for the strip of window trim.
Which came away in my hand a good deal more
swiftly than I had anticipated. Flailing, I did manage
not to fall off that blasted ladder. But obviously the
wood around the window had been exposed to water
longer than I'd thought. Instead of being solid with one
loose place in the middle, the whole strip was the
consistency of damp papier-mache, from one side of the
window top to the other.
And down both sides, I realized with dawning horror
as I tapped the wood experimentally. The siding
gave off the punky, hollow-log sound that meant it was
holding together mostly via some dim, vegetable memory
of being solid, at some time in the distant past such
as for instance when it used to be a tree.
While I frowned at it, Monday plunged into a pile
of fallen leaves and rolled joyously, then began snuffling
along the edge of the perennial garden, where I'd
heaped more leaves in hopes of discouraging my best
crop: weeds.
Cautiously, I tugged on a piece of siding. It came
away as if I were tearing off wet newspaper; underneath,
a colony of dark beetles swarmed in the sudden
sunlight.
All thoughts of handy-dandy, one-afternoon home
fix-it work flew out of my head; this wasn't a job I
could do myself. This would take carpentry of the kind
done by people who ordered their lumber and nails by
the hideously expensive truckload.
Probably it explained the rot Wade had found upstairs,
too; this water wasn't only coming in around the
aluminum window. It was from above, as I could tell
by pulling on siding higher than the window frame. A
sick sensation started somewhere in the pit of my stomach;
possibly the leak was in the roof.
The idea made me think I might break out in hives,
because the roof of my old house is three full stories
above the ground, not counting the peak above the
attic. Working on it myself was out of the question,
and hiring somebody to climb up there meant finding
someone who was:
1. drunk enough to consent to do it, and
2. sober enough to be able to.
Also, the person had to know how to perform roof
work. And although that combination is not as rare as
you may think--men in Eastport climb cheerfully up steeples,
ship masts, and shaky, slapdashedly assembled scaffoldings,
and walk along roof lines to reflash chimneys
and install lightning rods without even dropping the
pint bottles of fiery brown liquid with which they are,
in order to go up there at all, necessarily equipped--
there is a final requirement: When it comes time
for the job, you also have to find a place in your house
where you cannot see out any windows, in case the
person you have sent up there should fall past one suddenly,
waving that pint bottle.
So it's a big project even aside from what it costs.
Slowly, I replaced the cap on the caulking gun, turning
to see where the dog might have wandered off to. But
she was still in the yard; as I spotted her she readied
herself to pounce, and plunged her nose curiously into
another pile of dry leaves.
And let out a shriek.
"The dog is fine," Ellie kept saying two
hours later as she drove us home from the
animal clinic on the mainland. Even though
it was Sunday evening, the vet had agreed to
meet us there when I told her what had happened.
Crazed with sudden pain, Monday had run without
knowing it straight into my arms, or I might never
have caught her. I'd grabbed the rat trap she was trying
to shake off and muscled it open, praying for only a
bruise. But the horrid thing--like a mouse trap only
bigger, much bigger--had cut a gash on the side of her
nose.
Now she was stitched up, medicated for pain and
infection, and sedated, her glossy black head cradled
quietly in my lap. The vet hadn't said anything about
owner's tears being therapeutic.
But I shed them anyway. "Sam raked those leaves
three days ago," I managed. "That thing must've been
put out there since then. If I'd stuck my hand in it, it
could have broken my wrist. We're lucky it didn't fracture
Monday's nose."
Ellie nodded grimly, saying nothing. The look on
her face as she glanced in the rearview said it all. Monday
sighed, grieved and puzzled by the whole ordeal,
and burrowed her head tighter against me, wincing
when her nose brushed my sweater.
"Has this happened to anyone else around town
lately? Mean pranks, meant to hurt someone?"
"Not that I've heard." Ellie hesitated. "This is the
kind of thing that Reuben would do, not a normal person.
And I'm not sure it was a prank."
I'd filled her in on the Sondergards' travels, the
way they had mirrored the drifting of Reuben Tate
from town to town.
"I don't mean to upset you any more than you are,
but you've been asking a lot of questions about him,"
she went on. "Word's spread."
She was right. Pranks in Eastport were pretty exclusively
of the ring-your-doorbell-and-run variety, not
the snap-your-hand-off kind. And by now almost everybody
in town knew that Victor was in trouble and I
was trying to get him out of it.
"I called Willow Prettymore," Ellie added. "Explained
your situation. And never mind what Mike
Carpentier might think, I didn't get a feeling that Willow's
exactly dying to talk to us."
The woman Mike had been so sure would blab to
us about him and Reuben.
"Too bad for Willow," I retorted angrily. "She's
going to."
Then the import of Ellie's first comment sank in; I
wondered abruptly what other surprises someone
might have prepared for me.
Ellie met my gaze in the rearview again. "That trap
might have sat there until spring, you know, without
you or anyone else finding it."
So if the rat trap had been intended to discourage
me from asking any more questions, she meant, then
there might be other things intended to accomplish that
goal, too: attacks that didn't depend as much on blind
chance, but were equally anonymous--
--assuming, of course, that Ellie and I weren't
jumping to conclusions.
"If somebody told me to stop digging into this," I
began. "Threatened me right up front ..."
"Then it would be obvious there was something to
dig into," she agreed. "And Victor would stop looking
so guilty, maybe even to the police."
"But this way ..."
I let the rest go unspoken. This way, someone
could go on being subtle about suggesting that I mind
my own damned business, without raising anyone
else's suspicions about the status quo.
Subtle for now. The thought made me angrier.
"You've set it up with her?" I asked. "With Willow, to
meet with us?"
"Uh-uh. She hung up on me. Willow's a tough
one."
"We'll see about that," I said as I smoothed Monday's
ears. The vet said it was lucky that the thing had
caught her sideways, not full on. "We'll just see."
We were nearly at my house. "At this point," I
went on as Ellie turned into the drive--I averted my
eyes from the storm windows--"I'm so mad that to get
rid of me, Willow Prettymore's probably going to have
to break my jaw."
Ellie stopped the Jeep, her eyes meeting mine
again. "Yes, but be a little careful, too, will you, Jacobia?
Whoever's doing this ..."
"I know." The awful scarecrow sight of him rose
again, as if Reuben himself were behind today's mean
deed. Which of course in a way he was...
That night we all pampered the dog to a fare-thee
well, and I explained to Wade and Sam about the rat
trap: that my chronic nosiness might just possibly have
annoyed someone.
Wade raised his eyebrows, saying nothing but
meaning plenty, and I knew we were going to have a
very interesting discussion later. Sam nodded gravely,
filing the information away to think over in private
before he commented on it.
Then he went back to nursing Monday: sitting by
her dog bed on his sleeping bag, where he meant to
spend the night, speaking very quietly to her without
ever stopping--I listened once: he was telling her
knock-knock jokes--and rinsing her nose with warm
water at frequent, regular intervals.
If I had tried this she would have run up three
flights of stairs, to the back of a closet in the attic, and
stayed there until I gave up. But Sam is a repairing type
of boy; not only did she tolerate his method of canine
wound care, but it worked:
The next morning, Monday ate the soft food I prepared
for her and drank some water. The gash looked
clean, if still very swollen; her eyes were clear, her
mood subdued but cheerful. She even frisked a little
when I put down her breakfast--Sam, after a careful
inspection of her condition, had consented to go to
work--and she licked my hand as I got her settled back
onto her dog bed, preparatory to my leaving the house.
The .25 semiauto was in my sweater pocket. Setting
out into a morning of thin clouds and watery sun,
I could feel it there: a lump of misery like the one in my
heart.
Despite what I'd told Sam and Wade, because of
course I'd had to warn them, all night I'd gone on resisting
the idea that the rat trap really had been put
there on purpose. There were, I kept insisting to myself,
other possible explanations.
Only none held much water and at last I'd given in:
Someone wasn't kidding.
"Listen," I'd said to Wade, who was just then waking
up as he always did at the crack of dawn, "there's
another thing. All this is about Victor. And I can't help
thinking that you must be feeling ..."
Annoyed. Even a little jealous. Something.
He'd clicked on the lamp. "Maybe if I'd done what
I ought to all those years ago, this might not be happening."
He sat up. "So I'll tell you what. Until I say so,
why don't you assume I'm okay about whatever you
need to do, all right?"