Authors: Christopher Bollen
B
efore the eleven o’clock funeral mass, Lisa Muldoon performed a private ceremony on her family’s front lawn. Wearing a black wool dress and midnight blue stockings, she carried a bag of sunflower seeds up the driveway and stopped at a giant oak. The tree’s highest branches were gnarled by the fire, but its lowest branch still supported a Plexiglas bird feeder shaped like a translucent lighthouse. Lisa unhooked the feeder and poured in the seeds. She returned the feeder to its chain and stepped back to watch it buoy in the morning light. Her grandparents stood behind her, clutching a blanket.
It didn’t take long for the birds to find the food. Perhaps they remembered it from past winters, when Theo kept it stocked as part of his chores. The finches were first, pecking down the oak and flitting on the feeder’s saucer perch. Female cardinals in their dreary roses and browns soon displaced them, until they too were frightened away by woodpeckers. On the ground, squirrels competed for fallen seeds, gnawing on the husks with their apelike fingers.
Lisa watched for half an hour as the feeder became a cluster of whirling feathers, the same way that flies clustered on roadkill, the same way that, an hour from now, mourners would cluster around Lisa on the steps of the church, trying to hug her or whisper sympathies in her ear. She curled the top of the bag and turned, her lips quivering, her eyes purposely avoiding the blackened carcass of the house. Her grandmother wrapped the blanket around her, and they
proceeded down the driveway past four piles of snow. The snowmen had dissolved from a spike in temperature. The Muldoon house was two days away from demolition.
That morning, Beth sat at her kitchen table, performing her own remembrance of the dead. She flipped through Jeff Trader’s journal, trying to discern the reason Magdalena had been so adamant about getting it back. Most of the entries started out the same: “check boiler, pilot light, garbage lids, window locks, fire alarms, drainpipes, sterilize well with tablet, mow lawn, replace pool cover, install storm windows . . .” Variations depended upon the wealth of the tenant and the size of the house: “spray wasp nest in shed,” “let in Whirlpool repairman,” “sponge redwood dining room floor with Du Mur Lubricated Polish.” She scanned the first several lines and flicked to another page. Not for the first time, Beth missed the tenement apartments of Manhattan, how they crumbled around her in relentless decay, but as a renter it wasn’t her problem. In contrast, the houses of Orient were hungry, crib-sick babies in constant need of attention. How much effort went into maintaining those dilapidated shells.
If Jeff had any dealings with the historical board, Beth couldn’t find them in the pages. Why had he warned Magdalena about OHB on his last visit? Was it that bleak warning alone that had caused her to change her will? Mike Gilburn was right. OHB lost more than it gained in Magdalena’s death. And now the head of that board was also dead, to be buried that afternoon under the eyes of its remaining members—Ted and Sarakit Herrig, George Morgensen, Max Griffin, Helen Floyd, Kelley Flanner, Archie Young. Since the death of the Muldoons, Beth had heard nothing further about the call for development rights. Talk of conservancy had disappeared like talk of mutant animals on Plum—a bigger storm had pushed those coastal clouds away.
Beth found the page that listed her own address. She read the tasks that Jeff had done for her mother. “Rake leaves, clean pool filters, unclog gutters, change front door lock, sweep chimney and
flue”—the list was instructive. No wonder the old creaker had been slowly falling apart in the six months she and Gavril had moved in: they had done none of these basic chores. But suddenly midparagraph, the list morphed into a different entry, the kind that spoke of human failings in need of very different repair. “$80,000 in savings, second divorce finalized, car insurance defaulted, condo brochures, hated by all, dependence on prescription painkillers, cosmetic-surgery costs on long-term payment plan, collection agency calls unreturned, sells Laurito’s sailboat.” At the bottom of the page, Jeff Trader had written a single word:
yes
.
Beth jumped as she heard the mail drop through the slot and scatter in the hall. But her heart continued to skip as she reread the entry. Jeff Trader’s depiction of her mother was as accurate as it was unkind. She flipped through the book again, and in the middle of each list, the information mutated from odd jobs to secrets, just as Mills had said. The Drake home: “H unhappy, little revenue in home business, C doesn’t want children, C passed over as law partner, H + B affair, C football gambling addiction.” Jeff Trader hadn’t been snooping through Holly’s drawers for money. He had been snooping for secrets to record in his journal. At the bottom of the Drake page was the word
yes
.
Beth located Magdalena’s page—“install grip bar in bathroom, restock firewood, order netting for hives, 83 with heart trouble, fight with B over initiative, concerned about price of farmhouse sale, hides jewelry in armoire from nurse’s son, suspicious of two city artists”—and at the bottom of her page was the damning word again:
yes
. She turned the pages haphazardly. She found the Floyds: “Five children, three live at home/help with farm work” and at the bottom
no
. The Muldoons: “B three affairs at Seaview, oldest son bad grades, daughter in college, paying full tuition, youngest takes pills for ADHD, P sees therapist, B’s security contracts flagging” and then
no
. The Herrigs: “S travel business near bankruptcy, second mortgage on home, T yearly earning $53,000, three adopted children, five credit cards at limit, T sells second car, divorce papers sent but shredded, PFarms
targeting city buyers as last-ditch effort,” and at the bottom
no
. Luz Wilson and Nathan Crimp: “millionaires, pornography collection, no children, looking to buy more land, L writes $3000 checks to family in Trenton, N cashes $30,000 checks from family in Boston, no debt, drug problem, new speedboat,” and the word
maybe
. Arthur Cleaver was a blank page except for the word
yes
. Isaiah Goodman and Vince Donnelly: “openly gay, openly everything, I wants to move to Hamptons, V environmental fanatic, money troubles,”
yes
. Karen Norgen: “bitter about artists, low on money, cancerous lump benign, fight with Morgensen over bushes, passed over as board member,”
maybe
. Roe diCorcia: “corn crop failed, two seasons, gov farm subsidy denied, oldest child mental illness, possible incest, fight with B over water main, private meeting with superintendent,” and the word, as black as Jeff Trader’s laugh:
yes
.
Beth went on reading, peering with Jeff through the doors of each home, where owners’ secrets and sufferings were left out on counters or tucked quietly into drawers. Thanks to his pickle jar of keys, the caretaker had unlimited access to a world of hurt, and it would have hurt anyone he’d worked for if their secrets had been exposed. Beth felt certain that Jeff Trader had been killed over this cache of broken confidences. Had “yes” marked the people he had blackmailed? The people who could be blackmailed? The weakest and most desperate of Orient homeowners? Holly Drake had admitted having a final argument with Jeff Trader; perhaps he’d threatened her. How much had it been worth to Holly to keep her affair from her husband? And how many others had folded and given Jeff money in return for his silence? The last page of the book documented sums of money: $200, $150, $500, $2,000. Were those the prices of keeping quiet?
She pictured Jeff Trader drowning, realizing as his mouth slipped under the water that he’d mistaken the trust of a man or woman who had mistaken his trust first. She thought of Tommy Muldoon, also being buried that afternoon. Mills had said that Tommy might have had the reckless intentions of a blackmailer. Had he too been
murdered for trying to exploit the book’s contents? Or was his mere possession of the book a cause for arson? She pulled out a note tucked in the book, a piece of thick card stock decorated with a drawing of an oyster shell: “Orient’s real threat is its trust.”
The book was a matter for Mike Gilburn. Only Mills and Mike knew she had it. Even if she gave it to Mike, the killer might learn that she’d read it. How quickly would this house burn? She pictured a map of Orient marked by
yes
es and
no
s, each a flame consuming its wick, held from the wind by a tin-shaped house to keep it from spreading. In Manhattan, no one cared about a neighbor’s missteps over love or money. In Orient, such sins were unforgivable, unforgotten. Better to move than to face a village that knew the exact make and color of shame.
A car pulled into the driveway. Beth watched as a slender figure passed the windows and opened the kitchen door.
“Don’t look so surprised,” Gail said as she let herself in. She wore silken burgundy, and her low-heeled pumps brought her down to her daughter’s height. “I
did
know them forever. I feel like it’s my duty to pay my respects.” Her recently shoddy hair and nails had been restored to full chemical shine, befitting a woman preparing to bid farewell to her old Orient enemies. First Magdalena, now the Muldoons. Who was left but Beth and Gavril to stand between Gail and her native dominion?
There was only one problem: Beth was also wearing burgundy, a wool sweater and thick, twill pants, like a faded photograph of her mother in her prime.
“We’ll look like stewardesses,” Beth said as she poured Gail a cup of coffee.
“It’s a good thing I stopped by, then. You still have time to change.”
Beth set the cup on the counter and pulled the journal from the table. “I asked you once about Jeff Trader,” Beth reminded her. Gail sighed and headed for the downstairs bathroom, where she busied herself straightening the hand towels. “I’m going to ask you a strange question and I’d appreciate an honest answer.”
“I’m always honest,” her mother called.
“Did Jeff Trader ever try to use anything against you?”
“Use anything? Against me?” The voice was an echo. “You mean like a weapon? Honey, I’m sure I wasn’t his type.”
“No, I mean, like blackmail. Did he ever try to extort money from you? Something he knew about that he could use against you?” The majority of Trader’s list on her mother was harmless—cosmetic surgeries, divorce—but a pill dependency and financial ruin might have been worth some kind of payoff.
Gail returned to the kitchen, her china white nails ticking through the stack of mail. Beth lunged for it, grabbing the envelopes in her hands with such ferocity that Gail tightened her grip as if by reflex. They wrestled over it briefly before Beth finally overpowered her, flattening the mail against her chest.
“What’s the matter?” Gail’s mouth hung open like a stable door from which a horse had just stampeded. “I still get mail delivered to me here. I was just checking. Is that a letter from your doctor? What does it say?”
Gail was right: there was an envelope from her gynecologist, a thin piece of paper in its waxy window. She was lucky she’d snatched the bundle before her mother could slit the envelope with her nail.
“We’re expecting some important papers for Gavril,” Beth lied. “About his immigration.” She waved a Citibank envelope addressed to her husband, a stiff new bank card evident through the paper. “Anyway,” she said, “you didn’t answer my question about Jeff Trader.”
Gail brought the coffee cup to her lips. She sniffed it before sipping. “I don’t know the first thing about extortion. Honey, Jeff Trader was so drunk most days that he could barely make it from his car to the door. Now get changed.” She examined her wristwatch. “We have to be there in twenty minutes. Is Gavril coming?”
“No, he’s working in his studio and asked me not to interrupt him.”
“I’ll just peek in and—”
“He doesn’t want to be disturbed,” she insisted. There were two ads for playpens in the mail. Knobby toddlers climbed inside the structures as if they came with the product.
Gail stared out the window and tapped her nail against the glass. “Now, would you look at that,” she said.
Beth craned her neck and saw a woman in a purple pantsuit unlock the front door of Magdalena’s cottage. “Must be a Realtor,” Gail said. “They’re going to try to sell that house. I wonder how much they’ll ask for it. It’s half the size of this one.” Beth remembered the furniture she had yet to claim. Did she even want a grandfather clock that belonged to a murder victim, or the armoire where Magdalena had hid her jewelry from Alvara’s son? “God, I pray I’ll get some decent neighbors,” her mother said. “City people are the only types who will buy out here now. They’re the only ones who aren’t worried about some maniac setting homes on fire. I don’t think there’s any way they’ll get their asking price. Okay, hurry. We don’t have all day.”
“Did you know that Magdalena changed her will before she died?” Beth looked at her mother, the frosted makeup disguising the plain Long Island woman underneath. Had she truly seen her mother in the last ten years? Beth was horrified to realize that she didn’t know exactly what Gail looked like even as she stood in front of her; all she had to go on was the failing memory of who she had been. Rouge was smeared across her face like brake lights on a wet road. Her poor mother, addicted to pain medication and still paying for the surgeries that had gotten her hooked. “She was going to leave her house to the Orient Historical Board,” Beth said, “but suddenly had that clause expunged. Don’t you find that odd?” It would have been odd to anyone who didn’t know that Jeff Trader had warned Magdalena about the historical board on his last visit.
Gail shrugged. “Roe diCorcia said she would have been livid to see her name on that initiative. Didn’t want anything to do with it. He told me that as we were leaving Poquatuck on the night of the
town hall meeting. That was the last time I ever saw Bryan Muldoon. Oh, honey.” Gail reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind Beth’s ear. “You never know what life has in store. You better do everything you want now before your body fails and your dreams grow so moldy all they’re good for is the trash. There isn’t time and things never happen at a better moment. Your father wanted to wait to have you, but I put my foot down. If you had come any later, you would still have been a child when he died. I think, in some way, I knew that.”