Summer of the Dead

by Julia Keller

  While Rhonda and Bell methodically relocated a toy xylophone, the scattered accoutrements of a Barbie Country Camper, a seriously warped copy of Goodnight Moon that looked as if it had been dropped repeatedly in a wading pool and then left to dry in the yard, a colored-on Candy Land game board, a plastic pail and shovel, an upside-down carton of baby wipes, a sparkly tiara, and dozens of tiny sticks and sprockets from an Erector Set, Tiffany watched them. She lit a cigarette. She lifted her shoulders as she acquired a passionate lungful. Blew it out in a rich plume. Then she waved away the smoke with a spasm of impatience, as if somebody else had produced it.

  “You all want sumpin’ to drink?” she said. She sat down across from them, on a wooden chair that didn’t match any other furniture in the room. “I got Mountain Dew and Pabst.” She was barefoot, and wore cutoff shorts and a sleeveless pink blouse. Her arms and legs were very thin and looked, Bell thought, a lot like the sticks in the Erector Set they’d just relocated.

  “We’re fine,” Bell answered. Rhonda nodded, backing her up.

  “Okay, well. Guinivere’ll be getting up after while. She sleeps pretty late. Still don’t understand what happened to her daddy. Asks about him all the time. I just say, ‘He’s with Jesus.’ Figure that’ll cover it pretty good. Till she’s older.” Tiffany shrugged and leaned forward, utilizing the orange plastic ashtray on the glass-topped coffee table. The glass was smudged with dozens of overlapping fingerprints and a long-ago spill of something brown and thick that had hardened into a kidney-shaped glaze.

  “We’re very sorry for your loss,” Bell said. “How long had you and Jed been married?”

  “Three years is all. We was together a long time before that, though. Years and years. Tied the knot when I knew I was having Guinivere.”

  “Pretty name,” Rhonda said.

  “It’s from Camelot. She was the queen. The one married to King Arthur, till she ruint it all by falling in love with the wrong guy.” Tiffany grinned, an act that revealed the unfortunate fate of the majority of her teeth. “Trouble is,” she went on, “my mama keeps callin’ her Gwen when we’re out in public. Which makes people think I named her after Gwen Stefani. As if.” Energized by outrage, she took another long suck on her cigarette. She exhaled and then flailed again at the smoke, as if still mystified about its origins.

  “Well,” Rhonda said, “you can set them straight.”

  Tiffany nodded. “And so can Guinivere, once she’s old enough. She’ll speak up for herself. Gonna be a good strong girl. Go her own way. Just like her daddy. He never took no shit from nobody.”

  Bell noticed how easily Tiffany had adopted the past tense. And she noticed, too, the total absence of anything resembling grief in the young woman’s breezy demeanor. Yet Bell always cautioned her staff not to read too much into an individual’s response to the loss of a loved one, and never to assume that it implied complicity in a homicide. Shock could make some people seem indifferent, even callous. Everyone grieved in her or his own way.

  Still, Tiffany’s response was a bit surprising. This woman had just lost her husband, the father of her child, and presumably the family’s sole breadwinner—and lost him in a silly bar fight, to boot, inspired by his pursuit of another woman—and she seemed relaxed and casual. Not even especially perturbed. Was it significant? Hell if I know, Bell thought. But maybe it’s time I found out.

  “As I said, Mrs. Stark, I’m the prosecutor over in Raythune County. I was sorry to hear about your husband’s passing. Wanted to know more about him. How’d he make his living?”

  “Little of this, little of that.”

  “So he didn’t have regular employment?”

  “Not Jed.” Pride flashed in Tiffany’s voice. “He said he was too smart for that. Too smart to work for somebody else and break his back all day long so’s they’d get the profit and he’d get nothing but the scraps. He wasn’t no fool.”

  Rhonda scooted forward on the couch. She’d sensed where Bell was heading and wanted to help steer. “So how’d he support you and Guinivere? I mean—” Rhonda leaned over and picked up a plush lime green tyrannosaurus from the floor in front of the couch and waved it in the air, smiling. “—how’d he pay for all these cute toys you got here for your little girl? If you don’t mind my asking?”

  “Errands.”

  They waited. When Tiffany didn’t go on, Rhonda said, “Errands? Like, what kind of errands?”

  “Well, you know. Somebody needed something taken somewhere. Or picked up. Or somebody needed to send a message to somebody else—like, ‘Back off’ or ‘Gimme what’s mine.’ Or whatever. See, Jed was real good at doing what needed to be done. No questions asked. I mean—sure, he’d get hisself in trouble sometimes. He couldn’t pass a bar without stopping in for a cold one. But he took care of business. Believe you me.” With a forward bolt and a hard tap, Tiffany eliminated the lagging ash from her cigarette. She perched her cheek on the hand that held it, and the frowsy smoke headed into her hair.

  “So what kind of errand was he doing for Sampson Voorhees?” Bell said.

  “Who?”

  “Voorhees. His business card was found in your husband’s belongings. He’s an attorney based in New York City.”

  “Voorhees. Voorhees.” Tiffany, thinking hard, scrunched up her face. Shook her head. “Nope. Never hearda that name. No, ma’am.”

  “There was another name on the card, too,” Bell said. “Looked like your husband had written it himself, maybe to remember it. Odell Crabtree.”

  Tiffany, pulling her hand away from her cheek, studied the tip of the cigarette. She crossed her right leg over her left knee. Before that, she’d had her left leg crossed over her right knee. “That one don’t ring no bell, neither. Sorry, folks. Sorry you made your trip for nothin’.”

  “So you have no idea what your husband’s last job was about—or who it was for?” Bell said.

  “Nope.”

  “He didn’t mention Voorhees? Or Crabtree? Say, before he left home that night?”

  “Not a peep.”

  “And you didn’t—?”

  Before Bell could finish her sentence, Tiffany was up on her feet again, leaning over and mashing what was left of her cigarette into the ashtray. “Look, I got stuff to do, okay? I told you what I know—which ain’t much—and now I gotta get some cleaning done before Guinivere gets up. If you all don’t mind—”

  “Mama.”

  All three turned toward the sound, a kittenish mew as much as a word. Guinivere stood in the doorway of the trailer’s sole bedroom, tiny face blurred with recent sleep, blond hair mussed and matted. She wore white shorts at least a size and a half too big—hand-me-downs from an older relative, Bell guessed—and a T-shirt with FUTURE HEARTBREAKER printed across a pair of plump red lips.

  “Baby! You come on over here, honey, and let Mommy hold you.” Tiffany spread out her arms and waited for her daughter, still dazed with sleep, to stumble forward. Tiffany then scooped up the warm bundle of limbs and torso and hair and fell back into the chair, nuzzling the girl’s nose with her own. “How’s my baby? How’s mommy’s little punkin?”

  “What a sweetie,” Rhonda said, nodding and smiling. “Just like an angel.” There was a note of gushing in her tone that irritated Bell—until she realized it was entirely strategic. “Tell me something, Tiffany,” Rhonda went on. Her voice had dropped to a just-between-us hush. “I don’t mean to pry, but—aren’t you just the teensiest little bit worried about keeping up payments on the trailer and making a nice home for that precious little child? Now that’s Jed gone—well, I’m right concerned for the two of you. If you have to get a job, then who’s going to watch her during the—?”

  Tiffany’s interruption came in a blaze. “Don’t you worry ’bout me. I’m fine. Okay? Gonna be just fine. Both of us. Got it all taken care of.”

  “Really.” Rhonda looked mildly skeptical and gave Tiffany a chance to add to her explanation. Nothing was forthcoming.

  “Yeah,” T
iffany finally said. “Really. We’re gonna be fine. Told you that. Got lots of help, matter of fact.”

  The little girl squirmed in her lap, struggling to sit upright. “Mama.”

  “Hold on, honey,” Tiffany replied to her child. “Mama’s saying good-bye to these nice ladies. Then you can have some cereal, how ’bout it?”

  “But, Mama—”

  “I said hold on!” Tiffany snapped, giving her a hasty shake.

  Bell nodded at Rhonda, and they rose from the couch. Time to go. At this point, they were only annoying Tiffany, riling her up. Bell didn’t want to think about how that annoyance might manifest itself later, when it was just mother and child—with nobody around to witness the end results of Tiffany’s temper.

  “Mama,” Guinivere said, her soft voice still slurred with sleep, “these ladies gonna visit? When we go to our new house?”

  Bell and Rhonda looked at Tiffany.

  “Mama?” the little girl persisted, wriggling and shifting. “Them comin’ to our new house?”

  Tiffany patted her daughter’s head. Short, nervous pats. “Shhh, sweetness. Don’t know. You be quiet now.” Her eyes flicked up to their faces. “Was thinkin’ about moving. That’s all. Nothing’s for sure yet.”

  Silence ensued. It seemed to merge with the heat, consolidating into a single oppressive force that pressed down on the surroundings.

  “New house,” Bell said. She glanced around the cramped trailer. “That’ll be nice. Glad you can afford it. I guess Jed had a good life insurance policy, huh?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s the name of the company that issued the policy?”

  “Don’t remember.”

  “How about the agent?”

  “Don’t remember that, neither.”

  “You’ve got records, though, right?”

  Tiffany shrugged.

  Bell said, “Could you check for us?”

  “No.” Something else moved into Tiffany’s voice, something darker. “You gotta go now. Need to take care of my little girl. Get her some lunch, okay? That okay by you all? Case you missed it, I’m her mama. I’m responsible.” Tiffany didn’t look at them. Instead she focused on the child in her lap, cuddling her, cooing at her, murmuring to her: “There’s a good girl. There’s mama’s sweet little girl.”

  They let themselves out.

  * * *

  Before they even reached the hard road, Bell had split up the list. “I’ll pay a call on Odell Crabtree and see how he figures into all of this,” she said, “and I’d like you to track down any recent payments into any bank accounts belonging to Tiffany Stark. From a life insurance company—or from any other source.” A source, Bell elaborated, such as someone who might want to buy Tiffany’s silence about the precise nature of what had turned out to be Jed Stark’s final assignment. “Got to find an explanation for the fact that someone as poor as Tiffany Stark—with a child to raise—is so cavalier about future expenses,” Bell concluded. “And ready to move into a brand-new house.”

  “Gotcha.”

  Bell didn’t have a subpoena, of course, to compel a bank officer or anyone else to provide the information. But she didn’t need a subpoena.

  Not when she had Rhonda Lovejoy.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Bell’s dreams could be frantic and unsettling. Often she had trouble falling asleep, and her dreams, when they finally came, had to do their work in a hurry. Thus they were as cold and abrupt as a drive-by shooting. Drive-by dreams—that was how she thought of them. They were black-hearted marauders who hardly paused long enough to do anything but spread panic, disorder, and dread. And then they were gone again.

  This dream, though, was wonderful. It was languid and golden; it was a dream that made her feel warm and safe. She sensed Clay Meckling stretched out there beside her. They’d been lovers for only a few months, but she missed him—God, she missed him—and missing him was a dull ache that she never acknowledged during daylight hours, and the pain went away only during dreams like this one, beautiful dreams, dreams that wrapped her up and—

  “Goddamn you to fucking hell.”

  Bell, jolted awake by the words, felt herself being dragged toward the side of the bed. The room was dark and someone was pulling at the sheets, pulling hard and fast, and she was skidding over the edge. She tore at the fabric, trying to hang on, dangling for a second or so, but then she hit the floor with an ugly whump. Pain shot up her side. The words continued to pour down on her:

  “You goddamned fucking bitch. You had no right. No right, do you hear me? It’s my fucking life. Mine. Got that?”

  Bell still couldn’t see a thing, but there was no doubt about who loomed up there, flinging obscenities. When Shirley paused, needing a breath, Bell grabbed the chance to speak.

  “What the hell?”

  “You bitch. You bitch.” Now Shirley began to pace around the room, repeating the two words in a low-pitched snarl.

  Bell’s first instinct was to respond in violent kind—to grope for her sister’s leg and pull her down, as if she were eight years old again, and she and Shirley were quarreling, wrestling, settling their differences with kicks and slaps and opportunistic yanks of hair.

  She forced herself to calm down. The floor was hard, but it was also cool, cooler than her bed. She pushed the heels of her hands in her eye sockets. “Jesus,” Bell said. “What time is it?”

  Shirley stopped pacing. “I don’t have a fucking clue what time it is. And I don’t care. You know what, Belfa? You really screwed me over this time. Hope you’re happy. Hope you’re just tickled pink. Finally, finally, things were starting to go right for me. Matter of fact, they were going really great. And then you go behind my back and stick your big fat fucking nose in my business, and now—”

  She stopped.

  Silence. The sharp point of Shirley’s anger had broken off like a pencil tip. Bell could sense it. This was another of her sister’s sudden swerves. Another emotional U-turn from rage to blankness.

  “Hey,” Bell said. She tried to sound lighthearted. “Give me a hand here, so I can get off the damned floor. Unless I broke something in the fall.” She reached up. At first, there was no response. Then she felt Shirley’s thin fingers wrapping themselves around her wrist.

  “Easy,” Bell said. She groaned as she rose, staggering a bit before she found her feet. “I’ll say this. You sure know how to make an entrance.” She pulled down the front of her T-shirt, bunched and cockeyed from the dumping.

  Shirley was breathing hard now. In this moment the two of them seemed to belong to different species: Bell, soothing and amiable, trying to dial down the tension in the room; Shirley, distraught, filled with anger and confusion, hoping to get through the next few seconds without doing something unforgivable.

  “You know what, Belfa? It’s all a big pile of shit.” Shirley’s voice was ragged and lost-sounding, as if it had traveled a long way to get here and wore the marks of the road.

  “Could be worse.” Bell was still striving for lightness. “Startle me like that again, and I just might reach for the twelve-gauge I keep under the bed.”

  No response.

  “Come on, then,” Bell said. “Let’s go downstairs. Neither one of us is liable to get much more sleep tonight.”

  Bell made the coffee. The clock on the stove told her that it was just past three on Saturday night. No, she corrected herself. Sunday morning now. Shirley sat at the kitchen table, head down.

  After the trip to Steppe County, Bell had dropped off Rhonda and then put in an afternoon of paperwork. Made a quick trip to Lymon’s Market for some groceries. A quiet evening: First Patsy Cline, then Mozart, on the iPod dock. A cold Rolling Rock. Another. Still no word from Shirley. At 11 P.M. Carla had called, giddy with more details about the internship, which would start next week: She’d live with Sam’s friends, Nigel and Natasha Hetherington, in their home in Central London. “It’s going to be awesome, Mom,” Carla said. Excitement danced in her voice. “
I’ll text you every day. Twice a day! With lots of pictures. Swear. And we can Skype.”

  A little past midnight, Bell had gone to bed. And then, a few hours later, she was awakened by an angry, flailing woman whose towering rage had now fallen back into an almost catatonic sadness.

  Shirley stared at her hands. Her flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, was wet with sweat; it stuck to her back. Her gray hair was brittle and frayed-looking, and her eyes were pink and swollen. She started to light a cigarette but stopped before the lighter came to life, and then she swiped away the pack, the lighter, the ashtray, from the section of the kitchen table in front of her, all in one fed-up gesture.

  “Okay,” Bell said, turning around. “Ready in a jiff.” The coffeemaker was popping and wheezing and fussing, as was its custom. Sounds like an old man blowing his nose, Carla always said. And Bell always replied, Gross. And then they’d both laugh.

  It really did sound like an old man blowing his nose. Bell shook her head. God, she missed Carla. Was there any end, she wondered, to missing people?

  She sat down. She was surprised at herself, frankly, for not being more pissed off at Shirley. Waking her up like that, pulling her out of bed, was a shitty thing to do. The reason didn’t matter. It was shitty, plain and simple.

  Bell touched her sister’s skinny forearm. Then she took her hand away again, because she knew Shirley well, as well as she knew herself, which meant she also knew this: a touch was okay as long as it didn’t go on too long. Shirley’s smell was not fresh, but nor was it definitely bad. She smelled like cigarettes and perspiration and earth. She smelled like some of the people who came into Bell’s office in the course of a day, country people, the ones who didn’t have an appointment; something bad had happened to them and they needed help. A husband or wife had run off, a neighbor had stolen something, a child might or might not be involved in drugs. Can’t you investigate? Can’t you make it better? Can’t you do that? Ain’t that your job? Ain’t you the law? These were people who worked with their bodies all day, every day, and there was a certain kind of sweat that never came out of a garment or out of a life, no matter how often you tried to wash it. Just didn’t. That was how Shirley smelled.