Beautiful to the Bone (The Enuis Trilogy #1) (37 page)

“You say that like I didn’t deserve him.”

“You didn’t.”

“So tell me.”

“He was kindhearted. He didn’t need bright lights. He didn’t need a sex pot like you.”

That
tickled me. “Sex pot?! Me?”

“Throwing your tits and ass all over the place. He was perfectly happy before you came around.”

“I didn’t come around. He came to me.”

He fell silent, grabbed the pack of Luckies again.

I steeled myself. “Did he love you?”

Johnny Ray set the pack of Luckies in his lap and searched for a place to wheel his chair, but he was blockaded. I was afraid he’d barrel over me.

“Did he?” I stood taller.

“He never said that, but he did. Do you even know what made him laugh?”

“Me.”

“Shiiit.”

“You were lovers. You sent him that Poe book with your hair, those beads; the same beads you used to create the birdbath out front.”

“My college colors. Go wildcats.” He was almost breezy.

“You wanted him back.”

“We were a good fit. Happy.”

“Was the hair a memento or a warning?”

He peered up at me, eyes glassy.

I relaxed, tried to speak tenderly. “It was, wasn’t it . . . a warning? That’s how much you wanted him back.”

“I never meant . . .”

“For him to kill himself.”

He wiped his eyes.

I struggled to be sympathetic. “You must have known his father would abandon him completely if he found out, if you’d made your relationship public. Rhoald’s not a forgiving man, even if it was love.”

Johnny Ray grew smaller. “Even if it was love?” He lit another cigarette. He blew smoke my way. “Maybe you killed him. Maybe he realized his mistake. You consider that?”

The cigarette trembled ever so slightly in his hand. I could see them together, arms around each other’s shoulders. Not attractive men, but beautiful friends.

“Of course I did.”

He rubbed his forehead, took another drag from the cigarette.

“We were all part of his collection.” I couldn’t see what they’d seen in each other’s faces.

“Yes.” I could barely hear him. “But he
married
you. Conventional. The others . . .” His eyes disconsolate. “The rest of us . . .”

His gaze drifted, reflecting the oceans of unknown that we shared. I didn’t know what to say. Hadn’t a clue. And nothing more was said.

CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

The next day I was summoned to the police station, a peach brick building that was even less hospitable inside, walled in white cinder block. Harold’s true cause of death was still unclear, as was Atara’s, and Johnny Ray’s jealousy aside, I couldn’t believe he’d kill Atara and frame me for it. Or how he might even have accomplished either death given his condition. But Sullivan had his eye on me, and who could blame him. There was the very real chance that he would hold me in jail as a prime suspect. I shivered at the thought of incarceration.

As soon as we were in Sullivan’s closet-like office and he’d closed the door, he said, “It’s odd, isn’t it, that we keep meeting this way. You knew her, correct?”

“Atara, yes. Atara Bukara.”

“That wasn’t her last name.”

More particles in motion.
I was such a fool
. “That’s the name she told me.”

“And how did you meet?”

Oh crap, I didn’t want to go
there
. “I was a patient in a hospital.”

He leveled me with distrustful eyes. “What kind of hospital?”

I took a breath. “I had a mild concussion. I’d helped a man, but —”

“I don’t need that level of detail. She was a nurse.”

Thank goodness. “Yes.”

“And . . .?”

“She and her husband were very generous to me.”

“She wasn’t married.”

Naturally
. “Oh, well they lived together.”

He stretched to see the sheet of paper on his desktop. “Levi . . . Levi O’Brien.”

“Levi, yes.”

“Apparently you had something of Ms. Afaa’s.”

“That was her name?

He nodded.

I considered telling him the truth but I saw a small dirty jail cell with me in it. My breath became shallow, labored. “I didn’t. I don’t.”

He held up his hand. “Two different people have testified that you do.”

Water, I should have brought some water. “Two?”

“What do you say to that?”

“Levi, Mr. O’Brien, may have thought that. Atara certainly thought so, but I don’t know who else—”

“A credible person.”

“Who?”

“You know I can’t tell you that. Did you introduce Vic —Mayor King— to Atara Afaa?”

“I did.”

He opened a manila folder on his desk. “And apparently you had other questionable episodes, in New York.”

That covered a multitude of possibilities. I was being pulled under.
Don’t panic
. “I have no record. I’ve never been charged with anything.”

“No, you haven’t. Who might have a reason to intimidate or want Ms. Afaa dead?”

“I don’t know. But she was no angel.”

He raised an eyebrow. “How do you mean?”

“You can ask Mr. O’Brien, and maybe even . . .” I measured the wisdom of mentioning it, “the Mayor.”

“Our mayor?”

“Could have been an accident. Some people underestimate the cold. Hyperthermia. She was wearing a bathing suit.” I looked again at the mounted bass on his wall, then squarely at the detective, but he didn’t meet my gaze.
There was something about that fish
.

“You like swimming in cold water.”

“I do.”

“Where were you the past two days, before we found her?”

I recounted that I’d been to the pharmacy for Lyle’s pills, I’d talked to Gordon, I’d visited Muriel Cloonis.

“Your former mother-in-law.”

“Yes.” Then for a swim in Kingdom and then home with Carly, Lyle and Momma.

He wrote it all down. Poker-faced. “Anyone see you at the lake?”

“Not that I know of.”

“Yesterday?”

“Home. The Drink ‘n’ Dive with Mae Scotts. I even bumped into The Mayor.”

“Yes, he told me.”

“Then Kingdom.”

“Right.” He scribbled something more. I started adding too.

“Anything else?”

“No, that’s it for now.”

A reprieve. My throat loosened, breathing came more easily. “You got a tip.” I started to rise.

“What?”

“Strange that someone tipped you to look in the lake. In Kingdom.”

“How would you know?”

“Detective, do your men usually beat around the bushes?”

He stared down at his notes. “That’s it for now, Mrs. Cloonis. Thanks for coming in.”

When I got to my car I found a stray receipt and on the back made one of my lists:

***

It was like the first time I’d jumped into a lake.

“Levi?”

“Yes.”

“It’s Eunis.”

Silence.

“I’m sorry for your loss.”

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“I had nothing to do with it.”

“Quite a coincidence that of all people you found her.”

I remained unusually serene. “Quite a coincidence that she was at my favorite swimming spot.”

More silence.

“And that she drowned like her sister.”

“She didn’t have a sister.”

Duped again.
My turn to take a breather. “Well, I’m sorry.”

“I don’t suppose you have any ideas about who might have done it.”

I had to restrain myself. “No. Perhaps it was an accident. Perhaps she miscalculated the cold water.”

“That’s what the police are saying . . . so far.” He was remarkably calm. “Is that all?”

“The other day when I called you . . .”

“Yes?”

“You weren’t in New York, were you?”

“No.”

“Would you tell me where?”

“No. Is that all?”

“No. Both of you shared with me something of your arrangement.” Actually, they’d hinted.

“You mean about our bodies?”

That was it!
“Yes. You’re in charge of her burial, not her family.”

“So?”

“I thought I could be of service.”

“What does that mean?”

I looked out over the farmhouse. Restored, it had come a long way, the yard not so much. I was halfway in two worlds. Having the discussion with Levi in New York made it even more dreamlike. “I want to make a deal.”

“You don’t have anything to deal. Are we done?”

“I think I do. Hear me out. In a few days, after the autopsy is complete, I’m going to send you some instructions.”

“You can’t be serious.”

“You both signed papers, right? Legal but delicate.”

He was silent.

“Levi?”

“This is madness.”

Balmy weather had returned. The marshes would be filling with white and pink bog rosemary, and the woods showing red baneberry with its white spears and glossy rubicund fruit. “We all have our madness; she was yours. Don’t force us to be adversaries. I can make this work for you. For both of us.”

“You want to come back to the nest?”

I
was silent. The luxury, the adulation. I wanted it but not if it cost me my purpose and self-respect. I’d come close to losing both.

Then he ended the silence. “No, I didn’t think so.” He hung up.

The farmhouse, as I stepped backward to get perspective on the fresh veneer, no longer matched the rest of the landscape. The bristles of unkempt weeds, the blighted shed, the rusted caboose, the crumbling equipment, the rotting trough, were all reminders of profound, unfinished business.

Inside the house, the peeling walls, the hobbled cabinets, the worn carpets, the neglected furniture, were all steeped in four decades of tobacco and delusion. Nothing had changed on the inside. It was past time for me to tackle the hard choices.

***

Organizing my thoughts wasn’t easy, not around Atara or Levi or Harold. I’d learned something about beauty that was part of the solution. But there were only two things I had to immediately attend to: organizing Lyle’s performance and rehabilitating Carver’s workshop, a place I could work, alone. I threw myself into both.

With but a few days till his show, Lyle could barely move without support. Perhaps I’d placed an unnecessary weight upon him by suggesting the performance. But he perked up during our brief rehearsals. When I proposed taking him out for dinner, he offered an appreciative rejection. “No point spendin’ on a dinner that I’m gonna crap and puke out two hours later.”

Momma visited him once every morning when he was barely awake, and when —I surmised— he was least likely to make any conversation, allowing Momma to generously offer, “I’ll just let you sleep.”

So in the mornings I was off to Carver’s, first purging and cleaning, then hammering whatever was necessary for protection from the elements, if only temporary. The well and plumbing was still somewhat intact, and a call to Sparky took care of electrical support. Someone had returned the sign and leaned it against the front of the small building, creating more cover. I entered through the back. And while I worked, I mulled the sequence of my route the day the body was found, the autopsy, and Atara’s final moments.

Despite all that, the week went by slowly, and on the Wednesday before his show, I came into Lyle’s room with his medication, finding him clinging to his guitar and delirious. “Ya know,” he said, heavy-lidded, “you should be out dancin’ instead of here.”

“What do you mean?” I sat on his bed, gently repositioning his ever-lengthening hair out of his eyes and off his face, and tucking it behind his ear.

“I’d dance if I could, you and me.”

“Yes.”

“Don’t be mad.” His eyes pleading.

“Why would I be mad at you?”

“Promise.”

“Okay, I promise.”

He smiled, hung his head over the Martin, and fell asleep. His emaciated face possessed the genes of a little boy I’d watched from first breath. Try as I might, I couldn’t see them, another face I’d collected but failed to fully understand, even as his blood drained into mine, leaving me sadder still.

***

When Detective Sullivan called me in for more questioning, familiar faces populated the reception area: Gordon, Victor King, Melissa, Rhoald and Muriel. No one looked happy.

“Ah, Mrs. Cloonis,” the detective said. “Please, come with me.”
Come with me!

Gordon nodded. Victor’s wife tracked me with a sullen glare. Victor didn’t make eye contact. I thought Rhoald was going to leap up and hit me until Muriel laid a steadying hand on his arm.

The Detective ran me through many of the same questions he’d already asked. It was as if he’d marched me past the others in the reception area like a model on a runway, to elicit a response. So I tried to isolate each expression. Gordon looked confused, embarrassed and sympathetic. Melissa looked aloof and piqued to be in such a place. Victor was stoic. Rhoald, as I say, more determined than ever to close the door on me permanently, hostility forefront, but an anomalous hint of duplicity around his eyes, scarier than the anger. And Muriel, mawkish and almost shamefaced.

Somewhere in there, probably, was a clue. With me, the supposed expert on faces.
Ironies coming at me like locusts.
My track record not so good. But, as Lyle would say, it’s all I had in my holster.

***

I approached Harold’s old office, the mid-day light flat and unwelcoming. I hadn’t been there since returning a week after Harold’s death at the detective’s request, when Detective Sullivan manipulated me into moving Harold’s oak desk. And now, as I ascended the staircase to the second floor office, I began to understand.

The detective’s logic must have been if I could move the desk I could have snapped Harold’s neck, I could have lifted or moved the body.
I could have. But why?

My phone rang. It was Gordon.

“Hi.” I got to the top step and stopped.

“I heard they’re going to charge you.”