The Arsonist (19 page)

“Oh, do
you
deliver the papers?”

“About a third of them. I’ve got a kid who does it around the green. The urban route. And someone else who does Route Seventy-Two. But I do the outliers on the other side of town. Like you.”

“I had no idea you were so … multifarious.”

“Some say
talented
. I wish you would too.
Multifarious
sounds kind of utilitarian.”

“Talented, then. But what
is
the news?”

“You probably know better than I do. I feel as though I’m always bringing up the rear, marching along well behind the gossip. You must hear it all, with your parents around.”

“Not so much now. Since I moved out I don’t get the news. So”—she gestured, her hands opening at her sides—“I need you.”

“How nice, to be needed.” She looked away quickly, and Bud felt embarrassed. Felt he’d pushed something. “You heard about yesterday’s fire,” he said quickly.

“I did. You mean, the one at the Frenches’ place.” He nodded. “Yes, my mother had heard, so I got the story when I borrowed the car.” She gestured behind herself at an old station wagon. “I guess I do still get some of the gossip.” She frowned. “But they put that one out, right?”

“Yeah, the Frenches happened to come home pretty soon after it was set, apparently. They called it in themselves and had started to run their hose on it while they waited for the fire department.”

Bud had gotten the page and gone again to the fire, but by the time he got there, it was out. There was a kind of childish giddiness among the guys, and no rush to pack up. It was still light out, for one thing, and more important, they’d beat this one. The kitchen cabinets along the wall by the door were partially burned and the ceiling scorched, but not much more was damaged. The Frenches had made a celebratory pitcher of martinis and were serving those and beer to anyone interested. Many were.

“So I heard correctly,” Frankie said now.

“You did. But have you heard this?” he asked.
“Guys for rent.”

“ ‘Guys for rent’?” She wrinkled her nose. “What does that mean?”

“Guys will come to your house and stay awake for you. Sit on your porch. Armed.”

“Shades of Africa,” she said. “Who is this?”

“Oh, a couple of local guys. Kids, really. Peter Babcock. Gavin Knox. They’ve got signs up in a couple of places with that frill of tags at the bottom with their phone numbers. Quite a few takers, it looks like.”

“How entrepreneurial.”

“I guess. But this is just a by-product of the fire news.”

“Everything is now, isn’t it. A by-product of the fire news. Every conversation I have starts with that.”

“Every conversation everyone has.”

“Speaking of which, I’ve been thinking about something.” Her face was suddenly very serious. “I was realizing it only last week, after the town meeting where we first heard the dread word.”

“Arson.”

“Yeah. Because I think I might have seen the arsonist.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, his car anyway.” And she told him a story about taking a walk in the middle of the night—the first night she was home, she said, jet-lagged. About the smell of smoke. And about a car coming over the hill from the Olsens’ direction at that unlikely hour.

“God, it might really
be
something,” he said. “So, what else do you have? The make? The color, the license plate?”

She shook her head.

“Nothing else?”

“No. I mean, that’s why I didn’t think of it earlier, I suppose. It didn’t really … register at that time. Maybe it was grayish. It was so dark out. It was a beater, I think—do they still call them that? It seemed, maybe, older. It had slanty-eyed taillights.”

“Ah, ah. None of that racist stuff.”

She smiled. “Sorry, but that’s the only thing I remember clearly. The slant, and then watching them go away. The eyes. Kind of disappearing behind a rise in the road, and then appearing again lower
down.” Her hand made a wavy gesture. “So,” she said. “Who do I report this to?”

“You probably need to talk to Loren Spader, sad to say. It’s not much, but it could help, looking for those Asian eyes.”

“Why ‘sad to say’?”

“Just, he’s kind of a local jerk.”

“He’s the fat guy, right? The police chief?”

“Yes. The chief, and then, as it happens, also the entire department. Do you want me to set it up for you?” He’d go along with her, he was thinking. It might be of interest. And then there was his interest in her.

“Would you?” she said. “It’d make it quicker, I suppose. Otherwise, I’d have to track him down.”

“I will. I’ll let you know.”

She was frowning. “But you know, I’m not sure how well I remember them. The taillights. If he wanted me to pick them out, somehow. You know, if there were five of them backed up to me …”

“A kind of vehicular lineup.”

“Precisely. I’m not sure I’d get the exact lights. I was really, really tired. And distracted.”

“By what?”

She was silent for a few seconds. Then she shrugged. “Just … by jet lag, I guess.”

“Ah, yes.” Another silence. It occurred to him that she might be shy, and this touched him, somehow. They stood there. And then, stupidly, he asked, “You’re shopping?”

“Yes. Dinner. I’m going to go in and buy pasta and a cheap bottle of wine. And cereal. And bread.”

“Carbs galore.”

“I’ve been to the farm stand already.” She gestured toward her car. “Fruits galore.”

“Ah, then you’re excused.”

She started to turn away.

“It was … it was nice to run into you. And come Tuesday? You’ll find a paper waiting for you.”

“Where will I find it?”

“On the porch. There’s a porch, right? I’ll try to hit it from the car. Always a challenge.”

“You’ll drive in with it?”

“For you, of course.”

“That’s so nice of you. And what will I owe you?”

“Depends how long you want it. There’s a summer rate, and then a different rate if you’re staying on. Are you?” He said this as though announcing to himself that this was an impossibility, he heard that in his own voice.

“Not … really. Not past, maybe, early fall.”

“So, you’re going back?”

“I don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“Why not what?”

“Why don’t you know?”

“Oh, just … It’s complicated.”

“Try me.”

She drew a deep breath. “Because, I guess, I’ve come to feel—in Africa—that I’m …” She looked at the ground, then up, at him. “Temporizing, I guess you could say. With my life.”

“More.” He made a beckoning gesture.

She seemed embarrassed, suddenly. She said, “Just … in work. In love.” She shrugged. “Or in sex, anyway.” She made a short laughing noise.

He was startled, maybe even a little shocked. He was about to try to ask her about this—he couldn’t quite imagine how—when she said, “I think what I’m going to do is explore some other possibilities in the States.” Her eyes moved around. “I couldn’t live
here
, though. I don’t think.”

“Many do”

“Yeah, but that’s not the kind of work I do. It’s not … transportable to a place like this. I mean, I could be in New
York
. I could do something connected to it there.” She shook her head, and her hair swayed thickly. “Not here.”

“What is your work exactly? AIDS work?” Hadn’t she said that?

“No. It’s hunger.
Aid
work. Malnutrition. For me, it’s African work. I know it could be lots of other places, but Africa is the place I … Well, I was going to say the place I live, but I guess I can’t.”

“The place you might or might not be going back to.”

“Right. But there is, there’s lots of other stuff I could do here, in the States. I mean, the program I work for is actually run out of here.”

“Here, meaning New York.”

“Yes.”

“But that’s not
here
—New York. That’s
there
. Way over there. I locate myself”—he pointed to the ground at his feet with both forefingers—“here.”

She looked at him and smiled. “Are you scolding me?” she asked. “For not planning on staying here?”

“No. No, no. How could I? Not ever. I just
got
here.”

She tilted her head. “Okay, then.” She started to turn away.

“Okay, then. I’ll be in touch about Loren.”

She stopped. “I don’t have a phone,” she said.

“Ah. Well. I’ll leave you a note.”

“Okay,” she said.

“Are there days, or times, better for you than others?”

She grinned at him.
Mind the gap
. “All times, all days, are utterly the same for me at the moment.”

“Nice work if you can get it,” he said.

“You think so,” she said. She started to walk away again.

And he turned away, too, went around his car to get in on the driver’s side, carefully not looking at her as she disappeared into the store.

Bud was up in the night on Saturday at a fire that destroyed most of the house belonging to the Coolidge family. No martinis served there. They’d been home, in bed, and had barely gotten out. They stood watching their house burn in their nightclothes, the parents and three kids, preteens. Someone had given the children blankets to wrap up in. Natalie Coolidge kept saying—to Bud, to anyone else who spoke to her—that all that mattered was that they’d gotten out, that no one was hurt.

He wrote this up when he came home, and then, after sleeping fitfully, half waking from time to time with the smell of fire on his skin, in his hair, he went to pick up Frankie.

She was quiet on the way to meet Loren. Bud couldn’t stop looking over at her as he drove. She’d dressed up a little. This would be wasted on Loren. She wore sandals and bright red toenail polish, thank you very much. Her hair was loose again today, the curls swarming her shoulders.

Her profile was unmoving, remote.

“You couldn’t be nervous.” She didn’t answer. “Are you?” he asked.

She drew in a long breath, looked at him. “What if the car had nothing to do with it? With the fire. I don’t want to get some innocent … adulterer, sneaking home in the dead of the night, in trouble.”

He smiled. “I like your sense of sin.”

“Me and Bill Clinton.”

“Now there’s a guy who’s given adulterers a lot to be grateful for.”

“Mmm.” She turned away again.

“I wouldn’t worry about it. This would just be something to start with. They’d need other evidence before they arrested anyone.”

She was quiet for a while. Then she said, “What kind of other evidence do you mean?”

“Well, motive would usually be a possibility, wouldn’t it? But in this case, I guess maybe not—this seems so almost without any possible motive to me. Or with a motive so … perverse as to seem uninformative. But I suppose they’d be looking for the weapon.”

“The rope, the knife, the candlestick.”

“Yeah. Or maybe a can that smelled of kerosene, or whatever the accelerant was. Or maybe fingerprints. Or footprints.”

“Tire tracks.”

“Yeah. That kind of thing.”

She shifted her long body slightly, turning it to him, and he was aware of a sudden sexual
thrum
in himself. “So, do they have any of that?” she asked.

“They’re not talking, if they do. No comment, no comment, no comment.” This was true for the arson squad and the state police. Bud had been in touch with them both. Loren, on the other hand, was full of
hints. He’d suggested they did know what the accelerant was. “Oh, we got a good idea about that, all right.”

This was outside the post office. Loren was sitting in his car, parked close to the side of the building, hidden enough so he could catch people who didn’t come to a complete stop at the intersection, the only one in town.

Bud was leaning over Loren’s open window, looking down at him. There were food wrappers scattered over the floor and seat of the passenger side of the car. “Could you share this good idea?” he had asked.

“I could not,” Loren had replied, with deep satisfaction, grinning up at Bud.

Now he and Frankie turned off the road at the redbrick building a few doors down from Snell’s.

“But isn’t this
your
office?” Frankie asked.

“Yeah. Loren’s meeting us here because he doesn’t have an office. Or his office is his car, mostly. You’re dealing with small-town stuff here, Frankie.” He pulled into the three-car parking area and turned the engine off. He got out and started around to open her door, but she had opened it already and stepped out on her own, so that he was just in time to awkwardly more or less help her close it.

She smiled at him, charmingly, noticing his ridiculousness, he was sure. “Thanks,” she said. She followed him up the walk to the door and then in through the cluttered real-estate office on the ground floor. “It’s up here,” he said, gesturing to the stairs that led to the rooms above, the rooms that housed the paper. She went ahead of him. He followed her, watching the sway of the red skirt moving up the stairs, the white of her legs.

Upstairs, she turned slowly around in the big open space. There wasn’t much here. Bud’s desk, a couple of chairs, a long table, shelves, and file cabinets. “But where’s the printing press?” she asked. “Where are your cub reporters?”

“Ah. Well, the press is in Whitehall, a guy who runs it off every week, along with the Winslow paper and a couple of others. As well as a lot of other stuff—the brochure for your next concert, let’s say, should you be planning one. And the cub reporters …” He shrugged. “Well, they’re not cubs anymore. Three out of four are actually a bit geriatric. And they’re
all part-timers, anyway—four or five people who regularly write the odd article. For free, I might add.”

“So what you’re saying is you basically do the whole thing more or less alone.”

“Yep.”

“Isn’t it lonely?”

“No. Not at all. Half the time I’m out and about, talking to people, going to things. And when I’m here, I’m on the phone most of the time. So, no. Now: would you like some coffee?”

She would. Bud had a cheap coffee machine on the long table against the wall. There was a half refrigerator under this table for milk, among other things. While he fixed the coffee, he explained the decor, how he’d inherited the setup from Pete when he bought the paper. “The only thing I changed was to throw away a couch so sprung you could feel the floor when you sat on it.”