The Crossroads (6 page)

About once
every month, Billy O'Claire, the plumber, went to visit his grandmother at the nursing home.

Billy called his grandmother Mee Maw. He called the place where she lived the Smelly Old Folks Home because both were true: The home smelled and so did the old folks living inside it. The home smelled like mashed potatoes mixed with mop water. The old folks smelled like dirty diapers.

Billy pulled into the empty parking lot. This was no assisted-living retirement village. This was a cinder-block dump with weeds and cigarette butts in the gravel pits that used to be gardens. But it was the best the twenty-five-year-old plumber could do for his sixty-seven-year-old grandmother, even though the crazy old coot had raised him since he was a baby.

Billy had picked up a box of Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pies. Mee Maw loved them because they were soft and spongy and easy to eat without putting in her dentures.

Billy knew Mee Maw would be sitting in the cafeteria, so he headed that way. The vast room was quiet except for an old man plunking sour notes on a battered upright piano.

Billy saw Mee Maw sitting at a table far from the window. Mee Maw hated windows. She always thought somebody was on the other side, waiting to smash the glass and grab her.

“Hey, Mee Maw.” His grandmother's white hair was flat across the back of her head, plastered in place by her pillow. Billy knew she spent most of her days in bed, staring up at the ceiling. She had lived that way most of her life. Alone and afraid.

“Who are you?” Mee Maw looked up from her tray when Billy sat down across from her.

“I'm your grandson. Billy. Remember?”

“Who?”

“Billy O'Claire.”

“That's
my
name. O'Claire.”

“I know, Mee Maw.”

“My name is Mary. Mary O'Claire.”

“That's right. I brought you oatmeal pies, Mee Maw.”

“How sweet. Be a dear and open one for me.”

“Yes, ma'am.”

Billy pulled out a plastic-wrapped pie and tore into the wrapper with his teeth.

“He was here again. Last night.”

“Who, Mee Maw?”

“The man at the window. He says he's going to kill me for what I meant to do.”

“Is that so?” Billy said it with the enthusiasm of someone who had heard the same story over and over, every day, his whole life.

When Billy was a baby, barely three months old, he had been sent to live with his reclusive grandmother. Maybe she wasn't so bad back then. Maybe she even went outdoors. Billy couldn't remember. He went to Mee Maw's after his parents had been killed by a cop in what the newspapers called a “bungled blackmail scheme.”

“How's your baby boy?” Mee Maw asked.

“Don't know,” Billy answered sheepishly.

“You don't know?”

“No, ma'am.” After the divorce, the judge gave Billy's ex full custody of their baby boy.

Mee Maw shook her head. “Like father, like son.”

“I brought you some candy, too,” Billy said. “Bag of them mints you like. Maybe you can fling 'em at the window if the bad man comes back tonight.”

“Like father, like son.”

Billy rose from the table. It was time to go.

“I'll see you next time, Mee Maw.”

He kissed his grandmother on the top of her head. He sometimes wondered why he bothered coming out to visit the old woman, but the answer was simple: Mee Maw was the only family he had.

Except, of course, for my son.

But his ex-wife, Sharon, wouldn't let Billy anywhere near Aidan—no matter how many times he went over to where she worked to beg.

And Billy hated going to that place.

Spratling Manor gave him the creeps.

Tuesday afternoon,
Judy drove to the North Chester Public Library. It was a two-story redbrick building with a small schoolhouse steeple. It looked like it had been built sometime after the war. The Revolutionary War.

Judy loved the aroma of libraries: the scent of copy-machine toner peppered with just a pinch of plastic from crinkly dust jackets.

“Ms. Magruder?” A sweet little lady with curly white hair and bright purple reading glasses was standing behind the front desk. “My, you look exactly like the photograph inside your book jackets!”

“Are you Mrs. Emerson?”

“Yes, dear. Kindly wipe your feet.”

Okay. Maybe she's more feisty than sweet.

“I'm Jeanette Emerson,” the librarian said. “No relation.”

“To Ralph Waldo?”

“Is there another? I was delighted to hear that you and Georgie have moved back to town.”

“Georgie?”

“That's what I called him when he was a bluebird.”

“Georgie was a bluebird?”

“Yes. Four straight summers. The bluebirds always won. Read far more books than either the sparrows or the parakeets. That's why I wanted to meet you.”

“You want to talk about birds?” Judy asked.

“We could do that if you like. I, however, was much more interested in ascertaining whether you might be available to read your latest book to this year's flock of Summer Library Campers.”

“I'd love to.”

“Excellent. We start up in a few weeks. July, actually.”

“My July is wide open.”

“Wonderful. So, where are you and Georgie living?”

“Rocky Hill Farms. We're right near the intersection of these two highways.”

Mrs. Emerson nodded. “Route 13. Highway 31.”

Judy remembered George's little landmark. “We're in the corner where the tree is.”

“I see. But as you may have noticed, there are several trees on all sides of that particular intersection.”

“We've got the one with the white cross.”

“Ah, yes. Miss Gerda Spratling's
descanso
.”

“Gerda…”

“Spratling. The family is of German descent. Gerda, I believe, means ‘protector.' Her family, the Spratlings, ran the clock factory here for ages. Ran the town, too.”

“What's a
descanso
?”

“Spanish word for roadside memorial. In the early days of the American Southwest, funeral processions would carry the coffin out to the graveyard for burial. From time to time, the pallbearers might set the casket down by the side of the road and rest. When the procession resumed, the priest would bless the spot where the deceased's soul had tarried on its final journey. The women would then scatter juniper flowers and stake a cross into the ground to further commemorate the site.”

“So someone died behind our house? What was it? A car wreck?”

Mrs. Emerson hesitated.

“Ms. Magruder, might I be frank?”

“Please.”

“That cross has been hanging on that old oak tree so long, I doubt if even Miss Spratling remembers why she hung it there.”

“Well, that'll be my second investigation,” Judy said.

“And your first?”

“Discovering why the town clock stopped.”

“Ah, yes. There are several interesting stories about that. I'd tell you now, but I have to read Mother Goose to the children. Are you free for dinner this evening?”

The storm
started about eight p.m.

Thunder boomed and the windows of the restaurant rattled. Judy didn't mind: Mrs. Emerson was an excellent storyteller. She regaled Judy with tales of a girl so ugly “her face could stop a clock.” Apparently, she arrived by train in North Chester one day at exactly 9:52 p.m.

“Then there's the story of Osgood Vanderwinkle,” Mrs. Emerson said.

“Who's he?”

“Clock keeper, dear.”

“Did he have any monkeys or squirrels on his staff?”

“No. None that I'm aware of. However, he might have
seen
several—as well as assorted pink elephants. Mr. Vanderwinkle loved to tipple his rum. He was soused so often, we suspect he forgot to close the trapdoor at the top of the tower. The rains came…”

“The gears rusted?”

“Exactly. I suppose that story is the most mundane and, therefore, probably closest to the truth.”

“Too bad.”

“Indeed.”

 

Around nine-thirty p.m.,
Judy said goodbye to Mrs. Emerson and ran across the muddy restaurant parking lot to her car.

She shivered and waited for the front and rear window defrosters to do their job. A twist of the wiper-control knob sent the windshield blades slapping back and forth to chase away the unrelenting rain. Judy cranked up the radio so she wouldn't have to listen to any more clouds explode.

She had called George earlier, told him about her dinner plans with Mrs. Emerson. He said, “Have fun. Drive carefully.”

She had had fun.

Now she would try to drive carefully.

 

The radio
was calling it a gully washer.

Flood warnings were in effect. Water rolled across the freeway in rippling waves. Wind gusted and made the treetops dance a wild, frenzied tango. The weatherman predicted that the storm would last until midnight with “the usual creeks overrunning their banks.”

For an instant, Judy wished she still lived in New York City. In a high-rise apartment building. Someplace without creeks.

Then she heard a tire blow out.

The car skidded slightly and Judy carefully eased it off the road. She came to a stop right in front of an old graveyard about a quarter mile west of the crossroads. She could see the flashing red light blurring in the distance.

That meant George and home weren't far away. He could drive out in their other car and rescue her. She reached for her cell phone.

The battery was dead and she had forgotten the car adapter.

She looked up and down the highway. There was no traffic. No tow trucks cruising the highways she could flag down like a taxi in Times Square. There was nobody on the road at all.

Except, all of a sudden, Judy sensed somebody staring at her.

Somebody outside the car.

She turned slowly to the left. To the window.

She practically jumped out of her skin.

The storm
moved closer.

Zack sat on his bed with Zipper, stared out the window, and counted the seconds between seeing lightning and hearing thunder.

“I used to be afraid of thunderstorms,” he comforted his dog. “Now I just pretend it's somebody bowling in the clouds. A giant probably. And he uses the moon for his bowling ball.”

Zack heard the familiar gurgling from behind his bathroom door. The rainwater was probably flooding the cracked sewer lines—sending more gunk upstairs to burble out of his toilet.

It was a good thing their new house had so many bathrooms. Zack's was currently off-limits and would be, his dad said, until the plumber showed up.

So Zack had rolled up a spare towel and jammed it into the crack at the bottom of the bathroom door.

He didn't want the odor oozing out to make his bedroom smell farty, too.

But what if the lightning moved too close and an electrical spark made all that trapped gas explode?

Zack tried not to look worried. He didn't want to scare his new dog. Besides, he'd already unpacked his G.I. Joe firefighter action figure—the one Judy said knew how to handle “hazmats,” hazardous materials like sewer gas.

But Judy wasn't home.

If the bathroom blew, Zack would have to do all of Joe's voices himself.