24

Emily and Ray had spent the whole day doing hard physical labor, lifting and packing and loading, moving boxes of small things and large pieces of furniture out of upstairs bedrooms and down the staircase to the living room. Working beside Ray made her feel close to him. There was the physical proximity, and the very specific choreography-the “I’ve got this end and you take that end” that built familiarity.

They had also trusted each other enough to let themselves be seen in a sweaty shirt and with tousled hair stuck to a damp forehead, to be unconcerned about appearance for a time because they had to concentrate on the job of clearing the rooms.

And they had talked.

Emily’s private life had stopped being private the moment Phil had been murdered. Even before, the privacy had been an illusion. Ray Hall had already known more about some parts of her life than she did.

In those days, Phil would tell her his version of things and she would listen and wonder fleetingly whether he was telling the truth, and then remind herself that part of what was required of her was that she believe him when he spoke. She didn’t want to be the enemy waiting for him in his own house, the person who was trying to catch him at something.

Today she had moved another step away from those days, and as she did, she realized that Ray had been as deluded as she had. He might not have been fooled about Phil’s cheating, but he was still living by the same rules of conduct that she was. Neither of them could acknowledge the truth without irrefutable evidence. Neither had really known the truth until Phil was dead.

Today she and Ray spent the whole day talking about things that weren’t big or momentous, and so were more intimate than the big things that they had been forced to talk about since the night when Phil had not come home.

Emily talked about the items she was putting into boxes. Almost all of the clothes she kept were outfits that she had bought for special occasions. There were books she had bought but never read. There was a painting of the Santa Monica Mountains that she had never really liked, but had kept on a wall in the hall where it wouldn’t do much damage, like an old pet that was ugly but sweet-tempered.

Ray talked to her about the job he’d had when he was in college, working on a moving van. He found that for the first whole summer the money almost didn’t matter because of his intense curiosity about the hoards of things that people owned. He specialized in the seemingly tedious task of packing delicate or valuable items in boxes, just so he could see them and learn what he could about their owners’ lives and histories. He had pretended that he hated the chore, partly so the other moving men didn’t think he was odd, and shouldn’t keep doing it. But by the second summer he had learned the contents of homes so thoroughly that there were no more surprises. Everybody’s house was full of the same things, with the variations so minor that they revealed little except differences in income. Emily loved the way he laughed at his own curiosity.

They talked for long periods, and then were silent for stretches, and the silence built a kind of intimacy, too, because as they worked together, they were thinking about each other, each of them thinking about what the other had said.

There were times when one of them would stop in the act of moving some item-once, an old suitcase left in the guest-bedroom closet-and they would realize simultaneously that this could be itthe hiding place-and search it together.

When either of them took a book from a shelf, the next move would be to shake it, turn it over and riffle the pages. Each time something fluttered from between the pages to the floor they would both stop, feeling the same excitement at the same instant, then release the held breath in disappointment.

The things in her house-nearly all of them by now-were hers, not Phil’s. When Phil had been dead a few days, she had gone through his clothes. She had decided it was the right thing to do because good clothes should not go to waste. But she had known she could not simply take clothes off hangers and give them away. Phil was perfectly capable of sewing something inside a piece of clothing. When he was in the marines, he had sometimes gone on leave with money sewn into a jacket. So Emily had gone through all of the clothes, felt the seams of the garments, folded them carefully, and taken them to Goodwill.

At ten thirty at night, after they had been working together for fourteen hours, they loaded what Ray referred to as Emily’s “valuables” into the truck Billy had rented. She found that there were things of hers that she had kept for years simply because she expected always to live in this house, but which she didn’t feel as though she wanted to move or pay to store. They ended up taking surprisingly little-her good clothes, a dozen photo albums, a few paintings and prints, and a few things she kept only because she couldn’t give them away-Phil’s guns and ammunition, a collection of gold coins he’d had for years, a small lacquer box of inexpensive jewelry, a couple of clocks, two radios, and two television sets. Ray filled the rest of the bay of the truck with a few favorite pieces of furniture. They drove the truck to the storage building and unloaded it, then drove to Ray’s house.

IT WAS LATE Now, after three, and she was lying in Ray Hall’s bedone of his beds, anyway. It was her second night in his guest bedroom, and she noted that she had begun to have a new relationship with the room. On the first night it felt alien and empty and cold, as guest rooms often did. There wasn’t much furniture. The sheets and bedspread had a subtle smell of detergent that wasn’t the same as hers, and she could tell that nobody had ever slept on the mattress.

On the first night, she had kept her suitcase on a chair, opened it to take out things that she needed, and then closed it again. That changed tonight. Now she had clothes hanging in the closet so the wrinkles would hang out, and the bathroom counter was crowded with bottles of her shampoo and makeup containers and toothbrush and hairbrushes.

When she and Ray had come in this evening, she had been exhausted and dirty. They ate at a diner on the boulevard near Ray’s neighborhood, where the waitress knew Ray’s name and looked at him with a bit too much interest while she leaned close to him to get his order exactly right.

Emily had taken a hot bath and gone to bed, then slept deeply. But now she was awake. Since Phil’s death, she had been unable to sleep past the first few hours, the sort of sleep that was simple collapse. Once she had used up that sleep, insistent problems came back into her mind. She thought for hours about the single simple problem of where Phil could have hidden the evidence about the nameless powerful man. So far the theories and guesses that had kept tumbling out of Emily’s brain were all clever, all just like Phil, and all wrong.

Before long she found herself thinking once again about Dewey Burns. There was a great deal to think about, and she had been putting the topic off for a whole day and most of the night. Dewey was Phil’s son. Dewey had a mother. How and when had Phil Kramer met her? How could Phil have gotten a young black woman pregnant when he had just married Emily?

She tried to remember what must have been happening between her and Phil twentytwo years ago, or twenty-one years ago, but she was having a terrible time bringing back the feeling. She remembered, intellectually, that they had fought sometimes when they were very young. In later years, she had learned that it was better not to point out every single thing that wasn’t as she wanted it to be. Could that have been the problem? Could they have had a fight, and Phil had gone out and decided to get quiet revenge, or maybe gone to another woman for solace? That thought hurt too much. Maybe he had been out celebrating some case that he had solved. He had gotten drunk in some nightspot and met a pretty girl. Emily could tell by looking at Dewey that his mother must have been pretty. Those big light-brown eyes and high cheekbones had not come from Phil.

What bothered Emily the most was that something should have been happening at that time between her and Phil. She should have noticed that something was wrong, but nothing had made an impression on her. It should have, but it hadn’t.

She thought at first that the sound of footsteps in the hallway was part of a dream and that she had slipped into a nightmare repetition of the way she had been awakened only one night ago. Then she recognized that the sounds were real. She sat up and watched the door open. “Emily?”

“What, Ray?”

“More trouble.”

“What is it?”

“It’s your house again. Apparently there’s a fire.”

“I’ll be out in a minute.” She threw the covers aside, slid off the bed, and walked toward the bathroom, then realized that she had stood up wearing only a T-shirt, and that she had already walked too far to retreat. She told herself it didn’t matter. It was dark in the room; he was probably already turning away before she had moved; they were both adults; it was an emergency. Then she hit on the truth: She didn’t care if Ray saw her that way.

Her house. She tugged on some clean clothes, then sat on the bed to tie her running shoes. Her house. That man must have been back, trying to find exactly the same thing she had spent the day looking for. She felt afraid, but at the same time she felt urgency. She wanted to get there and see.

She met Ray at the upstairs landing. This time she took her purse because it had Phil’s gun in it. She knew it was illegal for her to carry a gun, but she didn’t care. She followed Ray down the stairs and saw that he had his gun tonight. He must be thinking what she was thinking: Anything could be a ploy, a trick to get her out in the open. She got into Ray’s car and he drove toward her neighborhood, but neither of them spoke at first.

When they were near Emily’s street, it was hardly necessary to say anything. The sky had an orange glow, and pieces of black ash floated upward against it, swirling in the hot updraft. Emily could see a big sycamore silhouetted against the orange luminescence. Beyond it the sky seemed to brighten as rolling sheets of flame came up off the siding on the second floor, flickering around the fireproof shingles of the roof. The windows were all shattered and black smoke streamed out, but the rooms inside were bright with fire. There was a hot wall of fire beyond every window frame, as though everything had gone up at once.

Ray pulled the car to the curb. Ahead was a jam of parked fire trucks and, on the pavement, a complicated slither of hoses leading from the hydrants toward her house. Firefighters in yellow turnout coats with stripes of tape that reflected their headlights dragged more hoses, so she realized that the trucks must have arrived only a few minutes ahead of them.

She looked at Ray. “Do you think he’s here?”

“I don’t know. The firemen will be taking videos of the crowd, and probably the cars parked close enough to see. They always do that when there’s a chance of arson. I doubt that they’ll have much question about this one.”

Emily and Ray got out of the car. She stayed close to him, but she began looking in every direction except the direction of the fire. A small crowd had gathered, and she recognized a few of her neighbors standing on the sidewalk near their own houses, their faces illuminated by the fire. A few were still in bathrobes, and others dressed in what must have been the clothes they took off a few hours ago.

She scanned the crowd for a stranger who might be the man who had come into her bedroom in a ski mask, but she didn’t see anyone who frightened her. She saw the O’Connors, all seven of them lined up on their front lawn, staring up at the sparks rising on the heated air above the flames on Emily’s house. Denny had the garden hose connected to the spigot at the corner of their house. She hoped that the flying sparks didn’t ignite anybody else’s roof.

There were the Weilers on the other side, all the kids on their front steps as though they were bleachers. The parents must be on the other side or in the back yard. After a moment, she saw the Weilers’ car back out of the garage slowly and stop just above the sidewalk. It was probably a wise precaution. The fire could easily catch their garage, and this would save their car. If they planned to move anything out of their house, this might be the time.

She saw a couple of firefighters walking along the line of people on the sidewalk, and it looked to her as though one of them had a camera on a strap around his neck. This could be the one Ray had mentioned: the fireman who would take a long, careful look at who was there to watch the spectacle of her house burning down.

A woman came out of the line and spoke to the fireman for a few seconds. She pointed at Emily, and the firefighter looked over his shoulder at her. The woman hurried across the street, and Emily saw she was Margaret Santora. “Oh, my God, Emily!” she said. “We were all so afraid you didn’t get out. We were so scared. How did it happen?”

“I … was out,” said Emily. “I have no idea.”

Emily didn’t miss the way Margaret’s eyes flicked to the side to take in Ray Hall, then back to Emily’s face.

“Margaret, this is Ray Hall, one of the detectives from the agency.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Margaret said. She didn’t seem to be, and her left hand rose to the neck of her robe to pinch the sides together in an unconscious gesture. She said to Emily, “Well, I’m just glad you’re okay, that’s all. The rest of it is the insurance company’s problem.” She waited for a moment to see Emily’s reaction.

Emily had not thought about financial loss, or about insurance. She was thinking about destructive power, the heat of the flames, the malice of the man who had tried to burn her to death in her sleep.

She was distracted by the firefighter she had noticed with her neighbors. He had appeared only a few feet off. “Mrs. Kramer?”

“Yes?”

“I’m Captain Rossman. I need to talk with you for a few minutes.”

Emily was alarmed by his manner, which seemed more insistent than she would have expected. But she noticed that Ray had moved to the man’s side and a step behind, and he was nodding. “Sure,” she said. “Here?”

“Let’s go to my car.”

He halfturned and nearly bumped into Ray. “This is Ray Hall,” she said. “He’s a … colleague of mine.”

“Hello,” said Captain Rossman. He gave Ray’s hand a perfunctory shake, barely looking at him. He took Emily to a Ford Crown Victoria that looked like a police car that had been painted red, opened the door for her and got in behind the wheel.

She said, “Are you the arson investigator?”

“I’m one of them.”

“Do you know yet if it was?”

“Yes. There were accelerants in the corners of all the rooms. The first people in said it looked and smelled like the whole place was soaked.”

“I was afraid of that.”

“Oh?” he said. “You expected this? Why?”

“It’s complicated. My husband owned a detective agency. He was murdered nine days ago-shot on the street. Two days ago, I had a visit here in the middle of the night from a man with a gun and a ski mask. He wanted some information that my husband supposedly had about someone.”

“What was it?”

“I have no idea.”

“Who was the person the information was about?”

“I don’t know that, either. But the man in the ski mask said he’d kill me if I didn’t give it to him. I think he would have, but he got interrupted when another of our detectives showed up and scared him off. He was back last night, but the guys couldn’t catch him.”

Rossman sat scribbling in his notebook, but she was sure he had a recorder. He had reached into his coat as they had sat in the car, and his hand had come back empty. Finally he said, “You called the police?”

“Yes. They were here for hours two days ago, then again last night.”

“So there’s a police report?”

“I assume there is, or will be.” She stared at him. “Are you having trouble believing me?”

He turned in his seat to face her. “I’m sorry to give that impression. At this stage, I’m just collecting all the facts I can while they’re still fresh. The firefighters told me that the house wasn’t arranged in the usual way. The living room had furniture piled up in it, and the rest of the house was empty. Why was that?”

“I had just had a horrible experience in that house. When the man broke in the second night, I knew that whatever else happened, I didn’t intend to live there again. But I knew that it was also the most likely place to find whatever it was that my husband had hidden and that the man in the ski mask wanted. Mr. Hall and I were searching the furniture-mostly drawers and cabinets-and then moving everything to storage so that when it was gone we could search the house itself. We had already taken a couple of loads out. The furniture in the living room was going tomorrow.”

“Did anybody besides Mr. Hall know you were doing that?”

“Yes. The other people from the detective agency.” Various thoughts raced through her mind. She couldn’t mention that April had loved Phil; she couldn’t tell this man that Dewey was Phil’s son. “They were my husband’s friends, and my friends. They were working all day doing the same to the agency office.”

Rossman looked at her for a moment, but this time it was different, less distrustful. “I guess I should be the one to tell you, Mrs. Kramer. Your office had a fire tonight, too.”


Загрузка...