Edgewise (18 page)

“Is there going to be a funeral?” asked Sammy.

“Yes. When the FBI have released Daddy's body.”

“He was all in bits. They'll have to put him back together again before they bury him.”

“Yes, they will. But they have people who are very good at doing that.”

“Do they sew them together, or do they use Crazy Glue?”

Dr. Flaurus had warned Lily that the children would want to talk about their experience, and that she shouldn't try to discourage them, no matter how ghoulish it got.

“I guess they probably sew them.”

They sat down to eat. Sammy wolfed down his scramble as if he hadn't been fed in a week, but Tasha only toyed with hers. Lily saw that she had tears in her eyes, and she reached across the table and held her hand.

“You'll get over it, sweetheart. One day you'll go to bed and you'll realize that you haven't thought about it, even once.”

“We had such a good time,” said Tasha, miserably. “It was almost like being in heaven.”

“I know. Your daddy only wanted to make you happy.”

“But we didn't care about you. We hardly ever talked about you. How could we have been so mean?”

“You weren't being mean. You were enjoying yourselves, that's all. If I was down in Florida, swimming and horseback riding and going to Busch Gardens all the time, I wouldn't want to think about snow, and school, and tidying my room.”

Tasha wiped her eyes with her fingers. In the short time that she had been away she had started to change, and she was already looking like a young woman rather than a child. She reminded Lily so much of herself at that age, except that Tasha had Jeff's eyes—pale turquoise, and slightly unfocused-looking, as if she were short-sighted, although she wasn't.

They spent the rest of the evening in the living room, sprawled on the couch in front of the fire. Lily had stacked the logs up high, and the fire blazed so fiercely that their faces grew flushed. She told them everything that she had done since Jeff had kidnapped them: how she had spent Christmas with Agnes and Ned, and how Special Agents Rylance and Kellogg had called her almost every day.

At nine-thirty she took Sammy up to bed and tucked him in. He looked at her solemnly over his candy-striped sheet and said, “Goodnight, Mommy. I'm really glad I'm home.”

She smiled and stroked his hair. “I'm glad you're home, too. And I think the
house
is glad. Can you feel how happy it is? I think it missed you.”

“I was too short to go on the Gwazi. You have to be four feet ten.”

“Never mind. I'll take you snowmobiling next week. You're not too short for that.”

“Cool!”

She kissed him. He smelled like freshly baked shortbread. He wrapped his arms around her neck and held her so tight that he hurt her.

“Mommy?”

“What is it?”

“That nobody who killed Daddy . . . he can't come here, can he?”

“Of course not. You're safe here.”

She left his bedroom door slightly ajar and the landing light on. “Remember . . . if you have any bad dreams—if you get frightened by anything at all—you just come to my bedroom and wake me up. I won't mind a bit.”

She went back downstairs. Tasha was kneeling in front of the fire, prodding it with the poker, so that sparks flurried up the chimney.

“Do I have to go to Daddy's funeral?” she asked.

“Not if you don't want to.”

“I want to forget about him. I want to forget about everything that happened.”

Lily sat on the hearthrug next to her. “You shouldn't forget him completely. He was your father, after all. He did love you.” She hadn't yet told Tasha about the men from FLAME, and how they had tried to burn her alive. She didn't know if she ever would. Her last memory of her father was traumatic enough, without thinking that he had wanted to kill her mother, too.

Tasha said, “I still don't understand what killed him. I keep trying to remember what it looked like, but it didn't really look like anything. It didn't look like a man and it didn't look like an animal. And it made this
hissing
noise.”

“You were in shock. People see some very strange things when they're in shock.”

“It had arms like a kind of insect. Daddy came into the den and said did we want to go swimming and I don't think he even saw it. It took hold of his head and pulled it straight up, and there was this horrible tearing sound.”

Tasha stared at Lily and her eyes were filled with desperation. Jeff's death had been horrific, and she should never have had to witness it. But what was obviously disturbing her the most was the fact that she couldn't understand what the Wendigo was, or why it had killed him. Lily put her arm around her, and held her close.
God,
she thought,
I'm her mother and I can't tell her what really happened.

The next morning both children slept late. At nine-fifteen Lily was sitting at the kitchen table drinking coffee and trying to finish the cryptic crossword in the
Star Tribune
when she was startled by a sharp
rappety-rap-rap!
at the window.

She looked up. It was John Shooks, wearing a huge black fur hat, and mirror sunglasses. He was pointing to the back door. Lily got up, unlocked it and let him in. He was accompanied by a northwest wind as sharp as a faceful of box cutters.

“Unsuccessfully tried to ring your doorbell,” he explained. “Guess it must have froze.”

“The forecast said twelve below,” said Lily. “How about a cup of coffee?”

“Never drink coffee—makes me jumpy; but thanks anyhow.”

He took off his hat but left his sunglasses on. Lily said, “I was going to call you this morning and tell you my news.”

“That's all right. I heard about it already. Nothing much gets past John Shooks.”

“You'll know about my ex-husband then.”

“Yes. Yes, I do.” He wiped his nose on his glove. “Don't suppose you're grieving about it too much.”

“Oh, you don't think so?”

“Considering what that man tried to have done to you, Mrs. Blake . . .”

“That's not really the point. It wasn't up to me to be judge and executioner, was it? It was up to the law. And Jeff
was
the children's father, whatever he was guilty of.”

Shooks raised his eyebrows, so that they appeared over his sunglasses like two rooks, but said nothing.

Lily said, “I'm upset, as a matter of fact. I'm
very
upset. Jeff was selfish, and pig-headed, and he could be cruel, too. But he still didn't deserve to be killed like that.”

“Well . . . it's a little late to be worrying about that now. What's irrevocably torn to pieces is irrevocably torn to pieces.”

Lily went to the kitchen drawer and took out her checkbook. “How much do you want, Mr. Shooks?”

“Two twenty-five, if that's all right with you.”

“Two twenty-five is fine.”

She sat at the table and began to fill out the check. As she did so, Shooks said, “I'm going to need the deed for that piece of land, too, so that I can take it to George Iron Walker.”

Lily signed the check, tore it out, and held it out to him. “I'm sorry. George Iron Walker won't be getting any land. I asked him to find my children, not kill my ex-husband.”

“You're serious?”

“I'm very serious.”

Shooks sucked in his breath. “This is going to be more than a little difficult, Mrs. Blake. See—the deal was, George Iron Walker was to find your children for you, and make sure that they were fetched back to you safe and sound. In return for that service you would hand over the title to that piece of land at Mystery Lake. Whatever the circumstances, you can't deny that George Iron Walker fulfilled his part of the bargain.”

“Mr. Shooks, if I had known that the Wendigo was going to slaughter two people, I never would have considered that deal, not for a moment. George Iron Walker misled me, and I told him so right to his face.”

“Yes. He mentioned that you'd paid him a visit.”

“So, that's it. That's the end of it. Take your money, and I hope that I never need your services, ever again.”

Shooks took the check, folded it lengthwise, and tucked it inside his coat. But he made no move to leave.

“Is there anything else?” Lily asked him. Shooks was making her feel breathless and hyped up, as if she had been playing a hard game of raquets. “Tasha and Sammy will be down in a minute, for their breakfast. I don't really want to have to explain to them who you are.”

“Mrs. Blake, this is serious. You promised that piece of land to George Iron Walker, and believe me, he's not going to let you renege on that promise.”

“So what's he going to do? Take me to court? Let him try.”

“He doesn't need to take you to court, Mrs. Blake. He has Hazawin.”

“And what can she do?”

“It's more like what she
can't
do. A woman who can raise the Wendigo can turn your whole life into a nightmare.”

Lily said, “I'm not going to give George Iron Walker that piece of land, Mr. Shooks. He made me an unwilling accessory to two violent homicides, and he deprived my children of their father, whom they loved. They saw him killed right in front of their eyes. They saw his head torn off his shoulders. How can I reward George Iron Walker for doing a thing like that?”

“Mrs. Blake—you listen to me—I'm giving you the gravest of warnings.”

“Well, thank you, Mr. Shooks. I appreciate it. But I'm still not going to change my mind. If you want to go back to George Iron Walker and tell him that the deal is well and truly off, that's your prerogative. But I'm not even going to bother. As far as I'm concerned, he deceived me, and I don't think I'm obliged to honor any kind of agreement with a liar.”

From the upstairs landing, Sammy called out, “Mom! Where did you put my Vikings sweatshirt?”

“Just a minute!” Lily called back. She turned to Shooks and said, “I think you'd better leave now.”

Shooks looked at Lily for a very long time. She could see herself in duplicate, reflected in his sunglasses.

“Okay,” he said at last. “But I have to tell you this: I'm walking away from here with a heavy heart.”

“Don't worry, Mr. Shooks. I think I'm quite capable of taking care of myself.”

John Shooks put on his hat and opened the back door. The wind blew in, and Lily's newspaper flew up off the table like a seagull, or a pelican.

After breakfast Lily drove them over to Wayzata to see Agnes and Ned. Petra and Jamie were at school, but little William was at home, and Tasha and Sammy took him out into the yard to build a snow house. They laughed and screamed and threw snowballs as if nothing had happened to them.

“We'll still be seeing snow in May,” Ned predicted, watching the children through the living-room window.

“Oh, God, I hope not,” said Lily.

“You only have to look at this season's statistics. Those green people keep yattering on about global warming, but they're talking through their knitted hats. It's all a conspiracy to get government funding.”

“Ned's convinced that we're in for a second Ice Age,” Agnes put in.

They sat down, and Agnes passed around coffee and toll-house cookies.

“Are the kids okay?” asked Ned.

“I think so. They slept all night last night, but of course they were both exhausted. It's the weeks to come that I'm worried about.”

“Are you going to take them to a therapist?”

“They'll probably need it. At the moment they seem so
calm
about it, you know? So matter-of-fact. But seeing Jeff killed like that—I'm sure that it must have caused them some psychological trauma.”

Ned brushed cookie crumbs out of his moustache. “Any more news on who might have done it?”

“Nothing. Apart from Tasha and Sammy, nobody saw anything.”

“Well, you know that I never liked Jeff much,” said Agnes. “He was always too darn sorry for himself. But I can't imagine why anybody would have wanted to kill him. I mean—to rip somebody apart like that—you would really have to
hate
them, wouldn't you?”

“Nothing was stolen?” asked Ned.

Lily shook her head.

“Maybe it was something to do with those FLAME people he was mixed up with. One of them was torn apart, too, wasn't he? Maybe Jeff was threatening to blow the whistle on them, about burning those women.”

“I really don't know,” said Lily.

Ned took a bite of cookie. “The only other person I can think of who would have had a motive for killing Jeff is
you
.”

Lily managed a tight smile, but Agnes said, “
Ned
. Not funny, Ned. Not funny
at all
.”

As she drove home, her cell phone warbled. It was Bennie.

“Lily! Fiona told me that you got Tasha and Sammy back! Terrific news!”

“Well, it wasn't exactly a picnic. But, yes, they're home. And they're both okay.”

“So who found them? Don't tell me your Native American tracker lucked out?”

“It's kind of complicated. I don't know whether you heard, but Jeff's dead.”

“
Dead?
Are you serious? What happened?”

Lily glanced at Tasha, who was sitting next to her. “I'll explain it to you later. I'm driving right now.”

“Well, call me later. I can come around to see you, if you like.”

“Maybe we can take a raincheck for a couple of days, Bennie. Tasha and Sammy need a little time to settle.”

“Sure, whatever you say. So—it
wasn't
your Native American tracker who found them?”

“Like I say, it's complicated. But we don't have to give him that spit of land at Mystery Lake.”

“We don't? You really mean that? That's going to make life a whole lot easier. Listen, I'll call you again this evening, if that's okay.”