New England White (34 page)

Oh, this was a great idea, Julia.

In the middle of the room, Mr. Huebner stripped off his gloves and tossed them, along with his hat, onto a table. He picked up a bag of Oreos that might have been around since last season, top folded in with a dutiful child’s care. “Can I offer you something?” he said, still not looking at her.

“I’m fine,” said Julia, standing very still and feeling very prissy, and very afraid. The front door stood wide open. He had not asked her to close it, and if he did, she would dash for her car, for she would rather tangle with Goetz again than face Mitch Huebner with the door to this crazy little room closed. His madness was a live thing, burning within him, and, standing even this close, she felt she could inhale it like secondhand smoke and, in time, grow sick herself.

“So—what did you want to ask me about?”

“Well…”

He followed her glance toward the white-power flag. He chuckled. “Hey, don’t let that bother you. It’s just to scare her away. It doesn’t mean anything.”

Julia felt herself stepping into the cool, prickly stream of impossibility. “Scare who away?”

He scowled at her, eyes flat and shining yet empty, the eyes of a dead thing you pass on the road at night. “I think you know the answer to that, Mrs. Carlyle. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here.”

Julia fought the urge to lick her lips. Outside, the wind shifted. The dog howled, and the breeze tickled the small of her back even through her parka. She would not ask. She absolutely refused, even unconsciously, to ask.

And so, unsteadily, she returned to her text. “You…you knew that professor who got killed. Kellen Zant.”

“Is that so?”

“He came to you. He wanted your father’s diary.”

“Maybe.” He folded strong arms. He had not removed his windbreaker, and, for all Julia knew, could be hiding another gun or two in there. “What’s it to you, Mrs. Carlyle?”

Again her eyes shifted, taking in the grimy mirror, the covered windows, the religious symbols scattered around the room. None looked new. “Your father was the constable when Gina Joule was killed. The Joules made a stink for a while, and then the case was closed. DeShaun Moton did it. Everybody agreed. Your father was at the press conference.” She watched his face. “Of course there were the riots afterward, and the Landing got a bad name for a while. The scandal ended your father’s career. It pretty much ended the Huebners in the Landing. Before Gina died, the Huebners were pretty prominent. Afterward, your father”—she did not want to say that Arnold Huebner drank himself to death, although, according to Vera Brightwood, he pretty much had—“well, he was in disgrace. Your sisters both left town. You stayed around, but you moved out here, where you wouldn’t have to worry about…about…”

She trailed off, looked around the room with fresh eyes.

“All of this. It’s for Gina, isn’t it?” Prickle, prickle. Even as she pronounced the words, Julia knew she would never believe them. What mattered was whether Mr. Huebner believed them. “She…bothers you. Haunts you.” Julia waited, but Mitch Huebner was rough New England stone. “Why? Because your father named the wrong killer?” She pointed at the Madonnas. “You’re hoping to scare her away. The crosses. And that’s garlic, isn’t it? On the windows.”

The shotgun came up fast, and Julia got ready to run, but he was only breaking it open to dump the remaining shell into his palm. “What if it is?” he said, looking down.

“Your father never believed it. He never believed it was DeShaun. Not really. He wrote it down in his diary. That’s what this whole thing has been about. What Professor Zant was looking for. Your father’s diary.” She tried to remember what Frank had said. “There was a powerful family, wasn’t there? Protecting itself. Kellen told you he could prove it, and in return he wanted that diary.”

“He might have wanted it, Mrs. Carlyle, but I couldn’t give it to him. It’s lost.”

“That’s what everybody thinks. I’m not sure I believe it.”

“I put out a reward—”

“I heard. But I think the reward was cover. I think you had the diary all along, but you pretended not to, because you wanted to stay out of trouble. I think Kellen persuaded you to give it to him. Maybe he promised to do justice. I don’t know. But I think you gave him the diary, and that’s why he was so certain he knew—”

“Knew what, Mrs. Carlyle?”

“Who really killed Gina Joule.”

(IV)

J
ULIA REFUSED TO SIT
in the house, and Mitch Huebner refused to leave the property, so they compromised on the front porch, where she kept a wary eye on Goetz, who lay curled and sulking near her broken chain. They both held Buds, because Julia did not want to alienate him by refusing. Whenever he guzzled, she sipped.

“Tell you something funny, Mrs. Carlyle. Nobody ever asks me anything. They all think I’m crazy, they think I’m dirty, and they know I’m from the wrong part of town. So everybody’s always wondering what really happened that night, and none of them ever ask me anything. When your Vanessa came to talk to me a year, year and a half ago, she was the first one in a long time, Mrs. Carlyle. Maybe I was a little rude. I didn’t tell her much. I didn’t owe her. What I did tell her was how my daddy was almost run out of town when he couldn’t find who killed little Gina. In those days the Landing wasn’t like it is now, all the university types, executives, like that. We were just a little farm town. When the Joules moved in, well, we probably had two or three professors, and they all lived down near the Town Green. We needed them, Mrs. Carlyle. Their influence. Their money. Back in those days, the richest man in town was Mr. Brightwood—Vera’s dad—who ran the bank. But the little bit he had wouldn’t count for much in any kind of big city, or even in Elm Harbor. So the Joules were kind of a big deal. So were the other professors.”

Mitch Huebner possessed a big man’s laugh but with a raw sadness underneath. Wind teased snow from the thick, lonely trees.

“So, anyway,” he resumed, “the town fathers already had this dream, to turn the Landing into what they called a bedroom town. Get the commuters to move in. Most of us thought they had their heads up their proverbial asses, but that was the dream. If Gina had been local, everything would have been fine. But she was the daughter of a professor, Mrs. Carlyle. See why it matters? If the Landing couldn’t solve it, how could we get the commuters to move in? So, sure, the Joules put all kinds of pressure on. Well, who could blame them? Merrill Joule called in every favor he knew. He knew the governor. The president of the university—man named Cicero Hadley in those days, the one who did all the civil-rights business—well, old Cicero was close to the Nixon people, so the feds put the pressure on, too. Mrs. Joule, well, her family owned newspapers, and they sent people to do a big story.”

Julia again thought back on Vanessa’s work. “There was never any big story. A little mention, maybe, in a couple of the state papers, and that was it.”

Mr. Huebner nodded, and chugged. Julia took a dainty sip. She had always hated beer, but found the sensation less bad than she remembered. The winter woodland sounds soothed her. She wondered if she was mellowing with age; or if the beer was creating the pleasant buzz.

“That’s right, Mrs. Carlyle. The big story never ran. The way I heard it from my daddy, Merrill Joule had a change of heart. His daughter was dead or worse, and embarrassing the town wouldn’t bring her back. The Joules never really believed that the black boy did it. Merrill decided to keep up the pressure to find out what happened to her, but not in such a public way. He was a liberal, Mrs. Carlyle. The old-fashioned kind. Not this lifestyle crap. The kind who believed in sacrifice, helping the less fortunate. The town was poor in those days. Not like now. And Merrill Joule didn’t want his own tragedy to make it poorer. Mrs. Joule, well, she promised to set up a trust fund in Gina’s name to send children from the Landing to college. But before she could do it, she…well, she had her troubles.”

This, too, Julia recalled from Vanessa’s paper. After her daughter died, Anna Joule took a year to travel in Europe. Upon her return, Anna rapidly deteriorated, spending the next decade of her life in a series of mental institutions, insisting that her daughter spoke to her at night. As for Merrill, he took his own life, or drowned by accident, in the middle of the night, at the town beach, five years after Gina died there.

“Tell me about the diary.”

“I am telling you about the diary.” Mitch Huebner struck a philosophical tone. The man continued to surprise her, and she wondered whether what people assumed to be his politics and his seeming lack of interest in matters intellectual were a pose. “You see, Mrs. Carlyle, you’re judging by what people around the town say. But they don’t say everything they know. Not to you. Not to your Vanessa. You’re outsiders. Not just because you haven’t lived in town very long. Also because…well, because you weren’t here when it happened. You look at any town in New England, Mrs. Carlyle, and you’ll find a line down the middle. On one side are the people who don’t know the secrets. On the other are the people who’ve always been there, who hold on to the town’s history like the roots that keep the trees standing. Cut away the secrets—make them public—and the whole town withers and blows away with the next nor’easter.” He put his beer down, cocked his head to the side. “And there’s another reason, too. Another reason people won’t tell you the story. Don’t take offense, Mrs. Carlyle, but you’re also not…white.”

“What difference does that make?”

“It just makes a difference. I’m sorry, Mrs. Carlyle, but that’s life.”

She forced upon herself an uncommon calm. “What’s the secret, Mr. Huebner? What are the Landingers hiding?”

Another long swallow. He was on his third beer, possibly his fourth. Julia was working on her second can, even though she did not quite recall finishing the first. “Yes, Mrs. Carlyle. You’re right. I used to have my father’s diary. Turned up ten years ago in a file cabinet in the basement of the town hall, with a bunch of my daddy’s junk they were gonna throw out. But I don’t have it any more. I gave it to Zant, like you said.” Raising a hand before she could ask the obvious question. “I don’t know what he did with it. And I never read it. I never even opened it. Call me a coward. The truth is, I didn’t want to know. What my father always told me, though, was that Gina had a boyfriend. A college boy she was seeing.”

“I heard that, too,” said Julia, vaguely disappointed. “Is that what’s in the diary? The name of the boyfriend?”

He nodded, watching the woods. “Most likely. But there’s something else my daddy told me, Mrs. Carlyle. The night Gina died, there was this witness who saw her get into the car with DeShaun—”

“Mrs. Spicer. Her teacher.”

“Right. Mrs. Spicer. Changed her story.” He waited for Julia to say she already knew this part, too, but this time she had more sense. “What my daddy told me was, he went around to her house later and got the truth out of her. Seems Gina did ring her bell that night, just the way Mrs. Spicer said the first time. Not only that. Gina asks if she can make a call. Half an hour later, forty-five minutes maybe, there’s a mighty sporty looking car in her driveway, and two guys inside.”

“Two!”

“That’s right. Two guys. College age. White. One of them rings the bell, but Mrs. Spicer sees the other one in the car. And Gina, well, she hugs the one guy but then, when she gets outside—Mrs. Spicer is watching through the window the whole time—when Gina gets to the car, she looks like she didn’t expect the other guy to be there. They have words, Gina and her boyfriend, and she looks mad, but she gets into the car. Last time anybody sees her.” Mitch Huebner shrugged, swigged more beer. “My daddy asked why she changed her story. Mrs. Spicer said she was afraid. My daddy thought that some money might have changed—” He stopped, cocked his head. He had heard something she had missed, out there in the woods. “Did you come out here alone, Mrs. Carlyle?”

“Yes. Yes, of course.” She turned in the direction of his gaze, saw nothing more than the thrilling, silent beauty of any snowy wood. “Why?”

“Are you sure?”

“I’m sure, Mr. Huebner.”

He eased the shotgun from its position by the door onto his lap. He said, “Somebody’s out in my woods, making a hell of a racket trying to stay quiet.”

“Kids—”

“Kids don’t come out here, Mrs. Carlyle. Mitch Huebner is crazy. Mitch Huebner is a right-wing nutcase. Mitch Huebner eats kids for breakfast. They’re scared of me.”

Julia looked off the other way but saw nothing. “Deer—”

“Or visitors from Mars. No, it’s a human somebody. But, if he comes too close, Goetz’ll take care of it.” He made a quick hand signal, and the massive dog bounded uninjured to its feet and was lost in the snow-capped trees. “Where was I?”

“Ah, what your father told you about the night Gina Joule disappeared.”

Mitch Huebner nodded. “I knew Gina. Not well. A little. I must have been, oh, thirteen, fourteen when it happened. I would see her around town. I’d notice her the way thirteen-year-old boys everywhere start noticing the pretty girls a few years older. Never saw her with a boy. Because of those parents. Not that they didn’t love her. But she was the only one they ever had, and they had trouble having the one, and they used to protect her like she was the most precious creature on God’s earth. Most of the boys around here, well, they were scared to try to date her. Gina was a real beauty, but Merrill Joule was a terror. She could have had all the boyfriends she wanted, that’s how pretty she was.”

Julia hid her smile behind another sip of beer. What a crush Mitch Huebner must have harbored. “You sound like you…thought highly of her.”

“It wasn’t just me, Mrs. Carlyle. It was everybody. People just naturally liked her. Maybe it was because”—he shook it off, then seemed to catch her thoughts, because he tipped his grizzled chin to the side and shook his head. “Now, don’t get me wrong. I was from a different side of the tracks. Sure, my daddy was constable, but Gina was university, and town and gown don’t mix.” A smaller sip. “Anyway, my daddy told me once that it’s true what they say, you can’t fight City Hall. The thing is, Mrs. Carlyle, back in those days, there was still such a thing as people so big you couldn’t touch them. Not like now, when the press goes after every politician who can’t keep his pants on. No, in those days—” He stopped again, leaping to his feet, gun in hand, and she turned in time to hear an angry shout in the woods, and Goetz barking. “Let’s go see who’s out there,” he said, hurrying down into the snow.