Shortest Day (23 page)

“That's okay,” said Arlo from the depths of his new knowledge. “It's early. Good time for it.”

All the people passing through Harvard Square on their way to work got the joke about the wheels on the sofas. Palmer had seen to that. Last week the words of the police sergeant had been emblazoned in all the local papers, and even in the
Boston Globe
—
WHEELED VEHICLES ONLY, DEMANDS POLICEWOMAN; HOMELESS SOFAS TICKETED
.

They got the joke and laughed and dropped money in the tin cans Palmer set out on the sidewalk.

The Cambridge police sergeant laughed too, when she came charging up in her cruiser. She couldn't help it, the sofas looked so funny. She tried to control herself, but she kept bursting out again in whoop after whoop. “You're under arrest,” she gasped at last, wiping her eyes and grinning. “Palmer Nifto, I am placing you under arrest.”

“Whatever for?” said Palmer innocently, spreading out his hands. He pulled Homer Kelly forward. “May I introduce my attorney?”

“My God, Nifto, I'm not your attorney,” whispered Homer.

“Mr. Kelly will insist upon a written certificate of arrest, naming the law we have violated. Right, Mr. Kelly?”

“Oh, sure, sure,” mumbled Homer, looking at the woman officer in embarrassment, “you've got to have a warrant to arrest anybody.”

But she was whipping a pad of forms out of her pocket. “Disturbing the peace, that's one count. I'll think of some more in a minute.”

“Disturbing the peace? I'm not disturbing the peace.” Palmer turned to the row of sofas and spoke up loudly to the twelve occupants, who were sitting up and staring at the police sergeant. “We're simply sleeping, peacefully sleeping, that's all we're doing.” At once they flopped back down.

“You made me laugh, that's how you disturbed the peace.” The police officer giggled. “I probably woke up a bunch of people living around here.”

“Where?” Wide-eyed, Palmer gestured at the tombstones behind the iron fence. “In the cemetery?”

It was the funniest thing to appear on the local television news in years. Of course Palmer had to load up his sofas again, and take them back to the Furniture Bank, but he had made his point. The homeless people of Cambridge were once more the center of attention.

And that afternoon their fame attracted the defectors back. By four o'clock there were eighty-one campers at Harvard Towers. The good women of the Congregational church had to make a second vat of split-pea soup, and rush over to Sage's to get more eggs for the cornbread. The loyal kids from Phillips Brooks House turned out batch after batch of cookies.

“Oh, God, I keep burning them,” said Millie, the idealistic freshman, yanking another tin out of the oven and slapping it down on the counter.

“Just scrape off the black,” said Brad, the idealistic sophomore.

That evening, back home in Concord, Homer and Mary turned on the news to see if Palmer Nifto had succeeded in attracting national publicity. Oh, yes, he had. There he was, and there were the sofas with their wheels, and there was the anchorwoman announcing that in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where these homeless people were living in tents out-of-doors, the temperature was about to plummet to ten degrees below zero.

The next piece of news was also of flabbergasting interest.

“General Confection,” said the anchorwoman, “the manufacturer of many popular brands of candies and candy bars, is rushing to take off grocers' shelves the product believed to have caused the death of Thomas Cobb of Cambridge, Massachusetts. Arsenate of lead was found in Cobb's stomach, which otherwise contained only the ingredients of a candy bar called Tastychox. Some malicious person is thought to have injected the bar with this highly toxic substance. No other illnesses connected with Tastychox have been reported, but shoppers are warned to avoid it.”

“A candy bar!” said Homer. “Of course, I should have guessed. All that chocolate and cocoa powder and so on. Naturally, it was a candy bar.” He looked at his wife in triumph. “So it was murder, all right, just as I thought. Somebody injected Tom's candy bar with arsenate of lead. What the hell for? What did anybody have against him? Mary, dear, for Christ's sake, what's the matter? You're white as a sheet.”

“Homer, oh, Homer.” Mary jumped to her feet, but she was too weak to stand up. Sinking back in her chair, she tried to explain it. She could only tell it in short bursts, how Tom had offered her his candy bar, how he had taken it out of his pocket and held it out to her only an hour or two before he fell writhing to the floor of the stage in Sanders Theatre. If she had accepted it, if she had not already used up her appetite on a liverwurst sandwich and a couple of sugary doughnuts,
she
was the one who would have died in anguish on the operating table. “Oh, Homer.”

Homer said nothing, he merely swept her up and held her in his arms.

G
retchen Milligan had still not come back to Bright Day. Her counselor went out in the cold to look for her at Harvard Towers and in the shelters at University Lutheran and Central Square, but no one knew where Gretchen was.

The counselor was darkly pessimistic. “Don't blame me,” she said to the other social workers at Bright Day when she got back and climbed the steep steps to the front door and warmed her cold fingers around a mug of hot coffee. “Don't blame me if we have a dead mother and a stillborn child on our hands. What else can I do?”

CHAPTER 30

O then bespoke Joseph
,

With answer most unkind
,

“
Let him pluck thee a cherry

That brought thee now with child
.”

“The Cherry Tree Carol”

A
rlo Field came running back to the astronomy lab in the middle of the hilarious encounter between the Cambridge Police Department and Palmer Nifto. Something more important was on Arlo's mind.

It was Friday, December twenty-second, the shortest day of the year. He had an appointment with his camera. He wanted to be on hand at eight-thirty in the morning to make sure it took its last picture of the sun, the image that would appear on the film at the very lowest point of the curve of the analemma. Then he would remove the filter and set the timer to take a picture later on in normal light, to give foreground to the forty-four bright suns in the dark sky—a view of the tower of Memorial Hall in the normal sunshine of afternoon. Thank God, it was a clear day.

Arlo was early enough in the astronomy lab to have time on his hands. He ambled around the room staring at the floor, thinking about sofas, shutter speeds, solar flares, and Sarah Bailey. It wasn't until he had looked at the marks on the floor three times that he at last really saw them.

The legs of the tripod had been moved. They were taped to the floor, but they were not on the marks.

Alarmed, enraged, he dropped to his knees, tore off the tape, moved the camera back, and shifted it by small degrees until the little scope showed the northeastern geegaw on the top of the Mem Hall tower. Then he taped the tripod down again.

Who the hell would do a thing like that? God, it couldn't have been Chickie Pickett? Chickie was pretty wild, but she really cared about the analemma project. It couldn't have been Chickie.

A lot of other students hung around the lab, and some of them were pretty nutty.

Arlo stood up and stared thoughtfully at the camera.
Let us now consider Harley Finch
. Harley had nearly knocked the camera down once already, because he was clumsy. But this dirty trick wasn't mere clumsiness. Someone had used great care in pulling off the old tape and fastening the legs down in the wrong places. Harley was the only person with a reason for discrediting the work of Arlo Field. He'd be ensuring his own academic survival.

Grimly Arlo looked at his watch. There was still half an hour to kill before the last exposure of the sun at eight-thirty. Bored, he went out on the terrace and leaned against the railing, looking out over the city of Cambridge and Harvard University. Directly below him was Palmer Nifto's tent city of homeless people. Some of them were straggling back from the sofa caper in Harvard Square. Yes, there was Nifto, walking briskly in the direction of his command center with a cameraman in tow.

Then Arlo gripped the railing and leaned over a little farther to stare at Sarah and Morgan Bailey. They were walking quickly along Kirkland Street, approaching the north door of Memorial Hall.

Arlo ran into the lab for a pair of high-powered field glasses, then ran back to the railing and aimed them at Sarah.

As usual she was rosy and broad and beautiful, with that mop of tangled hair into which Arlo longed to plunge his fingers. But her eyes were cast down. Why did she look that way? If it weren't absurd to think it of Sarah Bailey, he would say she was frightened.

He shifted the glasses to her husband. Morgan's eyes were bright, but his face was pale with a more-than-winter paleness. In the last week Arlo had made an effort to befriend Morgan Bailey, and for a while it had worked. Morgan had his birds and Arlo his sun and stars, and each had tried to take an interest in the other's profession. But lately Morgan had seemed too absorbed in some silent business of his own to exchange small talk with Arlo Field.

And anyway—Arlo had to admit it to himself—his only reason for getting to know Morgan had been to get closer to his wife. Quickly, before she disappeared inside Mem Hall, Arlo shifted the glasses back to Sarah's face. At once it jumped up at him, and Arlo's heart jumped with it. With a wry grin, he recognized the fatal symptoms. Goddamnit, he was in love again.

Greedily he stared at Sarah as she began climbing the steps with Morgan. Then, to his dismay, she turned her head and glanced upward. She was looking straight at him through the lenses of the glasses. And, oh, God, so was Morgan. And Morgan's pale face was red with anger. His lips were moving, he was saying something, something furious, but there was no giant ear trumpet to amplify the sound, as the field glasses had magnified the sight.

At once Arlo let the glasses drop around his neck. Now Sarah and Morgan were only toy figures opening a faraway door and disappearing inside.

Trembling, Arlo went back into the lab, so agitated that he forgot to lock the glass door. He couldn't get Sarah's glance of recognition out of his mind. Had there been a look of appeal on her face? Or was his imagination working overtime?

With an effort he put her out of his mind, because it was almost eight-thirty, time for the last exposure of his camera to the sun. Would the shutter open on schedule, or had the digital alarm been monkeyed with too? If so, he'd have to depress the button by hand.

He went to the camera and watched the green numbers on the clock change from 8:25 to 8:30.
Good
—there it was, the soft buzzing click. The last solar image had been recorded. With his tongue between his teeth Arlo delicately removed the filter, changed the exposure setting, and set the timer for three o'clock. Tonight he'd try to get back here and take a look at his year's work.