Dreams of the Dead

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  “Don’t say that. We’ll come out of this. We will,” Nina said.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll be back. I’ll call tomorrow.” He walked her to her little truck, chatting about Wish and his misadventures, showing not a hint of trouble or pain. Nina did the same.

  At the truck, he leaned over and kissed her lightly. “Sorry,” he said. “Forgot to ask. But you needed one.” He strode off.

  “Grr,” she said, throwing the RAV into reverse.

  CHAPTER 12

  “The sliced tri-tip with garlic mushrooms and a bottle of cabernet sauvignon.” Kurt handed the waiter his menu and said to Nina, “A bottle okay?”

  “Why not? I’ll go with grilled blackened salmon with a coconut-almond crust, and molten lava cake for dessert.” Nina ordered her favorites, hungry but understanding she would probably not finish all that food. The waiter shot away before they could change their minds.

  Kurt and Nina sat together at one of her favorite Tahoe hangouts, Passaretti’s. Candlelight, white tablecloths. The wine came first, then food arrived, presented on patterned plates.

  Kurt looked relaxed in a black turtleneck, his turquoise bracelet, and jeans. Nina wore a blue angora sweater that showed exactly what she wanted to show, a short skirt, and her Jimmy Choos. She was overdressed; some of the other women eating there wore jeans. However, she was on a mission. She forced herself to feel optimistic and ignore the niggling reality that he wanted to move back to Europe.

  Her reggae ringtone. She ignored it.

  The music again.

  “Oh, go on,” Kurt said. “Get it over with.” He sipped his wine.

  “I’ll just step outside for a minute, okay?”

  Bob needed some help. She told him where to find some things, then returned to the table to find Kurt tossing back a second glass too quickly. Any spell that might have been in the weaving had broken.

  When the dinner plates had been cleared and they sat in their tiny island of silence among the other diners, Kurt said, “Being close to you and Bob over the past few months has been great.”

  “Nice to hear.” She tasted the cake she had so anticipated, but couldn’t eat it.

  He took her hand. His felt cool. “Remember what I said the other day?”

  “You mean, when you said I didn’t love you?” Nina thought of her mother, dead for years, and mused about her mixed-up relationship with Nina’s father. She thought of Andrea who knew Nina’s brother, Matt, so well, with all his failings, and loved him to death nevertheless. Memories of Nina’s own past loves filled her, Kurt among them. “You can’t believe that. You’re my first. You’re Bob’s father. I’ll never stop loving you.”

  “But there are varying degrees, aren’t there? You can love but not be in love. You aren’t in love with me, not anymore. It’s my observation that since I came back from Europe, we’ve become friendly. Not like lovers.”

  “Does that mean you aren’t in love with me either?”

  “Possibly.” That hurt. “I do know I’m very fond of you.”

  “But we committed to each other—”

  “To get to know each other. To try.”

  Nina’s coffee came. She stared at the fumes billowing off it. “I’ll loan you money to tide you over. Aren’t Bob and I worth changing careers over? You thought you were finished as a professional musician when you came here, and I thought you had adjusted to that.”

  Kurt looked at his hands, beautiful hands, the nails perfectly square, the skin smooth and white, the fingers curved as if ready to go wrestle down a grand piano. “When I couldn’t play, I saw the end of my career. Now I’m better. It’s a different game. Don’t you see, Nina? It’s like a miracle. I’m a classical musician. It’s what I was born to do. Without that, I’m just an unemployed man with no special skills and no future.”

  “Let me think.” Nina was hearing her whole life deconstruct, her cabin in the woods, their son, Hitchcock hopping like a rabbit through snow down the steep driveway. She thought of Sandy in the office, the smell of freshly ground coffee in the morning, the pleasure of its heat in winter. She tried to smile and took his hand. “If you really want it, if it’s what has to happen, we could think about moving. How’s that sound? Starting over together.”

  He didn’t answer right away. Then he asked, “How would Bob react?”

  “As long as we’re a family, he’ll be fine. I could sell my practice.” The thought choked her. She could barely speak, but forged onward. “We could pack up, compromise, go to San Francisco. Get a place in Noe Valley or someplace.” She was flailing. She had a failed marriage in Bernal Heights and had already rejected working downtown in a high-rise legal firm. “You’ll find work teaching piano. There’s the big symphony orchestra there, and—”

  “Aw, hell, Nina.” He stroked her hand. “You don’t want to be in the city. You fit right in here.”

  “I’m willing.”

  He looked away. “I’ve looked at San Francisco. There aren’t any symphony jobs waiting in the Bay Area for me. The symphonies are in serious financial trouble.”

  “Kurt, I-I can’t move to Europe. I couldn’t practice law there.”

  “I know.”

  “And Bob’s life is here.”

  Kurt didn’t respond to that.

  “I feel stupid, dressing up like this. I suppose I expected to seduce you. It’s been a month since you spent the night with me.”

  He avoided her eyes. “I don’t think we should do that.”

  She pushed her already mangled cake around with her fork. “Last resort. Will you see a counselor with me? I can’t give up, not so easily.”

  “Sure, if you think it will help you get through this transition.”

  “No final decisions tonight?”

  “No final decisions.” He smiled at her and paid for dinner with his almost-maxed-out credit card.

  They went home separately, to their separate, empty beds.

  Late Wednesday night, after braving a brief blizzard over the pass at Echo Summit, Paul arrived back at his condo on the hill above the Barnyard Shopping Center on Carmel Valley Road. It was already full spring back here at sea level, genista lining the gulch just past the parking lot. Finding his driveway blocked, he found a spot on the street, unloaded his suitcase, and went inside the cold apartment.

  Even with all the lights on, the place didn’t have its usual welcoming feel. He looked in the fridge and scored a Sam Adams ale, but most of the food looked old and sad, so he gave up on the idea of eating, stripped down, turned off the lights again, and crawled between sheets that needed washing. He did not sleep much. When he did, he dreamed he was lying on a hard bunk wide-awake, watching spiders crawl across the floor, waiting for his cellmate to attack him.

  Early Thursday morning he went for a morning run on Carmel River Beach in the fog. He ran as far as he could, up and back along the shore, passing a couple in a double sleeping bag who had no business doing what they were doing on a family beach. He ran like a guy who might not smell this ocean air or watch the powerful splashing waves again anytime soon.

  Back at his condo, he cleaned up, then spent the morning dealing with personal issues—bills, rent, plumbing, a visit to the neighbor who routinely blocked his parking spot.

  At noon he sat on his deck, surrounded by Monterey cypresses and curling wisps of fog, and remembered offering Nina a ring sometime past on this very deck. She had turned him down. That memory made him get up to pour himself a Bushmills in honor of one of the worst moments of his life. So far.

  Starving, he ate at the pub at the Barnyard, then drove the short distance to his office in Carmel. At the stoplight on Ocean Avenue, lost in thought, he pictured Brinkman in Brazil sitting across from a shady lawyer in some exotic office with ferns everywhere. Who had dreamed up this scam?

  He was anxious to get back up to Tahoe, but he didn’t have an official reason to be there. He was damn anxious, in fact, but it would be much better to have a cover while he was watching events
up there.

  A horn tapped in the polite California way behind him. Dude, the light has totally changed, it informed him. Please stop texting, speaking on the phone, figuring out where a good restaurant is, receiving your blow job, fighting with your spouse, or trying to calm your cranky infant. Have a good day, but get moving.

  How the hell had it come to this? He had put Jim Strong into a mental dead file labeled Handled. Back he had come, not in the flesh but almost worse now, bigger and more dangerous, more powerful as a ghost.

  Maybe everything in his mind now related to Jim Strong, since the ultimate insult, images of himself incarcerated, rushed toward him as implacably as loose rocks at Pinnacles National Monument, his favorite climbing spot. He might never again climb those crumbling rock-towers that scared him in a good way; he would not suck down beers and watch the Oakland A’s in his bachelor pad or win at blackjack in a casino; he would not drive his car too fast on Highway 1 along a wild ocean; he would not make sweet love to the love of his life—or anyone else, for that matter. The disappearance of Jim Strong would require answers this time around. Paul might well be found out, especially if he let Brinkman handle things.

  All for taking out the trash and deciding not to mention it.

  * * *

  For once he easily found a place on the street near the Hog’s Breath Inn and climbed the stairs beyond the restaurant to his office. These days, the dark wood that had seemed so hip when he moved in appeared dated and ever-so-slightly dilapidated. He supposed he should upgrade his digs, but this was Carmel, and the Clint Eastwood connection held, and he wasn’t going to move.

  Unlocking the door’s triple locks, he hoped that maybe Wish Whitefeather, his associate, son of the redoubtable Sandy, might be doing something quietly useful on the computer inside, but no such luck, the office was cold and empty. He worked the thermostat, setting it to warm against the moist ocean air that leaked through every gap: sixty-six degrees these days, no higher. When he had first landed here, the standard was seventy-two. Good old times, he thought, not removing his jacket. He sat down at “his” desk, currently littered with a coffee cup decorated with antlers next to a box of stale pecans. Wish’s snacks. He pushed these aside to make room for the monadnock of stacked paperwork he needed to study.

  Wish must be off gallivanting around, acting as if Thursday were a day of rest. How late these youngsters learn that business is a full-time affair. He had left files and notes, which Paul pored over. He called Wish, who was actually doing some insurance interviews in Salinas.

  For the next several hours Paul caught up on business. He had four appointments set for succeeding days. He sent e-mails postponing them.

  Then he tackled the file of outstanding business bills, approved a bunch, and set them neatly on the table where Wish worked when Paul was there. Like a pet when the master was out of the room, Wish had gravitated to the master’s spot, the leather reclining office chair, the better monitor.

  After dealing with his business problems, Paul let his mind go back to what lingered under every single thought he had these days: Jim’s body. The Strongs needed to know Jim was dead. They needed to know the affidavit was forged, and that someone was making a play for Jim’s share of the resort money.

  Paul had no contacts in Porto Alegre, Brazil. He had no contacts who knew contacts who had contacts. He suspected that his old buddy Sergeant Fred Cheney, due to budget cuts at the South Lake Tahoe Police Department, also had no pot to piss in, in terms of second-guessing the Brazilian angle.

  Nina, he knew, had no ammo without his help. Three more years must pass before Jim could be declared dead by operation of law. He had hoped, hearing about the Steve Fossett case, in which the famous explorer was declared dead only a year and a half after his disappearance, the statute might be waived. But Fossett’s circumstances were unusual. A pilot takes off on a routine trip and never returns. Death can be presumed by law from the perilous circumstances. But Jim Strong would have had several good reasons to disappear alive.

  Paul stood up, stretched, and started up a pot of coffee, an exotic blend Wish had found that took up a few minutes of his attention, grinding beans, pouring water, setting a dial.

  While the water started to steam and drip, he stared down from the window at the people on the outdoor patio below. The fog had finally broken. Golden late-afternoon sunlight colored the impressionistic scene. Heaters kept the courtyard habitable, and the blurry couples and families smiled, gesticulated, and ate food he could smell up here in his office, some cooked over charcoal. A young couple held hands. An old couple held hands. A plump man blew out a candle on a cupcake, and his whole family clapped.

  Turning away, Paul poured himself a cup and sipped it black.

  He called Nina at home. “Hey, marmalade girl.”

  “Hi, Paul.”

  “My name. It’s from the Bible. Did you know that? I personally never liked the guy.” He heard sounds.

  “Sorry, I just walked in the door, Paul. Let me—oh, yeah, wood in the fireplace. Hang on.”

  The phone went down.

  “Fire,” she said. “It’s cold in here.”

  “Bob and Hitchcock sitting in the cold?”

  “They’re over at Matt and Andrea’s. Home soon.”

  “Ah.” Paul imagined her kicking off her high heels, the small, pink half-moons on her toenails.

  He heard her sigh.

  “Rough day?”

  “I had dinner with Kurt last night. It didn’t go well.”

  He felt bad for her. Then he moved rapidly on to feeling good. Kurt didn’t appreciate her. He was a selfish bastard. Paul had intimate knowledge of selfish bastards, having been one more than a few times. “I’ve been thinking.”

  “Okay.”

  “Your coat’s off? You’re settled on the couch?”

  “More bad news?”

  “It’s nice and warm now?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s something I need us to do. Will you do it?”

  “You sound so serious. What is it? You know I’ll do anything to fix this situation.”

  He laughed. “You’re too smart to make a promise unless you have all the details in advance.”

  “I’m a lawyer. The three P’s. Paranoid, protective, private. Plus I avoid anything that demands a signature. Anything else, I’ll do.”

  “Okay, well, I can work with that. Here’s what I need you to do.” He paused, hoping to make her nervous. Her quickened breath on the phone told him he had succeeded.

  “Ready?”

  “What?!”

  “I need you to take off all your clothes. I want to picture you all warm and stretched out in front of your fire.”

  An outraged silence, then: “Why you little—! I thought we were having a serious conversation.”

  “Don’t you care about my needs?”

  “Your needs? What you need is the old grab and twist, and some screaming on the ground in a fetal position to remind you we’re in deep trouble!”

  “Ooh. Sexy.”

  “You’re impossible! We need to talk about what is really happening here. You are going down, buddy, unless you’ve got something better than a thirteen-year-old’s fantasies to hold you up.”

  He laughed and heard her join in.

  “I have to admit it feels good, doesn’t it? A good laugh, even when you’re on the way to hell and can see the flames ahead.”

  “All right, sorry, I couldn’t resist, you’re so cute and full of gravitas, I had to tweak you, but here’s the thing. I do have a plan, a way to give the Strong family peace.”

  “But—?”

  “They need to know Jim’s dead and this fraud about the resort has to be laid to rest. Right?”

  “How can that happen without something really bad happening to you?”

  “By the way, Brickman’s not back for a couple more days, isn’t that right?” Paul heard some rustling.

  “I’m checking what I wrote in my schedule,” Ni
na said. “I think that’s right. Eric left yesterday. He said four days, and with travel, earliest we’ll see him is after the weekend.”

  “I’m going to get some sort of cover job that will bring me back up there. I’ll contact some friends up there. Then we swing into action.”

  “Doing what?”

  “I assume Philip trusts Brinkman.”

  “He’s worked with him for a couple of years.”

  “But no money was recovered. And they suspect Jim took off with the money. But, honey, you and I know he didn’t. We have to look at Brinkman.”

  “You suspect—Eric? Why?”

  “I don’t know enough. Not yet.”

  “But why? He has all the right credentials, from what—”

  “So does my uncle. The one the World Court is after.”

  Paul listened to her pause and tried to imagine her on the couch in front of her fireplace, sipping a glass of wine. Comely girl. Certain physical reactions began to occur. Paul focused on the conversation with difficulty.

  “You don’t like him, but, Paul?”

  “What?”

  “Isn’t it possible that you’re prejudiced? That you view him as some kind of rival?”

  A Perry Mason moment. Isn’t it true, Mrs. McGillicuddy, that you hated your husband and poisoned him so that you could run off with—“Yeah. He terrifies me.”

  “Stop teasing. I can’t stand this! You could end up in prison.”

  “Okay. I’m coming back up as soon as I can, and the point of all this is that I want to take you for a ride when I do.”

  “Paul, sorry. I have a call. It’s Bob. I have to go.”

  “Don’t polish off the whole bottle alone,” Paul said. “See you shortly.”

  PART

  TWO

  CHAPTER 13

  Meantime, what was really happening was that Sondra’s boss was in trouble and only Sondra could save her. She sat down at her desk and didn’t even take a minute to savor the comfort of her new surroundings. Instead, she punched buttons on her electronic organizer. She knew that what she was doing was risky and might anger Riley Fox, but she saw no other way. Ms. Fox had gotten herself into a dangerous situation. She could lose her license, her family, and even her freedom. Sondra made a few calls. The last call she made to the one man who could help. It took a lot of persuading, but finally he agreed.