boys began raiding the refrigerator. "I know that
sounds awful, but ..."
"You can't fake an actual lesion. If it's on the scans
they took at the hospital, it's there. And it fits his behavior."
The boys came back in from the dining room,
where they had set up their snack. "Hey, Mom," Sam
said, "Tommy got this great idea. We've set up battery
lanterns in our windows, so now we can signal in
Morse code at night. Secret messages."
"And everyone," Tommy put in, "will be mystified
when they see these lamps flashing. Because the thing
is, with Morse code you can tell right away that it
means something."
"From," Sam enthused, "the pattern. But you
don't know what, so it seems, like, even more secret
than it is."
Patterns; there were patterns all over the place, and
they were driving me crazy, but ...
"Sam," Tommy called back from the dining room,
where he had gone with a jar of pickled herring, some
cheese, a few leftover deviled eggs, a box of Ritz crackers,
and a liter of Coca-Cola. "Let's ask the board
about those girls at the park yesterday."
"Come on, what's the spirit world know about
girls?" Sam retorted, grabbing a bottle of milk. "Dead
girls, maybe, but we want live girls."
Maniacal boyish laughter greeted this impeccable
teenaged logic, as Sam snagged the Oreos bag.
"Tommy," he confided to me as he went out, "is just so
not with it about girls."
His face grew serious. "You know," he added, "I
think I probably will go to college after all. Bridget"--
the girl from the salmon supper--"thinks it's probably
a good idea."
Great. Maybe Bridget would be able to come up
with some way to pay for it, too, now that I was going
to be penniless in about ten minutes.
Then he was gone and I sat down with Ellie, who
was looking miserable. "Rotten of us to snoop in those
diaries," she said.
"Maybe. But if we hadn't, Paddy wouldn't have
told us all he did."
"I guess. It's what he didn't say that's bothering me
now."
"Yeah. Somebody bonks your buddy over the
head, there in the darkness. Under the circumstances
you would be thinking: Maybe that was a mistake;
maybe there was a murderous intruder. But he hit the
wrong guy--maybe the intended victim was me. And I
just don't get it, about that unlocked door. It doesn't fit
anything."
"Maybe Paddy's too heartbroken over Terence to
worry about it," Ellie said. "Somebody coming back
for a second try, I mean."
"Sure. Or--" I hated to say it, "maybe he knows
they won't."
Because Paddy's story was neat, but everyone's
was. That was the whole trouble. Some truth, lots of
poetry; hard to sort out.
The phone rang, and I told the boys to let the machine
take it: it was the zoning commissioner wanting
to know if Victor would appear at the appeals board
meeting, at which the variance for the zoning on the
trauma-center property would be considered.
It rang again: it was the loan officer from the bank
where Victor needed to borrow a zillion dollars, to buy
all the medical equipment he needed just to get started.
I'd forgotten those two when I'd been making my calls;
there were so many of them.
"Maybe," I offered, "we should ask the dratted
Ouija board who killed Reuben."
"No!" She looked shocked. "I don't want that
thing getting a whiff of Reuben. It wouldn't," she
added frowningly, "be prudent."
My thought exactly. "Only kidding," I assured
her. So far, everything had been going just as Reuben
would have dreamed: from bad to worse. I didn't want
him getting an actual hand in matters even if the hand
was only made of ectoplasm, or whatever moves a
planchette around a Ouija board.
If it does. "Anyway, the situation is this," Ellie
summed up. "Everyone's got a motive, and a story, and
everybody--"
"Could be lying," I finished, "about some of it
even if they aren't lying about all of it."
The whole truth about the end of the trauma center
was just then hitting me: finis. Game over.
"Ellie, I've got to start getting past all this."
She ignored me. "So what do you say we just go
and talk to everyone again. Just ... talk to them
once more, the ones that we can find, anyway. See if
anything they say doesn't fit or isn't what they said the
first time."
In the dining room, the boys guffawed at some
spirit-world witticism. "And if we don't? Learn something
new, I mean. What then? Because we've already
talked to ..."
The phone rang. Determinedly, I closed my ears to
it. After a few rings, the machine picked up again.
"Ellie. I mean it, I've got to start thinking hard
about my options here. I've got to think about ..."
"Giving up." She watched me carefully as she
said it.
"I know," I went on quickly, "you don't like the
idea. But I didn't get Victor into this pickle. And it's
starting to look as if I might not be able to get him out.
This time."
As opposed, I meant, to all the other times: the
palimony-demanding girlfriends, the scamsters who regarded
Victor as the perfect flimflam target, the obsession
he'd had over a famous television attorney, who
had responded to his many unappreciated overtures by
having him served with two restraining orders, one in
New York State and one that barred him from coming
within 250 miles of Atlanta, Georgia ...
Well, suffice it to say that if I had all the hot water I
had gotten Victor out of over the years, I wouldn't
have had to worry about that weatherstripping; I could
have run the radiators for centuries with the windows
wide open and stay plenty warm.
Which reminded me: If I didn't get back to work
on the house very soon, I'd be running the radiators
outdoors, because they would be the only thing left
standing when the rest fell down. The weatherstripping
itself wasn't completed yet either, and the rain of the
night before had left a stain shaped like Africa on the
kitchen ceiling, courtesy of those rotten clapboards.
But Ellie was still watching me. "Okay," I gave in.
"Once more. We'll make a few visits. And if that
doesn't work ..."
The words tasted like poison in my mouth, but I
just didn't see much choice. The phone rang again: it
was one of the main prospective outside investors in
Victor's project; he'd read the papers, seen Victor in
them, and wanted an update.
The machine thweeped, recording the guy's message.
"Then," I finished as the phone rang again and I
ignored it, "it's endgame."
Marcus was vehement. "I have no idea why
my father told you that."
He was packing to leave. They were all
leaving, tourists and visitors, getting out of
town in a steady stream up Washington Street like ants
departing a rained-out picnic.
"Following Reuben Tate," he said scathingly.
"Why, that's ridiculous. Our engagements were
booked months in advance. We'd have had no idea
where Reuben might be. It was impossible."
He flung shirts into a suitcase, in one of the Victorian
bedrooms in Heddlepenny House. The oval mirror
above the ornate carved dresser reflected his irritation.
"Not to mention pointless," he added. "What reason
could we have had?"
"Your father suggested he wanted to convert Reuben,"
I said. "I got the sense that saving such a
doomed, damned soul would've been a feather in his
cap. Spiritually speaking."
Marcus made a sound of disgust; his hand was
again covered with dermatological makeup. "My father
had no idea how bad Tate really was. And didn't
take spiritual trophies in the foolish sense that you're
implying. Why he said we were pursuing Tate," he repeated,
"I simply cannot imagine."
Heywood's funeral was scheduled for Friday, in a
tiny town in Florida where, it turned out, he had been
born. His body, now at the medical examiner's, would
be shipped there; if it did not make it in time, they
would have the services anyway and bury him later.
"How could your father not know about death
threats, arson, and murder? About the terrors Reuben
inflicted on the members of the children's group your
father was in charge of? And it's well known that Reuben
was supposed to have frightened your own mother
to death, after she punished Reuben."
"That's nonsense, too," Marcus retorted swiftly.
"My mother had a heart condition; she could have died
of it at any time. But that part was forgotten because it
wasn't suitable fodder for the gossip mill, that's all.
Not sensational enough."
"But you said yourself you thought ..."
"I admit I said it," he retorted, snapping his case
shut. "But I was a victim of the hysteria the town has
about Tate."
What about the coins under her body? I wanted to
ask, but I wanted more for him to go on talking.
"And the notion that Dad ignored his young parishioners'
problems is really a slur on his name. That
really," he faced me, "is going too far."
I noticed, however, that Marcus did not precisely
deny it.
"Are you sure it's not exactly what Reuben threatened
to say about your father? The last time he saw
him?"
Willow had said that Reuben did his homework,
knew how he could hurt you. So why wouldn't he have
updated his arsenal against Heywood, dropped the
story about being gay in favor of one that might work
better now that times had changed?
Especially if there was a grain of truth in it.
"As I told you," Marcus declared, "I don't know
what he said to my father, but I can guess: that he'd
keep coming back until one of us gave him money.
Anything else is pure fantasy on your part. And for
Dad's sake, I'd appreciate your not repeating it."
He swung his case off the white tufted chenille
spread that covered the four-poster. "Now, if you'll