“Not too much longer, I don’t think.”
His eyes let go. “Well, it was nice bumping into you.”
“You too.”
***
I dialed the farmhouse. She answered. “Momma, “ I said.
“Yeah, what do ya want?”
“This guy you saw with Harold. Was he in a wheelchair?”
“Yeah, so? Your Harold was weird. He had weird friends.”
“Wheelchairs aren’t weird, Momma.”
“Yeah, well . . . what else you want?”
“Nothing, Momma. Thanks.” I hung up.
I turned east, stopping at Little Bass Stump for a swim to clear my head. The smaller and shallower the lake, the warmer, especially so early in the season. But I found two fishermen and their loud portable radio so I moved on to Kingdom, which was the next most swimmable on the way home, more private and my favorite anyhow. The lake was still a cold 50-55 degrees but there was no wind. Just a quick dip.
After folding my clothes under the white cedar, I dove into the water and glided quickly through the velvet electricity, recalling the icy wind and Malcolm, my Charles Dickens. “Death is coming,” he’d said. “Let’s dance while we can.”
And so I swam —my kind of dance— once to the center of the small lake and back, lost in thought as I considered the bravery of so many people I’d met in the past year: Malcolm, Elizabeth, Sydney, Roddy (!), Cherry, the blind young sailor, Lindsay, Constance, Harold’s mother and, yes, my brother Lyle. Especially Lyle.
And there was something else, something that both Malcolm and Harold had said, about intuition, about not being blind to it, though it was hard to reconcile with verifiable data, tedious to even think of it.
A squawk box echoed. “Roger fifteen.”
Then more voices. One hundred yards off the shore and almost 100 yards to the west of my neatly stacked clothes, two men sloshed around in the tall reeds, searching for something. As I got closer I saw holsters on their hips, and dread spiked in me.
Trembling from the cold, I pulled myself out through the reeds. Harold was near. I didn’t resist. Between the cops and me, something protruded from the shadows, just north of the cedar, amongst the canes. Something Harold wanted me to see. Something beautiful. Five short crystalized shoots caught the light, evocative of a beckoning hand.
Still naked and shivering, I slipped out of the water, quickly dried and clothed myself. One of the cops saw me and yelled, “Stay there.”
As he doubled back toward me along the ragged shoreline and his buddy kept combing the stalks, I waded over and through the clumps of tall grass to one of the still frozen clusters along the lake. Without my glasses I had to bend closer. It was a hand! And even through the thin layer of ice I couldn’t mistake that face, those aquamarine eyes. Atara stared up at me.
Disbelief. Shock. And relief. I know it sounds cruel.
“Jim, over here.” I heard the officer. “Did you do this?”
She was still beautiful.
“Lady, did you do this?”
“What? No. I just found her.”
“Don’t move.”
I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She didn’t take hers off mine.
One of the officers pulled me to the shore and asked me a bunch of questions.
“No bumps, no bruises, no bullet holes,” I heard one of them say. “Cause of death?”
“Coroner’s call. Cold maybe, the waters pretty cold,” said another.
“She’s friggin’ gorgeous.”
“And in great shape. Not much cloth wasted on that bikini.”
“Lady? Lady!” He yelled at me.
“Yes,” I said, still dazed.
“You can go, but don’t go anywhere out of the county. You understand? Detective Sullivan will have further questions, I’m sure.”
***
The front of Johnny Ray’s trailer showed more signs of wear and tear than I’d remembered, yellow water stains under the windows and the roof thick with leaves. Or perhaps it was that second look that revealed more.
How did that man traverse the front door steps in his wheelchair? Was there an accident? When could he drive a car? I moved quietly around to the rear where a wooden ramp angled to the ground a few feet from a dark blue car. A basketball net hung on a spindly, long-dead tamarack. I returned cautiously to the front yard.
The orange and blue birdbath, now somehow familiar, attracted me and, watching for Johnny Ray’s imminent arrival at the front door, I drew closer to it, off the gravel path on which I was surely supposed to remain. A few cups of water sat at the bottom of the shell-shaped bowl gathering fragments of twig and leaf. The workmanship was quite good, each row of tiles carefully orchestrated, joined by an almost unerring spacing between them. Not tiles, beads.
“You’re back.” Johnny Ray sat behind the screen once more, his voice not quite as sturdy.
“I’m sorry to bother you again.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Can I come in?”
“If this visit will be your last.”
“I can’t promise that.” I ascended the two front steps. “My brother wanted me to pay you what he owes you. Four hundred and fifty-five dollars, for those lessons and the amp.” I pulled the bills from my pocket, the dwindling remains of my back pay.
“Lyle,” Johnny Ray coughed, “after all these years? Bullshit.”
I waved the bills at him. “He wants things square, and I have to know about Harold. He was my husband. I have to know.”
“Don’t be so sure.”
“May I?” I saw him wheel away from the door to allow entry.
I stacked the wrinkled bills on the closest counter top, away from an opened bottle of Red Bull. The trailer was cluttered but as orderly as the outside. I counted at least five guitars arranged in a semi-circle; others hung uniformly on the walls. The stench of cigarette almost suffocated me, small plates and ashtrays overflowing with remnant parts, incongruous with the otherwise pervading order.
“It was you who ran me off the road. You shot my tire out.”
He swallowed a smile, like meeting a long-lost family member and not quite knowing how to react. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.” He pulled a Lucky Strike from the pack and lit it.
“My mother smokes those. You have the same cough.”
“Should I offer you one?” The first hint of sarcasm I’d heard from him. He answered for me. “I didn’t think so.” He didn’t move his wheelchair back to make room for me to sit.
“I stopped at the Drink ‘n’ Dive, spoke to Mae. Lyle will be singing there in ten days; a Friday night.”
“The thirtieth, day of the Cannonball crash. Not very lucky.”
“Mae says you changed your famous braided hair.”
“Change is good.”
“Actually, you cut it sometime after he and I got serious. When my mother met you it was long. At the cremation, you’d cut it.”
“And how were the Twins doing at the time? A two-game win streak? Maybe I was celebrating. Maybe it was in deference to my friend. Maybe I got lice. What’s your point?”
I steadied myself against the small counter. “You changed your hair color on his death — your hair is naturally brown, not white like mine.”
“I should have asked your permission.” He stubbed out the cigarette before its time.
“You met at the library. You both loved Dickens.”
“You’re regurgitating.” Johnny Ray sounded fatigued.
“You were friends.”
“Friends.” He spit out a rueful laugh. “He was a good man.”
“Yes, he was.”
“You don’t know how good.”
“You say that like I didn’t deserve him.”
“You didn’t.”
“So tell me.”
“He was kindhearted. He didn’t need bright lights. He didn’t need a sex pot like you.”
That tickled me. “Sex pot?! Me?”
“T
hrowing your tits and ass all over the place. He was perfectly happy before you came around.”
“I didn’t come around. He came to me.”
He fell silent, grabbed the pack of Luckies again.
I steeled myself. “Did he love you?”
Johnny Ray set the pack of Luckies in his lap and searched for a place to wheel his chair, but he was blockaded. I was afraid he’d barrel over me.
“Did he?” I stood taller.
“He never said that, but he did. Do you even know what made him laugh?”
“Me.”
“Shiiit.”
“You were lovers. You sent him that Poe book with your hair, those beads; the same beads you used to create the birdbath out front.”
“My college colors. Go wildcats.” He was almost breezy.
“You wanted him back.”
“We were a good fit. Happy.”
“Was the hair a memento or a warning?”
He peered up at me, eyes glassy.
I relaxed, tried to speak tenderly. “It was, wasn’t it . . . a warning? That’s how much you wanted him back.”
“I never meant . . .”
“For him to kill himself.”
He wiped his eyes.
I struggled to be sympathetic. “You must have known his father would abandon him completely if he found out, if you’d made your relationship public. Rhoald’s not a forgiving man, even if it was love.”
Johnny Ray grew smaller. “Even if it was love?” He lit another cigarette. He blew smoke my way. “Maybe you killed him. Maybe he realized his mistake. You consider that?”
The cigarette trembled ever so slightly in his hand. I could see them together, arms around each other’s shoulders. Not attractive men, but beautiful friends.
“Of course I did.”
He rubbed his forehead, took another drag from the cigarette.
“We were all part of his collection.” I couldn’t see what they’d seen in each other’s faces.
“Yes.” I could barely hear him. “But he married you. Conventional. The others . . .” His eyes disconsolate. “The rest of us . . .”
His gaze drifted, reflecting the oceans of unknown that we shared. I didn’t know what to say. Hadn’t a clue. And nothing more was said.
CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE
The next day I was summoned to the police station, a peach brick building that was even less hospitable inside, walled in white cinder block. Harold’s true cause of death was still unclear, as was Atara’s, and Johnny Ray’s jealousy aside, I couldn’t believe he’d kill Atara and frame me for it. Or how he might even have accomplished either death given his condition. But Sullivan had his eye on me, and who could blame him. There was the very real chance that he would hold me in jail as a prime suspect. I shivered at the thought of incarceration.
As soon as we were in Sullivan’s closet-like office and he’d closed the door, he said, “It’s odd, isn’t it, that we keep meeting this way. You knew her, correct?”
“Atara, yes. Atara Bukara.”
“That wasn’t her last name.”
More particles in motion. I was such a fool. “That’s the name she told me.”
“And how did you meet?”
Oh crap, I didn’t want to go there. “I was a patient in a hospital.”
He leveled me with distrustful eyes. “What kind of hospital?”
I took a breath. “I had a mild concussion. I’d helped a man, but —”
“I don’t need that level of detail. She was a nurse.”
Thank goodness. “Yes.”
“And . . .?”
“She and her husband were very generous to me.”
“She wasn’t married.”
Naturally. “Oh, well they lived together.”
He stretched to see the sheet of paper on his desktop. “Levi . . . Levi O’Brien.”
“Levi, yes.”
“Apparently you had something of Ms. Afaa’s.”
“That was her name?
He nodded.
I considered telling him the truth but I saw a small dirty jail cell with me in it. My breath became shallow, labored. “I didn’t. I don’t.”
He held up his hand. “Two different people have testified that you do.”
Water, I should have brought some water. “Two?”
“What do you say to that?”
“Levi, Mr. O’Brien, may have thought that. Atara certainly thought so, but I don’t know who else—”
“A credible person.”
“Who?”
“You know I can’t tell you that. Did you introduce Vic —Mayor King— to Atara Afaa?”
“I did.”
He opened a manila folder on his desk. “And apparently you had other questionable episodes, in New York.”
That covered a multitude of possibilities. I was being pulled under. Don’t panic. “I have no record. I’ve never been charged with anything.”
“No, you haven’t. Who might have a reason to intimidate or want Ms. Afaa dead?”
“I don’t know. But she was no angel.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How do you mean?”
“You can ask Mr. O’Brien, and maybe even . . .” I measured the wisdom of mentioning it, “the Mayor.”
“Our mayor?”
“Could have been an accident. Some people underestimate the cold. Hyperthermia. She was wearing a bathing suit.” I looked again at the mounted bass on his wall, then squarely at the detective, but he didn’t meet my gaze. There was something about that fish.
“You like swimming in cold water.”
“I do.”
“Where were you the past two days, before we found her?”
I recounted that I’d been to the pharmacy for Lyle’s pills, I’d talked to Gordon, I’d visited Muriel Cloonis.
“Your former mother-in-law.”
“Yes.” Then for a swim in Kingdom and then home with Carly, Lyle and Momma.
He wrote it all down. Poker-faced. “Anyone see you at the lake?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Yesterday?”
“Home. The Drink ‘n’ Dive with Mae Scotts. I even bumped into The Mayor.”
“Yes, he told me.”
“Then Kingdom.”
“Right.” He scribbled something more. I started adding too.
“Anything else?”
“No, that’s it for now.”
A reprieve. My throat loosened, breathing came more easily. “You got a tip.” I started to rise.
“What?”
“Strange that someone tipped you to look in the lake. In Kingdom.”
“How would you know?”
“Detective, do your men usually beat around the bushes?”
He stared down at his notes. “That’s it for now, Mrs. Cloonis. Thanks for coming in.”
When I got to my car I found a stray receipt and on the back made one of my lists:
***
It was like the first time I’d jumped into a lake.
“Levi?”
“Yes.”
“It’s Eunis.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry for your loss.”
“You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I had nothing to do with it.”
“Quite a coincidence that of all people you found her.”
I remained unusually serene. “Quite a coincidence that she was at my favorite swimming spot.”
More silence.
“And that she drowned like her sister.”
“She didn’t have a sister.”
Duped again. My turn to take a breather. “Well, I’m sorry.”
“I don’t suppose you have any ideas about who might have done it.”
I had to restrain myself. “No. Perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps she miscalculated the cold water.”
“That’s what the police are saying . . . so far.” He was remarkably calm. “Is that all?”
“The other day when I called you . . .”
“Yes?”
“You weren’t in New York, were you?”
“No.”
“Would you tell me where?”
“No. Is that all?”
“No. Both of you shared with me something of your arrangement.” Actually, they’d hinted.
“You mean about our bodies?”
That was it! “Yes. You’re in charge of her burial, not her family.”
“So?”
“I thought I could be of service.”
“What does that mean?”
I looked out over the farmhouse. Restored, it had come a long way, the yard not so much. I was halfway in two worlds. Having the discussion with Levi in New York made it even more dreamlike. “I want to make a deal.”
“You don’t have anything to deal. Are we done?”
“I think I do. Hear me out. In a few days, after the autopsy is complete, I’m going to send you some instructions.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“You both signed papers, right? Legal but delicate.”
He was silent.
“Levi?”
“This is madness.”
Balmy weather had returned. The marshes would be filling with white and pink bog rosemary, and the woods showing red baneberry with its white spears and glossy rubicund fruit. “We all have our madness; she was yours. Don’t force us to be adversaries. I can make this work for you. For both of us.”
“You want to come back to the nest?”
I was silent. The luxury, the adulation. I wanted it but not if it cost me my purpose and self-respect. I’d come close to losing both.
Then he ended the silence. “No, I didn’t think so.” He hung up.
The farmhouse, as I stepped backward to get perspective on the fresh veneer, no longer matched the rest of the landscape. The bristles of unkempt weeds, the blighted shed, the rusted caboose, the crumbling equipment, the rotting trough, were all reminders of profound, unfinished business.
Inside the house, the peeling walls, the hobbled cabinets, the worn carpets, the neglected furniture, were all steeped in four decades of tobacco and delusion. Nothing had changed on the inside. It was past time for me to tackle the hard choices.
***
Organizing my thoughts wasn’t easy, not around Atara or Levi or Harold. I’d learned something about beauty that was part of the solution. But there were only two things I had to immediately attend to: organizing Lyle’s performance and rehabilitating Carver’s workshop, a place I could work, alone. I threw myself into both.
Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) Page 37