silly?”
“I don’t know.”
He watched her drop it back inside her blouse with a strong sense of misgiving… but once it was out of sight and her fingersher undeniably limber fingers- had gone to work re-buttoning the top of her blouse, the feeling began to fade. What didn’t was his growing suspicion that Mr. Leland Gaunt was conning the woman he loved… and if he was, she would not be the only one “Have you thought it could be something else?” Now he was moving with the delicacy of a man using slick stepping-stones to cross a swift-running stream. “You’ve had remissions before, you know.”
“Of course I know,” Polly said with edgy patience. “They’re my hands.”
“Polly, I’m just trying-”
“I knew you’d probably react just the way you are reacting, Alan. The fact is simple enough: I know what arthritic remission feels like, and brother, this isn’t it. I’ve had times over the last five or six years when I felt pretty good, but I never felt this good even during the best of them. This is different.
This is like…” She paused, thought, then made a small frustrated gesture that was mostly hands and shoulders. “This is like being well again. I don’t expect you to understand exactly what I mean, but I can’t put it any better than that.”
He nodded, frowning. He did understand what she was saying, and he also understood that she meant it. Perhaps the azka had unlocked some dormant healing power in her own mind. Was that possible, even though the disease in question wasn’t psychosomatic in origin? The Rosicrucians thought stuff like that happened all the time. So did the millions of people who had bought L. Ron Hubbard’s book on Dianetics, for that matter. He himself didn’t know; the only thing he could say for sure was that he had never seen a blind person think himself back to sight or a wounded person stop his bleeding by an effort of concentration.
What he did know was this: something about the situation smelled wrong. Something about it smelled as high as dead fish that have spent three days in the hot sun.
“Let’s cut to the chase,” Polly said. “Trying not to be mad at you is wearing me out. Come inside with me. Talk to Mr. Gaunt yourself. It’s time you met him anyway. Maybe he can explain better what the charm does… and what it doesn’t do.”
He looked at his watch again. Fourteen minutes of three now.
For a brief moment he thought of doing as she suggested, and leaving Brian Rusk for later. But catching the boy as he came out of school-catching him while he was away from home-felt right.
He would get better answers if he talked to him away from his mother, who would hang around them like a lioness protecting her cub, interrupting, perhaps even telling her son not to answer. Yes, that was the bottom line: if it turned out her son had something to hide, or if Mrs. Rusk even thought he did, Alan might find it difficult or impossible to get the information he needed.
Here he had a potential con artist; in Brian Rusk he might have the key that would unlock a double murder.
“I can’t, honey,” he said. “Maybe a little later today. I have to go over to the Middle School and talk to someone, and I ought to do it right away.”
“Is it about Nettle?”
“It’s about Wilma jerzyck… but if my hunch is right, Nettle comes into it, yes. If I find anything out, I’ll tell you later. In the meantime, will you do something for me?”
“Alan, I’m buying it! They’re not your hands!”
“No, I expect you to buy it. I want you to pay him by check, that’s all. There’s no reason why he shouldn’t take one-if he’s a reputable businessman, that is. You live in town and you bank right across the street. But if something shakes out funny, you’ve got a few days to Put a stop on payment.”
“I see,” Polly said. Her voice was calm, but Alan realized with a sinking feeling that he had finally missed his footing on one of those slippery stepping-stones and fallen headlong into the stream.
“You think he’s a crook, don’t you, Alan? You think he’s going to take the gullible little lady’s money, fold his tent, and steal off into the night.”
“I don’t know,” Alan said evenly. “What I do know is that he’s only been doing business here in town for a week. So a check seems like a reasonable precaution to take.”
Yes, he was being reasonable. Polly recognized that. It was that very reasonableness, that stubborn rationality in the face of what seemed to her to be an authentic miracle cure, that was now driving her anger. She fought an urge to begin snapping her fingers in his face, shouting Do you SEE that, Alan? Are you BLIND? as she did so. The fact that Alan was right, that Mr. Gaunt should have no problem at all with her check if he was on the up-and-up, only made her angrier.
Be careful, a voice whispered. Be careful, don’t be hasty, turn on brain before throwing mouth in gear. Remember that you love this man.
But another voice answered, a colder voice, one she barely recognized as her own: Do I? Do I really?
“All right,” she said, tight-lipped, and slid across the seat and away from him. “Thank you for looking after my best interests, Alan.
Sometimes I forget how badly I need someone to do that, you see. I’ll be sure to write him a check.”
Polly'No, Alan. No more talk now. I can’t not be mad at you any longer today.” She opened the door and got out in one lithe gesture.
The jumper rode up, revealing a momentary heart-stopping length of thigh.
He started to get out on his own side, wanting to catch her, talk to her, smooth it over, make her see that he had only voiced his doubts because he cared about her. Then he looked at his watch again. It was nine minutes of three. Even if he pushed it, he might miss Brian Rusk.
“I’ll talk to you tonight,” he called out the window.
“Fine,” she said. “You do that, Alan.” She went directly to the door beneath the canopy without turning around. Before he put the station wagon in reverse and backed out into the street, Alan heard the tinkle of a small silver bell.
5
“Ms. Chalmers!” Mr. Gaunt cried cheerfully, and made a small check-mark on the sheet beside the cash register. He was nearing the bottom of it now: Polly’s was the last name but one.
“Please… Polly,” she said.
“Excuse me.” His smile widened. “Polly.”
She smiled back at him, but the smile was forced. Now that she was in here, she felt a keen sorrow at the angry way she and Alan had parted. Suddenly she found herself struggling just to keep from bursting into tears.
“Ms. Chalmers? Polly? Are you feeling unwell?” Mr. Gaunt came around the counter. “You look a trifle pale.” His face was furrowed with genuine concern. This is the man Alan thinks is a crook, Polly thought. If he could only see him now'It’s the sun, I think,” she said in a voice that was not quite even. “It’s so warm outside.”
“But cool in here,” he said soothingly. “Come, Polly. Come and sit down.”
He led her, his hand near but not quite touching the small of her back, to one of the red velvet chairs. She sat upon it, knees together.
“I happened to be looking out the window,” he said, sitting in the chair next to hers and folding his long hands into his lap. “It looked to me as if you and the Sheriff might be arguing.”
“it’s nothing,” she said, but then a single large tear overspilled the corner of her left eye and rolled down her cheek.
“On the contrary,” he said. “It means a great deal.”
She looked up at him, surprised… and Mr. Gaunt’s hazel eyes captured hers. Had they been hazel before? She couldn’t remember, not for certain. All she knew was that as she looked into them, she felt all the day’s misery-poor Nettle’s funeral, then the stupid fight she’d had with Alan-begin to dissolve.
“It… it does?”
“Polly,” he said softly, “I think everything is going to turn out just fine. If you trust me. Do you? Do you trust me?”
“Yes,” Polly said, although something inside, something far and faint, cried out a desperate warning. “I do-no matter what Alan says, I trust you with all my heart.”
“Well, that’s fine,” Mr. Gaunt said. He reached out and took one of Polly’s hands. Her face wrinkled in disgust for a moment, and then relaxed into its former blank and dreaming expression.
“That’s just fine. And your friend the Sheriff needn’t have worried, you know; your personal check is just as good as gold with me.”
6
Alan saw he was going to be late unless he turned on the flasherbubble and stuck it on the roof. He didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want Brian Rusk to see a police car; he wanted him to see a slightly down-at-the-heels station wagon, just like the kind his own dad probably drove.
It was too late to make it to the school before it let out for the day. Alan parked at the intersection of Main and School streets instead. This was the most logical way for Brian to come; he would just have to hope that logic would work somewhere along the line today.
Alan got out, leaned against the station wagon’s bumper, and felt in his pocket for a stick of chewing gum. He was unwrapping it when he heard the three o’clock bell at the Middle School, dreamy and distant in the warm air.
He decided to talk to Mr. Leland Gaunt of Akron, Ohio, as soon as he finished with Brian Rusk, appointment or no appointment… and just as abruptly changed his mind. He’d call the Attorney General’s Office in Augusta first, have them check Gaunt’s name against the con file. If there was nothing there, they could send the name on to the LAWS R amp; I computer in WashingtonLAWS, in Alan’s opinion, was one of the few good things the Nixon administration had ever done.
The first kids were coming down the street now, yelling, skipping, laughing. A sudden idea struck Alan, and he opened the driver’s door of the station wagon. He reached across the seat, opened the glove compartment, and pawed through the stuff inside.
