"Poor old Grammar," said Daphne. "I wonder what was going on."
"I think we've got to figure out what was going on, before somebody else tries to shoot me."
"Let's go look at the shed," said Daphne, her voice moving away from the window.
Old Marrity swung his legs off the bed. In both his previous lifetimes he had eventually dug up the gold wire, and in horrible Life B he had sold his trailer to get gold wire to replace it and rewire the time machine, but he couldn't let them disassemble it now — they might just wreck it, and if the machine was gone, could he still have jumped back here? He couldn't figure out the logic of it, but he didn't want them fooling with the machine.
"Wait!" he shouted, limping toward the bedroom door.
He hobbled past the washing machine and wrenched at the dead bolt on the back door; finally he got it back and pushed the door open, squinting at the bright sunlight in the yard. It occurred to him that he hadn't shaved in two days, and his jowls must be bristling with white stubble.
Daphne and his younger self were standing in the weedy yard gaping back at him.
"Wait," he said again. And then he took a deep breath, not having any idea what he could say next.
Sixteen
Sturm and Drang had driven Bennett to the Bank of America on California Street and led him inside, and there they really had given him six cashier's checks, each for $8,333; Bennett had tucked the envelope into his inner jacket pocket, feeling dizzy and anxious. The bank happened to be only a couple of blocks from Grammar Marrity's house.
Then they had driven out of that neighborhood, north to the cedar-shaded parking lot at the Holiday Inn by the Civic Auditorium. Sturm had parked next to a big brown Dodge van with a sliding door in the side, which had rolled open when Sturm got out of the car and knocked on it. From the passenger seat of the idling car, Bennett had been able to see three burly young men and a dark-haired woman in sunglasses in the van; white-haired Sturm had conferred with them for a few moments, then had got back into the car and driven out of the lot, eyeing the rearview mirror to make sure the van was following. The air-conditioning was uncomfortably cold, and somehow the car smelled of burnt fabric.
"Where are we going?" Sturm asked now, without looking sideways at Bennett.
"Uh, 204 Batsford," said Bennett. "It's two blocks south of the bank we were just at. What burned in here?"
In the backseat, Drang lifted a shoe box from beside him and held it forward, lifting the cardboard lid.
Bennett hitched around in his seat to look, then recoiled from the little blackened figure inside. "What the hell is that?" he barked. The burnt smell was gagging him now.
"Your niece's teddy bear, we assume," said Drang, clearly pleased with Bennett's reaction. He put the lid back on the box and set it down on the floor by his feet. "It was buried in Marrity's yard. She apparently burned it up."
"When we get there," Sturm went on, "don't mention any of this about the sale of the grandmother's property. Just get Marrity and his daughter, both, to come to the van. Tell them you've got a bicycle for the girl or something."
From the backseat, Drang said cheerfully, "We can take them from there."
Sturm glanced at Drang in the rearview mirror. "When we get there," he told the fat man, "you go back and wait in the van."
Drang raised his eyebrows. "You think I look alarming?"
"Better that they see only one stranger."
Bennett shifted uncomfortably under the front seat's shoulder strap, wishing he could lean forward and put his face into the cold air coming from the dashboard blowers. "Why did you bring the, the burned-up teddy bear?"
Sturm scowled, as if he wished Drang had not shown Bennett the bear. "It might mean something to the girl," he said.
Bennett realized he was nodding, and he made himself stop it. "You could just let me go — I mean, I can get a cab to get back to my car, then. After." He rubbed his hand over his mouth, feeling sweat in his mustache. "When you've—"
"Okay," said Sturm.
It occurred to Bennett that they were now paying him just for the delivery of Marrity and Daphne, and not for the things Grammar had wanted to sell — if in fact these men were going to let him keep the money, or even let him go.
I should have awakened Moira, he thought. She'd have stopped me. Why the hell couldn't she have woken on her own?
Daphne stared at her grandfather, who was standing in the shade of the trellis looking like a bum. His white hair was all shoved up in the back, and she knew that when her father's hair was that way it meant he'd been napping.
She was glad to see that he'd mostly recovered from whatever had happened to him at the hospital this morning. Over the door behind him was the wooden sign that read, Everyone Who Dwells Here Is Safe. She wondered if that sign was why he had come here.
"Wait?" said her father beside her. "Wait for what?"
Her grandfather was swaying in the patchy trellis shade.
"Don't — go," the old man said. "I was asleep, and I heard your voices. I—"
"Who was that woman who shot at me," her father interrupted, "in the hospital lobby?"
"I don't know—"
"You said, 'She's blind if you don't look at her.' Which was true. And she tried to kill Daphne and me an hour ago. Who is she?"
"Ach! She did? She's a — a psychic. I haven't spoken to her in years, I truly can't imagine why she tried to kill you. I saved your life."
Daphne's father shifted his feet in the weeds. "It's true, you did. Thank you. How do you know her? "
"She — she was part of a team that interviewed me once, after a, a bereavement — she's with a secret agency—"
"Not a United States one," said her father. "We talked to a man from the National Security Agency last night, and he told me not to speak to her."
"You did? I never did, not the NSA. I — only want what's best for you."
Daphne noticed that he said it directly to her father. How about what's best for me too? she thought.
"What sort of secret agency?" her father asked.
The old man sat down in a shaded wicker chair against the outside bedroom wall. "They were interested in something a… family member of mine had previously picked up, which didn't belong to her." He waved his spotty old hands inexpressively. "A family member who had in fact just died. I gave it to them, and they went away. They were psychics, they had a head — anyway, I didn't argue with them, so I didn't learn anything about them."
"When was this?"
The look the old man gave her father seemed defiant. "I was thirty-five."
"You're not saying you met that woman then," Daphne's father objected. "She's only about thirty now."
"I've met her," said the old man. "Leave it at that."
Marrity shook his head impatiently, then asked, "What did your family member take, that you gave to these people? "
The old man exhaled. "Call it a book. Call it a photo album. Call it a key." He glanced at Daphne for the first time, then quickly looked away. To her father, he said, "Next time I'm inclined to save your life, remind me of how grateful you were this time."
Her father paused, and Daphne looked up and saw him nodding. "Sorry, sorry. But you need to tell us all these things, not just the things you think we'll believe. Why did you think Daphne was dead, this morning?"
"A nurse, I must have misunderstood what a nurse said. I don't hear very well. Leave me alone."
Marrity relented. "Okay. Do you want a beer?"
"They're gone, if you mean Grammar's."