Man With a Squirrel Read Free

Martin.”
    â€œShe’s someone else.”
    â€œRight,” Fred agreed.
    Warm air rushed out of the backseat of the taxi. The sidewalk under Fred’s feet was about forty degrees. “You’ll be all right?” Fred asked the driver, who nodded once, accepting Fred’s money. “Make sure he gets back into his house.” Fred watched the taxi drive off. Depending on how long the taxi had been waiting, the old man had invested about fifty dollars on the fare from Cambridge.
    Molly was in the kitchen, looking worried, standing by the table, her hands clasped. “What’s going on, Fred?”
    Both suspicion and accusation were in her voice, mixed with a mother’s proprietary fear.
    â€œIt was your mass murderer,” Fred said. “Out in the street, looking at the house. The one from the library. His name is Martin and he lives in Cambridge. He seems inoffensive.”
    â€œHe came to my house?” Molly exclaimed. “To my house? What does he want? What is he?”
    â€œSomething deluded him into thinking you are his daughter. I told the cabbie to see he got back home, and gave him twenty bucks.”
    Molly said, “The poor old guy is senile. No mass murderer, then. It gives me the willies he was on my street.”
    It was almost four o’clock. They sat in the kitchen, debating whether to condemn sleep and make coffee. Fred said, “The normal mass murderer is pretty well groomed; has nice clothes and a new haircut and lovely manners. Mr. Martin presents himself more like the underneath of a yard-sale sofa. I don’t think you have to be afraid of him.”
    â€œYou were the one upset,” Molly said. “You should have brought him inside, so we could call his family.”
    Fred, having already classified the guy as a potential menace, and knowing Molly was afraid of him, wasn’t going to bring the old boy into Molly’s house.
    Molly said, “Poor fellow. I’ll see tomorrow if I can locate anyone in his family: the daughter he’s lost, or a wife, son—something.” Fred had looked in the Cambridge phone book and found too many listings under Martin. “I’ll check our cardholders to see if we have somebody in his family. Common name, though.”
    Fred shouldn’t have let him go. He didn’t like to leave such things unexplained. “Rats,” Fred said, and they went back to bed.
    Next day Molly spent some time on the telephone, but failed to find a Martin that fit their visitor. Molly had a wide acquaintance in Cambridge, which stretched even into the police force. No one could place him.
    â€œCould be his first name,” Molly said. “That would broaden the field.”

3
    â€œLook at this,” Fred said to Molly, pointing at the front page of the Globe.
    â€œI’ve seen them before,” Molly said. “I believe you’ll find those are lighter than air.” Molly was barely sitting at the kitchen table, where Fred was drinking coffee. She dunked a piece of dry toast in her coffee, and looked at it with displeasure. Her idea of a healthy breakfast conflicted with anyone’s idea of a good breakfast.
    â€œI don’t mean the picture,” Fred said. The Globe had gotten Blanche Maybelle Stardust to re-create her acrobatic start of alarm, on the bank of the Charles River, beneath the cherry trees still looking like winter, showing how she had responded to the realization that her dogs had struck a corpse, which was described as dead and white and male.
    Blanche Maybelle Stardust’s start of alarm had a flavor of well-rehearsed rah-rah to it. But it showed energy and goodwill, and the eagerness to please that encourages photographers.
    On this rainy March morning, her dogs had ruined the run for Blanche Maybelle Stardust, who was seeking to maintain a figure that left little to be imagined in the way of unrealized perfection. It ruined the morning’s run, but