Lisey's Story(26)

"I know." What she knew was that she was tired and confused and ashamed of her outburst. "We'll work it out. I'll come right now. Okay?"

"Yes." Relief in Darla's voice. "Okay."

"That Frenchman," Lisey said. "What a jerk. Good riddance to bad trash."

"Get here as soon as you can."

"I will. G'bye."

Lisey hung up. She walked over to the northeast corner of the room and grasped the shaft of the silver spade. It was as if she were doing it for the first time, and was that so strange?

When Scott passed it to her, she'd only been interested in the glittering silver scoop with its engraved message, and by the time she got ready to swing the darn thing, her hands had been moving on their own...or so it had seemed; she supposed some primitive, survival-oriented part of her brain had actually been moving them for the rest of her, for Thoroughly Modern Lisey.

She slid one palm down the smooth wood, relishing the smooth slide, and as she bent, her eyes once more fell on the three stacked boxes with their exuberant message slashed across the side of each one in black Magic Marker: SCOTT! THE EARLY YEARS! The box on top had once contained Gilbey's Gin, and the flaps had been folded together rather than taped. Lisey brushed away the dust, marveling at how thick it was, marveling at the realization that the last hands to touch this box - to fill it and fold the flaps and place it atop the others - now lay folded themselves, and under the ground.

The box was full of paper. Manuscripts, she presumed. The slightly yellowed title sheet on top was capitalized, underlined, and centered. Scott's name neatly typed beneath, also centered. All this she recognized as she would have recognized his smile - it had been his style of presentation when she met him as a young man, and had never changed. What she didn't recognize was the title of this one:

IKE COMES HOME

By Scott Landon

Was it a novel? A short story? Just looking into the box, it was impossible to tell. But there had to be a thousand or more pages in there, most of them in a single high stack under that title-page but still more crammed in sideways in two directions, like packing. If it was a novel, and this box contained all of it, it had to be longer than Gone With the Wind. Was that possible? Lisey supposed it might be. Scott always showed her his work when it was done, and he was happy to show her work in progress if she asked about it (a privilege he accorded no one else, not even his longtime editor, Carson Foray), but if she didn't ask, he usually kept it to himself. And he'd been prolific right up until the day he died. On the road or at home, Scott Landon wrote.

But a thousand-pager? Surely he would have mentioned that. I bet it's only a short story, and one he didn't like, at that.

And the rest of the stuff in this box, the stuff underneath and crammed in at the side? Copies of his first couple of novels, probably. Or galley-pages. What he used to call "foul matter."

But hadn't he shipped all the foul matter back to Pitt when he was done with it, for the Scott Landon Collection in their library? For the Incunks to drool over, in other words? And if there were copies of his early manuscripts in these boxes, how come there were more copies (carbons from the dark ages, mostly) in the closets marked STORAGE upstairs? And now that she thought about it, what about the cubbies on either side of the erstwhile chicken pen? What was stored in those?

She looked upward, almost as if she were Supergirl and could see the answer with her X-ray vision, and that was when the telephone on her desk once more began to ring.

4

She crossed to the desk and snared the handset with a mixture of dread and irritation...but quite a bit heavier on the irritation. It was possible - just - that Amanda had decided to whack off an ear à la Van Gogh or maybe slit her throat instead of just a thigh or a forearm, but Lisey doubted it. All her life Darla had been the sister most apt to call back three minutes later, starting off with I just remembered or I forgot to tell you.

"What is it, Darl?"

There was a moment or two of silence, and then a male voice - one she thought she knew - said: "Mrs. Landon?"

It was Lisey's turn to pause as she ran through a list of male names. Pretty short list these days; it was amazing how your husband's death pruned your catalogue of acquaintances. There was Jacob Montano, their lawyer in Portland; Arthur Williams, the accountant in New York who wouldn't let go of a dollar until the eagle shrieked for mercy (or died of asphyxiation); Deke Williams - no relation to Arthur - the contractor from Bridgton who'd turned the empty haylofts over the barn into Scott's study and who'd also remodeled the second floor of their house, transforming previously dim rooms into wonderlands of light; Smiley Flanders, the plumber from over in Motton with the endless supply of jokes both clean and dirty; Charlie Haddonfield, Scott's agent, who called on business from time to time (foreign rights and short-story anthologies, mostly); plus the handful of Scott's friends who still kept in touch. But none of those people would call on this number, surely, even if it were listed. Was it? She couldn't remember. In any case, none of the names seemed to fit how she knew (or thought she knew) the voice. But, damn it -

"Mrs. Landon?"

"Who is this?" she asked.

"My name doesn't matter, Missus," the voice replied, and Lisey had a sudden vivid image of Gerd Allen Cole, lips moving in what might have been a prayer. Except for the gun in his longfingered poet's hand. Dear God, don't let this be another one of those, she thought. Don't let it be another Blondie. Yet she saw she once more had the silver spade in her hand - she'd grasped its wooden shaft without thinking when she picked up the phone - and that seemed to promise her that it was, it was.