by Jamie Quaid
Anger had been a lovely shield to hide behind. If I started remembering the real Max, I’d be a basket case in no time flat, so I was performing some kind of emotional balancing act by letting the reporter in.
At my nonresponse, she continued nervously, “I ran into the old guy across the hall. He told me his family hates reporters and to keep out. What’s his story?”
“Have to ask Lily. She lives there. I’ve only met him once.” I probably ought to have checked on Lily again, but I was a bit preoccupied these days. I set Milo loose and proceeded into the kitchen. I deposited the fish in the freezer, opened the refrigerator, and indicated the assortment of cans and bottles left from Max’s last shopping expedition. “Drink?”
“Cold caffeine of any kind,” she said gratefully, settling at my counter and removing a palm-size recorder from her overflowing knapsack. “You’re kind of hard to reach. I’ve been calling for days.”
“You and a thousand other nosy hounds. I may develop my neighbor’s hatred of reporters.” I popped a can, handed her a glass of ice, and helped myself to a bottle of water. Environment be damned. I wasn’t drinking tap water from anywhere near the Zone.
“Yeah, I kind of figured that. Sorry. It’s a tough business out there. People want sensationalism, and you offered it in 3-D Technicolor. And now you’re frustrating the heck out of everyone.”
“The heck?” I asked in amusement. “Is that what they teach you in journalism school these days? Non-abrasive cursing?”
“No, that’s what I learned while trying to raise a two-year-old who repeats anything I say.” She produced pen and notebook to go with her recorder. “I’m crazy to get into this business these days. It’s hard with all our paper outlets disappearing. But without the media, there will be no one to report government corruption or uncover stories that would otherwise be swept under the rug. So I’m an idealistic idiot.”
With a two-year-old. That had to be hard. I lifted my bottle in salute. “I’m going for a law degree for the same reason. To idiots.”
She clanked her can against my plastic bottle and we drank to idiots everywhere.
“No one has heard your side of the story,” she continued, shifting to a professional tone. “We’ve all heard the bare facts of the police report—your boyfriend, Maxim MacNeill, drove your car at high speed into the bank near where you were standing. He narrowly missed you, hit a pole, the electric wires sparked in spilled gas, and fire ensued. Is that correct?”
“I don’t know any more than that,” I warned. “Max was not a violent person. He did not drink to excess or do drugs. He had reason to be mad at me at the time but not sufficient reason to kill me.”
Those were conclusions I’d reached during my sleepless nights. I had inadequate information beyond that. And to avoid insanity, I hadn’t attempted to think further. There was a time for grief . . . and whatever.
“So you conclude that the car’s brakes were tampered with?” she asked with wide-eyed innocence.
“That’s a neat leap.” I took a frozen dinner from the freezer and slid it into the microwave. “Since the car was mine, are you saying someone wanted to kill me or Max?”
“That’s kind of what I wanted to know. Do you know of anyone who wanted either of you dead?”
I wasn’t about to explain my neurosis about damning Max to hell, so I contemplated her version of events. “I don’t know enough about Max to know if anyone wanted him dead. If they had, it would have been simpler if they’d monkeyed with his bike instead of my car, though.”
“His family says he was a mechanic who worked for some pretty important people. Do you know their names?”
I wasn’t about to admit I hadn’t even known his family existed. I was still bitter about that lie. “Hardly. He worked on cars and bikes for anyone who paid him. If he kept any books, they’re in his apartment, but I’m betting he only took cash and kept no records. Max called himself a citizen of the world. He didn’t believe in paying taxes for wars, so he spent a percentage of his income helping the people the government doesn’t.”
Jane snorted. “Another idealist, but creative. Wish I’d met him.”
“Max preferred helping his biker buddies buy beer,” I pointed out, taking an edge off her pretty picture. “Child care might be more important than unemployed bikers, but vets were more important to him than kids. That’s why government is a more democratic method of distributing the wealth. Theoretically.”
She frowned and made notes. “Maybe his biker buddies didn’t like your opinions?”
“Most of them don’t have the foresight to look beyond the next ride. Don’t go looking for them in some conspiracy.” The idea bulb struck, and I diverted the topic. “If you really want a story, you ought to look into the diplomatic limo that ran over a bunch of inner-city kids just before Max performed his flameout. One kid had her leg broken. Another lost a computer she’d worked for years to buy. Hard to tell what other damage the driver did. I got a partial license number from a government car pool but don’t have the resources to track it.” That last was a lie but she didn’t have to know I was on the case.
She looked mildly interested. “Not as sensational as a fireball, unless you have video.”
“It’s sensational if we can nail a corrupt congressman. Ask yourself why someone that powerful would be in South Baltimore, much less near the Zone. Why would they be in a hurry to leave the bank? What kind of slime would leave kids injured in the street? You want him running our government?”
And was there any chance the limo had anything to do with Max’s death less than half an hour later? But that was stretching credulity a little thin.
She frowned in thought. “Interesting, but I don’t have many resources, either. Fireballs catch the public eye, but people already expect slime from our public officials. ‘Dog Bites Man’ equals boring.”
“So much for idealism if sensation is more important than corruption.” I wrote down the partial plate from memory and shoved the paper at her. “Poke at it and let me know what you find. He was in the drive-through lane at the bank. I have no experience in investigating. Pretend he might have something to do with Max’s death.”
She tucked the paper into her notebook. “Timing was wrong. He was long gone before your boyfriend crashed. I do my research. Maybe whoever he was will do something spectacularly noticeable someday. One never knows. So you don’t think Max would be a target for murder?”
I liked the way she thought, but I couldn’t help her. “I think the whole episode was a horrible accident. Or the Zone effect is spreading and causing mechanical weirdnesses. Maybe the congressman’s brakes didn’t work that day, either.”
“I like that!” she said with more interest. “I can work with that. Kind of like an area-oriented Mercury retrograde. Machines and communication break down in the Zone. Maybe it comes and goes. I can track other accidents down there, see if I can develop a pattern.”
I rolled my eyes and popped my dinner out of the oven. “Glad I can be of help,” I said dryly. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have studying to do.”
She packed up and politely offered her hand. “Thank you, Miss Clancy. It was a pleasure to meet you. And I really will look into the diplomatic incident if I have time.”
I didn’t hold out high hopes, but I shook her hand and saw her out. If nothing else, I’d learned something new. I could take tools of the media and use them for my own purposes. Sort of. Live and learn.
I ate my dinner at the table with my books spread out in front of me. Milo fell asleep in his food bowl. This was probably the first time in his short life that he’d ever had enough to eat. Judging by the size of his paws, he would grow into a good-size cat. I was fine with that. I’d encourage him to growl at all strangers.
By the time I’d staggered off to the shower, my brain was fried, and I wasn’t thinking about Max and mirrors. So I was pretty sure it wasn’t my paranoid imagination that conjured the words scrawled on the bathroom mirror.
<
br /> rethgad s’nataS was painstakingly inscribed across the glass beneath the backward Justy.
Max never could spell worth a damn.
Satan’s daughter? Me? Literally or figuratively? Was Max cursing me as I had him, or warning me? Either way, I freaked. Forgetting the shower, I dived under the covers rather than face any more mirrors. Even Milo couldn’t comfort me.
• • •
After another night of tossing and turning, insanely wondering if Satan—who I was pretty sure I didn’t believe in—had marked me as his, I remembered the weird message from Themis Astrology. I got up, found my glasses, and opened my netbook before I braved the shower, but I didn’t know how to retrieve a deleted instant message impossibly sent from someone who didn’t exist. Maybe the Zone had moved into my apartment. Maybe I’d carried shampoo chemicals and other pathogens home. Or maybe I was cuckoo and should check into a nest.
But my legal mind wanted logic and explanations. I recalled the message had said something along the line of: Your Saturn transit is almost complete. And conga-rats, newest daughter.
Daughter. Saturn? Satan? Coincidence that the words were almost identical to those in the mirror phrase? Could Max read my computer from wherever he was? Of course, that was assuming Max was behind the glass, which was pretty far out even for the Zone. Cuckoo territory.
Exhausted from too little sleep, under too much pressure from looming finals, I was on the very edge of freaking out all over again. As far as I was concerned, the devil was a figment of Bible Belt imaginations. How could anyone be a daughter of Satan?
Maybe my mother never spoke about my father, but given her free-spirited tendencies, I figured that was because she didn’t know who he was. Still, I kind of thought I’d have had some clue that he was the devil by now. My mother had a few skanky friends, but on the whole, they were pot smokers and slackers, not outright evildoers. I didn’t remember any of them being short and dark like me. I have my mother’s coloring, except she looks like Cleopatra and I don’t.
I was definitely going to find someone who could replace that medicine cabinet. Right now, I had classes and work and couldn’t afford a day in bed.
• • •
I was so stressed, I didn’t even care that a photographer caught me driving out of the parking lot in my rattle-heap Miata when I left. If they wanted a real story, they’d have to see my bathroom mirror. Maybe I should take a hammer to it. Vandalism wasn’t my usual modus operandi, but I figured I was justified.
I was now undecided about going to the viewing at the funeral home tonight. The Max I’d known deserved my last respects, only I was too unnerved to pay them in front of a roomful of staring strangers and a passel of reporters and a family who didn’t know me. But I couldn’t skip class to attend the church services scheduled for tomorrow morning. Besides, I wasn’t even certain I’d be allowed inside a church without a bolt of lightning striking me—that’s how far my nightmares had taken me.
I argued with myself all day as I went through the routine of school and counting cash without incident. The viewing was that evening. I probably should have watched the news so I could get some idea of how the reports were being spun, but I couldn’t stomach reliving that crash over and over again.
Walking from the bus stop to the tenement, I ran into the gray-haired stranger, who was looking more disheveled and wild-eyed than before.
“Hide,” he muttered without stopping. “Don’t let them find you.”
No way was I confronting a crazy man. I hurried home to debate the funeral.
In the end, my respect for Max won out. I might not have known him well, but we’d had a good few months. We’d fought and argued like any couple, but we’d never gone to bed mad. He might have been a little too full of himself, but he’d been a decent, fun-loving guy. Unless some demon had taken him over, I couldn’t believe he’d really tried to kill me. I might have been willing to buy any theory, no matter how unlikely, but that he was a demon wasn’t one of them. I’d had a bad day. Maybe I’d just imagined his fury.
So I donned my best little black dress and tucked a compact and lipstick into my messenger bag to repair myself after I arrived. I wore Max’s jacket, pinned my old college skull-and-crossbones earring in one ear, and drove north, past downtown, to the funeral home.
His family had chosen a place in an upper-middle-class neighborhood of traditional brick houses and tree-lined streets, nowhere near the Zone or anyplace Max might have hung out. I hoped his buddies would be there, because I couldn’t relate to anyone who lived this kind of lifestyle. I couldn’t imagine burly Max growing up here. I’d thought he was my kind of educated trailer trash. What else had I been wrong about?
Once inside the funeral home, I didn’t have any problem locating the viewing room where they’d set up his coffin. His biker friends were hanging around outside, their stringy long hair and leathers looking as out of place in this quiet, proper sanctum as I felt.
I limped up to them warily, but they were simple guys. They didn’t read motives into anything. The big lugs hugged me and fought tears and passed me around as if I were a beer can. I was good with that. I was more than good. I let the tears ruin my mascara and accepted their big shoulders as pillows to cry on. The experience was the catharsis I’d needed to relieve some of the lump of molten lead in my chest.
“If you ever need anything, kid,” said Lance, Max’s closest friend, “we’re here for ya. And we’ve got someone working on getting that car out of impound.”
“Yeah.” Gonzo, Max’s mechanical partner pounded me on the back so hard that I almost fell over. “We’re taking that Escort apart. Ain’t no way Max would have crashed that baby.”
“You’ll let me know if you find anything?” Stupid, but it cheered me to know someone wasn’t writing off the fireball as the result of a domestic dispute. Nothing could bring Max back, but knowing someone was at least looking into his death made me feel less helpless. And maybe a shade less guilty.
“You’ll be the first to know,” Lance assured me. He hugged me and led me into the viewing room as the organ music began.
All the proper citizens were already in place. The family was sitting to one side, what there was of them. I studied a regal, gray-haired woman wearing a hat with a veil straight out of the sixties and wondered if that was his grandmother. She didn’t look up when we entered.
A distinguished gentleman sat at her side, holding her gloved hand. He wore a light gray suit that set off his head of silver hair to perfection. I wondered if he had hair implants. No man of his age should have had that much hair. He looked up with a slight frown as we scraped chairs at the back of the room.
A woman in her thirties, probably a few years older than Max, openly scowled at us. Really, I couldn’t blame her. We represented the side of Max’s life that had taken him away. If this was his family, he should have been up there in a tailored suit and neat haircut, wiping away his sister’s tears, assuming that’s who she was. He shouldn’t have been driving my ancient Escort and cruising too near the edge of nowhere that was the Zone.
Maybe I should have been looking into Max’s background instead of hunting for a diplomatic limo. Why the devil had someone from that family been hanging out with bikers instead of working in a white-collar office?
I couldn’t ask Lance or the other guys, not in here. They might not know any more than I did. I tried to let the organ music drown out thought, but then they let a preacher get up there to bleed over the audience, and his unctuous tones and ambiguous moral prosing made me want to hurl.
I got up and walked out, thinking I could go back in when the preaching stopped. I thought I caught a glimpse of Lily’s weirdo slipping out the front, and I followed, out of stupid curiosity. What would my wacko neighbor be doing at Max’s funeral? And why had I only noticed him after Max died? My paranoia was starting to show, and I decided I’d feel better if I confronted the problem instead of hiding.
The moment I limped down the front
steps, my vision disappeared in a blinding flash of cameras.
I was teetering on the brink of exhaustion, frayed and distraught, with a mascara-streaked face. I’d had enough surprises for a lifetime. I could have reacted very badly. Instead, I swung to beat a hasty retreat to the pillared porch.
Cutting off my escape by trespassing on the funeral home steps, a talking head from the TV station got in my face with his microphone.
“How did the MacNeills react when you showed up this evening, Miss Clancy? Do they blame you for the loss of their son and heir?”
Son and heir?
Unnerved and off guard, I did not behave with decorum. Lacking a gun and a fast draw, I yanked the microphone out of his hand and snapped it into wires. A cameraman raced to film the incident. From my position on the steps, I kicked his knee to unbalance him, grabbed his video camera, and flung it against a brick wall, shattering it.
The crowd closed in, suffocating me. Some other jerkwad yelled and swung his mic too near my nose. I grabbed his wrist and may have broken it, from the pained sound of his cry. I was weeping too hard to care. I’d spent two years avoiding confrontation, for this?
The shouts and altercation brought Max’s buddies running.
I was nearly crushed in the abrupt melee of flying fists and boots. Before I could catch my breath, Lance had the pretty-boy newsman on the ground and was unprettifying his face. Horrified, I didn’t want the boys arrested for my sake, and I certainly didn’t need any more black marks on my record. I wanted a do-over, but fleeing was about the best I could arrange—if I could miraculously limp through the battleground without being noticed.
In a fair world, a tornado would have blown the scrimmage across the lawn like autumn leaves.
Even as I thought about it, an unnatural wind whistled through the stately elms, gusting through the pillared porch and shoving me forward. Huge trees dipped and bowed their heads. Leaves blew sideways and men toppled. With the fearful wind at my back, I fled down a path that amazingly cleared across the lawn. Maybe I was crying so hard, I wasn’t seeing straight. I just ran, head down, tears falling.