“I suppose you haven’t called the police about the son of a bitch.”
“I can’t really do that now.”
“Might have been a better idea than letting Stanley run off.”
“It wouldn’t have made any difference. I know this guy. He’d say Rosie agreed to do it. Even Rosie says he didn’t force her, she did it to protect Stan’s business. Stan and Rosie aren’t the type of people who can go up against someone like Jeremy Tripp. Believe me.”
Millicent shook her head to herself. “That poor girl.”
“She’s sleeping now. She’s going to be okay. She was more upset about Stan than she was about herself.”
“You’d think if you were like Rosie or Stan life would go a little easier on you. But it doesn’t. Mostly it seems to go the other way.”
I gave her back the keys to the Datsun and left her staring at the blue flame of the heater, her fingers playing restlessly across the material of her shawl.
CHAPTER 29
I spent the night listening for cars, expecting a cavalcade of them to come thundering across the meadow at any moment, carrying cops and a warrant for our arrest. But the night passed undisturbed and when I woke the next morning I lay for a while daring to hope that we might have escaped the warehouse fire undetected.
It was a Saturday. Marla at home and no Plantasaurus work-what little we had left of it. I thought I was the first one up but when I went out onto the stoop Stan was sitting in a patch of sunshine wearing his Batman costume. He had his eyes closed behind the mask and didn’t realize I was there. His face was turned to the sun and his right hand was closed in a loose fist on his knee. Slowly, as I watched, he brought his hand up and I saw that his fingers were wrapped around a large brown moth. He pushed it into his mouth and started chewing, scrunching his face as he forced himself to eat the insect.
“What are you doing!”
He swallowed and shuddered, then opened his eyes and blinked and looked emptily at me.
“I don’t know, Johnny.”
“Jesus, Stan… Look, dude, don’t worry about last night. Jeremy Tripp deserved it. It’s not something you have to feel bad about.”
“Why’s everything going wrong? I used to be happy, then all of this bad stuff happened. I don’t understand it, Johnny.”
I could have told him it was just the way life was, that the bad came along with the good, but that wouldn’t have been the truth. Everything bad that was happening to Stan could be traced back to one event-Marla and me fucking in the forest for Bill Prentice. I couldn’t have foreseen that it would have such disastrous consequences, I hadn’t done it with the thought of hurting anyone at all, but still…
“Everything is going to be okay, Stan, I promise. I don’t want you to be frightened or upset about anything.”
“But there’s nothing behind things anymore, not like there used to be.” He looked at me then as though he had suddenly realized something. “Is this how you feel, Johnny? Am I like you now?”
By the middle of the morning Stan had changed out of his costume but he still had about him the air of someone who had been profoundly stunned. Rosie joined him on the stoop and the two of them spent a long time staring vacantly at the meadow.
In an attempt to distract him from his misery I reminded him that we hadn’t investigated our secret river yet. He seemed to have lost all interest in it, but after I’d talked for a while about gold and how much money we could make and how the whole thing would be a huge adventure, he roused himself a little and agreed to accompany me on an expedition to find out what the buried riverbed held.
“And maybe, Johnny, if there’s a lot of gold, maybe I could pay Jeremy Tripp back for his warehouse.”
Over the years my father had accumulated all the basics necessary for amateur prospecting: shovels, wire- mesh graders for sieving out stones, even a modern aluminum sluice. We’d brought this gear with us from the old house and kept it now in the shed behind the cabin. Stan and I loaded ourselves with a couple of pans, a shovel, a mattock, and a grader and were just coming back around to the front of the cabin when I realized that my plans for the day would have to be radically rethought.
Marla and Rosie were standing close together on the stoop looking up the slope of the meadow in alarm. I followed their gaze and saw, at the top of the track that led down to our cabin, a red E-type Jaguar sitting motionless against a background of trees.
Stan made a small whimpering sound and dropped the pan he was carrying. “Johnny…”
“It’s okay. He’s probably just here to see if we can lend him some plants.”
“No, he isn’t.”
“Why don’t you take Rosie and show her how to pan for gold? We really need to find out what’s in that riverbed.”
I handed my pan to Rosie. Stan stayed staring worriedly at Jeremy Tripp’s car.
“Go on, Stan. It’ll be better if it’s just me who talks to him. I’ll come and get you when he’s gone. Don’t worry about anything, it’s going to be all right.”
Stan picked up his pan and tugged unhappily at Rosie and the two of them set off down the meadow. I went and stood beside Marla on the stoop. A minute later the E-type rolled down the track.
When Jeremy Tripp got out of the car I felt Marla flinch. He stepped onto the ground in front of the cabin as though he were taking ownership of everything around him, us included.
“Log cabin… Very rustic, but don’t you worry about fire?”
“Not especially.”
“Really? I have to tell you, it’s of some concern to me. You really don’t worry about it?” He gazed off down the meadow. Stan and Rosie were just entering the trees. “Smart move sending your brother away. I expect he doesn’t cope well with stress. Shall we go inside?”
Without waiting for an answer he climbed the steps and walked past us into the cabin. Marla looked dull and white and I felt a cold hand close about my stomach. For a moment neither of us moved, then we turned and went inside.
Jeremy Tripp sprawled on the couch. Marla took a chair as far away from him as possible and I stayed standing. Jeremy Tripp smirked when I didn’t sit down.
“Standing won’t do you any good, John. All that stuff about sitting with your back to a window, having your chair higher than the other guy? It’s all pointless if you don’t have the goods. There are only a few things that really allow you to dominate an exchange. Money is one of them. Knowledge is another. Strutting around the room usually means you don’t have either.”
“What do you want?”
“There was a fire at my warehouse last night.”
“Oh?”
“Surprised? So was I. Fire department says it was arson. That got me thinking, as you might imagine. The target’s a warehouse full of plants. There’s another plant company in town whose business I’ve pretty much annihilated, run by someone less than kindly disposed toward me.”
“Just because I have a plant company doesn’t mean I started the fire.”
“I’m not saying it does. You’re probably not stupid enough to do something so obvious.”
“Okay. Good. So what’s this about?”
“You’re not stupid enough… but your brother is.”
I felt the cold hand around my stomach tighten. “Stan’s not capable of doing anything like that.”
“Anyone can do anything if the circumstances are right, and it’s been a tough old time for Stanley. Business going down the toilet, losing your house… If you don’t have a strong mind these things can push you over the edge. It’s just a guess, of course, but I’d say Stan’s mind is a long way from strong. Finding out his girlfriend likes
