Startled, I looked at her. She was working her fat arms over a frying pan. Grease spat, flames jumped. Her face was set in an expression of sullen obduracy.
“Why did you do it?”
“Because of the other one. Like I said.” She was lying. She had been Alison’s agent; it was also clear that she had disliked having the photograph within her view.
“What did you think of my cousin? Do you remember her?”
“Not to speak of.” She went firmly back to the eggs.
“You don’t want to talk about her.”
“No. What’s past is past.”
“In one sense,” I said, and laughed. “Only in one sense, my dear Mrs. Sunderson.”
The “my dear” made her look toward me with magnified goggling eyes. More brooding, puzzled silence over the sizzling eggs on the gas burner.
“Why did you tear up that picture of Duane’s girl? I saw it when I straightened up your mess in the front bedroom.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said.
“Oh I do remember. I didn’t really know what it was. It was a random gesture. A reflex.”
“So some would say,” she pronounced as she brought me the eggs. “Maybe some would say the same about that car of yours.”
I could still taste those eggs two hours later when I stood on the asphalt of the Arden filling station beside a squat young man with Hank blazoned over his heart and listened to him groan about the condition of the VW.
“This is some mess,” he said. “I sure hope you got insurance. First off, we ain’t even got a man these days who can beat out those dents for you. And all these is foreign parts. This glass here, and that headlight and missing hubcap. They might be a long time in coming. It’s gonna cost plenty.”
“You don’t have to get them from Germany,” I pointed out. “There must be a VW agency around here somewhere.”
“Maybe,” the boy reluctantly agreed. “I heard about one somewheres, but I can’t remember where it is right now. And we’re all backed up on work. We’re doubling up.”
I looked around at the deserted gas station.
“You can’t see it all,” Hank said defensively.
“I can’t see any of it.” I was thinking that it must have been at this station that the Polish lover of Duane’s fiancée had worked. “Maybe this will help you squeeze it into your schedule.” I took a ten dollar bill from my pocket and folded it into his hand.
“You live here, Mister?”
“What do you think?” He just coolly regarded me. “I’m a visitor. I had an accident. Look. Forget about the dents, they’re not too important, just get the glass and headlights repaired. And take a look at the engine to see if it needs any work. It’s been acting up.”
“Okay. I need a name for the slip.”
“Greening,” I said. “Miles Greening.”
“That Jewish?”
The boy reluctantly parted with one of the garage’s loaners, a 1957 Nash that steered class="underline" like a lumber wagon; further into Arden, I took the precaution of parking it in a side street in an area where the houses appeared to be at least moderately prosperous.
An hour and a half later, I was listening to Paul Kant say to me, “You put yourself and me in trouble just by coming here, Miles. I tried to warn you. You really should have listened. I appreciate your friendliness, but there are only two people that the good folks around here think could have done these crimes, and here we are together. Cozy. If you’re not scared, you should be. Because I’m terrified. If anything else happens, anything else to a child I mean, I think I’m a dead man. They took baseball bats to my car last night, just to let me know they’re watching.”
“Mine too,” I said. “And I saw them working on yours, but I didn’t know whose it was.”
“So here we are, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Why don’t you just get out while you have the chance?”
“I can’t, for several reasons. One of them is that Polar Bears asked me to stay put until everything is over.”
“Because of the Alison Greening business?”
I nodded.
He let out an enormous, scooping sigh, too large for his small body. “Of course. Of course. I didn’t even have to ask. I wish my sins were as far in the past as yours.” I looked up, puzzled, and saw him trying to light a cigarette with a trembling hand. “Hasn’t anybody warned you about being associated with me, Miles? I’m quite a notorious character.”
“Hence the ritual.”
“It’s been a long time since anyone in Arden used a word like hence, but yes, hence the ritual.”
I had come to Paul’s by way of Main Street, where I first stopped in at a shop to buy a portable record player. The clerk looked at the name on my check and disappeared with it into an office at the rear of the shop. I was aware of my presence causing a little flurry of attention among the other customers — they were pretending not to look at me, but they moved with that exaggerated carelessness of people trying to catch every nuance. After a while the clerk returned with a nervous man in a brown suit and a rayon tie. He informed me that he could not accept my check.
“Why not?”
“Ah, well, Mr. Teagarden, this check is drawn on a New York bank.”
“Obviously,” I said. “They use money in New York too.”
“But we only accept local checks.”
“How about credit cards? You don’t refuse credit cards, do you?”
“Ah, no, not usually,” he said.
I yanked a lengthy strip of cards from my wallet. “Which one do you want? Mastercharge? American Express? Diners’ Club? Mobil? Sears? Come on, you make the choice. Firestone?”
“Mr. Teagarden, this isn’t necessary. In this case—”
“In this case, what? These things are as good as money, aren’t they? Here’s another one. Bank Americard. Take your pick.”
The other customers by now had dropped the pretense of not listening, and a few were threatening to come forward to take a closer look. He decided to accept Mastercharge, which I could have predicted, and I waited while he took one of the portable stereos from stock and went through the usual business with the card. He was sweating by the time he had finished.
I spent some time looking through the record racks at Zumgo’s and the Coast To Coast Store, but could not find what I needed for the Alison environment. At a little stationery shop a block from Freebo’s I found a few of the books I remembered Alison had liked: She, The White Guard, Kerouac, St. Exupéry. These I purchased with cash, having conquered for good that other childish business.
I cut through sidestreets to get back to the Nash locked my purchases inside it, and then went back to Freebo’s.
“Can I make a phone call?” I asked him. He looked relieved, and pointed to a pay phone in the rear corner. I knew by his demeanor what his next words would be before he spoke them.
“Mr. Teagarden, you been a good customer here since you came in town, but some people came to see me late last night, and I wonder if…”
“If I might lay off? Take my business elsewhere?”
He was too embarrassed to nod.
“What did they say they’d do? Break your windows? Burn your place down?”
“No, nothing like that, Mr. Teagarden.”
“But you’d be happier if I quit coming in.”
“Maybe just for a week, just for a couple of days. It’s nothing personal, Mr. Teagarden. But, well, some of ‘em decided — well, it might be better to wait it out for a while.”
“I don’t want to make trouble for you,” I said.
He turned away, unable to face me any further. “The phone’s in the corner.”
I looked up Paul Kant’s number. His whispery voice greeted me hesitantly. “Stop hiding,” I said. “This is Miles. I’m in Arden, and I’m coming over to talk about what’s happening to us.”