Faultlines

by Barbara Taylor Sissel

  Libby nodded, taking the card. She wondered if he meant it, about contacting his buddy. When it came to crime, on a scale of one to ten, she doubted a slaughtered hog and a few keyed cars flew very high on the radar.

  Sergeant Huckabee said he had business in Austin.

  Augie straightened. “You going to see Trav and Jordy? How are they? Do you know?”

  “Not good.” Huckabee looked at the ground, and Libby had the sense he was taking time to prepare them, or himself, perhaps, for the hard thing he had to say. And she was wondering which one of the boys had died when he said it, that Travis Simmons hadn’t made it.

  The passenger, she thought.

  And over Augie’s “Oh God” and Beck’s “Jesus,” Huckabee said, “Jordy’s in pretty deep shit,” and then he apologized, his eyes grazing Libby’s. She waved him off.

  “You’re arresting him?” Augie asked.

  “Don’t have much choice,” Huckabee said. “He was driving, and his blood alcohol was more than twice the legal limit. In the state of Texas, you drive drunk and kill somebody, it’s manslaughter.”

  Libby wasn’t sure, but she thought she detected an element of satisfaction in Huckabee’s voice, some degree of smugness, as if he were happy about the circumstances. But she dismissed the notion. It wasn’t plausible.

  They dug a proper grave for the hog using Augie’s backhoe, which had been left at the site. Libby considered it a fortuitous gift. “Imagine if all you had was a shovel,” she said when they’d finished the job.

  “I’d let the carcass rot,” Beck said.

  “Let the coyotes take it,” Augie said.

  It was hotter now; the breeze had mostly died. Both men were sweaty and red-faced. She ought to have brought water, Libby thought.

  Beck’s phone buzzed.

  Augie gave a salute. “I’ll call y’all,” he said. “Let me know if you want to stand guard. I’ll bring my twenty-two. We’ll catch the bastards.”

  “Thanks, buddy.” Beck grinned. He answered his phone.

  Libby walked Augie to his truck and came back.

  “That was Robert,” Beck said. “You won’t believe it.” He held Libby’s gaze.

  “What?” She felt the faint stirring of fresh alarm.

  “He found a dead coon gutted on the hood of his car this morning. Somebody had opened it up, taken out the organs, and scattered them around it—sound familiar?”

  “You’re joking,” Libby said.

  “I told him he got off easy.”

  “Beck, I don’t believe this. Did he call the police? Should we let Sergeant Huckabee know?”

  “Yeah, I guess. Can you call him?” He headed for the truck, Libby trailing him. “I need to get back to the cottage, get a shower, and get on the road. Robert wants to get the media involved, hold a press conference with the plaintiff’s attorneys. He wants them to make it clear we’re not the ones responsible for what happened to the folks who died when that balcony collapsed.”

  “Well, it makes sense, getting the word out. That should put a stop to this—this—whatever it is.”

  “If the whack job who’s responsible is even tuned in, listening.”

  They got into Beck’s truck. He keyed the ignition.

  “It must be more than one whack job.” Libby looked at Beck.

  He was looking over his shoulder, backing up.

  “There’s no way the same person could have slaughtered two different animals in Houston and out here in one night, is there? The drive one way is almost five hours.”

  “I don’t think you should stay out here alone.” He pulled onto the service road. Dust rose on either side of the truck, making wings.

  “But if I leave, too, Augie might move on to some other project.”

  “Maybe we should let him until we figure out what’s going on. You’re too isolated here.”

  “I have Dad’s shotgun. I’ll be fine.” She’d brought it to the cottage their first trip out after they closed on the property. It was never a bad idea to have a gun handy when you lived in the boonies. “Anything moves, I’ll shoot first, ask questions later.” She smiled.

  Beck sighed. “Who knew I was married to Annie Oakley.”

  Libby punched his arm. “I can take care of myself, and you know it.”

  “I don’t like it.”

  “But once the word gets out through the media, I bet whoever is behind this will either stop or get caught.”

  “I’ll come back as soon as I can.”

  “Yes,” Libby said. “You have to, because we were supposed to go to that salvage place today, remember? The one that could very possibly have the big ceiling beams we’re looking for.”

  She kissed him before he left, winding her arms around his neck, lingering, wishing he didn’t have to go.

  He held her gaze. “I don’t know what it is,” he said, “but out here with you, I feel like a new man—twenty years younger, at least.”

  She laughed.

  He rocked his eyes up, looking at the sky, shouting out, “God!” And then, leveling his glance, said in a low, husky voice, “I want to stay, rip off your clothes, eat that peach ice cream in the freezer from your belly button.”

  “You never did that twenty years ago,” she said.

  He folded her in close. “If I didn’t, I should have. When I get back here, I’m going to.”

  “Promises, promises,” she murmured, and she was making light of it, but something in his voice, some note of tender regret, pulled at her heart. She searched his gaze. “You aren’t sorry for our life together so far, are you? Because I’m not. I wouldn’t trade any of it.”

  “No,” he said. “Only the pain I caused you.” He took a moment, his gaze resting on her. “You know, I’ve been thinking, we don’t have to pursue—” He stopped, looked away, looked back. “What I’m trying to say is that just because we’re finally here doesn’t mean we have to go through with anything. You understand that, right?” He tipped up her chin. “I never want you to be hurt like that again.”

  Libby was surprised when her throat closed, when her eyes filled with tears.

  He wiped them with his thumbs. “I should get on the road,” he said, and he smiled. “The circus is waiting.”

  “What are you doing out there alone?” Ruth wanted to know when Libby called her that evening and caught her up on all that had happened. “Come into town now and stay with me till Beck gets back.”

  But Libby said no. She was happy where she was, tucked into the corner of an old chintz-covered settee. The night had cooled off, as it often did in the hill country, and she’d opened the windows. A breeze ruffled the wisp of embroidered linen she’d tacked up over the living-room window, sending moon-driven shadows trembling over the walls.

  “Are you sure?” Ruth wanted to know.

  She was, Libby said. “I’m not letting a bunch of kids run me off my property.”

  “Kids?”

  “That’s who Sergeant Huckabee thinks is behind it.”

  “Him.” Ruth huffed the word.

  “You don’t like him?”

  “It’s not that.” She heaved a little sigh. “He wants me to hire his wife, his little chica, Coleta.”

  “Augie mentioned her. He said if I were to ask you about her, I should stand back.”

  The sound Ruth made was half laugh, half snort of disgust.

  “Augie said she’s young.” Libby said.

  “Yeah, you could say that. Huck could be her dad. Wait till you see her. She’s gorgeous, boobs out to here, tiny waist, and her skin—my God, I don’t think she has a single pore.”

  “I hate her already.” Libby was teasing.

  “Me, too.” They shared a beat of silence, then Ruth said, “She’s trying to get green-card status.”

  “She’s here illegally?”

  “Not exactly. She let her visa run out. She would have been deported if Huck hadn’t married her. But there’s still a lot of rigmarole to go through, forms and stuff; it’s
a long process, and part of it requires that Coleta be able to speak and write in English. She’s taking a class, but Huck thinks if she works in the office with me and the other agents, she’ll learn faster, and I’d be fine with it, I guess—”

  “But?” Libby prompted.

  “Nothing in particular. Some folks in town think she only married Huck to get citizenship, that she’ll leave him flat once she has it, and that’s just wrong, doing that to him, especially now that they have a child together. Hold on, can you. Clemmie wants out.”

  Clemmie was Ruth’s Aussie, and so sweet natured Libby had threatened to dognap her.

  Ruth had never married, although she had always had a man in her life. Her current guy was the head of some hotshot Internet-based business in Santa Monica. They’d been together for eight years, seeing each other every couple of months or so. Like Libby, Ruth had no children. The difference was that she’d never wanted them. She was a dog lover, she would say. They made the perfect companion.

  She should get a dog, Libby thought. She thought of the peach ice cream in the freezer, what Beck had said about eating it from her navel—her fiftysomething navel. It was ridiculous; it made her groan inwardly even as it made her smile.

  “Sorry.” Ruth came back on the line. “What were we talking about?”

  “Coleta.”

  “Oh yeah. Well, honestly, I am totally gossiping here—you know, baseball may be the national pastime, but here in Wyatt, it’s gossiping. I was bound to get sucked into it sooner or later.”

  Libby laughed.

  “Just wait,” Ruth said. “You’ll be doing it, too.”

  “Augie was telling me he gets all his information from Mandy, his wife.”

  “Oh,” Ruth said, “she is the worst. Sweet as can be, but can she talk. That old saying comes to mind—telegram, telephone, tele-Mandy.”

  “You’re terrible,” Libby said. “But since we’re talking, isn’t it considered fraud when a marriage is arranged for the sole purpose of gaining citizenship? Wouldn’t Coleta be deported if immigration were to find out? Lose custody of her—” Libby laughed again, interrupting herself. “God, you’re right. I’m gossiping like a pro, and I’m only living here part-time so far.”

  Ruth snorted. “Told you. I think it’s all a bunch of hooey, anyway. People around here don’t have enough drama in their own lives. They always want to go around stirring it up in someone else’s.”

  “I’m glad I live out here in the sticks.”

  “Yeah, except for finding the occasional gutted hog swinging from a tree, what’s not to like? Are you sure you won’t come stay with me?”

  “I’m already in my pj’s, thinking of raiding the fridge for peach ice cream and watching the ID channel.”

  “Oh, you and your crime shows. Have you ever considered you might have a problem?”

  Libby laughed. It was true; she loved them all. Dateline, 48 Hours, and everything IDTV. Beck teased her, saying he was afraid to sleep nights for fear of all the ways she might be planning to do him in. “You think I should find a twelve-step program?”

  “Ha! Listen here, tootsie, if you change your mind or get scared, just come over, hear me? I don’t care if you wake me up.”

  Libby said, “Sure,” and “Thank you,” but she knew she’d be fine. After all, didn’t she have her dad’s shotgun?

  On Sunday morning, she called the number on the card Sergeant Huckabee had given her, and when he didn’t answer, she left a message, telling him about Beck’s partner, Robert, finding the raccoon’s entrails smeared on his car in Houston. “I thought you should know,” she said, “so you could pass it along to your friend on the force down there.” She left the cottage after that and drove to Yesterday’s News, the salvage warehouse near Fredericksburg, to look at the beams. Beck had called earlier and told her to go, that he had no idea when he’d make it back. The news conference wasn’t going to happen until two o’clock that afternoon. Meanwhile, he was dealing with a client he called a pain in the ass. Beck had said it might be Wednesday before he saw her again. Unless she came home. To Houston, he meant. He was still worried about her being at the cottage alone. But she’d repeated she was fine.

  “I know I’m being a pain in the ass, too,” she’d said.

  He’d laughed. “But what an ass it is.”

  Yesterday’s News turned out to be a vintage lover’s gold mine. In addition to a lean-to housing dozens of rough-hewn barn beams, there were three warehouses packed to the rafters with everything from doors and windows to porch columns, beadboard, and hardwood flooring. There were oddities—a table made from a cypress knot, an iron lung, a rusted casket roller. Libby snapped a picture of that and texted it to Ruth with a note: See what ur missing?

  Ruth texted back: I may need that later. Clients n la-la land! How much?

  Libby grinned and texted: Stick with wine; it’s way cheaper. I’ll buy.

  Ur on! Ruth responded.

  Before Libby left she bought an old bee skep and talked to the owner, a gruff old man who told her he’d give her a 20 percent discount if she bought three or more of the beams.

  “Can’t beat that,” Libby said, adding she’d have to wait until her husband got back. “He’s the one with the truck.”

  “I was you, I’d bring a trailer to haul them things outta here,” the old man advised.

  Libby thanked him. She wouldn’t have known, she said. “He’s been saying we need a trailer,” she told the old guy. “Now he’s got an excuse to buy one.”

  Somehow going home to the cottage, she ended up on CR 440, passing the accident scene again. There was only one vehicle parked there now, a pale-green vintage pickup truck with the name EJS Landscape Design painted on the door. The mementos that had been left behind only days ago—the sympathy cards and hand-printed messages, the flowers, candleholders and candles—had been blown about by the wind. They were caught in the tall clumps of grass; they scrimmed the broken fence line like so much fading party trash. Libby slowed as she neared the parked truck. A woman sat behind the steering wheel, staring into the field. Only the back of her head was visible, but Libby could see she was blonde and wore her hair in a messy ponytail. She turned as Libby drew abreast of her, and her eyes locked with Libby’s. She looked exhausted and sad.

  Stricken.

  The word surfaced in Libby’s mind. She was related to one of the kids, Libby thought, possibly even one of the mothers. She looked the right age to be the parent of a twentysomething. Libby felt a commiserating pang of sorrow. Who by a certain time in life didn’t suffer the heartrending loss of someone they loved? And sometimes death came so suddenly, taking a person who was way too young. Like this boy. Like Helen.

  Libby’s eyes smarted. She nodded at the woman and drove on, hurriedly, slowing only when she remembered having been stopped for speeding before on this road. She looked in the rearview, half expecting to see the flashing strobe of red and blue lights, but there was no one there.

  Libby checked on the homesite before driving to the cottage, walking the ground around the shattered slab framework, but she found no further signs of damage. She paused on her future front porch, letting her gaze fly over the highway to the hills. Even in the glare of the sun’s unforgiving eye, they were peaceful to look upon, a row of round-shouldered old men, caped in verdigrised shades of green and gold, inscrutable faced, eternal. She would sit here with Beck, evenings, she thought. At dusk the cardinals would come. Soon after there would be fireflies, hummingbird moths. They would come to the mountain laurel she would plant just there, off the porch’s deepest corner. Imagining this, her heart flooded with joy. She couldn’t wait to begin. A thought swam through her brain, that her vision was too perfect. But there had always been so much goodness in her life, enough that at times she felt compelled to apologize: I’m sorry my childhood was so happy, stable, abundant. It was only after she learned that the one blessing she longed for most—a child—would be denied her that she thought there was a price fo
r having been given so much when she was young, that possibly there was such a thing as too much good, too much joy. The truth was that light required darkness.

  At the cottage, she lifted the bee skep carefully out of the backseat and carried it onto the porch, setting it on the old table she’d found a few weeks ago while out junking with Ruth. Stepping back, she admired it. She wondered if she could learn to keep bees. Beck would probably laugh at her. He certainly wouldn’t be able to tend them with her, though. He was allergic.

  She was opening the front door, juggling her phone and purse, when some prescient sense of alarm tripped inside her brain. She didn’t know what caused her sudden unease, but then it came to her that she hadn’t had to unlock the door, the door she was certain she’d locked behind her this morning. After yesterday, the gutted pig, she was hypervigilant. Last night she’d checked and double-checked the windows and doors, making sure they were all locked up tight. She’d loaded her dad’s shotgun and propped it against the wall by the night table.

  She stood right inside the door of the cottage now, listening intently. The stillness enveloped her, feeling eerie, and yet at the same time familiar. Dust sifted idly along feathery air currents. Setting her purse down, she went through the arched doorway into the kitchen. It was a moment before she saw it and another moment before she recognized what it was—that dazzling, iridescent puff of color on the floor.

  Hummingbird, said a voice in her mind, while another voice protested, No.

  She bent over it, making herself take a closer look, but she knew. Knew it was one of the tiny black-chinned hummers that were prolific here, more prolific than the rubythroats she fed in Houston.

  “Ooohh . . . ” The syllable, a half-despairing groan, escaped her. How had it gotten in? She glanced around at the windows. Locked. She checked the rest of the windows. All locked. Every one. With screens intact.

  It wasn’t until she went back into the kitchen and crossed the floor to the kitchen-sink counter, intending to tear off a couple of sheets of paper towel to make a kind of shroud for the tiny fallen bird, that she saw the sheet of copy paper and on it the penciled scrawl—not one she recognized—that read: