“You’re agitated.” Gordon walked me to my car.
“I guess strong character begins and ends with tits. But it was beautiful to see her try.”
“Lindsay.”
“Yes.”
Gordon shrugged. “I’m just one of the judges.” A car pulled up next to us. I readied myself.
“You finished?” asked the pretty man behind the wheel.
“A moment,” said Gordon turning back to me. “About yesterday’s call…”
“I’m sorry about that. I thought… I don’t know.” I removed my shades. “It felt like something atmospheric. Maybe a straight line wind, a blow down.”
“It was.”
“What?”
“A small tornado. Touched down around twenty minutes after you called. Cut a swath roughly a quarter mile wide, a mile long. Haven’t had time to see the area, but apparently it took down some buildings. No one hurt. That area’s quite remote, luckily. So I guess we’re even.”
My mouth fell open. Apparently I did have a gift.
“You’re surprised?” Gordon said.
“We have reservations,” interrupted the pretty man leaning across the front car seat and trying not to be rude. “Charles and Jason are waiting.”
“Let’s talk before I leave,” Gordon said to me. “I think you have a talent.”
“Crickets and low-flying birds,” I murmured.
“What? Yes, yes right.” Gordon gave me a hug and got in the car. The pretty man kissed him on the cheek. “We’ll talk,” Gordon said, and the car drove off.
In less than a minute I’d learned something about Gordon and the vagaries of my intuition, but it wasn’t until I caught sight of Victor over my shoulder that I started to hone my investigation. He slid into a dark blue or black car, sporty, driven by his wife, the still beautiful Perfect Teeth Melissa. A dark blue or black car.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
I sat by the caboose waiting for Lyle, the metal hulk rusted a terra cotta red that absorbed all light. It slept, near dead for years, on sleeper timbers at the front of our driveway. As children, Momma let us crawl around and on and through its weary iron, tin and wood carcass, sharp, blistered edges everywhere. What was Momma thinking? We were crawling a live scorpion! Only the cupola at the top hadn’t been completely savaged, where Papa Karl had thrown a now-tattered tarp expecting, I suppose, he’d start rehabilitation one day. His accident changed all that.
It was just a jungle gym for me and Lyle. A dangerous one, I could see now, and one that was primarily his domain. I’d climb it yelling, “Get on board, train leaving for all points east” or “Join me on the rocket.” But I scared him and he pushed me away in any way he could. Thankful, I could always tell, when I went off to the shed or later, into the woods. That corroded hack caboose; what was Momma thinking?
Anyway, I wasn’t doing much better. Researching Johnny Ray always ended with the fifties ‘Cry Guy’ singer Johnnie Ray, dearly departed and no longer available for appearances. I needed to track the live one down.
Gordon had never heard of him. Momma didn’t have a clue. I even called Victor . . .
“Hello, King residence.”
“Is this Mrs. King, Melissa?”
“No, this is her son, Michael. I’ll get her.”
Before I could explain that I wanted Victor, it was too late.
“Hello, this is Melissa.”
“I’m sorry, Mrs. King . . . my name is Eunis, I was a Miss USA judge with Victor.”
“Oh . . . right. I think my husband mentioned you. I guess you went out for drinks after the gown competition and the results. I guess you earned it, but boy, Victor doesn’t usually stay out that late anymore.”
Keep out of it. “Well, yes . . .”
“Victor’s not at the office.”
“I know.”
“And he’s not home today either. He’s always out and around. Can I leave him a message?”
“No . . . but you wouldn’t happen to know a Johnny Ray in the vicinity, would you?”
“Is he? —no, that’s, that’s someone else. No, no I don’t.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll let Victor know you called.” Oh goodie.
Yet that simple phone call set so many atoms in motion —attracting, repelling and colliding with one another.
Lyle finally sauntered to the caboose, hands wedged in his jeans.
I looked up at him. “You ever heard of a Johnny Ray around here, not the 1950’s singer?”
Lyle slouched against the timber where the creosote had dried. Another unseasonably warm day. He lifted his head. “You mean like Johnny Ray Bardo?”
“Who?”
“My guitar teacher —well, the first real one.”
“Around here?”
“Last I heard. He wasn’t very mobile.”
“Could you introduce me?”
Lyle’s mouth twisted a bit. “No.”
“Why the heck not?”
“Not a good idea.”
“For me or you?”
“Aw shit.”
“Well?”
Lyle shook his head. “I kinda still owe him for some lessons and an amp.”
“Really?” I sighed. “But you could point me there?”
“I guess, sure, but why?”
“You got me. May be part of the molecular structure.”
“What?”
“Never mind. Come on let’s go for a ride. The old train gives me the creeps.”
“It’s our heritage.” He patted it, then rubbed the red and orange dust off his palms. “But I ain’t goin’ to Johnny Ray’s with you. I’ll show you the trailer park, that’s it.”
***
A few minutes later we were on Route 15.
“You heard Momma’s throwing a Death & Dying party for herself end of the week.”
Lyle stuck his head out the car and let the wind whip at his face. “I heard, invitations an all. ‘Life’s too short. Bring a bottle.’”
I had to laugh. Momma knew what she wanted. “Maybe we should get her a needlepoint with that on it. She’s the cozy type.”
“Maybe embroider a bloody hatchet.” He burped.
We both laughed.
“You’re sure you won’t visit Johnny Ray?”
“Positive.”
“Then is it okay if we go by old Carver’s place?”
“You got some strange habits.”
“Always have.” As we passed by, a magnolia bush, fluorescent purple, caught my attention, and then a forsythia spiked gold.
“I’m not gonna stay around for no party,” said Lyle.
“No need.” I glanced at him, my hand relaxed on the steering wheel. Never thick, Lyle was thinner still. Older. “It’s just going to be Sarah Pooley and the rest of her banditas. We don’t have to be there. She’d like it to be a tribute — she even invited Carly. But there’s no dinner and after the first two drinks the coven will close ranks. We’ll be superfluous. I’m still an untouchable, better not seen anyhow.”
“No dinner!” He mocked surprise. “I thought a bottle of schnapps and a six-pack of Keystone was dinner.”
“Lunch.”
He stretched his neck and affected a profound professional tone. “You think she’s gettin’ enough key-lated minerals?”
“Peppermint’s a mineral, isn’t it?”
“If taken with yeast.” He drummed on the dashboard.
“There you go.”
He hooted, I snorted. His shoulders relaxed. “Sometimes I don’t know how serious to take her?”
“After all these years? Come on.”
“Always scared the hell out of me.” He sat back. “Even her smell is twisted. You ever smell her scalp?”
“It was all that shit she fed us about tussers and mylings —”
“Vardøgers.”
“Those too,” I laughed. Vardøgers.
He stopped laughing.
“Oh come on, you’ve gotten over those spook stories of he
rs.”
“Have you? I fuckin’ hate graveyards.” He put up his hand in defense of unseen phantoms. “I think there’s somethin’ to what she says, things we can’t see. Too many strange, nasty things happenin’. Everywhere.”
“You mean ghosts?”
“You’re always talkin’ to them. Least you used to. I think they follow us. That Harold thing was creepy.” He caught himself and checked to see if he’d tripped my fears again.
“It’s okay.” I waved it away. A trace lingered.
He continued. “Somethin’ was following him. Timmy K’s wife. Same thing. That kid in Rochester, remember he took an ax to his whole family? Somethin’s drivin’ them, somethin’ unseen.”
“Unseen, maybe, but there’s a sound reason for everything, usually scientific.”
“Like Harold offin’ himself.”
I hesitated. “Yes, even that. Something logical, even if it was only logical in Harold’s mind. I’m investigating his death.” I wasn’t going to mention it to anyone.
“Investigatin’? What’s there to investigate? You’re not still thinkin’ you had somethin’ to do with it?”
“I just want to be sure. I want to know why. Why’d he do it? Even in his mind, he rationalized it. That’s what we do, all of us.” Saying it started me simmering.
“Rational? You think life is fuckin’ rational. You’re swimmin’ in deep waters, Sis. I don’t go there. I learned ya can’t be sure —of anythin’.” He waved me off and peered out the window.
I’d pulled an axe handle from the shed and kept it by my bedside, just in case Atara showed up at the farmhouse. And now she and Victor . . . no telling what they’d done the night before. Harold and some woman. A guy named Johnny Ray. Momma and her retinue of darkness, forever ranting.
“Holy shit!” Lyle signaled to my left.
“Shit!”
Carver’s colossal taxidermy sign was gone, and the two massive support timbers that had borne it were whittled into kindling. But there, way down and across the road, against an apparently untouched grove of black spruce, sat the sign, Carver’s eyes staring at us. The tornado had come down that corridor. The shop, sitting alone in the clearing, still sagging a bit, was untouched.
Lyle’s face froze, then he buried it in his hands and broke down crying.
“Oh my god, Lyle. What’s the matter?” I unbuckled my seat belt and reached for him. He let me take him in my arms. “Whoa, whoa. What’s the matter? We can fix it.”
“No,” he said, voice choked and flat. “No.” Carver’s eyes bore down on us. My brother subsided, regrouped. He wiped his nose with his hand and the moisture from his eyes with his sleeve. I handed him the sanitizer from the glove compartment.
He stared at the small bottle and laughed. “I’m a dead man.”
The stillness cracked, a clap so loud we both jumped as if one of Carver’s timbers was splitting on top of us. The sound filled the sky, flapping over the landscape in waves, an invisible flock of white pelicans. A single resounding rifle shot. The car began to buckle, a trophy deer going down. In the distance an engine started and drove off. We looked at each other.
“What the fuck was that?” Lyle asked, sobering and getting out of the car.
“Don’t!” But he was out and I did the same.
“Your tire, somebody shot it out.”
“Another warning,” I said.
“Another?”
“Never mind. What do you mean you’re a dead man?”
“Somebody’s shooting at you?” He wore his disbelief like gravity, his face and shoulders weighed to the ground.
I must have looked the same. “What do you mean you’re a dead man?”
He knelt by the flattened tire, then slumped with it. “Blood. In my urine. You ever see that? Chunks of red and black blood streamin’ out of you? Out of me.”
“It could be a lot of things.”
“It could be, but it’s fuckin’ cancer, kidney cancer.”
“Oh Lyle.” I went around to him, crouched down and held him again, the two of us pinned against the fender, a cool draft tussling his thin hair, the smell of his old leather jacket against my cheek.
Who is warnin’ you about what?” Lyle finally got to his feet and ran fingers through his hair.
“Somebody doesn’t want me nosing around.” Or wanted me to deliver a comb.
“About what?”
“Harold . . . or maybe I remind somebody of their past, I don’t know. Anyway, about you, are you sure? Does Momma know?”
“Sure. Doctors agree. Momma don’t know nothin’,” he said with disgust.
“How much time?”
“A month, maybe three.”
I gasped. “You should’ve told me.”
“I’m tellin’ you now, and you’re the only one, and I expect you to keep it to yourself, understand?”
“Yes.”
“Open the trunk. Let’s fix this goddam tire and get outta here.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
It was worse than most trailer parks. Just driving past the wagon wheel gate made me want to take a shower. I considered the glove box then started looking for numbers.
I’d decided to ask forgiveness rather than permission when I surprised Johnny Ray. Come with me. I saw Harold by his neck and something more: he reached out to me, hopeful. Then it went blank, that dark frame that followed me everywhere, something I couldn’t or didn’t want to remember. It was a slice more than I’d recovered before but I had to keep my focus.
My car crept through the afternoon shadows, no one in sight but a mangy tabby that frightened at the sight of me and limped behind a stack of plastic piping shrouded in tall grass. Project abandoned.
When I reached #72, it was a trailer home in better repair than most of the others, with a small fenced yard that was free of debris and a custom-made birdbath of small orange and blue tiles. As I passed it I admired the workmanship. No reason to be nervous.
The door opened before I made it to the front step. “Can I help you?” asked a sturdy voice, a hint of Creole from the darkness behind the screen door.
I stepped back. “I’m sorry to bother you but someone suggested you might have known Harold Cloonis.”
“Someone?” asked the shadow. A puff of cigarette smoke ballooned through the screen.
“Look, did you know him? Because I’m his —”
“I know who you are.”
That threw me off balance. “Well, can I come in?”
“You mean ‘may’ you come in.”
“Yes.”
“How about you stay out there and I open the door, just for a short time, because I’ve got things to do and you weren’t expected.”
“Sure, that would be fine. Thank you.” I didn’t know whether I should remove my shades. I didn’t want to unsettle him. “How do you know me?”
“I know you, that’s all.”
My twisted history in town had been more on display than I’d realized. “Okay.”
The door opened wider and a neatly cropped white-haired man in his late fifties, wearing a gray and white-striped cardigan, no shirt, and black jeans, managed to effortlessly wedge open the screen door with his wheelchair. He held the cigarette between his teeth and drew more smoke. “You’re on the clock, lady.”
“Okay, okay, then how did you know Harold?”
“Too long a story. Next.”
“Maybe if we could —”
“Next,” he repeated without rancor.
“I’m looking for people who knew him before his death.”
“Hard to know him after.”
I reorganized. “Yes, of course. What I meant was, you’re aware that he killed himself?” Out loud, it hurt. Even then.
“So they say.” Like I was a suspect.
“So, ah, did he seem despondent when you knew him and when was that exactly?”
“I knew him a year or two before his death. We both liked Dickens. I still do. At the time he wasn’t at all despondent.
He was very happy.”
“Very happy?”
“That was my take.”
“Does the phrase ‘come with me’ have any significance related to Harold?”
“No.”
“Did he have any friends besides you?” I bit hard on it. “I mean, maybe a girlfriend?”
“There was a girlfriend.”
I was a marionette, yanked up and down with every answer.
He pulled the cigarette out of his teeth with his thin lips and sucked in the bonus smoke. “Before my time.” No smoke exhaled.
“Do you remember a name?”
“Connie or Constance. Figueroa, I think.”
“Any idea where she worked or lived?”
“Worked at Itasca.”
“The state park. How long ago?”
“Two years, maybe more. Like I said, before my time.”
“Do you know what she looked like?” And then another question I really didn’t want to ask, and an answer I wasn’t sure I wanted to hear. “Was he . . . in love?”
Johnny Ray sniffed. “Don’t know, but he wasn’t in love.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Yes. And we’ve run out of time.”
“Could we talk again?”
“I’ve got a guitar to re-string. But I’ll ask you a question.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Why don’t you let the dead rest?”
As I searched for a reply, he backed up his wheelchair and slammed the screen door shut.
***
I resolved to give Victor a visit, to gauge his response to me, alone, and to squeeze out any information he might have concerning Johnny Ray. But when I arrived at the mayor’s office, his secretary waved me off. “Not today,” she said pointing to the crowd of people waiting for him, including his wife, the still extravagant Melissa. “He’s even more backed up than usual.” The only available chair was next to her, so I sat. Even after all those years and the encroaching crows feet, she was quite lovely and well toned. I gave her a pained smile.
“He’s a busy man,” I said.
“Yes.” She wasn’t pleased.
“Hi.” I removed my shades, extended my hand; she’d never met me in person outside of The Beaver. “I’m Eunis, Eunis Cloonis.”
Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) Page 34