Charles Grant - Night Songs

Tabor brushed at his forelock futilely and shook his head as if he were dealing with children. "I heard what you told me, Col, but if Peg is right, the threat-if there was one-"

"If..?"

"— was implied, and I'd be up to my butt in false arrest suits if I did anything now. It's a subjective thing, Col, Peg, and there's really nothing I can do."

"Talk to Cameron, then," she suggested.

"About what? His friends?" He waved her silent as he straightened and pushed a closed folder to one side on his blotter. Then he opened a side drawer and pulled out a handful of fountain pens, their caps long since missing. His chair swiveled around and he tossed one at the bulletin board. It stuck in the cork like an ungainly dart.

"I'll tell you something."

"Please," Colin said sourly, moving his chair aside when a second pen nearly^pinned his ear to the wall.

"You were talking to Mike Lombard and Theo Vincent, right? Sweet fellas, both of them. Lombard has oil for a smile, and Vincent looks like he eats nothing but sugar."

Peg shifted impatiently, but was too fascinated by his errant marksmanship to say anything in protest.

When the last fountain pen skewered a wanted poster yellowed with age, Garve snorted and faced her.

"Peg, they're nasty, the both of them. I know it. I talked with them back when Jim was killed. But I can't ride them out of town because in the first place, I'm not Gary Cooper, as I told Colin last night; and in the second, there's no law against visiting someone in her home and passing on information. You chose to make what they said a threat, but Lombard is an expensive lawyer who would have me beachcombing in a week if he wanted to. And I'll tell you the truth, I wouldn't want anything but a smoking gun for evidence before I faced Theo Vincent."

"Jesus," Colin muttered in disgust.

Peg, however, saw the man's point and knew he was correct. And perhaps she'd been right all along; perhaps it was the mood the day had gotten itself into. She sighed noncommittally and rose from the chair. Colin muttered under his breath and raised his eyebrows in a shrug.

"You feel it, too," she said suddenly, without knowing why. He nodded. "Yeah."

Garve looked astonished. "You talking about the weird that's come over this town?"

"Weird?" Peg said.

"That's what Annalee calls it."

"Annalee, huh?" Colin said, wide-eyed and innocent.

"Yes," Garve said. He reached for a pile of message slips and waved them briefly at the phone. "She says Doc's been working her tail off all afternoon. A million people coming in with complaints that don't exist, I got a million calls here from folks who've decided to go away for the weekend and would I keep an eye on the house. El's at the ferry now, as a matter of fact. The second fender-bender this afternoon. Lord, if they had water wings, they'd stick 'em on their bumpers and try to drive across, the jerks. Sterling's probably making a fortune." He glanced up at the round clock fixed over the door. "Four now. If this keeps up, we'll be the only ones left by sunset."

"The storm," Colin suggested. "You said there might be one of those Carolina somethings-"

"Screamers."

"Yeah. That could be it. And Gran, and… well, I guess a night on the town is just what they need."

"Sure," Garve grumbled as the telephone rang. He listened for a moment, looked heavenward for mercy, and muttered a few words Peg didn't hear. Then he dropped the receiver and spread his palms in the air. "I was waiting for it."

"What?" she asked.

"Reverend Otter. That goddamned Doberman's been keeping him from his beauty nap. Jesus, if I've told Hattie once, I've told her a hundred times to keep that fool animal inside. God!"

Peg laughed, more from abrupt relief than from thinking the situation comic; as long as these two had felt what Garve had called the 'weird,' then it really was possible she'd overreacted to Cameron's visit. She nodded then when Colin reminded her of the promise of a ride, glad for the chance to be alone with him for a time. When they reached the door the phone rang, and Tabor swore. When they reached the sidewalk, a mud-spattered jeep braked loudly at the curb. Alex Fox was driving and Matt was huddled in the seat beside him.

As soon as Peg saw the dazed look on her son's face, her throat went dry and her skin turned cold. She rushed to his side and gathered him silently into her arms, looking to Fox as he climbed from his seat.

"Lilla," the red-haired man said. "She come out of the woods and scared the kids half to death."

She stroked the boy's cold cheeks, his rigid shoulders, brushed his dark hair away from his eyes. "Darling, are you all right?"

"She didn't touch him, I don't think," Fox said, standing at the curb as Garve came from the office. "I chased her off," he said to the chief, "but Jesus, Garve, God knows what she might've done. Damn, she's crazy!"

Colin stood beside her. "Matt, you okay?"

The boy nodded quickly several times.

"Did she say anything?"

He nodded again.

Peg cupped his chin with a palm and turned his head toward her. "What, darlin'? What did she say?"

"Colin," the boy whispered. "I'm here, pal."

"No. She said 'Colin.' "

"Anything else?" Garve asked from over her shoulder. "No."

Peg eased him from the jeep, a protective arm hard around his shoulders. "I'm going to take him home," she said tightly. "Then I want to talk to Lilla."

"I'll go with you," Colin said.

"Don't bother," she told him, and led Matt around the corner as she whispered to him gently, telling him it was all right and nobody was hurt and Lilla still feels bad about Gran and something like that sometimes makes people do strange things.

Matt pulled away from her. Slowly, not abruptly. He shoved his hands into his pockets and stared at the sidewalk, the curb, the sidewalk again. A pebble got in his way, and he kicked it aside. She looked back only once, faltering when she saw Colin storming around the corner of the hedge, heading for the Run. But damn it, what did he expect her to think? Does Lilla ask for help from someone who's known her all her life? Does she ask for Peg, who had held her when her parents died, and fought with Gran to let her go to college, and was more than a friend, practically a surrogate mother? No, of course not. She frightens Peg's only son to death-God knows why she picked on him of all people-and then she asks for Colin. Colin Ross the artist. Colin Ross the man she's only known for five years. Not Peg. Colin.

A year ago she had seen them on the beach, sitting there, watching the waves, Lilla talking, Colin listening, Lilla suddenly turning to kiss him on the cheek for whatever response he'd given. He'd laughed. She'd kissed him again, was on her feet and running. Peg, as with the first time she'd seen them, hadn't the nerve to confront him for an explanation. It was, of course, all very innocent. Lilla was only a child (seventeen, Peg, and hardly a child), and everyone knew she had a crush on the artist.

But Colin never said a word, and Lilla never said a word, and of course there was nothing to it, and she'd felt cheap for her inadvertent spying, and now here it was again and… she blinked once, slowly, and almost exclaimed aloud: My God, Peg Fletcher, you're actually jealous. You're so frightened for Matt you've made yourself jealous.

Good God, a hell of a thing.

"Mom, what's for supper?"

"Crow, my darlin'," she said wryly. Good Lord, jealous; I haven't felt that in years.

He grimaced and stuck out his tongue. "That's rotten."

"Yes," she said, impulsively hugging him. "Tell me all about it."

She followed his gaze as he looked at the sky. The storm clouds-white slashed with black and reaching for the blue-had drained off all the haze. And over the mainland the slowly-sinking sun glided broad golden beams to the tops of the trees. It was so perfect it was unnatural, and she wasn't surprised when Matt told her, "I don't like this day, Mom. It doesn't feel right, y'know?"

"Yes," she said quietly, "I know exactly what you mean."

At their front door he looked fearfully over his shoulder.

"It's all right," she assured him. "Lilla's not there." He frowned, then nodded in silent contradiction. Peg closed the door behind them, and made sure it was locked.

Frankie crouched behind a wall of red-thorned shrubs and scratched at a pimple breaking on his cheek. He frowned. He stared at the back of the boarding house and wondered if Mayfair was working in the kitchen, or sitting in the front room, or sitting on the porch talking to herself. The house was brown and three stories high, bay windows and additions everywhere you looked. There were dim lights here and there, and dazzling reflections from the sun lowering to the treetops. There were no cars in the driveway, but that didn't mean a thing; Mayfair didn't drive. And he figured there wasn't a car big enough to hold her.

If she were in the kitchen, he was dead, simple as that.

The birdbath was halfway between him and the back porch, and nothing but dead grass and weeds to hide him if she saw him.

Maybe, he thought, it would be a good idea to wait for dark. But if he waited for dark, Cart and Denise would be holed up in one of the empty motels, going at it on one of the beds, taking a little dope, laughing at nothing and calling him a shithead.

No. He had to do it now. He had to take the chance that the concrete bowl would lift off the pedestal easily and wouldn't be all that heavy to carry. Hell, if he did it right, he could roll it like a hoop.

He stared until his eyes watered, thinking about Denise and Carter and his mother and his old man, and he turned around twice when he heard the squirrels bounding through the leaves in the shadows behind him. After the second time, he realized he was losing his nerve.

Damn, he thought, double damnation.

Slowly, listening to his knees pop, he rose and licked at his lips. A deep breath filled his lungs. A palm rubbed his stomach in slow circles.

Okay, Frankie, he thought, in and out like a fuckin' rocket.

He eased around the brush.

And a hand grabbed his shoulder.

Colin shoved through the Clipper Run's door almost at a run and stood panting in the narrow foyer while he tried to catch his breath. There was silence, and from where he stood he could see no one at all. He was glad; it would give him a moment to try to calm down.

The restaurant's interior was constructed on two levels. The upper, straight in from the scrolled oak door and the cubbyhole of the check room, stretched along the right side of the building. A long, dark mahogany bar curved from one end to the other- brass footrailing, padded black leather handrail, black leather stools with high backs for unsteady drinkers, a huge mirror edged in daily-polished silver behind the artfully-stacked bottles. It was separated from the dining area by three broad, carpeted steps and a waist-high railing of lemon-waxed, hand-smoothed teak.

He moved in cautiously and grabbed the back of a stool, leaned on it heavily and brushed a hand through his hair.

The dining room held two hundred people at irregularly placed, small round tables, each with captain's chairs, white linen, red-chimneyed candles and a slender white vase with blossoms in season. In the room's center was a grand piano Alex Fox's wife played when she wasn't waiting tables; no jukebox, no taped music.

From the exposed-beam ceiling hung netting and intricate shark's-tooth mobiles. On the walnut-paneled walls were original oils and water colors of MacKay's clipper ships, Fulton's steamboats, whalers, Cape Cod trawlers, and a three-master in full sail at sunset flying a bold skull and crossbones.