Salem's Lot - Stephen King [50]
‘Now, I don’t think that, not at all.’ He gazed at Ben over his cigarette, and his eyes had gone flinty. ‘I’m just tryin’ to close you off. If I thought you had anything to do with anything, you’d be down in the tank.’
‘Okay,’ Ben said. ‘I left the Nortons around quarter past seven. I took a walk out toward Schoolyard Hill. When it got too dark to see, I came back here, wrote for two hours, and went to bed.’
‘What time did you get back here?’ ‘Quarter past eight, I think. Around there.’
‘Well, that don’t clear you as well as I’d like. Did you see anybody?’
‘No,’ Ben said. ‘No one.’
Parkins made a noncommittal grunt and walked toward the typewriter. ‘What are you writin’ about?’
‘None of your damn business,’ Ben said, and his voice had gone tight. ‘I’ll thank you to keep your eyes and your hands off that. Unless you’ve got a search warrant, of course.’
‘Kind of touchy, ain’t you? For a man who means his books to be read?’
‘When it’s gone through three drafts, editorial correction, galley-proof corrections, final set and print, I’ll personally see that you get four copies. Signed. Right now that comes under the heading of private papers.’
Parkins smiled and moved away. ‘Good enough. I doubt like hell that it’s a signed confession to anything, anyway.’ Ben smiled back. ‘Mark Twain said a novel was a confession to everything by a man who had never done anything.’
Parkins blew out smoke and went to the door. ‘I won’t drip on your rug anymore, Mr Mears. Want to thank you for y’time, and just for the record, I don’t think you ever saw that Glick boy. But it’s my job to kind of ask round about these things.’
Ben nodded. ‘Understood.’
‘And you oughtta know how things are in places like Isalem’s Lot or Milbridge or Guilford or any little pissant burg. You’re the stranger in town until you been here twenty years.’
‘I know. I’m sorry if I snapped at you. But after a week of looking for him and not finding a goddamned thing Ben shook his head.
‘Yeah,’ Parkins said. ‘It’s bad for his mother. Awful bad. You take care.’
‘Sure,’ Ben said.
‘No hard feelin’s?’
‘No.’ He paused. ‘Will you tell me one thing?’
‘I will if I can.’
‘Where did you get that book? Really?’
Parkins Gillespie smiled. ‘Well, there’s a fella over in Cumberland that’s got a used-furniture barn. Kind of a sissy fella, he is. Name of Gendron. He sells paperbacks a dime apiece. Had five of these.’
Ben threw back his head and laughed, and Parkins Gillespie went out, smiling and smoking. Ben went to the window and watched until he saw the constable come out and cross the street, walking carefully around puddles in his black galoshes.
10
Parkins paused a moment to look in the show window of the new shop before knocking on the door. When the place had been the Village Washtub, a body could look in here and see nothing but a lot of fat women in rollers adding bleach or getting change out of the machine on the wall, most of them chewing gum like cows with mouthfuls of mulch. But an interior decorator’s truck from Portland had been here yesterday afternoon and most of today, and the place looked considerably different.
A platform had been shoved up behind the window, and it was covered with a swatch of deep nubby carpet, light green in color. Two spotlights had been installed up out of sight, and they cast soft, highlighting glows on the three objects that bad been arranged in the window: a clock, a spinning wheel, and an old-fashioned cherrywood cabinet. There was a small easel in front of each piece, and a discreet price tag on each easel, and my God, would anybody in their right mind actually pay $600 for a spinning wheel when they could go down to the Value House and get a Singer for $48.95?
Sighing, Parkins went to the door and knocked.
It was opened only a second later, almost as if the new fella had been lurking behind it, waiting for him to come to the