“I believe it was a forty,” Clyde said, “because I remember a fella that used to cane chairs down by Alfred, come right to your house he would, and—”

And so the argument was begun, progressing more in the silences than in the speeches, like a chess game played by mail. And the day seemed to stand still and stretch into eternity for them, and Vinnie Upshaw began to make another cigarette with sweet, arthritic slowness.

NINE

Ben was writing when the tap came at the door, and he marked his place before getting up to open it. It was just after three o’clock on Wednesday, September 24. The rain had ended any plans to search further for Ralphie Glick, and the consensus was that the search was over. The Glick boy was gone…solid gone.

He opened the door and Parkins Gillespie was standing there, smoking a cigarette. He was holding a paperback in one hand, and Ben saw with some amusement that it was the Bantam edition of Conway’s Daughter.

“Come on in, Constable,” he said. “Wet out there.”

“It is, a trifle,” Parkins said, stepping in. “September’s grippe weather. I always wear m’ galoshes. There’s some that laughs, but I ain’t had the grippe since St-Lô, France, in 1944.”

“Lay your coat on the bed. Sorry I can’t offer you coffee.”

“Wouldn’t think of wettin’ it,” Parkins said, and tapped ash in Ben’s wastebasket. “And I just had a cup of Pauline’s down to the Excellent.”

“Can I do something for you?”

“Well, my wife read this…” He held up the book. “She heard you was in town, but she’s shy. She kind of thought maybe you might write your name in it, or somethin’.”

Ben took the book. “The way Weasel Craig tells it, your wife’s been dead fourteen or fifteen years.”

“That so?” Parkins looked totally unsurprised. “That Weasel, he does love to talk. He’ll open his mouth too wide one day and fall right in.”

Ben said nothing.

“Do you s’pose you could sign it for me, then?”

“Delighted to.” He took a pen from the desk, opened the book to the flyleaf (“A raw slice of life!”—Cleveland Plain Dealer), and wrote: Best wishes to Constable Gillespie, from Ben Mears, 9/24/75. He handed it back.

“I appreciate that,” Parkins said, without looking at what Ben had written. He bent over and crushed out his smoke on the side of the wastebasket. “That’s the only signed book I got.”

“Did you come here to brace me?” Ben asked, smiling.

“You’re pretty sharp,” Parkins said. “I figured I ought to come and ask a question or two, now that you mention it. Waited until Nolly was off somewheres. He’s a good boy, but he likes to talk, too. Lordy, the gossip that goes on.”

“What would you like to know?”

“Mostly where you were on last Wednesday evenin’.”

“The night Ralphie Glick disappeared?”

“Yeah.”

“Am I a suspect, Constable?”

“No, sir. I ain’t got no suspects. A thing like this is outside my tour, you might say. Catchin’ speeders out by Dell’s or chasin’ kids outta the park before they turn randy is more my line. I’m just nosin’ here and there.”

“Suppose I don’t want to tell you.”

Parkins shrugged and produced his cigarettes. “That’s your business, son.”

“I had dinner with Susan Norton and her folks. Played some badminton with her dad.”

“Bet he beat you, too. He always beats Nolly. Nolly raves up and down about how bad he’d like to beat Bill Norton just once. What time did you leave?”

Ben laughed, but the sound did not contain a great deal of humor. “You cut right to the bone, don’t you?”

“You know,” Parkins said, “if I was one of those New York detectives like on TV, I might think you had somethin’ to hide, the way you polka around my questions.”

“Nothing to hide,” Ben said. “I’m just tired of being the stranger in town, getting pointed at in the streets, being nudged over in the library. Now you come around with this Yankee trader routine, trying to find out if I’ve got Ralphie Glick’s scalp in my closet.”

“Now, I don’t think that, not at all.” He gazed at Ben over his cigarette, and his eyes had gone flinty. “I’m just tryin’ to close you off. If I thought you had anything to do with anything, you’d be down in the tank.”

“Okay,” Ben said. “I left the Nortons around quarter past seven. I took a walk out toward Schoolyard Hill. When it got too dark to see, I came back here, wrote for two hours, and went to bed.”

“What time did you get back here?”

“Quarter past eight, I think. Around there.”

“Well, that don’t clear you as well as I’d like. Did you see anybody?”

“No,” Ben said. “No one.”

Parkins made a noncommittal grunt and walked toward the typewriter. “What are you writin’ about?”

“None of your damn business,” Ben said, and his voice had gone tight. “I’ll thank you to keep your eyes and your hands off that. Unless you’ve got a search warrant, of course.”

“Kind of touchy, ain’t you? For a man who means his books to be read?”

“When it’s gone through three drafts, editorial correction, galley-proof corrections, final set and print, I’ll personally see that you get four copies. Signed. Right now that comes under the heading of private papers.”

Parkins smiled and moved away. “Good enough. I doubt like hell that it’s a signed confession to anything, anyway.”

Ben smiled back. “Mark Twain said a novel was a confession to everything by a man who had never done anything.”

Parkins blew out smoke and went to the door. “I won’t drip on your rug anymore, Mr Mears. Want to thank you for y’time, and just for the record, I don’t think you ever saw that Glick boy. But it’s my job to kind of ask round about these things.”

Ben nodded. “Understood.”

“And you oughtta know how things are in places like ’salem’s Lot or Milbridge or Guilford or any little pissant burg. You’re the stranger in town until you been here twenty years.”

“I know. I’m sorry if I snapped at you. But after a week of looking for him and not finding a goddamned thing—” Ben shook his head.

“Yeah,” Parkins said. “It’s bad for his mother. Awful bad. You take care.”

“Sure,” Ben said.

“No hard feelin’s?”

“No.” He paused. “Will you tell me one thing?”

“I will if I can.”

“Where did you get that book? Really?”

Parkins Gillespie smiled. “Well, there’s a fella over in Cumberland that’s got a used-furniture barn. Kind of a sissy fella, he is. Name of Gendron. He sells paperbacks a dime apiece. Had five of these.”

Ben threw back his head and laughed, and Parkins Gillespie went out, smiling and smoking. Ben went to the window and watched until he saw the constable come out and cross the street, walking carefully around puddles in his black galoshes.

TEN

Parkins paused a moment to look in the show window of the new shop before knocking on the door. When the place had been the Village Washtub, a body could look in here and see nothing but a lot of fat women in rollers adding bleach or getting change out of the machine on the wall, most of them chewing gum like cows with mouthfuls of mulch. But an interior decorator’s truck from Portland had been here yesterday afternoon and most of today, and the place looked considerably different.

A platform had been shoved up behind the window, and it was covered with a swatch of deep nubby carpet, light green in color. Two spotlights had been installed up out of sight, and they cast soft, highlighting glows on the three objects that had been arranged in the window: a clock, a spinning wheel, and an old-fashioned cherrywood cabinet. There was a small easel in front of each piece, and a discreet price tag on each easel, and my God, would anybody in their right mind actually pay $600 for a spinning wheel when they could go down to the Value House and get a Singer for $48.95?

Sighing, Parkins went to the door and knocked.