I nodded at the box on the table.
“You been messing with it?” Trask said. Tough as nails.
“Not me, Chief. I’ve been keeping it under close surveillance. I think the guinea pig is faking.”
“Move aside,” he said and picked up the box. He looked at the guinea pig and shook his head. “Sick,” he said.
“Sickest goddamned thing I ever been involved in. Hey, Silveria.” The young cop appeared at the back door. He had a round moon face and bushy black hair. His uniform cap seemed too small for his head.
“Take this stuff down to the station and hold it for me. I’ll be down in a while to examine it. Send Marsh back here to relieve you.”
Silveria departed. Trask took a ball-point pen and a notebook out of his shirt pocket. “Okay, Marge,” he said, “let’s have it all. When did the package arrive?” I didn’t need to dance that circle with them. “Excuse me,” I said and went out the back door. The day was new and sunny. All it needed to be September mom was a nude bathing in the pool. I looked, just to be sure, but there wasn’t any. A scarlet tanager flashed across the lawn from the crab apple tree to the barn and disappeared into an open loft where the fake post for a hay hoist that never existed jutted out over the door.
I walked over to the barn. Inside was a collection of power mowers, hedge trimmers, electric clippers, rollers, lawn sweepers, barrels, paint cans, posthole diggers, shovels, rakes, bicycle parts, several kegs of eight-penny nails, some folding lawn chairs, a hose, snow tires, and a beach umbrella. To the right a set of stairs ascended to the loft. On the first step Dolly Bartlett was sitting listening to a portable radio through an earplug. She was eating Fritos from a plastic bag. The dog sat on the floor beside her with his mouth open and his tongue hanging out, panting.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Hi.” She offered the bag of Fritos to me. I took one and ate it. It wasn’t as bad as some things I’d eaten. The Nutter Butter cookies, for instance.
“Had breakfast?” I really know how to talk to kids. After that I could ask her how she was doing in school, or maybe her age. Really get her on my side.
She shook her head and nodded at the Fritos.
“You’d be better off eating the bag,” I said.
She giggled. “I bet I wouldn’t,” she said.
“Maybe not,” I said. “Bags aren’t nourishing anymore.
Now when I was a boy…”
She made a face and stuck out her tongue. “Oh,” I said, “you heard that line before?”
She nodded. I was competing with the top forty sounds in Boston playing loud in her earphone, and she was only half-listening to me. That was okay because I was only half-saying anything.
“You want to see Kevin’s hideout?” she said, one ear still fastened to the radio.
“Yes,” I said.
“Come on.” She got up carrying the radio and headed up the stairs. Punkin and I scrambled for second position. I won. Still got the old reflexes.
The second floor of the barn was unfinished. Exposed beams, subflooring. At one end a small room had been studded off and Sheetrock nailed up. Some carpenter tools lay on the floor near it, and a box of blue lathing nails had spilled on the floor. It looked-like a project Roger Bartlett was going to do in his spare time, and he didn’t have any spare time. There was scrap lumber and Sheetrock trimmings in a pile as if someone had swept them up and gone for a trash barrel and been waylaid. A number of four-by-eight plywood panels in a simulated wood-plank texture were leaning against a wall.
“In here,” Dolly said. And disappeared into the studded-off room. I followed. It was probably going to be a bathroom from the size and the rough openings that looked to be for plumbing. A makeshift partition had been constructed out of some paneling and two sawhorses.
Behind it was a steamer trunk and a low canvas lawn chair The steamer trunk was locked with a padlock. The floor was covered with a rug that appeared to be a remnant of wall-to-wall carpeting. The window looked out over the pool and the back of the house. The wiring was in, and a bare light bulb was screwed into a porcelain receptacle. A string hung from it.
“What’s in the trunk?” I asked.
“I don’t know. Kevin always kept it locked up. He never let me in here.”
“Do your mother and father know about this place?”
“I doubt it. My father hasn’t worked up here since last summer, and my mother’s never been up here. She says it should be fixed up so she can have it for a studio. But she hasn’t ever come up. Just me and Kevin, and Kevin always kicked me out when he came up here. He didn’t want anyone to know about his place.”
“How come you’re telling me?”
She shrugged. “You’re a detective.”
I nodded, I was glad she said that because I was beginning to have my doubts.
“You get along with Kevin?” I asked.
“He’s creepy,” she said, “but he’s okay sometimes.”
She shrugged again. “He’s my brother. I’ve known him all my life.”
“Okay, Dolly, here’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to break into that trunk. Maybe it won’t have anything that will help, but maybe it will, and the only way to know is to look.
