In the way a particle of food sticks between the teeth, an otherwise unnoticed detail seemed to have lodged in my mind, and I leafed back and found this sentence:"The only persons who saw Wilbur during the first month of his life were old Zechariah Whateley, of the undecayed Whateleys, and Earl Sawyer's common-law wife, Mamie Bishop."
I flipped through a couple of pages and saw,"Earl Sawyer went out to the Whateley place with both sets of reporters and camera men."
Goose pimples rose on my arms. Once was chance, twice was design. The Buxton Place houses had been bought under names taken from Lovecraft characters, and their caretaker went by the name of another. Earl Sawyer adored Edward Rinehart because he was Edward Rinehart.
"Laurie," I said before I knew what I was going to do, “I think I left something upstairs yesterday."
"What?" she called.
“I'll be right back." As though driven by a malign compulsion, I double-jumped the stairs and went into Laurie's bedroom. While a part of me stood by in horror, I pulled open her dresser drawers and searched through her clothing. I went to her closet and compounded my crime.
Laurie's voice came from the bottom of the staircase. "What are you looking for, Ned?"
"A pair of sunglasses. I just realized they're gone."
“I don't think they're here. Dinner in five minutes."
I looked under her bed and into her bedside table. I searched the bathroom. When I came out into the hallway, I glanced at Cobbie's door and moved to Posy's. I considered taking a look inside, rejected the idea, and turned toward the stairs. Posy Fairbrother was regarding me from the end of the hallway.
"Thank you for not going into my room," she said. "Am I to gather you thought I might have taken your sunglasses?"
"No, Posy, please," I said. “I was just trying to figure out where the blasted things could be."
“I don't think I've ever seen you wear sunglasses," she said. "Anyhow, we're ready to eat."
I got through dinner by steering the conversation toward cartoons, a subject on which Cobbie had a great many observations, and Haydn'sTheresienmesse, to which I had listened just often enough to fake an expertise. Posy sent me suspicious glances, and Cobbie, for whom dinner with the grown-ups was a special treat, threw in a couple of four-year-old apercus. ("That music was like very, very, very good food," and “It's nice when a bunch of singers don't make the notessmeary.") Both women seemed put out with me, and my apologies for fussing over a lost pair of sunglasses and having to leave after dinner did nothing to warm the atmosphere. A puzzled Laurie walked me to the door. I said that I expected to be busy all the next day, but would call if I could. Cobbie rocketed out of the kitchen, and I gathered him up
and kissed his check, He reared back and said, emphasizing every word, “I—want—to—hear—another—FOOG!"
•107
•I parkeda block south of Brennan's and hurried into narrow Buxton Place. Twilight had begun to sink into real darkness, and moonlight glinted from the windows in the old stables. As I had expected, the doors and windows of the cottages refused to budge. I kicked at cobbles until one dislodged. I wrapped it in my jacket, carried it back to number 2, and stepped up to the window.
A hand closed on my shoulder. I thought my heart would explode.
An inch from my ear, Robert's voice, my voice, said, "Have you lost your mind?"
I wanted to club him with the stone.
"You can't still be angry. I did you a favor."
"You ran out on me."
"Didn't you disappear a second after I did?"
"Did I?"
He chuckled. "Brother dear, the more you can discover in yourself, the better off we'll be tomorrow."
"Where have you been?"
"Speaking of favors," he said. "Blueberry Lane."
His smirk was unbearable. "Someone had to repair the damage. I apologized for my moodiness. I hadn't even thanked Laurie and Posy for their lovely dinner, and I hoped they would understand that my mother's funeral was having a terrible effect on my manners. I found the sunglasses in the car, sorry for letting them become the focus of my anxieties. Blah blah blah. There are things about human beings I don't understand, I know, but your fondness for that little boy really baffles me. I had to keep peeling him off my leg. If you don't watch out, you're going to spoil that child."
"You followed me?"
"No. I had the pleasure of an early supper at Le Madrigal. Julian flirted with me so sweetly that I'm joining him for a drink around one-thirty this morning. The boy is all aquiver."
"You're going to have sex with Julian?"
“I don't make pointless distinctions. Now that the ladies of Blueberry Lane have been pacified, tell me why we're breaking into this hovel."
"After we get inside," I said.
Robert filtered through the front door of number 2. As always, it looked like a special effect in a movie. The door swung open, and I dropped the cobblestone and walked in.
"Make sure the curtains are drawn," Robert said.
I tugged the curtains until they overlapped. "Can you see?"
"Not much better than you." He felt his way to the central table and fumbled with the lamp. “If Earl Sawyer already gave you the tour, why are we here?"
"His name isn't Earl Sawyer," I said, and told him what I knew.
For once, Robert seemed dumbfounded. "How can that ugly old man be Edward Rinehart? He doesn't look anything like us, and he's supposed to be our father?"
"Thirty years ago, he probably looked exactly like us. He's had a lousy life, he's about fifty pounds overweight, and he eats terrible food. On top of that, he's as crazy as a shithouse rat, which tends to distort the way you look."
“I could have killed him in the blasted Cobden Building."
"He didn't know who you were, either. He never really saw you. But he sure knew who I was when he let me in here this afternoon. He had to."
"Why didn't he try to kill you then?"
I gave him the only reason that made sense to me. "Because killing only one of us is no good."
"You're wrong, wrong, wrong," Robert said. "He doesn't know there are two of us. That's the reason I'm still alive."
"He has to know it now, Robert," I said. "Maybe he saw us on that night in Hatchtown. He's waiting until tomorrow, when he's counting on getting us together. But whatever he tries to do, we have one advantage over him."
Robert grasped the point. "He doesn't knowwe know."
“I hope that's an advantage. Anyhow, it's the only one we have."
He moved frowning across the floor and switched on the other lights. "Don't make assumptions about what I'll be willing to do."
"Robert," I said, "we will do what we have to do."
Two parallel lines cut through the dust on top of the table where Earl Sawyer had been standing when he summoned me into the room. One of the lines was about eight inches long, the other no more than two. A picture frame, I thought, propped on its cardboard leg. I pulled out the drawer and found nothing but mouse droppings. Sawyer had taken with him whatever he had hidden from me.
"Let's rattle his cage." Robert was virtually shimmering with excitement. "Let's make Edward Rinehart so angry he won't be able to think."
"How?"
Robert looked across to the thirty or forty copies ofFrom Beyond. “I suppose he is amazingly attached to those books."