THE TRAP Page 5

  “How are you, Helen?” Liv asked.

  Barrie and Linda looked at each other. No one ever addressed Miss Alden by her first name.

  “Still in the land of the living,” Miss Alden said, and sounded as if it were not so much a privilege as a sentence.

  She peered into Liv’s plastic cup. “What’s that?”

  “White wine.”

  Miss Alden looked down her magnificent nose. “Jug swill.”

  Mike Spellman leaned over to ask what he could fetch for her.

  “I expect the scotch will be drinkable,” Miss Alden told him. “A double on ice, please.”

  “I’m not fussy,” Barrie said. “I’ll take another glass of the jug swill, Mike.”

  “Linda?” Mike asked.

  “Jug swill for me, too,” she said.

  “All those years of med school,” Barrie said, “and he goes to work as a waiter.”

  “The tips are better,” Mike said.

  The younger women laughed. Miss Alden smiled thinly.

  She turned to Liv. “How are you, my dear?”

  Barrie and Linda arched carefully shaped, penciled, and significant eyebrows at each other.

  “Much better, thanks,” Liv said. She touched Miss Alden’s hand lightly. “You were a lifesaver, you know. And Travis and I had a wonderful time at our tea party.”

  “What’s this?” Pat asked, slipping back onto the bench on Liv’s other side. His hand covered hers on the table. “What’s this about tea parties? Have you been leading Miss Alden astray, Liv?”

  “Helen helped me change a flat tire one day,” Liv said. “Then she had Travis and me to tea. Ask Travis.” To Miss Alden, “He still talks about it. He’s always wanting to have a tea party.”

  “We’ll have another,” Miss Alden said. “I’m afraid it will have to be next year, though. The summer’s gotten away from us.”

  “I’d like to come,” Pat said, “if I wouldn’t be intruding.”

  “Oh, I expect we can handle it,” Miss Alden declared. “An old maid I may be, but it takes more than a mere man to turn my head.”

  “Shucks,” said Pat.

  Mike Spellman appeared with the assorted drinks on a tray and a dish towel folded over one arm.

  “Madame,” he addressed each woman as he placed her drink before her.

  “Mademoiselle,” corrected Miss Alden.

  “Mais oui,” Mike said. “I’m sorry.”

  “I’m not,” Miss Alden said.

  Barrie Spellman shrieked with laughter.

  Pat raised his beer can in a silent toast to Miss Alden.

  Miss Alden addressed Liv. “Have you been able to work?”

  Liv shrugged. “No. But I’ve been having ideas.”

  “Good,” said Pat lasciviously. He squeezed her. “So have I.”

  Everyone laughed, except Miss Alden, who looked as if lewd ideas were exactly what she expected Pat to have.

  “Perhaps a vacation is just what you needed,” Miss Alden said to Liv. “Fallow time.”

  “I hope that’s what it was,” Liv said. “I’ll feel like I salvaged something from this summer, then.”

  Miss Alden patted Liv’s knee. “I know just what you mean. I think I’d go mad without work.”

  Quite visibly, Barrie Spellman elbowed Mike, who had taken his seat next to her and was eavesdropping, like the rest of the table, on the conversation.

  “Then again,” said Miss Alden, looking at Barrie, “I’m sure some people think I’m raving anyway.”

  Mike elbowed Barrie back, and said in a low voice, “I guess she told you, babe.”

  “I think you’re the sanest person I know,” Liv said.

  “Well, thank you,” Miss Alden said. “I appreciate the vote of confidence. I expect you’re wrong, my dear. I’m as crazy as anyone else in this insane world.”

  “Isn’t there an argument that insanity is the only defense against reality?” Pat said.

  Len Winslow sat down opposite them, clutching his chef’s hat in one hand and a drink in the other. “Mind if I join you?” he asked in a perfunctory way. “I’m about ready to fall down if I don’t sit down. I’m getting too old for this show.”

  Breathing heavily, nearly purple in the face, he did indeed appear about ready to collapse.

  He gulped from his drink. “What I want to know,” he said, “is why the goddamn thieves don’t ever take my barbecue spit. They steal every other thing that isn’t nailed down. They took the goddamn thing, I could switch to hot dogs and live a little longer.” He looked around guiltily. “Don’t tell Claire I said that. She’s thought a pig on a spit was the only thing for it ever since we honeymooned in Hawaii.”

  Liv felt Miss Alden tense. “I’ll leave ‘em a note, Len,” Miss Alden said.

  Several people laughed.

  Pat looked puzzled. “Sorry, I missed something.”

  Miss Alden looked at him. “They’ve hit me three years running.”

  There was head-shaking and commiseration.

  “You’re not alone,” Len Winslow said. “And Walter McKenzie told Claire just the other day he’s stumped.”

  “Walter McKenzie is an old fool,” Miss Alden said. “I fired him after the second break-in. What goddamn good does it do to pay a caretaker if he can’t take care of a place? Walter’s too old for the job. If he had any sense left, he’d retire.”

  A general silence followed. On this side of the lake, Walter McKenzie had been everyone’s caretaker forever. There had never been another caretaker. No one could imagine who would take his place.

  “It’s true,” Pat said. “Walter’s getting on. What’s he now, seventy-five?”

  “Eighty-three,” Miss Alden said.

  “Wow,” said Mike Spellman. “I had no idea. He sure doesn’t look it, does he?”

  Miss Alden ignored Mike. “Pity Joe Nevers is gone. I’d’ve hired him in Walter’s place in a minute. Nobody ever broke into one of Joe Nevers’ places.”

  “Joe Nevers wouldn’t have taken the job,” Liv said.

  Everyone looked at her.

  “This is Walter’s side of the lake,” she said.

  They did not seem, any of them, to understand. Nor did she really expect they would.

  “Wait a minute,” Pat said. “I’d like to know why no one’s ever broken into one of Joe Nevers’ places.”

  They all looked at Liv, who had inadvertently revealed an unexpected fund of knowledge about Nodd’s Ridge.

  She blushed. “Respect. There was too much respect for Joe Nevers.” She looked into her cup of wine. “And a measure of fear. But mostly,” she said with a smile, “I believe it was because he used to pay off the likeliest villains.”

  Everyone laughed, except Helen Alden. And Liv, who was surprised they found Joe Nevers’ sensible arrangements amusing.

  “How do you know all this?” Miss Alden asked.

  “I used to run into old Joe once in a while,” Liv admitted.

  She wasn’t going to tell them the whole story. She already felt as if she had lost something valuable to them.

  “Ho, now,” Joe Nevers said when she came up silently under his line and tugged it gently.

  She kept the tension steady but light, so as not to break it, and rose with it at the rate he reeled it in.

  “A mermaid,” he exclaimed, as he always did when they played this game, as her head broke the surface. “I’ll be goddamned.”

  And they shared a soft, smothered chuckle.

  “ ‘Morning, Missus Mermaid,” Joe Nevers said.

  “ ‘Morning, Joe Nevers,” Liv said. “Guess you’ve got three wishes.”

  “Ah,” Joe Nevers said. “Much obliged. I think first off I’d like a smoke.”

  And he set aside his rod and took out a cigarillo, politely first offering her one, which she just as politely refused. One hand light on the skiff, she trod water, waiting on his little ceremony.

  And then he talked. She asked questions now and again to clarify mat
ters, but otherwise was content to listen. He seemed not to expect anymore return from her than that. She had heard stories from him she suspected no one had ever heard, not even his cronies at the post office or the diner or the town office, or even his sister Gussie, who had been the town librarian for years before she retired to Florida.

  One day she asked him about Arden Nighswander.

  “Arden Nighswander,” said Joe Nevers, and rolled his cigarillo in his hand.

  “I’m afraid of him,” Liv said. She trod the water of the lake, and moved her arms lazily, rippling the water in swirling, curving arcs. The water glistened pinkly in the rosy spill of sunlight coming over the wall of the mountains and staining the wisps of mist over the water. “I don’t know why. He’s so polite, he’s greasy. But he smiles like a shark. Gives me goosebumps.”

  Joe Nevers shook his head. “Just shows your good sense.” He extinguished the butt of his smoke into the lid of the mayonnaise jar which he carried for that purpose, and returned the lid to his kit bag before shaking out a new cigarillo. Bending over with a little grunt, he struck a wooden match on the sole of his shoe, a dexterous motion for an elderly man sitting in a boat. He took off his cap and scratched behind his clean pink ear.

  “I hear,” he said, sucking at the cigarillo, “that fella is the kind that makes a career of being a nuisance. Lives off what he nuisanced outta the govamint, don’t you know he’s s’posed to be ‘disabled’ on account of his war wounds.” Joe Nevers grunted. “It’s his back, a course. Saddle sores or hemmerhoids from sitting at a desk, I imagine. With the taxpayer feeding and housing him, he’s free to develop his full potential as a deadbeat son of a bitch. When he ain’t being sued by somebody he’s suckered, he’s suing one of his neighbors over a propitty line or a cross look, it don’t matter. When court ain’t in session, he’s a common thief, whelping thieves and vandals. That I know for a fact. Don’t leave nothing lying around loose, missus. Them boys, Ricky and Rand. He’s got ‘em trained like hunting dogs to smell out opportunities.”

  “Are they some of the people who do the breaking in?” Liv asked.

  “They’re all of ‘em,” he said. “Do it as a regular thing. Closest thing to pros. Most of the rest is just boys been drinking. Just need a taking down. Give ‘em a good scare and sober ‘em up, then slip ‘em a five spot to keep a eye peeled for the wrong truck on the wrong road. Generally, that’s the end of it. But since the Nighswander boys been around, the trouble’s gotten seriously ugly.” He shook his head. The water lapped against the sides of the boat in little shivers.

  Liv tipped her head back and her feet up, floating briefly on the surface of the lake. Along the backbone of the mountains the sunrise was still bleeding but directly overhead, the white bowl of the sky was bluing, the mist burning off. “They’re not from around here,” she said.

  That cheered Joe Nevers right up. “No, they ain’t New Hampshire, I expect. Nighswander talks like it. Probably seven years ago, the year Gussie went off to Florida and come back married again, surprised the hell outta me, I’ll tell you, that was the winter Ola Whicher died and in the spring, Nighswander showed up to claim her propitty. Ola was his great-aunt, married his grandmother’s, on his father’s side, brother. Ola never could stand sight nor sound of her husband’s kin, but he died young of consumption and they never had no children, and she just got old up there, all by herself, on a piece of land that wouldn’t grow rocks it was so poor. Took in cats and dogs and all kinds of creatures and after a while she took a pittance from the town and was listed as the animal control officer. Everybody figured her to pass away in the night and be discovered when the cats and dogs were yipping and yowling around her corpse, but actually she took it in her head to fix her own roof and killed herself falling off of it when she was eighty-seven. Big fat woman, she landed on her neck and broke it. Otherwise, she might’ve lived another twenty years.” Joe Nevers looked aggrieved. “Any one of us would have been happy to fix them shingles, if she’d just ast. Wouldna charged her nothing, either. She was always poor-mouthing, but folks used to say she actually had quite a lot of money tucked away in shoe boxes. No doubt that’s the biggest reason why Nighswander bothered to lay claim to her propitty, aside from it was someplace to go because where he was was getting too hot for him, one nest fouled beyond even what he could stand, so he moved on.”

  “Guess he didn’t find any shoe boxes,” Liv said. She touched the edge of the boat lightly and held onto it, resting.

  Joe Nevers grinned. “Don’t guess he did. ‘Bout the only treasures Nighswander dug up on the Ridge was Jean McKenzie and her boy. Leastways with Jeannie, Nighswander got somebody to cook and clean for him and the boys. And not just Jeannie to beat, but the boy, too.” Joe Nevers grew gloomy, and fidgeted as if the subject were uncomfortable. “The boy—Gordy—‘s worse ‘n useless.”

  “Is there something wrong with him?” Liv asked. “He seemed like he might be a little retarded to me.”

  “Well, Gordy’s never had much to start with, worst of both parents, Jeannie’s looks and Harry Teed’s brains,” Joe Nevers said, “and living with the Nighswanders, what brains he’s got has been turned right around, being pounded against walls, and with drink and filthy habits and worse language. No, poor Gordy’s just like one of their cur dogs they’ve made half-foolish and dangerous, torturing ‘em and encouraging the worst part of their natures. Someday he’ll have to be put down.” He ground out the butt of his second smoke and put the jar lid away.

  Liv shivered, the water suddenly very cold.

  The red of the sunrise had faded to a thin mauve fine marking the edge of the planet, where the glacial bones of the mountains peaked. She let go of the boat, and pushed herself backward. “Time for me to go,” she said. “What about your other wishes?”

  He thought a bit. “Well,” he said, as the ritual required, “I wish you a fine day. That’s number two. And I wish we meet again. That’s number three.”

  Without a word, just a smile, she slipped beneath the surface and swam away, not coming up again to breathe until she was some distance away. By then, Joe Nevers had put away his rod and was pulling for the Narrows.

  “Oh oh,” said Terry Breen.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Pat asked.

  Terry grinned lasciviously. “You’ve been away too much, old buddy. You must not have heard how old Joe went.”

  Linda and Barrie giggled in chorus.

  Pat’s eyebrows made gull wings and he assumed both a mock cigar and a Groucho accent. “So tell me, how did he go?”

  Terry sniggered. “You could’ve watched it, you’d been here. Right across the lake from your place. The old goat was in bed with the widow Christopher, you remember her. Little red headed woman with a .44 caliber tongue and a taste for scotch. Both of ‘em older than King Tut.”

  Helen Alden’s mouth pursed. “She was my age,” she said. “Riddled with cancer. Passed away last fall.” And then, in a softer voice. “She was a friend of mine.”

  Terry Breen rolled his eyes and looked uncomfortable.

  Pat touched Miss Alden’s wrist. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “He was a nice old man,” Liv said. “I miss him.”

  Barrie Spellman twitched and fidgeted. “The only thing you can do is lock up, and don’t leave anything around that’s worth stealing,” she said, as if she had missed the entire conversation about Joe Nevers and the late Mrs. Christopher.

  “I don’t know what people expect,” Linda Breen put in. “The people here are poverty-stricken. It must be very tough for them to see the luxuries some of us just leave here all winter.”

  Liv laughed. “The ones who do the stealing use snowmobiles, Linda. Snowmobiles start at over a thousand dollars. How hard up are you if you do your stealing with a thousand-dollar toy?”

  Linda reddened.

  “There’s always insurance,” Terry put in. “You can protect yourself against the potential losses. The premiums don’t cost that much
.”

  “They do more than steal,” said Miss Alden. She looked very grim. “They are vandals, barbarians. They destroy. They break windows. They slash upholstery. They do terrible things.”

  “Well, we know you’ve had some bad luck,” Mike Spellman said.

  “Luck!” Miss Alden exclaimed. Her face was hectic, mottled bright over her cheekbones. “Luck has nothing to do with it. This is not random, Doctor Spellman. They have chosen me as their victim. I know what they think of me. They wrote on my walls that I am a filthy, cuntlapping old dyke. They wrote it in shit.”

  They were all frozen, horrified.

  Liv touched Miss Alden’s hands, clenched on the table. “I’m so sorry, Helen. How can people be so awful?”

  “They are mistaken if they think they will get away with it again,” Miss Alden said.

  “What are you going to do?” Pat asked.

  “Go home,” Miss Alden said. She groped for her cane and stood up. “I’m getting on myself. Too old for all-night partying. Thank you, Len. Why don’t you just misplace the spit? Or bend it accidentally beyond repair?” She turned to Liv, cocked her head, and with both hands gripping the cane, declaimed, “ ‘A prince being thus obliged to know how to act the beast must imitate the fox and the lion, for the lion cannot protect himself from traps, and the fox cannot defend himself from wolves. Therefore be a fox to recognize traps, and a lion to frighten the wolves.’ Frighten the wolves,” she repeated, and took a deep satisfied breath. She looked at Barrie Spellman scornfully. “Niccolò Machiavelli,” she trilled. Then she nodded at Liv. “Goodnight, my dear.”

  “Take care,” Liv said.

  Miss Alden straightened herself to her full height and left them, bearing down on the cane every few steps, stiffly, as if she hated the unmistakable revelation of weakness. The crowd parted for her passage, and closed behind her, buzzing.

  “I don’t believe it,” Linda Breen said, just loud enough for them all to hear. “Did you hear what she said they called her?”

  Barrie giggled like a cheerleader at a dirty joke.

  “She’s quite remarkable, really,” Pat said to Liv. “You didn’t tell me you’d made friends with the formidable Miss Alden.”