I nodded. ‘I’m more worried about red faces. Newspapers, or
television. Some reporter finds classified stuff on a trash pile
near a strip club, there’ll be major embarrassment all around.’
‘Maybe the widow will know. He might have discussed it with
her.’
‘We can’t ask her,’ I said. ‘As far as she’s concerned he died
in his sleep with the blanket pulled up to his chin, and everything
else was kosher. Any worries we’ve got at this point stay
strictly between me, you, and Garber.’
‘Garber?’ she said.
The, you, and him,’ I said.
I saw her smile. It was a trivial case, but working it with
Garber was a definite stroke of luck, for a person with a ll0th
Special Unit transfer pending.
Green Valley was a picture-perfect colonial town and the
Kramer house was a neat old place in an expensive part of it. It
was a Victorian confection with fish-scale tiles on the roof and
a bunch of turrets and porches all painted white, sitting on a
couple of acres of emerald lawn. There were stately evergreen
trees dotted about. They looked like someone had positioned
them with care, which they probably had, a hundred years ago.
We pulled up at the kerb and waited, just looking. I don’t know
what Summer was thinking about, but I was scanning the scene
and filing it away under A for America. I have a Social Security
number and the same blue and silver passport as everyone else
but between my old man’s Stateside tours and my own I can
only put together about five years’ worth of actual.residence in
the continental U.S. So I know a bunch of basic elementary
school facts like state capitals and how many grand slams
39
Lou Gehrig hit and some basic high-school stuff like the
Constitutional amendments and the importance of Antietam, but
I don’t know much about the price of milk or how to work a pay
phone or how different places look and smell. So I soak it up
when I can. And the Kramer house was worth soaking up. That
was for sure. A watery sun was shining on it. There was a faint
breeze and the smell of woodsmoke in the air and a kind
of intense cold-afternoon quiet all around us. It was the kind of
place you would have wanted your grandparents to live. You
could have visited in the fall and raked leaves and drunk apple
cider and then come back in the summer and loaded a ten
year-old station wagon with a canoe and headed for a lake
somewhere. It reminded me of the places in the picture books
they gave me in Manila and Guam and Seoul.
Until we got inside.
‘Ready?’ Summer said.
‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Let’s do it. Let’s do the widow thing.’
She was quiet. I was sure she had done it before. I had too,
more than once. It was never fun. She pulled off the kerb and
headed for the driveway entrance. Drove slowly towards the
front door and eased to a stop ten feet from it. We opened our
doors together and slid out into the chill and straightened
our jackets. We left our hats in the car. That would be Mrs
Kramer’s first clue, if she happened to be watching. A pair of
MPs at your door is never good news, and if they’re bareheaded,
it’s worse news.
This particular door was painted a dull antique red and it had
a glass storm screen in front of it. I rang the bell and we waited.
And waited. I started to think nobody was home. I rang the bell
again. The breeze was cold. It was stronger than it had looked.
‘We should have called ahead,’ Summer said.
‘Can’t,’ I said. ‘Can’t say, please be there four hours from now
so we can deliver some very important news face to face. Too
much of a preview, wouldn’t you say?’
‘I came all this way and I’ve got nobody to hug.’
‘Sounds like a country song. Then your truck breaks down
and your dog dies.’
I tried the bell again. No response.
‘We should look for a vehicle,’ Summer said.