3
Nolly Gardener came out of the Municipal Building and sat down on the steps next to Parkins Gillespie just in time to see Ben and Susan walk into Spencer’s together. Parkins was smoking a Pall Mail and cleaning his yellowed fingernails with a pocket knife.
‘That’s that writer fella, ain’t it?’ Nolly asked.
‘Yep.’
‘Was that Susie Norton with him?’
‘Yep.’
‘Well, that’s interesting,’ Nolly said, and hitched his garrison belt. His deputy star glittered importantly on his chest. He had sent away to a detective magazine to get it; the town did not provide its deputy constables with badges. Parkins had one, but he carried it in his wallet, something Nolly had never been able to understand. Of course everybody in the Lot knew he was the constable, but there was such a thing as tradition. There was such a thing as responsibility. When you were an officer of the law, you had to think about both. Nolly thought about them both often, although he could only afford to deputy part-time.
Parkins’s knife slipped and slit the cuticle of his thumb. ‘Shit,’ he said mildly.
‘You think he’s a real writer, Park?’
‘Sure he is. He’s got three books right in this library.’
‘True or made up?’
‘Made up.’ Parkins put his knife away and sighed.
‘Floyd Tibbets ain’t going to like some guy makin’ time with his woman.’
‘They ain’t married,’ Parkins said. ‘And she’s over eighteen.’
‘Floyd ain’t going to like it.’
‘Floyd can crap in his hat and wear it backward for all of me,’ Parkins said. He crushed his smoke on the step, took a Sucrets box out of his pocket, put the dead butt inside, and put the box back in his pocket.
‘Where’s that writer fella livin’?’
‘Down to Eva’s,’ Parkins said. He examined his wounded cuticle closely. ‘He was up lookin’ at the Marsten House the other day. Funny expression on his face.’
‘Funny? What do you mean?’
‘Funny, that’s all.’ Parkins took his cigarettes out. The sun felt warm and good on his face. ‘Then he went to see Larry Crockett. Wanted to lease the place.’
‘The
‘Yep.’
‘What is he, crazy?’
‘Could be.’ Parkins brushed a fly from the left knee of his pants and watched it buzz away into the bright morning. ‘Ole Larry Crockett’s been a busy one lately. I hear he’s gone and sold the Village Washtub. Sold it awhile back, as a matter of fact.’
‘What, that old laundrymat?’
‘Yep.’
‘What would anyone want to put in there!’
‘Dunno.’
‘Well.’ Nolly stood up and gave his belt another hitch. ‘Think I’ll take a turn around town.’
‘You do that,’ Parkins said, and lit another cigarette.
‘Want to come?’
‘No, I believe I’ll sit right here for a while.’
‘Okay. See you.’
Nolly went down the steps, wondering (not for the first time) when Parkins would decide to retire so that he, Nolly, could have the job full-time. How in God’s name could you ferret out crime sitting on the Municipal Building steps?
Parkins watched him go with a mild feeling of relief. Nolly was a good boy, but he was awfully eager. He took out his pocket knife, opened it, and began paring his nails again.
4
Jerusalem’s Lot was incorporated in 1765 (two hundred years later it had celebrated its bicentennial with fireworks and a pageant in the park; little Debbie Forester’s Indian princess costume was set on fire by a thrown sparkler and Parkins Gillespie had to throw six fellows in the local cooler for public intoxication), a full fifty-five years before Maine became a state as the result of the Missouri Compromise.
The town took its peculiar name from a fairly prosaic occurrence. One of the area’s earliest residents was a dour, gangling farmer named Charles Belknap Tanner. He kept pigs, and one of the large sows was named Jerusalem. Jerusalem broke out of her pen one day at feeding time, escaped into the nearby woods, and went wild
