George moved forward. “I ought to take your head off, you miserable little worm.”
Henry tried to close the door but George shoved it back and walked in, the rest of us following. Down at the end of the hall I could see Mrs. Henry in the kitchen, cleaning up after dinner. Two girls, about eight and ten, ran giggling from the kitchen, down the hall and up the stairs.
“Maybe we should play it for them,” I taunted Henry. “Here’s how Daddy talks to grown-up girls.”
“Shhhh,” he said, running a hand over the top of his head. “Just, just come downstairs.”
He led us down into a rec room that didn’t appear to have been changed since the 1960s. Brown shag carpeting, dark paneled walls, a pool table covered with boxes of Christmas decorations that had evidently been sitting there for months. With Christmas only a few months away, there wasn’t much point putting them away now.
“Chuck?” his wife shouted downstairs. “What’s going on?”
“Shut the damn door!” he shouted at her. The door slammed shut. He said to us, “What do you want?”
Lawrence found a corner of the pool table on which to rest his laptop, opened it up, and played the recording of his call to Alice Holland’s house, finishing with “Hi, Mr. Henry!”
Henry shook his head. “Goddamn that Violet.”
“Violet?” I said.
“Cashier,” said Alice, who clearly knew everyone in town. “Grade 12 student, works part-time for Charles. She see you at the pay phone after her shift?”
Charles Henry said nothing.
“First thing I want is,” said Alice, “I want you to own up to what you’ve been doing.”
I held up the egg carton from the car. “And we’re not talking just the phone calls. You’ve been paying some visits to the comics store in Red Lake.”
It was cool in the basement, but Charles Henry was still sweating.
“I don’t know anything about any comics store.”
“Really?” said Lawrence. “What do you think will happen when I give this carton of eggs to my friends at the forensic lab, and they compare the DNA of these eggs to the DNA of the eggs splattered all over Stuart Lethbridge’s store?”
I looked at Lawrence.
“Oh my God,” Henry said, clearly overwhelmed by what science apparently could do. “Okay, okay, I egged the place. And I’m really sorry about the phone calls.”
George Holland made a snorting noise. “He’s fucking sorry.”
“You’re sorry you got caught,” Alice Holland said. “This is what I want you to do. I want you to call Tracy over at the Times. Tell her you’re withdrawing the petition. Tell her you think it’s time to let things calm down. Tell her yeah, people have differences of opinion about who should and shouldn’t be in the parade, but tempers are flaring, and it’s time for people to cool off.”
Charles Henry nodded, swallowed. “Okay,” he squeaked.
“The Times’s next edition doesn’t come out for a few more days,” I said. “You need to get the message out now.”
Alice nodded. “Charles, you’re going to call Andy at FL Radio and offer him an interview that he can get on the next newscast. Tell him what you’re going to tell Tracy. You can tell them you don’t want gays and lesbians in the parade, I don’t care, but make it clear that the parade needs to be peaceful, that this is an issue that can be taken up at a later date.”
Henry looked hopeful. “We can still have discussions about this?”
Alice leaned in close to Henry, forcing him up against the pool table. “Not you, Charles. Never. Your opinion in this town counts for nothing from this day forward. You give me one moment’s trouble, and I’ll give that recording not only to the police, but the radio station. I’ll put it on a loudspeaker and drive around town playing it at full volume. Let people find out what you’re really like. That you’re a little, little man.”
Henry seemed to shrink.
“I have some questions,” Lawrence said. Alice stepped aside and Lawrence moved forward. “What do you know about what’s going to go down at the parade tomorrow?”
“Huh?” Henry said, surprised. “What do you mean?”
“If you know about anything that’s going to happen, something bad, you better tell us now.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
Lawrence turned to George. “You know how you were asking for ten minutes alone with this guy?”
George brightened. “Yeah.”
“This seems as good a time as any.”
“No! No!” Charles Henry whined. “I swear, I don’t know anything!”
“What about the Wickenses?” Lawrence said. “Timmy Wickens and his crew?”
“Timmy Wickens? Are you kidding? That guy’s crazy! Him and those boys, his wife’s two? They’re a bunch of psychos!”
Well. Something we could all agree on.
We were all quiet for a moment. For a few seconds, all we could hear was a dishwasher running upstairs, and Henry’s rapid breathing.
“I don’t think he’s in on anything else,” Lawrence said.