Face on the Wall (11 page)

“Oh, right, I get the picture.” Impulsively Homer said, “Look, why don't we work on this together? You and me? And nail that Bluebeard Small?”

“Bluebeard?”

“Oh, it's my niece Annie. She's obsessed with folktales. Bluebeard murdered one wife after another. There was this locked room full of corpses.”

“You think Small's like that?” Kennebunk looked at Homer soberly. “You think Pearl Small didn't go away, he killed her?”

“And maybe six or seven wives before her.” Homer was carried away. He waved his doughnut at Kennebunk. “Princess, they called her Princess. She's got this long golden hair.”

“Princess, oh, right.” Kennebunk's rugged face softened. “Her hair is yellow as straw. She's like the princess in the tower, the one with her long golden hair hanging out the window. She always reminds me of that.”

“What, another fantasist in our midst?” Homer beamed at Kennebunk. “You're as bad as Annie. Listen, do you have any idea who told
The Candid Courier
she was missing? Somebody must have given them all that stuff about Pearl's disappearance.”

Under his thick white hair Kennebunk's ruddy face grew redder still. “It was me, I'm afraid. McNutt wasn't doing anything about it and he refused to let me look into it. Small's his old drinking pal and lodge buddy. So I thought a little publicity wouldn't do any harm. I tried the
Globe
and the
Lowell Sun,
but they didn't seem interested. So I worked my way down to the
Courier
.”

“I see,” said Homer. “Well, good for you. At least it got my wife all excited.”

“There's something else that's sort of strange,” said Kennebunk. “After Pearl disappeared, Small showed up with his arm in a sling.”

“Oh? How did it happen, did he say?”

“I asked him, when I stopped at his house to ask about Pearl.”

“Well, how did you know she was missing?”

“My wife's her boss at the Southtown Public Library. When Pearl didn't show up for work, Dot was worried. She suspected for a long time that Pearl was being knocked around. One day she asked her point-blank why she didn't leave her husband, and Pearl said she couldn't leave her trees.”

“Her what? Her trees?”

“That old pig farm. Pearl was trying to improve it, planting trees.”

“I see. So what about Small? You asked him about his wife?”

“Right. He was mad as hell. Said it was none of my business. If a man's wife chooses to go off for a while, it's no business of the police, that's what he said. And then of course Small called McNutt, and McNutt bawled me out.”

“You poor bastard. Well, what about the sling on his arm?”

“He said he fell downstairs. He'd been drinking, he said, and he fell downstairs. I'd like to think Pearl knocked him down, but she was pretty small and fragile.”

“What about a doctor? Did he go to an emergency room or anything?”

“Apparently not. I checked with the hospital. I mean, my wife kept after me. My wife—”

“You don't have to tell me about wives.” Homer laughed. “She should get together with Mary Kelly, they're two of a kind.” He stood up. “How about another doughnut?”

“Oh, no thanks,” said Kennebunk. “My wife's got me on a diet.” He took an appointment book out of his pocket, wrote down Homer's phone number, and promised to keep in touch.

Left alone in Jacky's, Homer ordered two more doughnuts and ate them slowly. They were a mistake. When he waddled outdoors and climbed into his car, the four deep-fat-fried morsels sat like a dead weight in the bottom of his stomach.

Chapter 16

Weave a circle round him thrice,

And close your eyes in holy dread,

For he on honey-dew hath fed,

And drunk the milk of Paradise.

Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”

A
s soon as Annie walked into the house with her bag of groceries, she heard a strange noise, a rhythmic humming. She dumped the bag on the counter and turned around.

There was a whirl of color on the floor in front of the window. It was a spinning top. It droned and hopped and spun as though it would never slow down.

“Flimnap?” called Annie. At once there was another sound, a loud engine-driven noise, the lawn mower. Flimnap was outside, cutting the grass for the first time.

Mesmerized, Annie watched the top until it wallowed to a stop and lay on its side. Then she picked it up and looked at it. It was an ordinary old-fashioned wooden top. Her brother John had owned one just like it a long time ago.

Later on, when Flimnap came in from mowing the entire front lawn, Annie showed him the top. “This is yours?”

“Perhaps.” Flimnap took it, pulled a string out of his pocket, wound it carefully around the top, and flung it on the floor. Again the top whizzed and sang.

Annie laughed and began putting away her groceries, comparing the prosaic contents of her kitchen shelves with the sprightly presence of Flimnap O'Dougherty. Flimnap didn't belong in the world of paper bags and canned tomatoes and cartons of milk. He was a refugee from her wall, an escapee, a participant in its astonishing events. He belonged up there in that gallery, along with Aesop and Beatrix Potter and Hans Christian Andersen. Their enchanted plaster was the air he breathed.

Someone knocked on the glass of the French door. “Hello there, Eddy,” said Flimnap, opening it, letting him in.

“Oh, Eddy,” said Annie. “I'm sorry, but I can't read to you today. I have to go to Cambridge.”

“It's all right,” said Flimnap. “I'll be here for a while. Come on, Eddy, look at this.” Once again, while Annie hurried the rest of her groceries into the refrigerator and slammed her cupboard doors, Flimnap spun the top.

Eddy wanted to try it. Flimnap wound the string for him, but when Eddy threw it down, the top fell on its side and rattled across the floor. Annie hurried into her bedroom and changed her clothes. When she came back, Flimnap was juggling plastic plates. “One, two, three—whoops!” The fourth plate bounced on the floor. “I can never manage four,” said Flimnap, grinning at Eddy. He tried again, while Eddy laughed and clapped his hands.

Annie spent half the day in Harvard Square, taking a holiday from her painted wall. She met Minnie Peck for lunch. Min made huge metal sculptures from car parts, bedsprings, and old washing machines. Annie was envious of Min's cosmopolitan life. She was always popping off to New York for a gallery opening or a play. She knew everybody in the contemporary art scene. Today at lunch she told Annie about a party for some illustrator, Miguel Somebody.

“Miguel Delgado?”

“That's right. He does those crazy clowns, right? And elephants? Green and purple elephants?”

“Oh, yes, that's right. What's he like?”

“Oh, really good-looking, sexy. Long black hair, and he's got these burning eyes.”

“Oh, Min, did anybody mention Noakes? Joseph Noakes I've heard a rumor that he's dead.”

“Oh, no, he was there. He's not dead.”

“Oh, thank goodness. What's he like?”

“Noakes? Oh, sort of stark and really intense. Big shoulders. Gorgeous. You know.” Then Min wrinkled her brow with doubt. “Unless it was Boakes, Joe Boakes. Is there somebody called Boakes?”

Annie sighed and picked up the carafe of wine. Joseph Noakes-Boakes sounded a lot like her old boyfriend Jack. But now Min was off on something else, her latest work of art. “I call it
Millennial Woman.
It's almost finished. It's hubcaps, shiny hubcaps, rusty hubcaps,
thousands
of hubcaps. And you know what? It would look really fabulous on your lawn.” Min reached across the table and gripped Annie's arm. “Look, why don't I truck it over? You could try it here and there. Special price for an old friend.”

“Well, I don't know, Min,” said Annie cautiously. “I was thinking more of a sundial.”

On the way home she felt slightly tipsy. On Route 2 she stared straight ahead, widening her eyes, concentrating on the traffic rushing ahead of her, beside her, behind her, then ramming on her brakes when the car in front suddenly veered to one side and stopped with a jolt.

Something had run out on the road, some kind of animal. The driver yelled out the window, “Jesus Christ, what the hell do you think you're doing?”

He wasn't yelling at Annie, he was shouting at a small shape on the road. While other cars dodged around her and sounded angry horns, she threw open the door and ran to Eddy.

“Is that your kid?” bellowed the man who had nearly driven over him. “Criminal negligence,” he shouted at Annie, as she hurried Eddy back to her car and pushed him into the front seat.

“Eddy,” she said, working her way back into the slow lane, “what happened? What were you doing out there on the highway?”

“Cambridge,” he said, looking up at her, his voice trembling. “Going to Cambridge.”

Oh, God, thought Annie, he had been trying to follow her to Cambridge. While she had been gossiping with Minnie Peck in the restaurant on JFK Street, poor old Eddy had been stumbling through the woods, fighting his way through the underbrush, heading for the highway. Why didn't Eddy's mother keep a closer watch on Eddy?

At home Annie brought Eddy to the Gasts' front door and confronted Roberta. “I was driving home from Cambridge on Route 2 when he ran out on the road.”

Roberta said, “Oh dear.” She took Eddy's hand and said faintly, “Thank you.”

At home, in her own part of the house, after flinging down her bag, and tearing off her coat, Annie stopped to stare at the wall. The face was back. It was no longer the bleeding blank face of a woman with golden hair. This time it was dark and brutal, with pointed teeth, bulging eyes, and a bright-blue beard.

Chapter 17

“O
h, Flimnap,” said Annie, “I forgot to tell you. Bob Gast wants to know if you could fix some things over there. You know, clogged drains, doors that won't shut.”

Flimnap glanced at her. “Well, okay, fine.” His voice was flat.

“And they say the trapdoor on the floor of the laundry porch is rotten.”

“I'll do that first. It's not rotten, but I wouldn't put it past those people to fall through on purpose and sue you. Mrs. Cast's law firm specializes in that kind of thing.”

“It does! They sue people? How do you know?”

“Ear to the ground.”

It was a typically evasive Flimnappian remark. There were a lot of questions Annie wanted to ask him, such as, “Exactly what is your marital status?” But she knew he'd dodge around them somehow. The truth was probably something like,
Married and divorced, six children in child support.

Flimnap asked Annie a question instead. “What does Bob Gast do? Is he another lawyer?”

Annie wasn't sure. “He's in some kind of real estate, I think. You know, land management, something like that.”

Next day Flimnap began doing things for the Gasts, knocking on their front door, using Annie's key when they weren't at home. After replacing the trapdoor on the side porch, he climbed the stairs with bucket and pipe wrench to work on the stopped-up drain in the bathroom sink.

He was alone in the house. Bob and Roberta Gast were at work, the children were in school. Flimnap put the bucket down softly and began moving around among the bedrooms. One was an elegant master bedroom with a canopied bed. Another was a boy's room, Eddy's, rather spartan. A third was full of dolls and swimming trophies, Charlene's.

There remained the small room on the north side. The door was closed. Flimnap opened it boldly. The room was a study with a desk, a filing cabinet, and an electric typewriter.

Slowly Flimnap walked up to the desk and looked down at the rows of papers, neatly arranged in piles. Was this Roberta's stuff, or her husband's? Or did they both use the room?