"Scott!"
"What?! I'm going to find Beenie. I'm going to talk to her and find out what the hell she's doing. Then I'm going to come back here and dig out what other poisons you've got inside you."
I don't like driving in the snow, because I never feel like I have full control over the car on icy roads. But you can bet your behind I drove that day. I drove too fast, and a couple of times fishtailed going around turns. Beenie had never gone home early, much less ten minutes after arriving but her unhappiness today didn't concern me. I would leave her alone as soon as she told me about the dead girl's manuscript, and where she'd found letters I'd burned years ago.
Strange as it sounds, it didn't cross my mind that these circumstances were bizarre and verging on the impossible. I knew I'd given Annette's book to the cops and had thrown the black letters into the fire. Despite that, here they all were again, back on earth to accuse and alarm. Yet I wasn't spooked; I was irate! Who was this woman to dredge my past and come up with the only things I wanted to stay buried a fathom deep? I wasn't a bad man, damn it, but these two memories said I was. Insensitive and selfish, a pedantic lecher who cared little for most people and too much in the wrongest way for others.
We have friends who live on Plum Hill. Houses there are old and big, and most have long sweeps of lawn right down to the lake. Groucho Marx had spent a summer there, and was purported to have said it would have been a nice place if it hadn't been so beautiful. Whenever there, I always marveled over the way the buildings, like powerful eider statesmen, sat up on that hill and knew they were impressive even if you had no idea whom they belonged to. Now and then, Roberta and I talked about what it'd be like to live on Plum Hill, but in our hearts, we knew it wasn't for us. What would we do next door to Peter Dawson, who owned the biggest newspaper in the state? Or Dexter Lewis, the junk-bond king? These were people you saw in town on Saturday wearing freshly ironed khaki pants and denim shirts, getting a haircut or buying a hammer at the hardware store. You nodded at each other and perhaps said a few pleasant, shoot-the-breeze words while waiting on line for the cashier to get on with it. But outside, the "Plums" drove off in their new Mercedes, while you dug in your pocket for the keys to a Chevy that hadn't been washed in some weeks. The world of difference doesn't rip you apart, but, once in a while, you stand by the door of your car a little too long and give a small sigh.
I stopped at a gas station and used the book in their phone booth to find her address. "B. Rushforth – Plum Hill 67a. "I assumed the small a meant the difference between her gatehouse and the main. The sky had started the morning blue, but had slipped down gray-white to almost brown by the time I entered the Plum Hill gates and started looking for numbers. A large black labrador retriever ran out of a driveway and followed the car, barking awhile until he lost interest a few houses down and wagged his tail back home. 63, 65, 67. The name on the mailbox was none other than Samuel Morgan, sole owner of the Morgan Computer Company. You know the one I'm talking about – each machine costs millions and is the darling of the U.S. Defense Department? I think the man is still in his thirties, but is reputed to be astronomically wealthy. Beenie rented her house from this guy?
The driveway wound up and around a long way before you actually saw anything. The 'gatehouse" came first, although it guarded no gate. No car was parked near her house, and, from what I could see, none were at the big house, either. I felt like a thief casing the joint. I am not a thief or a snoop, but I decided to snoop. I would do it in plain sight, however, so if anyone happened to come up, they'd see me at it. But I did have every intention of looking in whatever windows were there and finding whatever clues were available.
Snow had begun to fail, but it was light and playful. The whole feeling of what I was about to do lightened my mood. It was so out of character for me – so nosy and so none of my business to peek in a stranger's windows. I couldn't help smiling, although I was still pretty riled.
Flakes began to stick and melt on my glasses. I had to take them off for a wipe before spying in earnest. Specs in hand, I looked around and realized what an utterly beautiful scene it was. Acres of lawn, dark trees on the edges, the green-brown stillness of the lake behind the fat floating snowflakes ….
Beenie's house was nothing special. A small Cape Cod saltbox the color of silvery tree bark – from the outside, it appeared cozy and a good place for one person to live, two at most. Pink gauzy curtains framed the windows. From afar, I looked through and saw a couch covered in a large flower print. Eyeglasses back in place, I went to the window that looked into her living room. Typical stuff: appropriate furniture, a few throw rugs, dull pictures on the wails. For no reason, I looked at my watch and then chuckled. I'd seen too much TV. Without realizing it, I was spying the way they did it on television – check your watch a lot; check over your shoulder constantly; don't spent too much time looking in a window before moving on to the next. Check that watch again – you have only so much time. I had no idea how much I would have before someone noticed me peeking in windows, and came over or called the cops, and I would get myself into big trouble.
Moving slowly around the house, I passed a kitchen with the remnants of breakfast left out – a knife on a plate filled with bread crumbs, a coffee cuptipped over on its saucer. something touched my mind, but didn't come into focus until a few minutes later. a small window into a bathroom. standing on tiptoe, i could make out a yellow shower curtain and a rumpled towel tossed across the sink.
I was a step toward the next window, when it registered. "It's messy!"
Her whole house was messy. Beenie Rushforth, Queen Terminator of the dust speck, Grand Wielder of Mop and Broom/Look-Out-Dirt-Here-I Come, lived in a house with wet towels and strawberry-jam smudges on her tablecloth? It was not only hard to believe, it was nigh onto impossible. I know – People are a giant admixture of contradictions, and nothing should be surprising in life, but if you had seen the results of this woman's work, you would fully understand why it was inconceivable for her to live like this.
Still dumbfounded, I walked to the last window and saw dead Annette Taugwalder sitting on Beenie Rushforth's bed, reading a magazine.
It was a trick, a joke; I was drunk; I was insane. She was dead. She could not be there . But oh, she most certainly was. Twenty years' dead Annette flipping the pages of a magazine. Without realizing it, I put my head on the glass, because the world was suddenly a new place for me.
"Annette?" I put a hand on the glass, too. It was cold. I felt that. She looked up and smiled. I was fifty-five years old and thought …. Forget what I thought. I was wrong.
She stood up and walked out of the room. I kept my forehead on the glass, and kept looking at the tangled bedspread where she'd sat. I had never in my life been so close to the answer, but I was petrified. Everything inside me howled and screeched and shook the bars of their cages. Let us out. Let us run away. The fire's close and will kill us. "Professor Silver?"
I turned, and there was Annette. "I'm scared of you." She nodded, said she understood.
"I don't know what to do. Can one talk to Death?"