Too Close to Home Read online

  “He is,” I said. “He has his moments, but he’s a great kid.”

  “They all have their moments,” Agnes said. “Brett certainly did. I felt a little guilty, giving away his computer, but what can you do? You can’t hang on to these things forever. He had one of those other computers, those little ones that fold up, but I must have gotten rid of that a long time ago. I don’t even remember what happened to it. His clothes, I didn’t hang on too long to those. Gave them to the poor. I think that’s what he would have wanted.”

  “I’ll bet he was a good son,” I said.

  That sad smile again. “Oh yes. There’s not a day . . .”

  She let the sentence hang there a moment. “Not a day?” I said.

  She sighed. “There’s not a day I don’t wonder. Wonder why he did what he did. You know what happened to Brett, don’t you, Mr.—Jim?”

  “I had heard,” I said, “that he took his own life.”

  She nodded. “I can’t even go downtown. I can’t go near the falls. I could pop into town and drop off my property tax payment, but I just mail it in. I can’t look at the falls, don’t even want to hear it.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “I try not to blame myself. But even now, it’s hard not to. I should have been able to read the signs. But I swear, I never noticed anything. I didn’t see it coming. Just that last day or so, just before he killed himself. He seemed just fine right up to that point, but that last day, he seemed so troubled, so upset about something, but he wouldn’t talk to me about it. That’s why I have such a hard time forgiving myself. I didn’t appreciate just how unhappy he was then. And yet, he was my whole life after my husband died. There must have been signs in the weeks leading up to that day, but I didn’t spot them. How could a mother not see that her son was that troubled, before it was too late?”

  I shook my head slowly in sympathy. “We never know everything about our own children,” I said. “There’re always things they keep from us. I’m sure Derek’s no different.” I tried a light chuckle. “Sometimes there are things you don’t want to know.”

  Agnes stared out into her yard, saying nothing.

  I said, “Tell me about Brett. What was he interested in? What did he like to do?”

  “He wasn’t like the other boys,” she said. “He was—” She stopped suddenly. “Would you like to see a picture of him?”

  “Of course.”

  She excused herself, was gone no more than half a minute, and returned with a framed high school photo. “That was his graduating year, it would have been four years before he, well, it’s pretty much how I remember him.”

  Brett Stockwell was a good-looking young man. Sandy-colored hair that came down over his ears, brown eyes, fairly unblemished skin for a boy his age. He had a sensitive, artistic look about him. Not jock material.

  “I think I can see your eyes in him,” I said.

  She took the picture back and studied it, as though looking at it for the first time. “He looked a lot like his father. Took after him, I think. Borden was a small man, only five-five, and Brett had that same kind of build.”

  “You were saying he wasn’t like the other boys.”

  “He didn’t care much about sports. Never went out for football, didn’t care much about that stuff. He liked to read. And he loved movies. But not the ones everyone else liked. He liked the ones with the words at the bottom.”

  “Subtitles.”

  “That’s right. Movies in different languages. He liked to watch those. He had an appreciation for things that other people didn’t care much about.”

  “That’s nice,” I said. “We don’t need everyone to be the same. What kind of world would that be?” I had another drink of my lemonade.

  “And he loved to write,” Agnes Stockwell said. “He was always writing things.”

  “What sort of things?” I asked.

  “Oh, you name it. When he was little, he liked to write stories about going to other planets. People traveling through time, things like that. And poems. He wrote hundreds and hundreds of poems. Not the kind that rhyme, though. Poetry’s not like it was when I was a girl. It doesn’t have to rhyme anymore. Doesn’t even seem like poetry if it doesn’t rhyme. It’s just a bunch of sentences otherwise.”

  “I can’t say as I know a lot about poetry. Ellen, she likes to read poetry sometimes.”

  “Is that your wife?”

  “Yes.”

  “You should bring her around sometime. I’d love to meet her.”

  “I should do that. I think she’d like to meet you, too. She knows you as the one who gives us lemonade.”

  She smiled, then, “Sometimes, on my birthday, Brett would write me a poem. He’d try to make those ones rhyme because he knew I didn’t understand the other ones as well. They were a bit more like the ones you find in greeting cards, you know?”

  “Did he show you all the things he wrote?” I asked.

  “Oh, some he did, some he didn’t. He liked to have something done, all polished up the way he liked it, before he showed it to me. And some things, as he got older, I think some of those things were a bit more private. A boy doesn’t want to show his mother everything, you know.” She blinked at me, and her eyes seemed to twinkle.

  “Yeah, well, I know what you mean,” I said. “Do you think that’s what he wanted to do with his life? Become a writer?”

  “Oh, without a doubt. That was his dream, to be some famous novelist. He talked about writers he admired, like that Truman Capote, and James Kirkwood, and lots of others. And I really believe, if he hadn’t . . . if he’d made different choices, I think that’s what would have happened. Because he was good, you know. He had tremendous talent. And I’m not just saying that because I’m his mother.” She paused. “Was his mother.”

  “Others thought he had talent?” I asked.

  She nodded. “His teachers, they said he was very good. Some said he was actually quite brilliant.”

  “Really?”

  “When he was in high school, he had this one teacher, what was his name?” She closed her eyes for a moment, searching. “Mr. Burgess. That’s who it was. I remember what he wrote on one of Brett’s short stories. He wrote, ‘John Irving, watch out.’ How about that?”

  “Wow.”

  “You know who John Irving is?”

  “I do,” I said.

  “Brett got in trouble once, his senior year it was. Wrote something that upset some of the staff. The subject matter was a bit, it was a bit mature. Do you know what I mean? And the language, it was not totally appropriate for high school.”

  “What was it about?”

  “It was about other students. Not actual students, but a story about boys and girls his age, and the things they did that their parents didn’t know about. A kind of sexual awakening story.” She said the words as if there were quotation marks around them. “A little too out there for the folks at Promise Falls High School.”

  “Did Brett get in trouble?”

  “He might have, if it hadn’t been for Mr. Burgess. He defended Brett from the administration, said that his work, while dealing with controversial material, was honest and a fair representation of what was actually going on. He said Brett didn’t deserve to be suspended or punished in any way for pointing out things that everyone else knew was going on but didn’t have the courage to admit.”

  “Well. He sounds like quite a teacher.”

  “Brett never showed me that story. He’d have known that I’d have tried to talk him out of handing it in or showing it to anyone. I’m not the sort of person who likes to make a fuss.”

  “Not many of us are,” I said. “How about when he got to Thackeray? Did he have mentors there? Professors who encouraged his writing?”

  “Oh yes. Although, once you get to college, there’s often less opportunity for the kind of creative writing that appealed to Brett. It’s all very academic stuff, you know, and I don’t think that ever interested Brett quite as much. Although h
e did very well with essays, and he was a voracious reader. He had so many books. I haven’t decided what to do with all those yet. Do you think the library would want them?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “So once he got to college, he stopped writing stories and poems?”

  “He kept writing them. He was always writing them. And showing them to his professors. Some of them were more interested than others, of course.”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Mostly his teachers who taught English, or literature, I guess that’s what they call it when you get to college. If he tried to get his political science teacher or history professor interested, well, they didn’t care so much. They’re all so busy, you know, not all of them want to take the time to read something that’s really not part of the course. But he also had professors who’d actually let him submit a poem or a story as an assignment, instead of having to write an actual essay with footnotes and a bibliography.”

  “I hated doing bibliographies,” I said, thinking back. “Sometimes I’d just make them up.”

  Agnes slapped my shoulder playfully. “I’ll bet you didn’t fool anyone.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Some of the professors,” Agnes said, “were writers themselves, and they didn’t mind bending the rules a bit. They were the ones who’d let Brett hand in a story instead of something he had to go to the library to research.”

  “Do you remember who they were?”

  Agnes shook her head. “It’s been so long. I wouldn’t know them if they stood up in my soup naked. Except maybe for that one who runs the college now. I see his name in the Standard now and then and recognize it.”

  It felt as though a minor tremor had gone off beneath me. “You mean Conrad Chase?” I asked.

  “That’s right. That’s the one. When he was still a professor, he took an interest in Brett’s stuff. Brett talked about him all the time. Probably his favorite professor the whole time he was at Thackeray. He even came by to see me a couple of times after Brett died. He brought flowers the first time, and he even sent me some concert tickets once. He was very thoughtful.”

  And then, suddenly, she teared up. She dug a tissue out from under her sleeve and dabbed at her eyes. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s been so long, you’d think I could hold it together when I talk about him now.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “These things are always with us.” I gave her a moment to compose herself, then asked, “So did Brett ever show Professor Chase his writings?”

  “I know he did. He was very encouraging. Brett even got invited to Professor Chase’s home a couple of times, I think. This was back before he became famous, and before he met that actress and married her. I think Brett would have been very excited to see what happened to Professor Chase after that book of his came out. Imagine, if his future hadn’t been cut short the way it was, trying to go on as a writer, being able to count someone like Conrad Chase among your friends. I bet that would have opened some doors.”

  “I bet it would have.”

  But then she shrugged and dabbed away a couple more tears.

  I said, “Did you ever read it?”

  “Hmm?” she said, not sure what I was referring to.

  “A Missing Part,” I said.

  Agnes Stockwell shook her head as though I’d asked her if she did table dancing in her spare time. “Oh no. Well, I tried. I got about fifty pages into it and thought it was so . . . well, it wasn’t my cup of tea, if you know what I mean. I’m not saying it was a bad book, just not the kind of thing I want to read. There are so many wonderful words in the English language, so many nice things to write about, but some writers, they don’t like those words and those things. I like to pick up the latest Danielle Steel, but reading about a man’s privates getting changed into a woman’s? I don’t care how brilliant the critics say it is. It’s not for me.”

  I smiled. “I totally understand.”

  “But I’ll tell you this,” she said, softening. “Brett was always a lot more open-minded than me about these things. He was what I guess you’d call a more experimental writer, willing to take chances. I think he would have loved that Professor Chase’s book.”

  THIRTEEN

  I ASKED AGNES whether I could borrow her phone book before I left. She went in and fetched it for me, leaving me with Boots. She rubbed her ugly pug-nosed face up against my pant leg.

  Agnes Stockwell returned with not only the phone book but a small notepad and a pencil.

  “What are you looking up?” she asked, and then, quickly, “Forgive me. That’s none of my business.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “There’s another stop I have to make on the way home, but I needed to double-check an address.”

  I found three listings for Burgess in the Promise Falls directory and wrote down the number and address for each. “Thank you,” I said, handing the book back to Agnes. “And for the lemonade, too. So long, Boots.”

  As I walked down the driveway, I dug my cell phone out of my pocket. I thought a quick call to Barry was in order, to tell him that it had occurred to Derek, after he’d been through the Langley house, that the computer tower was missing. It either meant something or it didn’t, but he might as well know.

  I realized I’d not turned the phone on when I left home, and hit the button to bring it to life. While I waited for it to come on, I happened to glance up the street and saw a black car sitting there, a block or more away. As I took a couple of steps toward my truck, the car, a Grand Marquis, started moving, and rather than get in I decided to wait and see whether this had anything to do with me.

  The car pulled up alongside the truck, and before it had come to a full stop the back window powered down.

  “Hello, Randall,” I said, slipping the phone back into my pocket.

  Mayor Finley flashed me his big shit-eating grin. “Cutter, you son of a bitch, would it kill you to say ‘Your Worship’?”

  “It might,” I said.

  “Listen, Jim, have you got a minute? I’d really like to talk to you.”

  “I’m kind of working,” I said. “How did you find me here?”

  “I asked Ellen,” he said. “She tried to call you.”

  “My cell was off,” I said.

  Finley said, “I told her it was really important, and when she couldn’t raise you, she told me where we might find you. Come on. Take a minute. Get out of that heat.” He opened the door, his version of an official invitation.

  “Randy, really—”

  “Please, Cutter, come on. I’m asking real nice here.”

  So I opened the back door wide enough to get in. Finley shifted over to the other side of the seat. It was wonderful and cool back there. As I pulled the door shut, Lance Garrick turned around in the driver’s seat and sneered, “Hey, Cutter, how goes the weed whacking?”

  I pretended he wasn’t there.

  “Lance,” said the mayor, “instead of sitting around wasting gas, why don’t we drive around a bit? That okay with you?” Finley asked me.

  “Whatever,” I said. “I’ll sit back and enjoy the A/C.”

  “Pretty fucking hot week to be cutting grass, and on a Sunday, too,” Lance said, shaking his head, making a “tsk-tsk” noise, as if I were in violation of some Promise Falls bylaw. He looked ahead, steered, and said, “Mighty cool in here, though.”

  “Lucky you,” I said, unable to ignore him completely.

  “Yeah, I sure wouldn’t want to be cutting grass in this heat, no sirree Bob.”

  “I get it, Lance,” I said.

  “If I was, like, fourteen, then it’d be a different story.”

  “Lance,” Finley said, “would you just shut the fuck up?” To me, he said, “I gotta see if there’s money in the next budget for one of those pieces of glass between the seats.” Up front, Lance twitched. “I want to have a talk here, Lance. Can you put in your fucking iPod or something?”

  “I didn’t bring it,” he said, sounding hurt.

 
“Then just watch the fucking road,” Finley said. “I’m conducting business back here.”

  Not so far, I thought. I was just looking out the window, enjoying the ride. I wondered whether Randall would get Lance to wipe my sweat off the gray leather seat after I got dropped off back at my truck.

  “Jim,” Mayor Finley said, “you’re looking good. You really are.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “How y’all managing, after this thing at the Langleys’? You must be shook up. How’s your wife and boy?”

  “What can I do for you, Randy?” I said.

  “That’s the Jim Cutter I know. Cut to the chase, no pun intended. That’s something I always liked about you. Langley, he acted for me on a number of occasions, did you know that? His office, not him personally, even handled my divorce from my first wife.” He paused a moment. “Or my second. Or maybe it was both of them.”

  I rubbed my hand over the leather seat between us. I wondered how many times Finley had gotten laid back here.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Albert did work for a lot of the movers and shakers around Promise Falls. That is, if Promise Falls is big enough to have movers and shakers.”

  Finley laughed. “True enough. We’re not Albany. We’re a smaller pond. But even one of those has a few big fish, am I right?”

  I waited.

  “The thing is,” Randall Finley said, his voice growing more quiet, “I’m thinking of making a move.”

  “A move?” I said. “Jane finally kicking you out of the house?” A reference to his third wife, who’d stood by him for longer than anyone would have expected. She must have been expecting a payoff at some point to stay with Randall Finley, or was just a hell of a lot more forgiving than the two wives who’d gone before her.

  “Funny one,” he said. “I’m taking a run at Congress.”

  I had no reaction.

  “What?” Finley said. “No smart-ass comment?”

  “Knock yourself out, Randy. Run for Congress. Run for president. It doesn’t matter to me. I won’t be voting for you.”

  Another laugh. “You’re a straight shooter, Jimmy boy. I’m not counting on your vote, but I was wondering if I could count on your discretion.”