Cry for the Strangers Page 0,98

Riley’s eyes blinked open and he stared at Chip.

“I’m not sure I ought to tell you the story—it happened a long time ago and it isn’t very pleasant. But it might help you to understand why Harn feels the way he does about strangers.”

“Go on,” Chip urged him.

“Well, it was a night very much like this one,” Riley began. There was a storm brewing, but when Harney—he was only seven or eight at the time—went to bed, it hadn’t really hit the coast yet. Then, late at night, it came in, blowing like crazy.

“Nobody ever found out exactly what happened that night, but during the storm there were terrible things done. It was the next morning that all hell broke loose. Harney woke up and the house was empty. He looked around for his grandparents but they weren’t there. So he started searching for them.” Riley closed his eyes, visualizing the scene as he talked. “He found them on the beach. Sod Beach, about halfway between where the houses are now. Neither of them was there back then—the beach was just a beach. Anyway, Ham went out there and at first he didn’t see them. But they were there: buried in the sand up to their necks, drowned. It was just like the old Klickashaw stories, but that time it wasn’t a story. It was Harn’s grandparents. I saw them myself a little while later. The whole town went out there before they even dug the Whalens up. Awful. Their eyes were all bugged out, and their faces were blue. And the expressions—you wouldn’t have believed it.”

“Jesus,” Chip said softly. “Did they find out who did it?”

“Nah,” Riley said. Disgust edged his voice. “Everybody had suspicions, of course, and what happened after that didn’t help any.”

“Something else happened?”

“About a week after the funeral, Harney’s dad gave in and signed a lease with the lumber people. The old man wouldn’t, but Harney’s dad did. And then he leased the beach to that guy Baron, who built the house out there that Harney owns now.”

“How’d Harney get it?”

“He grew up,” Riley said flatly. “He Just waited around. The lease wasn’t a long one—only about ten or fifteen years—but by the time it was up his dad had died too and Harney owned the land. He just refused to renew the lease. Baron was mad—real mad. Claimed there’d been an unwritten agreement, some kinda option, I think. But Harn got some fancy lawyer from Olympia to go to work on that. Anyway, he ended the lease, and that was it for Baron. He stayed around for a while and tried to fish, but that didn’t work either. Got himself drowned, he did. Nobody around here gave a shit—they all thought he’d been in on killing Old Man Whalen and his wife.” The old man chuckled then. “Funny how I always think of him as Old Man Whalen—he must have been twenty years younger than I am now when he died.”

He stopped talking for a few minutes, then grinned at his grandson. “Funny thing. I was telling Tad and Clem about Baron the other day, but I couldn’t remember his name then. I know it as well as I know my own but it just slipped right on away. Anyway, like I told Tad and Clem, same thing happened to Baron’s wife as happened to Miriam Shelling. Hung herself in the woods. Might even have been the same tree for all I know.”

Chip stared at his grandfather. “She hanged herself? After her husband drowned?”

“Yup. Just like Pete and Miriam. Funny how things like that happen. I guess the guy who said history repeats itself wasn’t so far off, was he?”

“Funny Harney didn’t tell me about it,” Chip commented.

Riley made an impatient gesture. “Why would he? What happened to the Barons was thirty-five, forty years ago, long before you were even born. Anyway, that’s why Harney hates strangers so much. A couple of them killed his grandparents, even if no one ever proved it.”

Chip swirled the half-inch of scotch that still remained in his glass and stared thoughtfully up at the portrait of his grandmother. Her dark face had a stoic, almost impassive look, as if life had been hard for her but she had survived it. As he studied the portrait Chip realized that the resemblance between her and her nephew, Harney Whalen, was not so much a physical thing at all. It was the look. The look of impassivity.

Chip began to understand Harney