Summerkill Page 6

  CHAPTER 5

  It wasn’t so bad, being sheltered from the rest of the world by the cops out front. Before dark and for an hour or so after, there was extra traffic on the road, several dozen cars in all. A few stopped, briefly; when I went to the back door to check, I could hear the distant slowing down then speeding back up as the drivers concluded there wasn’t much they’d be allowed to see.

  Alex’s television privileges restored, I let the boys watch the six o’clock news, keeping custody of the remote and insisting on Channel 8, since they’d been kept the farthest away from the crime scene. The place looked like a dump in their footage, but at least there was nothing visually grisly showing. All they said was that the Patroon County Sheriff’s Department was investigating the apparent murder of a young white male; the victim’s name had not yet been released, pending notification of next of kin.

  The news hurdle past, I said they could watch whatever they felt like. They both seemed okay, Alex maybe a little too quiet. When I announced at quarter after nine that it was absolutely, no-arguments bedtime, they went upstairs with only the normal amount of stalling. Galen gave me his trademark generous hug, Alex a harder quickie than usual.

  The biggest problem turned out to be the answering machine. It kept running out of tape before I got around to scanning, as Mariah acidly pointed out when she finally found space for a few comments. There were lots of disconnects but plenty of messages, too, a strong majority from the media. Our three Albany network TV channels plus the independent channel operating out of Poughkeepsie; the two county radio stations and several from farther north; both county newspapers, the daily and the biweekly; both Albany dailies, morning and afternoon: all now had my name and were on record at least once as wanting me to call them back. I didn’t.

  Vicky and Donna, like Mariah, were looking for updates, which I supplied. Sue told me her husband Denny remembered hearing two cars, close together, turning in at their corner pretty late the previous night, after he’d gone to bed. For our road, that qualified as unusual. He’d mentioned it to the deputy when he stopped by.

  Then there were the people I knew who’d heard something—though not from me—and wanted more. I got back to them all, but only my friend Ayesha from Birchwood and Skip Boyles, the Garden Center crew chief Ryan had forced out, were treated to anything resembling depth. Willem consumed a good chunk of tape saying he still couldn’t believe I’d killed Ryan, in spite of what “everyone” seemed to think, but even if I had he’d be there for me, I must know that. Communications from the remainder of the Etlingers and any main-branch Donnellys were conspicuously absent.

  I didn’t try to return Willem’s call. Granted, he was always way too uncritical in what he absorbed from his family, but I was still pissed. I ran his “everyone” past Mariah, whose “Humph!” we both left at that. Since the shrub shipment had arrived, I told her that barring complications I’d be over in the morning to start getting them into the ground.

  Should I call Pete and Janey, who were out west somewhere, RVing their way into retirement? We’d kept in touch over the years—more than birthdays and holidays but not quite family-strength contact. I knew Pete periodically checked out the area newspapers on the Internet, so he was going to pick up on the story sooner or later. I decided to hope for later, when I might have something reassuring to say. What could I tell them now, and what could they do from wherever they were? If the alibi thing didn’t work out, though, I’d definitely summon them into my corner.

  At a few minutes past ten there was a spirited banging that set Roxy to barking furiously from the living room. Having programmed in the number for the cops out front, I grabbed my cell phone and speed-dialed. “Somebody’s outside my porch, pounding on the door. Did you guys send anyone back?”

  “Nope. One of us better come check.”

  “Hold on a sec.” I reminded myself it was a solid door, securely locked, and whoever was out there listening to Roxy could not see her tail wagging. The intruder wasn’t persisting with the noise-making, and the boys could do without a larger commotion. “I don’t think you need to bother. My dog seems to have scared them off.”

  “There were several news guys hanging around bugging us. My guess is one of them managed to pick his way around through the woods, hoping to get at you. More of a nuisance than a danger, but if you’d like one of us to reposition back there for a while—”

  “No, I think we’re fine.”

  About half an hour later the cell phone beeped. “Do you know somebody named Sandy Borland?” the cop asked brusquely when I answered.

  The Garden Center’s ill-chosen summer intern. “Sure. We work together.”

  “She claims she didn’t come all this way just for the exercise. Want to talk with her?”

  “Send her on back.”

  I watched from the kitchen doorway as the one headlight made its up-down way along the driveway. Sandy’s vehicle is a bicycle, her rented room is in the village. She’d never been out to my place, and I wondered how she’d managed to find it, especially in the dark. Also why.

  She dismounted and approached. Plain of face and flat of chest, Sandy must, like me, have come to realize early on that she wasn’t going to make the cut for the traditional male concept of femininity. In her unrelentingly serious expression, touchy independence, and strong appetite for physical work she reminded me of myself at that age. I’ve mellowed some, or so my older friends allow. Sandy was in a totally pissed-offat-life phase, an orientation her recent coming-out seemed only to have intensified. With her cultivated unwashed look and prickly disposition I thought it unlikely she attracted many members of her own sex, either.

  I felt mildly guilty about Sandy’s rotten summer, having been the one to tell Willem’s parents about the intern program they acquired her from. Hiring anyone sight unseen is a mistake for the Garden Center—appearance may not be all for Eleanor and Rodney, but it’s way up there. After the first horrified appraisal they started compiling a list of minimum-visibility assignments. Minimum interest, too, most of them. I’d appropriated her for a little of Mariah’s stuff—they would not let her near Hudson Heights. She knew damn well what was going on and was furious but couldn’t afford to have a walk-away on her record. They’d have loved to ship her back but didn’t dare, discrimination suits being so fashionable these days.

  “Come on in,” I said, patting Roxy reassuringly; her tail was not up and wagging. “You must’ve had a long ride.”

  “From the village?” she said dismissively. “I tried and tried to call but your answering machine never stopped beeping. Doesn’t it work?”

  “The tape keeps running out. Would you like a beer or something?”

  “Water. From the tap is fine. I was there this morning, you know. When the cops came.”

  Running the water, I concluded she couldn’t possibly have meant my front yard. “What sort of things did they ask you?”

  “Me? I was in back. Filing.” Her pronunciation of the word spoke volumes. “It was the royal family they interviewed. Minus its crown prince, who’d found a more fun place to spend the night and was running a little late.”

  Willem alone among the family members tried to be friendly, but he was so inept dealing with a woman he couldn’t turn on that she gave him only grief for his efforts. “How did that go?”

  “For you, awful. It started with one of the cops saying Ryan was dead, and then there were these little, you know, noises and Rodney, with his usual brilliance, asked ‘What do you mean, dead?’ So the cop said, well, he’d been killed last night. And guess what was the next question was? Kate wanted to know where. I mean, wouldn’t you ask how first?”

  Unless you already had both answers. “Probably,” I allowed.

  “It was like that sealed it. They let it all out: your yard, you hated Ryan, he was planning to take you to court if you didn’t do that schlock work. Plus you’ve got this awful temper, they’d had one problem after another with you. Oh, and your thing f
or Willem. And finally the biggie: when you were a kid you’d stabbed your stepfather!”

  Well, I’d made the mistake of telling Willem, before I realized he was an incurable sharer. “Do you remember which one brought it up?”

  “Eleanor, I think, but they all knew. It was dumb to tell them.”

  “It would have been.”

  “Why did you stab him?” she asked once she realized it was her turn again. “Your stepfather, I mean,” she added hastily.

  I smiled, a rarity in any discussion of Jon Keegan. “This time the first question really should be where. The answer is in the penis. It was the closest available target.”

  “Oh.” I watched her mentally reject several possible responses. “Okay. So, I was positive you’d be in jail by noon. But when I got back to my room and called that emergency number you have taped on your desk—for your sister?—she said no, she thought things would be cool. Are they?”

  “Well, I didn’t kill Ryan. It looks like a strong maybe that the cops will believe that. I appreciate the alert, though.”

  “I almost gagged listening to the Etlingers rave about Ryan. ‘Such an exceptional young man …’ Christ, what galloping phonies. So what are you going to do?”

  “Assuming I’m cleared? Finish Mariah’s garden, I guess. That batch of shrub reorders finally got delivered this morning.”

  “What are you, crazy? You want to get the hell away from that operation. After what they said this morning they can’t very well sue you for taking a hike.”

  “They can’t very well start hanging out in Mariah’s garden, either. They’re not speaking to her.”

  Sandy shook her head with something less than normal vigor. “God, I’ve got another whole week of this place?”

  Taking an immediate hike did have its appeal. However much of the course I elected to stay, Sandy’s parting admonition as she mounted her bike, “Look, at least watch your tail,” was unquestionably sound. Mulling over ways to go about it pretty much obliterated the good night’s sleep Sheriff Dye had tried to prescribe. That and the chest-up image of Ryan Jessup as last I’d seen him, which had taken up residence behind my eyelids.

  What did I most want to do? Easy: find out who had murdered Ryan and set me up as the killer. And then? Okay, sic the cops on them. I could settle for fantasizing any personally delivered violent punishment. Of course he, she, or they weren’t avid to be unmasked, and had already moved beyond merely fantasized violence. Sometimes Janey’s follow-throughs work too well.

  Anyhow, did I truly want to deliver up some or much of Willem’s family as murderers? Maybe even Willem himself, though I was having difficulty sustaining that possibility. My instinct with him was to protect, to shield him against life’s grittier realities. Mariah and I both did this, as did his parents, and even Kate in some ways. And the latter three weren’t necessarily killers because they’d dumped on me this morning.

  So what I really wanted was Ryan restored to life, myself departed from the Garden Center retroactive to last spring, and Willem left unhurt.

  Moving on to possibilities, what did I most need to do? For starters, get cleared. On my own, I couldn’t see how else to help that along. It sounded like I was established as being indoors with the boys from before Ryan could have been killed until one A.M. If I didn’t hear something positive by afternoon, though, I’d give Donna the go-ahead to call in a colleague. The biggest lesson from the mess with my stepfather: once you’re sucked into the criminal justice system, you do want a lawyer who knows the rules.

  And after I was cleared, or failing that, shielded by big-bucks legal talent? Realistically, my top priority should be the same as before this all started: to be there for Vicky and the boys. That could become a much bigger deal than it had looked yesterday, and it emphatically did not suggest nosing after killers.

  I hate it when logic strands you where you’d never choose to spend any time.

  By morning, though, I was resigned. Mariah’s garden was reasonably out of the way; the work down in the south county should be definitively out of the way. How I was supposed to watch my tail while maintaining a safe distance from whoever might be chasing it remained hazy. Nonetheless, I would try for that safe distance.

  My short-term conclusion that the boys should skip the rec program seemed sensible enough when I announced it. The early morning news had more details: Ryan’s and my names. What were the odds none of the other kids would’ve heard? It might be better to take them along to Mariah’s.

  It would not either be better, Alex flared as tears welled in his brother’s eyes. This was the last day, they were going to have a big picnic and get their prizes. And Miss Dawson had promised he could pitch a couple of innings in the softball game. If any of the kids said something, he’d set them straight about me having an alibi. They didn’t believe him, they could go ask the sheriff.

  With more confidence in my prospects of reestablishing self-direction, I’d have held out for Mariah’s. But already, at not even eight o’clock, the road was sounding busy. From my bedroom window I could see a clot of people milling around out at the end of the driveway. Once I ran that gauntlet, who could say what else my day held in store? The rec program and Sue’s would at least keep the boys out of the way. “If it’s all right with Mrs. Donnelly,” I capitulated. We called—it would be fine.

  They liked the part about making their escape from that bunch of people out front. Once we were all ready to leave, I showed myself outside the kitchen door. While attention was focused on me, they were to slip out through the porch, diagonal down to the creek, and duck into the woods to pick up the path. It was pretty much the route they always took, but dramatically enhanced. Even if they screwed up, their passage wouldn’t be visible from as far away as the road. I didn’t tell them.

  My role wasn’t as much fun. The two deputies on morning duty kept everybody away from the crime scene, but apparently congregating out by the road was considered legit. Seeing me get into the Bronco, one deputy walked over and removed the sawhorse from the end of the driveway. That looked like as much help as I was going to get.

  As I headed the Bronco wide around the fatal curve, it struck me there were too many people eagerly awaiting my emergence: two with TV cameras, several with smaller photographic equipment, and close to a dozen who appeared to be unequipped. Did they know more than I’d expected, that Ryan and I had worked together, that we’d had our differences? That I’d stabbed my stepfather—clearly the Etlingers weren’t moved to sit on that tidbit. I wondered uneasily what announcements or news reports I’d missed but wasn’t about to roll down the window to find out.

  My strategy was not complex: I intended to keep going— through the crowd, past the crowd, out onto the road and away. Theirs was simple also: they would block my path. It wasn’t much of a contest. I leaned on the horn and inched forward. Most people would really rather not get hit by a large vehicle, even a very slow moving one. When it became clear I would not stop they peeled back. The deputies merely watched. “Thanks, guys,” I muttered, waving for them or the cameras or whatever.

  Contemplating the likelihood of pursuit, I’d developed a getaway plan. Pinehaven Township contains one village, also called Pinehaven, governed by its own elected officials, and several named hamlets that have post offices and fire districts but are under town rule. Beyond these areas, it’s just country, slashed by north-south arteries toward its east and west edges and otherwise segmented by many meandering two-lane roads. Wilbur Creek Road, on which my property fronts, is one of these. Until the previous day, there was nothing much on it anybody would choose to visit.

  My road doesn’t connect to either of the two main north-south routes; neither does County Route 26, which I turned on to at the Donnellys’ corner with several vehicles starting to give chase. It was time to burn a little rubber. I had plenty of lead, and a few strategic turns later my rearview mirror showed nothing but empty asphalt. When I intersected with Route 5, the more western of our nort
h-south arteries, there hadn’t been a car behind me for at least a mile.

  Across the highway, within township limits, are a couple of hamlets, a lot of country, and, beyond the rise, the Hudson River. A left onto Route 5 would point me south toward Hudson Heights, about two-thirds of which is in the township. Turning right instead, I drove north toward and through Pinehaven village. The Garden Center is situated on its northern fringe.

  It had occurred to me during the night that I could no longer pop in and pick up anything I might need there. Not that I anticipated needing much, but there were some papers in my desk, a couple of computer disks, and my time sheets, in case we ended up arguing about money. I could play it safe and use my keys tonight, after hours, but would everything stay untampered with that long? It was early enough that only Grant Oldham, who did the paperwork on plant orders, should be there. And maybe Kate, if she wasn’t playing golf or tennis. Not to worry—Kate and I were good at avoiding one another. With any luck, I should get in and out cleanly.

  But then I was hardly on a roll in the luck department. Pulling in to the parking lot I saw not only Grant’s pickup but also Rodney’s Mercedes and his secretary’s Tercel.

  Getting out of the Bronco and walking toward the side entrance the employees used, I took my customary appreciative look around. If you’re in the landscaping business, the Etlingers’ theory ran, be your own best advertisement. To me a portfolio of completed projects is at least as effective and immensely cheaper. This is not to take away from Willem’s design. The Garden Center’s broad sweep of highway frontage he’d turned into a lush landscape of colorful perennial beds, wonderful accent trees, sinuous paths, the greenest of grass, elegant garden furniture. One woman had actually come in and said, “Make me a yard just like that.” He would’ve, too—or an even better one—if economic realities hadn’t intervened.