Judas Cat (19 page)

The cemetery was near the top of Cobbler’s Hill. Just inside the gate was the oldest marker in the town, January 3, 1845. It accounted for the location of the cemetery and the name of the hill. Jason Greene, a shoemaker, had come out of Ohio with the first settlers of Hillside. When he was dying, so the story went, he named the site where he was to be buried, choosing it because the echo of his hammer rode from hill to hill from there, never ceasing. One by one the other settlers had been buried beside him. Now, Alex thought, most of the hills had been leveled, and the cobbler was one with the hill named after him.

Many of the people who were on hand for the funeral had spread over the entire cemetery, taking the opportunity to visit their family plots and pull out stray weeds or dead leaves from around the markers. In a remote corner, edging an alfalfa field, the sod was piled high above the open grave. A few people stood about it awaiting the arrival of the funeral procession from Riverdale.

“Andy’s still a recluse,” Alex said.

“We’re great ones for respecting privacy,” Mr. Whiting said.

Chief Waterman was talking with his wife not far from the grave. A few feet away from them, Mabel Turnsby was standing alone, like an old fence post. Alex looked around. Dan Casey was there. He must have done his rounds double time. Joe Hershel and his wife. Alex wondered if his mother knew her. She did not go out much. The kids called her the “goat woman.” Joe looked drawn, worried. Kruger had closed up the cigar store. Phil Robbins, the postmaster, and his wife were there, and her sister who lived with them; Jesse Lyons and his new wife. It took real courage for Jesse to come. He had buried his first wife there less than a year ago. The new one was half his age and nearly twice his size. Jesse still looked lonely.

Alex looked across the open grave at Waterman. The chief seemed tired. Mrs. Waterman was talking rapidly, and loudly enough for anybody within twenty yards to hear her. “… And I says to her, my Fred knows what he’s doing. He took the crime detection course two years ago at the state police school …” Alex raised an eyebrow at the chief. Waterman grinned.

Barnard was there alone. Alex wondered why he had come. Doc Jacobs was there, looking at his watch impatiently, and Alex remembered his comments on Mrs. Barnard’s health, and Turnsbys in general. His father had gone over to speak to the veterinary.

The clouds were getting low again, the heat seemingly heavy in them. Alex moved about restlessly. He looked at the names on the various monuments, family names, with the little markers carrying the names and dates of each member buried in the plot … Baldwin, Withrow, Fabry, Turnsby … Mabel had been right that her family helped found the town. There was a Turnsby died in 1846, at the age of two. Somehow you didn’t think of them ever as children, Alex thought. … Jonathan Turnsby, 1812-1858 … Irene Wilson Turnsby, 1840-1901 … That might be Mabel’s mother. The last burial in the plot had been in 1907. He looked for other markers, but there were only empty lots, and beyond them the beginning of the Sanders plots. Where were Michael Turnsby and his wife buried? Why not the family lot, wherever they might have died? He could remember when they brought Matt Sanders’ brother back from New York …

“Here they come,” someone called.

Alex heard the sputter of Gilbert’s motorcycle. Two cars came over the crest of Cobbler’s Hill. They looked extraordinarily alike in their limousine lines and high polish. The name “Addison” ran through the crowd as the cars turned in the gate. As though he had been given a signal, Mayor Altman drove up from the opposite direction and turned in the gate behind them.

Alex went back to where his father stood. Mabel was looking at him. She had been watching him as he had gone from one grave to another in the Turnsby lot. Her eyes were wide, and he could not tell what was in them, whether it was fear or hatred.

A chauffeur opened the door for Addison and a young woman Alex presumed to be his daughter. She was an attractive person, thirty maybe, quietly dressed, and with just the right attitude for one attending the funeral of her grandfather’s friend.

“Where are the pall bearers?” Alex whispered to his father. It was a depressing thing to see the funeral director motion to the two gravediggers who were standing by, to come and help him and his assistant with the coffin. Alex was angry. “No! My father and I will act as pall bearers.”

Chief Waterman and Hershel fell in behind them. They lifted the wooden coffin from the hearse and laid it on the straps over the grave. Mayor Altman looked flustered, as though he wished he had done something about it, but by the time they had returned to their places, he had the book open. The rain began to fall then, and the mayor hurried. He prefaced his reading of the prayer by a remark to the effect that Andrew Mattson had not been known to profess any religious tenets, and therefore it seemed more appropriate not to ask a minister to perform his last rites.

As though Andy gave a damn who performed them, Alex thought. He had never been confined in his life by the little proprieties, and he was not likely to enjoy his rest any the more for the mayor acting God’s little brother over him now. Alex bowed his head. He did not want thoughts like that. He wanted to pay tribute to Andy Mattson. The old man had died for a reason, and he wanted to know that reason. There were moments when he almost felt old Mattson’s presence. He could imagine him smiling sardonically at this sight—Altman reading the Episcopalian service because it was sonorous, and probably because he heard the Addisons were Episcopalians. Since Andy’s death, he had had such moments of exultation—the workshop, the picture, the integrity and kindness of Waterman, his discovery of Joan and their lovely moment together, the feeling of which was still with him despite Mabel and the velvet voice of the mayor.

Altman reached the ending dramatically. He put on his hat, and there was a murmur of “amens.” He was already moving around to speak to the Addisons. Alex nodded across the grave to George Addison and turned away. He waited until he heard the earth fall in regular thuds against the coffin, and then walked back to the car. The crowd was still staring at the Addisons, grateful to the mayor that he had held them up to talk to them, even in the rain. Looking from face to face, Alex wondered if it were possible that among them was the person responsible for the old man’s death. He saw Mabel picking her way among the tombstones to the gravel path, her legs unsteady, and her felt hat drooping under the rain. No matter what she might have done, she was a pathetic sight at that moment.

“Miss Turnsby,” he called, going after her, “won’t you ride back to town with us?”

“No thank you, Alex. I’d rather walk.”

He would never forget her face at that moment. The perspiration and rain had washed away the powder, and her skin was like yellow clay smeared thin over the bones. Her eyes were dry, but there was remorse in them, and a great fear that was eating into her. She was an old woman now, and she no longer cared who knew it. He put on his hat and went back to the car where his father was waiting for him. He looked at his watch. Ten-twenty.

“It didn’t take long,” he said.

“No,” Mr. Whiting said. “The longer a man lives the less time it takes to bury him.”

A
LEX AND HIS FATHER
went directly to the plant. Maude was in the office. “How was the funeral?”

“As gay as a broken leg,” Alex said. “Everybody there. The mayor wore patent leather shoes and spoke with a broad ‘A’. The new Mrs. Lyons had the old Mr. Lyons on a leash, and half a dozen kids fell into the grave playing leap frog over it.”

“Oh shut up,” she said. “I’ve never heard you like this.”

“I’ve never felt like this.”

“What’s going on between you and Joan, Alex?” She brushed a wisp of hair away so that she could watch him closely.

Alex felt a little sick at what he knew was coming. “What do you mean, going on between us?”

“What happened in that old house this morning, if you want it straight.”

His father had stopped opening the mail to listen.

“I felt like it, and I kissed her,” Alex said, angry at feeling as though he were a little boy who had just discovered the wonders of life and was about to get a lecture on it.

“Don’t get on your high horse to me, young man,” Maude said. “I wondered how long it would take you. But did you have to do it in front of Mabel Turnsby? It’s all over town, now.”

“Oh, to hell with the town,” Alex said.

His father whistled softly and went into the private office.

“That’s fine,” Maude said. “You’ve got the discretion of a goat. Go find another wall to butt your head into.” She went back to the plant. The building was vibrating with the presses.

Alex went into the office where his father was. “What were you and Barnard talking about at the cemetery, Dad?”

“Not much. The way reputations are being ruined over this business. I watched him look at you when you were poking around the Turnsby lot up there. He didn’t take his eyes off you.”

“I don’t think Mabel did either. She’s a miserable soul if I ever saw one.”

Joan came in from the library then. “Alex, there was an item about Addison Industries in every one of those seven papers.”

“Oh?”

“You’ll have to wait until I type them up. Miss Woods wouldn’t let me take the papers from the library.”

Alex read each one as she rolled it out of the typewriter. He handed it to his father when he had finished. They all pertained to new products Addison was putting on the market. “Any reason you can see for Andy’s interest in them, Dad?”

“No. They’re a long way from toys. Consumer goods, as they say in the surveys.”

“No particular value to the war, either,” Alex said.

“Anything Hershel could manufacture?” his father asked after a moment.

“Maybe. I don’t see why, though.”

“Anything Andy might have invented?”

Alex shrugged. “That’s an idea, though, Dad. I wonder what the patent story is on them.”

“The only patent library in the state’s in Jackson,” Mr. Whiting said. “And my experience on ’em, you’d need a Philadelphia lawyer to understand them.”

Alex lit a cigarette. “I’ve got an appointment with a lawyer this afternoon. Maybe that’s what I’m going to find out.”

He pocketed the notes and went to the station. Waterman listened carefully, making him repeat parts of what had happened at Andy’s that morning. Then he read the items from the Jackson papers. “I don’t just see where these would figure in his death,” he said.

“That’s what I hope to find out from Gautier.”

“Don’t count too much on it, Alex. Addison Industries don’t take chances, and a lawyer don’t get himself in bad with them in this county, especially if he’s got political ambitions, unless he’s a danged fool.”

“And where in the devil would Mabel fit into that picture?”

Waterman opened his desk drawer. “I don’t know. But I got one place she fits. I wired the sheriff’s office at Webber, Massachusetts last night. Read this.”

CHECKED COUNTY FILES ANDREW MATTSON. BORN JANUARY 30, 1856. FATHER JOSEPHUS MATTSON. MOTHER HANNAH RYAN MATTSON. MARRIED ANNE ADDISON JUNE 23, 1888. MALE CHILD BORN APRIL 3, 1893. INSTRUCT FOR FURTHER INFORMATION.

“Anne Addison,” Alex said. “Holy Christopher.”

“And a son and heir.”

“Wonder why they didn’t record his name.”

“That’s a doctor’s registry of birth,” Waterman said, “kid wasn’t named yet.”

Alex took his notebook from his pocket and opened it to the
Who’s Who
on Henry Addison. “One of two children,” he said. “She must have been old Addison’s sister. Anne Addison, Anne Mattson, Anne Turnsby. The same person, Chief?”

“That’s the way I figure it,” he said.

“Then she must have divorced Andy and married Mike Turnsby.”

Waterman nodded. “It gives you an idea why Mabel was dead nuts against her.”

Alex remembered the night he and Joan gave Sarah Randalls a ride from the telephone exchange. “Imagine, a divorce in Hillside,” Sarah said. “It accounts for the airs Mrs. Barnard gives herself, too,” Alex said. “But why the secrecy, Chief? Why don’t any of them talk about it?”

Waterman shook his head. “I just don’t know, Alex. I’ve been wondering if the kids would come into anything from old Addison on account of their mother. Would Norah get anything? Twenty-five thousand is peanuts next to what he left.”

“I don’t think so if there’s a will. Nobody knows that relationship. We’d know it if they did.” Alex re-read the telegram. “A male child, 1894. That would make him fifty-four if he was alive. How old would you say Norah Barnard is, Chief?”

“Early forties, I’d say. I was thinking of that, too, Alex. Suppose he was old Andy’s son … just her half-brother. She says she’s got no idea where he is. But if he’s old Andy’s son, I don’t think she’d want to. And she sure wouldn’t want Doc mixed up in it either.” Waterman rubbed the back of his neck. “Funny how the old man must have washed his hands of the boy. It don’t seem like him, somehow.”

“He washed his hands of a lot of things,” Alex said. “And when you come right down to it, how do we know what was like him and what wasn’t?”

Waterman got up and stretched. “I’m going to wait for a couple of things, Alex. See what you turn up with that lawyer, the wire I sent to Colorado, and the afternoon paper on Addison’s will. Then we’re going after everybody involved in this thing and push them against the wall. I don’t like to do it, but if I don’t, that’s where I’m going to end up myself.”

It had stopped raining when Alex went outdoors again. He had a little time before leaving for Riverdale. He had so much miscellaneous information now, a little more wouldn’t hurt. He walked to Durkin’s market from the station.

“Yes,” Mrs. Durkin said, “he’d come by maybe once a week. He bought more food for the cat than for himself. I was saying to Niel, my husband, it’s a wonder the poor man lived as long as he did, the little bit he ate.”

“Did he pay you every time,” Alex said, “or is there something owing now?”

“He paid when he came in to order. Cash. He used to carry things home himself, but the last couple of years, he’s let Chuck drop them up to the house for him.”