Liberty or Death (14 page)

Hannon gave me a pitying look. "You're welcome to come and talk to me during the day, if you need to. This time of night, you should be home..."

Boy, was he right about that. I
should
be home. But without Andre, it was just a house. A dark, empty house. "I'm sorry I bothered you," I said. Not Thea Kozak's sarcastic "excuse me for living" but poor downtrodden Dora's genuine apology. It had seemed easy planning this with Dom and Rosie, but I was finding Dora McKusick increasingly hard to be. She was so pitiful I wanted to shake her. Hannon seemed to like it, though. Dora was his kind of woman.

I turned and headed for the street, Natty trailing proudly after me as my bodyguard, walking "Theresa's girl" back home. We didn't exchange any words on the short walk back. He stayed behind me, as if he were herding me and he had to make sure I went back to the barn. When I said "thanks" and "good night" at my door, he mumbled something noncommittal and sat down on the steps. I went upstairs and went to bed. Sleep was still slow in coming. I had to wait for the adrenaline to subside. When I looked out the window an hour later, Natty was still there.

 

 

 

Chapter 9

 

By dawn, my fear had subsided just enough to allow my curiosity and sense of mission to overrule my common sense. It's a failing of mine. Ask anyone who knows me. I have a fatal attraction to danger, unless it's danger that's attracted to me. In any case, it meant that I went into the kitchen, still sore and limping, intent on finding out what I could about the man they'd called Reverend Hannon. I knew better than to ask Theresa, she'd tell me to keep my head down and mind my own business. Clyde was scared of women, and besides, he was one of them. So was Natty. That left Kalyn.

I had to wait a long time with the question uppermost in my mind, while I fed a blurring succession of hungry faces, made and poured an ocean of coffee, and toasted a mound of muffins, bagels, and bread easily the size of a brontosaurus. Unless it was an apatosaurus. Those damned scientists. You learned something and then they went and changed it. There ought to be rules.

At least the bar wasn't open for breakfast. It didn't open until 11:30. Lunch and dinner I had to thread my way among the tables, dying not to breathe in the smoke, keeping my eyes down to avoid the stares and the leers. Too bad I couldn't close my ears, too. Commenting on my anatomy seemed to already have become a favored pastime. I was torn about the bar. It was pretty disgusting. I've never had much respect for people who start drinking at lunch. I've never even understood how they do it. I drink at lunch and I'm asleep by two. But I thought I might hear things there, alcohol being a great loosener of tongues. But in keeping with her theory about the danger of combining attractive waitresses and customers, Theresa had herself a barmaid in her fifties, about as wide as she was tall. And a bartender who was both a bastard and an extortionist. If we didn't share our tips, he'd drag his feet on drinks until our customers were furious.

It was 10:30 when Theresa told us to take a break, that she'd cover the dining room. Clyde dished up two plates brimming with steak and eggs and home fries and made me and Kalyn sit down and eat. It was really too hot for meat and potatoes, but it seemed just right. Clyde had that instinct. He knew what we needed to eat. Then he went out on the back porch for a smoke.

Kalyn grinned down at her brimming plate and said, as if she'd read my mind, "That Clyde. I'm absolutely starving today. How does he know?" She picked up her fork and knife and set to work.

I couldn't see where she put it. She was so tiny. I waited until she'd eaten a few mouthfuls, then said, "You been around here long enough to know who's who?"

She shrugged. "Sometimes. Why?"

"Something really scary happened to me last night. I was just wondering how badly I'd put my foot in it..."

She set down her fork and leaned forward, eyes wide. "What happened?"

"You know how hot it was?" She nodded. "Well. I couldn't sleep. I was thinking about my ex-husband, and how I'd seen a truck like his in town... probably my imagination... but when a guy keeps showing up, you can get paranoid. Anyway, I went for a walk. I mean, it seemed okay to me, this looks like a nice safe town and all, and I was over by the church. You know that one down on the corner?"

She said "yeah," but now she looked a little wary, like there was something about that church so obvious any sensible person would know enough to steer clear of it.

"There's something funny about the church, isn't there?"

Now she was definitely wary. "I don't know what you mean." She picked up her fork and started eating again.

"Oh, yeah. I guess you can't, can you, if I don't finish my story? It's like my mom always said, 'Dora, you've got to spit it out. People can't read your mind.' She's one tough woman, my mother. She told me not to marry him, but I was so sure I knew what I was doing..." Good. She was looking interested again. As long as it was about me and my husband, and not the church. Now to see if I could slip the question in.

"So I'm out walking and I passed the church on the corner and I stopped, because I was feeling scared and nervous..." I made wiggly motions in the air with my hands "...in my stomach. I get like that... with my husband I used to see him building up and I knew he was going to hit me and there was nothing I could do to stop it and I'd get those funny feelings. Well, anyway, these days, just thinking about him does it, and it was a church, you know. A place that was supposed to make me feel safer and more comfortable."

I stopped and gave her an apologetic grin. "I know. I know. I sure do take my time getting to the point, don't I? So there I am, standing on the church lawn, and all of sudden there's this man standing there pointing a gun at me." Looking down, I saw that my hand was shaking. So much for acting. Even in my craziest or bravest moments, this place was so unnerving I didn't have to fake it.

Now I had her. She might not want to talk about it, but the idea of me standing there at gunpoint was too riveting. "God," she said. "You must have been so scared."

I held out my shaking hand. "Look at me. Hours later, I still am. Anyway, this guy with the gun takes me to this other man, someone they all called Reverend Hannon, and he told them to leave me alone and sent me home. But Kalyn..." I had to get it out quickly. Just mentioning his name made her nervous. "...who is this guy? He's not like any minister I ever met. Why is he surrounded by men carrying guns? At a church?"

She shook her head vehemently, then reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me in closer. "Oh, Lord, honey, you've got to be more careful. You came here to get away from trouble, didn't you?" I nodded. "Well, the last thing you want to do is draw their attention to you." Funny how I didn't mind it when she called me "honey." Maybe because she was so seriously concerned for me. "Those guys are trouble with a big T."

I put down my fork. I'd only eaten about half of my breakfast, while she'd cleaned her plate, but I'd lost my appetite. "I don't understand, Kalyn. Why do they care if I'm out taking a walk at night..."

"They probably thought you were spying on them. They're... what's that word? Para something."

"Paranoid?"

"That's it. They think everyone who isn't one of them is against them. That we're... that people are undercover cops or government informers... things like that." She shrugged. "My way of dealing with it, I just don't have anything to do with those people and hope they don't know I exist. With people like that, it's best not to ask too many questions. No. Don't ask any questions."

She lowered her voice and leaned in again. "Terrible things happen to people who cross him. He's..." She lowered it to a whisper. "...one of them."

"One of them?" I asked aloud.

"Shsssh. Are you an idiot? The militia." She glanced around quickly to see if we'd been overheard, then added, "I forgot you're from away. Look, things are really crazy around here. They're everywhere. Nobody knows who is and who isn't, so you can't trust anyone. Just take however you feel about your ex and multiply by a hundred. That's how bad it is." Then, with a trace of a smile, she said, "Except they don't take women, so with women, it's more a question of who's likely to be talking to one of them and who isn't. Us they like barefoot and pregnant." She tossed her head defiantly. "And I don't intend to be either of those."

It wasn't fair to drag her into this when she was so obviously frightened of these people, but I wasn't here to play fair. I thought, despite her professed practice of keeping her head down and her nose clean, that she probably knew a lot about what was going on. While I had her talking, I had two more things I wanted to test. "You worked here long?" I asked.

"Coupla... two years, maybe? Seems like a lifetime."

"Did you know Paulette Harding?"

She pushed her plate away and pulled cigarettes out of her pocket. "She was one of the dumbest women I ever met. Thought the whole universe revolved around her, what she did, what she wanted to do. She had no sense..." The ponytail swiveled around decisively. "I mean no sense... not of what she was getting herself into, nor of what she might be getting other people into. We're all better off now that she's gone."

"Everyone says she's gone, but no one seems to know where she went."

"That's right." She shoved back her chair and stood up. "Something you need to understand, Dora, for your own good. Nobody around here talks about Paulette Harding. You go around asking questions about her and you'll have worse than your ex-husband to worry about. A lot worse."

With that, she walked out the door, letting it slam shut behind her, leaving me to read the bold words between the lines. What little Lyle had told me yesterday was true. If Paulette Harding had left town, it hadn't been of her own volition, and wherever she'd gone, she wasn't coming back. It was one more ugly thought to file away in a mind that was already dripping blood and crawling with spiders. The sharp pain in my stomach wasn't about Paulette Harding, though. It was about people who kill with impunity, and the pathetic hope that Andre was worth more to them alive.

I gave her a minute to light up and inhale that soothing nicotine, then followed her outside, checking to be sure Clyde had gone back to his stove. "Thanks for the warning." She shrugged. "How do you live with it?"

She shrugged again. "It's like anything else. You put it out of your mind as best you can, and get on with things. What else can we do? If it weren't for them, this would be a really great place." She pointed at her boyfriend's motorcycle, parked next door behind the garage where he worked. "Sometimes, when it really gets to me and I feel all seized up inside, I get Andy to take me for a ride. Someplace really curvy and bumpy and we go real fast. God. It's better than a carnival ride. And then... don't know why... it settles me right down and I'm okay again."

She gave me an "I dare you" smile. "You want, things get real bad for you, I'll ask Andy to take you for a ride. But I gotta warn you. He's crazy." She said it with pride. Being a crazy man's girlfriend was too cool.

There wasn't time for more questions, even if she'd been inclined to answer them. Theresa appeared in the doorway, wearing one of her more poisonous faces. "Anytime you ladies are inclined to come back to work, we've got a dining room full of hungry people waiting."

With a sigh, Kalyn pitched her butt over the railing and headed back inside. I followed her with a sigh of my own, wondering. Was there a connection between what had happened to Gary Pelletier and Paulette Harding's disappearance? Between her disappearance and Andre? Was there any real possibility that the fish butts had been right and Andre was in a survival shelter? And was there a list of those somewhere in the library? Why would civil-defense records be in the library anyway? Even if they were, were they filed in a way that would make sense to me?

It was hard to have so many questions and no one to ask. But Kalyn had been pretty clear. Go around asking questions and bad things could happen to you. For the time being, though, I had more pressing things to worry about. I put my questions on a mental shelf until after lunch. For now, I was going to be too busy to wonder about anything, except vital stuff, like what kind of bread, did they want it toasted, and would we run out of pie?

 

 

 

Chapter 10