Shades of Simon Gray (13 page)

“Bellehaven? Surely you are mistaken. This is the village of Havenhill. And I, young sir, am Jessup Wildemere, at your service.” The man swept his hat from his head, clicked his heels together, and made a polite bow. “And you would be …?”

Simon told the man his name, all the while thinking someone was playing an elaborate joke on him. This man couldn’t possibly be Jessup Wildemere, not the same drifter who was hanged from the branches of the Liberty Tree—the Hanging Tree, the very tree they both now stood beneath—for murdering Cornelius Dobbler. Simon stared at the man in disbelief. Like every kid in school, he knew the story of Jessup Wildemere.

Simon had always imagined Jessup Wildemere in smelly, sweat-stained buckskins, with a grizzly lice-laden beard and brown rotting teeth. But the man who stood
before him was young, only a few years older than he, and well dressed. Or at least as far as Simon could tell. He looked like a decent enough person. Not at all like someone who could commit murder.

“What are you doing here?” Simon all but whispered the question. He felt foolish even asking it. Because by now it seemed obvious to him that this was a dream. It had to be. Jessup Wildemere had been dead more than two hundred years. Things like this didn’t happen when you were awake.

The man looked beyond Simon and smiled. “I’m waiting for someone.”

Simon knew that smile, had felt it on his own face many times. It was the same look he got whenever Devin McCafferty walked into view.

But just as his lips parted, about to form the question “Who?” Simon felt the pull of his body and the painful plunge back into dark silence.

B
Y NOON ON
F
RIDAY ALL THE SNOW EXCEPT THE
mounds left by the plows had melted. The magnolia buds had already begun to turn brown. A warm spring breeze carried an invisible airborne cloud from the pharmaceutical plant into town. It hovered over the houses nestled in the valley, a pungent odor that smelled like cat urine. The people of Bellehaven were used to it. They hardly noticed it anymore.

Today they welcomed the smell as if it were a gift from heaven, an honest-to-goodness miracle, because when the odor drifted through the tree branches, the crows lifted into the air, squawking their indignant protests, and headed west.

Nobody was as happy or relieved as Danny Giannetti, who barreled home from school, tires squealing as he made a sharp turn into the driveway. Without even bothering to change his clothes, he dragged the hose from the back of the house, got a bucket of hot soapy water, and began to scrub away more than four days’ worth of crow droppings from his Mustang.

It was the first normal spring day since the previous Saturday when the four-day heat wave arrived, followed by the blizzard. The afternoon sun was warm. A light breeze swept the last of the dead leaves into the storm drain. Daffodils, buried under a half foot of snow two days before, their stalks bent to the ground, struggled to straighten up. Their stems, like hunched spines, swayed precariously in the breeze. Danny noticed none of this. His attention was on his Mustang.

The spray from the hose as it hit the car left dark splotches on his jeans and olive green T-shirt. He felt the sun on his neck, the wind in his hair, and for the briefest moment, he dared to hope. Nothing more had happened since the police confiscated Simon’s computer on Tuesday. He was sure if there was something incriminating, the cops would have been pounding on his door by now, slapping handcuffs on him.

Danny shook his head as if trying to dislodge the image. He stepped back to admire his handiwork. The sight of the shiny black paint, the shimmering beads of water, reassured him. No crows cackled overhead. No crows threatened to undo his hard work. All was right with the world.

Until the image of Simon swirling the hose over his head suddenly popped uninvited into Danny’s head.

Simon had come by Danny’s house one Saturday morning in September, an hour before everyone was to hook up at Kyle’s and head down to the school for the football game. Danny had been outside washing his new Mustang, his pride and joy, purchased with money earned from numerous after-school and summer jobs. He had the car stereo on full blast, ignoring the disgruntled remarks of his neighbors.

He had no idea why Simon had come by so early. He found his presence annoying and even a little disconcerting. Danny wanted to be left alone to wash his car in peace. It wasn’t as if he and Simon were friends or anything. And without Kyle, Devin, and his other friends there, he didn’t have a clue what to say to the little geek.

Simon slid inside the car on the passenger side and, to Danny’s horror, began to switch stations. First to some country western station, then an oldies station.

Finally, after listening to some really boring classical piece, Danny had had enough. “What the hell’s wrong with you, man?”

Simon blinked in surprise and pushed his glasses back up on his nose. “What?”

“What do you mean ‘what?’ I had it tuned to a decent station.”

“Don’t you ever listen to anything else?”

“Why should I?”

Simon shrugged. “I don’t know. Just for the hell of it? Just to hear something different?”

“I like what I like,” Danny said, unable to keep the irritation out of his voice. “Leave the damn radio alone.” He stood there, looking outraged, as the sponge dripped soapy water down the front of his pants. “Jeez. Now look what you made me do.”

Simon didn’t look the least bit contrite. In fact, Danny noticed something in Simon’s expression he hadn’t seen before, although he couldn’t put a name to it. The next thing he knew, Simon had sprung from the car, grabbed the hose, pressed the handle on the spray nozzle, and was spinning a stream of water over their heads like a lasso. Before he knew what hit him, Danny was soaked to the skin.

He lunged for the hose, shrieking obscenities at the top of his lungs, but Simon only laughed and continued to whip water over their heads. In no time flat, Danny was laughing too, smacking Simon with the soapy sponge.

Before they left for the game, Danny changed his clothes, but Simon, still dripping, his sneakers squishing and oozing water with each step, didn’t bother. He told Danny he’d be dry before the second quarter, sitting out on those hot bleachers, and a whole lot cooler than everyone else. Danny thought Simon had a point and almost wished he hadn’t changed his own clothes.

Now he lifted the hose from the driveway and stared down at the nozzle. The temptation to point it straight up in the air and swirl it the way Simon had was overwhelming. But it wouldn’t be the same. Not without Simon.

Danny was busy smearing paste wax on the car, taking pride in each large swooping circle he made, when his
sister, Marni, pulled into the driveway and parked her classic ’65 T-bird right next to his car. She wore khaki hiking shorts and a pale orange T-shirt and held a Diet Pepsi in one hand. Danny spotted her grease-stained jeans tossed in a heap in the backseat and figured she must have changed at work.

She glanced at Danny’s Mustang; then, shading her eyes with her hand, she squinted up at the treetops. “Thank god,” she said. “If those damn crows were still here I was going to borrow Austin McAllister’s BB gun and blast their feathers off.”

Austin McAllister lived next door, and as far as Danny was concerned, he was a dorky little seventh grader with psychotic tendencies. On more than one occasion Danny had seen him sitting on his deck shooting at robins that settled on the branches of a black birch a few yards away. He was one of the few people Danny steered clear of.

“Nice talk,” Danny said.

Marni shrugged and bent forward to check her reflection in the shiny surface of Danny’s car. “Mrs. McCafferty is in the hospital.” She ran her tongue over her lips to moisten them. “They’re saying it could be that West Nile virus.”

It took a few seconds for her words to register. Danny stood there with the can of paste wax in one hand and a rag in the other. “Devin’s mom?”

“Her grandmother, I think.” Marni straightened up and looked at him. “I told you. It’s those damn crows. Ron Snyder, who heads the Mosquito Commission, was in to pick up his Pathfinder this afternoon. He says they found
a dead crow in the McCaffertys’ backyard and they’re having it tested.”

The hair on the back of his neck bristled, although he wasn’t sure why that should be. He didn’t even know Devin’s grandmother, except to say hi in the A&P or when he saw her in town. “Did he actually say it’s West Nile virus?”

“No. That’s what some of the guys at the station are saying.”

Danny smirked. “Oh, right. Yeah, like with their Ph.D.’s in biology, they’ve got it all figured out.” This was a sore point with Marni and he knew it.

She took the bait. “Just because a person chooses not to go to some hotshot university doesn’t mean they aren’t smart.” She spun around and headed toward the back door. “And there are plenty of stupid jerks who think because they’re going to some snotty fancy school people won’t notice they’re brain-dead.”

Danny laughed. He knew this was aimed at him, at his recent acceptance by Dartmouth. “It’s too early for mosquitoes,” he shouted to her back.

“Sorry, genius, but you don’t know everything,” she called over her shoulder. “Ron says all that rain we had at the end of March, followed by the heat wave that came through last Saturday, set off a mess of early hatchers.” She bounced up the back steps and let the screen door slap shut behind her.

Danny went back to applying the paste wax, but the pleasure he’d felt earlier was gone. West Nile virus. So big deal, he thought. People got sick all the time. Only, for
some reason, he couldn’t shake a feeling of dread, the same feeling he’d had the morning the crows first descended on Bellehaven.

Kyle gently brushed Devin’s hair away from her bowed head, trying to read her expression. They were standing inside the custodial closet, the same one Kyle and Danny had brought Simon to the day Kyle decided Simon would be Walter Tate’s replacement.

“I thought you were going to drive me to the hospital,” Devin said.

“I will, okay? After you talk to McCabe.”

“I told my mom I’d be there right after school.”

Kyle rolled his eyes and assumed his most patient look. “Dev, I know you’re worried about your grandmother. I can understand that. But this computer security situation is definitely code blue. We have to move fast.”

“Why can’t you do it?” she said, looking up at him.

“McCabe’s not about to tell me squat.”

“So why should he tell
me
anything?” Devin took a step away from him. Her back was against the metal shelves.

How could he tell her it was because she was hot, because no guy could keep anything from her even if he tried? “It’ll seem more innocent coming from you. You’re just trying to find out about a friend who might be in trouble.”

Devin twisted a loose button on her sweater. “You’re better at getting what you want from people. I’m just going to blow it. I’ll get nervous and screw it up.”

“Dev, we’ve only got a short window of opportunity here. McCabe’s still in the computer lab. If we don’t move fast, we’ll have to wait until Monday. I don’t think we can afford to do that. Do you?”

Devin stared down at the button in the palm of her hand. She hadn’t realized it had come off. She rubbed her thumb and forefinger over the smooth surface. Kyle was right, of course. They couldn’t afford to wait.