Winter Tides (30 page)

“I agree,” Edmund said as if he meant it. “That sounds pretty crazy to me, too. I sure can’t explain it.”

“No, I
bet
you can’t,” Collier said.

“I’m not sure I understand your implication,” Edmund said flatly. He looked back toward the parking lot and saw that the crowd had pretty much gone away. Anne sat at the edge of the lawn, playing some kind of hand jive game with Jenny, and Dave stood talking to the Earl. The woman, whoever she was, stood alone. “Earl!” Edmund hollered, moving away from Collier and the fireman. The Earl strode toward him, leaving Dave behind.

“Yeah,” he said. “What can I do?”

“Hang in here with Collier for a little while, will you?” Edmund asked him. “He’s pretty shook up. This doesn’t look real good for Jenny, and he can see that. He’s a little defensive about it.” Then to the fireman he said, “Maybe we can have a word in private.”

The fireman nodded, and they moved away, out of earshot of the others. “I’m not happy to have to say this,” Edmund told him, “but Jenny’s been in and out from under that porch all morning. I know that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. But she was under there a couple of minutes before I saw the smoke. Her grandfather doesn’t know that, because he was over in the theatre. He wasn’t over there that long, like he said, but she was under there for … I don’t know, five minutes anyway.” He shook his head sadly. “I guess I don’t know what to think. Like he said, it doesn’t make any sense, her going inside like that. Maybe there was some kind of spontaneous combustion….”

“Mr. Collier asserts that you were under the porch too.”

“That’s correct. I grew up around here. My father’s owned this place for nearly fifty years. I played under that porch myself when I was a kid. It’s a private place. Kids love a private place. I’ll tell you the truth—when I saw the smoke, I got suspicious. Like I said, I was a kid once myself.”

“You started fires when you were a kid?”

The fireman looked straight at him, the dirty little bastard. Edmund fought down his anger. “I’ll ignore that question,” he said. “It’s not the kind of thing I’d expect from a public servant.”

“What did you see when you looked under there? Anything? Too smoky?”

“No, actually, the wind was blowing most of the smoke back under the house at first. I think that’s why Mr. Collier didn’t see any sign of it when he was coming back over from the theatre. Naturally he wondered what the hell I was doing under there. Anyway …” He paused and looked thoughtful, as if he had something tough to say. “… What I saw was a bunch of stuff burning. Looked like … I don’t know, leaves and junk, wadded-up paper, toys, all set up against that post right about in the center of the porch. What got me was that there was a doll on fire, too, sitting in the middle of it all. I don’t know why, but I guess it upset me a little bit. It was almost scary, you know? I can see now that it’s not evidence of anything, maybe just kid stuff that got a little out of hand.”

“But you didn’t see anything that makes you
certain
that it was the little girl that started the fire? You didn’t see her carry anything in or out of there?”

“Not a thing. No, sir. All I wanted to say was that she was under there. Her grandfather doesn’t know that. He’s telling you the absolute truth as far as he understands it.”

“And there were no other children around?”

“Not a one.”

“All right. Thanks for your help.”

“Thank
you
. I wonder if I can say one more thing. I guess … I don’t want it to sound like I’m accusing anybody here, but I’m not crazy about fires breaking out every other day, either. These old buildings …” He shook his head. “I’ve got employees working here, there’s a play
going up in a couple of weeks here in the theatre, and I’ve got my tenants to worry about. This could have been a tragedy today if I hadn’t looked out the window when I did.”

“I appreciate that,” the fireman said. “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

The fireman left him and walked toward Collier then, and Edmund drifted back to the porch and looked underneath. He pursed his lips and cocked his head, as if he were studying things out. The whole thing had gone unbelievably well. Not a hitch. This time nobody would buy any nonsense about imaginary friends. Collier’s days were numbered.

Edmund turned around and headed back across the lawn in the direction of the warehouse. There was nothing more for him to do here, and his hanging around could easily set Collier off. The man was dangerously unstable, aside from being a loser and a welfare case. But he still had too much sympathy from the peanut gallery for Edmund to go
mano a mano
with him here. Today’s activities would have to be a part of the tenderizing process. Later he could grill the old man over an open flame, literally, if he had to.

“Edmund!”

He heard the voice behind him and turned around, putting a quizzical look on his face. It was Dave, obviously full of baloney. Anne hadn’t moved. They were out of earshot if they kept their voices down. “What’s up?” Edmund asked, giving him a look of doubt, as if perhaps Dave were in some sort of immediate trouble and were asking for help.

Dave moved past him, blocking his way. “I just wanted to make a little something clear,” he said.

“And what would that be?”

“I don’t think it was Jenny who started this fire today. And it wasn’t her who started the fire the other night, either.”

“I agree entirely, Dave. She’s a
very
misunderstood little girl. And I admire your stepping forward now, at a sensitive time like this. You’re telling the wrong person, though. All I did was
rescue
her, Dave. You know what I mean? You and I don’t always see eye to eye, but I can’t imagine
you’re so small-minded as to have a problem with that. Maybe it’s time you crawled out from under your past.”

Dave stared at him, and for a moment Edmund wondered if he’d gone too far. He braced himself, ready to block a punch.

“You want to explain that?”

“What’s to explain? A little girl was in trouble, and I walked in and brought her out. People do that kind of thing all the time, Dave, and they don’t make it into a lifetime issue. So now, if you’re through, I’m late for about three meetings and I’ve got to run home and change suits and wash the blood off.” He saw that Dave wasn’t going to take a punch at him after all. He had gotten to the bastard, deflated him. He stepped aside and started off again, across the lot.

“I’ll make it simple,” Dave said to his back. “Leave Collier alone. Leave Anne alone.”

Edmund turned toward him again and shook his head tiredly. “My relationship with Anne is none of your business, Dave. Although I can understand why you’re worried about it.”

“I’m making it my business. Stay out of her building. Don’t hang around there.”

“Dave, I’m reminding you who signs your paycheck.”

“Makes no difference.”

“Really?”

“Not a bit.”

“Then you’re fired. I can’t have my employees threatening me. I’m sorry.”

“No, you’re not sorry, and I’m not fired. The Earl hired me, and the Earl’s got to fire me. Go ahead and ask him to. I don’t think he will. What I think is that you’ve got your hand in the till,
Ed
. I think you’re stealing from the Earl, and I think I can prove it.”

“Is
that
what you want to do?” Edmund said, walking toward him and stopping a couple of feet away. “You want to cause my father grief by making up a lot of slanderous crap? I’m a little surprised at that, Dave. I’ve always known you were emotional, but I didn’t have any idea you were vicious.”

“Call it what you want. I’m ready to pull the plug. I’m not going to talk about this again. I’m serious.”

“Not half as serious as I am, Dave.”

“Then we understand each other.”

Edmund smiled at him, giving the smile a moment to affect him. “I think we do,” he said, and then walked away from him again, half expecting Dave to jump him from behind, to lose his sanity altogether. He half hoped he would. He could have him arrested for assault.

M
AYHEW HAD BEEN HARD TO GET RID OF, ALTHOUGH IN
the end he had taken Ray Mifflin’s twenty-five dollars and two packs of cigarettes. He was dressed in the same faded yellow coat that he’d worn when he’d pretended to be Edmund Dalton’s father, and with the same leisure suit, and true to form, he had headed next door to the liquor store to buy a morning bottle before walking away south again down Beach Boulevard.

Mifflin sat in his swivel chair now and stared out the window at the afternoon traffic, running through what he’d say to Dalton when the time came to bail out. Dalton wouldn’t make it easy on him. But in the end—and Dalton
had
to know this—if one of them went down, they would both go down. Dalton’s options were as limited as his own. And if push came absolutely to shove, Mifflin
could
simply turn him in. He could claim to have been hoaxed by the Mayhew fraud and then admit to relaxing the rules a couple of times afterward, not knowing that Dalton was up to any kind of real malarkey. The money that he had taken from Edmund had been cash. He hadn’t signed any receipts. And so far he hadn’t put a dime of it in the bank, so there were
no big deposits to look suspicious to anyone snooping around.

So on the plus side of the ledger, he had made over fifteen thousand dollars in no time at all. No effort, no expenses, no trouble. He was on the edge of making more quick. Dalton had been right. Right Now Notary was pathetic. It was a living, but that’s about all it was. Mifflin was sick of the trash-strewn strip mall, of the crush of petty business every winter, of the smell of stale coffee and the mountains of forms and the whole damned squalid thing that his life had become.

Thoughts of Mexico turned in his mind, and he doodled with a pencil on a piece of paper, adding up figures. What the hell would it take? The house in Punta Rioja needed work, but cheap labor was easy to find down there. A wife, for God’s sake, was easy to find down there, or at least it was a hell of a lot easier down there than up here. Since he’d put on weight and his hairline had receded, his chances for companionship had fallen to absolute zip. He had even bought an issue of
Cherry Blossoms
in order to check out the possibility of buying a Filipino bride, but the next morning, when he had come out into the living room and seen the magazine on the table, he’d been so humiliated that he had tossed it into the trash.

He threw his pencil at the front door and pushed himself back from the desk. What was utterly clear to him was that Mayhew would soon favor him with another visit. And why not? Mifflin was easy money, and Mayhew knew it. May-hew was an old drunk, but he wasn’t a naive old drunk. He had been tolerably sober on the morning that he had impersonated Dalton’s father, and he had taken a damn good look at the deed that he’d signed. Probably he knew that there was real money involved in the transaction. Mayhew was in a position to nickel-and-dime everyone involved until Hell froze over.

He hadn’t been happy with the twenty-five bucks he’d gotten this morning, either. Dalton, the old man had told him, had given him fifty. And “that other guy” had given him twenty more. What the hell “other guy”? Mayhew wouldn’t say. He had shaken his head shrewdly, as if he
wouldn’t be outfoxed, as if he thought Mifflin himself would start knocking people over for twenty-five bucks himself, and wreck Mayhew’s deal.
So who the hell was the other guy?
Not Jimmy Stewart, unless he was paying Mayhew for information….

As much as he hated to talk to the man, Mifflin picked up the phone and dialed Dalton’s number. “We’ve got more trouble,” he said when Dalton answered.

T
HE FOG DRIFTED IN EARLY THAT EVENING, A MOVING
wall that came in off the ocean, drawn toward the warmth of the coast. Anne and Dave watched it cross the Highway from where they stood in front of Jack’s Surf Shop at the bottom of Main Street, and in moments it engulfed them. They walked west along the sidewalk toward the doughnut shop, cutting up the path through the vacant lot.

“Is it like this every spring?” Anne asked.

“Not really,” Dave said. “I think it’s foggy more often in the early fall. It used to be worse, back when most of Fountain Valley was agriculture. The fog would get so thick that you had to drive with the door open, watching the white line.”

“Agriculture?” Anne asked. “How long ago?” They passed the doughnut shop and turned up the path through the foggy vacant lot.

“When I was a kid,” Dave said. “Once it started to go, though, it went fast, like the oil wells. It only took a couple of years. The real estate was worth too much.”

Anne stopped on the path and looked up at him. “What did they grow,” she asked softly, “hamsters?” The fog hid them from the Highway and from 6th Street.

“A lot of hamsters,” Dave said, nodding. “Hamsters and guinea pickles.” He stood looking at her, his heart pounding. “Mostly they grew sugar beets.”

“Sugar beets?”

“Looks like a sweet potato,” Dave said. “They make sugar out of it.”

“Why don’t they call it a sugar potato?” she asked, looking at him doubtfully. “I think you’re making all this up to impress me with your vast storehouse of knowledge.”

“Why would I want to do that?”

“Because you’re thinking that you want to kiss me, and you know I have high standards.”

He hesitated, looking into her eyes.

“Yes, that was an invitation,” she said. “Don’t be hopeless.”

He kissed her then, sliding his hands up under her jacket in order to hold her more closely.

“That was rather nice,” she said after a moment. “I was afraid maybe you were waiting for a printed invitation.”

“I’m slow that way,” he said.

“Good,” she told him. “I like slow men. Slow and goofy.”

“Well,” he said, “you found one. After all these years of searching.”

“It seems like we’re alone in the world, doesn’t it?” Anne whispered. They listened to the slow creaking of the invisible oil well and to the sound of surf collapsing along the beach behind them. A dog barked somewhere in the distance, but it sounded as if it were a long way off, and after a moment another dog barked once, as if to answer it, and then both of them were silent. Dave kissed her again, uninvited this time, and then they set out again, walking past the chain-link fence toward the back of the Earl’s.