The Secret History - Donna Tartt [168]
“ ‘State and local,’ ” said Henry.
“What?”
“Not federal.”
“Of course not,” said Charles. “Do you think the FBI is going to believe some dumb story that a Vermonter made up?”
“Well, if they don’t, why are they here?” said Henry.
This was a disconcerting thought. In the brilliant, delayed-tape noontime sun, a group of men hurried down the courthouse steps. Mr. Hundy, his head down, was among them. His hair was slicked back and he wore, in lieu of his service station uniform, a baby-blue leisure suit.
A reporter—Liz Ocavello, a sort of local celebrity, with her own current-issues program and a segment called “Movie Beat” on the local news—approached, microphone in hand. “Mr. Hundy,” she said. “Mr. Hundy.”
He stopped, confused, as his companions walked ahead and left him standing alone on the steps. Then they realized what was going on and came back up to huddle around him in an official-looking cluster. They grabbed Hundy by the elbows and made as if to hustle him away but he hung back, reluctant.
“Mr. Hundy,” said Liz Ocavello, nudging her way in. “I understand you have been working today with police artists on composite drawings of the persons you saw with the missing boy on Sunday.”
Mr. Hundy nodded rather briskly. His shy, evasive manner of the day before had given way to a slightly more assertive stance.
“Could you tell us what they looked like?”
The men surged around Mr. Hundy once more, but he seemed entranced by the camera. “Well,” he said, “they wasn’t from around here. They was … dark.”
“Dark?”
They now were tugging him down the steps, and he glanced back over his shoulder, as if sharing a confidence. “Arabs,” he said. “You know.”
Liz Ocavello, behind her glasses and her big anchorwoman hairdo, accepted this disclosure so blandly that I thought I’d heard it wrong. “Thank you, Mr. Hundy,” she said, turning away, as Mr. Hundy and his friends disappeared down the steps. “This is Liz Ocavello at the Hampden County Courthouse.”
“Thanks, Liz,” the newscaster said cheerily, swiveling in his chair.
“Wait,” said Camilla. “Did he say what I thought he said?”
“What?”
“Arabs? He said Bunny got in a car with some Arabs?”
“In a related development,” the anchorman said, “area churches have joined hands in a prayer effort for the missing boy. According to Reverend A. K. Poole of First Lutheran, several churches in the tri-state area, including First Baptist, First Methodist, Blessed Sacrament and Assembly of God, have offered up their—”
“I wonder what this mechanic of yours is up to, Henry,” said Francis.
Henry lit a cigarette. He had smoked it halfway down before he said: “Did they ask you anything about Arabs, Charles?”
“No.”
“But they just said on television that Hundy’s not dealing with the FBI,” Camilla said.
“We don’t know that.”
“You don’t think it’s all some kind of setup?”
“I don’t know what to think.”
The picture on the set had changed. A thin, well-groomed woman in her fifties—Chanel cardigan, pearls at the neckline, hair brushed into a stiff, shoulder-length flip—was talking, in a nasal voice which was oddly familiar.
“Yes,” she said; where had I heard that voice before? “The people of Hampden are ever so kind. When we arrived at our hotel, late yesterday afternoon, the concierge was waiting for—”
“Concierge,” said Francis, disgusted. “They don’t have a concierge at the Coachlight Inn.”
I studied this woman with new interest. “That’s Bunny’s mother?”
“That’s right,” said Henry. “I keep forgetting. You haven’t met her.”
She was a slight woman, corded and freckled around the neck the way women of that age and disposition often