FrostLine (15 page)

What in hell was I going to say to her? Get a blood test? What else could I say to her? I owed it to the poor girl. And anyone she ever fell in love with again.

“How long are you home for?”

“I gotta report tomorrow. I never used to come home. I had all this leave racked up. So when I met Dicky, I've been home a lot.”

“When did you see him last?”

She blushed, bright red. “The night before.”

“The night before?”

“Uhhh. The morning. I mean I drove him home in the morning and he was going to catch some sleep—he was drinking wine all night. So I told him, catch some sleep and I'll see you later. He wanted to go on a picnic.”

“
That morning
he wanted to go on a picnic?”

“He'd never been on a picnic. Neither had I till I went in the Service. When the kids did it in school, I couldn't get to town. The school bus only picked me up for school days and Grandpa wouldn't let me anyhow. I told Dicky how these friends of mine at Bragg invited me along. So he wanted to try it.”

I was damned curious how a guy would ask his girlfriend on a picnic the same day he was planning to blow up Henry King's dam.

Cover? Josie for an alibi? A good alibi, if he had laid a slow fuse.

“Where were you going to have this picnic?”

“Out by the covered bridge. There's a rock in the middle of the river when the water's low.”

“Great picnic spot.” Sergeant Marian and I had used it more than once. A big flat rock we reached by stepping stones. It was usually private. Although last time, when the Newbury Driving Club came trotting along the river's edge in their antique carriages and period costume, we had frightened their horses.

The covered bridge was to hell and gone from Morris Mountain so that if Dicky had been planning an alibi he'd have had to lay an unbelievably slow fuse.

“Josie? I have to talk to you.”

“Here comes Mom. Please don't tell her. She doesn't know any of this.”

Gwen glided up with a fresh Bud someone had bought her. “What are you two so palsy about?”

“Talking about Fort Bragg. I used to have buddies there.”

“I thought you were in the Navy.”

“They're good soldiers at Bragg, but I never met one who could walk on water.”

Josie hid a grin and headed for the ladies' room. Gwen said, “Thanks for cheering her up.”

“She's a nice kid.”

“How come you never come up for a visit?”

I looked at her, a little surprised, and more than a little interested. “I guess I always got the impression Buddy wouldn't like it.”

“Buddy's in fucking Indonesia.”

“Is that an invitation?”

Gwen drank from her bottle and studied me carefully. “Maybe.”

“Sounds like the beer talking.”

“So bring beer.”

I should have made a date right then. But I was worrying that I hadn't yet warned Josie that Dicky Butler was HIV-positive. And wondering, had it been Dicky's red wine talking picnic the morning he blew King's dam?

Josie came back and leaned a fist on the table and said with a firmness that surprised me and stunned Gwen, “Mom, would you excuse us a minute? I have to talk to Ben.”

Chapter 14

I said, “First I have to talk to you.”

She said, “Dicky didn't do it.”

“Do what?”

“Blow up Mr. King's dam.”

“Yes he did. We'll get to that in a minute. There's something much more important.”

“What could be more important? Don't you realize what I'm saying?”

“Dicky's dead. You're still alive. Keeping you that way is more important.”

Josie shook her head and smiled a private smile.

“What?” I asked.

“We didn't really do it. You know?”

The private smile made her unexpectedly womanly. Not sexily womanly like her mother—though there was a sexuality to it—but brimful of the wisdom women take for granted and guys keep thinking we'll get when we grow up, despite the example of our older friends.

“You're talking about the HIV,” she said.

“He told you?”

“Of course he told me. He was my friend.”

“Did he protect you?”

“You shouldn't doubt him, Ben.”

I most certainly did doubt him. On his best day Dicky had been a selfish bully. On his worst, a sociopath. And while I too had fallen more than once under the blinding power of romantic love, I didn't have to buy into Josie's take on a Dicky Butler whom I'd known since Josie's mother was a voluptuous middle school girl-woman with a long red braid.

“We didn't really do it,” she repeated softly.

We talked for a long time. Her mother watched irritably from the bar. Sometimes Josie blushed. Sometimes she cried. She was eighteen years old, a chubby child who had held herself in check her whole life trying to survive the chaos of the Jervis trailer camp. He had been in his thirties, going on a hundred. My friend, she kept calling him. My friend. How she missed him. Dicky Butler had lifted her eyeglasses off her nose, massaged the red marks, and told her she was beautiful. Because he had called me his friend, and she had no other friends in Newbury, she told me in frank and reassuring detail how he had introduced her to safe sex.

“Dicky had a pamphlet. From the prison?” She giggled. “And I had mine from the Army.”

They'd had good fun comparing them.

“Don't tell anybody.”

“Of course not.”

“Especially her.”

“That's between you and your mom.”

Josie glanced her way and announced, matter-of-factly, “She's jealous I'm talking to you.”

I glanced at the bar. “Well, she's going to have to get used to having a sexy daughter.”

“I'm not sexy. I'm fat.”

“Sounds like Dicky thought you were sexy.”

I'm here to report that goodly intentioned foot in the mouth does
not
taste more like dancing pump than sewer boot.

“I can't believe I'll never see him again,” she wept.

I said I was sorry. She cried harder. Thank God she had earlier introduced a change of subject.

“What's this about Dicky didn't blow King's dam?”

“He couldn't have. He was too drunk.”

The boot in my mouth smothered the obvious retort: considering the results, way too drunk.

“Maybe he slept it off?”

“I didn't get him home 'til almost noon.”

That was cutting it close. “How drunk was he? Too drunk to walk?”

“He was staggering.”

“And the last you saw, you put him to bed?”

“No! His father was there. No, I dropped him at the gate.” She hesitated.

I asked, “Did he go to bed?”

“I don't think so.”

“Did he go in the house?”

“No, his father was always ragging him about drinking. Dicky said he was going to sleep in the woods. It was a beautiful day. Remember?”

“Glorious.”

“There was a spot down the stream where he liked to hang out. We'd go down there sometimes if his dad was out in the fields. It was beautiful—all cool and shady.”

“Sounds buggy,” I said, considering the garment doffing required to compare safe sex manuals.

“Not really. There were dragonflies. Dicky said they ate the bugs.”

“Did his dad know he was seeing you?”

“Sort of. We never came right out and said it, but he'd see my mom's truck and must have known something.”

“So you think Dicky slept it off in the woods.”

“The last I saw, that's where he was heading.”

“But, Josie…What did he do when he woke up?”

“He was
staggering.
He could hardly walk down the hill. There wasn't time to get sober enough to do what the cops say he did.”

When
I
drink way too much, I usually pop wide awake about two hours after I hit the hay, up and roaring to go. Several hours later, of course, I'm begging for death. But immediately upon awakening I'm fairly sharp. Sharp enough to sneak an armload of Dad's dynamite down to the neighbor's dam? Possibly, provided I had such a dad and such a neighbor. It might even seem like a good idea at the time.

“What are you thinking?” Josie asked.

Maybe the threat of death had mellowed Dicky. Maybe all those regrets he had spouted about his father had presaged major changes. Maybe. “Did you tell this to Trooper Moody?”

“Are you kidding? He hated Dicky's guts.”

“How about the state police detectives?”

Josie stared hard. “Told
her
to take a hike. Leaning on me about U.S. Army responsibility.”

“I thought no one knew about you.”

“Bitch pulled me over the night at the funeral home.”

Busy, busy Marian. “What did she ask you?”

“When did I see Dicky last? Did he say he was going to do it? All that stuff.”

“What did you tell her?”

“Nothing.” High school diploma and corporal's stripes aside, she was still a Jervis. “What do you think?” she asked again.

“I'm sorry. I think it's very hard to believe that he didn't accidentally kill himself while blowing up the dam.”

“You don't get it,” she said. “I thought you'd understand, being his friend.”

“Understand what?”

“That it wasn't him.”

All I understood was that it certainly looked like it was him. And it was a Dicky thing to do. Or was it?

Maybe my mouth dropped a little. She demanded, “What? What are you thinking?”

His girlfriend didn't think he did it.

His father didn't think he did it.

And actually, in one way it wasn't at all a Dicky thing to do. He wasn't a sneak attack guy. He would punch you in the face, not in the back.

“If he didn't do it, how did he end up under it?”

“Maybe he was sleeping there instead of the woods.”

“On King's property?”

“He was drunk.”

“That's a bit of a walk for a drunk.”

“Maybe he took a swim in the lake. Then climbed out and fell asleep and it blew up on him.”

But he had been wearing boots, I remembered. And gloves. “Assuming it did. Who blew it up?”

“His father.”

“His father?” My client, whose innocence I was supposed to prove. “Why do you say that?”

“Who else? He's in jail, right?”

“The difference between jail and prison is the people in jail haven't been convicted yet.” A fine distinction, but one a Jervis child should appreciate. “And he's charged with helping Dicky. Conspiracy for helping him, and accessory to murder for accidentally killing him.”

“He didn't help Dicky. He did it himself. Who else would have done it? He hated Mr. King.”

“Mr. Butler says he didn't do it.” Of course, he also said he knew for a fact that Dicky didn't do it.

Someone fired up the jukebox. Josie got teary again. “Dicky's favorite song.” She sang with it in the strong contralto she had inherited from her mother, “‘…Now I am guilty of something I hope you never do. 'Cause there's nothing any sadder than losing yourself in love.'”

When it was over, and Megadeth started blasting a White Birch standard, I asked “Did Dicky tell you anything that would implicate his father?”

“Not exactly,” she answered carefully. “But he did say how much his dad hated King.”

“What do you do with all this?” I asked.

“Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“It was an accident. His father didn't mean to kill him. And if he did, knowing he did will be a horrible punishment.”

“Do you really believe this, Josie? Or do you just want to?”

“Hey, I don't care if Dicky blew up some rich bastard's dam. And I sure can't blame his poor father for an accident. He's dead either way.”

Chubby cheeks, eyeglasses and pressed Army fatigues notwithstanding, Josie was Gwen Jervis' daughter. Simultaneously cold and passionate. A great friend. Or a terrible enemy.

“Why are you telling me this?”

“I didn't come looking for you. You asked. You were his friend. Who else would I tell?”

“You could tell your mother.”

“What for?”

“Comfort. Don't underestimate her. She's one of the smarter people I know.”

“She's really hot for you.”

“Beg pardon?”

“I said my mom is really hot for you.”

I thought she'd said that. “Your mother and I go back a long way,” I answered, firmly. “And there's been times we were special friends. Times we stood up for each other.”

“Because you're screwing her?”

“What?”

Josie gave me a neutral smile. “You heard me.”

Unexpectedly intimate with the young soldier, thanks to Dicky Butler, it still felt strange to say, “I haven't slept with your Mom since I was fourteen years old.”

“Really?”

“Really,” I said, rocketed in memory to a hot summer night; an icy six-pack Pink had thrust grinning into my hands; a wild and worldly grown-up older girl leading me into the dark, twining a long red braid around my neck, laughing at my excitement and mocking my fear. For which I would be forever grateful.

“I was sure you were.”

“What in hell gave you that idea?”

“Right after I went into the Service she got all silly. Started wearing makeup again and growing her hair like a teenager. I thought she was sleeping with you.”

“No such luck,” I said, making sure I smiled.

“Are you telling me the truth? Because I told you the truth. I told you stuff I never told anybody but Dicky.”

“I know that. And I'm flattered. I am telling you the truth. I don't lie. And if you think about it, I have no reason to lie.”

“Well, she was sleeping with somebody and it wasn't my dad because he was out in the Gulf.”

Buddy Jervis—he and Gwen were not-so-distant cousins—was apt to forget his mailing address while working oil rigs in distant fields. Particularly when it came to sending checks. My sympathies and loyalties lay with Gwen. Nonetheless, it seemed a moment to be avuncular.

“Your parents have been together a long time.”

That was a big help. Josie started crying, again. “I thought it would be like that with Dicky.”

Around my second boot in mouth I mumbled something brilliant like, “I'll bet.”

“Some people are HIV a long time.”

More than are immune to dynamite.

Gwen came back to the table with a dangerous glint in her eye. I defused it with a private glance that things were better with Josie.

I went home and combed a salad out of the garden, which July's rains had choked with weeds.

DaNang didn't want any. I tipped several pounds of dry food in the washtub we were using for a bowl and freshened his water. He watched me with a baleful eye and made an angry sound.

“What the hell are you growling about?”

He stared. I stared. Suddenly his tail thumped for Alison in the doorway.

“That's his whine, not his growl.”

“Sounded like a growl to me. Why's he whining?”

“He likes a can of liverwurst on his dry food.”

“Since when?”

“Couple of days ago. I tried it. He liked it.”

“Liverwurst doesn't come in cans.”

She climbed onto a counter and opened a high cupboard door. “Here.”

“That is
not
liverwurst.That is
pâté de fois gras
.”

“Well, you're almost out. You're going to have to get some more.”

The phone rang before I fed her to him.

“Yes!”

“Ben, this is Julia Devlin.” Wielding her used-to-being-obeyed voice.

“Hey. How are you?”

“Henry heard you called at the gate.” She made it sound like I'd been lurking there with a grenade launcher.

“I was in the neighborhood. Had something I wanted to talk to him about.”

“Come up. We're having a little cookout.”

Orders roared by naval commanders dodging torpedoes cut more slack than that supper invitation.

“I'll bring the salad.”