Crossroad

by W. H. Cameron

  “If he hung himself, his legs would look like grapes.”

  He nods. “And a body on the deck would have been spotted dozens of times over. Hell, I would have seen him on my way to work after we talked.” He grimaces as if he reminded himself of something he wanted to forget. “Are we supposed to believe someone thought he was a dead deer and pushed him off the bridge to get him out of the way?”

  “A local would have claimed the venison,” Barb says around a mouthful of kale. “But what’s the alternative? He gets killed … somewhere … then hours later the murderer drives his body to the bridge and tosses it overboard? Gross. I mean, why? But gross.”

  With my salad fork, I fish tot fragments from my aioli. “Someone wanted it to look like an accident.”

  “Or suicide,” Jeremy adds.

  Barb nods. “They didn’t count on our little undertaker unraveling their evil scheme.”

  “I didn’t unravel anything. I noticed lividity. And it took me all night to realize what it meant.”

  Jeremy snorts. “Varney should have caught it anyway.”

  “You were there, Jeremy. We were all thinking the same thing. If Duniway hadn’t stuck me in a cell with nothing to do but endlessly rerun the last twenty-four hours, I probably would have forgotten about it too.”

  “I still think Varney should have caught it.” Jeremy stares into his beer. “With Pride asking around about those boys, I’m thinking someone might not have liked his questions.”

  I wonder if Jeremy believes that or if he’s looking for a way to draw attention away from me. As if in confirmation, he adds, “Duniway won’t give up on you, but I could check around. If I find something, I’ll take it straight to the sheriff.”

  I make a face.

  “Don’t underestimate Sheriff Turnbull, Mel. He isn’t just some alpha yokel ruling over the hayseeds. The man is a long way from stupid.”

  I’m being sold a line, and I’m not in a spending mood. “He’s a tub of butter swimming with pork rinds.” I finish my sangria in one long swallow and instantly regret it. A headache strikes with the force of a rockslide.

  “Get you another?” Jeremy says, oblivious to the strain I can feel in my face.

  “I’m tired.” I’ve only eaten half my food, but I want to get out of there.

  Jeremy lifts himself partway out of the booth. “I’ll drive you home.” His tone is casual and hopeful at once. I can picture him on duty last night, checking campsites for trail mix thieves as he relived our conversation outside Barb’s. He’s probably worked out a new tactic. The coffee cart breakfast was meant to soften me up. Sharing dirt on Duniway shows whose side he’s on. Investigating Pride’s movements will prove he’s serious. Now he wants to bring it home with a self-serving apology and some makeup sex.

  “I’ll go with Barb.”

  I need to retrieve the Stiff, so Barb points us toward the Hensley School.

  I rest my head against the window. Outside, the sky is as empty as the desert between Samuelton and the crossroad. I register the passing landscape only for what it lacks. No vultures lurk on the basalt outcrop where we found Nathan Harper, no teen dirtbags drink beer at the crossroad fire circle. No spirit girls dart among the trees as we climb toward Crestview. No bodies lie on the Tsokapo Gorge bridge. Landry MacElroy doesn’t haunt the Cerise Creek trailhead on Hensley Lane. Even Pride’s blue hybrid has been towed.

  But when we pull into the Hensley School parking lot, what stands out most of all is the empty space in the shade of the ash tree. The Stiff is gone.

  THIRTY-SIX

  The Photo

  Stolen? Towed? I don’t know which would be worse. There’s no glass on the pavement to indicate a break-in. Not that Lydia Koenig would tolerate shattered glass on school grounds for long.

  “We’ll ask inside. If they had it towed, we can pitch a fit. If not, we’ll add it to Jeremy’s to-do list.” Barb smiles at her own quip. “But don’t fret. No one wants to joy ride in a hearse.”

  The Stiff isn’t a hearse, but I don’t bother to correct her. “I’m more worried Landry drove it into the river.”

  She has no answer for that.

  In contrast to yesterday, girls roam the grounds or gather in little clots on the grass, many in the company of adults. Four generations have claimed the porch swing: newborn, teen mom, mother, and a sour-faced grandmother who sits facing away from the rest. A father and daughter—the relationship clear in their shared nose, wide-set eyes, and high foreheads—laugh together in the wicker chairs at the other end of the porch.

  As we go inside and cross the foyer, the sour tang of spit-up and the reek of fouled diapers attack my nostrils. In one of the sitting rooms, a teen boy, his skin umber brown, grins as he changes a squirming newborn on a blanket between his knees. Sperm donor? The young mother watches from the couch beside them, her expression a mix of wonder and worry.

  Confronting us at the bell desk is a petite Latina girl, her stomach surprisingly flat under her blue Hensley smock. She taps an open sign-in sheet on the desk. “Name of student?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Who are you visiting?”

  A baby’s shriek nearby drives a wedge of pain into my skull. I struggle to find the words to explain the Stiff and why I left it here. Feeling stupid, I settle on a feeble, “Lydia Koenig?”

  “The director?”

  I nod.

  “Hmm, I haven’t seen her today, but I can try her office.” She picks up the phone and dials. After a minute, she pulls the receiver away from her ear. “It kicked to voicemail. Would you like to leave a message?”

  Sensing my exhaustion has caught up with me, Barb leans forward.

  “That shouldn’t be necessary. My friend was here yesterday for a meeting but got pulled away by an emergency and had to leave her van in the parking lot. We just returned to pick it up, but it’s gone.” As Barb speaks, the girl’s expression screws up with concern. “Is there someone who might know what happened to it?”

  “I can call security?”

  “That sounds great. Thank you.”

  The girl dials again. The crying makes it hard to hear her. “… ladies here … something about a van … Okay.” She cradles the receiver. “They’re on their way.”

  “Great,” Barb repeats, too brightly.

  Head splitting, I move away from the bell desk. An older woman in a chair against the wall daubs her eyes with a tissue. Beside her, standing, a gray-bearded man gently swings a carrier holding the crying infant. Barb looks up at the party store letters on the wall. “Make Motherhood a Mother Habit.” She once said she wouldn’t have kids on a triple-dog dare.

  Solidarity fist bump.

  I steady myself against the cool wall, find myself facing the dour framed headshots of the Hensley School trustees. They could be store manager portraits on display at Ray’s Thriftway or members of Congress.

  “You again?” a sharp voice snaps. “You’re like a damn canker sore.”

  My whole body jerks. I recognize the voice, or at least the irritation it arouses. A man in a sharply creased, Hensley-blue shirt has materialized at my back and now stands glaring from beneath a half-familiar gray crew cut and bushy eyebrows. It’s the resort village rent-a-cop—X. Meyer, Lord of Fifteen-Minute Parking. Before I can tell him to fuck off, Barb slides across the hallway and injects herself between us.

  “Hello, Xavier. How are you?” Her tone is casual, even a little friendly. She must not know him very well.

  “You with her, Ms. Ellingson?”

  “I am. I didn’t know you worked here too.”

  “Just part time. I fill in for vacations and stuff.” The sheriff mentioned some of his deputies moonlighted as Hensley School security. If they take Dryer Lake rent-a-cops too, they must have pretty low standards.

  “Are you here about that van?”

  “Do you know what happened to it?”

  “I was on shift at the resort yesterday, but I understand the sherrif called and asked us
to leave it overnight.”

  “We were worried it got towed.”

  “Been up to me, it would have been.” A wave of dizziness is the only thing keeping me from cracking Xavier upside his pruned head. Good thing Barb is doing all the talking. “In any event, someone came by for it this morning.”

  “Do you know who?”

  “Afraid not. The vehicle was gone when I came on at eleven. Only reason I even know about it is the log entry.”

  Someone taps my arm. “Hey, you’re back.”

  I turn away from rent-a-cop’s sneer and find a warm, friendly face at my side. “Hello, Celeste.”

  Her eyes are bright and excited. “I was talking to one of the girls, Kaylee, and she told me about a man who came to the school on Friday. Tall, dressed nice. Sound like your guy?”

  “Kendrick Pride?” Saying it aloud makes my stomach hurt.

  “She didn’t remember his name, just that he showed up while she was on bell desk and asked to see the director. Lydia was gone that day, so he ended up leaving a note.”

  “Do you know if he came back?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  Not that it matters now. I manage a wan smile. Behind me, Xavier continues to grouse about the Stiff. As if it wasn’t gone before he ever knew it was here.

  “Anyway, the reason Kaylee brought it up was he showed her a picture of some girl, asked if she recognized her. She didn’t, but he kept pushing for her to look again.” Celeste steals a glance at Xavier. “He was insistent enough about it that she called security, but they couldn’t help him either.”

  It must have been the photo I saw in Pride’s car, now missing along with his evidence and notes. Another piece of the puzzle, gone. Trae Fowler was the son of Pride’s client; Nathan Harper, the son of his law partner. Who does that make this mystery girl, besides the likely mother of a lost baby and owner of unexpected bones in the Bouton retort?

  A sharp wave of nausea washes through me. I reach out for Barb, stumble into Xavier Meyer instead.

  “Whoa! She drunk? I can’t allow that here.”

  He backs away. Concern scrunches the smooth skin between Celeste’s eyebrows. Then Barb is there, arm in mine. “What is it, honey?”

  That damned photo is what got Pride killed.

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Private Quarters

  Barb suggests taking me back to her house for a girls’ night. “We’ll tuck into my California King with a pint of Ben and Jerry’s and watch Lizzy Bennet eventually fumble her way into Mr. Darcy’s arms.”

  “I’m in more of a Fury Road mood.”

  “A double feature then.”

  It’s tempting, but after everything that’s happened, a night in my own bed followed by an early start at the New Mortuary feels like the best way to show Aunt Elodie and Uncle Rémy I appreciate all they’ve done for me.

  “Maybe next weekend.”

  I need the silence of Shatter Hill and the emptiness of the Old Mortuary. I need space to make sense of everything that’s happened.

  I need room to escape.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be okay, Mel?”

  “As okay as a hot bath and twelve hours of sleep in my own bed can make me.”

  From the driveway, I watch her car disappear over the lip of Shatter Hill, then head for the house. The wind carries the scent of sage. I allow myself a couple of deep breaths. With each exhalation my headache eases, as if the very air at the Old Mortuary is restorative. At the edge of the lawn, I drop the overnight bag with my dirty clothes and boots, then slide out of Barb’s sandals.

  No one has watered since Uncle Rémy left for his surgery ten days ago. The grass crackles underfoot. The gasping roses, peonies, and lavender under the windows suddenly seem as unexpected on the dry, undulating tableland as the Old Mortuary itself.

  The grounds have always been Uncle Rémy’s thing. Quince helps, or did—but never without Uncle Rémy’s supervision. Now the responsibility will have to fall to someone else.

  Someone like me?

  “What do you know about yard work, little sister?”

  About as much I knew about undertaking before I got here.

  An open padlock hangs from the hasp of the maintenance shed behind the crematorium. It’s never latched. Who’d steal from the isolated Old Mortuary? Inside, rakes and shovels, hoes, and clippers hang on the walls. All tidy, everything in its place. I power up the pump, then head outside to open the spigots feeding the soaker hoses in the flower beds. The lawn sprinklers are on a separate line, a manual system Uncle Rémy installed decades ago. The grass will have to wait. “Water the lawn before the heat of the day,” Uncle Rémy says. With the late afternoon sun still high, I decide to run them tomorrow morning while I’m getting ready for work.

  When I circle around to the back of the Old Mortuary to make sure the soakers are all doing their job, I see the Stiff parked outside the garage. Aunt Elodie must have brought it here, though she’d have needed someone to drive her back to Crestview. Just one more burden I’ve put on her, and now on someone else too.

  A wave of guilt drives me across the lawn to the edge of the Pioneer Cemetery. The place usually serves as a respite, but as I step from the lawn onto the buff earth and brown stone, the silence is broken by the sound of car or truck approaching on Wayette Highway. Aside from us, there’s nothing up out here for miles. I can only hope it’s someone heading to Trout Rot Bridge to fish, or to the state park away east. But we do get visitors to the old cemetery, the occasional mourners or history buffs in search of Old West color. I’m in no mood to share the hard-packed paths winding among native plantings of sage, sulfur buckwheat, and larkspur. I want the graves covered with raked gravel and the whitewashed boulders marking the boundaries of family plots to myself. But as the car engine dies, I know my solitude is about to be shattered.

  Before I turn away, my gaze falls on a tall granite gravestone topped with a cherub, the engraving weathered but still readable after more than a century.

  He was laid to rest among other Freshwaters, children and grandchildren. I’m struck by the similarity to Alice Hensley’s monument in the old cemetery at the Hensley Asylum, and by the contrast to the many graves around it. A sudden sadness comes over me at the thought of all those forgotten infirm ladies and needful girls.

  Back in front, an unfamiliar silver Lexus with Washington state plates is parked on the drive. A woman in pegged slacks, sensible flats, and an embroidered peasant blouse sits on the porch steps. Her skin is the color of antique ivory. Her dark brown hair is loosely knotted behind her head. When she looks up, the breath goes out of me. She has the melancholy gray eyes of a French film star.

  “It’s good to see you again, Melisende.” Helene’s voice might be from another era. “It’s been too long.”

  * * *

  She has house keys.

  “I didn’t want to frighten you. That’s why I waited outside.”

  Helene picks up Barb’s overnight bag and the sandals I’d taken off, then leads me inside. Her footsteps make no sound on the deep carpet in the foyer or on the stairs leading to the second floor. I follow close enough to inhale her scent, yet afraid to. I half-wonder if she’s really here. A sharp breath might dispel her like smoke. At the top of the stairs, the short hallway ends at the entrance to the private quarters.

  “I thought we’d be more comfortable up here, but if you’d prefer, we can go somewhere else.”

  Numbly, I shake my head. We continue into the family kitchen. Through the windows I can see the crematorium and the road beyond. The chattering valves of a passing pickup disturb the desert’s peace.

  The chair squeaks when I sit at the old enamel kitchen table. Helene drops overnight bag and shoes beside the door. Then she moves from cupboard to fridge. Ice trays crack and cubes clink against glass. She joins me at the table, with a pitcher of iced tea and two tumblers.

  “Unless you want something stronger.”

  “This is fine.”

 
They’re my first words to Helene Bouton in a year and a half—not counting a million voice messages. This is fine. Iced tea is fine. A friendly visit in the family kitchen is fine. Just drop my things anywhere—it’s fine. Missing bodies and search warrants and teen rapists with knives, unidentified bones, postmortem stain in the gorge—all fucking fine. I rest my head on the tabletop. When Helene reaches out to stroke my neck, I flinch.

  “I’m sorry. I know you don’t like to be touched.”

  If anyone ever had permission to touch me, it’s Helene. But I hadn’t believed my eyes when I saw her on the porch. I hadn’t believed my ears when I heard her speak. It took the physicality of her fingertips against my skin for me to accept she’s really here. Now that I do, I don’t know what to say, to think. To feel.

  “You helped Aunt Elodie with the Stiff,” I say, settling on the mundane. At her quizzical look, I add, “The van.”

  “Right.” She gives me a little smile. “I followed her, then drove her back to Crestview.”

  “You saw Uncle Rémy?”

  “Yes.” From the look on her face, I don’t need to ask how he was.

  “So, are you a lawyer now?”

  Her head tilts. “No, not yet. Until I pass the bar, I’m basically a glorified proofreader.”

  “In Washington.” I say, remembering the plates on her car. I never pictured Helene in a Lexus or pegged slacks. Back in Massachusetts, she was a Vespa and cargo pants girl, or if she had to drive, a hybrid like Pride’s.

  “My firm is in Seattle, yes. The exam is in ten days. I’ll know if I passed in early September.”

  “You’ll pass.”

  “I should be studying right now.”

  I can’t tell if she means that as a rebuke. “You got my messages.” My words seem to pool on the cool enamel.

  “All of them.”

  “You never called back.”

  She makes a production of pouring the tea, like she’s performing a ritual. “You never asked me to.”

  Helene, hi … I hope you’re okay. Could it be so simple that all I had to do was add a Please, call me?