Follow the Dotted Line (9 page)

“Mom,” Mitch bellowed through the speaker. “Can you hear me?!”

“Yes. You can bring it down a few decibels, honey. Thanks.”

“Okay. Anyway, you know about these ashes being tested, right?”

Andy took a deep breath. “Yes, Mitch. I was the one who had them tested, remember?”

“Yeah. Right. So this brings up a lot of unanswered questions.”

“Uh huh,” said Andy, evenly.

“Like the cause of death, if there is a death. And whether Dad had a will or not. Stuff like that. Things we never really considered when we first got the burger box.”

“Ah,” she replied, surrendering to the futility of pointing out that those were precisely the questions she’d been asking. “Yes. All very good questions.”

“Thank you. Now we feel, as Dad’s children, that in order to answer these questions, we need a presence in Texas.”

“What do you mean by ‘presence,’ Mitch?”

“Somebody who knows their way around. A local.”

“Oh,” said Andy. “I hadn’t thought of that.” What she had thought about was going to Texas herself. Still, it was hard to argue with getting someone local, she thought. “Okay. That’s probably a good idea.”

“I know. That’s why I’m suggesting we hire a lawyer.”

“A lawyer?” Another smart move that made her unnecessary.

“It seems the best way to proceed. You agree?”

“I guess.”

“Good. I knew you would. I’ll find somebody and foot the bill. Any objections?”

“No, not really.”

“You sound hesitant,” Mitch observed. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Really. A lawyer makes sense.”

“Excellent.”

Andy felt oddly deflated. Had she really been relying on Mark’s death to give her meandering life some direction?

“So do you mind going down to work with him?” belted out the voice on the phone.

“What?”

“Somebody’s gotta go to Texas and do a little legwork. Check out the house. Talk to the lawyer. We need boots on the ground, Mom. Do you have the time?”

“Me?”

“Well, you know more about Dad than any of us do.”

“That’s true,” she said, trying not to sound as pleased as she felt.

“Meaning you can go?”

“Sure. Why not?” Suddenly, she was behaving like a teenager:
whatever, who cares, doesn’t matter to me
.

“That’s great, Mom. Just great.”

She liked this; the more blasé she appeared, the more of a cheerleader Mitch became.

“Sam’s gonna get the tickets. And you two can leave ASAP.”

“Sam’s coming with me?” Andy asked, surprised.

“No. Sam’s buying the tickets. We want Harley to go with you.”

“What?” Andy was back in adult mode.

“Harley’s coming with you.”

“Oh, no, he’s not, Mitchell.” Her pernicious nephew was sitting on a bar stool stooped over his phone playing a video game, pretending he wasn’t listening to the conversation.

“We have no idea what’s going on down there, Mom,” Mitch went on. “Tilda appears to be something of a loose cannon. We don’t want to send you by yourself.”

“But I’ll be perfectly fine by myself!”

Andy turned her head from one daughter to the other, pleading for mercy. They clearly weren’t offering any. She picked up the phone, put it to her ear, and walked into the nearby living room.

“You know what this kid is like, Mitch,” she said, trying vainly to hush her voice. “The only assistance he’s qualified to offer is his unintelligible rendition of the Lord’s Prayer. Please, Mitch.”

“Mom, we’re insisting you take him.”

“Have you asked him if he wants to go?” she tried.

“No problem, Aunt Andy,” Harley called from his perch in the dining room. “I’ve never been to Texas.”

“Mitch!”

“It’s non-negotiable, Mom. Just think of it as having Jesus as your co-pilot.”

Andy pounded her thumb into the off button and wondered when, precisely, she had lost control of
almost everything
!

Unrepressed Memories

For someone who had written an editorial for her college newspaper nearly 40 years ago demanding the legalization of pot and whose only current religious belief was in universal healthcare, a trip to the Lone Star state was not on Andy’s bucket list. The minute the plane lifted off the tarmac at LAX headed for Harlingen, she began to feel herself slipping down a rabbit hole and wondering just how deep and dark this adventure might become. Harley, on the other hand, couldn’t get enough of the free, honey-roasted peanuts.

“So the Rio Grande. That’s got to be a pretty big river, huh?” Harley said.

“I’ve never seen it. But if ‘grand’ is any indication, that’s right,” said Andy, not really in the mood to discover how little her nephew knew about yet another academic subject. “It’s a large share of the border between the United States and Mexico.”

“Hey, I didn’t know that.”

“Really? So maybe this trip will make up for the two days of classes you’re missing.”

“Oh, don’t worry about that. It’s okay if I don’t learn anything on this trip, Aunt Andy. Sometimes you need to do things just for your own pleasure, right?”

Andy decided this bit of wisdom really didn’t deserve any affirmation. Besides, she wanted him to stop talking. If wishes were horses . . . .

“I like your kids,” he announced, with absolutely no provocation. “But they’re kinda different.”

“Different?”

“You know, from most of the relatives I’ve met so far.”

“Have you met a lot of your relatives?”

“Um, no. Not really. I guess they’re different from most of the people I’ve met so far. In life.”

“Hmm,” said Andy. “Okay. So how are they different?”

“They’re all sort of hyper, you know. Like they’re wearing jetpacks or something. I guess Ian can be mellow sometimes. But to be honest, Aunt Andy, your kids can be a little scary. For a guy like me anyway.”

She looked at the growing pile of empty peanut bags on his tray table and considered the limited number of people, no, the limited
variety
of people Harley Davidson had met in his young life. And yet, she mused, there was something profoundly accurate in his ‘jetpack’ analysis of her children. The level of energy that filled a room when they were all together was a little scary for her, too. Especially because she often became the focus of their verbal one-upmanship.

Andy was reminded of one particularly effervescent holiday meal three years ago, when all four kids were present and accounted for and the conversation had veered onto the always-popular subject of her parenting defects. The defect in question was Andy’s uncanny ability to tune her children out completely, while she was at work in her home office and they were doing—well, anything they wanted. According to their unrepressed memories, one afternoon she was working on a treatment for Sony Studios, and her elementary-aged children were running wild. As they remembered it, Ian was making an escape by climbing out a second-story window, Lilly was shaving the cat with hair clippers, Samantha was in front of the TV eating a package of refrigerated cookie dough, and Mitch was on the back porch trying to ignite a box of matchsticks with a magnifying glass. It was, what Lil liked to call, parenting by chaotic design. When Andy tried to defend herself, the four of them piled on like bad comics at a celebrity roast. The fact that Ian broke his arm that afternoon and Mitch burned down the rose trellis made her protests a little hollow. All in all, nothing she could do or say at that moment would shut them up.

After that holiday meal, Andy vowed never again to be with all of her children in the same room simultaneously because nothing good ever came of it. Now she realized that axiom was true even if they were only together over a speakerphone. As individuals, they were each wonderful. And taken together in smaller doses, they made her feel like a million bucks. But when they were together in one place, something about their sibling synergy transformed them into the four horsemen of the apocalypse.

Oh my god, she lamented, I’ve been infected with Biblical allusions.

The boy beside her put down his latest bag of nuts. “What are we doing first when we get there?” he asked.

“Getting a car and checking in at the motel,” she answered.

“And then?”

“Going to see the lawyer.”

“Awesome.”

“Going to see a lawyer is never awesome, Harley. Sometimes it’s necessary, but it always stinks.”

Harley ultimately discovered the delights of the small television screen attached to the seat in front of him, and Andy found peace. An hour later, it was wheels down in Harlingen, Texas, a city boasting the largest airport in the Rio Grande Valley, as well as the lowest cost of living in the entire country. Two statistics Andy somehow found mildly depressing. She and her nephew deplaned, picked up their Toyota rental car, and headed for McAllen, a distance of about 35 miles.

The Rio Grande Valley is not really a valley but a flood plain that stretches for seemingly endless flat miles. In the summer months, it’s hot. Hotter than southern California and more forbidding. But then unfamiliar territory is always a little forbidding, Andy thought, and she reckoned she ought to give Texas a break and at least let it introduce itself to her before committing to hating it.

McAllen was one of those small towns now growing fast and trying desperately not to look too far behind the curve. The city was full of palm trees, bike lanes, irrigated grass, and an excess of blazing solar rays. You needed sunglasses to protect your eyes from the beams bouncing off the white concrete. The downtown reminded Andy of a cross between some main street in the 1950s Midwest and the Alamo. The commercial area was full of cars and pickups parked diagonally curbside facing dated storefronts. The place had been redeveloped with fancy street lamps and faux brick crosswalks, but the revitalization already needed an update. It bustled with the descendants of longtime and recent Mexican immigrants mixed together with refugee retirees from Minnesota and the Dakotas. There was money here, as well as poverty. There was the façade of a bigger, more prosperous future to come, which was fronting an underbelly of the usual border-town vices. It was definitely not Los Angeles, yet it was oddly an echo of the desert town Andy called home. She hated it but not all that much.

The offices of Tony Pescaras, Esquire were located on North 6th Street near the County Clerk’s Office in a two-story building with a mission motif. Andy climbed the steps to the second floor, Harley in tow. They were shown into the lawyer’s office right away, and each took a seat opposite a small man with incredibly gorgeous curly dark hair and a small mustache. He looked like a professional salsa dancer.

“Mrs. Kornacky,” he began.

“Actually, my name is Bravos, and it’s Ms.,” Andy said. “Just call me Andy. Please. And this is my nephew, Harley. I know my son Mitch Kornacky paid you a $5,000 retainer, and I’m here to find out what he got for his money.”

The lawyer sat up a bit straighter and forced a smile. She had pissed him off already, she could tell. How was it that she managed to turn every discussion with a lawyer or a car mechanic into a fight over money? Mitch would have started this conversation with a handshake and small talk and a bit of bonding, but she felt the money meter ticking and resented spending even a penny on niceties.

“Well, yes,” said the attorney. “Your son did hire me and asked me to look into a few matters regarding the death of his father. And I have done that.”

“Great,” she said, hoping to sound more amiable than she felt. “What did you find?”

Pescaras opened the red folder on his desk and fingered two pieces of paper inside. Apparently not very much, Andy thought.

“All right,” he said, deliberately. “I began with a records search at the Hildago County Clerk’s Office.”

She nodded and grinned, hoping to speed him along.

“There is no record of the death of any Mark Kornacky in this county. At any time.”

She looked surprised. She
was
surprised.

“He may have died in another county,” the lawyer said.

“Another county?” she asked.

“Well, the Valley is made up of four counties. We’re in Hildago. But if he died in say, Harlingen, that would be Cameron County.”

“Oh. Did you check those counties?”

“No, but if you’d like me to—”

“Hold on. Let’s see what else you’ve got first,” she said, cutting him off.

He grimaced, tight-lipped and irritated.

“Fine. I checked with the Hildago county coroner, as well. No records, either. And no unidentified bodies fitting your late husband’s description.”

“My ex-husband.”

“Excuse me?”

“Nothing,” said Andy, not wanting to waste time on a description of her current non-relationship with the elusive deceased. “Did you check with the police to see if they have any records—”

“I did. And they don’t,” he said, narrowing his eyes to indicate he could be as brief as she wanted.

“And what about a will?” Andy wanted to know.

“I checked with the court. Mr. Kornacky had no attorney of record, and there is no will in probate.”

“Wow,” said Andy, truly perplexed.

“Mr. Kornacky did—does, however, have a bank account. Several, in fact. At Texas Fidelity on North 10
^th
Street.”

Andy flinched. “How much money does he have?” she blurted out.

“No clue, Mrs.—Ms. Bravos. I just found records indicating he has several accounts.”

Andy sat for a moment, taking all this in. Out of the corner of her eye she saw Harley lean forward, as if he were going to speak. “Don’t you dare,” she hissed. “These guys charge by the nanosecond.” He leaned back.

“What about the house? Did you go by his address?” she asked.

“I don’t
go by
addresses, ” he said. “If you’d like me to hire a private investigator—”

“No, no. I’ll go by the address. So that’s it?”

“Yes,” he said, with open disdain. “That’s it. Now, would you like me to check the other three counties for information?”

“Have you got enough money left in the kitty?”

“Pardon me?”

“What’s left of Mitch’s retainer?”

“Nothing. I will need another—”