Greely's Cove (39 page)

“Mr. Sparhawk, I really
am
surprised at you, someone with your unique abilities and powers, asking such a question! Have you never heard of a scrying mirror?”

Robbie had not.

“Well, you have now, and you’ll even see one when you get here—one of the few still in existence. Far better to demonstrate than merely tell you about it, don’t you think? Now do hurry, Mr. Sparhawk, because we haven’t much time.”

So Robinson Sparhawk did as he had promised and hurried away, leaving a frustrated and bewildered police chief at Liquid Larry’s to nurse his beer alone.

By midafternoon on Monday, Lorna’s Little Gallery on Frontage Street had become a nearly vacant storefront with featureless walls and bare floors. Carl Trosper, his son, and Renzy Dawkins had slaved throughout half the previous day and most of the present one, boxing and crating the artifacts of Lorna’s modest but loving enterprise: fixtures, paintings, posters, art supplies. They stacked them in the rear stockroom that fronted the alley. Later that week, hired movers would cart off the goods for storage until Carl could arrange for an auction.

Jeremy had proved himself an energetic and cheerful worker. He had shown none of the hostility or cruel astuteness that had so unnerved his father on Sunday morning. Around three o’clock they broke for Diet Cokes that Renzy had brought in a cooler from his boat, and Carl remarked that Jeremy looked a little tired—not surprising for a boy who had worked as hard as he had for the past two days.

“Why don’t you knock off,” suggested Carl to his son, “maybe walk home and watch a little TV? Renzy and I can finish up here. You know what they say about all work and no play.”

Home was only a few blocks away, as most places were in tiny Greely’s Cove.

“I guess I do have some reading to catch up on,” said the boy with a grin, sounding almost like a normal American kid. He wiped his brow with one of the bulky workman’s gloves that he had worn all weekend. “See you around dinner, then?”

“Around six,” confirmed Carl. “And don’t cook anything. I’m taking you both out for dinner. It’s the least I can do for a faithful pair of draft animals.”

After Jeremy had gone, Renzy lit a cigarette and smoked contentedly for a few moments, pacing lazily around the empty cavern that had been Lorna Trosper’s store.

“Know what, Bush? I need a get-rich-quick scheme, something that’ll get me back into the swim when my money runs out—which will be soon. What do you think of this? Genital cosmetics. I’m talking about a new rage here, a whole line of nicely packaged blushes, conditioners, liners, and scents for discriminating consumers of both sexes. It would be easy to do: Just adapt a bunch of existing products and launch them with a punchy ad campaign. Hey, are you listening to me?”

Carl was listening, but not closely. His gaze was far off, his face etched with worry, as it had been throughout the past two days.

“Sorry. I guess I’m a little preoccupied. Putting all this stuff in boxes, piling it up to be sent away—it’s like we’re getting rid of the last traces of Lorna. After the carpenters and painters are done, you won’t be able to recognize this place. There won’t be anything left of her.”

“Yeah, it’s sad. I feel it, too, but I keep reminding myself that this is the way she would’ve wanted it, and then I feel a little better. Are you sure there’s nothing else eating you?”

“It’s nothing, really. Unless you count the fact that virtually everything I own is in a moving van somewhere, probably overturned in a ditch in Kansas or Nebraska, buried in the snow until spring.”

“For Christ’s sake, your stuff will get here okay.”

“Then there’s the two hundred pounds of legal paperwork I’ve got ahead of me concerning Lorna’s estate. I have to buy a car, furniture for the house and this place, law books, office equipment, hire a secretary—”

“It’s Jeremy, isn’t it?” said Renzy, his sea-weathered face growing serious. He dropped his cigarette butt on the floor, stepped on it, and drew close to Carl, who was staring downward in silence. “What happened, Bush? I thought everything was copacetic with you guys.”

“I suppose it won’t do me any good to keep it in. Yesterday morning he and I had a set-to over the dogs and cats he’d collected. Sometime Saturday night—after we’d gone to bed—or maybe even early Sunday morning, he got up and took them somewhere. Says he set them free, because he couldn’t stand the thought of sending them to the shelter. Wanted to save me the work of taking them there. Or something like that. Wouldn’t tell me where he took them or the real reason he did it. Then, when I pressed him on it and started giving him a lecture about truth and honesty, he—” This was difficult, and Carl’s dry throat forced him to take a gulp of Diet Coke. “He
changed.
I don’t know how to explain this without sounding like a stark-raving madman, but he
changed
, Renzy....” Renzy Dawkins listened quietly to the rest of the story, occasionally picking at his bluish stubble or absently practicing bowlines and hitches with the short hank of rope that he carried in his khakis. Carl left nothing out—not even Jeremy’s spiteful tale about Lorna and Renzy, or the one about Stu Bromton being a crooked cop who took bribes from illegal drug dealers.

“And it was like he was inside my head, Renzy, like he knew exactly the right buttons to push in order to get my goat and cause me the greatest possible pain. How in the hell he was able to imitate my father’s voice—even use Dad’s kind of language—I’ll never know. I’m not even sure I want to. And then, just as abruptly as it started, it was over, and he was back to his lovable self, apologetic and considerate, even cheerful.”

“The same kid we took out on the town Saturday night.”

“And the one we’ve been working with for the last two days.

I keep thinking about what Dr. Craslowe said: that Jeremy’s been through a hellish ordeal for the past thirteen years and that we’ve got to expect his attitude and emotions to swing back and forth as he goes on with his recovery, but that doesn’t explain some of the
other
things.”

“You don’t really think Jeremy can read minds, do you? Is that what you’re driving at? Listen, Bush, the kid is world-class perceptive—that much is certain—and it’s the combination of his perceptiveness and intelligence that makes you think he’s reading your mind. It’s an illusion, a trick that he sets you up to play on yourself.”

“What about Dad’s voice?”

“That’s an easy one. If you could hear a recording today of what Jeremy said to you—in what you thought was your dad’s voice—you’d say that it doesn’t sound like him at all. If the language was similar, it was probably because you talk that way yourself, and Jeremy was only imitating
you.
You heard what you heard because your imagination was running wild, and you were in a state of shock over all this sudden hostility. The kid doesn’t read minds, Bush. Nobody does.”

“Okay, maybe I buy all that. It still doesn’t explain the hostility, or the obsession with keeping a part of his life private from me—his personal affairs, he calls them.”

“Good God, why is
that
so surprising? You were an only child yourself, Bush. If you’ll think back a minute to when you were a kid, you’ll remember you owned a part of the household, almost like a little fiefdom, that was all
yours
—separate and apart from the world of adults—and you didn’t have to share it with anyone. You had no brothers or sisters—remember?—nobody who wanted a piece of it. You had
your
room,
your
toys,
your
clothes, and you learned very early what it means to have a personal life, one that belongs to you and nobody else. Why shouldn’t your kid want the same thing?”

“And the hostility?”

Renzy undid a sailor’s knot in his hank of rope and poked it into a hip pocket, holding back a moment, thinking. Finally: “I don’t know the answer to that one. I could hazard a few more guesses, but good God, I’m no shrink. My opinion on that score wouldn’t be worth much, I’m afraid.”

Carl patted his friend on the shoulder. “No matter. You’ve been a help, Renzy; more than I can tell you. It’s good to have an objective view on things like this, especially from someone who cares. Know what else? I appreciate your friendship, all you’ve done: lending me your car, helping me get this place in shape, not to mention letting me cry on your shoulder. I’ll make it up to you some day.”

“Does that mean you’ll become a partner in the genital cosmetics business?” asked Renzy, grinning slyly.

“Let’s not get carried away with this friendship thing,” answered Carl with a mock frown that he could not hold for long, and they both laughed.

“What do you say we kick this job in the ass, finish it, and get ready for a nice quiet dinner at the Moorage? Crating the rest of this stuff won’t take more than half an hour, and after that, all we have to do is scrub the floors and wash the windows. Another couple of hours and we’ll be out of here.”

“Carl,” said Renzy somewhat hesitantly, dropping the nickname he’d pinned on his buddy when they were boys, “I have something to tell you. It’s not easy—I mean, it’s about something that Jeremy told you yesterday, the part about Lorna and me—”

“Don’t worry about it,” said Carl, about to lug a box to the back room. “I didn’t believe him for a minute. He was only trying to hurt me with a lie. I probably shouldn’t even have told you about it.”

“That’s the problem: He wasn’t lying.”

Carl straightened and stared wide-eyed at Renzy, wondering if he had heard correctly. “You mean—you and Lorna?”

“I’m afraid so. I should’ve leveled with you long before this, but I—well, I wasn’t sure what Lorna herself might’ve told you. Besides that, I—”

“She never mentioned it to me,” said Carl, feeling a little numb. He kneaded the back of his neck, then pocketed his hands and let a few more long moments drift by. “Were you in love with her?”

Renzy nodded, his green eyes sad. “You can understand that, I hope. It wasn’t what you could call a storybook romance; in fact, we were in the process of breaking up when she—when she died. For a few horrible days afterward, I worried that maybe she had killed herself because—uh, because—”

“Because of the breakup?”

“Something like that, I guess. But the fact is, Carl, she wasn’t madly in love with me, not like I was with her—at least not during those last few months. We started off like gang-busters, had about six months of that old I’m-in-love-and-the-whole-word-is-wonderful feeling. We kept things pretty private, which was my idea, since I’m just one cut above the town drunk on the social register around here.
That
distinction, by the way, belongs to Mitch Nistler. Remember him from the old days? Weird little guy with thick glasses who nobody could stand?

“Anyway, I don’t think Lorna even told her mother and sister about us, which suited me just fine. We saw each other whenever we could, which wasn’t all that often, because it wasn’t easy to find someone to take care of Jeremy, even for a few hours. Then, after a while, Lorna started getting depressed, becoming afraid of things she wouldn’t talk about, withdrawn. I almost felt like I didn’t know her anymore. She shut me out, along with everything and everybody else, and it became clear that our relationship wasn’t going anywhere. So—shit, you can guess the rest.”

“You hadn’t been planning to marry her?”

“I was on the brink of asking her a couple of times, but I never did. What could I have given her? Or for that matter, what could I have
been
for her? Here I am, running out of money, no real prospects—Christ, she was entitled to better than that. Besides, I always had the feeling that she had never really gotten over you.”

Carl wandered over to the crate on which he had set his can of soda and took a long sip. “I suppose that should make me feel a little better, but it doesn’t,” he said, bleeding inside.

Renzy lit another cigarette. “Remember her memorial service, when I was just sort of standing on the beach, not getting too close to the crowd in the park? If you hadn’t caught sight of me out there, I probably wouldn’t have come any closer, because I was feeling so guilty. I felt like I had done you shit, Carl, and I was scared of talking to you. On top of that, I didn’t want to run into Stu Bromton, not just then.”

“Why not? What’s Stu got to do with all this?”

Renzy blew out a lungful of smoke, staring at his old friend in disbelief.

“You mean you don’t
know
? After all these years, you really don’t know? Carl, listen: Stu has had it bad for Lorna ever since you first started taking her out back at UW. He never tried to horn in on you, because you and he were friends, and he knew he wouldn’t have gotten to first base anyway, not with you around. After your divorce he actually made a few clumsy moves in Lorna’s direction, but hell, he was the chief of police and the son-in-law of the mayor, so he had to watch his step. Needless to say, his efforts sort of fizzled.”

“
Hippo
in love with Lorna? God, I feel like I’m dreaming.
You
I can understand, Renzy, but Hippo—”

“His marriage to Judy is a cruel joke,” Renzy went on. “He hates her—actually
hates
her—and I don’t doubt he hates his kids, too, along with his whole damn life, probably. This thing about the missing people has turned him into a grade-A basket case, which is understandable, I guess’. The man is not a happy camper, Carl, and he’s especially unhappy with me: thinks I’m a profligate jerk and a bum—which of course I am, but that’s beside the point.

“When I first starting seeing Lorna, Stu and I were still friendly, and I let on to him what was going on between her and me. Real mistake, that was. I found out that he’d never gotten over her. He damn near demanded that I stop seeing her, got insanely jealous and predicted that I’d be a disaster for her. I haven’t given up on the idea of salvaging my friendship with him, but even so, I’m sure he thinks I had something to do with her suicide. So you can see why I wasn’t anxious to run into him at the memorial service.”

“Yeah.”

“I needed to tell you about this, Carl, because I value your friendship, and I want things to be on the up-and-up between us. I also want you to know that I’m sorry.”