Sorrow's crown

FOUR

Anna could read a dozen mysteries at once and never confuse the complexities of plot lines. She appeared to be in a hard-boiled phase. In the past few weeks I'd sent her Chandler's Lady in the Lake, Lawrence Block's The Devil Knows You're Dead, Charles Williams' Go Home, Stranger, and Andrew Vachss' Strega. I'd met Block and Vachss at an autograph party in the city, and liked them personally as much as I enjoyed their work. Anna never cared if she read a signed first edition or not. She wasn't a collector as such, but I tried to get rarities when I could. Block had written, "For Anna, a true lady of mystery…." He'd seen us on the news after Richie Harraday's body had been found in her garbage can.

I tossed the novel back on the pile and got off the couch. Katie and Anna were in the kitchen discussing herbal teas, Lamaze, marriage, and mortgage rates in the Grove. As far as conversation topics went, I was rooting for tea to come up from behind and start leading the pack. The world seemed to be sprawling away from me, but not quite violently out of control yet. I felt if I planted my feet and took a firm stance on anything in my life, the sudden shifting of what had been set in motion behind me would rise up across my shoulders and crash over my head.

I looked out the window at the spot on the lawn where Harraday's body had been dumped, and where Lisa Hobbes had left her best friend Karen Bolan's corpse as well, hoping to make the murders seem connected. The tougher reporters, or those less informed, occasionally knocked on the door and tried to peek into the only window with its shade not fully drawn. I left it that way on purpose: when somebody attempted to peer inside, Anubis would draw himself up, lean his front paws on the windowsill, and stick his flat, black muzzle against the glass. The reporters left in a hurry, trundling back down the ramp beside the porch stairs.

Katie and Anna entered the living room, Katie with a huge grin that highlighted her dimples and made my heart tug to the left. Her palms angled evenly across the hand grips pushing Anna's wheelchair-it took a little getting used to, shoving the sometimes unwieldy chair across the wears in the carpet; the smaller guide tires tended to sink and slip. A silver platter of cups and cookies lay across my grandmother's lap. I wondered if we would ever be able to make the break to having liquor in the house again after my father's alcoholism.

Mortgage rates in the Grove, I was informed, were quite reasonable, and the market appeared to be getting even better this fiscal year for homeowners.

I waited it out. Anna would crack soon. We were into something ugly again, and while she didn't feel haunted by it, she did grow more and more enthralled, possibly even delighted. Katie also sensed the change in atmosphere as they talked-my grandmother's attention not only wavering but diverting, leading into another direction. Anna's questions and responses got slower and shorter. She started saying "That's nice, dear," a lot. Katie gave me an amused frown and I shrugged. She sat on the couch, put the television on, and ran the channels, searching for some news.

"Such mutilation of the boy's features has meaning," my grandmother said, sipping her tea, and we were into it.

"Means somebody probably didn't like the guy too much."

Naturally it had significance-you cleave somebody's features off, chances are you're trying to make a pretty big point.

"Did Lowell believe there might be any connection to the grave on which you found the body?"

She knew I'd asked him, both of us traveling along these same paths so often we could second-guess each other's actions. The same way I knew she would go see Keaton Wallace, the ME, tomorrow morning, and ferret more information about the kid's face. "No. An old grave from the Civil War, but not belonging to any of the Harnes clan."

At the sound of the name she stiffened slightly. That bothered me, but before I could say anything Anna continued. "There may be more to it, Jonathan."

"Probably not. That part of the cemetery swings low down the hill into much older sections. You go from the Civil War circles to the present with the rise of the new promontories, spreading back across the fields."

"Perhaps he stood on higher ground, the scuffle took place there, and he rolled down the hill?"

"Maybe he was running for his life," I said. "Whatever it was, it wasn't a scuffle."

This lady of silver rarity, her eyes hardening until she looked a little like Lowell did facing the wind-imperturbable, accustomed to talking and dealing with such matters-stared at me curiously the way my football coach used to when I was off my game. "We need to know more, dear. The wallet disturbs me. Greater suspicion is thrown on Crummler for their having retrieved the wallet in his shack, as much as for anything else."

I thought the blood in his beard was a bit more suspicious, but only told her, "I don't know if that's true, but Crummler wouldn't have stolen the kid's money."

"The wallet appears to be an extra and conclusive touch, without finesse, in order to implicate him."

"Or maybe he found it, before or after he discovered the body, and was simply holding on to it."

Anubis rose, alert to her frame of mind, and paced across the room, moving his broad head beneath her hand, where she petted him absently between his ears. "Were there any wounds on Crummler? Signs of a thrashing or abuse of any sort?"

"No, he wasn't provoked physically, at least not in that manner. He wasn't beaten by the kid."

In a throaty whisper filled with concern, but no real anxiety, she asked, "Do you think he sought us out last night? He said he came to see his friends."

It couldn't be the case, but I kept wondering anyhow, thinking about the way he'd erupted from the night into the restaurant, seething and electrified. Something had driven him there. I didn't believe much in coincidence, but nothing else made any sense, either.

He counted us to be, perhaps, his only friends, and had traveled a long way in the freeze-to find me and Anna?

Or had he simply been trying to escape the Grove, and the ties of circumstance binding him to the cemetery, the town, and even to me and my love, had been stretched to their limit, and snapped him back to where darkness already waited?

"How could he know where we'd be?"

Katie caught a broadcast that showed the murder site, turned to me and said, "I know this will sound ridiculous, but I wish you'd smile more."

"What? You mean in front of the cameras?" I thought about what kind of a day I'd had. "I think that qualifies as ridiculous."

"You always look so angry. Half these people probably think you did it, the way you scowl."

I did look sort of loony, just sitting there on a grave as the camera panned across the cemetery, and I tried to imagine just how many people would be smiling, waving to their mothers, primping their hair. At least she didn't mention that I had dressed sloppily. "Not exactly the best photo opportunity."

"You know what I mean, I care what they think about you, Jon. I don't want them hounding you." She picked up the remote to change the channel but couldn't quite tear her interest from the screen. They were wringing every drop of drama from the story, getting into Harnes' sordid sexual history but not mentioning a word about Teddy's life; we watched the gorgeous newscaster smiling too much and stating that a suspect was in custody and the victim was believed to be Theodore Harnes' son. She dipped her chin to her abundant chest, over-articulated the name, "Thee-a-door Harnezz," as if she were giving you time to gasp, flinch, and wave your hands about your face before she continued.

They went live to the scene, and Broghin, to his benefit, gave only a curt statement. He'd been right to drive Crummler away quickly, before anybody could get a shot of him dancing his Rockette steps against the back window. They cut to a close-up of Anna's house, a tight shot of Anubis' face in the window.

"Oh boy."

Katie's mouth smoothed into a flat, white line. "Why didn't you at least make a statement? You could have explained yourself to them. Anna, you should have handled this. Now they'll be making accusations and innuendoes, angling their reports, like the last time."

My grandmother and I exchanged glances. We'd both spoken to the press in the past only to realize how little of our interviews had actually been used; you could never be sure if your responses and intent would come through as you meant them.

A thin sheen of sweat dappled Katie's forehead. "They kept coming into the shop throughout the day, all these people I'd never seen before who knew we were dating, asking any kind of questions they could think to ask. Some of them reminisced, talking about your years in high school, the way you'd played football. I think most of your teammates and their wives wandered in this afternoon. I didn't think this was the type of town that took high school athletics to such an extreme, but every one of them came in alone but told the same stories."

"Did they at least buy flowers?" I asked.

"No, nobody. Some guy said you botched an easy play against Briscane County? And lost twenty-one to twenty-four, costing the championship. If he's not in therapy he should be. That guy seems to have some unresolved issues."

"Yeah, that would be Arnie Devington. He's still mad. He thinks a scout for Miami University was in the stands, and he missed his shot at the pros because we lost. Did he say anything about his two fumbles in the second half?"

"No."

"That's because he hasn't thought about them since three seconds after I became his scapegoat." Arnie Devington, his mother and father, two brothers and two sisters had badgered me for months after that game, and still the old hurt and anger rose up in me, just as it did in him.

"Was there a scout?" Katie asked.

"Beats the hell out of me, but I seriously doubt it. If there was he would've only been interested in Lowell, anyway. Guys from Miami don't travel north if they can help it."

My grandmother kept patting Anubis in a repetitive, rhythmic motion I could almost put music to. His tail thumped every fifth or sixth beat as Anna turned events over in her mind. Our gazes tangled, and I caught her lips working silently. I cocked my head as if to listen better, waited, and she said it aloud. "Theodore Harnes." She enunciated it with nearly as much affectation as the newscaster. "He is a most … intriguing man."

"Oh cripes."

Whenever she said "intriguing" like that I remembered how much I hated her saying "intriguing" like that. I felt a sudden drop in temperature, a rise in pressure.

Anna pursed her lips. "Truly."

"Do you know anything about his son?"

"No, not that I recall."

"If he's anything like his father, from what I've heard, then Crummler might have had provocation."

"So your assertion is that Zebediah is guilty?" She had a slicing arc of astonishment in her voice she could only afford because she hadn't seen him covered in blood. If she'd witnessed that lucidity trying to break through the haze of his burning-wire persona, she wouldn't be half so certain.

"I'm keeping the list of our possibilities open until we learn more one way or another."

Catching the slight edge of guilt in my tone, Katie said, "I'm glad you hit him. I'm relieved you were willing to protect yourself first. Sometimes I worry about that."

"Don't."

"From now on I won't."

I moved to sit beside her and Katie sneaked in close-she knew how to read me and how to make it better. I'd catch her staring at the side of my face and realize she'd set aside her own worries to concentrate on mine. I slipped my hand onto her belly, which made her sigh, both of us falling into a weird pattern of being preoccupied with something so natural yet terrifying as this. I hoped she'd understand that no matter what happened we'd get through it all. I hoped I could believe it myself.

"Teddy Harnes may have faked his own demise," Anna said.

"Yes, but why?"

"It's something to consider. And you're quite right, Jonathan, I apologize for seeming narrow-minded when it was you who was personally involved with the situation this morning. That was foolish and thoughtless of me. It's correct to keep our possibilities open. Crummler may indeed have been provoked."

"Into defending himself, maybe." I shook my head. "I'm not sure how you can be provoked into shearing somebody's nose and lips off."

Anna's eyes filled with a great distance. A shaft of late afternoon sunlight cut down from the one shade less window, wreathing my grandmother in rose. "A psychiatric facility like Panecraft will be pure torture for him. . . ." She hesitated in following up, blowing out a thin stream of air that made Anubis' eyelids twitch, and stopping just short of saying, He'll go mad.

The bloody blade of the shovel came up toward my face again, with him whimpering about battling himself, perhaps not feeling any differently than I did now, yanked in too many directions at once. He wouldn't make it. Something lurked down inside him-he's no different from any of us-and whether it was a weeping boy locked in silence or a burgeoning call to lash out, Crummler wouldn't be able to handle being taken from Felicity Grave and the dead that gave his life meaning.

"I tend to agree," I said.

"Jonathan, are you holding anything back?"

I answered more easily than I would have thought. "I think I saw another side of him."

"Which side is that?" Katie asked.

"A part of him that might be sane."

Anna steepled her fingers and brought them to her chin as though she were trying to figure out which part of me might still be sane. "You know as well as I do, dear, that his sanity is not actually in question. Crummler is mentally handicapped."

"Mentally-challenged is the PC term nowadays. And I'm not sure what he is anymore, except that I saw someone else lurking beneath his usual self."

Anna worried her lips and sipped her tea. The chemistry had shifted between us with the introduction of Katie, as it had once before with Michelle. "Theodore Harnes married a friend of mine."

"Who?"

"One of my bridesmaids, Diane Cruthers. They met while I was on my honeymoon, had something of a whirlwind storybook romance, and eloped only days later. Of course, since he did not come from old wealth, this was before he'd amassed his fortune, Theodore Harnes proved to cut something of a deliberate, but shy, figure."

What had it meant when she'd frozen like that before just hearing his name? "So, you've met him."

"No more than three or four times." Her voice both gained and lost an edge, as though she did and didn't want to talk about any of this. My stomach started to knot. She cleared her throat and fell silent for a moment, and I knew she was editing her story for either my benefit, or her own. Whatever she was hiding would undoubtedly be ugly. "A year or so younger than us, actually, he was hardly more than a boy himself. I only saw Diane once again, very briefly. She was expecting their first child."

I scanned the photos on the wall, the large black-and-white of Anna's wedding; my grandfather standing there looking frightened in a bow tie before the rampant forest of his eye-brows completely consumed his forehead; a row of men and women in their wedding party, everyone grinning good-naturedly. I wondered who was Diane Cruthers. The ladies seemed so much alike in the somewhat worn-out, dark pictures, with a sort of glaze to them all. Youth and expectancy, eagerness perhaps. Which of these women would Harnes sweep away to Europe? Maybe he was only a foolish young man with feverish dreams at the time … or maybe a monster in the making.

Only rarely did my grandmother allow some prejudice to bubble up and break the surface where it could be viewed by someone who might notice. She gathered Katie's cup and the uneaten cookies back onto the platter and put it across her knees, and worked her wheelchair around and rolled toward the kitchen.

"Where is she now?" I asked.

Anna smiled blandly, one of her few acts of false bravado, and consequently a poor one. "She committed suicide shortly thereafter."

Katie paled and said, "Good God." She shifted against me, folding herself closer under my arm.

There had to be more. I hadn't really heard it in my grandmother's voice or seen it in the virtually wrinkle-free angles of her face, but the truth had been there, a tiny thing searching for a place to hide.

Anna had been jealous of Diane Cruthers for winning the love of an intriguing man named Theodore Harnes.