Bag of Bones (62 page)

I snatched it off the dining-room table. Although it covered the whole southern part of Castle County—Motton, Harlow, and Kashwakamak as well as the TR—it was pretty thin. The first thing I did was check the white pages to see if there
were
at least ninety-two. There were. The
Y
's and
Z
's finished up on page ninety-seven.

This was the answer. Had to be.

“I got it, didn't I?” I asked Bunter. “This is it.”

Nothing. Not even a tinkle from the bell.

“Fuck you—what does a stuffed moosehead know about a telephone book?”

Go down nineteen. I turned to page nineteen of the telephone book, where the letter
F
was prominently showcased. I began to slip my finger down the first column and as it went, my excitement faded. The nineteenth name on page nineteen was Harold Failles. It meant nothing to me. There were also Feltons and Fenners, a Filkersham and several Finneys, half a dozen Flahertys and more Fosses than you could shake a stick at. The last name on page nineteen was Framingham. It also meant nothing to me, but—

Framingham, Kenneth P.

I stared at that for a moment. A realization began to dawn. It had nothing to do with the refrigerator messages.

You're not seeing what you think you're seeing,
I thought.
This is like when you buy a blue Buick—

“You see blue Buicks everywhere,” I said. “Practically got to kick em out of your way. Yeah, that's it.” But my hands were shaking as I turned to page ninety-two.

Here were the
T
's of southern Castle County, along with a few
U
's like Alton Ubeck and Catherine Udell just to round things out. I didn't bother checking the ninety-second entry on the page; the phone book wasn't the key to the magnetic crosspatches after all. It did, however, suggest something enormous. I closed the book, just held it in my hands for a moment (happy folks with blueberry rakes on the front cover), then opened it at random, this time to the
M
's. And once you knew what you were looking for, it jumped right out at you.

All those
K
's.

Oh, there were Stevens and Johns and Marthas; there was Meserve, G., and Messier, V., and Jayhouse, T. And yet, again and again, I saw the initial
K
where people had exercised their right not to list their first name in the book. There were at least twenty
K
-initials on page fifty alone, and another dozen
C
-initials. As for the actual names themselves . . .

There were twelve Kenneths on this random page in the
M
-section, including three Kenneth Moores and two Kenneth Munters. There were four Catherines and two Katherines. There were a Casey, a Kiana, and a Kiefer.

“Holy Christ, it's like fallout,” I whispered.

I thumbed through the book, not able to believe what I was seeing and seeing it anyway. Kenneths, Katherines, and Keiths were everywhere. I also saw Kimberly, Kim, and Kym. There were Cammie, Kia (yes, and we had thought ourselves so original), Kiah, Kendra, Kaela, Keil, and Kyle. Kirby and Kirk. There was a woman named Kissy Bowden, and a man named Kito Rennie—Kito, the same name as one of
Kyra's fridgeafator people. And everywhere, outnumbering such usually common initials as
S
and
T
and
E,
were those
K
's. My eyes danced with them.

I turned to look at the clock—didn't want to stand John Storrow up at the airport, Christ no—and there was no clock there. Of course not. Old Krazy Kat had popped his peepers during a psychic event. I gave a loud, braying laugh that scared me a little—it wasn't particularly sane.

“Get hold of yourself, Mike,” I said. “Take a deep breath, son.”

I took the breath. Held it. Let it out. Checked the digital readout on the microwave. Quarter past eight. Plenty of time for John. I turned back to the telephone book and began to riffle rapidly through it. I'd had a second inspiration—not a megawatt blast like the first one, but a lot more accurate, it turned out.

Western Maine is a relatively isolated area—it's a little like the hill country of the border South—but there has always been at least some inflow of folks from away (“flatlanders” is the term the locals use when they are feeling contemptuous), and in the last quarter of the century it has become a popular area for active seniors who want to fish and ski their way through retirement. The phone book goes a long way toward separating the newbies from the long-time residents. Babickis, Parettis, O'Quindlans, Donahues, Smolnacks, Dvoraks, Blindermeyers—all from away. All flatlanders. Jalberts, Meserves, Pillsburys, Spruces, Therriaults, Perraults, Stanchfields, Starbirds, Dubays—all from Castle County. You see what I'm saying, don't you? When you see a whole column of Bowies on page twelve, you know that
those folks have been around long enough to relax and really spread those Bowie genes.

There were a few
K
-initials and
K
-names among the Parettis and the Smolnacks, but only a few. The heavy concentrations were all attached to families that had been here long enough to absorb the atmosphere. To breathe the fallout. Except it wasn't radiation, exactly, it—

I suddenly imagined a black headstone taller than the tallest tree on the lake, a monolith which cast its shadow over half of Castle County. This picture was so clear and so terrible that I covered my eyes, dropping the phone book on the table. I backed away from it, shuddering. Hiding my eyes actually seemed to enhance the image further: a grave-marker so enormous it blotted out the sun; TR-90 lay at its foot like a funeral bouquet. Sara Tidwell's son had drowned in Dark Score Lake . . . or
been
drowned in it. But she had marked his passing. Memorialized it. I wondered if anyone else in town had ever noticed what I just had. I didn't suppose it was all that likely; when you open a telephone book you're looking for a specific name in most cases, not reading whole pages line by line. I wondered if
Jo
had noticed—if she'd known that almost every longtime family in this part of the world had, in one way or another, named at least one child after Sara Tidwell's dead son.

Jo wasn't stupid. I thought she probably had.

*   *   *

I returned to the bathroom, relathered, started again from scratch. When I finished, I went back to the phone and picked it up. I poked in three numbers, then stopped, looking out at the lake. Mattie and Ki
were up and in the kitchen, both of them wearing aprons, both of them in a fine froth of excitement. There was going to be a party! They would wear pretty new summer clothes, and there would be music from Mattie's boombox CD player! Ki was helping Mattie make biscuits for strewberry snort-cake, and while the biscuits were baking they would make salads. If I called Mattie up and said
Pack a couple of bags, you and Ki are going to spend a week at Disney World,
Mattie would assume I was joking, then tell me to hurry up and finish getting dressed so I'd be at the airport when John's plane landed. If I pressed, she'd remind me that Lindy had offered her her old job back, but the offer would close in a hurry if Mattie didn't show up promptly at two
P.M.
on Friday. If I continued to press, she would just say no.

Because I wasn't the only one in the zone, was I? I wasn't the only one who was really feeling it.

I returned the phone to its recharging cradle, then went back into the north bedroom. By the time I'd finished dressing, my fresh shirt was already feeling wilted under the arms; it was as hot that morning as it had been for the last week, maybe even hotter. But I'd be in plenty of time to meet the plane. I had never felt less like partying, but I'd be there. Mikey on the spot, that was me. Mikey on the goddam spot.

*   *   *

John hadn't given me his flight number, but at Castle County Airport, such niceties are hardly necessary. This bustling hub of transport consists of three hangars and a terminal which used to be a Flying A gas station—when the light's strong on the little building's rusty north side, you can still see the shape
of that winged
A.
There's one runway. Security is provided by Lassie, Breck Pellerin's ancient collie, who spends her days crashed out on the linoleum floor, cocking an ear at the ceiling whenever a plane lands or takes off.

I popped my head into Pellerin's office and asked him if the ten from Boston was on time. He said it 'twas, although he hoped the paa'ty I was meetin planned to either fly back out before mid-afternoon or stay the night. Bad weather was comin in, good gorry, yes. What Breck Pellerin referred to as
'lectrical
weather. I knew exactly what he meant, because in my nervous system that electricity already seemed to have arrived.

I went out to the runway side of the terminal and sat on a bench advertising Cormier's Market (
FLY INTO OUR DELI FOR THE BEST MEATS IN MAINE
). The sun was a silver button stuck on the eastern slope of a hot white sky. Headache weather, my mother would have called it, but the weather was due to change. I would hold onto the hope of that change as best I could.

At ten past ten I heard a wasp-whine from the south. At quarter past, some sort of twin-engine plane dropped out of the murk, flopped onto the runway, and taxied toward the terminal. There were only four passengers, and John Storrow was the first one off. I grinned when I saw him. I had to grin. He was wearing a black tee-shirt with
WE ARE THE CHAMPIONS
printed across the front and a pair of khaki shorts which displayed a perfect set of city shins: white and bony. He was trying to manage both a Styrofoam cooler and a briefcase. I grabbed the cooler maybe
four seconds before he dropped it, and tucked it under my arm.

“Mike!” he cried, lifting one hand palm out.

“John!” I returned in much the same spirit (
evoe
is the word that comes immediately to the crossword aficionado's mind), and slapped him five. His homely-handsome face split in a grin, and I felt a little stab of guilt. Mattie had expressed no preference for John—quite the opposite, in fact—and he really hadn't solved any of her problems; Devore had done that by topping himself before John had so much as a chance to get started on her behalf. Yet still I felt that nasty little poke.

“Come on,” he said. “Let's get out of this heat. You have air conditioning in your car, I presume?”

“Absolutely.”

“What about a cassette player? You got one of those? If you do, I'll play you something that'll make you chortle.”

“I don't think I've ever heard that word actually used in conversation, John.”

The grin shone out again, and I noticed what a lot of freckles he had. Sheriff Andy's boy Opie grows up to serve at the bar. “I'm a lawyer. I use words in conversation that haven't even been invented yet. You have a tape-player?”

“Of course I do.” I hefted the cooler. “Steaks?”

“You bet. Peter Luger's. They're—”

“—the best in the world. You told me.”

As we went into the terminal, someone said, “Michael?”

It was Romeo Bissonette, the lawyer who had chaperoned me through my deposition. In one hand
he had a box wrapped in blue paper and tied with a white ribbon. Beside him, just rising from one of the lumpy chairs, was a tall guy with a fringe of gray hair. He was wearing a brown suit, a blue shirt, and a string tie with a golf-club on the clasp. He looked more like a farmer on auction day than the sort of guy who'd be a scream when you got a drink or two into him, but I had no doubt this was the private detective. He stepped over the comatose collie and shook hands with me. “George Kennedy, Mr. Noonan. I'm pleased to meet you. My wife has read every single book you ever wrote.”

“Well thank her for me.”

“I will. I have one in the car—a hardcover . . .” He looked shy, as so many people do when they get right to the point of asking. “I wonder if you'd sign it for her at some point.”

“I'd be delighted to,” I said. “Right away's best, then I won't forget.” I turned to Romeo. “Good to see you, Romeo.”

“Make it Rommie,” he said. “Good to see you, too.” He held out the box. “George and I clubbed together on this. We thought you deserved something nice for helping a damsel in distress.”

Kennedy now
did
look like a man who might be fun after a few drinks. The kind who might just take a notion to hop onto the nearest table, turn a tablecloth into a kilt, and dance. I looked at John, who gave the kind of shrug that means hey, don't ask
me.

I pulled off the satin bow, slipped my finger under the Scotch tape holding the paper, then looked up. I caught Rommie Bissonette in the act of elbowing Kennedy. Now they were both grinning.

“There's nothing in here that's going to jump out at me and go booga-booga, is there, guys?” I asked.

“Absolutely not,” Rommie said, but his grin widened.

Well, I can be as good a sport as the next guy. I guess. I unwrapped the package, opened the plain white box inside, revealed a square pad of cotton, lifted it out. I had been smiling all through this, but now I felt the smile curl up and die on my mouth. Something went twisting up my spine as well, and I think I came very close to dropping the box.

It was the oxygen mask Devore had had on his lap when he met me on The Street, the one he'd snorted from occasionally as he and Rogette paced me, trying to keep me out deep enough to drown. Rommie Bissonette and George Kennedy had brought it to me like the scalp of a dead enemy and I was supposed to think it was
funny
—

“Mike?” Rommie asked anxiously. “Mike, are you okay? It was just a joke—”

I blinked and saw it wasn't an oxygen mask at all—how in God's name could I have been so stupid? For one thing, it was bigger than Devore's mask; for another, it was made of opaque rather than clear plastic. It was—