God in Concord Part 14

Hungrily Hope inspected Ananda's room. It was immaculate. The bed was made, although not very well. Books and papers lay on a small table. The pencils were at right angles to the books. There was a small framed picture of an Indian-looking girl on Ananda's dresser. It was Ananda's sister, Maya, but Hope didn't know that. Her heart sank. She turned to the booksa"The Maine Woods, The Natural History Essays, Walden, Civil Disobedience. They were all by Henry Th.o.r.eau.

Hope turned to Mary with an anguished face. Her feelings were like a boil on the end of her nose. She was entirely exposed.

Mary took pity on her, Mary herself was not immune to the attractions of Ananda Singh. She had told Homer it was a good thing she was twice Ananda's age, or she'd run away with him to the end of the world. "He's from Simla," she told Hope kindly. "He came here to study Th.o.r.eau. He's very poor."

"Poor? He's poor?" Hope was astonished. Then Bonnie Glover had been mistaken. Of course she had been mistaken. The world's richest bachelor wouldn't be working in a hardware store. It was some other Indian person who was so fabulously wealthy. Well, what did it matter? Hope sighed with longing. "Thank you, Mrs. Kelly." She turned away. At the bottom of the porch steps she walked vaguely toward her father's car.

"Aren't you going for a walk?" said Mary, calling down from the porch.

"A walk?" Hope looked back at her blankly. "Oh, a walk. I guess not."

Later that afternoon Mary went to the Star Market, and then she picked up Ananda at the hardware store. Triumphantly he showed her his first paycheck. He had worked a full week. "From now on I must pay you more rent. You and Homer are too kind. Truly you must allow mea""

"No, no." Mary glanced at the worn knees of Ananda's jeans. The boy had only a single pair of shoes. And then she had a thought. She remembered Hope Fry and the way she had stared so dolefully into Ananda's room. "I wonder," she said. "Perhaps I've thought of something. Well, we'll talk about it later."

At home in the privacy of her bedroom she called Oliver Fry and asked him if he'd like to rent a room to young Ananda Singh.

Oliver was charmed. "Certainly we'll have him. This place has six bedrooms. It was meant to be a boarding house. And we could use a little extra income. How much do you think the kid can pay?"

"Well, not very much, I'm afraid."

"Well, anything's better than nothing." There was a pause, land then Oliver cleared his throat. Mary could detect his anxiety. "I don't know what Hopey will think. She's been so queer lately."

"Oh, I bet she'll take it in good stride," said Mary comfortably.

*34*

This is not the figure that I cut. This is the figure the

tailor cuts. That presumptuous and impertinent fashion

whispered in his ear, so that he heard no word of mine.

a"Journal, January 14, 1854

Homer Kelly was on his way to the barbershop. His wife had told him he needed a haircut, and when he looked in the mirror he had to admit she was right. His hair was sticking up all over as if struck by lightning.

He hated to take the time. For one thing he was worried about Julian Snow and Charlotte Harris, and he had a new idea he wanted to work on. For another, he was falling behind in his preparations for the fall semester. There was a new course, new to Homer although it had been part of Harvard's core curriculum for years. It was one of those fast-moving lecture courses that wipe away ignorance in huge strokes, galloping through the centuries at high speed. But, good G.o.d, the broader the stroke, the more full it was of lies. Before sweeping and swabbing with his big brush, he had to prepare the way with a private pursuit of niggling detail. Sometimes Homer envied the specialists, those dry professors who insert a narrow splinter into the past, then pluck it out and pick their teeth.

Homer left his car in the Walden Street parking lot and strode past half a dozen of Mimi Pink's boutiques. Thank G.o.d for Alphonso Domingo. In this desert of sillified merchandise his barbershop was an oasis of dingy reality. Mimi Pink's shop windows made Homer wince, and he kept his eyes fixed on the sidewalk.

But at the barbershop he stopped short. It looked different. There was a barber pole outside, twisting with stripes of pink and white. And Alphonso had put up a snappy new turquoise awning. The faded lettering on the window, BARBER _HOP, was gone, replaced by a hanging wooden sign with words in gold leaf, HUGO'S HAIR HARMONIES.

Homer quailed. Who in the h.e.l.l was Hugo? And where was Alphonso Domingo?

Venturing inside, he was horrified to discover that the old barber chairs had been cleared away. In their places were a couple of turquoise lounge chairs from some interstellar starship. A girl and a guy in matching turquoise jumpsuits were working on a guy and a girl. The girl on the lounge chair was Mimi Pink herself. The guy in the jumpsuit, who was obviously Hugo, was clipping her neck up to the tops of her ears, then bushing out her hair on each side and flattening the top into a sort of mesa. Homer stared at it, imagining tiny Navahos tramping around it in a rain dance.

"I'm ready now," said the jumpsuited girl, glancing at Homer. "Like take a seat."

"Where's Alphonso Domingo?" said Homer, scandalized.

"Oh, he's retired," said Hugo, winking at Mimi Pink.

Mimi t.i.ttered. Homer was dismayed. With gingerly caution he lowered himself onto the lounge chair. Twenty minutes later he emerged from Hugo's Hair Harmonies shampooed, shaped, styled, blown dry, and separated from twenty-five dollars. He felt like a fool.

Creeping back into his car, he was careful not to look at himself in the rearview mirror as he drove down Main Street. He was on his way to Emerson Hospital to look for the doctor who took care of all the people at Pond View, Dr. Stefano.

Homer had an old fondness for hospitals. In this one he had proposed to his wife. The signs directing the visitor here and there pullulated with interesta"EMERGENCY, X-RAY, PHYSICAL THERAPY, OBSTETRICS. It was in these sterile places that people entered the world and left it. Dramatic crises worked themselves out in operating rooms deep underground. Homer wanted to poke his nose into all the rooms and say, "Hey, how are you? What are they doing to you? Wow, no kidding!"

Dr. Stefano's office was in the new wing. Homer found it on the third floor. Opening the door, he recoiled. For the second time in the last hour he was a.s.saulted by interior decoration. Dr. Stefano's waiting room was a cave of gray and pink. Gray louvers hid the glorious view of the river. Huge gray silk flowers rose from a pink vase. Immense airbrushed pictures of opalescent blossoms covered the walls. The carpet was dusty pink, silencing his footsteps as he approached the receptionist.

She was a teenager in a high state of cosmetic finish, but she smiled at Homer in a friendly way, and her corny greeting won him over, "What can I do you for?"

"Is Dr. Stefano in?"

"No, sorry. Hey, that's a really fabulous hairstyle you've got there. Listen, you haven't got an appointment, right? But it's okay. He'll be back soon, and we've had a cancellation. I mean like you're in luck."

"Well, good. But maybe you can help me. My name's Kelly, Homer Kelly. I'm conducting an investigation into the deaths of several people who lived at the trailer park called Pond View. I'm sort of aa""

"Detective!" The girl's eyes widened.

Homer smiled modestly, not wanting to deny an a.s.sumption that was, thank G.o.d, no longer true. "I have a list here, the names of all the people who live in the park. I wonder if you could look them up and tell me about their general health?"

The receptionist invited him into the doctor's office. "I'm Cheryl," she said with a dazzling smile. With the list between her teeth she squatted on the floor and whipped through a file drawer with nimble fingers. "Oh, s.h.i.t," she said as one of her pasted-on fingernails came off, revealing a normal girlish nail bitten to the quick. Her pretty fingers went on searching, then paused again, and Cheryl glanced up at Homer. "That's funny. Charlotte and Peter Harris aren't here. Neither are Stuart LaDue or Porter McAdoo." Rapidly she ficked through another drawer. "You know what? I think they've all been taken out, all the ones on your list."

Cheryl teetered to a standing posture on her four-inch heels. "And I remember some of them myselfa"Mrs. Harris and Mr. Snow and Mr. and Mrs. Ryan and Mrs. Mooney. They certainly were patients of Dr. Stefano's, and their files ought to be here." Then Cheryl beamed. "Oh, here comes Dr. Stefano. Hi, Dr. Stefano! Hey, Dr. Stefano, this is a detective, you know, from the police, and he wants to know about the people at the trailer park, you know, Pond View, and you know what? We can't find their files. I mean like they're all missing."

Dr. Stefano nodded at Homer and sat down at his desk with a groan. He looked tired. Homer was glad to see that he didn't match his office suite. His face wasn't part of any decorating scheme. It was lined and puckered with stillborn babies and burst appendixes and dying men and women. "That's strange," he said.

"Like maybe you took them out yourself?" said Cheryl encouragingly.

"No, but look here, I don't really need the files. I can tell you about all those people. Most of the physicians around here have their memories locked up in their computerized records. I've got them up here." Dr. Stefano tapped his head. "What do you want to know?"

Homer explained his theory. "I may be wrong, but I wonder if someone isn't trying to shorten the life expectancy of the trailer park. Somebody, I think, wants to see the residents die off as soon as possible. They're not doing anything about the oldest ones, because those folks can be depended on to expire before long. But the youngest are being helped into early graves. That's what I think. I admit it's a shaky theory."

The doctor looked shocked. "But that would be terrible. Are you talking about the deaths of Alice Snow and Shirley Mills?" Dr. Stefano's wan face sagged. "I a.s.sumed Mrs. Mills died of a coronary thrombosis, but I admit I didn't call in a pathologist. You're not counting the deaths of Norman Peck and Madeline Raymond? They were very elderly, and they certainly pa.s.sed away from natural causes."

"No, but since then there have been attempts on the lives of Julian Snow and Charlotte Harris. Failed attempts, thank G.o.d."

"Good heavens."

Homer paced the dusty-rose carpet. "Let's start with Alice Snow. I'm puzzled about Mrs. Snow, because she doesn't fit my theory. I understand she was an invalid. I should think this erstwhile killer might have started with some healthier person who could otherwise have been expected to live for years."

"Alice Snow was no invalid," said Dr. Stefano sharply.

Homer was flabbergasted. "She wasn't? But everybody said she was bedridden."

Dr. Stefano smiled grimly. "She might have been bedridden, but she wasn't ill. She was as healthy as you or me."

"Then that meansa"" Homer brightened. "Somebody knew she wasn't really ill. Somebody knew she might live a long time if she weren't dealt with. They could have found that out from your missing file."

"You mean somebody stole my files in order to establish who was going to die of natural causes and who needed to be finished off?"

"Precisely. So if I could find those files in someone's possession, we'd know who's been creating the nastiness at Pond View."

"Diabolical," said the doctor.

Homer said good-bye and escaped from the new wing of the hospital into the bald sunshine of the out-of-doors, where the flowers were blazing orange marigolds and screaming scarlet salvias rather than pallid blossoms like the ones in Dr. Stefano's office.

He spent the next day doing his duty by Julian Snow, going from one mobile home to another at Pond View, asking about the Ryans' keys, inquiring about tools that might have drilled a hole in Julian's gas pipe, letting his eyes rove inquisitively over the exposed surfaces of tables and counters, looking surrept.i.tiously for Dr. Stefano's missing files. From his great height Homer inspected the tops of refrigerators. He knew from long experience that those belonging to short people were always dusty. He had seen hundreds like that. Sometimes he had even kindly offered to wash them himself. But even the dusty ones at Pond View were not laden with Dr. Stefano's purloined files.

And n.o.body admitted possessing a key to the Ryans' trailer. It was easier to inspect the collections of tools, looking for one that might have stripped the insulation from the cord of Charlotte's electric iron, or drilled a hole in Julian's gas line, or tinkered malevolently with Julian's machine at the landfill.

All three of these dangerous interferences pointed to the kind of skill that was second nature to most men. But these days, Homer reminded himself, there were plenty of handy women as well.

One glance at Eugene Beaver was enough to eliminate him from the running. He was too old and frail to have managed feats requiring stealth and nimble fingers.

Honey Mooney was different. She was young and quick. But Honey professed a total inability to handle tools. "I always have to get Julian or Porter to help me when anything stops working," she said, retreating into coy helplessness.

"Do you have any equipment in the house?" said Homer. "A toolbox, or anything like that?"

"Oh, well, there's my husband's old set of tools," admitted Honey. She pulled it out from under the sink, and Homer looked at it. There were the usual hammers, pliers, and screwdrivers. There was also a new-looking pair of wire strippers and an electric drill. Homer held up the drill and examined the bit. It looked just about the right size to fit the hole in Julian's gas line. "Do you mind if I borrow this?" he said. And when he took it to Julian's place and thrust it into the hole, it fitted precisely.

But so did the bit in Porter McAdoo's drill. It too was an eighth of an inch in cross section. So was the bit in Julian Snow's. Homer suspected that his own drill at home sported the same size bit. It was a useful size, the one you were apt to choose to make a miscellaneous hole in something.

The fact that Stuart LaDue and Pete Harris didn't own any drills at all didn't eliminate them. Surely any sensible murderer would get rid of the incriminating weapon.

On his way back to Fair Haven Bay, Homer began thinking once again about reasons. Why would anybody want to hasten the end of the Pond View Trailer Park?

He could think of only one answer, and it pained him. It would have to be someone who wanted to see Th.o.r.eau's Walden Pond cleared of insults like the sanitary landfill and the trailer park and the public beach and the bathhouse. The beach was ancient history and una.s.sailable, and the landfill would require long-term political action, but the old folks at Pond View were vulnerable. Once they were gonea"dead from natural or unnatural causesa"the place would probably be returned to nature once again.

Who would like to see that happen? Oliver Fry for one, and a lot of other people Homer admired and respected.

Not to mention that arch-transcendentalist, Homer Kelly.

*35*

...most legislators, politicians, lawyers, ministers, and office-holders

...rarely make any moral distinctions, they are as likely to serve the Devil,

without intending it, as G.o.d. a"Th.o.r.eau, Civil Disobedience

The first August hearing of the Concord Planning Board was held on the hottest night of the summer. As Homer waited for Oliver Fry on the steps of the town hall, his shirt was already clinging to his back.

He was early. He looked out at the Civil War obelisk rising above the round green trees of Monument Square. The trees were hazy with humidity. Their leaves hung limp. The flag on the traffic island drooped on its lofty pole. The long view down Main Street was striped with sun and shadow.

Turning, Homer saw an apparition speeding toward him down Lexington Road. It was Oliver Fry on his bicycle. Even from here there was a sinewy cantankerousness in Oliver's outline against the evening air. n.o.body but Oliver Fry would pump a bicycle so furiously forward and drive down the pedals with such violence. Homer grinned, appreciating from afar the essence of his old and valued friend. After the easy laxity of polite ties with other people, there was excitement in the tug of the vibrating string that was Oliver Fry.

Together they mounted the stairs to the public hearing room on the second floor. When Oliver paused on the landing to catch his breath, Homer pressed him gently on the subject of Pond View. Had Oliver heard about the fire?

Oliver didn't seem interested. He had no wrath to spare for anything but the new dragon that was spitting fire and threatening the sanct.i.ty of Walden Woods.

Thankfully Homer dropped the notion of Oliver Fry as murderer and arsonist. But there were other earnest conservationists in Concord who might harbor in their b.r.e.a.s.t.s a deadly eagerness to see the abrupt end of the trailer park. Homer vowed to track down a few and talk to them.