by Andrew Hunt
I sighed. “I worry about you, Roscoe.”
“I’m a big boy. I can take care of myself. Besides, this whole Underhill situation already stinks to high hell. Something just isn’t right.”
“I can’t argue with you there. I’m not supposed to touch the homicide investigation, but I think Clive’s disappearance and Nigel’s murder are related.”
“Of course they are. How could they not be?”
“The powers that be at Public Safety want to keep them separate,” I said. “And they don’t want the press getting anywhere near it.”
Roscoe nodded thoughtfully, rubbing his hand over his bristly chin. “Because once the newspapers find out…”
“Pure bedlam. And make no mistake: the cops will hunt you down.”
“I’ve got eyes on the back of my head,” said Roscoe.
I checked my watch. “You’d better make yourself scarce,” I said. “Before I give you a cent, or the key to Clara’s Olds, I’ve got to know where you’re going.”
“I’m gonna go do some snooping around. Find out who really did this.”
I studied Roscoe. No missing the desperation in his face, and that was all I was going to get out of him. I stood up and left, taking that thick stack of typewritten pages with me. In the kitchen, I found a hiding place for the manuscript, on an unused top cupboard shelf. Then I retrieved Clara’s car key, dangling on a small brass hook near the sink. Next, I located the aging baking powder tin that contained our rainy-day fund. I pulled out four limp twenties and two tens, stuffed the rest of the wad back in the can and returned it to the spot where only Clara and I could find it. I went back to the front room, gave Roscoe what he wanted. He accepted it with restrained gratitude.
“There’s something I didn’t tell you,” he said, pocketing the money.
I almost said, I’m sure there’s a lot you haven’t told me. Instead, I asked, “What?”
“The man Clive was talking to at the Old Mill Club last week was Vaughn Perry. He’s a scenic tour and hiking guide.”
“How did you come by that information?”
“I’d rather not say.”
“I thought you said you couldn’t hear them over the orchestra.”
“I picked up a few fragments during the breaks. I overheard Clive asking to be taken to the Canyons of the Escalante.”
“Why is it that Albert Shaw didn’t mention Perry the other day?”
“Search me. Those English are screwy as hell, if you ask me.” He drew a shaky breath. “Will you look in on my cats?”
“Every day.”
“You may need to buy them some food and gravel for their pans on the back porch. I’ll reimburse you.”
“Don’t worry about it.”
“Thanks again, Art. I won’t forget this.”
I watched Roscoe leave. The revving Oldsmobile engine awoke Clara, who came walking down the hall, her slippers slapping the wood floor. She was dressed in her flannel pajamas and wore a silky maroon robe that we bought in San Francisco’s Chinatown. I pulled the screen door shut, closed the front door, and faced Clara, my heart and head brimming with dread.
* * *
“Why, in God’s name, would you do something like that?”
Clara and I sat on the porch steps in front of the house, resting our elbows on our knees. A warm gust fanned my brow, and I could tell it was going to be another hot day. A chorus of birds proved particularly vocal this morning. Golden rays of sunlight were spilling into the valley, and trees cast long shadows. Our children were still asleep inside.
“He needed my help.”
“So you’d risk everything you have, everything you are, to help a wanted man?”
“He’d do the same for me.”
“That’s beside the point. He’s on the lam, and you’re helping him!”
“Shh! Keep it down, will you?” I whispered. “He had a gun aimed at me. Let’s not forget that small detail.”
“The police are going to think you’re lying,” she said. “They’re going to ask you why you didn’t report it right away. They’re going to know you helped Roscoe.”
“He’s my friend, Clara, and I was trying to help him.”
“There’s a little something called the justice system, Art,” she said. “You always go around telling people it works, in spite of its flaws, and all they need to do is give it a chance. But then you turn around and do a damn fool thing like this.”
“I know. You’re right. I’m sorry.”
“Is that all you can say?”
“What do you want me to say?”
“For starters, I’d love to hear a guarantee that’ll assure me that everything’s going to work out fine. All of this hemming and hawing and apologizing isn’t exactly inspiring confidence, Art. I mean, if you get caught, what’s going to happen to me? It’s my car. Does that mean I’m going to go to prison, too?”
“Nobody’s going to prison, Clara. Will you stop with the dramatics?”
“I can’t believe you, Art. I really can’t believe you.”
She patted her robe in a few spots until she found what she was looking for. She reached in her pocket and pulled out a rectangular-shaped object, the size of a deck of cards. I couldn’t tell what it was at first. I craned my neck to get a better look. When I saw what it was, I almost fell over in shock. Clara held a pack of Chesterfield cigarettes and a book of matches from the Rotisserie Inn. She gave the pack a couple of shakes and caught one of the Chesterfields between her lips, then deftly slipped the pack down where it came from, lit a match, and raised flame to tip. She smoked like a veteran, not even letting out a tiny cough as she inhaled. She dropped her match on the concrete walkway, picked a piece of tobacco off of her tongue, and noticed my speechless mouth agape.
“What?”
“How long have you…?”
“I took it up at age eighteen.”
“How often do you do it?”
“One a day, unless it’s been a tough day.”
My heart raced, watching her hold her cigarette like a movie star. Smoking was forbidden among devout Mormons. The pious regarded it as taboo and sinful, and judged smokers as unworthy. Smoking itself went against the Word of Wisdom, a set of healthy living guidelines that most dedicated members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints endeavored to adhere to. The Word of Wisdom advised us against consuming hot beverages such as coffee, prohibited us from smoking tobacco and taking narcotics, and counseled us to eat lots of fruits and vegetables and only consume meat sparingly. But at that particular moment, watching Clara smoke—something I had never seen her do in the decades I’d known her—I was not thinking of Church doctrines or theology. I just sat there, puzzling over how I could have not seen her do this for so long.
“How have you kept it hidden all these years?”
She took a drag and blew smoke in the air. “I do it alone, outside, away from other people. When I’m done, I brush my teeth and I gargle with Listerine.”
“What other secrets have you been keeping from me?”
“After what you did this morning, Arthur J. Oveson, I’d say you don’t have any business lecturing other people about keeping secrets.”
She smoked her cigarette in silence for a moment, then squinted at me. “What?”
“I can’t believe you smoke,” I said. “That’s all.”
“Let’s not blow it out of proportion,” she said. “Forgive the pun. Besides, it’s not as if I’m a chain smoker.”
“But you seem so…” I searched for the word.
“So what?”
“I don’t know. So … caught up in propriety. You know, keeping up appearances, and all that. You’re the last person I’d expect to be a smoker.”
She laughed as she fished out her box of Chesterfields and tilted them at me.
“You might enjoy it, once you get used to it.”
“You know I don’t smoke.”
“I never assume anything.” She put the pack away. “You
had no idea I smoked.”
“True.”
A white cloud swirling around us made me cough. I waved my hand in a subtle fanning motion, still trying to adjust to the shock.
She asked, “Don’t you have any secrets? A thing, or two, you try conceal from the rest of the world.”
“Sure. We all do.”
“Well? What’s yours? A wife and kids in Muncie?”
“Look, Clara, I don’t think this is the time or place to…”
“You don’t want to tell me. Is that it?”
I moved to change the subject: “What do you think Bishop Shumway would say if he saw you smoking like this?”
She took one final, deep draw from her cigarette. Tobacco crackled. The tip glowed brightly. She dropped it on the ground, crushing it under the sole of her slipper. “I’ve followed the rules all my life.” She blew one last cloud of smoke. “I obeyed my parents like a dutiful daughter. I met a boy and fell in love with him. I waited two years for him to come back home from his mission. I got married to him and bore his children. The one thing I wanted for myself, to be a teacher, to make a difference in the lives of students, I gave up. I threw it away. You know why? Others expected me to. The lobbying for me to resign was relentless, and I succumbed.”
“I never asked you to quit your job.”
“No, but you sat back in silence when your brothers and sisters-in-law all told me that the only way I could be a good mother was to quit my job,” she said. “You could have defended me and the choices I made. But you didn’t. You just sat there like a bump on a log. Why didn’t you speak up?”
I had no reply to that question. The possibility that she was right—that I was a coward, and I’d failed to come to the defense of my own wife—haunted me.
“And as if all that weren’t bad enough, you handed Roscoe my car keys without asking me, along with a hundred dollars of our money, without asking me, so he could run off and do God knows what. And please, spare me the business about the gun, because that’s malarkey, and you know it. Who knows how many laws you’ve broken this morning? I can think of several right off the top of my head. And you have the temerity to sit there and judge me for smoking.”
“I didn’t judge…”
“Yes, you most certainly did, Art!” She lowered her voice to imitate me. “What do you think the bishop would say if he could see you smoking?”
“Oh c’mon, I was merely pointing out…”
“Does smoking a cigarette make me less of a person in your eyes, Art?”
“Certainly not! But…”
“But what?”
“Put yourself in my shoes. How would you feel if I’d smoked since I was nineteen…”
“Eighteen.”
“How would you feel if I’d smoked since I was eighteen and never told you?”
“At least there’d be something interesting about you that I didn’t know about before. Sometimes I wish you had a couple of skeletons in your closet, Art. It’s exhausting to be married to a saint. Even Joseph Smith drank liquor and chewed tobacco and married young ladies.”
Clara saw my shoulders sagging. I could not conceal the hurt I felt then. I told myself that Clara spoke out of frustration, and did not really mean what she said. But that did little to diminish the sting of her words. She reached for my dangling hand. I instinctively pulled it away. She tensed up. In that instant, a big white Cream o’Weber dairy truck rumbled past, and I could hear bottles rattling and clanking inside of it.
“It was wrong of me to do what I did,” I finally said. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m sorry, too, about what I said. Sometimes I feel like we don’t know each other as well as we should, especially for people who’ve been together so long.” She paused, to collect her thoughts. “When Sarah Jane came to me and told me she no longer believed in God, part of me was terribly upset. But I was also relieved.”
I reared my head in surprise. “Relieved?”
“Yes. Because she isn’t going to turn out like me.”
“You say it like that’s a bad thing. You’re the finest woman I know.”
“That’s good of you to say. What I mean is, I’m glad she won’t grow up to be the kind of woman willing to give up everything to please other people.”
“Do you think that’s what you’ve done?” I gestured to the rectangular bulge in her robe pocket. “Is that why you…”
The words trailed off, but she read my mind.
“It’s my own little act of rebellion.”
“Since eighteen, huh?”
“I took it up while you were on your mission. Remember Margo Barnes?”
“From grammar school?”
Clara nodded. “Her powers of persuasion were strong.”
“I see.”
Clara turned her head toward me and blinked a few times. I smiled as I beheld the splash of freckles on either side of her lean nose, so light you almost couldn’t see them unless you looked close up.
“So you think he’s innocent?” she asked.
“Yeah.”
“You still shouldn’t have done what you did.”
Clara thrust herself upward with her arms, turned and faced the house, and walked up porch steps. She halted, and her hand gripped my shoulder, and I reached up and patted it softly. She released me, wood creaked under her footsteps, the screen door clopped shut, and she was gone.
I leaned down and picked her cigarette butt off the concrete.
Fifteen
I didn’t bother informing Myron or DeVoy of my spontaneous decision to drive out to the Bonneville Salt Flats Tuesday morning. I figured the two of them could find plenty to do without me looking over their shoulders. They were probably happy to be rid of me. Before leaving town, I stopped at Roscoe’s place to feed his cats. With that behind me, I climbed into my Dodge, started her up, and drove west, into the sun-drenched desert. On the passenger-side seat next to me sat a folded copy of today’s Salt Lake Examiner with the front-page headline that had prompted me to embark on this trip.
HEINRICH TO REVEAL NEW RACE CAR AT SALT FLATS TODAY
Following a dusty ninety-minute trip across an old auto trail called the Victory Highway, I reached the glittering salt-pan earth. Exiting the highway, I motored north on a primitive road and soon arrived at the sprawling tent city that stretched for a few miles. Not a tenth as many cars were out here today as Saturday, when most of the competitive driving occurred. On my way across the desert, I dropped by the tent belonging to my cousin, Hank Jensen, but it was closed up, sealed with a padlock, and his race car was nowhere to be seen.
All of the action was happening near a cluster of tents to the north. I walked across the hot ground until I came to a hundred or so onlookers that included a mix of photographers, reporters, and the merely curious. Up front was a makeshift wooden stage, and behind it, three swastika flags flapped from poles. The symbols—twisted black crosses on white circles stamped on red banners—made me queasy, knowing the aggression they symbolized, occurring at that exact moment on the other side of the ocean, thousands of miles from here.
“Cousin Artie!”
I turned to face Hank Jensen, gaunt, big-eared, and with a Thoroughbred’s grin. His bright red suspenders stood out on his drab, sweat-drenched clothes. Except for the long mop of hair on top, his head was freshly shaved, and he slapped me affectionately on the shoulder with his bony hand. A few feet behind him were his trio of brothers, Murray, Gordon, and Kenneth, all wearing hats, with sleeves rolled up to the elbows. I dreaded the request coming my way in a few seconds, but I did not have the quickness of mind to feign an excuse to get out of it. So I simply smiled and gave him a playful little sock on the shoulder.
“Hank,” I said. “How’s every little thing?”
“I’ll be better when you tell me you can make it out here on Saturday to volunteer at the tent,” he said. He wasted no time. No “how’s the family?” No “what brings you out here?” A master of cutting to the chase, Hank Jensen was.
“It’s the long-distance final. Last big outing of the summer. What do you say, Artie? Can I count on you?”
“Maybe I should check with Clara first,” I said.
Behind him, my cousins laughed.
“Don’t mind these fresh mugs,” said Hank, jerking his thumb over his shoulder. “You go right ahead and ask her, and if you can make it, that’d be swell.”
“Will do,” I said.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. “Aren’t the Salt Flats a little outside of your purview?”
“A little,” I said. “I heard the Germans are making a big announcement.”
“Yeah, it’s called the P9,” said Hank. “Fastest car on earth. They’ve got craftsmanship on their side, I’ll give ’em that much.”
“I’ll be interested to see it,” I said.
“Me too,” said Hank. “Hopefully we’ll see you this Saturday, huh?”
“Hopefully,” I said.
I gave a last affectionate smile and parted ways with my cousins. I looked around and spotted Albert Shaw, Julian Pangborn, and Peter Insley in the crowd. No sign of the lovely Dot Bliss, to my silent disappointment. I squeezed my way toward the front of the crowd, until I came to a motion-picture camera mounted on a tripod, and a pudgy man with droplets of sweat in his bristly hair and thick beige clothing, much too hot for this weather, prepping the device for filming. A small logo on the side of the camera—white letters on a blue diamond inside of a larger red diamond—read UFA.
He scowled. “Weg von der Kamera,” he mumbled. “Verdammt amerikanischen.”
“Kripo!” a voice called out.
I turned toward the tent, and who should step out but Rudy Heinrich. His chiseled features appeared even more pronounced under a brown leather helmet, goggles on his forehead, and a scarf around his neck. There was no missing his swastika armband, either. He strode past the cameraman and held out his hand, and I reached and shook it.
“What a fine surprise! I remember you from Saturday night,” he said, in his thick German accent. “You were at the Grove with Clive.”
“Yes, that’s right,” I said. “Good to see you again, Mr. Heinrich.”
“Please, let us ditch formal,” he said. “Call me Rudy. What’s your name again?”