Die Dreaming by Terence Faherty

Author:Terence Faherty [Faherty, Terence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Terence Faherty

Chapter Five

I started out for Rocky Hill with the thoughtless arrogance of the native and promptly got lost. My wanderings carried me north to Skillman. There a filling station attendant fielded me like a grounder that had gone through the shortstop’s legs and flipped me east southeast.

My careless navigating might have been due in part to nerves. It was one thing to admit my desertion of Richard Gerow to his ex-guidance counselor and quite another to confess it to his father. That is, it would be if I actually got around to making a confession. Minerva didn’t think that rehashing the Sorrowers’ crimes with Mr. Gerow was a good idea, and I had a history of using her sound judgment as an excuse for silence.

I was also apprehensive on my drive to Rocky Hill because I half expected to find Mr. Gerow in a nursing home. I’d done some investigating in nursing homes in the past, and the results weren’t among my happier memories. I relaxed a bit after I’d closed in on Mr. Gerow’s retirement community. The place was called Rockingham, and it looked more like a country club than an old folks home. Behind a massive stone wall were nicely scattered apartment buildings, surrounded by shedding trees and the mothballed holes of a golf course. I paused twice for speed bumps at golf cart crossings on my way up the winding drive. Just short of the community’s office, I was stopped again, this time by a gaggle of once-wild geese crossing the drive on their way from one pond to another. I wondered if they were northern geese wintering here or Jersey geese who had yet to head south.

A man vacuuming leaves from the office sidewalk directed me to Hearthstone, Mr. Gerow’s street. His apartment was on the first floor of a stone and cedar building, and it had its own street door complete with a brass knocker. A bunch of Indian corn was wired to the knocker, so I used the bell.

I’d just about decided that no one was home when the door’s dead bolt snapped back. Mr. Gerow had changed less in the past ten years than had Minerva Fine, or so it seemed to me. He still had the look of a boy left outside on a frosty night. He was even dressed the way I remembered, in a cardigan sweater over a golf shirt and plaid slacks. As we shook hands, I entertained the odd idea that he’d changed his residence to match his outfit.

“You’re a friend of Richard’s and you and I have met before,” Mr. Gerow said, summing up my rambling introduction.

“I came by your house ten years ago and you gave me Ricky’s address,” I said.

He smiled and shook his head at the same time. I interpreted the combination to mean that my claim was plausible but didn’t ring any bells. “Come on in,” he said. “Excuse the mess.”

There was no mess to excuse beyond a few pages of newspaper dropped at the foot of an easy chair.

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