Part 75 (1/2)
His double chin shook gently, too. ”I've told you everything I can.
Really, I have' I., Their eyes met.
”Please,” said Grover again. He motioned to the door and a tone in his voice suggested that the next request would not be as polite.
Thomas was halfway down the flagstone path when he pa.s.sed Susan Grover.
The little girl was in a buoyant mood. She'd been talking to the lady in the car, she said, and her daddy could talk just like that.
”What?” asked Thomas, hardly slowing his step. Leslie sat in the car, facing away from the house.
”Daddy can talk just like the Queen,” said Susan.
”The Queen of-' ”Susan!”
Grover stood at his front door and bellowed at his daughter.
”Susan! Get in here!”
The little girl was frightened. She turned and ran toward her father, not knowing what she'd done wrong. She'd never seen him like this. A man of many voices and faces, both voice and face now denoted one emotion: anger.
Grover glowered at Daniels.
”Get off my property, mister,” he said.
”When we meet again it will be on my terms.” The fat man raised his hammy forearm to his face and bit savagely into what appeared to be a m.u.f.fin. He glared and chewed simultaneously.
Thomas turned and walked to his car. Leslie had witnessed the scene on the flagstone path. She'd heard Grover, but not his daughter.
Thomas slid into the driver's seat. Leslie appeared disappointed.
”Your exit didn't look friendly,” she noted wryly. She had a pad and in her hand and was drawing an oval on it, and oval which, penci 11 as the basis of a sketch, would form a head.
Thomas glanced away from the pad, back to the house where the door was slamming.
”He wouldn't talk,” said Thomas, turning the car key in the ignition slot.
”It's back to New York.”
She nodded.
They drove through miles of wooded forestland in northeastern Pennsylvania. Leslie continued to sketch, even in the moving car.
He marveled that she could do it and occasionally glanced down at her work. A man's face was appearing on the paper. Thomas recognized it.
Grover. De Septio.
”Why are you doing that?” he asked.
As you Americans would say,” she said, ”'for the h.e.l.l of it' She continued. A strange sense was upon Thomas; miles had pa.s.sed before he recognized it.
He'd been here before. Not in Grover's house, and never within Grover's company. But the section of the country, along the way, he recognized from his early teens.