Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 43, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1998

The Dreamers by D. A. McGuire

I’d never been here before. You might as well have set me down in an alien world. Heard about it, of course, because everybody has, but been here? Never. Not until today.

“You said what? What?” he shouted, one hand on the back of his balding head. He was sitting behind a desk cluttered with file folders, memo pads, candy wrappers. “You want to tell me again exactly what you said?”

So I told him. Again. I wondered how many times he wanted me to repeat what I’d said to get tossed out of Mr. Frakes’ chemistry class. Because this was his reaction, again. “You said what? You told him he could do what with his Bunsen burner?”

Maybe he was just a little bit hard of hearing. So I said, as politely as I could, “Yes, sir. Do you want me to tell you again?”

“What are you, boy, some kind of wiseguy?” He was squinting at me.

I’d heard about this side of Mr. Sharpe but never seen it up close. Still, I felt the best defense, if any, was to remain as obedient and polite as possible.

“No, sir, I don’t think I am.”

That’s when he got up from behind his desk, walked around in front of it, leaned back, and stared down at me, arms folded across his chest. He wasn’t a very big man, Mr. Sharpe, but he was imposing. He couldn’t have survived long in this job, assistant principal of Manamesset Junior High, grades seven through nine, if he hadn’t been.

“I think you are, Sawyer,” he said, still squinting. In fact, he was squinting so hard you could barely see his eyes. Some of the kids called him Hawk Eyes because according to them he never missed a trick — anywhere. In the halls, the locker rooms, the bathrooms, the lunchroom, if you were planning anything at all you shouldn’t be — chucking a piece of bread at a pretty girl, writing on a locker, taking a smoke in the boys’ room — he’d home right in on you like he smelled blood.

Actually that’s a pretty poor analogy. Hawks don’t smell blood, what they do is spot, then target, their prey. And that’s exactly what Mr. Sharpe was doing now: spotting me, looking for my weakness.

And although he might have thought he wasn’t trying hard enough to scare me, he was actually doing a pretty good job. My stomach was jumping around; my head was starting to hurt.

“Sawyer. Sawyer.” He tipped his head back, cupped his chin, all a big act. “Do I know your father, Mr. Yes Sir, No Sir?”

It was all I could do not to choke because the only way I could answer was, “No, sir.”

The hawk eyes opened wide and beamed down on me.

“My father’s dead... sir.” I cleared my throat. “But you might know my mother.”

“Your mother? I might know your mother.” He was mocking me, and then he smiled; the kids always said that was a bad sign. Mr. Sharpe had a perfect smile, perfect teeth, like a tiger’s. “Emily Sawyer, works in the superintendent’s office, doesn’t she? Oh, I think she’s going to be one upset and disappointed lady when she hears from me, don’t you?”

“I guess so, sir,” I murmured as he turned from me. Possibly as an added effect he grabbed his phone and slammed it down on his desk near me. It made me jump, which it was supposed to do, I guess, and then he started dialing.

“Thursday, Friday, suspended at home,” I muttered, staring down at the slip in my hands. “Next week, three days in-school suspension.” I put my head back, banging it against the outer wall. But I barely felt it. What I did feel was the utter humiliation. The walls of the main office were glass — so the principal and assistant principal could look out and see what was going on in the main lobby, I suppose. The bells had just rung, and kids were going by to class. I could hear their laughter, then my name ringing out in both surprise and derision.

“Hey, Sawyer!” one especially loud and obnoxious voice cried out. “Got tossed, didn’t you, for saying some bad words in Mr. Frakes’ class?” I heard a rap on the glass when someone hit it as they went by. I jumped up at the same time a nearby secretary did.

“Did you see who that was?” she demanded.

“No, ma’am, didn’t see,” I answered. I wanted to add, “And I wouldn’t tell you even if I had,” but I kept my mouth shut.

“Don’t even know this kid,” I heard Mr. Sharpe say as his door flew open. He was looking at me with those hawk eyes and those tiger teeth. “Maybe you can talk some sense into him, Sergeant Valari. Never seen him in my office before, never had a complaint from any teacher about him. In fact—” He was holding an open manila folder full of green- and blue-edged papers. Report cards. “Mr. Sawyer’s even made the honor roll seven terms out of eight and was nominated twice as student of the month.” He glared down at me. “Hard to believe after what Mr. Frakes told me happened in chemistry class.”

“Hard to believe,” Jake echoed with a sigh. His small bright eyes were on me, too.

“Also been a peer counselor, worked as an elementary tutor for kids with special needs—” the assistant principal was running out of breath as he flipped through my folder some more “—and according to his seventh and eighth grade teachers—” he looked at Jake in surprise “—has even assisted the police on a few occasions.” He looked at me, then at Jake. “That true?”

“It’s true,” Jake said. “Hard as that is to believe, too.”

“So I did that big a crime they had to call the police?” I asked as I threw my school bag over my shoulder and followed Jake out to the school parking lot. I don’t know why I said that, it only added more grief to what I had coming.

Except, instead of yelling at me, Jake said, “Your mother called me.”

“Really?” I replied. “Hard to believe.”

I could see he was holding his temper, but at that moment I didn’t really care. Maybe I just didn’t care about anything, which was a really strange feeling for me. I’d been afraid, just briefly, in Mr. Sharpe’s office because I’d been anticipating my mother’s reaction to all this. I’d also been anticipating Jake’s, but now that I saw him I wasn’t afraid any more. He was just a cop, a sergeant on the small local police force, who used to date my mother until he dumped her six weeks ago for another woman. And knowing that, seeing him there to take me home, it seemed ironic suddenly, almost ludicrous that she’d call him.

“Yes, Herbie, she called me,” he explained. “She tried to get hold of Elmer Hornton...”

Suddenly I felt my heart sink, and any bravado I was about to display to Jake melted away. Elmer Hornton was a close friend, a good friend, someone I’d always depended on. He was an elderly man who lived two streets over from my mother and me. He was also a retired signpainter. I often did small jobs for him.

“But Elmer wasn’t at home,” Jake said. “Your mother’s pretty upset, Herbie. Why did you do this?”

I didn’t answer. I walked on toward his car, a custom red Firebird with a long scrape down the passenger side door. The rear fender on the same side looked like a ten ton truck had plowed into it.

“Hey, Jake, what happened?” But then it came back, that false sense of bravery that I could say anything I wanted to, since there was nothing worse he could do to me that he hadn’t done already. So even though I knew — this is a small town; it’d been in the papers — that his new girlfriend had borrowed his car and been sideswiped at an intersection a week ago by a pickup, I said, “Looks like somebody banged up your precious Mercury Firebird pretty good, huh?”

Did I say Jake was pushing fifty? And that he was a big guy? But not heavy with flab; no, he was one of those men they call “robust” or “sturdy”; he was also surprisingly fast when he wanted to be. So fast I barely saw him coming as he grabbed me and slammed me against his car.

But it was all for effect. Jake didn’t hurt me, though I’m sure anyone looking out the windows of the principal’s office might have seen it differently. In fact, I probably could have gotten an assault charge out of it — police sergeant shoving a minor kid up against his car — if I’d wanted to. But I didn’t want to, he’d made his point.

“For a smart kid,” he said to me, his face just inches from mine, “you can be pretty stupid sometimes. It’s a Pontiac Firebird, and I know you’re mad at me and I hope to hell it hasn’t got anything to do with what went on in there.” A glance back at my school. “Because it’s a lame excuse, Herbie, for saying what you did in that chemistry class.” Then he backed off. “Get in the car. I’m taking you home.”

Silence for three or four minutes, and then I said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s an easy thing to say,” he told me, “but not so easy to mean sometimes.”

“Look, I’ve been having problems,” I replied irritably. “What do you want from me? Mr. Frakes caught me off guard. I wasn’t thinking.”

“Mr. Frakes caught you off guard? What the heck are you talking about? It’s what — Wednesday in the second week of school for God’s sake — and you’ve already got a five-day suspension. Pardon me if I say what the—” (and I’ll delete the word, even though it’s the same one that got me into so much trouble) “—is wrong with you?”

“I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t know what he... what the class was doing. Safety or something, and lab equipment. Anyway, he asked me something about the stupid Bunsen burner, and it just came out of my mouth. Look, I’ll apologize to him. I’ll apologize to the whole class if it makes you happy.”

“Don’t you think it’s a little late?” he said, glancing at me as we slowed down at a red light. “There are girls in that class, Herbie.”

“Like they’ve never heard the word before.”

“Not from you they haven’t.”

“Yeah,” I said sarcastically. “Meet me, Mr. Perfect, never says and never does anything he shouldn’t. Mr. Yes Sir, No Sir. I’m just a model to the whole community, aren’t I? But what’s it get me, Jake? You and Mom are split up. She’s dating some jerk over in Northport.”

“Heard he was a firefighter.”

“Assistant fire chief, who cares?” I snapped back. “And now she’s thinking of selling our house and moving into a condo — a condo, Jake? How the heck am I supposed to live in a condo? Where am I going to put all my stuff? I need a shed, you know, or a garage or something. She’s been offered a job over there, too, and if we move, it means I’ve got to change schools. So who really cares what I say to Mr. Frakes, or the pure little girls in my class, or anybody else for that matter?”

“Boy, you’ve got chip on your shoulder so big I don’t think Arnold Schwarzenegger could knock it off.” He turned again to look at me, his small blue eyes mocking me. “Anything else bothering you you’d like to tell me about?”

“That’s about it.” I looked down suddenly, ran my hands along my legs. “Except for Meggie. She’s at a private school in Ohio. Bet you didn’t know that either.”

“Ohio?” He gave a low whistle. “Kind of puts a cramp in your love life, doesn’t it? Well, Herbie, so you’ve got a whole lot of problems right now, but why take it out on Sam Frakes?”

I looked at him in surprise.

“Oh, I know Sam. We played football in high school together. Don’t forget, Herbie, this is my town, too. Know everybody, I do. Ben Sharpe, too, though he was a few years behind me.”

I knew by his tone what was coming, but I also knew this:

“I don’t want any favors from you, Jake. I appreciate your picking me up, but if I never see you again, I couldn’t care less. My life is hell right now, and there’s nothing you can do about it.”

I think he wanted to say something, probably something upbeat and positive. I could tell by the look on his face, it was kind of confused, but that’s when his radio gave a crackle: official business calling.

I turned away, slumping down in the seat, and folded my arms over my chest. I didn’t even care what the call was about, though normally I’d be curious. It wasn’t until I heard him say, “Corner of Bayview and Oak? I’m close. I’ll be right there,” that I turned around.

“Not Mr. Hornton? That’s his address.”

“I know,” he said, replacing the receiver. “There’s been an accident. They think Elmer fell off his roof or from a ladder. Ed Andersen’s there, and the fire department.” He pulled into a rest stop, spinning the wheel to turn the Firebird around the other way. “Let’s see what’s going on.”

“It was an accident, Jake, pure and simple,” Officer Andersen was saying as he pointed to the back roof of Mr. Hornton’s small, one story Cape. Across the yard a ways, out near Mr. Hornton’s quahog-shell driveway, another police officer was talking to a small group of people, neighbors mostly who’d been attracted by the commotion created by two police cars, a firetruck, an ambulance. Even the local ice cream guy had parked his truck behind Mr. Hornton’s beat-up pickup and ambled over to see what was going on.

“It seems to have happened about, oh, one o’clock. Elmer was up there,” Ed Andersen went on, “cleaning out the gutters maybe, and he slipped. Though I guess the doctors have to check for heart attack, stroke, that sort of thing. Won’t know until they get a good look at him.”

“Cleaning out the gutters,” I muttered. I looked at where Mr. Hornton’s aluminum ladder had been propped against the side of the house. Then I turned around and looked at the garage. It was twelve, maybe thirteen feet from the house, a large, sturdy structure with a sloping roof. The grass between the two buildings was more brown than green and cut very short. In some places there was no grass at all, just a grayish-brown sand, typical of this part of Cape Cod. There were no flattened areas in the grass, you could see, and no marks in the dirt, so at first glance, there was no way to tell where the feet of the ladder had been placed. Against the house? Or against the garage?

“Or maybe a dizzy spell?” Officer Andersen added as he wiped his forehead. “Hot day, still summer, you know.” He looked at me. “Hey, Herbie, what are you doing out of school?”

But it was more reasonable to suppose that Mr. Hornton had been working on the house or its gutters than on the garage. For one thing, the garage had no gutters. For another, the garage roof was newer, with fresh black shingles, though a few about a foot from the edge looked like there was white mildew on them.

If he’d needed his gutters cleaned, he should have asked me to do it, I said to myself.

The EMT’s had already come and gone. I hadn’t had a chance to see Mr. Hornton, though we’d been told he was found lying on his back in the small grassy area between the house and garage. A lady walking her dog had spotted him and had rushed over, then waved down some guys along the road who were removing a tree. One of them had used the phone in his truck to call the police.

Jake had talked to the woman and the tree crew briefly when we first arrived, but now they were gone, too.

As for the ladder, it lay between the house and the garage. Next to it was Mr. Hornton’s green corduroy fishing cap, the one he always wore. “Can I pick it up?” I asked Jake.

“Sure. Not a crime scene, Herbie,” Jake assured me, hands on his hips as he continued to talk to Ed Andersen and look up at the roof, the side of the house, and the garage, its doors thrown wide open, where Mr. Hornton kept his small workshop.

Mr. Hornton was retired, like I said, but he kept busy. He painted for one thing, mostly watercolors — beaches, seagulls, boats — and he did small jobs like lettering trucks and boats, election posters, and the new signs, all gold leaf and dark blue paint, for the Town Hall. He kept paints and other supplies in the garage, plus an odd assortment of tools, old outboard motors, sawhorses, fishing poles, and buoys. It was a big building with a huge overhead loft accessible by a ladder. Up there he stored plans and drawings for signs he’d designed and made over the last forty or fifty years. It was a great garage, a great place to keep... well, to keep all the stuff a guy needs.

I needed a garage, too, although I might not have one much longer.

But that was hardly important now and I was angry at myself for even thinking it.

“He going to be okay, Jake?” I asked, walking back to the two men with the cap in my hand.

“Oh, sure, Herbie,” Ed Andersen said. He pushed his notepad into his back pocket. “He was talking when we got here, not making much sense, kind of in a daze, you know? But he was moving his arms and legs and breathing pretty good. Maybe he just got the wind knocked out of him. Elmer Hornton’s a crusty old son of a—” he smiled “—gun. Little tumble ain’t going to hurt him.”

The small group of neighbors had wandered over our way. I knew most of them including Buster Holiday, who made a point of telling Jake, “Just saw Elmer this morning. Gave him a hand with his stairs, but he didn’t say nothing about going up on the roof.” Buster was a nice enough guy, pushing eighty if he was a day, with bad eyes, bad teeth, and most noticeably bad breath. We all kept our distance as he asked the others standing there — mostly men in their sixties and seventies — “Elmer tell any of you fellers what needed doing up on the roof?”

There was a lot of head shaking and a lot of speculation about leaky roofs, loose shingles, dirty gutters, but none of them was much help.

“I’ll call,” Jake said to me as this little group went on sharing opinions among themselves. “See if the doctors have come up with anything.”

I looked at the ladder, then at Ed Andersen. Not a crime scene. He turned away from the group of men and smiled. Ed Andersen was a nice enough guy, but I never thought he was particularly bright. “That’s where the ladder fell? I mean, no one moved it, did they?”

“Heck,” Ed answered, taking out his notepad and checking it. “Didn’t think to ask, Herbie. I suppose one of the tree guys might have moved it, or the EMT’s. Don’t know for sure.”

Jake was heading for Mr. Hornton’s side door. The house was wide open, and Jake was probably going to look around inside to make sure Mr. Hornton hadn’t been cooking, or left something else on. He paused on the bottom step, looked at me, and said, “Go ahead. Do what you want with it.”

Fifteen minutes later, after I’d done what I wanted with the ladder, I went inside. Jake and Ed Andersen had shut off a radio, turned off the coffeemaker, and put the contents of a slowly simmering Crock-Pot in the refrigerator. Jake sent Ed out to check the garage, make sure no power tools were left on and the lights were all off, paint cans sealed, and so on. Now Jake was standing before Mr. Hornton’s phone, a frown on his face. It looked like he had something in his hand, maybe his notepad. Whatever it was, he slipped it into his pocket, then went to the sink.

There was nothing in it but a couple of coffee mugs and some dishes, soaking in soapy water.

I can be pretty patient for a kid with a fresh mouth, but Jake was too quiet. I glanced at the phone on the wall. It was an old fashioned model, rotary dial, black in color. Next to it on the counter was an answering machine, and it was plugged in, which surprised me. I knew Mr. Hornton hated the thing even if he’d pretended to be pleased and surprised when Mom and I gave it to him last Christmas.

Suddenly I thought I understood. “Did you call the hospital?” I asked, trying not to sound anxious.

“Yes.” Jake’s voice sounded funny. “They’ve ruled out a heart attack, but they’re still looking him over.”

“That’s good news, isn’t it?” I asked. I looked around. This was a small, bachelor kitchen but neatly kept. Table wiped clean, on the counter a pile of unopened mail and a paper bag with the name of the local hardware store on it, Big Eddie’s. Some sticks were poking out of the bag, probably for stirring paint; Big Eddie’s gave them away with every purchase. There was something else in the bag, too, wrapped in a cardboard and plastic wrapper. I could read the words “genuine camel hair,” written on it, but it wasn’t my business to go nosing around in Mr. Hornton’s things. I looked back at Jake.

“Yeah, Herbie, it’s good news,” he finally answered.

“I’ve got something I want to show you outside,” I said.

“Go on out. I’ll be with you as soon as I lock up.”

“So, what am I looking at, Herbie?” Jake asked. He was still acting kind of funny; he seemed to be trying to pay attention to one thing, me, while his mind was on something else.

“I just ran my hands along that gutter,” I said, pointing up. “It’s absolutely clean. If Mr. Hornton had just finished cleaning it, there’d be a trash bag or a pile of dirt and leaves somewhere, but I don’t see anything like that. I think he cleaned it some time ago, not today.”

“Maybe he’s got a leak in the roof.” Jake shrugged. There was a honk from the driveway. Ed Andersen was starting up his black-and-white.

“You get the front door, sergeant?” Ed hollered.

Jake turned with a wave.

“Everything’s locked up,” he said. As Ed tipped his hat, Jake muttered, “Damn, let’s not make this out to be something it isn’t.”

“What?” I snapped. “Why’d you say that?” I watched Ed Andersen take off up the street. Something here didn’t feel right, but I didn’t know what it was.

“I may not know much, Jake, but I do know this: Mr. Hornton wasn’t up there cleaning out his gutters.” I drew in a deep breath; I was finding it more and more difficult being in the same six square yards of space with him. “When you talk to him, that’s the first thing you ought to ask: what the heck was he doing up there?”

But he wasn’t going to be able to. Talk to Mr. Hornton, that is. When we got to my house, Jake came in. My mother would be home in a few minutes, but that didn’t seem to matter. He said he wanted to use our phone, call the station without broadcasting everything all over the airwaves. Then he made one more quick call, turning away from me suddenly as he did.

When he hung up, I could tell by the look on his face it wasn’t good. I caught in my breath as he told me, “Bad news. They have found signs of bleeding in the brain. Elmer’s gone into a coma.” He added, “I’ve got something else to tell you, Herbie. I found a message on his answering machine. I’ve got the tape here.” He patted his pocket. “It looks possible, remotely possible, that Elmer didn’t fall off that ladder. Maybe he was pushed.”

“I know. I know. It looks like an accident.” Jake was arguing on the phone with his captain, who was at a Police Supervisors’ Conference in New Orleans. “Yes, sir, most likely. I can read it to you again, but I can’t play the tape where I am. I can do that from the station if you want—”

A sigh of exasperation as he looked at me, then at my mother.

“Yes, sir, perfectly plausible, may be no connection.” Another pause. “Okay, it’s just the end of a message. The beginning got recorded over by one of those telemarketers that say nothing, then just hang up. Here it is.” Jake read from his notepad one more time: “ ‘You’ll be sorry if you show the dreamers.’ ” “Yes, sir, that’s all there is, plus the fact that his front door was wide open.” A roll of his eyes. “Sure, he could have left it that way — and gotten a house full of flies.”

Pause. “No. No signs of anyone being in the house. Nothing looks touched or seems missing.” Another pause and Jake shifted his weight around.

“Yes, I’ll have it sent to the lab, maybe they can — yes, captain, a male voice.” Pause. “No suspicion of that, but I agree, better to err on the side of caution.”

“I don’t care what’s on it,” my mother said when Jake hung up. “I can’t believe anyone would want to hurt Elmer Hornton.”

She folded her arms high over her chest and walked through the narrow archway leading from our kitchen to the living room.

It was a small place, our house, but it had a big kitchen and a comfortable living room paneled in old fashioned knotty pine. Every room had a high, open ceiling with a huge circulating fan that Jake had installed for us. The house had two large bedrooms; mine was off the kitchen through what looked like a closet door but actually led to a narrow, curved flight of stairs. Hers was down a short hall from the living room. It was actually two smaller rooms that Jake had remodeled into a larger one by taking out a wall.

It had a fenced-in yard and a pair of towering sycamores in front, a row of small purple locusts in back. We also had an old rickety half-falling-down garage barely big enough to park a car in. Right now it held a lawnmower, a battered outboard engine I was determined to put back together someday, and lots of odds and ends, mostly mine. But the important thing was that it was our house. After years of being pushed around from rental to rental, motel room to motel room, it was the first real home we’d ever had.

Now she was planning to sell it, move into a stupid condo.

All because of him, Jake Valari, following her into the living room, trying to be nonchalant, casual, and concerned. He got only the last part right.

“Emily, it’s just routine,” he told her. “Probably nothing to it. But I’ll have some of my men ask around, see if anyone heard or saw anything. Sometimes things seem one way and—” He stopped abruptly as my mother hugged herself and turned away.

She was facing me and trying not to cry. But for whom? For Mr. Hornton, whom we both cared for, who’d been our first real friend in this town, and honest to God, was more like a — well, like a grandfather to me than just the guy I did odd jobs for?

Or were her eyes full of tears because of Jake, standing there saying, “And they’re not the way they seem.”

“Yeah?” I said, determined to defend my mother as well as her pride. “Like you seemed to be a nice guy but you turned out to be a jerk?”

“Herbie!” my mother cried. Turning to Jake she said, “I’m so sorry. He has been like this for weeks. Unbearable. Sometimes—” now to me “—I don’t think I know my own son any more.”

“You know me fine,” I said as I left them both standing there awkwardly. “I haven’t changed at all.”

“So, Herbie, who or what are the dreamers?” Jake was standing behind me in the open door.

I was sitting on our back steps, facing the sun as it started to drop westward in the distance. In a few hours it would be doing a slow dance across the waters of Manamesset Bay.

Manamesset Bay, just visible between the locust trees. Suddenly I wished I was out there in my little skiff, just fishing or daydreaming or doing anything but listening to him...

Or worrying about Mr. Hornton.

“Well?” he said. Then, repeating the message on Mr. Hornton’s tape, “ ‘You’ll be sorry if you show the dreamers.’ Any ideas?”

“What kind of voice was it?” I asked.

“Male. But not deep, sounded fairly young. No noticeable accent. I’ll get a cassette player, have you listen to it on the off chance you recognize it. You know a lot of Elmer’s friends.”

“Did it sound threatening?”

“The words are threatening enough, but yes, there was a definite... tone to it.”

I watched the neighbors’ kids scream and shout as they chased a ball through their back yard. “I don’t know, Jake,” I said, answering his original question. “Could it be a name? ‘Don’t show something to the Dreamers,’ with a capital D?”

“Or Dramers, and it was pronounced wrong. Or Dremers without an a in it. It could be somebody’s name.”

I rested my elbows on my knees. “Doesn’t make sense, though. I don’t know anyone with that name. Could it be... what? The Dreamers sounds like a rock group, or the name of a stupid horror book or movie.”

“Herbie, I’m going to ask you to do something,” Jake said. He came down to the bottom step so he could look at me face to face. “I’m going to investigate this, talk to all Elmer’s neighbors and friends, find out what I can, even though this is probably just an accident. You know most of his friends and neighbors, and you’re going to be home for the next two days—”

“Golly, sheriff,” I interrupted cockily, “you appointing me your new deputy?”

I don’t know how he stopped himself from reaching out and slapping me one, but he did.

“You listen to me.” His face grew hard and fierce for a moment. “I’ll let you listen to that tape, but you are not to go around and ask questions. Anyone who would push an old man off a ladder isn’t going to care about some fourteen-year-old kid, you understand?” He sighed. “I don’t know anyone who might hold a grudge against Elmer, but...” A pause. “I’ve got somebody holding a grudge against me right now that I didn’t know a thing about.”

I didn’t know what to say.

“So I’m just asking if you hear anything you let me know. Now, if you can stand me for another hour, I’ll be glad to drive you over to County General. What do you say? Then we can get a bite to eat on the way back. I asked your mother; she doesn’t want to go. She says she’ll take some time off tomorrow to visit Elmer.”

So he had surprised me; now it was my turn. “Tell me, Jake, your new girlfriend, she as pretty as my mother?”

Stunned, he just stared at me.

I wasn’t done. “She younger? Smarter? Got a better job? Or how about this: she’s got no kids to get in the way, right?”

“Herbie.” Again, looking right at me, but because I felt like a fool suddenly and didn’t want him to see the tears in my eyes, I jumped up.

“Hell yes, let’s go see him. Because if anything happens to him...” I couldn’t say anything more, couldn’t look at him, but neither could I cover up the crack in my voice as I went to the back door and told my mother I’d be out with Jake for a little while.

All I could think about as we went through Mr. Hornton’s house that evening — turning on lights, setting a radio on low so it would sound like someone was at home — was what he’d looked like in that hospital bed. So old. A hundred years old. Even his tanned and leathery skin, face and hands, had looked pale, insubstantial, thin as paper. I wanted him to sit up, shake off all those tubes and lines they had stuck in him, and yell at me for getting thrown out of school.

“Nothing,” Jake commented. He was sitting at Mr. Hornton’s rolltop desk in a corner of the living room. He hadn’t touched anything because he had no reason to; besides, he had nobody’s permission. I was there because Mr. Hornton had trusted me and my mother with the key to his house long ago.

But Jake had done a few things — put a new tape in the answering machine and checked the front door again — and now he was glancing at the large calendar Mr. Hornton kept on his desk, using it as a kind of combination blotter and schedule pad.

“I’ll have the guys on shift tonight drive by a couple of times,” he told me, “just to keep an eye on things.”

Suddenly he pointed at the calendar. “What’s this on Saturday the twelfth? ‘Exhibition, library.’ What’s that about?”

“Mr. Hornton paints a little, you know, his hobby.” I shrugged and sat down on the arm of the couch near the desk. “Nothing big. Still lifes. Boats. He bought himself some new paintbrushes; they’re in the Big Eddie’s bag on the counter.”

“He paints?”

“Yeah, watercolors. He’s got his stuff in the spare bedroom. You didn’t notice? I thought you checked everything this afternoon.” I headed for the smaller of the two bedrooms, which opened off the living room. “He’s got easels and canvases and everything. There’s a big window in here, but it faces east so the light’s no good except in the morning. Sometimes he works on the front porch, and lately he’s been going to the beach. I’ll show you.”

Jake was just a few steps behind me. “Boats. Herbie, could the Dreamers be a boat?”

“I suppose. He does boat lettering, and he’s real good at it, you know, but it still doesn’t sound right. I mean, when you think about what the guy on the tape said, ‘You’ll be sorry if you show the dreamers.’ Why would Mr. Hornton ‘show’ a boat? Doesn’t make sense.”

“I’m going to have to listen to that tape again. Maybe a few times,” he said.

I flicked on the light, and Jake nearly banged into me when I stopped short and stood there frozen and speechless.

Then I said that word, the one that had gotten me into so much trouble about eight hours ago. This time I definitely thought it fit the situation. Because I’d just found something else that didn’t make sense.

There was nothing in Mr. Hornton’s spare bedroom. Not a stick of furniture. Not an easel or canvas. No paints. No work table where he mixed his paints. Nothing. Zilch. Zero. Zip.

Suddenly I felt like I was back in an alien place again.

Of course I couldn’t sleep, or rather I had one of those nights where you’re not really sleeping, you’re constantly tossing and turning, looking at the clock. I thought I heard voices once or twice, my mother on the phone, and I thought of getting up to see what was going on. Then I realized she’d come and get me if anything had happened. To Mr. Hornton, that is.

When I finally woke up, I felt like I hadn’t slept at all. She probably hadn’t slept much either. She was standing in the kitchen staring out the window with one hand in her hair, the other holding a coffee cup. On her face was a vague, distracted kind of look as though she wasn’t able to focus on anything.

But she heard me, and said, “I’m not going to work today. I’ve things I have to do at the hospital. Paul’s taking me over.”

I didn’t say anything to that, just scooped my workboots from under the table and, pulling out a kitchen chair, sat down to put them on.

“Herbie, when you and Jake were at the hospital last night, I got a call from Mr. Sharpe.”

“Yeah, so?”

“I know a lot’s going on right now, but we’ve got to talk about this, too.”

I had no interest in talking about school. “How’s Mr. Hornton?” I looked up at her. “I mean, he didn’t die or anything, right? You would have waked me up and told me that, wouldn’t you?”

“Of course I would,” she said, shocked. “The bleeding stopped, but his prognosis still isn’t good. He may have to have surgery, and he’s seventy-three.” She put her hand to her mouth, set down her coffee cup, and walked to the back door. She wasn’t a very big woman, less than five three, and was lucky if she weighed a hundred pounds. But suddenly she looked even smaller and incredibly fragile. “Elmer gave me power of attorney a year ago; you know that. He has no relatives, so I have to go sign some papers and talk to some people.”

“And Paul Fiore’s taking you. He’s got the day off, too?”

“Why are you like this?” she asked, turning to look at me. “Why have you been this way the last few weeks? And now this horrible business at school? I couldn’t believe it when Mr. Sharpe told me what you did. You can’t be that mad at me, Herbie, can you?”

“Who says I’m mad at you?” I snapped. “I’ve got things to do.” I went to the key hook by the back door and grabbed Mr. Hornton’s house and garage keys.

“Is it Jake and me?” she demanded almost pathetically; it made me angry to see that reaction from her. “Herbie, I never was in love with Jake Valari, and he didn’t love me either. We were good friends, and we still are... friends. Jake did a lot for me; I won’t deny that. He helped me get a good job and buy this house and—”

“Yeah, he was just your knight in shining armor, wasn’t he? And now he’s dumped you for somebody else, so you’re gonna walk around convincing yourself you never loved him when you did and I know you did. Jake’s a jerk, a total and complete jerk.”

“Herbie, don’t say that,” she said, her voice flat and limp. I almost wished she’d yell at me or slap me or do something. This was the way she used to be, always so weak and rundown and feeling sorry for herself.

“And this thing at school, it’s got nothing to do with you. I’ll serve my time, apologize to Mr. Frakes, and it’ll all be over.” I opened the screen door. “But right now something weird is going on at Mr. Hornton’s, and I’ve got to figure it out. So goodbye, and say hello to Mr. Hornton if he wakes up. I’ll go see him later.” I leaned forward and, grabbing her shoulder, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek.

Then I flew out the door.

Of course I felt like a fool. I had more important things to do. But I couldn’t help myself, and I couldn’t stop it and I didn’t remember ever feeling that way before. Totally helpless and frustrated, so much so that when it started I just sank down on the edge of Mr. Hornton’s sofa and let it come. I was glad there was nobody there to see it happen, and nobody around to hear it, either. The tree guys were right outside. I could hear the roar of their chainsaws.

Imagine, a fourteen-year-old kid crying like a baby. Girls cry over the least little thing, and women and little kids. And maybe even old men, say in times of war, like after their entire fighter squadron gets wiped out by the enemy, but not kids my age. We do anything not to get caught like this, and react any way other than sobbing like a fool. We hit things (or people) and throw things or maybe even swear and say things we don’t mean.

Suddenly I jumped up, realizing that I wasn’t the only person with a key to Mr. Hornton’s house. Jake could stop by any time, and if he’d found out there had been a real threat to — or an attempt on — Mr. Hornton’s life, he’d probably have a court order, or my mother’s permission, to look around inside. He’d start going through Mr. Hornton’s personal papers looking for threatening letters, things like that.

So I went into the bathroom to wash my face, refusing as I did to look in the mirror. I felt so stupid. If anything, Jake needed me to be alert, sharp, and on the ball, not a blubbering idiot who couldn’t hold his emotions together. And though I didn’t know exactly what I was going to do, or how, I knew I had a few problems to solve first.

Number one, find out where Mr. Hornton had put his paintings. It was possible he’d taken some to the library for this weekend’s exhibition. I could check that out easily enough. But he had completed at least twenty paintings in the two years since he’d taken up the hobby. Where were they? And where was his work table? And the shelf he’d built to hold his finished work?

Two, figure out who or what the dreamers were. Or Dreamers with a capital D. (Or however else it might be spelled.) I reasoned it would be okay for me to flip through Mr. Hornton’s address book to do that. He also kept a ledger in his workshop with the names, addresses, and job descriptions of any boats he was working on. Jake and I should have looked out there last night. Maybe it was beyond the scope of what Jake could legally do, but I could look, couldn’t I? Since I was Mr. Hornton’s helper, his right-hand man, it would be perfectly legitimate.

And then there was number three: ask around the neighborhood and find out if anyone had seen anything strange or suspicious over here yesterday morning or early afternoon. Did anyone see a truck or car drive up? Were any deliveries made about that time? Was Mr. Hornton in his yard or in his driveway talking to anyone? What about that lady with the dog, and the tree crew — they’d been farther down the street yesterday, but they might have noticed something.

Especially if someone went barreling out the front door, which I checked. It was just a regular wooden door, kind of old fashioned, with an ordinary lock on it, not a deadbolt. In the middle of the doorknob was a button you pushed to lock or unlock the door. But it was strange that Jake had found the door open. Mr. Hornton never used this door. He always went in and out the back. And that crack about the flies was true: if you left your doors open around here long enough, the house would fill up with flies from the marsh across the street.

Even though Jake had warned me about talking to people, I felt some of them might feel more comfortable telling me, a local kid, rather than a cop if they’d noticed something suspicious.

I hated to use that word; it throws a curve on things right away. People are suddenly thinking “Perry Mason” or “Ellery Queen” suspicious. I preferred to use the word “unusual,” or maybe even just plain “usual.”

Yeah, if someone saw Mr. Hornton talking to one of his usual friends, people might not even think to mention it to the police. And Mr. Hornton had a lot of friends; he called them his buddies. He had fishing buddies and clamming buddies and poker buddies. He also had war buddies, whom he hung out with at the VA Club, as well as just plain old buddies whom he saw at the hardware store, the post office, and the doughnut shop. That added up to a heck of a lot of buddies. I’d have to be careful about how I phrased my questions. I hoped Jake would do the same.

As I was washing my face and thinking all this over, I heard a sound, a buzzing sound, then a couple of clicks. It was followed by a voice. Mr. Hornton’s voice.

For a moment I was surprised: was Mr. Hornton home? No, it was the answering machine, but why would Mr. Hornton be calling his house? I went to the bathroom doorway and stood there for a moment, just listening.

“... at the beep, thanks.” Mr. Hornton’s message, followed by an empty silence, and then:

“Elmer? Elmer? Well, I guess you’re not there. This is...” A pause. The voice was a woman’s and, from the sound, very elderly, the words slow and drawn out. “...Mildred Hunt from the library.” Another pause; I moved into the kitchen, washcloth still in my hand. “It’s Thursday, Elmer, about eight fifteen. I’m calling to confirm your exhibition of four paintings this Saturday, the sixth. We’ve given you a nice spot just as we promised, the upper gallery toward the front.” Her voice picked up. “It’s a lovely spot. I’m sure you’ll be very pleased. Now, these are the paintings we have listed for you. Sand and Water, Number One; Sand and Water, Number Two. Like I told you, we’ve given your untitled works names, for our records. And then there’s Boy with Dog, and of course that lovely picture you were so kind as to show me yesterday, The Dreamers.”

I froze. I didn’t react in time. Some people would have dived for the phone and picked it up. I just stared stupidly at the machine as it went on recording.

“I really adored that one. Two young lovers, so simple, so perfect, staring at the sunset. And what a lovely spot you found; I’m surprised you thought of it. I haven’t been there in years.” A soft, girlish laugh. “I’ve heard it’s quite a different place from when you and I were young.” A pause. “So this is just a formality, and please excuse the length of this message. I’ll be in the library at seven Saturday morning to help you set up. Goodbye.” A click and a buzz as the machine dutifully stored the message.

The Dreamers. I’d answered question number two.

“I’m sorry, young man, but Mildred Hunt isn’t here. She just left. She’s a volunteer, not on regular staff.” The woman on the other end was courteous but hardly helpful. “And no, I cannot give you her home phone number. If you want to speak with her, I’ll leave her a message, and she’ll get back to you. And no, I have no idea what you’re talking about. Mildred takes care of all our art exhibitions. I can check later if you want to call back, but I can’t leave the circulation desk right now. We’ve several school groups today, and we’re short-staffed. I’m terribly sorry.”

Yeah, and what if this were an adult voice you were talking to, would you leave your precious circulation desk and go upstairs to see if any of Mr. Hornton’s paintings had arrived early? Because that’s all I could think of, that The Dreamers was sitting in the “upper gallery” wrapped in brown paper and string and Mildred Hunt didn’t even know it.

But damn, it was still a revelation, wasn’t it?

“Then listen,” I said even as I heard her sigh into the phone; I was so excruciatingly polite that I nearly made myself sick. “When she returns, please have Mrs. Hunt call this number, would you?” The woman sighed and then sighed again when I asked her to read it back — which she did. I added, “And please have her ask for Detective Sergeant Jacob Valari. It’s about a painting, tell her, a painting called The Dreamers.”

A painting called The Dreamers, a painting of two people in love. A painting.

It was all I could think of as I pedaled my bike down Bayview toward the water shimmering like a mirror off the bluffs. A painting, but what connection, if any, did it have with Mr. Hornton’s falling off a ladder?

Maybe no connection at all. A phone call about the painting: what did it mean? Maybe nothing. Maybe Mr. Hornton had painted someone without their permission. Maybe.

A host of maybes.

I saw Officer Ed Andersen park his black-and-white down the road and get out with his notepad in hand. He was walking toward one of Mr. Hornton’s nosier neighbors. She was watering some late-blooming roses around the edge of a fence. Good, I thought, let him talk to her. I knew who I wanted, old “Bad Breath” Buster Holiday.

And out there, fiddling around on his sailboat in the bay, was where I was sure to find him.

A lot of coughing and scratching, then the mandatory spitting off the side of his boat: he was happy to see me. A crack-toothed smile and a “Hey, Herbie Sawyer my man — put it right there.”

I slapped his hand. Buster Holiday watched too many basketball games, too many late-night movies. It was hard to believe, as Mr. Hornton once told me, that Buster had done a stint in Hollywood as an extra for some of the biggest names in movies back in the thirties and forties.

Then, equally hard to believe, he’d written a series of self-help books on home repair, made a bunch of money, and settled here on Cape Cod. He had a beautiful big house on the bluff but spent most of his time on the twenty foot sailboat he kept moored at a private dock. He was always puttering around, fishing, going for clams, quahogs, mussels, whatever was in season.

I got right down to business. “I’ve got some questions for you, Mr. Holiday, about Elmer Hornton...”

Of course that caused a lot more coughing and scratching and even some belching. “How the heck is he? I tried to see him this morning, they wouldn’t let me near him.” This was followed by a general denouncement of the medical establishment, Mr. Hornton’s doctors in particular.

“He’s the same, Mr. Holiday, no change. My mother’s going to see him this morning. We’ll let you know if we hear anything.”

“Now, your mother, a fine woman, a real lady—” Several seconds of lauding my mother; she’d made the mistake of sending him an eggplant casserole when he’d been sick a while back — until I could finally interject:

“I need to know... Buster, if you saw anyone at Mr. Hornton’s house yesterday. You know, if someone stopped by, like a friend or even a stranger or, say, a delivery guy?”

More scratching and frowning and looking off across the water as a pair of terns wheeled and twittered overhead. For a moment I thought, great, he’s finally gone senile; he’s not going to be any help at all.

“Well, no. Why you asking?” His sharp little eyes turned on me. He needed a bath; he needed a shave, he needed some mouthwash.

And I needed a new approach. What if Buster himself had — what? Leaned against Mr. Hornton’s ladder? Deliberately pushed it? How did I know what went through somebody else’s mind? Or what arguments, grudges, or differences existed between any two people when I barely knew what existed between me and Jake Valari?

“We’re just wondering—” I said, realizing another mistake, the use of “we.” It was strange, wasn’t it, how I could identify so closely with Jake Valari and still hate him. “—if you or someone else noticed that Mr. Hornton was experiencing any, you know, chest pains or headaches that would be—”

“Symptomatic of an oncoming stroke?” he said, surprising me with his grasp of medical jargon.

Everyone surprised me.

“Well, hell no, I didn’t, at least he didn’t complain of nothing like that. We had a cup of coffee after we worked on the stairs.” He sat back on the rim of the boat and scratched again, his neck, his forehead, his chest. “Oh, then we took a hike down the road, watched those tree guys again. They been taking trees down all along Bayview. Lot of damage that last windstorm, you know; damn shame. Some of those trees are over a hundred years old.” He belched again; I stepped back. “Watched those guys take down one heck of a big oak. Full of ants it was. You should have seen them scamper when they took the big saws to it. Heck of a big saw, too — never saw a saw so big! Get it?” He moved toward me with his elbow, so I nodded quickly.

“I got it.”

“Disgusting things, ants. Had a problem with carpenter ants once, nearly ate me out of house and home—”

“So you were with Mr. Hornton all morning?”

“Until noon. Had myself an ice cream, went home. Funny that Elmer never said anything about his roof. I would have helped him. Never go up a ladder alone, Herbie. Too dangerous. You need someone down below balancing it, and just looking out in case of a problem. I guess Elmer never read that chapter in my book.” More scratching. “Hope I’ve been of some help to you. It’s a damn shame.”

“Yeah, thanks.” I turned to climb off his boat. I’d left my bike up on the bluff.

“But you know Elmer, does everything himself, never wants any help. Wouldn’t have let me help him with the stairs if I hadn’t been there at the time.”

I had one foot on the mooring, the other still in the boat. “What stairs?”

“Why, the new stairs in the garage of course!” he laughed.

“There are no stairs in the garage, Mr. Hobday.”

“The stairs going up—” he pointed one dirty finger into the air “—overhead. You know what I mean, the collapsible kind. Complicated thing. He got a kit and put it together himself. I helped him put it in.”

“Collapsible stairs?”

“Why of course! Into the loft he’s building over the garage. He didn’t tell you?”

“No,” I murmured, suddenly knowing where The Dreamers was. “He didn’t.”

Amazing how much I can miss or can hear but not listen to.

There it was, just beyond Mr. Hornton’s workbench in the far corner of the garage. Of course that’s where the trapdoor going up into the overhead loft was. The rickety wooden ladder he used to have me climb, stowing papers and plans up there, was tucked in a corner next to some brooms and rakes.

I’d seen one of those contraptions before, in a friend’s house going up to an attic. There was a long thin mesh chain, ending in a ring, that was looped around a nail in the wall. If you pulled up on the chain, the door overhead opened, and out popped the bottom of a collapsible set of stairs. You pulled the stairs down toward you, and they kind of unfolded all the way to the floor. The whole apparatus was on a system of pulleys and chains.

And it worked perfectly. I started up the stairs, and a light came on.

I was startled for a moment, remembering that the only light up here had been one bare bulb in the middle of the ceiling. Then I understood. Mr. Hornton had added new lights and a motion detector; the lights came on automatically. And when I got to the top and looked around at the entire loft, which suddenly had become a real and functional room, I understood a few other things, too.

“I just don’t get it,” I argued. “What do you mean, the investigation’s been stopped? Mr. Hornton was nearly killed!” “Herbie.” Jake cut me off. Although he hadn’t been upset with me for tracking down Mrs. Hunt and finding out that The Dreamers was a painting, he was not pleased about my talking to Buster Holiday. Ed Andersen had gone to see him just after I had, so naturally Jake had given me the old lecture about “interfering in a police investigation.” Except now there was no police investigation.

“Elmer fell off a ladder,” Jake said. We were out on my back steps, a place where we seemed to have a lot of arguments lately. It was going on suppertime, but we could hear the buzz of boats roaring out in the bay, the noisy clamor of the neighborhood kids as they ran out to an ice cream truck in the road. “There’s no reason to think it was anything but that. He fell off. He lost his balance. He’s an old man.”

I glared at him.

“And the message on the tape doesn’t prove much. Someone didn’t want Elmer to put this painting on display, for whatever reason. Maybe he’s the guy in the painting, and the woman’s not his wife.”

“You never let me listen to the tape,” I said bitterly. “I might have recognized the voice.”

“Sorry, Herbie, had to send it to the lab.”

I turned away and heard my mother and her new boyfriend in the kitchen behind us. The guy’s voice was high and irritating. “I don’t know, Em, but I’m not happy with you and Herbie getting mixed up in police business.”

“God, that guy makes me sick,” I muttered.

Jake tried to suppress a smile. “So the investigation, for what it was worth, is over. I’m driving over to see Elmer before it gets too late; then I’m stopping at the library. I spoke to one of the librarians, and she said Mrs. Hunt comes in on Thursday evenings to help with new inventory.”

“Why are you bothering to talk to Mrs. Hunt if there’s no investigation?”

“Just loose ends. I want to know where Elmer painted that picture; apparently she knows. She’s seen it, and...” A shrug, but a highly acted one. “Elmer might have mentioned to her if anyone was trying to buy it, or didn’t want it shown.”

“Yeah, and she’s the only lead you’ve got, right?” I snapped. I turned away and looked out at the driveway where a black boxy-looking car sat next to my mother’s six-year-old Ford Mustang. There was another car in the drive, too, a green and beige Jeep Cherokee.

Now, someone might assume things by looking at those three cars, but then that person might assume things all wrong, too. Assumptions can be tricky and dangerous things.

“Officer Andersen didn’t pick up any other information, did he? From talking to Mr. Hornton’s neighbors?”

“No.” He was too nervous. “I guess no one saw anything.”

I was too mad to respond just then. I’d found out about the stairs in the garage, and where The Dreamers was, not to mention what the darn thing was, plus I’d taken him the tape from Mr. Hornton’s answering machine with Mildred Hunt’s message on it. I’d done all this for him, and what had he done for me?

“You got a new car?” I asked suddenly.

“The Volvo? No, it’s a friend’s. I’m borrowing it while mine’s in for repairs.”

“So your new girlfidend drives a Volvo, huh?” I said flippantly. “Figures. She’s such a lousy driver she needs a car she can’t kill herself in.” I started down the steps with him behind me. “She ought to drive a tank.”

I said nothing, just turned on the radio real loud — to one of the worst, most obnoxious alternative rock stations on the dial — and tapped a pencil I’d found in the glove compartment on my knees, the dash, and just about everywhere else as we drove. I was trying to drive him crazy, I admit it, but wasn’t having much effect. He was too busy watching some guy in the rear view mirror. Tailgaters. He should have pulled him over.

But my heart wasn’t really into annoying Jake Valari, and my mind was on everything else. I simply wasn’t satisfied with anything, including the picture I’d seen in Mr. Hornton’s loft.

The loft had been wide and clean. All the sign plans and papers I’d stowed up there for him were now neatly arranged in a series of shelves along one wall. Along another wall were the thin, vertical compartments Mr. Hornton had built to hold his paintings. Right now, though, most of the canvases in them were blank.

His missing work table was up there and, scattered across it, his paints and brushes, mixing tools, some cans and bottles. Above the table on wooden hooks were a half dozen palettes. But the most astonishing thing — actually the two most astonishing things — were these:

First, above the work table in the slope of the roof Mr. Hornton had drawn a large rectangle in chalk. It was obvious he was planning to cut that part of the roof away for a skylight. A brochure from Big Eddie’s showing all kinds of skylights lay on the table.

And, second, in the middle of the room was an easel, and on it was a painting of two people looking off into a sunset. They were facing away from the artist, painted from the shoulders up, so all you could see was the backs of their heads. The man had short dark hair; the woman’s was long and blonde and fell almost to her shoulders. She was wearing a red tank top, he had on a blue work shirt, and anyone, anyone at all just glancing at the picture, would have known they were in love. Something about it, plus the woman was resting her head on the man’s shoulder.

It was The Dreamers all right, even said so in the bottom left-hand corner: “EH, Dreamers.”

Other things slid into place, too. I left the loft and went back outside. Hoisting the ladder against the side of the garage, I climbed up. I should have done that yesterday, checked to see if he’d been up there, because what I’d thought was mildew on the shingles was actually chalk. Mr. Hornton had drawn a rough line along the bottom row of shingles and started writing X’s on them. Those shingles had to come off in order to cut a hole in the roof for the skylight.

Damn, I’d been so stupid.

Now The Dreamers was safely nestled in the trunk of the Volvo alongside the other paintings destined for the library exhibition. Jake and I had found the other three wrapped in brown paper and string, neatly propped under the work table.

But The Dreamers hadn’t been wrapped to go to the library. As I’d dragged the other three paintings out to the car, Jake had carefully tied up The Dreamers in a clean piece of cloth he’d found in the loft.

It did occur to me that maybe The Dreamers wasn’t supposed to go. Maybe Mr. Hornton had changed his mind at the last minute and not told Mrs. Hunt. Maybe...

“Maybe he was going to show it to someone. Maybe.” I looked down into my lap, stopped my tapping. “But then he didn’t.” I stared out the window, watching the garish lights of the local clam shack, ice cream place, and pizza parlor slip by. “Or he couldn’t.” I shut my eyes and said, “ ‘You’ll be sorry if you show The Dreamers.’ ” I opened my eyes and looked at Jake, but he said nothing.

“Case really closed?” I asked.

“Never was a case,” he said as he pulled into the circular lot of Manamesset County General Hospital.

I wandered out into the waiting room. Jake had only stayed a few minutes with Mr. Hornton. Now he was sitting on a worn vinyl chair, elbows on his legs, his head forward. No one had been very forthcoming, not the nurses, not the doctors on staff. There had been no change in Mr. Hornton’s condition, and now he might be taken by ambulance to Boston for surgery.

“I’m going to tell you this,” I said, managing — just barely — to keep my mouth from trembling, my words from spilling over into tears. “That painting, it’s going on display Saturday. Right there in the library. And if there is any connection, case or no case, I’m going to show that son of a—”

A loud boom rocked the ward, the entire building. Nurses came running and interns and orderlies; patients along the corridor were crying out. Then we heard an orderly shout, “There’s been some kind of explosion down in the parking lot. There’s a couple of cars on fire!”

The Volvo was totally destroyed, firebombed along with two other cars belonging to doctors, a Jaguar XJ6 and a Cadillac Seville STS. There were firetrucks out there, police squad cars from both Manamesset and Northport, and a long line of people being held back by police along the periphery of the parking lot.

And then a Jeep Cherokee tore up, nearly onto the sidewalk, right to where Jake and I were standing. It was Paul Fiore, slamming on his brakes, jumping out, and heading straight toward Jake.

“I ought to take you apart, you stupid fool!” he screamed. “You took the kid with you, knowing something like this could happen!” Suddenly two policemen were there grabbing Paul’s arms.

“Hold on, Paul,” Jake said, walking toward him. “I didn’t know...”

“The hell you didn’t!” Paul barked back. “Then why’d you and Emily switch the paintings back at her house? There’s a maniac out there who wants that picture, and you knew it! You knew it!” For a whiny and irritating guy, Paul Fiore was surprisingly strong, throwing off first one man, then the other. “You ought to get written up, Valari, tossed off the force.”

He wiped his eyes, then his face. Suddenly, using that same expletive that had gotten me in so much trouble, he turned away and walked off to join his men as they put out the last of the fire.

Five minutes ago, seeing that burning car, its hull now a smoldering, blackened heap, I had felt like my heart, lungs, and stomach had all been pulled out of me. I’d thought The Dreamers was gone and with it whatever this had all been about. But suddenly I was wrong again. It wasn’t over. Not yet.

Arguing, back and forth, loud and sometimes violently, then softer and apologetic. I lay on my stomach listening to them, then I slipped on my headphones and let Depeche Mode, low, soft, depressing, lull me to sleep...

And into dreams of my own.

Who was I? Where was I? On a beach. On an island somewhere in the bay.

Could be any island, any part of the bay, but the gulls are filling the sky, chasing the terns, diving into the shoals, swooping down at pieces of bread that someone, that she, tosses into the air for them.

And who am I? Where am I? With a paintbrush in my hand and an easel in the sand, looking down at them, not dreamers but lovers, racing across the sand on a deserted beach island where they can be, can do, can feel anything they want. And they see me, but they don’t notice me, don’t care. I’m just a painter in the sand, and whatever I’m doing, painting the water, the rocks, the broken-down jetty stretching into the distance, it’s nothing. Dreamers and lovers, and they pause somewhere in all of this and she puts her head on his shoulder and they turn to the blaze of sun spilling across the gold-lapped waters.

I paint them, looking down to the water, the sunset, the gulls, the gold and blue bay before them; I paint them with their faces turned away, to preserve their privacy, to protect them.

And I call them The Dreamers, with respect, not with derision.

And I understand. I know.

I sat up straight in bed, awake and alarmed, knowing, having it right there on the tip of my consciousness. I knew. And if they’d only given me half a chance, I would’ve done what they wanted, what they asked, even destroy the painting I’d taken so long to complete. I would have because I’m not a heartless or vindictive man. I would’ve kept their secret, but they didn’t know that, they didn’t know me, didn’t know my word was good. I hadn’t even wrapped it up to go to the library.

I’d left it on the easel, up in the loft, to show...

I sat forward farther, trying, trying, trying to hold onto it, the bits and pieces of a dream that was shattering before me.

It was gone. Yet for a moment I’d known why Mr. Hornton had fallen and what it had to do with the dreamers — the two people in the painting, not the painting itself. I knew.

And what I knew, I’d lost.

“You’ve got to get some sleep, Emily.”

I awoke to a different voice, not Paul Fiore’s, and not my mother’s. I glanced at the clock; five in the morning.

“You can’t do this any more.” That was my mother responding to Jake. And though her voice was low and soft, it wasn’t weak; it held that fiery edge to it that both Jake and I had learned to respect. “You can’t involve my son in these matters. I know you’ll say he does it himself, he’s in the wrong place at the wrong time, but there’s also you. You do understand that, don’t you? Herbie’s emulating you.”

I slipped out of my bedroom quietly. Barefoot, careful to avoid the places on the stairs where the boards creak, I went down to the bottom and listened. They were in the living room, so I eased the door open a crack.

“And I don’t want police cars parked out in front of my house all night,” my mother went on. “The neighbors will think I’m carrying on with the whole Manamesset police force.” She tried to laugh, couldn’t.

I eased the door open even farther.

“Just a precaution, Emily. If anyone heard what Paul said tonight at the hospital—” He left it unfinished.

“ ‘What Paul said.’ ” My mother’s voice was too ironic. “You say that as though—”

“He interfered. He should’ve kept his mouth shut.”

“Damn you, Jake, Paul was just being protective!”

“Protective? You know how he could have been protective? By keeping quiet so I could let the papers write that the four paintings that were going on display Saturday were destroyed in the fire. He just made things more complicated.”

“Oh, did he?” she snapped. “So let me ask you this, what’s the plan now, Jake? Wait until Elmer wakes up, if he ever does? Then ask him what’s going on here? Because I’ve got an easier solution. We drag that thing out onto the front lawn of the Town Hall, dump gasoline all over it, and set it on fire.”

“Can’t do that, Emily.”

“No, we can’t do it because it’s not the way you want it. It’s always got to be your way or no way.”

“No, it’s simply not the right thing to do. That painting is going to stay in the town vault until we can figure out what’s going on here.” A prolonged sigh. “Look, I apologize for what happened. I had a hunch, which turned out to be a good one, or maybe a bad one, and—”

“I don’t give a—” the word again, and though it was in its appropriate place, it jolted me to hear her say it “—about your hunches, detective; all I care about is my son. You’ve drawn him into this thing—”

“Emily, no. You know I care about Herbie—”

Her voice rode right over his. “And if you really cared about him, you would have demanded — demanded, Jake — that he stay out of it. He had no business going back to Elmer’s house yesterday, and no business talking to Buster Holiday.”

“How was I going to stop him?” Jake replied with exasperation. “That kid’s just as hard-headed and stubborn as you—”

“You could have called Ben Sharpe for one thing! You could have demanded that Herbie spend his entire suspension in school! Because, damn it, you know what your hunches are. They’re good hunches, Jake, and if you suspected anything at all was wrong here, you knew you were probably right.”

There was a sudden and intense silence between them. I smelled smoke. Jake was lighting a cigarette.

And she was letting him.

“It’s no good, is it?” my mother finally said. “Fighting with you. It’s like fighting with Herbie. I get nowhere. But I’m scared. Someone saw you and Herbie take those paintings out of Elmer Hornton’s garage, and someone saw you put them in the Volvo. Which leads me to believe that same someone has been watching my son the last two days. And that scares me terribly.”

“Watching your son...” Jake’s voice trailed off as I headed back upstairs, threw some clothes on, grabbed my sneakers, and crept back down.

Suddenly I had a hunch of my own.

The patrol car — number 16, the one Ed Andersen usually drove — was parked in front of my house. Evidently Jake had run out of available vehicles and had to scrape the bottom of the car barrel for this one.

Which meant Ed Andersen had the unmarked gray Chrysler, and it was parked outside Mr. Hornton’s house on the Bayview side. It was good to know, but it might have been more effective if Ed had been awake. He was slumped down in the car, chin on his chest. I thought about banging on the hood or yelling in the window but thought better of it and headed for the garage.

With a choke in my chest and a lump in my throat. For two days there’d been no change in Mr. Hornton’s condition, which was both good and bad.

So for a moment I stood in the space between the house and the garage, looking up at first one, then the other. The sun was coming up, but there was an edge to the air of something cold and raw blowing in from the bay.

I glanced in its direction as a tree removal truck clattered down the road and took the garage key out of my pocket while thoughts cascaded through my head.

What I was about to do was a long shot, perhaps the longest I’d ever had the gall to walk up to the plate and try to hit, but it had occurred to me that there was one other way to look at things. And it was this: that the fall from the ladder had been an accident, an accident that had suddenly upset other plans...

No, not other plans, a transaction.

Wasn’t it possible that someone had been coming here that morning to purchase the painting?

Of course that didn’t explain the threatening message on the machine, but it had been left there earlier in the week. Mr. Hornton had even reused the tape, allowing a new message to be taped over part of it. If he had worried about the message, he hadn’t let on, hadn’t contacted the police or Jake.

So maybe he’d made a deal to sell it and decided not to show it after all. Why else was it on the easel?

And why had Mrs. Hunt needed to “confirm” the paintings for the exhibition unless Mr. Hornton had expressed some doubt about showing it?

An incredible long shot, full of holes, like this one: If that mysterious someone had come along after Mr. Hornton fell from the ladder, why hadn’t he gone into the house and called for help? Why had he bolted out the front door — as it now looked — when the lady and her dog showed up?

For precisely the same reason that person wanted to prevent the painting from going into the exhibit: it made the subjects known.

But known as what? As the two people in The Dreamers? Or as the two people in what also could have been called The Lovers?

“Lovers,” I said as I opened up the garage. In the thin, pale glare of a rising sun I went to the workbench and took down Mr. Hornton’s ledger. I took it over to the window — I didn’t want to risk turning on the lights in case Ed Andersen suddenly woke up; he was apt to come rushing in with his gun drawn. In the weak light I leafed through the last few weeks.

A couple of election signs coming up for the fall. Two boat-lettering jobs, both done and paid for. The Town Hall job, not paid for yet. But no mention of any offers for a painting, let alone its being sold.

I put the ledger back, looked up at the ceiling. So Mr. Hornton kept his commercial painting jobs in this ledger, but what if he had made a different kind of sale?

I grabbed the chain off the hook on the wall, pulled on it, and caught the stairs as they descended. Then I hurried up into the loft and searched until I found it — under the skylight brochures. A second ledger, for a different type of work. Work that had started simply as pleasure but had suddenly shown a profitable side.

For there on the first page of the book was last Tuesday’s date and the notation “The Dreamers, offer of $500.” This was followed by a name, Tony C., then two question marks and the notation “Will call back.”

“So this is where it was all along.” A voice from behind me.

I turned, startled and alarmed. A man probably in his late twenties was coming up the stairs, each step a slow, heavy thud. He had sharp, angular features, light brown hair tied back, and dark, bright eyes. Dressed in work clothes — bluejeans, dark brown shirt, camel-colored work-boots — he looked around the loft uncertainly, then tucked his hands into his belt and stared at me. He wasn’t a very big guy, but he was bigger than me. “That right, kid? This is where it was stowed?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking—” I started.

“The painting. The Dreamers,” he said. “Where is it?”

I took a step backward. “It got burned up.”

“No, it didn’t,” he said softly, removing one hand from under his belt and looking down at it. On his right hand was a row of bandages across the knuckles. He pulled out the other hand, the same thing: burn marks. “I was there, kid.” His eyes lifted to look at me.

“You started that fire,” I whispered.

“I was on call; I helped put it out,” he said. “So where is it?”

“You’re a call firefighter.” I felt like I had no breath. “But that’s not all you are.” I glanced out the small window facing east. The motion detectors had put the fights on; why hadn’t Ed Andersen noticed them? Was he still sleeping in the unmarked car, or...

“I never meant to hurt anyone, kid,” the man was saying. “But I’ve got a short temper. The old guy...” Was that a smattering of regret crossing his face, filling his eyes? “He should have told me where it was when I asked.”

“You pushed him off the ladder.”

“Hey, that was an accident. He told me he’d already sold it. How could he do that? First he tells us that he’s going to show it at the library, then he says he sold it?” He swallowed, or gulped, and turned just enough to move into the fight above the work table. “I couldn’t let him do that. Not sell it. Not show it. Not because of me, but because of the—”

“Other guy in the picture,” I said it for him, suddenly wishing I hadn’t.

His eyes seemed to boil; for a moment there was nothing in them but pure, raw hatred. “What do you know?” he snarled. “What are you, fourteen, fifteen? What do you know?” He moved like he was going to come at me; then he stopped, and a half smile snaked across his face.

“Yeah, it’s me, kid. Want to see?” And with that he tore the band from his hair and swung his head back, smiling as he did. His hair was long enough to reach his shoulders and in the sun probably looked fight enough to be taken for blond. “Hey, I don’t blame you. The old guy thought the same until we came up the beach to see what he was doing. It was all very polite and friendly. He told us he was going to call it The Dreamers, show it at the local library. We’d had a few beers, we didn’t care, Tony and me. It wasn’t until later that—” He stopped short and was looking at me as though he didn’t see me.

“You realized how embarrassing it would be if you were ever recognized. Your friends would never understand. Firefighters and guys who take down trees for a living, right?”

“You’re pretty—” that word again “—bold, aren’t you, kid? Pretty—” and again “—brave.”

The guy was bigger than me and angry and upset and probably very strong. He could have killed me, no problem, and Ed Andersen wouldn’t have heard a thing. But I was angry, too, and the words flew out of me like spit: “And then you saw him again, when? A few days ago, an old guy coming down the street to watch you take down a tree.” I felt my heart pounding, my eyes tearing up. “You recognized him and decided what? To go after him, to intimidate him so he wouldn’t put The Dreamers on public display? Is that what you decided to do, because you did a hell of a nice job, fella, you not only hurt my best friend — he might die.”

“Your best friend?” he said, and then, when I thought for certain that was the stupidest thing I’d ever said or done in my life, he turned away and kind of crumpled down onto his knees. One hand over his eyes, he said, “God, I’m sorry,” and started to cry.

“I’m very appreciative of all your help, sergeant,” the dark-haired man in the expensive business suit said as he came into Jake’s office. He accepted the chair that Officer Andersen indicated. “And I understand the charges against... my friend. My lawyer has explained them to me and to Max. But I have to say this, I’m certain Max never meant to hurt—” a careful glance at me “—your elderly friend, young man. I know it’s no consolation. But I accept responsibility, too.” Back to Jake. “I didn’t tell Max I was taking care of it.”

Jake looked down at the business card the man had presented when he came in. Mr. Anthony Carletti, owner of one of the largest restaurant chains on the Cape. He’d called ahead, and had brought his lawyer with him, too, though the latter was waiting outside.

“Taking care of it,” Jake murmured.

“He was going to buy the painting,” I snapped; what was Jake? A complete moron? Didn’t he know? Hadn’t I explained it already?

“Yes, yes,” the man said, suddenly uncomfortable and shifting in the chair slightly. “I kept it a secret from Max, and I shouldn’t have. His birthday is in... pardon me.” He suddenly turned away and pulling a handkerchief from his pocket quickly wiped his eyes. “There’s really nothing I can say, nothing I can do to make it right. I remembered the artist, the elderly gentleman telling us that he was a retired signpainter, so I called around and found someone at the Town Hall here who knew who he was. I called Mr. Hornton and made an offer but insisted of course on seeing the painting again. I thought I was getting a rather good deal.” He looked at me as he said this; his eyes were wet. “Such a beautiful painting at such a reasonable price. But it seems now such a terrible price to pay, and all for nothing. If I’d just told Max...”

He turned his head away again.

“So, Jake,” I said as I sat down on the railing outside the police station. I’d been right; the sun was up, but so was the wind off the water, blowing in hard and fierce. The gulls were flying inland, too, sign of a storm moving our way.

“And you can’t lie on this one. I need to know.”

He joined me, leaning against the rail, unlit cigarette in his hand.

“Shoot, Herbie,” he said.

“You ever cry? I mean for any reason other than getting hurt, like when you were a little kid, or other than someone close to you dying, like a parent or...” I shrugged.

“Yes, I have.” He looked at me, his sharp blue eyes frank and unapologetic. “I cried when your mother broke up with me.”

“Yeah.” I slid forward off the railing and starting walking toward the Jeep Cherokee waiting for me. “I kind of thought you might have.”