Callisto (11 page)

“It's got Bree in it.”

I watched her face. She's thinking, Bree in the freezer . . . and then she gets it, only she doesn't want to.

“Bree . . . ?” her voice was all little and soft like a girl's, which is a side to Lorraine that I did not see till right now, she has got a softer side, which I liked.

“I went down to get something for breakfast,” I said, following the script careful, “and I'm digging around to find something besides pizza, which isn't right for breakfast, only lunch and dinner generally, maybe some breakfast sausages and waffles if there's any there, and that's when I found her. I don't know how to say this . . . she's dead. I'm real sorry.”

She looked at me like I just told her a flying saucer landed
on the roof, then she did something very unexpected, which is slap me right in the face very hard, and she is a big woman like I said, so it hurt.

“Don't you tell me a story like that! Fuck you!”

I didn't hit her back, of course, she's a woman in shock so what she did is excusable, but I got ready to block a second slap if there was another one coming my way, which there wasn't, she just kept on looking at me, reading my eyes to see if it's the truth I'm telling, which it was, mostly. Then she rushed out of the kitchen and down to the basement to investigate the situation there. I stayed where I am, not wanting to intrude on family grief, which is a very private thing restricted to family members only. Then I heard what I kind of expected, namely a scream, but it was short. Then after awhile she come up again and looked me square in the face. “Did you have anything to do with this?” she asked me, very cold, her mouth all tight.

“No, all I did was find her down there,” I said, the whole truth this time.

“Then it was Dean,” she said, slumping down in a chair and staring at the tabletop. “Oh, God . . . he went and did it . . .He went crazy again and did it . . .” She looked over at me. “When he left, did he have any luggage with him, a suitcase or whatever?”

“No, just the clothes he was wearing, unless he had something in his pockets I couldn't see.”

“That'd be right,” she says, kind of talking to herself. “He took the money and . . . then he came back to deliver the package. Oh, Jesus, Dean, why'd you have to go and fuck everything up?”

She was mad at him. I stayed quiet, not knowing which
way to jump. Lorraine's face had gone all pale and her mouth hung open a little, but it wasn't unattractive like Dean's had been.

“Do you still want breakfast?”

“No, I do not want breakfast! Just shut up and let me think!”

“Okay.”

I respected her wishes even if my guts were growling by then, just sat quiet on the other side of the table looking at the wall or sometimes the ceiling. Lorraine, she's away somewhere else, thinking hard about all this. Finally she looks me in the eye and says, “You're going to have to help me, Odell.”

“Okay.”

“There's no way I can keep you out of this. You've been seen driving his truck around town and mowing his lawns, so you can't just disappear. Believe me, that's what I'd prefer, just have you vanish, but that can't happen now. God almighty, Dean went and did it, went crazy all the way and killed her. She never should've let him stay here, the way he was . . .”

Lorraine started in on what a crazy guy Dean was, all fucked up from an early age with no friends that stuck with him in school and a bad record with employment, which is why Aunt Bree set him up with his own small business that prospered okay but behind the smiling lawnmower man there's someone else, a crazy person waiting to get out. He was into drugs, she said, all kinds, which didn't help one bit with the crazy part, and him and Bree argued a lot because he wouldn't turn to Jesus to save himself. Bree was very big on the Lord, all the time watching those late night TV shows, which I already figured out because of Chet and Preacher
Bob getting called in to settle the situation, only I couldn't say that to Lorraine, of course. And on top of everything else she says Dean had a problem about “unresolved sexuality” which means he was kind of gay the way she explained it, only he didn't want to admit it even to himself.

“Did he make any moves on you?” she asked.

“No . . . except that first night when he woke me up saying he thought he heard someone prowling around, but there was nobody.”

“Then what happened?”

“Well . . . nothing, he went back to bed, only it was strange the way he woke me up, whispering in my ear. It gave me a fright if you want the honest truth. That's no way to wake someone up unless you want them to get a big surprise, which I did.”

“It figures,” she said. “You're exactly the kind of guy he was always falling for, big and tall, the exact opposite of Dean. Listen, don't tell anyone about that part, okay? It's got nothing to do with what happened here.”

“Okay.”

“Pretty soon I'm going to call the Chief of Police. He's a personal friend of mine so he'll go easy, but I'm telling you, Odell, you're going to come under suspicion because of the circumstances, you understand that, don't you?”

“Well, yeah . . .”

“So that means you're going to have to trim the truth a little, are you following me?”

“Sure. How do you mean?”

“I mean, as well as leaving out the part about Dean waking you up by whispering in your ear, you've got to leave out the
part about Dean going away with the guy in the green Pontiac, and especially about the package getting delivered here. You can't talk to
anyone
about that, okay?”

“Okay. Why not?”

“Because I'm asking you to. Believe me, it'll only make a bad situation worse for everyone, not just Dean, everyone, including you, but mainly it'd make big trouble for me, that's why.”

“Why would it do that?”

“Jesus . . . it just would. Now, listen up good, Odell. Do you like me?”

“Uhuh.”

“That's good, because I like you too, but if you tell anyone at all, especially the Chief of Police, about this package here, it'll most likely mean I end up in jail. Would you want to see me in jail, Odell?”

“No.”

“Well, all right then, just keep your lip zipped about the green Pontiac and the package and everything'll go okay, except now Dean is gonna be a wanted man. He won't run far, hasn't got the connections or the smarts. Jesus, Dean . . .”

She put her head in her hands and didn't move for awhile. My guts rumbled but I don't think she heard. I really wanted breakfast, but how would it look when the cops come and I'm chowing down on sausages and waffles, with maybe some bacon on the side, plus coffee, when there's a dead frozen woman been discovered down in the basement? It wouldn't look good, that's how it'd look. I had to make the sacrifice, not just for me, for Lorraine too. Seeing her there looking miserable about what happened, it made my heart hurt, so if she
wanted me to trim the truth like she described it, then I would.

“Odell,” she says, “we've got to get your story set about how Dean went away from here. This is what happened, are you listening close?”

“I'm listening.”

“About ten o' clock Monday night you and Dean heard a car horn outside. You went out on the porch and there's a car parked halfway along the driveway, so far away you can't see what kind in the dark. That's important – you can't see what kind or who's in it. But Dean acts like it's nothing strange and goes down to talk to the guy or guys in the car, then he comes back and says he has to go away for a few days and will you take over his lawnmowing schedule till he gets back, which you said you will because he's been pretty good to you even if you only met a little while ago. So Dean goes away with these guys without even packing a bag – remember that detail because they'll look over everything in his room and see his razor's still there and stuff like that, so get that part right, he left with just the clothes he's wearing. It'll sound peculiar but the facts will bear it out . . . except if they catch Dean and he says something different, which he would . . . Well, we just have to hope they don't catch him. Maybe they won't. I hate to say it, but Dean is so messed up he might just kill himself over this from remorse or something . . .”

I waited for more things to remember but she was done. “Can you remember that story, Odell?”

“I sure can, it's simple.”

“Okay,” she says, standing up, “I'm going to call Chief Webb. Have you got your ducks in a row, Odell?”

“Ducks?”

“Are your thoughts all organized about what happened and didn't happen here, like I explained?”

“Sure thing.”

“Because Andy Webb is no fool. He'll try and trip you up, so you better be ready.”

“I'm ready.”

“Okay then.”

And she started tapping the phone with her fingertip. “Chief Webb,” she says, then, “Lorraine Lowry. Tell him it's urgent.” A few seconds went by then she says, “Andy, I've got a situation here. I'm out at my Aunt Bree's place and . . . she's dead. It's murder, Andy . . . She's in the freezer . . . In the freezer, yes . . .And Dean's gone missing as of two days back . . . Right . . . Andy, I'd be real appreciative if you didn't pass this on to the media till after the coroner's come and gone, is that possible?”

It sounded like it was, because she said Thank you more than once then hung up. Then she picked up the package and waved it under my nose. “You know what this is in my hand?” she asked.

“A package?”

“Wrong. There's nothing at all in my hand, because no package got delivered here, got that straight? There never was any package. If you can just keep that fact uppermost in your mind you and me can continue to be friends.”

“I'd like that.”

“Well, fine, I'd like that too. Everyone needs friends, especially when there's a tragedy like this. That's what friends are for, to cover for each other and keep the other guy out of trouble with the law. Once you're in trouble with the law,
you're toast, I've seen it happen. Dean, he's in the biggest trouble of his life now. . .”

She sat down again at the table and I thought she's going to cry, but she didn't, just looked at the package in her hand and got straight up again, like she didn't know which way to go or what to do at that exact moment, then she says to me, “I'm taking this out to my car. When this package disappears out of this kitchen it disappears out of your thoughts. Forever. Got that, Odell?”

“Got it.”

And away she goes. Soon as she's gone I took a packet of cookies from the pantry and crammed three or four into my mouth I'm so starving hungry by then, and then three or four more, just to take the edge off of my appetite as they say, which had got my stomach churning so bad it's painful, but those cookies kept the wolf from the door until I could eat a true meal later on after the cops came and went.

Lorraine come back in the house just as I'm swallowing the last of the cookies and tossing the empty packet in the trash bin under the sink. Her face was set very grim and determined so I made mine the same way so our stories would match up for Andy Webb. The thing I was thinking is this – if Lorraine and me can bring this off it brings us closer together like they say tragedy does, and from being closer who knows what might happen? I was getting those feelings about her even if she's an older woman, but I could overlook that if we're made for each other the way I'm thinking we are, which Lorraine might not have been, seeing as she's got other things on her mind right now. But not me, I'm thinking hard about her and me, which helps to wipe away any thinking about that
package, which I knew good and well was something illegal, which means she's doing something against the law but, hey, nobody's perfect and I could overlook that part too because love is blind.

What I'm saying is, I would put my hands over my eyes deliberate for this woman to bring us happiness. Already I junked my plan to join the Army because she's right, her and Dean, saying it's crazy to risk getting my head blown off in Iraq if Lorraine can get me a good job as a prison guard. That is steady work because there will always be criminals who have to be kept under lock and key for the protection of us all, so it's a job for life being handed to me on a silver plate. I would have to be crazy to say no, and I am not crazy.

Maybe twenty minutes later two cop cars and an ambulance turned off the road and came up the driveway, going slow and with no sirens because there's no emergency here, and the twinkle bars were not flashing either, same reason. They all pulled up in the yard which got it pretty crowded out there, and it was plain from the start which one is Andy Webb. He's a big guy, although not so big as me, around forty-five maybe, and he looks like a police chief should, smart and tough at the same time, and he's got three other cops with him.

I watched from the porch while Lorraine went down to speak a few words. He even gave her a quick hug, which was a surprise, not what you might expect from cops investigating a murder scene, but she did say they're old friends so no big deal. The other cops acted like they didn't even see it. Then they all came up to the house and Lorraine introduced me to the Chief by way of saying I'm an acquaintance of Dean's,
which was clever of her because an acquaintance is not so close a thing as a friend, so if I did not have all the answers about Dean there's a reason, namely I'm only an acquaintance, which would be a big help with the questioning.

We all trooped down to the basement and Andy says to me, “Tell me what happened, how you found her.”

So I did, and while I'm talking a couple of the cops are taking pictures of Bree in the freezer, and when they had enough Andy says to start pulling out the pizzas and so forth and get her out of there, which they did, setting everything aside neat till you could see Bree exposed which they took more pictures of, then it's time to lift her out, which was done real careful out of respect for the dead. They even put on rubber gloves for this part like in a TV operating theater. When they got her out and saw the way her being folded over has hid the shotgun wound in her stomach they looked at each other like to say officially that it's murder all right and more pictures got took of Bree on the floor next to the freezer with the pizzas and Birds Eye peas beside her. Then the ambulance guys from the coroner set her on a stretcher to take her away and Andy says he wants to talk with me upstairs, so that's where we went.