Free Face on the Wall by Jane Langton Page B

Pearl Small didn’t go away, he killed her?”
    â€œAnd maybe six or seven wives before her.” Homer was carried away. He waved his doughnut at Kennebunk. “Princess, they called her Princess. She’s got this long golden hair.”
    â€œPrincess, oh, right.” Kennebunk’s rugged face softened. “Her hair is yellow as straw. She’s like the princess in the tower, the one with her long golden hair hanging out the window. She always reminds me of that.”
    â€œWhat, another fantasist in our midst?” Homer beamed at Kennebunk. “You’re as bad as Annie. Listen, do you have any idea who told The Candid Courier she was missing? Somebody must have given them all that stuff about Pearl’s disappearance.”
    Under his thick white hair Kennebunk’s ruddy face grew redder still. “It was me, I’m afraid. McNutt wasn’t doing anything about it and he refused to let me look into it. Small’s his old drinking pal and lodge buddy. So I thought a little publicity wouldn’t do any harm. I tried the Globe and the Lowell Sun, but they didn’t seem interested. So I worked my way down to the Courier .”
    â€œI see,” said Homer. “Well, good for you. At least it got my wife all excited.”
    â€œThere’s something else that’s sort of strange,” said Kennebunk. “After Pearl disappeared, Small showed up with his arm in a sling.”
    â€œOh? How did it happen, did he say?”
    â€œI asked him, when I stopped at his house to ask about Pearl.”
    â€œWell, how did you know she was missing?”
    â€œMy wife’s her boss at the Southtown Public Library. When Pearl didn’t show up for work, Dot was worried. She suspected for a long time that Pearl was being knocked around. One day she asked her point-blank why she didn’t leave her husband, and Pearl said she couldn’t leave her trees.”
    â€œHer what? Her trees?”
    â€œThat old pig farm. Pearl was trying to improve it, planting trees.”
    â€œI see. So what about Small? You asked him about his wife?”
    â€œRight. He was mad as hell. Said it was none of my business. If a man’s wife chooses to go off for a while, it’s no business of the police, that’s what he said. And then of course Small called McNutt, and McNutt bawled me out.”
    â€œYou poor bastard. Well, what about the sling on his arm?”
    â€œHe said he fell downstairs. He’d been drinking, he said, and he fell downstairs. I’d like to think Pearl knocked him down, but she was pretty small and fragile.”
    â€œWhat about a doctor? Did he go to an emergency room or anything?”
    â€œApparently not. I checked with the hospital. I mean, my wife kept after me. My wife—”
    â€œYou don’t have to tell me about wives.” Homer laughed. “She should get together with Mary Kelly, they’re two of a kind.” He stood up. “How about another doughnut?”
    â€œOh, no thanks,” said Kennebunk. “My wife’s got me on a diet.” He took an appointment book out of his pocket, wrote down Homer’s phone number, and promised to keep in touch.
    Left alone in Jacky’s, Homer ordered two more doughnuts and ate them slowly. They were a mistake. When he waddled outdoors and climbed into his car, the four deep-fat-fried morsels sat like a dead weight in the bottom of his stomach.

Chapter 16

    Weave a circle round him thrice,
    And close your eyes in holy dread,
    For he on honey-dew hath fed,
    And drunk the milk of Paradise.
    Coleridge, “Kubla Khan”

    A s soon as Annie walked into the house with her bag of groceries, she heard a strange noise, a rhythmic humming. She dumped the bag on the counter and turned around.
    There was a whirl of color on the floor in front of the window. It was a spinning top. It droned and hopped and spun as though it would never slow