by Ellen Hart
“Is this your first time on an airplane?” asked a kindly older woman sitting in the middle seat.
God, did he look that pathetic? “I’m fine.”
“These planes today are amazing. Very safe.”
“You think so?”
“I fly all the time. Nothing to worry about. Just sit back and relax.”
He smiled, mostly at her naïveté.
It was all so familiar. The smells. The sounds. He’d been right to assume that the flight out would not be the worst of it. It was the trip home—suspended as he would be in the heavy dark, a place where logic could dissolve in the blink of an eye—that opened up the sudden trapdoor feeling in his stomach.
The attendant came by, and he ordered two small bottles of Scotch.
Emmett had left his son a note on the kitchen table, explaining that he had to make a quick flight to Salt Lake and would be home late. He didn’t add that he wouldn’t be piloting the plane. He also mentioned that Lukas had called and that it sounded important.
The plane touched down at Salt Lake City International a few minutes before five. As they taxied to the jet bridge, Emmett sat up in the seat and tried to shake off his fatigue. I’m not drunk, he told himself. Unsteady, yes, but driving shouldn’t be a problem. In the distance, the setting sun was half obscured by distant clouds. He’d barely thought about Ken Crowder on the way out. The entire situation seemed so remote. If it hadn’t been for Vince hitting the panic button, he’d be home tonight, not on some silly wild-goose chase. He’d probably get to Crowder’s place and find him grilling hamburgers.
The ride up to Park City through the chill, leaden twilight was uneventful. Once the sun had finally set, a fuzzy seasick feeling settled over Emmett. He kept checking the navigation system on his rented Fusion, confused by some of the instructions. Coming out of Park City, he’d taken a wrong turn, but with the help of a woman at a convenience store, he was finally heading up Owl Canyon Road, not more than a few miles from Crowder’s cabin.
Leaving the bright lights of the city behind, the mountain road seemed particularly dark and steep. A sign told him to slow to ten miles an hour just before the Fusion’s tires rolled off the pavement onto a dirt lane covered in potholes, which eventually leveled out just as Emmett spied a two-story cabin nestled into the pines off to his right. The navigation system announced that he’d reached his destination. He’d been thinking that he might need to park a ways off from the house, just so that his coming and going wouldn’t be easily observed, but when he saw the remoteness of the location, with no other houses anywhere near Crowder’s cabin, he turned into a drive bordered on one side by massive boulders and on the other by a cement walkway.
Approaching the garage, he was startled when a motion-sensitive floodlight burst on. Telling himself to take it easy, he parked, switched off the headlights, and cut the engine, then sat for a few moments staring up at the house, amazed at the size of the place.
“Cabin, my ass,” he muttered.
True, there were logs. A log front door. A log balcony that ran along the upper story. Log walls interrupted by huge windows. Logs, however, did not a cabin make. This thing was a minimansion. Second-floor lights glowed a soft yellow gold, making the interior look like an inviting port in the wilderness.
Slipping out of the front seat, Emmett was glad for the hard slap of the cold air. He made his way up the drive, his feet crunching on gravel, his blood pressure—he was sure—rising into the stratosphere. He hadn’t eaten much all day, which meant that the drinks on the plane had left his stomach burning and his head banging. With any luck, this conversation wouldn’t take long.
Seeing a note taped to the glass on the front door, he pulled it free and held it up to a faux lantern light.
Ken:
Where the hell were you last night? The guys and I came by at ten. Nobody home. Talked to a neighbor of yours today when I stopped over.
She said she was out walking her dog yesterday and saw a short-haired blonde come out of your door. Man, if you went off again with some skank and left us hanging, we’re going to boil you in crankcase oil. Call.
Stan
Emmett pocketed the note and pressed the doorbell. Standing back, he flipped the collar of his jacket up against the cold, stamped his feet, and blew on his hands, wishing for the umpteenth time today that he’d told Vince no.
“Crowder? You in there?” He banged the door knocker.
As he waited, he thought back to that summer thirty-some years ago when they’d all played baseball together. Until the chaos of that one awful incident, he’d been having a great time. Crowder had been the gentle giant type, sandy haired, soft voiced, chunky, and shambling. He and Rudmann were the team leaders—and the leaders that night. They were powerful personalities. Nobody ever crossed them. Even then, Emmett knew there was something wrong with Rudmann. He was a sociopath, a word Emmett had come across years later. He had no empathy. Crowder was big and handsome, with a smile people—women especially—found irresistible. Next to them, Emmett felt like a wallflower, a hanger-on, a skinny, tongue-tied kid. He was the only black guy on the team. The fact that he was the best athlete of the bunch—and that liberal types back then thought it was cool to hang with a brother—was the only reason he’d been included.
“Come on, Ken,” he called again, pounding on the door this time. “I’m freezing out here.”
Before renting the Fusion, Emmett had called Crowder from the airport, still hoping he wouldn’t need to make the trip up to Park City. Of course, Crowder hadn’t answered. Emmett didn’t leave a voice mail. Seemed kind of pointless. Until this moment, he’d never seriously entertained the notion that someone might truly be after them. It seemed too outlandish—the sort of thing that only happened in movies. Yet now, as he stood freezing in front of Crowder’s house, he wasn’t so sure.
Giving up for the moment, Emmett decided to do a brief inspection of the property. Coming around the side, away from the floodlights, he saw that the house was perched on heavy pilings sunk deep into the canyon wall.
“Must be an incredible view from up there,” he muttered, backing up when one of his shoes started to slip on the snow. “Jesus,” he whispered. One wrong step and he could easily end up on the canyon floor.
A deck ran the entire length of the rear of the house, without a stairway anywhere in sight. Unless he could fly, there was no way he could reach it. He thought back to what Vince had said to him before he left his house. Break in if you have to.
As Emmett crossed around to the other side of the house, the floodlight flipped back on. He was already on edge and didn’t need this freakin’ klieg light hitting him in the face every few seconds. He stepped up to a door at the corner of the garage and tried the handle, assuming it would be another dead end. It was. The lock, however, appeared to be loose. Glancing around to make sure he was still alone, he heaved his full weight against it. Three more tries and he was in. Light slanted through a row of small, square, high garage-door windows. An SUV was parked in one of the stalls, a canoe, a motorcycle, a snowblower, and a snowmobile in the other. Crowder apparently liked his toys.
As he made his way to another door at the back, the air around him felt like pure electricity. The top half of the door was glass, covered by blinds. Standing close, he cocked his arm and smashed the glass with his elbow. He found an oily cloth on the floor by the motorcycle’s front tire and used it to knock out the remaining glass from around the edge. Slipping his arm through, he pulled back the dead bolt. He was in.
The instant he stepped across the threshold he smelled something familiar. It reminded him of the nursing home where his mother had once lived. It was the oder of urine and feces. Along with it came an unfamiliar stink—coppery, sweet, foul. As he moved through the kitchen, the metallic smell coated his nostrils and clung to the roof of his mouth.
Emmett stopped at the edge of the living room, his gaze sliding along the shag carpet to Crowder’s dead body. He was sprawled on hi
s back directly in front of the stone fireplace. Blood and excrement had soaked through his clothes, turning parts of the carpet black. Emmett barely recognized him. He’d put on at least a hundred pounds. His face was bloated in death but had also surely been bloated in life.
Holding his nose, Emmett edged closer, bending down to examine the body more closely. A chest wound had killed him. Oddly enough, his right hand held a small piece of copper. Emmett pulled it free and examined it. A series of Greek letters had been stamped into the thin metal. The only reason Emmett knew it was Greek was that he’d been in a fraternity for a couple of years in college. He had no idea what the word meant, or why someone had so obviously placed it in Crowder’s hand after he’d been killed.
Stumbling back into the kitchen with the piece of copper still clutched in his hand, Emmett bolted through the garage and burst out into the cold night air, gulping in deep breaths. He knew the smell in his nostrils was something he’d never forget.
He drove several miles down the mountain before easing the car over to the side of the road. Removing his cell, he punched in Vince’s number. Two rings and they were connected.
“Bessetti.”
“Vince, it’s me. Can you talk?”
“Yeah. What? Tell me.”
“I found him. He’s dead. Shot in the chest. You can’t believe how bad that cabin smelled. I found a thin piece of what looks like copper in his hand with some Greek letters on it. You know what it means?”
Vince groaned.
“I need to know.”
“It means, you fucking moron, that we’re fucking dead men.”
24
Jane sat with Bolger and Hattie on the living room couch in Cordelia’s loft that evening, watching Animal Planet, Hattie’s favorite channel, while Cordelia changed out of her business duds into something more comfortable. They planned to spend another night at GaudyLights.
“You don’t want to look too glamorous,” called Bolger. As an aside to Jane, he added, “Unless she wants people stuffing twenty-dollar bills in her cleavage. I mean, the sane mind reels.”
“What’s GaudyLights?” asked Hattie, tearing her attention away from a West African pygmy hippo.
“It’s a place where they have lots of colored lights and gaudy people,” answered Bolger.
“What’s ‘gaudy’?”
Bending close to Jane, Bolger whispered, “I’ll be glad when this interrogation phase is over.” Lifting Hattie onto his lap, he said, “Gaudy. Hmm. Well, it means glittery. Tasteless. Flashy. Vulgar.”
“What’s ‘vulgar’?”
As he was about to answer, the doorbell rang.
“I’ll get it,” said Cordelia, sailing down the steps from her raised loft bedroom wearing a striped, double-breasted men’s suit with a wide tie, spats, and a broad-brimmed fedora set at a rakish angle over her auburn curls.
“Don’t you look … gaudy,” said Bolger. “Gangsta gaudy. Maybe you can start a new lesbatron fashion trend.”
“I don’t need a fashion critique from you,” said Cordelia, flashing her eyes at his gray satin smoking jacket with black lapels and black satin belt.
“I love what you’re wearing, Deeya,” said Hattie.
Hattie still called her aunt by the name she’d given her when she was a toddler and couldn’t pronounce “Cordelia.”
“Thank you,” said Cordelia, sticking her tongue out at Bolger. When she swung back the door, her mouth dropped open. “If I find a head of garlic and an old rugged cross will you slink away into the night?”
“I do so love your warm welcomes.”
Jane stood up to see who was outside. “Oh my God,” she whispered.
Standing her ground, Cordelia tried again. “How did Homeland Security ever let you back into the country?”
Octavia Thorn Lester, dripping with jewelry and wearing a black cashmere cape and black designer boots, elbowed her way into the room. “Nice to see you, too.”
“Mommy,” shouted Hattie, rushing to her and hugging her around the knees.
Octavia absently patted her head. “My little darling, how are you?”
“Can you stay?”
“No,” said Cordelia, continuing to hold the door open. “She’s on her way somewhere. Anywhere.”
“Yes, of course Mummy can stay,” said Octavia. “Jane, how nice to see you again.”
Jane had never been quite sure how Octavia could pull off looking heroic, tragic, and smarmy at the same time. It had to be a trick of the light.
“And—” Octavia turned to Bolger, inspecting him openly. “Who would this be?”
“You’re Octavia Thorn Lester,” said Bolger, rising as if in a trance. “You changed your hair color. Didn’t you used to be blond?”
“It’s a pelt,” said Cordelia, finally giving up and shutting the door. “I was there when she shot the varmint. It was the year she made the cover of Field & Stream.”
“How clever you are,” said Octavia, removing her cape and revealing an off-the-shoulder midnight blue sweater and pleated gray wool slacks. “For a minute there, I thought I’d walked in on Al Capone. All you need to complete the look is a lit cigar.”
“I’ll borrow one of yours,” said Cordelia.
“Young man,” said Octavia, oozing over to the drinks cart and pouring herself an inch of Grey Goose La Poire, “would you be good enough to run downstairs to my cab and bring up my luggage?”
“My pleasure.”
“You’ll need a hoist and derrick,” said Cordelia out of the side of her mouth.
“No, I’m traveling light this time. Just a few pieces.” She followed Bolger with her eyes until he’d disappeared out the door. “Gorgeous. Gay, yes?”
“He’s my nanny,” said Hattie. “Wanna watch the pygmy hippos with me?”
“You’re sticky, darling. Go wash your hands.”
As Hattie trotted off to the bathroom, Cordelia whipped off her fedora and said, “You can’t just … appear.”
“I always just appear. It’s part of my allure.”
“Don’t forget I’m your older sister. I changed your smelly diapers. You have no perceptible allure in my book.”
“All right,” she said, dropping the sophisticate act. “Here’s the deal. I came because of our new joint venture. I’m not an idiot, which means I’m not sinking money into a theater unless I see it with my own eyes and get a chance to weigh in on the renovations. I mean, wake up and smell the greasepaint, Deeya. I’ll be starring in the initial production, so I should have some say.”
Cordelia cocked her head. “No, you won’t.”
“Yes, I will.”
“No. I don’t think so.”
“Yes, absolutely.”
“Over my dead body.”
“You mean over your dead theatrical brainchild. I’m the one with all those lovely greenbacks. You want them, you get me—and I want veto power over which play we choose.”
“We? We.”
“Call your real estate agent. Let’s go see the space.”
“Tonight?”
“You have something better to do?”
Jane motioned for Cordelia to follow her into the kitchen. When she didn’t move, Jane slipped her arm through Cordelia’s and dragged her. “It might not be so bad,” she whispered, opening the refrigerator and cracking open a black cherry soda. She handed it over. It was Cordelia’s relaxation beverage of choice. “She’s got a huge name. She starred in that thriller with Michael Douglas a few years back. She’s one of the biggest names in New York.”
“Used to be,” said Cordelia, glaring at the soda can.
“Don’t crush it until you finish drinking it.”
“She thinks she can walk in here and take over.”
“If you want her backing, you’ll need to humor her.”
Cordelia took a few sustaining gulps. “I can do this. I am Woman.”
“You take care of your sister, and I’ll head over to GaudyLights.”
“Oh. Right. Sorry f
or the change in plans.”
“Can’t be helped.”
Squaring her shoulders, Cordelia marched out of the kitchen, ready to do battle. “I’ll make that call to my real estate agent,” she announced.
“Thank you, Jane,” said Octavia. “As always, you’re the voice of reason in my sister’s life. Are you leaving?” she asked, watching Jane slip into her coat.
“I’m afraid I have plans. I’m sure I’ll see you again, unless your visit is a short one.”
“Oh, no. I’ll be around.”
Cordelia gritted her teeth.
On the way to the elevator, Jane crossed paths with Bolger. He had a garment bag slung over one arm and was wheeling an extra-large leather Pullman and carrying a valise. “Boy, she’s something,” he said, obviously referring to Octavia.
“‘Something’ is as good a term as any.”
“Not terribly maternal, though.”
“Which is why Cordelia has custody of Hattie.”
“Cordelia’s not exactly a poster child for maternal instincts either, although she loves that kid beyond reason—pygmy hippos and all.” He leaned close. “Octavia didn’t pay the cabdriver, so I did.”
“Just let Cordelia know. She’ll take care of it.”
“No, it’s not a problem. It’s just, she’s sort of…”