The Winslow Incident (59 page)

“That’s right, Tiny,” Mathers
agrees. “So what do you have to say for yourself, Hazel Winslow?” Tap. Tap.
TAP.

Puddles cover the maple floor, of
what she doesn’t want to know. Dark smears defile the white marble fireplace.
And the reflection of Fritz Earley’s body swings in the gilt-framed mirror over
the mantle.

“What do you have to say?” Mathers
says.

That you’re murderers
, she thinks again. Then she notices that Kenny Clark has
begun to skulk across the room toward her.

Does Uncle Pard know what’s
going on here?
She doubts it. She doubts
he has any idea the climate he’s fostered. But as furious with him as she is,
she’d give anything to see him right about now. He may be harsh and stubborn
and dead wrong, but he’s not completely deranged.

Gus Bolinger stands and hoarsely
shouts, “This has got nothing to do with the Winslows
or
the water, for
crying out loud, and everything to do with Rhone Bakery. Remember?” He gestures
with his blackened hands. “Remember, Mathers? All of you? We’ve already got
things figured out—as far as we’re going to for now anyhow—so let’s
give it a rest!”

“Which is why we’ve moved on to
the business of the Winslows,” Mathers says in a choked voice. “The other’s
been settled out there in the lobby.”

“The feed man got what was coming
to him,” Tiny says. “The baker, too, in the fire.”

Mathers waves his hand
impatiently. “Then let’s get back to—”

“They’re looting in town!” a man
yells from the hallway.

“Who’s stealing from my store?”
Tiny shoots a round into the ceiling and plaster showers down.

People rise from the floor and off
the furniture, upset and excited.

“Listen to me!” Mathers pounds the
lectern with his fist. “Do you see anybody else in charge here? No! So listen
to me!”

“For the luva Mary,” Gus Bolinger
calls, “give it a rest, Mathers!”

Everyone is moving fast and
confused, as though the hive has just been hit by a rock.

Kenny’s a lot closer now.

“See what you’ve done, Mathers?”
Hazel shouts to be heard above the clamor. “You set this in motion and now you
can’t control it.”

Patience rushes the podium and
pulls her grandfather away. “No more, Gramps!”

“Stop making such a spectacle of
yourself, Patience Charlotte! You shame our family!” He pushes her and she
falls—awkwardly and hard—against the base of the podium.

Hazel runs to her, shoving at
zombies who won’t move out of her way, screaming at Ben Mathers, “Shame on
you
for not looking out for your own granddaughter!”

When she reaches Patience, she
pulls her up off the floor. “Are you okay?”

Though Patience nods, Hazel
worries about the way her eyes seem unfocused.

“What are the three?” Hazel asks
her, thinking,
Zachary, Fritz . . .

“Huh?”

Hazel’s scalp creeps and she
shoots a glance behind her. Kenny Clark is watching them from where he now
straddles the middle of the doorway—the only way out of the
ballroom—and she realizes that now she
is
cornered.

She turns back to her friend. “I
need to know, Patience. Who are the three?”

Her gaze remains distracted.
“Apples cows bread. Creeks rain drown.”

“Please try to make sense.” Hazel
gently shakes her. “
Please.
”

“Shame blame—” Patience’s
eyes flit to a place over Hazel’s shoulder, then they widen, as though she’s
trying to take in something larger than life.

“What is it?” Hazel asks.

Patience returns her eyes to
Hazel’s. “Sean.”

Hazel spins around and her breath
locks in her throat.

Oh, Sean, why did you come
here?

He’s passing Kenny in the doorway,
covered in sweat and dirt, dragging a canvas bag so heavy and full it takes both
his hands to pull it along.

Why why why?

As Sean goes by him, Kenny laughs.
“What’ve you got there, Adair?” Rifle slung over his shoulder, Kenny is
laughing his rat ass off. “What the hell have you got in there?”

Sean shoots a look of annoyance at
Kenny as he continues past, and all is chillingly quiet across the ballroom
except for the sound of Sean’s bag scraping along the wood floor. He’s not
heading to where Hazel and Patience stand stunned at the head of the room, but rather
to the fireplace opposite the doorway.

Every eye lay curiously upon him.

Who’s next?
Hazel thinks.
Step right up.

Sean looks so slight to her as he
weaves himself and his plunder around the human obstacles on the floor.

Drop the bag!
she silently screams.
Turn around! Run!

When he reaches the fireplace he
releases his hold on the bag, exhaling from the effort of lugging it all the
way from who knows where.

“Can we help you, son?” Ben Mathers
asks, and more men laugh.

Then they begin to move in Sean’s
direction.
Step right up. Gather ’round.

Sean kneels and splits open the
sack. Dirty yellow bones and a big skull tumble out onto the floor at his bare
feet.

“What,” Kenny says, “is
that
?”

Sean stares at the pile of bones.
They
all
stare at the pile of bones.

“Hawkin Rhone needs the truth told,”
Sean’s voice reveals his resolve, “so we can give him the proper burial he
deserves.”

Hazel and Patience swap looks of
horror.

“Good Lord. Is that—”
Mathers points at the skull. “
Him
?”

Doc Simmons comes forward for a
closer look at the remains. Indicating a caved-in section of skull at the left
temple, he says, “See this depressed fracture? Bet you that’s what did him in.”

Patience moans and knocks against
Hazel on her way down to her knees, hands covering her face, attempting to
shield herself from this worst of all possible nightmares come true.

Still kneeling before the bones,
Sean glances at Patience, then at Hazel, and pushes tangled brown hair out of
eyes polluted with remorse.

Hazel shakes her head at
him—slowly, clearly—while mouthing
no.

He pinches his face at her,
I
have to.

No.
She lifts her gaze to the rope dangling from the
chandelier, hoping his eyes will follow hers, so that he’ll see the noose and understand
what’s going on here.

But when she looks back at Sean,
he’s studying Hawkin Rhone’s skull, running his finger along one of the cracks.
Then he staggers a bit when he stands and announces, “I killed him. So it’s up
to me to set things straight.”

“Don’t,” Hazel says.

She sees Kenny push off the
doorway and head for the fireplace.

“Hawkin Rhone didn’t poison
anybody on purpose,” Sean says, “except for the birds.”

Doc Simmons dives his arm into the
mound of Hawkin Rhone and rummages around and the bones clatter and clack
against each other like an upset bag of golf clubs.

Hazel’s stomach lurches.

“He ordered Missy not to pick any
apples,” Sean goes on, “to stay out of the orchard till spring. But she didn’t
mind him, even when she saw the birds dying beneath the trees. Because none of
you liked her, did you?”

“Missy Rhone was not popular,”
Rose Peabody’s voice quivers in sad admission. “Always a little sickly and that
hair in a big snarl.” Rose rubs her pink scalp where a swath of her own hair
has gone missing. “None of us wanted to play with her.”

“That’s why she disobeyed her
father,” Sean says. “It was her day to share and she wanted you to like her. If
only he would’ve given her donuts, she wouldn’t have brought those apples.”

Rose joins Sean at the fireplace
and frowns at the bones. “I haven’t felt this sick since then. Like I’m coming apart.”
Rose searches the faces across the ballroom. “You were there, Marlene, and Ivy
and Hap, all of us schoolmates fell ill. The Holloways too. Anabel, still here
then. Where did Anabel Holloway go?” Her eyes land on Hazel. “And Nate Winslow?
Where did he go?”

“So all of you got sick,” Sean
said, “but only one died, right? Missy Rhone.”

With the toe of his boot, Kenny
prods the skull. “What was wrong with the apples?”

Tiny Clemshaw replies, “Hawkin
Rhone soaked them in poison.”

“He never intended for anyone to
eat them,” Sean insists. “Only wanted to stop those robber jays.”

“Outcome is all that matters,” Mathers
says. “And nobody wanted him in town after that. Not then.” He narrows his eyes
at the bones. “Not now.”

Sean spreads his hands, imploring.
“Why did you punish him when losing his daughter Missy was punishment enough?”
Looking increasingly haggard, Sean falters on his feet when he takes a step
forward. “It wasn’t right to bury him across the creek. We need to bury him in
the church cemetery—it’s the only way he’ll keep to his grave. Otherwise
Hawkin Rhone will haunt this town forever.”

Kenny pokes the end of his rifle
through the mouth of the skull, then lifts it to eye level for closer
inspection.

“Knock it off, Clark! That’s
disrespectful!” Sean snatches the skull off the end of the gun and Hazel’s
heart clenches when the rifle swings to point in Sean’s face.

Laughing, Kenny lowers the rifle.
A bit.

As Hazel watches Sean set the
skull on the mantle, it dawns on her that if this goes on much longer, she will
go completely insane too.

Hand over belly, Marlene groans
miserably. “Why did I eat Missy’s apples again?”

“Is that what happened to Melanie
and Zachary Rhone?” Doc Simmons appears utterly confused. “Is that when they
died?”

“What?” Gus Bolinger looks
startled. “Are they dead?”

Simmons glances around. “Do you
remember when all the children were dying?”

“Where are the children now?” asks
Marlene.

Simmons looks bewildered when he
replies, “Gone.”

Gone into hiding
, Hazel thinks.
Hiding from you.

Kohl Thacker sputters through
split and bloodied lips, “The children of Winslow have been poisoned all over
again!”

The room explodes with
exclamations of shock.

Then Simmons asks, “Who poisoned
them this time?”

Standing before Sean, rifle
lowered but hardly at ease, Kenny Clark casually and loudly asks him, “What’d
you do with them?”

“Do with what?” says Sean.

“All the little bodies.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean after you poisoned them.”

Sean’s jaw drops.

Kenny turns to face the
increasingly agitated crowd. “Sean Adair knew the flour was bad, but he
delivered poison bread all the hell over town anyway.”

When Kenny’s eyes find Hazel’s, he
mocks a face at her: surprise!

Damn you, Tanner!
Hazel thinks. She curses Tanner Holloway—wills
both
his legs
and
his arms to turn black and rot off. The slower and more
painful the better. Kenny’s too. Or better yet, she hopes Kenny’s rat head
crusts off at the neck and plops to the floor where she can squish it underfoot
like a grape.

Hazel starts for the fireplace,
shaking off Patience who reaches for her, trying to stop her. Only Sean seems
so far away all of a sudden—half the length of the ballroom. She’ll never
reach him in time.

“I didn’t think the bread would
hurt anybody,” Sean says. “I was wrong.”

Hazel yells, “Sean—don’t say
anything else!”

“Is that why you wrote ‘I’m sorry’
on the granite wall?” Kenny asks.

“That you?” Mathers raises an
eyebrow.

Sean’s nod is made heavy by his
utter contrition.

Stop!
Hazel’s brain sobs.
You’re digging your own grave. Not
Hawkin Rhone’s—yours!

Kenny pokes Sean in the bare chest
with his rifle, forcing him back against the fireplace. “And that’s why you
told Tanner Holloway that it’s a lot worse than food poisoning and people will
get a lot sicker?”

Again Sean nods, his expression
one of total defeat. “Zachary told me to keep quiet. He was afraid you’d run
him out of town like his father.”

“Sean, no!” Hazel is not getting
there in time. Her feet are moving, but not nearly fast enough, and people
won’t get the hell out of her way.

“I’m sorry I didn’t figure it out
sooner.” Sean looks diminished and feverish and gravely unaware. “By the time I
did, it was too late to change anything. I’m really sorry.”

“You
knew
something was
wrong with the bread?” Doc Simmons shakes Hawkin Rhone’s femur at Sean.