“Better get it,” he encouraged.
Still a little confused, I stepped onto the sidewalk and followed where Miss Etta had gone. She was back in her usual place behind the register, eyes closed. The phone was on the counter in front of her, receiver off the hook.
I picked it up carefully, trying not to disturb Etta any further.
“Hello?” I said gingerly into the phone.
“Dr. Devilin,” the voice said quickly, “I'm glad you're still there. It's Melissa Mathews. I would have just come over there to Miss Etta's, but I'm not supposed to leave this desk while the sheriff is away. We've had a notice of disturbance at your house.”
“What?”
“Well,” she said, attempting to apply her official voice to the matter at hand, “Lucinda Foxe called us a while ago. She was looking for you and called your house and a strange man answered the phone!”
“What?” I demanded. “Are you sure?”
“That's what she said,” Melissa confirmed.
“She just dialed the wrong number.”
“No,” Melissa said uncomfortably. “I asked her that. She was very upset. I'm sending a man up there right now.”
“Did you know that Skidmore was here with me?”
“Oh my gosh,” she sighed. “No, sir. Could you please let me talk to him, then?”
“God.” I was barely comprehending what I was hearing.
Skid had come in and was staring at me, wanting answers.
“And then you call Ms. Foxe, hear? She's really worried,” Melissa insisted.
“Yes,” I managed into the phone. “Thank you, Melissa. I'll call Lucinda and go right home.”
“Okay,” she said cheerily. “You let us know if there's anything stolen or messed up, hear?”
I motioned for Skid to take the phone.
“Right,” I told Melissa absently. “Here's Skid.”
He took the phone from me.
“What?” Skid asked Melissa.
“An intruder was in my house,” I told him, astonished, “and answered my phone when Lucinda called.”
“Yes,” Skid said, his lips tight, “you were right to call Dr. Devilin. I'll handle it now.”
“I'm calling Lucinda this minute,” I said to Skid.
He nodded.
“All right, Melissa,” he said into the phone. “Damn.”
He pushed the button on the phone, hanging up on Melissa, and handed me the receiver.
I dialed Lucinda's number. It barely rang once.
“Fever?” she said anxiously into the phone.
“How did you know it was me?”
“Thank God.” She let out a long breath. “Where are you?”
“Miss Etta's. With Skid. Tell me what happened.”
“I called to see what you were doing, if you'd found out anything, and a man answered your phone. He didn't even sound like a real person. I thought somehow it was the television or something.”
“What do you mean?”
“His voice was unreal,” she said, a little shaky.
“Well, one of Skid's deputies is going up there to chase him off,” I assured her, sounding a little more confident than I felt. “Everything's fine. I'm going up there now to see if there's anything missing.”
“Don't you go up there alone!” she insisted instantly. “And don't
you let Skidmore send one of his sorry deputies for this. He has to go with you.”
“I'll be all right.”
“No,” she said firmly, “either Skid goes up there with you or I'll meet you over there. Take your pick.”
“Well, you're not meeting me over there.”
“Let me talk to Skid,” she said imperatively.
“Lucy,” I tried.
“Fever,” she rejoined. “I'll meet you at your house in twenty minutes, so help me God.”
“Wait.”
I held the phone to my chest.
“Look, do you have a second to convince Lucinda that I don't need you to hold my hand?” I said to Skid. “She wants you to go up with me up to my place.”
“Give me the phone,” he said, holding out his hand.
I acquiesced.
“Lucy,” Skid said calmly into the phone, “it's Skidmore. What do you reckon Dr. Devilin would do without you and me?”
He smiled.
“That's right.” He shot me a look. “I'll go up there with him. We'll make sure everything's all right, and then he'll come see you.”
He looked me in the eye. I shook my head angrily.
“He agrees,” Skid told Lucinda. “So we're going now. Okay. Bye.”
He hung up.
“Each of those phone calls is going to run you boys a quarter,” Miss Etta piped up, eyes still closed.
I dug a dollar bill out of my wallet and laid it on the counter.
“Keep the change.”
“You're damned right,” she agreed.
“I only have a few minutes,” Skid said impatiently. “Let's go.”
We took off out of the restaurant and were halfway up the side of the mountain before I allowed myself to reflect on Skid's reaction to the term
white dwarf
and the image of Orvid Newcomb it brought forth.
Â
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My reasoning followed this line: I knew that Orvid had been engaged in some sort of questionable activity on the night the girls died. I knew that Skidmore was uncomfortable telling me what he was doing that same night with Melissa. And I knew that Melissa's cousin Nickel had given drugs to the girls. My surmise was that Skid and Melissa had embarked upon some sort of shady date under the guise of keeping an eye on Nickel and his drug activities. In fact they had been too intent upon each other to stop the terrible events that had transpired.
Furthermore, I posited the likelihood that Orvid was the supplier of the drugs; he'd been waiting for a train delivery of some sort and witnessed the train wreck but was loath to relate too many incriminating details.
There it was: a very urban cancer in our idyllic hamlet. I felt queasy at the prospect, even a little light-headed. Could have been indigestion. God may have invented the gastronomic pleasures, but the devil took his due inside the many regrets of gluttony.
Â
My cabin appeared over the rise, a dark gem in the misty air. Where the leaves had fallen on the roof, gold and rubies decked its crown. Where the rain had made black roof tiles slick, obsidian ruled. All around it the trees whispered, keeping secrets so ancient and so painful that they dared not speak aloud. I never failed to appreciate the beauty of my home even though, each time I saw it come into view, I felt a stab of the childhood melancholy that had driven me from it for so many years.
The front door was open.
When I'd first returned to the mountains several years before, I used to lock the door every time I went out. After a year had gone by, I only used the key if I was going to be gone for more than two or three days. The intruder hadn't broken in, he'd simply opened the front door.
I pulled up close to the porch and got out of the truck. Skidmore called out before his squad car had come to a halt.
“Wait,” he said.
I didn't argue with his directive as I would normally have, because his concern felt pleasant, familiar; a return to what I wanted our friendship to be.
He climbed out of his cruiser, pistol pulled.
“Is that necessary?” I couldn't help asking.
“Didn't you just give me a lecture on how much evil has taken over the world?” he sighed. “Would you let me do the job the way you see it on the television just once?”
“Sorry.” I grinned.
He walked loudly up the steps.
“Police!” he barked. “Out with your hands
straight
up over your head.”
Silence answered.
Skid went into the house through the open door, stomping through the living room to frighten the intruder. I heard him yelling something else as he bounded up the stairs to the bedrooms. But after a moment it was obvious that our criminal had gone.
Skid appeared in the doorway.
“Come on in,” he said at last from the doorway, a little relieved.
I leapt up the porch steps and into the front room. Oak beams that framed the large room downstairs seemed to give off a kind of golden light. To my right the little galley kitchen was undisturbed. The staircase in the far corner that led up to the three bedrooms sat silently.
“You checked upstairs?”
“Yup,” Skid answered. “Take a look around and see if there's anything missing or broken.”
Television, stereo, major items of furniture, and pieces of art on the walls were all undisturbed. The kitchen looked exactly as I'd left it.
“Nothing major,” I reported. “In fact, nothing at all, that I can tell.”
“Check upstairs.”
I did. My bedroom was pristine, the other two hadn't been entered, in my opinion.
“Everything seems untouched,” I reported, coming down the stairs.
Skid stood in the kitchen. In his hand, to my complete dismay, was the last bite of Lucinda's apple tart.
“This is
good
,” he mumbled, wiping his lips with his index finger.
“I was saving that,” I told him woefully.
“Well,” he announced, brushing off his hands over the sink, “then you
have
to go to Lucinda's house, don't you? She'll make you another one if you tell her I ate your last piece.”
“I would have gone over there anyway,” I whined. “Damn. I was
saving
that.”
“Call her,” he said, ignoring my complaint.
He breezed past me toward the front door.
“I would have insisted on peach cobbler at Miss Etta's,” I began, following him, “if I'd known someone would eat the last crumb of that tart.”
He stopped moving, his back to me.
“Look,” he said quietly, standing in the doorway, “even though I still have to tell you
officially
that you can't be messing around with my investigation, I can say that
personally
I couldn't be happier you're going to help. You know.”
He looked down. It had been a difficult speech for him to make for some reason.
“Yes,” I told him, confused. “I'll do what I can.”
“I'll send someone up to get prints off the phone, that sort of thing” he said, sniffing. “Most likely won't do much good, but we'll give her a try. I don't think this was any big deal, do you? Kids, maybe.”
“Where are you going now?”
“Back to the office,” he sighed, “to see can I figure out a way to arrest Andy Newlander.”
He left without another word. I stood in the door and watched him drive off, a clutch of apprehension in my chest.
The sound of his car had vanished down the mountain before I
realized I hadn't asked him the question we both wanted to know. Why had the intruder answered my phone?
I went to the phone, trying to decide how I could use it to call Lucinda without disturbing what could be fingerprint evidence on the receiver.
That's when my eye fell on something I hadn't noticed, the one thing that was different about the interior of my house.
A small black Bible was on the phone table, open. It wasn't mine.
I didn't want to touch it. I leaned in close to see that it had been opened to the book of Revelation, last chapter.
One sentence was underlined:
Behold I am coming soon, bringing my recompense, to repay every one for what he has done.
I had been visited by Hiram Frazier.
The phone startled me, ringing jabbed my mind's vision of the wandering minister. I stared, trying to think how I might answer it without touching it. It rang again. I had an ice-white vision of Hiram Frazier on the other end, calling with his final judgment.
On the third ring I gave up and grabbed the receiver.
“Hello?” I tried to sound intimidating.
“Dr. Devilin?” the high-pitched voice asked.
“Yes, ma'am,” I answered tentatively.
“God damn it, you little pissant,” the voice grated, “it's Eppie Waldrup!”
He sounded like an eleven-year-old girl with the croup. As usual.
“Oh,” I stammered quickly, “yes. Eppie. How are you?”
“How am I?” he snorted. “I'm terrible. You got to come down to my place right away.”
“I do?” I said weakly.
Every effort I made to concentrate on what he was saying was usurped by the open Bible at which I stared.
“Somebody's been messing with that Volkswagen you were looking at the other day. And then the police came by and now they're accusing me of tampering with evidence. What evidence? It's a damned
Volkswagen
!”
“Calm down, Eppie,” I said soothingly. “Who came by? Skidmore?”
“Yes,” he answered hotly. “Earlier this morning. That's why you got to come over. You know me. You know I ain't tampering.”
“Sheriff Needle,” I said slowly, focusing, “actually accused you of evidence tampering?”
“Yes!”
I closed the Bible on the tabletop. I would not have it distract me one instant longer.
“And you didn't do
anything
,” I said sternly, “to the car? You didn't think maybe you could salvage some parts from it?”
“Nothing,” he insisted. “Damn.”
He was silent a moment.
“Except, you know,” he went on calmly, “that a certain part of the Volkswagen engine, the cylinder head, is a perfect C below middle C, so, of course, I have that hanging in the yard. You know. But that was
after
the other person messed with the car. After.”
“Eppie,” I told him, shaking my head, “what's the matter with you? Was there really somebody in your yard disturbing that car besides you, or are you trying to fool the sheriff? He's a very smart person.”
“Someone else was here!” he swore. “And here's how I know it. When I first looked at the engine and the transmission and all, I seen that the car had definitely been shut off when it was hit by the train. Engine dead stopped.”
“How could you tell that?”
“Oh, lots of ways,” he answered, completely assured. “The cylinders was all shut down, the way the transmission locked, just certain things. It's also what kept the car from blowing up like you see in the movies. If there's gas all over everything and the spark plugs are still sparking, that sets off the gas and everything goes up. If the engine's off, it's just gas everywhere, no explosion, see?”
“Sort of.”
“Well, take my word for it,” he assured me. “So, what I'm saying is that when I came in this morning, someone had taken off the cylinder head. I thought it might be them kids that comes in here all
the time, so I went to put it back. That's when I made my discovery about the perfect C below middle C.”
“And then the police showed up,” I guessed.
“About a hour later. Sheriff come to impound the car, but when he seen me with part of it hanging on the line, you know, he wanted me to explain what the hell I was doing. And he don't have the musical sense that you do, it was hard to tell him anything. He's mad.”
“You have a lot of things hanging from that line,” I said, hoping to hide my suspicion. “How did Skid know that one of those pieces of junk was from the girls' VW?”
“I don't know,” Eppie stammered. “You got to help me, Doc.”
“Okay,” I sighed, “but why do I have to come over there right now?”
“Well,” he said sheepishly, “there's one more thing that finally convinced me the engine was shut off when the car got hit.”
“What is it?”
“A note from the person who was messing with the car last night,” he confessed. “It was sitting on the engine block when I come in this morning. Got it right here. It says, âThis engine was turned off when this car was hit. Call Dr. Devilin and tell him that.'”
Â
After a brief phone conversation checking in with Lucinda to assure her that I was all right and that nothing was missing from my home, I offered her my promise to be at her house for dinner. I told her I had a good deal of information for her, but that I'd rather tell it in person. It seemed too complicated, for one, trying to explain Hiram Frazier over the phone.
For the first time in a year, I locked my front door on the way out.
I sped toward Eppie's junkyard thinking about the note he'd read to me. Someone was shadowing my investigation; it seemed to me that Orvid Newcomb was the likely culprit. He'd gone to the coroner, Millroy, and somehow managed to get information about the girls. He'd taken the Volkswagen apart and ascertained or guessed something about it. The supposition that their car engine wasn't
running when the girls were killed scarcely seemed important, except that it could be further verification of their drug-addled state.
I tried not to conjure images of the car sitting on the railroad tracks.
Instead I was again haunted by images of Tess and Rory in life. My mind veered to a summer not long past when Lucinda had showed me photographs of the girls' first road trip, going to the beach in their new VW. They were headed for Jekyll Island. Once a millionaires' playground, the island had long since been made a state-protected island, not too crowded most of the time, and at night bear and deer walked on the beach.
Apparently a tire had gone flat on the girls' Volkswagen less than halfway to the island, and the lug nuts were on the wheels tighter than they could turn. They had to flag down some help, and naturally, the help turned out to be college boys. The boys were going to Jekyll too because God will punish any parent who allows teenaged daughters to take a road trip on the first day of summer.
The girls spent most of their time at the beach with the tire-changing boys and reported to Lucinda that it was a good vacation. They played putt-putt and swam in the ocean; danced to the music on the jukeboxes and and drank Cokes; ate fried shrimp every night and felt grown-up.
The best photographs Lucinda had shown me were of the girls by the ocean. I could see into those bright images, to a reality where the girls splashed up salt water, collecting the summer in brown layers on their skin, in golden threads in their hair and salt droplets on their mouths. I had the notion that every time they blinked they were taking their own minute photographs, storing them in albums that made a library in the back of their minds.
That's the most important thing young people do, after all. They collect experiences for a book that is eventually supposed to become a life.
So I was again in a gray mood by the time I arrived in Pine City.
Â
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My truck pulled up to Eppie's junkyard emporium. He was waiting for me, engaged in his version of pacing back and forth: leaning forward in his chair and drumming his fingers on his knees.
His coveralls were dirtier than I'd ever seen them, smeared with a Jackson Pollock assemblage of dark colors and patterns. He managed to get himself out of his chair by the time I'd turned off my truck and gotten out the door.
“You made good time,” he said absently.
“When was Skidmore here?” I asked instantly.
“Oh, sometime before lunch. He was here, then he got a call on his car radio from that dipsy deputy of his.”
“Melissa,” I guessed.
“Right.” Eppie nodded. “And he was off.”
“Did he tell you he was pressing charges or did he give you some kind of summons or paperwork?”
“No.”
“Then what makes you think you're in trouble?”
“He's the sheriff,” Eppie answered urgently. “He says I'm in trouble and I believe him.”
“You're still thinking about Sheriff Maddox.”
“Sheriff's a sheriff is my philosophy. Anyway, he took off when he got that phone message.”
It only took a second to realize that the
message
had been me. That Skidmore had been at the junkyard when I talked to him on the phone. And he hadn't mentioned a thing about the car during lunch. That realization jarred me back to a chill where my old friend was concerned.
“You didn't show him the note you read me over the phone,” I checked.
“Of course not,” Eppie replied, his voice higher than ever. “It was for you. Damn. What do you think I am?”
“Sorry.” I hid my expression.
He rummaged in his pocket a moment and produced a crumple of paper, held it out.
I took it, opened it as best I could.
The handwriting was rough, jagged.
“You found this note
on
the car engine?” I asked.
“Right.”
“When?”
“This morning, early. Around six.”
“So whoever left it was here during the night?”
“That's what's got me,” Eppie confessed. “You know don't nobody come in here after dark on account of Bruno.”
My eyes darted around the yard, suddenly straining to see Eppie's junkyard dog, the meanest animal in the United States. My fear of dogs in general was nothing compared to the concentrated terror that I felt whenever Bruno was near. He was a wolfhound, bigger than a Great Dane, loyal to Eppie and desperate to eat any other adult human being alive. Eppie had trained the dog personally, taking great care to teach it not to menace children and women over sixty. Every other pulsing creature was fair game. It was said that a bull had once wandered onto the property. Bruno dispatched it, eating half, leaving the rest for Eppie to barbecue.
A bull.
Eppie read the dread in my eyes.
“Not to worry, Doctor,” he told me, only condescending a little. “The dog's chained up in back.”
“So how did anyone get in here last night?” I marveled.
“That's one for the books all right.” He grinned. “Look, you got to hear this.”
He picked up a tire iron and went to his clothesline xylophone.
I followed, only mildly confused by Eppie's shift in concern. I knew him to be easily distracted, a man whose powers of concentration might be bested by a wandering toddler.
“You mean you haven't put the Volkswagen back together yet?” I asked, incredulous.
“Damage is already done,” he said cavalierly, “and you will not believe this tone.”
He came to a halt before a heavy gray mass hanging pendulously
from the airplane wire that stretched between his office and a telephone pole, his bizarre array of metal car parts.
He raised the tire iron and hit the piece of metal delicately. It made a tone so deep and rich I felt it in my chest, it stopped up my ears. It was like a cathedral bell, the envy of Notre Dame.
“Beautiful,” was all I could say.
“Yeah,” he agreed proudly. “It completes the work. I got a full two octaves now. I'm done.”
I roused myself from the hypnotic rapture of the sound, the overtones still filling the air around me.
“No, you're not,” I demanded. “You have to put that back in the girls' car.”
“I know,” he snapped. “I mean
eventually
I can get this, and then I'll have a complete set.”
“You have to put it back today,” I told him sternly, “and it still might not matter to Skid, because you did tamper with evidence in a homicide investigation.”
“Homicide? I thought it was a train wreck.”
I winced.
“It was,” I answered hastily, “that's what I meant. That sound, it disoriented me. It's really something.”
“Yeah,” he said proudly. “C below middle C. Damn. I'm thinking of setting the whole thing up different now that I got two octaves, make it easier to play. You got any ideas about that?”
I only paused a moment to consider that if I were required to sit around a junkyard all day waiting for someone to come and buy something, I would have lost my mind long ago. I found it satisfying that Eppie had turned his lunacy toward music, however insane that music might be.