Mr. X

the steak.

    Her smile changed. “I wish I'd been able to do more for Ashleigh. She's so smart and dedicated. You two get on very well together.'For a hitchhiker and the person who gave him a ride.

    'Ashleigh's easy to get on with. She wanted to hear more about my mother.'

    “I know how it feels to lose your mother. How is your father doing?'

    “I wonder.' I smiled at her chagrin. “I never knew my father.'

    'Do you know where he is?'

    “I didn't even know his name until yesterday, when my mother toldit to me. I thought I might see what I can find out about him. My family isn't too happy about that.'

    'They don't understand it? Or are they afraid of what you could find out?'

    The question startled me. 'They act like I'm being outrageous. They won't talk about things I know they remember.'

    'What could they be afraid of?'

    'God knows. My family is ... let's say, eccentric.'

    I had a memory-flash of Aunt Joy leaning forward and aiming a scrawny forefinger across the room to send Clarence's wheelchair rolling a yard forward, a yard back. She squinted. The wheelchair floated four feet off the ground and swung from side to side while Clarence pushed his tongue in and out of his mouth in babyish pleasure.

    That's all I can do, now most of my strength is gone. At least I can get him in and out of the bath, because how else is an old lady like me supposed to handle a full-grown man? Wasn't supposed to end up like this, Neddie. We used to be like royalty in this town.

    “I loved Aunt Nettie,' Laurie said, delivering me from the river-bottom and back to Le Madrigal.

    'You can have her. Aunt May, too. Once you have May in your family, you never have to pay for anything again. May just picks it up for you. She's a kind of magician.'

    'What do you mean? She's a kleptomaniac?'

    'May's beyond kleptomania. It's like Zen, like a mystical kleptomania.'

    Laurie appeared to contemplate the existence of a mystical kleptomania. 'But you still want to do it, don't you? You're not afraid.'

    A tingle of fear threaded my spine. “I want to find out whatever I can.'

    I heard Joy saying,Sylvan moved the family out of town, and he and Ethel had a hatch of kids, but some of those children, my daddy said, they didn't look human at all. The word for that in French is 'epouvante.' I was always superior to my sisters in my command of the French language.

    'What was your father's name?'

    Speaking his name in public seemed a violation of my privacy, or of some ancient code. I said it anyhow. 'Edward Rinehart.' It brought back the other name my mother had spoken, Robert. Who wasRobert?

    'What a great name. Swirling fog. A mansion on a rocky dill above the coastline. A devastatingly handsome man in a trench coat and evening clothes. He never talks about his past. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you . . . Mr. Edward Rinehart.'

    Feeling even more uncomfortable than before, I said, “I don't think he was much like Maximilian de Winter.'

    'Excuse me?'

    'The husband inRebecca. Grand house, rocky shoreline, unhappy secrets.'

    'No,I'm sorry!Rebecca is one of my favorite movies. Laurence Olivier, of course, exactly.'

    I had been thinking of Daphne du Maurier's novel instead of the Hitchcock movie, but so what?

     She placed her hand over mine. “I was going to show you the delights of Edgerton anyhow, so let's see what we can turn up along the way. Together, we could accomplish more than you could on your own.' Her dead- level glance might almost have been a plea. 'You'd be helping me, too. I need something to think about besides my stupid situation.' A moment of self-recognition silenced her, and she glanced away, then back at me. 'Look, Ned, if I'm being pushy, or intrusive, or anything like that... or sort of crazy . . .'

    And Sylvan told my daddy, Howard, don't trust anyone but your kin and don't trust them all that much, because you'll be lucky if some night I don't come along and split your head open with an axe. I always thought it was likely that my daddy shot Sylvan with that revolver he was supposed to be cleaning at the time of his death.

    I told her she didn't sound even faintly crazy, compared to some people in my family.

    'All I mean is that helping you would . . .'

    Would give her something to do besides brood about Stewart Hatch. 'All right. Let's help each other.'

    “I'm free all day tomorrow. Stewart gets Cobbie on Saturdays. Which means that a hired flunkey pushes our son on the swings in Merchants Park until Stewart walks out of his office long enough to stuff Cobbie full of hamburgers and candy before delivering him to my house at eight P.M.'

    We tried to work out where to meet. The park across the street turned out to be the place where the flunkey pushed Cobbie on the swings. Laurie suggested the front of the main library, four blocks up from the hotel and two blocks south, on the corner of Graceand Grenville.

    'Grenville?'

    'Half the streets in Edgerton are named after the families of people still walking around. LikeCobden Avenue? Stewart's father was named Cobden Hatch, which is how Cobbie got his name, of course. When should we meet? Nine-thirty? A friend of mine, Hugh Coventry, who works at the library, volunteers at City Hall on the weekends. Everything's closed, but he has access to all the offices, and he gets in around nine.'

    I asked why she wanted to go to City Hall.

    'Edward Rinehart should be in the records. And you might want to look at copies of your mother's marriage license and your birth certificate. Nothing like hard data.'

    'Nothing like a brilliant dinner companion,' I said.

    Most of the people in the restaurant looked up as we moved toward the podium. Vincent's smile barely concealed a leer.

    In an alcove off the lobby, I went into a booth and placed two calls. Laurie Hatch was doing her best to look inconspicuous alongside a potted palm when I came out, and I hurried across the lobby and followed her through the revolving door. The doorman handed her yellow ticket to an eager kid in a black vest, and the kid raced down into the garage.

    'Adventure beckons.' Laurie lifted her eyebrows in a comic, slyly conspiratorial glance.

    The boy in the black vest jumped out of a dark blue Mercury Mountaineer and held the door. Laurie winked at me and drove away, and I walked across Commercial Avenue, going toward Lanyard Street and Toby Kraft's pawnshop. According to Toby, long ago the street had been called Whore's Alley, but these days all the best hookers were married to money and lived in Ellendale.

 • 33

 • I began moving down Ferryman's Road at the top end of triangular Merchants Park. Three-story brick buildings set back on postcard lawns lined both of the streets fanning out from the apexof the triangle. At the top of the steps before the first building in the row, a heavyset man in a tan uniform was flipping through a hall of keys. Wondering what sort of business required the services of a security guard on a Friday night in Edgerton, I looked for a sign, which did not exist. Then I noticed the legend carved on a stone headpiece over the front door:THE COBDEN BUILDING. I laughed out loud—here was where Stewart Hatch did whatever he did with his father's money.

    Set deep within a ravaged face the color and texture of oatmeal laced with maple syrup, the guard's eyes fell on me. He looked too old for his job.

    'A lot of keys,' I said.

    'A lot of doors.' The guard continued to stare at me, not with the suspicion that would have been inevitable in Manhattan, but with an odd, expectant attentiveness. 'No matter how many times I tell myself to put a piece of tape on that first one, I always forget. Here's the little sucker.' He held up a key, and his belly strained the