Face on the Wall (12 page)

Big manila envelope, “Weingarten and Morrissey, Attorneys at Law.” That sounded like Roberta.

Legal-sized envelope, “Winchester, Board of Appeals.” That was more like Bob.

Folded plot plan, “Rolling Pastures, footprint.” Footprint? It was a land planner's term, the shape of a structure on a lot. That was surely Bob Cast.

A sheaf of stapled pages, “Songsparrow Estates, Southtown, Preliminary Estimates.”

Flimnap picked up the sheaf and began to read.

Bob Gast came home early from his downtown office. Roberta was late. Eddy's driver had not yet brought him home. Charlene was at swimming practice. Bob ran upstairs to make a few phone calls.

Sitting down at his desk, he picked up the phone. For a moment he held it in his hand, ready to dial, then put it down.

His papers didn't look right. “Songsparrow Estates, Southtown, Preliminary Estimates,” what was it doing right there on top? He had thrust it carefully underneath all the rest before he left the house. His dealings with Fred Small were still in a shaky state, and there was a tricky question about ownership. It was too soon to go public.

Could Eddy have been messing around with his papers? No, surely it wasn't Eddy. Charlene? Roberta? Not very likely. Gast stood up and looked doubtfully out the window, as though an interfering marauder might be visible below.

Fee, ft, fo, fum!

I smell the blood of an Englishman;

Be he alive or be he dead,

I'll grind his bones to make my bread.

English nursery rhyme

Chapter 18

When he had crossed the water he found the entrance to Hell. It was black and sooty within, and, the Devil was not at home….

The Brothers Grimm,

“The Devil with the Three Golden Hairs”

“S
ergeant Is that you?”

“Professor Kelly?”

“Listen, I thought I'd head out your way and drop in on Fred Small. Want to join me? And please call me Homer, for heaven's sake.”

“Well, all right, Homer. And my name's Bill. Sorry I can't join you, I'm on traffic duty all day. Besides, Small would slam the door in my face.”

“Okay. I'll just barge in, the innocent bystander. All he can do is throw me out. Where does he live, exactly?”

Kennebunk told him, but when Homer got to Southtown he lost his way.
Out the Pig Road,
Kennebunk had said. Then he had corrected himself,
Oh, no, it's Skylark now,
or something like that. Homer drove around aimlessly, hoping to run into Skylark Road.

Southtown was a village of annihilated farms turned into housing tracts and shopping malls. After driving for miles down a country lane lined with houses built in the 1950s, modest one-storied cottages with big triangular gables, Homer stopped to ask directions from a man who was washing his car.

“Skylark? Never heard of it.” The guy lowered his hose and the water ran out on the driveway. “Sorry.”

“Thanks anyway.” Homer turned his car around and went back the way he had come. At a crossroads he took a right, just for the heck of it. At once he saw a carved sign, “Meadowlark Estates.” Wasn't that what Kennebunk had said?

There were gateposts at the entrance to Meadowlark Estates, surrounded by dwarf Alberta spruce trees; Blue Rug junipers, and daffodils. The daffodils spoke up at once and addressed Homer sternly.
This is a pretty classy place. Are you sure you measure up
?

I'm afraid not,
mumbled Homer, glancing nervously at the miniature castle behind the daffodils. It was a guardhouse. Like the daffodils, it asked a nosy question:
Do you have any legitimate business here, my friend? Are you acquainted with any of these impor tant people?

Homer rehearsed an answer in his head.
Can you tell me which house belongs to Mr. Frederick Small
.?

But there was no one in the guardhouse. How lax, thought Homer, how careless. In the absence of the palace guard, anybody might walk in off the street, just anybody. An outside agitator like himself, for instance.

Homer grinned and drove slowly along the curving drive, examining the splendid houses left and right. The place was a jumble. There were fairy castles straight from Disneyland, French châteaux, and Grecian temples. Medieval crenellated towers and half-timbered Elizabethan mansions were cheek by jowl with Corinthian peristyles and Italianate balustrades. Homer thought about the abundant gushes of cash that had resulted in the building of these dream homes. He imagined husbands saying to their wives, “Honey, the sky's the limit, let your imagination soar.” And the wives had answered quick as a flash, because they knew exactly what they wanted, they'd been dreaming about it for years, “Marble foyer, curving staircase, gold fixtures in the powder room.” Were they happy now, the wives? Did they wake up joyfully every morning and leap out of bed with glad cries, or did they suffer from the ordinary anxieties of the rest of humankind? Did their husbands run around with other women, did their children flunk out of schools?

Homer drove on, looking for a human being who could direct him to the house of Frederick Small. At the end of Meadowlark Drive, circling past an Ionic temple with a cupola on top, he was surprised to see a blot on the landscape. Behind the temple rose a rusty tower, a contraption of crumbling chutes and ladders. Surely this was not part of Meadowlark Estates? No, it was some sort of rattling, clanking commercial enterprise. Homer guessed at once what it was, the sand-and-gravel company belonging to Frederick Small.

His house must be here somewhere. Homer drove on, looking for someone to talk to. But the massive houses were blank, and the shades of the windows were pulled down. No children played on the faultless grass, no father washed his car, no dog barked. The houses looked abandoned, like monuments in the desert.

But not utterly abandoned. Homer put his foot on the brake and stopped his car. The garage door of one of the fairy castles was rising without the aid of human hands: A car backed out silently, a low sports car with swollen fenders.

Homer jumped out and hailed the driver, a faceless dark shape behind the tinted windows, but the car continued to back up, swerving out into the street, ready to take off. Homer ran in front of it, waving his arms.

Reluctantly the driver stopped. A window rolled down. A white male face in black goggles looked out at him and said, “How did you get past the gate?”

Oh, what a courteous welcome! What a hospitable reception to the stranger from afar!
Homer bent down to the window and explained that he was looking for Frederick Small.

“Christ,” said Black Goggles. “I hope you're an interested buyer.”

“No, no, just an interested party.” Homer glanced at the huge blocky houses up and down the street. “He's selling his place? Does he live around here?”

“Oh, God, no, he's on the Pig Road.” Black Goggles wagged his head to the left. “Oughta be condemned. Here we are in these executive estates, gated properties, paying a lousy fortune in taxes, while he's got this phony agricultural assessment and pays zilch. Farmland, bullshit! And that fucking sand-and-gravel company, that's his too.” Black Goggles jerked his head in the direction of the rusty towers. “Jesus, he swore it'd be gone by New Year's Day. You tell him we're gonna sue.”

Magically the window beside Black Goggles moved upward. The sleek hips of the car silked past Homer. Gathering speed, it zoomed out of sight.

Chapter 19

There was once a man who had beautiful houses in the city and in the country … But, unfortunately, he had a blue beard.

Charles Perrault, “Bluebeard”

H
omer was still looking for Fred Small. As he drove out of the gated community called Meadowlark, he reflected on Small's name. It had the sound of one of those modest little men who are actually homicidal psychopaths. Hadn't there been a notorious Dr. Small who had poisoned his wife with potassium cyanide, prescribing it for gastric distress? And wasn't there another Small in Maine who had strangled his wife, set fire to the house, and gone off for a jolly weekend in the city? Only, unfortunately, his wife's body had fallen through the floor into the basement, where the local sheriff observed the cord around its neck? Maybe Fred was yet another homicidal wife-killing Small.

The next driveway was heralded by another impressive sign, “Songsparrow Estates.” That was it. Kennebunk had not said Skylark or Meadowlark, he had said Songsparrow.

This driveway was unpaved. There were no gateposts and no daffodils, and the only house in sight was a dark little bungalow.

Homer pulled to the side and stared at the sign. Black Goggles had said nothing about Songsparrow Estates. He had called it the Pig Road. Then Homer discovered another sign on a tall metal pole, an official green highway sign. He squinted at it. The name had been smeared with mud, but the shapes of the letters were clear in the slanting light of afternoon: “Pig Road.”

What did it mean, two signs with different names for the same road? Pride, that was what it meant. “Pig Road” sounded agricultural and foul-smelling. One's nose wrinkled with distaste. Whereas there was a sweetly spiritual ring to “Songsparrow,” shamelessly imitating the musical overtones of “Meadowlark” next door.

Homer parked beside the bungalow, got out of his car, and approached the front porch. The air had a high thin sound, as of birds chirping far away. Round leaves on a bush dangled and trembled. Directly in his path a crow flapped up from some dead creature, a field mouse or a shrew.

Climbing the porch steps, Homer told himself that of course he should have written an introductory letter, asking for an appointment. But it was not in Homer's nature to make appointments. He never called ahead or wrote a letter, he just blundered in. It was partly laziness, partly his habit of making impulsive decisions, and partly his belief in surprise, giving his quarry no time to clean up, to shove the body under the bed and wash the bloody knife and put the kettle on for tea.