Rest In Pieces (28 page)

“Well, Chuck borrowed a tractor from Johnny Haffner, the tractor man, and together the two men pulled out the Beegles’ tractor. Curiosity got the better of them and they jumped back into the grave and opened the casket. The skeleton of a woman was inside and even a few tatters of what must have been a beautiful dress. A wave of guilt washed over both Chuck and Johnny as they closed up the coffin and returned the lady to her eternal slumbers. Then they filled in the cavity.

“That night a loud noise awakened Jean. She heard someone shout three times. Someone—a voice she didn’t recognize—was calling her. ‘Jean Ritenour Beegle, Jean, come to the garden.’

“Well, Jean’s bedroom didn’t have a window on that side, so she went downstairs. She wasn’t afraid, because it was a woman’s voice. I would have been afraid, I think. Anyway, she walked out into her garden and there stood a tall well-figured woman.

“She said, ‘My name is Mary Carmichael and I died here in 1791. As I loved the garden, my brother buried me out here and planted a rosebush over my grave. When he died the new owners forgot that I was buried here and didn’t tend to my rosebush. I died in the kitchen, which used to be in the basement of the house. The fireplace was large and it was so cold. They kept me down there.’

“Jean asked if there was anything she could do to make Mary happy.

“The ghost replied, ‘Plant a rosebush over my grave. I love pink roses. And you know, I built a trellis, which I put up between the two windows.’ She pointed to the windows facing the garden, which would be the parlor. ‘If it would please you and it does look pretty, put up a white trellis and train some yellow tearoses to climb it.’

“So Jean did that, and she says that in the summers on a moonlit night she sometimes sees Mary walking in the garden.”

As the humans continued their ghost stories, Mrs. Murphy gathered the two kittens around her.
“Now, Noel and Jingle, let me tell you about a dashing cat named Dragoon. Back in the days of our ancestors . . .”

“When’s that?”
the gray kitten mewed.

“Before we were a country, back when the British ruled. Way back then there was a big handsome cat who used to hang around with a British officer, so they called him Dragoon. Oh, his whiskers were silver and his paws were white, his eyes the brightest green, and his coat a lustrous red. The humans had a big ball one night and Dragoon came. He saw a young white Angora there, wearing a blue silk ribbon as a collar. He walked over to her as other cats surrounded her, so great was her beauty. And he talked to her and wooed her. She said her name was Silverkins. He volunteered to walk Silverkins home. They walked through the streets of the town and out into the countryside. The crickets chirped and the stars twinkled. As they neared a little stone cottage with a graveyard on the hill, the pretty cat stopped.

“‘I’ll be leaving you here, Dragoon, for my old mother lives inside and I don’t want to wake her.’ Saying that, she scampered away.

“Dragoon called after her, ‘I’ll come for you tomorrow.’

“All the next day Dragoon couldn’t keep his mind on his duties. He thought only of Silverkins. When night approached he walked through the town, ignoring the catcalls of his carousing friends. He walked out on the little country path and soon arrived at the stone cottage. He knocked at the door and an old cat answered.

“‘I’ve come to call on Silverkins,’ he said to the old white cat.

“‘Don’t jest with me, young tom,’ the old lady cat snarled.

“‘I’m not jesting,’ said he. ‘I walked her home from the ball last evening.’

“‘You’ll find my daughter up on the hill.’ The old cat pointed toward the graveyard and then shut the door.

“Dragoon bounded up the hill but no Silverkins was in sight. He called her name. No answer. He leapt from tombstone to tombstone. Not a sign of her. He reached the end of a row of human markers and he jumped onto a small square tombstone. It read, ‘Here lies my pretty pet, Silverkins. Born 1699. Died 1704.’ And there on her grave was her blue silk ribbon.”

The kittens screamed at the end of the story.

Harry glanced over at the scared babies. Mrs. Murphy was lying on her side in front of them, eyes half-closed.

“Mrs. Murphy, are you picking on those kittens?”

“Hee hee”
was all Mrs. Murphy would say.

58

No goblins bumped in the night; no human horrors either. Harry, Cynthia, and Blair awoke to a crystal-clear day. Harry couldn’t remember when a winter’s day had sparkled like this one.

Perhaps Harry had overreacted. Maybe those tracks belonged to someone looking, illegally, for animals to trap. Maybe the truck or car Cynthia heard coming down Blair’s driveway was simply someone who had lost his way in the snow.

By the time Harry arrived at work she felt a little sheepish about her concerns. Outside the windows she saw road crews maneuvering the big snowplows. One little compact car by the side of the road was being completely covered by snow.

Mrs. Hogendobber bustled around and the two gossiped as they worked. BoomBoom was the first person at the post office. She’d borrowed a big four-wheel-drive Wagoneer from the car dealer just before the storm. She hadn’t bought it yet. “How fortunate to have such a long-term loan,” was Mrs. Hogendobber’s comment.

“Orlando arrives today. The ten-thirty. Blair said he’d pick him up and we’d get together for dinner. Wait until you meet him. He really is special.”

“So’s Fair,” Harry defended her ex. If she’d thought about it she probably would have kept her mouth shut, but that was the trouble: She didn’t think. She said what came into her head at that exact moment.

BoomBoom’s long eyelashes fluttered. “Of course he is. He’s a dear sweet man and he’s been such a comfort to me since Kelly died. I’m very fond of him but well, he is provincial. All he really knows is his profession. Face it, Harry, he bored you too.”

Harry threw the mail she was holding onto the floor. Mrs. Hogendobber wisely came alongside Harry . . . just in case.

“We all bore one another occasionally. No one is universally exciting.” Harry’s face reddened.

Mrs. Murphy and Tucker pricked their ears.

“Oh, come off it. He wasn’t right for you.” BoomBoom derived a sordid pleasure from upsetting others. Emotions were the only coin BoomBoom exchanged. Without real employment to absorb her, her thoughts revolved around herself and the emotions of others. Sometimes even her pleasures became fatiguing.

“He was for a good long time. Now why don’t you pick up your mail and spare me your expertly made-up face.” Harry gritted her teeth.

“This is a public building and I can do what I want.”

Miranda’s alto voice resonated with authority. “BoomBoom, for a woman who proclaims exaggerated sensitivity, you’re remarkably insensitive to other people. You’ve created an uncomfortable situation. I suggest you think on it at your leisure, which is to say the rest of the day.”

BoomBoom flounced off in a huff. Before the day reached noon she would call everyone she knew to inform them of her precarious emotional state due to the personally abusive behavior of Harry and Mrs. Hogendobber, who crudely ganged up on her. She would also find it necessary to call her psychiatrist and then to find something to soothe her nerves.

Mrs. Hogendobber bent over with some stiffness, scooping up the mail Harry had tossed on the floor.

“Oh, Miranda, I’ll do that. I was pretty silly.”

“You still love him.”

“No, I don’t,” Harry quietly replied, “but I love what we were to each other, and he’s worth loving as a friend. He’ll make some woman out there a good companion. Isn’t that what marriage is about? Companionship? Shared goals?”

“Ideally. I don’t know, Harry, young people today want so much more than we did. They want excitement, romance, good looks, lots of money, vacations all the time. When I married George we didn’t expect that. We expected to work hard together and improve our lot. We scrimped and saved. The fires of romance burned brighter sometimes than others but we were a team.”

Harry thought about what Mrs. Hogendobber said. She also listened as Miranda turned the conversation to church gossip. The best soprano in the choir and the best tenor had started a row over who got the most solos. Mrs. Hogendobber interspersed her pearls of wisdom throughout.

At one o’clock Blair brought in Orlando Heguay. The airplane was late, the terminal crowded, but all was well. Orlando charmed Mrs. Hogendobber. Harry thought he was exactly right for BoomBoom: urbane, wealthy, and incredibly attractive. Whether or not he was a man who needed to give a woman the kind of constant attention BoomBoom demanded would be known in time.

As Blair opened his post box a hairy paw reached out at him. He yanked back his hand.

“Scared you,”
Mrs. Murphy laughed.

“You little devil.” Blair reached back into his box and grabbed her paw for a minute.

Orlando walked around and then paused before the photograph of the unidentified victim. Studying it intently, he let out a low whistle. “Good God.”

“I beg your pardon,” Mrs. Hogendobber said.

Harry walked over to explain why it was on the wall but before she could open her mouth Orlando said, “That’s Tommy Norton.”

Everyone turned to him, ashen-faced. Harry spoke first. “You know this man?”

“It’s Tommy Norton. I mean, the hair is wrong and he looks thinner than when I knew him but yes, if it isn’t Tommy Norton it’s his aging double.”

Miranda dialed Rick Shaw before Orlando finished his sentence.

59

After profuse apologies for disrupting Orlando’s holiday, Rick and Cynthia closed the door to Rick’s office. Blair waited outside and read the newspaper.

“Continue, Mr. Heguay.”

“I met Fitz-Gilbert in 1971. We were not close at school. He had a good friend in New York, Tommy Norton. I met Tommy Norton in the summer of 1974. He worked as a gofer in the brokerage house of Kincaid, Foster and Kincaid. I was seventeen that summer and I guess he was fifteen or sixteen. I worked next door at Young and Fulton Brothers. That convinced me I never wanted to be a stockbroker.” Orlando took a breath and continued. “Anyway, we’d have lunch once or twice a week. The rest of the time they’d work us through lunch.”

“We?” Cynthia asked.

“Tommy, Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton, and myself.”

“Go on.” Rick’s voice had a hypnotic quality.

“Well, there’s not much to tell. He was a poor kid from Brooklyn but very bright and he wanted to be like Fitz and me. He imitated us. It was sad, really, that he couldn’t go to prep school, because it would have made him so happy. They weren’t giving out as many scholarships in those days.”

“Did he ever come up to Andover to visit?”

“Well, Fitz’s parents were killed in that awful plane crash that summer, and the next year, at school, Fitz was really out of control. Tommy and Fitz were close, though, and Tommy did come up at least once that fall. He fit right in. Since I was a year older than Tommy, I lost touch after graduating and going to Yale. Fitz went to Princeton, once he straightened out, and I don’t know what happened to Tommy. Well, I do remember that he worked again at Kincaid, Foster and Kincaid the following summer and so did Fitz.”

“Can you think of anyone else who might know Tommy Norton?” Rick asked.

“The head of personnel in those days was an officious toad named Leonard, uh, Leonard Imbry. Funny name. If he’s still there he might remember Tommy.”

“What makes you think the photograph reconstruction is Norton?” Cynthia thought Orlando, with his dark hair and eyes, was extremely handsome and she wished she were in anything but a police uniform.

“I wouldn’t want to bet my life on it but the reconstruction had Tommy’s chin, which was prominent. The nose was a little smaller maybe, and the haircut was wrong.” He shrugged. “It looked like an older version of that boy I knew. What happened to him? Before I could get the story from the ladies in the post office you whisked me away.”

Cynthia answered. “The man in the photograph was murdered, his face severely disfigured, and his body dismembered. The fingerprints were literally cut off the fingerpads and every tooth was knocked out of his head. Over a period of days people here kept finding body parts. The head turned up in a pumpkin at our Harvest Festival. It was really unforgivable and there are children and adults who will have nightmares for a long time because of that.”

“Why would anyone want to kill Tommy Norton?” Orlando was shocked at the news.

“That’s what we want to know.” Rick made more notes.

“When was the last time you saw Fitz-Gilbert Hamilton?” Cynthia wished she could think of enough questions to keep him there for hours.

“At my graduation from Andover Academy. His voice had deepened but he was still a little slow in developing. I don’t know if I would recognize him today. I’d like to think that I would.”

“You said he attended Princeton—after he straightened out.”

“Fitz was a mess there for a while after his parents died. He was very withdrawn. None of us boys was particularly adept at handling a crisis like that. Maybe we wouldn’t be adept today either. I don’t know, but he stayed in his room playing Mozart’s
Requiem
. Over and over.”