“Well, I hope the kids are still doing those crazy tricks,” Amy said.
“Unfortunately, no. It was too much fun. The school administration squashed it. They made it into a reminder of why bright kids don’t come back after college. Maybe we could slip in a guest appearance, though, if you have a trick you’d like to perform.”
“I’m not that entertaining, really.”
“My ex-husband called you a stud. He said you played ball as if you had superpowers.”
“I wish.”
“Okay, superpower granted. What would it be?”
Amy paused. Meg heard it, too, a low drift of voices. The disembodied murmur so close by chilled her. The sound came from a section they hadn’t yet canvassed, near the dead cottonwood.
Amy noted the direction but showed no concern. “Okay, I’ll take time travel, the power to give people do-overs. I’d return kids back to the day before they were abused, before they first shoplifted because their folks didn’t feed them, before they tried booze or weed or meth. If I only had one shot, it would be Jimmy Johncock, the first guy from the river we finally got into rehab. Tony and I went when Jimmy graduated from a program in Denver. We were so proud. We were new to this outreach stuff and we’d thought we’d made a save. Three years later, Jimmy’s right back here.”
Richard and Zack appeared from a side path. Amy motioned to them to wait.
“Just to be safe, I want to check it out up there,” she said.
Amy walked down the path and stopped where it made a turn toward the thick understory around the cottonwood. She fingered the radio mic clipped to her shoulder and spoke too quietly to understand. A dog started woofing, setting off the pit bull pair behind them.
“Anybody home?” Amy called. The barking intensified. Meg thought she heard muffled curses. “Grand Junction Police. Secure your dog and you’re fine. We’re just bringing by some information for you.”
A hoarse voice called back, “Hang on, hang on, just a minute.”
Amy raised a hand toward Meg and then disappeared around the bend.
The voices again, one high and one low, words impossible to sort out. Branches crackled and snapped. Meg thought she heard a car door thump closed. There was no road in here… No, it was more like a watermelon dropped on the ground. The dog quiet now. Scrambling sounds of retreat, then the commotion stopped.
Okay, she’s letting them go.
Meg and Richard waited, expecting to hear the okay. Zack had a different notion.
“Amy!” he cried. “Amy!”
Amy. When they ran in her direction, it was toward the silence.
Home is where the memories are.
—“Home” with Meg Mogrin, Grand Junction Style
The Avalon Theater, built as an opera house just as vaudeville was expiring, had devolved into a movie theater before being abandoned by a bankrupt cinema chain. After community efforts had failed to revive the building as a performing arts center, the Avalon stood as a city-owned monument to stalemate, too treasured to level and too costly to renovate. In the lobby, the scholarship kids ignored their parents and dribbled salsa on the carpet. Teachers, out of habit, scanned for trouble. Businessmen thumped each other’s backs, their accessory wives already in the auditorium, saving seats and clutching purses they dared not set on the gummy floor. Meg lingered under the marquee glow with the stragglers measuring their pre-event cigarettes. Eve Winslow had promised to meet her, but Meg understood that Eve might be playing mayor at the hospital tonight.
At least Meg had not seen the worst of it, only Amy on the ground and the rusty truck wheel above her quivering from a cable like some malevolent sputnik. Richard Diaz stopped Meg and told her to call 911. Zack and Richard worked to stabilize Amy, while she went out to direct the EMTs back to the scene. Amy was alive when they took her out. All Meg had heard since was a brief news report and angry accusations on talk radio.
This event was difficult enough, watching another girl accept her sister’s memorial scholarship, celebrating one’s potential while being reminded of another’s loss. She wasn’t going to be pathetic about being stood up. She’d give Eve a few more minutes before chancing a run past Senator Pinecone, camped at the entrance. The former state senator turned clean coal lobbyist had just snared a banker with a handshake only a check could uncouple.
Her phone vibrated, the call from Jay DeWitt, a hotshot hospital executive from back east. After viewing at least thirty homes, DeWitt and his wife decided to build. The lot they’d recently closed on posed some challenges but its view overlooking the city was stunning.
“Did you get my texts?”
“Just opening them now, Jay.”
“Well, take a look. It’s a travesty!”
A photo of four large dirt mounds. The second shot showed the piles from a different angle. Another offered a close-up.
“I’m not sure I see what’s going on here.” She didn’t do dirt, she sold houses.
“It was supposed to be clean fill. The loads don’t match—brown, putty-colored, tan. This last one they delivered is pinkish and chunky, like somebody shelled shrimp in a sand box.”
“It obviously came from different sites around the valley. Clean means it’s not polluted, that’s all. It’s just compaction fill. It doesn’t have to match.” She took a deep breath. Jesus. Artisanal fill. “What would you like me to do?”
“You sold us the lot. You found us the builder. You fix it.”
At least DeWitt had called her instead of raining down on the contractor, whose relationship was more important to her long term. Imported jerks like DeWitt tended to depart suddenly with enemies and severance packages, and his new house might be on the market before too long. To keep the door open, Meg left him with assurances she hoped sounded more cheerful than they felt.
The morning’s trauma had drained her reserves. No more multitasking. Though it went against her grain, she set her phone to Do Not Disturb and slipped it in her bag. She had meant to bring her brightest, most vivacious self here, but in the lobby glass she saw a gypsy woman exhausted after a long day of telling fortunes. Pairing jangly beaded earrings with a messy bun pulled up in a silk scarf wasn’t such a festive disguise after all. Out in public, it took effort to maintain the super agent vibe when she disliked makeup and didn’t look like Norah Jones to start with. Clients expected to meet the woman in the photo on her website, the one whose headshot leapt out of the real estate section filled with agents posing confidently in their big hair and statement necklaces. She had spent two hours getting ready for her first photoshoot and another two under the lights, only to look like someone she had never seen before, had never been. The agency ran with the shot until she went off on her own and replaced it with something more realistic, more Grand Junction and less Palm Beach, but still stylish and warm and energetic and savvy. Meg Mogrin reduced to a one-inch thumbnail. That picture was always in her head somewhere, the standard, the summation, the brand. But it was nowhere on her face tonight.
“You here solo?” a voice purred and an arm looped through hers. She turned into the piano-key grin of Donnie Barclay. Donnie glowed like someone half-famous, a second-rung character actor on his way to Telluride. Some moneyed people cultivated the blazer, boots and Levis look. Meg suspected Donnie merely lost interest in dressing up halfway down. Either way, it served his purpose. Without changing his costume, he could play the ranching patriarch with a little sideline gravel business or the prosperous entrepreneur who still clung to the old family homestead.
“I was supposed to meet Eve,” said Meg. “Something must’ve come up.”
“Oh, you know how that goes.” Donnie knew how everything went. “Eve runs behind ’cause it filters out the weak and the impatient.”
He squeezed her arm against his ribs and leaned in so close Meg could smell wintergreen on his breath. Donnie wasn’t a flirt. He was interested in information. “Do you need to wait? I was hoping you could be my protector tonight.”
“Fr
om Toby?” Toby Conifer, Senator Pinecone’s proper name.
“From embarrassment. Toby’s let the kooks get to him. Used to be you could count on him to support ranching and drilling and stay-out-of-my-wallet. Now he wants to be sheriff and thinks we should run the county like its own damn country. Which I guess you can, if you like living in the eighteenth century. I need to find me another Republican.”
“Well, that shouldn’t be hard around here,” she said.
Donnie flicked his chaw into a waste bin. “He’s just started to tell a dirty joke. Let’s dive in while we have an opening.” They slipped through the entry, leaving the senator to wave a futile limb. “Now we gotta get past the lady from the history farm. Look at me like you’re fascinated as hell.”
He had cheered her up already. “Maybe you should’ve brought Terri with you if you need protection so badly.”
“Oh, Terri hates this shit. People who want to kiss my ass are always kissing hers just in case. The history farm wants Barclay Paving to buy some old Gilsonite mining cars for an interpretive asphalt exhibit, whatever the hell that is. I think it’s just a way to get a choo-choo train for the school kids.”
“Kids need to learn about our agricultural heritage.”
“I’m sure. But I already spend a ton to preserve it”—he winked—“every year I hang onto the ranch. You coming up this year?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“You can’t work all the time. You gotta have some fun, too.”
“The real estate market’s coming back. I have some years to make up for.”
“Yup, I know.” He released her arm and turned to face her full on. “You gonna be okay tonight? You look a tad frazzled.”
Donnie, bless him, thought he knew what weighed on her. More than two decades since Helen fell off Cold Shivers Point and Neulan Kornhauer came briefly under suspicion. Nearly a dozen years since Neulan’s role in other women’s deaths came to light. His flight and disappearance. Eight years ago, Meg took over funding the scholarship from her parents.
“Who’s your girl this year?”
“You can’t miss her. She’ll be the one with the purple streak in her hair. She sings in a band, plays piano and bass guitar, and her name’s Pandora Cox. How could I not pick her?”
“Sounds like a handful,” he said.
“That’s sort of the point.”
“Is it a single-year deal or do you keep four scholarships going at a time?”
She could see him doing the math in his head. “Depends. Some are two-year community college grants. Not all the kids finish.” Some who graduated had opted for marriage over career or assumed a bland adulthood. A few disappeared entirely. None had achieved the trajectory Meg had imagined for Helen.
“I didn’t exactly know your sister.” Donnie’s gaze flicked out of the theater and came back to Meg. “But I feel your loss. I’m sure it’s not easy with that Kornhauer sonofabitch still out there.”
“I put him out of my mind long ago,” she said.
“Well, let’s hope he’s gone for good, and that it was a slow, nasty trip.”
The scholarship winners trooped onstage. A boy led the audience in the Pledge of Allegiance and then a young woman stepped to a keyboard set up behind a microphone stand. In all black, she had a classical singer’s fullness and bearing, except for an amber wave through her purple hair. Pandora Cox rippled some opening chords. When her fingers reached the tonic, she rounded her lips into an 0 as if to say, you’re right, this is not going to be “The Star Spangled Banner.”
In an earthy alto she sang “America the Beautiful,” drawing the nostalgia from the first verse’s spacious skies and fruited plain. After a quiet shedding of grace, she marched the next verse in a more military cadence past the alabaster cities. This time the refrain slipped into a minor key. Were others hearing this lamentation? A vision of America with gleaming cities walled away from human suffering. Where goodness and brotherhood dwindled into shining seas.
“Well, that was different,” Donnie said.
The daytime newscaster emcee asked a moment of silence from the already hushed audience for the quick recovery of our fallen police officer, then moved to his script, projecting a big-screen baby picture before summoning each award winner. The gimmick brought hoots from friends and family members but fell short of the loopy celebration Scholarship Night once had been. Not all of them were performers. Perhaps most kids preferred a more solemn event, appropriate to the idea their lives were about to change course. They could learn later that teachers could end up selling real estate, that poets made coffee for commuters, that engineers got laid off and lost their houses.
This is their show now, not yours. Not even Helen’s.
When Pandora collected her parchment, Donnie squeezed Meg’s shoulder. She turned, she thought, in appreciation, but her face must have told him it was time to go. He took her hand and ducked up the aisle.
Refreshed by their spontaneous flight and the cool outside air, Meg wasn’t ready to go home. Donnie seemed to see that and headed her to the corner of Seventh where B.B. King’s “The Thrill is Gone” tramped and tumbled over the patio bar. A glass of the Entrada Cabernet would be nice, maybe two. She just had to make sure Donnie didn’t order a bottle because it would be all hers.
As they waited for their drinks, she entertained him with an account of her conversation with Jay DeWitt. Normally, she would never discuss a client by name, but Donnie was in the excavation business and would have figured it out based on how few houses were going up right now. He chuckled at her idea of supplying high-grade fill to picky customers, once she explained what artisanal meant. Oh, it was lovely to laugh after this hard day! She started to ease out of her heels and stopped. The relief in her feet told her she might not get them back on.
Donnie sipped his Windsor and Seven. “It’s been pouring out-of-town geniuses lately. I hear the mayor’s got you roped in with some corporate bigwig.”
Where had he heard that? Eve had asked her to put together some ideas for an executive home tour and hinted that the related business might be substantial. But Meg didn’t even know the name of the man’s company yet.
“All Eve’s told me is that he’s divorced.”
This bit of non-news appeared to please Donnie. “Yeah, I thought the city was in on it. Everybody’s being so damn coy. At the Chamber meetings, Dan McCallam’s about to pee his pants with excitement but he’s keeping the news to himself. And Vince Foyer’s not as subtle as he thinks. He’s been poking around looking at good-sized parcels that are off the market. It’s hard for a developer to take a crap in this county without me at least smelling it.”
It had been a long dry spell for Donnie’s gravel and paving businesses. Any development would be good news. He held plenty of commercial/industrial property around town, too.
“It’s killing you not to know, isn’t it?”
He bared his lower teeth and patted his wallet pocket. “Yeah, my tender little ego.” They laughed. “You’re looking perkier now.”
There was no point withholding it. “Did you hear about the mess with Amy Hostetter this morning? I was down there when it happened.”
“Are you okay? And here I been talking nothing but business.”
He could be so sweet. Father sweet.
“Your company’s been just what I needed. Listen, what if this tour I’m working on turns out to be related to your deal? Do you think Terri would let me show your summer house?”
“It’s not for sale,” he said.
“Just as an example. Glade Park should be on any tour of exclusive places to live. And for the full cultural experience, a ranch owner could show him around.”
“I’ll check with the boss.” Donnie took her hand and wrapped it in both of his. “I’m glad you didn’t get hurt. They can’t clean up that shit hole fast enough to suit me.”
As soon as Donnie left Meg at her car, she pulled off her heels and pitched them across the seat. Her third pai
r of shoes today—no, the fourth, counting the mudders. She had repackaged every part of herself at least twice for the day’s events and was now ready for a robe and that third glass of wine she’d turned down at the bar. But instead of heading straight home, she looped south toward the river where her morning began.
Las Colonias Park wasn’t on anyone’s way, and that was its attraction to the homeless population. The feds had poured millions into clearing the ground of uranium tailings and the city had spent millions more to relocate junkyards and build a parkway to skirt the south edge of downtown. But the park itself had remained perpetually on the drawing board. Except for the Botanical Gardens, Las Colonias Park was only a barren river flats hemmed by a scraggle of tamarisk and split by a bike path.
She pulled over near the last remnant of the old uranium mill across from the park and peered through the streetlamp flare. No one about. No lights coming from the camps. It was as if night had already absorbed the day’s horror into the bleak history of the place. There was nothing specific about such darkness. It could contain any dreadfulness, including the worst mistake of her life. The memory came back like a poorly fixed Polaroid, a bright white blank with smudges and shadows creeping to the foreground.
Right over there. About this time of night.
There was no Botanical Gardens building then. The junkyard had been off to the right and some shacks straight ahead where the hardpan was glazed in ghostly alkali blotched with crankcase oil. They had abandoned the Jeep there with the keys in the ignition, counting on some derelict to cover the vehicle with fingerprints. Their impulse turned out better than they had imagined. The Jeep ended up trashed near the Amtrak station in Salt Lake City, where everyone assumed Neulan Kornhauer had left it, after eluding the authorities closing in on him. Back in Grand Junction, security camera footage had showed the Choirmaster Killer fueling his vehicle and filling a reserve gas can on the day he disappeared. Then no more charge card transactions. No sightings. A decade later, investigators still combed coroner’s reports on young women who had fallen from high places, keen to pick up Neulan’s trail. Only Meg and Brian could tell them they should be searching instead for his bones.
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