Both men stared.
“How do we know you’re not some impostor?”
“Justine,” said Duncan.
She ignored him. She was watching Caleb. “But who else would bother?” Caleb asked her.
“You’re not like them in any way.”
Caleb shrugged. (A foreign gesture.) “For that matter,” he said, “how do I know you’re a Peck?”
“We’re not even sure that Eli’s honest,” Justine said. “Maybe he just picked up some stranger and coached him. Maybe the two of you framed this whole story together. After all, there must be money involved. Caleb’s share of the will must have been drawing interest for sixty years.”
“Caleb didn’t have any share of the will,” Duncan told her. “Justine, I wish you would—”
But Caleb only nodded, sober and proud somehow, as if he were receiving compliments.
In the night there was a pounding on the door, and shouting and the beam of headlights across the bedroom ceiling. Justine, wide awake as usual, crawled over Duncan and threw a bathrobe around her shoulders. “Just a minute,” she called. Duncan stirred and then sat up. From Caleb’s room came the rustle of bedclothes. Justine ran through the hallway, breathless and shivering. Someone had died. Something was wrong with Meg. She had never realized how many possibilities there were for disaster, or how calm and joyous her life had been until this moment.
But it was only Tucker Dawcett, whose wife had her fortune told weekly to see if he were faithful and never believed it when the answer was yes. Tucker was just a sweet skinny man with buck teeth. He jogged in a sweatsuit every morning and worked as a, let’s see—
Policeman.
Her teeth started chattering again.
Tucker coughed, and then showed her his identification in a plastic envelope. (Why on earth?) For all she knew it was his YMCA card. “Oh. Tucker,” she said.
“Could I speak with you a moment, Justine?”
From the hall doorway, Duncan said, “Do you know what time it is?”
“Police business,” said Tucker.
Duncan came up behind Justine without a sound.
“Now I have to ask you folks this question,” Tucker said. “Are you all related to a Mr. Caleb Peck?”
“You get us up at one a.m. to ask us that?” Duncan said.
“Now I know, I know how trying this must be,” Tucker told him. Through the screen his face looked grainy; out of tiredness or embarrassment he kept his eyes down. “Fact is I was sacked out at home myself. Doug Tilghman called from the station asking me to run this little errand. I wanted to wait till morning but he said we would look pretty silly if Louisiana called back in a couple hours and we hadn’t done a thing.”
“Louisiana?” said Duncan.
“See they got this lady down there claiming a Mr. Caleb Peck has been kidnapped.”
Duncan looked at Justine.
“Seems like he was in a home of some sort. This lady, Mrs. Luray Pickett, went to visit him last Sunday and found he’d disappeared. Home hadn’t noticed. Seems somebody at the office remembered a Justine Peck come from Caro Mill to visit him, and he was never seen again.”
“So?” said Duncan.
“Well, I believe that would be kidnapping, or stealing at least. See, the man was institutionalized. He didn’t have no right to be leaving of his own free will. Or would it be aiding and abetting? Well, look. I don’t care about it. Let an old fellow go where he wants, I always say. But Doug Tilghman said I had to just ask, because some lady somewhere is fit to be tied. Mrs. Luray Pickett. I said, ‘Look, Doug, can’t this wait till morning? I mean what will the Pecks think of us for this?’ I said, and he said, ‘Tell them I’m just as sorry as I can be but these policemen in Louisiana have this lady name of Mrs. Luray Pickett who is kicking up a storm, calling them and visiting, asking why they’re not doing more. She says she put the man in a Home herself and saw to his every need, never let a month go by without . . . and here he had been removed and not so much as a by-your-leave. She says if anybody thought she wasn’t taking proper care they could just come to her in person, there was no need to steal the man, and she will thank the police to get him replaced or she’ll know the reason why. And also—’ Well, and it’s true there’s not many Justine Pecks. I mean the name is odd. And especially from Caro Mill. Of course you do have that old man staying with you now . . . ”
“Tucker,” said Duncan, “don’t you know that all our family is from Baltimore?”
“That’s true, they are.”
“And have you ever heard either one of us mention a relative in Louisiana?”
“Well, not directly,” said Tucker.
“So,” said Duncan.
“Well, I knew there was nothing to it,” Tucker told him. “Sorry to have woken you folks up.” And for the first time he raised his eyes to meet theirs. “I’ll tell the wife I saw you,” he said. “Night, now.”
“Night,” said Duncan.
He turned on the porch light and shut the door. Justine waited, but he didn’t say a word. Maybe he was angry. She should have told him from the beginning. Only at the beginning he had been so odd, and after that it was never the proper moment. Now what? Would he make her send Caleb back again? Then it occurred to her that all this time Caleb must have been listening, bolt upright in bed, terrified they would give him away. “That poor old man!” she said, and slid past Duncan to open Caleb’s door.
He was gone.
His bed was unmade, and his pajamas lay at the foot. His rubberized raincoat no longer hung from the closet door. Duncan’s harmonica was missing from the bureau. And the window was wide open, empty and black, the paper shade lisping in the wind. “Duncan!” Justine called. “Hurry, we have to find him!”
She already had one leg over the windowsill before he stopped her. He took hold of her arm and said, “Let him get a little head start again first, Justine.”
20
Duncan sat on the floor with a twelve-hundred-piece jigsaw puzzle, “Sunset in the Rockies.” He had found all the straight edges and constructed the frame; but now he was simply moving pieces around, picking one up and tapping it against his teeth while he stared into space, setting it down, picking up another, turning several over to expose their gray cardboard backs. He considered turning the whole puzzle over and doing it all in gray.
He considered moving Justine back to Baltimore.
“Is that what you want?” he asked her when she came through wearing her hat.
She looked startled. “What?”
“I asked if you wanted to move to Baltimore.”
“Baltimore?”
“Baltimore, Maryland, Justine.”
She stared at him.
“We’ll live in Great-Grandma’s house. Your house,” he told her. “I’ll find some kind of busywork with Peck and Sons. You know Dad’s always said I could.”
“You mean, stay forever?”
“No reason not to.”
“Never again move?”
“Not unless you liked.”
She thought a while, biting her lip.
“But you might not be happy there,” she told him finally.
Which was her way of saying yes. He felt the answer settling on him by degrees, like a large heavy blanket drifting down. He was done for. Yet at the same time he had a sense of relief, almost. What else would you call this sudden giddiness? The other shoe had fallen. He nearly laughed.
Underneath, he must have known all through their marriage that this was where they were headed.