“Would John have carried out his threats?”
She let her eyes travel up the East River to the spot where the tram carried people from Roosevelt Island to Manhattan.The aerial car was halfway across.She felt she was the one hanging in mid-air.“Maybe.”
“You don’t believe it?”
“I don’t want to.But then, I didn’t want to believe that he whipped Cutter, but it’s true.Pam confirmed it, and she has seen Cutter’s back.Even Bumble confirmed it.”
Arlan looked surprised.“You talked with her?”
“Went up there last week, a day after the party.”
“She must be ancient,” he said in a hushed voice.Remembering the bent and weathered woman, Hillary gave a small smile.“Not as old as people think.Maybe seventy-five.”
“That’s old enough,” he drawled.
“But we thought she was double that twenty years ago!”He eyed her with the utmost admiration.“So you went to the pack rat’s midden.”
Hillary’s smile tilted.Arlan was reacting just as the people of Timiny Cove would have done if they’d known she had visited Bumble.
“The pack rat’s midden,” she enlightened him, “is actually a small house on the far side of the woods fromCutter’s place.I wouldn’t exactly call it a dung heap.It is quite well equipped.”
“You mean, she has Teflon-coated cauldrons?”
“I mean, she has a modern stove and refrigerator, a microwave oven, a television with a small satellite dish, plus a VCR and an extensive collection of films.Seems she’s a sucker for situation comedy.Three’s a Crowd, Who’s the Boss, Cheers—you name it, she has taped collections.”
“Where did she get them?”
“Cutter.He’s been sending her stuff for years.”
“The microwave and the stove, too?”
Hillary nodded.
“In gratitude for nursing him?”
She nodded again and turned her face to the breeze.It lifted the hair off her neck, offering pleasant relief from the warmth of the sun, and the tension of her thoughts.
“And you?Did you take Cutter in for old times’ sake?”
“And for Pam’s sake.I knew she liked him.I also—” She hesitated, feeling guilty.
“You also what?”
She sighed.“I had mixed enough feelings for John to take Cutter in out of defiance.I knew that John had given him trouble over the years.Somehow it seemed right that I give him his start in the big city.Not that I dreamed he’d actually make it.He seemed harmless.I knew that he had worked hard at the mine, but there was no correlation between mining and anything in New York.It never occurred to me that he would pose any kind of threat to John.”
“Does he?Have I missed something here?”
Hillary wasn’t sure.Since she’d seen Cutter the week before, there had been times when she wondered how on top of things she really was.“He’s become a somebody, all right.He knew the movers and shakers at that reception last week, and they knew him.”
“Does that make him a threat to John?”
“Not per se.”She was trying to figure out her unease.“But back then he had so much anger.He said there were two things pushing him when he left Timiny Cove—getting Pam, and getting back at John.He doesn’t have either yet, but I can’t believe he’s given up.Especially now that I know … this.”
She felt Arlan watching her closely.Seeking to escape his scrutiny, she rose and began walking again.It wasn’t long before he was beside her.
“It bothers you, doesn’t it?”
“Of course it bothers me.I hate violence.”
