Following the world’s fastest benediction. Hardy marched his choir down the center aisle at breakneck speed, the mayor at his side. Their differences over the Unmarked Grave temporarily forgotten, they looked united in their common desire to see that nothing interfered with the steady progress of Liberty Harbor.
“The advisory committee meets in my study in five,” Hardy barked. Politically, he added, “If you please.”
I tried to reach my father, but the congregation was in pandemonium, and I couldn’t even see him. I wasn’t too worried now, however, because Atheneum McGee had wrested attention from my dad; the reporters and photographers were stampeding to get to the scarecrow in the back row. Every member of the church and visitor, as well, seemed to be shoving to reach Atheneum and to plead with him to be reasonable, and not to obstruct the renovation our town needed so badly. Men who’d been out of work for months tugged at his ratty sleeve; mothers with babies in their arms pushed those babies toward him as proof that Mommy needed work because Baby needed shoes. “Listen fella,” Goose Shattuck roared, “we’re six months into that job! You want your fair share, don’t bug us. Go after those relatives of yours who had you dead and buried!”
Jack Fenton put a hand on Goose’s beefy shoulder and said, surprisingly, “Shut up, Goose.” The banker said coolly to Atheneum McGee, “If you didn’t die in Vietnam, where have you been all this time, Mr. McGee? I wonder if the army might not/be interested in that information.”
An expression that unpleasantly combined cunning and fear crossed Atheneum McGee’s sharp features. “You can’t blackmail me into disappearing,” he said nastily. “It’s not my fault the army identified the wrong dead body! My buddy and me, we was blown up in a cave in Nam. Damn near knocked me into Cambodia, and when I woke up I didn’t know my ass from my army. Wandered around in the jungle living off the gooks, didn’t even know my name. It was my sergeant, man; he identified my buddy’s body, said it was me, said it was my buddy who was MIA. I got witnesses, man! I can prove it.”
Again, that image of a rat came to my mind. Atheneum McGee looked like a diseased, crazed rat. Rabid. Vicious. Jack Fenton and the rest of the crowd around him seemed to sense it, too, and backed off, giving him breathing room.
Unexpectedly, Webster Helms took advantage of the moment to rescue McGee by pulling him out of the importuning, hostile crowd and into a room with a lock on it. Just before Web slammed the door, Pete and Betty Tower ran up and Betty pounded on it. “Let us in, Web,” Betty said shrilly. “Can’t let him delay us, got to keep on schedule!” Web allowed them, in, muttering something that sounded like, “Dam fool.” I heard the lock fall into place.
That left the rest of us with nothing to do but mill around and wring our hands. Some of the crowd gave up and left for their homes and lunches. I looked futilely for my father, only to give up and head for Hardy’s study. But first, I turned to Geof who was still beside me.
“At least this isn’t the kind of trouble you feared.”
But he was scanning the horizon, looking so bloodhoun-dish I expected him to sniff the air. “Urn,” he said, “Excuse me, Jenny.” I watched him convene the other cops in a corner of the sanctuary, and then they dispersed to different areas of the church. Geof, feigning that official pose that fools no one, slipped into the crowd on the front steps.
“Come on, Jenny,” commanded Mary Eberhardt. “This way.”
She had also rounded up Jack Fenton, Goose Shattuck and Ted Sullivan. Mary led us to her husband’s office to join the mayor. Ted and I took the only chairs. Jack and Goose paced, crossing paths in the center of the room. Barbara stared out the window.
“Damnedest thing,” Jack muttered to the carpet. “If this isn’t the damnedest thing.”
Betty Tower’s blond head appeared in the doorway. She looked flushed, strained, unsteady on her feet as if the day’s shock had made her woozy. “Ted,” she said, her voice trembling a bit, “take my place in there. If I have to spend five more minutes with that smelly moron, I’ll be sick.”
Ted left quickly, followed by Goose. Shortly after, Jack Fenton couldn’t seem to stand it any longer, and he disappeared, too, along with the mayor. For the next half hour, the minister’s office was a giant jack-in-the-box with many heads popping in and out.
“You talk to him, Mary!”
“All right, but don’t expect miracles.”
“Why not, it’s a church, isn’t it?”
“Where’s Hardy?”
“Gone to phone a lawyer, get some legal advice about this. How come we don’t have a lawyer on the committee?”
“Jenny, aren’t you going in?”
“No,” I said firmly. “Too many cooks.”
They came and went, sometimes reporting progress, more often looking discouraged. Atheneum McGee was playing us like a poker hand, knowing all the time that he held the winning ace. “But Ted,” I said at one point when the realtor and I were the only people in Hardy’s study, “what if he is not really Atheneum McGee?”
“But he is,” Ted said. “I’d bet on it.”
I shrugged. “Yeah, so would I.”
Hardy came back from another trip to the telephone, “Okay,” he said, “where’s Jack? We need to get some cool heads together to talk to the man again.”
“Getting a cup of coffee, I think,” I reported. “Who’s in there with McGee now?”
“I don’t know!” The blue-robed arms flew up in frustration. “If I could get him alone, I could persuade him to see the error of his ways.”
“Go team,” I said, to which he, to his credit, grinned.
“Hardy.” I stopped him before he flew out the door again. “I hate to be the local pessimist, but I don’t think all this arm-twisting is worth it. People are so litigious these days; and Atheneum McGee strikes me as a person who will sue everybody who ever had anything to do with the project, whether or not they’re responsible for his problems. He’d probably sue the phone company because nobody called him to tell him he’s an heir. He’ll probably sue the funeral home that buried the wrong body; He’d sue his great-uncle Lobster if he were still alive.”
“You,” said Mary Eberhardt, who had stuck her head in the door, “are what is known as a wet blanket. Besides, we’re making progress, I can feel it.”
I shook my head. “That man is after every penny he can get,” I said. “If we were turnip he’d squeeze blood from us. I’ve a feeling this project is going on hold for a good long time, just about as long as it takes him to get an injunction to stop construction, and for us to appeal it, and for him to . . .”
“You’re wrong!” Ted Sullivan crowed. Jack Fenton, the Towers and Goose pushed in behind him. “We’ve got him convinced to leave us alone and to get his money from the other heirs.”
“I don’t believe it,” I said.
“Drip.” Mary smiled. “Drip, drip.”
“Oh, ye, of little faith,” her husband said to me.
“So who’s with him now?” Mary looked from face to eager face. They all stared back blankly at her. “Oh, for heaven’s sake,” said she, the master organizer, “we can’t just leave him alone in there to change his mind.” She wheeled around to retrieve the heir apparent. I sat in my chair and watched the others congratulate each other for managing to persuade McGee to sue his relatives instead of us.
When she left the room it was eleven minutes past twelve, by the clock on the wall in Hardy’s study. At thirteen minutes past twelve a piercing scream shattered the bonhomie.
“Mary!” Hardy said, turning as pale as it was possible for him to turn. “Oh Lord, my Mary!”
We rushed after him, running toward the sound of that horrible scream which continued to echo through the halls of the church. The screaming was, indeed, coming from Mary Eberhardt’s throat. But we weren’t the first to reach her. Geof was.
We found them both kneeling on the floor of the room in which Webster had sequestered Atheneum McGee. It was the practice and changing room for the choir. In respect for the negotiations that had been going on inside their quarters, the choir had neatly folded their blue, robes and piled them on the floor outside the door. But even if they’d been able to hang their pretty robes in the closet, they would not have wished to do so.
Two legs sprawled out of that closet, their feet shod in sandals. The rest of the body lay half in, half out of the closet. It was Atheneum McGee, of course. He lay facedown, his arms flung out above his head. Deep into his back, in the region of his heart, somebody had thrust with violent and hateful force the whittled end of the cross for the Unmarked Grave.