"Until then." He gave us all a stiff-backed bow and walked to the black-satin-skinned car. The noise the engine made starting up was like hushed music. Then Mr. Pritchard drove away, and turned at the next intersection onto the upward curve of Temple Street.

"I hope everything'll be all right," Mom said as soon as we were back in the house. "I have to say, Vernon's book gave me the w.i.l.l.i.e.s."

Dad sat down in his chair again and picked up the sports page where he'd left off. All the headlines were about Alabama and Auburn football games, the religions of autumn. "Always wanted to see where ol' Moorwood lives. I guess this is as good an opportunity as I'll get. Anyhow, Cory'll have a chance to talk to Vernon about writin'."

"Lord, I hope you don't ever write anythin' as gruesome as that book was," Mom said to me. "It's strange, too, because all that gruesome stuff just seemed sewn in where it didn't have to be. It would've been a good book about a small town if all that murder hadn't been in there."

"Murders happen," Dad said. "As we all know."

"Yes, but shouldn't a book about life be good enough? And that b.l.o.o.d.y meat cleaver on the cover... well, I wouldn't have read it to begin with if Vernon's name hadn't been on it."

"All life isn't hearts and flowers." Dad put down his paper. "I wish it was, G.o.d knows I do. But life is just as much pain and mess as it is joy and order. Probably a lot more mess than order, too. I guess when you make yourself realize that, you"-he smiled faintly, with his sad eyes, and looked at me-"start growin' up." He began reading an article about the Auburn football team, then he put it aside again as another thought struck him. "I'll tell you what's strange, Rebecca. Have you seen Moorwood Thaxter in the last two or three years? Have you seen him just once? At the bank, or the barbershop, or anywhere around town?"

"No, I haven't. I probably wouldn't even know what he looks like, anyway."

"Slim old fella. Always wears a black suit and a black bow tie. I remember seein' Moorwood when I was a kid. He always looked dried up and old. After his wife died, he stopped comin' out of his house very often. But it seems like we would've seen him now and again, don't you think?"

"I've never seen Mr. Pritchard before. I guess they're all hermits."

"Except Vernon," I said. "Until the weather turns cold, I mean."

"Right as rain," Dad said. "But I think I might ask around tomorrow. Find out if anybody I know has seen Moorwood lately."

"Why?" Mom frowned. "What does it matter? You'll probably see him on Sat.u.r.day night."

"Unless he's dead," came his answer. "Now, wouldn't that be somethin'? If Moorwood's been dead for two years or more, and everybody in Zephyr still jumps at the sound of his name because his dyin's been kept a secret?"

"And why would it be kept a secret? What would be the point?"

Dad shrugged, but I could tell he was thinking in overdrive. "Inheritance taxes, maybe. Greedy relatives. Legal mess. Could be a lot of things." A smile stole across his mouth, and his eyes sparkled. "Vernon would have to know it. Now, wouldn't that just be a hoot if a naked insane man owned most of this town and everybody did what he said to do because we thought it was Moorwood talkin'? Like the night the whole town turned out to keep Bruton from bein' washed away? I always thought that was peculiar. Moorwood was more interested in keepin' his money in a tight fist than givin' it away to Good Samaritans, even if they had to be threatened to be good."

"Maybe he had a change of heart," Mom suggested.

"Yeah. I suspect bein' dead can do that."

"You'll have your chance to find out on Sat.u.r.day night," Mom said.

And so we would. Between now and then, however, I had to face the Demon and hear about how much fun her birthday party was going to be and how everybody else in the cla.s.s would be there. Just as my father was asking around about sightings of Moorwood Thaxter, I asked my cla.s.smates at recess if they were going to the Demon's birthday party.

No one was. Most made comments that led me to believe they'd rather eat one of her dog dookey sandwiches than go to any party where they'd be at her booger-flicking, Munster-family mercy. I said I'd lie down in red-hot coals and kiss that baldheaded Russian guy who beat his shoe on the table rather than go to the Demon's party and have to smell her stinking relatives.

But I didn't say this where she could hear me, of course. In fact, I was starting to feel more than a little sorry for her, because I couldn't find one single kid who was going to that party.

I don't know why I did it. Maybe because I thought of what it would feel like, to invite a cla.s.sful of kids to your birthday party, offer to feed them ice cream and cake and they wouldn't even have to bring a present, and have every one of them say no. That is a hurtful word, and I figured the Demon would hear a lot of it in time to come. But I couldn't go to the party; that would be begging for trouble. On Thursday after school, I rode Rocket to the Woolworth's on Merchants Street, and I bought her a fifteen-cent birthday card with a puppy wearing a birthday hat on the front. Inside, under the doggerel poem, I wrote Happy Birthday from Your Cla.s.smates. Then I slid it into its pink envelope, and on Friday I got into the room before anybody else and put the envelope on the Demon's desk. I thanked G.o.d n.o.body saw me, either; I never would've lived it down.

The bell rang, and Leatherlungs took command. The Demon sat down behind me. I heard her open the envelope. Leatherlungs started hollering at a guy named Reggie Duffy because he was chewing grape bubble gum. This was part of the overall plan; we'd learned she despised the smell of grape bubble gum, and so almost every day somebody became a purple-mouthed martyr.

Behind me, I heard a faint sniff.

That was all. But it was a heart-aching sound, to think that fifteen cents could buy a happy tear.

At recess, on the dusty playground behind the school, the Demon fluttered from kid to kid showing them the card. Everybody had the good sense to pretend they already knew about it. Ladd Devine, a lanky kid with a red crew cut who was already showing signs of being a football star in his quick feet, loping pa.s.ses, and general fondness for mayhem, began telling all the girls he'd bought the card when he heard they thought it was sweet. I didn't say anything. The Demon was already staring at Ladd with love in her eyes and a finger up her nose.

On Sat.u.r.day evening, at the appointed time, Mr. Pritchard arrived at our house in the long black car. "Watch your manners!" Mom cautioned me, though it was meant for Dad, too. We weren't dressed up in suits; "casual wear" meant comfortable short-sleeved shirts and clean blue jeans. Dad and I climbed into the back of the car and the impression I had was of finding yourself in a cavern with walls of mink and leather. Mr. Pritchard sat divided from us by a pane of clear plastic. He drove us away from the house and took the turn up onto the heights of Temple Street, and we could hardly hear the engine or even feel a b.u.mp.

On Temple Street, amid huge spreading oaks and poplars, were the homes of the elite citizens of Zephyr. Mayor Swope's red brick house was there, on a circular driveway. Dad pointed out the white stone mansion of the man who was president of the bank. A little farther along the winding street stood the house of Mr. Sumpter Womack, who owned the Spinnin' Wheel, and directly across the way in a house with white columns lived Dr. Parrish. Then Temple Street ended at a gate of scrolled ironwork. Beyond the gate, a cobblestoned drive curved between rows of evergreens that stood as straight as soldiers at attention. The windows of the Thaxter mansion were ablaze with light, its slanted roofs topped with chimneys and bulbous onion-shaped turrets. Mr. Pritchard stopped to get out to open the gate, then he stopped again on the other side to close it. The car's tires made pillows out of the cobblestones. We followed the curve between the fragrant pines, and Mr. Pritchard pulled us to a halt under a large canvas awning striped with blue and gold. Beneath the awning, a stone-tiled entryway led to the ma.s.sive front door. Before Dad could unlatch the car's door, Mr. Pritchard was there to do it for him. Then Mr. Pritchard, moving with the grace and silence of quicksilver, opened the mansion's front door for us, and we walked in.

Dad stopped. "Golly," was all he could say.

I shared his sense of awe. To describe the interior of the Thaxter mansion in the detail it deserves is impossible, but I was struck by the vastness of it, the high ceilings with exposed beams and chandeliers hanging down. Everything seemed to be shining and gleaming and glinting, and our feet were cushioned by gardens of Oriental weave. The air smelled of cedar and saddle soap. On the walls pictures in gilded frames basked in pools of light. A huge tapestry showing a medieval scene adorned one entire wall, and a wide staircase swept up to the second floor like the sweet curve of Chile Willow's shoulder. I saw textures of burled wood, burnished leather, crushed velvet, and colored gla.s.s, and even the chandelier bulbs were sparkling clean, not a cobweb between them.

A woman about the same age as Mr. Pritchard appeared from a hallway. She wore a white uniform and had her snowy hair in a bun clasped with silver pins. She had a round, pretty face and clear blue eyes, and she said h.e.l.lo to us in the same accent as her husband. Dad had told me it was British. "Young master Vernon's with his trains," she told us. "He'd like you to join him there."

"Thank you, Gwendolyn," Mr. Pritchard said. "If you'll follow me, gentlemen?" He began walking into a corridor flanked with more rooms, and we were quick to keep up. It was obvious to us that you could put several houses the size of ours in this mansion and still have room left over for a barn. Mr. Pritchard stopped and opened a pair of tall doors and we heard the tinny wail of a train whistle.

And there was Vernon, naked as the day he escaped the womb. He was leaning over, examining something he held close to his face, and we had quite a view of his rear end.

Mr. Pritchard cleared his throat. Vernon turned around, a locomotive in his hand, and he smiled so wide I thought his face would split. "Oh, there you are!" he said. "Come on in!" We did. The room had no furniture but a huge table on which toy trains were chugging across a green landscape of miniature hills, forest, and a tiny town. Vernon was attending to the locomotive's wheels with a shaving brush. "Dust on the tracks," he explained. "If it builds up, a whole train can crash."

I watched the train layout with pure amazement. Seven trains were in motion at the same time. Little switches were being thrown automatically, little signal lights blinking, little cars stopped at little railroad crossings. Sprinkled throughout the green forest were red-leafed Judas trees. The tiny town had matchbox houses and buildings painted to resemble brick and stone. At the terminus of the main street there was a gothic structure with a cupola: the courthouse where I'd fled from Mayor Swope. Roads snaked between the mounded hills. A bridge crossed a river of green-painted gla.s.s, and out beyond the town there was a large oblong black-painted mirror. Saxon's Lake, I realized. Vernon had even painted the sh.o.r.eline red to represent the rocks there. I saw the baseball field, the swimming pool, the houses and streets of Bruton. Even a single rainbow-splashed house, at the end of what must be Jessamyn Street. I found Route Ten, which ran along the forest that opened up a s.p.a.ce for Saxon's Lake. I was looking for a particular house. Yes, there it was, the size of my thumbnail: Miss Grace's house of bad girls. In the wooded hills to the west, between Zephyr and the off-map Union Town, there was a round scorch mark where some of the little trees had burned away. "Somethin' caught fire," I said.

"That's where the meteor fell," Vernon replied without even glancing at it. He blew on the locomotive's wheels, a naked Amazing Colossal Man. I found Hilltop Street, and our own house at the edge of the woods. Then I followed the stately curve of Temple Street, and right there stood the cardboard mansion my father and I were standing in.

"You're in here, Cory. Both of you are." Vernon motioned toward a s...o...b..x beside his right hand, near a scatter of railroad cars, disconnected tracks, and wiring. On the s...o...b..x's lid was written PEOPLE in black crayon. I lifted the lid and looked down at what must've been hundreds of tiny toy people, their flesh and hair meticulously painted. None of them wore any clothes.

One of the moving trains let out a high, birdlike whistle. Another was pulled by a steam engine, which puffed out circles of smoke the size of Cheerios. Dad walked around the gigantic, intricate layout, his mouth agape. "It's all here, isn't it?" he asked. "Poulter Hill's even got tombstones on it! Mr. Thaxter, how'd you do all this?"

He looked up from his work. "I'm not Mr. Thaxter," he said. "I'm Vernon."

"Oh. All right. Vernon, then. How'd you do all this?"

"Not overnight, that's for sure," Vernon answered, and he smiled again. From a distance his face was boyish; up close, though, you could see the crinkly lines around his eyes and two deeper lines bracketing his mouth. "I did it because I love Zephyr. Always have. Always will." He glanced at Mr. Pritchard, who'd been waiting by the door. "Thanks, Cyril. You can go now. Oh... wait. Does Mr. Mackenson understand?"

"Understand what?" Dad asked.

"Uh... young master Vernon wants to have dinner alone with your son. He wants you to eat in the kitchen."

"I don't get it. Why?"

Vernon kept staring at Mr. Pritchard. The older man said, "Because he invited your son to dinner. You came along, as I understand, as a chaperon. If you still have any... uh... reservations, let me tell you that the dining room is next to the kitchen. We'll be there eating our dinner while your son and young master Vernon are in the dining room. It's what he wants, Mr. Mackenson." This last sentence was spoken with an air of resignation.

Dad looked at me, and I shrugged. I could tell he didn't like this arrangement, and he was close to pulling up stakes.

"You're here," Vernon said. He put the locomotive down on a track, and it clickety-clicked out from under his hand. "Might as well stay."

"Might as well," I echoed to Dad.

"You'll enjoy the food. Gwendolyn's a fine cook," Mr. Pritchard added.

Dad folded his arms across his chest and watched the trains. "Okay," he said quietly. "I guess."

"Good!" Now Vernon truly beamed. "That's all, Cyril."

"Yes sir." Mr. Pritchard left, and the doors closed behind him.

"You're a milkman, aren't you?" Vernon asked.

"Yes, I am. I work for Green Meadows."

"My daddy owns Green Meadows." Vernon walked past me and around the table to check a connection of wires. "It's that way." He pointed off the table with one of his skinny arms in the direction of the dairy. "You know there's a new grocery store opening in Union Town next month? They're almost finished with that new shopping center there. Going to be what they call a supermarket. Going to have a whole big section of milk in-can you believe this?-plastic jugs."

"Plastic jugs?" Dad grunted. "I'll be."

"Everything's going plastic," Vernon said. He reached down and straightened a house. "That's what the future's going to be. Plastic, through and through."

"I... haven't seen your father for a good long while, Vernon. I talked to Mr. Dollar yesterday. Talked to Dr. Parrish and Mayor Swope today, too. Even went by the bank to talk to a few people. n.o.body's seen your father for two or more years. Fella at the bank says Mr. Pritchard picks up the important papers and they come back signed by Moorwood."

"Yes, that's right. Cory, how do you like this bird's-eye view of Zephyr? Kind of makes you feel like you could fly right over the roofs, doesn't it?"

"Yes sir." I'd been thinking the exact same thing just a minute or so before.

"Oh, don't 'sir' me. Call me Vernon."

"Cory's been taught to respect his elders," Dad said.

Vernon looked at him with an expression of surprise and dismay. "Elders? But we're the same age."

Dad didn't speak for a few seconds. Then he said, "Oh" in a careful voice.

"Cory, come here and run the trains! Okay?" He was standing next to a control box with dials and levers on it. "Express freight's coming through! Toot toot!"

I walked to the control box, which looked as complicated as dividing fractions. "What do I do?"

"Anything," Vernon said. "That's the fun of it."

Hesitantly, I started twisting dials and pushing levers. Some of the trains got faster, others slower. The steam engine was really puffing now. The signal lights blinked and the whistles blew.

"Is Moorwood still here, Vernon?" my father asked.

"Resting. He's upstairs, resting." Vernon's attention was fixed on the trains.

"Can I see him?"

"n.o.body sees him when he's resting," Vernon explained.

"When is he not restin', then?"

"I don't know. He's always too tired to tell me."

"Vernon, would you look at me?" Vernon turned his head toward my dad, but his eyes kept cutting back to the trains. "Is Moorwood still alive?"

"Alive, alive-o," Vernon said. "Clams and mussels, alive, alive-o." He frowned, as if the question had finally registered. "Of course he's alive! Who do you think runs all this business stuff?"

"Maybe Mr. Pritchard does?"

"My daddy is upstairs resting," Vernon repeated with firm emphasis on the resting. "Are you a milkman or a member of the Inquisition?"

"Just a milkman," Dad said. "A curious milkman."

"And curiouser and curiouser you get. Pick up the speed, Cory! Number Six is running late!"

I kept twisting the dials. The trains were zipping around the bends and racing between the hills.

"I liked your story about the lake," Vernon said. "That's why I painted the lake black. It's got a dark secret deep inside, doesn't it?"

"Yes, si-Vernon," I corrected myself. I'd have to get used to being able to call a grown-up by his first name.

"I read about it in the Journal." Vernon reached out toward a hillside to straighten a crooked tree, and his shadow fell over the earth. Then, the task done, he stepped back and gazed down upon the town. "The killer had to know how deep Saxon's Lake is. So he has to be a local. Maybe he lives in one of those houses, right there in Zephyr. But, if I'm to understand the dead man was never identified and n.o.body's turned up missing since March, then he must not have been a local. So: what's the connection between a man who lives here and a man who lived somewhere far away?"

"The sheriff would like to know that, too."

"Sheriff Amory's a good man," Vernon said. "Just not a good sheriff. He'd be the first to admit it. He doesn't have the hound-dog instinct; he lets the birds fly when he's got his paws on them." Vernon scratched a place just below his navel, his head c.o.c.ked to one side. Then he walked to a bra.s.s wallplate and flicked two switches. The room's lights went off; tiny lights in some of the toy houses came on. The trains followed their headlights around the tracks. "So early in the morning," he mused. "But if I was going to kill somebody, I'd have killed them early enough to dump them in the lake and be sure n.o.body was coming along Route Ten. Why'd the killer wait until almost dawn to do it?"

"I wish I knew," Dad said.

I kept playing with the levers, the dials illuminated before me.

"It must be somebody who doesn't get home delivery from Green Meadows," Vernon decided. "He didn't think about the milkmen's schedules, did he? You know what I believe?" Dad didn't answer. "I believe the killer's a night owl. I think dumping the body into the lake was the last thing he did before he went home and went to bed. I believe if you find a night owl who doesn't drink milk, you've got your killer."

"Doesn't drink milk? How do you figure that?"

"Milk helps you sleep," Vernon said. "The killer doesn't like to sleep, and if he works in the daytime, he'll drink his coffee black."

The only response Dad gave was a m.u.f.fled grunt, whether in agreement or in sympathy I didn't know.

Mr. Pritchard returned to the darkened room to announce that dinner was being served. Then Vernon turned off the trains and said, "Come on with me, Cory," and I followed him as Dad went with the butler. We walked into a room with suits of armor standing in it, and there was a long table with two places set, one across from the other. Vernon told me to choose a seat, so I sat where I could see the knights. In a few minutes Gwendolyn entered, carrying a silver tray, and so began one of the strangest dinners of my life.

We had strawberry soup with vanilla wafers crumbled up in it. We had ravioli and chocolate cake on the same plate. We had lemon-lime Fizzies to drink, and Vernon put a whole Fizzie tablet in his mouth and I laughed when the green bubbles boiled out. We had hamburger patties and b.u.t.tered popcorn, and dessert was a bowl of devil's food cake batter you ate with a spoon. As I ate these things, I did so with guilty pleasure; a kid's feast like this was the kind of thing that would've made my mother swoon. There wasn't a vegetable in sight, no carrots, no spinach, no Brussels sprouts. I did get a whiff of what I thought to be beef stew from the kitchen, so I figured Dad was having a grown-up's meal. He probably had no idea what I was a.s.saulting my stomach with. Vernon was a happy eater; he laughed and laughed and both of us wound up licking our batter bowls in a sugar-sopped delirium.

Vernon wanted to know all about me. What I liked to do, who my friends were, what books I liked to read, what movies I enjoyed. He'd seen Invaders from Mars, too; it was a linchpin between us. He said he used to have a great big trunk full of superhero comic books, but his daddy had made him throw them away. He said he used to have shelves of Hardy Boys mysteries, until his daddy had gotten mad at him one day and burned them in the fireplace. He said he used to have all the Doc Savage magazines and the Tarzan and John Carter of Mars books and the Shadow and Weird Tales and boxes of Argosy and Boy's Life magazines, but his daddy had said Vernon had gotten too old for those things and all of them, every one, had gone into the fire or the trash and burned to ashes or been covered in earth. He said he would give a million dollars if he could have them again and he said that if I had any of them I should hold on to them forever because they were magic.

And once you burn the magic things or cast them out in the garbage, Vernon said, you become a beggar for magic again.

"'I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled,'" Vernon said.

"What?" I asked him. I'd never even seen Vernon wearing shorts before.

"I wrote a book once," he told me.