She held her head up, thrust her chin forward, not just because we towered over her, but as a show of strength. She was trying to tell us she was a tough old broad, not to be messed with. I was surprised she wasn"t more fearful of two men showing up at her door late at night. The fact was, she was still an old lady in a wheelchair, and we were two able-bodied men.
I did a quick visual sweep of the living room. Knockoff colonial furniture, Ethan Allen Lite, lots of s.p.a.ce between the pieces to allow for the wheelchair. Faded drapes and sheers, a few vases with fake flowers. The carpet, a thick broadloom that must have cost a bundle when it was installed, looked worn and stained in places, the pile worn down by the wheelchair.
There was a TV on in another room on the first floor, and there was a comforting smell coming to us from farther inside the house. I sniffed the air. "Baking?" I said.
"Carrot cake," she snapped. "For my son. He"s coming home."
"Oh," I said. "That"s who we"ve come by to see. Jeremy?"
"What do you want with Jeremy?"
Just what did did we want with Jeremy? At least, what did we want to we want with Jeremy? At least, what did we want to say say we wanted with Jeremy? we wanted with Jeremy?
While I hesitated, trying to come up with something, Vince took the lead: "Where"s Jeremy right now, Mrs. Sloan?"
"Who are you?"
"I"m afraid we"re the ones asking the questions, ma"am," he said. He"d adopted an authoritarian tone, but he seemed to be making an effort not to sound menacing. I wondered if he was trying to give Enid Sloan the impression he was some kind of cop.
"Who are you people?"
"Maybe," I said, "if we could talk to your husband. Could we speak with Clayton?"
"He"s not here," Enid Sloan said. "He"s in the hospital."
That took me by surprise. "Oh," I said. "I"m sorry. Would that be the hospital we saw driving up here?"
"If you came up by way of Lewiston," she said. "He"s been there several weeks. I have to take a taxi to see him. Every day, there and back." It was important, I guessed, that we know the sacrifices she"d been making on her husband"s behalf.
"Your son can"t take you?" Vince asked. "He"s been gone that long?"
"He"s had things to do." She inched her chair forward, as if she could push us off the porch.
"I hope it"s nothing serious," I said. "With your husband."
"My husband is dying," Enid Sloan said. "Got cancer all through him. It"s only a matter of time now." She hesitated, looked at me. "You the one who phoned here? Asking for Jeremy?"
"Uh, yes," I said. "I"ve been needing to get in touch with him."
"You said he told you he was going to Connecticut," she said accusingly.
"I believe that"s what he said," I told her.
"He never told you that. I asked him. He said he didn"t tell anybody where he was going. So how do you know about that?"
"I think we should continue this discussion inside," Vince said, moving forward.
Enid Sloan held on to her wheels. "I don"t think so."
"Well, I do," Vince said, and put both hands on the arms of the chair and forced it back. Enid"s grip was no match for Vince"s force.
"Hey," I said to him, reaching out to touch his arm. I hadn"t planned for us to get rough with an old lady in a wheelchair.
"Don"t worry," Vince said, trying to make his voice sound rea.s.suring. "It"s just cold out on the porch, and I don"t want Mrs. Sloan here to catch her death."
I didn"t care much for his choice of words.
"You stop that," Enid Sloan said, swatting at Vince"s hands and arms.
He pushed her inside, and I didn"t see that I had much choice but to follow. I closed the front door behind me.
"I don"t see any easy way to p.u.s.s.yfoot around this," Vince said. "You might as well just ask your questions."
"Who the f.u.c.k are you?" Enid spat at us.
I was taken aback. "Mrs. Sloan," I said, "my name is Terry Archer. My wife"s name is Cynthia. Cynthia Bigge."
She stared at me, her mouth half open. She was speechless.
"I take it that name means something to you," I said. "My wife"s, that is. Maybe mine, too, but my wife"s name, that seems to have made an impression."
She still said nothing.
"I have a question for you," I said. "And it might sound a bit crazy, but I"ll have to ask you to be a bit patient here if my questions sound ridiculous."
Still silent.
"Anyway, here goes," I said. "Are you Cynthia"s mother? Are you Patricia Bigge?"
And she laughed scornfully. "I don"t know what you"re talking about," she said.
"Then why the laugh?" I said. "You seem to know these names I"m mentioning."
"Leave my house. Nothing you"re saying makes any sense to me."
I glanced at Vince, who was stone-faced. I said to him, "Did you ever see Cyn"s mother? Other than that one time, going out to the car that night?"
He shook his head. "No."
"Could this be her?" I asked.
He narrowed his eyes, focused on her. "I don"t know. Unlikely, I think."
"I"m calling the police," Enid said, turning her chair. Vince came around behind it, went to grab for the handles, until I waved for him to stop.
"No," I said. "Maybe that would be a good idea. We could all wait here for Jeremy to return home, and ask him some questions with the police here."
That stopped her wheeling the chair, but she said, "Why should I be afraid to have the police come?"
"That"s a good question. Why should you be? Could it have something to do with what happened twenty-five years ago? Or maybe with more recent events, in Connecticut? While Jeremy"s been away? The death of Tess Berman, my wife"s aunt? And a private detective named Denton Abagnall?"
"Get out," she said.
"And about Jeremy," I said. "He"s Cynthia"s brother, isn"t he?"
She glared at me, her eyes filled with hate. "Don"t you dare say that," she said, her hands resting on the blanket.
"Why?" I asked. "Because it"s true? Because Jeremy"s actually Todd?"
"What?" she said. "Who told you that? That"s a filthy lie!"
I looked over her shoulder at Vince, whose hands were on the rubber grips of the wheelchair.
"I want to make a phone call," she said. "I demand that you let me use the phone."
"Who do you want to call?" Vince asked.
"That"s not one of your business."
He looked at me. "She"s going to call Jeremy," he said calmly. "She wants to warn him. That"s not such a good idea."
"What about Clayton?" I asked her. "Is Clayton Sloan actually Clayton Bigge? Are they one and the same person?"
"Let me use the phone," she repeated, almost hissing like a snake.
Vince held on to the chair. I said to him, "You can"t just hold her like that. It"s, like, kidnapping, or confinement, or something."
"That"s right!" Enid Sloan said. "You can"t do this, you can"t barge into an old lady"s house and hold her like this!"
Vince let go of the chair. "Then use the phone, to call the police," he said, repeating my bluff. "Forget about calling your son. Call the cops."
The chair did not move.
"I need to go to the hospital," I said to Vince. "I want to see Clayton Sloan."
"He"s very sick," Enid said. "He can"t be disturbed."
"Maybe I can disturb him long enough to ask him a couple of questions."
"You can"t go! Visiting hours are over! And besides, he"s in a coma! He won"t even know you"re there!"
If he were in a coma, I figured, she wouldn"t care whether I went to see him. "Let"s go to the hospital," I said.
Vince said, "If we leave, she"s going to call Jeremy. Warn him that we"re waiting here to talk to him. I could tie her up."
"Jesus, Vince," I said. I couldn"t condone tying up an elderly disabled woman, no matter how unpleasant she seemed. Even if it meant never finding the answers to all my questions. "What if you just stayed here?"
He nodded. "That works. Enid and I can chat, gossip about the neighbors, that kind of thing." He leaned over so she could see his face. "Won"t that be fun? Maybe we can even have some of that carrot cake. It smells delicious." Then he reached into his jacket, took out the keys to the truck, and tossed them my way.
I grabbed them out of the air. "What room is he in?" I asked her.
She glared at me.
"Tell me what room he"s in, or I"ll call the cops myself."
She gave that a moment"s thought, knew that once I got to the hospital I"d probably be able to find out anyway, then said, "Third floor. Room 309."
Before I left the house, Vince and I exchanged cell phone numbers. I got in his truck, fiddled with getting the key into the ignition. A different vehicle always takes a minute or two to get used to. I turned on the engine, found the lights, then backed into a driveway and turned around. I needed a moment to get my bearings. I knew Lewiston was south of here, and that we"d gone south from the bar, but I didn"t know whether continuing in a southerly direction would get me where I had to go. So I backtracked up Main, cut east, and once I"d found my way back to the highway, headed south.
I took the first exit once I saw the blue "H" in the distance, found my way to the hospital parking lot, and entered by way of the emergency department. There were half a dozen people in the waiting room: a set of parents with a crying baby, a teenage boy with blood soaking through the knee of his jeans, an elderly couple. I walked right through, past the admissions desk, where I saw a sign indicating that visiting hours had ended a couple of hours ago, at eight, and found an elevator to the third floor.
Chances were good that someone was going to stop me at some point, but I figured if I could just make it to Clayton Sloan"s room, I"d be okay.
The elevator doors parted onto the third-floor nurses" station. There was no one there. I stepped out, paused a moment, then turned left, looking for door numbers. I found 322, discovered the numbers got bigger as I moved on down the hallway. I stopped, went back in the other direction, which was going to take me past the nurses" station again. A woman was standing with her back to me, reading a chart, and I walked past as noiselessly as possible.
I looked for numbers again. The hallway turned left, and the first door I came to was 309. The door was partly ajar, the room mostly in darkness except for a neon light mounted to the wall next to the bed.
It was a private room, one bed. A curtain obscured all but the foot of the bed, where a clipboard hung on a metal frame. I took a few steps in, beyond the curtain, and saw that there was a man in the bed, on his back, slightly raised, fast asleep. In his seventies, I guessed. Emaciated-looking, thinned hair. From chemo, maybe. His breathing was raspy. His arms lay at his sides, his fingers long and white and bony.
I moved around to the far side of the bed, where the curtain gave me cover from the hallway. There was a chair near the head of the bed, and when I sat down, I was able to make myself even more invisible to anyone pa.s.sing by the room.
I studied Clayton Sloan"s face, searching for something there that I was unable to find when I looked at Enid Sloan"s. Something about his nose, perhaps, a trace of cleft in his chin. I reached out and gently touched the man"s exposed arm, and he made a slight snorting noise.
"Clayton," I whispered.
He sniffed, wiggled his nose about unconsciously.
"Clayton," I whispered again, rubbing his leathery skin softly back and forth. Inside his elbow a tube ran into his arm. An IV drip of some kind.
His eyes fluttered open, and he sniffed again. He saw me, blinked hard a couple of times, let his eyes adjust and focus.
"Wha..."
"Clayton Bigge?" I said.
That not only brought his eyes into focus, but made him turn his head more sharply. The fleshy folds of his neck bunched together. "Who are you?" he whispered.
"Your son-in-law," I said.
41.
As he swallowed I watched his Adam"s apple bob along the length of his throat. "My what?" he said. I watched his Adam"s apple bob along the length of his throat. "My what?" he said.