Searching for Caleb (29 page)

   "Ah," said Mr. Everjohn. When he opened his mouth like that, his face became impossibly long and his cheeks sank in.

   "Anyway, she left before Caleb did," said the grandfather.

   "Now where was it she went to?"

   You could have heard a pin drop.

   "Washington," said the grandfather.

   "Oh yes."

   "She got a job. But she died."

   "What kind of job?"

   "There's not much point in going into this," the grandfather said.

   "I got to know anyway, Mr. Peck."

   "Uh, she laundered money."

   "Money."

   "She worked for the U.S. Treasury. She washed old bills."

   Mr. Everjohn's deep, bruised-looking eyes searched mournfully around the room.

   "It's perfectly possible," Duncan told him. "They used to wash them and coat them with rosin. For crispness. In the past they weren't so quick to throw things away. They had a machine that-"

   "I see," said Mr. Everjohn. "Cause of death?"

   "Boardinghouse fire," said Grandfather Peck.

   "She live in a boardinghouse?"

   "Her parents wouldn't let her stay with them, you see. In those days women were expected to be better behaved. They tried to make her come back to Baltimore. Her father wrote and told me."

   "Now. You sure she really died."

   "They buried her, didn't they?"

   "I was thinking maybe that was where your brother went to: Washington.

   Maybe the two of them. You ever consider that?"

   Lucy had. But Grandfather Peck was merely impatient. "If he were such a scoundrel, why would I be looking for him?" he asked.

   "Oh yes," said Mr. Everjohn, and he seemed perfectly satisfied. He slipped the notebook and pencil back into his pocket. "Well, I think I got something here to start on."

   "We certainly appreciate your making a housecall, Mr. Eyerjohn," Two said.

   "Why, that's all right."

   "I never expected to take so much of your time, but of course I am fully prepared to-"

   "Think nothing of it," Mr. Everjohn said. "To be honest, this town don't keep a man very busy." He felt beneath his chair for his hat and then rose, unfolding foot by foot. With a hat on he looked more like Lincoln than ever. The crown was even slightly squared, the brim oddly curved.

   "There's so little call for us, me and my partner have to shadow each other's wives for practice," he said.

   "Really," said Two.

   "Women's lives are right dull, I've found. My partner's wife goes to one store for toothpaste and another for mouthwash, just to get herself two outings."

   "Well, I know you have to be getting back," said Two.

   "Now my wife takes lessons. She will sign up for anything. You wouldn't believe the places Joe has got to follow her to."

   "May I expect your bill on a monthly basis?"

   "Pet grooming. Exotic dance. Kung-fu. Stretch-'n-Sew."

   "Oh, Eli!" cried Justine, making one of her shocking leaps to a first-name friendship. "Won't you take your wife a piece of birthday cake?"

   "She's on this diet," Mr. Everjohn said gloomily. "She goes to Weight Watchers and Slenderella, and every Thursday from two to four she's got her this class in low-carbohydrate food preparation." He shook Justine's hand too hard. "I'll keep in touch," he told her.

   "Well, drop in any time. Grandfather will want to hear."

   "And thank you again for your patience," Two said.

   But the minute Mr. Everjohn was out the door, Two collapsed in his chair.

   "I knew we should have used a Baltimore man," he told Lucy.

   "Well, there, dear."

   "I must have the names of twenty good detectives back home. But no, Marcus said it had to be a Caro Mill fellow. That way Father could handle things, he said. Otherwise we'd be the ones to-"

   "Well, I thought he was very nice," Justine said, returning from the front door.

   "If you children would live in a civilized area, Justine-"

   "Caro Mill is civilized."

   Two turned to Duncan, who was playing with what looked to be an auto part over by the window. "You need to come back to Baltimore, boy," he said.

   "What's stopping you? Jobs? You know there's lots to do in a law office that wouldn't take a degree. Your cousins could fix you up. Quick mind like yours, there's lots to-"

   "Thanks anyway," Duncan said.

   "Do Justine good. See there? She's looking a little tired."

   Lucy glanced over at her. Why, she was. It was true. Now that she was not running or laughing or talking too much, her face seemed strained and pale. Blame Meg, that's who. Children! She shifted her gaze to Duncan, an aging little boy. Secretly her favorite son, and she had always imagined what a fine man he would be once he was grown and mellowed. But that had never happened. He was preserved forever as he had been at ten, reckless and inconsiderate, not kind at all, not ever willing to make allowance for other people's weaknesses. He had needed a good strong wife to settle him down and round his sharp edges, but he hadn't got one. Only Justine.

   Was Justine the way she was deliberately? Had she just flat out decided one day that she would refuse to take responsibility, that Duncan could go caroming straight to hell taking wife and daughter along before she would say a word? Something made Lucy speak up suddenly, when she hadn't even known she was going to. "Oh," she said, "if only poor dear Caroline could have been with us today!"

   The look Duncan gave her was as cold and hard as glass, but Lucy felt her little triumph warming all her bones when she saw how still Justine grew.

   By the time they were back in the car it was very nearly twilight. Even so, Lucy took the preaddressed envelope out of her purse and unfolded a sheet of stationery and wrote, as Two had taught her to:

   Dear Justine, June 6, 1973 Thank you so much for the lovely time! As always you made a perfectly charming hostess, and the War Cake was delicious. We shall remember our visit with a great deal of pleasure.

   Love, Aunt Lucy

   She placed the note in the envelope and sealed it, "Whenever you notice a mailbox, Two . . ." she said, but then she trailed off, bleakly tapping the letter against her purse. Two moved his lips as he drove. In back, Laura May and Sarah sat side by side beneath veiled brown hats and looked out the windows at their separate views.

   12

   Now Justine and her grandfather had no place to go. At first they hardly noticed; they traveled less during the summer months anyway. But as June dragged on, hot and humid, and then July took over, Justine grew unhappier. She didn't have enough to do with herself. There was some troubled feeling gnawing at the back of her mind. Uneasiness drove her into quarreling with Duncan, snapping at her grandfather, telling skimpy, half-hearted fortunes for her clients. She spoke with an unplaceable foreign accent for days at a time. She insulted Dorcas. The cat moved out of the house and into the crawlspace behind the rose bushes. Her grandfather sat on the porch, unusually still, with his face slack and vacant.

   "Look, Grandfather," Justine said, "isn't there someone you would like to look up? How about that man in Delaware? Maybe he's remembered something new."

   "It wouldn't be any use," her grandfather said.

   "Well, I don't see why not."

   "That detective fellow didn't even take his name down. Took hardly any of those names. Seemed to think they would serve no purpose whatsoever."

   "Oh, what does he know," Justine said.

   She had begun to resent Eli's odd, probing questions and the mysterious silence that followed all answers. After each of his visits she felt tampered with. He had a way of arriving when no one was home and settling himself to wait on the front porch. When she and her grandfather returned he would loom up, tall and black as a raven, with his squared-off hat centered over his chest. "Eli!" she always cried, but her heart grew thick, as if preparing against invasion. And her grandfather, who made a point of remembering every passing name, said, "Mr.-ah," and stood scowling down at his shoes like a forgetful schoolboy. But Eli was humble and awkward, and he began by discussing something harmless-his shadowing practice, his wife's calligraphy lessons. After all, he was in no hurry.

   Then Justine warmed to him all over again, to his absurd fringe of a beard as precise as the brush on a typewriter eraser and his preposterously long, multiple-jointed fingers fumbling at his hat; and her grandfather relaxed enough to grow politely bored. "Come inside, Eli," Justine would say. "I'll make you some iced tea." But at that very moment his face would narrow, his fingers would grow still. "What all were the records your family owned?" he might ask.

   626

   "What?"

   "Recordings. For that old-timey phonograph."

   She had to turn to her grandfather, who scuffed the porch floorboards petulantly. "Caruso, I remember," he said finally. "Other things. Red Label discs."

   "Oh yes. Red Seal."

   "In the beginning they were called Red Label."

   "Ah," said Eli.

   "Don't you know anything?"

   "But what besides Caruso? Any more?"

   "I don't recall."

   "It's something I got to find out," said Eli, but he wouldn't say why.

   "Well, I reckon I'll just have to go to Baltimore again. You've kept them, now."

   "We've kept everything," said Grandfather Peck. And when he went inside he would slam the screen door. Yet it was plain that Eli's questions intrigued him. For the remainder of the day he would be thinking hard, frowning until his eyebrows met. "Can you tell me why he would ask such a thing? What has he got up his sleeve? That fellow must know something we just have no idea of, Justine."

   But for the grandfather, after all, finding Caleb was the only goal. For Justine the point of the search had been the trips themselves, and now she felt bereft and useless. She wandered from room to room, absently carrying her straw bag around with her as if she were a visitor, long after her grandfather had settled himself in the armchair to plan what he would say first when he and Caleb met.

   Meanwhile Duncan was selling antique tools by the dozen, by the gross, faster than he could stock them. Why did things always work out this way?

   Newton Norton, the man who had bought the garden engine, was reconstructing his ancient farm down to the last pitchfork in the barn.

   He haunted the Blue Bottle, seizing on old rusty pliers and milking lanterns, blacksmith's implements, kitchen utensils. "If you could see Silas's face!" Duncan told Justine. "Sometimes Newton Norton has to call for a truck just to take his purchases home."

   "He must be crazy," said Justine. "What if he has to move someday?"

   They were on the front porch, Duncan sitting on a stool while Justine gave him a haircut with the kitchen shears. His hair was thick and straight, audible when it fell. She cut it in layers down the back like a shingled roof, and then when she combed it the layers sifted magically together and evened out. She combed again, floating off into a trance among the shimmering yellow ribbons. She cut another inch off. "Maybe I should have been a barber," she said.

   "Let's not get carried away here," Duncan told her.

   By now it was August and their corn was so tall it blocked their view of the street. Cars swished by unseen, almost unheard. (Duncan was interested in the effect of greenery upon the decibel count.) People walking past were no more than disembodied voices.

   "Hello!" they called, apparently taking it on faith that someone was there to answer. "Well/ hi!" said Justine. She waved her flashing shears in the air. Duncan didn't look up. He had his mind on other things.

   "I told Silas, 'See there?' He wouldn't let me buy that old sewing machine of Mrs. Farnsworth's, now he's sorry. Newton Norton tracked it down himself and gave her twice what it was worth. But you know Silas.

   'Yes/ he said, 'but once he's got this farm of his set up, what then?

   Hmm?' Well, yesterday Newton Norton opened his place to the public, a fully working nineteenth-century farm. Admission two dollars. Fifty cents for children. Plus. Cooking lessons. A six-week course in old-time American cooking. You learn in this kitchen that has a wood stove and a fireplace big enough to roast an ox. You make cabbage custard and codfish cakes-well, to tell the truth, none of it sounded edible. But somebody must like it. All this morning women were coming in asking for sausage guns. Bird's-eye maple sauerkraut mashers. They snatched up these hand-cranked machines that I hadn't even quite figured out yet, things to pare cucumbers and strip corncobs and peel potatoes. By noon I'd sold every utensil in the place."

   "Think of that! You're a success," said Justine, trimming around his ears.

   "That's what they call it."

   But he spoke through a yawn, and then sneezed when a snippet of hair landed on his nose. His face glinted all over with stray blond sparks. He didn't look like a success.

   On the fourth Sunday in August, the three of them drove to Semple to visit Meg. They were supposed to go earlier but always at the last minute Duncan claimed that something had come up. He had to attend an auction, or a special flea market, now that Silas was urging him to buy more tools. Yet he returned without any tools whatsoever-only, once, a carton of rusty Prince Albert tobacco tins. "These are antiques?" Justine asked.

   "Imagine, they used to be garbage. I used to see them in the weeds along Roland Avenue. But where are the tools? What about the kitchen utensils?"

   "None of them appealed to me," said Duncan. "Only Prince Albert."

   "In the end, the silliest things get valuable. We shouldn't throw anything out."

   "It doesn't seem to me that we do," said Duncan.

   Now he wanted to cancel the trip yet another time (he said there was a Tailgate Treasures near Washington) but Justine had caught on to him.

   "It's not possible," she said. "You know how long we waited for Meg to invite us. Now we've put her off twice. What will she think?"