A Child's Garden of Death (3 page)

In a few minutes the officer was back at the car. “Your name is Wentworth, and you say you own this car.”

“Of course.”

“Any identification?”

“I told you, I must have left my wallet at home.”

“Get out of the car.”

“What?”

The revolver pointed directly at Lyon's nose. With his free hand the trooper opened the car door. “Get out.” All friendliness and politeness were gone from his voice. “Out!”

Lyon slowly stepped from the car; the trooper stepped back, revolver still pointing. “What is this?” Lyon asked.

“Around. Brace.” The trooper's free hand grasped Lyon's elbow and spun him toward the car. “Hands on the roof.”

Lyon placed his palms on the roof of the car and leaned forward. He felt the trooper's brisk hands run across his body. My God! He was frisking him. He turned. “What in hell is this?”

“Back around.” Lyon turned back to the roof of the car. “Connecticut marker number DC 7120 is registered to a Mr. Antony Horton of Saybrook.”

“That's crazy. This is my car.”

“A man of your age jumping a sports car. That's kid stuff.”

On the small rear seat of the car Lyon could see several leather camera cases, light meters and several parcels that definitely weren't his. He had the wrong car. Simultaneously he and the trooper half-turned as a line of four Murphysville cruisers braked to a stop in front of the sports car. Chief Rocco Herbert unwound from the rear car and walked slowly back toward Lyon.

“Need help?” the Chief asked the trooper.

“A hot car, Chief. But he's clean. I'll book him at the Middle-town Barracks.”

“A forty-year-old man jumping a sports car. That's kid stuff,” Rocco said.

“That's what I told him, sir. He must be a sickie.”

“No doubt about it.”

“Damn it all, Rocco. Tell this joker who I am.”

“Brace, mister.” The young trooper shoved him against the side of the car.

“Is that your car?” Rocco asked.

“Well, no. But it looks like mine.”

“Grand Theft—Auto will get you two to five,” Rocco said, and Lyon could see the twitch of one cheek as the Chief bit his lip. “However,” he continued, “I might make a deal.”

“Damn it all, Rocco, no deal, no blackmail.”

The trooper clacked a handcuff around Lyon's right wrist and reached for the other wrist. Lyon heard the snuff of retained laughter from the circle of police officers surrounding him, and then the cackle of Rocco Herbert as he leaned against the car in a paroxysm of gargantuan giggles.

Lyon's car pulled to a stop between the cruisers, and a very irate police photographer rushed over to examine his car.

“I know him,” the Chief said to the trooper. “He's nuts, but harmless. Wrong car—mistake.”

“He was, speeding, sir.”

“Write him on that. He's a menace on the highways,” Rocco said.

“Very funny,” Lyon said as the trooper undid the handcuff and the photographer handed him his car key. “Terribly funny.”

“I thought so,” Rocco said as he went back to his cruiser. “See you Monday.”

Nutmeg Hill was built in 1780, some said by a Black Irishman who had made his fortune in the Triangle Trade. For 150 years after the death of its builder the house had been the home of a farming family who scrabbled a living from the marginal soil until younger heads left the land to make rifles and cannons in the Connecticut arms factories.

Lyon and Beatrice found it accidentally, the land overgrown, the house deathlike in its vacancy, only a few years from utter devastation by the elements and adventuresome young boys. With the first book royalties and an inheritance from Beatrice's father, they had bought the house and its adjoining hundred acres. The restoration had been expensive, and Lyon mentally visualized each room as completely consuming the royalties of a book. The study was labeled the “Monster on the Mantel,” and consequently housed, on the mantel, several of the large Wobbly dolls caricatured by a famous toymaker after the monster of the book.

The car spewed gravel from its rear wheels as he braked hastily in front of the house. Menace on the highways, he thought angrily to himself as he slammed the car door and stomped up the stairs. Grand Theft—Auto, that overgrown fuzz … he lurched even more angrily into his study and poured a triple finger of dry sack sherry.

The warming glow of sherry made him smile at himself. He poured another and contemplated the sacrilege of drinking good wine in hasty fashion, and then he laughed. He laughed at Rocco and he laughed at himself.

Sitting at the desk with his third sherry, he looked down at the partially completed manuscript of “Cat in the Capitol.” The work seemed far away, the wiles and ways of feline protagonists very distant and at this bleak moment much too fey.

The desk faced the window, and through the large, multipaned glass he could see the winding Connecticut River below the house. At this point the river was wooded on both shores, heading toward Old Saybrook and Long Island Sound. Over the hill and across the river, beyond the ridge, not too distant as a bird flies … was the grave site.

He wouldn't think about it. After all, in a certain sense the view from the window housed many long-forgotten graves. Indians, Colonials, hardworking farmers. Countless lives had disappeared into the hard New England soil and traprock ridges of this land.

He thought that the Jewish myth of the seven just men was an excellent concept. Seven men of each generation bore the sufferings of mankind. A lovely thought allowing for a survival and compartmentalization. It was impossible to assimilate the suffering of mankind throughout the world. The mere bulk led to initial indignation which dissipated to lethargy. He had always imagined that Rocco Herbert had a capacity for indignation in sufficient quantity to allow him to view each case as a personal cause, as a vendetta against transgressors; and this constellation allowed a somewhat gentle man to operate successfully throughout most of his life in a milieu of potential violence. And how Rocco fought to hide these qualities.

Lyon Wentworth swiveled his chair and visually caressed the Wobblies on the mantel. The Wobblies, terrible of visage, were a cross between Gothic gargoyle and yeti. Their menace, by some miracle of toymaking, was gentle, as if they spoke to children with a quiet voice that said, “See, I'm not so terrible, and if I'm not, then perhaps the other monsters of life aren't.” He was fascinated with his monsters, and wondered about the toymaker who created them.

The bottle of sherry across the room shimmered and he deliberated momentarily on the possibility of becoming pleasantly sloshed. The few he'd just had would make it difficult to work effectively.… Rocco, it's your fault, he thought. He should never have made the trip to the grave.

It was time to pull the room around him in a protective mantle, roll the rock against the cave entrance and immerse himself in the half-completed cat character. The phone rang. He had meant to shut it off.

“Hello, Wentworth here.”

“
WHERE THE HELL YOU BEEN
,
LYON
?
BEEN TRYING TO GET YOU HALF THE DAY
.”

Over the past two years his wife Beatrice had been slowly going deaf, and as sometimes happens with hearing impairments she compensated incorrectly by raising her voice. He would really have to convince her that she did have a slight problem—not fatal to her career, but disconcerting. He held the phone several inches from his ear. “Hi, Bea. Thought you'd be on your way home now.”

“
THAT'S WHY I'M CALLING
,” she bellowed, and he moved the phone a little farther away. In the background he could hear the clatter of voices in the Capitol corridors and knew she was probably calling from the Party caucus room, Connecticut probably being one of the few states in the Union whose legislators did not have private offices. “Going to be late,” she continued.

“I'll wait and eat with you,” he said.

“No, never mind. I'll grab something here. Have a very important meeting tonight with the welfare mothers. Watch it on TV.”

“I'll turn it on.”

“How's the work coming?” she asked.

“Terrible, that's why I went out and got laid this afternoon.”

“That's nice,” she yelled in return. “Keep it going.”

She was engaged in conversation with a fellow legislator before the phone hit the cradle, and he felt a twinge of guilt for the small and slightly cruel practical joke he'd played on his wife. He considered her his tentacle to life, the outward one, the practical one with an oar dipped in midstream while he immersed himself in his study to create benign monsters. They both knew that friends and enemies often referred to them as Mutt and Jeff. They didn't care and were comfortable in their relationship.

Lyon also knew that his wife was becoming a political power in the state. She was a spokesperson (as she said) for welfare groups, feminists, and oddly enough some strange anti-tax groups. It was a juggling of ideals and political awareness that she somehow seemed to be able to keep going without fault and which had resulted in her election to two terms in the State House and one in the State Senate. They were considering her for Lieutenant-Governor in the next election—at least that's what some of the columnists said—but, knowing his wife, Lyon felt that she would probably take some strong stand on an issue before the convention and alienate herself from supporters.

It was dark, and he turned on the desk lamp with the realization that he hadn't eaten. He drank another sherry and made a chicken sandwich in the kitchen before returning to his desk to reread his notes.

With ivory glow they danced with the Wobblies, and he didn't know who they were.

Wobblies—monsters large and reminiscent of Rocco Herbert—grinned through whiskered snouts and danced in short leaps, while two porcelain figures, translucent and shining in the soft glow of the desk lamp, danced with delicate feet and grinned vacantly at him. The bonehand of the smallest stretched outward with invitation and command. He recoiled from the gesture and threw himself backwards in the chair.

Wobblies grinned again and joined furry hands with the jubilant chorus of dancing bones.

Lyon's hands gripped the chair arms in refusal of the beckoning invitation to join the figures.

He willed the Wobblies back to the mantel. Willed them and they reluctantly returned to their habitat. But they stood with curled feet and shook joyfully with malevolent grins as the knocking dance of the boned figures continued.

Room gone. His daughter stood before him—her first bike held firmly with that look of wonderment children have. “I can already ride a two-wheeler,” she said. “I don't need training wheels.”

He watched as she rode down the drive, and then turned to go into the house at the Green and distantly heard the ringing of the bell.

They were ringing the telephone in strange sequences. He awoke, his head bent forward over the desk, his neck cricked, the half-eaten sandwich in the plate before him. He picked up the phone.

“Lyon,” Rocco's quiet voice said.

“Rocco, you Goddamn son-of-a-bitchin' fat pig, go to hell!” He slammed the phone back on the receiver and caught his thumb. He grimaced and sucked on the hurt fingernail as the phone rang again.

“What do you have?” Lyon asked as he sucked on his nail again.

“Hardly anything. One male, height at a probable five three, weight one hundred and four. One mature female, height five feet, weight one oh five. Both adults in the early or mid-thirties. One female child, age eight, weight sixty pounds. As we figured, they'd been in that pit thirty years. No other usable evidence from the site. Negative on the doll and missing persons.”

“That's all?”

“Odd dental work on the adult male. I'll try and have something more on that tomorrow.”

“That could help.”

“Any ideas?”

“No.”

“Thanks, Lyon. 'Preciate it.” The Chief hung up.

Lyon Wentworth stared down at the silent phone as his wife's car drove quickly up the graveled drive. Turning to meet her he saw that the boned dream figures had disappeared and the Wobblies sat in silent contemplation on the mantel, and he shook his head in resignation.

Two

Beatrice Wentworth glared at her husband as she entered the barn. Her look indicated less malice than a frowning puzzlement that transmitted itself to an impatient kick. She was a tallish, slight woman with close-cropped hair and darting energetic eyes. Her trim figure, now in tight slacks and fitted shirt, was slender and well proportioned.

“
YOU AREN
'
T GOING TO RUIN ANOTHER SUNDAY BY GOING UP IN THAT THING
?” she asked with arms akimbo as Lyon carried equipment from the barn.

“Only a short flight,” he replied, almost dropping the propane burner.

“The last time you said that, I had to pick you up on the Boston Commons.”

“I couldn't help it—the wind shifted.”

“Finish your book so we can remodel the kitchen.”

“I will, I will,” he puffed as he dollied the bag through the barn's double doors and over to the pulley rig Rocco had helped him design and build. “Will you follow me?” he asked her.

“I had better,” she replied. “If I hadn't that time you blew over the Sound, you'd probably have landed in the Azores.”

“Good. How about giving me a hand?”

With Bea's help and the aid of Rocco's two-by-four network and pulley system, Lyon was able to position the balloon bag and light the propane burner. Slowly the bag began to fill with hot air, its creased folds starting to bend outward and take shape.

They stood back from the filling balloon, occasionally darting up to unfold some material so it would fill properly. Bea put her arms around him and spoke in a tone lower than he'd heard in weeks.