Face on the Wall (23 page)

The class was mesmerized. They gazed at Mrs. Rutledge. Some had their mouths open.

Mary put down the projector and waited until Mrs. Rutledge closed the book and stood up to make an announcement. “Class, I have something very sad to tell you this morning. There has been a death in Charlene's family. Last week there was an accident, and her little brother was killed.” There were real tears in Mrs. Rutledge's eyes. “Eddy was eight years old. He was going to a special school. I'm sure you will all want to show your sympathy for Charlene.”

Everyone looked inquisitively at Charlene Gast. Charlene stared straight ahead and said nothing.

“It was so brave of you, dear, not to miss a day of school,” continued Mrs. Rutledge. “But we all know what a courageous young woman you are.” With relief she changed the subject to something jollier. “Charlene, is it true that a big swimming meet is coming up soon?”

Charlene's impassive expression disappeared. She beamed. “Next week it's the New England championships in Providence. After that I go to Orlando, Florida, for the Eastern Division Finals. The three top swimmers get to compete in the Junior Olympics.”

Breaths were sucked in. How exciting! Charlene would soon be an Olympic swimmer! Mrs. Rutledge clasped her hands. “Is this the one I read about, with Cindy—?”

“Foxweiler.” Charlene grinned. “Oh, right. But it's okay. I can swim faster than Cindy Foxweiler.”

There were squeals of delight. Applause. Becca Smith waggled her hand in the air. “I saw her on TV! Cindy Foxweiler!”

“All right, class,” said Mrs. Rutledge. “Now, just calm down. Thank you, Charlene. You know we'll all be cheering for you. Now, girls, quiet down, please, for Mrs. Kelly's thrilling slide talk about—what is it about, Mrs. Kelly?”

“Greek architecture,” said Mary grimly.

“How exciting! Cissie, would you close the curtains? Now, girls, you heard what I said,
quiet down!”

The news of the death of Charlene's little brother hardly made a dent in the consciousness of the fifth-grade class at Weston Country Day. Later that morning Mary watched them run around the playground. Her amateur psychological study of fifth-grade sociopathology was still in progress. It was obvious that an alarming virus was spreading among these eighteen ten-year-old girls. Mrs. Rutledge was nominally in charge, but in truth she was only a figurehead. Charlene Gast was commander-in-chief. She towered over the rest. They clustered around her, circling and giggling, vying for her attention.

Today Eddy's bereaved sister seemed especially gleeful.

Chapter 35

“Go to the right, into the dark forest of fir-trees; for I saw Death take that road with your little child.”

Hans Christian Andersen, “The Story of a Mother”

H
omer looked at his watch. It was ten o'clock on Saturday morning. He was bored with his documentary history of the town of Concord, tired of waiting for news from Bill Kennebunk, sick of being nagged by his wife to do something about her niece's troubles.

But Annie's troubles were terrible enough to nag him on their own. Homer gazed out the window at the bend of the river. No wind ruffled the surface of the water. The red haze of the trees on the other shore had given way to a delicate veil of green leaves. Homer drummed his fingers on the table. What if he were to pay those lovable Gasts a friendly visit? Once again it amused him, the idea of barging in uninvited, lifting up a rock to watch the loathsome bugs scamper away from the light.

Now he stood up cautiously and minced around the papers on the floor, only once losing his balance and sending the notes for an entire decade sailing across the room.

Roberta Gast opened the door, and said, “Oh.”

“Hi there,” said Homer cheerfully. “I just thought I'd pay you a call.” He looked past Roberta at the front hall. “I've always liked this house. My nephew John used to live here.” When Roberta still stood immobile, staring at him, he said, as if it explained everything, “Annie's brother.”

“Oh,” said Roberta again. “Well, come in.” She stood back, and Homer walked past her into the hall. In spite of his familiarity with the house, he hardly recognized it. In John and Helen's time it had been dignified and bare, with only a few pieces of furniture making stark patterns against the walls. Now it was fussy with carpets, curtains, and bric-a-brac. Over a mantel hung a huge mirror with a fantastic gilt frame. The rest of the furniture was handsome too, but somehow phony—expensive replicas of antiques.

Furtively he inspected the seat of his pants, then sat down on a spotless sofa,
George III Chippendale, serpentine cresting, claw-and-ball feet, circa 1760
. Roberta sat opposite on a splendid side chair,
Williamsburg, Queen Anne, cabriole legs, vase-shaped splat.

She looked wary. Her lip was firmly buttoned. By a trick of optics her face appeared before him twice, once across the room and once in the shining mirror.
Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who is wickedest of all
?

Roberta offered nothing in the way of comfortable small talk to the fumbling guest. Homer rattled on about the old days. Foolishly he mentioned John's spider collection, and asked if she ever came across descendants of John's dear old barn spiders. “Sort of fuzzy creatures, with big round webs?”

Roberta shuddered. “God, no. My cleaning lady comes twice a week.”

Homer leaned forward and turned sober. “My wife and I are so sorry about your boy.”

Roberta grimaced, and said, “Thank you.”

Homer blundered on, as though entirely unaware that the Gasts were suing Mary's niece. “So strange, the way he got into Annie's house. You people didn't have a key, did you? Children are so curious. Eddy might have found a key somewhere, and used it? You know, the way a child might do?”

Roberta bridled, and said, “Of course not.” The button on her lip had become a closed zipper.

Homer floundered around in his head and produced another question. “I gather there were other incidents. Could you tell me any other things that happened, unavoidable accidents?”

Roberta no longer had a mouth at all. The lower part of her face was a block of cement. She stared at him venomously.

Homer stood up, and chuckled. “Well, I'd better be going. I'll drop in on Annie, and see what she's up to.”

Roberta did not accompany him to the door. He shambled out, shouting cheerful farewells, and walked around the house to Annie's front door. Annie answered his knock at once and let him in. She looked drawn and pale.

“I should have remembered,” said Homer. “That woman is some kind of lawyer, right?”

“What woman?”

“Mrs. Gast.”

“Yes, unfortunately. She's with the firm that's suing me. Come on in, Uncle Homer.”

“I just stopped in over there. She didn't exactly roll out the red carpet. I asked her if they have a key to your place, and she said no.”

“My God, Uncle Homer, what nerve! Did you expect her to answer a question like that?”

“Well, probably not. But you said you loaned them your key, right? So before they gave it back they could have had it copied. Have you still got it?”

Annie went to the kitchen counter and opened a drawer. “Here it is. It's got a tag.”

Homer looked at the tag, which said “Annie's house,” and stroked his chin. “When was this?”

“Last month sometime. Before—” She reached for her calendar. “Yes, here it is.” She showed it to Homer, the scrawl across the spaces for March 27 and 28. “I went to New York with my little sister. Miranda and I saw a couple of plays.”

“Ah,” said Homer, “just three weeks before Eddy's death. How very interesting. May I keep this key for a white? You don't happen to have a picture of those people, do you?”

“The Gasts? Why, yes, I think so.” Annie took a shoebox from a bookshelf. “I ought to paste these in a scrapbook, but I never get around to it.” She groped in the box and pulled out a picture. “I took it just after they moved in.” Her voice hardened. “When we were all such jolly friends.”

It was a family picture. There they were, the Gasts, lined up before their new front door. Roberta's mouth, now so firmly cemented shut, was wide open in a toothy grin. Bob was smiling too, and so were Eddy and Charlene. “What a
sweet
young family,” murmured Homer.

“Adorable.”

Homer pocketed the picture, patted Annie's back awkwardly, and said goodbye. In his car on the way home he thought about all the places where a key could be copied. Oh, Christ, there were so many.

Impulsively he ignored the turnoff for Fair Haven Road, turned left on Route 62, and parked in front of Biggy's Hardware Store in West Concord.

It was an upmarket hardware store. Besides the usual tools, grass rakes, lawn mowers, trash cans, weed killers, and other murderous substances, it had an interior-decorating department with custom-mixed paint in colonial colors and samples of upholstery fabric. Homer thought of Roberta Gast's flossy furniture. This was surely her kind of hardware store.

“Do you people make keys?” he asked the guy at the counter.

“We sure do. Hand it over.”

“No, I don't need a key.” Homer pulled out the picture of the Gast family. “I'm looking into a case of B and E, breaking and entering—you know, burglary—and I wondered—”

“You a cop?”

Sighing, Homer produced the well-worn card that identified him as a lieutenant detective, the one dating from many years back. Displaying it as legitimate accreditation was increasingly ticklish. This time the guy behind the counter looked at it carefully and glanced up at Homer suspiciously. “Hey, fella, this isn't you.”

“Oh, that was before I grew whiskers,” said Homer, grinning foolishly.

“And the date, this card's no good. What are you trying to pull?”

Homer put the card away and tried a fallback approach, telling the truth. “Look, the people in this picture are suing my niece, claiming she's responsible for the death of their son. They say she left the door open while she was out, and the little kid got in and had a fatal accident.”

“Oh, yeah, I read about it in the Concord paper. Kid was retarded, right?”

“Down's syndrome. Tell me, did you copy a key for these people?”

Doubtfully the hardware-store clerk looked at the key. “I didn't copy anything with a tag. Maybe Ron did. I just work weekends. And I don't recognize anybody in this picture. Come back Monday. Ask Ron.”

At Vanderhoof's Hardware, on the Milldam, it was the same. “Sure, sometimes the keys have tags, but I don't remember this one.” The proprietor bent over the picture. “I think that guy comes in here sometimes.” He called to his clerk. “Do you recognize this guy? Didn't he buy some antifreeze in here one time?”

“Right. He's been in here a couple of times. Bought a bunch of twenty-five-watt candle-flame bulbs. Couple dozen, for a chandelier.”

Homer dangled the key in front of him. “Can you remember if he had a key copied?”

“Not as far as I know,” said the proprietor, glancing at the clerk.

“Nope,” agreed the clerk. “I didn't cut a key for him. I'd remember it if I had.”

Homer went out to the sidewalk, telling himself Gast would have been a fool to have his key copied smack in the middle of town. He went home and showed the key and the picture to Mary, and growled about his suspicions.

“There's a hardware store in Lexington,” said Mary. “You could try that one. And there must be others in Bedford and Sudbury. Probably every town around here has a hardware store. And don't forget Boston. Roberta works in Boston.”

“Oh, good. That's just great. My God.” Then Homer noticed an appalling orderliness in the living room. “Good Lord, what happened? You didn't pick up my papers” He looked around in a panic. “Where are they? Where the hell are they?”