The Paper Grail (44 page)

“Maybe she thinks you’re worth leaving with.”

It was another statement that struck Howard silent. And it was a strange statement, too, coming from his aunt. But Aunt Edith,
he was finding, often said just what she meant. He shrugged. “I can’t leave yet,” he said. “There’s something that’s only half done.”

“What is it?”

“I’m not sure what it is, but I can feel it. You know—this thing with old Graham …”

“What
thing
, Howard? Can you tell me? You don’t know what you’re talking about, do you?”

He shook his head. The saw started up outside again, and Howard could hear his uncle tossing boards around.

“Maybe that’s good,” she said. “Maybe that’s some kind of charm. Take care of my daughter, though. She’s not as tough as she thinks she is. We all lean on her.” Aunt Edith smiled proudly then, and in that moment her face softened and she looked like Sylvia. Then the saw blade shrieked outside and the saw abruptly stopped.

“
Chingatha
!” Uncle Roy shouted, and the lines of worry and care and work reappeared in Aunt Edith’s face. They both looked out the back window, where Uncle Roy wrenched at a board that was cocked up into the jammed saw blade.

“I don’t see any blood,” Aunt Edith said, pushing the window open. “What happened?”

“Nothing,” Uncle Roy said, hammering at the piece of wood with his fist now.

“Turn the saw off, then. Watch out it doesn’t come on while you’re working with it.”

“Overload switch shut down. It
can’t
come on. Damn if,” he shouted, looking around for something to hit it with and picking up a short length of two-by-four. His eyes were wide, as if he were going to show the jammed board a thing or two, and he smashed the two-by-four against the board, driving it down and out of the saw blade, denting and splitting the wood in the process. Once out of the blade, the board tumbled off the saw table onto the ground, and Uncle Roy slammed away at it another three or four times for good measure, splintering the board into rubbish. He stood over it, legs spread, his stomach heaving with exertion. Then he straightened up and yanked on his suspenders, kicking the pieces of board out of the way.

Aunt Edith still stared out of the open window, her hand over her mouth.

Uncle Roy gaped back in at her. “Had to kill the patient,” he said. Then he felt around under the saw motor until he found the overload button. The saw whined and took off, and he reached
up and shut it down with the on-off switch. “Sometimes you have to beat the bastards up,” he said.

Aunt Edith stayed silent, but she gave Howard a look. He realized that he hadn’t talked half enough to her. It was a shame that they couldn’t have sat down over coffee and really chewed things over, gotten to know each other. There were a hundred questions he would have liked to ask her, about her and Mr. Jimmers, about Sylvia’s father, about the spirit museum and their lives on the north coast. Uncle Roy was just then coming in at the door, though, and it was too late. It would have to wait.

On the back corner of the kitchen cabinet sat a ceramic Humpty Dumpty—exactly like the one that had fallen and broken in the earthquake. “Hey,” Howard said. “Another one.” He pointed at it, and Aunt Edith picked it up.

“Same one,” she said. “Sylvia went to work on it with a tube of glue. She’s good with her hands—good at fine work. You can hardly see the cracks.”

Howard inspected it. “Just looks like cracks in the glaze, doesn’t it? I like that, actually—like old china in an antique shop. I like a bit of age in his face. He doesn’t look so smug.”

Aunt Edith smiled at him. “That’s our Sylvia. She has that effect on people sometimes.”

“She got that from her mother,” Uncle Roy said, kissing his wife on the cheek. Then he shrugged, threw his arms around her, bent her back clumsily, and kissed her on the lips. “Hah!” he said, straightening them both up. “Wonderful dinner last night, wasn’t it? Sylvia hit the nail on the head with that place.”

Aunt Edith smiled at Howard. “It was,” she said. “We don’t go out very often. When was the last time, Roy?”

“Back in eighty-three, wasn’t it? Remember, we went to that polka dive. I could dance back then.” He winked at Edith. “Dirty shame I had to go out last night, after we were through with dinner. Poor Bennet, he—”

“No need to lie,” Edith said. “Howard’s told me why you went out. There’ll be other nights.”

“By golly, you’re right.” Uncle Roy lit up, as if a momentous thought had just struck him. “There’s one later today, isn’t there?” He kissed Edith again. “Call me insatiable,” he said.

“Call you an old fool,” Edith told him, dusting the wood chips off the front of his shirt with her feather duster. She headed toward the door then. “I’ll just let you men talk shop. I’ve got cleaning to do while you two live the life of Riley.”

Uncle Roy watched her go. There was a look of longing in
his face. He sighed deeply. “Never underestimate the value of a wife,” he said. Recovering, he asked, “How’s the knee?” and poured the last of the cold coffee into his empty cup.

“Better, I think.”

“Sandwich?”

“Sure.” Howard realized that he was half starved.

Uncle Roy hauled out mustard and mayonnaise and lettuce and packages of bologna and American cheese. “Well,” he said, “we skinned out of it last night.” He went to the door and stuck his head out into the living room as if to see whether Aunt Edith was still around.

“What did you want the four hundred for?” Howard asked.

“Payola. I gave it to Mrs. Lamey.” He stopped squirting mustard onto his bread slice and looked steadily at Howard, who widened his eyes in bewilderment.

“I told the cop that Bennet and I had just come up from Petaluma, where we’d got a load of chicken manure for old Cal down in Albion. You remember Cal. I said he’d paid us off, along with money he owed us for six more loads. And then when I dropped Bennet off, I figured that even though it was late, I’d knock on Mrs. Lamey’s door and wake her up, in order to pay her overdue rent money. That way she could get the money into the bank tomorrow, which is today, of course. Anyway, I said that I couldn’t wake her up at first so I knocked harder, and she must have waked up out of a dream or something and thought there was a nut at the door.” Uncle Roy chuckled, layering meat and cheese onto the bread and smashing it all down with an inch of lettuce.

“So you gave
her
the four hundred?”

“Right there in front of the cop. Just handed it to her. Pissed her off, too.”

“Did they check the story, the chicken manure story?”

“Damned right they did. These hick cops aren’t stupid. They called Cal up and grilled him, right then and there. Used Mrs. Lamey’s phone. We’d got to him first, of course, right after you left. Iron-clad story.”

“How about the window? Did she accuse you of breaking the window?”

“Of course she did. But what was lying in the bushes outside? An ashtray. Someone had pretty clearly thrown it through earlier. Why? That’s the question I asked, right there on the spot. It was obvious that I hadn’t broken the window at all. Someone else had done it,
from inside the house
. When I knocked on the door
a piece had fallen out. She didn’t deny it. Not for a moment. She didn’t want cops snooping around there, getting suspicious. You should have seen her. Looked like something out of a nightmare. I’m pretty sure the cop wanted to lock her up on general principles. They don’t like being called out at midnight to deal with a batshit old woman when nothing’s wrong except she’s been offered four hundred dollars.

“Then of course there was the fish blood all over everything. I pointed that out before she had a chance to. ‘What the hell’s all this?” I said, stepping back. The cop looked hard at it. Stunk like a cannery. He thought it was some kind of creep joint. You could see it in his face. I reasoned with him, though—said she was an eccentric old woman but not dangerous. Luckily he didn’t know who she really was. She probably owns the mortgage to his house. Anyway, it blew over and he left without any trouble. Between her place and Bennet’s place, though, he was a confused man.”

Uncle Roy was smiling now, wolfing down big bites of sandwich and talking around them. He had won through again, pulled himself out of another scrape. His army of irregulars stretched down the coast, into Albion. The day had been full of victories, although it was unclear to Howard whether any of the battles had been decisive. “How about the three that walked home?” Howard asked.

“To hell with them. Maybe they got run over by a lumber truck. And say, that reminds me, thanks again for getting a jump on that barn lumber. I made out all right on it. Bought a little something for Edith and Sylvia and took Edith out to dinner with what was left over. Squandered the hell out of it.”

“Good for you. Sylvia showed me the sweater. She’s nuts about it.”

“She’s a good girl. Sees things clearly. She gets her good looks from her mother, but I’ve had a little bit of influence on the way she thinks. I’ve worked hard to knock some of the practicality out of her. What I’ve been doing out back is trying to clean up the scrap that’s left over. I figured to rip out another few feet of one-by-two, but it’s so warped it keeps binding the blade up. It’s firewood, I think.”

“That was my conclusion. We ought to chop it into lengths and stack it.”

Uncle Roy changed the subject, as if he’d gotten all the mileage out of the barn lumber he cared about. The practical business of turning it into firewood didn’t interest him. “I hated like hell to give Mrs. Deventer’s money to old Lamey last night, but what
could I do?” He shrugged, to show that he’d had no other option. “Anyway, I owe it to Mrs. Deventer now, especially after what I told Lou Gibb.”

Howard didn’t bother to question his logic, to ask what it was Uncle Roy owed himself and Aunt Edith.

Uncle Roy shoved down the rest of his sandwich and then washed his hands at the sink. “Time to meet Bennet down to the harbor. What are you up to?”

“I thought I’d pay a visit to Jimmers’,” Howard said.

“He won’t be there. It’s his town day.”

Howard nodded. “I know.”

Uncle Roy shrugged. “Do what you have to.”

24

“W
E’RE
certain he’s not home, then?” Howard watched the ocean out the window as they drove south. The swell had come up considerably since last night, and the tide was higher than he would have liked. It looked as if he’d be getting wet again if they dawdled.

“Trust me. He comes up to town, up to the Safeway, once a week to buy supplies, and then he’ll eat a late lunch down at the harbor. You can set your watch by it. He won’t be home until dark. It’s now or wait till next week, though, because if we show up while he’s home, he won’t let you anywhere near that passage. He’ll thank you for bringing his clothes back and try to interest you in UFO sightings or disappearing rabbits or something. He’ll be on his guard now, especially since the shed was stolen.”

The day was beautiful—sunny and dry, almost warm. Howard wished they were simply going down to the beach for a picnic. There wasn’t time for that sort of pleasure, though—maybe. Mr. Jimmers would be home before dark, carrying his bags of groceries. It wouldn’t do to be confronted in the living room or to be trapped down on the beach and have to swim around the point again, especially if they were carrying the sketch.

They passed the driveway slowly, not turning off. Howard craned his neck to look back down toward the house, trying to catch a glimpse of Jimmers’ car, just in case he hadn’t made the usual Wednesday trip. He couldn’t see anything at all, the car included. A quarter mile south, Sylvia pulled off at a turnout and cut the engine, and without waiting another moment they were out and walking back up the road just as fast as Howard could manage it. He felt almost spry, but he carried his cane in case he’d need it in the steep passage—and partly, he had to admit, out of superstition. He still didn’t want to be without it. At the mouth of the driveway they held up, making sure there was no one out and about, and then slipped across and started down in the shadow of the woods.

For once, Howard thought, they could have used a little fog, if only to cover up all this breaking and entering. Abruptly he felt a twinge of doubt, but he shooed it out of his head like a pigeon out of the rafters. What he was going to steal didn’t belong to Mr. Jimmers, and neither did the house he and Sylvia were about to break into. Both of them belonged to a dead man who had summoned Howard north, it seemed, to accomplish just such feats as this.

Jimmers’ car was indeed gone, and the place was deserted. Where the shed used to be, out on the meadow, there was a rectangle of moldery-looking dead grass and dirt with a few stalky tendrils of Bermuda grass growing up through it. The ground was broken where the comers of the wooden skids had been yanked around, and there were four rusty old bottle jacks left behind that were still lying there in the dirt. It looked as if someone had been surprised in the middle of the theft and had to run for it. They had probably jacked up the comers enough to back the lift gate under the skids, then winched it forward onto the truck bed while they were rolling back up the highway.