Authors: Andrew Coburn
When she finished the letter she realized with a bit of a shock that her handwriting had become almost childlike. She addressed the envelope with decided care and with a lick took the full taste of the stamp, which she pounded into place, her fist the hammer. Then, before tucking the letter inside, she added a postscript.
Terrible rumor going around about the MacGregor boy — too vicious to repeat.
It was after she had sealed the envelope and poured herself another cup of coffee that her thoughts turned to the whole MacGregor family: Arthur MacGregor walking out without so much as a good-bye, leaving poor Luella spinning like a toy, with her daughter, Diane, just entering her teens and Matt still a boy. Then poor Luella worked at some little job in Lawrence till her health went — her heart, she said, though it seemed more like her spirit. But by that time Diane had married well, someone outside the town, and Matt was nearly a man.
Handsome boy, Matt, pug nose and all. He had mowed lawns and delivered papers. He had delivered hers. He had been good at high-school sports, she remembered, his picture in the paper more than once and then again when he became a policeman. Some people — although come to think of it, it may only have been Ethel Fossey — said he had sucked up to the chief to get the appointment. If so, so what? Sometimes it’s the only way you get things.
What she did not understand, however, was what Lydia Lapham saw in him, for there had always seemed more to Lydia than to him. She, for one, had thought the girl would find herself some doctor, which would have pleased Flo. Unlike others in town, she was not surprised that Lydia and Matt had gone together for so long without marrying.
She let her coffee go cold and went outdoors. Waving to a neighbor, she strode down the front walk to leave the letter for the postman. Ropes of sunlight hung from the trees across the street, where children were setting up a lemonade stand. It was another fine day — meant to be enjoyed, she told herself. But when she lowered the lid of the mailbox, a wasp flew out and a chilling thought struck her.
What if? What if?
Her mind raced back into the past and tried to dredge up any occasional streaks of cruelty the boy might have shown.
The father was a queer fish, why not the son?
• • •
Junior Rayball woke hard with crusted eyes and threw off the army blanket with a shiver of excitement. He moved quickly, a human monkey in droopy underdrawers, and peered through the window in hope of seeing a car in the yard. He saw only the pickup, which was shrouded in a morning mist that etherealized the pines.
He padded into the kitchen, where Papa was drinking coffee and eating a slice of bread smeared with blackberry jam. With disappointment breaking his voice, Junior said, “He ain’t here.”
“He’s here,” Papa said in the midst of a chew. “He just ain’t here direct.” Papa winked. “He ain’t like us. He sleeps late.”
“Where is he, he ain’t here direct?”
“Some motel. He flew into Boston. You and me, we ain’t never been on an airplane, have we?”
Junior saw hope. “But he’s comin’.”
“Said he was, didn’t I? You got your story straight?”
“Yes, Papa.”
“You’re in enough trouble as it is. You don’t wanna go wanderin’.”
“Can I tell him you and me went to Boston?”
“Yeah, you can tell him that.”
Smiling, Junior stood crooked and scratched a naked shoulder. The crotch of his drawers were permanently pee-stained, which never failed to annoy Papa, who took a sudden hot swig of coffee. “What’s the matter, Papa?”
“You’d think by now you’d learn to shake it first.”
Junior stepped to the table, looked into the jam jar, and reached for the bread. Papa’s voice was a bark.
“Don’t touch nothin’. You ain’t washed yet.”
Junior slunk back, color in his face. Then he stood straight. “Clement comes, don’t talk to me that way.”
• • •
Chief Morgan ordered scrambled eggs and a hot bun for breakfast. Mitch Brown came out of the kitchen to serve the order himself and cast a questioning glance at Matt MacGregor, who was with the chief. “Sure I can’t get you something, Matt?” Mitch asked. “Coffee?”
MacGregor shook his head. He was not on duty, but he was in uniform, in a way that seemed defiant. The blue shirt was stiff with starch, and the polished shield on his breast glared. His hair was creased, his forehead reddened where his cap had snugged the skin. Drinking the chief’s water, he said, “Word’s got around. People are looking at me funny.”
“You’re imagining it,” Morgan said and glanced at other tables. Malcolm Crandall, the town clerk, averted his eyes, and Fred Fossey, his mouth packed with food, raised his newspaper. At a window table two women, longtime employees of the library, employed their napkins with rapt care.
“You told me to trust you,” MacGregor said, suspicion and jealousy in his tone. “Then I heard you took my girl for a ride. What was that all about?”
“It was a chance to talk.” Morgan stopped eating. “What else would it be?”
“You know.”
“No, I don’t.”
“Yes, you do.”
MacGregor was pitched high, Morgan could see that. He resumed eating. “I’m not going to get into that kind of game with you, Matt.”
“I’m sorry,” MacGregor said and studied his thumbs, the nails bitten. “But this shit going on, it’s not fair. I’m the cop, the good guy, and Bakinowski’s trying to make me the heavy. You haven’t heard the latest. He wants me to take a polygraph.”
“Take it.”
“It’s an insult, God damn it.”
“Take it,” Morgan advised, “and get him off your back.”
“You don’t understand, Chief. Nothing’s going to get him off my back until the real guy comes forward — or we catch him. Do you know what scares me, Chief? That we might
never
catch him.”
Morgan stared at him closely, aware of a void between them. “Hold on, Matt. I’ve been going about this in my own way. Thurman Wetherfield, I know, wouldn’t have done it.”
“I told you that right off the bat.”
“Let me finish. The answer’s with the Rayballs, and I’m working on it, my own way.”
MacGregor, who did not look reassured, drank more water. “All these years you’ve been trying to nail Papa Rayball, everybody knows that, and nobody’s gonna buy it.”
“Let me worry about that.”
MacGregor slapped his cap on and yanked the visor as if to hide the rest of his thoughts. Then he was on his feet. “Face it, Chief. We’re not the big league, we’re semi-pro.”
“Where are you going?”
“Where am I going? I got nowhere to go. I got a cloud over me.”
Morgan watched him leave and then finished off his eggs. He was eating the remainder of the bun when Fred Fossey approached with the newspaper furled tightly under an arm. “I don’t believe it, Chief. I thought about it for a long while and I don’t believe it for a minute.”
“What don’t you believe?”
“What I heard about Matt.” Fossey leaned toward Morgan with wisdom in his eyes. “Besides, he just proved his innocence.”
Morgan pushed his plate aside and used his napkin. “I’m not following you, Fred.”
“He was guilty, he’d have paid for your breakfast.”
• • •
A gas pain gave Sergeant Avery a travesty of a smile. Shifting his weight, he loosed air and hoped Meg O’Brien would not get wind of it. She was taking a call from May Hutchins, whose voice was loud enough for him to hear. Wasps were building a hive in her mailbox, and one had nearly stung her. Meg advised her to buy a certain spray at Tuck’s, but she wanted help and asked specifically for Sergeant Avery, who tried to slip away. Meg’s voice spun him back.
“She’s waiting for you.”
“What for?”
“You heard. Stop at Tuck’s for the spray. She’ll pay you for it.”
“Get somebody else.”
“There’s nobody else.” She stared at him. “You all right?”
He was plugged up, packed in like walnut meat, but he was not going to tell her that. “I’m fine,” he said and, slapping his cap on, headed for the door.
“Eugene.”
He pivoted heavily, assigning Meg a mean streak. “What now?”
“Treat her right. Something’s bothering her more than wasps.”
In the cruiser he farted to his heart’s content and then drove around the green to Tuck’s General Store, which had lost its crackerbarrel look and now resembled a superette. While buying an aerosol can of Ortho Hornet & Wasp Killer, he exhausted his eye on Sissy Alexander, the ballplayer’s wife, who was buying feminine products. The only bribe he had ever taken in his life was from her husband, whom he had stopped for running a stop sign the year the Alexanders moved into town. The bribe was an autographed ball, one of several Crack kept in the glove compartment of his Rolls.
Outside, he watched Sissy Alexander drive away in her Jeep Cherokee, a Red Sox sticker on the back window. The sight of her had keyed him up and gave him a lighter head, and climbing into the cruiser he wondered whether stories he had heard about her and the chief were really true. He hoped not, out of respect for Crack.
May Hutchins’s street stretched narrow under a canopy of trees, mostly maple, some oak. Elms and chestnuts had long vanished. He ran the cruiser into the Hutchinses’ drive, climbed out, and waved to children selling lemonade. As he approached the open mailbox, spray can in hand, May Hutchins came hustling down the walk, which took him aback. She did not look herself without curlers.
“Forget the wasps,” she said. “There was only one.”
“You got me over here for one wasp?” Chagrined, he flourished the aerosol can as if he might spray her with it. “What am I supposed to do with this?”
“Take it back,” she said.
“What did you get me over here for, May?”
She had him by the arm, a daunting grip for a woman not all that big. “Let’s talk,” she said and maneuvered him over the grass, away from mums and marigolds, to the side of the house, where a large maple quivered with life. Leaves quaked. A bird flitted out, and a squirrel tested a branch.
“You can let go of my damn arm,” he said and rubbed it.
“What’s going on, Eugene?” Her eyes were arrows. “It wasn’t any use asking Meg O’Brien, she protects you guys.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I want to know what’s going on.” Anxiety shot color into her cheeks and deepened her voice. “Did Matt MacGregor have anything to do with what happened to the Laphams?”
“Jesus, May!” He reared up in defense of the department, in loyalty to the uniform, though his needed a press and some letting out. “That’s an ugly thing to ask.”
“Just tell me.”
“You know Matt well as I do. He’s twenty-four carat.”
“Sometimes we don’t know people as well as we think.”
Sergeant Avery gave a hitch to his pants. “I don’t know who’s telling you this stuff, but it’s not worth listening to.”
“Flo was my friend.”
“Matt’s mine.”
“If it wasn’t him, who was it?”
Sunlight tore through the maple. Leaves blazed. “Only one fella’s going to find that out,” Sergeant Avery said, “and that’s the chief.”
• • •
Lieutenant Bakinowski had three suits in his working wardrobe: business blue, dim plaid, and steel gray. Today he had on the gray, which gave him a wise and unyielding look. He and Chief Morgan shared a bench on the village green, where a drowsy quiet prevailed. Brushing a sleeve, he said, “I’ve learned something about MacGregor. He’s got money in the bank, more than forty thousand.”
Morgan tilted his head. “That much?”
“He had almost fifty, but a few weeks ago he drew out five. Where’s a cop get that kind of money?”
“There’s an easy answer,” Morgan said.
“I’ll take an easy answer the same as any other kind.”
“His father died four years ago, left behind a good insurance policy. His mother shared the proceeds with him and his sister. His father bought the policy years ago from Earl Lapham, Metropolitan Life. Maybe you can make something of that.”
“I see irony, is all.” Suffering slightly from pollen, Bakinowski delivered a large handkerchief to his nose and blew. “Any idea why he drew out five grand?”
“Ask him.”
“He’ll tell me to go to hell. That’s where we’re at.” Bakinowski seemed to smile. “I was expecting help from you, but I’m not getting it, am I? Your boy won’t even take a polygraph.”
“Ask him again.”
“Would it do any good?”
“It might,” Morgan said, watching two girls in straight-legged jeans cross the green, all the confidence of youth in their strides. “You may have guessed, I have my own theory.”
Bakinowski showed neither surprise nor curiosity. He gave his nose another blow and put away the handkerchief. “You talking about the Rayballs?”
“You’ve heard of them?”
“I’ve heard you got a bug up your ass about the old man. Something about his wife’s death — how long ago, twenty years?”
“I don’t deny I think he killed his wife.”
“Some say it’s an obsession with you.”
“I don’t label it.”
“I don’t want to hurt you, Chief, but if you want people to take you seriously you got to be serious yourself.”
Morgan’s face was set hard. “Do you want to explain that?”
“Sure, if you want me to.” Bakinowski looked up at the sky, an infinity of chalky blue. “I’ve heard people say when you can’t sleep at night you count women’s arses.”
“You’ve got a big mouth.”
“I’m just repeating what I hear. Some folks think you’re a hero for putting something over on the big newcomers in town. They say the women lie with you in their garter belts and with their rich husbands in their bed socks. That true?”
Morgan stirred. “Why don’t you take it for what it’s worth?”
“I hear it everywhere. A fellow at the Blue Bonnet says you put your face in so much pussy you got a hairball in your stomach.”
Morgan’s estimable jaw was clenched. He rose slowly to his feet and for an instant seemed on the verge of yanking Bakinowski along with him. Instead he moved his eyes. Nearby, compliments of the Bensington Garden Club, was a rockery of flowers, the many varieties responding to one another, vying for attention and competing for glory. “Flowers remind me of women,” he said, “do they you?”