“But then more bills came in. Kessler may have gone to McIntyre again, I don’t know. We do know that he became suspicious. He took the trouble to copy the fuel bills and conceal them among his own papers. Somewhere along the line he must have put two and two together and decided to see for himself. He loved the outdoors, and the possibility of illegal dumping of toxic waste would have been anathema to him. So he took the cabin, but before he had a chance to nose around, he got taken out.”
“But,” said Kessler, “how did they get to him so fast?”
I shrugged. “He must have slipped up, not realizing the full extent of the danger he was in. He may have mentioned to someone at work where he was going. Word got back to McIntyre, who panicked and called the organization in Jersey.”
Gilliat shook his head. “Clumsy way to do it. A fishing accident would have been neater.” He glanced at Kessler to see if he had offended him.
“Who knows, maybe they figured a bomb would put the cops off the track by suggesting a shady past, or a case of mistaken identity, which in fact it did.” Floyd started gathering up the dishes.
“Say, Floyd,” I said. “You did such a bang-up job on that logic puzzle, I was wondering if you’d help me out with another one.”
“Certainly, Charles. What is it?”
“Well, there are these two airplanes: Airplane A and Airplane B—”
Summer Evil
by Nora H. Caplan
The drive, almost obscured by flanking bridal wreath, lilacs, and forsythia, followed one boundary line of the property to a stone building that had once been a barn. Between that and the house was a boxwood hedge pruned to a height of six feet.
The house was built in the early 1830’s. It was a small, two story cottage of red brick with a slate roof and huge central chimney. Weathered green shutters framed the windows and recessed front door. Beyond the swell of pin oaks and pines sheltering the site lay Sugar Loaf Mountain. And beyond that, a hazy suggestion of the Catoctin range.
From the moment they first saw the house, Phyllis had a watchful feeling about it. As if she expected some major obstacle to prevent their buying it. But the price was incredibly within their means; Ben had no objection to driving thirty-five miles in to Washington; and the county school Kate would attend had a fine reputation.
One night shortly after they’d moved in, Phyllis and Ben were sitting on the steps of the back porch, watching Kate gather grass for a jarful of lightning bugs, her bangs damp with concentration. The sun had almost gone down, and there was a faint mist rising from the creek that crossed the back of their land. The air seemed to be layered with both warmth and coolness, pungent with sweet grass and pennyroyal.
“I’d feel a lot easier in my mind,” Phyllis said to Ben, “if we’d discover even one thing wrong about all this. People like us just don’t find one-hundred-twenty-five-year-old homes in perfect condition for twenty-three thousand.”
Ben folded the sports page and leaned back against her knees. “It’s pretty far out here, and most families wouldn’t consider a two bedroom house.” Then he added dryly, “Besides, I’ve never liked the way old houses smell. I noticed it about this one, too, right off.”
“I’ve told you a hundred times, it’s the boxwood. That’s what the smell is, not the house, darling. Anyway, you’ll have to get used to it. I have absolutely no intention of getting rid of that hedge. Mrs. Gastell said it’s as old as the house.”
Ben grinned as he turned and looked up at her. “Then would you at least trust me to spray it? There are spiderwebs all over the stuff.”
“You’d better check with that nurseryman first, just to be sure. What’s his name...” Phyllis pulled a letter from the pocket of her jamaicas and glanced through it. “Newton. He’s just this side of the bridge in Gaithersburg.”
“Who’s the letter from? The old lady?” Phyllis nodded. “What’d she have to say?”
“Oh, nothing much. Just that she’s getting settled, and she thinks she’ll like Florida. Every other word is about her granddaughter. I guess the real reason she wrote was to remind us to put in a new furnace filter this fall. A few other things like that.” Phyllis frowned. “There’s a part here at the end I couldn’t quite figure out.”
She handed Ben the letter.
He scanned the page and then handed it back. “What’s so mysterious about this? All old people take a proprietary air about everybody else’s kid. Personally, I don’t know why she’s so worried about the creek. It’s not more than a foot deep. There’s no danger of Kate’s getting drowned. And I haven’t seen any snakes down there — not up to now, I haven’t.”
“Well, it’s not only what she said in the letter. It’s the way she’s acted about Kate since she saw her. Almost as if she wouldn’t have sold the house to us if she’d known we had a child. But I’m sure I mentioned Kate to her the first time we came out with the agent.”
Ben lit a cigarette. “Maybe she thought Katie would tear up the place.”
“No, it wasn’t that. In fact, several times I told her how we’ve taken Kate to all kinds of museums and historic homes, and how she’s always been careful with valuable old things. But Mrs. Gastell hardly paid any attention at all to me. She kept saying Katie shouldn’t be allowed to wander all over the place by herself.”
Ben shrugged. “Mrs. Gastell’s seventy years old. People her age think we give our kids too much freedom. That’s all she meant.”
Their daughter had abandoned the lightning bugs and was now making hollyhock dolls, lining them chorus-fashion across the brick path to the grape arbor. Her shorts were grass-stained and the soles of her bare feet were already seasoned a greenish-rust. Ben reflected on her a moment and then he said, “I guess it will be hard on Katie, being alone so much now. It might be a good idea to get acquainted pretty soon with the people around here.”
Phyllis leaned her elbows on his shoulders. “That’s the trouble. Nobody on this road has children her age. But it’s only six weeks until school starts. And in the meantime, there’s plenty around here to keep her occupied. The two of us can start all kinds of projects. I can’t describe what a wonderful feeling it is, not to have people running in for coffee all day long or the phone ringing every ten minutes. Everybody knows this is a toll call, thank goodness. Maybe now I can start on the book.”
Ben stood up abruptly. “No, you don’t. Not after what you went through with that last story. Remember, you promised me you wouldn’t do a thing for the rest of the summer.”
She took his hand. “I didn’t mean anytime soon. I only meant now that we’ve moved. I promise not to write a word until we’re all settled and Kate’s in school.” She called to the child, “I’m going to start your bath now, so don’t be long.”
“In a minute,” Kate said automatically. “Daddy, come here. I made seven pink ones with white hats, and seven white ones with pink hats, and...”
Phyllis smiled and went into the kitchen. She turned on the brass lamp over the round pine table. The planked floor gleamed with a fresh coat of wax. It was a low ceilinged room, full of early morning sunshine and pine-shaded in the afternoon. Women years before her had stood at her window and cleaned berries, kneaded bread, stamped butter with a thistle-patterned mold. Perhaps the room had given them moments of completeness, as it gave her now when she poured milk into a brown earthenware pitcher and set it beside a bowl of tawny nasturtiums.
Then, as she was slightly bent over the table, one hand on the pitcher, Phyllis had the sensation that this room, the whole house, had an inexplicable fullness. That the very atmosphere had absorbed a century and a half of other lives. It reminded her of an incredible camera she had once read about — one that recorded, through heat radiations, images from the past, that were of course invisible to the naked eye. There was something about this house that seemed to retain, at times even emanate, certain... presences. And it was not a feeling that came from any conscious attempt to visualize previous occupants. Somehow this thought disturbed her.