No Witnesses

by Ridley Pearson

  “Precautions, not rules.”

  “Truthfully, I think she’s more excited about Monty the Clown than the party.”

  “Who?”

  “It’s an ice-cream bar with a gimmick, is all. The kids love it.” He sounded like a marketing executive.

  “Do you want to talk about the investigation?”

  “No. It’s what I came to get away from.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “In the morning if it’s necessary.”

  “It’s not,” she said.

  The water shimmered and she could make out several sailboats in the distance motoring with the sails down. But it was the lawn and the woods that called her, having grown up in riding boots.

  She said, “The way you’re keeping track of Corky, the way you’re always watching her, always attentive to her needs—that’s part of you … who you are. You do that for me, too.”

  “Not enough.”

  “Yes. It is enough—that’s what I’m saying. It’s a quality in you. It’s not something I measure or keep track of—I don’t think of it like that.”

  In a self-deprecating tone he said, “I don’t always pay attention. I leave you in the lurch. I get thinking, and suddenly I realize I’ve left you out of my thoughts—and that’s a criminal offense in any relationship—father/daughter, lovers, it doesn’t matter. It’s a selfishness, and I’m often guilty of it. I know it’s the kind of thing that eventually destroys relationships—”

  “You’re doing it again,” she warned him.

  “Am I?”

  “You’re trying to give me a way out. Mark the exits. But I’m not going, Owen. I’m here. Like it or not, I’m in this.”

  “I like it. And you’re right—that’s exactly what I was doing.” He hesitated, and allowed privately, “That’s what you give me.”

  “What?” she encouraged—this was the great puzzle for her.

  “Insight.” He pointed out a flight of birds in the distance. “You call me on my games. You see what I’m up to when I’m not even aware of it.”

  “That doesn’t sound so good,” she admitted. “I don’t want to be a psychologist, I want to be a companion.”

  “But it is good. I need both, I think. You’re not afraid of me—you can’t believe how many people act afraid of me. I hate it. It happens so much, so often, and it affects me—and it’s terrible.”

  She collected her thoughts.

  “You’re nervous,” he observed.

  “A little uncomfortable,” she admitted. “The thing is: This is your private time. Your family time—you and Corky. It feels different than when we’re at the house.”

  “It is different.”

  “Like I’m intruding.”

  “Not at all. You know that.”

  “Maybe I don’t.” She added quickly, “And I’m not fishing.” She attempted to clarify. “I have a hard time knowing what’s going on inside of you.”

  They skirted one of the large timbers, and then another. Corky slipped over a log and ducked low, out of sight. Owen Adler said, “We’ll pretend we don’t see her, okay? Act surprised.”

  “Right.”

  The child erupted with a “Boo!” coming to her feet and waving her arms, then threw herself into hysterics at their reactions and buried her face in her father’s stomach and laughed to that point where she was forcing it. Owen pushed her off, teased her, and sent her on ahead of them.

  When they were alone again he admitted, “I hide, too—just like that.”

  She allowed him time to think about this. “Have you always hidden?”

  “No.” This seemed to encourage him.

  “The result of something recent or something old?”

  “Both maybe. As a child I hid—physically hid from my father. He had a short fuse. He drank too much on the weekends and he’d want to ‘play’ with me,” he said, drawing the quotes in the air, “which amounted to playing too hard. Wrestling. Some punching. He hurt me often enough that I learned to hide. There was a place in the woods. I would stay there. But truthfully, I’m not sure it’s that as much as when Connie died,” he said, referring to his sister. “We were best friends. And she was the last of my family.”

  He went quiet for a time after that, interrupting the silence with, “I’m willing to work on any of this if it means the difference between losing you and keeping you.”

  “It’s me who needs the work, Owen.”

  Corky hid again, but she gave up impatiently and chased something imaginary down the beach of rocks.

  “I’m afraid to commit fully to this,” Daphne admitted. “I see you tiring of me, leaving me, and that keeps me an arm’s length away most of the time. It happened to my parents—they never divorced, which is worse. They just grew bored with each other. Bored and old and despondent. I don’t want to bore you.”

  “Of course you’ll bore me. And I’ll bore you, too. But that doesn’t have to be the permanent state of things.” He said softly, “Corky drives me crazy sometimes. So what? If we’re ready for that stuff, we’re okay. If we’re wearing blinders, we’re in trouble.” He added, “Are you worried we’ll end up like your parents?”

  “I see it around me all the time: happily married boredom. I am not charming and entertaining every second of my life.”

  “And I am?”

  “Honestly?” she asked. “Yes. I’m never bored with you. That’s a big part of it.”

  They walked for a while longer, Corky up ahead chasing the birds off the logs and running after them. His throat sounded constricted as he said, “I think maybe I’ve created an image of me rather than risk showing you the terrified boy who’s actually inside here.”

  “I don’t want to bore you,” she confessed.

  They caught hands, and they walked until the water turned gray and the wind slowed to a calm.

  He said, “If this is going to happen, the work is ahead of us, not behind us.”

  “Agreed.”

  “And you’re prepared for that?” he asked.

  “Probably not. But I want it.”

  “You know what we’re saying?” he challenged.

  She did know. She squeezed his hand. He held hers tighter.

  “I’m terrified,” he admitted.

  “Me too,” she answered.

  “Uncle Owen?” Corky wore a pale yellow nightgown. She had always called him this, though Owen had confessed to Daphne that he hoped to hear the D word one of these days.

  “Yes, Love?”

  Corky was half-Peruvian, previously Owen’s niece, and now his legally adopted daughter. Owen’s sister and her husband had met an eighteen-wheeler in the passing lane of I-84 five miles outside of Bliss, Idaho. “My sister died in Bliss,” Owen had said. The driver of the truck, who had started his run in Chicago, was discovered to have been pumped full of amphetamines. But apparently not enough. He had fallen asleep at the wheel with a trailer of washing machines driving him through the guardrail in time to find Corky’s parents passing an RV. His brother-in-law had left no clue to his past in Peru, claiming once while quite drunk that his family had been butchered because of politics, but never saying anything more. Adler, his sister’s closest friend and confidant, had put up a fight to keep Corky when it had been discovered no legal guardian had been named, no will left. He had won by taking the case to the Idaho Supreme Court, and had adopted the girl on her sixth birthday.

  “I’m going to bed now,” the girl said.

  “Not without a hug you’re not.”

  The terrace stones were still warm from an afternoon in the sun and felt wonderful on Daphne’s bare feet. The pool would be warm, too, and she had an urge to take her clothes off and go for a swim.

  Corky tiptoed over to Owen and gave him a warm hug and kiss. Somewhat nervously, she asked Daphne to tuck her in, which Daphne took as a great honor.

  “Do you like it here?” Corky asked her as they reached the child’s room.

  “I like being with you and your dad.”


  “I mean here—this house.”

  “It’s a nice house.”

  “I like it because Owen’s different.”

  “Different?”

  Daphne stood by as Corky brushed her teeth and washed her face. She was a little adult, the way she tended to herself. Then the child dove into bed, pulled up the covers, and said, “At home he’s tired, isn’t he, Daffy?”

  She felt a lump in her throat as she answered, “Yes, Cork, he’s very tired. He works very hard.”

  “I can tell because he doesn’t play with me as much.”

  “But he loves you as much.”

  “I don’t like it when he’s tired.”

  “No.”

  She gathered up all her courage and asked, “Are you coming to my birthday party?”

  “If you invite me, I will.”

  “I’m inviting you now.”

  “In that case, I would love to come. Thank you.”

  “Promise?”

  “As close to a promise as I can.”

  “Monty the Clown is coming,” she informed her as an added enticement.

  “Well, then! How can I resist?”

  Corky liked that; she squinted and blushed. Daphne stroked the child’s hair, wondering if she would ever have any children of her own, wondering if she had the strength and courage for it. The hair felt soft, her skin smooth and creamy.

  Daphne returned to the patio, and without a word, began to undress.

  “Things are looking up,” Owen said.

  Looking him over, she said, “Yes they are, aren’t they?” She enjoyed that her body had such an effect on him. She carefully laid her blouse and pants and bra over the chair. By the time she stepped out of her underwear, the air felt chilly to her, and gooseflesh raced over her skin.

  She ran across the lawn to the pool, hesitated at the pool’s edge, and dove in. The sensation was astonishing. For a moment there was no outside world, no poisonings, no job to return to in the morning.

  He caught her from behind, and she spun around and wrapped her legs around him, and they hugged tightly. “I feel like we’re hiding from the parents,” she said. Owen felt very strongly about limiting Corky’s exposure to the physical side of their relationship. Daphne was a friend, not a lover, and though she understood this, she questioned both its sincerity and her own position in Owen’s life.

  He met eyes with her and asked, “Do we do it?”

  Her throat caught and her eyes stung. This question had nothing to do with his arousal, which was substantial at the moment. It had to do with permanence and commitment. With promises, both kept and broken. Heartache and joy. A lifetime together. The question seemed to have escaped him spontaneously, and she worried he might be flooded with regret. He rarely spoke spontaneously. She allowed him time to retract the question, but he made no attempt to do so. His hands held her firmly on her hips.

  He had his own way about doing things. He had nibbled around the edges of proposal several times, testing the water. And she had been conveniently noncommittal, believing that that was what he wanted of her—and seeing the fallacy of this, always in hindsight, tonight she braved to be honest. She held her breath. Their buoyancy seemed to rely on her answer. For a moment, all the world was perfectly still despite the electrifying shrill of the chorus of summer insects.

  They never took their eyes off of each other, and neither blinked.

  Daphne nodded and said softly, “Yes, we do it.”

  “Good,” he said. The moment felt awkward to her. He looked as frightened as she felt.

  It was done. She was engaged, she realized.

  She did not squeal and hug him. She did not kiss him. It was not the way Owen Adler sealed a deal, and she wanted this deal consummated. Her left hand grabbing for the pool’s edge, her legs still locked around his waist, she pulled from his careful grip and leaned far away from him, precariously off-balance, and quickly extended her hand to him. He saw it and grinned. With both of their heads beginning to sink in the water, with both of them laughing and their eyes, like alligators’, barely breaking the surface, their right hands found each other, and they sealed a life together with a handshake.

  She let go her left hand, and together they sank, holding hands, bubbles rising from their laughter, her legs still entwined around him. She thought that happiness was like this pool of warm water, that the water enveloped them both, and that to be submerged in this kind of shared happiness, even for a moment, made all the other moments insignificant.

  And as they broke their hold and exploded to the surface, grabbing for air, she was glad for the water and the darkness, for together they combined to mask her tears.

  FIFTEEN

  “Ain’t no skin off my neck,” the man with a bad limp said. The freight elevator clanged loudly to a stop and he slid a steel-mesh accordion grate out of the way. Oblivious to his own impairment, he towed his left foot behind him like an unwilling child; the sole dragging on the warehouse cement sounded like fingernails on a blackboard. Daphne fought off the chills. “Mr. Taplin ’posed to be here,” he stated firmly.

  “He’s coming,” she lied. “Besides, Mr. Adler,” she emphasized, “said it was all right. You want me to get Mr. Adler on the phone?”

  “No need for that,” the guard said. They rode the rickety freight elevator three stories up. “Mr. Taplin ’posed to be here,” he repeated, unlocking and throwing open the heavy door for her. She had to get in and out of here quickly and without being found out. In her mind, someone had altered the State Health lab report, and she intended to find out who, and without their knowledge. It was an enormous room, partially lit by an east-facing row of towering, fogged safety-glass windows that reminded Daphne of her gymnasium locker-room door in junior high. This being the top floor of the warehouse, the ceiling was vaulted, the ridge twenty or more feet overhead. Rain fell on the roof noisily, like pebbles on sheet metal; the air smelled heavily of paper and ink and mold—stale, like an old attic, but metallic, like the inside of a refrigerator. She heard the groaning of some machinery that she identified with the odor in the dry air, made aware of the environmental controls that sought to preserve the room’s contents. This was confirmed when the guard explained, “Gotta keep the door shut because of the dehumidifier.” Adding, “You want me to tell Mr. Taplin you’re already up here when he comes?”

  “No,” she said. “Let’s surprise him. I won’t tell if you don’t tell.”

  “Mr. Taplin don’t like no surprises.” He flicked on the lights and pulled the door closed with an authority that made Daphne flinch.

  Alone in here, the room felt about the size of a football field. Row after row of steel shelving, about half of which was stacked high with cardboard boxes—all carefully labeled.

  The boxes were ordered chronologically, and arranged alphabetically within the year. New Leaf Foods, being the original company name, was likely to be among the first archived material. The very first boxes she encountered were labeled NLF: A—D; NLF: E—G; on and on—twelve boxes for the first year, 1985.

  At the far end of the enormous room, in aisle 3, she discovered a specially designed rolling ladder—part ladder, part scaffolding—containing a battery-operated platform lift with locking wheels. She moved it down to 1985, locked the wheels, and climbed up, unsure where to begin: C, for Contamination; S, for State Health; L, for Longview Farms? She could spend hours in 1985 alone, and looking down the row of years, she saw more boxes labeled NLF in 1986 as well. She would need extended hours alone in this room. Should she jump ahead to 1986, figuring that this contamination occurred near the end of what was New Leaf Foods, and the start of Adler? She remembered the date, September 25, but not the year.

  Ten minutes later she stumbled onto a set of files labeled Corporate Security, and a light went off in her head: by job definition, Kenny Fowler would have been involved in any possible contamination investigation. It seemed like a legitimate place to start. She pulled the box off the shelf, balancin
g it on the mechanical lift when she stood. She thumbed quickly through the material, heart beating strongly, a tingling on the back of her neck.

  CONFIDENTIAL

  RE: Salmonella contamination

  CONFIDENTIAL

  RE: Salmonella

  CONFIDENTIAL

  RE: State Health Investigation

  All signed by Fowler. The mother lode! Fowler’s investigation of the contamination might provide leads or insights. It seemed exactly what she was after.

  An electronic pop went through her system like a gunshot as the freight elevator engaged. She jerked slightly, and felt the box going over, only it was too late: The file box was midair before she reached out to grab for it. As she did, she knocked the file she was reading off as well. The box tipped fully over and spilled its contents. Her Corporate Security file went airborne as well. The uncountable sheets of paperwork floated down and blanketed the cement floor.

  The elevator hummed.

  She panicked, slipped, and fell, catching a hand on the top rung and dangling from the mechanical loader. She kicked out and hooked a foot around the rail and hauled herself back aboard the ladder, tearing the armpit out of her jacket in the process.

  The elevator continued its noisy ascent and she hoped that it might stop at the floor below. But it did not. It continued up. And this was the floor’s only room.

  It seemed impossible that so many papers could have been inside a single box. They littered an enormous area below her. She scrambled down the ladder, collected the papers in big, sweeping, armfuls, attempting both to find the Fowler letters and get the edges of the piles straight enough to fit back into the box, which she quickly uprighted and began to fill. Paying no mind to order or classification, she crammed the pages into manila folders and stuffed them into the box. She spotted a Fowler memo and separated it from the others. Then another. And a third. But only one marked Confidential—those she wanted so desperately. Scoop … Stack … Stuff … she went dizzy with the task. Papers were sideways, upside-down, dirty, folded, wrinkled—wrecked! Crawling on hands and knees, she made herself dusty, working her way around the large loader, scooping under it, looking everywhere for the adventurous piece of paper that had managed to travel great distances in free fall.