Keeper of the Keys

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  She nodded. She felt better, back by the fire, in better light, her jeans on and zipped. “Yep,” she said. Ray poked the fire, bringing up some heat. They sat on the floor, feet as close to the burning wood as they could stand. Finally warmed up again, Kat said, “I thought you weren’t positive what she wore the day she disappeared.”

  “I am now. Take a look.” He led and she followed him into the upstairs bedroom. A purple V-necked shirt lay across the pillow.

  “That’s Leigh’s, and I don’t mean from years ago. It was thrown in the back. The rest of the clothing was folded.”

  Kat picked the shirt up. It was inside out and wrinkled. She spread it, looking closer. “My God. What’s this?” She held the shirt up to the light, and even he could see it, holes. Rusty-looking spots. “What the hell?”

  Ray examined the shirt. “Oh, no,” he said. “I didn’t really look at it. God, no.”

  “She was injured.”

  Voice constricted, like someone who had been punched in the stomach, he finally said, “Yeah.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Ray broke through a long silence saying, “But she left the shirt here. Doesn’t that mean she’s okay?”

  Kat, the shirt dangling from her right hand, didn’t know. “Maybe. Should we call the police?”

  Ray looked flummoxed. “I just don’t know. Maybe she was working with her power tools? It wouldn’t be the first time she hurt herself.”

  “Oh no, Ray. These are like-jabs. Too many to be an accident.”

  After a long discussion, they decided to bag the T-shirt and take it to the sheriff the minute they got back.

  “She left it here. She’s okay,” Ray said.

  “If that’s so, they’ll figure that out,” said Kat.

  And so at last they had something, and it was hard to look at each other, because they were both thinking the same thing. Ray fetched the sleeping bag and resettled himself on the living room couch, not far from the dread door to the downstairs. Kat took the upstairs bedroom bed and left her door open and the light on. Even so, she only dozed. Ghosts, dead bodies, old houses, and bloody shirts flitted through her dreams.

  She was running out of the manhattan mix from the liquor store. Esmé sloshed some more into her coffee cup and took a drink. Really, she preferred a more delicate glass. What was she up to, drinking from such crude pottery? Even Ray would not approve.

  She poured it full. It had been a long day, starting with calling in sick at the store. She settled herself on her couch.

  No need to cook tonight; she wasn’t hungry.

  During the couple of years they were together, when the world seemed so wide open and possibilities stretched out infinitely, the fact that Henry’s parents didn’t like Esmé seemed like nothing, a flick of a feather duster. Who cared what they thought? Her grandparents did not approve, but nobody expected to gain their approval. Good God. These people had been born in the early nineteen hundreds, so very, very long ago.

  If they had looked at Henry objectively, not as a crazy, lovestruck young man who didn’t know what he was doing, they might have recognized him for the catch he was. Henry had graduated with honors from high school, attended Cal for two years. He almost finished his degree before they got married, and planned to take graduate courses so that someday, he might teach at Cal State. Before everything went so bad.

  Who could have predicted such a tall man with such winning blue eyes could turn against her so utterly?

  Pouring herself another glass, walking out into her garden, she remembered that she had been so young. Henry wanted her, yes. He loved her fluffy hair, her innocence, her sweet youth.

  Oh, give Ray a girl like herself back then! She had been irresistible!

  Then she’d had Ray. She ballooned from a hundred and ten pounds to a hundred and sixty-five. After graduation, Hank worked at Cal State Long Beach as a TA, a teaching assistant. He came home at the end of the day disgruntled, unsatisfied with his lot, and disapproving.

  “Other women keep their figures,” he would say. “Other women go back to work right away after their baby is born.”

  He wanted her to support him so that he could finish his graduate degree and couldn’t understand when she didn’t rate that goal as a priority.

  She didn’t care about prettier women or his education. She would not go back to work until this amazing boy spent most of his days in school. She did not give a damn about her figure.

  “Real men want their wives to stay home and take care of their precious sons,” she said.

  Esmé wondered where Ray was. She had called him twice today. He didn’t answer. She tried his cell phone, leaving a message.

  The last dregs of the bottle dribbled into her glass and she drank them. Although her thinking was fuzzy, she was sure her driving reflexes were fine. Certainly her emotions were full and flourishing. She called a cab, gathered up her keys, locked the front door, and picked up her own vehicle in Granada ’s lot.

  She stuck her key into the ignition, which did not start.

  But she did not believe in divine intervention. She did not believe in fate. After about four tries, the car started up. She recognized a certain unsound quality to her driving, but she seemed able enough to stay within the boundaries of her lane. Be very careful. She opened her eyes very wide and put both hands on the wheel and kept reminding herself that she was driving toward Topanga Canyon.

  She made her way out of Whittier through the maze of numbered freeways. This exercise frequently reminded her of those mazes people marked with stones that started in the center and led to some outside goal. People claimed to find the walk edifying, even spiritual. She had tried walking the labyrinths, with mixed emotions. They frustrated and angered her. If a choice had to be made, which, depending on the maze, choices did have to be made, she invariably picked the wrong route.

  Kind of like picking Henry, who turned out to be so wrong for her.

  Now she followed a well-worn path, and when traffic stalled, she listened to talk shows.

  “I hate my father!” one tearful caller said.

  “Let’s figure out why,” said the patient radio host.

  The host probably had no credentials, no counseling experience whatsoever. He probably had three ex-wives and seven children, vaguely related, all wondering what love meant witnessing his mean existence and emotional detachment.

  Esmé arrived at Ray’s house around seven Saturday night. Maybe he was out.

  During daylight savings time, even the canyon stayed relatively light. She saw no signs of life except for the landscape lights bursting on when she stepped out of the car. She wove up the driveway, her Rockports crunching on the gravel, aware that she was not at her best.

  Tonight, she wanted to tell her son the whole story, the whole sad tale of herself and her hero, Henry Jackson. How it all fell apart. How she regretted so much.

  She dreaded the encounter slightly more than she welcomed it. Her power over Ray had weakened through the years. Leigh came along, a normal course of events. Leigh loved Ray; even Esmé could see it, how much Leigh loved her son. But as a mother who had invested absolutely everything in her child, she could barely stomach the change. She went to work at the grocery store every day, yes, but with what purpose? No little boy came home to her anymore needing a hug, fresh crayons, help with his science project.

  Sometimes she indulged in a vision of grandchildren. Whenever she broached the topic with Ray, she got put off. “We’ll think about that when the time comes.”

  In other words, Leigh didn’t want them, not ever, and Esmé could just up and die of a broken heart, for all Leigh cared.

  Drinking brought up negativity. She remembered that. She must crush these unpleasant thoughts. Finally reaching the entrance to Ray’s house, she rang the bell. Nobody came.

  She knocked. No one answered.

  “Ray?” she called softly. Then, “Ray!” regardless of the neighbors. After waiting a polite amount of time, sh
e gave up and took the hidden key from behind a bramble bush. She pushed the old-fashioned key first into the door lock, then into the dead bolt. Both slipped open like well-oiled musical instruments. She opened the door to his immaculate, magnificent, sterile home.

  A perfectly tempered air swept over her, forcing her eyes closed. “Ah,” she said, accepting this benevolent feeling that came from money and good planning.

  Replacing the key, she went into the house. Lights greeted her, turning on as if bidden. Ray adored modern technology, and at this moment, so did she. She felt so welcomed.

  She poured herself a vodka from his wet bar, and looked around. She admired and hated the artwork on his walls. She peeked into his closet, but when she spilled her drink, decided she probably ought to lie down for a bit.

  His sofa, worth thousands no doubt, was hard but at least had some loose pillows. She put her head on one end and stretched out on the unforgiving sofa.

  She would tell all.

  In a way, she couldn’t wait. All these years, she had kept her life bottled up inside so tight, corked, screwed down. Ray should know, she decided, plumping the pillow with one hand, feeling a little dizzy. He ought to know who his father was, and who his mother is.

  Probably he deserved to know, although such niceties of morality seemed a little like the leaves outside, blowing in hot summer winds, untouchable unless they fell to the ground and you stomped on them. She would have a nap, and then he’d be home.

  22

  F or breakfast, Ray found some food they could eat, canned pears, dry cereal with powdered milk. The pantry, located on a porch beside the kitchen, showed signs of vermin infestation. Kat, continuing to feel quite hungry after the ordeals of a haunted Idyllwild night, did not care. When Ray didn’t finish his cornflakes, she finished them.

  The T-shirt sat in its bag on the couch. Ray kept away from it. Kat couldn’t stop looking at it.

  “Plan of action,” Kat said. “Besides take the shirt back to the sheriff?”

  “We didn’t finish searching this place. Maybe there’s more.”

  “We hunt some more?” Kat said.

  “Don’t want to miss anything, now that we’re here.”

  “But it’s a crime scene. We shouldn’t mess it up.”

  “Is it? I don’t believe it. Besides, we already slept here.”

  They hunted. Kat made Ray search the small downstairs bedroom. She refused to go downstairs at all, in fact.

  They tossed the place attic to foundation, finding nothing else that suggested Leigh had been there recently.

  Kat found a picture album that documented many years of visits. Mr. Hubbel, not exactly a fine figure of a man these days, appeared godlike, handsome as a movie star. He water-skied, hiked, rode a bike, swam wearing a mighty tight Speedo. In occasional extras presumably taken by friends, his wife appeared alongside him, small and adorable. Leigh, young and accompanied by friends male and female over the years, grinned a camera-false smile. Kat, although frequently invited, had never managed to visit before.

  At the back of a leather-bound volume on the bottom shelf of many albums, she found three pictures of Tom with Leigh.

  In one, they sat together on a boat, heads inclined toward each other, hers so very blonde, his darker, his thick eyebrows furrowed, worried looking. Leigh looked up at him, and although the picture was black and white, her gray eyes appeared translucent. They sat in the stern of a speedboat, a white trail behind them, globules of water decorating both their faces. Tom gazed back at her, lovestruck. She appeared happy, without connection.

  In another, they smiled into the camera, Tom, several inches taller than Leigh, standing against a desert backdrop of treeless, cracked ground. He had looped an arm over her shoulder. They looked relaxed, like two people who belonged together.

  In the third and last picture, Tom was peripheral, not part of the framed group. He sat on a bench in the background, watching Leigh whoop it up at an evening party, champagne glass in one hand, a plate of hors d’oeuvres in the other. Behind her, an orange desert sky blazed. Tom, lurking in shadows, appeared to glower.

  Leigh glowed like the moon, handsome young men hovering nearby.

  Kat pulled out the photos and pushed them into her pocket. She shut the album.

  “Find anything?” Ray called from outside.

  “Nothing.”

  “I have something.” He held his hands cupped as he showed her some broken nutshells.

  “These haven’t been around long. I found them strewn all around under the back balcony where the blue jays hang.”

  “Peanuts. She likes peanuts.”

  “She sat out there eating peanuts.”

  Neither of them said the obvious: maybe whoever had hurt her had sat out there, watching the jays.

  “Put ’em in another bag, and we’ll bring them, too,” Kat advised. “For DNA testing.”

  “You’ve made up your mind she’s dead,” Ray said. “Haven’t you?”

  Kat held up her hands.

  “I want to spend a few more hours in the area before we go back,” Ray said. “Please. I can’t go back quite yet. It’s too awful. That shirt. I need some kind of hope.”

  “It’s an important discovery, Ray. I think we have to go back.”

  “Just check a gas station or two. I think I remember vaguely where the reservation is.”

  Kat shook her head, but in the end, she felt as though whatever harm had come to Leigh had come and gone, and a few more hours wouldn’t cause any more harm.

  They packed quickly. “We need a better map of this area,” Ray said. He seemed calm, rested, on patrol this morning. They closed up and drove into the village, to a local market which carried maps. Ray studied the one they bought, saying, “Maybe,” as if to himself.

  They drove north and then east along the long hill, catching glimpses of taller mountains in the distance, stopping at every convenience store, every grocery store, every gas station, moving farther and farther from Los Angeles. They showed photos of Leigh.

  Nobody knew anything. Morning turned to mid-afternoon under the blue mountain sky.

  Without discussion, at the foot of the next mountain, Ray turned his Porsche onto the road that led toward Palm Springs.

  Kat, dozing in the comfortable coolness of the Boxster, felt the car turn left and crunch onto a road that was not highway. Ray said, “I saw a road sign. There’s a reservation down here. Let’s check it out, see if I recognize anything. It’s the only one marked on this map. It’s called Baños Calientes.”

  “You think it’s the one Leigh visited?”

  “I can’t remember. I don’t know if she even told me the name of it. It could be.” On both sides of them, scrub and sand stretched away. The chaparral plants were so evenly placed, so organized in their desperate struggle to find just enough water for their roots, that the landscape looked like a park. Of course, this park was assiduously tended mostly by snakes and scorpions.

  “What exactly did she buy there?”

  “Wood. For furniture she wanted to make.”

  “What else do you remember about it?”

  “Just that an old guy sold it to her. She told me she liked him. I wasn’t paying much attention. It could be this place, or there may be a dozen small reservations around here.”

  “Well, hip hip hooray.” It popped out.

  “What?” He sounded offended.

  “I’ve felt like I dragged you along with me on this hunt for Leigh, Ray. Now here you are actually trying to help us move forward. Maybe you didn’t kill her after all.” Now that one foot was lodged in her jaw, she had to cram the other one in, too. Even as she spoke, she realized she would regret it.

  Ray’s chin moved to the forefront. “She’s not dead. Stop assuming that she is. You never gave me the chance to take charge, Kat. You’re a prodder. A poker. I hate women who prod and poke. Especially ones who look like stick insects with red hair.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah.�
�

  “Well, real men don’t wear boxers. Especially plaid ones.”

  “How would you know? You’ve never had a real man.”

  “I was just trying to say-”

  “The same shit you’ve been handing me all along to keep me moving.”

  “Which worked, finally.”

  “I worked up to it on my own, little lady.”

  Kat folded her arms and stared straight ahead, though the bouncing from the potholes detracted from this dignified posture. They were sending up a rooster tail of dry sand behind them, even though Ray was doing under thirty miles an hour now.

  After a minute, he said slowly, “Although the hot poker up my ass did make me jump a little faster.”

  “You really were frozen. Immobilized. Except for running around L.A. peeking in houses like a hamster running in a wheel.”

  “Had to do it,” Ray said.

  “What did you get out of it?”

  “I figured out where some keys fit.”

  “That’s not all of it.”

  “It’s good enough for now.”

  Kat felt they had just barely avoided an impasse that would have sent them careening back home. Ray seemed relieved, too-he whistled a little under his breath. She resolved, as she had a thousand times before, to keep a close watch on the openings to the body, guard the mouth-guard the-whoa, guard all the orifices, that meant-she had a silent epiphany involving her love life, an epiphany which she managed to keep from sharing with Ray.

  “I think his name was Pablo,” Ray now said. “Of course, I could be making that up to throw you further off the scent.”

  Replying carefully and reasonably, she said, “Okay, Baños Calientes, here we come. We still have a few hours before we should turn around and go to the police. How far are we from Topanga?”

  “Two and a half, maybe up to three hours, depending on traffic. I’ll get us back.”

  Behind them, the San Jacinto Mountains loomed, their rugged shapes piercing the sky like vampire teeth. An outcropping of sedimentary rock appeared, and over a rolling hill a settlement of nondescript ranch houses and trailers in an oasis of willows.