A Shiver of Wonder (19 page)

“Here ya go!” Lydia had swung by with a
generous piece of the devil’s food cake for David. Her voice
lowered to a stage whisper. “I wasn’t sure if it was cool with the
boss, so I had her look this over before I brought it out. Extra
icing on the house, if you catch my drift!”

David snorted. Janice’s face remained
blank.

Lydia smiled warmly at Janice. “I just love
your hair. Seriously. If I’d been born with a lucky shade like
that, I’d never have to keep changing mine up, trying to find
something that works as natural as yours. You work at The Hot Spot,
don’t you?”

Janice nodded, her countenance doubtful as
she obviously wondered where this was leading.

“I knew it!” Lydia beamed. “I come in there
every few weeks with a bunch of girlfriends. We’re the ones who
always go through buckets and buckets of Long Island Ice Teas, and
then have to start chowing down so we don’t all get rolled home.
You’ve waited on us several times. You’re good! You always get
everything perfect, no matter how toasted we are.”

A real smile had broken out on Janice’s
face. “Hummingbird,” she replied simply. “Right?”

Lydia nodded. “Yep!” She rolled up her
sleeve a few inches to display it, and then winked at Janice. “I’ll
probably see you there this weekend. You could always join us, ya
know, after work, maybe. We usually hit The Roadhouse down on Oak
for a bit, just to cap the evening off.”

Janice executed a careful nod. “Okay. I
might like that.”

“Cool!” Lydia bounced her head back and
forth, and then lightly slapped David’s arm. “Just don’t bring any
men along. They ruin everything!
This
one’s all right, some
of the time, but God, the rest of them?”

The smile on Janice’s face was upgrading to
a beam. “Don’t I know it?” she rejoined easily. “Got it. No
men.”

“Cool!” Lydia repeated. “All right! We’ll
see ya, then.” And her hand squeezed David’s shoulder just before
she sashayed away.

Janice picked up her fork. “What’s her
name?” she asked David quietly. “I should remember, but…”

“Lydia,” grinned David. “She’s awesome. In
every way. She’s never invited
me
to The Roadhouse or The
Hot Spot. I feel like I’m missing out on all the fun stuff.
Seriously, no men?”

Another smile. It was the happiest David had
ever seen her. “Might not be such a bad thing for a while,” she
replied. Her fork came down, and she upended the newspaper.
Detective Ormsby’s smug visage eyeballed them from beneath the
screaming headlines. “Ever see such a mess caused by women?” she
asked.

David could think of a plethora of disasters
that had been caused by women, historically as well as in the
present day, but didn’t think it the right moment to say so.
Instead, he said, “Are you glad it’s pretty much over? No more
visits from this loser – ” His finger gave Ormsby’s manly chin a
swift poke. “ – at the very least. And I’m guessing that those two
guys aren’t ever coming back to Shady Grove.”

But Janice’s face had begun to cloud over.
“I don’t know,” she said in a much lower voice. “I guess Deke and
Lew mighta done it. But I’d hate for ’em to take the rap if it
wasn’t them. From what I’ve been hearin’, they been claimin’ they
didn’t do it. Even Bill’s not so sure, now that it’s all official
and such.” She toyed with her fork. “But they did skip out and all.
So maybe all of ’em are just a pack of liars.”

David shifted in his chair as he tried to
follow all of this. “But it seems pretty clear,” he said. “I mean,
they drove all the way over from Greenville that morning,
supposedly to confront Heck about money. And Bill saw them at the
building, pounding on your door around twelve. And then when you
came back that night, Heck had been dead for almost the exact
number of hours that had passed since they’d been there. What’s
Bill not so sure about now, anyway? It was noon. He’s never all
sauced up in the middle of the day.”

Janice’s ebullience had evaporated entirely.
“He’s just… not sure. He said that something like this happened to
someone he knew when he was a kid. That it was obvious who had done
it, but then it turned out it was actually someone else. He said
that the cops didn’t even go after any of the killers, they were
just so happy they’d left town.”

David’s thoughts had begun to spin. His head
was spiraling, his mind was abuzz with a swarm of facts and
suppositions, and snippets of stories to which he wished he had
paid more attention.

Jim Frisk. Big Jim Frisk. Some guys he owed
money to, they came for him one day and gave him a touch of his own
medicine.

David stood. One of Genevieve’s paintings, a
delectable rendering of a layered cheesecake fronting a backdrop of
falling rose petals, began to swim sideways on the wall. The table
below him grew small and insignificant.

“David? You okay? David?”

He ignored Janice. The concern in her voice
was touching but entirely useless. Did she know? Did she harbor any
suspicions?

They went too far, though. His head was
nothin’ but bloody pulp when they got through.

How could he not have noticed the
similarities? How had he missed such glaringly obvious
parallels?

Ya knew he beat on her, right? My Mum, she
lived for a bit with a guy just like Heck.

“David?” Janice had risen as well. “Do you
feel all right?”

NO
, David didn’t feel all right! He
felt ill, sick to his stomach. He wanted to vomit, he wanted to
scream. Was everyone and everything around him completely screwed
up beyond all redemption? Was this just what most people truly were
underneath all of the brittle coatings of civilized behavior?

And what about David himself? How had his
attempts to forge a cleaner, better life for himself failed so
stupendously? Wasn’t he, to some extent, culpable for some of what
had occurred? Didn’t he own a responsibility for not only his own
life, but also for the lives of those by whom he was
surrounded?

“I have to go,” he heard a robotic voice
that sounded nothing like his own announce. “I have to go.”

The door to Larch Avenue beckoned. The
outdoor light was intensely bright. And as he pushed out onto the
street, not only was it the first time in over a year that David
had departed Gâteaupia without an exchange of banter with Lydia, it
was the first time ever that his plate of cake had remained
untouched.

Left on Larch. Jaywalk across Larch. Right
on Fifth Street.

Well, he got his. He got his.

Bill’s words taunted David, slapped at him
as his feet slapped at the pavement. Bill’s drinking had definitely
picked up as well over the past several days. He had been
immersing
himself in alcohol!

Run across Oak. Almost to Maple. Crossing
Maple.

Whoever did it, I hope they get away.

How could THAT not have been a giant
freaking clue?

I told ’em what I saw. They can follow it
up and come up with their own conclusions
.

Jesus, David was blind!

Crossing Gum. Almost to Birch. Sprinting to
beat a minivan that was pulling up at the stop sign.

And how about that look on Bill’s face when
Detective Ormsby had suggested poking into
his
background?

Clean as a whistle. Have at it.

But his expression! And when Ormsby had
provoked him with that comment about cleaning the fountain for a
living…

Passing the elementary school. Almost to
Marion. Clair!

David pulled up abruptly, his heart freezing
even as it pumped more strongly than it had ever done before.

Clair! Clair and Bill! Was it even possible?
Had she said something to him as well?

That girl creeps me out
.

David gasped for air, sucking in humongous
quantities of oxygen as he stared at the façade of the school.

He doesn’t trust me.

Holy crap!

It’s okay. He has his reasons.

And as Clair’s words began to carom about
his head as well, David was off and running again. He wanted to
scream, he wanted to yell,
he
wanted to
UNDERSTAND!

Crossing Marion. Approaching Smithfield.

Who was she?
What
was she? Or was
David leaping to conclusions, tying everything together incorrectly
just because the string was available to do so?

Flying across Dr. Longworth. One more long
block south, and then it was Piston Avenue.

But he
knew
Clair was involved, he
knew it! She had told Janice to visit her mother, she had provided
her with an ironclad alibi! Why would she do so, unless she needed
her out of the way for some reason?

But could Clair be involved with Heck’s
murder?

Big business here yesterday. Big business,
bad business.

A terrible business. But CLAIR WAS IN FIRST
GRADE!

This was insane, it was all nuts. They had
all
been dipping into the squirrel stash!

Right on Piston. Three buildings down was
the Rainbow Arms.

David collapsed onto the grass. He had never
run so hard so fast. A mile and three-quarters done in less time
than it normally took the Shady Grove trolley to traverse the same
distance.

He lay back on the lawn, his chest heaving,
scalding rivulets of sweat running down far too many parts of his
body. The Rainbow Arms looked sad, tired, and decrepit. Why did he
live here? Why had he
chosen
to live here?

But the answers to those questions were
unrelated to what had been occurring lately. Detective Ormsby had
already asked them, and they had been answered, honestly.

And suddenly, David knew that his time here
at the Rainbow Arms was nearing its end. He had had enough of his
tiny apartment and its spartan furnishings. He was done with
ignoring the deterioration stalking steadily northwards from Easton
Avenue. He loved the courtyard, as well as his occasional chats
with Bill, Janice and Clair, but it was time to move on, it was
time to move out. He had taught himself to live simply and to live
well. Lesson earned, lesson learned. But right now, as of this
moment, the absolute last thing he wanted to do was to spend
another hour, let alone another night, in this antiquated, rundown
excuse for a home, no matter
how
much he had thrilled to
discover himself able to thrive here.

The geranium bushes appeared weakly. The
grass felt insubstantial beneath his hands. The Rainbow Arms itself
looked shabby and battered, weather-beaten by the callousness of
both time and circumstance. Its best years lay long in the past,
and David could see this clearly now as he stared up at it in the
stark, noonday sun.

His breathing had slowed, but it would be a
while before it returned to normal. He smelled, but there wasn’t
much he could do to fix that just now. He rose, brushed off his
hands and pants, and did what he could to straighten himself
up.

And then David strode up the walkway to the
lobby, and directly past his apartment door to the passageway that
led to the courtyard. Johnson let out a couple yelps from inside
1F, but obviously wasn’t aware that it was his master’s footsteps
he was hearing out there.

David stepped through the gate into the
courtyard, unlatched the inner gate, and then knocked briskly on
the front door of Bill’s cottage.

Bill opened the door himself. “Hey,” he
said. He wasn’t exactly disheveled, but he wasn’t exactly put
together, either.

David eyeballed his friend, wondering if
he’d gotten everything all wrong. Bill looked old, confused, and as
if he’d spent the entire morning sleeping one off.

In, out, in, out went David’s breathing, far
faster than he would have liked. “Did you do it?” he asked, his
tone harsh, his articulation crisp and even.

“Do what?” Bill goggled at him, clearly
unaware of where David’s thoughts had been traveling.

“Did you kill him? Did you kill Heck?”

Bill’s face froze. He took an automatic step
backwards, and unwittingly kicked over one of his spindly side
tables. “Wha… Wha – ” He didn’t even glance behind him as the
table, along with its contents, crashed to the floor.

David advanced to the threshold. “Was it
you?” he challenged roughly. “Tell me! Did you murder him, like you
murdered Jim Frisk all those years ago?”

Bill’s hands had started to shake, and his
countenance blanched. He grabbed hold of the back of a chair, and
took one more reverse step. “I… How did you…”

A searing pain thrust through David’s head,
and he squeezed his eyes shut as he yanked his head to the side. It
worsened for a few agonizing seconds, and then eased, gradually
lessening to become a dull, throbbing ache.

He tentatively opened his eyes to see Bill
moving toward him, concerned. “Hey, you okay, man?”

David tried to wave him off, but found
himself falling uncontrollably forward. He grabbed for the
doorframe, but it was Bill’s hands that caught him instead. Seconds
later, Bill had his arm around David’s waist, and he was carrying
him to his usual chair.

“Siddown. Don’t try ’n move. I’m gettin’ you
some water.”

The water was cool and delicious. David
slurped it all down, never so grateful for the simple pleasure.

Bill refilled his glass, and then sat down
across from him. David’s color was better, but hadn’t quite
returned to normal. His breathing was still ragged, and he inhaled
some more liquid before trusting himself to speak again.

“I… uh…” Bill looked away, toward one of the
windows. And then he exhaled heavily, nodded to himself, and met
David’s gaze again. “I did. I did it. I did both of ’em.” He drew
in a long, quavering breath, and then swallowed, the sound
grotesque and magnified in the dim, quiet room. “I ain’t proud of
it. But yuh, it was me. That what ya wanted to hear me say?”