his resignation or not?”

“Tomorrow,” he insisted. “It’s official business.”

“Don’t be afraid of him, Randolph. Besides, I want to watch.”

He drove past Tuck’s and made the swing back to the town hall, where the chief was watching them. “You stay here,” he said in an undertone and popped out of the car with a spring to his step, which faltered. “You got a minute, Jim?”

“Sure,” Morgan said. Suzy Jackson smiled at him from the car, and he stooped forward. “How are you, Mrs. Jackson?”

“Fine, Chief. You’re looking fit.”

Jackson had him by the arm and ushered him closer to the town hall, almost to the stone steps. The evening air was buggy, sticky, skinned with heat. “I haven’t told you this, Jim, but I’ve been getting calls. The other selectmen have too. Orville Farnham tells me he gets them every day.”

“What kind of calls?” Morgan asked.

Jackson, who detested sticky situations of any kind, cleared his throat and gave himself a wider voice. “People think you’re protecting MacGregor. If the boy is a suspect — and people have heard he is — they want to know why he’s still wearing a uniform and carrying a weapon. It’s a legitimate question, Jim. Myself, personally, I think a leave of absence would be in order.”

“I can’t do that,” Morgan said. “He’s getting socked with too much as it is.”

Jackson looked around, looked back at the car, and rued the situation. He truly wasn’t a man who asked for much: a breeze on his back in the summer, a warm house in the winter, and his meals brought to him on a tray when he had a touch of something. “This is hard for me, Jim. Sometimes I wonder what the reward is in being a town father.”

“A little more than being a police chief. What are you trying to tell me?”

“Some of the people don’t think you’re doing your job, at least not one hundred percent. And then there’s talk about, you know, those women from the Heights.”

“If you hadn’t sold all that woodland, we wouldn’t have the Heights, would we?”

“Now you’re treading into matters don’t concern you, Jim. What I did with that woodland was for progress. A town that sits still dies.” He rose on his toes, galled that he should have to explain himself. “The point is — ”

“The point
is
, Gerald Bowman’s been talking to you.”

“He’s a resident, he has the right.”

“He also made you rich.”

“Look here, Jim, I’m my own man, always have been.” He felt his color rising, his exalted position in town questioned by one of his public servants. Morgan, expressionless, stared at him.

“How’s your new Audi running?”

His face burned, and his dinner at the country club now lay heavy, a burden in his belly. Returning from a political dinner in Andover, three sheets to the wind, he had cracked up his old Audi at the bend near Tish Hopkins’s farm. It had been the chief who pulled him out of the car, sobered him up, and drove him home no worse for the wear, though in the morning he warranted breakfast in bed. “You’re taking this all wrong, Jim.”

“I’m trying not to.”

“Take it in the spirit I’m giving it. Basically, I’m on your side, always have been.” He cleared his throat again. “All I’m saying is that people want the town to get back to normal business. They want this Lapham thing cleared up.”

“So do I,” Morgan said without inflection. “Anything else you want to tell me?”

“No, I guess that’s it. For now.”

Morgan stretched his neck and waved an arm. “Good night, Mrs. Jackson.”

Jackson watched him walk away and turn into the dark direction of the police station.
That’s his home
, Jackson thought,
that’s where he lives.

When he returned to his car, his wife gave him a sweeping look. “You bloody coward, you didn’t tell him.”

“No, but I warned him.”

• • •

As soon as Morgan turned the corner of the town hall he was confronted by Matt MacGregor, who was in full uniform, his service revolver slung low. “I heard it all, Chief. You played him like a fucking piano, like you do the whole town. You should do a concert on the green, charge admission.”

“Keep your voice down,” Morgan said, smelling beer on his breath. “Are you back to work?”

“Right. I don’t want to use any more sick time.” He pulled at the visor of his cap and gave a hitch to his trousers. “You’re protecting me, that’s what I heard said. And you’re not going to take away my badge and gun. I’ve been socked with enough, that’s what you said.”

“And that’s what I meant. Listen to me, Matt, can you listen to me?”

“I’m listening. Like I’ve been listening every day since I put on the badge. You say something, I jump.”

“You’re
not
listening.”

“Go ‘head, I’m listening.”

“I think I can put it together. If I work it right, get Junior Rayball alone in a perfect place, I think I can make him admit Papa incited him into using the rifle. I think Junior’s ready.”

MacGregor staggered back a bit, and his eyes emptied. “You make it sound so simple, Chief. Life’s never simple. Ask me. I can tell you.” His voice snagged on something, then stumbled forth. “I thought I was going to have it all. Lydia would be my wife, and I even figured someday I’d have your job. That’s a laugh.”

“Don’t count yourself out of anything, Matt.”

“You giving me hope?” MacGregor said sardonically. Then he let out a belch, full force, which was what buddies of Morgan’s used to do in Vietnam to show disdain for everything in sight, including themselves.

“Go home, Matt.”