Lisey's Story(125)
"Good, the Benadryl must be working. As long as it doesn't make me sleepy."
"If it does, pull over, okay? Do yourself a favor."
"Yes, Dad," Lisey said, and Alston laughed. He also blushed a little.
"By the way, Mrs. Landon - "
"Lisey."
"Yes, ma'am. Lisey. Andy called. He'd like you to drop by the Sheriff's Office when it's convenient and make an official report on this business. You know, something you can sign for the record. Would you do that?"
"Yes. I'll try to stop in on my way back from Auburn."
"Well, I'll tell you a little secret, Mrs. Lan - Lisey. Both our secretaries are apt to clear out early on days when it comes on to hard rain. They live out Motton way, and those roads flood if you look at em crosseyed. Need new culverts."
Lisey shrugged. "We'll see," she said. She made a show of looking at her watch.
"Whoa, look at the time! I really have to run. Help yourself to the toilet if you have to go, Deputy Alston, there's - "
"Joe. If you're Lisey, I'm Joe."
She gave him a thumbs-up. "Okay, Joe. There's a key to the back door under the porch step. If you feel around a little, I think you'll find it."
"Ayuh, I'm a trained investigator," he said with a straight face. Lisey burst out laughing and held up her hand. Deputy Joe Alston, now grinning himself, high-fived her there in the sunshine near the mailbox where she'd found the dead Galloway barncat.
5
Driving to Auburn, she mused for a little while on how Deputy Joe Alston had looked at her as they stood talking at the end of the driveway. It had been a little while since she'd attracted a honey, you look so good stare from a man, but she'd gotten one today, slightly swollen nose and all. Amazing. Amazing.
"The Get-Beat-Up-By-Jim-Dooley Beauty Treatment," she said, and laughed. "I could hawk it on high-channel cable TV."
And her mouth had the most wonderfully sweet taste. If she ever wanted another cigarette, she would be surprised. Maybe she could hawk that on high-channel cable, too. 6
By the time Lisey got to Greenlawn, it was twenty minutes past one. She didn't expect to see Darla's car, but still let out a sigh of relief when she had made sure it wasn't one of the dozen or so scattered around the visitors' parking lot. She liked the idea of Darla and Canty well south of here, well away from the dangerous craziness of Jim Dooley. She remembered helping Mr. Silver grade potatoes when she was a little girl (well, twelve or thirteen - not so little at that) and how he'd always cautioned her to wear pants and keep her sleeves rolled up when she was around the potato grader in the back shed. You get caught in that baby, she'll undress ya, he'd said, and she had taken the warning to heart because she'd understood old Max Silver hadn't been talking about what his hulk of a potato-grader would do to her clothes but what it would do to her. Amanda was a part of this, had been since the day she'd shown up as Lisey was halfheartedly beginning the job of cleaning out Scott's study. Lisey accepted that. Darla and Canty, however, would be an unnecessary complication. If God was good, He would keep them at the Snow Squall, eating Lazy Lobster and drinking white wine spritzers, for a long time. Like until midnight.
Before she got out of her car, Lisey touched her left breast lightly with her right hand, wincing in advance at the bright lance of pain she expected. All she felt was a faint throb. Amazing, she thought. It's like touching a week-old bruise. Any time you get to doubting the reality of Boo'ya Moon, Lisey, just remember what he did to your breast, not even five hours ago, and what it feels like now.
She got out of the car, locked it with the SmartKey, then paused for a moment to look around, trying to fix the spot in her mind. She had no clear reason for doing this; nothing she could have put her finger on, even if she'd wanted to. It was just more of that step-bystep thing, almost like baking bread for the first time from a cookbook recipe, and that was fine by her.
Freshly tarred and lined, the Greenlawn visitors' parking lot reminded her strongly of the parking lot where her husband had fallen eighteen years ago, and she heard the ghostly voice of Assistant Professor Roger Dashmiel, aka the southern-fried chickenshit, saying We'll proceed on across yondah parkin lot to Nelson Hall - which is mercifully air-conditioned. No Nelson Hall here; Nelson Hall was in the Land of Ago, as was the man who had gone there to dig a spadeful of earth and inaugurate construction of the Shipman Library.
What she saw looming over the neatly trimmed hedges wasn't an English Department building but the smooth brick and bright glass of a twenty-first-century madhouse, the sort of clean, well-lighted place where her husband might well have finished up if something, some spore the doctors in Bowling Green had eventually elected to call pneumonia (no one wanted to put Unknown causes on the death certificate of a man whose demise would be reported on the front page of the New York Times), had not finished him first.
On this side of the hedge was an oak tree; Lisey had parked so that the BMW would be in its shade, although - yes - she could see clouds massing in the west, so maybe Deputy Joe Alston was right about those afternoon thunderstorms. The tree would make a perfectly lovely marker if it had been the only one, but it wasn't. There was a whole row of them along the hedge, to Lisey they all looked the same...and what the smuck did it matter, anyway?
She started for the path to the main building, but something inside - a voice that didn't seem like any of the variations of her own mental voice - nagged her back, insisting that she look at her car and its place in the parking lot again. She wondered if something wanted her to move the BMW to a different spot. If so, it wasn't making its wants known very clearly. Lisey settled for a walk-around instead, as her father had told her you should always do before setting out on a long trip. Only then you were looking for uneven tirewear, a bust' taillight, a sagging muffler, things of that sort. Now she didn't know what she was looking for.