Keeper of the Keys

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  Four-thirty in the afternoon. A small hawk perched on a telephone pole, feathers barely moving; women wearing Sunday-go-to-church dresses chatted in the parking lot of the trading post, which was basically a mom-and-pop grocery store; a leathery senior in a white hat and lived-in jeans filled up his Ranger at the gas pump out front. Ray pulled the car into a parking spot.

  He locked the car remotely with a click. Kat followed him into the store.

  Racks of bait mixed incongruously with fresh spices. Apparently the people down here not only liked to catch fresh food, they liked to cook with spices, rare beer batters, unusual root-based roux. Unlike the grocery stores near her house in Hermosa, the aisles were not speckled with plastic grasses or lit with halogen spotlights to create the illusion of cozy gourmet. This store reminded her of the one down the hill from Franklin Street in Whittier when she was a kid, what they used to call “the little store.” Fusty candies in moldering baskets decorated the shelf below the counter cash register. The rest of the store held basics like toilet paper, tampons, and peanut butter stacked up to the black painted ceiling without any fanfare.

  A gum-chewing teen manned the register. Ray did not pretend he wanted to buy anything.

  “Pablo around?”

  The jaw worked. Gum popped once, then twice.

  “Haven’t seen him today.”

  “I need to see him.”

  A stare as indifferent as the stars blinked back.

  “I know him,” Ray said.

  “Who are you?”

  “My name is Ray Jackson. My wife’s name is Leigh. Leigh Jackson.”

  The gum popped again. The boy at the counter took a dirty rag out and wiped his counter down. When it continued to be grubby, he spit on the rag and wiped it again. “Don’t know you.”

  “You sell my wife manzanita.”

  A dim light penetrated the distant universe of his eyes. “Sounds familiar.”

  “She builds furniture, and sometimes she uses the manzanita as bases for glass tables.”

  “It grows wild out here.”

  “Yes.”

  “He doesn’t steal it, you know.”

  “Nobody said he did.” When the boy began to straighten the newspapers, Ray said, “It’s not like he was selling her drugs.”

  “He wouldn’t.”

  “He around?”

  “No. You want to buy something?”

  No problem, Kat had a handful of goodies she wanted at the ready. She plopped them in front of the boy. Ray looked at the candy bars and said, “That’s not your lunch.”

  “No, I missed lunch. This is high tea.”

  The clerk smiled, revealing gold-tipped incisors, and rang their purchases up.

  “Where can we find Pablo?”

  Ching. Ching. Ching. “He’s my grandfather. You want to buy some manzanita?”

  “Maybe.”

  “We call it madrón. He rambles around the desert collecting what he calls found things. He used to follow the Grateful Dead around, you know? Fell in love with a woman who played harpsichord with them a few times, named Margaret. When she dumped him, he married Grandma Rayella.”

  “Sounds like a live wire,” Kat said, while he bagged up the food she couldn’t wait to eat. The cornflakes at the Idyllwild cabin had not assuaged her need for nutrients.

  The boy began to hand her the change from her twenty; she waved him off.

  He narrowed his eyes and tucked the money into the right front pocket of his jeans. “Grandpa comes in around five almost every night. Since Grandma died, he doesn’t cook.” He waved toward a steaming bar along one side of the shop. “He’ll eat any soup we dream up.”

  “Is that what I’m smelling? Smells good.” Kat was now regretting the Mounds, the Snickers, and the paper-wrapped Necco Wafers she had just opened.

  “White bean soup. I make it with fresh parsley, garlic, and a delicate imported parmigiano.” He smirked, and Kat imagined how many cans he opened in the morning, getting that fresh soup going.

  “I’ll take a quart,” Ray said, pulling out his wallet.

  They left to await the appearance of Pablo. They had only a few minutes to kill. Cars passed by but nobody stopped. Lights winked on behind them.

  They didn’t want to return to the car, so they walked up the block toward a distant blinking sign that said, “Desert Tots.” On both sides of the street, empty lots extended for miles beyond the road. Tumbleweeds blew by. An early moon floated in the blue. A shaded wooden bench sat in front of the store, which on weekdays sold secondhand items for children. It was very quiet.

  Ray opened his soup container and pulled a plastic spoon out of his pocket.

  “You going to eat all that?”

  “You could have told me to get two spoons,” he said, offering her the first bite.

  “I couldn’t. I was embarrassed.” She slurped down a bite, then two, then three. “Oh, man.”

  He took the spoon from her and sampled the soup.

  “That kid can cook!”

  They polished off the soup and walked up and down, past the library trailer, the bank branch, and the post office in the heat. That was one block and then they were in a neighborhood where a few kids played in a yard.

  When they got back to the little store, they had a new contact, a middle-aged babe with bold silver streaks in her hair, who wore a lowcut T-shirt that displayed her amplitudes. Ray asked for Pablo again.

  Seconds later, a man in a straw cowboy hat with a dark, seamed face appeared from behind a door at the back of the store. He had a cloth napkin decorated with roosters tucked into his neck like a bib. “Cheche outdid himself,” he said to the woman at the register. He paid no attention to Kat and Ray.

  She answered, “He thinks he can talk you into paying for cooking school next year. He’s praying. He’s hoping.”

  The older man, scrawny, small, no more than five feet five inches tall, nodded. “He’s been cooking since he had to stand on a stool.”

  She pointed toward Ray. “These people want to talk to you.”

  Pablo removed his bib, folded it, and placed it on the counter next to the woman. “Find a place for that, will you, querida?”

  She stuffed the dirty napkin under the counter, turned away from them, and began watching a miniature television, with a serious expression.

  “Hi,” Kat said, letting Pablo look them over. He leaned against the ice-cream cooler, the picture of a well-fed man. He must be past seventy, with large scarred hands and cords standing out in his neck.

  “We’re looking for someone.” Ray pulled a picture of Leigh out of his coat pocket and handed it to Pablo.

  Pablo held the picture of Leigh in his hands. “Long time since I saw this lady.” He had a deep, distant voice, like he was channeling it from somewhere else.

  “Old man,” the woman at the counter said, “your memory needs tweaking.”

  “Months,” he said stubbornly, and gave her a look. “Don’t pay any attention to her,” he said. “She just likes to talk.”

  “Leigh is my wife,” Ray said. “She’s missing. If you saw her, we really need to know. We are afraid something has happened to her.”

  “I remember a long time ago when I saw her, she mentioned you,” the man said. Kat couldn’t see his eyes under the hat. “I was asking why she came out here alone. She said she had a wonderful husband. A wonderful husband, but he didn’t have time for deserts and mountains.”

  “She meant me, all right,” Ray said. He didn’t blink.

  “She makes wonderful furniture. She made a table for me last year.”

  “She did?”

  “She’s a real artist.”

  Ray looked away. Kat wondered what he was thinking. She said, “When you saw her, was she on her way somewhere?”

  “I wouldn’t know.”

  “She didn’t say anything about her plans?” Kat broke in.

  “Who are you?” the man said, his gaze moving back and forth between her and Ray.

&
nbsp; “I understand why you wouldn’t be sure about trusting us. But this is urgent. She has disappeared. We have to find her.”

  “Who are you?”

  “Her best friend.”

  “She didn’t mention you.”

  “Nevertheless, here I am,” Kat said.

  “If you know anything, anything at all-” Ray said.

  “Sometimes people want to disappear for a while.”

  “Is that what she told you? She came through here last weekend, didn’t she?” Kat said, the words rushing out.

  The man squeezed his lips so tightly together they disappeared, and Kat was reminded again about guarding the mouth. She turned to the woman at the counter and said, “Please.”

  “It’s up to him,” the woman said, jerking her head toward Pablo.

  “You want the police here?”

  “My cousin’s the deputy on duty here. I’m not afraid of him, or you two. You better go now.”

  23

  T hey’re lying,” Kat said, as they got back in the car and pulled back into the road.

  “I agree.”

  “He saw her. Or he knew something about her. He knew something!”

  “Could be.”

  “You think he’d act like that if he knew nothing?”

  “I think,” Ray said, steering the Porsche west as they turned back onto the highway, “we have to go back to L.A. ”

  “Did he see her or not? It’s a simple enough question.”

  “He said she wanted to disappear,” Ray said. His jaw clenched. “As if he knows she’s alive.”

  “Not exactly. Maybe we should keep going until we find her.”

  “Where should we go?” Ray said. “ Palm Springs? Vegas? Salt Lake City? Albuquerque? St. Louis? Cleveland? Owego, New York? We have to go back now, Kat.”

  “I’m angry at that old man,” Kat said. “He could have helped us.”

  “Don’t think about him. Get mad at Leigh,” Ray said. “I know I wasn’t a great husband to her. But here I am, ready to change, and she’s not here to see it. And she wasn’t a great wife to me. I knew she was still sad about your brother. But years passed and she stayed just as sad. I wonder if she ever loved me. Maybe I was just the guy between Tom and Martin.”

  “She loves you,” Kat said. “I read the poems.”

  For a long time into the night, heading up toward the stars that shone so brightly, they drove in silence. The desert, yellow, gold, ochre, mustard, whipped by.

  Ray drove too fast for another couple of minutes, then asked, “What was he like?”

  “Who?”

  “Tom.”

  “You never asked her?”

  “Why would I? I’d only start comparing myself to him. But it doesn’t matter now, I suppose.”

  She found herself telling him about Tom. She told him about how he was the glue that kept their family together, how he kept them laughing, how he didn’t have an enemy in the world. Surprisingly, she didn’t get choked up like usual. To be able to talk about Tom without descending into utter grief was a new thing for her.

  Ray listened intently, while dodging the semis and the road hogs trying to make it to their destinations before dark.

  “She still loves him,” he said finally.

  “She had broken up with him before he died. She left him for you, Ray! Why are you so stupid! Of course she loved-loves you!”

  “You don’t understand. She-” He fell silent.

  “Look, what she did with your partner-I don’t excuse that,” Kat said. “I can’t explain it, and I doubt she can explain it. Let’s find her. That’s all I know.”

  “I don’t know where else to look,” Ray said.

  “She took out some cash. We’ll find her.”

  “Someone used her card. Not necessarily her. Like you said before.”

  “Was Leigh’s PIN hard to guess?”

  “No idea.” They talked about that. Leigh had apparently never told Ray her PIN or for that matter any of her computer IDs, facts Kat found telling. Now she was glancing at him again.

  The shirt in the back was like a funereal shroud and they were just a couple of hearse-drivers. Her mind was like a Ping-Pong match. It was too late. No, it wasn’t. Yes, it was.

  No, it wasn’t! “The police have to get right on this!” Kat cried.

  “As soon as we get back, I’ll go straight to Rappaport. No more phone calls. I just hope they don’t clap me in jail when I do.”

  Kat rifled through her purse for a brush. She knew how bad she looked from the tiny mirror under the sunshade in the car that revealed all in the unforgiving glare of the map light. She pulled a brush through her hair and discreetly tossed loose spikes out of the car window when she thought Ray wasn’t looking. Let the birds make nests.

  She vowed to take more vitamins, meditate properly, love the people in her life, because you never knew how long they might be there. She considered calling Jacki. Checking her watch, she saw that it was late and decided to wait. Jacki and Raoul, and with luck, the babe, would be snoring away.

  They had dropped into the L.A. Basin into light traffic. Thank God for Sunday, the one day you could still drive here. Full dark had come on. Sandwiched between sound walls on this strip of blacktop, they could be anywhere.

  Kat, looking out the window at nothing, realized that she was very low, so low she could feel tears coming on. Every once in a while she needed to have a long talk with Tommy, and it felt like tonight would be another one of those nights. Where was Leigh? She just wanted to be in bed now, safe, even if she couldn’t sleep, even if she’d spend the night thinking about the losses and the pain…

  But then she bit her lip and smiled to herself. Her sister had a new baby. Good things did happen. There was a chance for all of them still.

  “Did you notice what she did as we were leaving the store?” she asked Ray.

  “Who?” Ray passed in the left lane, doing ninety, headlights in front flashing by, headlights behind eating his dust. Kat held on tight.

  “The woman at the register. The one with the big hooters.”

  “She looked good.”

  “She looked at the old man.”

  “So?”

  “I don’t know. I might be imagining this. But I thought she gave him a signal, sort of a wink. As if she’s not worried about Leigh, not taking this seriously. Would they really have shined us on like they did if they didn’t know Leigh is okay?”

  “Yeah, sure, she’s fine,” Ray said. And Kat managed not to look at him this time, but she was wondering again, wondering what was really in his mind, whether he knew exactly where Leigh was. She remembered a California murder case in which an adulterous husband, Scott Peterson, killed his pregnant wife and threw her body into the Berkeley harbor. In the absence of much direct evidence, the jury had been mightily influenced by his conduct during the subsequent search, his calls to his girlfriend, his purchase of new toys.

  Was Ray just making a case for himself, using her?

  Kat, exhausted, barely spoke to him when they finally pulled into the driveway in Topanga. “Rappaport,” she said, fished out her car keys, climbed into her tin can of a car, and drove off, buckling her seat belt for another stretch before she’d be home in Hermosa.

  Ray pulled the Porsche into the garage, watched the door lower, and went through the inside garage door into his house, beat through and through.

  Something felt strange. The door led into his laundry room. He couldn’t see anything out of place there, but he had an instantaneous impression that something was not right. A smell? A peculiar air, not his.

  Setting his jacket gently down on the floor instead of on its usual hook, he made his way slowly toward the darkened living room. “Who’s there?” His voice reverberated hollowly along the hard surfaces.

  Nobody answered but the clock his mother had given him for his mantel. It chose this moment to let out its muffled chime.

  Midnight. How perfect. He remembered Kat’s scare at Idyllwild
and told himself to get a grip.

  Rather than march directly into the living room, he sidestepped into the kitchen, where he had a view of the front room but some protection if he needed it, and flipped on the overheads: he chose a low counter to hide behind. He took his big chef’s knife out of its special place in a drawer, taking care to keep the drawer quiet. Stopping to see anything he could view from the kitchen, he moved silently into the living room and fumbled for the light on his Palmetti lamp.

  Vomit desecrated his custom bamboo floor. The mess had been hastily wiped, with ugly gobbets left behind. Ugh. A throw had been moved from his bed to one arm of the sofa, and dragged sloppily on the floor.

  Ray moved in closer. Who? Who would invade his home then sleep there? Certainly no typical burglar. Not the police?

  Leigh?

  Martin?

  Now he walked rapidly through the house turning on lights, holding the knife tightly-but he wouldn’t need it, there was nobody there, not even an open window, no other signs of major disturbance.

  Back in the living room he examined the pillow on the couch, silk, that had been taken from a nearby chair. A hair, mid-length, gray-rooted, lay at the center.

  He drew a final conclusion easily when he spotted her favorite sweater draped over a chair. His mother had come, crashed in his living room, and left again. She had thrown up. She was sick.

  After Ray cleaned up the mess, placing the rags he used directly into the washing machine with copious amounts of detergent and bleach, he drank coffee he probably didn’t need in spite of his lack of sleep.

  His mother had slept here, tossed her cookies.

  She never drank. Could she be ill? But he wasn’t quite ready to call her.

  A quick perusal of the kitchen told him that she had invaded the cupboard above his refrigerator and the mirrored bar. A bottle of vodka Leigh had bought months ago that had gathered dust was less than one-fourth full. Last time he had noticed, the bottle had been three-quarters full. Even if Leigh made several of her favorites, cranberry and vodka, she hadn’t drunk that much that fast in all the time he had known her.

  Had he driven Esmé to this?