‘Yes,’ said Cecilia, ‘I understand. The relationship you had with him, it was not so good.’
Kate nodded. ‘Well, sometimes it was, especially in the beginning. But he started having these rages. He would throw things and yell at people for nothing at all. There didn’t seem to be any reason for it. I found myself tensing up all the time, kind of anticipating.’
Cecilia nodded. ‘I understand very well. But I’ve never seen Harry like that. Go on.’
‘I was tired of being tense all the time. If I tried to talk about anything with him that he didn’t agree with, he would just get mad, so finally one day when he was at a class I packed up everything I had and just drove away.’
‘And you didn’t tell him you were leaving?’
‘No.’
‘Really? Why not?’
Kate stared at Cecilia. ‘I was afraid of him. When he went into a rage he was a different person, not like the Harry you’re talking about.’
‘But now you’re still thinking about him. This—’ She glanced at Malcolm. ‘This detective here wants to investigate my daughter’s disappearance. You’re wondering if Harry did something to my daughter.’
‘Yes. Look, someone seems to be after me right now. Someone shot at my car, someone— It’s a long story. I left Harry so abruptly, and now, with Anna Marie missing, I’m wondering, well, you know …’
‘I don’t know.’ Cecilia sat straight up in the booth. ‘Let me tell you something – Harry was never ever anything but a gentleman to my girl. He always treated her very lovingly.’
The waitress brought the coffee, the waffle, the side of bacon. Kate pushed the bacon towards Malcolm, towards Cecilia. ‘I only want one slice,’ she said.
Malcolm took some bacon.
Cecilia did not. She watched as Kate smeared butter on the waffle, a little jam, and took a bite. Cecilia pushed her own plate away – about half the English muffin was uneaten. Everyone sat silently watching Kate eat her waffle.
‘They wait,’ said Cecilia suddenly, ‘until you trust them. This certain kind of man. The man I married, such a temper. Not just with me but with Anna Marie too. And so jealous. For no reason, for nothing. I know my husband had something to do with my little girl disappearing, and—’
‘I understand he was a suspect,’ Malcolm broke in for the first time, ‘but nothing ever came of it.’
‘Yes. In confidence, in strictest confidence, I talked to Detective Piper.’ Cecilia shrugged. ‘I still have to live with my husband, you know. We’ve had good things together too. He’s a sad man in many ways. And besides, I still love him.’
There was a silence.
‘I’m sorry. We can’t keep talking about this in such a public place,’ Cecilia said. She stood up. ‘Look out the window,’ she said, ‘at the parking lot. I saw you pull in. My car is parked right down from there – the green Toyota Corolla. I’m leaving as soon as I pay, and I want you to follow my car.’
They followed the green Toyota Corolla out of the parking lot at Denny’s and down the street to the light just before the freeway. Cecilia signaled then, and they followed on to the ramp and on to the freeway.
‘So, what do you think?’ Malcolm asked Kate.
‘She’s a very nice lady who was conned by Harry. Like I said, a flimflam man.’
‘My impression,’ Malcolm said, ‘is that she thinks her husband had something to do with Anna Marie’s disappearance, but she’s too afraid of him to deal with it properly.’
‘Do you think this is smart?’ Kate asked. ‘Following her?’
‘Sure. Why not?’ Malcolm slowed and merged into the right lane so he was right behind the green Toyota.
‘I don’t know.’
‘I think,’ said Malcolm, ‘that it’s the right thing to do. I’m going to follow this woman – after all, don’t forget she got in touch with me on the recommendation of a fellow police officer. She clearly has something to tell us other than what a gentleman Harry Light is, and I want to hear what it is.’
Cecilia took the second exit down, stopped at a light.
‘Do you think you’ll go back to that?’ Kate asked.
‘Back to what?’
‘Being a detective.’
Malcolm laughed. He laughed and laughed.
‘Stop that!’ Kate said. ‘Why are you laughing?’
‘Because.’
Cecilia turned left at the La Quinta Motel, then right at the Days Inn. They went down a block, past a Circle K, and turned again on to another street, this time a side street that seemed primarily residential.
‘Because why?’ Kate persisted.
‘Because you asked me if I’d ever be a detective again.’
‘And?’
‘Well, look at me,’ Malcolm said. ‘I’m following this woman – basically doing an investigation. I even brought my gun, just in case. And I’m feeling a whole lot happier than I have for months. Plus it certainly beats watching birds and drinking too much Sam Adams beer.’
They passed house after house, all essentially the same stucco and red tiled roofs. The small yards were planted with stands of bright red cannas, magenta bougainvillea reached almost to the red tiles, shrines to the Virgin of Guadaloupe. The green Toyota Corolla kept going.
‘I notice all this scary stuff doesn’t seem to have hurt your appetite,’ Malcolm commented.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘Take it at face value.’
She wanted to say she wasn’t scared when she was with him, but he might take it wrong. What taking it wrong might entail, she didn’t really know. ‘Where is your gun, anyway?’ she asked.
‘In my shoulder holster.’
Kate blinked. ‘Wow,’ she said. ‘You know, I don’t think I’ve ever been in a car with a man who had a gun on him.’
She was silent then as they followed the Toyota Corolla down another street, one more turn, then it slowed and turned into the driveway of a small house, a pretty house, the stucco painted a rose pink, blue trim on the door, with a gray Ford Explorer in the driveway. The Toyota pulled in and parked right behind the Ford Explorer, and Malcolm parked on the street a little past the driveway. They watched as Cecilia got out of the car and stood beside it, looking over at them.
A couple of kids skateboarded towards them down the sidewalk. They waved at Cecilia as they whizzed by. Cecilia beckoned at Malcolm’s car.
‘Tell you what,’ Malcolm said. ‘I’m going to go inside with Cecilia, and you stay here.’
‘Why?’
‘Just to be on the safe side. Is your cell on?’
‘Yes. No. It needs to be charged.’
‘Here, take mine,’ Malcolm said. ‘Press here—’ he showed her – ‘and you get nine one one.’
‘Nine one one? Why?’
‘Just a precaution.’
‘Look, I don’t want you to do anything you think is dangerous.’
‘I don’t think this is dangerous. I think it’s just fine, but I still want you to lock the doors and wait. I’ll come out and motion for you to come in once I’ve checked it out.’
Kate laughed. ‘You mean once the area is secured?’
He opened the door of the truck and got out. ‘How is it,’ he asked before he closed the door, ‘that you can go from stark terror to casual jokes in the space of a couple of seconds?’
It was one of those questions that didn’t seem to require an answer. Kate watched as he went up the driveway. She saw Cecilia glance over at the car, then both of them walked up the sidewalk and Cecilia opened the door. They vanished inside.
THIRTY-FOUR
Kate waited. She waited and watched as a mom with a stroller meandered down the other side of the street and a big red truck drove by – a low rider with fat tires and hip hop music blaring out. The two young boys on skateboards whizzed by again. She longed for her iPod, but it had run down too and needed to be charged. All she had was Malcolm’s cellphone.
With pictures. Ian, Sally, Mal
colm and herself at the table, all red-eyed and with foolish grins except for Sally who looked worried. She went back quickly through the cellphone pictures. Here was a dark picture, you couldn’t tell what it was at all, then one of an angry-looking blonde woman in what appeared to be a store, and then some pictures of what seemed to be back yards in Dudley, more people, their faces ghostlike.
She went back more and found, of course, Cindy. This time full length in running shoes and shorts. She was smiling; she didn’t look sad at all, but bright and shining. Maybe she was in a mania phase. Or maybe she had decided. Kate had heard somewhere that when people finally made the decision to kill themselves, they felt really happy.
But where was Malcolm? Should she start to worry? How long had he been inside? Why hadn’t he said something like ‘wait fifteen minutes then call the cops’? She wished she’d looked at her watch when he’d gone inside. She didn’t really know how long he’d been gone, and time went by at an artificially slow pace when you were stuck in a car waiting.
Then a thought came to her, out of the blue. All I have to do, she thought, is accept that no matter what happens in my life sooner or later I’m going to die.
Then all at once the blue front door of the rose-colored house opened, and Malcolm came out. He was smiling. He beckoned to her. Kate got out of the car. She walked towards the front door, Malcolm smiling at her all the way.
‘What’s so funny, anyway?’ she said.
‘You’ll see.’
He took her arm, an unnecessary gesture, and led her into the house. From somewhere inside she heard people talking and laughing. They walked through a slightly disheveled living room – saltillo tile, red curtains at the windows – down a short hall and into a kitchen: a fairly large kitchen dominated by an oilcloth-covered table. Five or six people were sitting around the table, Cecilia at the closest end.
She smiled when she saw Kate.
‘Cecilia can do the introductions,’ Malcolm said.
‘Of course.’ She stood up. ‘Everyone, this is Kate, and Kate, over there is Chuey, and next to him is Ben, with his true love, Emily, and next to Emily is Belen, and next to Belen, I’m pleased to introduce my daughter, Anna Marie Romero.’
‘What?’ said Kate.
Anna Marie stood up. Kate recognized her then. Tall and pretty in jeans and a red peasant blouse.
‘I don’t understand,’ Kate said.
‘It’s simple, actually,’ said Anna Marie. ‘Come outside where it’s quieter, and I’ll explain it to you.’
‘My father?’ said Anna Marie outside. She was so pretty, her dark hair like a cloud around her head. ‘For years and years he abused me, not like, um, sex, you understand, just yelling, and sometimes he’d hit me. He always had some reason for hitting me, like I was always bad, and for a long time I believed him.’
They were sitting on a small patio at the back of the house, on white plastic chairs at a wooden picnic table. Bright-pink bougainvillea spilled over the high bamboo fence, and bees buzzed in a cloud of purple verbena.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Kate. ‘How awful. But you were still living at home when you, um, disappeared.’ She was careful to make it a statement not an accusing kind of question.
‘He hit my mom sometimes too. I wanted to look after her. But she said, no, no, you leave, Anna Marie. I know how to handle him. But I was afraid – I thought he would come to where I was living and kill me. And it’s kind of hard to explain but, you see, staying home, at least I knew where he was.’
‘Yes,’ said Kate.
‘And then I went to this poetry workshop, and there was Harry, teaching people how to write poetry. He was so warm, so interested in everything. We started seeing each other, not like dates, really, more like talks.’ She paused. ‘You were his girlfriend once, my mom said. I think he told me about you.’
‘You think?’
‘He didn’t use a name. I was telling him about my father, and it came up – he said he was so ashamed and sorry about the way he acted when you were together.’
There was a silence. Kate looked away from Anna Marie at the pink bougainvillea spilling over the bamboo fence. She wanted to leave, to go back home, not listen to Harry apologize for his behavior through a surrogate.
‘He said he didn’t mean it as an excuse,’ Anna Marie went on, ‘but he was taking antidepressants, you know?’
‘No,’ said Kate, ‘I didn’t know.’
‘He used to be a drinker then he went to AA. He got sober, but then he got depressed. I think he was maybe a little ashamed. But he’d been taking them for a while, and then his doctor switched him to a new kind. The pills worked really well, except he’d suddenly blow up, out of the blue, for no reason.’
Kate sighed. ‘My question to you,’ she said, ‘is how long did you know him? He listened to all my problems too, in the beginning. He’s good at that.’
‘I’m telling you this,’ said Anna Marie, her voice rising, ‘because my mom said you thought Harry might have murdered me when I went missing. Well, you were wrong. He didn’t. Here I am.’
‘Does he know you’re talking to me?’
‘He saved my life, Kate. We worked out this whole plan together for me to get away from my father. He set it all up, got me a place in Phoenix with people he knew ’cause it was risky to stay with my relatives. He met me where I abandoned my car, and we drove here together, to Phoenix.’
There was a silence. Somewhere inside the house Kate heard people laughing.
‘It was a big risk for him,’ Anna Marie said. ‘It hurt his reputation, having the people question him and all, but he did it anyway.’
‘Do you still see him?
‘Yes.’ She laughed. ‘He comes to Phoenix every now and then, and we have a deal. I have to make him chili rellenos. I’m not even a good cook, but he has this idea that all Chicanas are good cooks, and if he wants to be prejudiced, you know what? I forgive him.’
Afterwards Malcolm and Kate stopped in to pick up their stuff at Ian and Sally’s, who of course weren’t there, but they’d left a few things for Malcolm, including an iPod dock.
‘If you don’t want that,’ Kate said, ‘I’ll take it.’
‘Sure.’
They drove the long drive back from Phoenix. The Sierra Vista exit, the one they would take to Dudley, was coming up on the right. Malcolm put on his turn signal and switched lanes. The sun was getting lower in the sky, putting a glare on the windshield.
Malcolm took the exit and turned into the McDonald’s parking lot. ‘I need to stretch,’ he said. ‘Want anything – coffee, Coke, a snack?’
‘Nothing.’
They got out together, walked around. Other than the cluster of fast food chains, there was only the desert that stretched away to purple mountains. The desert and, of course, the freeway, close by, cars and pickup trucks and big rigs lumbering along. Or appeared to be lumbering along; they were all going seventy-five, eighty-five miles an hour. If any living thing should step in front of them they would be killed instantly.
All around them was cement, sparse grass, six or seven or maybe even eight other fast food chains and a replica of a dinosaur in front of the McDonald’s. A Triceratops? A Tyrannosaurus Rex?
‘Here’s the plan,’ Malcolm said. ‘You can stay at Dakota’s tonight, or if you want to go home then I’ll be more than willing to sleep on your couch with my gun.’
‘That would be good,’ Kate said.
‘You’re working tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’
‘I’m going to Tucson tomorrow to talk to Dr Paul Sanger.’
‘Who’s that?’
‘An old friend of Wes and Carrie, according to Carrie’s sister Rose, and also a friend of Polly Hampton, Wes’s daughter. He came to Chico’s release hearing. I didn’t talk to him then. I should be back late afternoon. We can have dinner together, and I’ll tell you what I find out.’
They got back in the truck. Everything was decided, as if they’d needed this parti
cular landscape to decide on things.
THIRTY-FIVE
Malcolm woke up on the lumpy couch in the living room of Kate’s fully furnished rented house to the sound of someone singing. French, it was French. Malcolm had a smattering of it from freshman semester in college.
‘Maman les p’tits bateaux. Qui vont sur l’eau—’ Kate. Kate was singing. ‘Ont-ils des jambes?’
He sat up, tried not to groan, swung his feet to the floor. His gun was on the coffee table. What—? Oh, yeah.
‘Mais oui,’ Kate sang on, ‘mon gros bêta—’
Malcolm went in the direction of the singing. Kate was in the kitchen, spooning coffee. ‘S’ils n’en avaient pas. Ils ne march’raient pas.’ She looked happy.
‘You’re French,’ he said. ‘You never told me you were French.’
‘My mother lived in France for a while when she was a girl,’ said Kate. ‘She liked to sing me that song about a little boat.’
‘And where is she now, your mom?’
‘She died. Three years ago. I miss her.’
But she looked happy. He realized he hadn’t ever actually seen Kate looking happy.
Malcolm timed his trip to Tucson so he would get to the medical plaza off Oracle a little before lunchtime when, he hoped, the doctor would be free.
In the office, babies were crying. A red-haired middle-aged woman came to the sliding window and slid it open. ‘Hi there! How can I help you?’
‘I’m not a patient—’ he began.
The woman’s mouth twitched. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I can see that.’
Malcolm smiled. ‘My name’s Malcolm MacGregor. The doctor doesn’t know me, but we have a friend in common, Rose Kelly. She suggested I look him up, and I’m only in town briefly. I was hoping, maybe during his lunch hour, I could have a word.’
‘Hold on.’
Babies cried some more, mothers fussed. The woman came back in a minute. ‘Half an hour – he’ll meet you out in the courtyard by the fountain. How’s that?’
‘Just fine.’
Malcolm went and sat in the courtyard. Birds twittered. A lizard did push-ups on the rim of the fountain. From time to time Malcolm glanced at his watch. Half an hour went by, forty-five minutes, then just at the hour a man carrying a brown paper bag came out of Dr Paul Sanger’s office. He wore a pink shirt and khakis and didn’t look like the man Malcolm had seen in the courtroom because he was wearing wire-rimmed glasses, instead of the big black ones. Malcolm imagined somewhere a Mrs Sanger, saying, ‘Honey, you’ve got to get rid of those ugly glasses.’
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