Lie of the Needle(36)
Angus drummed his meaty fingers on the steering wheel.
I sighed. Me and my big mouth.
I hopped into my Subaru, and Angus followed me to the outskirts of Millbury. As I got closer, I felt a racing tingle in my skin, the way I usually did when I listened to my intuition. The rough, rustic setting would fit Cyril’s character perfectly and be a nice tie-in to the purpose of the calendar.
When we pulled into the rutted driveway, where the entrance sign for Glory Farm hung askew on the pole, I was glad Angus had insisted on coming with me. The farmhouse was set a good distance back from the road. In the waning light of a winter afternoon, it suddenly seemed eerily remote.
The last time I’d seen the place up close was a few months ago when the Historical Society had toured here, trying to come up with ideas to save it. It was boarded up then, too, but not so condemned-looking.
“Don’t look too glorious now, does it?” Angus said once we were out of our vehicles and picking our way over muddy puddles and patches of gravel in the melting snow. In late summer there had been perennials in the garden, albeit overgrown, and in the glow of the sun it had seemed a whole lot better.
“Careful, Daisy.” Angus reached out a hand as I stepped onto the porch and almost lost my balance when one of the rotted boards sank beneath my feet. Some of the gutters were missing, and long treacherous icicles hung off the sides of the house. I spotted some shingles lying on the ground from the recent storms. If someone didn’t do something soon, the roof would leak and the cost of restoration would zoom to astronomical.
I peered through a gap where one of the slats had been ripped away from the boarded-up kitchen window. The room was a mess, with a table overturned, beer bottles on the ground, trash everywhere. Kids must have been in here at some point, just like Althea said. Or had there been a struggle? It was tough to tell.
There was still quite a bit of furniture in the house from what I could see. My heart raced as I spotted some earthenware jars in the corner.
“Wonder why the farmer left all this stuff here?” I whispered to Angus, who was looking over my shoulder.
He shrugged. “Shame to see those jars broken by vandals or squatters. They’re probably worth a couple of hundred bucks each.”
“The sooner we sort this out, the better. I can’t bear to think of this place being bulldozed.” If houses could speak, this one was crying out for help. Even in the terrible shape it was in, it still had way more character and beauty than Cassell’s boring boxes.
Above us the sky was streaked with deep purple and violent pink, almost Technicolor. A vivid contrast against the white of the farmhouse and the snowy fields. It would make a great watercolor painting, except it wouldn’t look real.
The main house was closed up, but there also were plenty of outbuildings where the shoot could have taken place. As Angus and I were walking over to the barn, with its bird coop built into the top, I suddenly spotted an unopened pack of Benson & Hedges cigarettes on the ground. Cyril, a former smoker, always carried one as a security blanket. He used to say if he knew he had them, but chose not to smoke, the urge went away. He’d had them for so long that if he ever did succumb to the urge, his head would probably explode.
My heart was racing as I traced my fingers over the battered gold foil box.
I wasn’t a particularly mystical person, but I didn’t get the sense that Cyril was dead. If he was, I thought I should feel an ache in my heart, but I couldn’t, especially not in this run-down atmosphere where he would have felt so at home.
“Oh, Cyril,” I whispered, “where the heck are you?”
* * *
That night I came home to find Martha in my kitchen with a large cosmopolitan in her hand and a distressed look on her face. Joe was chatting with her as he busied himself at the stove.