Cold Flat Junction
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1 - A dented cup
Chapter 2 - Dervish
Chapter 3 - Benchsitting
Chapter 4 - Orphns-in-a-storm
Chapter 5 - News
Chapter 6 - Waitressing
Chapter 7 - Sorrolowful Places
Chapter 8 - Pink thinking
Chapter 9 - A short history of Do-X-machines
Chapter 10 - Moses in the bullrushes
Chapter 11 - Moses and Aurora
Chapter 12 - Falling out with the Sheriff
Chapter 13 - Uninvited
Chapter 14 - Bunny and me
Chapter 15 - Last of the Butternuts
Chapter 16 - Brokedown House
Chapter 17 - Lost girl
Chapter 18 - A new decor
Chapter 19 - Their Florida vacation
Chapter 20 - Sauerkraut
Chapter 21 - Diner people
Chapter 22 - Flyback Hollow
Chapter 23 - Orphans
Chapter 24 - Tracking poachers
Chapter 25 - Master mechanic
Chapter 26 - Tamiami Trail
Chapter 27 - My real life
Chapter 28 - Brokedown House, revisited
Chapter 29 - My florida vacation II
Chapter 30 - Rainbow
Chapter 31 - Lazy days at the Rony Plaza
Chapter 32 - Scent of grass
Chapter 33 - End of the pier
Chapter 34 - Bartending
Chapter 35 - Deaf
Chapter 36 - Diner life
Chapter 37 - Lemonade
Chapter 38 - Solitary blue
Chapter 39 - A drowning
Chapter 40 - Waiting time
Chapter 41 - I could have danced all night
Chapter 42 - Psssst! from overhead
Chapter 43 - An album
Chapter 44 - Light in August
Chapter 45 - Master mechanic II
Chapter 46 - Out of the clouds
Chapter 47 - Deputy Dawg
Chapter 48 - Inadmissible evidence
Chapter 49 - Hell-bent
Chapter 50 - She’s Medea
Chapter 51 - Goldengirl
Chapter 52 - We remember it well
Chapter 53 - An alibi
Chapter 54 - Solace
Chapter 55 - Smitty
Chapter 56 - Cold Turkey
Chapter 57 - Ghosts
Chapter 58 - Deadmanwalking
Chapter 59 - The boathouse
Chapter 60 - Ree-Jane goes spastic
Chapter 61 - Star reporter
Chapter 62 - Hearsayist
Chapter 63 - Ree-Jane rousted
Chapter 64 - Bugswirled,stumppocked
Praise for the novels of Martha Grimes
Cold Flat Junction
“A marvelous gallery of idiosyncratic characters ... a thoroughly delightful reading experience.”
—The San Diego Union-Tribune
“Melds classic mystery with a coming-of-age story in which the young protagonist must face the hard and often shocking realities of adulthood ... Grimes gets that—and everything else—just right.”
—The Baltimore Sun
“Eccentric characters keep [Grimes’s] enchanted, time-forgotten towns alive.”
—The New York TimesBook Review
“Character-driven psychological fiction ... smartly written ... surprisingly satisfying.”
—Publishers Weekly
Hotel Paradise
“Utterly engaging.... Emma’s voice [is] sharp, funny, perceptive.”
—The Washington Post
“Rich with metaphors and imaginative characters ... provocative.... Hotel Paradise takes on the mood of a lazy Sunday afternoon with its slow unveiling of events. Meandering and atmospheric, the novel reads with the ease of a daydream.... [Grimes] proves herself a writer of delicate sensibility whose work is notable for its delightfully quirky details, insightful perceptions into human relationships, and graceful prose.”
—Los Angeles Times
The Train Now Departing
“Brilliantly told.”
—The Boston Globe
“Full of suspense and surprise. These carefully written little gems showcase Grimes at her best.”
—Library Journal
“Grimes has created a work of value here, a book that expands her art, her reputation—and possibly her audience.”
—Richmond Times-Dispatch
“Atmospheric and chilling.... Grimes [exhibits] a complete mastery of emotional nuance and [a] virtuoso treatment of the grayest coloration.”
—The Commercial Appeal (Memphis)
Biting the Moon
“[A] coming-of-age odyssey [that] inspires some grand nature writing from Grimes.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“A lyrical coming-of-age journey.”
—Chicago Sun-Times
“For mesmerizing readability, it’s hard to beat Biting the Moon.... Quick, buy the book before it gets made into a movie. I suspect you only have a couple of weeks.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Characters to care about ... evocative.”
—Chicago Tribune
The Lamorna Wink
A New York Times Bestseller
“Atmospheric ... an elegantly styled series.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Swift and satisfying ... grafts the old-fashioned ‘Golden Age’ amateur-detective story to the contemporary police procedural ... real charm.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“Fans ... will not be disappointed. The eccentrics who populate Plant’s life are back and provide wickedly funny cameos.”
—USA Today
“Entrancing. Grimes makes her own mark on du Maurier country.”
—The Orlando Sentinel
TheStargazey
A New York Times Bestseller
“Wondrously eccentric characters.... The details are divine.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“The literary equivalent of a box of Godiva truffles.... Wonderful.”
—Los Angeles Times
“Martha Grimes’s wintry new mystery envelops the reader in all the comforts of a serviceable English whodunit.... The Stargazey is well worth setting your sights on.”
—USA Today
“Grimes’s popular Richard Jury returns in top form.... A delightfully entertaining blend of irony, danger, and intrigue, liberally laced with wit and charm.... A must-have from one of today’s most gifted and intelligent writers.”
—Booklist (starred review)
The Case Has Altered
“The way Martha Grimes tells it, there is no more atmospheric setting for murder in all of England than the Lincolnshire fens.... Richly textured.”
—The New York Times Book Review
“Grimes is dazzling in this deftly plotted Richard Jury mystery.... Psychologically complex.... The novel also boasts Grimes’s delicious wit.... [She] brings Jury triumphantly back where he belongs.”
—Publishers Weekly
“A delicious ebb and flow of tension.... Twists and turns.... Beautifully rendered atmosphere.... Vintage Grimes.”
—Library Journal
“Provocative entertainment.”
—The Orlando Sentinel
I Am the Only Running Footman
“Literate, witty, and stylishly crafted.”
—The Washington Post
“Everything about Miss Grimes’s new novel shows her at her best.... [She] gets our immediate attention.... She holds it, however, with something more than mere
suspense.”
—The New Yorker
Praise for Martha Grimes
“Her wit sparkles, her plots intrigue, and her characters are absolutely unforgettable.”
—The Denver Post
“Grimes is not the next Dorothy Sayers, not the next Agatha Christie. She is better than both.”
—The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
“Read any one [of her novels] and you’ll want to read them all.”
—Chicago Tribune
“She really has no superior in what she does. Grimes’s books are powerful comedies of no-manners, of the assumed gap between the blue-blooded and the red-blooded people.... Her world is enriched by every new novel, and our admiration grows.”
—Armchair Detective
“Martha Grimes, America’s answer to the classic British detective novel, is winning the hearts of readers who long to return to the golden age of the dagger beneath the tea cozy and the butler lurking at the drawing room door.”
—San Francisco Chronicle
“A class act.... She writes with charm, authority, and ironic wit.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The spirit of Christie, Allingham, and Sayers lives on.”
—Los Angeles Times
RICHARD JURY NOVELS
The Man with a Load of Mischief
The Old Fox Deceived
The Anodyne Necklace
The Dirty Duck
Jerusalem Inn
Help the Poor Struggler
The Deer Leap
I Am the Only Running Footman
The Five Bells and Bladebone
The Old Silent
The Old Contemptibles
The Horse You Came In On
Rainbow’s End
The Case Has Altered
The Stargazey
The Lamorna Wink
The Blue Last
OTHER WORKS BY MARTHA GRIMES
The End of the Pier
Hotel Paradise
Biting the Moon
The Train Now Departing
POETRY
Send Bygraves
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Published by New American Library, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Previously published in a Viking edition.
First New American Library Printing, February 2002 10
Copyright © Martha Grimes, 2001
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
eISBN : 978-1-101-17513-2
Cold flat junction / Martha Grimes.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-17513-2
I. Title.
PS3557.R48998 C65 2001
813’.54—dc211
00-043992
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint excerpts from the following copyrighted works:
“Directive” from The Poetry of Robert Frost, edited by Edward Connery Lathem. Copyright ©Henry Holt and Co., 1947, 1969. Copyright © Lesley Frost Ballantine, 1975.
“Tangerine” by Johnny Mercer and Victor Schertzinger. Copyright Famous Music Corporation, 1942. Copyright ©renewed Famous Music Corporation, 1969. “Tonight You Belong to Me” by Billy Rose and David Lee. Copyright (renewed) Chappell & Co. and C & J David Music, 1926. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Warner Bros. Publications U.S. Inc., Miami, Florida.
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To Van, who was there
I have kept hidden in the instep arch
Of an old cedar at the waterside
A broken drinking goblet like the Grail
Under a spell so the wrong ones can’t find it,
So can’t get saved, as Saint Mark says they mustn’t
(I stole the goblet from the children’s playhouse.)
Here are your waters and your watering place.
Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.
—Robert Frost from “Directive”
1
A dented cup
I’m sitting here where you left me hardly more than a week ago. Every day and nearly every night I’ve been here on the low stone wall by the spring. I sit near the little alcove where spring water runs from a pipe jutting out of the stone. There’s a metal cup dented from years of use that sits beneath the pipe and catches the water so that people can drink it. The cup has been around as long as I have. It’s as if the alcove were its room, and people can take it out and drink from it and return it. It’s amazing that in all of this time, in all of these years, it’s never been stolen.
Why would anyone bother stealing a dented tin cup? Because there are some things that go beyond reason—like the Girl, appearing and disappearing; like knowing Ben Queen didn’t kill anyone; like Do-X-machines; like vengeance. Probably, you’ve forgotten most of what happened, but you might remember Fern Queen being shot and killed over by Mirror Pond. That’s on White’s Bridge Road. You might remember because people think murder is more important than anything (except maybe sex).
I asked my mother, who’s lived all of her life at the hotel, about the cup, and she said, “What cup?” So there doesn’t seem much point in asking about it. In the alcove where the cup rests, I found the Artist George tube taken from the Mr. Ree game and put here by Persons Unknown (yet I think it must have been the Girl) to communicate something to me, maybe to tell me, You’re on the right track, keep going, or maybe just to say, I’m here.
I imagine it was I’m here, for if I were to tell anyone there was such a person and she was here, they’d say the opposite: No, she isn’t. That’s what Ben Queen said about her, but he had a particular reason: he didn’t want anybody, especially the police, to know she was around. He was trying to protect her. So he pretended there was n
o such person, and I pretended I went along with that, and both of us knew we were both pretending. We both knew we knew there was such a person.
When there’s a great mystery you wish to protect—that is, a mystery you want to keep people from tearing to ribbons—then you’ve got to keep the wrong people away from it. You go about solving it in a roundabout way. You sometimes ask questions of the wrong people, people who know nothing, for instance, and although you eventually come to an answer, it will take much longer to get to it.
But why is this? Why would I go about trying to solve it in this roundabout way? Maybe the answer wouldn’t mean the same thing to me if I didn’t ask the questions in my own way, and of the people I ask them of. Or maybe some part of me doesn’t want to know the answer. Or maybe both.
It’s been forty years since the Tragedy. That’s the way people say it, in that awed, excited way you know means they wish it would happen all over again. Most people seem to have forgotten, or perhaps never knew there were two Tragedies, perhaps because one of them happened in Spirit Lake and one in Cold Flat Junction. Now, if you include the murder of Fern Queen, there are three Tragedies.