The Traveling Prayer by YentaPatrol - Chapter Two

[flipit]

Chapter 2

Lucille stopped stacking the boxes of napkins long enough to watch Annie scrub her hands in scalding hot water for what seemed like the hundredth time that day. Frowning, she walked out to the front of the diner to find her brother. “Has Annie been taking her meds?” she asked softly.

Brett looked up from the pile of receipts he was going through, irritation flickered for a moment in the back of his eyes and he sighed. “What’s she doing?”

Lucille shrugged. “Nothing much, just scouring the flesh off her hands every thirty minutes and scrubbing the kitchen to within an inch of its foundation.”

Brett nodded. “You should see the house, she even washed the animals.” He ran his hands through his curls in a frustrated gesture. His large frame had grown a little wider over the years and his hair was a little grayer, but his blue eyes were still kind and his manner still gentle. “It’s going up to see Henri that’s bothering her,” Brett told his sister. “Dealing with family always stresses her out. Just leave her be and she’ll be fine.”

Lucille gave him a skeptical look. “You taking her up there tonight?”

When Brett nodded uncomfortably, Lucille shook her head and scowled, “If you ask me nothing good is going to come of Annie spending time with her family. Jacqueline Davenport never was a good mother to Annie and the Lord knows that Henri hasn’t been much of a father figure.”

Brett sighed and looked at his sister with a reproachful expression in his blue eyes.

“Okay,” she relented. “It’s none of my business, but I’m telling you nothing good is going to come of this.”

Brett watched Lucille walk away, feeling more worried than annoyed. He didn’t think spending time with Henri was good for Annie either. He just didn’t know what to do about it.

Henri Walden had been the closest thing in Annie’s life to a father figure and, like Lucille had said, he hadn’t been much good at that. Of course, he had never married Annie’s mother and he had his own daughter. Brett figured that that might have accounted for the way he treated Annie, but it didn’t account for the way that Annie acted around him.

Over the years, Henri had rarely come in to the diner, but at the beginning of the summer Brett had hired Henri’s granddaughter, Lori, as a part-time waitress. Since then, it seemed like he was stopping in a couple times a week. At first, whenever Henri made an appearance, Annie would disappear, hiding in the back room or even racing up the side stairs to Lucille’s apartment. Eventually, it had become a routine for Henri to stroll in at the end of the lunch rush, just before the diner emptied out and everybody, including Annie, was out front waiting tables.

Henri always made a point of acknowledging a few of the local men by name. He would stand talking to them in his expensive LL Bean workboots and dungarees, while they shifted in their seats, impatient to clock back into their jobs so as not to lose an hour’s pay. Over time, Annie seemed to grow used to him and would stay in the diner simply ignoring his presence. Brett wasn’t sure exactly when Henri and Annie had started talking, but he knew it was having her short story published that had given them something to talk about. Henri had seen it and had been impressed. Since then, he seemed to be almost courting Annie by offering to help her with her writing. He had even gone so far as to invite them up to his house a few times to talk about it. Brett frowned and wondered what the real reason was for a big shot writer like Henri Walden to take an interest in Annie.

It was nearing seven thirty when Brett carefully backed the truck onto Main Street and headed out toward the lake. The diner had still been busy when they left and Brett felt a twinge of guilt at leaving Lucille in charge with both him and Annie gone. Of course, it was a misplaced guilt, and Brett knew that Lucille would have been the first to tell him so. She’d been working for him since he had bought the place and she could run it better than he could himself. Lucille took no crap from anyone, least of all him. Brett smiled softly to himself. The only person his sister had a soft spot for was his Annie.

When he turned the truck up Lake Road, the sun was already low in the sky and the clouds had turned brilliant shades of crimson and gold. Brett automatically slowed down so that they could watch the final rush of colors fade into streaks of dark purple and then disappear into darkness.
“It happens so quickly,” Annie said sadly. She looked up at her husband and gave him a wistful smile. “I wish the sunsets would last longer.”

Brett smiled back at her and promised, “The good news is that there’ll be another one tomorrow.”

A worried expression had settled over Annie’s face and she went back to watching the road ahead. She was still too thin, almost frail looking. But after years of working alongside her, Brett knew that her fragile appearance was deceptive. Her honey colored hair was twisted back in a knot behind her head, messy from the day at the diner, with long pieces falling down here and there. Brett reached out and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.

“You sure you want to do this?” he asked her in a neutral voice. So far, their visits to Henri Walden had resulted in nightmares followed by several days where Annie was exhausted by long sleepless nights.

Annie turned to her husband and tried to smile. It was impossible to explain to him that it was her memory of what Henri Walden had been, that was making her stomach tense. But that Henri Walden no longer existed. Time had changed him, physically shaping him into an old man nearing seventy, from whom she had nothing to fear. The memory of Henri was only a ghost that haunted her and she was determined to banish it.

Annie looked down at the narrow folder of writing that she held in her lap and felt a small bubble of excitement and happiness stir in the midst of her anxiety. Henri Walden was taking her seriously as a writer and that was almost enough to forget everything else. Except that she wasn’t really ready to be alone in a room with him. “It’s for my writing,” she tried to explain to Brett in a halting voice. “There’s no one else here to help and he’s a real writer.”

“You’re a real writer, yourself,” Brett reminded her as he steered the truck around a steep curve. “Remember, published and all that.”

Annie flushed a delicate pink at the words and squirmed. “I wonder if I’ll ever get used to having my stories published.”

Brett grinned. “Probably after a hundred or so.” Out of the corner of his eye he could see Annie grin back at him and he relaxed a little.

If Brett had had his way, Annie would never have had to see Henri Walden, Jacqueline Davenport or any other member of that crowd ever again. But that was one of the points that Annie could be obstinate on. “I don’t like the idea of not having any family,” she would tell him looking bereft.

And Brett would ask in a plaintive voice, “Isn’t Lucille’s and my family enough?”

But she would shake her head and say, “You don’t understand, because your family has always been here and you’ve always had your family. I want to come from somewhere and have my own people that I belong to.”

Lately, since Henri had come into their lives, Brett had taken to reminding her, “Those people almost destroyed you.”

“I know,” she would answer him sadly. “But sometimes people change.”

“And sometimes they don’t” Brett would say to himself, as he stomped off in search of a way to work off the tension that came from worrying about her.

As he pulled into Henri’s driveway, Brett pushed the memories of these conversations from his mind and parked behind the beat-up truck that Henri had taken to driving. Annie opened her door and jumped lightly to the ground, clutching her folder of writing tightly against her body. Brett stepped out and followed silently behind her to the front door. While they waited for Henri to appear, Brett wondered as he often did what Henri made of his presence at these meetings. But Henri was far too polite a host to communicate anything other than gracious hospitality to Annie’s large, silent husband who stubbornly insisted on staying beside her throughout their visit.




****

By nine o’clock, the arguing that had been going on for most of the day between Kristi’s mother and father finally reached a point of mutual recriminations that were too painful to listen to. In an act of desperation, Kristi crawled out of her bedroom window and set off through the woods toward Lori’s house.

It was too dark to see where she was going, but Kristi’s bare feet moved instinctively over the path that she and Lori had made as children while traveling back and forth to each other’s houses. The bright flame of a lightning bug flashed in front of her, dancing just out of reach, but Kristi barely spared it a glance. It had been years since she and Lori had had trapped lightning bugs to make magic lanterns out of old jelly jars.

Kristi was breathing hard when she reached the edge of the Eastman’s yard. She ran quickly across the lawn towards Lori’s brightly lit window, remnants of freshly cut grass sticking to her toes. Standing up on the balls of her feet, Kristi reached up and tapped lightly on the windowpane. “Come on Lori,” she muttered urgently under her breath. “Come on.”

Lori was seated at her desk, doing her best to concentrate on her homework. Her house was weirdly silent and the tension in the air was almost palpable. She was pretty sure her dad was out in his workshop and she thought her mom had either locked herself in their bedroom or gone out for the night. She heard the tapping at her window and put down her pen. An irritated expression crossed her face as the tapping became more insistent, demanding her attention. If Kristi was upset, Lori knew that she wasn’t going to go away and there was a lot to be upset about lately. She sighed and crossed her bedroom to push open her window and leaned out into the night air. Her auburn hair was backlit from the light in her bedroom and her face was lost in shadows giving her a ghostlike effect as she hovered above Kristi. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Are you okay?”

Kristi gulped and shook her head. Her short curly hair framed her heart shaped face as she looked back up at Lori. “No, things are worse,” she said forlornly. “I really think my stepdad’s going to leave my mom.”

Lori frowned and her hands tightened over the windowsill in a painful grip. “I thought that your parents had decided to move away from here?”

[flipit]

(continued)

Tears streamed across Kristi’s cheeks as she looked steadily up at Lori and she said in an accusing voice, her words tripping over each other as she rushed to get them out, “Your mom started calling my dad again today and my mom got really mad. They’ve been arguing all night.”

Lori sighed, the heavy weight of depression settling on her shoulders as she stared out toward the dark shadows around their lawn.

“Lori,” Kristi pleaded, “We’ve got to do something. Can’t you talk to your mom, get her to leave my dad alone?”

“I don’t think my mom cares,” Lori said slowly. “My dad’s been sleeping in his workshop and he’s looking for a house to move into.” She considered their situation for a moment before adding, “that’s probably why my mom’s calling your dad so much, she couldn’t stand ending up without anybody.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do?” Kristi asked sounding desperate. She looked down at her bare feet and added in a small voice, “I’m not like you, I really love my parents.”

“I really love my dad,” Lori told her angrily, then exhaled in exasperation. It wasn’t Kristi’s fault and it didn’t do any good to get angry at her. “Look,” she told Kristi, “I can try talking to my grandfather, maybe my mother will listen to him.”

****
It was dark out by the time Zane had finished his dinner and stumbled down the hall to his room to sleep. Jenny moved automatically around the kitchen, cleaning up the dishes. Once the kitchen was in order, she began methodically slicing the leftover roast to make sandwiches; carefully packing them in a box that would eventually hold two thermoses of coffee, packets of sugar and styrofoam cups.

When Jenny finished, it was nearing nine o’clock and she poured herself a cup of coffee to take out to the front porch with her. The urgency that had been building in her for the past few days was reaching a peak and she prepared herself to wait for the outcome.

She sat on the porch steps sipping her coffee and straining her ears and eyes to see into the darkness above the lake. It started as a faint orange glow near the top of Lake Road. As she watched, it seemed to grow and pulse releasing clouds of smoke that slowly drifted upwards. Jenny’s first instinct was to rush back in to the house to wake Zane and call the fire department, but another deeper instinct held her in place. She sipped her coffee and waited. It wasn’t long before she could see the hazy shape of a gentleman hovering by the edge of her property. Flames from the fire were licking the sky and occasional bursts lit up the lake. The phone was going to ring soon and wake Zane. Aware that she didn’t have much time, Jenny concentrated on the hazy figure willing it to come forward. And, as if in response, the slender gentleman began to move down the path toward her porch until he stood before her in mute appeal.

Jenny studied Henri Walden. She could see that he was already fading, heading on his way. “What do you want Henri?” she asked.

His handsome face was sad and his eyes pleading as he slowly answered, “Annie, take care of Annie.”

Jenny sighed. “Henri, I don’t know what I can do for her.” She watched as he faded looking sadder than ever. Waves of guilt and helplessness washed over her. “I’ll do what I can,” she told him reluctantly and her last image of him held a look of gratitude.

When the phone started its urgent ringing, Jenny was already handing Zane a cup of coffee. Fifteen minutes later, he was driving the police cruiser up Lake Road toward the burning house; a box of sandwiches and coffee carefully packed in the back of the car.

It was a large house and it had taken a lot of work to extinguish the fire. The flames had been chiefly confined to the sprawling downstairs. The upstairs bedroom had been filled with smoke, soot and heat, but had been spared the worst destruction.

Henri Walden’s body had been found on his bed in the upstairs bedroom. The firefighters that had located his body reported that he had been resting on his side with eyes closed and his hands folded as if in prayer alongside his head. It was as if he had fallen into a deep peaceful sleep. They had automatically and efficiently checked his vital signs, but they knew death when they saw it, and moved even more efficiently to strap him onto to a gurney and remove him from the smoldering house.

It was nearly three in the morning when Ed Tompkins, the local fire chief, approached Zane. Car beams and searchlights, powered by mobile generators, were trained on the remains of Henri’s house and the surrounding property, generating a crisscross pattern of light made hazy by the smoke. The firefighters were working silently and efficiently as they finished up their work, anxious to get home for a few hours of sleep before leaving for their day jobs.

“It’s safe to go in now,” Ed said sounding tired and irritable.

Zane nodded. “Just the one body?”

“Just the one,” Ed confirmed. Henri Walden’s body rested on a gurney at the edge of the crime scene waiting for Doc Owen to come and sign off that he was, in fact, dead.

“Can’t say for sure yet, but off the record we’re looking at arson,” Ed told him in a grim voice.

“We’ll go on in then,” Zane nodded and accepted the hard hat Ed was offering. Not many years before, those words would have sparked an adrenaline rush for Zane, now they just brought a heavier feeling of depression. Of all the tragedies Zane had to attend, he hated fires the most.

The house had been built in a style more common for warm sunny areas than western Maine. The downstairs was almost entirely open space with divisions between the living room, dining room and kitchen primarily defined by a single step up or down into each area. A spiral staircase led up to the smaller master bedroom that sat like a square box centered above the first floor. Ed led Zane through the acrid smoke and charred remains to a large stone fireplace that graced the wall at the far end of the living room. He knelt down and poked at the ashes in the fireplace then looked over his shoulder at Zane. “I’m pretty sure the fire started here, but from the amount of ash, I’m guessing that it must have spread pretty quick after it was started.”

Zane frowned and rolled the events over in his tired mind. “So Henri makes a fire in the living room and then goes up and falls asleep?” he paused and shook his head grimly. “Doesn’t make much sense does it?”

“Nope,” Ed agreed. Then backing up, motioned to where the maple flooring was now gray with charred streaks. “Pretty sure that accelerants caused this pattern,” he said slowly. “Some of these black strips go all the way across the first floor, probably where somebody poured the accelerant.” Ed had knelt back down and was poking in the ashes again as he spoke, sounding somewhat distracted, “Course I can’t say for sure until we get some samples up to the lab to be analyzed.”

Zane frowned and walked back across the room looking at the burn pattern on the floor. “Any idea what might have been used?”

Ed sat back on his heels and nodded. “Plain old gasoline would be my best guess. Smells like it and the smoke from gasoline is black. We had a fair amount of that tonight.”

Zane stopped and readjusted his hard hat to a more comfortable position. “So the arsonist either starts a fire and then pours out a couple gallons of gasoline or the gasoline is poured first and then the fire is lit. Either way it seems pretty foolhardy.”

Ed was still squatting in front of the fireplace searching in his pockets. Finally drawing out some tweezers and a bag, he leaned forward and pulled some charred remains out of the ashes. Displaying them with pride, he said, “I think there’s another option.”

Zane came closer and squatted down next to his friend to peer at the charred short cylinder he dropped into the baggy. Watching while Ed continued to poke carefully through the ashes, he asked, “What’ve you got?”

“I think our fire bug used one of those fancy Easy Light logs,” Ed told him, “with a cigarette or two taped to the ends.”

“So your saying that the time it took for the cigarettes to burn down would have given somebody enough time to pour out the gasoline and leave the house.” Zane had stood and was pacing out the actions as he spoke, adding, “then they probably waited outside long enough to make sure it worked before they left.”

Ed finished picking over the remains of the ashes and stood up nodding. “I’d say that’s about right. Probably expected the whole house to go up in flames if the downstairs did. But there wasn’t enough oxygen in the upstairs room with the door shut to get a really good flame going. The question in my mind is what Henri Walden was doing while this was going on?”

Zane sighed. “I don’t think he was doing much of anything, I think he was unconscious.” Seeing Ed’s startled look, Zane remembered that his friend wouldn’t have spent much time looking at the corpse once it was determined dead. “Henri’s skin was cherry pink from smoke inhalation, so he must have been breathing when the fire started. But if he was conscious, I don’t think he would stayed curled up on his bed when the smoke started pouring in.”

“So how’d he get unconscious?” Ed asked slowly.

Zane shrugged. “We won’t have an answer for that for a while. Doc Owen’s going to have to send the body on up to the state medical examiner.” He paused and looked around, before asking, “Anything else before I see his room?”

Ed shook his head and reluctantly headed for the stairs warning, “Be careful up here. Probably shouldn’t let you come up, but under the circumstances.” He shrugged and let his words trail off.

Zane nodded and moved slowly, testing each step as he went up, careful to distribute his weight on the outer part of the stairs. Henri Walden’s bedroom was surprisingly large, with a king-sized bed facing the huge windows that looked out over the lake. The left-hand corner of the room had been made into a small office space with a little kitchenette, complete with an espresso maker along the side wall and a huge desk facing out over the water. The tiny refrigerator contained coffee, creamer, and an open bottle of wine standing alongside a plate of crackers and cheese.

The desk was surprisingly well organized with separate in and out boxes for correspondence and hanging files marked by chapter and draft numbers. A ceramic mug holding pens was neatly lined up with a tape dispenser and a stapler. A laser printer sat on a small side table placed at a right angle to the desk. Zane stared at the desk, “Computer?” he asked looking at Ed.

Ed shrugged. “Don’t know.”

Zane frowned and pulling on gloves, carefully and methodically started to search the room saying a little grimly, almost to himself, “For what it’s worth I’ll need the state crime scene unit in here, as soon as they can get down from Augusta.”

The room itself was surprisingly free of clutter and had little to offer. A walk in closet off the left back corner of the room held Henri’s wardrobe of neatly hung and folded clothes. His shoes were neatly lined up in fastidious rows on the floor next to the wall.

The back right corner of the room opened into the master bath, with the sink and mirror running along one side, and a stand up shower and oval bathtub running along the other. While the shower showed some signs of personal use, with shampoos and body washes neatly resting on a shelf hanging from the showerhead, the porcelain fixtures of the tub gleamed brightly and Zane personally doubted that Henri ever used the bath. Another door led to a small, enclosed room that modestly separated the toilet from the rest of the bathroom. Zane poked through the medicine cabinet and found little else, other than aspirin and a recent prescription for twenty-eight sleeping pills prescribed during the previous week. Methodically, he counted out the little blue pills and found ten left, frowning he pulled out a small spiral notebook and made a note.

The sound of Ed coughing softly in the corner caught Zane’s attention. He turned to see his friend standing with his arms folded over his chest and a look of patient resignation on his face. Zane looked ruefully back at him, “Okay, let’s go.”

Ed cocked an eyebrow at him. “You sure now?”

Zane looked at his watch and realized that it was near four am. He grinned back at his friend. “Yup, just look, I’ve saved your wife the trouble of having to get you up this morning.”

Ed grunted as he started down the stairs, saying in a voice, heavy with sarcasm, “I’m sure she’ll be grateful.”

[tvkitty]

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee I didn't know you had more stories up- I've forgotten to check my tvgasm lately. I'm excited to start reading. Thanks Yenta- but where is chapter1??