The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (8 page)

"Well, Maggie, I wondered, because I hadn't seen you lately. I've meant to get out there, but with this old car of ours . . . and I've got morning sickness so much these days."

"Do you?" said Maggie, examining her fingernails. "Congratulations."

"I wondered if you'd like to come to church again, Maggie. I know it's been hard for you, but—" She thought she heard the girl's sharp intake of breath. "Well, let's not talk about that. I really wanted to know if you wanted to do a solo with the choir for our Christmas service. There's a lovely old mountain carol that seems just suited for a clear alto voice like yours."

Maggie shifted from one foot to the other as she glanced about her mother's kitchen. The floor was dull now, with bits of dust and straw lying here and there on the unswept linoleum. On the table, among scraps of crusted food, sat a tin can of Spaghetti Os with a spoon in it; so Mark had already eaten his dinner. Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she saw her mother standing at the sink, twisting her burlap apron, watching her. Maggie whirled around, but there was no one there.

"Maggie?" said the faraway voice on the phone. "Are you there?"

"Yeah. Sure. I guess I'll come. But Mark won't. He only went to church whenever Dad made us, but I'd like to sing."

"That's good, Maggie. Shall I come and pick you up?"

Maggie took a long deep breath before she said no. "I'll drive myself, Mrs. Bruce."

"If you're sure . . ."

"Mrs. Bruce, did you call me before? Just a minute ago? You didn't? Oh, no reason. Just thought I heard it ring, that's all."

Joe LeDonne always came back from patrol looking like day-old coffee, but this time Martha saw such a deepening of his glower that she asked him what was wrong. He shrugged and sat down on the front end of his desk, staring at the county map above her head. The can of Diet Pepsi, which he drank summer and winter without fail, rested between his knees as he considered the problem. 132

Martha tried to jolly him out of his mood. "What did you find? Moonshiners?" she asked, grinning.

"I don't think so," LeDonne murmured, not really listening.

"Did you ever read about that fifty-two pounds of radioactive material that went missing over at the Erwin Naval Facility? They never did say what had become of it, did they? Although how the government could lose fifty-two pounds of something is beyond me. Anyway, I've figured out what happened to it."

"Have you?"

Martha's smile broadened. "I figure some of those old boys back up in the hollers have made themselves an atomic still No more getting caught by the woodsmoke, and it'll run forever."

Joe LeDonne laughed in spite of himself. "Well, if they've got one, Martha, I'm sure as hell not going to take an ax to it. I ain't glowing in the dark for no damn moonshiners."

Martha waited. He would tell her now what was troubling him. They had been together for several years now, through tough therapy and Joe's bouts of depression over a war that wouldn't turn him loose, but at least she knew him better now. She knew how to deal with the nightmares that still came sometimes, and she knew the look in his eyes that said he needed to be left alone. It hadn't been an easy adjustment to this relationship, but after two failed marriages, Martha had about decided that anything that came too easy wasn't worth having. 133

She didn't want to give up on LeDonne; not until he chased her away, and so far he hadn't. She gave him an encouraging smile.

The crease between his eyes went away as he smiled back, and he held up the Pepsi can to her in a mock toast. "Okay," he said. "I ran into a new landowner this afternoon, and I want to find out a little more about him, that's all. I think I'll check the realtors, and maybe the registrar of deeds, and see if I can turn up anything on Wake County's new citizen."

"Why?" asked Martha. "Does he look like a bank robber?"

"No. I'd say he looks like a mercenary. And I want to know what he's doing in a county that's more than half national forest. It sure as hell ain't bird-watching."

And He walks with me, and He talks with me, And He tells me I am His own . . .

For one shocked moment Spencer Arrowood wondered where Vernon Woolwine had gotten the skull. Vernon stood apart from the crowd in the foyer of the Hamelin High auditorium, returning grins with a dignified nod, as befitting a prince of Denmark. Spencer thought he detected in Vernon's costume a strong influence of the Olivier photograph on the local video store's cassette of Hamlet. From somewhere he had scrounged up a blond pageboy wig that looked mortally foolish with Vernon's quasi-Cherokee features, and his black tights and velvet tunic could have stood being a size larger if the Johnson City Goodwill offered more of a selection. The sword at his belt was a curved plastic one, apparently borrowed from his Ninja impersonation. Spencer recognized the impressive metal decor around the top of the tunic: Coke-can tabs bent into an overlapping chain. Vernon was nothing if not resourceful.

The skull almost threw him, though. Even after years of telling everybody in sight that Vernon was as harmless as a fruit bat (and the

similarities didn't end there, either), the sheriff felt a stab of dread when he saw the smoothly polished bone cradled in "Hamlet" Woolwine's beefy hand. When Spencer edged through the crowd for a closer look, he recognized the calf skull and broke into a grin of relief. Vernon bowed. In contrition for his moment of doubt, Spencer returned the bow.

The high school play was hardly the social event of the season, even in tiny Hamelin, but since nearly everyone in the community had children or kinfolks in the production, most people went along to the production anyhow. You had to encourage young people in something besides sports.

For Spencer Arrowood, attending the play was an exercise in diplomacy. It gave him a chance to exchange pleasantries with the citizenry. Here he could smile. He didn't want the people of Wake County to remember him always as a sidekick of disaster: the man who stands in the ruins of your burgled living room, or fires questions at you as you stand beside your crumpled Chevrolet. He wore his uniform for recognition, not comfort. As he studied the crowd, he saw Jeff McCullough, the one-man newspaper staff, whose only requirements tonight as drama critic would be to mention everybody and to spell their names right. Some friends of Spencer's mother were there, in attendance now as proud grandparents of cast members. He found it hard to believe that he was old enough to be the father of one of these hulking adolescents. Stranger still was the re-

alization that here was a generation that never had an innocence to lose; Vietnam was as remote to them as the Boer War. For them the word war would forever mean Desert Storm, a six-week miniseries sponsored by Hallmark.

Spencer's mother was probably in the audience somewhere, sitting with the ladies of her garden club. He wondered if she minded not having a grandchild to watch on stage. He knew she'd had hopes of it when he married Jenny, but when that ended, the subject of children became an unspoken taboo in their conversation.

The doors to the auditorium opened, and the crowd surged forward. There was no admission; no assigned seating. Just grab a mimeographed program and try not to sit too near a proud daddy with a flash attachment.

He stared at the red velvet curtains, thinking not of his own days before the footlights but of Naomi Judd. What did it feel like to stand poised behind a curtain with a thousand fans holding their breath, straining for that first glimpse of you? He supposed that for the first few months or maybe even years, it must be like opening night in the high school play: all glamour and personal glory. But surely the splendor would spiral down into routine. He wondered if she ever felt bad on the stage, if she worried about her taxes, or if new shoes hurt her feet. Or now, with incurable hepatitis sapping her strength, did she tell herself at each performance, It's coming to an end.

The houselights dimmed, and the play began. The curtain rose on cardboard battlements,

where two burly linemen in homemade tunics and Styrofoam armor paced out the watch at Elsinore. Maybe they should consult Vernon Woolwine on costume design for the next production, thought Spencer, unable to suppress a smile. The ghost, when he appeared, was certainly wooden enough to be dead, but the young actor was fortunate in the size of his family, and his share of the applause was generous.

Laertes appeared in scene 2. Mark Underbill's dark good looks carried across the footlights, and his voice, lacking a Tennessee accent, seemed more fitting for Shakespearean dialogue than those of his local-born comrades. Spencer thought that might be a twentieth-century prejudice: the assumption that sixteenth-century Londoners spoke like the BBC. The Underhill boy was a better actor than the others, too. He said his lines with conviction, while his fellow actors struggled to spit out each syllable of a memorized piece.

Mark's sister appeared in scene 3, accompanied by a murmur from the audience. Maggie Underhill was too heavily rouged to be really pretty under the stage lights, but you could see the fineness of the bones beneath the makeup. She looked regal. She also looked terrified. Spencer wondered whether this was stage fright or good acting. In the row behind him, he heard a woman mutter, "Poor kid. She's lived this part, hasn't she?"

The gentle Ophelia seemed properly submissive to her father and brother in the scene in which they caution her about Hamlet's flirta-

tion. With downcast eyes, she spoke her lines in a barely audible voice. Spencer wondered what things had really been like for Maggie Underbill with her father and brother. Was all that fear left over from the family tragedy, or had she escaped into the mind of a medieval Danish girl?

The sheriff's attention wandered after that to the department reports that needed to be written and a list of errands that had to be run on his day off, but Maggie Underbill's voice drew him back to the play. She was talking to Polonius about her encounter with Hamlet, but as she spoke, she wandered toward the footlights, her voice rising as if she had forgotten where she was. "My lord, as I was sewing in my closet, Lord Hamlet with his doublet all unbraced, No hat upon his head, his stockings fouled, Un-gart'red, and down-gyved to his ankle, Pale as his shirt, his knees knocking each other, And with a look so piteous in purport As if he had been loosed out of hell To speak of horrors—he comes before me."

Tears streamed down her face, but the sound of applause drowned out any cries she might have made. Spencer thought there was more to the scene than that speech, but perhaps he was mistaken. Polonius helped his "daughter" offstage, and the play resumed with another scene.

The remainder of Hamlet was uneventful. Maggie played Ophelia's mad scene without any of her former presence. After that one outburst, she had muted her performance to an imitation of the rest of the troupe, intent upon getting her

speeches out by rote. Act 4 was her last appearance. The only point of interest after that was the intensity of her brother's hatred toward Hamlet. It seemed so real that the sheriff found himself wondering if Mark Underhill and Carlyle Watts had offstage scores to settle with each other, but Watts seemed bewildered, as if he were unable to manage both emotion and memorization all in one go.

Spencer wished that LeDonne had come to the play. Not that the deputy gave a rat's ass for local politics or classical drama, but he was a shrewd judge of character. No, not character. He was a reader of emotions. LeDonne seemed to have a knack for knowing what people were really feeling, regardless of whatever image they wanted to project. He'd seen a kid with the face of a choirboy cut loose with a string of obscenities—and, incidentally, an admission of guilt—after five minutes' conversation with the impassive LeDonne.

After the play was over, he joined the crowd of well-wishers who surged toward the stage to congratulate the actors, dodging the doting parents with cameras. Mark and Maggie Underhill had come onstage for a curtain call with the rest of the cast, but as soon as the applause died down, they had dropped the hands of Gertrude and Polonius and headed toward the wings. Spencer, determined to assuage his guilt for not checking on them sooner, ducked behind the curtain in search of them. Instead, he met Florence Purdy, the drama teacher, still holding the obligatory director's bouquet.

"I suppose you're here to collect the skull?" she said.

Spencer had forgotten all about it. "I guess I could take it along tonight. Enjoyed the play, though." Miss Purdy, a persimmon-faced redhead, was entirely too optimistic about the cosmetic benefits of rouge. Tonight, in her ruffled black evening dress, she looked like a rooster's grandmother. Spencer knew it would cost him two more minutes of small talk to get rid of her with any tact at all. Fortunately, he got to spend most of the two minutes listening instead of having to think up more compliments. In the middle of her discourse on the difficulties of obtaining costumes when students' mothers don't sew anymore, he decided that the minimum time he had allotted her for socializing had expired. "Tell you what!" he said, as if he had just thought of it. "Why don't you find that skull for me while I tell some of your actors what a great job they did. If I don't hurry, they might get away."

Before she could protest, he hurried off in search of the Underhills. He found them coming out of the dressing room, looking considerably less medieval in jeans, with the stage makeup already scrubbed off their pale faces. Maggie's hair was pulled back in a ponytail, and in the absence of makeup, dark circles had appeared under her eyes, making her look older than fifteen. Mark wore a black leather jacket and a blue ski cap jammed over his dark curls. They stopped when they saw him, glancing at each other and then down at the floor.

Spencer was used to that reaction. It was one of the depressing parts of his job. There were people to whom he would forever be a reminder of a speeding ticket, a domestic quarrel, or a nightmare best forgotten. Since Wake was a small county, and had always been his home, most people's tension upon seeing him was fleeting, a response to the uniform more than to him personally, and then they remembered him as the guy from high school, or the Softball team, or the Ruritan Club. Others never got over their association of him with tragedy. He had stood on too many doorsteps bearing bad tidings. He wasn't Death, but he was most often his messenger. Nora Bonesteel probably gets this look, too, he thought.

"You both did a fine job of acting tonight," the sheriff said to them, exaggerating his Southern accent, as he did when he wanted to put people at ease. "I think your parents would have been proud of you."

"Thank you, sir," said Mark Underhill. "We thought about dropping out of the play because we are in mourning, but we didn't want to disappoint the rest of the cast."

"Or Miss Purdy," said Spencer solemnly.

Mark Underbill's smirk was fleeting. "Oh, fer sure."

"Well," said Spencer. "You were both excellent. I wanted to come back and tell you how much I enjoyed the play. And I thought I'd see how you two were getting along. I've been meaning to stop by, but something always comes up."

Maggie Underhill said nothing. Her fingers plucked at the ends of her dark hair.

After a short silence, her brother said, "Stop in anytime you like, Sheriff, but don't go to any trouble on our account. We're doing all right, aren't we, Maggie?"

Her voice was a monotone. "Yes."

Spencer couldn't think of any way to prolong the conversation. "Well, if you ever need anything, you give me a call."

"Sure," said Mark, who was already heading for the door, with Maggie at his heels. "If we run into any problems, we'll let you know, sir."

I'll check on them in a week or so, Spencer told himself. Just to make sure.

Jeff McCullough, the one-man staff and editor of the Hamelin Record, wished the high school would consult him before they scheduled their extracurricular events. Take the play tonight. Because the children of so many subscribers were featured prominently in the cast, Hamlet would be one of the major news stories featured in the next edition of the weekly newspaper. In fact, a three-column photo of the actors anchored his front-page layout; the other newsworthy item, the school board budget meeting, did not lend itself to photo opportunities.

His problem was that the play had been scheduled for the night before the Record's Thursday noon deadline. Was that any way to cooperate with a well-meaning journalist? To accommodate this late-breaking story, Jeff 145

McCullough had to take his photos at the dress rehearsal, and then he'd had to attend the play the next night as well, for as sure as he got lazy and skipped the real performance, somebody would get sick and use a standin, or some fiasco would happen onstage, and if his story came out in the paper without those details, everybody would know he'd fudged his review. So he went to the play, and of course nothing out of the ordinary did happen, so here he was, at eleven o'clock at night, hunched over his keyboard, finishing up the play review, and trying to get the front page laid out, so he could drive to the Johnson City print shop tomorrow and put the newspaper together.

It was a lot of trouble for a feature; a daily would have been able to handle the rush with all their staff, but he had to do the best he could with his own efforts on unpaid overtime. He couldn't do without the article on Hamlet. His readers cared about activities at the high school, and he had a solemn responsibility to keep them informed. At twenty-eight, Jeff McCullough was a serious and dedicated journalist, hoping for better things. He loosened his tie and yawned, wondering how long he could live on hot dogs and Twinkies.

McCullough was going through the mimeographed program, double-checking his spelling of cast names, when he heard the knock at the door. "We're closed!" he yelled. Why couldn't people turn in their "Free Kitten" ads during regular business hours?

The knock this time was louder. 146

The editor threw down his pencil, and stalked to the door. The shade had been pulled down to cover the glass, and in front of it dangled a sign that said Closed. McCullough peered past these obstructions, and saw two old men peering back at him. Maybe it's a fire or something, he thought, flipping back the brass lock. He pulled open the door, motioning for them to come inside.