Sorrow's crown

FIVE

Katie still lived at the Orchard Inn, a kind of boarding house run by the Leones. She'd found no reason to move, and I didn't blame her. The place was much bigger than my apartment in the city, and cheaper than just about anything else she might find in the Grove. It had a certain charm, with a trellis beyond the window, and doilies, floral chintz curtains, and rosewood everywhere you looked. She'd taken down the crucifixes and some of the statues of saints the Leones had left around, and politely kept them all in one corner. I'd sometimes glance over and feel the weight of a thousand years of Catholic canon upon me.

When we got back to her apartment we spent a long time in bed whispering and caressing before we finally made love. Need grew steadily. We worked with the slow madness of everything we'd been feeling lately, the fuel of frustration and passion, and wondering how it would all play out. My flight reservation back to the city had been made for this morning. I had weeks' worth of backorders to fulfill and auction lots to scout.

"Boy," she said as we drifted back against the pillows. I brushed the hair from her face, drawing my fingers in and out of her dimples. "Somebody had his Wheaties."

Wind howled like baying hounds and rattled the windows, the roof lurching and groaning. The night split open and that freaky hail started pecking at the glass again. Even the weather seemed out of sorts, working to get back on track. Katie shivered, clambered to her dresser, drew on a thick flannel nightgown that had either been out of style for six decades or had just come back in, and climbed back into bed where we huddled beneath the comforter.

She said, "You're looking at Jesus again."

"He's looking at me."

"You want to brood. I can tell. Hey, I know, we'll put on Mozart's 'Requiem,' is it too late for that? What time is it?" She leaned over and checked the clock on the night stand. Beyond her silhouette, the trellis bowed into view, hail driving a little harder now like some kid outside throwing pebbles to get our attention. "We don't want to wake anyone with funeral dirges, somebody might get upset. Why are you still feeling guilty, Jon?"

"Not guilty exactly, just pondering," I said.

"Your choices were limited."

"Yes, they were."

"When in doubt, wallop first."

"Wallop?"

"I kind of like wallop. Better than whatever you did to that loudmouth horsey-faced guy in the restaurant."

"Well, yeah."

"You going to join Oscar's gym?"

"I think I'll take a pass."

She was trying to be serious, but it wouldn't work with that nightgown on. When she turned too quickly the flannel would snap against my knees. I feared burns. She smoothed herself out in front of me and said, "When in doubt, wallop first. A motto to live by, especially when forced with that kind of a situation."

"Which I hope never to find myself in again."

"I think all the major parties involved feel that same way."

"Especially Teddy. If only he'd walloped first." Even in shadow, her beauty carried through, the set of her lips so clear, and her voice giving her so much substance here in the night. "You don't really think it's him, do you?"

"I'm not sure. What was done to his face bothers me. Why would a millionaire's son hide? And if it's not him, then who is it?"

"It's not your problem, and you really don't need to make it your problem."

"I already did that when I didn't listen to whatever Crummler would have told me."

"Maybe he wouldn't have said anything. Maybe there was nothing to say." She took my face in her hands and I took hers in mine, and we looked like some couple in a Fellini film where they talk into each other's noses. "Is it possible we can put this on the back burner for tonight?"

"We'll take it completely off the stove."

"The things you do for me."

"Damn straight," I said. I hoped she didn't mean that we should talk about the flower shop/bookstore idea all over again.

She didn't.

Dawn broke unevenly. A lot of red light, but it was cold again. I wished I had some flannel pajamas. Jesus was still looking at me. I lay staring at the ceiling for about two hours, until Katie lifted her head from my chest and put it back and then pulled it away. Large drops of sweat suddenly rose and began to drip down her ashen forehead.

She whimpered, "Oh hell."

I held on for a second, not wanting to be parted just then. I started to sweat, too. She knew more about this from being a woman, and more still from having been in medical school before deciding she'd rather open a shop and let me steal tulips. Her color drained further, as if somebody with a huge eraser was working down her face inch by inch. I'd been assured this was completely natural, but I still didn't know what to do most of the time, sitting around helplessly while she suffered.

Katie scampered from the bed and nearly didn't make it to the bathroom in time. Her words had a muted echo. "Oh, yuck." I stepped beside her in time to see her legs fall out from under her as she retched and slid against the freezing tile floor. I wrapped her into my arms until she finished.

"It's okay," she said, trying to smile. "Don't look like that. This is normal, really. I don't know why they call it morning sickness, a woman feels ill almost all the time the first three months." I carried her back to the bed and wet her face, breasts, and belly down with a cool wash cloth. At a couple of points she giggled and the hard knot of guilt and stress in my skull loosened a bit.

"You're going to stick around now, aren't you?" she said. "You'll skip going back to the city?"

"I have some things to clear up, but I'll be back in two or three days."

Her jade eyes filled with an irritated charge, and the silence hit like a physical force. She wanted to know why I'd leave Manhattan to return to Felicity Grove in order to get involved with murder, but hesitated when it came to finding housing and happiness with a woman I loved and a child on the way.

That silence followed us while we showered and dressed and got ready for her to drive me to the airport. I was famished, but didn't want to mention food in case she still felt a bit queasy. Her cheeks had the rich pink gleam of stoked anger, even as we made our way down the staircase and past the Leones' living room, where the luscious aroma of breakfast wafted throughout the house. My stomach made one huge gurgling noise that startled me as much as if I'd sat on a cat.

Mr. Leone waved to us as we walked out. "You're not staying for breakfast? Come in, come in here, what, are you pazzo making me go in there and eat all that by myself? Hey, did that schifo crazy caretaker ever find you?"

I stopped short in the doorway and Katie plowed into my back. She let out a loud whuff.

I said, "What?"

They kept their television turned mostly to the Italian cable stations. You could hear Cella Luna playing at late hours, all kinds of weird Italian soap operas where the main characters shrieked and wept and tried to bite each others' ears, then threw themselves down on altars at church. Bowling trophies and photos of stern-faced men and women lined the rosewood shelves. The religious icons weren't kept in a corner down here, but spread out on every horizontal surface you could see, with the walls covered by some truly beautiful paintings of scenes from the bible, giving the room a vaguely funeral-home feel to it.

"He came here a couple nights ago looking for you. I told him you two went to that restaurant, what is it called, Frank's Bistro? How can you eat at a place called Frank's Bistro I have no idea. I went once, tried their frutti di mare and it tasted like they boxed and mailed the fish over from Genoa, fourth class, on a slow boat, took maybe two months to get here. Tell me you didn't have that, please, couldn't be anything worse. Hey, I already told you, come in here, want some pasta fagioli? Just made it yesterday. It's good even for breakfast, hot or cold. Jonny, tell this girl she's got to eat. She's too skinny and looks pale to me all the time." His wife shouted something in Italian from the kitchen, and his eyes got very wide. He said, "You forget the basil and she goes for the cleaver, scusi," and wandered off.

"Crummler was looking for me," I whispered.

"Call Lowell."

"Anna was right. He needed my help."

"Listen to me. It still doesn't have to be your problem. Call Lowell, notify the police. If Crummler really needed help he would have told the sheriff."

"Maybe he couldn't for some reason."

We were still stuck in the doorway, the screen open with leaves swirling in a circular drift around our feet. A white Mercedes limousine idled at the curb, with a shine so thick you could have thrown buckets of gravel on the hood and never dented the coat of wax. Both front doors opened, and two men climbed out and stood rigid, waiting and staring.

"Now what?" Katie asked.

"I think I can guess."

An Asian woman stepped up the walk and took a long bead on me. Her straight, shining black hair fell longer than any I'd ever seen before, down beyond her waist in a perfect crest. The rising wind hadn't dislodged a strand. She wore only a tightly fitted, sleeveless red dress, and I saw the slight rise of goose bumps on the back of her arms as she approached.

"Mr. Harnes would like to speak with you." I expected an Asian sing-song cadence but there was only an Ivy League thickness of voice and manner. She added with a note of demand and finality. "Now, please."

Katie kept the quiet fume going and said, "Go do what you have to do."

"I'll be back in a few minutes."

Except for the curiously dead gaze of the woman, she was the most exotic lady who'd ever stepped foot into Felicity Grove, and looked like she could teach a man the secret sensual pleasures of the Orient even if he were on the rack. If she had been one of the kids in Thailand forced into sweatshop factory work at the age of six, then somehow it had paid off for her.

"That won't be necessary. Please allow us to drive you to the airport."

Katie asked her, "You want to tell me how you happen to know where he's going?"

"Please." There was no query or room for discussion in the woman's tone. She simply stared, her lips not notched so much as a millimeter toward a smile or frown. Her face seemed fabricated from cloth or plastic, smoother than flesh should be. I didn't spot a single line in her skin, not around her eyes, not at the edges of her mouth, not even between her eyebrows where we all get a furrow.

To know I was leaving they had to know my schedule. I tried to placate my paranoia by accepting the possibility that Harnes had simply made a few inquiries about me in the past twenty-four hours after all the news broadcasts. A man of his wealth and position wouldn't find it too difficult to garner information. It made more sense than the idea that he'd been hovering over me-or perhaps Crummler-for weeks.

"What's your name?"

"Jocelyn."

"I'll be with you in a moment," I said, and turned my back to her. I didn't like being accosted, checked up on, and followed right to the door of my girl's place. Jocelyn hardly made a sound walking down the walk to the Mercedes limousine again, but Katie watched her leave.

"Call Lowell," she said. "Whatever is happening, you're going to need his help. I'll call him now."

"No, it's all right."

"You have to do everything alone, in your own way, don't you?"

"It'll be fine."

"You're going to get hurt." She stood quickly on her toes, threw a kiss at my lips that sort of missed, spun back inside and shut the door.

The driver was hardly more than spectral: a thin, ashen-faced man in a bad-fitting black suit who smelled like he'd gotten into Oscar Kinion's bathroom and used up the rest of his cologne.

Another guy with a white crew cut stood half out of the passenger seat, as if ready to come in and get me if I hadn't been persuaded to follow the woman. The etched lines of his face bent around his mouth like a poorly folded map-his sneer had been affixed to him for decades. He looked a very healthy, fit, and forceful sixty. His upper lip dipped at an improper angle, almost like a harelip. Once he'd been punched in the mouth so hard that he'd bitten out a large piece of his lip, and the sew-up job had mauled him further. The lower half of his front teeth showed through, yellow and dry. He said, "Stop looking at me."

The woman opened the rear door of the limo, and I got my first glimpse of Theodore Harnes.

Nondescript was the best description I could come up with. Nothing about him stuck with me, no simile or metaphor came to mind. I sat beside him with my body slightly twisted in case he wanted to shake hands. He stared straight ahead. Jocelyn got in beside me, pressing me over until I sat in the middle between her and Harnes. If this was a Chandler, Block, Williams or Vachss novel I'd have been "scrunched between the heaving shoulders of two guys named Vincenzo and Popgun Rolly." The woman felt like smoke beside me, a presence but not a pressure. Harnes, though we didn't touch, was the opposite. A live pressure but no sense of a living presence.

I was starting to think that getting into the car was a bad idea.

Theodore Harnes, who had married one of my grandmother's bridesmaids, said, "I want to thank you.”

“You do?"

"Yes."

"For what?"

"Catching the man who murdered my son."

An autopsy report wouldn't be completed for at least another day. The kid's teeth had been broken and scattered and it would take a while for him to be identified by his dental records or whatever other means they had. I wondered why, under these circumstances, a father wouldn't reach out with both hands for even the slightest hope that his child wasn't dead.

"It might not be your son. There's no real evidence yet that…”

In a tranquil, toneless voice, he said, "He did not come home."

“But there's a chance that …"

"My son always came home."

I could see he was a man who brooked no opposition of any kind, not even by natural events. All things had to follow in the same course, at his insistence. What he expected must come to pass. His demands would be unrealistic and unobtainable. Only death proved to be an acceptable excuse for Teddy. What would having this man for a father do to a boy? To what lengths would someone forced to live in that shadow go to get away?

"I don't think Crummler did it," I said.

He showed no bewilderment, as if prepared for my response. "A raving lunatic covered in blood holding the murder weapon? He is guilty."

"Crummler wouldn't hurt anyone."

He ignored my comment and said, "I've heard of your past, helpful interests in certain investigations. The kidnapped Degrasse child. The sheriff's recent troubles. You found the murderer of your parents. You and your grandmother, I believe. You are a formidable pair. She sounds like a most intriguing woman."

"Oh cripes."

So, he would take the tack that he didn't know Anna, or perhaps he'd forgotten her, or only remembered her in a haze from before he had such power to wield.

"Why was Teddy at the cemetery?" I asked.

Jocelyn gazed at me, the driver glared into the rearview mirror, and the other guy kept his grin up, as if nobody ever asked Harnes a question, or maybe nobody ever mentioned Teddy.

"His mother is buried there," Harnes said.

"Was he visiting her grave?"

"I believe so."

"Tell me about him."

"Why?"

"Why not? Who were his friends?"

"You should have murdered that madman," Harnes told me, and a static charge built around him. I thought if I reached out and touched him, sparks would skitter off my fingernails. He gave me a sidelong glance, showing nothing. "Believe me, Mr. Kendrick, it would have been worth your while, if you had killed him."

He said it the way anyone else would talk about turning in their recycled cans for cash. I stared at the side of his face, trying to get a bead on him, but he moved in and out of focus from second to second.

"Is there anyone I can talk to?"

"Talk? About my son?" Barnes snapped back into himself, so unassuming that he seemed to fade in and out of existence. "No, there is no one with whom you can talk."

The guy in the front seat turned to grin at me some more with that scarred mouth. He had the air of a man who knew a secret and wanted everyone else to know that he knew it. Whatever he wanted to tell me, he'd eventually get around to it. I smiled pleasantly at him, showing off my nice upper lip. I wasn't getting anywhere with Harnes anyway. "What's your name, Sparky?"

He opened his mouth slowly and I saw that part of his tongue was missing as well, leaving it slightly forked. He said, "It sure as hell ain't Sparky," just as we pulled up to the airport. Jocelyn got out and I followed.

Harnes said nothing, and didn't even glance toward us. Jocelyn slipped back into the Mercedes, slammed the door, and they left me there.

I realized that Harnes hadn't given me a lift in his nice limousine to thank me for finding his son's killer, not at all. He hadn't even seen me, really. He'd been looking right through me and staring at Anna.

~ * ~

I called my grandmother from the airport but got my own voice on her answering machine. I said, "If Harnes comes around call Lowell immediately." Then I called Lowell and told him that I thought Theodore Harnes was going to be great misfortune in one form or another.

He laughed and said, "You giving me a bulletin, Jonny? Guy's got kids in Indonesia, Hong Kong, Thailand, Nicaragua, all the places you can't even point to on a map-"

"I think I could get Nicaragua."

"-they do nothing but work on the line making shoes for sixteen hours a day that are sold on Rodeo Drive for six hundred bucks a pair. He has a house full of Burmese servants who probably get paid off in table scraps and half the minimum wage. He makes the old men in the sawmills and out on the road camps thank their stars they've at least got shooters and beer to slump into in their dirty trailers at night. Thanks for the advice, I can't express in words how much I appreciate it. Why don't you go shelve some more books out there in the big bad city, Jonny Kendrick? What's that noise, you dropping change into a pay phone? What, you didn't get your cell phone yet?"