SIXTY-TWO

 

 

Miles spent a wretched and largely sleepless night trying to cope with a profound sense of loss and rejection. With wave after wave of sadness and emotional pain. To his great irritation, he also found himself thinking about things his mother had said—for example, that he was, perhaps, getting too old to find someone to share his life with.

Were things already as good as they were ever going to get for him? Would he spend the rest of his days in a job he disliked and living with his mother? He felt as if he'd missed some eminently important train. One that bore away his rediscovered sense of meaning in life. In a way, of course, last night's eastbound Oriental Limited had done just that.

Wide awake sometime after 3 a.m., he considered going on a night watch. He could play a little Sidney Bechet when his arms tired of holding the binoculars. It would kill time, if nothing else. But he couldn't muster the motivation to sit up, let alone get dressed. He fell asleep an hour later.

He woke with the sun, but with no desire to get out of bed. For more than an hour, he lay there imagining Marion on the train to Chicago, passing the great peaks of the Rocky Mountains, their summits lit pink in the predawn Montana light, Marion and Sylvia waking up to a breakfast service of hot scones and jam with a pot of gourmet coffee. The vision made the inside of his rib cage feel empty but for a few butterflies, while an odd tingle radiated down his arms, hands, and fingers, making them feel weak. He wanted nothing more than to go back to sleep.

At least the investigation was nearing closure, thank heaven.

The investigation. Ugh.

He remembered that he needed to meet the new Cantonese interpreter dockside when he arrived on the morning boat from Seattle. With a groan, he dragged himself out of bed and shuffled his way to the bathroom where the simple task of brushing his teeth somehow took him more than five minutes.

"Sleeping the day away?" Nellie asked when he found her in the kitchen preparing to can a batch of string beans from her vegetable garden. He didn't bother to answer. "Much as I did when you were still a child, Miles, I'll remind you to please close the windows when you go to bed at night so that we don't get flies and mosquitos in the house."

"What are you talking about?" he asked, irritated, as he reached for the coffee can, Monsieur Rousseau glaring at him from his cat pillow in the corner.

"You left the window open last night."

"I did not."

"You certainly did."

"Which window?"

"The one next to the back door."

Miles walked to the back of the house for a look.

"I've already shut it," she called after him. "You needn't trouble yourself now."

But I didn't open it either, Miles thought.

It was an ordinary 12-pane sash window next to their back door. It wasn't latched—but then, they usually only latched their windows if they were leaving home for an extended absence. Everything appeared normal from the inside. However, when he opened the back door, a foot-long splinter of wood came off the doorframe and fell at his feet.

What the hell?

The doorframe had a huge crack in it, and in the part of the frame just below the latch there was a deep square impression in the wood—like that of a pry bar being used to try to force the door open. Peeking out, he saw that the outside of the window frame had a similar mark and similar damage. The lilies of the valley below the window were trampled.

He tried to raise the window from inside the house and found that it stopped after about five inches—not enough of a gap for a man to squeeze through. He lowered the window, then tried to raise it again with the same result. It jammed, solidly, five inches up. The frame must have warped over the years, and they'd never noticed before because they almost never opened this particular window.

Miles stepped outside and scanned the surrounding area—the yard, the orchard, the edge of the nearby forest—hoping to spot a meaningful clue. Then he made a quick circuit of the house, examining each first-floor window and the front door. Everything else looked normal.

"Someone tried to break in last night," he said, returning to the kitchen, explaining his findings to his mother.

"What of value would someone expect to steal from here?" Nellie asked. "Some bent silver forks? The old clock?"

"They were probably looking for me, Mother."

"Looking for you?"

"With bad intent. Pack an overnight bag. I'm taking you to stay with Meredith Bailey until this is over."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Don't be ridiculous. What if they come back? Are you going to run away? You can hardly walk with your bad hip." He pictured her limping, fleeing for her life in midnight darkness.

"Miles—"

"Having you here means both of us are in danger. And having to worry about you makes me more vulnerable."

"Miles, I am not about to let some unknown scoundrel force me out of my own home. Who will look after Monsieur Rousseau?"

"Monsieur Rousseau? Who gives a . . ." Stopping himself, Miles wiped his hands over his face. "Look, you can bring your cat, alright?"

"No."

"Why on earth not?"

"A person has to draw a line, Miles. What if I don't stand up for what's right? Where will I be then?"

"You'll be alive, mother! How does that sound?"

This seemed to startle her for a split second. But she reverted to her initial rigidity in the blink of an eye. "No, Miles. You're either a part of civilized society or you're not. I refuse to enable chaos and bad deeds by thinking only of myself."

"For heaven's sake! You really think that by . . . You know what? Never mind."

Instead of moving his mother to a safe house, he spent the next half hour nailing all of the first-floor windows shut with a hammer and a box of ten penny nails.

"You're going to ruin the window frames."

"I'm being careful not to hit the wood."

"You'll ruin them."

"It's either this, or I bind, gag, and drag you out of here."

The windows secured, he went back upstairs to his bedroom closet and took from it the old, lightweight .410 double-barrel birding shotgun he'd used as a kid, loaded it, and took it back downstairs to his mother. "You remember how to use this?"

"Of course."

"It's only birdshot, so aim for the face."

"I'm not an idiot."

"I can have Bill bring you a revolver when—"

"Miles, go to work. Quit worrying about me. I'll be fine."

He insisted that she bolt both doors and wedge chairs against them after he left. "And don't open the door to anyone—I mean anyone—you don't know. Or anyone you do know, for that matter."

"I'll say it again. I'll be fine."