Чарльз Грант – Night Songs (страница 20)
And Cart was gone with Denise the Bitch, and he didn't dare go home because he was supposed to be at work, and…
He fell back in sudden panic with a choked-off curse, hitting the wall hard when a small gull squawked loudly and landed in the browning grass a few feet away. He stared at it a moment, rubbing his sore shoulder, watching it hunt boldly for edible garbage. It complained to itself as it found little more than a moldy orange rind, and Frankie was tempted to find a rock to put through its head to make people think the gull-killer was back. But before he could move, his eyes widened, his lips parted in a smile.
Gull. Bird. Tess Mayfair and her fancy birdbath in that garden behind the boarding house. Cart had tried a million times to steal it, and the old fart had nearly caught him. She was the only one on the island Cart was afraid of. Of course, he wasn't a coward. Anybody'd head the other way when she was running full tilt at you. God, she must weigh five hundred goddamn pounds.
But he wasn't afraid.
And if he could get that birdbath and bring it to Cart, by Jesus Cart'd listen to him then.
The creep. Who did he think he was, calling him a shithead?
He spat and sidled to the corner of the building, checked the street for traffic, and broke into an easy lope that took him behind the other stores, the theater, Naughton's Market. He was in the trees fifteen minutes later, running easily, dodging the low branches, once in a while taking a fallen log at a leap. He was grinning. And he didn't even care that the shadows seemed to follow.
TWO
The haze thickened, closing out the blue and softening the light to a faint shade of gold-gray. What leaves stubbornly remained on branches stirred restlessly, trembling; and those fallen to the gutter clustered close to the curb. The scent of last night's rain still clung to the air, but there was a stronger one now that made the growing slight breeze unpleasantly damp.
Peg held her jacket closed with one hand as she walked toward the setting sun, her free hand shading her eyes. Rather than go to the corner, she cut around the back of the drug store, hurrying to Ocean between the library and the church. A large Doberman chained to an iron stake near the sidewalk lunged at her, barking, snarling, and wagging its tail. She grinned and waved at it, and continued across the street, to the next, and the third, finally slowing on the pathway flanked with chainlink fencing. The house on her left belonged to the Adams, the one on her right to the librarian, Hattie Mills. Straight ahead was her own, and there was a man on the front walk waiting for her.
She moistened her lips nervously. Bob Cameron had called her only half an hour ago, asking if she would mind talking with him for a bit. When she asked why, he oddly declined to give her a reason except to say it had something to do with her late husband.
Then she told herself sternly to stop overreacting. It was probably nothing. It was the day, the Screamer. Almost every hour she had gone to the window to check the sky for thunderheads, the tingling along her arms the same sensation she experienced before a storm. Others felt it too, commenting as they paid their bills and left without delivering the usual ration of gossip.
It was the day, not Bob Cameron. It was probably some stupid way to get him her vote.
He waved as she approached, and she managed a polite smile. He was taller than she, burly and wide-mouthed, tanned so dark his wavy graying hair seemed almost as white as the suit he was wearing. She stepped around the hood of the car at the curb, had gone three steps beyond before she realized there was someone behind the wheel. She turned and frowned as Cameron touched her arm.
"Glad you could come, Peg." His voice was as smooth as the cologne he had on.
"I can't stay long," she told him. "Poor Colin is minding the store, and I don't want to go broke."
He smiled warmly and squeezed her elbow. "No problem. It won't take but a few minutes, I promise you."
Suddenly, she had a distressing feeling that he was v about to declare himself and had called her away to get her free of Colin. It was foolish, she knew, but she couldn't shake it loose once it had taken hold, couldn't for the life of her remember if she'd ever given him even the slightest hint she might be interested at all. Good lord, how could she? After what had happened to Jim, how could she?
She tilted her head to place his face between her eyes and the sun. "Well?"
"I'd rather we do it inside."
She shrugged and pulled her keys from her pocket, had the knob in her hand when she heard the car door slam. Cameron was right behind her and eased her over the threshold.
"Bob?"
Immediately behind them two men followed, and Cameron steered her directly back to the kitchen.
"Damn it, Bob!" But softly. An annoyed glance over her shoulder.
He sat at the round table unbidden, and as she blinked in a combination of undefined fear and annoyance, the others took seats and stared at her openly. Suddenly she was outraged, and an order to leave was hard at her lips when the man on her left-incredibly thin, blond, with a jaw that came to a nearly-perfect honed point-introduced himself as Michael Lombard. His hands were folded primly on the table, his back was straight.
"Mrs. Fletcher, I'm terribly sorry for the intrusion and this apparent mystery," he said with an apologetic smile. "And you shouldn't blame Bob here for all this rush. It's my fault, I'm afraid."
"Yes," she said, and waited. She avoided looking at the other one. She didn't like him. He was much heavier, ^his features flat from nose to cheeks, his striking blue shirt open two buttons down to expose a chest of dark hair and a jagged gray scar that reached up toward the hollow of his neck.
"Mrs. Fletcher, I work in Trenton," Lombard explained, "and it's my job for the governor to see that what the politicos call the undesirables are shown the first highway to the border." He smiled self-consciously. "That sounds like something out of a western, I know, but it's what I do."
She sensed what was coming and turned to the sink. A milk glass left over from breakfast lay near the drain. She picked it up and filled it with hot water. "Yes, so what does this have to do with me?"
"Your husband, Mrs. Fletcher. We have reason to believe the man or men who killed him are back in New Jersey. In fact-"
She cut him off with a harsh gesture without turning around, put the glass down, and began filling the kettle and sugar bowl while her mind found its gears. Jim was dead, and she had had all these years to bury the bitterness of both the impending divorce and the police's lack of success; all these years to put her life back on the track. Now, suddenly, like a tidal surge that flooded the beach without warning, this man from the capital was trying to bring it all back.
Amazed that her hands weren't trembling, she set the kettle on the stove, turned the burner on high, and kept her gaze on the flames curling up around the bottom. "Mr. Lombard," she said, her voice tight and direct. "I'm sorry if I seem callous or ungrateful, but I just don't care anymore."
There was a subtle shifting at the table. The second man coughed politely. "Mrs. Fletcher, we're only trying to warn you-"
"Against what?" she said sharply, spinning around so quickly that she caught Cameron's leering eye before it left the curve of her buttocks. "Against what?"
Lombard smiled-a professional smile, meaningless and quick. "Mrs. Fletcher, I understand how you must feel at this time, but you must also understand that we feel a certain-"
"Wait a minute," Cameron interrupted, one hand up and shaking. "Just a minute, please." He waited until she had reached for the squealing kettle, then rose quickly and helped her set the cups and saucers on the table. "Peg, these men are friends of mine, all right? They came here last night, and they want to be sure this guy, whoever it is, doesn't come back to Haven's End. I know you think it's impossible, and I know the police have been all over this place a hundred times, but you can't tell about these mob fellas, y'know? This guy, whoever he is, he might still have it in his head that Jim kept all his records here."
Peg gaped at him, and felt cold for the first time. "No," she said with a shake of her head. "No."
"Mrs. Fletcher," Lombard said quietly, soothingly, with a side glance to Cameron, "you know that and we know that, but
"But I don't know anything!" she said helplessly.
"Yes, yes," Cameron said, laying a hand on her shoulder and massaging it gently. She looked at him desperately, and he brought her to a chair. "I know, Peg, I know. It doesn't make any sense to ordinary people like you and me, but these gentlemen make their living at this. They know, Peg. They know how the criminal mind works."
She put her hands to her face and thought of Matt playing at the marina, Colin fumbling behind the counter, all the cartons of Jim's papers she had burned in the fireplace-thought of the not always peaceful years since the car had been reduced to black metal and black ash. And immediately the image of the automobile's destruction came to mind, she thought of Bob Cameron.