“Not yet,” I replied.
“Do you … do you think you might?”
“Hard to say. There are a lot of unknowns right now.”
“Oh. I thought—I thought you said there’s lots to talk about.”
“There is. I want to talk about some of those unknowns. Let’s talk about your father first.”
“My father?”
“Yes. It’s better if I just get to the point, so I’m sorry if this sounds harsh. Do you know if he does drugs?”
She stared at me. I was waiting for the indignant reaction, the protesting that a man like her father would never do such a thing, but I got a nod instead.
“Yes,” she said.
“Yes, he does drugs?”
“I … I didn’t think so before. But now that I’ve been staying with him, I see him doing lines of coke sometimes. At first I thought maybe he was just doing it because he was so sad I was gone, but … Well, he’s obviously been doing it a while.”
“Where is he getting his drugs?”
“I don’t know. His supply is just about out. He seems pretty worried about it. I overhead him talking to some man on the phone about it and he got very angry. He slammed the phone down.”
“What man?”
“I don’t know!”
“Do you think it’s possible he got his drugs from Tony?”
Now I did get the indignant reaction I’d been expecting. She bolted upright in her chair and glared at me. “Tony! No way! He would never deal drugs. He was too smart to stoop to something like that. I told you, he was a respectable investor.”
“Yes, you did tell me that. Did he do drugs?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“So he did.”
She shrugged. “I saw him snort coke a couple times. Just once or twice.”
“Uh-huh. How about you? Did you join him?”
“No way! I mean, I did weed a few times in college, but I didn’t like that sort of thing.”
“Oh, that’s right, booze is your addiction of choice.”
Her eyes welled up, and she struggled to keep the tears contained. “Why are you being so mean?”
“I’m not trying to be mean. I’m just getting the sense you’re not telling me the whole truth, and it irritates me.”
“I’m telling you everything, I swear!”
“You didn’t tell me about your blood-alcohol level when you crashed. You didn’t tell me your father is a drug addict.”
“He’s not a drug addict!”
“You’re sure?”
“He—he just does it once in a while. To relax. He’s not an addict.”
“Just like you’re not an alcoholic?”
Her lower lip was trembling. I knew I was being hard on her, but I needed some answers. If she was holding out on me, I needed to know. I thought for a moment about telling her what Billie had discovered, that Tony was already dead, just to see her reaction, but it seemed pointless when I didn’t believe it to be true anymore.
“Where is your father getting his drugs?” I pressed again.
“I told you, I don’t know!”
“Did the man he was talking to sound Mexican?”
“I didn’t hear! Maybe. I don’t know.”
“Where was Tony five years ago in November?”
“What? How should I know?”
“He never told you what he was doing back then?”
“He said—he said he was working in New York. At an investment firm. I don’t—I don’t remember the name …”
“Probably because it wasn’t real. I have reason to believe he was in Portland. Did you know your sister Janice was sleeping with Tony?”
“What?”
“You heard me.”
“How could you—how could you say such a—”
“She admitted it,” I said.
This was a lot for her to take in, too much, and I saw her face closing up as if an iron mask had slipped over it. I’d hit her with a barrage of questions, many without even thinking through what I was after, and she was shutting down on me. She looked at me but didn’t see me. She was so still that when the tears dribbled down her face, the movement startled me. I reached for the tissue box on the corner of my desk, then caught myself.
“Nobody loves me,” she whispered.
“Oh, that’s not true,” I said. “Your father loves you very much. Your mother too.”
She laughed derisively. “Right.”
“People are complicated. They can love us and still do mean things to us.”
“If you say so.”
“Look, I’m sorry for coming off so hard. I’m a bit of an asshole sometimes. It’s a fatal condition, I’m afraid, but I do need to try harder to keep the symptoms under control.”
She wiped away the tears. “No, no, you’re the only friend I have right now, Myron. I appreciate you being honest with me. Nobody in my whole life has ever been honest with me. Maybe … Maybe if they had, things wouldn’t have turned out the way they did. Please don’t give up on me. On this, I mean. I need to know who killed me and why. I want the truth. All of it.”
“I’m not giving up,” I said. Briefly, I thought about telling her my own special connection to Tony, since she claimed to want the whole truth, but decided it was an unnecessary complication. There would be a time for it, but not now. “There’s lots more detecting to do. I want to talk to your other sister, Beth. Having a hell of a time getting in touch with her.”
“Her cabin,” Karen said. “She stopped by to visit with Dad yesterday afternoon. She said she was going to her cabin afterward to do some writing. But I don’t know why you should bother. Beth lives in her own little world. Trying to talk to her in any real way is like trying to talk to somebody in outer space. Janice and I can get her to open up a little, but I don’t know anybody else who can.”
I hesitated. What I was going to say was awkward, but I needed to say it anyway. “So you don’t think she could have had an affair with Tony?”
“Jesus. Beth? No.”
“Why not?”
“Have you seen her? She’s not exactly Tony’s type.”
“Uh-huh. You mean she’s not attractive enough?”
“She’s attractive! She’s just … a special kind of attractiveness.”
“Right. Can you tell me how to find her cabin?”
She told me. It was a good hour away, in the foothills of Mount Hood. I had her repeat the directions three times, to make sure I didn’t get lost. I didn’t want to get lost in the forest. I didn’t want to go out there at all, really, but it had to be done.
“I went out there, you know,” Karen said. “She wasn’t there, but I thought maybe he’d be hiding there. Because he knows she doesn’t use it all the time, and she doesn’t rent it out. He wasn’t there.”
“Well, your sister may know something. You never know.”
She shook her head, a bemused look in her eyes. “Beth and Tony. Wouldn’t that be something? And then both my sisters would have betrayed me.”
“Yeah. Well, I better get going. I’ll let you know by SRS if I find out anything meaningful. Otherwise, check back on Friday morning, okay?”
I stood, gathering up my wallet, phone, and other things. She stood as well, but she looked confused and nervous, holding herself tightly, glancing around the room as if she was afraid someone or something was going to jump out at her. I put on my jacket and she watched me, moving slowly to the center of the room. She had kind of a sad-puppy look to her, and I felt bad running out on her so quickly. I tried to think of something comforting to say.
“You’re not alone, okay?” I said. “I know it seems bleak right now, but I’ve seen a lot of ghosts. That first year is always the hardest, no matter how you died.”
Her eyes were wide and bright. I thought she might cry, but instead she took a step closer to me, close enough that she had to lift her chin to look me in the face, close enough that I caught the scent of her floral perfume, magnolias and r
oses.
“I appreciate you,” she said. “I mean, I appreciate everything you’re doing. I want you to know that.”
“Just my job,” I said.
“You’re a good man, Myron.”
“Thank you. I’ll put you in touch with my mother.”
“If only I’d met a man like you. Maybe—maybe things would have been different.”
“Karen—”
“Shh.”
She put a finger up to my lips, and crazy as it was, I could actually feel it there—not as strong as an actual touch, with a bit more of an electric sizzle behind it, but close enough to the real thing that I might have mistaken her for a real person if I didn’t know otherwise.
“You must be very lonely,” she said.
I swallowed, and the lump in my throat felt as a big as a golf ball. “I manage.”
“I know what it’s like to be lonely. I’ve been lonely my entire life.”
“Well …”
“You know,” she said, dropping her voice to a seductive purr, “we could help each other with the loneliness. That’s a problem we can solve, the two of us.”
“Karen, we should really—”
“Let me show you,” she said.
I had been so focused on her eyes—they were hypnotic, that particular shade of green—that I was only barely aware that her hands were working on the sash of her coat. With a shrug of her shoulders and a little shimmy, she slipped out of her trench coat.
And there she was, completely naked except for those red stiletto heels.
It goes without saying that there are plenty of people in the world who look better with their clothes on, even very attractive people, and I would have wagered good money before she stripped bare that Karen would be one of them because it was hard to imagine her looking more beautiful, but I was surprised again. Kate Upton, Bo Derrick, Rita Hayworth—take your pick of pinup girl from any generation, and I doubted they would have looked any better naked next to Karen Thorne. It wasn’t just the full, supple breasts, the womanly hips, or the taut calves; it was the way it all fit together, all those slopes and curves in between, the way it all worked together as one thing, like a well-designed city.
“Well, what do you think?” she asked.
“I’m trying not to,” I said.
“Think?”
“Look,” I said.
“Ah. Don’t worry about that. I’m not shy.”
“It’s not you I’m worried about. Why don’t you put your trench coat back on?”
“I have a better idea,” she said. “Why don’t you take off your pants?”
Before I could reply, Billie stepped through the door into the room.
Everybody did their best audition for a mime parade, freezing in place, facial expressions exaggerated to comical effect. It was one of those moments when life too perfectly matches a sitcom for anyone to actually believe it happened—even if it wasn’t really happening, not to anyone else but me. If anyone else walked in, they’d only see my shocked and vaguely guilty expression, and not the shocked and strangely bemused expression on my wife’s face or the shocked and highly embarrassed expression on Karen’s. They’d wonder why I was acting so crazy, which, of course, was how people looked at me most of the time these days. It would only be more so.
Billie was wearing her white gi with the green belt fastened tight, what she wore to her Kempo practices, which she often went to on Mondays. It only added to the strangeness of the moment.
“Oh no,” Karen choked.
“Well,” Billie said, having no trouble really giving the naked woman in front of her a scrutinizing look up and down, “if I’d known you were going to be here today in your birthday suit, I would have brought a drawing pad. I need to brush up on my nudes.”
She was grinning. I’d expected some kind of outraged explosion out of Billie, or at least some hint of jealousy, and I was oddly disappointed by its absence. Poor Karen’s husky confidence disappeared in an instant, and she blushed the mother of all blushes, a real whopper that exploded bright red in her cheeks, spread down her neck, and went even lower, much lower. I’d never known someone could blush that low until I saw it happen.
“Maybe you should put on that trench coat now,” I whispered to her.
“Oh,” she said, and snatched up her coat. She struggled with it, having a hard time getting her arms in the right places. “Oh dear. I’ve got to … I’ve got to go.”
“I’ll bet,” Billie said.
Karen finally got the darn thing on—I have to admit, I felt a fair amount of disappointment—and was hustling toward the door when Billie put up a hand, stopping her abruptly. There wasn’t a drop of rage in Billie’s hands, but Karen still looked like she was afraid Billie was going to strangle her.
“Please,” she said in a tiny voice.
“It’s okay,” Billie said. “I know you’re in a vulnerable place. You just got some bad news, after all.”
Karen blinked rapidly. “Bad news?”
“Well, of course. About your husband being … well, you know.”
When Karen only offered still more blinking in reply, both women looked at me.
“You didn’t tell her?” Billie asked.
“Tell me what?” Karen said.
“Not time yet,” I said.
Billie, who’d shown little sign of anger at catching me with a naked woman in my office, now crossed her arms and glowered at me.
“Oh really?” she said.
“Will somebody please tell me what’s going on?” Karen said.
I looked at Karen, and in my sternest voice, channeling some of the anger I was feeling toward Billie, I said, “There’s nothing going on. I will be in touch when there is. Leave now.”
That was all the encouragement Karen needed. Meekly, she made her exit, leaving me and Billie and a lot of tension filling the air between us. She was crossing her arms, glaring. I joined her in the effort. As if on cue, a deep, gravelly baritone started belting out some kind of Indian folk song down the hall.
“What the hell is going on?” she said. “Why didn’t you tell her?”
I knew I had to choose my words carefully, so she wouldn’t just disappear for three days this time. “I’m just waiting for all the information to come in,” I said.
“What information, Myron? It’s over! Tony Neuman is dead!”
“I know you said that.”
“I said that? What’s that supposed to mean? “
“Billie—”
“Are you saying I’m lying?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. There’s only one reason you didn’t tell Karen her husband is dead, and it’s because you think I lied to you about what I found out at Manuel Loretto’s. You don’t trust me. You think I’m lying.”
“Well, did you?” I shot back.
“What reason would I possibly have to lie? I’m on your side.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“Can’t you just trust me on this?”
“Still no answer. Did you lie to me?”
“I don’t believe this!”
“Did you?”
“I’m done! I’m done with this!”
“Did you lie, Billie? Did you lie to me?”
“Yes!” she screamed. “And this time it was for a good reason!”
It was as if an F-15 had flown low overhead, leaving a sonic boom in its wake. Whether the sound of her shout was real in the literal sense or not, I still felt its vibrations in the floorboards and in the walls and in every piece of furniture and junk that filled my little office. She was glaring and breathing hard, her face coated in a sheen of sweat. I was so dumfounded that it took me a few seconds to get out any words.
“What do you mean, this time?” I said. “When—when did you lie before? Is that priest involved in this somehow? Does he know something bad’s going to happen to me?”
“Myron,” she said, rubbing her temples.
“Is it som
ething else? Is it about why you killed yourself? We’ve never really talked about it. Answer me, damn it!”
Now it was me who was shouting, and my voice boomed even louder. She shook her head and closed her eyes, standing like that for a few long seconds, then turned and abruptly walked out of the room. She was gone so quickly that I couldn’t even tell her to stop. I wasn’t ready to let it go at that, the fear and anger coursing through me in equal measure, so I stormed to the door and threw it open.
She was gone.
There was, however, someone else in the narrow hall, a tiny Indian man dressed in a simple brown cloak. He was approaching from the church door on the right, bare feet on the threadbare brown carpet, and I saw other similarly dressed people of various nationalities watching from the doorway. The tips of his fingers clasped in the sign of prayer, the man bowed slightly.
“Greetings, brother,” he said. “Would you mind keeping it down a bit? We’re trying to sing a few hymns, you see.”
Chapter 22
The money was hidden in a grove of pin oaks at the edge of a farmer’s field in Woodburn. I traipsed through the tall grass under the setting sun, Billie and Antonia beside me, the headache that had been hounding me for days finally fading under the welcome arrival of a cool breeze. It was the first glimpse of cooler weather I’d seen in weeks. The first few days of July had brought with it a merciless heat wave, and the heat, as I’d learned over the past two years, was one of the triggers that brought on the headaches. The throbbing in my skull had been with me so long that I’d almost forgotten what it was like without it.
“Just up there, by a big stump,” Antonia said.
She was dressed in the same outfit as when I’d met her six weeks earlier, the simple blue dress and the white headscarf. Billie wore skintight black shorts, a sleeveless black T-shirt, and Birkenstocks. The grass sliced at my bare arms and crunched under my shoes, but it did not bend in the slightest to Billie and Antonia. As annoying as the grass was, I found myself wishing the whole world was covered in tall grass. It would make it much easier for me to tell the ghosts apart.
Fully within the trees, the grass was thinner, festooned with weeds and exposed roots, all of it dappled with the shadows of oaks in full dress. The shadows shimmered and shifted in response to the breeze. I heard the whinny of a horse far off in the distance, but otherwise a reverent silence hung over the grove. In the old days, before the shooting, it was just the kind of place I would have come to on my own, and stayed a while. There weren’t even any ghosts around, except for the two I’d brought with me.
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