Chapter 51
Nate slammed the sword back into the scabbard and tossed it into the corner by the couch. Out of pure instinct he turned to dart out of the office just in case his dad came barreling down the hall to pick up the phone and find him there. The memories of being nine years old and back in that bedroom returned like a flood, and the bowel-loosening feeling of being somewhere he shouldn’t be kicked him square in the gut. Then he remembered his dad was gone. He waited a beat to see if he heard Vicky stir, but nothing came out of the kitchen. He put his hands on his knees and took a deep breath. The phone rang a third time and he stared at it. He had heard the office phone ring only once before. It was the only other day Nate had ever been in there. The sheer coincidence was uncanny, and it made him wonder if he should pick up. He looked over at the sword again. If it was his dad calling, he would skin Nate’s hide for being in the office. But why would his dad call this line? He rarely even let Vicky in the office, so he certainly would not expect anyone to be in there, much less answer. Nate made the command decision and picked up the receiver before it rang a fifth time.
“Hello?”
“Hello, Dr. Mayes.”
Dr. Mayes? “Uh, yes. Yes. Who is this?” Dammit. Too stiff.
“I warned you they were coming after you. I am glad to see you listened for a change.”
“What do you want?” Nate wasn’t sure if that was the right response either, but it must have been good enough since the guy hadn’t hung up yet.
“You appear to be in a difficult spot right now, just like me. I think for once, we can help each other out.”
“Go on.” Nate said, and shrugging his shoulders to himself. Better.
“Check the drop and you will understand.”
What? What drop? A thought came to mind and before he could even ponder it the implications of it, Nate spoke.
“Uh, Eddie?”
“Yes.”
“Why don’t you come by here and –”
“I will contact you when I am ready.”
The line went dead.
“Hello? Hello?” Nate slammed the receiver down.
So Ms. Cooper was right. There was an Eddie out there working with his dad. But what was he talking about? Nate stood, his heart thumping so hard he could feel his neck pulsing against his collar. He breathed until he calmed down, and ran and reran the conversation in his head. He still had no idea what the guy meant. After a few minutes, he gave up and went back out in the hall to start the cleanup process. His dad would make him do it eventually anyway when he got home. Might as well get a head start. He pulled the office door closed. He wasn’t going back in there.
He put on his Walkman, and pushed play. He had just picked up the new Cult tape, and as he stepped over Vicky to get the broom out of the kitchen closet, “She Sells Sanctuary” kicked on. He looked at her, passed out on the ground looking puffy and nasty.
Probably not the way she intended to spend her day, either.
Chapter 52
Sundays in November in the South meant two things: church and football – and not necessarily in that order, especially for the Catholics. Priests had been known to cut their homilies short if there was an early kickoff time. Depending on who was playing, it was not uncommon to head out to evening Mass after the start of the second quarter and be back on your couch before halftime was over.
For me and my buddies, the inevitable bitterness of knowing we had to go to school the next day was balanced by the fact that we had Sunday afternoons together. If there were no good games on, we’d usually watch a quarter or two of whatever teams were on the gridiron and then go outside and play two-hand touch until the sun went down. If the Saints were on, it was a marquee event, and we rarely left the TV for more than a few minutes. If it happened to be one of those extra special days – when the Saints played the Falcons – then we pretty much planned the whole weekend around it. A lot of bragging rights hung on the outcome of those games, even though we technically didn’t know anyone from Atlanta. It was good to have the win, anyway, just in case we happened to run into any of them.
Every now and then the stars and planets would align, and the whole entire weekend would elevate to a higher plane. Homecoming weekend happened to be one of them. Not only was the Saints – Falcons game the perfect bookend for what had been a pretty awesome three days, but Mark’s mom had invited all of us over for a game day feast to rival anything they were serving in the French Quarter. Any one of those events, standing alone, would have merited our undivided attention. But a homecoming-Saints-Ragone meal trifecta? A rare event indeed.
I picked up Hop just after one o’clock, and when we pulled into Mark’s driveway, we saw Wendy’s car. It shouldn’t have bothered me, but it did. Not counting moms, we had never had a chick attend one of our football game watching parties, and I was kind of surprised to see her there, although I couldn’t blame Mark for the invite. According to the details he dropped on us Saturday, when he and Wendy went parking after the homecoming dance, he entered the zone of mystery and breached a few layers of rayon, cotton and whatever they made bras out of. Still, I didn’t want Wendy to become our Yoko.
When we arrived, Mrs. Ragone was cooking the entrees, but in true fashion, she had not left us hanging either. A tray of fresh prosciutto and cut pears, gobs of buffalo mozz and beefsteak tomatoes, and stacks of cut muffalettas greeted us when we walked in. Longneck bottles of Barq’s and Coca-Cola were icing in her old metal cooler, and the smell of seafood, pasta and fresh bread warmed the entire kitchen. Hop and I started going to town, and it wasn’t long before Nate and Lance showed up. Lance couldn’t believe his eyes, and he must have “yes, ma’amed” and “no, ma’amed” Mrs. Ragone a hundred times in between challenging Nate over who could eat the most food.
After we had our fill, we went outside for a short game. We needed to run off our gluttony, and pregame didn’t start until three-thirty, so we had plenty of time. Some other kids from the neighborhood had already gathered in the lot so we ended up with a four-on-four. We had to wait a few minutes for Mark to come out, but it was okay because he was telling Wendy bye, which made everything right in the universe again.
“I pick Nate.” It was my turn to be captain, and although Lance had the potential to be a ringer, Nate was a sure thing.
“Lance,” Hop said.
Dangit. I thought Hop’s loyalty to Mark would force his hand to pick him, but he went for Lance. It was not that Mark was a poor athlete. It’s that Mark had just eaten, and even in his best days he had deceptive speed – he was slower than he looked. I rounded out my team with a tow-headed ninth grader named Randy. He was long and lanky, which I thought might help on the receiving front, but sadly, his coordination had not caught up with his body, and when he ran, he looked like pipe cleaners twisted together. Hop picked two brothers who had played with us before, and the game was on.
First team to get to ten – counting by ones – could claim victory, and we went at it. I would like to say it was an epic performance, culminating in a Hail Mary to give my team the win, but it was nothing even close to that. Between Mark and Randy, we didn’t have a lot of depth, and at the end, Nate and I just couldn’t carry it. Okay, so maybe Nate couldn’t carry it. It’s not like I was a ringer myself. Final score: ten to four, other guys. Only one allegation of cheating and only one almost-fight, so even with a defeat it was a good afternoon. I just hoped the Saints would have a better showing than we did.
We made our way back to Mark’s and sat on the back porch to rehydrate with big stadium cups filled with ice water. Even though it was November, we were hot, sweaty, and starting to stink. Hop and Lance decided to relive their victory and ran some plays in the yard, which gave me and Nate some time to chat.
“Milk Wagon still guarding my treasures?” he asked, not too loud.
“You know it. I haven’t touched them since. Remember, I d
on’t even know I have them, right?”
“Right.”
“You ready to talk about ‘em?”
“Not yet.” Nate took a few gulps and wiped his face with the bottom of his shirt. “Getting close, though.”
“Good. Just let me know. Things better at home?”
Nate looked at me sideways. “Not really. The Doc went totally berserk yesterday morning over something he read in the newspaper. About some lady he knew.”
“Wow.”
“Ever heard of Charlotte Gutherz?”
“No. We don’t get the paper.”
“She was killed this past week, and something about it set him off.”
“Killed? Like murdered?”
“Yeah. Sounds like it.”
“No shit? Another one. How’d your dad know her?”
“Another story for another day. Anyway, when he found out about it, he tore up half the house looking for something.”
“For what?”
“Not sure, but something in the back of my mind tells me I should know. Just not there yet.”
“Any clues?”
Nate nodded his head. “Yeah, one weird one that I can’t figure out. I went in his office yesterday –”
“You’re a brave man.”
“Nah, he wasn’t home. While I was in there, the phone rang, and when I picked it up, the guy on the other end mistook me for my dad. Started saying things like he had warned me in the past, and that we could help each other out.”
“Really?” I sat up. “That’s bizarre stuff, man.”
“Then he said something I can’t figure out at all. He said to ‘check the drop’ and I will understand. Any idea what that could mean?”
“The drop?”
“Yeah? What do you think about that?”
The first thing that came to my mind was the night we saw Nate running. “Could he have meant a drop box?”
“A drop box? I guess, but where would I find a drop box?”
“At your house. When we brought your wallet back, Vicky told us to put it in the drop box.” Nate looked at me like he was confused. “I didn’t know what she was talking about, either, so she directed me kind of over by the mail slot, behind some bushes. Near the gate.”
“Is that where you put it?”
“Yeah, just like she told me.”
“That’s weird. Was she actually out there talking to y’all?”
“Oh no, she was on the intercom. But speaking of weird - your yardman was, though.”
“The yardman was . . . what?”
“Just standing there by the fence. Not saying a word. Like he was staring at us or something. I didn’t even see him until after I put the wallet in. ’Course we were all creeped out anyway that night because, you know, we had just seen you running down the street. I don’t know, maybe looking back, I am overthinking it, but – ”
Nate put his water down and stood up.
“That’s it,” Nate said. “That’s got to be it.” He looked at his watch and grabbed his keys. “I got to go.”
“You sure?”
“Definitely.”
“Okay, but come back if you want to watch the game.”
He gave me a wave and took off, which was a shame, because had he stayed, he would have enjoyed a plate of softshell crabs, a pot of shrimp creole and the best cannoli this side of Sicily.
And, I might add, one heck of a football game.
Chapter 53
The first thing Nate did when he pulled in was to jump out and see if there was, in fact, a drop box hidden behind the azaleas. He worked his way between the shrubs and the bricks, and sure enough, there it was: newly built in to the facing – a bronze square that butted out about two inches on the yard side. He gave the handle a pull, but it didn’t budge. He yanked it again, but it held tight, and when he ran his hand across the top lip, he saw why it was not giving – it was locked. He felt around to see if he could find a key near it in a box or under a rock, but again came up empty handed. He looked over to the house and realized the key would have to come from a different source.
At first he thought Vicky might have one, but he couldn’t recall her ever going out front to do anything but get the paper, and she did that only on the weekends. It would have been highly unusual for Vicky to even step foot out of the golf cart unless she absolutely had to. She was not outdoorsy, and Nate could not ever recall her doing anything remotely related to manual labor, much less pushing her way through branches and wet leaves to check out a glorified mail slot. But according to Matt, she knew about it, and Nate figured his dad must have told her. The Doc was probably the most likely one to have a key, but trying to get it from him was not really a feasible option. The risk just was not worth the reward. If Nate got caught digging around in their bedroom, it would make his prior unauthorized entry into their space seem like a cakewalk.
There was one other option: Carl. The yardman delivered the mail every afternoon from the road to the little table in the foyer. It made sense that he would have been the one to retrieve packages or other things on occasion. Plus, Matt did say Carl was standing there when they dropped the wallet off, which, Nate agreed, was weird.
Nate walked through the house to make sure no one had seen him by the fence, and it didn’t take him long to pick up the chill that still lingered in the air. His dad and Vicky were still not talking. The television was on in the game room, and the Doc looked small sitting by himself in the middle of the big couch. He had come back home late the day before – well after Nate was asleep. When Nate hung around a few seconds in the kitchen after breakfast the next morning pretending he was looking for milk, the bastard acted like nothing happened. Once Nate realized there would be no comment on the house, or even a minimal acknowledgment of Nate’s unsolicited efforts to clean the mess up, he went to his room until it was time to go to Matt’s.
He was beginning to wonder if he was invisible.
Vicky was in the kitchen, telephone in one hand and a glass in the other, blabbing away. Self-medicating was becoming a daily coping routine, and while Nate wanted to feel sad for her, he just couldn’t. He actually preferred her a little blitzed because it meant she would keep to herself. She didn’t notice his arrival, either, so after he took a quick leak, he slipped out to the potting shed.
If Carl had an office, this was it. The potting shed itself looked ancient, and one time Nate heard his dad say it used to be a slave quarters. Several ligustrum trees, a wise old camellia that was probably twelve feet tall, and runners from two established Carolina Jasmines had grown in and around the building so much that it looked organic, but for the panes of glass breaking up the camouflage. Nate always thought it would make a great Hobbit house if the door had been round.
It was not locked, and when he stepped in the little one-roomer, it was dark, dank, and smelled of peat and topsoil. Roughhewn wooden cabinets and countertops skirted two of the walls, and tools hung on imperfect nails that looked hand forged. Two pairs of rubber boots stood guard to the left of the door, and pots of various sizes were stacked in a corner. An industrial stool with a leather seat was tucked under the workshop area, where a treacherous-looking electrical outlet sat next to a plugged-in fan. Nate pulled the chain on the pigtail light and began rummaging through the shed’s two drawers. In them, he found gardening gloves, a Farmer’s Almanac, several empty tobacco pouches, and a bunch of other miscellaneous junk.
He sat down on the stool and looked around. Hanging on the walls was just about everything one would expect to find in such a place. Shears, coffee mugs, clippers, weed-eater spools – all there, but nothing of real interest. A wasp’s nest had survived up near one of the eaves, and he could detect some winged activity up in the shadows. But Nate didn’t see keys anywhere. Not a single one.
The cabinet looked like it hadn’t been opened for decades. Humidi
ty had wedged it so tight that Nate thought he would pull the handle off getting it open. He finally did but found nothing but spider webs and an owner’s manual from a 1970s lawn mower. He shut it back and reassessed his surroundings.
The one shiny thing that drew his eye was a framed 5x7 photo sitting on the countertop. It was a black and white picture of a couple at the beach taken during either the World War II or Korea era. Nate squinted at the picture. She was pretty, and the man was wearing a uniform. Was that Carl? Nate dusted off the glass but still couldn’t get a good look, and when he picked it up, he was greeted with a surprise.
A single key connected by a ring to a patinaed Irish Cross lay there behind it.
Nate squeezed it in his hand and closed his eyes. Could this be it? And if so, did he really want to know what was in the drop box? He took another look at what had to be a picture of Carl in better times and thought about the life Carl had lived that no one knew about – much less asked about. How does one live a life forgotten? What decisions had Carl made that left him living his Golden Years raking leaves and working alone out of a dilapidated building – for a terrible man, no less?
Nate set the photo down. He had already made some choices that had, for the first time ever, put a bright light on his horizon. Call it fate, call it timing, call it divine intervention – whatever it was, it gave him a reason to keep going. No way he would stop now. He had to check that box.
Nate trudged out to the fence, and sure enough, the key was a match. He yanked on the handle, and the box creaked open on its hinge. Inside was a singular unmarked small envelope.
Nate slid it in his pocket, returned the key ring to its rightful place, and eased back into the house and slipped up to his room. After locking his door, he climbed onto his bed and opened the envelope. He blew into it, then peeked inside and took a deep breath.
It was another Polaroid.
“Oh, crap.”
Looking back at him with one eye open was Charlotte Gutherz. Pasty, bloated, gray, and grotesque. It was a near duplicate of the one Ms. Cooper had shown him, but taken from a different angle. Scribbled on the bottom in barely legible handwriting was a message.
The Milk Wagon Page 19