"Alan?" Her fist knocked lightly on his forehead. "Alan, are you in there?"
He looked back at her with a smile. "I'm here, Polly."
She had worn a dark-blue jumper with a matching blue stock tie to Nettie's funeral. While Alan was thinking, she had taken off the tie and dextrously unbuttoned the top two buttons of the white blouse underneath.
"More!" he said with a leer. "Cleavage! We want cleavage!"
"Stop," she said primly but with a smile. "We're sitting in the middle of Main Street and it's two-thirty in the afternoon. Besides, we've just come from a funeral, in case you forgot."
He started. "Is it really that late?"
"If two-thirty's late, it's late." She tapped his wrist.
"Do you ever look at the thing you've got strapped on there?"
He looked at it now and saw it was closer to two-forty than two-thirty. Middle School broke at three o'clock. If he was going to be there when Brian Rusk got out, he had to get moving right away.
"Let me see your trinket," he said.
She grasped the fine silver chain around her neck and pulled out the small silver object on the end of it. She cupped it in her palm ... then closed her hand over it when he moved to touch it.
"Uh ... I don't know if you're supposed to." She was smiling, but the move he'd made had clearly left her uncomfortable. "It might screw up the vibrations, or something."
"Oh, come on, Pol," he said, annoyed.
"Look," she said, "let's get something straight, okay? Want to?" The anger was back in her voice. She was trying to control it, but it was there. "It's easy for you to make light of this. You're not the one with the oversized buttons on the telephone, or the oversized Percodan prescription."
"Hey, Polly! That's--"
"No, never mind hey Polly." Bright spots of color had mounted in her cheeks. Part of her anger, she would think later, sprang from a very simple source: on Sunday, she had felt exactly as Alan felt now. Something had happened since then to change her mind, and dealing with that change was not easy. "This thing works. I know it's crazy, but it does work. On Sunday morning, when Nettie came over, I was in agony. I'd started thinking about how the real solution to all my problems might be a double amputation. The pain was so bad, Alan, that I turned that thought over with a feeling that was almost surprise. Like 'Oh yeah--amputation! Why haven't I thought of that before? It's so obvious!' Now, just two days later, all I've got is what Dr. Van Allen calls 'fugitive pain,' and even that seems to be going away. I remember about a year ago I spent a week on a brown-rice diet because that was supposed to help. Is this so different?"
The anger had gone out of her voice as she spoke, and now she was looking at him almost pleadingly.
"I don't know, Polly. I really don't."
She had opened her hand again, and she now held the azka between her thumb and forefinger. Alan bent close to look at it, but made no move to touch it this time. It was a small silver object, not quite round. Tiny holes, not much bigger than the black dots which make up newsprint photographs, studded its lower half. It gleamed mellowly in the sunlight.
And as Alan looked at it, a powerful, irrational feeling swept him: he didn't like it. He didn't like it at all. He resisted a brief, powerful urge to simply rip it off Polly's neck and throw it out the open window.
Yes! Good idea, sport! You do that and you'll be picking your teeth out of your lap!
"Sometimes it almost feels like something is moving around inside of it," Polly said, smiling. "Like a Mexican jumping bean, or something. Isn't that silly?"
"I don't know."
He watched her drop it back inside her blouse with a strong sense of misgiving ... but once it was out of sight and her fingers--her undeniably limber fingers--had gone to work re-buttoning the top of her blouse, the feeling began to fade. What didn't was his growing suspicion that Mr. Leland Gaunt was conning the woman he loved ... and if he was, she would not be the only one.
"Have you thought it could be something else?" Now he was moving with the delicacy of a man using slick stepping-stones to cross a swift-running stream. "You've had remissions before, you know."
"Of course I know," Polly said with edgy patience. "They're my hands."
"Polly, I'm just trying--"
"I knew you'd probably react just the way you are reacting, Alan. The fact is simple enough: I know what arthritic remission feels like, and brother, this isn't it. I've had times over the last five or six years when I felt pretty good, but I never felt this good even during the best of them. This is different. This is like ..." She paused, thought, then made a small frustrated gesture that was mostly hands and shoulders. "This is like being well again. I don't expect you to understand exactly what I mean, but I can't put it any better than that."
He nodded, frowning. He did understand what she was saying, and he also understood that she meant it. Perhaps the azka had unlocked some dormant healing power in her own mind. Was that possible, even though the disease in question wasn't psychosomatic in origin? The Rosicrucians thought stuff like that happened all the time. So did the millions of people who had bought L. Ron Hubbard's book on Dianetics, for that matter. He himself didn't know; the only thing he could say for sure was that he had never seen a blind person think himself back to sight or a wounded person stop his bleeding by an effort of concentration.
What he did know was this: something about the situation smelled wrong. Something about it smelled as high as dead fish that have spent three days in the hot sun.
"Let's cut to the chase," Polly said. "Trying not to be mad at you is wearing me out. Come inside with me. Talk to Mr. Gaunt yourself. It's time you met him anyway. Maybe he can explain better what the charm does ... and what it doesn't do."
He looked at his watch again. Fourteen minutes of three now. For a brief moment he thought of doing as she suggested, and leaving Brian Rusk for later. But catching the boy as he came out of school--catching him while he was away from home--felt right. He would get better answers if he talked to him away from his mother, who would hang around them like a lioness protecting her cub, interrupting, perhaps even telling her son not to answer. Yes, that was the bottom line: if it turned out her son had something to hide, or if Mrs. Rusk even thought he did, Alan might find it difficult or impossible to get the information he needed.
Here he had a potential con artist; in Brian Rusk he might have the key that would unlock a double murder.
"I can't, honey," he said. "Maybe a little later today. I have to go over to the Middle School and talk to someone, and I ought to do it right away."
"Is it about Nettie?"
"It's about Wilma Jerzyck ... but if my hunch is right, Nettie comes into it, yes. If I find anything out, I'll tell you later. In the meantime, will you do something for me?"
"Alan, I'm buying it! They're not your hands!"
"No, I expect you to buy it. I want you to pay him by check, that's all. There's no reason why he shouldn't take one--if he's a reputable businessman, that is. You live in town and you bank right across the street. But if something shakes out funny, you've got a few days to put a stop on payment."
"I see," Polly said. Her voice was calm, but Alan realized with a sinking feeling that he had finally missed his footing on one of those slippery stepping-stones and fallen headlong into the stream. "You think he's a crook, don't you, Alan? You think he's going to take the gullible little lady's money, fold his tent, and steal off into the night."
"I don't know," Alan said evenly. "What I do know is that he's only been doing business here in town for a week. So a check seems like a reasonable precaution to take."
Yes, he was being reasonable. Polly recognized that. It was that very reasonableness, that stubborn rationality in the face of what seemed to her to be an authentic miracle cure, that was now driving her anger. She fought an urge to begin snapping her fingers in his face, shouting Do you SEE that, Alan? Are you BLIND? as she did so. The fact that Alan was right, that Mr. Gaunt should have no problem
at all with her check if he was on the up-and-up, only made her angrier.
Be careful, a voice whispered. Be careful, don't be hasty, turn on brain before throwing mouth in gear. Remember that you love this man.
But another voice answered, a colder voice, one she barely recognized as her own: Do I? Do I really?
"All right," she said, tight-lipped, and slid across the seat and away from him. "Thank you for looking after my best interests, Alan. Sometimes I forget how badly I need someone to do that, you see. I'll be sure to write him a check."
"Polly--"
"No, Alan. No more talk now. I can't not be mad at you any longer today." She opened the door and got out in one lithe gesture. The jumper rode up, revealing a momentary heart-stopping length of thigh.
He started to get out on his own side, wanting to catch her, talk to her, smooth it over, make her see that he had only voiced his doubts because he cared about her. Then he looked at his watch again. It was nine minutes of three. Even if he pushed it, he might miss Brian Rusk.
"I'll talk to you tonight," he called out the window.
"Fine," she said. "You do that, Alan." She went directly to the door beneath the canopy without turning around. Before he put the station wagon in reverse and backed out into the street, Alan heard the tinkle of a small silver bell.
5
"Ms. Chalmers!" Mr. Gaunt cried cheerfully, and made a small check-mark on the sheet beside the cash register. He was nearing the bottom of it now: Polly's was the last name but one.
"Please ... Polly," she said.
"Excuse me." His smile widened. "Polly."
She smiled back at him, but the smile was forced. Now that she was in here, she felt a keen sorrow at the angry way she and Alan had parted. Suddenly she found herself struggling just to keep from bursting into tears.
"Ms. Chalmers? Polly? Are you feeling unwell?" Mr. Gaunt came around the counter. "You look a trifle pale." His face was furrowed with genuine concern. This is the man Alan thinks is a crook, Polly thought. If he could only see him now--
"It's the sun, I think," she said in a voice that was not quite even. "It's so warm outside."
"But cool in here," he said soothingly. "Come, Polly. Come and sit down."
He led her, his hand near but not quite touching the small of her back, to one of the red velvet chairs. She sat upon it, knees together.
"I happened to be looking out the window," he said, sitting in the chair next to hers and folding his long hands into his lap. "It looked to me as if you and the Sheriff might be arguing."
"It's nothing," she said, but then a single large tear overspilled the comer of her left eye and rolled down her cheek.
"On the contrary," he said. "It means a great deal."
She looked up at him, surprised ... and Mr. Gaunt's hazel eyes captured hers. Had they been hazel before? She couldn't remember, not for certain. All she knew was that as she looked into them, she felt all the day's misery--poor Nettie's funeral, then the stupid fight she'd had with Alan--begin to dissolve.
"It ... it does?"
"Polly," he said softly, "I think everything is going to turn out just fine. If you trust me. Do you? Do you trust me?"
"Yes," Polly said, although something inside, something far and faint, cried out a desperate warning. "I do --no matter what Alan says, I trust you with all my heart."
"Well, that's fine," Mr. Gaunt said. He reached out and took one of Polly's hands. Her face wrinkled in disgust for a moment, and then relaxed into its former blank and dreaming expression. "That's just fine. And your friend the Sheriff needn't have worried, you know; your personal check is just as good as gold with me."
6
Alan saw he was going to be late unless he turned on the flasher-bubble and stuck it on the roof. He didn't want to do that. He didn't want Brian Rusk to see a police car; he wanted him to see a slightly down-at-the-heels station wagon, just like the kind his own dad probably drove.
It was too late to make it to the school before it let out for the day. Alan parked at the intersection of Main and School streets instead. This was the most logical way for Brian to come; he would just have to hope that logic would work somewhere along the line today.
Alan got out, leaned against the station wagon's bumper, and felt in his pocket for a stick of chewing gum. He was unwrapping it when he heard the three o'clock bell at the Middle School, dreamy and distant in the warm air.
He decided to talk to Mr. Leland Gaunt of Akron, Ohio, as soon as he finished with Brian Rusk, appointment or no appointment ... and just as abruptly changed his mind. He'd call the Attorney General's Office in Augusta first, have them check Gaunt's name against the con file. If there was nothing there, they could send the name on to the LAWS R & I computer in Washington--LAWS, in Alan's opinion, was one of the few good things the Nixon administration had ever done.
The first kids were coming down the street now, yelling, skipping, laughing. A sudden idea struck Alan, and he opened the driver's door of the station wagon. He reached across the seat, opened the glove compartment, and pawed through the stuff inside. Todd's joke can of nuts fell out onto the floor as he did so.
Alan was about to give up when he found what he wanted. He took it, slammed the glove compartment shut, and backed out of the car. He was holding a small cardboard envelope with a sticker on it that said: The Folding Flower Trick
Blackstone Magic Co.
19 Greer St.
Paterson, N.J.
From this packet Alan slipped an even smaller square--a thick block of multicolored tissue-paper. He slipped it beneath his watchband. All magicians have a number of "palming wells" on their persons and about their clothes, and each has his own favorite well. Under the watchband was Alan's.
With the famous Folding Flowers taken care of, Alan went back to watching for Brian Rusk. He saw a boy on a bike, cutting jazzily in and out through the clots of pint-sized pedestrians, and was alert at once. Then he saw it was one of the Hanlon twins, and allowed himself to relax again.
"Slow down or I'll give you a ticket," Alan growled as the boy shot past. Jay Hanlon looked at him, startled, and almost ran into a tree. He pedaled on at a much more sedate speed.
Alan watched him for a moment, amused, then turned back in the direction of the school and resumed his watch for Brian Rusk.
7
Sally Ratcliffe climbed the stairs from her little speech therapy room to the first floor of the Middle School five minutes after the three o'clock bell and walked down the main hall toward the office. The hall was clearing rapidly, as it always did on days when the weather was fair and warm. Outside, droves of kids were shouting their way across the lawn to where the #2 and #3 buses idled sleepily at the curb. Sally's low heels clicked and clacked. She was holding a manila envelope in one hand. The name on this envelope, Frank Jewett, was turned in against her gently rounded breast.
She paused at Room 6, one door down from the office, and looked in through the wire-reinforced glass. Inside, Mr. Jewett was talking to the half-dozen teachers who were involved in coaching fall and winter sports. Frank Jewett was a pudgy little man who always reminded Sally of Mr. Weatherbee, the principal in the Archie comics. Like Mr. Weatherbee's, his glasses were always sliding down on his nose.
Sitting to his right was Alice Tanner, the school secretary. She appeared to be taking notes.
Mr. Jewett glanced to his left, saw Sally looking in the window, and gave her one of his prissy little smiles. She raised one hand in a wave and made herself smile back. She could remember the days when smiling had come naturally to her; next to praying, smiling had been the most natural thing in the world.
Some of the other teachers looked over to see who their fearless leader was looking at. So did Alice Tanner. Alice waggled her fingers coyly at Sally, smiling with saccharine sweetness.
They know, Sally thought. Every one of them knows that Lester and I are history. Irene was so sweet last night ... so sympathetic ... and so anxious to spill her gut
s. That little bitch.
Sally waggled her fingers right back, feeling her own coy--and totally bogus--smile stretch her lips. I hope you get hit by a dump-truck on your way home, you whorylooking thing, she thought, and then walked on, her sensible low heels clicking and clacking.
When Mr. Gaunt had called her during her free period and told her it was time to finish paying for the wonderful splinter, Sally had reacted with enthusiasm and a sour kind of pleasure. She sensed that the "little joke" she had promised to play on Mr. Jewett was a mean one, and that was all right with her. She felt mean today.
She put her hand on the office door ... then paused.
What's the matter with you? she wondered suddenly. You have the splinter ... the wonderful, holy splinter with the wonderful, holy vision caught inside it. Aren't things like that supposed to make a person feel better? Calmer? More in touch with God the Father Almighty? You don't feel calmer and more in touch with anyone. You feel like someone filled your head up with barbed wire.
"Yes, but that's not my fault, or the splinter's fault," Sally muttered. "That's Lester's fault. Mr. Lester Big-Prick Pratt."
A short girl wearing glasses and heavy braces turned from the Pep Club poster she'd been studying and glanced curiously at Sally.
"What are you looking at, Irvina?" Sally asked.
Irvina blinked. "Nuffink, Miz Rat-Cliff."
"Then go look at it someplace else," Sally snapped. "School is out, you know."
Irvina hurried down the hall, throwing an occasional distrustful glance back over her shoulder.
Sally opened the door to the office and went in. The envelope she carried had been right where Mr. Gaunt had told her it would be, behind the garbage cans outside the cafeteria doors. She had written Mr. Jewett's name on it herself.
She took one more quick glance over her shoulder to make sure that little whore Alice Tanner wasn't coming in. Then she opened the door to the inner office, hurried across the room, and laid the manila envelope on Frank Jewett's desk. Now there was the other thing.