Part 6 (1/2)

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 6.

PRESENT DAY.

They pa.s.sed through a white-on-white hallway and into a completely changed environment from the front room. No carpets interrupted the light hardwood floor and no draperies blocked the high windows. No furniture save for a waist-high platform in the center of the room, which had to measure ten feet by fifteen.

Corliss stood at one end and turned a crank to roll up the clear plastic sheet that floated on the top, supported by metal rods placed in strategic locations.

No quaint village here. Highways, skysc.r.a.pers, and houses upon houses, through which the trains flowed, met, separated, and looped around again on the sh.o.r.es of a blue-”It's Cleveland,” Theresa exclaimed. ”You've modeled Cleveland.”

”From Rocky River to Shaker Heights.” Corliss bent over one corner of the platform, opened an electrical box, and flipped several switches. Tiny bulbs lit up in the windows of the office buildings, the airport, gas stations. Trains chugged to life.

”You even have the rapid transit cars.” Theresa watched one of the electric commuter vehicles, on which she'd spent so many hours over the years, glide along beside a locomotive. Both at 1:64 scale, of course.

Even Jablonski seemed impressed. He took some stills, then switched back to the camcorder, its lens sweeping the model city from end to end.

Frank said nothing but circled the tableau as if he expected to witness the model citizenry engaging in various crimes. He needn't have worried. The replicated city had every accoutrement down to park benches but not one citizen. Theresa did not find that surprising-they'd have had to be the size of ants and number in the hundreds to populate this metropolis.

”Here's the Medical Examiner's Office.” Theresa could have spent an hour noting every detail to the display. ”How long did this take you to build?”

”About a year, I suppose. But I'm never really done. I'm always tinkering with it-I spent three days on the swing bridge this past week after its motor decided to quit. Then I decided to make it winter-at least in part of the city. Here, let me show you.”

He picked up a pint-sized plastic container and popped off the lid. Before she could react, he scooped up her hand and immersed her fingers into the white goo. ”Brush it on the trees like this, lightly, so it sort of frosts them but not completely.”

It had been a long time since a man held her hand. The white stuff felt like cottage cheese but drier, the tiny plastic limbs rough but flexible. Under her fingers, Christmas came to Cleveland.

”Do you ever crash them?” Jablonski asked, tapping one engine as it went by.

”Of course not!” its creator snapped. ”And don't touch that!”

”Sorry.”

”I could stand here all day.” Frank's voice sounded patently unconvincing, but perhaps only to someone who'd known him since her birth.

”But we really do need to learn more about your father's building.”

”It's here.” Theresa pointed out the stone structure's miniature copy. It looked better in the model than in real life-tidy and still alive.

Frank raised an eyebrow to let her know she was being less than helpful. ”Can we check for the photographs, please?”

”Certainly. You have to excuse me, I don't get many opportunities to show it off. My neighbor is a fan, but other than him...” Edward Corliss handed Theresa a rag for her fingers, switched off his tiny city with obvious regret, carefully replaced the plastic dust cover, and took them to a much smaller room off the back of the house. Bookshelves covered nearly every inch of wall s.p.a.ce except for framed prints and drawings of trains, and it smelled of dust and pipe tobacco.

”They're not in an alb.u.m, I'm afraid, only loose in a box,” Corliss warned them as he dug through one of the lower cabinets. ”Father didn't always have my sense of order. Or Mother's.”

”Where is your mother?” Frank asked.

”She pa.s.sed away, oh, must be more than forty years now. Before father did. Let's see what we have here.” He sat at a wooden desk that would have required six bodybuilders to lift and flipped the top of a box that had once held Audubon Society note cards. The other three people in the room watched over his shoulder, Theresa leaning close enough to pick up the scent of Old Spice. She loathed Old Spice because her first boyfriend had worn it. She decided not to hold that against Edward Corliss.

After donning a pair of reading gla.s.ses, he turned the photos over, one by one, gently but methodically. ”This is my baptism, you don't need to see that...those were our neighbors, they've since moved...my flat in England, I still regret selling that, the prices have shot up in the past few years...my graduation...ah, here's one. It's the outside of the building, though.”

Theresa peered at the black-and-white image, still sharp after so many years. ”Which one is your father?”

He tapped a lean finger on the man in the center, who was wearing creased trousers and a white s.h.i.+rt with a tie. He bore some resemblance to his son, mainly in the deep-set eyes, but seemed taller. He carried his suit coat tossed over one shoulder, and a rounded hat had been pushed back from his forehead. He posed in front of the same entrance Theresa had pa.s.sed through yesterday morning; his clothing and the shadow behind him told her the picture had been taken in summertime, when the sun hung to the north.

”Who are the other people?” Frank asked.

On Arthur's right stood a gaunt man in similar clothing and a young woman in a long black skirt and a coat festooned with chiffon scarves. She had wavy dark hair and smiled. The man didn't. On the other side of the owner, two young men seemed to be jostling with each other and their images had blurred. Behind them and off to the side sat a man with less-neat clothing and a ruined expression.

Corliss said, ”I'm only guessing, you understand, but I'm sure my father told me at some point that these two young men are the architects I spoke of. And-again, I'm not sure-this man could be that doctor.”

”The nutritionist?” Theresa asked.

”The dietician, yes.”

”Who's the woman? Is that your mother?”

”No.” Edward Corliss brought the photo closer to his face and then backed it away again, as if that might help jog his memory. ”I have no idea. She could be the medium. Father always described her as an outlandish dresser.”

”What about this man, in the background?”

Corliss shrugged. ”Again, no idea. He could be anyone, someone working for the other tenants, a pa.s.serby. He could have been a b.u.m, I mean, a hobo. My father used to try to help them during the Depression, give them a meal, let them sleep there a night or two if he had any vacant units. I said he had a soft heart, and during those years there were plenty of men who needed one.”

”When was this photo taken?” she asked.

Corliss turned it over, showed them the May 5, 1936, printed in block letters. ”The man could have been a messenger for the railroads or one of the other businesses, I suppose, or he could have spent the night on the front stoop and hadn't left before they snapped the picture. As I said, a common occurrence then as now, the poor souls sleeping on the sidewalk. Sometimes I think not much has changed.”

Jablonski spoke, startling Theresa. He had moved to just behind her left shoulder. ”Who took the picture?”

All four people peered at the snap with new interest.

”Your mother?” Theresa suggested.

”No, they didn't meet until after the war. I really don't know. A friend, I suppose, or another tenant.”

Frank asked, ”Did he ever mention someone disappearing from his building? A tenant? A client? Even a hobo?”

Corliss considered the question, shook his head. ”I'm sure I would remember something like that.”

”Did he ever mention a James Miller?”

”Not that I recall.”

”So you have no idea who this dead man we found could be?”

”I've been thinking of nothing else since you called this morning. No.

I have no idea.” His eyelids fluttered suddenly. ”Surely you don't think my father had something to do with that.”