Detour

by Lorena McCourtney

  “Well, that is skunk cabbage down by the creek, and I can smell it. But I have a more sensitive sense of smell than most people.” She sniffed as if to give a demonstration of that superior talent. BoBandy sniffed back, taking a good whiff of her feet. “But I was mostly thinking about how the parking lot is all run down and poor old Tricky has lost part of a horn.” She gave Mac a sideways glance, and I had the unexpected feeling she wanted to say something else but not in Mac’s presence.

  He saw it too. With admirable insight, he jumped up. “If you ladies will excuse me, I think it’s time to take BoBandy out for a walk.” He put on a jacket and briskly snapped a leash on BoBandy’s collar.

  Sheila did not instantly provide more derogatory information about Brian after Mac was gone. She talked about her daughter Vivian living down in Las Vegas, Duke’s knee problems, and how the church was having trouble getting accustomed to a pastor’s wife who played drums. I tried to ease her back to the subject of the Morrisons.

  “I keep feeling I know Kathy from somewhere, but she doesn’t seem to recognize me. Or doesn’t want to recognize me,” I added with careful casualness. “Duke told us about how he fell in a hole he’d dug out in the park, and they rescued him. Do you know much about them?”

  “Not really. I’m not even sure where they came from.” Sheila’s forehead creased in a frown. “Kathy has mentioned that Brian is into investments. He spends a lot of time on his laptop, and he tells her he’s looking at investment properties when he jaunts off to Eureka so often. Poor Kathy. She’s so . . . gullible.”

  “Brian said she sometimes has migraines.”

  “Yes, terrible migraines. Although it’s a wonder she doesn’t have them full-time, being married to that man. If I were Kathy, I’d pick up that laptop and whack him over the head with it.”

  I didn’t ask her to elaborate on that. In fact, I was now inclined to back away from this discussion entirely. The conversation felt as if it might be sliding into busybody gossip. We’d been mistaken about Brian coming up with excuses for us not to talk to Duke, and apparently I was just as mistaken in suspecting he’d invented migraines as a way to keep Kathy from having to talk to me again. He didn’t strike me as particularly likeable, but I didn’t want to jump to some other unfair conclusion about him.

  “I had one of Kathy’s very good dinosaur cupcakes earlier,” I said. “I think I’ll ask her for the recipe.”

  Now that Sheila was started on this subject, whatever the subject was, she was not going to be distracted. She lowered her voice. “This hasn’t anything to do with Mac’s article for the magazine. It isn’t for print.”

  I was curious, of course. Being wary of gossip doesn’t, unfortunately, cancel curiosity. But I managed not to ask questions. “Perhaps Duke will feel well enough in the morning to talk to Mac again.”

  “I’ve been thinking I should get Duke a better cell phone,” Sheila said. “That ancient old thing he has now is always dropping calls, and he complains that it doesn’t ring loud enough. He needs something better in case of an emergency.”

  I wasn’t sure what she was getting at. With Duke’s age and health problems, I agreed he needed a reliable form of communication. He might fall out there in the trailer, and the gun hanging by the door wouldn’t do him much good in that kind of emergency. But Sheila almost sounded as if she had some darker emergency or danger in mind. Before I could agree on the need for a better phone, however, Sheila jumped to a different subject. Or perhaps it was the subject she had been headed for all along.

  “The thing is, I’m almost certain Brian has a girlfriend. Well, nothing almost about it. Brian has a girlfriend. She’s a real estate agent in Eureka, Renée Echol. Divorced. Attractive, but pants so tight they look painted on. Necklines so low it’s a wonder she doesn’t trip over them in those stiletto heels she wears.”

  I managed not to make a giveaway glance at the heels on Sheila’s own boots.

  “I’ve been undecided about whether or not to tell Kathy about her. I think she has a right to know, but I don’t want to be a tattletale . . .” Her shoulders lifted in a gesture of vexed dilemma.

  “Kathy said Brian was interested in possible real estate investments in the area.”

  “Yeah, right.” Sheila’s tone made a snide comment on that possibility. “I saw Brian and Renée having lunch together in a back booth at the Red Dragon and they didn’t look as if they were discussing real estate. Not unless she had a property map printed on her neck.”

  I had to admit that neck exploration didn’t sound like a standard way to discuss a real estate investment, but I’m reluctant to think the worst of people. Especially since I’d already been wrong about Brian a couple of times.

  “After lunch I followed them, discreetly, of course, back to her house on the south side of town. Brian was in there over an hour. I don’t think they were discussing real estate.”

  When I didn’t make a comment, Sheila threw her hands in the air, apparently exasperated with my denseness. “Ivy, the man is a sleaze. He’s cheating on his wife, and who knows what kind of con game he’s playing with Duke? I think he wants the dinosaur park, though I don’t know why. And Renée Echol is a sleaze too. They were together in The Fisherman’s Retreat one evening. That’s a bar in Arcata, not some therapy organization where fishermen gather to discuss the psychological problems of men at sea,” she added with sarcastic emphasis.

  I have to admit I immediately wondered what Sheila was also doing at a bar in Arcata, but maybe they had exceptionally good french fries or fried fish, so all I said was, “You didn’t want Mac to know about this?”

  She gave an exaggerated shrug. “You know how men tend to stick together. I figured he’d say it was none of my business. Although I had a run-in with Renée myself a while back.”

  “About her relationship with Brian?”

  “No, it was before I knew about that. Actually, at one time, Renée and I were fairly good friends. We met at a health club where we both worked out. Sometimes we went out for lunch after a workout session, or maybe a drink in the evening. But then another friend wanted to sell her house in Eureka, and I recommended Renée as a real estate agent. The house didn’t sell, and when a very lowball offer from some out-of-town buyer came in, Renée advised her to take it.”

  I raised my eyebrows, waiting for the connection.

  “Lexie took the offer and moved down to Modesto. Purely by accident, I found out Renée wound up owning the house. She’d just used someone as a front to get the place for herself at a bargain price. She’s using it as a rental now.”

  “That sounds rather unethical. Maybe even illegal.”

  “Right. And I was appalled that she’d done something like that to my friend. I called Lexie and told her she should sue the socks off Renée. She said she wasn’t up to getting involved in some big lawsuit and wouldn’t do it. But I was so upset with Renée that I stormed into her real estate office and gave her a piece of my mind.”

  I made some noncommittal murmur.

  “A few other people happened to be there, and Renée started screaming about suing me for defamation of character or libel or mental anguish, some ridiculous thing like that.” Sheila shook her head. “I told her to go ahead, sue me. And then I said, who knows what all might come out if all this got into a courtroom?”

  “You mean about her relationship with Brian?”

  “No. I didn’t know about her and Brian yet. It was just a shot in the dark. I figured someone who’s unethical on one business deal is probably unethical on others. And then she threatened me.”

  “Threatened you?”

  “On weekends I open up my garage and sell a few antiques and whatnots. You know, just a yard sale kind of thing. Renée started yelling about how it was a lot more than a yard sale, that it was an actual business, and I wasn’t complying with zoning and business permit regulations.”

  “A threat, then, that she might turn you in.”

>   “I’m sure what I do is perfectly legal, but she could still make trouble for me.”

  Sheila’s mention of the threat from Renée reminded me of Brian’s grumpy push to get us out of the dinosaur park parking lot. “Brian says we have to be out of the parking lot by tomorrow. County regulations about RV parking.”

  Sheila made an unladylike p-f-f-s-t sound. “You could park here for a month and nobody’d say anything. In fact, you can come park at my place for a month. Or more. Some friends from Texas did it for six weeks last summer. I have five acres, so there’s plenty of room.”

  “Thanks. I appreciate that. But some friends are arriving in their motorhome tomorrow.”

  “Bring them along.” She jumped up abruptly, again managing the spike heels nicely. “I’m half inclined to go over there and tell Kathy about Renée right now,” she declared.

  “Duke said the Morrisons think he should sell the park to them—”

  “Right. At some bargain-basement price, of course.”

  “And then he should marry you.”

  “Oh.” Sheila was obviously a bit taken aback at how she’d been bad-mouthing the Morrisons only to have me tell her they were promoting exactly what she wanted.

  “You don’t know anything more about Brian and Kathy?” Quickly, before she thought I wanted more details about Brian’s possible involvement with a girlfriend, I added, “I mean, how they happened to be going through here or what Brian did before coming here?”

  “Not really. He might have had a business of some kind.” Sheila made a vague gesture, well below her usual dramatic level of expression, and sat down again. More of a plop this time, as if my information about the Morrisons had deflated her.

  “He must be successful,” I suggested. “If his ride is any indication.” I don’t feel quite comfortable with that expression, ride, but grandniece Sandy tells me it’s the word that’s used now.

  “The Porsche?” Sheila said. “Yes, I guess so. Although Kathy has gone into Eureka with me a few times, and she’s always very careful about the price of anything she buys. But maybe Brian limits her to some skimpy household budget. That would be just like him, spend big bucks on that Porsche for himself but make her search for the cheapest paper towels in the store.”

  “Maybe she’s just the thrifty type.” I’m careful about money and probably would look for the best buy on paper towels even if we owned a Porsche. Which I can’t imagine us ever owning. But that’s fine. We have enough. The Lord may not provide all the luxuries magazine and TV ads tell us we should want, but he supplies our needs. “I keep feeling I’ve met Kathy somewhere before. But I can’t remember where, and she says no.” Except for a meeting that never happened at some RV park in Arkansas.

  Sheila unexpectedly went philosophical. “Well, who knows? Maybe they have some big secret in their past. Maybe they’re in that witness protection program or something.”

  Maybe. Or maybe time travelers headed for the dinosaur era but missing their mark and winding up in a deteriorating dinosaur park in the twenty-first century instead.

  “Thanks for the lasagna,” I said when she stood up again.

  “That’s a real invitation to come park your motorhome at my place. It’s not far, just before you get to the church on the other side of the highway.” She noticed the laptop still sitting on the dinette table and added, “You can use my Wi-Fi there too.” She scribbled an address on a piece of paper from a scratch pad in her purse. “Your friends too.”

  “I’ll see what Mac says.”

  *

  Mac, obviously just waiting for Sheila to leave, came inside only a minute after she headed back over to Duke’s trailer. I relayed what she had said about not knowing much more about Kathy and Brian than we did. After hesitating, I also passed along the gossipy information about Brian and a girlfriend. Sheila had said it wasn’t for print, but she hadn’t put any don’t-tell-anybody restrictions on it.

  “Are you thinking we should do something about it?” Mac asked.

  “Not necessarily. But we could check it out, I suppose.”

  Yes, we could do that, I agreed with myself. We could go into town and inquire about available real estate from Renée Echol. We might also ask about food at the Red Dragon and find out if she had an office in her home. We could see how she reacted to information that we were staying at the dinosaur park.

  Then I stiffened my shoulders. No. I may have snooped into a murder or two, but I was not snooping into gossip no matter how tempting it was.

  We ate the salad I’d started, plus Sheila’s soup and lasagna, which was very tasty. Afterward, with the moon shining, Mac suggested we drive down to the cove again.

  I started to ask why, but then I gave myself a mental whack. Walking hand in hand beside a moonlit sea. A sweet, newlywed kind of thing to do, right? And romantic of Mac to suggest it.

  So we drove over to the cove and parked under the same wind-twisted tree. Even though the evening was chilly, we took off our shoes, held hands, and walked along the curve of the cove, the opposite direction from the way we’d gone before. Stars sprinkled the sky, and the moon cast a magic glow over sand and waves and turned a twisted piece of driftwood into a silvered work of art.

  Gazing up at a starlit sky always brings out my thoughts about God along with awe at the immensity of his creation. Is there anyone else out there, Lord? Someone on a planet maybe like ours? The Bible makes no mention of anyone, but the Lord hasn’t necessarily told us everything, has he? He leaves things for us to discover. Quantum physics and the string theory, creatures under the sea and why a hard-boiled egg sometimes just won’t peel. A psalm came to mind.

  What are human beings that you care for them, mere mortals that you think of them? Them meaning us, of course. Me. This peek into the universe of stars in a night sky always does this to me. Why should the Lord care about me in the immensity of all this? But he does. Thank you, Lord! Then Mac interrupted my thoughts.

  “I’ve been thinking about having this tattoo on my arm removed.”

  Chapter 5

  IVY

  “Remove the tattoo?” I’ve had this ongoing curiosity about the tattoo ever since I first saw it. Why a blue motorcycle? Mac has never shown any particular interest in motorcycles, and he’s always been uncommunicative about the tattoo. Which has just made me more curious, of course. Mystery of the Tattoo. “Why remove it?”

  “I’ve been thinking about doing it for a long time.”

  Not exactly an answer to my question, so I asked it again. “Why?”

  He pushed his sleeve back and held his arm up to the moonlight. As always, there it was. A rather classy looking motorcycle, actually, with lots of fine-line detail, especially in the wheels.

  “They can remove tattoos with a laser now. It may take eight or nine treatments, with seven or eight weeks in between treatments, but it can be done.”

  “You’ve checked into this, then.”

  “Yes. Yes, I have.” He nodded. “I checked into it a long time ago, actually, but back then all they could do was try to sand it off or remove the skin surgically. Or you could tattoo over it.”

  Since the tattoo still decorated his arm, that was apparently what he’d done. “The tattoo was something else before it was a motorcycle?”

  “Yes.”

  “Were you a spy with an important message hidden in code in the tattoo? Or maybe a secret messenger for Interpol or the CIA?”

  “No.” He smiled at what he apparently considered my facetious speculations. Although I didn’t necessarily consider them facetious. Mac had lived most of his life before I came along. He knows about dinosaurs, and I never knew that about him. Who knows what intrigues and adventures he may have been involved in that I don’t know about? “I’m afraid the secret of the tattoo is much more mundane than that. As you may have noticed, the wheels are a little close together for a regular motorcycle.”

  Never having paid much attention to spaci
ng of motorcycle wheels, no, I hadn’t noticed. “What was it before?”

  He rubbed the arm as if he’d like to erase the tattoo rather than talk about it. “That’s the embarrassing part. The reason I always avoid talking about it.”

  Okay, as much as I wanted to know, I wasn’t going to push Mac into some awkward admission that made him more uncomfortable than he already was. Though I have to admit, I was instantly curious about why he was so uncomfortable.

  “I was only nineteen when I first got the tattoo. It was just before I went in the navy. A friend—long dead now—and I were enlisting together.” He paused. “Two nineteen-year-old guys who are excited about what they’re about to do, but also a little scared, do not necessarily have the best judgment in the world.”

  “Bad judgment about enlisting in the navy?”

  “Bad judgment about getting tattoos before we became sailors.”

  I surreptitiously tried to see a battleship hidden within the lines of the motorcycle, but I couldn’t. What else would an almost-sailor tattoo on his arm? An anchor? A sea monster? But no reason to be embarrassed by either of those. An old girlfriend’s name? Possibly embarrassing, but I couldn’t see any hint of that in the tattoo, either.

  “My friend Eddie got the back side of the bottom half of a rather curvy woman on his leg.” He swallowed. “A naked back side.”

  I digested that for a moment. I looked at the tattoo again, still not seeing anything. But if friend Eddie had gotten the naked bottom half . . .

  Mac saw my realization dawning. He nodded. “Yes, I also got part of the . . . anatomy of a curvy woman. Front side, top half. See these wheels?” He outlined them with a finger.

  It took me another minute to get the full extent of what he meant. Then I saw it. The full, round shape of the wheels. The less-than-normal distance between them. My swallow was more like a startled gulp. “A very . . . well-endowed top half of the anatomy.” Without any complication of head or arms.

  “Yes. It was that way all the time I was in the navy. After the first few weeks, I was appalled at what I’d done, but about all I could do was cover it with long sleeves whenever I could. Then I got out of the navy and met Marguerite.”