Return to Dust

by Andrew Lanh

  Fright flashed across her face, caving it in. Watching her, protective, Hank’s mother waved her hand wildly in the air, as if looking for a way out of this situation. Only Grandma, eyeing me closely, wore the sliver of a smile.

  “You have questions?” she asked me.

  “I just want a clearer picture of a few things that happened.”

  Hank spoke up. “Maybe I can…”

  I interrupted. “No, Hank. Let me be alone with him.”

  Perhaps my abrupt request was a violation of something I could never fully understand, perhaps not. But I had been wondering about timelines, fragmented details, Marta’s erratic behavior back in April, and now was an opportunity I might not have again. Violation or not, I had no choice. Willie’s encounter with Marta back then, his final days working for Joshua Jennings—perhaps he might recall an anecdote or a few spoken words—maybe even something he’d spotted but didn’t comprehend—that might provide me with a spark, a direction.

  “I mean the man no harm.” I smiled at Aunt Marie. “In fact, I want to help him. You do believe that, don’t you?”

  She stammered, “Yes.”

  “Good. Then let me do this.”

  Hank made a squeaky sound, irritated at his exclusion. But I understood that Willie had to be approached with delicacy, man-to-man conversation, direct, honest. Faced squarely, he’d talk to me. I recalled his comment about old man Joshua—how the patrician gentleman treated him fairly, a mutual respect, even conversation Willie welcomed. At heart here was a good man. I believed that to my core.

  The kitchen froze, no one moving except for Hank who leaned back in his chair, two legs off the floor, rocking dangerously. When I looked into his face, I saw an enigmatic smile. He understood me.

  “Go outside,” Hank advised me. “If I know Uncle Willie, he’s standing in the cold, shivering, back against his pickup, smoking a cigarette. Any minute now he’ll lean in and blow the horn again.”

  Grandma bowed me out.

  Willie looked startled to see me approaching him. His body stiffened, turned away, his collar buttoned up against the chilly November night, a faint hint of pale white smoke wreathing his head. The red tip of a cigarette glowed in the darkness. For a second he leaned into the pickup, as if to take shelter there, but, resigned, he faced me.

  “What do you want?” In English.

  “A minute of your time, Willie. Please. Some talk.” I answered him in English, my words sounding harsh after the smooth rhythms of Vietnamese at suppertime.

  “I ain’t got nothing to say.”

  “I think you do.”

  “I told you everything.”

  “Your wife told me about Tony sitting at Marta’s house.”

  “I told her not to.” He swore under his breath.

  “But she had to. It was unwise of him, yes, but innocent. He was thinking of you. A son defending his falsely accused father. Your son is not a killer.”

  His shoulders slumped as he dropped the cigarette to the ground. He raised his hand to tap the pack of Marlboros in his breast pocket, his fingers trembling.

  “Yeah, I know that. But it ain’t right.”

  “And neither are you a killer.”

  He nodded. “You know that?”

  “Yes. That’s not who you are.”

  “Then what do you want from me?”

  “I have a few questions.”

  He nodded toward the Toyota pickup, still running. “Sit.”

  Inside the front seat I surveyed the messy truck, an ashtray stuffed with cigarette butts, spilling out. The stale scent of too much cigarette smoke and too much fast food. Vietnamese newspapers strewn on the floor. A white carton from old Chinese food, cheap wooden chopsticks jutting out. A crumpled McDonald’s wrapper. A pair of work boots, the laces broken.

  He lit another cigarette though he cracked the window a few inches. Smoke filled the car. I cracked my window. My throat fogged up.

  “I don’t know if I trust you,” he began.

  “Why?”

  He was silent. He blew smoke into the air.

  “Is it because of my white blood?”

  The question embarrassed him and he turned away. Then, speaking rapidly, he faced me. “You have the bright blue eyes of an American soldier that I remember. On our street, fighting with us, but one who walked away, deserted, hurt…Never mind.”

  I smiled. “That wasn’t me.”

  “I know.” He breathed in. “This has to do with me, not you.”

  “I know.”

  A rush of words. “What do you want from me?”

  “Willie, I’m trying to get a picture of Marta’s last days, but now I want to go back to the time when she fought with you, last April, when Joshua Jennings broke off his friendship and moved away. Her reaction to everything. The events. I think something she did triggered something—I don’t know what. But maybe it led to her murder.”

  “If it was murder, right?”

  “Yeah, exactly. I could be on a wild goose chase.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment. “A woman easy to hate.”

  “But you didn’t hate her.”

  “You know, I never thought about her until that day when she yelled at me, called me names, said I threatened her.”

  “Could something have happened there that set her off?”

  “Maybe. I mean, it was like she was bruising for a fight. Like she had to take it out on someone.”

  “She might have been mad at Joshua, no?”

  He nodded. “You know, I ain’t seen her that much. I mean, I wasn’t there when she cleaned the place, except now and then. But I know that after cleaning, she…well, in summer they sat on the back patio, sipping coffee, laughing. I’d walk by and Joshua would comment on the lawns or gardens. She never did. But I’d hear her…you know…flattering, giggling, teasing him. Like a show. But I was invisible to her.”

  “But when you tracked in the mud…”

  “She went ballistic.”

  “Tell me about it again.” I cracked the window some more, breathed in the brisk air. “Joshua got angry with her for talking to you that way.”

  “He was a good man, that Mr. Jennings.” Willie locked eyes with mine. “You know, he and I sat on that same patio and talked. A kind man, Mr. Jennings. He looked into my face. He asked me about my family, my…” His voice trailed off. “He defended me that day—yelled at her.”

  “But that wasn’t the reason he ended the friendship with her. At first I thought it was.”

  A fake laugh. “Yeah, like that would do it. It was only one piece of the puzzle he put together. He was…like a trusting man with so few friends. She was his friend, but she sucked up to him. I think he started seeing her different like. You know, she smiled at him and flattered and…you know. ”

  “But then he saw a different side of her.”

  “Maybe he saw it before but it didn’t matter.” He fumbled with a pack of cigarettes. “Her life was a lie.”

  “Do you think she got panicky because he was moving away?”

  “He was always moving away.” A wry laugh. “But then he didn’t.” He tapped the window nervously. “And then he did. Back and forth. Crazy. I joked that he would never move. No, one day I drove back to work, and Marta was in the yard screaming like a crazy woman. Something had happened. The man who dropped off the fertilizer and mulch from the garden center was standing there and she was yelling at him, then at Joshua. It scared me so I drove away.”

  “That was Davey, her nephew.”

  He looked surprised. “I don’t know. I didn’t know that.”

  “But you went back?”

  “The next day. To work. The old man was still mad as hell. I mean, he told me that Marta had done something horrible to him, that she went nuts on the lawn, and that she could never return.
He couldn’t believe a friend—he said ‘a lady I really liked, laughed with’—could show her true colors. I didn’t know what to say.”

  “What next?”

  “Well, it was that night the police came to see me. I thought it was all over, the thing about the mud, but maybe she was flipping out. Getting ready to be real mean to me. Call the cops. When Joshua called me to come and do the lawns, I told him about it. I told him I was afraid to come back—she was there. The cops. Then he told me she would never step foot in the place again. He swore that he was glad he was leaving Farmington behind. He told me he’d called Peter Canterbury. ‘It’s yours,’ he says to him. I still didn’t believe him.”

  “But he did leave.”

  “Yeah.”

  “That must have bothered you.”

  “Yeah, but he was old, sick. Everything changes—it has to. The house was too much. He invited me over to meet Peter and Selina Canterbury and told them in front of me that they should hire me to work the grounds.”

  “What did they say?”

  “They smiled. Mr. Jennings said that he wanted the grounds to always look the way I kept them. He said to Peter, ‘Promise me.’ Peter looked confused. like he could buy a house and he had to still follow certain rules.”

  “So Marta never came back to the house?”

  “How would I know?” A pause. “One time I drive up in my truck. This was after he told her to get out. I pull up, and she’s sitting in the driveway in her car. Scared the shit outta me. I kept driving.”

  “Where was Joshua?”

  “Dunno. But I remember watching a shade pull down in the front window.”

  “She stalked him?”

  “She was a woman who didn’t want to hear a no.”

  “That was the end of it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But didn’t Joshua call you to straighten the grounds for the Canterburys, even after he sold the place. Your son Tony said…”

  “Yeah, he called one night, late at night. I was almost asleep. I hadn’t been there in a week or so, because I didn’t know what to do. He was real proud of his house and yard. He laughed and said, ‘My lovely spring gardens need your touch. Come back to work.’”

  “Did you?”

  He shook his head. “I drove by once, but I thought I saw Marta’s car on the street, so I kept driving. I mean, she probably drove him crazy. I suppose he couldn’t wait to get away from her. What the hell was wrong with her?”

  “Rejected, and not happy about it.”

  “I ain’t never seen a woman like that.”

  I grinned. “You’re lucky.”

  “A few days later when I went back, the lawn was mowed. I never went back. There was a moving van in the yard.”

  “No Marta?”

  “Not unless she was hiding in the bushes.”

  “The end of the story?”

  “Yeah. The end of her story.”

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Driving home, I swung by my office to collect mail. When I walked into the messy room, Jimmy grinned. He was surrounded by packed boxes.

  “My partner,” he said. “Come to see your old office—soon to be a fond memory?”

  “Are we still moving?”

  He pointed to a notice he’d stuck on my computer. “Yeah, now it’s definite.” He wagged a finger at me. “Your job is to find new quarters—cheap.”

  “I know. I’ll get on it.”

  He grumbled. “I’ve heard that before.”

  He slapped me on the back and immediately poured me the turgid liquid he defined as coffee. I took it but didn’t drink it. No one ever did—after that first numbing sip. I was still savoring Grandma’s lusty and lush Vietnamese confection.

  “You gonna wrap the Marta case up—if a case it is—by Thanksgiving?”

  I counted on my fingers. “Yes,” I said quickly. “Probably not.”

  I shook my head. Maybe it was the long morning phone marathon to the Mary Powells of Manhattan, my aimless stuttering through the ungainly list, getting nowhere. Maybe it was Grandma’s cryptic words—those Buddhist abstractions that were poetry for my soul. Maybe it was that unsettling talk with Willie Do in his pickup. Marta’s manic behavior, her obsession. But did such behavior bring about a reason for murder? How to connect the dots? I stood there with a gob-smacked look on my face.

  Jimmy was staring at me. “If you get defeated, you won’t see nothing right in front of you, Rick.”

  He was lighting one of those monstrous, barnyard-smelling, politically incorrect cigars, puffing smoke in my direction.

  “True,” I admitted, but my admission didn’t help. I closed my eyes.

  “Look.” He walked near me, leaned in. “Here’s the first rule of thumb for you to think about. The killer—if there is one—is most likely someone you’ve talked to since Karen hired you. This ain’t no random murder—if, I repeat, it was murder. Think about it. You’ve talked to the killer.”

  “Not bad.” I liked that idea.

  “Right,” Jimmy went on, puffing away. “Now go home and rethink everything. Sometimes too many details cloud your sight. Strip it down to essentials. You talked to the murderer. Remember that. You already talked to the murderer. Now put a name to him.”

  I thought of Grandma. “There are no holes in eternity. What’s missing is already filled in.”

  ***

  Back at my apartment, parking in the lot behind the house, I spotted Gracie pulling overstuffed trash barrels to the curb.

  “Come on, Gracie, let me do that.”

  “Most of the trash comes from you any way.”

  “You’re making that up.” But walking back from the curb, I stopped. “Let me treat you to a cocktaiI.”

  Her wrinkled face broke into a wide grin, and she loosened the thick scarf around her neck. She was wearing an old bulky sweater and a frayed lumberjack jacket.

  We walked to Zeke’s Olde Tavern. When I noticed her scanning the chalkboard menu, I suggested something warm. Hot soup—thick barley cream, with chunks of black bread. A Sam Adams lager ale for her, a scotch-and-soda for me.

  Feeling mellow, I brought up an old topic. For some time I’d been after her to donate her overflowing steamer trunk of vintage stage memorabilia—programs, autographs, letters, costumes, sheet music—to the Farmington College archives. Her glory days as a Rockette and a Korean War entertainer with Bob Hope left her with wonderfully rich memories she steadfastly refused to write down. But at least the college could catalog and safeguard her tangible memories.

  She scoffed at the idea. “I was a gypsy hoofer who lived on peanuts. What kind of history is that?”

  She tipped up her empty bottle, so I called out to the bartender. She giggled. “Me a part of history?”

  “But…”

  “Forget it.”

  Later, tucking her arm into my elbow, we had a leisurely stroll back to the apartment.

  She leaned into me. “Maybe I will…if you help me.”

  “Of course.”

  But the minute we opened the front door, entering the large cluttered foyer where stacks of occupant mail and weekly advertising circulars littered the floor—Gracie would straighten it once a month—we heard a voice calling from the upper landing. Ken was leaning out his door.

  “Rick,” he yelled down, “that you?”

  “Me and Gracie.”

  He bounded down the stairs and planted himself in front of us, his face drawn. He looked as if he’d just got out of bed, his shirt rumpled and unbuttoned, his hair uncombed.

  “Bad news.” A somber tone as he looked from me to Gracie. “A friend just called me. He heard it from a friend who’s a cop.”

  “What?” I got impatient.

  He sucked in his breath. “Davey Corcoran killed himself.”

&nb
sp; Gracie’s hand flew to her mouth. I gasped, stunned.

  “He hung himself. When he didn’t come into work for his afternoon shift, somebody called, then went to his place. They found him hanging in the bathroom. The front door open.”

  My mind shot to Karen. I saw her pale face, nervous as a squirrel’s. Grief again. Marta, now Davey. In that kaleidoscopic moment I imagined her pale eyes losing all color, becoming dull. I heard an echoey scream, long and sharp, the wailing of a soul falling into chaos.

  Upstairs I phoned Karen. No answer. Her cell phone. Nothing. I tried her store. The phone rang and rang. I tried her land line again. Finally her machine kicked on—her wispy voice, short and sweet. “Not here. Leave message.” Words omitted so the message had a quirky urgency.

  “Karen, it’s Rick,” I spoke into the machine. My voice hollow, strained. “Call me. Please.”

  Was she really at home tucked into an armchair and listening to my voice, her hands wrapped around her body, swaying with—with what emotion? Sitting in the dark room, maybe with the lights off, so weak and so cold, listening, November cold seeping under the windowsills. Listening, waiting, waiting. Perhaps mourning a brother she scarcely knew.

  ***

  Though it was late, I threw on my thick wool sweats, pullover cap, and scarf, and I hit the sidewalk. A shadowy night under a brilliant fall moon, though the raw chill and the biting breezes were awful harbingers of the long winter on its way. I craved the wind, hungered for it. Brown leaves swirled on the sidewalk, drifted down from the almost-bare trees.

  Davey Davey Davey.

  I ran and ran, furiously, breaking through my normal pace, hurling my body against the crisp wind and cold, plowing down and across new roads and lanes, weaving through cars, folks walking dogs, and young girls from Miss Porter’s returning to their rooms, their girlish laughter high and wonderful. I drove myself till I couldn’t breathe any more, wheezing, nearly crying from the pain. Wind needles pierced my lungs, my side ached, my head throbbed. Streetlights flashed before me, out of focus. Trees wavered. Buildings bent. Skies cracked. I threw my head back, exhausted, and yelled into the bare-bones tree limbs spread above me. I slumped over, felt the depression ooze out of my pores. Davey and Karen. And Marta. Suicides. Davey hanging himself in a bathroom. Murder. Karen, alone now.