by Neliza Drew
Eric Wright and Vince Zellner. The names grabbed some dangling thread of memory and tugged until a whole tapestry of carefully constructed lies lay in tatters.
Vince had sat on a sunken, stained couch in the corner of a warehouse loft in a questionable section of town. His face said he was confident and deeply concerned about whatever minor problem my roommate, Jackie, had been telling him about. His eyes told me something else. They always struck me as guarded, as hiding something dreadful. I was never sure how I felt about his eyes because I was never sure if what I was seeing was really him, or just a reflection of myself. And either way, it scared me.
Vince filled her head with doubts. Told her he’d caught Eric looking at me. Showed her pictures he’d taken of me working out, convinced her there was no way she could keep Eric away as long as I was around. Eventually, he’d done much worse.
I smelled blood that wasn’t there and pulled myself back to the coffee shop feeling sweaty and cold. I looked down and realized I’d set the coffee cup on the edge of the table so the slightest breeze or sneeze would send it crashing to the floor. I pushed it farther onto the table and took a long, slow breath.
It’s okay. You survived. The memories can’t hurt you.
It was another one of my lies. My memories hurt me all the time. I’d wake up in the night shaking and crying. I lived on the fringes of other people’s lives, even Tom’s and Matt’s, making sure they didn’t get too close. Tom thought he understood. Matt didn’t know he was supposed to.
I picked up my phone and called information, got a number for Wright’s Seafood and let them patch me through.
“I’d like to speak with Eric Wright, please.”
“He’s unavailable at the moment; would you like to leave a message?”
“Do you expect him back soon?” I asked.
There was a pause. “I’m not sure, ma’am. Would you like to leave that message?”
“No, thanks.”
I reread the newspaper article, forced myself to stay in the moment.
A shadow fell across my corner of the coffee table. “Davis? Davis Groves? Oh, I do declare. It’s been a dog’s age since I’ve seen you.”
I looked up to find woman with straight blonde hair holding a toddler and smiling like she’d found a diamond ring in her soup. I had no idea who she was, but she sort of resembled a chunky cheerleader.
“Do I know you?”
“It’s Jessica. Jessica Darber. Well, used to be Hutchinson. Married a Darber from up near New Bern. Met him at ECU.” She beamed and plopped down next to me. “You went to Wilmington, I heard. It’s so pretty down there, but I always wanted to go to Chapel Hill. Still root for the Tar Heels, you know. I can’t help it. Didn’t have the grades to get into UNC. Isn’t that where your sister went? The little one? What was her name?”
“Nik.”
“That’s it! Y’all always had such weird names, you’d think I wouldn’t forget them.”
I nodded like I’d never been accused of having a weird name before.
“I heard you left Wilmington. Headed to the mountains? It’s pretty there, but I guess I’m just a beach girl at heart. Never could picture myself going away from the coast for too long.”
“Yeah, well…” There was no way to explain to her that after Jackie’s suicide attempt had triggered memories of every time I’d found Charley strung out on the floor or the bed, I’d decided I couldn’t do it anymore. That after Vince had held a knife to my throat, I’d had not just enough, but too much.
She didn’t let the silence play out long. She leaned forward, letting the toddler hang off her hip behind her. He reached out and wiped something on the upholstery. “I heard your little sister shot somebody. Did that really happen?”
“If it did, why would I tell you?”
She looked hurt. “You don’t have to be rude.” She sat up straight. “Now that I think about it, you were always rude in high school, too. Thought you were better than everyone else. But you know what else I heard? I heard you were a slut, masquerading as some Goody Two-shoes like we were all so stupid. I heard you’d been arrested, even.” She sniffed her nose at me, gathered her kid, and got up.
“I wasn’t a slut.”
She turned, her nose already in the air. “Not what I heard.”
“I was a whore. The difference is cash.”
She stared at me in horror and stomped away.
Chapter seven
Since I couldn’t figure out why Lane had shot Guthrie, I decided to find out more about Guthrie. In my experience, sometimes people had personalities that just lent themselves to eventual execution or accidental death. Many would argue I was one of them.
A shelf under the glass top of the coffee table held several stacks of old magazines. Under one was a small phone book. I pulled it out and looked up Guthrie. The listings took up half a page, which meant his mother would have been hard to track down if I hadn’t seen the address on the police report. Finding her in the phone book led me to believe she wasn’t too paranoid. I figured I could use that to my advantage.
I dialed her number and waited. The coffee house was cozy and smelled of desserts and sweaters. I inhaled deeply and tried to fill my soul with some of the sweetness and comfort.
She answered on the third ring, breathless and expectant.
I slathered on a Southern accent from no particular sub-region. “Hello, my name is Amy Sylvester. I’m a reporter with The News and Observer in Raleigh. Am I speaking to Sally Guthrie?”
She paused, and when she answered I knew it was because she’d been holding back a sob. “I don’t know anything.”
“I’m not trying to intrude on your grief or anything ma’am. I usually handle op-ed pieces. You know, fluffy, feel-good stuff.” I inserted just enough pause to seem understanding, but not enough to give her time to think. “We picked up the story from the News Times there in Carteret County and, well, the story just seemed so sad and short. I’m sure you can understand how readers would want to know more about William.”
“He was a good boy.” She blew her nose and I could tell she was fighting tears. “He didn’t deserve this.”
“It does seem a shame more people didn’t get a chance to know him.” My voice was so syrupy I could’ve used it to sweeten lattes.
“You want me to tell you it’s okay to use my boy to sell papers.”
“Not exactly. There’s never even a guarantee any particular story won’t get bumped by another. But readers — and juries — tend to empathize more with the victim if they feel they know him, like he’s one of them.”
“I don’t want his named mixed up with any of the rumors I’ve heard about that guy running the plant right now.”
“Eric Wright?”
“Nah, he’s not so bad. He tries to help. Only reason Billy would go work for him. Ain’t too many fishing jobs left and Billy wanted to be in the industry because of his dad. Tried to tell him that’s no way to live. Wanted him to go to the college, even if just for a couple years. I thought… I just thought he’d end up struggling too hard, like his dad.” She paused and I could tell she was reliving some past argument. “Never figured on this.”
“Manager, right? Sounds like a good job.”
She snorted, a polite Southern, feminine snort.
“So, not a good job? Wright’s. Seafood company, right? People eat lots of seafood.” I was taking notes in the margins of a stray newsmagazine geared toward tourists. I doodled a top hat on the cartoon fish in a coupon.
“People eat seafood, but they like to get it cheap. Billy always complained about it. Even the hospital cafeteria orders from some company in California.” This brought new tears and sniffles.
I waited, letting her move back from hysterical to wistful on her own.
“When I was a little girl, the air around this place was so polluted with the smell of the fish factories you’d almost choke on the oily stench. Smell of money, folks called it. They’d rush down to the docks wheneve
r a menhaden boat would come in, hoping to get some roe.”
“Fish eggs?”
“Shad roe. My daddy’d fry it up and savor every bite.” She paused. “Doesn’t matter no way. Only factory left is Wright’s. Billy said things were pretty good when he worked there in high school. After Eric took over fulltime, started running for office… well, the old manager, the one Eric’s daddy left in charge, just wanted to keep the place afloat. People done changed, too. Nobody wants to eat a spot no more when there’s ‘mahi-mahi.’”
I thought about restaurants at home in Florida. Dolphinfish, mahi-mahi to keep tourists from confusing it with Flipper, ran off the coast with sailfish and marlin and tarpon and a lot of other things that seemed to end up on plates and trophy walls faster than it seemed nature could spawn them. “So he had image problems?” I was trying to figure out what that had to do with Billy’s death, but figured letting her ramble might get us back there.
She snorted, and this time it was cynical and rough. “Billy used to get upset about how people couldn’t eat what was in their own backyards. How people had to get all fancy but still wanted everything to cost a dollar-ninety-nine.” She blew her nose violently. “But he was a good boy, made a lot a sense. Tenderhearted, he was. World didn’t deserve him maybe, so God called him home.”
Silence hung between us, so I asked if Billy’d had any friends I could talk to.
“He was a bit of a momma’s boy, I guess. We took care of each other. Talked about Ricky Gillikin and Rex Wittman. They worked together. Got on pretty well. Had some friends from school, Amber Martin and her brother.” She sniffed again. “Used to be close to Lane Groves, too.”
After she’d hung up, I stared at my notes. Something didn’t fit, but I wasn’t sure what.
I flipped to the yellow pages and called several attorneys without getting anyone to take my call, much less the case. One paused before asking, “The William Guthrie case? Absolutely not.” He followed it up with a click.
I felt the beginning of a headache stretching across the middle of my head. Seemed like time to call my boss for something harder than forms. He answered, annoyed. “Erickson. Talk to me.”
“Your clients pay you by the hour, Dick. You can afford complete sentences.”
“Davis, what the hell do you want now? I have some temp in here who can’t seem to find anything and Belinda Huffington just died.”
“The Huffington files are in the second cabinet from the wall with the Miró print. Third drawer down. Midway the drawer. The file’s huge. You can’t miss it.” I rubbed the scar behind my ear. “Be-Huffy covered her ass and her assets years ago. Not to mention, everything you need is on your laptop.”
“The family’s arguing over the corpse.”
“Sounds about right. Look, I could really use a bit of a referral.”
“Why do I even keep you?” He sounded exasperated. The Huffington family could do that to a man. Or a lawyer.
“Because you threw a vase at the girl I replaced and the only reason the temp agency agreed to send anyone this time is because I told them you’d pay double.”
“You what? Dammit, Davis.” The sounds of flapping folders told me he’d put me on speakerphone.
“I need a good criminal attorney up here and I can’t get anyone to return my calls. You know somebody?”
The folder flapping stopped. “What the hell’d you do? You’ve only been gone a day.”
“Not for me.” I hated needing help. Felt like begging. “It’s for my sister. The police up here say she murdered someone.”
“Did she?”
“I don’t know. She’s not talking to anyone. Can’t see her alone until Sunday.” Not that I thought she’d talk to me any more than she’d talked to Detective Huber. Something had changed in her that wasn’t just teenage angst.
“You know, generally even gang members’ mamas and nephews come out of the woodwork saying there’s no way little Shaquan could’ve hurt anyone. Don’t you watch the news?”
“That’s racist bullshit and I’m not looking for a lawyer who cares one way or the other.”
He paused and I figured he was calculating my assets since he’d prepared my will shortly after I started working for him. “How much you looking to spend on this?”
“I could sell a condo or two if necessary.”
He whistled. “I ever tell you you’re the smartest stripper I ever met?”
“Considering how many strippers you’ve met, I’ll take that as a compliment.”
“Get MacQuayde to help you with the evidence. He’s respected. Got friends in lots of places.”
“Uh huh.” Tom’s friends were like a shiny gold ring Dick wanted in his pocket.
“You gonna be back in town soon? I got a couple new people coming in next week. Could be big money. I don’t want them to have to meet this temp. She’s hot, but…”
“You’re a pig, Dick.”
He laughed the laugh of someone who gave even fewer fucks than I did.
Chapter eight
There were as many Gillikins as Guthries in the phone book, so I shoved it in my purse for later and called the glass repair place advertised on the back page of the newspaper.
Matt texted again as I hung up. Are you okay?
I sighed and considered what I should tell him. Matt was a good guy, but my relationship with him had been superficial at best. I decided to go with the easy lie and told him things were great.
Tom, I called while eating a protein bar on the way to Charley’s to meet the glazier. I summarized my chat with Dick.
“You’re going to stick your nose in places it doesn’t belong, aren’t you?”
“Kind of my specialty, Tom. Seeing as that’s how we met.”
He sighed the way the parents of a precocious child did before they finally gave in. “I’ll start with financials on Guthrie.”
After he hung up, I tried Wright’s Seafood again. The same woman told me she still hadn’t seen him. Something in her voice made it sound out of the ordinary, but I couldn’t be sure. I told her to tell him Davis called.
“Would you like to leave your first name, ma’am? We got a lotta Davises Downeast.”
“It’s my first name. That should clear it up for him. Thanks.”
• • • • •
The glazier turned out to be an older guy, nonplussed by the mess. I left him working and went off to finish cleaning up. When I ran out of towels and sheets in Charley’s room, I loaded the mess into the washer downstairs and went in search of more fabric to ruin.
Nik’s bed was still made just the way she’d left it. I sat and held a discarded stuffed animal. The house was the first place we’d lived for longer than a few months since we’d left San Francisco when I was five. We bought it with the blood money of my uncle, who wasn’t really my uncle, and my father, who’d been declared dead without a body.
Nik had picked the location because I’d been tired of mountains, afraid of cellars, and because we’d both found ourselves worn down by cities and interstates. Nik and I found the realtor, talked to the banks, used the insurance money from dad’s death to pay for it, and worked part-time jobs to keep the utilities on. Charley lived there with us like a teenager. She drank too much, used up all her tips on drugs and junk food. She stayed out too late, brought home strange men, and sold herself because that’s what she was used to. What we were used to.
When we’d moved, I’d tried to transform myself, reinvented myself as best I knew how. I may have been a bad girl who skipped too many classes, smoked pot a little too often, but I’d gotten my As and Bs. Nik made sure of that. She wasn’t having a dummy as a sister. She saw me as her eldest kid and she wouldn’t let me be a failure. Not on the surface, anyway.
She hadn’t been thrilled when I took the GED, but she still took pride in my perfect score. She’d graduated a year later, but with honors recommendations for everything.
When I’d left for college, I’d gone to Wilmington because my ne
w best friend, Jackie, was going there and I’d thought she needed my protection. She’d been so innocent and sheltered, so happy when we started at the same college — a college that let me on a limited scholarship and probation as a non-traditional hardship case. I always wondered if they’d believed my admission essay.
She met Eric Wright almost immediately and fell hard.
At first, I’d been happy for them. Later, I’d felt foolish, but held on to hope that she’d be okay, that she’d find her own strength. But she found it too late, and I failed to protect her.
I’d failed a lot of people.
My old bedroom, bare mattress and scattered boxes, hadn’t been preserved like Nik’s, but still carried the weight of my existence. Old sweatshirts still covered the closet floor. The dresser top still held dried-up lip gloss and hair ties.
Craig thought he wanted to know the truth of prom night, why Charley hated me, and why things had gotten messy and wrong. Like most people, he thought the truth was just an inconvenient tidbit, some minor tragedy that could be washed clean with time and the healing powers of antibacterial ointment and sutures. People could relate to things they saw in sitcoms or heard about from friends, but the real confessional privilege, with the deep-dark-dirty secrets, only extended to strangers on television.
Or maybe I just didn’t feel like seeing the look of pity on his face.
I stared at the pile of boxes and refuse in my old bedroom. Most of the boxes had been Uncle Phil’s, but the contents had been slashed, tossed and scattered.
Phil Lockhart. Daddy’s boyfriend after the divorce from Charley — something I tried to resent them both for, but found I couldn’t. Surrogate uncle. Former Marine. A conflicted man hidden in layers. A man who couldn’t live with the things he’d done, seen, survived. I’d failed him like I’d failed Jackie. He was dust somewhere like she was.
I wondered if things would’ve been different if I hadn’t been the kind of girl Uncle Phil thought needed survival skills, needed to learn the discipline of sport. Would Lane have been better off if I hadn’t inherited a box of guns? Would she have been better off if I’d let Charley handle her own problems?