See Also Deception (8 page)

I took a quick second to put aside everything I was thinking and feeling. I peeked at myself in the rearview mirror and wondered if I was presentable enough to walk into a tavern. My face was pale and my lipstick, what there was of it, had nearly vanished. My lips looked like a newborn's instead of a lady about town. I was embarrassed by the state of my hair, by my appearance as a whole, but I wasn't sure that it mattered. I had never been a regular visitor to taverns. I hoped the inside was as black as the windows were on the outside.

I straightened myself up the best I could, squared my shoulders, and pushed out of the truck. Hank Trumaine would be furious with me if he knew what I was about to do, but I couldn't stop myself. I was as worried about Herbert as much as I wanted to find out what had happened to Calla.

I hurried to the door of the Wild Pony, ignoring any traffic that passed by. I hunched down, hoping that no one would see me, recognize me. In a town where everyone seemed to know everyone's business, the last thing I wanted to get around was that I was frequenting the Wild Pony while Hank lay paralyzed and blind in his bed.

I stepped inside a closed vestibule, and garbled music met my ears. I recognized the song immediately—“I Guess I'm Crazy” by Jim Reeves. It was the number-one song in the nation, even though poor Jim had died in a plane crash in July. You couldn't turn on the radio without hearing that song.

Airplanes and musicians seemed like a deadly combination to me. I remembered the Buddy Holly tragedy in Clear Lake, Iowa. Death and wreckage in a cornfield. The fates had no sense of decency as far as I was concerned, but the irony that I was hearing a ghost singing a love song was not lost on me.

I stopped before pushing through the second door that led directly into the tavern. I could smell thick cigarette smoke and the yeasty smell that came from the ancient presence of beer. I figured the drains were alive with the stuff. The Wild Pony served food, too, so there was a mixture of grease and burned meat in the air that did nothing to provoke my appetite. I wanted to go in, look around, see if Herbert was there, and get out as quickly as I could.

Never one to back off a decision easily, I stepped inside the Wild Pony and stopped just beyond the threshold.

The door brushed the back of my behind, encouraging me to go farther inside, but I held fast. My eyes had to adjust to the darkness and smoke. I was on unfamiliar ground, and I wasn't so dim as to not know that my entrance would be met with a scrutiny that I was unaccustomed to.

Two lonely pinball machines sat butted up against the far wall with bright carnival lights flashing repetitively, begging lazily, trying to entice someone, anyone, to drop a nickel in their hungry slots. Black-topped tables surrounded by empty orange vinyl covered chairs dotted the floor to my right; a maze that would need to be traversed all the way to the bar. The ornate bar, hand-carved walnut that looked like it belonged in the last century, stretched the length of the entire wall. Sconces haphazardly lit the walls, and the overhead lights were turned off.

A big bearded man glanced up at me from drying dull glass mugs. He hesitated a second, looked me up and down, passing judgment or assessing a threat, I wasn't sure. I wasn't looking to drag an errant husband home and had no intention of making a scene. I stared the bartender in the eye, then turned my attention to a man sitting at the south end of the bar. Satisfied that I wasn't going to cause trouble, the bartender went back to drying the mug.

The man at the end of the bar made two of Herbert and was talking with a blonde waitress, barmaid, whatever she was called, who looked a few years younger than me from the neck down. Her face had miles on it that I would never travel. It was easy to tell, even in the muted light, that she'd had a worrisome, hard life. I immediately felt sad for the woman, even though I didn't know her or remember ever seeing her. She looked up at me, met my stare, and I looked down as quickly as I could, embarrassed.

When I looked up and directed my attention to the other end of the bar, I sighed with relief. I'd found what I'd come looking for: Herbert Frakes hunched over a highball glass half filled with an amber liquid that I assumed was whiskey. He looked like he had been planted in the seat, but his roots were shallow. It was obvious that one tap on the shoulder, one little gust of wind, one more surprise would topple him over and, perhaps, destroy him.

CHAPTER 13

I wasn't quite sure how to approach Herbert. I'd been around enough injured animals in my life to know to be calm and aware of every move they made. I took a deep breath of the sour tavern air and made my way to the stool next to him as gently as I could.

“Herbert,” I said, sliding onto the stool, as I clutched my purse with one hand and tucked the back of my dress with the other. “Are you all right?”

He turned to me and my gaze met his swollen, red, sorrowful eyes, and I knew I had just asked the stupidest, most insensitive question I could have asked.

It took a second before any kind of recognition lit up in Herbert's eyes. They were pale blue, a faded late summer sky that was saying goodbye to the swallows and hello to winter. It was the end of one season for Herbert and the beginning of another.

“What are you doin' here, Marjorie?” he said.

The bartender moved my way gracefully, like he was roller skating, floating on air. He slid a cardboard coaster advertising Carling's Black Label beer in front of me with the skill of a lifelong bowler. The round coaster stopped directly in front of me, exactly where it should have.

“A drink, ma'am?” It didn't seem to matter to the bartender that he'd interrupted the start of our conversation. His voice boomed up to the ceiling just as the Jim Reeves song came to a sad end.

I looked over at Herbert's glass, could smell the burning strength of the whiskey, and shook my head. “Just a glass of water and an ashtray.”

He nodded and eased away just as smoothly as he came. The waitress eyed me knowingly, like she'd known what I was going to order before I did. There was no money to be made off me.

“I was worried about you,” I said to Herbert. My first instinct was to reach over and touch him on the shoulder, offer him what solace I could, but I restrained myself. It didn't take a fool to know that the man didn't like to be touched.

“You heard?”

“It was in the paper.”

“I suppose it was. I was afraid to look. That would make it real.” He was far from drunk. His words were not slurred, and he seemed lucid, aware.

I stared at him, and he stared back at me. His eyes were already glassy, so it was hard to tell if he was about to cry or had been crying all morning. Just as a tear was about to escape him, he looked away to the wall, to the past, to someplace I had no idea of.

Don't press, Marjorie
, my inside voice warned, so I said nothing, nodded as the bartender delivered my requested items, and watched him go back to the task of drying glasses with a white bleached towel.

I dug into my purse and pulled out my cigarettes, a half pack of Salems, and a book of matches from the Ivanhoe. Herbert needed his time, so I went about lighting a cigarette.

The first bit of smoke hit my lungs as I inhaled and it was a nice relief. I needed something to calm me down as much as Herbert did. I exhaled slowly.

“That was Calla's brand, too,” he said.

I glanced down to the pack and realized how thoughtless I'd been. “I'm sorry,” I said, grabbing up the green and white pack.

Herbert stopped me and grabbed my wrist causally with an easy grip. “It's okay, Marjorie. You can't erase her. She's everywhere I look. Always will be, I suppose.”

I heard a familiar love and loss in Herbert's voice. We were kindred spirits at that moment. Something I could never have imagined. I let the silence settle between us and took another draw off my cigarette. Since I wasn't a regular smoker, my throat protested briefly and I let out a small cough.

“How 'bout you, Marjorie? You all right?”

I shook my head. “No, I don't think I am. I can hardly believe she's gone, Herbert.”

He agreed silently with a sip of the whiskey. I watched him closely. His hair was still slicked back with yesterday's Brylcreem, pomade made of beeswax and mineral oil. It had lost its smell, or was overwhelmed by all of the circulating aromas inside the Wild Pony. He still had on his janitor's uniform, too. Dark gray Dickie work pants with a shirt to match. His name was stitched over the right pocket.

“Have you been home?” I asked. I sat the Salem down in the ashtray and watched the smoke waft upward until it joined the rest of the tobacco that lingered in the air.

“It's hard to go down there. I don't know what's going to happen now.”

Herbert lived in the basement of the library, had for as long as I could remember. There had always been speculation and gossip about a relationship between Herbert and Calla, but no one knew for sure the extent of it. Not even me.

“I met Delia Finch,” I said.

Herbert shook his head and his lip twisted up as if he had smelled something dead. “She's a treat.”

I started to agree, but didn't want to add to the sourness. I bit my lip instead. “I'm sure it's difficult for her being a stranger in town under the circumstances.”

Herbert turned and stared at me. “Why would she do something like this, Marjorie? Why?”

All of the sound in the room ceased. Even the pinball machine quieted, held its breath in sadness or respect, I wasn't sure which.

“I don't know, Herbert. I was hoping you could tell me.”

He shook his head, but he could not speak another word. Tears flowed from his eyes in torrents worthy of Niagara Falls. I could do nothing but pull him to me and cradle his head to my chest as he let his emotions go unhindered, unrestrained, and unexplained.

CHAPTER 14

I had a lot to ponder as I pointed the Studebaker toward home. I'd found the answer to my question about musk thistle early on, which only left me more unsettled by my encounter with the hard as nails stranger in Calla's place, Delia Finch. If I had been the praying kind, the kind of woman who asked for things from the empty sky and meant it, I would ask for Miss Finch to be an extremely temporary presence at the library. That, of course, would be a shallow thing to ask of a greater power, and one of the larger reasons why I had always restrained myself from doing such things. If there were that kind of magic in the world I would ask for Calla to be restored to her proper place in good physical and mental health. But that was not to be. Calla was dead, removed from her station in life, and I was faced with learning to live—and find respect for—a new librarian.

Even though the trip had been a success, I still carried a nagging feeling about Calla's death as I left town. I only knew a little more than I had before I'd left Hank to satisfy my uncontrollable need for information. After Herbert had regained his composure, he'd said there was no suicide note that he knew of. But the hardest part of what he had to tell, which further explained the state I'd found him in, was that he had been the one to find Calla.

He'd found her collapsed at her desk, cold as an iron spigot in deep winter, blood splattered everywhere, a pistol on the floor at her fingertips. There was no saving Calla, even though he had tried. Herbert had been certain that she'd been dead for hours. Just the thought of it left me empty and numb.

I looked at my watch and found that I was two hours later than I'd told Betty Walsh I'd be. I panicked and scanned the street ahead of me for a phone booth. There was nothing but houses. The closest pay phone that I knew of was over on Villard Street in front of the Ivanhoe.

I tapped my fingers on the top of the steering wheel. Usually it took two hands to handle the truck since it lacked power steering, but the street was free of any serious traffic and there were no ruts of snow to battle, not yet anyway. We were in the midst of a dry spell and, for once, I found that to be a pleasant development. I wasn't ready to do battle with Old Man Winter anytime soon, but I knew there would be consequences for the land, and ultimately me, if the rain and snow didn't show up when it was supposed to.

I had hated to leave Herbert behind, especially after he'd told me that he had no plans for staying at the library and really wasn't sure where he was going to go, or what he was going to do. “I can't step foot in that office ever again,” he'd said.

I'd told Herbert to check with me if things got tough, if he had no place to go, but he'd said he'd get by, and I had to leave it at that. He hadn't lost his pride, just the center of his universe.

The phone booth on Villard came into view and I was relieved to see an open parking spot in front of it. I guided the Studebaker to the curb and hurried to the pay phone, digging into my purse for a dime. I always had plenty of change, especially when I went into town, so the coin was handy. My hand grazed the pair of broken glasses, another souvenir from this trip, but I tried to ignore them the best I could. I had plenty to do in my life. Tracking down the woman they belonged to was low on my list of things to do at the moment, if ever.

I dialed the phone as quickly as I could and waited for it to ring on the other end. The wind careened up the street, and I was glad to be inside the glass phone booth. Dust and small pebbles pinged at the sides every few seconds. The air turned brown, then the sun cut through the clouds before disappearing again. There was no precipitation, even though the sky was moody, just more wind. I watched a small dirt devil whiz down the street like it was late for an appointment of some kind. Sometimes, I wished the wind would just tire itself out, quit blowing—
just shut up
—but I knew that would never happen. The wind was as much a continued presence in my life as the library had always been.

The phone didn't ring. Instead, a cold, surprising busy signal buzzed in my ear. I gritted my teeth, looked at the receiver in disbelief, hung up, retrieved my coin, and dialed the number to my house again. Same thing. Busy: beep, beep, beep.