“Yes, Mom. I just don’t understand why we’re going out here instead of going home.”
I said, “Just wait.”
When we got to the cabin, I took off my witch’s cape and hat and tried to wash the paint off Arch’s face. I considered waiting until morning to tell him about the death of his grandmother. But I did not under any circumstances want him to hear it accidentally or casually, from someone else. I decided to break the news after I had tucked him into Pomeroy’s cot.
“I’m sorry, Arch,” I whispered. “I have bad news. Vonette died this evening.”
He was very still, his eyes locked into mine. The shadow of the silver greasepaint that had not yielded to the washcloth gave him the aspect of a ghoul. When his tears began I wiped his face on the sleeve of my witch costume.
“And,” I went on slowly, “somebody’s tried to poison Fritz again. Except whoever did it probably didn’t put enough in again. That’s what I think.”
A few moments later he murmured, “Why are we here?”
“Well,” I said with a sigh, “your dad’s feeling really crazy right now. His mother’s dead and his dad’s sick. And you know how your dad can get when he’s angry, throwing dishes around and all. So I thought we’d be safer out here.”
He said nothing for a long time while tears continued to well up. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, opened it again.
He said, “Is Vonette in heaven? With Laura Smiley?”
I felt the tears prick behind my own eyes as I took my son into my arms.
I said, “Absolutely. They are up there together, taking care of each other, right now.”
Within half an hour Arch was breathing the comforting shallow wheeze of a child asleep. Pomeroy placed a mug of hot chocolate in front of me and we began the long work of opening letter after letter and reading them in silence. Outside, the wind howled and groaned. The waves of air would start and stop, and once after the sudden cessation of sound I thought I heard a car engine being turned off.
“Did you hear that?” I asked Pom.
He shook his head. “Out here you hear all kinds of stuff. You learn to ignore it.”
“Listen to this,” I said: I kept my voice low so Arch would not awaken. “Bebe writes, ‘He came in this morning when Mom was still asleep. After he did it to me again he wanted to know who I’ve told. He says this is just supposed to be between us. He says people who betray secrets die. I’m afraid.’ ”
“It’s bad, all right,” said Pom, who was slouched down between the cushions of his homemade sofa. His beekeeper suit was crumpled; he looked like a tired ghost. “I just read where she was bleeding and was afraid to go to a doctor, least of all her own stepfather. So she just waited for it to go away.”
Now there seemed to be sticks breaking outside. Perhaps it was a solitary elk moving through the forest. Pom noticed nothing. He was intensely involved in reading the letters. I thought I must be getting paranoid.
I read again, “ ‘Miss Smiley, I have stopped going to church because I know God doesn’t like me anymore. Fritz said—’ ” I paused and looked up at Pom. “You see, there she uses his name. I’m sure that’ll help with laws about evidence.” I looked back at the sheet in my hand. “ ‘Fritz said Mom knows. What does that mean, Miss Smiley? What does Mom know?’ ”
I shook my head. “Pom. No wonder this kid drank a whole bottle.”
“Yes,” came a voice from the door, “that’s why she did it, all right.”
And in walked Fritz Korman still in his black Zorro suit. He had a small gun in his hand.
“Put that thing down,” demanded Pomeroy. “Goldy’s kid is asleep over there.”
Fritz’s bald head shone in the soft yellow light of Pomeroy’s lamps. He was leering at us. A broad self- satisfied smile stretched across his handsome face. The devil’s own, out on Halloween night. My heart turned to ice.
I said, “I thought you were so sick.”
He brought his nose up in a wrinkle and kept the gun pointed at us.
“Goldy, honey,” he said, “that’s why we have ipecac. To get poison out of people’s systems. And since I figured it was Pomeroy or you or one of your buddies who tried to do me in, I’ve come to find out. And look at what else we’ve found.”
I said, “You bastard.”
“Now don’t go waking up my grandchild, Goldy. He’s going to find your and Pom’s bodies out in that garage shed after your little lovers’ quarrel. Now let’s all go out slowly.” And he motioned us with the gun to move over to the door.
“Did you kill Vonette?” I demanded without moving. “She knew about these letters, didn’t she? She threatened you, is my bet. How’d you make it look like suicide this time? And what about Laura Smiley?”
He gave me a rueful smile. “Well now, aren’t you full of questions?”
I pressed on, “Arch found an opened surgical kit in the Chrysler. Is that why you wanted your car back so badly, because of what you had left in there? Was that the car a neighbor heard at Laura’s that Saturday morning?” He smirked at me. “What I want to know is, how you got in and out of that house without the police finding any prints.”
He raised his eyebrows, again in mock surprise. He said, “Amazing invention, surgical gloves.”
“Look, Fritz,” said Pomeroy evenly. “Cut the crap. Take the letters and go. You don’t need to kill us, for God’s sake, there’s been enough dying already. Just go.”
Fritz cocked his head at Pomeroy, the same leer fixed on his face. For the first time, it occurred to me that my former father-in-law, a man I had liked for so long, was insane.
“Pomeroy Locraft, you are offending me. You have offended me already. You have accused me of immorality.”
“You mean,” I said, “for performing an abortion on his wife who was an alcoholic?”
“Well, Goldy. You’ve been reading those files,” said Fritz. He turned back to the beekeeper. “Poor Pomeroy, wanted to be a daddy so badly. Came into my office all upset. But it was too late.”
Pomeroy was shaking his head. He said to Fritz, “I wouldn’t go outside in that outfit if I were you—”
“Fritz,” I babbled, “where will you go? They’ll catch you, you know.”
He snorted. “By the time they figure out I’m gone, I’ll be the proprietor of a little hotel in Mexico.”
“What about Vonette?” I demanded, stalling, anything. “How much Demerol did you have to inject her with to kill her? Don’t you think the cops are going to figure that out?”
Fritz looked from one of us to the other. “Vonette’s better off now. The police will find nothing. I am tired,” he announced, “of listening to you two. Walk.”
And out we shuffled. I gave a last long look at the lump on the bed that was my son.
Halfway to the shed, Fritz called to us to stop.
“Almost forgot,” he said over the breeze stirring the trees. “If you and your boyfriend here are going to kill each other, we need another gun. So turn left, boys and girls, and we can go to my car and get one.” And then he laughed, a horrible high-pitched sound that made my stomach turn over.
We turned and marched through the dry grass toward what I could dimly see was Fritz’s Jeep. The evening was still cloudy and the moon was high in the sky. Occasionally moonlight swept the meadow. Pom’s cabin, the honey shed, the silvered grass would appear—and then be gone. I kept glancing back to see some movement in the cabin. Had Arch awakened? But if he had, what good would it do? Would he have heard? How could he get help? Would he be too terrified or confused to do anything? I had noticed a rural fire number posted on one of the trees near the cabin, an indication that someone had Pomeroy on a map somewhere. Fat lot of good that would do us.
Fritz was muttering and thrashing through his glove compartment.
“Goldy,” whispered Pom, “when we get down to the shed, I’ll try to hit him. If we’re in the back of the shed, go out the back door. Then run back to the house and get Arch and take off in my car. The keys are in it.”
“What about you?” I whispered back.
“Shut up, you two,” hollered Fritz. He had come around the car and now held two firearms. “Turn around and get down to that shed.”
We obediently turned and started back over the rocks and grass in the direction of the shed, Fritz behind us. I walked on tiptoe, trying to avoid holes. At one point I stepped on something that felt like eggshells. Then suddenly
