Tucker Peak Read Online Free PDF Page A

“No shit.”
    Lester began manipulating the computer mouse. “Okay, now we backtrack it to the seller and keep our fingers crossed he has more than just an e-mail address. And… ,” he paused a moment for the information to appear, “there you go: Walter Skottick, Old Route 5, Putney, Vermont—complete with phone number.”
    There was a telling moment of silence while everyone except Lester digested the ease with which he’d just conjured up the watch’s location.
    Willy was the first to break the spell. “Let me have that number.”
    He reached for Lester’s phone, tucked the receiver under his chin, and dialed.
    “Mr. Skottick?” he asked in a theatrical upper-class accent. “W. Graham Morrison here. Are you the person selling that marvelous timepiece on the Internet?”
    He paused and elaborated, “That’s correct, I did mean the
watch
. Well, believe it or not, you and I are almost neighbors—quite unusual, all things considered. I live in Boston, so I was wondering if I might take a look at it in person. It’s so much more compelling than seeing just a photograph.”
    He listened for a minute before adding, “Not at all. I’ll place my bids along with everyone else. I’m not asking to subvert the system, but since fate has placed me so nearby, I just had to ask for a closer examination, especially given how much I might be willing to pay.”
    He waited a little more and finally said, “Excellent. Isn’t that spiffy? I’ll come by in a few hours.”
    He hung up with a smile. “That ought to give us time for a warrant.”
    Sammie shook her head and stared at him in wonder. “Spiffy?”
    Willy raised an eyebrow. “Whatever.”
    · · ·
    North of Putney village, Old Route 5 turns from a paved road to dirt and then vanishes altogether over a very short distance, a victim of Interstate 91, which was traced across the map in the 1960s with the subtlety of a broad-tipped magic marker, cutting off or obliterating dozens of ancient meandering country roads that had taken their cues from a host of preceding Indian trails, cow paths, and wagon tracks.
    Old Route 5 also is just north of a settlement that future scientists will ponder at length, and about which—I dearly hope—they will reach some truly bizarre conclusions about Vermont’s overall placement on the national oddball scale.
    Santa’s Land is a tiny petting zoo and theme park given over to a menagerie of approachable, photogenic beasts, corralled among a startling collection of Swiss huts, elves’ workshops, and cement igloos, some with paint jobs as garish as a punk rocker’s toenails.
    Every time I drive by it, fantasizing about what those scholars will make of it, my pleasure is heightened because it also happens to be located in a village famous for its political correctness and artistic high breeding. Such jarring juxtapositions are one of the regular aspects of this state I find most appealing.
    The residents of Old Route 5 occupy a standard sliding scale for rural Vermont, from houses plucked from a frugal and practical contractor’s imagination, to mobile homes that were rolled into place so many years ago that the trees now surrounding them make all notion of mobility inconceivable. That quixotic and contradictory sense of humanity’s imprint mingling with signs of its own impermanence is driven home by the steady rumble from the unseen interstate nearby: a siren call to progress and the restless.
    Walter Skottick had staked out a middle ground between these extremes, living in a cobbled-together wooden house that had begun enthusiastically years ago, complete with siding and an asphalt roof, only to settle eventually for a series of plywood, barn wood, or plain tar paper extensions, all clearly designed for some specific purpose, and all stamped with the homeowner’s ever lessening standards.
    Willy and I left my car and surrendered to the cold-nosed nuzzling of four friendly dogs, their combined nostrils producing a fog