Loonies (8 page)

“Good afternoon,” Leo Wibbels said, rising from the chair behind his desk and extending his hand. Leo had a pinched, bulldog face topped with silver peach-fuzz hair and squinting eyes.

Brian shook his hand.

“What can I do for you?” the real estate agent/fruit seller asked.

Brian dropped into the chair in front of the desk as Wibbels sat.

“I was wondering if you knew where Ruth Snethen lives now.”

Wibbels shook his head. “Those State Police guys asked me that too, but I wasn’t able to help them either.”

“She didn’t buy another property after selling her house?”

The man shrugged. “If she did, she didn’t use me as her agent.” He leaned back in his chair and scratched his head. “I thought she made some comment about moving into a retirement home, over near Keene somewhere.”

Brian didn’t really hope for much here but figured it was worth a shot.

“That’s pretty crazy about that trunk in your house,” Wibbels said.

“Yeah,” Brian said. “And it’s not surprising that she didn’t take it with her.”

“I don’t know why she didn’t throw the damn thing in the dump.” Wibbels leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I mean, why hold on to something like that? Especially knowing what was in it. How could she even sleep at night, with that box of horrors right above her in the attic?”

“I know,” Brian said, thinking how he and Darcie had spent several months with it above their bedroom. Of course, they didn’t know it was up there and what was in it.

He thought about something Wibbels had said. “Did Ruth know what was in it?”

“Huh?” Wibbels grunted.

Brian hadn’t realized he had spoken out loud.

“Nothing,” he said, rising from his seat. “Thanks, anyway.” He extended his hand and Wibbels slapped an apple in it.

“Here, on the house,” he said with a grin.

“Thanks,” Brian said and left the office, waving to the clerk on his way out the door and still thinking he had seen the man somewhere.

On the sidewalk he bit into the fruit. It was soft. He fumbled the Garden Club flier out of his back pocket. A map on the interior showed the locations of the homes in the tour. The closest was just around the corner, on the street behind the library. He could walk to it. He headed up Main Street, tossing the disappointing fruit in a garbage can chained to a lamppost.

A paved walkway between the library and the elementary school on Main Street led to the homes on Cricket Lane. When Brian got there, a few women were milling about in the front yard gardens of a small Cape-style home. A white picket fence enclosed the front yard. Several rose bushes grew along the fence, sporting red flowers.

Once inside the front yard, he removed the camera from his bag and started taking pictures of the spectators admiring the bushes lining the picket fence and the front of the house. He approached a couple of the women, introducing himself, and asked what they thought of the tour. He scribbled their comments and then asked if they minded him taking their photograph looking at the flowers. They were thrilled, of course, and he snapped a couple of pictures.

He thanked them, turned to look for other shots, and came face to face with Mrs. Picklesmeir.

The large woman startled him.

“Hello,” he said, with a big smile.

“Mr. Keays,” she said. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I weren’t seeing it with my own eyes.”

Brian faked a laugh. “I told you I would be here.”

“And how many homes have you visited?”

He hesitated, almost afraid to answer. Boy, he thought, Steem and Wickwire should enlist her for their side.

“This is the first.”

“Humph.” Her eyes bore into him, and sweat seeped down the back of his neck. He could not hold her gaze and looked away.

“Very beautiful,” was the only thing he could think of saying while looking as some unknown flower. “What is that?”

“Delphinium.” She offered no more.

“I like it.” He turned to face her but she had already walked off and was now chatting with the two elderly women he had just photographed.

A wooden bench stood beside a stone bird bath, and Brian sat to jot some notes in his pad. He was wondering how to describe some of the plants when he heard whistling and looked up, spotting someone on the roof of the house across the street. It was the chimney sweep he had spied across from his house the other day. The man, grimy and black, was pushing a wire brush attached to a long handle into the mouth of the chimney. The man wore the same outfit—black coat with tails, dark shirt, and top hat. Brian wondered how comfortable it could be wearing a costume like that on a roof on a hot summer day. It might have made for a good publicity gimmick, but didn’t seem very practical.

“Brian?”

He looked up, drawn out of his daze, to see his wife.

“What are you doing here?” he asked.

She looked disappointed in him. “I told you before you left this morning that I was going to take in the garden tour. Remember?”

“Oh, sure.” He didn’t. “Having a good time?”

She sat down on the bench beside him. “Yes, very much so.” She was smiling. “It’s given me so many wonderful ideas for our own yard. I can’t wait to get started.”

“Great,” he said, and he really meant it. It would give her something to do and take her mind off the awful thing she had found in their home and the ongoing story that was unfolding because of it.

“I hope you’ll be able to help me with it.”

He feigned enthusiasm but really didn’t offer any kind of answer, just nodded politely.

“I was also thinking,” she said, “that I’d like us to go to church Sunday.”

“Church?” And he knew from her expression that he had used an inappropriate tone. They had not been in a church since their wedding day.

“Yes.”

“What’s brought that on?”

“I heard that there’s going to be a Mass in special remembrance for the children.”

He was confused. “Whose children?”

Her face flushed red, and he immediately regretted asking the question.

“The children found in our home.” He felt her distaste in the enunciation of her words.

“Oh.” How stupid could he be?

“You do realize they were human beings, don’t you. They weren’t just bones in a box.”

“Of course,” he said, patting her knee. “I didn’t mean it to sound that way. I’ve just got so much stuff rumbling around in my head from these past couple days.”

She stood. “You know, you’re not the only one.”

He looked up at her and felt like a child.

“I’m sorry, dear. Of course, we can go to the Mass.”

“Thank you,” she said. “Now I think I will go take a look at some of these beautiful flowers. I’ll see you back at home later.”

“Yes,” he said, and then added, “I’m not sure when.”

“Of course,” she said, and walked away.

Brian left the garden tour knowing that he wasn’t going to stop at any of the other houses. Mrs. Picklesmeir be damned. There were more important things to spend his time on. He walked back to Main Street, stopping at the convenience store for a small purchase that he shoved in his camera bag. His next stop was the police, and Wanda greeted him when he walked in.

“Noah in?” he asked, though he could see the chief through the glass window of his office. Noah looked up and waved him in.

Brian dropped into the chair in front of the chief’s desk, noticing the ashen appearance of Noah’s face and assuming that something was wrong.

“I know it was arson,” Brian said, taking a guess. “I already talked to Fire Chief Shives.”

Noah looked up, with an expression that said he wasn’t paying attention to Brian. Then he nodded. “Yeah, well, there wasn’t much doubt about that. They found a couple gas cans at the scene.”

“Then what’s the look for?”

Noah met his gaze. “Just got off the phone with Capt. Steem. He heard from the county medical examiner.”

“And?” Brian leaned forward.

“Dr. Wymbs didn’t die in the fire.” The chief paused for reaction. Brian had none. “The doctor was already dead. It’s been ruled a homicide. Steem’s in charge of the investigation, of course.” Noah ran his hand through his sandy hair and blew out a deep breath.

“Murdered,” was all Brian could come up with. “Did he say how?”

“Strangled,” Noah said. “With his own bow tie.”

“Wow,” Brian said. “The fire must have been set to cover it up.”

Noah stood and paced behind his desk, pausing to look out his window to the street beyond. “There hasn’t been a murder in Smokey Hollow since.…” He didn’t finish, just shook his head.

Brian finished it for him. “Since someone stuffed five little babies into a steamer trunk?”

Noah’s head turned sharply toward him. “We don’t know what that was yet.”

Brian stood as well. “How else did they end up there?” He took his camera out of his case. “Let me show you something.” He scrolled through his pictures, past the shots of people admiring the flowers on the house on Cricket Lane, till he got to the one of the crowd of onlookers at the fire scene. He showed it to the chief. “See that woman there?” he said, pointing to the woman standing off to the side. “Do you know her?”

Noah examined it for a moment, and then shook his head. “Doesn’t look familiar.”

“That’s Ruth Snethen.”

Noah’s eyes widened. “She was at the fire?”

“Yes, watching the place burn to the ground. And none of us knew she was there.”

The chief sat down. “Steem has had no luck trying to find her.”

“All he had to do was turn around.”

“Why was she there?”

“Very good question,” Brian said. “Watching her former place of employment burn to the ground and her former boss with it?”

“What are you suggesting?”

Brian didn’t want to sit. He was too excited. “I’m not suggesting anything. Just look at what’s happened. I find a steamer trunk of baby skeletons in the house that I bought from Ruth Snethen, who just happens to be a retired nurse who used to work at the Wymbs Institute, which burns to the ground the very next night, and the only thing inside is the strangled body of the doctor who ran the place.”

“Coincidence?” The chief’s brow furrowed.

Brian looked down at him in frustration. “That’s not the feeling I get in my gut.”

“Steem’s going to want to look at that picture of yours.”

“Yeah,” Brian said. “But I’m going to want some mutual cooperation.”

He thought about telling the chief about the mysterious note he had received but decided to keep it to himself. It might be important, but it came from someone who wanted to keep quiet.

Brian thought of something. “Almost forgot, Wymbs’ housekeeper was in that crowd shot, too.”

“Really. I was talking about her with Steem earlier. No one seems to know who she is or where she is. She’s the only other person we know who was working at the institute. She could clue us in on the other staff members and patients.”

“And where the hell they all went.”

“It just doesn’t make any sense,” the chief said. “They had to have some staff on duty overnight, even if it was just a skeleton crew.”

“Ooh, bad choice of words,” Brian said, chuckling.

The chief grinned and Brian was glad. That was the look he was used to seeing on the young man’s face, not this grim mask.

“Any records in the place went up in flames. Who knows how many were confined there.”

“Maybe it was a mass break out.” Brian was only half-serious.

“The lunatics leaving the asylum?” His grin looked mad.

“You said it.”

“Or maybe there was just nobody there.” His gaze met Brian’s, only he wasn’t smiling.

Brian’s house was empty when he got home, and he called Darcie to see if she was still on the garden tour.

“I’m just heading to the supermarket,” she said. “I should be home shortly.”

“Okay,” he said, grateful to have a few minutes home alone.

He walked outside the back door to the small yard behind their house. He had his camera bag with him.

An old maple at the back of the yard rose taller than the roof of his house, its limbs extending almost to the boundary of his lawn. Many of the branches were dead, devoid of bark, skeletal, creaking in the slight breeze that cooled the ending of the hot summer day. A hole in the trunk, about eye level, looked like a gaping mouth. Above it were two eyelike knots that gave the whole trunk the impression of a face, its mouth open in a scream.

Brian approached the tree. He removed his purchase out of the camera bag—a pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. He tore open the package, glancing over his shoulder at the back of the house, making sure no one was there. He plugged a cigarette into his mouth and lit it. He took a deep drag with his eyes closed.

It was the first one he’d had since they moved to Smokey Hollow, and it felt good. He could already feel his nerves relaxing. Darcie would be furious if she found out. When they decided to get married, she said he would have to quit smoking. It was time to be responsible, she told him, and think about the importance of being a family and having children and setting good examples for them.

She let him do it gradually, and it hadn’t been too hard. Once he got to Smokey Hollow, he didn’t miss it at all. The pace of the city crime beat in Boston stimulated the urge to smoke. But this town had changed all that…until the events of the past few days. Now the craving had come clawing back, and he caved in to it. But he’d need to keep it hidden.

He sucked one last drag on the butt and stamped it out on the side of the tree. He tossed the butt into the hole in the tree and tucked the matches under the cellophane wrapper of the pack and put it into the hole as well. There was no chance his wife would go poking around there.

He looked at the tree, thinking how unhealthy it looked. It should probably come down before it crashed onto their house. Their bedroom window was in line with it. Those dead limbs would smash through the window like hands trying to rip them from their bed.

He opened another pocket to his camera bag and took out a bottle of antacid tablets, another staple from his days on the Boston beat. He popped a couple of the fruit-flavored tablets into his mouth, crunching down on them. As he walked to the rear door of the house, he turned and looked back to make sure the cigarette package couldn’t be seen. The gaping hole in the trunk beneath those dark knot-eyes no longer looked like it was screaming. It looked more like it was laughing at him.