Scot on the Rocks

by Catriona McPherson

  ‘You need to speak to all the people at work that you’ve told about your affair and … untell them?’ I said. I left my dolphin-killer cup on the table and hurried out after her. ‘That sounds like a great plan. That’ll totally work.’

  She sped up when she hit the car park but so did I; we must have looked like a couple of Olympic speed-walkers, pounding over the wet tarmac as fast as feet would carry us without breaking into a run, which would have been as galling an admission here as it would have been an infraction against sportsmanship in the Games. As long as she kept one foot on the ground at all times, she could pretend to herself, me and any onlookers that she was just going back to work after her break and not hanging about, given the weather. She wasn’t desperately trying to stop me talking to her colleagues before she had a chance to tell them … what?

  ‘What would you say, anyway?’ I panted, as we got to the door of Bran’s building.

  ‘That I was just dreaming,’ she said, as she pushed the button for the lift. ‘He’ll never leave her. He loves her. I was just a bit fun to him. He sometimes needs to turn away from her light, you know? She’s too perfect for anyone to deal with non-stop. It’s overwhelming.’

  ‘Oh, you’re good,’ I said. I didn’t even know how good. When the lift arrived, I stepped in; she reached in, pushed the ‘door close’ button, then took off at a sprint for the stairs.

  ‘Slowest lift west of the Rockies!’ she said as her long legs started hurdling up the stairs, taking three at a time.

  She wasn’t wrong. It groaned like Chewbacca and lurched like a zombie and, when I arrived on Lancer and Lancer’s floor, Elise was sitting away back from the reception desk, with the other two girls clustered round her and her face buried in a hanky.

  ‘I don’t know what she’s told you,’ I began.

  ‘You just came right out and called her a kidnapper in the middle of a coffee shop?’ said the dumpy one. ‘Right in front of Kyle?’ Then she blushed and put her head down again, while I wondered which poleaxed barista Kyle was and if he had ever noticed her loving him as she ordered her macchiato.

  ‘I’m not in the business of accusations,’ I said. ‘I’m gathering information for Dr Lancer, who is currently at home climbing the walls with anguish about the disappearance of Dr Kowalski-Lancer. Anything anyone can tell me about Brandeee’s mood, or any of her calls, visitors or other actions in the run up to Valentine’s Day, could be very helpful.’

  I hadn’t checked behind me to see if there were any patients waiting. With hindsight, I could have been a bit more discreet.

  ‘So who’s going to cast my implant?’ said a voice, and I turned to see a man who looked vaguely familiar, sitting with an open National Geographic abandoned on his lap. ‘She didn’t turn up then?’ he said to me.

  ‘I can’t comment on my client’s case,’ I said.

  ‘My mother took quite a shine, you know,’ he said.

  ‘To … Brandeee?’ I asked him. ‘That’s nice. Sooooooo important.’ I was spouting accepted wisdom with that line. Actually, I didn’t see why you had to form a close personal bond with your doctor, dentist, podiatrist, optometrist, gynaecologist, dermatologist, proctologist and physio, even if you needed all those different specialists. Which you didn’t. Don’t get me wrong; I had a doctor. I’d seen her once for a contraceptive prescription while Bran and I were married and I was on his insurance, and then once for a nasty set of mouth ulcers when Bran and I were newly divorced and I was stressed, not sleeping well and saving on my supermarket bills by eating mostly tinned soup and sliced bread. Incidentally, I could have been eating fresh pineapple washed down with coconut milk straight from the shell for breakfast, lunch and dinner, because that one ten-minute appointment with no insurance card had set me back 200 dollars, and all she told me to do was wash my mouth out with salt water and keep off the chillies till the lesions healed.

  My point is, whenever anyone asked me if I liked my doctor – and they did, a lot – I always answered that she had a degree in medicine and so she seemed ideal. But my other point is that I wasn’t surprised when a random bloke in a waiting room offered the information that members of his family thought highly of their provider. They really care about all that stuff.

  In this instance, I had got him bang to wrongs.

  ‘Not Brandee,’ he said. ‘She took a shine to you.’

  ‘I don’t work here,’ I told him.

  ‘I know,’ he said. ‘You own your own business and you’re trying to find her but I’ve got to tell you, you don’t seem well suited to the work. You might have walked past her in the street and not realized who it was. Like you’ve just done with me.’

  God, that was annoying. But he was right. I had no clue where I knew him from. A client? Surely not. I would have remembered an out-and-out client. And Todd had clearly never been set loose on him. The man was wearing an anorak with arm pockets. Did he use the launderette? Again, no. Kathi had had no hand in the wavering crease that meandered up the front of his cargo pants, carried on clean through the pockets, but packed in completely, far below the waistband. Did he work in a business I frequented maybe? I didn’t think so, because he had a long, grey ponytail and if he was a waiter he’d have been forced to keep a hairnet over it. I always remember those hairnets because they spook me. Correction: the hairs they don’t cover spook me. Anytime I see a deli-counter dude or a pizza-oven shoveller with his do and his beard in a net, I can’t help thinking about his eyebrows, nostrils and knuckles, wondering if I’d be able to tell what un-netted bit of him a hair had come from if I found one.

  So, who did I know who had a mother I also knew? I asked myself. Todd. Diego. Blaike. I’d never met Bran’s mum in our short marriage. She lived in Florida and the pair of them were in a holding pattern whereby he invited her to come to California every time they spoke and she invited him to come and see her in Orlando. And neither of them ever did. It had seemed strange to me, but then I wasn’t overly keen to have a mother-in-law come and stay in the brutally open-plan Beige Barn when I was, let’s face it, a newlywed.

  Wait!

  I chased the thought. Marital communion overheard. Through an open window. By a mother.

  ‘Barbra Streisand!’ I said.

  ‘That’s me,’ said Anorak Man.

  ‘How is she?’ I asked.

  ‘Still dead,’ he told me. ‘Princess Elizabeth and Dick Clark aren’t looking too good either.’

  ‘Your poor mum,’ I said. ‘Did the gardenmaster find out what’s wrong?’

  ‘The “gardenmaster” got kicked out with a boot in her keister,’ he said, ‘after telling my mother she had killed her roses through poor husbandry and there were other shrubs more suited to a gardener with her disability.’

  I was sharing in this enormity when someone at my elbow cleared her throat and I turned to see a dental nurse, whose name I could never remember.

  ‘We’re ready for you now, Taylor,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah, who’s ready?’ he asked, closing the National Geographic and stowing it in one of his many pockets. ‘If both dentists are off the grid, who’s going to put a knee on my chest and get the pliers flying?’

  I laughed. It was a good question. Also, he’d brought his own National Geographic to read in the dentists’ waiting room. Americans were strange.

  SIXTEEN

  ‘Have you found her?’ Bran hauled the door open and stood framed on the threshold, a picture of dejection. He was wearing a cut-off sweatshirt with no logo. I had never before seen him in any sweatshirt-fabric garment that didn’t boast the name of his college or favoured sports team. He was also wearing a pair of striped pyjama trousers and mismatched socks – one black with diamonds and one a Christmas novelty with candy canes and cardinals. His hair was greasy, his breath as he started to sob was an affront to dumpsters, and he smelled of onion sweat, a smell I would never have dreamed he was capable of producing.

  ‘I haven’t,’ I said. I considered telling him I’d fou
nd Blaike, but then remembered he didn’t know the kid was missing. So I decided that if he said a word about needing to speak to his stepson and not being able to, I would blow the story. But if, as I suspected, poor Blaike didn’t cross his mind once, I would keep shtum. I followed him back into the house, trudging through crumbs and stepping around pizza boxes and beer bottles that lay abandoned on the floor.

  ‘You’re overplaying it, Bran,’ I said. ‘You need to dial this down if you’re going to get everyone to believe you.’

  He wheeled round and stared at me out of bloodshot eyes. A muscle was pounding in his cheek. ‘What are you suggesting?’

  ‘That you know where she is or you’re happy you don’t, but you can’t face anyone guessing as much so you’re putting on a show.’

  ‘I thought you were OK,’ he said, collapsing on to the couch, where he landed in yet another pizza box. That was part of the trouble; there hadn’t been enough days to account for the pizzas. ‘I didn’t think you hated me. But only someone who hates me would say anything so cruel. Look at me, Lexy.’

  ‘Yeah, you look like shit on toast,’ I said. ‘But if you’ve done something to Brandeee and you’re waiting for the cops to suss you out, you’re hardly going to look fresh and rested.’

  ‘Do you …?’ His voice ran out and he had to clear his throat and try again. ‘Do you actually mean that?’

  I took my time, considering it from every angle, putting it up against what I knew about him and Brandeee. ‘Nah,’ I said, in the end. ‘So have the police been able to tell you anything?’

  ‘No,’ he said, running his hands through his hair and finishing off with a deep scalp scratch that made me want to scratch mine too. He really was filthy. He’d always taken so many long showers, back when I knew him; I’d had no idea there was this much grease waiting so close by. ‘She’s logged as missing. But there have been no sightings and no contact with anyone she knows. They’ve got no theories and no suggestions. Lexy, what if she never comes back? What if I never find out what happened?’

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ I said, ‘except that there must be support groups of people in the same position that you could turn to.’

  ‘How could anyone be in the same position?’ said Bran. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Families of missing persons who never show up,’ I said. ‘What’s hard to understand?’

  ‘But they’re different,’ said Bran, ‘those deadbeat dads and wayward teens, addicted moms and bankrupt cases who run away. This is different. Brandee is an angel. She’s an angel walking on earth.’

  ‘Angels ain’t what they used to be,’ I said under my breath. I was getting sick of having to sit and listen to eulogies for Brandeee, although I was interested to hear Bran’s in a way. See if he’d found yet another angle, different from Burt’s and Elise’s.

  ‘She runs this house like a corporation,’ Bran said. ‘She never forgets a birthday or an anniversary. She sends condolence cards to every neighbour in a three-block radius, for spouses, parents and siblings, and sends condolence anniversary cards, three years after spouses and two for parents. She works from a spreadsheet.’

  ‘Just like Gabriel,’ I muttered.

  ‘She supports all the school-fund drives, and libraries too. She gives money to five churches besides her own. She goes on sex weekends twice a year and she never tags anyone on social media without asking them if they like the picture first. She—’

  ‘Can I jump in?’ I said. ‘What weekends?’ I thought maybe he’d said ‘tax’ or ‘sets’ or … something.

  ‘Sex weekends,’ Bran said. ‘Inspiration and retraining courses for focused and committed wives.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ I said. ‘Because that sounds like the boldest alibi for an affair I have ever heard.’

  ‘Absolutely, I’m sure,’ he told me. ‘I saw the charge go through on our joint account.’

  ‘Wow,’ I said. I’d spent an hour, just last week, telling a woman who was weaning twins and had no confidence left in her body, now that her skin was soft and her legs were veiny, that men were simple creatures and her husband would love her all the more now that she’d done this miraculous thing.

  ‘And is there absolutely nothing you can think of at all?’ I said. ‘Nothing she said, or did, or that came for her in the mail? Not even any junk calls? Nothing that would cast light on her recent activity?’

  ‘Junk calls?’ said Bran.

  ‘Yeah, you know how they target the calls to people they think are good prospects?’ I said. ‘So if you get Planned Parenthood, the ACLU and Amnesty, you’re one kind of person, and if you get the National Police Fund, the NRA and Family First, you’re probably sort of another? What do you get? Has it changed?’

  ‘We block them,’ said Bran. ‘We’re not cavemen.’

  But something was bubbling to the top of his brain. I could see it coming. I could see him chasing it like the last pickle as it swam around out of his reach in the vinegar. I saw him tense as though to burp up a ball of gas, and I watched as he had to relax again when the gas subsided unburped.

  Then I got distracted, because I was chasing a pickle burp of my own. ‘Hang on,’ I said. ‘You told me Brandeee ran her life like a Naz— with a measure of precision? Never flaked or goofed or punted on anything?’

  ‘She is perfect,’ Bran said. ‘Please use the present tense, Lexy.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘What happened at Christmas then? She didn’t give out a staff bonus to Elise and the rest of them.’

  ‘She did,’ said Bran. ‘Five-hundred-dollar gift cards.’

  ‘Well, they didn’t get them,’ I said. ‘Unless she missed Elise out. Would she have done that?’

  ‘We laughed about Elise,’ Bran said. ‘She has a little crush on me and, if I’m honest, I’m flattered, but Brandee knew she had no competition for my heart or my—’

  ‘Please don’t finish that sentence!’

  ‘Loyalty. I don’t know why Elise would lie about her holiday gift.’

  ‘Where were the vouchers for?’ I asked. ‘Maybe something went wrong at that end.’

  Bran screwed his face up in an effort to remember. ‘Some goofy place she found way out somewhere in orbit around redneck nowhere that ran courses on some crazy crap.’ Then he stuffed his fist in his mouth, horrified at how he’d just spoken about his angel of a wife and her choice in gifts for underlings. I had never liked him more.

  ‘Can you remember what it’s called?’ I said.

  ‘Why?’ said Bran. ‘You think she emailed them to complain and they were so pissed at her that they came to her house and abducted her?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s just the only thing I’ve heard that’s even slightly out of kilter. And the word “crazy” came out of you when you weren’t concentrating. Also, places away out in the armpit, or even asshole, or – as you say – orbit of nowhere keep coming up.’

  ‘They do?’

  ‘They do. So, how could you find out what this place is called? Credit-card bill?’

  He shook his head. ‘Last year’s credit-card bills are stored off-site now that our taxes are done,’ he said. ‘It’s a fire risk to keep financial documents in a residential premises. Brandee would never be so sloppy.’

  ‘Your taxes … are done?’ I said. ‘The taxes that are due by the end of April? Never mind. Could you look it up online?’

  ‘I can’t go poking in Brandee’s personal credit-card statement,’ he said. ‘This wasn’t a joint expense.’ He had forgotten, I think, that in his initial panic he had handed over all her passwords and PINs to Todd, Kathi and me.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Well, if it comes back to you …’

  ‘Of course,’ he said.

  ‘So let’s circle back to these junk calls you nearly remembered. Or was it mail?’

  ‘It was calls,’ Bran said. ‘And it was nothing. Only, like you said, Lexy, you’re supposed to be able to tell who someone is from the targeted junk they come in for.’

&n
bsp; ‘But?’ I said.

  ‘I kept getting money-off offers from some rib joint I’d never heard of,’ he said.

  ‘A barbecue restaurant?’ I said. ‘That seems pretty mild.’ What I was really thinking was that Brandeee, with her twice-yearly sex weekends, was lucky she wasn’t getting free poles delivered in return for testimonials. I didn’t understand why Bran cared so much about a downmarket eatery. But then I didn’t understand why Bran cared so much about a lot of things: like the fact that driving your car put miles on it and someone might see the high number and judge you; or the fact that if I shopped in the thrift store in Cuento I might meet the original owner of my new dress at a party; or the fact that if you asked the gardener to use a rake instead of a leaf blower because you had a hangover and the noise was killing you, the neighbours would think he was a friend doing you a favour and conclude that you couldn’t afford a gardener because you were a failure, with second-hand clothes and a shameful odometer, a disgrace to the American dream.

  I stood. ‘Try not to worry,’ I said. ‘And for God’s sake, have a shower. Imagine if Brandeee walks back in and you’re sitting there like Worzel Gummidge.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Pigpen.’

  ‘Right,’ he said. ‘But what if the phone rings when I’m in the shower?’

  ‘Have a bath.’

  ‘OK,’ he said.

  ‘And don’t eat any more pizza. What if Brandeee comes back and you’re all bloated and disgusting and she takes one look at you and leaves again?’

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘I know you’re trying to be kind. In your own cruel way.’

  We shared a smile. It would have been a hug, if he hadn’t been giving off actual waves of stink, like Pepé Le Pew.

  Back at the Last Ditch, the office, launderette, Todd’s room, Devin’s room and Della’s room were all deserted. So I squelched my way round the back to the slough, which was a lot bigger than it had been that morning – completely over its banks, so it looked like a Louisiana swamp with the bushes and scrub trees half-submerged, and the water the colour of bad instant coffee with Carnation milk in.