Last Ragged Breath

by Julia Keller

  Diana shook her head. That didn’t go well, and her face grew even paler from the brief slosh of nausea it brought. “Going back to my room. Calling the kids from there.”

  “Speaking of your kids,” Bell said. She made her voice as casual as possible. “I hope your family will be okay. Financially, I mean. I assume your husband had a good life insurance policy.”

  She’d had to ask. Collecting a life insurance settlement was the most glaringly conspicuous of motives for one spouse when the other one showed up dead—but it still happened. It happened all the time.

  “Yeah, well, you know what?” Diana said. Her words were slurred, but filled with resentment. “When I told Eddie I was pregnant, he said he’d get himself a new policy. A much, much bigger one. ’Cause there’d be three kids now, not just two. That’s what he promised me. But guess what? He canceled the old policy, all right. He just never signed the papers for the new one. Too busy, I guess. Too busy getting a bunch of hillbillies to sell their land.” She spat her next word. “Bastard.” All the warmth she’d expressed for her husband had vanished.

  “When did you find out he’d never gotten the new policy?” Bell asked. She felt a rising excitement: This could be it. A plausible reason for someone other than Royce Dillard to have wanted Hackel dead.

  “Couple of weeks ago,” Diana answered. “The insurance guy called me to check on it. That’s why I needed to sit down with Eddie. To get him to promise to go sign the damned papers.”

  Bell would have it checked out, of course, but if Diana’s timeline was accurate, then the widow had known she’d derive no financial benefit from her husband’s death. No motive there.

  “That’s a shame,” Bell said evenly.

  “Well, thank God I’ve got my business.”

  “So what kind of business is it?”

  “Antiques. Still in the planning stages, but I’m going to open my own store back in Falls Church.” She paused, and then quickly added, “Dealer in Charleston’s been advising me. The ins and outs. How to get started. The basics.” She shrugged. Bitterness seemed to stack up behind her next words, like cars at a roadblock. “Seems pretty goddamned pointless right now. Everything does, come to think of it.”

  With that she lurched away, bumping into furniture as she left the bar, muttering Fuckit or Dammit each time her hip rammed a chair or an empty table. She kept on going, though, because if she wanted to leave, she had no choice. There was only one way out.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Lunch? Bell never had lunch. Lunch meant peanut butter crackers and a Diet Coke at her desk. Lunch meant the last broken-off piano key of a Kit Kat bar that she’d squirreled away in her purse a few days ago; if she brushed off the lint and dug out that funny green dot stuck to it, she’d be good to go. Lunch meant a fifth cup of coffee. Or lunch meant nothing. It was a time of day. That was all.

  Lunch most certainly did not mean a date. Which was why, when David Gage called her a few minutes after ten on Tuesday morning and proposed just that—having lunch together—Bell was surprised, temporarily flummoxed by the very notion of a midday social event. Well, she’d replied. I usually don’t—well, I suppose that would be—well, okay. Sure. Okay. Change was good, right?

  At eleven forty-five Bell heard the voice of her secretary, Lee Ann Frickie, from Lee Ann’s desk in the outer office: “Got company, Belfa.” Typically Lee Ann, who was sixty-seven years old but admitted it to no one but her doctor and the DMV, would use the phone to communicate, but Bell had left her door open all morning to accommodate a varied, in-and-out stream of appointments, and a slightly raised human voice seemed more effective in this case than any technology.

  “Oh, and your sister called,” Lee Ann added. “Nothing urgent. Said to give her a jingle when you get a chance.”

  Bell rose. By the time she’d come around from behind her desk, Gage was already standing in her office, his eyes making the circuit: the shoulder-high row of glass-fronted bookcases and their cargo of leather-bound law books; the leaded windows that looked out on the black-and-white streets of downtown Acker’s Gap; and finally Bell’s desk itself, an unimpressive block of orangey should-have-been-scrap lumber that some bamboozling furniture wholesaler had unloaded on the county decades ago.

  “So this is it,” he said. “Your lair.”

  She smiled at the word and, letting him take her hands in his, leaned toward him. Gage kissed her on the cheek. She did a quick internal check of what she felt at the exact moment of his kiss: Anything? Anything at all? Then she silently took herself to task. If you’ve got to check, Bell thought, it’s not there.

  She remembered—against her will, but the memory came of its own volition—what it felt like when she and Clay first kissed, that melting sensation that had rocketed her back to the emotions of adolescence, that perpetual restlessness, the sort that left you almost airborne, your senses on high alert.

  She slipped her hands out of Gage’s. Wasn’t his fault. Wasn’t anyone’s, really.

  “Where are we going?” she said. “I usually skip lunch, but today I feel like I could eat a bear.”

  “Good. I was thinking about a place over in Swanville. No sautéed bear on the menu, but they’ve got a great spinach salad, and they—”

  “Swanville,” Bell said, interrupting him. She winced. “I’m really sorry, David. I should’ve been clearer when you called. I have to be back here by one P.M. for a meeting. There’s just not time to drive all the way over to Swanville and back.”

  He nodded. “So—what’s close?”

  “Well, there’s a diner right down the street.”

  “I was hoping to take you out of your daily routine. Bet you’re pretty familiar with a place that close by.”

  “Other than grabbing a cup of coffee—these days, not so much.” Bell lifted her coat from a peg on the wooden row on the wall. “Gets so busy around here sometimes, it’s like being on an island. I forget there’s a world out there.”

  All the booths were full, so Jackie LeFevre led them to a table. She left two menus at the table’s edge and promised to return with glasses of water.

  “JP’s,” Gage said slowly, considering it. “Somebody’s nickname?”

  “It’s short for ‘Joyce’s Place.’ The woman who seated us is the owner. Joyce was her mother.”

  Recognition dawned in his eyes. “Of course,” he said. “Ike’s Diner. I remember reading about what happened to it. Couple of years ago, right? Pretty big news statewide.”

  “Still hard to believe.” Bell didn’t add anything. She didn’t feel like talking about how close she’d been to Ike’s that day, and how the town and so many of its people had been transformed by the tragedy. Gage may have already known. Ginnie Prentice had told him a lot about her; her friend had admitted as much.

  “So how’s the case?” he asked.

  “Which one?”

  “The one that meant I didn’t get any cheesecake the other night.”

  Jackie was back. She planted their water glasses on the table and then waited. Her impatient expression took the place of the phrase, You two know what you want yet?

  The lunch special was fried catfish sandwich, which enticed neither Bell nor Gage. At his request, Bell ordered for both of them: grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. Joyce gathered their menus and was gone.

  “Pretty basic, but really tasty,” Bell said.

  She looked around warily. Coming here at lunchtime was a calculated risk. The violent death of Edward Hackel was already common knowledge; news of an unusual event tended to flick instantly over a small town in the high darting arc of a fly fisherman’s lure, only in this case, it never retracted. In the morning, customers kept mostly to themselves, half-asleep as they hunched sullenly over their coffee and their plates of biscuits with sausage gravy, but by midday, they spread out, primed for conversation, eager to theorize.

  Bell started to stay something to Gage, but here was Sally McArdle, the sole paid employee at the Raythune County
Public Library, stumping up to their table. Sally was sixty-one, silver-haired, and hefty. Her right leg had been amputated the year before, on account of her diabetes, and she was still getting used to her prosthesis, relying in equal measure on her quad cane and an abundance of grit. She had stowed a takeout container in the small string bag whose strap she’d slung over a thick shoulder. From the odor, Bell could tell that Sally had opted for the catfish sandwich.

  “Afternoon, Bell,” Sally said. Her manner was chilly. She had yet to fully forgive Bell for the death a year and a half ago of one of her best friends, Edna Hankins. Technically Bell was not responsible, but she had set in motion the events that had resulted in Edna’s violent passing. Sally had recently told Bell—with an accusatory look in her milky gray eyes—that some nights she still woke up out of a sound sleep, heart beating fast, certain that she’d heard the shy rhythmic squeak of Edna’s wheeled walker as she traveled up and down the aisles at the library, adding to her next batch of books.

  Clearly, this was not a social stop. Sally had something on her mind.

  “Real upset about Royce Dillard,” she said. “Can’t rightly believe it.”

  “You know him?” Bell said.

  “Nobody knows him. But I was close with his great-aunt Bessie, and she raised him. He’s a good person. I’d swear to that. After she died, though, he just sort of—well, drifted, I guess I’d say. Moved away from town. Moved away from everything, really. Lives off whatever’s left of the insurance settlement he got for losing his folks when he was so young. Can’t be much. Not sure how he keeps body and soul together. Not to mention all those dogs of his. Dogs gotta eat.” She gave Bell a stricken look. “Do you really think he killed that man?”

  “We believe the evidence is substantial. A jury will decide if we’re right.” Bell reverted to formal language when asked about active cases.

  “Just really hard to swallow, is all.” With a start, Sally seemed to realize that Bell wasn’t alone in the booth. “Well, now. Where are my manners? I’m Sally McArdle.” Out came a small plump hand, which Gage let nestle in his own lean, long-fingered one.

  “David Gage. I teach environmental sciences up at WVU.”

  “You’re pretty far from home.”

  “I am. I’m on sabbatical this semester. I have an apartment over in Blythesburg. Doing some research for a book on climate change. In fact, I recognize your name, Mrs. McArdle, and I’ve been meaning to come by and see you at the library. I’ve heard that your county historical records are very thorough.”

  “What kind of history?” Sally was intrigued, but not quite ready to trust Gage. Like a lot of librarians, Sally acted as if the contents of the library were her personal property, and only the worthy—as deemed by her—would be allowed access.

  “Coal mines,” Gage said. “The older ones. I’m testing your air and water quality. Thought I’d consult any old county maps you might have. Make sure I’ve located them all.”

  “Word of advice, Professor.” Sally lowered her voice, even though, by this time, the diner was much too crowded and noisy for her to be overheard, as the lunchtime rush had commenced. “Next time somebody around here asks what you’re studying, just say, ‘Oh, this and that.’ Don’t say anything about climate change or global warning. Folks’re pretty red about that. Can’t blame them. Those phrases have usually been the prelude to shutting down one of the few coal mines still up and running. Like we say around here—there’s only one thing worse than having a job in a coal mine. And that’s not having a job in a coal mine.”

  Gage nodded slowly. “I know it’s a sensitive topic.”

  “Sensitive topic.” Repeating his words back to him, Sally seemed to taste them and find them flavorless. “Okay. We’ll call it that, if that’s your preference. Me? I’d call it a life-and-death topic. It’s not a matter of tender feelings. These are people’s futures we’re talking about. And their children’s futures.” She looked again at Bell. “You’ll set him straight, I hope.”

  As Sally turned to leave, Gage said, “So I can come by and take a look at your archives?”

  She readjusted the strap on her shoulder. “Hours are posted on the door.” She nodded at Bell and headed back to work, thumping her cane with authority against the painted concrete floor.

  “Wow,” Gage said, watching her go. “You’d think a librarian might be a little more enlightened than that, right?”

  Bell eyed him. “What makes you say she’s not ‘enlightened’?” She made air quotes around the word.

  “Well, because—well, her attitude.”

  “She didn’t say that climate change wasn’t happening. She said that around here, it’s more than just an interesting subject for people to debate over scones and lattes, after they’ve finished their New York Times. We’re not in some drawing room. Or some college classroom, come to that. We’re in a place where those abstract arguments stop being abstract. And start being about flesh and blood.”

  “Here we go.” He said it the way a kid would, right before the roller coaster started up. Yet his sentence didn’t infuriate her nearly as much as did the twinkle in his eye.

  “Don’t make fun,” she snapped at him. “Disagree with me, get mad at me, tell me to go screw myself—but do not make fun of me. Or this place. Or these people.”

  “Sorry.” The twinkle disappeared. “Look. I teach at a university, and yes, I’ve got a Ph.D. But you know what? I grew up in McDowell County,” Gage declared. “My father wasn’t a coal miner—he sold mining equipment—but my grandfather was, and his father before him. That’s how I got interested in environmental science. I saw what life in McDowell County was doing to the people who couldn’t get out of there, doing to their lungs and to the developing brains of their kids. I saw what it was doing to the air and the water. Coal’s a killer. It’s just as bad as any criminal you capture and put on trial. It may make for cheap electricity, but burning it destroys the earth. And mining it destroys the lives of the miners. But I get your point—what’s the alternative? Do we just tell an entire generation of West Virginians that they have to starve while we research alternative energy sources? Do we tell them just to shut up and suffer while we theorize and pontificate?”

  Gage hadn’t noticed, so focused was he on his own words, but the small diner had grown quiet during his address. When he stopped talking, there was a spooky pause—the only sound was the accidental clink of a fork dropped on a plate—and then all at once the conversations resumed, as if nothing had happened.

  “Guess I’ll be lucky,” he murmured, “to make it out of here alive.”

  “You’ll be safe as long as you stick close to me.” Bell enjoyed the chance to tease him. “After that—no promises.”

  Truth was, she realized she’d misjudged him, making a superficial analysis based on expectation and prejudice. She’d assumed she could figure him out, relying on very little evidence. It was a mistake she almost never made in her professional life—so why did she make it so frequently in her personal one?

  “Tell you what,” she said. “I’ve got this major case on my hands right now, but first chance I get, I’m going to take you out to a mine up off Route 6. Just a couple of men going down there, every now and again, to bring out what’s left. It’s dirty and ugly and dangerous—and you’ll be coughing up a black gob for a week or so after. Guaranteed.”

  “Sounds romantic.”

  “It is.”

  “I was being sarcastic.”

  “I got that. But you know what? There’s more to a coal mine than just the negatives. There’s also something magical down there.”

  “Magical.” He couldn’t keep the note of amusement out of his voice.

  “Yes. Magical.” She peered closely at him. “You’ve never been down there, have you?”

  “No.” Emphatically. “And that was the plan. My entire life has been devoted to doing whatever the hell I had to do so that I never stepped foot in a coal mine. Seemed pretty impossible at first, comin
g from McDowell County.”

  “But you managed it.”

  “I did.”

  Bell picked up a little pink packet of sugar substitute from the pile in the plastic bowl at the end of the table. At times she liked to have something in her hands while she talked. She pushed on one corner of the packet, feeling the granules move around under her thumbs.

  “When I was in high school,” she said, “sometimes I’d go down in the mine on Saturdays with Roy Stratton. I lived with him and his wife, Beth Ann, for a little while. They were my foster parents.” She pushed the granules back toward the opposite corner of the packet. “Roy was a foreman for Milltown Limited. Always had some unfinished business down there, some odds and ends, and sometimes he’d take me with him. He’d find me the smallest hard hat he could scrounge and down we’d go. Down the man-hoist, down into the mine. He wanted me to see it. See the beauty. It’s dark, yes, but when you turn around and the light hits the walls, there’s the glint of mica. It’s like stars. It’s almost like you’re looking at the night sky. You know you’re way, way under the ground, but somehow it’s like you’re up—not down. You’re at the center of the universe. And the smell—it’s not a closed-up smell. It’s sort of sweet. The sound—well, I can’t describe it. Roy used to say that if you know how to listen, the coal sings to you.

  “Point is,” she said, hastily winding up her reminiscence, a little embarrassed at having gone off that way, “it’s not all bad. It’s mostly bad—but not all.” She dropped the pink packet and dusted off her hands, even though the packet was still closed. There was nothing on her hands.

  Gage was quiet for a moment. When he did start to speak, he ended up holding back because Jackie had just arrived at the table, delivering two bowls of soup. Then she backed away, off to check on their sandwiches.

  Gage took a tentative sip. The heat from the soup fogged up his glasses. “Hey, this is really good.”

  “Jackie uses a lot of her mother’s old recipes. You ought to try the pie.”