If only Fitz would give me the same courtesy.
“You just gonna sit around, little sister?”
I can all but feel him prod my shoulders.
“Get out there!”
And do what? I don’t dare say out loud.
I recall the dry mouth and wooziness from the antipsychotic cocktail they gave me in psych hold as the SUV continues toward the hospital. A block farther is the New Mortuary, but there’s no one there to transport. In the days since the Swarthmore driver took Mrs. Crandall, three preplanning clients have decided to move their business to a funeral home that doesn’t lose decedents. Even with the hummingbird energy of Wanda working damage control, the New Mortuary feels hollow and fragile. And the Old Mortuary—it’s so hard to be there I almost called Jeremy last night and asked if I could stay with him. I didn’t want to bother Barb, who’s been grading her midterms between curriculum meetings. Instead, I read Isabel Allende and drank Carménère from a sippy cup.
“Excuse me, Miss Dulac?”
A figure has appeared next to the table, as vague as the watercolors of alpine meadows—this month’s featured artwork—on the café walls. I blink, expecting her to melt away like the specter of the girl at the crossroad. Instead, she gathers form—not some phantom, but an ordinary girl in shorts and sandals and a sleeveless white blouse. Her raven hair is pulled back from her face, her brown arms are clasped over her breasts.
Paulette Soucie.
“May I sit down?”
A slick of perspiration gleams on her cheeks and forehead. Her nervous eyes drop to my chest, and a line forms between her eyebrows. I look down and see I’m wearing my “I ♥ Dead People” T-shirt.
“I mean, if you’re not busy …?”
I give her the chance to remember she has somewhere else to be. Instead, she looks at my chest again, and a ghost smile steals across her lips.
“Sure.”
Her eyes flicker with gratitude as she drops into the chair across from me. “I’m not supposed to talk to you.”
“Oh?” I suppress a laugh. “According to who?”
“Way to put the poor girl on the spot, Mellie.”
I wave my hand as if I’m shooing a fly away. Paulette, perhaps entangled in her own thought, doesn’t notice.
I know the feeling. I’ve been like a moth bouncing between porch lights. Old Mortuary to New, out to Crestview, and back again. The moments I’ve spent with Uncle Rémy feel the most worthwhile, but Aunt Elodie isn’t eager to share him for long. Wanda has nothing for me to do. The Old Mortuary is an empty tomb. Cuppa Jo is as good as anywhere, I guess. But I didn’t ask for company.
“I, um …” Paulette lets out a heavy breath. “I’m sorry about Landry the other night.”
A huff pushes between my teeth. “It’s not on you to apologize for him.”
“He just gets very emotional,” she continues, as if she didn’t hear me. “He was upset for days after what happened at the crossroad.”
“I’m more worried about you.”
“I’m fine.”
My face must betray my skepticism.
“People at school say I’m lucky he’ll have me.” There’s a tremor in her voice. “There are prettier girls.”
Paulette is lovely, with a round, open face and large, kind eyes. Far too kind for the likes of Landry. I remember her desolate gaze when she sat up in the back of his pickup. “Then let one of them put up with him.” Not that I’d wish Landry on anyone.
“I wish it was that easy.” Tears well up in her eyes. “You don’t know what it’s like.”
I open my mouth, but she’s right. I don’t. Not for her, not for anyone. When I was in high school, the other kids all kept their distance. My first boyfriend, if you can call him that, was some guy whose mother made him help me carry my things when I moved into the frosh dorm at UMass. Awkward and anxious, after she left he made some excuse and fled. I was used to being alone. But Grandma Mae said college was a chance for a fresh start, to try new things. So during the dorm mixer, I let him lead me into an unoccupied study carrel, where I learned the one way I like being touched. He avoided me the rest of the term, but there would be other boys and girls. Girl.
Paulette dabs at her eyes and laughs a little. “You must think I’m stupid.”
Without prompting, Joanne sets an iced coffee on the table. Paulette gives her a grateful smile and takes a quick sip. The ice in my own glass has melted, leaving me with watery, beige-flavored fluid. “What I think is that Landry’s an asshole.”
“Sometimes, sure.”
“And I think you deserve better.”
“My mother says I’m a slut.” She exhales heavily as she speaks, as if each word has tangible weight. “She says I got what I deserved for drinking.”
In the park across the street, a pair of blackbirds fight over a hotdog bun. Cars pass, idlers on foot. Here in the café, two guys in coveralls conspire over a chessboard. At the next table, a white-haired woman drinks hot tea and thumbs through a puzzle book. Beyond her, a young Latino couple discusses life insurance with a man who looks like he sells jewelry on TV.
“I didn’t want to lie.” Paulette lets out what sounds like a dying breath. “My mother said—”
“To hell with your mother. She should be looking out for you, not making excuses for a piece of shit like Landry.”
I regret the words the instant they spill from my lips. Around us, the café goes quiet. Even if Paulette doesn’t know these people personally, they may know her. She was on the homepage of the Samuelton Ledger, after all, with the golden boy of Barlow Consolidated High School.
“Paulette, listen. I shouldn’t have—”
“It’s okay. I understand.” She edges forward on her seat. “The thing is, I don’t want to be the girl you brought back from the crossroad.” She wipes her eyes and shakes her head again. “I appreciate what you tried to do, but it’s enough.”
Aside from pulling her out of that truck bed, I haven’t done anything. I wish Helene were here. She’s so much better at this. “Paulette—”
“Please. You’ve done enough.”
Helene used to say the reason most women don’t report assaults is because it takes a bad situation and makes it worse. I never quite understood that, but Paulette’s stricken face brings it home in ways Helene never could.
“Sure, okay.” I still want to punch Landry in the dick.
Her ghost smile returns for a fleeting instant. “That’s not why I wanted to talk to you anyway.” She glances down at her hands, fingers tangled in knots on the table. I can’t tell if she’s still thinking about Landry or is chewing on some new trouble.
“What is it?”
“Probably nothing—”
A shadow falls across us from outside and we both turn. A half-familiar figure fills the window frame, and Paulette jumps to her feet, hip checking the table. Tepid iced coffee splashes onto the tabletop. “Sorry. I have to go.”
“Paulette?”
With a jangle of bells and a sudden slam, she’s out the door. I race to follow, but when I yank the door open, a fog of stale tobacco envelops me.
Quince Kinsrow looms before me. He does a double take, his eyes popping like a cartoon animal. “Mel! Just the lady I was looking—”
“Not now.”
Paulette is dashing into the street. I try to push past Quince, but he fills the doorway, arms akimbo, a scarecrow posing as a bouncer. I’m left to watch helplessly as Paulette climbs into a familiar yellow pickup. Behind the wheel, Landry scowls, then punches the gas and peels away.
FOURTEEN
Roman Orator
I’d like to drown Quince in embalming fluid. Maybe I say so out loud.
“Calm down, Spooky.” He elbows past me into the café, his bony arms sticking out like a pair of worn ax handles. His terra cotta face has a two-day growth of white, wiry whiskers and wrinkles as deep as the river gorges he likes to fish. “Nice shirt, by the way.”
I roll my eyes
. His shirt looks like a wad of filthy rags strung together with fishing line.
“Miss me?”
“Somehow I’ve managed.”
That gets a chuckle out of him. He goes to the counter and orders a coffee, black. Joanne asks if he wants it iced, and he laughs again. It sounds like a joke they share, though I’m not sure what’s so funny. When she hands him his steaming mug, he takes a noisy slurp, then sets it on the counter and turns to face the café.
“You’ll never guess where I been all afternoon.”
He may be talking to me, but he directs his words to the room. Sudoku lady purses her lips while the chess players and the insurance agent look on with amused expressions. They’ve all seen this show before.
Quince draws himself up, hand extended like a Roman orator. He speaks in the sonorous drawl I’d never heard until I came to the high desert. “I was just at the sheriff’s. Can you believe Omar Duniway pulled me over up on Shatter Hill? Since when do they speed-trap the Trout Rot Bridge is what I wanna know?”
When I came to Barlow, Quince “mentored” me—his word—by standing around for hours sharing mortuary horror stories while I cleaned gear or moved decedents. He’s been with Bouton since before Uncle Rémy took over from his father, fifty years or more. Still, while he may be older than dirt, when he bothers to work, he can lift a body twice his own weight without breaking a sweat.
“Turns out it weren’t no speed trap.”
I look helplessly at Joanne, who gazes back with pointed indifference. She’s witnessed enough of these little performances to know all you can do is ride it out. For all his ridiculous declaiming, Quince is always building up to something.
“The bastard was actually looking for me. Can you believe that?”
Outside, the black Excursion returns, headed back toward the highway. It must be picking up the dead boy. Nathan Harper has been in the hospital morgue for the last two days. Under normal circumstances, the hospital would release the body to us, and we’d hold it until disposition. Not this time.
“Turns out he wanted to know where I was Tuesday night.”
Kendrick Pride, I assume, is leaving with Nathan—if he hasn’t gone already. I wonder what’s become of the bullet casings.
“Apparently, he wanted to make sure I wasn’t doing a little freelance undertaking.” That’s worth a belly laugh. “But all I was undertaking was a determined effort to hook me a rainbow.”
“So you’re a leprechaun?”
He ignores me. “Crazy what happened, though.” He throws his shoulders up in an exaggerated shrug. “But don’t you worry, Spooky. This isn’t the worst thing that ever happened at Bouton’s, not by a long shot.” He starts a story about a family feud boiling over at the funeral of some old Barlow patriarch. Gunfire in the Old Mortuary chapel, a brawl that spilled out the front doors and into the cemetery itself.
His piercing drawl is giving me a headache. “Quince, is there a point to all this?”
“Don’t you wanna know the rest?”
“You didn’t come here to discuss trout or tell some overblown yarn about a fight that never actually happened.” Uncle Rémy hosted the funeral in question and told me the real story. Tensions were high, he admitted, but the brawl consisted of the estranged granddaughter of the deceased puking Boone’s Farm into the casket, followed by her grandmother clocking her over the head with her walnut cane. Uncle calmed the frayed feelings of the bereaved and closed the casket. The funeral proceeded without further incident.
“Christ on a cracker. You know how to sting a man.” When Quince’s pout fails to move me, he adds, “In any event, when he finished with me, Omar mentioned he had some questions for you.”
“Questions? What questions?”
“How should I know?” His face crumples into an expression somewhere between bafflement and mirth. “Why?”
His tone makes clear he knows why.
“What did you say to him?”
“Me?” He throws up his hands in mock innocence. “Why do you think I said anything?”
“You never stop talking.”
“He wanted to know where you were is all.”
“What does that mean? He knows where I was.” Unless, for some reason, he doesn’t believe me. Alarm bells sound in my head. “What did you say to him?”
The others in the café have grown rapt with attention. Even the old lady has quit pretending to work on her puzzles. In the sudden quiet, the fluorescents sound like a bone saw.
“Just that I saw the van up at the Old Mortuary when I drove by Wednesday sunup.”
Jesus. I can only draw a ragged breath.
“Criminy, Mel. What?”
“You did not see the van.” The Stiff was parked outside the back door at the New Mortuary—thirteen miles from Shatter Hill. “You must have seen the hearse.”
“You think I don’t the know the difference between the hearse and the van?” He blows air dismissively. “Do I gotta remind you who slung bodies before you showed up?”
No, Quince. You do not. I know who’s the outsider here. Everyone is staring, this roomful of strangers. Of course they’ve heard—stolen bodies, the Bouton retort filled with ash. I’m sure the drama has been discussed and dissected many times over, rumor and innuendo stirred into fragmentary knowledge. Now Quince has dropped a salacious piece of misinformation into the overcooked stew.
“That Dulac girl was up at the Old Mortuary the whole time, right when the bodies were being cremated,” I can imagine him saying.
Even Joanne, usually friendly if not exactly a friend, looks on with new misgiving.
“What was I supposed to do, Mel?”
“Try telling the truth for once, asshole.”
I bang through the jangling door. Without pausing, I cross the street and pass under the trees. The park offers no refuge. The dry fountain is a looming reminder of Landry and his friends, of their jokes about the necrophiliac who sees ghosts. As if in confirmation of what everyone believes—that I’m crazy—Fitz’s voice buzzes in my head.
“Melisende!”
I don’t know where to go. Maybe I should walk straight into the chief deputy’s office. Call Quince on his bullshit before it calcifies into settled fact in Duniway’s head. But if I go barging in there full of fury, he’ll give me the hysterical-girl treatment, maybe even arrest me on the spot. I glance in the direction of the Whistle Pig. Barb would help me think things through. But it’s still early, even for a Friday.
“Mellie, look.”
Off to my left, across the street, Duniway walks toward his SUV, parked in an angled space in front of the Barlow Building. He pauses when someone calls to him from the top of the steps. That side of the park has no trees. All Duniway has to do is turn around.
And then what?
“Just tell him Quince was mistaken.”
“Like he’ll believe me over the man he’s known for a hundred years.”
I circle behind the fountain, my shoulders hunched up around my ears. After darting between a couple of parked cars, I jaywalk to the far sidewalk. Looking back to see if I’ve been spotted, I manage to collide with someone rounding the corner.
“Oh, hi, Mel. I didn’t see you.”
I find myself faced with a half-familiar woman in scrubs.
“How are you?” she asks.
The nurse. From the maternity ward. “Oh, hi, Dan—” Wait. Not the maternity ward. The other sister. Morgue tech. “—Danae. Yeah, I’m okay.” We’re steps from the entrance of Dailie’s Grille. Behind me, the chief deputy looms like a thunderhead.
“Say, you want to grab a drink?” My voice sounds shrill inside my head.
“Uh—”
“I’ve had a week and then some.” I edge toward Dailie’s Grille and attempt a grin that probably comes off as a grimace.
She looks like she’d rather go for a pap smear. I’d like to think my T-shirt wouldn’t bother a morgue tech, but the talk around town might have. Or maybe she just has somewhere else t
o be—a husband, a girlfriend. Two kids and a dog. Spin class. Chinchillas. A sex dungeon—
“Good grief, little sister. Give her a chance.”
Fucking Fitz, but damn if she doesn’t smile and say, “Sure. That sounds nice.” Next thing I know, we’re ducking through swinging, saloon-style doors to temporary safety.
FIFTEEN
Dailie’s Double
The main thing Dailie’s Grille has going for it is no jackalope.
It’s a place meant to appeal to the kind of people who arrive via the fifty-five-hundred-foot runway at the small airport between Crestview and Dryer Lake Resort. The interior is polished walnut and creamy plaster, with tasteful sketches of desert bunchgrass, boot spurs, or coils of rope in gilt frames. The piped-in music tends toward restrained string quartets or cool jazz. The bartender wears a bowtie and a black apron over his tuxedo shirt. The menu drips with folksy charm, offering appetizers like Pig Stickers or Hambone Hash, and entrées like Chucky’s River Steak. If the names suggest ass-end-of-nowhere eccentricity, the prices are all big-city shakedown.
Barb says it’s a good place to pick up well-heeled weekenders. The one time I joined her here, the most interesting thing I saw was Aaron Varney at the bar, drinking himself into a sack. Barb left with a Silicon Forest entrepreneur. I left with an empty wallet.
But today it’s just what the doctor ordered. Danae and I are the only customers. As we slide into a deep booth, the bartender brings us ice water in tumblers heavy enough to serve as blunt objects.
“Welcome. My name is Chet.” He places a sheaf of menu pages on the table. “Happy hour doesn’t start for about twenty minutes, but for you two lovely ladies, what say we start the party early?”
Oh, brother.
“I’ll have a double bourbon,” I say. “Your cheapest red-eye is fine. It’s medicinal.”
Danae giggles. “Boy, sounds like you did have a week.” She looks up at him, wide-eyed. “What the hell, Chet. Same for me.”
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