Not a Creature Was Stirring(40)

“Bennis, please.”

“—then we’re really up shit creek.”

Anne Marie swallowed, very carefully, making sure there was room in her throat. “Bennis, he couldn’t possibly find out about that. There wasn’t any evidence. There wasn’t anything. He was just—”

“Myra will talk,” Bennis said. “She’ll get a couple of martinis under her belt some afternoon while Jackman’s here and she’ll talk her head off.”

“Oh, God.”

Bennis picked up the turkey and shoved it back into her hands. “As long as you’re having a nervous breakdown about that, I’ve got something else for you. Mr. Demarkian spent at least half an hour alone with us last night.”

“I know.”

“So does Jackman.”

This time, Anne Marie almost thought she could squeeze the turkey and have her hands go straight through.

She put it down carefully, not wanting to see any more pieces of brown mush. Mush and brains. Blood and skin and bone. Everybody standing in the door of the study last night, Bennis holding them back, saying over and over again that somebody had to call the police. Everybody sitting in the living room later, pretending it hadn’t happened.

Bennis had taken a pack of cigarettes out of the pocket of her flannel shirt and was lighting up. “Anne Marie?”

“I’m all right,” Anne Marie said.

“No, you’re not. I bet you never got any sleep last night at all.”

Of course, Anne Marie thought, Bennis did sleep. Bennis would sleep. Bennis always knew everything, always did everything, always thought of everything. But then, Bennis hadn’t been living here in the house with him, all these years.

Am I making sense? Anne Marie wondered. She decided she wasn’t, but it didn’t matter much. She wasn’t afraid anymore.

Just sick.





2


On that Christmas Eve, Teddy Hannaford got the best sleep he’d had since he was ten years old. He slept until noon, as unconscious as a rock, and as soon as he woke up he vaulted out of bed. His bad leg hurt a little when it hit the floor, his brace cut into his knee, and he slid about half a foot, but he didn’t care. He barely noticed. He felt good. The grief reaction he’d been dreading hadn’t materialized. There was no reason why it should have—he’d hated his father without a break for two decades—but Teddy knew that reason rarely cut much ice with the human psyche. He’d carried his hate around for so long, he’d been a little worried he’d start mourning for it. Instead, he was free, happy, and at peace. He wanted to sing about the wicked old witch being dead, except that he couldn’t remember the words and witches were supposed to be girls.

Actually, he was a little feverish. He recognized that. The fever had started the night before, when it had finally sunk in that the old man was gone, and was heating up now, because there was so much about that situation he didn’t know. He was surprised he cared, but there it was. Obviously, that policeman thought one of them had killed him. Teddy knew all of them had wanted to, except maybe Emma. He’d never been able to get a real fix on Emma. Right now, he couldn’t even get a real fix on himself. It was as if he had two different songs playing in his head, unrelated but not discordant. He didn’t want to listen to either of them, but he couldn’t seem to shut the music off. What he could do was concentrate on one and then the other. It made him feel like an audition master of nightmares.

Daddy was dead, and everything was not all right. That was the problem.

Teddy stared at his hands.

Daddy was dead—and now what? From where he was sitting, on the edge of the bed, he could see the neat stack of “professional papers” he had put out on the writing table the night he arrived. He hadn’t looked at them since, hadn’t even thought about them, because they were mostly for show, in case Bennis came into his room. Now he needed to think of them. They summed up his predicament as nothing else could. Greer College was still up there in Maine. The chairman of the English department was still planted solidly in his corner office on the second floor of Adrian Hall. The photocopy of Susan Carpenter’s paper was still sitting in a file somewhere, waiting to do him in. No matter how he looked at it, it turned out that Daddy’s dying hadn’t changed his life at all, and wasn’t going to. It scared the hell out of him.

He slipped out of bed, found a pile of fresh clothes in the larger of his two suitcases, and started to get dressed. He hated to admit it, but he didn’t want to give up teaching. He didn’t like it, but he didn’t want to give it up. He was going to have to do something to make a living. The income from his trust came to only $22,286.37 a year. That was it. Even with his teaching income added in, he was always in hock to his credit cards. What kind of work could he get, if he went looking for work? And how would he survive it? All those rigid hours, those great five-day blocks of time where you weren’t allowed to be anywhere else. All that worrying about getting fired. Teddy was convinced that people who worked jobs worried about getting fired all the time. Even Chris must do that, because he spent so much of his time doing that radio program and writing poetry brought in so little money. Teaching had it all over that kind of thing. Besides, there was one thing about teaching he did like. The ego trip. You stood up there in front of a lot of good-looking eighteen year olds, and every time you opened your mouth they took notes.