Part 5 (2/2)

”Live-in?”

”Yes.”

”Do you know if he had any relatives? People who should be contacted?”

”He never mentioned anyone.”

”And your name is?”

Her arms drew upward protectively, as if against invisible fingers unb.u.t.toning her blouse. ”Dora March,” she replied evenly.

I closed the notebook. ”Well, that's all I need to know at the moment. I'll have to send Dr. Bradshaw over. He's the county coroner. Do you want me to call him now?”

”Yes,” she said.

I used the phone downstairs, a wooden one that hung on the wall. Dora stood a few feet away, beside a lamp with a bloodred shade, listening silently as I made the arrangements.

”The doctor will be by in just a few minutes,” I told her as I hung up the phone.

She nodded.

”I'm sorry about Mr. Dillard,” I added.

”Thank you.”

She walked me to the door.

I stepped out onto the porch. ”Well, good night, Miss March.”

”Good night, Mr. Chase.”

I was back in my office, sleeplessly toiling at some nondescript prosecution, when Doc Bradshaw came by an hour later. He was an old man, careless in his dress, with a rumpled hat, and a day or two's growth of gray stubble. One leg was shorter than the other, so that when he walked his left shoulder rode a good two inches higher than the right. It gave him a mangled appearance, like a bicycle that had been run over then crudely hammered back into shape.

”Here's the death certificate,” he said. He slid a single sheet of paper onto my desk.

I picked it up and began to glance over it. ”Anything I need to tell Hap?”

Doc Bradshaw lowered himself with a sigh into the chair opposite my desk. He didn't answer my question. Instead, he asked, ”You wouldn't happen to have a shot of whiskey, would you, Cal?”

”I don't keep it in my office.”

”Because it's against the rules?”

”Because it's too tempting.” I glanced at the bottom of the page. ”Natural causes. You have any reason to doubt that?”

Doc Bradshaw chuckled. ”You looking for trouble, Cal? Not enough felonious activity in Port Alma for you?” He laughed again. ”No, I didn't see anything out of the ordinary. Old men die, that's the long and short of it.” He bent forward, ma.s.saged his knees, then sat back with a soft groan. ”Poor old Ed. Not a person in the world to shed a tear for him.”

”Except that woman,” I said, surprising myself as I said it.

”Think they were close?” Doc Bradshaw asked.

”She seemed to care about him.”

Bradshaw glanced toward the window. ”I guess she'll be leaving Port Alma.”

”Why's that?”

His eyes returned to me. ”Probably have to. I don't know of any other old man who could afford to hire a live-in housekeeper. Not in times like these.”

I put the report in a folder and shoved it in my desk. ”She'll find something else to do.”

”Maybe so,” Doc Bradshaw said. He grabbed his knees and drew himself to his feet. ”You ought to give her a call, Cal.”

”Give who a call?”

”That young woman who was taking care of Ed. You know, there's not that many single women left in Port Alma.” He smiled slyly. ”He who hesitates is lost.”

Doc Bradshaw was right, of course, but I hesitated nonetheless. The following morning new cases were on my desk, people mistreating each other in the customary ways, mostly by breaching contracts involving money or the heart. Sheriff Pritchart came by to pick up Doc Bradshaw's report. He asked if everything had appeared ”normal” at Ed Dillard's house. I told him that it had, and gave the whole incident no further thought.

Then, two days later, the day after Christmas, I noticed a brief piece about Ed Dillard in the Sentinel. I knew Billy had written it, for it bore the mark of my brother's style, the distinctive romantic wistfulness that also marked his mind. He wrote of the old man's struggle against poverty, all he'd had to overcome, the devotion he'd shown during his wife's long sickness, the fort.i.tude with which he'd later borne his own ill fortune. ”The grace of Ed Dillard's life came to resemble the roses he tended in the garden beside his house,” my brother wrote, ”all the more beautiful for thorns.”

I visited my brother the following afternoon. For the last few years we'd made it our business to have lunch with our father each Sunday. After my mother left him, moved into the cottage on Fox Creek, he'd gone through a period of p.r.o.nounced withdrawal. He'd briefly considered returning to the paper, then just as abruptly dropped the idea, deciding to act only as an ”adviser.” This had meant little more than his depending upon his old friend, Sheriff Pritchart, to alert him about any newsworthy events in the county. For the rest, my father pretty much remained secluded in the house on Union Road, reading his cherished books and picking out the melody lines of the few pieces of sheet music my mother had left with the piano.

On that particular Sunday, he'd seemed somewhat more animated, telling stories from his early days at the Sentinel, the past, as always, considerably more alive than the present, while the future seemed hardly to exist for him at all, a land across the river, still and windless, already locked in death.

After lunch, we settled in my father's parlor. It was a bl.u.s.tery day, with dark clouds rolling in from the north. Beyond the rattling windows, winds gusted suddenly, then settled no less abruptly, like horses whipped then brought to heel.

My father handed out cigars, then took his place in the rocker beside the door. Billy leaned against the brick mantel, restless as ever, while I took my usual place on the leather sofa.

My father took a quick draw on his cigar. ”Anything new at the paper, William?”

Billy shook his head, then slumped into the chair opposite me and folded one long leg over the other, bouncing his foot rhythmically, like someone keeping time to a song no one else could hear.

”Well, there must be some news,” I said.

”Not really. Things are pretty quiet.”

My father turned to me. ”And in the legal profession, what news?”

”Not much there either.”

”All right, then,” my father said. He drew a piece of paper from his back pocket. ”Let's begin Four Lines.”

Four Lines was an idea my mother had come up with years before, when Billy and I were boys. After Sunday lunch, each member of the family had to recite four lines from some work of literature. Each recitation was to be carefully chosen for its beauty or its wisdom. Ideally it would reflect either our current mood or some problem that had arisen in our lives, one for which we were seeking a solution. In continuing the activity after my mother deserted him, my father no doubt hoped that it would encourage my brother and me to discuss our deepest hopes and fears with him. Four Lines had not achieved that end, but he'd continued to believe that one day it might.

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