The Mt. Monadnock Blues by Larry Duberstein

Author:Larry Duberstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453293478
Publisher: The Permanent Press

Tim drove past a field so steeply tilted it threatened to spin upside down like a Ferris wheel. For a while the mountain stayed with him. There was marshland—and then Monadnock. There was forest, and then another version of Monadnock, reconfigured.

Finally the mountain was behind him and he came through a more despoiled area, past a trailertown and self-storage bunkers set back on broken macadam. He was close to Keene now, but his nerves held steady until he came rolling down Main Street, a boulevard so wide and ample it seemed to have been designed for a much larger city. Now, suddenly, a vice closed on Tim’s head; now his mouth was dry as cotton.

When he saw the rotary and the vest-pocket park (complete with bandshell, monument, and fountain) he knew he had reached his destination. His destiny. The words COURT HOUSE were carved on a frieze above the Gothic stonework entry; below the arch stood Earl and Erica, dressed for success. Earl in a creamcolored suit, Ric in heels and pearls.

Tim had planned on arriving early, but Earl looked as though he had slept inside the COURT HOUSE and stepped outside to greet the day. Deeply at his ease, he might have been the mayor, perched grandly on his portico. Tim slant-parked, and watched a second man, also in a creamcolored suit, come bounding up the granite steps. As they shifted briefcases to shake hands, Tim knew this must be Earl’s liar. Or else his twin! Same suit, same height, same hair. Earl and Merle!

Then he saw Dee Barnes. Her no-nonsense navy blue suit cleaved the creamcolored twins and sped down Main Street at a pace that undoubtedly marked her as an invading force, an urbanite. Barnes could motor. When Tim finally caught up to her, he could feel her engine idling high. Her energy. “I’m in battle mode, I guess,” she gave as an explanation.

“I hope I’m not still the enemy.” Barnes smiled for him, did not reply. Behind her, in the window of a shop called Miranda’s Verandah, Tim noticed a shimmering silver gown draped on a bubblegum colored manikin. “Where are you going?”

“There’s a diner, I gather. We’ve got half an hour.”

“You can eat? I am a complete nervous wreck.”

“I see that.”

“But I could keep you company.”

“Lucky me.”

The diner, called Lindy’s, was an aluminum lunchcar set adrift smack in the middle of a parking lot opposite the Greyhound depot. Tim followed his attorney inside to the counter, where he ordered a cup of tea just to hold onto it. Barnes ordered the Trucker’s Special, an atomic bomb of cholesterol sufficient to kill every middle-aged man in the county, and rinsed it down with what might have been a gallon of jet black coffee.

“They have us scheduled for the entire morning session,” she said, once her plate was empty. “There’s literally nothing else on the docket, and nothing scheduled for the afternoon.”

“What are you saying? Is that good or bad?”

“It’s telling me they plan to wrap this up in one day.

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