by Allen Eskens
“Yeah, but…” Lila looked at me as though her point was so obvious that she shouldn’t have to finish the sentence, but then she did. “The bar exam is next week. I’m not ready. If I don’t pass the bar, I’m out of a job.”
“What if this Toke Talbert guy is…or was, my father? I can’t just stay here and ignore that.”
“If you really want to know about your father, maybe you should start by talking to your mother.”
I stiffened and pulled back like a dog getting jolted by a shock collar. The look on my face was enough to drop Lila’s gaze. “My mother is dead,” I said.
“She’s not dead. And quit saying that. What if Jeremy hears you?” Lila nodded toward the open door. I walked over and closed it.
“She may as well be dead. You know that.”
“No, I don’t,” Lila said in a soft voice, her thoughts seeming to turn inward.
I stared at Lila, not really sure of what I was hearing.
“It’s been five years, Joe,” Lila said, quietly. “People change.”
Where was this coming from? Had she forgotten the hell that my mother put us through? People change? What did she mean by that? I hardened my gaze but kept my voice level and said, “No.”
“All I’m saying is—”
“No,” I said again, although not as level this time.
Lila stared at me like a cat about to hiss.
“I’m sorry, Lila,” I said, hoping to smooth down the rough edge of our conversation. “You know why I can’t open that door again. What she did to Jeremy? What she said about me at that guardianship hearing? We can’t go back there—ever.”
Lila didn’t respond.
I wanted to move to a different topic, get us away from my mother, so I brought up my trip to Buckley again. “If Angel’s in a hospital, do you think they’d let me visit her?”
“What?”
“Angel…my sister. Will the hospital let me in to see her?”
“You’re going to visit her? You don’t even know for sure that she is your sister. Don’t you think you should wait?”
I didn’t really have a plan to visit Angel. I just wanted to ease back into the conversation about my trip with something neutral, maybe knock a few stones off the wall building up between us. “I suppose you’re right,” I said.
“You’re still planning on going to Buckley?”
“I won’t be gone long, an overnight at best.”
“Who’s going to take care of Jeremy while you’re gone?”
“Jeremy’s fine. He’s—”
“Jeremy’s not fine.” Lila found her footing again. “He hates his new job. It takes me half an hour of working with him before he stops rubbing his knuckles when he comes home. And you’re not here in the mornings when I’m getting him ready for work. It breaks my heart to put him on that bus. He hates his job.”
“He’ll get used to it. He did the same thing when he started at the recycling center.”
“But that’s the point; he’s not used to it. This is the week before the bar. I don’t need this, Joe. Not right now.”
“Angel’s all alone. She’s just a kid.”
I was hitting below the belt by aiming at Lila’s soft spot for the helpless and weak. Behind her narrowed eyes, I could see her thoughts whirling: my mother, the bar exam, Jeremy—colors that refused to blend together. I could tell that she had a lot more to say on each of those subjects, but she held her tongue. Instead, she closed her eyes and softly shook her head. Then she slipped her headphones back on.
Our conversation wasn’t over, but she had put her headphones on, so it was over for now. It would resume after supper, and again as I packed my bag for the trip to Buckley—neither conversation advancing the banner one way or the other. By bedtime, the matter still had not been resolved.
After I got Jeremy settled in for the night, I rolled out some blankets to sleep on the couch—a sleep that would refuse to come, of course. Instead, I lay there staring at a shadow cast against the wall by the light from the oven clock. As fatigue settled in, that shadow blurred, and I saw the mug-shot face of Toke Talbert staring at me. I closed my eyes, and the words of the press release invaded my thoughts: Joseph Talbert found dead in a barn—my dad, dead.
All of my life I had been pretending that I didn’t care if my father existed, but now that he might be dead, he became real to me. Learning about the death of this man had ripped open the rotted planks that I had used to hide him. In the quiet of that night, as my thoughts found their way past years of anger and resentment, one sad truth remained: I wanted to know my father.
Around midnight, as I lay staring at that shadow, I heard the creak of our bedroom door, and then the padding of feet approaching the couch. Lila came and sat on the edge of the cushion beside me.
“I can’t sleep,” she said.
“Me neither.” I leaned up on my elbow to make room for her. “I’m sorry about all this,” I said. “I can’t really explain why, but I just need to go to Buckley.”
“I know,” she said. “I’m sorry I freaked out.” I rubbed my hand down the soft skin of her arm as she spoke. “I’m really stressed about this exam. I know you have to go. I just wish the timing weren’t so…”
I reached my arms around her waist and pulled her closer to me. “I won’t be gone long.”
I felt her stiffen at those words. Then she relaxed, and she kissed the top of my head. “Come to bed,” she said.
Chapter 6
I woke with the sun the next morning and carefully slipped out of bed so as not to disturb Lila’s sleep or the delicate truce we had reached the night before. I’m not sure that Lila actually came around to my way of thinking so much as she took the steps that she needed to take to get some sleep. There was still much that went unsaid, details that could upset a true meeting of the minds, but I went ahead and filled in all of those blanks, in my favor. She agreed that I should go to Buckley―at least those were the words that I heard, so I was going.
I brewed a pot of coffee for the road and slid a few snacks into my bag. Buckley was two and a half hours away—closer to three with the city’s morning traffic. A couple stale doughnuts would tide me over. I also put a call in to Allison’s voice mail to let her know that I was taking a personal day, maybe two. I couldn’t imagine her having a problem with that, given the cloud that had been following me around lately.
I poured my coffee into a travel mug and snuck back into the bedroom to give Lila a kiss goodbye. I expected to find her asleep, but instead, she was sitting on the edge of the bed holding what, in the dim light of morning, looked like an envelope. I ignored the incongruity of the scene and leaned in to give her a kiss. She did not look up to receive me, so I kissed the top of her head.
“You okay?” I asked.
“No,” she whispered.
I sat on the bed beside her, expecting that we were about to have another go-around about my leaving, but her attention remained focused on the envelope in her hand.
“Joe, there’s something we need to talk about.” She didn’t look at me when she spoke, and the seriousness in her tone chilled me. “Last night, when I told you that…you should talk to your mother about your dad, I…”
Lila fiddled with the envelope, kneading it the way Jeremy rubs the back of his knuckles when he’s upset. I could see cursive writing on its face, but I could not make out any name on it.
“What’s that?” I said, nodding at the envelope.
“I know you told me that you never wanted to hear from your mom again…”
“And you know why,” I said.
“Joe, she’s your mother. She—”
“What’s in your hand?” I knew what it was, even before she answered.
“It’s from Kathy.”
“Throw it away.” I stood up. “No mail. No phone calls. No communication. That’s the rule, remember? She’s out of our lives, and it’s got to stay that way.”
“Just read it.” Lila held the letter out to m
e.
“You…did you read it?”
“Yes, and you should too.”
I backed away from her, as though the paper she held might come to life and claw me. “When did you get that?”
Lila paused and looked at the floor.
“Lila, how long have you had that letter?”
“It came just before Christmas.”
“Jesus Christ! Seven months? You’ve had that for…” I couldn’t finish my sentence. Lila and I have had disagreements over the years—but this? Stunned, I backed out of the room.
At first Lila didn’t follow after me. I paused as I picked up my bag, fighting against my urge to be somewhere away from her, waiting for her to utter an apology. When none came, I picked up my bag and made for the door, forgetting all about my coffee sitting on the kitchen counter. I had reached the door to our apartment before I heard the words I was hoping to hear.
“Joe, wait.”
I paused in the open doorway, my back to her, my ears listening to the familiar sound of her bare feet on the carpet. When she caught up to me, she took hold of my arm, and I turned to face her, expecting to see remorse in her eyes—not the anger that met me. Before I could say a word, she shoved the letter into my hand and took a step back.
“You can read it, or you can throw it away,” she said.
This was not the act of contrition I had been expecting. “Who are you?” I said. “How could you…” A clutter of harsh words tumbled through my head, jostling to get past my lips, but I held them back, knowing that nothing good could come from speaking. I looked at Lila and said, “I gotta go.” Then I turned and walked away.
Once in my car, I wadded up the letter and threw it to the floor, adding it to the mess of empty water bottles and crumpled-up fast-food bags on the passenger side of my car. The morning traffic on Snelling crawled at a pace that would normally have had me cursing the vehicles around me, but I barely noticed the gridlock as thoughts of Lila shoving Kathy’s letter into my hands stabbed at me. It was the same gesture used by that short, turd-of-a-man who served me with the lawsuit. I couldn’t hold anything against the bald man, though; he was only doing his job. But Lila’s gesture came with a layer of betrayal that blindsided me. She had been holding on to Kathy’s letter for seven months. She had read it. She broke the only rule I asked of her.
I fumed and sputtered as I worked my way south, the curtain of my anger never really parting until I passed through the first tier of suburbs on my way out of the Twin Cities. Only then did I pause to question whether I could have been at fault for what happened. But try as I might, I couldn’t see that I’d done anything wrong. Lila can’t hold it against me that I got upset. She knew the destruction that my mother caused. She also knew what my mother was still capable of doing if we let her back in. Lila had been there from the beginning. She was there the day that we rescued Jeremy from that woman. Hell, Lila drove the getaway car.
As I left Shakopee, Highway 169 thinned out enough that I set my cruise control and hit the scan on my radio, hoping to find some music to block out the thoughts of my mother, and the letter, and my fight with Lila. I inhaled a few deep breaths, halted my radio scan on something classical, and relaxed my grip on the steering wheel. I had two hours more to go.
Chapter 7
My trip took me south along the Minnesota River Valley for an hour or so and then west into farm country, a fairly treeless part of the state painted green with crops of corn and soy beans. I traveled on a two-lane highway where each mile looked exactly like the last mile, my travel hindered occasionally by a small town, some not even big enough to support their own gas station. The world had turned so flat that I could see Buckley—or at least the water tower—from a good eight miles away. I expected the town to grow bigger as I drew closer, but it never really did.
As a county seat, Buckley had been laid out around the courthouse, with small stores lining the four bordering streets. The highway that I’d been traveling turned into Main Street and ran along the front of the courthouse. I drove around the square, curious to see what Buckley might have to offer a ne’er-do-well like Toke Talbert. What drew him here—and, more important, what kept him here? I made a mental note of the stores and shops: antiques, hardware, a café, a bar, used clothing—the normal fare.
It never occurred to me that Buckley might not have a motel until I’d completed my loop and found none. I noticed the Sheriff’s Office across the street from the courthouse and parked in front of it. I hadn’t planned to make that my first stop, but if nothing else, I might get directions to some type of lodging.
The door to the Sheriff’s Office opened into a small lobby where, at the other end, a lady sat at a desk behind bulletproof glass. To my left, a thick, metal door marked Visitor told me that the jail was also part of the building. To my right, a wooden door led, I assumed, to the interior of the Sheriff’s Office. I approached the receptionist, a woman in her forties, who glanced up at me for a second before turning her attention back to something more important on her computer screen. She made me wait a full thirty seconds before she asked, “Can I help you?”
“I’m looking for a motel or hotel…or some place that I can stay here in Buckley.”
“Did you try the Caspen Inn?”
“I didn’t try anything,” I said. “Where’s the Caspen Inn?”
“It’s two blocks that way.” She pointed over her shoulder.
“Do you know the address?”
She looked at me as though I’d just asked her how to tie my own shoe, and said, “It’s on Maple, this street right here.” She held her left arm out and made a sweeping motion with her finger.
I was about to leave, but a thought came to me and I said, “While I’m here, could you tell me who the lead investigator is in the Toke Talbert case?”
Now I had her attention. She shifted in her chair to face me and said, “And you are?”
“I’m…a reporter with the Associated Press.” That was a true statement, but Allison would chew me out if she knew that I was using my AP credentials to get the skinny on my dad’s death.
The receptionist picked up the phone and whispered into the receiver.
“No,” I said, waving my hands to stop her. “I don’t want to meet them now. I just want a name.”
She ignored me and kept whispering. Then she hung up the phone and pointed to a row of chairs next to the entrance. “Have a seat and someone will be with you.”
I didn’t want to go into this interview cold. I had hoped to get some background on Toke before sitting down with the investigator. I wanted to steer the conversation, not be led through it. I opened my mouth to beg out of the meeting, but stopped when a deputy entered the receptionist’s office and spoke to the woman in quiet tones, both of them studying me as they talked.
The deputy, a big guy with a serious face and a buzz cut, disappeared from the reception office and a moment later popped through the door beside me, his thumbs tucked into his belt. “Can I help you?” he asked.
I stood up. “I’m a reporter with the Associated Press in Minneapolis. I’m here about the death of a man named—I think he went by Toke Talbert. I was hoping to speak to the lead investigator. Would that be you, Deputy”―I looked at the name clipped to his shirt―“Calder?”
“Associated Press? Why does the Associated Press care about a guy like Toke Talbert?”
If I had been truthful, I would have said that the Associated Press didn’t give a hoot about a guy like Toke Talbert, and that my editor would have my hide if she knew what I was doing. I briefly pictured Allison with the lawsuit papers in her hand and a what-were-you-thinking expression on her face, reprimanding me for poking my nose into a story that I had no business covering. I shook off that thought by remembering that I had no intention of writing a story. Of course, Deputy Calder didn’t have to know that. I answered the deputy by saying, “There’s no such thing as an unimportant murder.”
Calder crossed his thick arms over his chest
and looked dismissive. “Murder? I don’t recall any information being released about this being a murder.”
“The press release mentioned foul play. I figure that to be a murder. Are you saying that this wasn’t a murder?”
“I’m not saying anything. You have identification?”
Crap. I reached into my back pocket, pulled out my AP card, and handed it to Deputy Calder. He read the card, his eyebrows lifting about the time he read my name. He looked at me and then at the card, then back and forth one more time before his eyes finally settled hard on my face.
“Your name is Joe Talbert?”
I nodded.
“You related to Toke?”
I didn’t answer.
“Christ, we got friggen’ Talberts crawling out of the woodwork today.” Calder leaned his chin into the mike attached to his shoulder and said, “Sheriff, could you meet me in the conference room? I have something here you might want to see.”
The answer came back, “Ten-four.”
“Mr. Talbert, would you mind coming with me?”
“Why?”
“We’d like to ask you a few questions.” Then with feigned politeness he added, “Please.”
He waved me through the door and into an open space that held three metal desks running in a row along the cinder-block wall. Straight ahead was an office with a sign beside its door that read J. T. KIMBALL—SHERIFF. To my right, behind a large windowed wall, was a conference room, which I assumed doubled as an interrogation room given the cameras mounted to the ceiling.
Calder offered me a chair in the conference room, one facing the cameras, then stepped out, closing the door behind him. Through the glass wall I watched another deputy enter the frame. He and Deputy Calder appeared to be about the same age, late forties, but where Calder had the body of a power lifter, the second deputy had the sleek build of a triathlete.
They chatted and pointed at me for a minute before a rotund man wearing a white shirt joined them. That had to be Sheriff Kimball. Calder again mouthed words that I couldn’t read, showing the sheriff my AP credentials. The three of them exchanged a few more words and then came in.