Back at the parking lot, Felix said, “Welcome to crash at my pad, long as you want.”
“No, that’s all right,” I said. “I’ll stay at the Lafayette to start, until my bank account gets drained.”
“What are you going to do tomorrow?”
“I’ll figure it out then,” I said.
For the next few days, I got into a routine of sorts. I would sleep soundly but without waking particularly refreshed, go downstairs to have an overpriced and over-caloried breakfast in the Lafayette House’s dining room, and then putter around in the morning on a variety of errands and cleanup. On the first day, I rented a Honda Pilot that had great legroom, so I was able to drive around even with my injured leg, which meant I could visit Diane every day. Kara was so happy to see me that at first she burst into tears.
“I can’t help it,” she said, as we stood next to Diane’s quiet form. “She’s breathing on her own, and sometimes her eyes open up, but she really isn’t responding. And if I don’t put more hours in at work, I’m going to get fired. So maybe you could sit with her some, so I can catch up on work. And… Jesus, Lewis, what happened to you?”
“Bee sting,” I said. “Bad reaction.”
“Lewis… ”
“Let’s just leave it like that for now. Look, what can I do?”
She wiped at her eyes. “Just sit with her, okay? Like you said, even in the deepest of comas, patients can hear what’s going on. So talk to her, or read to her.”
“I’ll run out of things to say in a while,” I said. “What kind of books does she like?”
“Classic mystery books. Like Agatha Christie. I always teased her about that, that she was bringing her work home with her when she cracked open one of those books. But she said she just enjoyed the plots and the detectives, except for that Belgian one.”
“Hercule Poirot.”
“Yeah,” Kara said. “Diane called him ‘that insufferable Belgian twit.’ So don’t pick up any of those.”
“I won’t.”
Before I left, I kissed Diane again on the forehead, and said, “Kara, by the way, you won’t need that Tyler cop sitting outside anymore.”
Her face looked puzzled. “What happened?”
“Time passed, that’s what.”
“Does that have something to do with your leg?”
I slowly walked toward the door. “Everything. Something. Nothing. Diane’s safe, that’s all that counts.”
So on the second day, I spent some time with Diane, just reading from Ten Little Indians, and about the second hour, I was startled when her head rolled to me and her eyes opened up. I dropped the book and stood over her, and her eyes rolled around, unfocused, and then she closed them.
I picked up the book and having lost my place, started reading again from the previous chapter.
I knew it didn’t make any difference, but I wished it had.
The day after that, I went to the Tyler Museum, a tiny wooden building set off a large oval lawn that was the Tyler Town Common, the place where its militia drilled back in the sixteen and seventeen hundreds, and what was now a nice park. The building is only open a few hours a week, and I was lucky in getting to one of those special hours when I arrived.
Larry Cannon, a retired shipworker from the Porter Naval Shipyard up the coast and the museum’s sole curator and volunteer, met me in the main room, which had a series of glass display cases that showed interesting bits and artifacts from Tyler and its beach from the early years right up to the time when Tyler was named an Official Bicentennial Community back in 1976.
Larry was in his late sixties, and even though he didn’t have to, he dressed up each time he was at the museum, with a dress shirt, bow tie, and gray slacks. He had a gray moustache and beard and wore reading glasses perched at the end of his nose. Besides running the museum, his other work consisted of traveling hither and yon, taking spectacular photographs of lighthouses.
He shook my hand as I got past the doors and said, “Damn, so sorry to hear about your house. I hear it was arson? True?”
“Unfortunately, very true.”
“Damn. Any idea who might have caused it?”
“A literary critic who doesn’t like my columns, I guess. The investigation is still continuing, according to the State Fire Marshal’s office.”
Larry folded his large leathery hands and leaned on a glass counter that held old coins and bills from the Revolutionary War period. “It was a hell of a shame, not only about your home, but about the history before it was converted into a house.”
“Which is why I’m here, Larry,” I said. “A couple of years back, we had a chat at the Tyler Town Days. You said that somewhere in the archives, you had some original blueprints and plans for my home, covering at least fifty years. I was hoping I could see them at some point.”
“You plan on rebuilding?”
“You know it,” I said.
Larry rubbed at his bristly beard. “I know we’ve got the plans. It’ll take some digging, but I can get them for you. But I got something else that might interest you. My brother-in-law Gavin, he’s in the home contractor business and specializes in old homes, old barns, stuff like that.”
“Go on.”
“Thing is, I know he keeps lumber he don’t use, and he’s got a christly big barn in Tyler Falls that’s full of planks and timbers that are up to a hundred years old. Some even older. It’ll be pricier than hell, but if you were wanting to do your remodeling job right, I could hook you up with him.”
I smiled. “That’s fantastic.”
Larry shook his head. “Again, I’ll warn you. It’ll be a right pricey job, to do it right.”
I headed for the door. “Pricey is fine. I want to do it right, and then some.”
On the third day after my return home, pricey was no longer fine.
Adrian Zimmerman was an eager young man with fine black slacks, long leather coat and leather briefcase, and a small digital camera that he used to take photos of my house and what was left of my Ford Explorer. His hair was light blond and he shook his head a lot while walking around the rubble, and he looked like he had bought his first razor blade a month ago. He was a claims agent for the insurance company that covered both my home and car, and when he was done, we went back up to his Buick, where he breathed on his hands and rubbed them together.
“Mister Cole, it’s obvious you’ve suffered a tremendous loss, but I’m afraid we can’t do anything for you at the present time.”
I kept a pleasant smile on my face that didn’t match my words. “And why the hell not?”
“It’s out of my hands, really, and the local office. Your case has been bumped up to regional. You see, preliminary investigation here is that your home fire began as an arson. Then, from police and news media reports, we also know that you were a suspect in a similar arson, just a few days later, up in Osgood.”
“All those charges were dropped.”
His smile was still wide and sincere. “Perhaps they were, but it still raises a number of questions, so regional plans to take its time answering before proceeding on any claim.”
“That’s not fair, and you know it,” I said. “I’ve been a customer for years, never once late for a payment, not once ever filing a claim.”
“Fair has nothing to do with it, I’m afraid. In these troubled times, Mister Cole, with your connection to two arsons, there will have to be a very thorough investigation before my company will assume liability and issue a payment.”
“Look, I just want to get things going here. Don’t you understand?”
“Of course I understand, Mister Cole, but look, even if a settlement is reached in another several months or so, my recommendation is that the residence be razed and a new structure be built in its place.”