Trap Door (23 page)

Small comfort; still, it was all I could muster as I stared at the ominously blinking light on the answering machine. Finally I pushed the button; if Sam was in some kind of trouble, I had to know.

And when I heard Bob Arnold’s voice, I thought that must be it: jail, hospital. Or worse. But it wasn’t.

“Autopsy results on Cory Trow just came back,” Bob’s voice said. “Little marijuana, some alcohol in the boy’s blood.”

Not Sam
. “Cause of death was a broken neck. Instantaneous,” Bob added. “One other thing… little mark in the middle of his back between the shoulder blades. Bruise, is all. I thought you’d want to know, Jake.”

That the medical examiner had found no evidence for anything but death by Cory’s own hand, Bob meant. The recording ended as I let my breath out, still relieved that it wasn’t bad news about Sam.

Some other mother’s son
. This time, at any rate. And not a pleasant end for Cory Trow, maybe, but at least a quick one; my imagination let go at last of the slow-motion movies it had been showing me, of the agonies of gradual strangulation.

The dogs padded in, breaking my reverie. With Wade out on the water and Bella Diamond and my father already gone home, I was the only one around who might give them treats. “Come on,” I said, glad for their company.

In the kitchen I found a box of tuna crisps that Cat Dancing liked, too, and distributed them liberally. But once that was done I was at loose ends again, alone in the silent house. Adding up the money spent so far by my dad on the roof job and writing a check to him for it didn’t take long. Picking myself up off the floor at the cost of roof work at all, even at the low prices he charged me, was more challenging.

But even after all that I still faced a long evening.
Oh, grow up,
I scolded myself firmly, looking around for a project and spying the box of old books Ellie had bought in St. John.

I’d brought it in without thinking much of it. Now it sat on the hall floor, so I opened it, planning to keep some books, throw some away, and get rid of the box.

A whiff of mildew rose from the paperbacks it turned out to contain, the shabby covers bearing familiar old names: Christie, Sayers, Ngaio Marsh. I was pretty sure they were all worthless: tattered pages, water stains, some covers even missing entirely. Yet despite my intentions, when it came right down to it I felt unable to throw any of them out, as if in some way I couldn’t put words to, I was their last chance.

Thus in the end I simply carried the box to the dining room and left it there. Bella could get something she liked out of it, probably, or she would be able to deal with its contents as hard-heartedly as I had not.

After that I took the dogs out, brought them in and got them settled for the night, and went to bed myself. But that didn’t work very well either; the bed was empty without Wade and I knew I would tell him about the brick through the truck’s windshield the minute he got home.

So around two in the morning I found myself climbing the stairs to the third floor of my ramshackle old dwelling, carrying a cup of coffee and trying to step carefully so the treads wouldn’t creak, even though I was the only one around who could hear them.

Stripped of its
wallpaper, an old plaster room that has never been painted is gray, tan, and cream, the colors of an exposed skeleton. Switching on the bare hanging bulb, I opened the bucket of premixed patching compound and got out the putty knife that I always left up there for nights like this.

The wallpaper’s layers had already come off, separating between my fingers to reveal succeeding homeowners’ decorating tastes. While removing it I’d thought about how happy somebody had been, seeing it up there new and fresh; it had seemed only right to admire it a final time before disposing of it.

Although I confess I’d left a triangle of the oldest stuff in a half-hidden corner, where a lavender lady still twirled a frilly parasol in a lavender garden scene. Now I dipped out some plaster patch with the putty knife, smoothed it into a gash in the old wall, and scraped it smooth.

Dip, smooth, scrape;
I kept on until I got into a rhythm, the soft material sliding into the ragged holes and the excess coming off cleanly and satisfyingly. It was tranquilizing to work in silence this way, almost hypnotic. The lavender lady looked as if she had been expensive, that being another thing about old wallpaper layers; like the rings in tree trunks, they mark growth periods, because people only redecorate when they have money.

After a while of dipping and scraping I almost forgot where I was. But eventually my present difficulties crept back into my thoughts: the awareness, for instance, that if I didn’t find a way to solve Jemmy’s problem, it would become my own.

That in fact it already had done so. If Jemmy couldn’t get rid of Walt Henderson and the threat he posed, he had decided to become a federal witness. He’d practically said as much; that if he had to he would enter what in the past he’d always scorned by calling it “Witless Protection,” try to salvage what he could of a life.

But going in meant testifying, not only about yourself but against other people. Such as, for instance, me. I’d taught quite a few career criminals how to invest their money legally. But the way they’d gotten it wasn’t legal, not even a little bit.

And I’d known it. What a federal prosecutor might make of that I didn’t know in detail, but I was certain that it wouldn’t be good; in short, the past was in serious danger of swinging around and biting me in the tail big-time.

And the only way to stop it was to get Walter Henderson out of the equation, preferably by involving him so deeply in his own legal troubles that he wouldn’t be able to threaten Jemmy anymore.

Now, though, however much I was convinced of Henderson’s guilt in Cory Trow’s death, I knew that to anyone else his motive would seem no stronger than that of Cory’s rival for Trish Bogan’s affections, the puppeteer Fred Mudge. And once Henderson’s legal beagles got done demonstrating
that,
he would be exonerated and freed as fast as a jury of his peers could pronounce the phrase “reasonable doubt.”

As a result, I thought unhappily, the two situations—Cory Trow’s death
and
the Jemmy/Walt Henderson problem—were rapidly turning into what Sam would’ve called a fuster-cluck.

“Jake.”

I gasped, nearly dropping the putty knife. The third-floor room with its falling plaster, bare overhead bulb, and unfinished plank floor was empty except for me.
“Jake… ”

Like a syllable spoken through water. It was a real sound, not merely in my head; audible in the sense that I felt certain I’d heard it with my physical ears.

Whether or not it was physically spoken was another matter. An image of Victor as he had been in life popped into my mind: dark curly hair, long jaw, clever fingers, and intelligent eyes.

Outside, dawn brightened, turning the bay to pewter. Birds began twittering, racketing around in the gutters where they built nests every spring no matter how we tried stopping them. Our most recent effort was a life-sized plaster owl Sam had named Raoul; the birds had pecked it to bits.

I waited a little longer, heart thudding, but when nothing else happened I closed the plaster bucket. Then, carrying my coffee cup and the putty knife to clean at the kitchen sink, I went downstairs to begin my day.

Or started to. Because on the stairway it suddenly occurred to me—

This, you see, is yet another benefit of emptying your mind via doing your own home repairs, for Nature abhors a vacuum and as a result something useful or at least clarifying may pop in.

—that maybe they weren’t.

Two different situations, I mean.

Maybe there was only one.

To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Subj: Eastport book again
Horace
In my excitement over the lab results, I neglected to reply to your point re what we ought to tell the book’s owner. Though I think "finder" might be a better term since I believe it’s safe to say original ownership probably has not been relinquished…
Anyway of course you’re right. Tangled webs and so on. Besides, her own name’s in the damned thing and considering the context how else could we explain that?
Winding down the spring term’s obligations here, so will be able to devote more time to this whole matter soon. Kids today! Though it seems just moments ago that our own professors were saying the same about us, no doubt as despairingly.
Best!
Dave

“What if Cory Trow knew what Henderson was up to?”
I asked Ellie when she arrived at my house later that morning. “Maybe not specifically about Jemmy,” I added, “but enough about Henderson’s past so people would look at him funny if Jemmy showed up dead. That is, people other than me.”

Considering this, she wrinkled her forehead and winced at the result. The edges of the cut had stayed together all right, but they looked red. “I like it,” she said of my idea as I handed her a tube of bacitracin.

“Here, smear this on,” I told her over the snarl of a power saw. My father was on the roof again, cutting out the rotted part of the old sheathing.

“I like it because it’s an actual practical motive,” Ellie continued, gingerly applying ointment. “And to me that’s been a problem all along.”

To me, also. Because Henderson was a professional killer. And no matter how I tried, I couldn’t quite accept the idea that he’d killed Cory for personal reasons, any more than a dentist would perform root canals for fun.

Ellie took a blueberry scone from the bag she’d brought over and sliced it in half. “Because Henderson wants to kill Jemmy.” She popped the two halves into the toaster. “That, according to Jemmy, is Henderson’s whole reason for being here.”

“Yup.” The aroma of toasting scone floated through the kitchen. “He’s spent a lot of time, money, energy… all so he can do a job no one else has been able to do.”

The scone halves popped up. She buttered them and handed one to me. “So what if Cory found out what Henderson really is?”

I bit in, the wild blueberries exploding on contact with my teeth. “Precisely,” I mumbled. I want hot buttered scones served at my funeral, and I want some put in my mouth, too, just in case they really are good enough to raise the dead.

“Jen could’ve told him,” I reasoned. “And then… ”

Ellie nodded wisely. “Then came the stalking accusation, and the guilty verdict, and she might’ve said, ‘Daddy, maybe it’s not a such good idea to make Cory mad. Because I know I shouldn’t have, but I told him you’re a… ’”

“She wouldn’t want to confess her indiscretion to her father right away. She’d put it off for a while, hoping she wouldn’t have to.” But once it started looking as if Cory really might see the inside of the slammer… “Then Cory might say, ‘You’d better do something about this, or I’m going to tell something about
you,
” I theorized. “And Henderson would.”

The power saw my father was using on the roof took on a high, unpleasant whine, as if it were biting into something more substantial than sheathing material.

Another roof beam, for instance. “Okay, let’s ask Jen about it,” Ellie said, and I agreed if only to escape the house, which seemed to be getting demolished.

“Where’s Lee?” I asked when we were in Ellie’s car. Up and down Key Street springtime chores were bursting out as exuberantly as the buds on the lilac bushes, with flower beds being neatened and windows being washed and small damp leaf piles smoldering sweetly at the edges of the driveways.

Ellie buckled her seat belt. “George signed her up for baby swimming lessons at the pool in Calais. He says it’s a safety thing, living by water the way we do. He’s there with her now.”

The mental picture of George in a pool full of moms and babies made me giggle; Ellie too, and I’m afraid we made some good-natured fun of George over it. But our laughter stopped when we reached the iron gates guarding the entry to the Henderson compound.

Suddenly our errand was real again, our enthusiasm for sleuthing fizzling palpably. “What if
he
answers the buzzer?” Ellie asked.

The wall still bristled with tall spikes. I estimated you could hang a dozen door-to-door salesmen, political activists, and/or religious proselytizers up there without even crowding them.

Or two snoops. “He won’t,” I said more confidently than I felt. “Look at this place—” I swung my arm wide at the enormous parcel of shorefront real estate. “He’s got people to answer gates for him,” I said. “And anyway for all we know he isn’t even home.”

I got out, pressed the buzzer on the box by the gate, and spoke into the microphone. A woman—probably the housekeeper—answered and after a pause the gates unlocked with a loud click.

“What’d you say?” Ellie asked breathlessly as we drove in. Going up the paved drive was easier than bushwhacking around the back way along the cliffs. Near the house the fenced pastures gave way to manicured lawn studded with topiary shrubbery.

“The truth.” A small flock of sheep cropped a hilly pasture; I recognized the breed. They were South African Dorpers: long nosed, sweet faced, and so expensive you might as well just buy a dozen gold-plated lawn mowers. “I said we were here to ask Jen what she’d told Cory Trow about her dad.”