A String of Beads

18

 

 

 

Jane drove along Route 20 to the east, going steadily through small towns where the high school, town hall, and public library were yards from each other, all of them dark. There were long stretches of open farmland. She had been this way dozens of times, and each part was familiar to her, as were the many places where she could turn down a barely marked cross street and disappear. Mattie was silent for a time, and Jane concentrated on being sure that nobody was following. Then Mattie seemed to decide she had waited long enough to talk.

 

“Where did you leave my car?”

 

“The long-term parking lot at the Rochester airport.” She reached into her pocket. “Here are your keys, while I’m thinking about it.” She placed them in Mattie’s hand.

 

“Why the airport?”

 

“A few reasons,” Jane said. “People fly out of an airport and sometimes don’t come back for a month or two, so your car won’t get towed before then. If the police find it, or the men who were trying to kidnap you find it, they’ll come to the conclusion that you drove it there and left town. They’ll waste valuable time finding out which flight you might have taken, and where it was going. The longer it takes for them to find the car, the more flights will have left Rochester. If they’re persistent, they’ll get lists of people on each of those flights, but they won’t see your name. They’ll try to figure out which names might be ones you could have used. You wouldn’t pretend to be George, but you might have been Nancy or Maria. Or since you probably didn’t plan this far in advance, they’ll try to investigate people who flew standby. If they’re imaginative, they’ll think of all kinds of other things to look for. All of it will keep them occupied. It will give them false hopes that will only result in disappointment and frustration and fatigue.”

 

“Goodness.”

 

“The best, of course, would be if the men who were after you would decide to sit in the parking lot and wait for you to come back, while the police did the same thing. They could hardly help bumping heads, and I know which heads I’d bet on.”

 

“You’re really good at this, aren’t you?”

 

“I hope so,” said Jane. She’d said too much. She prepared herself for the next few questions, dreading the prospect of lying to Mattie Sanders.

 

“Would you mind if I drove for a while?” Mattie said. “This much inactivity begins to get to me after a while. It makes me anxious. You could even get some sleep.”

 

“A good offer,” said Jane. “I’ll take it. Just stay on Route 20. It goes all the way to Kenmore Square in Boston.”

 

“We’re not going there, are we?”

 

“No. If you see Interstate Ninety-One north, take it. That should be in three hundred miles or so, and I’d better be up long before then.”

 

Jane pulled off the highway onto the shoulder and they traded places. She lay back in the passenger seat while Mattie adjusted the seat and mirrors, then pulled out onto the road. Jane pretended to be asleep for a few minutes while she watched the speedometer and the road with one eye. When she was satisfied that Mattie was still a competent driver, real sleep overtook her.

 

She woke when it was still dark, but she could tell that it would be morning before long. The window beside her felt cold, and there was a fog that had gathered in the bottoms of the valleys and put rainbow auras around the streetlamps they passed. There were already a few delivery trucks out unloading supplies of various sorts, and lights in a few house windows. She stretched, rubbed her eyes, and said, “How are you doing, Mattie?”

 

“Fine. It’s been a nice, easy trip with so little traffic.”

 

“I’m feeling rested. I’m ready to take over when you feel like it.”

 

“I’d like to stop for breakfast somewhere.”

 

They stopped at a diner in the next town. There were a surprising number of customers, most of them men who wore jeans or work uniforms, and sat at the counter. Jane and Mattie sat in a booth and ordered fried eggs, hash browns, and toast, but ate mostly in silence because they didn’t want to attract attention. After about twenty minutes a pair of police officers came in, a man and woman who were both about thirty years old and were hard to see as anything but a couple. Jane and Mattie finished their food, paid in cash, and went back to their car. This time Jane took the wheel.

 

They crossed the Hudson into Massachusetts in the morning sunshine and drove north up Interstate 91 into New Hampshire, and then switched to Interstate 89 at Manchester. The rolling mountains of New Hampshire made Jane think of huge sleeping prehistoric creatures, their big rounded bodies covered over the centuries of sleep with windblown leaves, then humus, then trees. The fog had burned off while Jane and Mattie were still in New York State, and now the sky was a fresh, robin’s egg blue with small puffs of white cloud in rows like the letters of an unknown language. Every ten minutes Jane and Mattie seemed to cross a bridge over a dark river that ran out of the forest. There were several with signs that said, BRIDGE FREEZES BEFORE THE ROAD, a warning that this was a different sort of country in the winter, and soon there were signs in swampy places that said MOOSE CROSSING.

 

Every town had its eighteenth-century churches and cemeteries, and a few had outlying margins of malls and discount stores and fast-food outlets. But most of the route was forest, and from the road Jane could see deep into shady spaces between white pine, maple, white oak and hickory, beech and birch trees. They got off at exit 18, and drove into Hanover on Route 120 past the hospital, into the center of town, and found themselves on the Dartmouth campus. There was no clear separation between the town and the college, only the realization at some point that the buildings had gotten bigger and fancier. In the center was a vast expanse of grass leading to a long brick building with a white steeple.

 

When they reached the apartment house where Jimmy Sanders was staying Jane parked the car and knocked on the door. She saw no movement, only felt a vague impression that the curtain had been disturbed. The door opened and Jimmy was visible a few feet back from the open door, where he would not be seen from the street.

 

When Mattie stepped in, she and Jimmy stood in silence and hugged each other for a few seconds while Jane closed the door and slipped the bolt. Jimmy said, “What are you doing here, Mom?” Then he turned to Jane. “This can’t be safe.”

 

Mattie said, “Safer than home. A bunch of men came to get me.”

 

“Came to get you?”

 

“Bad men. Jane thinks they’ve gotten tired of waiting for you to come home, so they decided to grab me and see if they could get you to come back.”

 

Jimmy looked at Jane, his eyes troubled.

 

Jane said, “They were in three cars—one lookout car with two men to control the street, one SUV to block the driveway, and another SUV to take her away. Six men rushed the house with guns drawn. The only thing to do was get her out of there. I should have done it before. Your mother is the most obvious way to get to you.”

 

“I can’t believe this,” said Jimmy. “Two months ago I had no enemies, and my mother was as safe as anybody could be, surrounded by a couple hundred families, nearly all relatives—brothers and sisters, practically.”

 

Jane stepped to the refrigerator, opened it, and then closed it again. “You two can catch each other up on things,” she said. “I’m going out to stock up on groceries. When I come back I’ll make us some dinner and tell you what I’ve learned so far.”

 

She saw Jimmy’s keys on the kitchen counter, took them, and put the Passat’s keys in their place, then went out the front door. She drove back out on Route 120, filled Jimmy’s Chevrolet Malibu with gas, then stopped at the Co-op. She bought lots of fresh meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit, and then filled her cart the rest of the way with a hoard of canned and frozen food so Jimmy and Mattie would not have to go out for a while.

 

When she returned she could see that mother and son had been talking. As she and Mattie worked together to make a dinner of chicken and vegetables and corn soup, Mattie seemed to be studying her whenever she wasn’t looking. Finally, while they were setting the table, Jane said, “So Jimmy told you about me.”

 

“Yes,” said Mattie. “Why didn’t you? I can keep a secret.”

 

“I don’t have only one secret.”

 

“I don’t understand.”

 

Jane said, “Over the years I’ve taken a lot of people out of lives that had gotten too dangerous. Who every one of those people used to be, who he is now, and where he lives, are all secrets. I may have made those secrets, but they don’t belong to me. Because I know them, I have a responsibility to keep myself from getting discovered and caught.” She held Mattie with her strange blue eyes. “Otherwise, there won’t be any more.”

 

“Any more what? People like Jimmy?”

 

She nodded. “If my own secret gets out, I’ll be useless to those people—the ones yet to come, the ones who may already be trying to find the way to me. There will be people who are running for their lives and need a door out of the world. The door won’t be there anymore.”

 

Mattie said, “He told me the clan mothers knew. I’d cut my throat before I told anyone else.”

 

“So would they,” said Jane. “Let’s hope nobody has to.”

 

They served the food, sat at the table, and ate together. When they had finished they said, “Nia:wen,” and Mattie and Jimmy stood to begin clearing the table.

 

“Sit,” said Jane. “I’ve learned some things, and you should know them too.”

 

They resumed their places, and Jane began to talk. She told them about Chelsea Schnell and the small house where Nick Bauermeister had been shot, about Bauermeister’s burglary kit and his cache of jewelry inside the salt sacks. She told them about Chelsea’s relationship with her dead boyfriend’s boss, Daniel Crane. She told them about the witness who said he’d sold Jimmy the murder weapon and his sudden show of wealth. Finally she told them she had retained Allison the lawyer and her partner Karen Alvarez. When she had finished, she smiled. “Dah-ne-hoh.” It was what Seneca storytellers said at the end of a story, and it meant “I have spoken.”

 

Mattie and Jimmy looked at her, then at each other, and then at Jane again. “Isn’t all that enough to get me off?” said Jimmy.

 

“Allison didn’t say it was,” Jane said. “And she’s the expert. A lot of people whose cases had what any sensible person would call reasonable doubt are sitting in prisons.”

 

“Well sure, but—”

 

“The victim was a burglar, but that doesn’t mean it was okay to kill him. His girlfriend is having an affair with his boss. That doesn’t prove that she or he wanted him dead, and certainly not that either of them killed him. If it came out, they would probably say they were comforting each other for their mutual loss. And it might be true. The witness who says he sold you the rifle has come up with money for new things, but nobody has demanded to know where he got it, and he seems to be a convincing liar. I wouldn’t want to go to court with that. Do you?”

 

“I guess not,” said Jimmy.

 

“Of course not,” Mattie said to him.

 

Jane said quietly, “And we still don’t know who these other people are who are so interested in getting rid of you. Until we know, I don’t think you can turn yourself in.”

 

Mattie said, “So what do we do now?”

 

Jane shrugged. “Jimmy has learned a lot about how to keep from being noticed. For the moment, the one who goes out and shops, or shows a face to the world, has to be you. And you shouldn’t do it very often.”

 

“Is that enough?” said Mattie. “Just sit here and hide?”

 

“For the moment. Keep to yourselves, live quietly, and let Jimmy stay out of sight most of the time. You’ve got gas in the car, a pantry full of food, and some money for when it runs out. Tomorrow I’m going to pay the rent that comes due next week, and the utility bills.”

 

“Where are you going?”

 

“Back to where the murder happened,” Jane said. “It’s the only place I can find anything out.” She got up and carried some dishes to the sink, and the others joined her. In a few minutes, they had loaded and started the dishwasher, and they could hear the water rushing into it. She reached into her pocket and pulled out one of the small leather pouches. “Ellen Dickerson sent you this.” She handed Jimmy the pouch.

 

He looked inside, then poured a little tobacco out into his hand and looked at it, and then returned it to the pouch. “That was nice of her. Maybe we should burn some before you go.”

 

“She gave me some too,” Jane said. “I put a little on my tires before I left her house.”

 

“You really did that?” said Jimmy.

 

Jane said, “It didn’t hurt to remind myself that we have friends and relatives, and they’re in this too.”

 

“And maybe friends who aren’t people?”

 

Jane shrugged. “I’ll take the help.”

 

The next morning when Mattie got up, she walked quietly and carefully from the spare room into the living room to keep from waking Jane. She looked at the couch and saw that the blanket was neatly folded and the pillow was on top of it. She looked at the spot where Jane had left the keys to the Passat. They were gone, replaced by the keys to the Chevrolet Malibu.

 

 

 

 

 

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