Romeo Bissonette tipped his head toward me. He used the side of his hand to bridge the gap between his mouth and my ear. ‘Devore’s tape,’ he said.
I nodded to show I understood, then turned to Durgin again.
‘Mr. Noonan, you’ve met Kyra Devore and her mother, Mary Devore, haven’t you?’
How did you get Mattie out of Mary, I wondered . . . and then knew, just as I had known about the white shorts and halter top. Mattie was how Ki had first tried to say Mary.
‘Mr. Noonan, are we keeping you up?’
‘There’s no need to be sarcastic, is there?’ Bissonette asked. His tone was mild, but Elmer Durgin gave him a look which suggested that, should the ELFFS succeed in their goal of world domination, Bissonette would be aboard the first gulag-bound boxcar.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said before Durgin could reply. ‘I just got derailed there for a second or two.’
‘New story idea?’ Durgin asked, smiling his glossy smile. He looked like a swamp-toad in a sportcoat. He turned to the old jet pilot, told him to strike that last, then repeated his question about Kyra and Mattie.
Yes, I said, I had met them.
‘Once or more than once?’
‘More than once.’
‘How many times have you met them?’
‘Twice.’
‘Have you also spoken to Mary Devore on the phone?’
Already these questions were moving in a direction that made me uncomfortable.
‘Yes.’
‘How many times?’
‘Three times.’ The third had come the day before, when she had asked if I would join her and John Storrow for a picnic lunch on the town common after my deposition. Lunch right there in the middle of town before God and everybody . . . although, with a New York lawyer to play chaperone, what harm in that?
‘Have you spoken to Kyra Devore on the telephone?’
What an odd question! Not one anybody had prepared me for, either. I supposed that was at least partly why he had asked it.
‘Mr. Noonan?’
‘Yes, I’ve spoken to her once.’
‘Can you tell us the nature of that conversation?’
‘Well . . . ‘ I looked doubtfully at Bissonette, but there was no help there. He obviously didn’t know, either. ‘Mattie — ‘
‘Pardon me?’ Durgin leaned forward as much as he could. His eyes were intent in their pink pockets of flesh. ‘Mattie?’
‘Mattie Devore. Mary Devore.’
‘You call her Mattie?’
‘Yes,’ I said, and had a wild impulse to add: In bed! In bed I call her that! ‘Oh Mattie, don’t stop, don’t stop,’ I cry!’ ‘It’s the name she gave me when she introduced herself. I met her — ‘
‘We may get to that, but right now I’m interested in your telephone conversation with Kyra Devore. When was that?’
‘It was yesterday.’
‘July ninth, 1998.’
‘Yes.’
‘Who placed that call?’
‘Ma . . . Mary Devore.’ Now he’ll ask why she called, I thought, and I’ll say she wanted to have yet another sex marathon, foreplay to consist of feeding each other chocolate-dipped strawberries while we look at pictures of naked malformed dwarves. ‘How did Kyra Devore happen to speak to you?’
‘She asked if she could. I heard her saying to her mother that she had to tell me something.’
‘What was it she had to tell you?’
‘That she had her first bubble bath.’
‘Did she also say she coughed?’
I was quiet, looking at him. In that moment I understood why people hate lawyers, especially when they’ve been dusted over by one who’s good at the job.
‘Mr. Noonan, would you like me to repeat the question?’
‘No,’ I said, wondering where he’d gotten his information. Had these bastards tapped Mattie’s phone? My phone? Both? Perhaps for the first time I understood on a gut level what it must be like to have half a billion dollars. With that much dough you could tap a lot of telephones. ‘She said her mother pushed bubbles in her face and she coughed. But she was — ‘
‘Thank you, Mr. Noonan, now let’s turn to — ‘
‘Let him finish,’ Bissonette said. I had an idea he had already taken a bigger part in the proceedings than he had expected to, but he didn’t seem to mind. He was a sleepy-looking man with a bloodhound’s mournful, trustworthy face. ‘This isn’t a courtroom, and you’re not cross-examining him.’
‘I have the little girl’s welfare to think of,’ Durgin said. He sounded both pompous and humble at the same time, a combination that went together like chocolate sauce on creamed corn. ‘It’s a responsibility I take very seriously. If I seemed to be badgering you, Mr. Noonan, I apologize.’
I didn’t bother accepting his apology — that would have made us both phonies. ‘All I was going to say is that Ki was laughing when she said it. She said she and her mother had a bubble-fight.
When her mother came back on, she was laughing, too.’
Durgin had opened the folder Footman had brought him and was paging rapidly through it while I spoke, as if he weren’t hearing a word. ‘Her mother . . . Mattie, as you call her.’
‘Yes. Mattie as I call her. How do you know about our private telephone conversation in the first place?’
‘That’s none of your business, Mr. Noonan.’ He selected a single sheet of paper, then closed the folder. He held the paper up briefly, like a doctor studying an X-ray, and I could see it was covered with single-spaced typing. ‘Let’s turn to your initial meeting with Mary and Kyra Devore. That was on the Fourth of July, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Durgin was nodding. ‘The morning of the Fourth. And you met Kyra Devore first.’
‘Yes.’
‘You met her first because her mother wasn’t with her at that time, was she?’
‘That’s a badly phrased question, Mr. Durgin, but I guess the answer is yes.’
‘I’m flattered to have my grammar corrected by a man who’s been on the bestseller lists,’ Durgin said, smiling. The smile suggested that he’d like to see me sitting next to Romeo Bissonette in that first gulag-bound boxcar. ‘Tell us about your meeting, first with Kyra Devore and then with Mary Devore. Or Mattie, if you like that better.’
I told the story. When I was finished, Durgin centered the tape player in front of him. The nails of his pudgy fingers looked as glossy as his lips.
‘Mr. Noonan, you could have run Kyra over, isn’t that true?’
‘Absolutely not. I was going thirty-five — that’s the speed limit there by the store. I saw her in plenty of time to stop.’
‘Suppose you had been coming the other way, though — heading north instead of south. Would you still have seen her in plenty of time?’
That was a fairer question than some of his others, actually. Someone coming the other way would have had a far shorter time to react. Still . . .
‘Yes,’ I said.
Durgin went up with the eyebrows. ‘You’re sure of that?’
‘Yes, Mr. Durgin. I might have had to come down a little harder on the brakes, but — ‘
‘At thirty-five.’
‘Yes, at thirty-five. I told you, that’s the speed limit — ‘
‘ — -on that particular stretch of Route 68. Yes, you told me that. You did. Is it your experience that most people obey the speed limit on that part of the road?’
‘I haven’t spent much time on the TR since 1993, so I can’t — ‘
‘Come on, Mr. Noonan — this isn’t a scene from one of your books. Just answer my questions, or we’ll be here all morning.’
‘I’m doing my best, Mr. Durgin.’
He sighed, put-upon. ‘You’ve owned your place on Dark Score Lake since the eighties, haven’t you? And the speed limit around the Lakeview General Store, the post office, and Dick Brooks’s All-Purpose Garage — what’s called The North Village — hasn’t changed since then, has it?’
‘No,’ I admitted.
‘Returning to my original question, then — in your observation, do most people on that stretch of road obey the thirty-five-mile-an-hour limit?’
‘I can’t say if it’s most, because I’ve never done a traffic survey, but I guess a lot don’t.’
‘Would you like to hear Castle County Sheriffs Deputy Footman testify on where the greatest number of speeding tickets are given out in TR-90, Mr. Noonan?’
‘No,’ I said, quite honestly.
‘Did other vehicles pass you while you were speaking first with Kyra Devore and then with Mary Devore?’
‘Yes.’
‘How many?’
‘I don’t know exactly. A couple.’
‘Could it have been three?’
‘I guess.’
‘Five?’
‘No, probably not so many.’
‘But you don’t know, exactly, do you?’
‘Because Kyra Devore was upset.’
‘Actually she had it together pretty well for a — ‘
‘Did she cry in your presence?’
‘Well . . . yes.’
‘Did her mother make her cry?’
‘That’s unfair.’
‘As unfair as allowing a three-year-old to go strolling down the middle of a busy highway on a holiday morning, in your opinion, or perhaps not quite as unfair as that?’