The View from the Cherry Tree (4 page)

“Put him in Rob's room, with Nick, then. Let Rob sleep on the floor.”

Rob winced from the eyes that flicked in his direction, but at least nobody looked as if they were going to hit him right that minute.

“I guess I could do that. Here, who's ready to start?”

“Can I have the first ones?” Rob asked quickly. Again he got that raking over by hostile glances, but his mother handed him the plate. He considered, decided the atmosphere needed cooling, and that it would be better to eat outside. He slathered butter on the hotcakes, laced them liberally with brown sugar, and rolled
them up so they could be eaten in his hand. His mother opened her mouth to protest when she saw him heading for the door, but luckily the phone rang again.

“Listen, somebody has to be at the church to let in the florist,” Darcy was saying.

“Can't they get in during rehearsal?”

“No, they said around 5:00. They want to set up the baskets and stuff then. They only have one man working tomorrow, and all he'll do is put the flowers in the baskets. I can't be there, Mother, I've got to see what I can do about a bridesmaid, and Steve said . . .”

Rob let the door slam behind him. Boy, he'd sure be glad when this weekend was over.

He munched through the pancakes, wishing he had two more. Was it worth it to go back inside for seconds? Maybe it would be better to wait a little while, till they'd cleared out.

Mrs. Calloway stood on her back steps, holding her binoculars to her eyes. The old bag, he thought, and kicked at the hose that lay across the sidewalk.

“Rob . . . hook up the sprinkler there on the front lawn, will you?”

He grunted and made his way toward the street, alternately kicking the hose and the sprinkler ahead of him. When he got in under the shrubbery to turn on the water, a big spider got on his hand and he brushed it off. Too bad he couldn't take all his spiders and put them in Mrs. Calloway's house. He bet she'd have a fit over that, all right, if they were running all over her bed. He imagined them, dumped on her while she was sleeping, seeing them run into her ears and up her nose and into her mouth, which would be open while she was snoring. He knew she snored, he'd heard her. It made him feel better to think of her with spiders in her mouth, and he turned on the water and was starting back around the house when his father bellowed from the front porch.

“Rob! Not right on the sidewalk! Not when we've got people coming and going all day!”

Knowing there was no point in saying anything, Rob turned back and moved the ­sprinkler. He hardly had it on the sidewalk at all. If anybody hurried, they wouldn't get more than slightly damp. Hot as it was, you wouldn't
think that would bother anybody, but there was no explaining grown-ups.

A car door slammed and he looked over his shoulder to see his aunt Grace coming up the walk. Yes, he'd sure be glad when this was all over. People coming and going every minute, and every time he turned around they wanted him to do something.

“Hello, Grace. What are you doing up so early?”

“Walt, do you know what's going on?”

His father sounded wary. “In regard to what, Grace?”

“In regard to Ray. He's gone and run off or something . . . is he in trouble of some kind?”

Rob paused to listen, just around the corner of the house.

“Run off? What makes you think he's run off?”

“His car's gone, and he took a suitcase and most of his good clothes. He didn't leave a note or anything, but . . . well, Ma's having a fit because he won't be at the wedding. I'm more concerned about why he left in the first place. Is he running away from somebody?”

“Oh no! That stupid idiot . . .”

“He is in trouble, then. What did he do?”

“He ‘borrowed' some money from his boss, that's what he did, and he knows French is going to discover the loss this weekend . . . You got any idea where he went?”

The water was sprinkling on Rob, but he didn't care. The water wasn't very cold. He stayed where he was, listening.

“Maybe over to that girl's he's been going with. I don't know where else. Walt, he's going to be in worse trouble if he runs away, isn't he? Maybe somebody ought to go after him.”

“Grace, do you have any idea how many things Marge has lined up for me to do today? I have to get the champagne and ice it down, be at both the reception hall and the church to let in the florist, round up a set of candelabra from St. Thomas's and bring them over to our church . . . oh, the heck with it! Who is this girl? Where does she live?”

Rob shrugged, going on around the house.

From the back porch Teddi was calling. “Rob! Robbie, where are you? Mother wants you to get your room cleaned up! You'll have to change both beds!”

By the time that was done he had made up his mind. He wasn't staying around to fetch and carry for this bunch of females. He stuffed his pockets with cookies, made two bologna sandwiches with mustard and Swiss cheese, and as an afterthought fished a Pepsi out of the refrigerator.

It wasn't easy to get up there with his hands so full, but he made it. He'd spend the rest of the day in the cherry tree, until it was time for all of them to go to the rehearsal. Then he'd climb down and get something more to eat.

There was a broad, almost flat place on one limb, right close to the trunk. He could put the Pepsi down there after he'd pried the cap off. He kept a bottle opener hanging up there on a string for just such emergencies. A guy never knew when he might need to open a bottle.

He spent the next hour in the cherry tree.

That was how he happened to see the murder.

Five

He was getting better at spitting cherry pits. He got a few of them onto Mrs. Calloway's windowsill. Of course he cheated, moving a little further along the big branch than usual. But it was worth it.

Sonny yowled at him, eyeing the sandwich. Rob broke off a corner and extended it, then put it down on a branch where the cat could pick it up by himself. Sonny expertly sought out the meat, then shook his head, flattening his ears, moving away. He stared with contemptuous yellow eyes, tail twitching his displeasure.

“I like it with mustard,” Rob informed him. “If you're so fussy, make your own sandwiches.”

Somewhere in Mrs. Calloway's house someone turned on the phonograph. It was an old, tinny-sounding thing, and she must be deaf
because it was turned up sort of loud. He remembered one time when Teddi had been playing her stereo that loud and the old witch called the police.

He thought about calling the police on
her,
but he knew at once they wouldn't like that, either. They'd be mad at him no matter what he did.

“I will not,” Mrs. Calloway said sharply.

Rob shifted position a little, so that he could rest his back against the tree trunk. The lace curtains weren't blowing much today, and he couldn't see into her house except when she came right close to the window.

She did this now, pushing aside the limp lace to stare down at the cherry pits.

“Such a nasty little boy. I can't think why they tolerate him,” she said, her mouth curling with distaste. The binoculars swung on their strap against her scrawny chest. “How does he get them up here on my windowsill?”

He thought he heard someone say something to her, but it was hard to tell, with the music playing, all loud and scratchy the way it was.

She turned her head, and this time he was sure there was someone in the room with her, for she said, “You must be out of your mind to think I'd agree to any such thing.”

She had reached to one side and scooped up a newspaper from the table; now she used it to push the cherry pits off onto the ground, her lips clamped tightly together.

Sonny saw the movement and began to creep toward her, out along the big limb. Rob opened his mouth to speak, to call him back, but already it was too late. The old woman had spotted the cat, and Rob hated to give away his own position. If she knew he spent so much time up the tree, she'd have him arrested for being a Peeping Tom or something, and then they wouldn't let him sit here anymore.

“Go on! Get away, you nasty thing!”

She leaned toward him, her head and shoulders out the window, swatting at the cat. Sonny was a hardened customer, however; unafraid, he was poised to spring.

Rob slid one foot downward, seeking the limb he knew was there, ready to reach out and grab the cat, when it happened.

It was so fast he could hardly take in what he had seen, although later he was able to put it all together as if in slow motion. It took much longer to tell about it than it did to happen.

Mrs. Calloway was leaning through the window, with Sonny ready to spring. (Perhaps he remembered the taste of that goldfish, and that there were more of them in there, through that open window.) Suddenly the old lady was lifted off her feet, through the opening, surprise causing her to emit a small squeak. That's all, only a squeak, like a cornered mouse.

For just a second Rob saw the hands that had pushed her . . . big hands, a man's hands, surely . . . and Sonny, alarmed by the figure coming toward him, bounded from the branch into the house. Rob heard a muffled grunt and saw the cat disappear, blood oozing up in ridges on the man's forearms where Sonny's claws had raked him. And then the arms were gone, the lace curtain hung limply across the opening, and he couldn't see into the house any longer.

All of that he saw, in seconds . . . less than seconds . . . while Mrs. Calloway was falling,
flailing with her arms and legs. Then she gave a gurgling, choked cry and was silent.

Rob stared down into her face, which was looking straight up at him and slowly turning blue. The leather strap of the binoculars had twisted about her neck, and as she fell had caught around the big branch, the one that had been cut off when it approached the side of her house; it was thick, thick enough to hold her meager weight as she swung there, her toes dangling only a foot or two off the ground.

Her glasses had gone askew, tipped by a branch or perhaps one of her own clawing hands, for she tried to loosen the strap at her neck. Her eyes, up close, were a pale blue; they bulged as if they were being squeezed out of her, and her mouth gaped, working soundlessly, then not at all.

Rob was frozen above her in the tree, looking down, unbelieving as the intelligence in the eyes, the fear, the agony, faded. He opened his mouth, trying to yell because he could hear people behind him at his own house, but he couldn't make any noise. Not even a squeak.

The bulging eyes continued to stare up at
him, sightless now. He knew they couldn't see him. The small body swung gently, turning a little, on the leather strap.

His chest hurt, as if his own breathing had been cut off. Rob shot one frantic glance after Sonny, but there was no way of getting him back, short of climbing over that awful swinging body, which he could not do. If they found the cat in the house maybe they'd say it was his fault, and they'd put him to sleep or ­something . . . He ought to go after the cat, and he couldn't. He couldn't speak, he couldn't move.

And then his foot slipped, and he fell forward, almost onto . . . it. Already he thought of her that way . . . as
it.
Not a person, but a thing. He actually brushed against the swinging body as he fell. He didn't feel the twigs that scraped his face and his arms, didn't know when he struck the ground. He doubled his legs under him, and they took him toward the back door; his hands didn't seem to work right as he scrabbled with the door, and he stumbled going across the threshold.

The house was full of people, their faces blurring before his eyes.

“Leave the pieces, huh, boy?” Mr. Mallory bent over to right a chair Rob didn't even know he'd overturned. “Where have you been? Your mother wanted you to . . .”

It didn't register, whatever his mother wanted him to do. It took two tries before the words came, gasping, puffing, almost not words at all.

“She's dead! Mrs. Calloway is dead! She's hanging in the cherry tree!”

None of their faces changed. Mr. Mallory sighed, shaking his head slightly. “Rob, I'm sorry if this weekend is boring you, but the rest of us are busy and we haven't got time for any more of your foolishness, do you understand?”

There seemed to be a roaring noise in his ears, as if something were gushing through his head, under pressure.

“No, it's not . . . I'm . . . Dad, she really is dead! She's hanging in the cherry tree! And Sonny went through her window, he's in her house . . . he didn't have anything to do with it, honest he didn't . . . but she's just . . . hanging there . . . and her eyes are squeezed out!”

They really looked at him, then.

Mrs. Mallory rose slowly from the chair where she had been sitting, hemming Darcy's dress. “Robert Walter Mallory, if you're making this up . . .”

He shook his head, pleading for them to believe him, feeling as if he'd been running for blocks. “I'm not, Mom! She's dead, she's really dead!”

The color left his mother's face. “Maybe you'd better go see, Wally.”

Their faces reflected, now, his own horror. They were beginning to believe, at least that he
thought
what he was saying was the truth.

“How could you possibly know . . .” Darcy asked slowly.

“I know. I was . . . looking at her, when she died.”

His words echoed hollowly. Mr. Mallory moved toward the door, not running but moving fast, and the rest of them followed. Rob didn't know if he wanted to go out there again or not. He had a horrid notion that he was going to dream about Mrs. Calloway, swinging and swaying from the branch of the cherry
tree, with her eyes bugging out. He felt a little sick to his stomach.

They poured out into the sunlit yard like a swarm of ants over spilled syrup, and then slowed. His father had reached her, put his arms up, lifting the frail old body. Funny, how little she looked. Rob had never thought of her as being so tiny.

Walt Mallory looked toward the house. “Come here, somebody . . . Steve, give me a hand, get that strap off of there . . . Teddi, call the ambulance.”

Teddi was halfway back to the house when he followed that up with a final command. “Better call the police, too, I guess.”

With Steve freeing the strap from the stump of the limb, the old woman was lifted down and stretched out on the grass. Rob stayed where he was, beside his own house. He could see all he wanted to see from there. He wondered if Sonny would come if they called him at the open window, but he didn't want to walk over so close to . . . it . . . to find out.

Mr. Mallory and Steve were kneeling beside the old woman. His mother, who had gone
halfway to them, called out, “Is she . . . is she really? . . .”

Mr. Mallory stood up. “Yes, looks like she strangled on that confounded binocular strap. Of all the stupid things . . . there isn't anything anybody can do for her now, I'm afraid.”

Mrs. Mallory retreated to Rob's side, putting one hand on his shoulder. She was ­trembling.

“Dear heaven . . . of all the times for such a thing to happen . . . what
did
happen, Rob? She just fell out the window?”

He opened his mouth, but Teddi's words covered his own as she came running back outside. “They're coming, both of them, the ambulance and the police! Is she really dead?”

Steve came toward them across the grass. “She's dead, all right. Man, talk about a freaky accident . . . another foot and she'd have been able to stand up.”

“Hey, what's going on? Holding a convention?”

They all looked toward the street, where Max was coming toward them, smiling. “I had
such a hassle with Old Lady Calloway yesterday, I thought I'd better park around the corner this time. What's going on?”

He read their expressions, then, and a moment later spotted the limp small figure on the grass. “Hey, what happened?”

“It's Mrs. Calloway,” Teddi said, torn between horror and excitement. “I called an ambulance, but Daddy and Steve say she's dead.”

Max swallowed. “How come? I mean, what happened?”

“She fell out the window and hanged herself in the cherry tree with the binocular straps,” Steve explained. “Rob saw her fall. I wouldn't go look at her if I were you; she isn't pretty.”

“I have no desire to look at her,” Max assured him. “What a thing to happen.”

Behind them, in the house, the telephone began to chime. For a moment nobody moved.

“Teddi, get the phone.” His mother might have been rooted there beside him, her fingers digging into his shoulder. “I don't think I can take much more today. There are the
sirens. Now I suppose everybody within blocks will be out here.”

Mr. Mallory was still standing beside the body. “Yes. Why don't you all go in the house? I'll talk to them when they come.”

“Darcy!” Teddi poked her head out a window. “It's the bakery calling back. There's been some kind of mix-up on your cake; they had the date down wrong, for
next
Saturday.”

Darcy, who was already pale, began to shake. “They couldn't have it wrong. They couldn't! I saw them mark it in the book, the seventeenth, I
saw
it!”

“Well, I don't know, that's what they said! Somebody better talk to them!”

Mrs. Mallory inhaled deeply, releasing Rob. “Well, if they made a mistake they'd better start working double-time, because they're going to have a cake to feed three hundred people at the reception hall by noon tomorrow, or else!”

“Will you talk to them, Darcy?”

“Mom . . . please, Mom . . .” Darcy looked as if she were going to cry.

“Don't worry, they'll have a cake if they all
have to stay up all night making it.” Mrs. Mallory strode up the steps, in a way that made Rob glad it wasn't him she was mad at.

Rob stood where he was as the rest of the family reentered the house, listening to the approaching sirens. They were almost here, and he hadn't gotten Sonny out of the house next door, and maybe they'd seal it up or something, and the cat wouldn't be able to get out . . .

And then he saw him. Sonny, creeping along the side of Mrs. Calloway's house. Rob felt a slight relaxation of his muscles. At least the cat had come out; he wouldn't be trapped in there.

He watched his father meet the police at the curb. There were two of them, both men his father knew. They talked for a minute, there on the sidewalk, and then they all walked up to stand over Mrs. Calloway. One of them was shaking his head.

It was about then that Rob began to go over the events in his mind. How Old Lady Calloway had been leaning out the window and those hands had come out and pushed her, and old Sonny had scratched the man on the arms.

He understood how anybody might have wanted to push her out the window. And it wasn't as if anybody could expect to
murder
her that way. As Steve had remarked, she might not have been hurt at all if she'd fallen to the ground. If it hadn't been for that crazy binocular strap catching on a sawed-off limb, she could have escaped without even a broken bone.

So he didn't feel that he could walk over to the officers and tell them the woman had been
murdered.
But he ought to tell them there had been somebody with her in the house, somebody who'd pushed her. There'd been something on TV about a man who killed somebody, but he hadn't meant to, and they hadn't charged him with first degree murder . . . Rob tried to remember exactly what had happened on the show, but it got too mixed up with other shows in his mind.