crackpot cure-a-gay organization. This made no sense, unless of course the person in charge of funeral arrangements had been Anson Stiver, the evil stepfather. Him, I had to meet.
Chapter Sixteen
Rain pounded down in drops the size of boccie balls. I cupped a hand over my injured ear and made it out to the car with my laptop and overnight bag. I got in and slammed the door.
Then I saw the note on the windshield. I climbed back out, grabbed the piece of sopping paper, and got back inside. The ink had run, but the handwritten two-word message was still legible. I'm sorry.
So Louderbush had shown up sometime during the night and left this apology? Presumably the note was his. Only two people knew where I was staying: Louderbush and Timmy. It seemed as if Louderbush had called off the Serbians, and he was trying to somehow deal with the repulsive mess he'd made, but he kept losing his nerve. I tried to work up some sympathy for him, but it was hard to find any.
I made a quick Dunkin' Donuts stop in Troy and headed back down the river to Albany, eating and drinking in the car, and trying to find any political news on the radio. WAMC had on a few local headlines; none mentioned Kenyon Louderbush or the gubernatorial campaign.
I thought about driving out to Hall Creek Community College, where Paul Podolski said Stiver had had a teaching job lined up, but I decided to wait until Monday. It seemed unlikely I'd find anybody out there willing and able to talk to me on a Saturday morning in June.
Instead, I headed toward Schenectady. I had an address for Anson and Margery Stiver. I pulled into the breakdown lane and keyed the address into my GPS. Normally I would have done this while in motion-another distracted-driving asshole-but I still felt so crummy that I feared that any greater than usual distraction might end in calamity.
The Anson Stiver home in Schenectady was in one of the nicer neighborhoods in this sad-ass abandoned-by- GE old rust-belt town. Ridgemont Drive was probably where company managers and professional people had made their comfortable lives from the nineteen-teens up until the seventies, when the company moved south and way, way east. The Stivers' ample manse was fieldstone below, powder blue wood frame above, with white decorative shutters and a big white front door with a bronze knocker. The front lawn wasn't as well tended as others in the neighborhood, and the azaleas needed pruning.
A blue Chevy Suburban was parked in the driveway in front of the Stivers' unopened garage doors. I pulled in next to it and made a dash through the rain for the front door.
There wasn't much of an overhang, and after making a couple of noisy bangs with the knocker I stood as close to the door as I could without risking ending up nose-to-nose with whoever might suddenly appear. Nothing happened for the next two minutes, and my back and shoulders were getting wet. This was quite the passive- aggressive residential portal.
I knocked again and tried the doorbell, too. The mailbox next to the door appeared to be empty, but I didn't go poking around in it.
The door swung open, and a woman who looked unprepared for guests stood peering out at me. She looked more rained on than I did. Her pale gray eyes were soft, but the face around them was an Okefenokee of channels and rivulets, the uneasily-lived-in middle-aged face of a woman who was beyond vanity out of choice or otherwise. She had on a pink terrycloth bathrobe, with another pink towel wrapped around her head. A few strands of wet gray hair stuck out from under the wrap.
'I thought this might be the cable people, or I wouldn't have answered it. You're not with Time Warner?'
'I'm sorry, no. I'm here about your son. I take it you're Margery Stiver?'
'About Hugh?' She looked frightened. 'What about Hugh?
Is he all right?'
'Actually, Hugh is doing okay. I saw him yesterday. It's your late son, Gregory, I'd like to talk to you about if you have a few minutes. I apologize for barging in like this, Mrs.
Stiver.'
She relaxed a little. 'Where did you see Hugh? Did he say for you to come here?'
'No, he didn't. I didn't tell him I would be talking to you. I was asking him some things about Greg. May I come in for just a few minutes? I know you're expecting Time Warner.' I showed her my ID.
'Oh. A private investigator?'
'Licensed by the state of New York.'
'You saw Hugh. Yes, okay, you can come in. My husband is in the other room. He's busy.'
She led me through a foyer past a carpeted staircase and into what used to be called a den and maybe still was west of Crow Street. A flat-screen TV the size of a Caddie Escalade occupied one wall, and the bookshelves lining another held what appeared to be collectible plates with an early American motif on wooden stands and a couple of shelves of mystery novels that included the complete works of Margaret Truman.
'I'm so glad you saw Hugh. I have to say I'm envious,'
Mrs. Stiver added with a nervous laugh. 'I haven't seen Hugh for going on fourteen years.' She perched on the edge of a long low couch while I seated myself tentatively on a well-worn recliner I assumed was that of her husband, the child beater. The only printed matter on the coffee table was the Sunday Times Union TV listings. 'I suppose Hugh told you that he's estranged from his family-from Anson and myself.'
'Yes, he did. That must be very difficult, especially for you.' She didn't pick up on this.
'How is he? What is he doing? Is he a mechanic? Hugh was the handy one with machines and engines.'
'He's an auto mechanic.'
'In Massachusetts?'
'Yes.'
'A friend of mine, Cindy Visnicki, saw him there three or four years ago. I wrote to an address a friend of Cindy's got hold of, but Hugh never wrote back. He hates us.' She didn't sob or tear up. She just looked at me, waiting, it seemed, to find out how much I knew.
I said, 'Hugh's childhood was pretty bad, is my impression.
Apparently he prefers to leave it far behind.'
'I know. I understand. I don't blame him.'
'No.'
'I suppose I could blame myself.'
'Oh?'
'But what's the point?'
'It's hard to know.'
'You can do what you can do, but you can only do what you can do.'
'Mm.'
'Doctor Phil says self-reproach can eat you alive if you let it. Move on and get it right the next time. That's what I've tried to do.'
There seemed to be no point asking her if she planned on having three more children and raising them in a home without a sadist in it. 'Does your husband also have regrets about the way the boys were treated?'
She sniffed. 'I really wouldn't know what Anson thinks about my children. Or about anything else.'
'He's the uncommunicative type?'
'Uncommunicative? With the boys, Anson communicated with his fists. With Jennifer and me-Jennifer is my daughter-he didn't have much to say, no. What Anson was, was a good provider. I never had that as a child, and my husband Jim was also a disappointment in that way. He died at age thirty-one when he spent a good part of his paycheck one Friday night on beer and on losing at poker and then driving a company pickup truck into a bridge abutment.
Snyder Construction didn't only refuse to pay for the last 146
Red White and Black and Blue by Richard Stevenson three days Jim worked. They thought I should also reimburse them for the truck. Can you believe it?'
