All the Things You Are

by Declan Hughes

  It’s an act, but it isn’t all an act. This is what normal people do, Charlie T kept thinking – at least, normal people who wear sweaters and have weekend places and drive European cars. Rich normal people. Normally Charlie T would hang out in the nearest dive bar, or the strip club his girlfriend would be working in later that night, or already, depending on the town. But Cambridge didn’t have a strip club, and his girlfriend wasn’t a stripper, she was a nurse. Scratch that – his fiancée.

  He had asked her on the trip up to Madison, and when they turned east on to the 12-18 headed for Cambridge, she said yes. He didn’t know for sure if it was exactly what he wanted, and he knew for damn certain that he hadn’t had his fill of other women yet, but there was something about Angelique, how, after he’d taken the Cowboy out, she’d stroked his thigh as he drove, not as a sex thing, more, she was proud of him. She spoke quietly of her plans, what she could expect as a nurse, what he could expect of her. Maybe she’d been fishing. Maybe she had manipulated him. The thing of it was, even if she had, he didn’t mind. Even if she had, he liked it. He liked the idea they might be together. He hadn’t realized he was lonely until she showed him there was an alternative to chasing after skanks.

  Maybe she had set him up. And then, true to female form, made him wait: he proposes on the I-90, she accepts on the 12-18, an hour later. Silence in between. The longest consecutive silence he’s ever witnessed from her. He found a radio station – he thought this was class, actually, a radio station that played all those old songs out of musicals and that, Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra and the like singing them, the songs his grandparents danced to. And of course, wasn’t every single one a love song? ‘The Tender Trap’. ‘I’ll Be Seeing You’. ‘All The Things You Are’. He thought he heard her suppress a sob once, thought he caught a sidelong glimpse of her wiping a tear away. Didn’t look around. Didn’t say a word. Kept his eyes on the road. ‘Let’s Face the Music and Dance.’ He thought of his grandparents, of his ma, of his sister and her kids. Angelique always mentioning her mother, her aunts, her sisters. Family. That’s what it was all about. The future. Nearly shed a tear or two himself, so he did.

  Mr Wilson still hadn’t delivered an address when they were on the outskirts, so they rolled into town and spent their romantic afternoon. Charlie isn’t a hundred percent convinced antique stores and art galleries are where he’d like to spend all of his afternoons; maybe he’d be more the champagne-on-a-yacht type of rich guy. But it’s not all romance. Angelique’s idea, that they should look like they’re thinking of moving here. It’s a game couples play all the time, she says, visit a place and imagine you lived there. And people talk to you. And maybe you don’t need the address.

  ‘Because,’ she said, spooning ice cream into his mouth, ‘where do you think they’re gonna be at five-thirty, six, once it gets dark?’

  ‘I don’t know. At home?’

  ‘On Halloween?’

  ‘They know to stay out of the spotlight.’

  ‘They’re already out of the spotlight, they live in a twinky little burgh like this. You think – what age are the girls, eleven and nine – you think they’re not gonna want to go trick or treat?’

  ‘They’re not?’

  ‘Only if they’ve got no self respect. Now put your coat on, and tuck your hair under your cheesehead hat, and try to look like you’re not so goddamn gorgeous.’

  So now they’re in Cindy’s, and Angelique is oohing and ahhing over the lakeshore cabins and the hillside villas in the realty brochures, and Charlie T is nodding away. Soon enough, Cindy sits down with them: Cindy, who has frizzy curls dyed the shade of an ear of corn and tied up in a batik scarf and gypsy hoop earrings and a figure and complexion that look like, once she’s closed up Cindy’s Country Bake, first she eats whatever country bake is left over, then she rolls across the street and orders the first of several at Andrew’s Bar.

  ‘You folks like the area?’ Cindy says, and laughs, as if she has said something funny.

  ‘Who wouldn’t?’ Angelique coos. ‘Such a great place to bring up children,’ she says, and ever so subtly brushes her belly with the palm of her hand.

  ‘Oh, well, that’s just what we need. Prices went so high, it got that young families couldn’t afford to move here,’ Cindy says, and laughs again.

  Angelique simpers a little in Charlie T’s direction.

  ‘Well, I’m just a beauty therapist, but my fiancé is in risk management, I know, don’t ask me either, he’s explained a hundred times but I can’t seem to keep it in my head. Just, whatever it is, it’s in great demand these days. This must be our first day off for months, isn’t it, sweetheart?’

  Charlie T nods and smiles. He’d rather not speak, because then he’ll get into a whole ‘Oh, I love your accent, are you from Ireland, I’m Irish!’ sequence and the next time an American with a broad American accent tells him she’s Irish because of her grandfather or she was on vacation there or she loves Colin Farrell he’s going to say, No you’re fucking not, which might not be much of a help with Cindy. In any case, in his experience a woman would much rather have you listen to her than have to listen to you.

  Cindy is asking Angelique about the beauty business, and if she’d keep it up when they move, and Angelique says she was thinking about a spa, a wellness center, and Cindy says they have a couple already but that’s an area that’s growing, and Angelique says, alternatively, something in the childcare area.

  ‘And on that theme, my fiancé here said the town looks a bit like Chitty Chitty Bang Bang this afternoon.’ (Charlie had said no such thing.) ‘It’s Halloween, but where are all the children?’

  ‘Well,’ says Cindy, ‘my children are long gone now,’ and she laughs an incredulous laugh, as if the notion she might have grown-up children is so unlikely. ‘And we raised them above the store, and as you say, there isn’t a lot of opportunity to trick or treat on Main Street. But we used to take ’em round a couple neighborhoods. Sycamore Heights was one, but prices there went up and the kids left home and no new ones arrived, that’s an example of exactly what we were talking about. The other one …’ and at this point, she turns around to a younger woman with a ponytail and a bored expression who’s working away on an iPhone. ‘April, where do the kids go at Halloween these days?’

  April, sighing elaborately, raises her head slowly, but it’s as if her eyes are a ton weight and don’t want to follow.

  ‘Older kids, they go to Cedar Point on the north lake shore, or over to Billy’s Roadhouse. Trick or Treat, the best is still Ripley Fields,’ she drawls.

  And April’s eyes drag her head down towards her iPhone again.

  Cindy laughs and nods her head.

  ‘Some things just don’t change. If you want to see where we’re hiding the kids of Cambridge, head on out to Ripley Fields.’

  PART THREE

  Halloween Night

  Sisters

  Barbara doesn’t want Donna to come around the houses with them when she and Irene are trick or treating. In fact, she’d prefer Donna to wait at the bottom of the road, as if she wasn’t there at all and the girls were flying solo, like the teens Barbara thinks they are. But Barbara is still only eleven (‘I’ll be twelve in March, actually’) and in any case, there’s Irene to consider. Irene, who competes pretty much at the same level as her elder sister for most of the day (if not remotely interested in boys or babies or the great wide world of sex which Barbara set herself the task of exploring and charting from the precocious age of about six). Irene, who you’d only know was the younger around half nine at night (while Barbara is campaigning to stay up as late as possible, Irene quietly finds her pajamas and curls up in bed, happy another day is done). Irene, who sometimes appears at Donna’s side at five or six in the morning and snuggles in like a toddler with bad dreams, thumb hovering within reach of her mouth, still anxious, still the little pet. Irene would like Donna to come up to the doorsteps with them, just in case.

  So the compromis
e is reached: Donna will wait on the sidewalk or in the driveway of each house, as long as she is in full view.

  ‘It’s either that or we go home, Barbara,’ Donna says, and after a spasm of eye-rolling, Barbara concedes.

  ‘All right, fine.’

  There has already been sulking because the walk along the lakeside splashed mud all over the girls’ Ugg boots, and while Irene didn’t seem to mind, Barbara was outraged, as if muddy boots were yet another infernal adult scheme to thwart her. Donna is amused to note that they are both now armed with heavy sticks which they found on the walk and refuse to relinquish:

  Irene: They’d be good for beating away werewolves, or zombies.

  Barbara: Or boys.

  The houses in Ripley Fields are mostly basic ranches and split-levels, peppered with a scattering of larger dwellings: Neo-Tudor, Neo-Colonial, Neo-Victorian. ‘A great place to raise the kids’ is what everyone says, and Donna has to agree: tonight, the wide tree-lined streets of the estate are swarming with pint-sized witches and wizards, goblins and ghosts and ghouls, some bustling around like Barbara, some hanging back like Irene, their parents either shadowing them like a security detail or hanging back to give them a taste of freedom. There are only about a thousand people in the entire village, so as aloof as Donna has always tried to hold herself, she is inevitably waylaid by this gallery owner or that hairdresser, keen to know who the vampire and the kitty-kat are.

  ‘My nieces,’ Donna says, dodging the invitation to explain any further, the girls an excuse to smile and nod and move on. She is spooked a little, by the wolf sighting earlier, by the crackle of fireworks and the piercing squeals of so many jubilant children, high on the prospect of gorging themselves on unfeasible portions of candy. Mostly though, she’s spooked by the news item she saw before they left the house, while the girls pulled their costumes on and jabbered about Halloween, the news item featuring the dead man in Danny and Claire’s backyard, the dead dog, the Be On The Lookout Alert for Danny, the mention of the girls. Donna called Danny’s number immediately and shouted at his voicemail, tried Claire but couldn’t reach her, then had to make a quick decision on whether to rescind trick or treating on security grounds, and found she simply couldn’t.

  But she is walking slow and watchful, and if Irene hadn’t insisted, she’d be on the girls anyway, like a whatdoyoucallit, helicopter mom. On the plus side, it’s Cambridge, where the local paper is full of school sports reports and chamber of commerce press releases and sponsored columns from the local dentist and veterinary surgeon and the murder of that real estate agent a few years back was a total one-off. It’s a great place to raise your kids, Donna actually mouths to herself. On the minus side, so is fucking Madison, so what the hell is a dead body doing in the backyard on Arboretum Avenue? Oh my God, little brother, what have you got yourself into?

  Yes, Donna is walking slow and watchful, her hands in the pockets of her Patagonia fleece, her glossy red clutch with her glossy black Glock within reach of her left hand, and she clocks each parent with interest: one of the barmen at Andrew’s Bar, the guy from the motor shop, Patricia and Pam from The Gingerbread House. There are some she doesn’t recognize, the bunch of teenage guys who look like they’re looking for trouble but wouldn’t know what to do with it if they found it, or the sexy redhead with the guy in the Badgers hat, who are probably on their way home from work and could care less if it’s Halloween or not. Not everyone has kids, after all.

  Donna’s favorite moment of the evening so far:

  A huge, gloomy Neo-Tudor other kids have avoided. Barbara, either oblivious, or reckless, possibly (usually) both, forges ahead, Irene, glancing over her shoulder at Donna, follows. The big old door opens, and a grumpy old guy (there’s always one) appears.

  ‘What are you supposed to be?’ he barks at Barbara.

  ‘Vampire,’ she says in a low voice, poor Babs knocked off course, suddenly deflated, cowed by the old buzzard, Donna wants to march up and smash his mean old face in.

  ‘What’s that? Can’t hear ya.’

  ‘Vampire!’ Barbara yells, irritation conquering her fears. Good girl yourself, a Brogan through and through, Donna grins.

  ‘All right then,’ the grumpy old guy (GOG) grunts, and tips a bunch of candy into Barbara’s skull and crossbones tote bag. He turns to Irene, and immediately starts to shake his head.

  ‘Oh no,’ he says. ‘No, you’re not even wearing a Halloween costume.’

  ‘Yes, I am,’ says Irene firmly, who is reluctant to get involved, but committed once she is.

  ‘You’re wearing cat’s ears and a little mask and a fur suit and a tail,’ the GOG snarls.

  ‘That’s ’cause I’m a kitty-kat,’ trills Irene.

  The GOG, who Donna is beginning to find kind of funny in a weird way, folds his arms above his huge belly and shakes his bearded head.

  ‘Kitty-kats are not Halloween critters,’ he says, like it’s the verdict in a trial, and Donna nearly giggles.

  ‘Hey!’ says Barbara, outraged on her sister’s behalf.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Irene says. ‘Kitty-kats are too. In ancient Egypt, a Roman soldier killed a cat, and the people of the Nile were furious and killed him, because they saw in the cat the Goddess Bast, who is goddess of the moon. And the goddess of the moon is also the goddess of Halloween. And that’s why I’m a kitty-kat.’

  The GOG is momentarily silenced by this.

  ‘So? Trick or Treat? Where’s her stuff?’ Barbara says, and the GOG shrugs and tips candy into Irene’s tote.

  ‘Hey,’ he says, as the girls are turning to go. ‘Was any of that true?’

  ‘Some of it,’ Irene says.

  ‘Which bits?’

  ‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Barbara says.

  ‘It’s stuff only we know about,’ Irene says.

  ‘You? Who are you?’ the GOG says.

  Barbara has almost caught up to Donna now. She waits for Irene and then turns back to the GOG, framed in the gloom of his doorway.

  ‘Who are we?’ Barbara says, as a rocket whooshes through the sky overhead, red sparks trailing in its wake, and Irene turns to her sister, on point.

  ‘Who are we? We’re the Brogan sisters.’

  Willow Weep for Me

  At the Brogan house on Arboretum Avenue, no one is sure what to do about the dead dog, and it falls to Detective Nora Fox to make a decision. It is the last thing to be settled before the crime scene is released. The body still lacks formal identification, but by a process of elimination, it is almost certainly that of Ralph Cowley – Ken Fowler didn’t get to talk to him, but there is a Dave Ricks Graphic Design consultancy on West Wacker in Chicago, and the receptionist told him Mr Ricks was unavailable because he was in a meeting, not because he was dead. The medical examiner has done his work, and the body has been removed, and the police photographers and technical specialists have taken their shots and collected their samples. Fragments of police tape litter the trampled lawn as Officer Colby and Nora Fox stand in the dark above the exhumed body of the grotesquely mutilated dog.

  ‘We can’t just leave it here,’ Colby says.

  ‘Him,’ Nora says. ‘Mr Smith was his name.’

  Her tone is harsher than she intends, anger at the savage who did this seeping into it, and Colby winces slightly, as if he has been rebuked.

  ‘We’re not going to bury him again either,’ she says. ‘If there’s … it’s for the family to decide. If there’s anything in the garage … canvas tarpaulin, or a tent or something? And then they can bury him, as a family, when the whole thing …’

  Nora lets her voice trail off. It’s understood that the whole thing could end in a number of ways, most of them excluding a scenario in which the reunited Brogan family congregate together in the backyard for the burial of their pet. Colby nods quietly and immediately heads for the garage.

  Nora looks back to the turreted Queen Anne cottage in the woods that is the Brogan house, and wonders if they were tempting fate, living
out here like this, then briskly dismisses the superstitious nature of the thought, and sets her mind to run over what has happened since she left Monroe High School library.

  Firstly, Danny Brogan’s traveling companion, Jeff Torrance, was shot dead earlier in the afternoon outside a Ruby Tuesday’s chain restaurant in Rockford, Illinois. Ken Fowler had already got plates from the DMV for a red 1976 Ford Mustang registered to Jefferson Torrance, Spring Harbor, Madison WI, and added it to the BOLO alert when it emerged that Danny Brogan had taken off in it. An eye witness saw Danny hovering over the body, hands and face covered in blood. Initially the Rockford Police assumed that Brogan had shot Torrance, but once the forensic pathologist from the University of Illinois showed up, his preliminary findings made it clear that, from the nature of the impact wound and the angle of entry, the shot had been fired from some considerable distance. Nonetheless, Brogan was still being pursued, and now the highway patrol had a vehicle to watch out for.

  Secondly, Nora has called Cass Epstein at the Wisconsin Department of Children and Families. Nora and Cass are members of the same book group, and when the book of the month was Conspiracy of Silence by Martha Powers, with its themes of adoption, the discussion had quickly moved, as book group discussions will, from the book to the issues themselves: what rights do the birth parents, the foster parents and the adopted children have, and who takes precedence? Nora knows she can get access to information based on a warrant or if she can demonstrate it’s a vital part of her investigation. She doesn’t have the former, and doesn’t know yet if the latter applies. But it’s Halloween tonight, the Bradberry fire was on Halloween thirty-five years ago, and Nora doesn’t think much of detectives who think having a bad feeling means anything, but … she has a bad feeling. So she calls Cass and asks her if she can identify the surviving Bradberry child, the three-year-old girl who got away. She tells Cass it may form the background to an investigation she’s conducting, and it might be very helpful, and two people are dead already, so time is a factor. She oscillates between calm, because Cass is highly resistant to bullying, and a bit of, well, bullying. And Cass says the office is nearly closed, and she will have to weigh Nora’s application on its merits, and she may not hear back from her until tomorrow, and Happy Halloween! So much for the book club network.