Wayward

by Gregory Ashe

  From the other end of the call, nothing. Hazard listened to the hiss of the minivan’s heater.

  “Are you ok?” Somers finally asked.

  “Of course. How’s your hand?”

  “Fine. I mean, the burns actually weren’t that bad. I was just, um. Scared. Kind of. Startled. I don’t know. I overreacted.”

  “Did they blister?”

  “Just one.”

  “Are you putting lidocaine on them?”

  “That’s the name of the stuff. I couldn’t remember it, and I asked Dulac and he wasn’t any help.”

  “We’ve got some at the house if you want to pick it up.”

  In the quiet that followed, a Mack truck barreled towards Hazard, headlights blooming into a migraine. Then the truck rattled past with a whoosh of wet spring air, and Hazard blinked at the red-gold dusk that lit the asphalt in pommels through the clouds.

  And because Emery Hazard was a fucking idiot and knew he was a fucking idiot, he said into that silence, “Or I could meet you for dinner.”

  “I told my father I’d help him with something.”

  Hazard swallowed and set his jaw. “Yeah, of course. Your dad comes first.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “No, of course not. Why the fuck would anything in my life be simple? Why would I think it’d be so fucking simple that I could, I don’t know, live with my fiancé? And if that’s too much to ask, why can’t I have a fucking meal with him? Because two faggots having dinner might mess up the election?”

  “Look, you have every right to be mad at me, but I just want—”

  “You want something? Great, Somers.” He heard the change, heard the name he hadn’t used in months, and didn’t want to call it back. “Here’s how I feel about what you fucking want.”

  And then he jabbed the screen until the call ended.

  The phone rang again. Hazard dismissed the call. It rang again. He dismissed it. On the third time, Hazard roared and chucked the phone down into the passenger footwell, and then he pulled the minivan to the side of the road and curled up over the steering wheel. A Ford pulling a horse trailer whipped past, the air from its passage rocking the car, and it was like dominos. Hazard started crying, thirty seconds, then a full minute, and then anger overpowered the tears and he cobbled together a semblance of self-control and pulled back onto the highway.

  Fine. Somers wasn’t going to live with him. Somers wasn’t going to eat with him. Christ, in another six hours, Somers probably wouldn’t even want to talk to him. So think about it rationally, Hazard told himself. You can’t change what he’s doing, so think about it instead of just being a blubbering fuck.

  Advantages. What was the upside of Somers being gone?

  No more blanket hog. That was a fucking advantage. No more SportsCenter on Saturdays. Major fucking advantage. No more suggestions-disguised-as-questions about dinner. Don’t you think it’d be good to have Italian tonight? No, Hazard very much didn’t fucking think that, which was why he had already made a fucking pot roast that night.

  The chain of thoughts ran along like that, and now Hazard was driving faster. He hit Wahredua twenty minutes later, but he didn’t follow the network of neighborhood streets to their Arts-and-Crafts home near the center of town. Instead, he went to Riverside Burgers, on Market Street. Lots of cops ate here. Lots of people in town ate here. It was close to the government complex, and even closer to the police station. If Glenn Somerset wanted the whole world to believe that Somers had dumped Hazard’s ass, then Hazard didn’t mind giving it to him.

  Inside, he ordered the garlic-and-gorgonzola burger, with extra raw red onions. Because who the fuck was going to complain?

  Sure enough, people that Hazard knew came through the restaurant: Carol Van Sant, with her brood of eight kids howling and going through the place like a pack of hyenas; Velva Davis, eighty years old if she was a day, who had taught Hazard Honors English in ninth grade and then, when he was a junior, Honors Survey of American Literature; AA Bennett—Alfie Allen, but he walked around flipping his ten-year chip, practically begging for the nickname; and then, at the end, Patrick Foley and his wife Mary Margaret, all five of their kids zooming around them like pinballs launched hard.

  Foley was a cop, and he was on more or less permanent leave until, Hazard guessed, the city’s balls dropped and they fired him, union be damned. He’d been shot a few months ago, and he wasn’t looking too bad, although he still hadn’t put on all the weight he’d lost. Hazard didn’t dislike Foley, not any more than he disliked most people, but he didn’t have patience for idiots. Especially not idiots who were accessories after the fact.

  The big, redheaded guy spotted Hazard the moment he entered the restaurant. He looked like he might come over, and then Mary Margaret, who was dime sized next to her husband, touched Foley’s arm, and he nodded and followed her to the register. The Foley kids had somehow reactivated the Van Sant brood, and now thirteen kids ricocheted through Riverside Burger’s small dining room. Hazard thought maybe it was the parenting equivalent of Boyle’s Law: cram kids into a small space, and watch the pressure shoot through the roof.

  After Foley and his wife had ordered, they took over a pair of booths. Foley said something to his wife; she shook her head, but he got up anyway and came over toward Hazard. Hazard wiped his hands and shook out a few more fries onto his tray—yes, the super-size fries, since nobody was around to bitch about his weight.

  “Hey,” Foley said.

  Hazard nodded.

  The redhead rubbed the back of his neck. “Just wanted to tell you I’m sorry, man. Heard about you and Somers. That sucks.”

  “Heard what?”

  Foley blinked and fanned the air. “That’s some ferocious garlic breath. What the hell’s on that burger?”

  “Heard what, Foley?”

  “Ah, you know.” He pointed to the empty seat across from Hazard, as though that explained everything.

  “If I knew, I wouldn’t be asking.”

  “And I just wanted to say, no hard feelings.”

  “No hard feelings about what?”

  Foley shook his head, a fake grin plastered on his face. “I’ll let you eat.”

  “No. You ‘just wanted to say’ you were sorry ten seconds ago. Now you ‘just want to say’ no hard feelings. Which one is it?”

  A Foley kid—you could tell by the coppery hair—hurtled past them, screaming.

  “Both, I guess,” Foley said.

  Grabbing the container of fries, Hazard picked up his tray and got to his feet. “Foley?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Fuck you. Fuck your sorry. Fuck your hard feelings.”

  The area immediately around Hazard had gone silent; on the far side of the dining room, one of the Van Sant boys, approximately three years old, was trying to yodel until Carol Van Sant clapped a hand over his mouth.

  “Everybody have a great dinner,” Hazard said, tossing his tray onto the stack near the trash cans.

  Before the door to Riverside Burgers had swung shut behind him, the restaurant exploded into conversation. He got into the minivan, popping fries into his mouth two at a time, and drove to the parking lot of a strip mall: Dollar General; Lady Liberty Tax Loans – TAX REFUND ADVANCE ON OUR DIME – DON’T WAIT; a holistic healer and supplement store with KRILL OIL KILLS ASK ME TODAY HOW TO SAVE OUR LITTLE BROTHERS AND SISTERS soaped in the windows, the letters getting smaller and smaller as the writer must have realized that space was running out.

  Something was buzzing. It took Hazard a moment to remember the phone he had hurled into the passenger footwell. Now he stretched to fish it out. The screen was bright with Somers’s name. Hazard accepted the call but didn’t say anything.

  “I hear there was an incident at Riverside Burgers,” Somers said casually.

  “Christ, I hate small towns. Stop calling me. I am really fucking mad at you.”

  And Hazard disconnected. But he k
ept thinking about Somers, about how stupid this charade was—and, even worse, how it seemed to be working. Somers had been out of the house less than twenty-four hours, and already dumbasses like Foley were lapping up the gossip that Somers and Hazard had split. What was going to be next? Maybe Somers would take Evie on a playdate in the park, and Cora would meet them there, and a photographer would just happen to be standing by to snap a few candids of the happy, traditional family: white, middle-class, attractive. And, of course, Hazard wouldn’t be allowed anywhere near Evie until the election was over. Two weeks without seeing—

  His daughter? Was he still allowed to call her that?

  Squished fries oozed out between Hazard’s fingers, and he blew out a breath and relaxed his hand. He found a wipe, cleaned up his hands, and walked the ruined fries and their flattened cardboard to a trash can. If he kept thinking about Somers and this fucking debacle, he was going to break something for real, and he’d been on a really good streak lately, hadn’t broken anything since he’d burned himself on the grill and decided to ‘even out’ the rim with a ball peen hammer.

  So, instead, he decided to think about the case. The one he was being paid to do, and not the job that Glenn Somerset had given him.

  Nobody had seen Donna May Plenge in Columbia. Not in six months. That didn’t necessarily mean anything; it was possible that Donna May had gone to Columbia and found a new group. But Hazard was a good detective, and he’d checked the most likely places. On top of that, he knew that most people were creatures of habit. It was possible Donna May had gone to Columbia and not gotten in touch with any of her old crowd—in the same way it was possible that she had hopped a bus to Poughkeepsie, or even just to Kansas City—but it was unlikely. For years, she’d been running away from Wahredua to Columbia, one of Missouri’s few blue dots. Why change her pattern now?

  The problem was that something had changed. Hazard just didn’t know what. Courtney had given him some information, but Courtney clearly had strong feelings about Donna May—strong, negative feelings. Hazard wanted to talk to the other people who knew Donna May and, maybe more importantly, had seen her the night before she disappeared: Josh Dobbs, Daniel Minor, and Therapist Melissa. A safe bet was that the therapist wouldn’t tell Hazard anything, which he understood as a form of protecting client confidentiality and privacy, even though it was a real fucking nuisance. That left the two men: Josh and Daniel. Hazard briefly considered calling Somers; his fiancé had been in the Vegas’ trailer the day before, and he might have seen or heard something to clue him in on Donna May’s location. Then Hazard decided he’d rather talk to the krill lady about how to save their little brothers and sisters.

  Josh Dobbs. That’s who Hazard wanted to talk to first. Josh had been romantically involved with Donna May, on and off, for at least three years. He probably knew her better than anyone else outside the immediate family. Maybe even better than they did, in some ways. And, although Hazard didn’t like it, the cop part of his brain had started to wake up. Donna May Plenge was missing, at least as far as Hazard was concerned, and when someone went missing, it was always smart to look at sexual partners first.

  Checking the address that Courtney had given him, Hazard realized that Josh lived at the edge of the city limits, in a new development—well, new meaning the last ten years or so—of expensive homes that fronted Moulton Lake. It was an expensive place to live, even more so considering the relatively low cost of homes and apartments in small-town Missouri. Hazard’s first guess was that Josh lived with his parents. Twenty-five years old and still living with his parents; for Hazard, that was right up with the krill lady or, at that particular moment, a phone call to his fiancé.

  But the thought of parents settled in Hazard’s gut, a guilty barb that made him call his mom as he drove toward Moulton Estates.

  “Hello, sweetheart,” his mother answered in a bright voice. “How’s my special guy today?”

  “Mom.”

  “What’s up, bunny?”

  “Just checking on Dad.”

  “Oh, you know your father.”

  “Unfortunately. That’s not what I meant, though.”

  “Well, we’re still in the hospital. I’m doing my needlepoint, and your father’s watching—is that Magnum, Frank? He’s watching Magnum PI. They show the re-runs.”

  “What did the doctors say?”

  “Oh, bunny. Hold on. Frank—” And then whatever she asked Hazard’s father was lost as she pulled the phone away. “I’ll let your father—well, somebody has to tell him, dear, and I really think—just hold on, bunny, one second—Francis Hazard, you need to—” With a sound of exasperation, Hazard’s mother came back to the call. “Your father’s not really feeling up to talking.”

  “Fine. Great. I am literally never feeling up to talking. I just want to know what the doctors said.”

  “Well, it’s not good, dear.”

  “He’s got cancer, Mom. I know it’s not good.”

  “Hold on. Bunny, the nurse is here. I’ll have to call you later. Oh, wait. June Louise called me. She said something about you and John-Henry—” She always said his name like she was testing thin ice. “—and a huge fight at Riverside Burgers.”

  “For the love of—it’s nothing, Mom.”

  “Nobody expects you two to be perfect, bunny. It’s ok to have a little squabble.”

  Groaning, Hazard said, “I’ve got to get back to work. I really need to go.”

  “But I really don’t think Riverside Burgers is the place for that kind of thing. Always do it in private. Behind closed doors.”

  “I’m hanging up now.”

  “And if John-Henry really is going to move out—”

  Hazard disconnected the call. He rolled down the window; spring air whipped him, wet and smelling like a thunderstorm and gravel and a whiff of corruption, gone almost as soon as Hazard noticed. He thought about throwing the phone out the window. He thought about driving until the gas ran out and, after that, walking. He thought maybe Donna May Plenge had been on to something, running away from family and boyfriend, just for a moment’s peace. But after a minute of tasting spring, the breeze tangling his long, dark hair, Hazard buzzed the window back up and kept driving.

  Moulton Estates wasn’t a gated community, although it was clearly one step away: the entrance to the neighborhood was marked by a low brick wall and a kind of gatekeeper’s cottage with mullioned glass and an electric light probably meant to look like a lamp. A nudge maybe. A little encouragement. If you’re thinking this is the place where you can ring a bell and somebody’ll bring you the newspaper with your breakfast, it seemed to say, you’re not far off. The little affectations of the upper middle class; Hazard saw them all the time.

  Land was cheap in Wahredua, and these houses with their lakefront lots had been built on several acres, with windbreak trees planted along property lines: cedar and cypress, juniper and spruce and pine. It was all part of the same illusion, complete with the long drives, the colonial brick façades, the eight-car garages and, down toward the lake, the boathouses. Welcome to my private estate. Missouri’s own little Downton Abbey, only ten minutes from the Walmart.

  The Dobbs house fit the mold. It might have been a little bigger than the others; it might have had a bigger boathouse down near the lake. The bumblebee-yellow Corvette in the driveway was a nice touch, but what really sold Hazard on the place was the forest of picket signs in the yard: AMERICA FOR AMERICANS was among the most prominent, followed by NAOMI MALSHO FOR MAYOR - KEEP HER ON THE JOB, but the Dobbs family had sprinkled a few others into the mix, like I’M A CONSERVATIVE – MY TAXES PAY YOUR WELFARE and SECURE BORDERS? THEN HOW’D YOU GET HERE? And, sun-bleached and posted near the back, confusingly in Hazard’s opinion: NO OIL FOR PACIFISTS.

  Charming, he thought as he pulled into the drive. Did they keep the bonfire for burning faggots in the back?

  He got out of the car and went up to the front door. Before he could raise
his hand to knock, the door opened, spilling a yellow flood of light across Hazard’s legs. A man and a woman stood there, kissing passionately. The man had his hand up the woman’s blouse, and if what he was doing felt anything like how it looked, the woman probably wondered if she was making out with a pair of pliers. The man was obviously Josh Dobbs, blond hair unmistakable under the backwards Cardinals cap, the collars on his layered golf shirts popped. The woman, though, Hazard didn’t recognize at first; it was the hair that threw him off. Therapist Melissa had buzzed the sides and back of her head and chopped her hair back to a pixie cut, now dyed dirty blond. Hazard opened his mouth to announce himself, but Josh saw him first.

  “What the hell?” Josh shouted, pulling back from Melissa, yanking his hand out from its former job of vigorous boob pinching. He stumbled back into the house, putting the heavy door between him and Hazard and peering out. “Holy shit, man. What the hell?”

  Melissa had startled too, but most of her anger and attention was turned at Josh, and she kept eyeing the space between them.

  “If you’re considering the benefits of a mate who just abandoned you to get himself to safety,” Hazard said to her, “you’re probably just better off finding somebody else.”

  Melissa’s whole body tightened. She was average height for a woman, and she had to look up to meet Hazard’s eyes as she turned toward him.

  “Who are you?” she said.

  “Emery Hazard. I’m a private investigator. Who are you?”

  Hazard liked asking questions he already knew the answer to; it was a good way to check if someone was lying.

  “I don’t think it’s any of your business,” Melissa said, giving Josh a flat look over her shoulder. “Close the door. Don’t talk to this man.”

  “You could do that,” Hazard said, “but I’ll come back tomorrow. And the day after that. I’ll find where you work. I’ll catch you when you go out for brunch.”

  “That’s stalking,” Melissa said. “And harassment.”

  “Sure,” Hazard said. “Take me to court.”