December Park(37)

“Just go on over and wish those people a merry Christmas,” she said and practically tossed me out the front door.

I crossed the snowy patch of yard. Paper-bag luminaries lit up the far end of Worth Street like an airport runway. As was typical, the worry about a heavy snowstorm this year had been for nothing, and we had received only three inches of snow, which was quickly melting. It was terribly cold, however, and the brief walk from my house to the Gardiners’ was enough to numb my cheekbones and cause my nose to start running.

I climbed the porch steps of the Gardiner house, wondering once again if anyone was home. The lower level was dark, but there was a single light in one of the upstairs windows. I knocked on the door, then peered through the adjacent window, searching for any kind of festive lighting inside. I saw nothing.

Doreen Gardiner opened the door. Her face was pale and haggard, her hair tugged back on her head and tied in a tight bun. She wore a loose-fitting cotton shirt and flared pants with a wallpapery paisley pattern. The smell of stale, unwashed flesh combined with liquor wafted out onto the porch with me.

“Merry Christmas,” I said, thrusting out the plate of struffoli.

“How nice,” she said flatly and bent down to survey the sticky balls of dough. “Very interesting.”

“It’s called struffoli,” I said. “I don’t like it much, but the rest of my family does. My grandma makes it for Christmas every year.”

As she leaned forward to take the plate, the frayed collar of her shirt gaped, and I saw what looked like a hideously pink scar twisting around the base of her neck. It was dark on the porch, and I thought it was maybe a trick of the light. Before I could get a better look, she straightened up, and the scar disappeared beneath the collar. “Do you want to come in? Adrian’s upstairs.”

“Uh, I need to get back home and help my grandma clean up,” I said.

Doreen Gardiner smiled with much effort. She looked like a corpse brought to life by black magic, doomed to walk around still reeking of the grave. “Tell your grandmother thanks for the . . . What’s it called again?”

“Struffoli.”

“Yes. Tell her thanks. And merry Christmas, too.”





Chapter Six


An Incident on Bessel Avenue





As was tradition on New Year’s Eve, my father, grandfather, and I drove to the old rock quarry at the end of our street to watch some of the neighbors light off fireworks. The quarry was a large pit of excavated limestone surrounded by two layers of chain-link fencing topped in concertina wire. It took up several acres, beginning at the end of Worth Street, where Worth denigrated from paved asphalt to a narrow access road comprised of crushed white gravel, and stretching all the way out to the black curtain of stately pines in the west. It was hard to tell how deep the pit was, although you wouldn’t be too far off estimating the drop at around two hundred feet.

It was eleven thirty when we arrived, still early for the fireworks show, but even at this hour I could see that there weren’t as many people hanging outside the quarry fences as there had been in the past. It was easy to chalk up the poor attendance to the cold weather, yet I couldn’t help but wonder if people had stayed home because of the Piper.

There had been nothing newsworthy that had come out since Courtney Cole’s body had been recovered from the woods. No leads were reported in the news, and there had certainly been no arrests. If the police had any suspects in mind, they were keeping their suppositions close to the vest.

I wanted to ask my father about the investigation, since he was one of the lead detectives on the case, but his dour spirit and tired eyes kept me from opening my mouth. Conversely, when he was in a good mood and his laughter came more easily, I was loath to ruin it by asking him morbid questions. So I let it go and remained in the dark just like the rest of the citizens of Harting Farms. And although some people were hopeful that the person responsible for Courtney Cole’s death—not to mention the disappearances of William Demorest, Jeffrey Connor, and Bethany Frost—had moved on, this belief did not seem to quell any concerns or lessen any fears.

My dad parked the car and we all got out. Beneath the three-quarters moon, the limestone on the other side of the fences appeared to radiate with an otherworldly light. A few people bundled in coats sat on lawn chairs, drinking beer or coffee from steaming thermoses. They sat in a rough semicircle around a slight concavity in the gravel where someone had already set up some impressive-looking fireworks. A battery-powered radio in someone’s lap was tuned to a classic-rock station.

When we approached the small crowd, everyone said hello and a few of the older women waved at me. Looking around, I realized I was the only kid. It was a fact that this little fireworks display had always been more for the adults than for the kids, but in years past, a handful of teenagers and even some younger kids had been in attendance. Their absence was like a glaring hole in the fabric of the night, and I felt instantly self-conscious standing here among all my grown-up neighbors.

Mr. Matherson shook my dad’s hand, a bottle of schnapps poking out from the side pocket of his Marlboro Man coat. He smiled at me, though he looked a little surprised to see me.

A man wearing a plaid hunting cap with earflaps, sort of like the one Elmer Fudd wears in the cartoons, came over and handed my dad and grandfather each a cigar. This man had a short and stumpy cigar, its tip glowing reddish orange like the blazing eye of a Cyclops, crooked into the corner of his mouth. “Merry Christmas, Sal,” he said to my dad, squeezing his forearm.