“I think I’d cut half my hand off just trying to pick one up.”
Gregor stood up and shook the wrinkles out of his jacket. “Let’s go,” he said. “Let’s go see what’s still out at the house and then let’s try to do something sensible with what we find.”
3
It was odd, Gregor thought, that Elizabeth Toliver’s house should look so much like he had seen it for the first time, and not at all as he had been seeing it since—experiencing it since, Bennis would say, to indicate that he was really talking about a kind of emotional atmosphere. This afternoon, there was no atmosphere around the place at all. There was only rain, which was now slightly, but only slightly, less furious than it had been an hour or two before. Gregor looked up and down the road as they drove into the Toliver driveway, but it was as completely deserted as anything he had ever seen, which was a relief.
Kyle pulled the car into the driveway halfway to the garage and cut the engine. “Here we are,” he said. “What exactly is it that you want to do?”
“I want to look for something,” Gregor said. “Let’s start with the garage first. And let me ask you something. Does Elizabeth Toliver make you angry?”
“Betsy? No, of course she doesn’t make me angry. Why should she?”
Gregor got out of the car and headed for the garage. Kyle was behind him in a moment. “She makes a lot of people angry,” Gregor said, pulling up the first garage door he came to, “have you noticed that? I don’t mean just envious or jealous or even resentful, but really down dirty furious. Belinda Hart could barely say Liz’s name without spitting it. And then there’s Maris Coleman. You haven’t been watching Ms. Coleman’s behavior from up close these last few days. I have. ‘Angry’ is almost too mild a word for it. The emotion runs so deep, I don’t think Maris Coleman even wishes Liz Toliver dead. I think death would be too quick. The pain would be over. Maris Coleman wishes Liz Toliver a long life lived in unending pain and humiliation.”
“Don’t you think that’s a little strong?” Kyle said.
“No.” Gregor looked around the garage. It was dark at the best of times. Now, with so little light coming from outside, it was virtually pitch. “Are there any lights in this place?” he asked.
“Right here.” Kyle fumbled around for a moment, and then three weak bulbs, screwed into ceiling fixtures without benefit of shades, glowed on. Kyle blinked. “I guess I can’t imagine Maris Coleman working up all that much energy about anything,” he said.
“But you’ve noticed the anger with Belinda Hart Grantling.”
“Oh, yeah,” Kyle said. “And it isn’t only her. It’s Emma Kenyon Bligh, too, if you want to know the truth, and Chris and Nancy weren’t too calm about the whole thing, either. I don’t know about Peggy. I’ve never heard her talk about it.”
“What about everybody else in town?” Gregor asked. He had begun to move slowly along the garage’s perimeter, studying the walls. “Are they angry at Elizabeth Toliver, too?”
Kyle cleared his throat. “Well,” he said, “a lot of them, it’s sort of the ‘who do you think you are?’ thing. They all knew her when she was growing up. They didn’t think she was anything special. And now she’s—We don’t feel very comfortable with people who are different. People who go away and become famous are different.”
Gregor finished with the first wall and began on the second, moving carefully, running his eyes up and down as well as back and forth. “But that’s not the way all small towns behave about all people who go away to become famous,” he said. “There’s that country singer, what’s her name, Shania Twain. Her hometown held a big celebration for her when she returned. And that movie star. Meg Ryan. Her hometown—”
“But that’s different,” Kyle protested. “They were big deals even before they left. Meg Ryan was a prom princess. So, you see—”
“Yes,” Gregor said. He finished with the third wall. The fourth wall was garage doors. He looked around one more time, to make sure. “Where else would somebody keep tools?”
“Tools?” Kyle looked blank. “You can’t be looking for tools here. Mrs. Toliver has Alzheimer’s disease. Even if the Tolivers ever had any tools, they wouldn’t have them around now. She could get hold of them and be dangerous.”
“Did they have any tools?” Gregor asked.
“Not a chance. Mr. Toliver was a hotshot lawyer. He never touched a tool in his life.”