Mickelsson's Ghosts (93 page)

“Is that what you think happened?” Mickelsson asked.

Thomas shook his head. “It's a mystery, that's all,” he said. He smiled, tentative, and looked toward Mickelsson. “Old Sprague was a witch. I guess you knew that? Or thought he was. Thought he could fly, thought he could cast spells …”

“Must not have been much money in it,” Mickelsson said, and grinned.

“Never is. Mostly all it does is make the rest of the witches your enemies.”

Mickelsson said nothing, thinking about it, uncertain whether Thomas was serious or joking.

“Anyway,” Thomas said, “somehow another somebody made a devil of a mess up there.” He smiled and moved his eyes away again, preparing to mosey down the aisle.

Mickelsson said, “Tell me this, though. What do they mean when they say everybody knows who did it? They said it about the murder of the fat man, too.”

“Depends on who said it,” Thomas suggested, one eyebrow raised.

“Tinklepaugh, Tim …”

Thomas pushed his hands into his trousers pockets and looked at the floor for a minute. “Well,” he said at last, “it's hard to tell.”

It was clear that he was being less than forthright. “Come on,” Mickelsson said. “I'm a good customer.” He gave Thomas his intense grin. “I'm a stranger, I admit, but I throw myself into it. I saved that old house. I care as much about Susquehanna as anybody else does, you know that.”

Thomas stared at the floor, quiet as a statue. At last he said, “I suppose
some
of 'em when they say it they mean they think it was you.”

“They think—” Mickelsson began. His tongue was suddenly thick, and his heart was beating fast. No doubt he was blushing. “They think
I
killed the fat man?” Quickly, no doubt showing his fluster, he added, “They think I tore up my own house?”

Thomas shrugged, gently. It was clear that he was sorry to have this conversation—clear that in fact he liked Mickelsson and was not speaking for himself, had been forced into the position of speaking for the town. “I don't know,” he said. “I guess when you're really a townsman you'll forgive it for its foolishness.” He was unable to meet Mickelsson's eyes. “Every town's got its ways,” he said. “Susquehanna's no different. There's a lot of good here. People are friendlier here than most places. Maybe it's because they're all so poor here, I don't know. But it's a good place, that way.”

As if hardly aware that he was doing it, Thomas picked up a bolt from one of the trays on the counter and moved it to the tray it belonged in. “On the other hand,” he said, “Susquehanna's got its faults. I guess we're a little hard on strangers, one thing.” He looked at the trays. “I guess there's a certain amount of superstition. And I guess when you come right down to it, law and order aren't exactly the -same in Susquehanna as in, well, most places. You can get away with a lot here if Cobb and Tinklepaugh know you, or if the town likes you—which comes to pretty much the same thing. It's not so much the laws on the books that people care about, in Susquehanna. That fat man, for instance. I guess they knew pretty well who he was, and what he was. It wasn't that people knew him—nobody knew him, come down to it. But he was never trouble. You take those boys that come down off the mountain and park their pickups across from Milly's. I guess you've seen it. They get out of their trucks and walk out into the middle of the street and open up their flies and take a piss, arms thrown out like they were dying on the cross. I guess most places you'd throw a man in jail for a thing like that.” Thomas blushed, smiling, still looking down, doubtful that Mickelsson would understand. “But what harm is it? When they're finished they button up and walk on in to Milly's and have their drinks, play their three or four games of pool, maybe locate some girlfriend. …”

Mickelsson asked softly, conscious of a certain professorial stiffness, “Do
you
think I'm the one that tore up my own house?” His smile, he knew, was a grotesque wince.

“No,” Thomas said, and gave a headshake.

Still more righteously, Mickelsson asked, “Do you think I killed the fat man?”

The evasion in Thomas's eyes was instantaneous and brief, though his answer was casual. “If you say you didn't, I believe you.”

Mickelsson blushed violently and knew that his guilt was revealed. He thought of saying, with wonderful indignation, “Well, I didn't!” But he said nothing. Owen Thomas showed only discomfiture.

Mickelsson would have no idea, later, how much time passed between his implicit confession and Owen Thomas's next words. “Well,” Thomas said, “I guess it's not likely we'll ever find out who killed the fat man. I'll tell you my own theory.” He glanced shyly at Mickelsson, then away. “I don't think anybody killed him. I think he just died. The only real evidence they've got at all is that the door was broken down. But what if he just couldn't find his key? Left it inside, say? Say he broke down his own door, and the excitement of it brought on a heart attack.”

Mickelsson gazed thoughtfully, still blushing, at Thomas's chest. If he were an ancient Greek, he might have felt that some alien spirit had entered into him; at any rate, it did not seem himself that said, “But the room was torn up.”

“He died of an attack of angina pectoris, that's what they say,” Thomas said. “From what I hear, a man can thrash around for twenty, thirty minutes with that. A man the size he was could've torn up a factory.”

Mickelsson said, feeling light, not himself, “But he had a gun in his hand. Why that?”

“Who knows?” Thomas said. “With angina pectoris your blood stops moving. Maybe he was seeing visions, having a nightmare. Maybe he was trying to shoot himself.”

Mickelsson could think of nothing to say.

Thomas found another misplaced bolt and put it where it belonged.

At last Mickelsson said, “What about the money? He's supposed to have been a bank robber. That's what Tinklepaugh says.”

“Maybe he spent it all years ago. Maybe he buried it.”

It crossed Mickelsson's mind that the theory was not Thomas's. Was it Tinklepaugh's, then? Bill Cobb's? The work of the state police?

“Strange business,” he said.

He bought a pair of pliers to explain his having come.

In the Jeep he pressed his palms into the steeringwheel and thought about the elaborate theory they'd made up to let him off. Why? The only answer he could think of was a stupid one: that they liked him and wanted to protect him, as if he were one of their own. The only alternatives he could think of were almost equally queer: that the death of the fat man was of no importance to the town; that they wanted eventually to pin the thing on somebody else.

When he glanced into the rear-view mirror, he noticed two things at once. The first was that the troll-doll was no longer there. He wasn't sorry to have given it to Lepatofsky's daughter, but he missed it: at the edge of his mind he'd felt that it was in some way lucky. The second thing he noticed was that the car behind him was dark green, unornamented. It had a large radio antenna. Anyone would have guessed at once that it was some kind of police car. According to diSapio-as-in-sap-but-don't-count-on-it, it was not an I.R.S. car. In the car there were two people, but because of the clean-lined reflection on the windshield he could make out nothing of what the two might look like. Mickelsson made a U-turn and nosed toward his house. When he reached his own driveway he stopped and sat thinking for a moment. Not quite to his surprise, the dark green car came up behind him, after a while; but the car did not slow, the two occupants did not look at him. It moved on, as if on important business, up the mountain.

A little after noon Mickelsson got visitors. The world outside was bright and glittering, warmish now, a day that at any other time of his life would have drawn him out of his house. It was not even now that he resisted the fresh-laundered whiteness of the world, the clean smell in the air; he simply failed to notice, half-heartedly reading, replaying in his mind his conversation this morning with Owen Thomas. He couldn't tell whether he was mainly frightened or mainly relieved to learn that the town thought him a murderer. He was troubled, that much he knew, and weak as a kitten, a weakness that went right to the bone marrow. Building toward something. Sometimes he would sit for an hour without moving a muscle, then suddenly get up and move around restlessly, reading as he walked, sometimes almost falling, unreached by the brightness coming in like a cry at every window.

He heard no car, no knock, but going to the livingroom door that opened onto the porch as if something had drawn him there, and happening to glance out the window for the first time in hours, he was startled half out of his wits to see there a large, outlandish figure in a bright pink overcoat and a white furry hat. When he leaned closer to the window, not quite believing his eyes, he made out a large, pale, smiling face and bright tufts of gray-white curls. The real-estate salesman Tim was behind her, grinning and waving. Mickelsson came to himself and hurried to open the door.

“Dr. Bauer! Well, hello! Tim! What a surprise!” He hoped the smile on his dried-out cheeks was not as ghastly as it felt.

“Prafessor Mickelsson! I'm so glad you're home!” She reached out one large, white-gloved hand to seize his, closed her fingers tightly, clung for a moment, then coyly tilted her head and drew her hand back. “Oh, look!” she said, peeking around him at the room. “Isn't this just lovely!” She allowed him to take one arm and help her in. Tim came behind her, still grinning from ear to ear, steadying her trailing elbow. He had on his cowboy hat and sheepskin coat. “Say, there!” he said.

“My, my, my,” the doctor said, “you've certainly been busy!” She apparently approved whole-heartedly.

“Yes, I have,” Mickelsson said. He closed the door behind them. “Let me take your coats.” To his surprise he was feeling tentatively glad they'd come.

“I can't stay but just a minute,” she said happily, but immediately began unbuttoning the front of her coat. The suit underneath was powder-blue, as pale as her eyes. When he lifted the coat from her shoulders she dusted her hands as if about to set to work. “Isn't this lovely,” she said, “isn't this
lovely!”

Tim stood with his hands in his coatpockets, looking around admiringly; then he too decided to take off his coat. He threw it over the end of the couch. “Boy,” he said, “it's really beautiful, Prafessor. You're really a handyman!”

“Oh, well,” Mickelsson said.

The doc said, examining the wallpaper seams (she would find no mistakes), “I was always so busy, you know. I just never gaht a minute for the poor howse. My goodness, what's this?” As if someone had told her how he'd changed the former workroom, she'd gone straight to the door, opened it—it was already part way open—and looked in. “Don't tell me you did all this yourself!” she exclaimed. “Well I never!” The queerly girlish laugh he remembered struck him now as unearthly. Whether or not he was right that the doc was gravely ill, she'd aged noticeably during her few months in Florida; her features had sharpened and she seemed much more pale; clearly she hadn't been lying around on beaches. Yet her voice was, if anything, younger than before.

Tim sat down on the couch, smiling, and hung his hands over his knees, keeping out of things, giving the doc playing room. Mickelsson, with part of his mind, worked at whether or not the man was homosexual, but he got nowhere. One would not be quite as open about it in Susquehanna, he supposed, as one might be in Binghamton.

“Yes, it makes a good diningroom, doesn't it,” Mickelsson said, getting out his pipe. He saw that she was looking now at the scraped place where once the hex sign had been. “Can I offer you a cup of tea?” he asked.

“That would be lovely, if it's naht too much trouble!”

“Nothing for me, thanks,” Tim said, and waved. Now he too was getting his pipe out.

The doc crossed to the Dutch door, visibly decided not to mention the missing hex sign, and turned to look at the stereo instead. “What a lovely phonograph! That's another thing I just never take time for. How we do let things slip by us!”

“I suppose that's so,” Mickelsson said. He nodded, excusing himself, still poking tobacco into his pipebowl, and went into the kitchen to fill the teakettle.

She came into the kitchen behind him and suddenly froze. He followed her eyes to the cat, which stood, stiffly arched, by the cellar door, staring back at her. Its mouth was drawn away from its fangs, ready to hiss. Mickelsson stepped over and opened the cellar door, allowing the cat to flee.

“I'm sorry. I take it you don't care much for cats,” he said, closing the door and smiling.

“Oh no, it just stahrtled me, that's all,” she said, then laughed. She raised one hand, brushing something invisible from in front of her face.

He finished putting on the kettle, then got out cups, two teabags, and sugar. When he bent his head, taking spoons from the drawer beside the sink, he became aware again of how large the woman was, taller than he was by an inch or two. When he glanced at her shoes he saw that her heels were low. The aroma of Tim's pipe tobacco drifted in from the livingroom, the same Dunhill Mickelsson himself smoked, or maybe the similar but cheaper mixture Balkan Sobranie.

She asked how things had been, whether or not he'd encountered any trouble with the house.

“Nothing serious,” he said. “I must say, I was surprised to learn it's haunted.” He glanced at her.

“Oh, that!” she said, and laughed. “How on earth do you suppose such a thing gaht stahrted?”

There seemed no doubt that she spoke innocently; but he asked, “You never saw them, then?”

“Saw them?” She tipped her head. Apparently deciding he was teasing, she said, “Naht that I know of!” She laughed again. “But it seems as if just about everybody else in Seskehenna has. At any rate that's what they told that poor Prafessor Warren. He was very interested in the house, I suppose you know.”