‘You ghosts take care of it,’ I muttered. ‘If you can change the pants and the underwear around on the whirligig, you can put my clothes in the hamper.’
I took three Tylenol and went to bed. At some point I woke a second time and heard the phantom child sobbing.
‘Stop,’ I told it. ‘Stop it, Ki, no one’s going to take you anywhere. You’re safe.’ Then I went back to sleep again.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
The telephone was ringing. I climbed toward it from a drowning dream where I couldn’t catch my breath, rising into early sunlight, wincing at the pain in the back of my head as I swung my feet out of bed. The phone would quit before I got to it, they almost always do in such situations, and then I’d lie back down and spend a fruitless ten minutes wondering who it had been before getting up for good.
Ringgg . . . ringgg . . . ringgg . . .
Was that ten? A dozen? I’d lost count. Someone was really dedicated. I hoped it wasn’t trouble, but in my experience people don’t try that hard when the news is good. I touched my fingers gingerly to the back of my head. It hurt plenty, but that deep, sick ache seemed to be gone. And there was no blood on my fingers when I looked at them.
I padded down the hall and picked up the phone. ‘Hello?’
‘Well, you won’t have to worry about testifyin at the kid’s custody hearin anymore, at least.’
‘Bill?’
‘Ayuh.’
‘How did you know . . . ‘ I leaned around the corner and peered at the waggy, annoying cat-clock.
Twenty minutes past seven and already sweltering. Hotter’n a bugger, as us TR Martians like to say. ‘How do you know he decided — ‘
‘I don’t know nothing about his business one way or t’other.’ Bill sounded touchy. ‘He never called to ask my advice, and I never called to give him any.’
‘What’s happened? What’s going on?’
‘You haven’t had the TV on yet?’
‘I don’t even have the coffee on yet.’
No apology from Bill; he was a fellow who believed that people who didn’t get up until after six A.M. deserved whatever they got. I was awake now, though. And had a pretty good idea of what was coming.
‘Devore killed himself last night, Mike. Got into a tub of warm water and pulled a plastic bag over his head. Mustn’t have taken long, with his lungs the way they were.’
No, I thought, probably not long. In spite of the humid summer heat that already lay on the house, I shivered.
‘Who found him? The woman?’
‘Ayuh, sure.’
‘What time?’
”’Shortly before midnight,”‘ they said on the Channel 6 news.’
Right around the time I had awakened on the couch and taken myself stiffly off to bed, in other words.
‘Is she implicated?’
‘Did she play Kevorkian, you mean? The news report I saw didn’t say nothin about that. The gossip-mill down to the Lakeview General will be turnin brisk by now, but I ain’t been down yet for my share of the grain. If she helped him, I don’t think she’ll ever see trouble for it, do you? He was eighty-five and not well.’
‘Do you know if he’ll be buried on the TR?’
‘California. She said there’d be services in Palm Springs on Tuesday.’
A sense of surpassing oddness swept over me as I realized the source of Mattie’s problems might be lying in a chapel filled with flowers at the same time The Friends of Kyra Devore were digesting their lunches and getting ready to start throwing the Frisbee around. It’s going to be a celebration, I thought wonderingly. I don’t know how they’re going to handle it in The Little Chapel of the Microchips in Palm Springs, but on Wasp Hill Road they’re going to be dancing and throwing their arms in the sky and hollering Yes, lawd.
I’d never been glad to hear of anyone’s death before in my life, but I was glad to hear of Devore’s.
I was sorry to feel that way, but I did. The old bastard had dumped me in the lake . . . but before the night was over, he was the one who had drowned. Inside a plastic bag he had drowned, sitting in a tub of tepid water.
‘Any idea how the TV guys got onto it so fast?’ It wasn’t superfast, not with seven hours between the discovery of the body and the seven o’clock news, but TV news people have a tendency to be lazy.
‘Whitmore called em. Had a press conference right there in Warrington’s parlor at two o’clock this morning. Took questions settin on that big maroon plush sofa, the one Jo always used to say should be in a saloon oil paintin with a naked woman lyin on it. Remember?’
‘Yeah.’
‘I saw a coupla County deputies walkin around in the background, plus a fella I reckonized from Jaquard’s Funeral Home in Motton.’
‘That’s bizarre,’ I said. ‘Ayuh, body still upstairs, most likely, while Whitmore was runnin her gums . . . but she claimed she was just followin the boss’s orders. Said he left a tape sayin he’d done it on Friday night so as not to affect the cump’ny stock price and wanted Rogette to call in the press right off and assure folks that the cump’ny was solid, that between his son and the Board of Directors, everythin was going to be just acey-deucey. Then she told about the services in Palm Springs.’
‘He commits suicide, then holds a two A.M. press conference by proxy to soothe the stockholders.’
‘Ayuh. And it sounds just like him.’
A silence fell between us on the line. I tried to think and couldn’t. All I knew was that I wanted to go upstairs and work, aching head or no aching head. I wanted to rejoin Andy Drake, John Shackleford, and Shackleford’s childhood friend, the awful Ray Garraty. There was madness in my story, but it was a madness I understood.
‘Bill,’ I said at last, ‘are we still friends?’
‘Christ, yes,’ he said promptly. ‘But if there’s people around who seem a little stand-offy to you, you’ll know why, won’t you?’
Sure I’d know. Many would blame the old man’s death on me. It was crazy, given his physical condition, and it would by no means be a majority opinion, but the idea would gain a certain amount of credence, at least in the short run — I knew that as well as I knew the truth about John Shackleford’s childhood friend.
Kiddies, once upon a time there was a goose that flew back to the little unincorporated township where it had lived as a downy gosling. It began laying lovely golden eggs, and the townsfolk all gathered around to marvel and receive their share. Now, however, that goose was cooked and someone had to take the heat. I’d get some, but Mattie’s kitchen might get a few degrees toastier than mine; she’d had the temerity to fight for her child instead of silently handing Ki over.
‘Keep your head down the next few weeks,’ Bill said. ‘That’d be my idea. In fact, if you had business that took you right out of the TR until all this settles down, that might be for the best.’
‘I appreciate the sense of what you’re saying, but I can’t. I’m writing a book. If I pick up my shit and move, it’s apt to die on me. It’s happened before, and I don’t want it to happen this time.’
‘Pretty good yarn, is it?’
‘Not bad, but that’s not the important thing. It’s . . . well, let’s just say this one’s important to me for other reasons.’
‘Wouldn’t it travel as far as Derry?’
‘Are you trying to get rid of me, William?’
‘I’m tryin to keep an eye out, that’s all — caretakin’s my job, y’know. And don’t say you weren’t warned: the hive’s gonna buzz. There’s two stories going around about you, Mike. One is that you’re shacking with Mattie Devore. The other is that you came back to write a hatchet-job on the TR. Pull out all the old skeletons you can find.’
‘Finish what Jo started, in other words. Who’s been spreading that story, Bill?’
Silence from Bill. We were back on earthquake ground again, and this time that ground felt shakier than ever.
‘The book I’m working on is a novel,’ I said. ‘Set in Florida.’
‘Oh, ayuh?’ You wouldn’t think three little syllables could have so much relief in them.
‘Think you could kind of pass that around?’
‘I think I could,’ he said. ‘If you tell Brenda Meserve, it’d get around even faster and go even farther.’
‘Okay, I will. As far as Mattie goes — ‘
‘Mike, you don’t have to’
‘I’m not shacking with her. That was never the deal. The deal was like walking down the street, turning the corner, and seeing a big guy beating up a little guy.’ I paused. ‘She and her lawyer are planning a barbecue at her place Tuesday noon. I’m planning to join them. Are people from town going to think we’re dancing on Devore’s grave?’