Bethany's Sin

TWENTY-FIVE

MRS. BARTLETT'S KITCHEN

"Mrs. Bartlett?" Evan asked the matronly, gray-haired woman who answered the door.

"That's right." She stood half-in, half-out of the door, as if she suspected he were some kind of brush or appliance salesman.

"I'm Evan Reid," he said. "I'm sure you don't know me, but I live over on McClain Terrace. Doesn't a man named Neely Ames have a room here?"

"Mr. Ames? Yes, he does."

"Is he in right now?"

She glanced down at her wristwatch. "No, I don't believe he is.

You didn't see his truck parked around back, did you?"

Evan shook his head.

"Neely doesn't get back from work until after six o'clock; he works for the village, you know. Sometimes it's way after seven when I hear his truck drive up. Can I give him a message for you?"

Now it was Evan's turn to look at his watch. Five fifteen. "I'd like to wait, if I could. it's really very important."

"The sheriff might be able to tell you where Neely is." Her eyes examined him from head to toe.

"I'd probably have better luck catching him here," Evan said.

"May I come in?"

Mrs. Bartlett smiled, stepped back, and opened the door wider for him. "Surely. Oh, that sun's still ferocious out there, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," he said, stepping across the threshold into the boardinghouse. Instantly he was met by a musty odor, the combination of life smells and heat bound up behind the walls of this house. There was a large sitting room with a brown-and-green Oriental carpet thrown across a hardwood floor, chairs and a sofa arranged around a scorched brick fireplace, lamps on low tables, a few Sears prints hanging on the walls. Sunlight streamed whitely through curtains drawn across a high bay window. "Please sit down,"

Mrs. Bartlett said, motioning to ward a chair. "I was just mixing some lemonade in the kitchen. Let me get you a glass."

"No, thanks. I'm fine as I am."

She sat down across from him; her legs were varicose veined and puffing beneath grayish-looking hose. "Are you a friend of Neely's?"

"In a way."

"Oh?" She raised an eyebrow. "I don't recall Neely saying he'd made any friends here in the village."

"We met one day over on McClain Terrace," he explained. "And then we ran into each other at the Cock's Crow."

Mrs. Bartlett frowned. "Oh, that's a nasty place, that Cock's Crow. Shame on you two decent men to be going up there. It's got a bad reputation, I'll tell you."

Evan shrugged. "It's not all that bad."

"I can't understand those places where adult men go to act like children. Seems to me like a waste of time." She fanned her face with a Good Housekeeping magazine she'd picked up from the sofa beside her. "Goodness, it's been hot these last few days. Unmerciful hot. Going to get hotter, too. Always does around here at the last of the summer. Gives us one more good bite and then it's gone into autumn. Sure I can't get you anything to drink?"

He smiled, shook his head.

"No telling when Neely might get home," Mrs. Bartlett said after a few minutes. "Maybe he's going out to the Cock's Crow again; maybe he won't be home until after midnight. Why don't you just leave a message for him, or I could have him call you?"

"I need to talk to him in person."

She grunted. "Must be something serious, then." She gave him a little sly smile. "Man-talk, is it? Things us women don't have any business knowing?"

"No," he said politely, "that's not quite it."

"Oh, I know all about menfolk's secrets." She laughed and shook her head. "Just like little boys."

"How long have you been running this boarding house?" Evan asked her.

"The better part of six years now. Of course, I don't do a whopping big business. But you'd be surprised how many traveling salesmen and insurance men come through Bethany's Sin. There's a Holiday Inn about ten miles north of here, on past the Cock's Crow, but I'll tell you they charge a lot for a room, and here I throw in meals with the rent. So I do all right."

"I'm sure you do. Does your husband work in the village?"

"My husband? No, I'm afraid my husband passed away soon after we moved here."

"I'm sorry." He was watching her carefully now.

"He had a bad heart," Mrs. Bartlett said. "Dr. Mabry told him he needed one of those pacemaker things, but he just waited too long.

Thank God he died peacefully, in his bed one night."

Evan stood up from his chair, walked over to the window, and moved the curtain aside. Sunlight stung him. The street was deserted. Houses on the other side: neat boxes of wood and brick, neat lawns, smooth, clean carports. Evan turned away from the window, his cheeks tingling from the touch of the sun, and saw on the fire place mantel a group of photographs. The first one was a wedding photo, snapped in front of a church, showing an attractive dark-haired woman kissing a stocky man in an ill-fitting powder blue tuxedo. Everyone was smiling. In the second photograph the woman was lying in bed, holding in the folds of a blanket a newborn baby; a shadow the man's? - had fallen across a wall. The same woman stood holding a baby - the same one or a different one? - on the neatly trimmed lawn of a white house in the third photograph.

Something about this picture disturbed Evan; he stepped forward, picked it up. The woman's eyes were harder, sunken deeper into her head; her mouth was smiling, but those eyes mirrored a soul in which all smiles had faded. There was something else in this photograph, too: an object just on the edge of it, beside the woman.

And staring at it Evan realized it was a hand clutching an armrest.

There was a slice of wheel rim. A few spokes. A shadow.

"That's my daughter, Emily," Mrs. Bartlett said. "Em for short.

She's a fine young woman."

"This is your grandchild, then?" he asked, holding up the photograph.

"My granddaughter, Jenny. She'll be eight months old in October. Jenny's my second grandchild. See that other picture, the first one on the mantel?" Evan reached for it, and Mrs. Bartlett nodded. "That's it. Her name's Karen, d ' and she'll be two years old in April. Do you have any children of your own?"

"A little girl named Laurie," Evan said; he replaced the photographs as they'd been. "Where does your daughter live?"

"Just a few streets over from here. She and her husband, Ray, have a beautiful little house on Warwick Lane." She fanned herself with the magazine. "Oh, that sun's made it so hot in this house! I'll thank God when it's autumn, I'll tell you! This year I won't mind the blizzards. Are you sure I can't get you a good glass of lemonade with plenty of ice?"

He checked his wristwatch again. "All right," he said. "I'd like that."

"Good." She smiled, rose from the sofa, disappeared toward the back of the house. He heard a cupboard opening, then another.

Evan turned toward the mantel, stared for a few minutes at the photographs. How simple and normal they looked. But dear God what a terrible story they told. He could look into the eyes of the woman in that third picture and see the change that had come over her. The same change now enfolding Kay. Evan left the mantel, peered back through the corridor that connected the front of the house with the back; there was a narrow stairway leading up to a series of closed doors. The boarders' rooms. At the end of the corridor a door stood open, and Evan could see Mrs. Bartlett moving around back there. He could see shelves, a stove, potted plants in a window, wallpaper with apples and oranges and cherries on it. Glass clinked. He moved quietly along the corridor toward the kitchen.

An instant before Mrs. Bartlett realized he was there, Evan saw bottles and vials in an open cabinet. All unmarked, they held bluish green, brown, grayish liquids, viscous-looking. There were solid substances in a few of the vials: white powder, something that looked like wet ashes, something else that looked like shards of charcoal. Beside the glass of lemonade that Mrs. Bartlett was laboriously stirring was a vial of slightly yellowish liquid. The cap was off. Mrs. Bartlett spun around; her eyes widened. But in the next second she composed herself. Her mouth smiling tightly, she reached up ever so casually and closed the cupboard. "I hope you don't mind artificial sweetener," she said, standing with the vial be hind her.

"Not, not at all," Evan said.

"You must be thirstier than you thought. I was going to bring it out to you." She stirred again, dropped in a couple of cubes from an ice tray, held the glass out to him. "Here we are." When he took it she walked past him back toward the sitting room; he followed her, wondering what sort of hellish substance she'd mixed into it. He could trust none of them now, none of them. Perhaps this old, unassuming woman was the true druggist of Bethany's Sin, mixing strange and ancient elixirs here in this house, in that kitchen with the tacky wallpaper. What would she concoct in there? Potions for strength? Sleep potions? Aphrodisiacs? Remedies passed down from the Amazonian culture, liquids distilled from night black roots and the marrow of men's bones? And if he drank this brew, what would it do to him? Make him physically ill? Make him sleep? Or simply pierce his brain, drawing from it the desire to defend himself against them when they finally came for him?

In the other room she sat down on the sofa again, smiled, fanned herself, waited for him to drink. Her eyes gave no indication that she realized he'd seen.

"Hot," she said. "That's all it is, just plain hot."

Evan heard the squealing of aged brakes from outside. Looking through the window again, he saw Neely Ames's battered truck pulling up at the curb. "Well," he said, setting the full glass of lemonade aside. "I think Mr. Ames is home."

"He'll be using the rear entrance," the woman said quietly.

"There are stairs up to his room." Her eyes glittered; she glanced from him to the glass and back again.

"Thank you, Mrs. Bartlett," Evan said at the front door. "I appreciate your hospitality."

"Surely, Mr. Reid." The woman rose, winced at pain in her legs, and approached him. "Please come back and sit some other time, will you?"

"I will," he said, and then he was out the door and walking toward the pickup truck. Ames, his T-shirt soaked with sweat and his face burned raw by the sun, swung out of the cab and onto the ground. He looked up, saw Evan, and continued rubbing lawnmower oil out of his hands with a stained rag.

" 'Evening," Neely said; there were dark hollows under his eyes, and his cheeks were gaunt. He massaged a kinked muscle in his right shoulder. "What are you doing over here?"

"Waiting for you," Evan said. He turned his head toward the house. The curtain at the window moved very slightly. "I have to ask your help in something."

"My help?" He took off his glasses, cleaned the lenses with a dry spot on his shirt. "Doing what?"

"Why don't we go up to your room? It might be better." Evan motioned toward the rear of the house.

"Excuse the mess," Neely said when they were upstairs. "Just throw those damned clothes out of that chair and sit down. You want a beer? Sorry, but they'll be warm."

"No, thanks." Evan sat down.

Neely shrugged, pulled the last remaining Schlitz from a carton on his night table, and popped it open. Drank, closed his eyes, sat down in a chair, and threw his legs up on the bed. "Christ. Jesus Holy Christ I burned my ass off out there today. God Almighty!" He drank again from the can.

Evan glanced around the room. There was a guitar case propped against a wall; what looked like songs on sheets of paper lying on a desk; an open, empty suitcase on the floor.

"So," Neely said after another moment. "What can I do for you?"

"Is that door locked?" Evan motioned toward it.

"Yes." He looked at Evan quizzically. "Why?"

Evan leaned forward, watching the man's face. "Do you still have those teeth you showed me? The ones you found in the landfill?"

"No. I threw them away."

"Did you ever tell the sheriff about them?"

"Was going to. Decided he'd only blow hot air my way. Besides, I started figuring that maybe there's a reasonable explanation for them. Maybe they came out of some dentist's garbage can; hell, maybe somebody got his jaw busted and spit his teeth out. I don't really care anymore."

"That's bullshit," Evan said. "You don't believe that any more than I do." He glanced over at the suitcase. "Are you planning on leaving?"

Neely drank from the can, crushed it, tossed it into the wastebasket. "Tomorrow morning," he said. "I'm settling with Mrs.

Bartlett tonight."

"Does she know yet?"

He shook his head.

"How about Wysinger?"

"Fuck that bastard," Neely snarled. "That son of a bitch has given me nothing but grief since I've been here. Today was payday."

He patted his back pocket. "This will take me a long way from Bethany's Sin."

"Where are you going?"

"North. Into New England. Who knows? I'm going to try to find myself a nice, dark little club to play my music in. If I can still pick a guitar with these damned blisters on my hands. No. I'm through here.

I'll be heading out at daylight."

"Finding those teeth in the landfill didn't have any thing to do with this decision, did it?"

"Hell, no. People throw away every kind of thing. More junk than you can imagine." He paused, looked into Evan's face. "Maybe it did. Maybe. Like I told you before, at the Cock's Crow, I've got a bad feeling about this village. I want to get out of here. You probably can't understand what I'm talking about, but I feel like...like something's coming closer to me. And I don't mind telling you that it scares the shit out of me." He reached for a pack of cigarettes from the night table, lit one, and inhaled. "I'm not going to stay and wait for it."

"I need your help," Evan` said, keeping his gaze steady.

"Tonight."

"How?"

"I want you to take me to the landfill. I want you to show me where you found those teeth."

"Huh?" Neely narrowed his eyes over the burning cigarette.

"What for?"

"Because I'm going to be looking for someone. Paul Keating."

"Keating? The guy that lives across the street from you...?" His voice trailed off.

"Lived across the street. Lived. I believe he's dead, and I believe his body's buried in the landfill."

Smoke streamed from Neely's nostrils. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and stared across the room. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"You heard me right. Now listen to me. I believed your story about those women who attacked you on the road; I think they've attacked and killed a great many others. Now, I ask you to believe what I'm saying, and I ask you to help me. I can't search across the landfill without you."

"I'm getting my ass out of here in the morning," Neely said.

"Okay. fine. Do what you want. But I have to stay here, and by God I've got to know the truth about this place. Just lead me out there, that's all I ask. And help me dig."

"Jesus," Neely whispered; he drew from the cigarette, exhaled smoke, crushed the butt out in an ashtray beside him. "You're going hunting for a body?"

"Or bodies," Evan said. And from the corner of his eye he caught the swift sliding of a shadow, moving across the strip of light at the bottom of the door. He rose quietly to his feet, was across the room in a few strides as Neely watched him from the other chair; Evan unlocked the door, turned the knob, and opened it.

There was no one in the stairway leading downstairs. The other doors along the corridor were closed. He wondered behind which of them the cunning old bitch was hiding. He shut the door again, locked it, stood with his ear pressed to the door for a moment. Heard silence.

Neely had lit another cigarette. He drew on it as if the smoke would chase away the nagging fears that now were chewing steadily at his stomach. When Evan looked at him again, Neely saw that his eyes were slitted and steady.

"Are you going to help me?" Evan asked, still standing against the door.

The cigarette burned toward Neely's fingers. He shivered suddenly because he'd felt that a figure with flaming blue eyes was standing just behind him, and it was slowly lifting an ax.

Evan waited.

Neely muttered, "I don't know who's crazier, you or me. What time?"

"Two o'clock."

"What? Christ Almighty!"

"I don't want anyone to know."

"Okay, okay," Neely said, and stood up from his chair. "Then you'd better let me get some sleep. Do you have a couple of shovels?"

"A shovel and a pickax. I bought them this afternoon."

"Good. That should do it."

Evan opened the rear door and then turned back to him.

"Something else. If I were you, I wouldn't eat or drink anything Mrs.

Bartlett tries to give you tonight. I'll meet you out front at two o'clock sharp.And then he'd turned away and was going down the back stairs.

Neely watched him go. Not eat or drink anything Mrs. Bartlett offered? What the hell was that all about? A voice within him screamed no don't do this! but he brushed it aside, refused to listen.

It faded away. He closed the door and stood looking down at the suitcase. The man needed his help. What would one more day mean?

But by God when he'd finished at that vile, stinking place he was going to fill that suitcase with his meager belongings, take his guitar and his songs, and get out of this village. Fast.

He pulled his T-shirt over his head, rolled it up, and tossed it into the suitcase. He was hungry, but he decided not to ask Mrs.

Bartlett to make him anything for dinner. Maybe that man wasn't as crazy as he appeared to be. He touched his shoulder gingerly, the fingers running across the scabbed line of a scratch that he'd first noticed in the bathroom mirror a few days before.