“Oh, that’s such a shame!” she said, slightly out of breath, but still managing to ooze enthusiasm with every syllable. “It would have been so nice to see him.”
Marie collected small ceramic figurines of forest creatures that adorned nearly every surface in the house. The slender table in the front hall was littered with deer and raccoons and squirrels and chipmunks, none of them to scale with one another, at least I hoped not, or else there were chipmunks out there somewhere capable of eating Bambi for lunch.
Peering into the living room I could see more of the menagerie. Len had carved out a small piece of territory on the coffee table for his remotes, but otherwise the animals had taken over. Marie also fancied herself a painter, and the walls were decorated with her own portraits of owls and moose and bunnies.
“Len!” she screamed again.
A door in the hallway just off the living room opened and Len emerged from the basement. I was willing to bet he spent a lot of time down there. I knew he had a workshop, that he made furniture.
“Ray dropped by!” Marie said. “Isn’t that nice?”
Len cracked a nervous smile. “Hey there,” he said. “You on your own?”
“Yeah,” I said.
“Would you like some coffee?” Marie asked. “I was just about to start a fresh pot.”
“That’s okay,” I said. “I just wanted to have a word with Len for a second.”
“Why don’t you come downstairs and I’ll show you what I’ve been working on,” he said, giving me a look that told me he knew why I was there, and that he didn’t want to talk about it in front of his wife.
“Sure,” I said.
“You positive you won’t have something?” Marie asked, following us to the basement door.
“We’re good, Marie,” Len said, holding out his arm for me to precede him down the steps. He closed the door behind him as he followed me.
“Nice workshop,” I said. It looked as though Len had, in this well-illuminated room, every tool a master craftsman might need: jigsaw, drill press, lathe, a large worktable, a Shop-Vac, and a wall adorned with hand tools of every description. On the far side of the room, a broad set of stairs led up to a pair of angled, swinging doors. So that was how he’d get the furniture out. There wasn’t a speck of sawdust on the floor, which made sense, since I didn’t see any project under way. No chair legs or dresser drawers or cabinet doors lying about, waiting to be made into something whole.
“I try to keep it nice,” Len said.
“So what are you working on?” I asked. “This place looks too pristine to actually build anything.”
“I don’t have any projects on the go,” Len said. “I figured you’d want to talk privately.”
“Thomas told me there was an incident yesterday,” I said. “I came over to find out more. I understand Thomas struck you.”
Len reached up and touched his cheek. “Yeah, well.”
“I’m sorry. Thomas shouldn’t have done that.”
“I guess he can’t help it,” Len said. “Being crazy and all.”
“He’s not crazy,” I said. “He has a mental illness. You know that.”
“Come on, Ray. That’s just a nice way to say he’s nuttier than a fruitcake.”
I felt something tingle at the back of my neck. “What happened, exactly? When you came out to the house.”
“I dropped by, just to see how you boys were doing, that’s the kind of thing your dad would have wanted me to do, and you weren’t there, just Thomas. He said you were in New York?”
“And what happened?”
“I tried to do something nice, that’s what happened.”
“I don’t understand why Thomas would get angry if that’s what you were trying to do.”
“I just wanted to get him—”
“Everything okay down there?” Marie called. She had opened the door.
“We’re fine, damn it!” Len barked.
The door closed.
Len cleared his throat and continued. “I offered to take him out for lunch.”
“You know Thomas doesn’t like to leave the house much.” I didn’t add that he especially wouldn’t have liked leaving it to go out with Len.
“Yeah, yeah, I know that, but I thought it would do him some good. He can’t stay cooped up in there all the time. It’s just not healthy. Used to drive your dad batty.”
“So when did Thomas hit you?”
Len shrugged tiredly. “I guess I was kind of pressing the point. Trying to talk him into coming out. I took hold of his arm, thought I could nudge him along, you know? He yanked his arm back and he caught me on the side of the face. If Thomas said it was anything more than that, if he said I hurt him or anything, that’s totally not true. That’s one of his flights of imagination, that’s what that is.”
“He never said anything like that,” I said.