Read Online The Four Corners Of The Sky by Michael Malone - Free Book Online
Authors: Michael Malone
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was.
Kim said she knew the whole story: Sam had called the police at midnight to say that the judge was missing. Emerald police had gone looking and found his tire marks in the muddy ruts of River Road, gouged over the side. It took them three weeks to dredge the car from the water below and by then the judge’s body was “no more recognizable than the side of a cow in a meat locker.”
Some people said it was odd that Judge Peregrine had driven off to Raleigh in the worst rainstorm in a decade; they started rumors of suicide but the rumors didn’t go anywhere. Judge Peregrine’s funeral service at St. Mark’s was the biggest that Emerald had enjoyed since the funeral of his grandfather, the Boss.
The funeral was when Annie’s father had robbed his dead father, stolen his sister’s car, and left town for good. “I was the one who saw him go,” Kim boasted. “‘He’s got your car!’ I yelled at Sam. But would she do a thing about it?”
The answer was presumably no.
After the reception, Jack and Sam’s mother retired to her bedroom, locked the door behind her, and stayed there for a year, overcome, the town assumed, by grief. Sam told the cleaning lady, who “did the house” once a week, that she was never to bother Grandee, that Sam would clean her room herself. But the cleaning lady later told Kim that she’d once seen the judge’s widow crouched on her brass bed, eating a live mouse, her lips smeared shining red. Grandee would still be loose in Emerald, a certifiable madwoman, if she hadn’t stabbed Sam with scissors and the sheriff hadn’t talked Sam into signing her mother into a home.
In fact, said Kim, not to mince words, over the centuries the whole Peregrine family had gone bat-shit crazy.
Annie had no reason to doubt the truth of these sad stories; she knew far less about her family than Georgette’s mother did; in fact she knew only what Mrs. Nickerson told her. And, given these sagas of dementia and sudden death, of lost wealth and lost love, of a house filled with such sorrow, she could easily understand why her father had called Pilgrim’s Rest a pit of snakes, a cage of tigers, and had told his young daughter that he’d never go back there; why Aunt Sam—although insisting that her own childhood at Pilgrim’s Rest had been “just fine”—had such sad eyes and why she declined to talk about any family but the one she and Clark and Annie had made for themselves.
Chapter VII
The Smiling Lieutenant
R acing the storm home to Pilgrim’s Rest in her convertible Porsche, Annie outdrove the memories that had unexpectedly jumped out at her because of Miami Detective Daniel Hart’s phone call.
Thunder rolled across the tobacco fields and a fat drop of rain splashed her knuckles as she downshifted to turn onto the gravel road that wound to the top of River Hill. Speeding up the drive, she parked efficiently in the open barn.
Above the porch of Pilgrim’s Rest a banner flapped loudly from the overhang, its letters spelling
Happy Birthday Annie. 26!!!
Aunt Sam, tall and nutmeg-tan, ran onto the porch. The storm blew the door from her hand, slapping it against the house. Sam’s cropped hair was prematurely white now, but she still played tennis every day and she still looked trim in her shorts and purple T-shirt with the logo of her movie rental store Now Voyager[__] across it. She was waving a FedEx envelope. Annie had the irrational feeling that her aunt was gesturing “Back up,” as if she were trying to warn her to turn around.
Clark’s Volvo drove slowly into view behind her. He backed into the barn beside the Porsche and emerged carrying the two large plant cones. “You win,” he called. “You beat me.”
Malpy ran into the yard from the side of the house and raced in circles around Annie. Wind blew back the Maltese’s white fur from his face.
Sam, running toward them, stopped suddenly. Then she shouted, “Phone,” turned around, and hurried back inside the
Kim said she knew the whole story: Sam had called the police at midnight to say that the judge was missing. Emerald police had gone looking and found his tire marks in the muddy ruts of River Road, gouged over the side. It took them three weeks to dredge the car from the water below and by then the judge’s body was “no more recognizable than the side of a cow in a meat locker.”
Some people said it was odd that Judge Peregrine had driven off to Raleigh in the worst rainstorm in a decade; they started rumors of suicide but the rumors didn’t go anywhere. Judge Peregrine’s funeral service at St. Mark’s was the biggest that Emerald had enjoyed since the funeral of his grandfather, the Boss.
The funeral was when Annie’s father had robbed his dead father, stolen his sister’s car, and left town for good. “I was the one who saw him go,” Kim boasted. “‘He’s got your car!’ I yelled at Sam. But would she do a thing about it?”
The answer was presumably no.
After the reception, Jack and Sam’s mother retired to her bedroom, locked the door behind her, and stayed there for a year, overcome, the town assumed, by grief. Sam told the cleaning lady, who “did the house” once a week, that she was never to bother Grandee, that Sam would clean her room herself. But the cleaning lady later told Kim that she’d once seen the judge’s widow crouched on her brass bed, eating a live mouse, her lips smeared shining red. Grandee would still be loose in Emerald, a certifiable madwoman, if she hadn’t stabbed Sam with scissors and the sheriff hadn’t talked Sam into signing her mother into a home.
In fact, said Kim, not to mince words, over the centuries the whole Peregrine family had gone bat-shit crazy.
Annie had no reason to doubt the truth of these sad stories; she knew far less about her family than Georgette’s mother did; in fact she knew only what Mrs. Nickerson told her. And, given these sagas of dementia and sudden death, of lost wealth and lost love, of a house filled with such sorrow, she could easily understand why her father had called Pilgrim’s Rest a pit of snakes, a cage of tigers, and had told his young daughter that he’d never go back there; why Aunt Sam—although insisting that her own childhood at Pilgrim’s Rest had been “just fine”—had such sad eyes and why she declined to talk about any family but the one she and Clark and Annie had made for themselves.
Chapter VII
The Smiling Lieutenant
R acing the storm home to Pilgrim’s Rest in her convertible Porsche, Annie outdrove the memories that had unexpectedly jumped out at her because of Miami Detective Daniel Hart’s phone call.
Thunder rolled across the tobacco fields and a fat drop of rain splashed her knuckles as she downshifted to turn onto the gravel road that wound to the top of River Hill. Speeding up the drive, she parked efficiently in the open barn.
Above the porch of Pilgrim’s Rest a banner flapped loudly from the overhang, its letters spelling
Happy Birthday Annie. 26!!!
Aunt Sam, tall and nutmeg-tan, ran onto the porch. The storm blew the door from her hand, slapping it against the house. Sam’s cropped hair was prematurely white now, but she still played tennis every day and she still looked trim in her shorts and purple T-shirt with the logo of her movie rental store Now Voyager[__] across it. She was waving a FedEx envelope. Annie had the irrational feeling that her aunt was gesturing “Back up,” as if she were trying to warn her to turn around.
Clark’s Volvo drove slowly into view behind her. He backed into the barn beside the Porsche and emerged carrying the two large plant cones. “You win,” he called. “You beat me.”
Malpy ran into the yard from the side of the house and raced in circles around Annie. Wind blew back the Maltese’s white fur from his face.
Sam, running toward them, stopped suddenly. Then she shouted, “Phone,” turned around, and hurried back inside the
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