Getting Sassy (35 page)

When I led Sassy through the door, Bix started barking. Helluva time to get territorial.

My mother set her slice of pizza on the open carton. “That animal is not spending the night here.”

“I’m afraid he has to, Mom.” I patted his back. “He’s clean. He’s empty. He’ll be in the crate.” I sat next to her on the bed. “No one can know I’ve got him.”

“You need to tell me what’s going on, Robyn. I don’t like this one bit. And why am I here?”

“I will, Mom.” I would tell her something.

When I returned with the crate, Sassy was munching a slice of pizza and my mother was trying to shoo him away from the carton.

“Get away, you filthy thing.”

Sassy jerked his head back, taking the slice with him. Bix, siding with my mother for the first time in his five years, stood on the bed next to her and barked at Sassy.

“Everybody, be quiet.”

My mother’s eyes widened, and Bix sat down and shut up.

“We need to get through this night. All of us. Together.” My mother opened her mouth, no doubt to protest, but I cut her off. “There will be no discussion. We are here.” I glanced at my watch. “It is almost one a.m. The night’s almost over.” I wished. “We need to do this. Please don’t ask me any questions.”

Neither my mother nor Bix interrupted as I set up the crate. Once I tossed a slice of pizza in, Sassy followed. I’d also brought some straw in for him. And now I filled the ice bucket with water and placed it in the crate.

“Robyn—”

“Please try to go to sleep.” I wished I’d thought to bring some Grouse.

My mother sighed, and then she said, as though addressing no one in particular. “I just wanted a glass of wine.”

“Yeah, that’d be nice.”

“You don’t have any?”

“No.”

“Could we watch television?”

“Sure.” I turned on the set and was lucky to find a John Wayne movie.
Sands of Iwo Jima.
He died in the end, but I hoped my mother would be asleep before then.

I looked over at her and the question just came out: “How long were you and my father together?”

“A year,” she answered without taking her eyes off the TV.

“I must have been an unpleasant surprise.”

She continued to stare at the TV, and I thought she’d chosen not to respond. But then she said, “You weren’t a mistake,” and added, “I thought if I were to become pregnant, he’d leave her.”

I watched some actor in a commercial cheerfully gargle, then dip below the camera to spit. I guess I could see how after a year she might think that extreme measures were necessary. How different would our lives have been if he had left his wife? In a way, I was surprised she’d kept me. My mother has no pro-life leanings whatsoever.

“It wasn’t your fault,” she said, and I thought I understood then. If I’d been an accident, I might not be sitting here. But I wasn’t—a bad move, perhaps, but not an accident. And so she had to deal with me. And, maybe she held out the hope that Robbie would come after her. When he finally did, it was too late.

I was mulling this over when, out of the blue, my mother said, “Why don’t you think we ever got along?”

“I don’t know.” Maybe because you resented my intruding on your life. Even though I’d been invited.

“I think we may be too much alike.”

I looked over at her and saw that she was serious. “How do you figure that?” I asked.

“Well, we’re both rather self-centered.”

Here I was sitting in a motel with my mother, my dog and a goat, biding my time until I could collect the ransom money, all so she wouldn’t have to move out of Dryden. Words failed me.

She continued, “That must be why you won’t let anyone into your life. Other that that dog.” Who happened to be curled up at the foot of her bed. “You can’t even make room for your mother.”

“We tried it, Mom. It didn’t work.”

“We did?”

I nodded. It was possible that she remembered the time after her stint in the nursing home as a dream. A bad one. “You stayed with me for a few months. Remember?”

The haze of confusion lifted slightly and she nodded. “It might have been better if you’d had a larger place.”

“It’s what I had.” The two-bedroom had been small. Even for one person.

“Well, once I get the money from that stamp, maybe I could buy a larger place for you.”

A glance in her direction revealed that the suggestion had not been made to provoke me. She lay on her back, hands folded at her chest with her head propped up against the flimsy veneer headboard.

The room went silent then, and after a few minutes I realized she’d fallen asleep. Bix was scrunched up next to her leg and Sassy lay in his crate, watching me with his strange, amber eyes.

I stretched out on the other bed thinking I should have been relieved that my mother had decided to explore our personal relationship rather than interrogate me about our present situation. I looked over at her, taking a moment to marvel at the fact that she was asleep. I knew she often spent much of the night wandering the floor, chatting with the nurses or dozing off in a chair. But tonight, with a goat in her room and a dog at the end of her bed, she slept. Strange where you found comfort.

It was after one. I needed my strength for what was to come. I had to call Bull, but I would also place a call to Erika. I doubted I’d get hold of her. She and her brother were probably on a flight out of the country by now, with my mother’s stamp and her letter in a carry-on bag. But I would call her. If only to hear the no-longer-in-use message.

I thought of the letter, saddened by its loss. I wanted to read it, to hear the voice of my father. Now I wouldn’t get that chance.

I tried to decide if I did fit into my mother’s “self-centered” frame, but I couldn’t hold on to a thought anymore and was starting to doze off when my phone vibrated against my hip. This time it was Hedges. What could I tell him? I almost didn’t answer, but then thought better of it. Didn’t want him thinking I’d come to harm and have the Fowler PD looking for me.

“You okay?” was the first thing he said.

“Yeah, but I had another run-in with him.”

“What happened?”

“I was worried about my mother and I took her to a motel. West of town. I guess he managed to follow us. As it turned out it wasn’t the letter he wanted. It was the envelope. There’s a stamp on it worth a lot of money. It’s called an Inverted Jenny.”

“And he’s got it now?”

“Yeah,” I sighed, then proceeded to explain what had happened, omitting any references to a goat.

“Where are you? I’ll send someone out there.”

“No, that’s okay. My mother’s sleeping now. I’m half asleep. He’s gone. He’s got what he wants. He won’t be back. Maybe his sister knows where he is.”

“We thought to question her,” he said, sounding a little sarcastic. But when he added that I should call him in the morning, he sounded concerned again.

I promised him I would, wondering to myself if that would be before or after I called Bull with the drop-off instructions.

I closed my eyes hoping that even the wicked deserved what was left of a good night’s sleep. But all I could think of was how Erika had known about the goat. Every path my mind took led me to the same conclusion: the woman really was psychic.

It was true. The wicked really couldn’t count on rest. I woke to a darkened, unfamiliar room, and it took until I dug my phone from my pocket for me to remember where I was. It took another moment to focus and when I did I saw Mick’s home number glaring at me from the phone’s display. Just above it, the time digits read 3:18.

“What’s wrong?” I answered.

“Tell me you’ve got the goat,” Mick said.

“Hold on.” I didn’t want to conduct this conversation with my mother in the room. My eyes had adjusted to the dim light and the shapes of her and Bix on the other bed. Sassy shifted in his cage, but didn’t make a fuss. I shut myself in the small, yellow bathroom, lowered the toilet lid and took a seat. Then I pulled in a deep breath and said into the phone, “Okay, Mick. I can talk now. What were you saying?”

“Tell me you’ve got the goat,” he repeated, sounding rather ominous.

I swallowed. “I have the goat.”

“You do?”

“Yes, I do.”

I heard him sigh—definitely a sigh of relief—and at first I felt my own tiny burst of relief. But then he said, “What the hell, Robyn? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“What happened?”

“Right after I talked to you, Bull decided he’s going to find another goat for Blood.”

“That was really late.”

“No shit. Dexter, Blood’s trainer, remembered where we got Sassy, so he calls Meyer’s place, talks to his brother, who says for us to come on out.”

“In the middle of the night? With the drunken brother there?”

“You got that right. Imagine my surprise when we’re looking over a barn full of goats and not one of them is Blood’s goat.”

I knew I would have to explain, but my next question was more urgent. “Did Bull find another goat?”

“He brought three back, but Blood’d have nothing to do with any of them.”

“So we’re still on. Right?”

I heard his intake of breath, and then all he said was, “Yeah.”

I tried to spin it to my advantage. “It’s a good thing Sassy wasn’t there. I mean, weren’t you relieved?”

“At first. Then I was worried. And then I got pissed.” He breathed into the phone a couple of times. “You’d better start talking, Robyn. For starters, where are you?”

“I’m in a motel.”

“Where’s the goat?”

No use lying. “He’s here with me.”

“In a motel room?”

He didn’t know half of it. “Yes.”

“What the hell were you thinking?”

“Well, I couldn’t take him to my apartment, so—”

“No. I mean what the hell were you thinking when you didn’t take him to Meyer’s?”

“Well, I wonder if it doesn’t matter so much what the hell I was thinking, only that I was thinking. That I kept Sassy and—”

“Why? Why’d you keep the goat?”

He wasn’t letting go of this. “Leaving him. It just didn’t feel right.”

“
It
didn’t feel right or
I
didn’t feel right?”

“It wasn’t you. Not really. But the place was dark, you said Meyer’s brother was a drunk. I didn’t want to leave him with a drunk.”

“It’s a goat, Robyn. Not a two-year-old.”

“And the coyotes. They target goats.”

Nothing.

I blundered on. “And, you know, that’s another thing. You never call the goat by its name. It’s always ‘the goat this, the goat that,’ you never use Sassy’s name. It’s almost like you don’t want to get real attached to him.”

“Jesus, Robyn—”

“It’s all those things combined.”

All he said was, “What the hell?”

“Well, I’m under a little pressure here, Mick. I’ve never done anything illegal in my life.” I was speaking in a harsh whisper, for fear that my mother might be awake, ear pressed to the door. “And...” I considered telling him where I was and why but knew it would only add credence to Mick’s diminishing opinion of me. So I cut to the finish: “And I am just about certain that there is no possible way I’m going to get through tomorrow without winding up dead or in jail. Something’s going to go wrong.” My eyes burned with tears, and I fought to keep them out of my voice. “I’ve got no control. And, to be honest, I guess I’ve wanted a little control.”

“Well, congratulations. You got it now. And if that’s the way you want to play it, then that’s the way we’ll play it.” Then he said, “You figure out what you’re going to do with the goat when you’re supposed to be picking up the money.”

“I thought I’d take him to Meyer’s right before then.”

“Yeah, well, that’s not going to work now.”

“Why not?”

“Think about it. I’ve just been there with Bull and Dexter. We all know that Blood’s goat isn’t there. If he shows up there tomorrow afternoon, it’ll be a coincidence too hard to explain.”

He was right. I sighed. “Can’t you be just a little relieved that I did keep Sassy?”

“Not as relieved as I am pissed off.”

I couldn’t even imagine what he’d think if he knew I was sitting here, in a motel room, with my mother, the goat and my dog in the middle of a murder investigation. “I’m sorry, Mick.”

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “You made this mess, you fix it.”

And then he was gone.

I sat there, on the chipped white toilet lid, pressing the phone to my cheek, and thinking how many ways I had screwed this up. If I wound up in jail or dead, it was my own fault.

I turned off the bathroom light and returned to the other room where I sat on the edge of my bed and let the whole mess wash over me. I could hear my mother breathing in the next bed. If we’d had the kind of relationship where we shared our problems, I might have woken her. I shook my head. No. This one had gone way past dire, and there was no explaining it. It had taken on a life of its own, and like some wild creature I thought I had under control, it had turned on me, and I could feel the heat of its breath on my neck.

Goats wake early. I was roused from a muddy sleep to a steady, clanging sound followed shortly by bleating. And then there was the smell. Apparently Sassy didn’t mind soiling his own bed. Or, maybe that’s why he was putting up a fuss now.