The Dead Past (7 page)

"But I enjoy it, dear."

Each of us collected our thoughts and turned them over, waiting for pieces to click and hoping for bolts of inspiration and enlightenment. My grandmother has the ultimate poker face, like a Himalayan lama who had total control over each facial muscle, every tic and nuance.

Eventually she broke the silence. "I am going to pay a visit to the owner of the pawnshop. Perhaps Margaret's jewelry had genuine value and she was murdered for it, and then Richie in turn." She didn't seem convinced it was the proper tack to take, but realized a thread had to be pulled before any of the tapestry could unravel. "It's a long shot I'd like to follow up on. What are your plans?"

"I don't know," I said, thinking about my rotten list. "You could ask Lowell for more information about Richie's dealings with the criminal element."

"Anna, only you could make a car thief sound like
Moriarity
."

She shrugged and tossed the book aside. No helpful hints from Dame Agatha this morning. "Well then, you'll think of something."

"Drop me off in town and I'll rent a truck from Edelman's Garage."

"A truck?'

"Yeah. I'm going to drive up into the back hills. I think I'll go see Maurice
Harraday
."

"Be careful," she said as she resumed reading. "And remember to call him Tons."

~ * ~

After I picked up a '78 Jeep with a cracked windshield, no heater, and a smashed back bumper from Duke Edelman, I followed my grandmother's advice and went to see Lowell. He sat behind his desk at the police station, talking on the phone while tapping out his frustration with a pencil. I took the opportunity to use his coffee-maker to grab myself a cup while he calmly spoke to a woman who wanted him to arrest her husband's friends for keeping him out until three o'clock in the morning, and him with his allergies.

Across the hall,
Broghin's
door was open but he wasn't in his office. When Lowell had finished explaining a vast amount of constitutional law to the woman, he hung up and said, "Let's go for a drive."

"You don't sound happy."

"That's a rare state of being for me lately.”

“We headed anywhere in particular?"

"C'mon."

Uptight, his manners were mechanical, back straight enough to surf on as we walked to his cruiser. I fed off his bad mood and fell back into funk, wishing the tulips would arrive today. We drove past the courthouse, then over to the high school where we circled the ice-encrusted football field. He refused to talk, and the solid frustration that had been growing in my chest shifted into the steady beat of annoyance. Still, I kept my mouth shut because we were basically doing the same thing we had done two days ago when he picked me up from the airport. Another ten minutes passed, blinding slashes of light reflecting off the snow of last night as we drove by the lumber yard, power station and movie theater, before Lowell scratched his beard stubble and said, "I think Richie's killer left a note.”

“Okay.”

“Now the question.”

“So where is it?"

“Uh-huh."

My stomach filled with the warm ebb of blood and nausea. Muscles in my neck bunched tight, and the hair on my nape pricked like quills. On top of that, the anger turned too, into rage, because Lowell shouldn't have wasted the twenty minutes before he told me. "What makes you think so?”

“That night," he began and dragged up short. "That night I searched the yard to make sure the perp was gone.
Broghin
stayed with the body. Anna and Jim
Witherton
came out onto the porch, and the sheriff kept telling them to go inside and stay in the house. When I got back I noticed a dry spot on Richie's pants leg.”

“As if something had been covering it while the snow came down.”

“Yeah.”

“Is that it?"

"This morning I walked in on
Broghin
and he was folding up a water-stained piece of paper, you could see that ink had run. It made a connection, not much of one, but I guess it showed because he threw it in a drawer like a boy caught with his father's
Playboy
. That meant a whole lot more." He slowed for a red light. A couple holding hands, pushing a stroller, stepped into the crosswalk. "I've been on this job for eight years and I thought I'd seen that man in just about every mood there is. Happy as a kid at Christmas, proud, vengeful, even throwing up on himself. But I've never actually seen him
rattled
."

"Anna can do it to him easily. I want her protected.”

“I don't think the note was for her."

"Why?"

"Because
Broghin
can be a jerk but he's still a good sheriff. If he thought she was in any kind of danger he would have had me or one of the other boys watching over her around the clock."

"So you say."

"It's the truth, and you know it, Jon."

I wasn't certain what I knew anymore, except that I didn't know as much as I needed to; we drove around the park, nostalgia trying to work into my system and utterly failing. Felicity Grove wasn't as retrograde as I'd come to believe, and it lost more of its sleepy, peaceful milieu all the time—it seemed the town had caught up fast with the insanity of the cities. What was going to come next?

"You think maybe he or his family was threatened?" I asked.

"Yeah, I do." The world was being squeezed through his Clint Eastwood squint. "The sheriff's been on edge for two days. He barks at the people he's usually nice to and he's a genuine doll to everybody he always screams at."

"I noticed. He actually called me Johnny."

Lowell shook his head. "He's twisted ass over backwards, and the only thing that can do that is for something to prod the man where he breathes."

"I promised not to get in the way and obstruct justice on this one if I could help it, but if you think that
Broghin
himself is hiding evidence . . .?"

"I didn't say that."

"No, but you came perilously close."

"I know you don't get along with the man, and I can't say I blame you. You just think of him as a butterball who razzes you too much, but I've seen him put his life on the line. Whatever the hell is eating at him, I've got to give him time to work it out."

"Why are you telling me this?" I said, staring out the window so I wouldn't have to look at him. "You know I'm not going to let it lie."

He reached out and touched my arm gently, with his wrist hanging over my shoulder, the way we had posed for our football team yearbook pictures. I didn't like this pull of the past. "Because I'm asking you to let it lie."

My turn to be in charge of the silence. We drove back to the police station and he pulled up in front of the Jeep. We sat there for another few minutes, watching the traffic lights change, people walking by. Between us, the shotgun's presence was disturbing and comforting.

"Okay, Lowell," I said. "I'll let you run with it for now. I'll give
Broghin
the benefit of the doubt, but only for so long." We got out of the car. "If what he's hiding has anything to do with Anna I'm going to find out. And then there'll be hell
and me
to pay."

"Good line," he said. "I like that. You're going to have knees knocking from here to Jacksonville."

~ * ~

I drove up to the back hills, a sort of mystical area of the county where the structures of town faded away to sprawling copses and scattershot cabins and trailers. The ragged timberline took over the landscape. I lost control of the Jeep twice on the unpaved roads and nearly skidded off the mountain. Although there was an intoxicating natural beauty, this wasn't friendly country in the winter. If I didn't gather my concentration I might wind up as bad off as Richie.

It wasn't that stupid a line, I thought. Pretty awful all right, but not as bad as "gamut of inquisitiveness" anyway.

When I got in the general vicinity of Tons
Harraday's
home I stopped at a two-pump gas station and asked directions. Turns out I wasn't in the general vicinity after all—
Harraday
lived to the east of Warner fork, where the peak of the hills met the river as the waters curved south along the grade, washing down into the valley. There weren't many road signs; some had been blown down in the storm, and some were probably still standing but invisible in the snow. The rest had been shot to pieces. I made a few more mistakes, the worst of which was when I followed a muddy trail to a dead end and had to drive a half mile in reverse back to the main road because the path was too narrow to turn around on.

Finally I spotted a mailbox someone had dug free from the snow: MILNER. I kept going another quarter mile to the next place. The mailbox there stood covered by layers of ice, which served to magnify the name: HARRADAY. I pulled up and parked at the bottom of a long, partially graveled driveway with only a single tire track cutting across the ground. Tons rode a motorcycle, even in winter.

Though it was more than a mile away, I could clearly hear the chops of the river.
Broghin
had said Richie
Harraday
was a creep from a long line of creeps; that could be true, but apparently
Harraday's
father at least had once been a logger. Lumberjack houses had the same general structure to them: mostly brick and mortar, with stone foundations, as if knowing how easy it was to cut down wood they set themselves inside homes with more permanence. Off to one side of the house a trailer sat on cinder blocks, like a newly added room slapped onto the cramped quarters.

Before I could start for the house I heard the rough sound of running behind me, chunks of snow kicking up. I spun and two Dobermans that had never had their ears pinched stopped on a dime and stared at me without emotion. They didn't growl or bark or advance, and their nubby tails didn't wag in the slightest. They looked odd without their ears pointed, a tad friendlier maybe, but their yellow eyes gave multitudes of reasons why Dobermans are not man's best friend. They're also just about the only breed of dog that can look completely ferocious without baring their fangs. Not even Anubis can do that.

These two were brothers, a team, standing equidistant from my left and right sides, fifteen feet away. I did my best not to swallow, blink, or breathe. All three of us were very good at playing statue and we stayed like that for a good three or four minutes, which, relatively speaking, seemed like an hour's worth of real time. If I ran I wouldn't even make it to the Jeep.

Cripes, didn't anybody own poodles or basset hounds anymore?

Another two or three minutes passed and I was getting tired and cold; I lifted my foot up to take a step and they both began to
growl
. I put my foot back on the ground very carefully and decided I wasn't really that tired or cold.

A large man wearing a ripped, red flannel shirt and a leather vest came out of the house and casually walked up behind the Dobermans. The dogs didn't turn, their gazes nailed on me. I felt the ridiculous urge to shriek
yahoos!
and cover my crotch.

He let me stew a while longer, enjoying himself. He stood at least six foot five, muscular, but with a fair amount of fat around the middle, built for the mountains.

He had tiny features scrunched into the center of a wide face and a well-trimmed beard.

Sweat rolled down my spine and made me itch like hell. He lit a cigarette and said quietly, "I suppose you got a reason for
sneakin
' around my property."

"I wasn't sneaking." At the sound of my voice the Dobermans inched closer.

"Fred and Barney made sure of that."

"Are you Tons
Harraday
?"