Murder Never Forgets

by Diana O'Hehir

  “Are you in love with somebody else?” Rob asks.

  I say, “Oh, shut up,” and scrunch forward a bit and bend over and kiss him.

  Maybe it’s the same idea as making love on the train track when a train is due. The danger is two-thirds of the thrill. Down there, maybe, is a bunch of murderous hoods who want to wrap us in a net and chuck us into the ocean or shoot us in the face or snap our necks like Mona’s. And up here are just little old us, hanging out under the stars. Plus the fact that I’ve just told Rob we’re not an item makes the relationship more interesting. Puts everything in perspective. All is transitory.

  Behind it all is a picture of Mrs. Sisal with her brains shot out.

  Actually, I kind of liked Mrs. Sisal.

  We settle in to a very good kiss. None of the tentative indecisive stuff of our walk through the woods. A genuine lips-teeth-tongue exploring, deep and fully, and then the hands moving and getting busy, and then the bodies shifting and pushing close.

  And, good God, who knows what would happen next, except for some jostling and bed-creaking from inside at just the right time to remind us that my parent sleeps within and could wake up any time at all. Pow, bam, poor little defective father in the doorway, staring baffled.

  He doesn’t, but it’s good for us to be reminded of the possibility.

  We break apart, and I say, “Oh, go on to bed, Robbie. In your own bed.” And I unsteadily pull myself up, grabbing at the porch railing.

  Chapter 22

  It’s eight-thirty A.M., a bright, assertive morning, sun and breeze briskly attacking the eucalypti and grasses of the California countryside, as Rob and Daddy and I drive along a rutted road in Rob’s Honda. We’re en route to Egypt Regained.

  “Homeland?” Rob has said. “Homeland?” That’s the name of the post office/gas station near Egypt Regained. “I feel peculiar about this,” he adds after a minute.

  “I feel peculiar, too. Have a sweet roll.” We’ve left the Best Western without eating our complimentary breakfast, but I have it in my backpack. One roll for Rob, one for my father.

  “Did you sleep?” I ask.

  “Not worth mentioning.”

  “Me, neither. Anyway, Egon’s expecting us. He said he was thrilled. He said he’d put out the red carpet. That’s what he said. ‘The reddest red.’ He’s sort of affected. He’s proud of Daddy.”

  “Red carpet?” My father turns around, arm over the back of the seat. He’s in the front, beside Rob. Rob and I decided the front was less isolating than the back.

  “We’re going to see Mr. Rothskellar.”

  “Rothskellar,” Daddy broods, dubiously.

  “Where your coffin lid is. Remember? We’re going to see your coffin lid.”

  “Oh! I am so glad.”

  “Mr. Rothskellar is the man who has it.”

  “My coffin lid,” my father says. “Yes. I am very glad.”

  “He’s the one that used the climate control, darling.” For some reason I want him to remember this.

  “This Egon,” Rob says to me, low-voiced. “Does he . . . Has he seen Ed recently?”

  “It’s okay,” I tell him. “Egon won’t notice. He refuses to notice. ‘Your father is a genius,’ he says. The day Daddy delivered the lid, they had a lightning storm that knocked the cross off the Homeland church. Egon loved that. It was a sign, he said. He thinks Daddy’s magic.”

  We pass a roadside stand with a tipsy array of raku pots, “Made by a Local Craftsperson.” My father is intrigued. “Raku. An old system, raku, difficult. Not Egyptian, of course. Perhaps discovered when someone knocked a shovelful of manure into the fire. Could we stop for the raku pots, do you think?”

  I remind him about the coffin lid, and he says, “Of course. I have a good feeling about this. It’s time. To see my hieroglyphs again.”

  “Well, I don’t exactly (have a good feeling),” I say, pitching the last part of my sentence into Rob’s ear only.

  It’s curious; Rob and I aren’t acting very apprehensive, either one of us, but we’re expecting trouble. Egon said something peculiar when I called. “Several phone calls in for tickets already. Not some of our usual patrons. Of course, if they’re true devotees of Egypt, they’re very welcome. But I suspect perhaps they aren’t.”

  “Yeah, I betcha they aren’t,” Rob agrees.

  It’s not very far from Conestoga to Homeland. Twenty miles, a snap of the fingers on a good road. This isn’t a good road, so it takes longer. Robbie is a determined driver. “I want to get there and get it over with,” Rob says when I comment on damage to the spine.

  “Like riding a camel,” says my father.

  I’m trying to watch the road behind us, which is hard to do. First, because of the big cloud of tan dust raised by Rob’s driving. And second, because of the loops and wiggles in the road. There’s no particular reason for this road not to be straight, no eccentric hills or gullies, but it wanders like a sidewinder’s trail; it must follow some ancient cattle track. A couple of times I see a car behind us and then tell myself not to be paranoid, why shouldn’t there be a car behind us? And then I tell myself yes, I should be paranoid.

  “There’s somebody back there,” I mutter in Rob’s ear.

  He grunts, “Yep.”

  We pass a gentle old California relic, a barn melted into the ground, its walls flattened, its roof the height of a chicken coop. “I could paint that,” my father claims.

  “You know, Ed,” Rob tells him, “you do seem better lately. Your memory. Know what I mean?”

  My father sounds pleased. “Oh, very much.”

  After a minute he adds, “It was the pills. The blue ones, I think. I believe they were blue.”

  There’s an immediate tense silence in the car: Rob in the front seat, me, in the back. Rob finally says, “Pills, Ed? What pills?”

  “The blue ones. The blue ones were the ones that did it.”

  “Who gave you the blue pills?” I snap at him.

  “Oh?” He’s caught the tension in my voice. “Well, pills, you know . . . on the cart. You know, the cart . . . with the pills . . . in the evening.”

  “Somebody’s been . . .” Rob says to me.

  I say, “Uh-huh.”

  A minute later I add, “I’m an idiot. He gave enough warning.”

  “Kittredge?”

  “Uh-huh.” I’m holding on to the fake leather armrest. I think I’m feeling murderous. “He wanted to jack up his memory. So he could find out what he knew. He could have hurt him. He could maybe have killed him. Nobody knows the side effects.”

  Rob is silent, from his profile he looks very angry. Finally he says, “It’s probably all right. There are several kinds of stuff in Europe, and they do test there. I’ll check. It’s probably all right.”

  “For God’s sake, Rob, just drive.

  “There’s somebody behind us,” I add.

  Rob agrees, “Yep.”

  A minute later I say, “Sorry.”

  “Just like a camel,” my father says. “The wobble of the car. Exactly the same.”

  We go through a few more bends and road-curves in silence and finally, at the end of a handsome eucalyptus alley, I point, “That’s it, to the left. Egypt Regained. It’s pretty weird.”

  Rob says, “Jee-sus.”

  Plunked down in a little grassy field, at the end of an offshoot of this rutted road, there it is, Egypt indeed. Some of it is pink and has arches; some of it is tan and has latticed windows, as in “Meet me in the Casbah.” There is a waterfall down one side of the building, and there are narrow walled passages that meander around the outside. The building material appears to be pink or gray adobe. I’ve been here before, but that was three years ago; I’ve forgotten some of the festive details. There is a wide pond and a large parking lot, presided over by a gentleman wearing a turban and a loincloth.

  If there was a car behind us it has disappeared, but it’s hard to be sure. The road has plenty of ambulation.

  The bad new
s is that there are six cars already in the parking lot. And the good news is that none of them is Dr. Kittredge’s Miata.

  Ever since the blue-pill discussion I have been thinking about Dr. Kittredge, very bad, evil, frightening thoughts.

  We pull up to the edge of the parking lot, and the person in the turban and loincloth sticks his head in our open window and says, “Hi.”

  My father is thrilled. “They have a native attendant.”

  Native Attendant has a happy-smiles label on his turban that announces his name is Haroun. He’s blond and pleasantly suntanned, with good teeth and nice surfer’s pectorals.

  Right now, Haroun needs to emote because the mention of Daddy’s name requires a big rise. “Oh, wow. Has he ever been waiting for you!” Haroun parks us in the best parking space and leads us to a monstrous gold metal front door, where an Egyptian god leans out to bless, palms raised.

  “Why, I remember this!” my father exclaims, sounding pleased. “I suppose it’s impressive. He—what’s his name?”

  “The god?” I ask.

  He’s irritated. “The man. Who lives here. I met him.” When I tell him Egon Rothskellar, he says, “Ah, yes. Well, he knows. That figure is modern. Not real. Not even a copy! I told him, and he knows.”

  We’re interrupted by the arrival of Egon himself, who appears, like an Arabian Nights djinn, half bent over and unrolling something as he approaches. Yes, indeed, behind him, a long red runner. He gets the last little bit of rug smacked down and arranged and then stands upright, dusts off the knees of his impeccable khakis, and holds his hand out to my father. “See? I told you! The red carpet. The only suitable greeting for our foremost scholar. Welcome, oh noble visitor, welcome.” And he touches his hand to his forehead, his mouth, and his belt buckle, probably hoping this comes out as an Arab salute.

  It almost does. My father is pleased. “It is good to be needed,” he says.

  And so we proceed through the door and into a cold carved-stone hallway, too dark for me to appraise the carvings, and finally through a second door and out into a long high-arched room with shelves and statues and upright glass cases and horizontal glass cases and stands holding pots, figures, clay models. The usual Egyptian mixture.

  On either side of this room is another room with what looks like more of the same. And down at the end there’s a small fenced-off sort of alcove with a sign above it.

  “Now,” I think, and I bend over and wonder if I can get my shoe untied unobtrusively. Because that’s where the token is now, in my shoe. Not glued under the sole, the way my father did, but just resting under my sock. And surely we’ll be needing it soon. I’m expecting a sudden dash or at least a purposeful march led by scholar Edward Day down to the cubicle containing his coffin lid where Verse Four will be identified and translated. I’m waiting for that. Daddy is supposed to say “My coffin lid, yes, I think it is in that space there.” Or something like that. “I need to see my lid now,” he’s supposed to say.

  So. And, no, he doesn’t. He seems to remember that the lid is back there, at the end, in a special space all to itself, a place of honor, with a sign above it: EDWARD DAY EXHIBIT. “We will work our way gradually,” my father announces. “There are things in this room. Some of them, surely are original?”

  Egon blinks and smoothes a hand over his hair. He is thin and elegant-looking, hawk-nosed, something like one of his Egyptian kings, except that he has well-coiffed, collar-length white hair. “Such an honor,” he says. “So wonderful to have Dr. Day here. How I have looked forward to it.”

  I am starting to feel desperate. Please, there are things we need to do, and dangers if we don’t do them, and probably more dangers when we have done them, and here we are poised on the edge of disaster.

  There must be a way of pushing my father. But pushing him is not a great idea; he could just fold completely.

  “Daddy,” I say, “your coffin lid.” I gesture. “I’ve been wanting so much . . .” I make circles in the air to show him how much.

  He smiles, his extra-sweet smile, “I wonder . . . perhaps . . . work our way around the room. Starting with this goddess . . .” He frowns. “I do know her name. It is right there, almost at the front. Carla?”

  “That’s Sekhmet.” Sekhmet is the goddess of the brilliant midsummer sun; also she’s good for getting even with your enemies. She has a lion’s head and a woman’s body and is both interesting-looking and scary; the Egyptians liked her. My father circles her carefully.

  Should I tell him Sekhmet would like him to move on down to the coffin lid enclosure? I should not. I can imagine the debate. Did she speak? Did I hear her in my head?

  He probably would tell me that hearing things in your head is bad.

  There’s another female figure in the room, a cartonnage, a figure made of gesso-coated linen wrapped around a mummy. My father is giving Sekhmet the appropriate attention, a little muttering and some bowing, but he’s inclining his body toward the cartonnage; I’m afraid he’ll be moving on to her next.

  Oh, hell. Again, it’s almost as if he were teasing us.

  The cartonnage is a charming, cheerful, plumpish lady. A figure like this has the features of the departed painted on it. In this case the departed was black-haired and pop-eyed with a knowing, welcoming expression and lots of handsome turquoise beads.

  Daddy moves on to her. He needs to flirt. “Why, hello.”

  I am making eye contact with Rob. My eye contact says, “Help.” Rob’s asks, “Help how?”

  “I didn’t know they had you here.” That’s my father, breathing sweet nothings to the cartonnage. “That is good. Almost as good as my coffin lid.”

  Rob is watching the room to the right. It’s smaller than this one but also has plenty of glass cases and statues. “People,” he asides to me. “Dodging around.”

  I agree with him. The scene is getting too active.

  “At least get that thing out,” he means the token.

  Yes, get the token and then go down to the coffin lid, just Rob and me to start, and try hard to understand. Neither of us is very sure about our hieroglyphs. We need Edward Day. Who may not be that sure, either. But will probably join us after he sees us there. And if he’s full of blue pills, maybe he has his memory of hieroglyphs back.

  I try to rehearse again what I think happened between my father and Aunt Crystal.

  She was on her way down to the beach.

  She met my father.

  She wanted to tell him where she had hidden the incriminating whatsit. Text, probably. Aunt Crystal liked pieces of paper.

  So she wrote him a note in a form that she thought he’d maybe understand. Or, maybe show to me.

  “Is it sometimes cold in here?” my father is asking the cartonnage lady. Solicitously worried about her welfare in the afterlife. “Is the Eye of Horus triumphant?”

  I tell Rob I’ll be back in a minute and snake my way out to the dark corridor and through to the ladies’ room, which of course has been Egyptianed up with murals of pharaohs and pyramids and with liquid soap containers that look like canopic jars. I sit down on the marble floor and take off my sneaker and then, after I’ve extracted the Walgreen’s receipt, have to decide where to put the damn thing. Down my bra? No. I’m not that well stacked; it’s likely to drop out the bottom. My backpack is the only logical place; I put the token in the outside pocket.

  And emerge from the restroom into a hectic scene.

  A busload of kids, fifth grade ones maybe, children about four feet high, has just been unloaded in front of the door.

  A teacher has them lined up. Brighter lights have been turned on in the hall. Egon Rothskellar is jeeping around at the head of the line. The teacher is issuing ultimatums: No touching. No running. No getting under things. No chewing gum. Yes, there is a mummy in a glass case, but anybody who runs or touches has to go sit in the bus and doesn’t get to see the mummy. Now I know you’re going to make me proud of you. Mr. Rothskellar has done a wonderful, wonderful thing, h
aving a real Egyptian museum here.

  The teacher assesses her line, which looks ready to explode, and signals to Egon to open the inner doors. There are about twenty kids, but it seems like more.

  I remember that I am a grown-up and dodge around the head of the line and out into the main room where Daddy is still whispering remarks to the cartonnage lady and Rob is backed against the wall. Behind me the line of kids gallops in like the wolf on the fold, but trying hard to muffle their normal instincts. “Hey, wheresa mummy? In there, I betcha. Or there, or there?” they ask, pointing in various directions.

  “Jeez, Rob,” I take his hand, and lead him ahead of the mob down to the Edward Day Exhibit.

  I was glad to tell Mrs. Cohen where we were. It seems a good idea to spread the word around.

  The kids are in a circle of about six, staring at me transfixed. Perhaps the charm is that the guard made me surrender the phone. Or maybe they see me acting nervous and find this interesting. Many little, round staring eyes are appraising me.

  Back in the main room my father is still flirting with his gesso girlfriend.

  “Father,” I call, and, “Edward,” and, finally, “Dr. Day.”

  “Dr. Day” gets a little action. He turns in our direction.

  “They have made a mistake here,” I say.

  “What, darling?”

  “Your translation is missing.” And it is. There used to be a word-for-word rendering of the text pasted onto the front of the case.

  A section of the fifth grade thinks this may be important and tries to crowd into the Edward Day Exhibit.

  Rob bends over, to become closer to their height. “I’ll tell you a secret,” he says. “The rest of your class doesn’t know this yet. The mummies are upstairs. The first kids upstairs will get to stand right next to the case and see the mummy close up, see how many teeth it has left and whether its eyeholes are open or shut and whether it still has eyeballs in there; you’ll see really clearly.”

  Rob has said the magic words. The kids near the enclosure entrance start out on the run, and then remember about running and its penalties, so they key down and are off, stiff-legged, but as fast as they can manage.