Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1)

by P. G. Lengsfelder

  With but a few days till his show, Lyle could barely move without support. Perhaps I’d placed an unnecessary weight upon him by suggesting the performance. But he perked up during our brief rehearsals. When I proposed taking him out for dinner, he offered an appreciative rejection. “No point spendin’ on a dinner that I’m gonna crap and puke out two hours later.”

  Momma visited him once every morning when he was barely awake, and when —I surmised— he was least likely to make any conversation, allowing Momma to generously offer, “I’ll just let you sleep.”

  So in the mornings I was off to Carver’s, first purging and cleaning, then hammering whatever was necessary for protection from the elements, if only temporary. The well and plumbing was still somewhat intact, and a call to Sparky took care of electrical support. Someone had returned the sign and leaned it against the front of the small building, creating more cover. I entered through the back. And while I worked, I mulled the sequence of my route the day the body was found, the autopsy, and Atara’s final moments.

  Despite all that, the week went by slowly, and on the Wednesday before his show, I came into Lyle’s room with his medication, finding him clinging to his guitar and delirious. “Ya know,” he said, heavy-lidded, “you should be out dancin’ instead of here.”

  “What do you mean?” I sat on his bed, gently repositioning his ever-lengthening hair out of his eyes and off his face, and tucking it behind his ear.

  “I’d dance if I could, you and me.”

  “Yes.”

  “Don’t be mad.” His eyes pleading.

  “Why would I be mad at you?”

  “Promise.”

  “Okay, I promise.”

  He smiled, hung his head over the Martin, and fell asleep. His emaciated face possessed the genes of a little boy I’d watched from first breath. Try as I might, I couldn’t see them, another face I’d collected but failed to fully understand, even as his blood drained into mine, leaving me sadder still.

  ***

  When Detective Sullivan called me in for more questioning, familiar faces populated the reception area: Gordon, Victor King, Melissa, Rhoald and Muriel. No one looked happy.

  “Ah, Mrs. Cloonis,” the detective said. “Please, come with me.” Come with me!

  Gordon nodded. Victor’s wife tracked me with a sullen glare. Victor didn’t make eye contact. I thought Rhoald was going to leap up and hit me until Muriel laid a steadying hand on his arm.

  The Detective ran me through many of the same questions he’d already asked. It was as if he’d marched me past the others in the reception area like a model on a runway, to elicit a response. So I tried to isolate each expression. Gordon looked confused, embarrassed and sympathetic. Melissa looked aloof and piqued to be in such a place. Victor was stoic. Rhoald, as I say, more determined than ever to close the door on me permanently, hostility forefront, but an anomalous hint of duplicity around his eyes, scarier than the anger. And Muriel, mawkish and almost shamefaced.

  Somewhere in there, probably, was a clue. With me, the supposed expert on faces. Ironies coming at me like locusts. My track record not so good. But, as Lyle would say, it’s all I had in my holster.

  ***

  I approached Harold’s old office, the mid-day light flat and unwelcoming. I hadn’t been there since returning a week after Harold’s death at the detective’s request, when Detective Sullivan manipulated me into moving Harold’s oak desk. And now, as I ascended the staircase to the second floor office, I began to understand.

  The detective’s logic must have been if I could move the desk I could have snapped Harold’s neck, I could have lifted or moved the body. I could have. But why?

  My phone rang. It was Gordon.

  “Hi.” I got to the top step and stopped.

  “I heard they’re going to charge you.”

  “Charge me with what?”

  “Two deaths. Something like, you can come in on your own or we’ll issue some type of document making sure you do. What are you gonna do?”

  “Shit! Really?” I looked back down the staircase. The walls edged closer. “Alright,” I said. Voices came from the corridor below. “First off, who told you this?”

  “Vic.”

  “Right.” I listened for Victor’s voice. The voices came and went and came again. Short little bursts, but indefinable. I whispered, “Well, nothing’s been served on me and you’re my only recent call.”

  “But what are you gonna do? Is there something I can do? A lawyer?”

  “Now they’ve got a record of you calling me.”

  “I don’t care about that.”

  “But you may.”

  “You didn’t do that did you?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  He chortled. “You don’t think so?”

  “I don’t remember.”

  “That was Nixon’s line. Are you serious?”

  I looked down the corridor. “Gordon, I don’t think I have time to talk to you. Will you have your cell with you?”

  “Yes. But where will you be?”

  “It’s better that you don’t know. Besides, it’s uncertain. Like the weather.” I hung up.

  Two deaths. Another pattern? All those cases I’d read about, that had captivated me as a young girl. Sleepwalking killers, usually murdering family members. Schizophrenia, hearing voices, pleas of insanity and short-term memory loss from others. Killers of all sorts, none of whom remember what they did. Things they did, asleep or wake, that science could not resolve.

  Harold irritated the hell out of me at times, and I often went to bed worried about him interfering with my work. Now the other lovers. The secrets. Maybe I already knew. Maybe I knew he was unfaithful. To me? To Johnny Ray? And my luxurious Octagon apartment? Not without Harold’s estate. And . . . The blank spaces. Come with me. Those damnable blank spaces.

  I turned left into the narrow wainscot hallway that led, barely lit by a frosted transom, to his office. I moved quickly. At the door I found a handwritten note. I removed my shades. There, a phone number and a name to call if interested in renting the space.

  Come with me. I tried the door. It opened. Someone else had inhabited the space since Harold. Walls painted sky blue. Same old oak desk, different chairs stacked in a corner, the freestanding lodge pole coat rack laid across them, one of its thin tines broken off. None of it well organized. Dusty. Atoms stirred; resonant water surrounding me as I submerged. Numinescence.

  I closed the door behind me.

  “Come with me,” Harold said, holding out his hand, smiling beatifically, as peaceful as I’d ever seen him. “Together,” he said. “Away from this world,” he said. “Together always.”

  I took two steps back, confused. “Don’t!”

  He loves me.

  “It’ll be easy,” he said. “Together. I’ll show you. You’re the only one. Nothing is so beautiful as us. Nothing can ruin this.”

  He climbed upon the desk. He threw the thick rope over the thick beam. “Forever.” Once more he adjusted the cord. “In the drawer.”

  He pointed to the oak desk. “Together. Come with me.” He placed the cable around his neck. “Forever.”

  He stepped off the desk.

  “Harold!” I said aloud to the empty office, as much questioning my memory as him. But I knew I’d been there as he’d stepped off that desk. I’d been there and lost the memory in a squall of atoms, electrons and quarks. I had walked away. But his broken neck?

  To get to the desk drawer I had to remove the damaged coat rack. I held it for a moment, distracted by the cracked tine. Harold’s neck; it had snapped because of his small bones, his brittle musculature. I pulled apart the stacked chairs, shifted a cabinet, reached over and tugged on it. It was locked, just as I’d left it after his death, when I’d found nothing. That was the way Harold had always kept it, ever wary that someone might invade his space. And then what? So, out of respect, I’d re-locked it. But he’d given me permission to see anything of his and
in fact had encouraged it, I’d thought until the recent revelations.

  A voice in the hallway. I didn’t move. After a minute, when I was sure the voice had disappeared, I locked the door.

  Back to the desk. I felt for the key along the inner rim of the desktop, sliding my fingers this way and that till I came upon it, still taped there and surprised that the detective hadn’t taken the time to unlock it. Or perhaps he had and had simply replaced the key. I’d told him about it.

  Reaching over, I considered the advisability of knowing. I envisioned a nautical rope. Stop imagining.

  One last breath before I inserted the small key and turned it, then pulled the middle drawer toward me. There was no rope. I swiped my hand back and forth. Nothing.

  I relaxed. It’s all in my head; Harold and sailors jumping to the call of something deep. I had been there! I had been part of this. But still there was blank space.

  Then, remembering the smaller secret drawer to the left that simultaneously unlocked (and that especially pleased Harold), I leaned over the cabinet. Knowing that it frequently jammed in the warmer weather, I wrenched it open.

  No rope visible. I shuttled my hand inside. There was something! A folded piece of paper and, withdrawing it, I could tell it was a sheet of accounting ledger. It could have been anything: a faulty formula, a scrap notation. But not a rope. Not a rope.

  I unfolded the perfectly quartered and scored paper. So Harold. It read:

  “If you find this, I know you loved me. You were willing to consider my offer. You can love. But I could not take you with me, as much as I wanted to. Together always, in this world and others. I love you –H”

  ***

  I ached. I cursed its untidiness, its lack of pure definition, leaving me without borders. But I knew at last what I’d found beautiful in Harold: his compassion. Not just for me, but for everyone, everyone but himself. He could see beauty where others could not. And it confirmed my earlier thoughts on the vulnerability of beauty.

  No police cars in our driveway. I walked, disoriented, into the farmhouse. I was shaken into the present. Roddy sat at the kitchen table with Lyle and Momma.

  “Come join us,” Momma said merrily, raising a beer.

  “You promised not to be mad,” chipped in Lyle, as Roddy stood and wrapped his arms around me.

  Momma, Roddy, Lyle! I could’ve died. But no one acted as if anything was wrong. So, for a luxurious opening in time —I can’t tell you how long— I was diverted by Roddy’s warm, singular smell: sweat, wood smoke and oranges. He wouldn’t let go till I put my arms around him, which I did reluctantly, and then it was I who didn’t want to let go. He was so . . . comforting.

  “How nice,” said Momma.

  I opened my eyes. Roddy pulled away. I questioned Lyle with a glance. He showed no urgency.

  “Lyle invited me,” said Roddy.

  “Everyone wants to hear my boy sing.” Momma waved her Keystone triumphantly.

  “I wanted him to hear me sing.” Lyle was steadfast.

  I knew better. I’d tell him it was preposterous, but I wanted no quarrel with Lyle, his eyes so ringed in red, doing his best to sit upright. “Really?” I said, still not looking at Roddy. “I never thought you were such buddies.”

  “Friendships arise.” Roddy smiled at Lyle. Lyle nodded in accord.

  “And,” I continued to Roddy, “I never took you for a country music fan.”

  “I like all kinds of music, I’m open-minded.”

  Perhaps a jab at me but I quickly dismissed it. “Where are you staying?”

  “On the couch.” He pointed to the living room and his bag sitting by the sofa. “Lyle suggested it.”

  “The more the merrier,” said Momma.

  The old couch, lumpy and stained. I felt shame for Momma and the whole house, and that Roddy should see this as my environment. “It reminds me of my Aunt Maxine’s sofa,” he said. “As a kid, I always felt safe sleeping on it. I’ll be fine.”

  Carly came through the back door. “Hi everybody!” Sport bag in hand, as if she was the party everyone was waiting for, she smiled. Then seeing Roddy she ran her hands through her hair, tossing it back, and running her tongue across her full lips. “And who is this?”

  She came close enough to Roddy that her well-heralded breasts were quickly upon him, compelling him to steady himself on the kitchen table to avoid falling on it.

  “Jerrod,” I said instinctively, hoping to protect him.

  “Roddy,” Roddy said, trying to find room to raise his arms and shake Carly’s hand.

  “Lyle’s friend.” Carly held his gaze.

  “And Eunis’s,” Lyle said.

  Carly faced me, pursed her lips in a didn’t-know-you-had-it-in-you expression, from which I didn’t retreat. It occurred to me that even Carly could have disposed of Atara. She had the strength, though I doubted she had the guts.

  “Hello, Carly.” Momma’s jaw twitched.

  “Oh, hi Momma.” Carly waved but didn’t look at her. “Everyone should have friends.” Carly sized up Roddy.

  Prickly heat ran up my neck. Knocking Carly down was an option, but then I wondered why. Rather than explore the question, I asked, “Any calls for me?”

  No one knew what I was talking about? Calling Gordon might make matters worse for him. I excused myself. “Well,” I said, threading past the bodies in the kitchen. “I’ll be downstairs if anybody needs me.”

  I passed Carly’s duffel bag, all covered in bright stickers from Mexico, Costa Rica, even Paris, and I thought about asking her where she planned to sleep. Then I decided I’d rather not contemplate her choices.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  I stood by the woodpile, then walked away from the farmhouse to the rusted caboose and looked back. Even in the late afternoon haze the farmhouse showed its insincerity, ever more present seen at a distance, despite my good intentions. Its vanity and hollowness sadder even than before its rehabilitation.

  That unfinished business again, thinking paint would hide the mind of the place. Because that’s what it was: the mind, not the soul. It was too late to undo, and unless I aimed to work the whole property . . . I couldn’t imagine that.

  Yet unfinished was so undisciplined. And unfair. To what? To whom? To Papa Karlyle? It wasn’t the work, I enjoyed the physical, the hands on. It wasn’t the property, I could make it attractive, even in its scraggily environment. It was the mindset: Momma’s. I was ashamed of Momma. And for a moment I was five years old and sitting in front of the vanity mirror, Momma applying cosmetics to my baby face.

  It was all about choices. Momma’s, Harold’s, mine. Was Gordon truly my friend? Was his call premeditated to elicit a response? The police hadn’t contacted me. I bounced down and did five quick pushups, stretched my neck a couple of times, then circled around to the shed. Even I knew better than to enter it, the slightest whisper liable to cave it in, first tearing, then burying, any trespasser. I was amazed it hadn’t happened years before.

  Nevertheless, wading through the spikey spring weeds, which left trails on my bare legs, I stepped over the downed barbed door and through cobwebs, ducking my head, careful not to touch the doorframe. Even so, I almost fell against it, losing my balance as I pulled viscid spider traps from my face and swatted at imagined creatures dropping into my hair.

  Someone had added paint cans to the floor plan but otherwise it hadn’t changed in thirty years, another graveyard of unfinished business. Choices. I stooped to the cans and, brushing aside their caked dust and mud, saw that they’d never been opened. I lifted one up to verify and sure enough, it was full, the weight of it surprising me so I almost lost my balance again before my arm anchored to a small patch of clear, dusty earth. I pondered what I was doing there.

  Standing straight up was impossible lest I bring the roof down upon myself. I bent over and stepped tactically onto lattice that snapped under me, between a large perforated washtub and a shattered glass washboard, and over the boat paddle that had lain o
n the same dirt floor moldering for half a century. Stepping into the dingy in the corner where Nemo and I once cuddled, I settled in very carefully, the sides giving way with a crackle to my slightest pressure, a sizeable splinter wedging under my thumbnail as I let myself down. “Damn!” I shook out my hand and sucked on it.

  Besides the front door, the only invading sunshine came from three small overcast shafts squeezing between slats on the far wall, never reaching me. For the first time I wondered how the dingy made its way into the shed through the door. It was as if the shed had been built around the dingy. Had the boat ever sailed? Who in my family had ever been a fisherman? No one.

  Fishermen. The two at Little Bass the day they found Atara’s body at Kingdom. One could have been Victor’s friend whom I’d seen only a half hour earlier outside the Drink ‘n’ Dive.

  My phone rang. “Yes?”

  “Eunis?”

  “Yes.”

  “It’s Levi.” He sounded tight.

  It wasn’t a train’s signal but the clanging of a cable car. “You were in San Francisco when it happened, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  No longer on my suspect list.

  “I told them you were authorized to take the body for me,” he said. “You’ll have to go in to sign for it. They’ll deliver.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” My confidence grew. But something still troubled me. “Levi?”

  “Yes?”

  “What about the tape? Atara mentioned something . . .”

  “I don’t know anything about a tape. She was probably bluffing.”

  “She didn’t strike me as the bluffing type.”

  “I told you, I know nothing of a tape.”

  “Sis, you in there?” It was Lyle.

  “I gotta go,” I said to Levi. “I’ll keep you apprised.” I hung up.

  “Lyle, don’t come in here, it’s dangerous.”

  “I can see that. What you doin’ in there?”

  An excellent question. “I needed a place to think.” Both foolish and insufficient. “I’m too big for under the staircase.” Even more ludicrous.