Valley of Ashes

by Cornelia Read

  I nodded and started rocking again, arms tighter around my knees.

  I saw her walk away. Couldn’t really focus my eyes, or even shift what I was looking at. A line of trees. Nothing special about them.

  When Mimi came back, she had an army blanket and a bottle of apple juice.

  “I want you to drink this,” she said. “You need a little sugar.”

  I drank down half of it and started coughing again. Hacked and spat on the sidewalk, once I’d gotten my breath back.

  “Let’s get you home,” she said.

  “I think I know who did this, Mimi.”

  “You drove here?” she asked. “I thought you couldn’t drive?”

  “Listen to me.”

  “Madeline, we have to leave.”

  “Mimi?” I started crying. “You have to look at Bittler for this.”

  “Just get back in your car,” she said, grabbing me by the shoulders and turning me around. “Passenger side. I already cleared it with Benny. I’m going to drive you home now.”

  I didn’t move, so she pushed me forward until I stumbled into movement, then walked behind me around to the other side of the car.

  She leaned me against the back door, opened the front one for me.

  “Jesus, Madeline,” she said, looking into the backseat. “You brought your children?”

  I was about to nod but instead I leaned forward and puked the apple juice back up, all over her shoes.

  Mimi didn’t say a word—just cradled me into the car and fastened my seat belt.

  She used the blanket I was still wearing to wipe off my face.

  So gently.

  Then she shut my door, walking quickly around the front of the car.

  The door on that side opened. She climbed up behind the wheel and started the engine.

  India said, “Mimi!”

  Parrish said, “Winnie-the-Pooh.”

  I couldn’t stop crying, the whole drive home.

  I tried really hard not to make too much noise, hoping I wouldn’t scare my children.

  When we parked in front of the house, I realized that I didn’t even care anymore that Dean was away.

  He couldn’t have comforted me, not even if he’d been waiting for all of us on the front porch, arms opened wide to gather us in.

  I didn’t want my husband. Because this was all too awful.

  I wanted my mom.

  39

  Mimi announced that she was staying over that night. She put the girls in the playpen. Then told me to go to bed.

  “I have to make dinner for the girls,” I said.

  “I’ll do it,” she answered. “Don’t worry about it, all right?”

  I didn’t even have the strength to feel guilty about burdening the poor woman with my life. I just thanked her.

  Climbing the stairs was exhausting. It felt like it took three days.

  I thought I wouldn’t be able to sleep, but I was out before my head hit the pillow. Just too painful to be awake, I guess.

  A long time later I woke up. Mimi was standing in the doorway of my bedroom, backlit.

  “You awake?” she asked.

  “Yeah.” I sat up, suddenly terrified. “Are the girls okay?”

  “They’re fine.”

  I slumped forward. Relief wiping the will to sit up right out of my spine.

  Tears started leaking down my face again.

  “Hey there,” said Mimi. “None of that.”

  She walked over and sat down on the edge of my bed.

  “I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I…” and then I couldn’t even think of anything to say, after that.

  “Listen,” she said, as though I hadn’t spoken. “I made them dinner. Some of the tortellini you had in the freezer. With apples. They were just fine with that. They’re fast asleep now. Gave them a bath first, before I put them down.”

  I looked up at her.

  She smoothed a lock of hair off my forehead.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I probably shouldn’t have woken you up, but I thought I should tell you that your husband called. I explained what happened today.”

  “To Cary?”

  I watched her nod.

  “So I was right, then?” I asked.

  “I’m so sorry, Madeline.”

  “Dean’s not coming home early, though, is he?”

  “He’s going to try.”

  “Asshole,” I said.

  “He was devastated, Maddie. He wept on the phone.”

  “Won’t change his ticket, though. Just watch.”

  “You should go back to sleep.”

  “Has anyone notified Cary’s family? They live in Cincinnati.”

  “I’m sure they have,” she said. “Don’t worry about all that. Just lie back down and get some rest.”

  I did, but I cried for a long time first. The same words echoed all around inside my head, over and over again:

  Terrible mother, terrible wife, terrible friend.

  Mimi was feeding the girls breakfast downstairs in the kitchen by the time I woke up the next morning.

  I felt a lot more clearheaded. Clearheaded enough to suffer the full weight of my own idiocy the day before: angst-ridden and self-recriminatory as shit.

  What the hell had I been thinking, driving out to that warehouse with my children in the car?

  Asshole.

  I walked down the stairs and joined the breakfast party.

  Mimi took one look at me and handed me a paper towel.

  I blew my nose, wadded up the towel, and put it in the garbage can under the sink. Black snot, of course.

  “Listen,” I said, turning back toward her. “I am so grateful to you for last night. Everything you did… I was such an idiot, and you totally came to my rescue. I don’t know how to begin to thank you.”

  “Drink some coffee,” she said. “After that, don’t worry about it.”

  I was tempted to burst into tears again, hearing that.

  Mimi looked at her watch. “I have to take off in a few minutes. They need me down at the scene. Anyone I can call to help you out today?”

  “Um,” I said, “not really.”

  “That woman Setsuko?”

  “She’s on vacation. Skiing somewhere. And she should stay doing that. Bad enough she has to find out about Cary when she gets back here. They were pals.”

  “His parents should be out here by the end of the day.”

  Then she got quiet.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Someone else will want to talk with you. Today, as soon as possible. I can have them come here to the house.”

  “From your department?”

  “Police,” she said.

  “So you guys think this is a homicide?”

  “Yes. But that’s all I can say, all right? It’s not appropriate for me to discuss any further details with you.”

  “Of course,” I said. “This is when it gets official. That’s how it should be. I completely understand.”

  She looked relieved.

  “But Mimi,” I continued, “I still want to finish telling you what I started to say yesterday. Before I puked on you and everything.”

  “Okay.”

  “I think I know who was involved in this. A guy named Bittler. Cary worked under him at Ionix. Remember, the guy we were trying to avoid at the community meeting? There was a lot of weird crap going on in their office. Like, embezzlement. That’s why Cary wanted to get into the warehouse—to follow up on stuff he suspected Bittler was doing. I told him not to go.”

  “That’s why Cary wanted to get into the warehouse?”

  “Yeah. And I guess he crowbarred the door open, after all. Bittler had the only keys to the place.”

  “He didn’t,” she said.

  “Didn’t what?”

  “Crowbar anything open. Our guys had to bust in. It was locked up tight.”

  “But Cary was inside. How the hell did he get hold of Bittler’s keys?”

  “We don’
t know that he did,” she said. “There weren’t any keys on him.”

  “So he wasn’t…” I stopped.

  Couldn’t bring myself to say, “burned to death.”

  But he couldn’t have been, if they knew there weren’t keys in his pockets, right? I mean, he had to have still had pockets.

  I found incredible relief in that thought. But I didn’t want to picture anything beyond it.

  “He was dead before the fire started, Madeline,” said Mimi. “He didn’t suffer.”

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “We can’t discuss this.”

  “Mimi, Bittler’s the only one with keys. If Cary didn’t have them, that’s another thing pointing to him. Who else could’ve locked him in?”

  “Madeline,” she said, “I cannot talk to you about this.”

  I looked down at the floor. “Okay.”

  “Would you like me to come back after work?”

  “I want to say no, after everything you’ve done for me already. But it would be magnificent if you could.”

  “I’ll swing by here around six thirty, then. Now finish that coffee.”

  “If you and I were lesbians, Mimi Neff,” I said, paraphrasing my favorite-ever greeting card, “I’d move to Vermont with you so we could adopt Vietnamese orphans and open an organic bakery together. But since we’re not, let’s just celebrate the burgeoning splendor of this already magnificent friendship.”

  “You never know,” she said. “Next incarnation—should we both come back as lesbians—I say we go in for the orphans and baked goods. Always liked Vermont, and I make a killer sourdough rye.”

  40

  I held it together until I’d waved Mimi to her pickup from the front porch.

  Then I walked back inside and started crying all over again.

  I stayed just outside the kitchen doorway, leaning against the dining room wall out of sight so I wouldn’t freak the girls out. Peeked in on them now and again, though, to make sure they still had waffles to chow on.

  Then the phone rang.

  I blew more black snot out of my nose, took a deep breath, and picked up in the office.

  “Bunny? Are you all right?” Dean’s voice, with no drunk colleagues clinking barware in the background this time.

  Small mercies.

  “No,” I said, sliding down to the shag-rugged floor. “Not even fucking close.”

  “I’m so sorry,” he said. “I wish I could be there with you.”

  “Get on a plane, then.”

  “I can’t. Things are really complicated here.”

  “Fuck you, Dean Bauer.”

  “Bunny—”

  “He was our friend. Cary was our friend, and you should be on your goddamn way home right now.”

  I heard my husband starting to cry, all those thousands of miles away.

  Well, good. He should be crying.

  Schmuck.

  And then I heard someone knocking on my front door.

  “I have to go,” I said.

  “Bunny, talk to me.”

  “I can’t right now. I think there’s a homicide detective at the front door. And the girls have finished their breakfast so I’ve got to get them out of their booster seats.”

  “I’ll call you back, then.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Why don’t you do that.”

  I slammed the phone down and went to answer the door.

  There were actually two people from homicide. A man and a woman. Young, tanned, fit. Both of them blond.

  The woman was holding a bag of bagels from Moe’s. Still warm, as I discovered when she smiled broadly and handed the bag to me.

  I got the feeling they hadn’t had a whole lot of practice with actual homicide investigations.

  “Hi there,” I said. “You guys are probably from Boulder PD, right?”

  The guy badged me, then, blushing a little.

  The chick stuck her hand out. “I’m Diane.”

  She was pretty, but just a teeny bit goofy-looking: mess of curly golden hair, wide-set blue eyes, big smile that brought out dimples in her cheeks and showcased a charming little gap between sparkling white front teeth.

  Granted, goofiness probably had something to do with the fact that she was wearing Teva sandals on her very tanned little feet.

  Not an unexpected fashion move in Boulder, but they did rather cancel out the professional intent of her prim blouse and beige pencil skirt. Or maybe she’d just nipped out of the office for a quick rappel down the Devil’s Thumb. On her chai-soy-latte break.

  She did seem a little bit out of breath.

  I shifted the bag of warm bagels to my left arm and shook her hand.

  “Madeline Dare,” I said. “But I bet you guys knew that already.”

  Diane nodded, elbowing her partner guy. “Introduce yourself, Wes.”

  “I’m Wes,” he said, blushing again as he stuck his own hand out toward me. “Nice to meet you.”

  He was a head taller than his partner. Just as blond, though. Just as blue-eyed.

  “Nice to meet you, Wes.” I shifted the bagels again so we could shake on it. “And I know that this is Boulder and we’re all friendly here and stuff, but would you guys mind telling me your last names?”

  Diane said, “Um, Bryant.”

  Wes said “Wyckoff.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I appreciate your sharing that information with me.”

  Then we all just stood there, on my front porch.

  Both of them smiling at me, now. Dimples all around.

  “So,” I said. “You guys want to come inside? I have bagels.”

  I pointed at the Moe’s bag, figuring they might need a visual aid.

  Their corn-fed grins were undimmed, but they didn’t laugh.

  I would’ve gladly given my right arm to trade these guys for a couple of New York City cops—somebody smart and snarky, like my old pal Skwarecki from Queens.

  This was going to be a very, very long morning. I could already tell.

  I turned away from them and walked back inside my house. Hoping they’d realize they were supposed to follow along behind.

  At several points during the interview that followed, I was sorely tempted to rip the notepad out of Wes’s hands so I could just write down my answers in large block-capital letters.

  It would’ve been so much faster than sitting there trying to look patient while he struggled to think up actual questions for me.

  “Bittler,” I said, for the third time. “B-I-T-T-L-E-R.”

  “Okay.” He struggled to write that out on his pad.

  I could’ve carved it into a block of marble more rapidly—with Diane’s Teva and a toothbrush for hammer and chisel.

  “Two t’s,” said Diane, looking over her partner’s shoulder.

  Dude, seriously?

  We’d been at this for over an hour already.

  I shoved half a bagel into my mouth. In lieu of shrieking.

  My phone started ringing.

  “Guys?” I said. “I have to get that. It’s probably my husband, calling back from Tokyo.”

  The pair of them were still intent on Wes’s notepad progress, but Diane waved a hand at me without looking up.

  I closed the office’s French doors behind me and picked up the phone.

  “Bunny?”

  “Dean,” I said. “Thank God. Look, I’m sorry I was such a bitch, before. So, so sorry.”

  “I’m sorry I’m not there with you. When things are so awful.”

  “They are,” I said, closing my eyes. “Really awful.”

  I sucked in my breath and held it, not wanting to cry again. Just wanting to pretend he was standing next to me.

  “I tried to change my flights home,” he said. “As soon as I heard from Mimi last night. But they want an extra five hundred bucks, this late in the game. I just can’t swing it.”

  I reached my hand up to my throat, then realized I wasn’t wearing my pearls anymore. Couldn’t remember when I�
��d taken them off.

  When we got home from the business dinner?

  Crap. I just hoped the clasp hadn’t worn through the silk again. They could’ve fallen off anywhere.

  And then I felt a bolt of shame rocket through me.

  Really? Cary’s dead and you’re worried about your fucking jewelry, Madeline?

  “Bunny? You still there?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  Still here. Still an undeserving asshole.

  “Was it really cops at the door?” he asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “Not exactly rocket surgeons, either of them. They’re making me miss the hell out of Skwarecki.”

  “How are the girls?”

  I looked through the French doors’ panes of glass, out toward the playpen. “India appears to be sending herself a letter in the Little Tikes plastic-garden-thingie’s mailbox. Parrish is inspecting the rear wheels on a Tonka dump truck. Making sure they spin properly.”

  “I miss them,” he said.

  “I miss you,” I replied.

  He cleared his throat. “I’ve called the office. Cary’s parents have planned a funeral. Wednesday afternoon.”

  I closed my eyes again, tempted to cross my fingers for luck. “You’ll be home?”

  “My plane gets into Denver around seven Tuesday night. I’ll be back at the house as quickly as I can.”

  It was still only Sunday, I realized. Even though Saturday felt like it happened five years ago.

  Longer.

  Tuesday afternoon seemed so far away I couldn’t imagine it actually ever happening. I’d probably turn eighty before Monday deigned to show up.

  “Do you think I should talk with the cops while they’re there?” asked Dean.

  “Totally useless,” I said. “They make Inspector Clouseau look like a goddamn genius. And that’s if Clouseau had been an illiterate Department of Motor Vehicles employee with a lifelong fondness for airplane glue.”

  Dean groaned.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Exactly. But you need to talk to somebody about Bittler. I’m not getting the vibe that anyone’s taking me seriously on that score. They might listen to you.”

  “I could call your friend Mimi.”

  “That would be great.”

  “And what should I be telling her about Bittler, exactly?”

  “Everything Cary thought he was up to.”