Touchy and Feely (Sissy Sawyer Mysteries) (20 page)

‘Well, let’s give it a try.’

They bumped and jostled their way down the track, with branches scraping against the Tahoe’s doors, and snow dropping from the overhanging trees. After about a half-mile, they found themselves in a clearing. It was strangely luminous, because of the snow, and Lamentation Mountain was rising to the north-west, barely visible, like a bad memory.

At the far side of the clearing there was a small single-story house, painted pale green. It had a low, shingled roof and a verandah all the way around it. Not far away from the house there was a shed made of rusty corrugated iron, and resembling a disused pig-pen.

‘Doesn’t look like there’s anybody home,’ said Doreen.

They drove slowly up to the house and stopped. Steve climbed out of the SUV and took out his flashlight and his gun. Doreen climbed out, too.

‘Maybe we should come back with a search warrant,’ she suggested.

‘I don’t know whether we’d get one.’

Their footsteps crunched on the snow as they crossed the yard at the front of the house. A washing-line was suspended from the verandah to a skinny, leafless tree. There was a green plaid shirt on it, and three pairs of boxer shorts, all frozen solid. ‘Hope he thaws those out before he tries to put them on,’ said Doreen.

They went up the steps to the front door and knocked. Each knock echoed from the trees on the opposite side of the clearing.

While they waited, Steve looked around. It was hard to tell if anybody still lived here. There was a sagging canvas chair, and a rusted table with a hammered-glass top, and a child’s scooter with no back wheel, but they could have been abandoned long ago.

Steve opened the screen door and tried the door handle. To his surprise, the door wasn’t locked. ‘Maybe he wasn’t expecting visitors.’

‘Maybe he doesn’t have anything worth stealing.’

‘Still,’ said Steve, ‘we’d better check the place out, just to make sure that nobody’s broken in.’

He opened the front door and went inside, and Doreen followed him. They found themselves in a chilly living room. It was sparsely furnished, but there were plenty of signs that somebody was still living here. The fire in the hearth had gone out, and it was heaped with soft gray ashes, but the ashes were still faintly warm. There was a damp, sagging couch, upholstered in worn brown velveteen, and the cushions were still out of shape where somebody had been lying on them. There was a stool next to the couch with an ashtray on it, crammed with cigarette butts, as well as the plastic tray from a microwaveable fruit pie, and an empty Miller bottle.

Steve flicked his flashlight left and right. The walls were papered with large green flowers, faded by years of damp and sunlight. Next to the fireplace there was a calendar from Middletown Auto Spares, still turned to August, with a color picture of a 1957 Chrysler 300F on it—‘red-hot and rambunctious.’ On the opposite wall there was a large photograph of a hairy-legged spider, torn out of a magazine, and a yellowed black-and-white photograph of a couple standing outside a hardware store. By their hairstyles, and the way they were dressed, Steve guessed that the photograph had been taken sometime in the late 1960s.

Stacked in one corner of the room were at least a dozen copies of
Guns & Ammo
, as well as several of
Hot Rod
, and three numbers of
Hustler
.

‘You can tell a pin-headed male chauvinist by the books he reads,’ Doreen quoted.

‘Who said that?’

‘I did, just now. These are the same magazines my Newton likes to look at.’

Steve went through to the kitchenette. It was fitted out in yellow and scarlet Formica, and every shelf and work surface was crowded with half-empty tubs of margarine and dirty plates and unwashed coffee cups and torn-open packs of instant pasta and curled-up Kraft cheese slices. The old Westinghouse cooker was thick with dark brown grease and there was a saucepan on it which was filled with rancid gray foam.

‘Well,’ said Doreen. ‘We’re not looking for Mr Clean.’

Steve opened and closed the kitchen drawers. He was looking for boxes of ammo, but all he found was filthy knives and forks, an egg-whisk that still had egg on it, used batteries, rubber-bands, and the same detritus that everybody keeps in their kitchen drawers, like business cards from screen-door salesmen, and take-out pizza menus.

He opened the door to one of the bedrooms. As he did so, Doreen said, ‘Don’t come into the bathroom, not unless you have a really strong stomach. He had a dump this morning but forgot to flush.’

The bedroom wasn’t much better. There was no undersheet on the bed, only a heavily stained and misshapen mattress which looked as if it had been rescued from a roadside ditch. A coffee-brown candlewick bedspread was lying on the floor, along with a heap of dirty socks and work shirts. A small dressing table stood beside the bed, its veneer lifted by damp. There was an economy can of Right Guard spray deodorant on it, and a bottle of Aramis aftershave.

‘At least he
knows
that he smells bad,’ said Doreen.

Steve opened the door to the second bedroom. It was in total darkness, but his flashlight caught the smeary glint of glass. He took a cautious step forward. The room was surprisingly warm, unlike the rest of the house. As he took another step forward, however, he was overwhelmed by the worst stench that he had ever smelled in his life. It was thick, and leathery, and rotten: like natural gas, and putrescing fur coats, and raw chicken that had gone past its sell-by date. He covered his face with his hand, but even so he couldn’t stop himself from retching.

‘Oh God,’ he said, taking a step backward.

‘What is it?’ said Doreen. Then, immediately, ‘Sweet Jesus. What’s that
smell
?’

‘Here, the windows are covered, let’s have some light.’

Steve groped around the door-jamb until he found the light switch. There was a single fluorescent tube hung diagonally across the ceiling. It flickered for a few seconds, and then it sprang into full brilliance. Doreen made a desperate
haaahhh
noise, like a terrified child.

The room was filled with tables of assorted sizes, and each table was stacked with glass fish-tanks. The fish-tanks, however, didn’t contain fish, but spiders, and snakes, and giant snails, and centipedes, and enormous slugs, and some glutinous creatures that Steve couldn’t even put a name to. All of the windows were covered with corrugated cardboard, and there was a small electric storage heater standing in the center of the room to keep the temperature up in the seventies.

As Steve looked around, his hand still clamped over his face, one of the largest spiders jumped against the glass of its tank, and he couldn’t stop himself from jerking back. Everything else seemed to be moving, too. A brown centipede with rippling legs; and scores of cockroaches; and a pale beige slug which kept rolling its eyes in and out.

Steve ducked his head down and quickly checked under the tables, just to satisfy himself that there were no rifles or ammunition concealed there. Then he switched off the light and closed the door.

Doreen was standing in the middle of the living room, fanning herself furiously with her hand. ‘I’m going to have nightmares about this for the rest of the year. I mean, where does this guy get
off
?’

‘Maybe he identifies with spiders and centipedes. Insects kill things at random, don’t they, without any qualms about it?’

‘We really have to find this guy, don’t we? If his pet collection is anything to go by, he’s seriously nuts.’

Steve took a last look around. There was nothing else they could do here, not tonight. They couldn’t even admit that they had been here, and searched the place.

‘Come on,’ said Doreen. ‘We should get you back now.’

Steve nodded. He stepped outside the house and found to his relief that his headache had almost gone.

They climbed back into the Tahoe, and Doreen started the engine. She had only just released the parking brake, however, when they saw headlights jostling toward them, over the snow.

‘Holy moly,’ said Doreen. ‘It’s him!’

 

M
r Boots was waiting for her by the back door when she returned, his tail drumming against the washing machine.

‘I know, fellow,’ she said, tugging his ears. ‘You must be starving. I’m sorry I was out for so long.’

Sam stayed outside. ‘You don’t need me to come in, do you, Sissy? I’d best be getting home.’

‘Don’t you want a drink? It’s the least I can offer you, for driving me all the way to Canaan and back. How about a brandy?’

‘I don’t think so, Sissy. I’m just about ready for a mug of warm milk, and the latest Clive Cussler.’

Sissy went back to the doorstep. Snow was spiraling out of the sky, onto his shoulders. ‘What happened to us, Sam? When did we lose our licentious youth?’

‘The only licentious youth I know is working behind the counter at Quinn’s Drugstore.’

Sissy leaned forward and kissed him. ‘Thanks, Sam. I’m going to read the cards again tonight, and see what’s going to happen next. You don’t mind if I call you, do you, if I need you?’

Sam kissed her back, and squeezed her hand, but somehow this attempt to show her how much he felt for her seemed desperately sad, and all Sissy could do was give him a regretful little smile, and turn her face away.

Mr Boots prodded her with his cold wet nose, behind the knees, just above the top of her boots. ‘OK, fellow, I’m coming. Thanks for everything, Sam. You’re an angel.’

Sam said nothing. He was obviously aware that something wasn’t quite right between them, but he didn’t know what. Or else he
did
know what, and didn’t want to face up to it. When it came down to it, warm milk and Clive Cussler were so much more comfortable than vodka and Sissy Sawyer.

Sissy opened up a pack of Bil-Jac senior dog food, chicken and oatmeal flavor. Mr Boots didn’t like it as much as Alpo’s hearty beef, bacon and cheese, but the vet had warned Sissy that he needed less fat and more fiber at his age, and in any case it usually gave Sissy a quieter night.

She lit a cigarette and built up the fire, which had sunk down to nothing but a few glowing embers. Then she sat in Gerry’s old armchair, still wearing her coat, smoking and thinking. She couldn’t get those three people out of her mind. Les Trois Araignées. She could still see the older man, chopping his hand; and the younger man, laughing. If she had taken a photograph, and reversed it left-to-right, and changed the ax into a pruning-hook, it would have been almost an identical reproduction of La Faucille Terrible, right down to their facial features.

But what had exhilarated her, and bewildered her, and tired her so much, was the way in which she had been drawn toward them. Not only to Canaan, but to Orchard Street, to the very house where they were staying. She couldn’t explain it. She had always been highly sensitive to other people’s feelings. As she had told Mina Jessop, she could feel true love through a cinderblock wall. But the magnetism which had pulled her today was stronger than any emotional force which she had experienced before.

She glanced sideways at the deck of cards on the coffee table, as if she didn’t want them to catch her looking. She wasn’t sure that she was ready to consult them again, not tonight. She had always known that they were powerful, but she had never realized that they could not only predict the future, but intervene.

The cards had told her that somebody was going to die, and Ellen Mitchelson
had
died, in just the way that the cards had foretold it. The cards had told her who had done it, and where to find them. All she needed now was proof.

She placed her hands on the arms of Gerry’s chair, where
his
hands used to rest, and said, ‘What would
you
do, darling?’

The clock ticked, and the fire hissed, and she could hear Mr Boots’ claws scrabbling on the kitchen floor as he finished his food; but that was all. She believed that Gerry was here, and that he was listening to her. But he was telling her that this was a decision which she had to make on her own. She could leave the cards in their box, and try to forget about Les Trois Araignées, or she could see what tomorrow had to bring.

She lit another cigarette from the butt of the first. Then she reached across the table and picked up the deck of cards. She didn’t have any choice. Gerry knew that, as well as she did. If she didn’t read the cards, she might as well give up, like Sam.

She opened the box, tipped out the deck, and shuffled them. ‘
Pictures of the world to be
,’ she whispered. ‘
I beg you now . . . please
speak to me
.’

She didn’t lay out a full arrangement. All she needed to know was what was going to happen next—something factual that she could take to the police, to convince them that she wasn’t a dotty old woman. She turned up three Ambience cards, and stared at them in resignation rather than disbelief, although they were scarcely believable. The two storm cards again, and the man in the chest. This was no coincidence. The odds against these three cards coming up together were astronomical.

As she picked out the fourth and last card, the Predictor, Mr Boots came in, licking his lips. He stood next to her, and shook himself, and shivered.

‘What do you think, Mr Boots? Do I turn this card over, and see what it says, or do I call it a day? I could still go to Florida, you know, and forget all of this.’

Mr Boots cocked one ear. Then he barked, once. He hardly ever barked, even at the mailman.

‘What does that mean? Should I turn this card over or not? One bark for yes, two barks for no.’

Mr Boots continued to stare at her but didn’t bark at all.

‘OK, I get it. I have to make up my own mind, just like Gerry told me.’