Presumption Of Death

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  Nina said, “Okay. Scratch them. No jury’s going to buy them as alternate suspects. We’re back to Siesta Court.”

  “Danny and Coyote and the Moneyman.”

  “Elizabeth played me an interesting tape last night. From the Siesta Court block party I attended.”

  He was on the computer. “About Elizabeth. I meant to say, uh, sorry about getting juiced last night. I don’t even know why I did that. So what about this tape?”

  “I think Elizabeth just wanted to talk to me anyway. And I know you don’t drink that much, but Paul, with Bob around, we’re going to have to straighten up in general.”

  Paul swiveled around so he was facing her. He looked like he was thinking that the good times were over.

  Nina said, “I really want that chair, Paul. That is the most comfortable, coolest chair in the world.”

  He leaned back and let a beatific expression cross his face. “It is.”

  “So that’s a no? You won’t let me use that chair? I have to use this director’s chair?”

  “Honey, without my chair, I’m nothing.”

  “Not very chivalrous.”

  “I’m much nicer to my wives. But let’s not go there this morning, we have work to do.”

  Nina fidgeted uncomfortably, just to make him feel bad, but he was pretending not to see it. So she went over to him and sat down on his lap.

  “A compromise,” she said as he put his arms around her. “Anyway, she taped a conversation in which several men were standing in a group apart from the rest of the party, having a quick conversation. Their voices were lowered, but you could hear some of it. They were toasting Danny’s death.”

  “They were what?”

  “I’m telling you. They said, ‘Good riddance.’”

  Paul thought for a moment, then said, “They must figure Danny was responsible for the fires. Even so, it’s damn cold.”

  “I think it might be more than that, Paul.”

  “What do you mean? Who are we talking about, anyway?”

  “Darryl Eubanks, George Hill, Sam Puglia, David Cowan, and Ted Ballard.”

  “You think-what? One of them is the Moneyman?”

  “One of them? Or all of them?” Nina said. “If it’s all of them, you see, there wouldn’t be six thousand two hundred fifty dollars missing from anybody’s account. They each could have pitched in part of the money to pay Coyote.”

  “I don’t know. First of all, who’s going to set all these fires for a little over six grand? Ben already told me that Danny hadn’t had an influx of money. So was he not involved after all? It doesn’t make sense.”

  “No, you’re right, but we have to start untangling this somewhere and I still feel this money in Coyote’s bank account is hard evidence of something.”

  “Okay. What now?”

  “I’m glad you asked me that, Paul.”

  “What are you up to?”

  “I’m going to call Debbie again. And ask her about the sum of twelve hundred fifty dollars, whether that rings any bells for any of the women.”

  Paul was nodding. “Twelve-fifty times five. Six thousand two hundred fifty. I get it, even if it sounds extremely far-fetched. Can’t hurt. Meantime, I’m scheduled to go talk to the Boyz again and get them ready to testify. Maybe they’ll remember something else.”

  Debbie was out on the deck, if the birds chirping madly in the background were any indication. “Just thought I’d check in,” Nina said.

  “Sam wants to know if you’re going to subpoena any of us,” Debbie said. “For this court proceeding.”

  “That’s not the plan at the moment. A preliminary hearing is a lot less thorough than a trial. There will only be a few witnesses, and at the moment I don’t see you and Sam as involved.” She added the lawyer’s private asterisk: But that could change.

  “What with Britta still in intensive care and Danny’s death and the Cat Lady, I just can’t seem to get to the gardening or the housework. All I do is worry. I wish I knew what was going on.”

  Nina felt a jab of conscience. She had told Britta, not Debbie, about the threat to the children. Maybe Britta hadn’t spread the word before she was assaulted. “Debbie,” she began, but Debbie was ahead of her.

  “We had a prowler a few nights ago. Behind David’s house. Now we’re all wondering about this guy Coyote you told us about.”

  “Debbie, I think you should worry. I think you should be careful.” She told Debbie about Donnelly’s death. Then, taking a deep breath, she told her Nate’s words about the children.

  “Our children?” Her voice was tremulous. “Here in the neighborhood? What is he doing? Why would he hurt Britta and set fires and threaten the children?”

  “I just don’t know. But, you know, I don’t agree with the police that there isn’t a possible danger.”

  “I think Nate doesn’t make things up. He does get confused, though.”

  “That’s true.”

  “But-someone hurt Britta. I need to talk to Jolene and Tory. And David.” Now she was in a hurry to sign off, but Nina said, “Wait. There’s one more thing. You know how I told you about the money Coyote received from somewhere?”

  “Yes, you got us in a tizzy and nothing came of it.”

  “I made a mistake,” Nina said. “The amount was twelve hundred fifty dollars.”

  There was a long silence at the end of the line.

  “Okay, then, gotta go,” Debbie said, feeding her a big tablespoonful of phony cheer.

  “Call me if anything comes up,” Nina said.

  “You bet. Oh, absolutely. Bye now.”

  When Darryl got back from the hardware store, Tory didn’t seem to be around, and the kids, who had been playing in the backyard when he left, must be with her. When he opened the back door, though, he heard them next door and he went out into the backyard.

  Tory and Debbie were chattering on the deck and the kids were trampolining. “Hey, ladies,” he called. They looked his way and Tory called, “Be right there.” So he put away the paint in the garage for his Sunday project and settled down in his La-Z-Boy to watch ESPN. He didn’t feel so good and he just wanted to be left alone, so of course Tory came marching in a few minutes later and, would you believe it, picked up the remote and turned off the tube.

  “I want to know what you’ve been up to,” she said. “You better start talking.” She stood right in front of him, arms folded, face white, wearing her gardening jeans and one of her old flowered cotton pregnancy tops that gave her lots of room to grow.

  “What’s the matter?” Darryl said. He set down his beer. “What happened?”

  “You ask what’s the matter. Britta’s in the hospital, Danny’s dead, the hills are alive with the sound of crackling, the Cat Lady was murdered-murdered, Darryl. You don’t love me anymore. And you ask me what’s the matter? I’m going to pack up the kids and get out of here. I’m not staying here. We’re going.” Her voice sounded strange. He’d never heard her so angry. He stood up and tried to put his arms around her to calm her down, but she shook him off.

  “You better listen this time,” she said. “I’ve had it.”

  “But what did I do?”

  “I don’t know what you did yet. I’m going to go check our bank records and find out some of what you did, but even before I do that, I’m going to tell you, Darryl, you better make up your mind if we’re going to stay married. I’m not putting up with it any longer. With you chasing after Elizabeth, jealous about her.” She burst into tears.

  “Oh, sweetie, don’t get so upset.” Darryl felt helpless. “Where are the kids?”

  “Debbie’s watching them so I can talk to you,” she choked out, and Darryl had that terrible sinking feeling that this was it, he was going to have to really talk to Tory. He wasn’t ready.

  “We’re leaving you, Darryl,” Tory sobbed. It felt like getting hit with a ninety-mile-an-hour fastball. Darryl sat down. He couldn’t breathe. “I’m packing up. All because of you being so stupid. You don�
��t care about anything but your big stupid self. You just sit home and wait for your girlfriend to come to you. I doubt she ever will, but that’s the way you’ve decided to live.”

  “But-but Pastor Sobczek-tomorrow-”

  “Too late. Too late.” She was crying like her heart was broken, and all of a sudden Darryl realized it really was. This was serious. She was thinking the unthinkable.

  He cleared his throat. “Sweetie, can we sit down? Please? Let’s sit down.” She let him take her hand and they sat down on the couch. He took her chin and tried to get her to look at him, but she wouldn’t. Now he was really alarmed.

  “Well, you love her, right?” Tory cried.

  “I-I-”

  “Putting me through hell. For what? She doesn’t love you! Me and the kids, that’s who used to love you! Well, it’s over. You keep your secrets, all of them. I don’t even care what you’ve been doing.”

  “What brought all this on?” Darryl asked, his alarm making it hard for him to hear, making his ears ring.

  “Debbie says the kids are in danger from the man who hurt Britta. I’m not staying here, Darryl. And I found out you went to see her.”

  “How?”

  “Who cares how? You think I’m stupid old Tory, I’ll put up with anything! I’m leav-”

  “Tory,” Darryl said as calmly as he could, “listen to me for just a second. You’re very upset and I-I understand. But you can’t just take off.”

  “Watch me!”

  “We have five kids!” The thought that he might lose his kids was new and so frightening he could barely say that.

  “Four. I’m not keeping this one, Darryl.” Stunned, Darryl let go of her. His mouth fell open. She too seemed stunned by what she had said. Then an expression of the most awful sadness and hostility all mixed up came over her face.

  “I’m going to have an abortion. I am.”

  Darryl’s eyes filled up. He couldn’t say a word.

  “I don’t want to, but what am I going to do with five kids? Society doesn’t support motherhood, not really.”

  “No. Please, no, Tory. Please listen.”

  “To your lies? You and your secrets. All you men. Something awful is going on around here.” She spun around and ran into the bedroom. Darryl stood there a second, panic knotting his gut, then he followed her in. She had pulled open the dresser drawers and was setting clothes on the bed.

  “Tory-Tory-”

  “Go away, Darryl.” She was crying again.

  “We’ll go see the pastor tomorrow.”

  “No.”

  “I’ll do anything. I love you. I do. I’ll prove it. Please don’t leave.” He grabbed her and she tried to struggle free, but he wouldn’t let her. They fell onto the bed and thrashed around and she got one arm free and hit him in the face, hard. She fought so hard he had to let her go so he wouldn’t accidentally hurt her. She was yelling and screaming the whole time.

  She rolled away and got up on one elbow, trying to catch her breath. Darryl felt something wet on his face and wiped under his nose and saw his hand covered with blood.

  “I think you broke my nose,” he mumbled. She jumped up and came back in with a bunch of tissue and said, “Stuff it under there.” Then she went back into the bathroom and a minute later came back with some wet washcloths. He sat on the edge of the bed and she wiped the blood from his lip and mouth carefully. She had stopped crying, but her eyelashes were wet and her face was all flushed and he felt the most tender and sad feeling come over him. He had made her cry.

  “Just a nosebleed,” she told him.

  “You have a hard right.”

  “You deserve that and more.”

  “You’re right. I’m stupid. I don’t believe how stupid I am. But please don’t leave me. Please. Let’s go see the pastor tomorrow. Then if you have to go, all right. Tory, I can’t make it without you and the kids.”

  “I don’t know,” Tory said. “I’m very mixed up. And afraid for the kids. And you’re no help at all. No support at all. Worst of all is that you don’t love me.”

  “But I do. I do. I just forgot it for a while.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Darryl got down on his knees and buried his head in her lap. He broke down like a little kid.

  And after a minute he felt her hands stroking his hair. It was like crashing a car and then, finding, thank God, you’re still alive.

  30

  T HE BOYZ GAVE NOTICE THE NEXT day.

  “We’re leaving tomorrow, but we’ll pay the rent until the end of the month,” Dustin said on the phone. Nina, on the floor in Paul’s bedroom, files and books and papers spread around her in a semicircle, tried to wrap her mind around this new domestic disturbance.

  “You sure will,” she answered. “Care to give me a reason?”

  “This whole thing with Wish.”

  “I don’t see how-”

  “Wish’s mother. Mrs. Whitefeather. She’s here right now. Know what she’s doing?”

  “What?”

  “She’s scrubbing the bathroom. She’s putting my razor in the cabinet above the toilet where I’ll never find it.” Dustin must be on a cordless phone because he seemed to be watching Sandy’s movements. His voice, hushed, went on, “She’s sniffing the towels.”

  “Put her on, would you?”

  “It won’t change our minds. We’re leaving. Sorry, Nina.”

  “So that’s it? There’s nothing I can do? Even make Sandy go stay somewhere else?”

  “Something else will happen. Tus and I need quiet to study. If Wish gets out he’ll come back here and-no offense, but who knows what’ll happen next? We need quiet. Quiet, man.” Nina heard the sound of the toilet flushing. “There goes the roach that lived in the medicine cabinet,” Dustin said. “He was kind of a pet.”

  Nina said, “Okay, Dustin. But I’ll still need you in court next week.”

  “We’re still on. I owe Wish that.” Sandy came on the line.

  Apparently Dustin hadn’t told her the news yet. When Nina told her she was about to become the sole tenant of the cottage, Sandy said, “I wasn’t going to say anything. But there were things in the freezer that would make your hair stand on end. So what now?”

  “The rent’s paid for a couple of weeks. I’ll rent it out again when you leave.”

  “It’ll be a lot better-looking around here by then. They’re nice boys, they just never heard of Ajax cleanser.”

  Nina returned to her work. She was writing down points to cover during her cross-examination of the medical examiner when Bob knocked on the door.

  “Mom? I’m going for a hike.”

  “A hike? Where?”

  “In the hills out back.”

  “I don’t think that’s such a good idea. There are tarantulas and snakes and poison oak and-”

  “I’ll watch out. Hitchcock hasn’t been for a good walk since he got hurt.”

  Yes, but there’s a fugitive hiding somewhere out there who wants to take some children, Nina thought. “I’ll go out with you about four.”

  “But I want to go now.”

  “Go swimming at the condo pool. Okay?”

  Bob’s eyes had fallen on a book that lay open in front of her. “What the heck is that?”

  “Don’t look at those, honey.” Nina hastily closed the book.

  “What happened to those people?”

  “It’s a book by two medical examiners, both named Di Maio, called Forensic Pathology. It’s about trying to figure out how people have died.”

  “You have to read stuff like that? Look at those cracked-up skulls? That one guy looked like a mummy. His skin was hanging in flaps!”

  “I’m sorry you saw the pictures, honey. This book is a reference book for doctors and lawyers. Not for you to look at.”

  “Remind me not to be a doctor or lawyer!”

  “I’ve got to get back to work now, Bobby.”

  “So when are we gonna have our big talk?”

  �
�In the next couple of days.”

  “Is Paul mad that I’m here? He’s staying away a lot, isn’t he?”

  “Paul likes you just fine,” Nina said. “Don’t worry about a thing.”

  “You always say that.”

  “Bob, I-” I don’t have time to talk right now, I have a prelim tomorrow and I have to get to work, kiddo, she wanted to say. And managed not to say it. “So go have a swim and get some sunshine.”

  He also hesitated. He was growing up and she couldn’t always read his mind anymore. “Okay. See you later.”

  “I’ll be knocking off around four. We’ll take a hike and later we can eat at Robata and we’ll stop at the Thunderbird Bookstore.” And then she would work some more.

  He closed the door and Nina opened her text again. The caption under the photo said, “Scalp burned away, exposing cranial vault.” Outside the window, it was summer.

  At Ben Lomond, Ted and Megan stopped for more water and granola bars, twenty hard miles from where they had started cycling. Ted’s hair, when he removed his helmet, curled in tendrils above his brow and made him look like a Roman emperor. They sat on a bench in front of the general store, drinking water and sweating it out almost as fast as they took it in. The tourists drove along Highway 9, gawking like they were exotic or something.

  “I never liked these mountains around Santa Cruz,” Megan said. “They’re too dark. Too thick. Too many murders too. I think the hippies who never grew up came here and some of them stagnated for a long time and then they got rotten.”

  “They’re dying off now,” Ted said. “The music was pretty good, though.”

  “Sex and drugs and rock. Do you think they had more sex than the current generation?”

  “Oh, crap. Are you on the sex thing again?”

  Megan looked at him, tall, hard, sucking down his water, wet hair, black spandex cycle shorts, hairy legs. “I’ve got a theory,” she said. “About the sex thing, as you call it.”

  Ted groaned.

  “I think it’s your bicycle seat. And all the time you spend on it. It injures your testes.”