I looked at the chauffeur. “I suppose it’s too late to back out?”
“Sorry, pal,” he said. “Orders.”
I nodded. You didn’t contradict a man like Mr. Smith. Leaning heavily on my walking stick, I limped after Aunt Peck.
She was a talker — I’ll say that much for her. As I sat at the kitchen table and worked on a slab of hot-from-the-oven apple pie topped with freshly whipped cream, she kept up a nonstop monologue about everything under the sun, except angelic visitors: the farm, her late husband Joshua, the city kids who had just moved in next door.
“City kids?” I prompted. New neighbors explained all the cardboard boxes out for trash pickup.
“Nick and Debby,” she said. “You’ll meet them tomorrow. I always invite neighbors over for Saturday dinner. It makes things a little less lonely. Of course, now that you’re here...”
I nodded encouragingly. “Have they been here long, Nick and Debby?”
“Oh, a bit over a month, I guess. Maybe two.”
“Ah.” I ate my last bite of pie. My hands kept shaking, but Aunt Peck either didn’t notice or marked it down to my accident.
How closely did the new neighbors’ arrival coincide with the disturbances? Could they be trying to scare her off her land? Pennsylvania had its share of natural resources... what could make her land valuable enough to steal? Oil, perhaps?
“I was wondering,” I said, wiping my mouth carefully on a napkin, “if you have well water?”
“Of course. Why?”
“In the late 1800s, my many-times-great-grandfather had a farm in Pennsylvania. He gave up on it and moved to Ohio because every time he tried to dig a well, it filled up with black oily stuff.”
She laughed; everyone who heard it always did. According to family legend, it had really happened. And Marilyn Monroe used to babysit my father and uncle too, before she got famous.
Aunt Peck said, “I bet your family has been kicking themselves ever since automobiles came along!”
“Yes.” I shook my head ruefully. “I guess you don’t have that problem here, though.”
“Oil companies poked around in ’75 or ’76, doing all sorts of surveys, but apparently there’s nothing under Hellersville but water.”
Strike one theory.
“Surely the town has something going for it...” I said. “Mines? Silver? Gold?”
“Well, there used to be a quarry. They made gravel, I think, but then it filled with water. It’s been a lake for nearly fifty years now. All Hellersville produces is produce.” She gave a wink. “But wait till you taste my tomatoes; they’re as big as softballs and sweet as anything! And my watermelons!” She laughed heartily.
Strike a second theory. If the land had no intrinsic value, why would anyone want to scare her off her farm?
After I finished my pie, Aunt Peck offered to show me my room. She retrieved my bags from the hallway, where she had left them while we checked her pies, then skirted the narrow stairs (which I had been dreading) and headed down a wide hallway. The floorboards creaked loudly as we walked. No one would be able to sneak up on us during the night.
We reached a cluttered family room. The sofa, wingbacked chairs, and ottoman all had plastic over the upholstery. Books, curios, and photos crammed the built-in shelves and the standalone bookcases. A small TV sat next to the fireplace.
We passed through into another small hallway, then came to a small bedroom at the back of the house. It had one window, which looked out across fields stubbled from recently harvested corn. To the left, I saw the edge of her garden — tomato and pepper plants.
I nodded approvingly at the single bed with a white quilt and two fluffy pillows. It looked a lot like my bed back in Philadelphia. A threadbare oval rug, made of tiny triangles of randomly chosen fabric set in a spiral pattern, covered much of the floor. An oak dresser and a battered old armoire completed the furnishings.
As she set the bags on the bed, I straightened the pictures on the walls: three faded black-and-white photographs showing children standing in armylike formations before this same farmhouse. Smiling girls wore knee-length dresses with bows in their hair; boys wore short pants and shirts with buttons, their hair buzzed so close they almost looked bald. The men behind them all wore white shirts with dark ties, and the women wore plain dresses. Dates written in the lower corners said July 13, 1961, July 8, 1962, and July 14, 1963. They had to commemorate the family gatherings Mr. Smith had disliked so much.
That would make Smith one of the boys. I studied their faces, but couldn’t pick him out; nearly identical clothes, haircuts, and suntans made him blend in among the others. Smith’s father, though, stood out among the men — shorter and darker than the others, leaner, with a somewhat sinister look in his eyes. A younger, rougher version of Mr. Smith.
“You used to have a lot of guests,” I said to Aunt Peck. “Where did you put them all?”
“Oh, we put the boys in the barn — plenty of room in the hayloft — and the girls slept in the family room. We had six bedrooms upstairs for the adults.”
“I was an only child. It must have been great to have so many family members together.”
“Oh, it was wonderful.” She sighed, eyes distant. “Those were the days.” Then she brightened. “Do you want me to unpack your things?”
“No, thank you. I can manage. I try to be self-reliant.”
“My Joshua was the same way, God rest his soul.” She started back for the kitchen. “I’ll start supper. Give a holler if you need anything.”
“Thanks.”
I spent the next half hour unpacking. Everything Mr. Smith had purchased looked like it would fit me. With careful precision, I opened packages of socks and then refolded the contents, placing each garment neatly and precisely in the dresser drawers. Next, I meticulously removed all the tags from my new shirts and hung them in the armoire. Jeans didn’t need hangers, so I stacked them in the bottom.
Mindless activities let my racing mind slow down. For a few minutes, I could forget Aunt Peck’s problems and concentrate solely on the here and now.
The last things in the suitcase turned out to be a tiny cell phone and a small but powerful flashlight, batteries already installed. I turned on the phone and checked the list of numbers. Speed-dial had been preprogrammed with two numbers:
Smith... 001
Fast help... 002
Smith really had thought of everything. I switched it off and put both phone and flashlight in the front of my sock drawer.
Next, I opened the garment bag. My new suit turned out to be a Joseph Abboud original, gray with pinstripes, one hundred percent wool — practical and conservative enough not to stand out in a rural farming community. Mr. Smith had good taste, if nothing else. I hung it up, then put my bags on top of the armoire. I made one last pass over the room, straightening the dresser slightly, lowering the shade so it covered the window latch, and picking a few bits of lint from the bed’s white quilt.
Finally, I opened the window and peered out. Now I could see the whole of Aunt Peck’s garden, and I had to admit it was impressive: a rectangle perhaps thirty feet long and sixty wide, enclosed with chicken wire and planted with peppers, tomatoes, pumpkins, and quite a few other vegetables I couldn’t identify at this distance. Other than the garden and a couple of shade trees, the land around the farmhouse had been cleared for more than two hundred yards in every direction. Nobody could sneak up on the house — or, having gotten here, escape unseen the way the last prowler had.
I made my way back toward the kitchen, straightening pictures along the way, examining rooms with greater attention. The books in the family room seemed to be a mix of espionage novels and religious nonfiction. Family photos showed Aunt Peck and a man I took to be Joshua with five children and in a variety of settings, from Disneyworld to Hershey Park. I committed the position of every item in every room to memory. If these alleged angels moved or made off with anything, I would notice.