Exit Row

by Judi Culbertson

She went back to the parking lot and unlocked the Explorer. Fastening her seatbelt and looking over the controls, Rosa programmed 454 Margarita Way into the GPS. As soon as she turned onto Washington Avenue, her confidence flooded back. The cheerful English butler’s voice that had guided them to Santa Fe—Greg had called him “Jeeves” and enjoyed mimicking him—took over. Rosa was soon above the city.

  As she drove, she thought about what could have happened to Susan. She lived by herself; what if early Sunday morning, showering and getting ready, she had slipped and fallen? She could be lying unconscious on her bathroom floor! Or she could have locked herself in the bathroom by accident.

  Rosa had heard stories about people who had done that, people who had been unable to break down a jammed bathroom door. The worst story had been about a woman who had been scheduled to leave for Europe the day she locked herself in. She missed her flight and was found starved to death three weeks later.

  After hearing that, Rosa never closed her bathroom door all the way. It was something Susan might not have known about.

  What if Susan had been in her house all this time? People could survive for a while, but it had been nearly a week.

  The drive only took twenty minutes. There was no one in the wooden gatehouse and no impediment to driving in, so Rosa followed Jeeves’s instructions to turn right. She parked the Explorer and moved up the path, past a monkey-puzzle tree set in white stone chunks. A black enameled door was firmly closed and did not yield when Rosa twisted the knob. She tried to look in the metal casement windows, but the glare of the sun was too strong.

  She banged on the door more loudly. Susan, can you hear me? Give a sign! But if she were trapped or unconscious . . .

  Did people leave keys with their neighbors out here? Edging across the grit, she approached an identical stucco house next door. As she moved closer, she thought she heard the smooth voice of a radio commentator coming from the backyard.

  “Hello?” she called, moving to the side with the metal gate. “Hello?”

  After a moment, a woman close to her own age came around the side of the house. Rosa was glad to see her white hair and the expensive, unfashionable light blue Bermuda shorts. My kind of people, Rosa thought.

  The woman smiled graciously.

  “Hello, I’m Rosa Cooper, Susan Allmayer’s editor.” She gave a quick nod toward the house.

  “But what are you doing here? She told me she was going to stay with you in New York. I think I got the name right.”

  “Yes, you did. But she never got there.”

  “She never got to New York?” The woman unlatched the gate quickly and brought Rosa to a small patio with a white iron table and chairs. A man, also in his seventies, was sitting with a cup in one hand, reading the newspaper.

  “Frank, this is Rosa Cooper, Susan’s editor. Susan never got there!” She turned to Rosa. “I bet you’d like some coffee.”

  “I’d kill for coffee.”

  Frank laughed and pulled out a seat at the table for her. “What did Alice mean about Susan?”

  Rosa waited until Alice was back. “I went to the airport to meet her plane Sunday, but she wasn’t on it. I haven’t heard a word since, and I’m really worried!”

  “Of course you are,” Alice said warmly. “She’s such a wonderful person. But we haven’t seen her since Sunday either.”

  Rosa took a long sip of coffee. It was strong and black.

  “I know she never would have missed Good Morning America. We watched, but she wasn’t on,” Alice said.

  “Could it have something to do with her book?” Frank asked. “Someone she may have antagonized?”

  “I never thought of anything like that,” Rosa admitted. “She’s interviewed a lot of criminals, but most of them are already in jail.”

  “Maybe she had a relapse,” Alice said. “She got to the airport and didn’t feel well enough to fly after all.”

  “A relapse of what?” Susan hadn’t mentioned having the flu.

  “You know. Her health issues.” Alice gave her an urgent, appealing look, as if she did not want to have to talk about them.

  “What health issues do you mean?”

  Alice sighed. “Sue has stage-four liver cancer. She’s fighting it, but I know it’s spread. She’s in so much pain, I don’t know how she stands it. Some mornings she can’t even get out of bed.”

  “Are you kidding? She never told me! Why didn’t she tell me?” Was she the kind of person people didn’t confide in?

  “She said she didn’t want it to interfere with publicizing her book.”

  Now it was more important than ever to get in the house. “Do you have a key?”

  “Of course. We water the plants and check if there’s anything suspicious. Not that there ever is.” She pushed up from the table and disappeared, but was back immediately.

  She held out a key threaded with a blue ribbon. “Do you want Frank to come with you?”

  “Yes, please.” Now besides locked bathroom doors, there was the real worry that Susan might have collapsed.

  They passed between the two yards, and Frank unlocked the door for Rosa.

  When Susan had turned fifty four years ago and mentioned moving into this community, Rosa was skeptical. “Why would you want to shut yourself off with a lot of old people?”

  “It’s not that way. You wouldn’t understand, but I’m a woman by myself. I need good neighbors and my mod cons.”

  And if everyone was as nice as Alice and Frank, Rosa could understand the appeal.

  The living room was dim and quiet, with nothing out of place. It might have been in a model home.

  Susan’s kitchen was bright from the skylights set into the roof. Strings of chiles, garlic, and dried flowers were everywhere. A bay-leaf wreath hung above the sink, and invitations and New Yorker cartoons were magnetized to the refrigerator. Rosa guessed that the shelves inside would be tidy and nearly bare except perhaps for jars of imported mustard and a bottle of white wine. She thought of her own refrigerator crammed with odd condiments and restaurant meal leftovers that didn’t seem as appealing the next day.

  The only room in any disarray was the office off the master bedroom, and that was because it was piled with books and file folders. On the desk was a state-of-the-art computer system and a laser printer. Next to it was the one-volume edition of the Oxford English Dictionary with its magnifying glass dome sitting on top. Susan claimed that the online dictionaries were for the verbally challenged.

  Rosa was suddenly anxious to check the bathroom. She looked for it and saw that the door was ominously shut. Her heart beating fast, Rosa twisted the knob and pushed the white-painted door back, then stared into the room. There was no one inside. She gave a quick glance at the fluffy white towels and plants grouped under the skylight, feeling her heart drop as she understood how badly she had wanted to find Susan here, weak but alive.

  Returning her attention to the bedroom, she found it model-home neat as well, except for a carry-on suitcase sitting open in the center of the bed. Rosa moved toward it and looked inside. Piles of neatly folded clothes, and on top a black Chanel jacket and ecru blouse.

  Rosa knew it was Chanel because Susan was planning to wear it on Good Morning America.

  She turned to Frank suddenly. “How was Susan planning to get to the airport?”

  He chuckled. “That was a bone of contention. We thought she should take a limo to Taos, but she was determined to drive. She said it would cost a fortune to hire a cab, and they weren’t that reliable.”

  “So I’ve heard. We could see whether her car’s here or not.”

  “Good idea! She always keeps it in the garage. I don’t have the opener, but I doubt it’s locked.”

  The garage was not locked. Frank pulled the door up, and they stared at the silver Toyota Camry centered in its space. Rosa was the one who noticed the black plastic bag stuffed in the exhaust pipe.

  She rushed to the passenger side. Susan was slumped against the steering
wheel, her dark curly hair hiding her face. Rosa didn’t try to separate and identify the terrible odors coming through the window. I’m not seeing this. This is not real.

  “It’s locked,” Frank said from the driver’s side.

  But Rosa was looking down at a note on the passenger seat, printed large and angled so it could be easily read: “I can’t pretend anymore. This is getting worse.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  THE CAMPBELL FAMILY vacation was progressing as their vacations always did—a fact Ed never seemed to remember when he was ensconced in his study in the deep Minnesota winter, making plans.

  “Come on, Dad. Not another ghost town!”

  “Yeah. We’re never gonna get to the Grand Canyon.”

  Ed pushed up his glasses and stared in wonder at the abandoned buildings. “Sure we are. That’s on next week’s schedule. This will be the last one for today. And then we’ll find a nice motel with a pool.”

  He hadn’t plotted out this trip to have the best parts over in five minutes. Marysville was supposed to be exceptional. “Amy, you tell us about this one.”

  His daughter rolled her eyes as her mother handed over the copy of Lost Mines of Colorado. “I don’t even know where we are!”

  Ed flipped up the hinged sunglass lenses on his bifocals and peered over the seat to look at the guide. “It should be under Marysville. Or Baldy Mountain. There.”

  The two younger boys ghost-punched each other as their sister skimmed the text.

  “Gold was discovered here in 1866,” Amy announced. “Something new and different. They had a newspaper, a drugstore, one church, and three dance halls.”

  “No feed store?” Ed asked genially, ignoring her tone.

  “It doesn’t say.”

  “With a population of over five thousand? They most likely did.”

  “Oh, this is interesting.” She began to read aloud. “ ‘After a while, Marysville residents began to whisper about travelers who stopped overnight at Kearney’s Log Inn and were never seen again. Travelers who arrived at Questa raved about the meat they had been served. But it wasn’t until Mrs. Kearney—’ ”

  “Amy, I don’t think this is something we need to hear.” The legend of cannibalism was coming back to him now. “What does it say about total mining wealth produced?”

  She was ready for him. “Over four million dollars. ‘But it wasn’t until Mrs. Kearney arrived in M-ville claiming that her husband had robbed and killed sixteen travelers, and eaten two of her children who annoyed him’ ”—Amy turned a significant gaze on her brothers—“ ‘that authorities were persuaded to—’ ”

  “You’re making that part up,” Timmy cried.

  “Am not. Anyway,” she started to skim the text before her father could snatch back the book. “They put him on trial, but people were too scared to convict him, so a posse dragged him out of jail and hanged him at night. And you know what?”

  Ed sighed. “What?”

  “They sent his skeleton to the Smithsonian.”

  Ed’s wife laughed. “They must have wanted to analyze the protein content.”

  “Give me the book!” Ed held out his hand to Amy.

  “Why can’t we get out?” the younger boy whined. “You never let us get out.”

  “Don’t you want to learn something about what you’re seeing first?”

  “No!” Both back car doors opened, and the children pushed free.

  “A lot of the wood from these buildings was burned by residents during harsh winters,” Ed told his wife sadly.

  “There’s still a lot of the town left.”

  “I know, but it’s not what it was. In 1936, they tunneled right through Baldy Mountain looking for the mother lode. They never found it.”

  “You’re sure it’s safe for them to be poking around in there?”

  “They know better than to touch anything.” But it gave him the excuse not to delay his pleasure any longer. Picking up his camera, Ed visually restored windows, chimneys, and hitching posts, and peopled the streets with miners and farmers. He imagined an earlier version of himself as a parson in a string tie. Here was history in the raw, a town untouched by archeologists.

  At the end of the main street, he turned the corner and saw the remains of a tall brick building with an ornamental plaster facade of ears of corn. Beyond it was the white church he was interested in. He was surprised to see wooden sawhorses like police barriers arranged across the dusty road in front of both buildings. What was going on?

  As he hesitated, his younger son came running to meet him. “Daddy, that church made Tim sick.”

  “I thought I told you never to go inside!” It was the structures that needed protection, not his children.

  “We didn’t. We just snuck around to the back.”

  Ed moved closer as Amy came out of a side alley and joined them. A sweet, putrid smell drifted toward them on the dry air.

  “Mr. Kearney’s been at it again,” Amy said. “And Tim upchucked.”

  “He threw up? Where is he?”

  “I’m here.” Tim appeared suddenly, looking greenish. “Dad, there are people in that church.”

  “Are you okay?” He put his hand on Tim’s shoulder. “Go back to the car and take it easy. All of you.”

  Ed had come across these New Age gatherings before. The white wooden church was almost intact, after all. That explained the sawhorses and the two vehicles parked outside, a large black truck with a design on the door and a vintage pink-and-white Cadillac. Probably they were burning some kind of horrible incense that upset Tim’s stomach. Ed hoped it wasn’t meant to cover the stench of animals being sacrificed.

  Before the children could leave, the door of the truck pushed open and a young man stepped out. He had a bland, open face and was dressed neatly in jeans, but his holster and gun made Ed feel uneasy.

  Still, his voice was good-natured. “Can I help y’all with something?”

  “Oh, no. We’re just poking around.”

  “You have permission?”

  “Permission? No . . . ”

  “This is private property.” The blue eyes were a little chalky now. “The owners don’t want people on the property. Liability and all that. You break a leg, y’know?”

  “Oh, but we wouldn’t sue anyone. Can’t I just take a few pictures?”

  But the man was slowly shaking his head no, pendulum style. The way he seemed to be enjoying the situation made Ed more uncomfortable. Why hadn’t the guidebook said anything about needing permission?

  “Are you having some kind of meeting inside?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Where do I get permission?”

  “Not sure.”

  “Okay, we’ll go. But I’ll be back. Come on, kids.”

  “You have a nice day now,” the man called to their backs. It sounded as if he were hoping for something else.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  “THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT being out here that makes you see things in a different way,” Dominick said. He and Fiona were leaving the tiny town of Chimayo and climbing into the mountains again. To their left, the cliffs in the distance looked like abandoned dwellings. With a lyricism she hadn’t known existed in him, Dominick had insisted they take the scenic road to Taos and had rhapsodized ever since.

  “There’s a whole different look out here,” he continued, lifting his hands from the wheel to outline it. “All these orange buildings and flat roofs. Who knew there was anything like this in America? You start seeing details like carvings and—what did you call them?—vigas?”

  Fiona nodded. He must be one of those people who could compartmentalize the different parts of their lives so that one thing did not spill over and color anything else. Dominick’s worry about his daughter could be kept in one place while he enjoyed what he was seeing. It was true that Fiona had stopped checking her phone every few minutes—there had been nothing from Lee since that one message and her flurry of frantic responses—but she was
seeing the world through a gray scrim.

  “You don’t seem very worried about your daughter.”

  He looked over, picking up the criticism in her voice. “What worries me is Coral in Mexico, with all the crime you hear about. I’m worried her mother might not send her home. Who knows where Eve’s head is these days.”

  “But you’re not worried about the plane? I know, I know.” She held up a hand. “You don’t think anything happened.”

  They were passing a tiny cemetery by the side of the road. White wooden crosses were crudely painted with black names and hung with artificial flowers and rosaries. A hot-pink plastic rabbit with a buck-toothed grin stood on one grave mound.

  Death was everywhere.

  Every few minutes she checked the side-view mirror. Leaving Santa Fe, there had been a black sedan behind them for several miles, but once they were on Route 84 it had disappeared. But she had already told Will Dunlea they were headed for Taos.

  Dominick pointed out a small corrugated-roofed house, its plaster walls painted a garish pink, and marveled, “Can you imagine something like that on Long Island?”

  “No, but it’s okay out here. People use whatever’s available.”

  “Even junk.”

  You’ve been servicing McMansions too long.

  They passed through a series of tiny towns—Oja Sarco, Las Trampas, Chamisal—names Fiona didn’t bother to translate to herself. The homes here were mostly trailers and one-story brick boxes, a few with stuffed chairs out front. No niceties of indoor-outdoor furniture.

  The road began to wind through the mountains again, through green alpine meadows that made her think of New England. Gradually, fields of yellow and white flowers and stalky pines gave way to hillsides of fat green junipers.

  “I could live out here.” Dominick glanced at his hands on the steering wheel as if to judge whether they would work as well in New Mexico. “At least for part of the year. If Eve wants to be out here, it could work.”

  What about the power mower? “How long have you been married?”

  “Married?” He slowed for a blinking light. “Twelve years. Eve’s my second wife.”