Laura Lippman: The Most Dangerous Thing

“I might as well go in now, get it over with,” he says, grabbing the car keys, ignoring his daughters’ wrathful looks.

“Is it the jewelry store murder?” Arlene asks.

“Sure,” he says. He almost wishes she would call him on his shit, ask what could possibly require him to go to the office on a Saturday, short of a cop killing. But she doesn’t pick up on it, only smiles and pats his shoulder again.

Behind the wheel of his car, he tries to concentrate on the roads even as he keeps reviewing the time line. If Gwen is right-if Father Andrew is telling the truth-

I f. There is another way of looking at this. The old priest is a liar. And with Go-Go dead, he can spin the story however he wants. But why spin a story at all? What does he have to gain? With Go-Go dead, he’s in the clear, assuming he’s the one who molested him. Only he says he’s not, that he’s never touched a kid, and that he was counting on Go-Go to tell people that.

He also says that Chicken George never touched a kid. At least-he didn’t touch Go-Go.

The priest was quite firm, Gwen told Tim. Go-Go said he was molested by two high school boys in 1980. The night of the hurricane-

Was in 1979, not 1980. People get those details wrong all the time. Trust me, Gwen.

But Go-Go said it was two high school boys, Tim. Not Chicken George. Why would he tell Father Andrew that?

Maybe he didn’t. Maybe the priest is using Go-Go’s death.

Father Andrew, it turns out, is essentially being blackmailed. A former student is threatening to go public with lurid tales of sex abuse in the parish. With the statute of limitations long past, he can’t bring a civil or criminal suit, but he can ruin Father Andrew’s life. The claim is baseless-Father Andrew says-but as an ex-priest and one who is now living openly as a gay man, he feels vulnerable. So many people don’t understand the difference between homosexuality and pedophilia. Yet he refuses on principle to pay this amoral opportunist. His lawyer started assembling character witnesses, students who would testify as to his behavior. Go-Go was one of those students, and he had agreed to give a deposition.

Go-Go was making a clean breast of things. He wanted to know if he had to talk about other sexual experiences, in his deposition, and Father Andrew promised him that it wouldn’t come up. He was only going to be asked about his relationship with Father Andrew, if he ever saw anything untoward. Go-Go said he was happy to do it. But then he changed his mind, refused to talk to the private investigator or Father Andrew.

Did he tell him-

About Chicken George’s death? No. But he insisted he was molested by two boys, then blamed this older man.

Tim arrives at his mother’s house. She has a book in hand, holding her place with her finger, and she looks surprised-really, almost a little annoyed-at her son’s unannounced visit. It never occurred to Tim that his mother would prefer anything to seeing one of her sons.

“Sean’s meeting you there,” she says.

“Where?”

“The golf course. He said you were playing golf this afternoon, but he had some errands to run first.”

Interesting. Why has Sean created such an elaborate lie to get away from their mother? But Tim instinctively takes his brother’s back.

“Our tee time isn’t for another couple of hours. Mom, where did you say you keep the stepladder now?”

“Why do you need the stepladder?”

“I just do.”

She has to think-or pretend that she’s thinking. “In the garage. I so seldom use it.”

It is the stepladder from his childhood, the one that used to be kept in the upstairs hall closet, the one that he needed last month to put away things on the high shelf of the china cupboard. In the event of a fire, they were to drag the stepladder to Go-Go’s room, lift the rectangular board that led to the attic crawl space, then proceed to throw a rope ladder out the attic window and clamber to the ground. The only problem was that their father never anchored the rope ladder to the sill, which meant it was useless. If the house ever caught fire, they would have been safer jumping out the second-story windows than clambering down an unsecured rope from the third. Still, the stepladder belonged in that upstairs closet. It’s the only way to get to the attic. He was surprised that his mother had moved it to the garage. Now he has a hunch why.

It clearly has been years since anyone has pushed open the door, leading to the storage space under the eaves. Someone-Go-Go, his father, his mother?-has tried to nail it shut, but it’s a piss-poor job. Tim pushes it with his shoulder and the nails slide from the thin, splintery wood.

Tim isn’t particularly tall, but once in the attic he has to stay hunched to keep his head from grazing the ceiling. He pulls the chain on the single-watt bulb only to watch it die with a pop. There’s enough light from the window for him to make things out, though. He begins taking inventory. On a set of low shelves, he finds the hockey gear that Go-Go wore in the Fourth of July parade. Hadn’t he said he borrowed it? That was the summer of 1980. It never made sense, Go-Go showing up with that gear. Tim always assumed he stole it. But if Father Andrew is right-it could fit. Someone could have given Go-Go the mask, the stick, the padded glove to ensure his silence. Interesting, but is this reason enough to seal up the crawl space? He pokes and prods the various cardboard boxes, filled with the most incredible debris, stained clothes, and broken toys. Tim sees a pile of old sheets in the corner, yellow with age, wrapped around something, and he moves toward it, keeping his head low, almost crawling.

A steel guitar.

He rocks back on his haunches, tells himself that there is more than one steel guitar in the world, that the guitar’s presence here means nothing. But it is Chicken George’s guitar. Go-Go went back for it, went back to where Chicken George fell and took the guitar. Why?

Because Chicken George never touched him. Because it was all a lie. And Go-Go wanted to be caught in the lie, wanted someone to ask him about it.

When he comes downstairs, his mother is in her chair, but no longer wrapped up in her book.

“You knew it was up there,” he says, not bothering with his professional techniques, not setting up a careful path of questions to which she must answer yes, so she can’t deny the established facts. His father might not have been handy, but he would have done a better job at nailing that door in place. Go-Go, too, for that matter. His mother hid the guitar, his mother nailed the attic up and moved the stepladder, hoping that it would deter anyone who decided to go up there. How long has she kept Go-Go’s secret?

“Yes,” she says.

“Why?”

“Because I knew it meant something.”

“What? What did you think it meant?”

“Something bad.”

C lem hears the front doorbell, a conversation between Gwen and a man. Karl? Has Karl relented and decided to let Annabelle spend Easter weekend here? He feels Annabelle’s absence keenly. As much as he wants Gwen to stop being an idiot and go back to Karl, he likes the fact that Annabelle has been here almost every weekend. He has started reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn to her, over Gwen’s protestations. Gwen says Annabelle’s too young, which is probably true. But Clem thinks that Gwen’s real problem is that she wants to read the book to Annabelle and he is usurping her. He is. Given his age, there is so much he will never do with this grandchild. He will never run alongside her two-wheeler. He couldn’t carry her even before he broke his hip. He feels as if he has missed out twice-over on being a real grandfather. Miller’s children lived too far away, and now Annabelle has arrived when he’s too old. He might not even see her through grade school. Gwen might have a little more empathy, he thinks.