Skeleton Key(57)

Martin got up and headed outside himself. Henry was standing on the porch, talking to Jake Sturmer over the rail. A wind was blowing through their chimes, making the world sound full of metal.

“So,” Martin said, coming out.

“I was just telling your brother here that there are a few little details we have to clear up,” Jake Sturmer said, “just a few little things that are bothering me. I was hoping the two of you wouldn’t mind.”

Jake Sturmer was a small man, short and wiry. His hair was cut very close to his head, and his small mustache was neatly trimmed. Today he was wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and a black cotton sweater. Yesterday he had been wearing jeans and a flannel shirt and a blue cotton sweater. It was like a uniform, the I-moved-out-here-from-New-York-City uniform. Or one of them. This was really the I-moved-out-here-from-New-York-City-with-a-big-fat-stock-portfolio uniform. There was another one—consisting of heavy leather sandals, batik print peasant blouses, and wool ponchos made in Guatemala—for the people who had moved out here from New York City to go back to the land.

“It’s two days before Halloween,” Martin pointed out. “We’re not ready.”

“Ready?” Jake Sturmer looked confused.

“For the invasion,” Henry said. “Christ on a crutch. What more can you possibly want to know? We came back from finding that damned car overturned in our own graveyard and there was your skeleton. If you ask me, it’s all connected. Whoever took the car took the skeleton.”

“Well, yes, Mr. Chandling. I think that’s what the police are dunking of—”

“So there’s nothing we can tell you about it,” Martin said. “That’s what we’re trying to say here. We don’t know anything about it. We didn’t hear anything we didn’t go investigate. We went over all this stuff—”

“Yes,” Jake said. “I know. But the thing is, I just realized.”

“Realized what?” Henry asked him.

Jake Sturmer was energized. “It was while I was in the shower this morning that I realized. I drove to get to your place, you see, so it wasn’t clear at first, because of the way the roads go. You have to go around. But if you didn’t have to use the roads, then we’d be right up there.” He pointed into space behind the house.

“What would be right up there?” Martin asked.

“The museum,” Jake said. “It’s right up there. Right through that stand of trees. It’s maybe a thousand yards from here. You could have walked it. I could have. Anybody could have. So you see, it makes more sense than we thought it did. For the skeleton to have ended up here.”

“Okay,” Martin said.

“It’s an invitation to Lyme disease, that’s what it is,” Henry said. “It’s crazy. Those trees are thick.”

“It’s not much farther, if you go around the side of them,” Jake Sturmer said. “Then there’s a little field. You could even have driven the Jeep. It has those big wheels. It’s supposed to go over terrain. That’s the point.”

“I don’t see what we’re getting at here,” Martin said.

Jake Sturmer hesitated, as if he didn’t either—which he might not, Martin thought, because he was so obviously the sort of man who needed to do things. Some people should never retire from their jobs. It made them anxious and overwrought.

“Well,” Jake said finally, “I was just going to ask. If you’d mind. If I walked it myself. First through the woods and then across the field.”

“Why?” Henry asked.

“I don’t know. To see if I could find anything. To see if—I don’t know.”

“Asshole,” Henry said.

“I don’t see how it would do any harm to let him walk around in the trees,” Martin said.

“I didn’t say it would do any harm,” Henry said.

“I’m just going to go up there and check it out,” Jake said. “I won’t bother you at all. I promise you. I just want to—look around.”

“Go right ahead,” Martin said.

“Asshole,” Henry said again.

Henry turned around and stomped back through the front door, slamming it behind him. The sharp noise made Jake Sturmer jump.

“Well,” he said, looking Martin up and down. “I guess I’ll just go on up. If you don’t mind.”

“Don’t mind at all,” Martin said.

“Right,” Jake said.

He smiled weakly and then took over, looking back over his shoulder every few steps to see if Martin was still watching him. Martin seemed to be, but he wasn’t. He was looking up into the stand of trees that started maybe thirty yards from the house and covered the rise of the hill at that end of the property. At lot of things out here were close together, but you didn’t realize they were. The roads were odd, and there were so many trees. He couldn’t believe that anyone would come down through that stand in pitch darkness carrying a human skeleton, even one that had been cleaned and polished to make an exhibit in a museum.