When she finally turned from the window and climbed back into bed, she fell asleep as soon as her head hit the pillow.
18
“Hey, don’t take it so bad,” Lisa said as she pulled out onto the highway. “It’s not like you had an investment in the guy or anything.”
Sherry nodded. “I know. But it still pisses me off. I should have gone with my gut feeling when I first saw him. The guy’s a worm.”
“Ah, but a poor hurt worm,” Lisa said. “That’s the trouble with you, Sherry. You’re a sucker for anything that’s feeling a little pain.”
“I should have become a vet then. At least animals don’t turn around and burn you.”
“I suppose. Frankie seemed pretty nice, though—don’t you think? What pisses me off is what she had to go through. But that guy that came to pick her up—now he was something else.”
“Don’t you ever think of anything else, Lisa?”
“Once in a while—but I’m working on cutting it out. You want to light up a joint?”
“Sure.”
Lisa laughed suddenly. “Christ, I’d like to see little Howie’s face when he finds out he’s got to walk back to wherever it is that he came from.”
Sherry smiled. “Let’s hope he’s got a long way to go.”
By the time they got back to Steve’s cottage, the joint had done its trick and they were both feeling better. The lights were on inside, but except for Steve, no one else was around.
“Christ!” Steve said when they came in. “Where the hell’ve you been?”
The two women looked at each other, then back at him.
“What’s your problem?” Lisa asked.
“What’s my problem? I’ll tell you what’s my problem. Earl Shaw’s called three times looking for his little buddy—that’s my problem. What happened to him?”
“He wanted to go for a drive,” Lisa said. “And then once we got to where we were going, he wanted to stay there. What difference does it make?”
“Look. You don’t know Earl. The fucker’s insane. He left his buddy here and now he wants him back. When he finds out that you’ve dumped him somewhere, there’s going to be hell to pay.”
“Come on, Steve,” Sherry said. “What’s he going to do—sue us? If he tries to get tough, just sic a couple of your biker friends on him.”
Steve shook his head. “This guy kills people.”
Sherry blanched. Lisa patted her shoulder. “Don’t worry, Sherry. I’ll talk to him. Did he leave you a number, Steve?”
“It’s by the phone. Listen, Lisa. Don’t expect any favors from him just because you balled him last night.”
Lisa gave him a withering look as she went to use the phone.
* * *
Lance took the first corner past the Treasure house in a skidding slide, his rear tires spitting dirt and gravel. He almost lost the pickup right then and there, but the sound of the engine’s roar and the wheels bouncing in the potholes, the lack of shocks that made the whole truck rattle, it all served to bring him back to his senses. He slowed down a little but pointed the pickup on down the road. He’d really done it now. Christ, that woman would have the police on him….
He couldn’t face that. Couldn’t face the idea of being booked, of the time in court, but most of all he couldn’t face Brenda. What could he tell her? That was the hardest thing. Because he didn’t regret the deed itself. That was something he’d always imagined doing, just grabbing some good-looking high-class woman and tearing into her. Yessir. But he’d never had the balls to actually do it—not until that goddamn music egged him on. And it had felt good, too.
For once he’d been in control. If he’d had the time, that woman would have done anything he told her to, just to keep on his good side. Yessir. A moment like that balanced against all the bowing and scraping for welfare checks. It didn’t make things better. It didn’t ease the pain and confusion of the bank taking his house and land and then renting the suckers back to him. Talk about a kick in the balls. It didn’t make the little bit of money stretch any further. Didn’t make damn near begging for make-work feel any better. But goddamn, for one moment there he’d really been in charge. And that had been great—though it would have been even better if he hadn’t got caught.
How long would it take for the police to get out to her place, listen to her story, then come to get him? He slowed down and pulled over to the side of the road. Christ, what was he going to tell Brenda? She’d stuck by him through a lot of shit—a hell of a lot more “for worse” than “for better.” But she wouldn’t stand by him on this.
He closed his eyes, but all he could see against his eyelids was the woman’s frightened face, the white of her flesh in the moonlight as he tore at her clothing. Buddy Treasure’s little girl, all grown up and his for the taking. If only that other car hadn’t shown up.
Christ on crutches. But if he was going to pay for it anyway… He was almost tempted to go back and see if those people were gone, maybe finish the job if the police weren’t there guarding her. If they hadn’t taken her away. But what if she hadn’t called them? Hell, what if she didn’t know who he was? Just because he knew her didn’t mean she’d remember him. It had been years since her mother ran off with her. Why the hell should she remember Lance Maxwell? She could be just lying there alone in her house right now, thinking it was over.
He shook his head, trying to get it to clear. Christ, but it ached. It was just filling up with a kaleidoscope of images of the woman and him. Riding her wouldn’t be like doing it with Brenda. Hell, no. This one was young, smooth like a doe, and he could be her buck deer, yessir.
He blinked his eyes open and stared through the windshield into the night. What the hell was he doing? Thinking of going back? Christ on a cross, she’d be talking to the police right now, giving his description, maybe even remembering his name from when he used to do odd jobs around her old man’s place.
Panic reared in him again, but he shoved it roughly down. Ease up, Lance, he told himself. Only one thing you can do now. The decision came hot and hard, like the way the music put the fire between his legs.
He shifted the pickup into first, turned on the head beams and headed down the road again.
* * *
Louie and Fingers were sitting on the bed. Between them was a suitcase. Louie was drawing a map on a piece of paper, using the case for a flat surface. “Okay,” he was saying. “There’s a door here. Window. Window. This might’ve been a cellar door—maybe just a root cellar. I don’t know.”
Fingers nodded. “Simple’s the best way. One of us in a side window, then go in the front and the back. If we do it quick and easy—”
“I don’t want the place to look roughed up,” Louie said.
“Yeah, but this other guy—you couldn’t make him?”
“Must be local talent.”
“Okay,” Fingers said. “But you’ve got two of them to worry about now—no way you can do it clean.”
“I got an idea you’re gonna love,” Louie said.
Sitting by the window, watching the pair of them, Earl could only shake his head. Christ, had they been watching too many caper movies or what? Looking at them, you’d think they were planning a major heist, not just knocking off a couple of jerks—even if one of them was Tony Valenti. Listen, he wanted to say, just let me handle it, but then the phone rang.
“Yeah?” he said in the mouthpiece.
“Hi, Earl. Lisa here. Steve says you’re looking for Howie.”
“That’s right. I thought he needed some rest. What did you do with him—take him out bar-hopping or something? Listen, put him on, would ya?”
“I can’t. He asked us to drive him down to Lanark—over to your ex-wife’s—and we left him there. We just got back.”
“You did what?” Earl looked up to find both Louie and Fingers watching him. He tried to compose his features.
“I said we just got back,” Lisa repeated.
“No. What I want to know is, w
here did you take him?”
“What do you mean?”
“What the fuck was he going to see her for?”
“Well, he wouldn’t tell us,” Lisa explained. “He said you’d be mad, but he did mention something about fixing things up between you. Hey, I didn’t know you had a little girl, Earl. You never told me that last night.”
“How long ago did you leave him?”
“Oh, I don’t know. An hour maybe?”
“Right. Thanks for calling.”
Earl hung up, thinking: And maybe we’ll talk some more, depending on how much Howie told you. He shook his head. Christ, Howie. You fuckup. He’d had to tell the wops about him, once he realized Howie was gone, losing the edge of having a hole card on them.
“Who was that?” Louie asked.
“Just one of the girls that I left my partner with.”
“What happened—he take off?”
“Something like that.”
“Who’d he go see?” Louie wanted to know.
“Look, that’s my problem,” Earl said. “You stick to Valenti and let me worry about what’s my business.”
Louie glanced at Fingers, then back. “Was it your ex-wife he went to see? The one with the money that you’re hoping to use to finance your deal with my old man?”
Earl stared at him, stunned. “What the fuck would you know about that?”
“You don’t think we check into people we do business with?”
“Cute. Who’d you check me out with? The Better Business Bureau?”
Fingers stiffened, but Louie shook his head. “Don’t play the smartass, Earl,” he said. “Maybe you’re big stuff up here, but in the circles we run in, you’re just a small-time hood, capito?”
“Sure,” Earl said. This wasn’t the right time for him to make his play.
“So your wife—she knows Tony?”
“Now how—”
“Think about it,” Louie said. “What else are you doing up in the bush where you just happen to run into Tony, but sniffing around her? So answer the question. Does she know Tony?”
“Looks like.”
“This complicates things,” Louie said.
“What the problem?”
“First off, we don’t make war on women and kids.”
“Sure,” Earl said. “But that’s only in the family—right?”
Louie shrugged. “Maybe so. But it’s never good business.”
“Look, like I said. You let me handle them, okay? What’ve you got to lose, fercrissakes? It’s not like—”
He broke off as a sharp rapping came at the door. Fingers moved silently from the bed and took up a position by the wall near it. He drew his gun and attached its silencer. Louie nodded to Earl.
“Open it,” he said.
Earl crossed to the door and jerked it opened. A large-wheeled laundry hamper stood in the hall in front of their door. “What the fuck?” he muttered and looked both ways down the hall, but it was empty so far as he could see. As he started to reach for the cloth that was covering the hamper Fingers stopped him.
“Easy,” he said. “That could be—”
“Oh, fercrissakes,” Earl said. “This isn’t some fucking movie. What do you think? There’s gonna be a bomb or a stiff in there?”
He laughed as he caught hold of the edge of the cloth and flipped it aside. The laughter died in his throat as he looked down into the pasty-white features of Howie Peale’s corpse.
“Oh, fuck,” he said.
Louie and Fingers looked inside. Fingers reached down and plucked a silver stick pin from the front of the corpse’s jacket. The head of the pin was a small sculpted fox’s head.
“Papale,” Fingers said. “He’s warning us that he’s in.”
Louie nodded. “Get rid of that thing,” he told Earl, indicating the hamper. “Then we’ve got some serious thinking to do.”
* * *
Lance turned off the ignition after pulling in beside his house. He sat in the truck for a few moments, then got out and slowly walked around to the front. Standing near the road, he looked back at the building.
There was a light on in their bedroom—that was where Brenda would be. Another light on in the kitchen and on the front porch. For him. That’s how it was when he was coming in late. She always left those two lights on for him. What was she going to think when she found out what he’d been doing while she left those lights on for him tonight? He’d taken off this morning without a word and then tried to hump Buddy Treasure’s little girl, only she wasn’t so little anymore, was she?
It was Brenda’s disappointment that was going to be the hardest to take. She’d stood by him through a lot of hard times. Losing the farm. Losing both the boys—the one in an accident with a thresher, the other to drunk driving. And his ma and pa. What were they thinking when they looked down on him now, when they saw what he’d done to the Maxwell farm—six generations it’d been in the family—when they saw what he’d done to the Maxwell name.
It wouldn’t matter, probably, except that he got caught.
Time’s wasting, he told himself. You know what you came here to do. He headed for the house, wishing he could hear that music one more time.
* * *
“What did you tell him that for?” Sherry asked when Lisa got off the phone. “Now he’s going to take it out on Frankie.”
Lisa shook her head. “He can’t do that. He knows that we know now—so what can he do? If anything happens to Frankie, he knows we can go to the police.”
“What makes you think that’ll stop him? Maybe he’ll come after us now.”
“I know this kind of guy,” Lisa insisted. “He talks big, but—”
“You’re wrong,” Steve said. “Earl Shaw’s one crazy motherfucker. Believe it. If I were you, I’d be planning a long vacation somewhere until this all blows over. That’s what I’m going to do. I like having my balls all in one piece.”
“C’mon, Steve. What can he do?”
“I don’t know, but I’m not hanging around to find out. It’s going to take him forty-five minutes or so to get out here, if he comes here first, and I plan to be long gone in the next five.”
“Where are you going?”
“I’ve got a friend who’s got a chalet up in Wakefield—someone Earl doesn’t know.”
Lisa glanced at Sherry. “You’re scared, aren’t you?”
Sherry nodded. “You’re not?”
Lisa thought about that for a moment, about the kind of man Earl had appeared to be last night. A little rough, full of himself, sure. But crazy?
“I saw him take a tire-iron to a guy once,” Steve said. “You want to know what for? The guy was leaning against Earl’s car.”
“For real?” Lisa asked.
Steve nodded. The two women exchanged glances, then Lisa turned to him. “Take us with you?”
“If you’re ready to leave in four minutes.”
“You’re on.”
* * *
Brenda Maxwell was lying in bed when she heard her husband’s pickup pull into the lane. Thank God. He was finally back. She’d made an appointment with Dr. Bolton for him for tomorrow morning. Now she just hoped she could get him to keep it. She listened to his footsteps in the lane, heard them fade. He’s gone to the grave, she thought. She’d stood over it herself earlier today, thinking about poor old Dooker, of how things had changed. Whatever demons were driving her husband, she just hoped it wasn’t too late to drive them away.
She was about to go downstairs and call him in when she heard the front door open and his work boots clomping down the hall to the kitchen. Should she get up and fix him something to eat? He’d missed breakfast, lunch and dinner, unless he’d eaten out. Where in God’s name had he been all day? Before she could get out of bed and go downstairs, she heard the back door open and the screen door creak on its hinges, then slam shut. Now what was he doing?
Her feet found their worn slippers and she put an old housecoat on. It was dark in the hallwa
y and on the stairs going down, but she decided not to turn on a light. Lord knew what was going through his mind at the moment. She didn’t want to spook him. Not with the appointment set for tomorrow morning. Not when she’d have somebody to help her deal with this thing.
She went down the stairs slowly, fingers trailing along the banister. Keep remembering those good times, she told herself. So times have been rough. They’ll get better again. She muttered the words to herself, using them as a litany as she practiced them. She had to convince him.
Her foot was just leaving the last stair when the sudden report of the shotgun being fired sounded like an explosion outside. She jumped, almost falling from the stairs, and recovered only by clutching the banister.
She knew before she reached the kitchen and flicked on the backyard floods what she was going to see. But she went through the motions all the same. It wasn’t until she stood on the porch and could actually see him sprawled across Dooker’s grave, the shotgun lying nearby and the ground splattered with his blood, that she slowly sank to her knees. Leaning her head against the support pole of the porch, she tried to pray, but all she could find were tears.
19
“’Lo, Lewis. Lily.”
Lily looked up sharply as the dishevelled figure swung down from a tree above them and settled on her haunches to stare at them. There was no hat hiding her matted curls tonight, and for the first time Lily saw the small horns lifting from Mally’s brow. Her eyes widened slightly, but then she nodded. She should have guessed that the wild girl was more kin to the mystery than to the village.
Lewis had always talked about Mally as though he’d known her for many years, but it was only fairly recently that she had been seen around the village, and joined them in the dance, so Lily had never put a great deal of mind to what Lewis had told her about the wild girl. Lily had just assumed that this Mally was a daughter, or granddaughter, of another Mally that Lewis had known.