Face on the Wall (25 page)

Tiffany Shrike

Sec'y to Boris Chirp, v. Prexzident

Fatcat Enterprises

Providence, R.I. 02902

Annie didn't believe it. There was some mistake. She called her agent in New York.

His voice on the phone was sepulchral. “Just another publishing takeover. I'll get your rights back and then we'll try to sell it to somebody else, but it's the same everyplace. I'm thinking of getting out entirely and raising mushrooms in Vermont.”

“Raising mushrooms! You're kidding.”

“Of course I'm kidding. But it's kind of intriguing.” The agent's lugubriousness changed to excitement. “You just order these little packages of spores. Then you grow them in your cellar and ship them to Boston. No investment, all profit.”

“How about rabbits?” said Annie sarcastically. “You start with two, pretty soon you've got a thousand.”

Her agent took the joke seriously. “Right! Rabbits too! I've thought about rabbits.”

The news from attorney Jerry Neville was worse, far worse. Annie sat in Jerry's office and listened as he explained the out-of-court settlement with the Gasts.

He looked exhausted. “I'm sorry, dear. It was the best I could do. You lose the house, but nothing else.”

“The house! The whole house?”

“The whole house. But you can go on living in the new wing as a tenant at will.”

“As a tenant! Oh, Jerry, my God.”

He looked at her dolefully. “You don't have to pay rent, just utilities, if that's any comfort.”

“Goddamn them anyway.”

“Right. Goddamn them straight to hell. Listen, do you know if Homer's come up with anything? He told me those people were really careless with their kid. He said he'd look into it.”

“I don't know. I'll ask him.”

Annie looked so desolate, Jerry said once again, “I'm sorry, honey. I'm really sorry.”

Jerry Neville was an old-fashioned American male, given to fatherly endearments. Annie didn't mind. “Oh, forgive me, Jerry. I know you did better than anybody else could possibly have done. I'm really grateful.”

“Here, dear, I'm afraid I've got some papers for you to sign, agreeing to the whole thing.”

“Oh, God, Jerry, I don't want to.”

“I know.” Jerry laid the papers tenderly on the table.

“Shit,” said Annie, but she signed.

Jerry took the papers and stood up. “I just happen to have a bottle of scotch in the back of the file cabinet. I think of it as reverse champagne.”

“Reverse—? Oh, I see. For the opposite of celebrating. Have you got champagne in there too?”

“Of course, filed under ‘R' for ‘Rejoicing.' We'll get it out one day for you, Annie dear. Don't despair.”

Charlene Gast won her backstroke event in Providence. But a week later she lost by two-tenths of a second in the two-hundred-yard medley to Cindy Foxweiler in Orlando, Florida. As one of the three fastest swimmers she would still be a contender in the Junior Olympics, but she was deeply disappointed. She couldn't believe it had happened. Neither could her classmates.

Mrs. Rutledge was appalled. She took Mary Kelly aside. “How are we going to deal with it? Poor Charlene! We've got to show her we love her just the same.”

“Oh, don't worry about Charlene Gast,” said Mary with a dry laugh. “She'll survive.”

Charlene had an explanation about her loss when she came back from Orlando, after missing two days of school. “Cindy Foxweiler has her own indoor pool, that's why she won. She can practice every day, like all the time. That's what you've got to have, your own indoor pool.”

“Oh, my Lord Fish,” shouted the fisherman, his words nearly blown away in the howling wind, “my wife is still unhappy.”

The great fish rose from the tumultuous sea and cried, “What favor does she ask for now?”

“She wants—forgive me, Lord Fish—she wants to rule an empire.”

“Go home. She is emperor already.”

Chapter 38

… When the sky began to roar,

'Twas like a lion at the door….

Mother Goose rhyme

S
ergeant William Kennebunk was an amateur horticulturalist and botanist. He was knowledgeable about all the trees and wild shrubs that grew in the fields and woods and swamps of Southtown, even on the fringes of parking lots and strip malls. He had found a
Stewartia koreana
with exfoliating bark in an abandoned garden behind a Wal-Mart on Route 72, and he himself had planted dawn redwoods on the conservation land around a cranberry bog.

Kennebunk knew how to identify trees and shrubs and wildflowers, but he didn't know anything about forensic botany. Fortunately, as a police officer he knew how to find a forensic botanist. On the day after exploring Small's property with Homer Kelly, Bill Kennebunk spent four hours directing traffic around a construction site, and then drove all the way to Boston, to the Bureau of Investigative Services. In the botanist's office he handed over the leaf fragments that had been caught in the woolly fibers of Frederick Small's coat.

The forensic botanist looked at Kennebunk's little plastic bag doubtfully. “I don't know when I'll get around to it. We're pretty goddamn busy. Whole department, we just been downsized. Me, I'm one of the lucky ones, only I don't know about luck. I'm supposed to handle everything four, five guys took care of before. They're out there on unemployment, going to Florida. One guy, no kidding, he's in Paris, France. Me, I'd go to Italy. I've got aunts and uncles in Italy.”

“Well, would you call me when you've had a chance to look at it? My phone number's inside the bag.”

The botanist looked vaguely at the bag. “You're in Southborough, right? Lieutenant Kennedy?”

“Southtown. Sergeant Kennebunk.”

“Oh, right, Sergeant.” The botanist's gaze wandered away to the wall, where there was a calendar with a picture of gondolas in Venice. “Sure, I'll call you.”

Homer didn't know what the hell to do about Annie. Those shyster lawyers were tearing at her like a pack of dogs.

His pursuit of her possibly copied key was a trivial piece of research, but it made him feel he was doing something to help. And it didn't take much time to drop into hardware stores here and there.

So far nobody had recognized the faces in his picture of the Gasts. On the first of May, he went back to Biggy's in West Concord, hoping to talk to Ron, the weekday clerk.

“Oh, sorry,” said the guy behind the counter, “he's not here. He's on vacation in the Caribbean.”

“The Caribbean! But you said—”

“He won't be back for a couple of weeks.”

“A couple of weeks!” Homer stared at the clerk, who gave up on him and went looking for a grass rake for another customer. “Wait, wait. Do you know where he is in the Caribbean?”

“God, I don't know.” The clerk raised his voice, and shouted toward the back of the store. “Hey, Mitch, where's Ron? You know, where did he go in the Caribbean?”

“Ron? He's in St. Martin. Lucky stiff. You been there? I been there. They got nude beaches, time-share condos. I told him about this really great hotel, the Caribbean Princess.” Mitch appeared, his arms dragged down by two gallons of paint, and beamed at Homer. “You want the address? No kidding, you ought to go.”

“Oh, no thanks,” said Homer, then changed his mind. “Wait a minute, I do want the address. Have you got the phone number of the hotel? I'll call him up. Hey, I could fax him the picture. Do you think the hotel has a fax machine?”

Homer took down Ron's full name and the address of the hotel, imagining the vacationing hardware-store clerk basking on the sand in St. Martin, gazing at the turquoise sea, or frolicking on the nude beach, tossing a Frisbee to a beautiful naked islander, his private parts jiggling up and down. Had Ron made a duplicate of Annie's key for Robert Gast, so that Gast could slyly unlock the door of Annie's house to allow little Eddy to walk in?

By midafternoon Homer had used all the technology available in Concord, Massachusetts, to send Annie's photograph of the Gasts to one Ronald Barnes, a possible guest in the Hotel Caribbean Princess on the island of St. Martin.

He waited around for a while beside the fax machine in the drugstore, hoping for an instantaneous response. None came. Ron was probably out there on the nude beach, enjoying a cookout with all the other naked guys and gals. Or snorkeling in the turquoise water, gazing at exotic fish in Day-Glo colors and beautiful sea anemones, opening and closing their gorgeous petals.

Chapter 39

When the door began to crack,

'Twas like a stick across my back.

Mother Goose rhyme

F
limnap was there when Annie came back from Jerry Neville's office, after trading her house for the agreement by the Gasts to drop the court case against her. There was Flimnap, big as life, standing in the driveway juggling plates. When Annie got out of her car he dropped one, and said, “I'll never get the hang of four.”