Face on the Wall (20 page)

Grasping the second ladder, Eddy went up slowly, setting both feet on every rung. He put his knees on the upper board and crawled forward until it was safe to stand up. Then he moved cautiously to the right, with the board shifting beneath his feet, and stopped in front of the little river scene. There before him was a big mouse standing up in a boat and holding a pair of oars, and another funny animal with glasses perched on his long snout. It was the Water Rat and the Mole from
The Wind in the Willows,
and it was the last wondrous vision of Eddy's life.

Charlene saw everything. She heard the thundering racket and Eddy's cry, she felt the vibration as his body struck the tile floor, she witnessed the final blow. Then there was no sound but weeping, and the rasping voice of a crow in the faraway field,
caw-caw, caw-caw.
The shutter of Cissie Aufsesser's camera had made no sound at all as it opened and closed. Nor was there a sudden flash of light, because the brilliant sunshine of midday flooded the room from Annie's four tall windows.

Charlene put the camera in her pocket and said, “I'll tell.”

Only then did her father turn around, his shoulders shaking with sobs, and see his daughter standing in the doorway.

“Oh, my Lord Fish,” said the fisherman, calling to him above the rumble of thunder, “my wife is still unhappy.”

The great fish gazed up at him from the water and said softly, “But she is rich and young and beautiful. Is that not enough?”

“I am sorry, Lord Fish, but she wants to be Queen of the land.”

The fish looked at him gravely, and murmured, “Go home. It shall be as she desires.” And then he sank down into the deepest part of the sea.

Chapter 31

A
nnie lugged her books from the car to the front door. She had to set them down on the broad stone step in order to unlock the door and push it open. Then she transferred the books to the hall table, hung up her coat, and dodged into the laundry, where she took the wet towels out of the washing machine and shoved them into the dryer.

It was a routine job, postponing for a moment the discovery that her life had taken a new and disastrous turn. Not until she picked up the books and carried them into the living room did she see what had happened. At once her arms went limp, and the books fell to the floor.

In the general wreckage of collapsed ladders, fallen boards, and smashed jars of paint she did not at first see Eddy, because his small body was obscured by her big plastic tarp. But when she came closer, cursing, there he was, and she cried, “Eddy, oh, Eddy,” and fell to her knees beside him.

It was clear that he was dead. His small round head was flattened against the tile floor in an ooze of blood. Annie wrenched herself around and stared at the French door. It was open, it was wide open, swinging a little in the cool spring breeze. But she had locked the door, she had locked it!

But there it was, wide open, and Bob Gast was running into the room, followed by three men in uniform. When he saw Annie, he shouted at her, “Get away from my son. You killed him, you bitch, you killed him.”

Annie opened her mouth to protest, but she had no voice.

“Move out of the way, miss,” said the sergeant in charge, coming closer and looking down at Eddy. “This is your house?”

“Yes.” Shaking, Annie stood up, stumbling over the fallen ladder. One of the uniformed officers took her arm and drew her out of the way, beyond the big littered table. There was something unfamiliar on the table. It was Eddy's new picture, the one he had given her that morning, saying,
I
made it for you.

Annie picked it up. It was a portrait of herself. There she was in her denim workshirt with every button glowing like a pearl, and her face—her face—Annie put the picture down and began to cry.

The sergeant stared at the wrecked scaffolding and ignored her. “He's laying on top of all this mess. Wheels on the apparatus, must've rolled. Look; see, the wheels aren't locked.” He looked up at the painted wall and spoke to Annie. “This is your work?”

Annie mopped her sleeve over her face and looked up too. There, high above the place where Eddy's body lay on the floor, were the new figures she had painted that morning, Rat and Mole in their boat on the river. Eddy had climbed the ladder to see them, trusting the scaffolding to hold him, but it had not.

The sergeant turned to Bob Gast. “What was the youngster doing here? Why wasn't he at home?”

“Ask her,” said Gast angrily. “She taught him to climb that shaky ladder and bounce around on those narrow boards.” His voice mounted in fury. “He was always over here. He could come in anytime. She went away and left the door open. She killed him. It's her fault. She killed my little son.”

Annie pulled herself together and spoke up, her voice sounding shrill in her own ears. “But I locked the door before I left. I did, I swear I did. I always lock the door when I go out. I lock both doors.”

“Then how come it's open?” Gast was shouting now. He pointed at the door. “You went away and left it open so my innocent little son could come in, and so of course he did, and of course he climbed the ladder, and you hadn't even locked those goddamn wheels, so the thing rolled right out from under him.” Gast whirled around to the detective sergeant, who was looking at him mournfully. “What do you call it? There's a legal term for it, ‘attractive nuisance.' She enticed Eddy over here day after day, and she didn't do a damn thing to protect him, my poor helpless little boy. She's no better than a murderer.” He was crying now. He turned back to Annie. “I'll sue you. I'll sue you for every cent you've got. You murdered my little son.”

“No, no, I didn't, I didn't.” Annie was overwhelmed by a nightmare sense of unfairness. Her grief for Eddy turned to anger. She clenched her fists. “It was your fault. You didn't care what happened to Eddy, you and Roberta, you didn't care at all.”

“Who else has keys to this place?” said the detective loudly, trying to restore order.

“He has a key,” said Annie, pointing a trembling finger at Bob Gast. “I gave you a key, remember? That weekend I went away? I gave Roberta a key.”

“We gave it back,” shouted Gast.

So they had. It was the key with a tag, “Annie's house,” lying in a tangle of other keys in a kitchen drawer, along with the pliers and the hammer. “My aunt, Mary Kelly, she has one.”

“Homer Kelly's wife?” said the police sergeant. “She's your aunt? Anybody else?”

Annie tried to think. Her mind was a blank. She shook her head.

“Nobody else has a key to this house, just you and your aunt?”

“That's right.”

They all turned their heads. There was a noise, the small rattle of a key in a lock, the sound of the front door opening and closing. Flimnap walked in from the hall.

“Oh, of course,” said Annie lamely. “I forgot.”

Chapter 32

“Have you not seen Death go by, with my little child?”

Hans Christian Andersen, “The Story of a Mother”

T
hey were finished with Annie, they were finished with the wreckage in her house. A couple of medical technicians carried Eddy's body outside on a stretcher. Bob Gast, his face streaked with tears, followed them out the front door. Roberta brought up the rear, weeping, holding Charlene by the hand. Charlene's eyes were dry.

Only the three police officers remained, tall dignified men in blue uniforms with leather holsters attached to their belts, and keys that jingled when they moved. With the departure of the Gasts, they gathered around Flimnap. They were dissatisfied with his refusal to explain where he had been. “Okay, Mr. O'Dougherty, it's a simple question. We just want to know where you went, and what for?”