Summer of the Dead

by Julia Keller

  “Daddy?”

  Lindy stood up abruptly from the kitchen chair. She’d heard a sound, a faint scuffling. Couldn’t tell what it was. Then she heard another sound, and this time it was a familiar one: the stomp of her father’s boots on the basement stairs. He was coming up.

  She waited, counting the steps in her head. Watched the basement door slowly open.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she said to the grizzled gray head that poked out sideways from behind the wood slab. Bloodshot eyes blinked at her, bleary and unresponsive. “Got the night off tonight,” she added. “You want something to eat? I can make you some food. No trouble.”

  He grunted. Pulled his head behind the door again, like a turtle going back in its shell. The door closed. She counted the steps as the boots clomped back down, the sounds growing marginally fainter. The counting was a habit now. One … two … three … four … five … When she got to fifteen, the steps stopped. He was back home again.

  Why had he come up? Did he think she’d left for work—and so now he could go out? Out to do whatever it was he did in the dark? She didn’t know, and she found the possibility so troubling that she pushed it out of her thoughts.

  Time to return to the letters.

  * * *

  The next batch had been sent at intervals of several months and, at one stretch, more than two years. They were all about this Maybelle person’s school days. She hated the new school. Hated the teachers. Hated the other kids. She missed Raythune County, missed her friends, missed her best friend Maggie. She’d thought about killing herself but couldn’t figure out how to do it efficiently; she was afraid of messing up. I don’t want to be some kind of vegetable, Maybelle wrote. That would be totally TOTALLY gross.

  The eleventh letter was dated February 6, 1992. The handwriting was different now. Little more than a scribble. It wiggled across the page, as if the writer was being called from another room and had to finish up quickly. Or maybe she was just distracted:

  Margaret,

  Okay, I hear what you’re saying. And no, I’m not mad. Okay? Really. You have a right to your opinion. But you know what? It’s my life, okay? My life. Maybe you could remember that, next time you feel like lecturing me. Okay?

  The letter was signed M. Just M. Lindy turned it over and then back again, to see if there was any more to it, but no.

  There were two more letters in the same vein—Don’t tell me what to do, it’s MY life—along with a few lines congratulating Margaret on her upcoming marriage. Maybelle made fun of the fiancé’s name, asking Margaret if she was going to mind having the nickname “Crabby,” because that was surely in the cards. Maybelle also made fun of how much Margaret read: You and that Anne What’s-her-face Lindbergh. Jesus. That’s all you talk about these days. Her and her books. All that shit about seashells and listening and gifts. BOR-R-R-RING! Who the hell cares about HER, anyway? HE’S the one who’s famous!!

  The final note, dated March 19, 1994, apparently was a response to something important that Margaret had written, an offer of some kind:

  You’re the best friend anybody ever had. I mean it. I’ll never, ever forget this. Not as long as I live. I’m in a real bad spot and there’s nobody else I can turn to. I know you’ll keep my secret. I know it. I also know that I don’t deserve a friend like you. I really don’t. And I’ll make it worth your while. You know I will, right? You can trust me, Maggs, just like I trust you.

  Look there. I called you Maggs, just like when we were kids. I miss those days. Everything was simple then. Nothing’s simple now. Everything is so goddamned complicated. I don’t know what I’d do without your help. I’d be lost. I’d be—well, I can’t even think about it.

  M.

  And that was it. The last letter.

  Lindy sat back in her chair. She’d had to strain to read the pages, especially the later ones, the ones with the minuscule, hurried-looking handwriting, and she rubbed her eyes. She couldn’t remember when she’d last gotten a personal letter. Everybody used e-mail to communicate now. Or texting. But there was something so warm and extraordinary about handwritten letters. They were actual, not virtual. They had shape. Took up space. All e-mails looked the same; they showed up on a computer screen and they left that way, too. Even if you printed them out, they still looked all the same. But each of these letters was distinctive. Lindy wished she had the other side of the correspondence—the notes her mother had written to this Maybelle person—but these were better than nothing. Her mother had touched each one, page by page. And that was enough.

  Margaret Crabtree had never mentioned a friend named Maybelle. But it was clear that these letters had meant a great deal to her. She’d put them away in a private place. They were not part of the surge and drift and heave of accumulated stuff with which the house had been blocked and swamped all these years. And maybe her mother, on those rare occasions when she was alone in the house, had reached toward that special spot under the dresser, the one that only she knew about, and drew out the blue and silver box and read and reread these letters, just as Lindy was doing now. And maybe they made her happy. Lindy hoped so.

  She envisioned her mother at nineteen. Her own age. Lindy imagined her mother holding each letter at exactly the same spot Lindy held it, thumb on the margin, sometimes using an index finger to follow a squiggly, hard-to-decipher line as it kinked its way across the fragile page. Lindy wondered if her mother at that age had been filled with the same kind of directionless longing that burned in her, filled with a restlessness that was like a fine powder riding atop every thought and gesture and ambition, like dust from a dandelion gone to seed, the kind of flower that you blow upon with your eyes closed, fist tight around the stem, fiercely dreaming.

  Chapter Twenty-six

  “They give you any trouble out at the gate?”

  They had, but Bell hated to admit it, and so she didn’t. She shrugged. “Not too much,” she replied to Sharon’s question.

  Truth was, the two bastards in their tight black T-shirts and black jeans had accosted her the moment she rolled up to the front entrance of Riley Jessup’s estate, yelling Freeze!—clearly, Bell thought, they’d watched too many reruns of Charlie’s Angels on TV Land—while commanding her to exit her vehicle. She complied. Then they’d advised her to turn around and put her hands on the hood of the Explorer while they patted her down. Aggressively. One of the security men, the larger and younger and uglier one, had deliberately taken his time, grunting and letting his oversized hands linger when they followed the inside seam of her slacks, lingering even longer when they grazed her butt and roved across the front of her blouse. Bell could have protested, could have whirled around and snarled, You sonofabitch, copping a feel, I’m going to kick you in the balls and see how you like it, you stinking—

  He wasn’t worth the aggravation. If she’d made a fuss, she might not get to see Riley Jessup; if she’d complained, then this visit would become a referendum on how his security staff comported itself—not a fact-finding expedition about Jessup and his investments. So she’d waited for them to finish, then waited again while the older guard called up to the house and checked to make sure they were authorized to let her in. Receiving permission, they stepped back. “Gwan,” the younger man said. He’d punched in a code and then used his palm to slap a metal pad on the side of the big stone pillar. The pillar was the intimidating twin to the one on the other side of the entryway. “Gwan. Git.” The gate swung open. Bell drove forward, and it closed behind her. Through her open window she could hear the mechanism locking automatically, with a soft whirrrrr and then the prolonged and ponderous-sounding thwwwwunk of a massive bolt settling heavily in its iron stirrup.

  She parked in front of the main house, an overgrown, white-brick edifice with six pillars spaced out evenly across the front, black shutters repeated at each of the myriad windows, and a perky profusion of dormers and turrets. There were five other vehicles parked up and down the wide curving drive, the requisite assortment of beefy-looking b
lack SUVs and a small red sports car as round and shiny as a cinnamon drop. Sharon’s car, Bell guessed.

  During her approach to the massive double-sided front door and its ostentatious hardware, Bell tried her best to ignore the luscious acreage that sloped gently away from the big house, the grass as smooth and emerald green as a PGA fairway, the treetops swaying in the breeze with a synchronous fluidity that could have been choreographed. Bell had never been here but knew the particulars anyway, thanks to Rhonda Lovejoy. Rhonda had dropped by Bell’s office the previous day to deliver a magazine piece on the place; published a few years ago, the article was a fawning spread filled with exclamation points and copious photographs and quotes that dripped with the pretend-humility of Jessup and his daughter. The estate included the main house and two guest cottages, a tennis court, a horse barn and riding trails, and a swimming pool trimmed in a blue-green ceramic tile that artfully echoed the color of the sky.

  Bell had leafed quickly through the slick pages, then sidearmed the thing back toward a marginally startled Rhonda. “Thanks,” Bell said, sarcasm making something blunt and stubby and notably ungrateful-sounding out of the word. “Nice to know that Riley Jessup’s precious butt is nestled in a soft spot every night.” It wasn’t his wealth that Bell resented; it was the fact that his wealth had come on the backs of struggling West Virginians. Hypocrisy was hardwired into his life story. He was, after all, a politician.

  Hell, she’d reminded herself. So am I, come to that.

  Sharon had met Bell at the front door and inquired about her reception at the gate. The governor’s daughter was wearing a white blouse, tan capri pants, and white sandals, and as soon as Bell lied to her about the guards’ decorum, Sharon smiled. “Oh, good,” she said. Her shivery little voice was as musical as a wind chime nudged ever so slightly by a minor breeze. This was probably not the same voice, Bell thought, that she’d been using back in Raythune County when the cell phone almost melted from the heat of her tirade. She escorted Bell through a succession of three vast rooms—the walls and essential furnishings of each served as a garish and overbearing celebration of, respectively, the colors green, gold, and scarlet—and into what seemed to have been designated as a sitting room. Sharon asked if she’d like a beverage. Bell declined. Her no overlapped with the unmistakable voice of Riley Jessup, booming across the acreage of the plush beige carpet, followed by the man himself. His walk was a sort of swaying waddle, reminiscent of a child’s pull toy that moves as much sideways as it does forward. He situated himself at one end of a gigantic couch, propped up against the padded armrest.

  “Your call was mighty welcome,” Jessup declared. “Not every day I get to entertain a pretty young prosecuting attorney anymore. Not since I left the statehouse. These days, I just rattle around this big old place, making more trouble for Sharon here.” He chuckled at his own little joke. He was wearing a lemon yellow suit with a bright white shirt and flowered tie, and white shoes. His hands looked enormous, like bristly gray chunks of a mystery meat that somehow had eluded FDA inspection.

  Sharon remained standing. She ignored her father and spoke directly to Bell. “I’m afraid I have to go now. My son’s very ill. He’s having an especially bad day.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” Bell replied.

  Sharon nodded. It was a martyr’s nod, serene and self-effacing. As Bell watched, she ascended the wide staircase that dominated the other end of the room, barely touching the twisting cherry handrail as she rose, as lithe and nimble as her father was doughy and tottering. The handrail was polished to a glorious sheen, its rich grain drawn out by the light of the large multifaceted chandelier presiding grandly over the area. Opposite the staircase was a marble fireplace. In the center of the room, four plush white couches had been arranged to form a square. In the middle was a table that featured, along its chamfered edges, a marquetry inlay of leaf-tasseled vines. This was the kind of place, Bell thought, that really should have included a price tag dangling coyly from each item, so that the owners could be absolutely certain that visitors would get the message: We’re rich. And you’re not.

  “Don’t know what business brings you here today, Mrs. Elkins,” Jessup continued, wiggling his backside until it was comfortably situated amid the couch cushions, “but afore we start, I gotta ask you this: If you got any extra prayers you ain’t using, I dearly hope you might fire up one or two for Montgomery. Boy’s ailing. Ailing something awful.”

  Bell sat down on the couch across from him. She underestimated the softness and pliancy of the cushions, and instantly felt as if she were falling backwards. Had she not caught herself in time, she was fairly certain that she’d have slid into the crease between the bottom and back cushions, arms and legs churning helplessly in the air like a capsized beetle.

  “Sorry to hear that,” Bell said. “I understand that it’s a heart problem.”

  “Yep.” He closed his eyes and indulged in an aggrieved head-bobble. “Boy’s been sick since the day he was born. Kinda makes you wonder why the Lord would saddle an innocent child with that kind of suffering and let so many worthless sons of bitches just run around without a care in the—” Jessup gave up on the sentence with a sigh. Looked down at his hands. He seemed genuinely stricken at the thought of his grandson’s illness. “Back when I was first starting to comprehend just how bad off the boy was,” the old man said, his voice quiet and searching, “I had to wonder. Wonder if maybe the Lord was punishing me. I’ve had a lot of good things in my life, Mrs. Elkins. More than I ever coulda dreamed of, truth be told. And so sometimes it seems to me that maybe the man upstairs is saying—saying in that special way He has, the way that nobody can ignore—that it’s time to ante up. Time to put things back in balance. What I mean is—maybe Montgomery’s paying the price for all that’s been given me. And you can understand, I’m sure, just how terrible that makes me feel. Just how it rips me up inside.”

  Bell watched him. This wasn’t the topic she’d come here to address, but she was fascinated. The governor had the spiel right at his fingertips. Was he sincere? Damned if I know, she thought. There was, she reminded herself, only one irrefutable truth about Riley Jessup: He was a politician. First, last, always.

  “Now,” Jessup continued, “what can I do for you, Mrs. Elkins?” He had pivoted away from his ruminative slump and perked up, like a plant spotting the watering can. “Nice as it is to welcome you to my home, I’m thinking you probably didn’t drive all the way over here from Raythune County just to say hello.”

  “I appreciate that.” Bell decided to plunge right in. “Governor, I’m confused.”

  “Howz that?”

  “Well, I have some questions about a company called Rhododendron Associates.” She watched Jessup closely. No reaction. “I was hoping you could enlighten me.”

  “And how might I do that, young lady?” he said, voice as soft and runny as syrup.

  “By explaining why a company in which you’re heavily involved would have employed a man named Jed Stark—who had, to say the least, a less than savory reputation. With all due respect, Governor, may I ask you just what the nature of that employment was?”

  Jessup didn’t seem alarmed or upset at her question. Instead, he looked thoughtful, just as he’d looked when discussing his grandson’s ailments. His gaze wandered away from Bell’s face, finding a temporary home in the center of the patterned gold draperies that spanned the long wall of floor-to-ceiling windows off to his left. He pressed a cupped palm over each knee. He smacked his lips a few times, as if there was a bad taste in his mouth that wouldn’t quite go away. The tip of his tongue lolled too long on his lower lip; it gave him a slightly demented appearance that was, she knew, entirely misleading. He was a bright man—a brilliant one, really, in his own way. You didn’t go from squalor to opulence, from Briney Hollow to this place, without a hefty dose of smarts. Yes, luck was involved, too, of course, and drive, and something more than luck and drive—call it a willingness to shift your gaze at the right
moment, so as to preserve plausible deniability—but you had to have the native intelligence, the bedrock intellectual capacity, to do elaborate calculations on the fly. Riley Jessup sometimes played the buffoon, Bell thought, because it worked. He embraced the stereotypes of his profession and his region—he was fat, coarse, sloppy, and slow-talking, sipping his bourbon and slipping the bribes in his back pocket—and it did the trick. Even though he’d been out of office for quite a few years now, even though he looked old and harmless, he still radiated a faint red glow of danger, like a decommissioned nuclear power plant.

  “Employ lots of folks,” he said. “You’ve seen the size of this place. And I’ve got some pretty complicated business operations as well. Not sure I know precisely what it is you’re referring to, ma’am.” The warmth in his voice had been turned down by about half a notch. “Maybe you could elaborate just a teensy-weensy bit.”

  “I’d like to know why Stark was being paid—and being paid quite well, as it happens—for his services to a company ultimately controlled by you,” she said. “And why a business card from a New York City attorney was found in his pocket. And why his widow is the recipient of an extremely generous payout from you, apparently in exchange for her promise not to divulge the nature of her husband’s activities on your behalf.”

  Jessup swung his big head around to face her. A cold steady fire was visible in the slits of his eyes, eyes made squinty by the upward thrust of pressure from his fat cheeks. Bell saw several things going on in those eyes—and none of the things had anything to do with words. Or with fancy drapes.

  Jessup moved his lips again, wetly and aggressively. It went on too long to be just a nervous gesture. The smacking sounds conveyed the same sense of slow preparatory menace as would the noise of a knife being sharpened against a stone, rhythmically, ominously, back and forth. Finally he spoke, enunciating each word to within an inch of its life: “Can’t really see as how that’s any of your business, ma’am.” His voice had now completely shed the homespun hokeyness that had seemed to append a little curlicue to the end of his sentences.