by Jan Burke
He turned and smiled at me—a big, immensely pleased smile. “That’s it!” he said, banging his hand on the counter.
The blender started up again. I quickly ducked beneath the table, while Mr. DeMont received an object lesson in the power of centrifugal force as the blender sprayed red juice everywhere. He fumbled blindly with the machine, finally turning it off. There was an eerie silence.
I crept up from my sheltered position. Other than a few spots here and there on my clothing I was, for the most part, unscathed. But Robert DeMont looked like he had been doing surgery in a MASH unit.
He reached for a dish towel and wiped the red liquid from his face. He looked over at me, grinned, and then began laughing. It was contagious. When we had brought ourselves back under control, he quickly made me lose it again by asking, quite innocently, “What happened?”
Once I had calmed myself, I said, “I don’t think the device could pick up the sound of your clapping while the blender was on. So you turned the blender off at the machine itself. The power to the blender was still on, the machine was off. You clapped again, and this time, without the noise of the machine to interfere, the power was turned off, too. You pushed a button, then, but without power, the blender wouldn’t start. That’s when you took the lid off. The button was still depressed. You smacked the counter—”
“And turned the power back on! Yes, yes! Now I remember! I smacked the counter because when you said, ”Unplug it,“ I realized what the problem was. I just chose an unfortunate way to express my excitement.”
He gathered a handful of paper towels and wet them down, I grabbed a sponge and together we managed to wipe up the worst of it. I looked up at the ceiling and winced.
“Don’t bother,” he said, following my gaze. “I’ll bring the ladder in and work on it later. Or maybe I’ll leave it as it is. It’s more interesting this way.” He looked down at himself and laughed again. “I’d better clean myself up a little, though. This stuff is a little sticky. I’ll be right back, Irene.”
“Not so fast! How do you know my name?”
The sly smile was back. “Over there, by the phone,” he said, pointing. Then he hurried out of the room.
I looked through the papers near the phone, and was nearly certain that he was simply stalling again, when I saw an envelope that made me feel a sharp sense of disappointment in a man who only moments ago seemed to be nothing more than a hapless gadgeteer.
It was a stiff nine-by-twelve manila envelope, the name “Robert De-Mont” handwritten across its face in large block letters. But it was the return address that caught my eye: Richmond and Associates. There were no stamps.
Walking slowly back to the table, I opened the already unsealed envelope and pulled out a good-sized stack of eight-by-ten color photos. There was a page of text, but for the moment, I ignored it. My attention was fully concentrated on the first photo: Briana, leaving her apartment in San Pedro.
Disappointment gave way to anger. There was no longer any doubt in my mind as to who had hired Harold Richmond. Robert DeMont had a lot to answer for.
I stared at the image of my aunt. I saw her as I had not seen her in life. In photo after photo, here was Briana: Briana walking down the street, cane in hand; Briana coming out of the Reyeses’ small grocery store; Briana going into St. Anthony’s Church; Briana getting out of a cab in front of St. Mary’s Hospital in Las Piernas. My fury rose with each piece of evidence that my aunt had been followed, spied upon. A lonely, shy old woman, vulnerable to the likes of Harold Richmond. Then came the worst of them all, the most intrusive—a photo of her weeping, leaning on Father Chris’s arm at a graveside. I heard myself make a strange little choking sound; my eyes blurred. I moved the heel of my hand across them and went on.
The next group were all taken outside my home. Rachel, Travis and me, getting out of Travis’s truck. There were photos of the camper, the house and the street, taken from different angles.
The camper—which was only in front of my house for a few hours before it was destroyed.
An odd set of noises I couldn’t quite make out seemed to come from several parts of the house all at once. I waited, but heard nothing more. I suddenly realized that I didn’t want to sit around chatting with Robert DeMont. I could look at the other photos later. For my own safety, I needed to get the hell away from him—and as fast as I could. What insane notion had led him to reveal the existence of the photos, I’d never guess, but I gathered them together now, stuffed them into the envelope and, taking it with me, hurried to the front door.
No sign of DeMont. I counted my blessings. I reached for the doorknob, turned and pulled. Nothing. Repeated the action, twice again, in the way of a person whose world isn’t working the way it should. I looked for some sort of deadbolt. Nothing.
Having once spent a few days having the tar beat out of me while being held captive in a small room, I don’t do well with locked doors. Claustrophobia and I have since had an ongoing unpleasant relationship, and DeMont’s locked door brought it on in a hurry.
I felt a kind of hysteria rising within me, and fought hard to keep it in check. I turned, telling myself to calm down, to try to find a back door, even as I heard my breath coming in short, quick gasps, as if I been running a race.
Blocking the hallway door was Robert DeMont. He was smiling.
I had an urge to tackle him, but instead I ran through the maze of tables to the kitchen door, hearing him shout, “Stop!”
I found the back door, yanked at it. It wouldn’t budge.
“They’re all locked,” I heard him say from behind me, “but there’s nothing to be upset about. I just want to talk to you, find out what you know.”
My heart was pounding in my chest.
“Let me out of here,” I said, hating how my voice shook. “Let me out!”
“It’s one of my inventions,” he said. “One button locks all the doors and windows of the house. Once it’s activated, I have to enter the secret code to turn it off.”
Christ. Trust this to be his one invention that worked. I was sweating. “I have a problem with enclosed spaces,” I tried, moving slowly back toward the kitchen.
He frowned, not making any attempt to block my way, but following me. “Are you sure? Richmond didn’t mention it in his report.”
I didn’t answer. I was trembling. My throat was closing up. I began moving toward the front of the house again, my steps shaky, but picking up speed.
“Where are you going?” he said, still following. “Let’s talk.”
“Open the goddamned doors!” I shouted. I stumbled past worktables, knocking two of them to the floor behind me. I heard DeMont shout something about his work, but paid no attention. My goal, straight ahead, was a set of closed, cream-colored drapes. There was light coming from behind those drapes. A large picture window. I set the envelope down, picked up a metal folding chair.
“Stop!” he shouted. “I’ll unlock the door!”
Too late. I had a good grip on the chair and was swinging that son of a bitch at that window as if I wouldn’t settle for anything short of a home run. There was a satisfying crash of glass—better yet, a rush of fresh air. Almost immediately I felt myself grow calmer. I yanked the drapes back and, turning my face away, took another couple of whacks at the glass. Now the opening was wide enough for me—I could get through without cutting myself.
I turned to pick up the envelope and saw Robert DeMont looking at me with the same sort of uncomprehending look he had on his face when the blender went wild. “Why did you do that?” he said. “I told you I would open the door.”
“First,” I said, stepping through the window, hearing the crackle of glass breaking beneath my shoes, “I don’t trust you.” Once outside the house, I took a deep breath. “Second, you paid someone to spy on my family. That would have been bad enough, but you probably paid for far more than that.”
“But I won’t harm you!” he said angrily. “Why break my window?”
I lo
oked across the street. Laurie was coming out of Leda’s house. She stopped on the sidewalk, looking wide-eyed at the damage.
I looked back at him. “You destroyed our privacy, and now I’ve done a little damage to yours.”
I walked away, not waiting to hear his reply. I wish it would have been in purposeful strides, but it wasn’t. I felt sick to my stomach, and my knees were suddenly going rubbery on me. I managed to get to my car, yank the door open and plop myself into the driver’s seat. I wanted to start the car and drive off, but I was shaking. Thanking God that I hadn’t put the top back up, I just sat there, taking deep breaths, trying to slow down.
I glanced up to see Laurie crossing the street to his house. I folded my arms across the steering wheel and rested my head against them. Now that the adrenaline rush was over, every part of my body that had hit that wall the day before was complaining—but that wasn’t what kept me sitting at the curb.
Better not to drive, I knew, when I was feeling like this. When I was feeling like this, my ghosts would rise—the memories would come to me, and I would lose my way in them. I waited.
But while one or two images of my days in captivity quickly crossed my mind, I did not fall prey to them. I wanted to hope that this was some sign that I was making progress, but settled for being grateful that I got off easy this time. I straightened up, felt the warm ocean breeze on my face and was just about to start the car when I heard a voice say, “Are you okay?”
I turned to see Laurie standing next to the car.
“Yes,” I said. “Thanks.”
“I hope he didn’t scare you too bad. You don’t look so great.”
“I’ll be all right in a minute.”
“He told me that he had used his locking invention. What a jerk! I’m so glad you broke his window.”
“You are?”
“Yeah. He needs to learn that he can’t have things his way all the time. He’s just an overgrown spoiled brat! He can’t go around locking strangers inside his house for no good reason. No wonder it scared you.” She suddenly blushed and said, “It’s my fault. I should have warned you about the locks. He told me about that invention, but I have to admit…”
“You didn’t think it would work?”
“No,” she said. “It’s a first, I think.”
I laughed. “I can’t blame you. Did he show you the ceiling of his kitchen?”
She shook her head. I told her the story of the blender.
She laughed and said, “Oh, God, that’s so like him. He doesn’t think about the consequences of his actions. It’s all ‘I want this,” and ’I want that.“ Sometimes he’s just a younger version of great-grandfather, only Uncle Bobby doesn’t swear. Grandma is stuck taking care of two very selfish old men.”
“I hope she won’t be upset about the window.”
“No, I’ll tell her what happened. She’ll understand.”
I wondered if it were true. She seemed to look out for her older brother. “Does she make meals for him every day?”
She shook her head. “No, she’s only doing this until his car is fixed. Before he wrecked his car, he would take care of his own grocery shopping, or, you know, he’d go out to eat. I’m hoping she doesn’t spoil him too much.”
“What happened to his car?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He got into some kind of accident a few weeks ago. I guess it, like, kind of embarrasses him. He won’t talk about it. He was going to try to fix it himself. God! Can you imagine? Probably have to drive it in reverse all the time!”
A few weeks ago. I tried to respond lightly, to keep the conversation going, but it was difficult to keep smiling. “I take it you talked him out of that idea?”
“No, Grandma had the car towed down to Sun Coast—this body shop on Beach Boulevard. Uncle Bobby was mad, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it.”
“Maybe he thought it needed to go to a specialist.”
“A Camry? I don’t think so—hey, are you sure you’re okay? You look a little pale again.”
A little truth wouldn’t hurt. “I’m just not very good about being locked in places.”
“No one could blame you for being freaked out. I mean, you go into this dude’s house, just bringing him something to eat, and he acts like something out of Frankenstein!”
I laughed. “It’s the inventor in him.”
“Oh, wow, you’ve seen that movie?”
“I read the book.” I steered the conversation back to Robert DeMont. “So your uncle was surprised to find the car gone from his garage?”
“Oh, man, it was so funny when he found out that it wasn’t there! He just about died! But if we had waited for him to do anything about it, Grandma’d be fixing him free meals forever!”
“Do you think Sun Coast does good work? I’m thinking of having this car painted.”
“Yeah, they’re good. But this car is so rad just the way it is—you aren’t going to paint it pink or anything like that are you?”
I grimaced. “Not pink.”
She laughed and gave me directions to Sun Coast. We talked for a little while longer, then she said she’d better go back to help her grandmother. She stepped away and said, “Hope you’ll come back. I could tell that Grandma liked visiting with you.”
“I promise I will. Tell her I’ll bring Travis.”
“Who’s he?”
“My good-looking cousin,” I said. “Much younger cousin.”
She smiled. “Cool!”
I didn’t think a body shop would be open on a Sunday, but I couldn’t keep myself from driving past it. I made my way over to Highway 39, Beach Boulevard. I didn’t have far to go before I came to Sun Coast. As expected, it was closed. I pulled up in front and saw several cars locked up behind its wrought-iron fence. None of them were Camrys. I’d have to come back on Monday.
I headed back to PCH. At a traffic light, I moved the envelope on the seat next to me so that it was tucked in more securely. I thought of Travis. With some distance between me and Robert DeMont’s house, I began to doubt myself. Maybe I should have stayed and talked to De-Mont, should have at least tried to figure out what he was planning next. I could have learned more. What assignment was Richmond working on now, I wondered?
With a little lane changing, I got past some slowpokes on Highway 1. In the clear, I asked for a little more from my old ragtop, and it delivered. I was anxious to get back to my family.
28
“Frank called,” Mary said when I returned. “He left this number. Room two fifty-four.”
“Where’s Travis?”
“Sleeping. His hand was bothering him and—of course, much more than that. Took one of those pills. Sleep will do him good. You look like you could use a little nap yourself.”
I did feel weary, but I knew it wasn’t caused by a lack of sleep. Remembered precariousness, vulnerability—that was what weighed on me. It was as if I had blindly stepped out over a cliff with one foot, drew back in time to keep from falling, but now, with solid ground beneath me, could only think of that near miss. Watch where you’re going. Watch where you’re going.
“Maybe I’ll try to catch some sleep a little later,” I told her. “Mind if I use your phone?”
I billed the call to my home number.
“Are you in Montana?” I asked Frank, once I was connected to his room.
“Yes, in Helena.” He gave me the hotel name, which I hadn’t been able to decipher from the switchboard’s mumbled answer. “Thought I’d give you that information on DeMont,” he said.
“That was fast—this friend of yours must be pretty efficient.”
“I didn’t ask for anybody’s help.” I could hear the satisfaction in his voice. “I looked it up myself—well, Pete and I worked on it together, and I found it first.”
“How?”
He laughed. “Same way you would have. I went to the library.”
“And to think some women have to worry about how their husbands will spend a S
aturday night on the road.”
“Be sure you tell Rachel that Pete came with me. The library was open last night and we had some time, so we looked at microfilm—old local newspaper files, just to see if we could find anything. Pete took the first half of June, I took the second half. And I found it.”
“Great! Tell me what you learned.”
“Okay. June 19, 1940. Robert DeMont and his father were named in the article, and the paper referred to them as ‘two drifters from California.” They did some work on a farm owned by a widow, on the understanding that she’d pay them. She wasn’t satisfied with the work and was going to give them less than the agreed-upon amount. Robert lost his temper, picked up a kitchen knife and took a couple of swipes at her.“