“Naturally.”
“So you’ll come?”
“When I’m done here; could be months. And on one condition: you’ll check your phone for me. I got a text from your phone, I’m sure of it.” I hesitated. “Victor King doesn’t have access to your phone.”
“Vic? Certainly not. Not my type.” A quizzical silence followed. “You and I, we’re always bargaining, aren’t we? But sure, I’ll check my phone’s history. Just don’t count on anything. But you’ll come? I’ll even pay for the trip, caramels and all.”
At least I had one person in my corner. “Sure, unless my mother or the authorities get me first.”
“Authorities?”
“It was a joke.”
When I looked up, Carly’s yellow Miata was gone. The least of my worries.
***
An hour later, I’d worked up enough confidence to slump down in my car as Rhoald Cloonis drove off in his truck. As I approached the Cloonis house, the orderly yard impressed me again, but for the first time I sensed the bone-drying weariness vaporizing the place. Perhaps it was always there and I’d simply repelled it; it was only my third visit. The other two — first with Harold, then the attempt to understand him — were like wading deep into desert.
Muriel answered the door, without surprise. She did not invite me in. “I don’t think you should be here.” She was impassive.
“I loved your son.” I think I loved your son. “All I want is to put him properly to rest. If I could just have a moment.”
She glanced over my shoulder, left and right. “Okay, but just for a moment.”
But then Muriel, who was about to have one herself, offered me a cup of tea. Tea! Unlike my imagined encounter, it wouldn’t include Daryl Hannah and Michael Jackson.
I accepted, and while she was in the kitchen, I scanned the living room in hopes of a clue. There were a few cheap antiques: a brass hurricane lamp, a woodcut terrier dog, a mantle clock, all of them subdued brown or aged yellow.
A small, stoppered urn, porcelain with thin ochre trim, stopped me cold. Harold’s remains?
Only one photograph: Rhoald, quite a few years younger, in hunting gear with rifle and a dead trophy moose. The same rifle, it appeared, hung over the mantle, pressed against walls papered in a dull gray pattern. I stood to sniff the rifle to see if it had been recently fired, but Muriel returned.
“I hope this is okay. It’s just Lipton’s.” Lankier and less attractive than I’d remembered, Murial had long ears and a concaved face.
“Thank you, you’re very kind. This is great.” Be quick and strategic. I didn’t know when Rhoald might reappear.
As if she was inside my mind, she said, “Mr. Cloonis won’t be returning for about three-quarters of an hour.”
“Do you have any idea why Harold did what he did?”
“No, no I don’t.”
“We were happy, you know. Your husband is wrong about me. Harold loved me.”
“Then why?” Her dehydrated face withered downward.
“I want to know too. Did he say anything to you in those last few weeks?”
“He rarely spoke to either of us. He didn’t like coming here. He must have told you. But no, nothing.”
“Did he say anything about me?” The question scared me, even as I asked it.
“After that time you and he visited, he said he was going to marry you. I asked him if he loved you, and he said he did.”
“That’s all, nothing more?”
“He didn’t like talking to us. He was always a private child. Wouldn’t even let us take photographs of him, even as a little boy. Oh, but there was your mother.”
“My mother?”
“Yes, he said she visited him. Unannounced. Wanted to know if his intentions were honest. My son! But I guess I can understand a mother wanting to know.”
It took me a minute to process. Was Momma trying to sabotage my relationship or was she looking out for me? “What else did she ask him?”
“Don’t know. He was just polite with her, I guess. My son’s intentions were always good. He was that kind of boy.”
“Did he have any other friends beside me?”
“You didn’t know? Well, if you didn’t, we certainly didn’t. But even as a little boy he would say he wanted a perfect friend.”
Muriel hadn’t touched her tea. Staring at the hunting photo of her husband, she continued. “He’d say, ‘a friend who will trust me, who will come with me whatever I do, the way I look, wherever I go.’ And I told him ‘you will, you’ll have friends.’ But that didn’t raise his spirits. He didn’t believe me. He was like that.”
“Like that?”
Muriel wiped something from her eye. “He was a good boy. Rhoald is . . .” She tossed away the thought.
I studied her face, like studying the inside of a thin wooden bowl. “Does Rhoald —Mr. Cloonis— does he still hunt?”
“He’s still a very good shot and he goes to the range occasionally but I don’t think he hunts anymore. Arthritis.”
“Before me, did Harold have any friends? Anyone that he mentioned?”
“Not many.”
“But there were a few?” My chest lifted, hopeful.
“Not a few.” I waited as Muriel burrowed into her concaved memory bank. “He had that friend, the one he met at the library. I guess they both liked the same books.”
“Dickens?”
“No, that wasn’t his name.”
“I meant the author of the books.”
“Oh, well, perhaps, but the guy had one of those southern names. Jimmy Bob Somethingorother.”
“Johnny Ray Bardo.” I was almost touching something concrete.
“Johnny Ray, that sounds familiar. He was at the cremation.”
And I wasn’t allowed. Another blow to my heart.
“Rhoald liked ‘the shape of his jib.’ Neatly trimmed. That’s Rhoald’s way.” Muriel glanced at the clock on the mantel. “Maybe you should go.”
***
That Momma had weaseled her way into my investigation made me claustrophobic, like I was caught in a net. About to be hauled on deck to bake in the sun. Like my life was everyone’s but mine. So I drove to Kingdom, just to get wet.
The deepest sections of the bogs still had occasional ice crystals and some small plates of ice, but the welcoming weather tempted the first greens out of hiding and the rivers were flowing. Kingdom Lake was there for the cold scrubbing, and I’d delayed my first swim way too long. It had a marked chill to be sure, but I made it to the east side where the sun had layered a blanket of gold and copper over roughly sixty yards of rocky shoreline. I remained there, face and chest to the sun, toes probing mud, for a while, cleansed and temporarily emancipated from my litany of questions, before swimming back across the placid lake to my pile of clothes.
When I got to my car I was surprised to find tire tracks alongside mine, possibly a truck’s judging by their width, freshly marking the thin mud. I didn’t recollect seeing them when I’d pulled in. Even while I’d been swimming, the trawl had closed in on me again. Paranoia? Absolutely.
***
No sooner had I returned to the farmhouse with Lyle’s inhibitor pills than Carly confronted me on the back steps. I tucked his medication in my pocket.
“What have you gotten us into?” Carly’s usually playful eyes were dull with fear.
“Me?”
“A woman looking for you. She’s going to hurt one of us, I’m sure of it.”
“Slow down.”
“You have something of hers.”
“She threatened you?”
“No, she implied. She came close to burning my face. Like it was an accident, but it wasn’t. Maybe we should go to the police.” Carly’s eyelids were puffy, her irises fractured like my windshield. I’d never seen her vulnerable, never seen her scared. And I was the cause of it, as usual.
“No, no, you can’t prove anything, right? Where’d this happen?”
“The Cosmetic
Center downtown. It doesn’t matter where, just give her whatever it is.”
“Did anyone see it happen?”
“No. She’s creepy, really creepy. She’s not fucking around.”
“How’d she know who you were?”
“I don’t know and I don’t care. What do you have of hers?”
“I don’t have anything.”
“Well, she thinks you do, damn it. I always thought it was Momma’s twisted mind, but you do bring bad juju. Just give it back to her.”
“Black hair, green eyes, beautiful?”
“That’s the one.”
“She won’t hurt you or Lyle or Momma, I promise.”
“Then you’ll give it back to her?”
“I will.”
Carly threw her hands up in disgust. “You’d better. Geezus!” She stormed to her car and drove off.
A voice came from behind me. “I got nothin’ to lose.” Lyle clung to the back door. “I’ll take care of it.”
“No you won’t, you stay out of this.”
“I’ll get her. She’s the one messin’ with you, runnin’ you off the road, the gun shot, your fucked up windshield.”
“We don’t know that. And you’re in no shape to be goin’ after anyone. Now get back inside and get some rest.”
He took my order, and I was ashamed to have spoken to him that way. I sounded like Momma. I stood in the late afternoon light, gazing at the caboose, trying to organize my thoughts. When the wind started nipping at me, I took the invitation, the gusts nudging me all the way back into the kitchen.
Momma, scornful and skulking around like she was plotting something, made sure it was just the two of us within earshot. I braced. She launched into me before I was halfway across the room. “What’s the matter with you? You blind too? Your brother’s sick. You’ve gotta do something. Lyle’s dying!” She wanted me to contradict her, I’m sure, but I couldn’t respond without recanting my promise. In my silence, age crept over her. “He’s dying,” she said again, her eyes pleading. “Don’t just stand there like a dumb —”
“You’re sure?”
“Oh god.” Momma closed her eyes, trying to imagine the truth. “A mother knows.”
I leaned forward, searching her face for a more reasonable explanation, but she gave none. “You mean like intuition? Like crickets and low-flying birds?”
“What?” The reference meant nothing to her. “Yes, intuition,” she said smugly then sagged more sheepishly. “Maybe I overheard him on the phone with his doctor. Anyway,” she snapped, quickly regaining her stock insolence, “what are you gonna do for him?”
Should I shake my mother by the shoulders or hold her? Both unreasonable. So I did neither. I nodded. “Okay. We should call Carly.”
“Carly! That girl wouldn’t notice nothin’ but her mirror. She don’t know shit, might make a bigger mess of things than you.”
“Momma! You want to help or do just want to fuck with me all the time?”
“Eunis Marie!”
“Don’t Eunis Marie me. I’m past indignation, if you understand what that means, so don’t bother laying yours on me.”
“You always were too smart for your own good.”
My eyes burned. “You went to see Harold.”
Her eyes went left and right, she hung her head. “Maybe.”
“Bullshit! You went to my fiancée and bullied him.”
“I didn’t bully nobody. I went for you. Look the guy in the eye.”
“For me.”
“Yes.”
“You tried to talk him out of it.”
“You don’t know what you’re talkin’ about, like always.”
“So tell me.”
“Nothin’ to tell. He said he loved you. Not sure I believed him, but there you have it.”
“That’s it? Anybody else there to corroborate?”
“Corrobo . . .?”
“Got any witnesses?”
“Damn you.” Then she faced me straight on. “Yes, as a matter of fact. A man came while I was there. Long hair. Scruffy. Your weird boyfriend sent him away.”
“Name?”
“Who do you think I am? It wasn’t my place to—”
“Okay, about Lyle. You’ll do what I say.”
“What you say?”
I stood firm, peering down at Momma.
“Maybe, if you got a plan.”
“I got a plan. I’m systematic.”
She looked puzzled. “Okay, okay.”
I wasn’t sure what I’d do next. But at least I was still afloat.
CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO
“It was Aunt Mae, my great aunt,” read Gordon’s text. “She’d heard you were looking for connections to Harold. Used my phone when I went to the bathroom. Didn’t know she even knew how to text. Sorry.”
I texted him back, “Tell her I’ll be by today or tomorrow. I need her help.”
***
I listened by my brother’s door. A few sweet chords and his frail voice:
“The sun is slowly sinkin'
The day's almost gone
Still darkness falls around us
And we must journey on . . .”
“Lyle,” I whispered, tapping on his bedroom door. His singing and strumming stopped.
“Come in.” He brightened. “Sis.”
“I’m sorry to bother you.” He’d lost more weight, his hands stringy, his blue blood vessels the roadmap of someone twice his age. I was watching him drift away and I was helpless.
“Nah, you’re the most welcome of all.”
“I’ve got an idea.”
“Better be soon.”
The pain went deeper still. I took a breath. “Would you be willing to sing for a group of people?”
“I don’t want no pity.”
“Lyle, you can sing, I just heard you. If I set it up?”
“I don’t want no one to know. Don’t want them comin’ cause they pity me.”
“I understand.”
He thought about it. “Only if you’d sing harmony with me.”
“I don’t sing.”
“Who says?” He waited. As he breathed his whole frame deflated.
I couldn’t lose him, not now. “Okay,” I said. “If you teach me.”
“I can do that.” This seemed to revive him. His fingers did a little tap dance on the guitar, and seeing his fingers move with spirit loosened my strings.
***
A little after noon I visited Mae at the Drink ‘n’ Dive, the place almost empty. We sat at the bar, none of the girls in the tank. Mae and I drank imported Vernors, her favorite.
“Never knew Lyle had more’n one sister.” Her voice gravely as ever. She wiped excess soda off her lips with the back of her hand. “But I’m glad to meet you.”
“Same.”
“So you’ll do that for Lyle?”
“Before we talk about Lyle, you’re a friend of Gordon’s.” She set it out like a litmus test.
“I am.” I felt good saying it. Gordon was a friend.
“Well, maybe you can tell me, does he have any girlfriends? I mean beside you, cause you’re just a friend, right?”
“Well, we’re definitely friends. But if you mean romantically—?”
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“That’s what I figured. So does he?” She waited, steely eyed, for my response.
Lyle’s gig perhaps contingent on my answer. “Well, I don’t know about his life back east.”
She leaned forward, conspiratorially, even though there was no one near us. “Do you think he’s got a woman?”
I saw where she was heading. “You probably should ask him.”
“I don’t think I could do that. What do you think?”
“Well, I don’t know. But he’s a man of his word. And he’s funny.”
“I’ll grant you that.” She flicked the Vernor’s can with her fingernail.
“So what more could you want?” A supportive smile.
“There are things I just don’t understand.”
“It’s okay,” I said placing my hand gently atop of hers. “Me too. Me too.”
“I suppose you’re right.” She inhaled. “I just want him to be happy.”
“I don’t know him that well but I think he is. How many people can say that?”
“Mmm.”
“So, Lyle? You’ll do that for him?”
She took her time, evaluating me. “I will. He always had talent. Never could understand how he didn’t get along. Pleasure to have him here.”
“Well, thank you.” I hesitated before lifting off the barstool. “There’s one more thing.”
“Shoot.”
“Johnny Ray. How’d you connect him to Harold?”
“I seen ‘em from time to time. Hard to miss JR with that hair a his, all funny and tied up. And Harold with those loud shirts a his.”
“Right.” The front door opened. Bright light and a couple of degenerates flushed into the bar. “And thanks for the Vernors.”
I wasn’t but a few steps outside the Drink ‘n’ Dive heading for my car, when I caught Victor leaning against the building in front of me, a bit startled and dismissing someone in a tan fishing jacket.
“Eunis, how nice to see you again.” He took my hand, gripped it less tightly this time.
“Mr. Mayor. You going for a drink?” I had the sense he knew I’d be there.
“Oh no.” He settled into easiness. “Not at this hour, and certainly not here.” The big man afraid of mermaids.
“Did you show her around?” I searched for my car keys.
“Who?”
“Atara.”
“Your friend from New York. No, we never did get a chance. I’ve just gotten so busy. Politics, everyone thinks I have an answer for their problem.” Still rehearsed. “And of course, I have my own business to run. Not easy being a small town mayor, I can tell you that. And Bemidji’s not that small anymore.”
“I can imagine.”
“And you? You here for a while?” His iris locked around his pupils. He genuinely anticipated my answer.
Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) Page 36