The Steep and Thorny Way (4 page)

CHAPTER 3

DESPERATE WITH IMAGINATION

MR. PAULISSEN'S FORD TRUCK SAT IN
the gravel drive in front of Fleur's house, a pretty white structure with forest-green shutters and geraniums blasting bright red fireworks of color from boxes in front of each window. Laurence Paulissen—almost eighteen years old, close to two years older than his sister and I—stood next to the hood of the truck, raking his hand through his short blond hair. He nudged the toe of his shoe against a front tire and spat as though he hadn't noticed a female wandering into his company. Behind him, the Witten twins, Robbie and Gil, took off their coats and slung them over the slats of the truck's wooden siding.

I walked through the shade of an apple tree that Fleur, Laurence,
and I used to call “Jack's beanstalk” when we climbed into its branches as little kids. I slowed my pace the closer I got to the boys, for I didn't completely trust those twins, with their slick, tawny hair, their teasing green eyes, and the comfortable way they chatted with me, as though we were old chums who'd shared years of laughs, even though we hadn't. Their faces were identical, with broad foreheads and square chins—a really rugged sort of appearance. Their father had come to Elston to fill our pharmacist vacancy in 1921, and they dressed a little nicer than the rest of us.

“Hanalee!” said Robbie, the louder of the twins, with a clap of his hands. He removed his cap and swaggered my way with a grin that stretched to his ears. “I see you have a bag all packed, darling. Are we eloping tonight?”

His brother, Gil, brayed a laugh that made his chewing gum fall out of his mouth and splat against his left shoe. Laurence frowned and turned his attention back to the truck's tires, testing out a back one with a solid kick of his foot.

I stepped past Robbie, smelling cigarette smoke from his clothing. “I'm just here to visit Fleur.”

“Here”—Robbie grabbed the valise from my hands—“I'll carry that for you.”

“All right. Thank you.” I proceeded up to the porch with Robbie close to my side.

At the top of the steps, he shot me a sidelong glance and said, “You seem tense tonight, Hanalee. What's wrong?”

I rubbed the back of my neck. “Nothing.”

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

“Come on, we need to get going, Robbie,” said Laurence. He bent down in front of the truck's grille and turned the starter crank. The congested old vehicle coughed and shuddered to life, and Laurence circled around to the driver's side of the cab. “Quit chatting with Hanalee.”

“Quit flirting with her is more like it,” said Gil with a laugh that carried a bite, and he climbed over the back slats of the rumbling truck.

Robbie set my bag on the steps by my feet. “Is it Joe's return that's bothering you?”

I picked up the valise without answering.

“Joe Adder's not right in the head, Hanalee.” Robbie leaned his left hand against the wall beside the Paulissens' screen door, above the brass doorbell. “He's dangerous.”

“H-h-how . . .” I swallowed. “How do you mean, ‘not right in the head'?”

“He's immoral. Depraved. Disgusting.” Robbie sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “If you see him, telephone Sheriff Rink immediately.”

“Come on, Robbie,” called Laurence from behind the steering wheel. “You're gonna make us late.”

“I'm coming, I'm coming.” Robbie fitted his cap back over his hair and galloped down the steps. “Just protecting our womenfolk, unlike you two useless boobs.”

“She's not our womenfolk,” said Laurence, the boy who used to race me into the woods on hot summer days—the first boy I'd ever kissed. With his face tipped toward the steering wheel, Laurence peeked up at me from the tops of his sky-blue eyes, and, without a
trace of feeling in his voice, he added, “It's just Hanalee. You know what I mean.”

I shifted my bag to my other hand and lifted my chin, as though his words hadn't hurled a dagger into my chest.

Robbie climbed into the passenger side. Laurence broke his gaze from mine and backed the truck down the driveway. In the truck bed behind them, Gil gripped the wooden slats and whooped with the cry of a coyote embarking upon a hunt.

I swung open the screen door and ducked inside the Paulissens' front room, a modest-size space filled with doilies and potted plants and butterscotch-colored furniture. The house always smelled like cinnamon and Christmas, no matter the time of year, and it immediately made me feel better.

“Fleur?” I called across the empty room.

From the kitchen, in the back of the house, came muffled adult voices and laughter. To my right, a clock made of blue and white delft ticked away the seconds on the mantel above the brick fireplace.

“Are you here, Fleur?” I asked, strengthening my grip on the suitcase.

“I'm upstairs,” she called. Her footsteps hurried across the floorboards above. “Hello!”

She emerged at the top of the stairs and scampered down the steps with a copy of
Motion Picture
magazine tucked beneath her left arm, the white lace of her hem swishing against the curves of her legs, a smile brightening her eyes, which were as blue as her brother's. She was one of those blondes so fair that even her eyebrows and lashes looked as yellow as morning sunshine, and she
was prettier than all the motion-picture stars in the magazine she carried—all of them combined.

“Hanalee . . .” Her smile faded, and she slowed to a stop on the last step. “Why do you look so upset? Did the boys say something to you out there?”

“Would your mother mind if I stayed here tonight?”

“What did they say?”

I peeked over my shoulder at the empty driveway. “Are we able to talk privately without anyone overhearing?”

“Mama's in the dining room with Deputy Fortaine.”

“She is? Why?”

“He ate Sunday dinner with us. She invited him. Come here.” Fleur backed down the hallway next to the stairs and beckoned with a wiggle of her right index finger. “I'll show you, so you can see what you think of this little tête-à-tête.”

I lowered my valise to the floor, and we tiptoed past Mrs. Paulissen's framed needlepoint meadowlarks and chickadees, which were hung on flowery red and yellow wallpaper that also reminded me of Christmas. At the far end of the hall hung a photograph of my family and theirs picnicking in the woods, back when we children hadn't yet grown old enough to start at the schoolhouse on the edge of town. My father held us girls on his lap, and Laurence sat between our mothers, wearing a crown of leaves I'd made for him. Mr. Paulissen had taken the picture with his Kodak camera.

Fleur nudged open the dining room door with the tips of her fingers. “Hanalee's here,” she called inside.

I poked my head around the corner and saw Deputy Fortaine, dressed in his Sunday-best suit and a smart striped tie, sitting at
the oval table with Mrs. Paulissen. He was the most handsome law enforcer we had around—Hollywood handsome, to be honest. Yet his dark eyes and wavy coal-black hair made everyone whisper that he hid a secret life as a Jew or an Italian Catholic. Some people claimed his real last name was Fishstein.

“Hello, Hanalee,” said Mrs. Paulissen, tucking a golden-blond curl behind her ear. She crossed her legs beneath the lace tablecloth, swinging the right one over the left. “How are your mother and Dr. Koning?”

“They're well, thank you.”

“We're planning to listen to some records, if that's all right,” said Fleur.

“That sounds fine, darling.” Mrs. Paulissen caressed the stem of her water goblet with a flirty little finger, as though she imagined the crystal to be Deputy Fortaine's neck.

“You two girls have a swell time,” said the deputy with his motion-picture-star smile.

I bit my bottom lip to avoid laughing. Fleur shut the door, and we skedaddled back down the hallway to the living room.

“You see? Those two lovebirds won't pay any attention to us.” Fleur slipped a shiny black record out of a paper sleeve that crinkled in her hands. “And the music will muffle our conversation.” She placed the record on the Victrola and wound the crank on the side of the machine until Henry Burr's sentimental “Faded Love Letters” drifted out of the horn-shaped speaker.

I glanced at the window behind me, half expecting to find Joe Adder standing on the other side of the glass.

“Come down here.” On the braided blue rug, Fleur laid open
her copy of
Motion Picture
and flipped the pages to an article titled “The Vogue of Valentino.”

“Look”—she turned another page—“an eminent psychologist claims that women have fallen passionately in love with Rudolph Valentino because American businessmen aren't meeting their needs as lovers. Isn't that a hoot?” She giggled in her rich, Fleur way that always quelled the worries inside my brain.

I crouched down beside her, my knees digging into the braided rug, and I leveled my head next to hers. Henry Burr's voice filled the room with music, and Valentino's suave Italian face and figure arrested our eyes. I couldn't even watch motion pictures. The next town over had a nickelodeon theater, but the manager had posted a sign on the door that said,
NO NEGROES, JEWS, CATHOLICS, CHINESE, OR JAPANESE
.

“I saw Joe,” I said.

Fleur's face sobered. “And . . . ? Is everything all right?”

“Well, I didn't kill him, if that's what you're wondering.” My glance flitted toward the hallway. “Are you sure Deputy Fortaine can't hear us? Uncle Clyde is chummy with him . . .”

“The music is loud, and he and Mama are too busy holding hands under the table. I think she's worried that Deputy Fortaine will find out what Laurie is doing for money. He doesn't look the other way as much as Sheriff Rinky-Dink does.”

“You sure Laurence is a bootlegger?”

“Shh.” Fleur held a finger to her lips. “Don't say that word. But, yes. Have you seen the nighttime sky? It positively glows with the fire of all the moonshine distilleries in these woods. Local restaurants—the
Dry Dock and Ginger's—and Portland establishments, they're all paying good money for home-brewed hooch, and Laurence has Daddy's truck to deliver it to them.”

“I thought the Dry Dock was genuinely dry.”

Fleur rolled her eyes. “They claim to be, so the good people of Elston will dine there, but the owners keep bottles on hand for certain patrons with money.”

“Is that where Laurence was going with those Witten boys just now? Out delivering?”

Fleur nodded with loose locks of her hair swaying against her face.

“And Joe Adder?” I pushed myself up higher on my elbows. “Is he going with them, too?”

“I don't think so. He can't risk jail again. He's just hiding out until he figures out what to do with his life.”

“Fleur . . .”

“Hmm?”

I scratched my left arm. “Robbie just told me Joe's not right in the head. Do you know anything about that?”

She shrugged. “I'm sure prison doesn't make a person very sane. It's certainly not going to make people believe you're upright and sweet.”

“Why is Laurence letting him hide in the shed, then? I didn't even know they were friends. Didn't they once get into a fistfight when they were younger?”

She shrugged again. “Laurence doesn't talk to me about much of anything anymore. He just mutters about taking the ‘moral high
road in life' all the time.” She stroked a photograph of Valentino dressed in some sort of exotic costume with a vest and long white pants. “Maybe Laurie sees Joe as a charity opportunity. A chance to repent for his sin of bootlegging. Church has become important to him.”

“Hmm . . .” I readjusted my weight on my knees, unconvinced that God would forgive Laurence of anything just because he snuck a few slices of bread out to the likes of Joe Adder. “Why'd you go see Joe in the shed in the first place?”

“I'm sorry.” She nestled her shoulder against mine. “I knew it would upset you, but Laurence told me Joe cut up his legs pretty badly when he hopped a fence to steal eggs. I made him a poultice and brewed him some tea. But I wasn't nice to him at all—I swear.”

I leaned away so that her shoulder no longer touched mine.

She lowered her head. “Maybe I shouldn't have told you about him, but there was something in his eyes that made me feel his message was important. I thought he might want to make peace with you.”

I pressed a hand over my forehead and drew a long breath through my nose. “He didn't make peace with me at all, Fleur.”

“Then what did he say?”

“He told me Uncle Clyde killed my father.”

The record stopped. Fleur jumped up, the scent of lilacs breezing away with her, and set the phonograph needle back to the beginning of the song. The fanfare of trumpets recommenced, and Henry Burr again warbled “Faded Love Letters.” Fleur crouched back down beside me, hanging her head next to mine over a new article, one that explored the shape of ten film stars' noses in relationship
to their personalities.
Good Lord
, I thought,
I sure hope my nose doesn't reveal what's going on inside me
.