A Fistful of Rain (22 page)

Hermione told me that she’d make me rich.

“I am rich,” I told her.

“I’ll make you richer.”

“Not sure I want that.”

She frowned, gnawed on her lip, adjusted her pillowcase full of swag. “Nobody else does this, everyone else just gives us candy.”

“Hey, you want candy, you got to do it right.”

Hermione smiled with an idea, said, “Okay, see, I know who you are, and if you give me candy, I’ll bring your brother back from the dead.”

It threw me for a second.

“You can do that?” I asked.

“Not yet,” she admitted.

I dumped two handfuls into her bag. “Let me know when you’ve worked that out, okay?”

Joan pulled another chair from the kitchen and joined me, and we had fun with it, and for a while again, I forgot to be afraid. It had been Joan who made Halloween a pleasure for me again, she who had explained that it was trick
or
treat, and that you had to play along with the extortion.

Given where I was, this kind of blackmail was a hell of a lot more enjoyable.

It was when I was dumping candy into the bags of unidentifiable monsters, soldiers, and two teenagers too old for it, but in good costumes—both were Star Wars Jedi Knights—that I registered what I’d been seeing on the street the whole time.

A car, parked just inside the view from my door, across the street. That alone wasn’t alarming, but there was someone inside of it, and that gave me pause.

I told myself it wasn’t the Parka Man, that even if my porch light was on, he had to know it was for Halloween. Since there’d been no return visit after the two cops had descended that morning, I had to assume he had faith that the terror he’d put in me would stay, that I’d pay up on time, without causing him trouble.

Couldn’t be him.

It wasn’t something I could concentrate on, either, with Joan beside me and kids parading to and from my doorstep. Each time I looked out, I tried to keep it subtle, and, once, I saw whoever was in the car move, but I didn’t see any features.

The last trick-or-treater came by just before nine, and that was good, because I’d almost run out of candy. I’m very generous on Halloween, I give handfuls, not just one or two pieces, and some years I’ve been reduced to giving away whatever is suitable in the kitchen, bags of pretzels or chips. I never give fruit or vegetables or things like that. What kid in their right mind wants an apple when they can have a Snickers bar?

Joan left around nine-thirty, giving me a kiss and saying that she had to get to bed. I told her I’d call that weekend, and that we could finally go out to the dinner I’d promised her.

She liked that.

Once she was gone, I checked the street again, and again there was motion from the car, and I suddenly knew who it was. There were a couple candy bars left in the bowl, and some Shock Tarts. I picked it up and went down the walk and across the street. The car was a Ford, blue, one of the newer ones. As I was crossing the street, the driver’s window purred down, and I could see both of the occupants.

Marcus was behind the wheel, on my side.

“Trick or treat,” I told him.

He grinned. “That for us?”

“Sure.”

He reached into the bowl, picking out both the remaining pieces of chocolate, then handed one to Hoffman. Neither of them looked particularly upset that I’d seen them.

“Have a good Halloween?” Marcus asked me.

“Pretty good. I like the holiday.”

“You seemed to enjoy talking to the kids.”

“Why are you guys watching my house?”

Marcus looked over at Hoffman. Without looking up from the chocolate bar she was unwrapping, she said, “Why don’t you stop hiding behind Chapel and just answer our questions, Miss Bracca?”

“Because I don’t like the questions. Because I don’t have any idea where my father is, and I don’t know what’s happened to him.”

“That’s why we’re watching your house,” Marcus explained.

“Isn’t this harassment?”

“No, actually,” Hoffman said, and she finally looked at me. “It’s called investigating. Harassment would mean we didn’t have a reason to watch you. But you’ve given us that. This is what we call keeping a suspect under surveillance. You could help yourself and us if you just stepped out from behind your lawyer for a little while.”

“I like it behind my lawyer,” I said. “He blocks the wind. Why am I a suspect?”

“We figure you were at your brother’s place yesterday,” Hoffman said.

“I told you I wasn’t.”

“We figure you’re lying to us.”

“If I call Mr. Chapel and tell him you’re out here—”

“There’s not a damn thing he can do about it,” Marcus said.

“And exactly what am I suspected of doing this time?”

“Murdering Tommy Bracca,” Hoffman said.

It was cold on the street, and I hadn’t bothered to put my jacket on before I came out. It made me want to shiver, and I had to fight it.

“Still don’t want to talk to us?” Hoffman asked.

I went back into my house without answering her.

CHAPTER 31

It all looked worse for the fourteen years since I’d last seen it. The lawn, once perfectly mown grass, was now marked with bare spots of mud, dotted with tangled weeds. The house needed a paint job. Even the station wagon in the driveway looked the same, just older, more beat-up.

I got out of the Jeep and checked down the street, and the Ford was there, a couple houses down at the curb. It was sunny, bright autumn, and painful to my eyes. The sunglasses I wore today were on out of necessity, not anonymity. Marcus and Hoffman were wearing sunglasses, too. I wondered if they’d gotten any sleep, or at least, any more than I had. They’d still been parked outside when I’d gone to bed.

It was ten past nine, Thursday morning, when I walked up to the door of the home of Gareth and Anne Quick.

Wrapped in precisely the same heavy dread that had surrounded me the last time I’d reached this door.

Anne answered, and she, too, looked like the years hadn’t been easy on her. The last time I’d seen her was when she’d handed me over to the Children’s Services woman, to take me to the Beckermans. We’d spent two nights in a Best Western prior to that, and Anne Quick hadn’t talked a lot. It had been hard for her to accept what her sons had tried to do, what they had been trying to do for so long. I’m sure it was only because her husband had seen it that Anne even believed the boys had done something wrong.

The whole time we were at the motel, I got the feeling that she believed what happened had been, somehow, my fault.

Fourteen years later she looked smaller and harder, with wrinkles that wouldn’t stay concealed with Oil of Olay. Her hair was still black, but dyed; there was gray creeping in at the roots, like a tide that had come just a little farther than anticipated onto a shore. She was dressed for garden work.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“Mrs. Quick,” I said, and I took off my sunglasses and dropped them in a pocket, sheepish. “I’m Miriam Bracca, I don’t know if you remember me.”

The wrinkles around her eyes bunched, as if in committee. She looked me over, and her mouth got tighter, more sour. She had one hand on the door, and from her grip, I thought she might be about to slam it on me.

“Yes, I remember you.”

“I was wondering if I might come in, speak to you and your husband? Is Mr. Quick here?”

“Of course he’s here.” She said it strangely, as if I should have known the answer already. “What do you want to talk to us about?”

“May I come in?”

She adjusted her hold on the door, and then she pulled it back, opening it wider, puffing a disgusted sigh. She waved me in as if it was easier than refusing me entry, then shut the door and came around, leading the way to the den. The interior, unlike the exterior, had gone through some changes. The architecture was early seventies, with a sunken den, and the carpet had been replaced, thicker than the old, blue instead of the tan I remembered. The couch had been replaced, was now a multisection modular monstrosity, the kind where segments can turn into recliners. Through the glass doors into the backyard, I could see the signs of gardening, preparing for the winter, torn-up plants, a wheelbarrow.

Gareth Quick was outside, on his knees, working with a trowel in the flower bed.

“The boys don’t live here anymore?” I asked.

“No.” Anne said it flatly. She pulled the sliding door open, adding, “Well, come on.”

I stepped onto the back patio. Gareth Quick looked up from his work, and his eyes went from me to his wife, and there was nothing in them but confusion. He settled the look back on me and smiled.

“You’re very pretty,” he said. “What happened to your head?”

“This is Miriam, honey,” Anne told him. “You remember Miriam, don’t you?”

“Miriam?”

“Yes, she lived with us for a while, when the boys were in high school.”

The smile stayed in place. He looked, unlike his wife, as if the years hadn’t had a physical effect on him. Even the haircut was the same, reminiscent of the military, close and neat. Like Anne, he was dressed for gardening, but unlike his wife, the clothes didn’t seem to settle correctly, a little baggy where they should have held tight, a little loose where they should have been snug.

Physically, he could have been the Parka Man, but I already knew it wasn’t him. It was his voice, it just wasn’t the same.

And there was absolutely no recognition of me in his eyes.

“The boys?”

“Brian and Christopher, honey. Our sons.”

Alarm crept laboriously across his face.

“What did they do?” Gareth Quick asked, and his voice dropped and wobbled, just the way it had when he’d found them dragging me through the hallway. “What did those little shits do to you, Miriam?”

“Nothing,” I assured him. “I’m fine, sir. It’s all right.”

There were tears in his eyes, and his chin had dropped onto his chest; he wasn’t even looking at us, now. He began to sob.

“What did we do?” he was saying. “God, what did we do that was so wrong, Annie? What did we do so wrong?”

“It’s all right, hon,” Anne said, and she dropped to her knees and put a hand on his shoulder. “It’s okay. You’re at home, and I’m here, and there’s nothing to worry about.”

He pushed her hand away, his sobs racking his thin body.

“Could you wait inside?” Anne asked, without looking at me, without taking her eyes off him. “In the kitchen, maybe?”

I nodded and backed off, retreating to the kitchen. It had changed, the cabinets and counters replaced, even the table. I took a chair and waited, and the déjà vu stampeded, and for a moment, it was as if I had never left, all of the wounds raw and open.

It was almost twenty minutes before Anne came back, and she was leading Gareth by the hand. An open archway past the table had another view of the den, and she brought him past me, that way, and got him settled on the couch. He seemed perfectly fine with that, and she put the remote control in his hand, turned on the television, and the soft noise of morning talk bubbled into the space.

“I’ll be in the kitchen,” Anne told her husband.

He nodded, focused on the screen.

She joined me at the table. “Alzheimer’s.”

“I didn’t know,” I said, and started to add that I was terribly sorry, but she cut me off.

“How could you?” She checked over her shoulder, to make certain Gareth was still where she’d left him. He hadn’t moved. “Almost three years, now. He’s not going to be with me much longer.”

“You’re caring for him by yourself?”

“A nurse comes during the afternoons, when I have to go to work. I’m part-time, real estate.”

“I’m a musician,” I told her.

“Is that what you call it?” Her mouth got smaller, even more bitter. “I’d have thought ‘entertainer’ might be a better word.”

“I suppose you could call it that, too.”

“What did you want to talk to us about?”

I thought about spinning a lie, like I had with Sheila Larkin, but it was clear Anne Quick had very little patience, and what amount of it was left she needed for her husband.

“I’m trying to find Brian and Chris,” I told her.

“Why?” This time there was no mistaking the hostility.

“I need to speak to them,” I said.

“You going to sue them? Have them arrested? You looking for some sort of revenge?”

“No, ma’am, I just—”

“They were perfectly nice boys, you know, they were wonderful boys, until you came into our house. They were just wonderful young men, their father loved them so much, he worked so hard for them, to give them everything they needed. Then we took you in, and you destroyed it.”

I stared at her. Someone’s memory was playing tricks, and it wasn’t mine.

“The way you led them on,” Anne Quick continued, her voice like acid. “The way you teased them, they were
boys,
what were they supposed to think? And now you make a living doing just that, don’t you? Selling a whiff of sex, a little promise here and there, strutting around with a guitar and your drug-addict friends.”

My mouth had gone dry. Behind Anne, her husband was still watching television, head cocked to one side, eyes bright with fascination, oblivious.

“I never led them on, ma’am,” I said. “I never did anything to encourage them.”

“You believe what you want to, that’s fine. I’m sure you don’t think of yourself as a slut now. But you sure as hell were one then.”

I tried again, trying to ignore the hostility. “I didn’t come here to make any trouble, Mrs. Quick. I’m just looking to contact Chris or Brian, that’s all.”

“Why? To get them locked up again? To accuse them of attempted rape, to make a big story? Do you need more headlines?”

“They were arrested?”

“Don’t act like you don’t know.” She spat it at me. “Don’t act like you don’t know.”

“Are they in prison?”

That made her more defensive, as if she’d thought I’d expected that. “No, they’re not, thank you. They’ve been just fine and they’ve stayed out of trouble, so they don’t need you making it worse.”

“Because if they’ve been in prison,” I said, “I’d hate to think that was my fault.”

Anne Quick gave me a suspicious appraisal. “What does
that
mean?”

“If it was my fault, I mean. If something I did got them in trouble. I’m . . . well, I was hoping I could make it up to them.”

“And how would you do that?”

“I’m rich,” I said.

The hard little eyes seemed to brighten momentarily. Green-eyed monster, I thought. Not jealousy, but greed.

“You’re going to give my
sons
money?”

“I didn’t want to insult them,” I said. “Didn’t want them to think it was charity. I was thinking of it as a gift.”

She needed a couple of seconds to chew on that. On the couch, Gareth had started flipping channels.

“I can’t imagine it’s easy taking care of Gareth like this,” I told her. “You must be working very hard.”

“All the time.”

“If you’d let me, maybe I could help you out with that, too.”

“I don’t want charity, either.”

“Of course not. But you and Gareth, you opened your home to me, and I owe you for that. I’d really like to make it up to you.”

“Would you, really? Or is it just that you think you can buy what you want?”

I gambled, then, pushing my chair back and getting to my feet. “I’m sorry to have insulted you this way, Mrs. Quick. I’ll go.”

She didn’t move and she didn’t speak, so I headed out of the kitchen, had gotten all the way to my hand on the doorknob before she called after me to stop. I heard her coming, hurrying to catch up to me.

“I apologize,” she said, and it looked like she was choking down rotten meat. “It’s just . . . it’s been very hard, you can imagine.”

“I understand.”

“If you’d be willing to help . . . ?”

“The medical bills,” I said. “Would you let me cover those?”

“You’d . . . you would do that?”

“I don’t want to see Gareth suffering,” I told her, and it was the honest-to-God truth. “I’ll have my attorney contact you, he’ll arrange to have the bills come to me.”

She didn’t speak for a few seconds, possibly because she couldn’t. She finally had to nod.

“And the boys,” I said. “Where can I find them?”

“They’re outside of Junction City, that’s near Eugene.”

“Do you have an address?”

“I’m sure I do around here somewhere.”

“If you can get that for me,” I said. “And if you don’t mind me using your phone, I’ll call my attorney, see if we can’t get this bill thing handled right now.”

Anne Quick, my new best friend, offered to dial for me.