Lemon Reef (29 page)

“You're Del's sister?” the woman said. “You look just like her.”

Nicole's face opened and her tone changed. I think she was realizing the woman was attractive. “Uh, who are you?”

“I'm looking for Adeline Soto.”

Nicole and I exchanged a curious look. “You don't know, do you?” The woman glanced at me. “You're from out of town?” She neither confirmed nor denied it. “Del's dead,” I said. “With all of the election news, her death hasn't gotten much publicity, I guess.”

The cool veneer cracked momentarily. Her legs swayed and her jaw tightened. She gripped the door more firmly in an effort to conceal her sudden shakiness. “When?” Her expression impassive, her tone sullen, she said, “When did she die?”

“Your turn,” I said. “Why are you following us?”

“I was trying to find Del.” To Nicole, she said, “I thought if I followed you, I'd find her.”

“Why are you looking for her?” Nicole asked.

The woman climbed into the Jeep. “I have to go now.”

Nicole grabbed the door. “Tell us who you are.”

The woman yanked the door shut, started her engine, and pulled out. Her actions were so determined I was certain if we had been in her way, she would have run us over.

“What the fuck?” Nicole said, backing up a few feet. “This just gets weirder and weirder. Those fucking cameras in her house. And now this. Who
was
that?”

“I think I know.”

Back in the car, I called the one person I knew could tell me more about this woman and what she was doing here. The administrative assistant answered.

“Margaret Todd, please.” I told her who I was.

Moments later, a different voice said, “This is Margaret Todd.”

“Jenna Ross, do you have a minute?”

“Depends on what for.”

“A favor. A personal favor.” There was a lengthy, uncomfortable silence. “Margaret, I need to know if a friend of mine was trying to use the underground. I wonder if you could help me find out.”

“I don't have any connections with any underground. That's illegal.” I didn't respond. After more silence, she said, “Why?” Her question confused me. “Why do you want to know?” When I didn't answer, she added, “I just need to make sure you're not using me to get some skank off the hook for hurting his wife.”

“Would you give me a
fucking
break?” I blew out a breath, tried to get my heart rate down. “I'm in Miami trying to figure out if my first love was murdered by her husband. I think she contacted some folks to get away, and if so, they probably know her story. Can you help me or not?”

Slightly kinder, she said, “I don't know. Miami?” Then she said, “Give me her information, I'll call around. If I find out anything, I'll call you back.”

*

Pulling into Pascale's, I eyed the box. “What do you think is in it?”

“Whatever it is,” Nicole said, “it can't be good.”

“Well, if it is videos of her having sex”—I tapped the box with my toe—“I don't care if it is evidence. I'm burning them.”

Now in Pascale's living room, Nicole, Ida, and I sat around the lacquered coffee table, our eyes dodging back and forth between the contents of the box and each other's faces. A fly buzzed around and between us, occasionally slamming itself into a window, refusing to believe in the glass.

“Okay?” Ida said. She held up a wooden figure, examined it.

I immediately recognized it as Matsya, the fish.

“Hey, let me see that.”

Nicole raked through the box recklessly, unwrapping the apparently carefully wrapped objects and tossing them about. “Fucking Del's toys. She wanted us to risk our lives to get her old toys?”

Gail and Katie, having just arrived, threw open the door, and the last remains of light from the day filled the room, momentarily brightening the interior.

“What did you find?” Gail looked into the box, then at the statue Ida was holding, and her expression went from eagerness to befuddlement. Then she laughed hard and loud. The laugh began someplace deep in her throat, built momentum like a wave swell as it gathered at the roof of her mouth, and then it burst out of her. “Mystery solved.” She laughed harder still. “You just risked your entire career for those.”

I wondered if part of Gail's glee was payback for the fifteen-mile bike ride I'd made her go on with me to get Kalki for Del.

Katie was still trying to catch up. “Uh, what are these?” She glanced at Gail and then shook with noiseless laughter, her eyes beginning to water.

I was the only one excited by the contents. “They're Avatars. Del collected them.” I fumbled through the box. “I was wondering where these were. I thought she might have thrown them out.”

My hand hit the paper before I realized what it was: gold, crinkly. There were objects wrapped inside it. I opened the paper to find Kalki and his white horse. On the inside was the note I had written to Del before I left her on the last night we spent together.
I love you
, it said.
No matter what happens, I promise, I will never let go of you.
I studied the pieces, turned them over in my hand, felt an energy emanating from them that made my palm hot and my skin tingle. These objects had outlived their context but maintained their poignancy. I rewrapped them and placed them back in the box.

“Great,” Nicole said, calmer now. “I risked a third strike for”—she was holding up one of the pieces and studying it—“a turtle.”

I smiled. “That's Kurma.”

Pascale entered from the hallway, cigarette dangling from her lips. She was looking for a match. She had joined us when we had first arrived, eager to see what was in the box, and then when she realized what it was, she'd returned to her room disgusted. Now her usually strict posture compromised, her complexion ashen, Pascale staggered a little, mumbling as she passed us, “Fucking Omri. That old woman was always telling those Indian stories. I couldn't get Del to do shit when she was around.” Her accented words were slurred from trying to talk with a cigarette in her mouth and also from alcohol. She used the stove to light her cigarette and then disappeared into her bedroom.

Ida and Nicole exchanged a worried look.

Ida asked Nicole, “Is she returning messages?”

Nicole shrugged.

“The funeral is Saturday, and all these people are calling, family and friends, and we have no idea if Pascale is even letting people know.” Ida rubbed her hand along the arm of the couch. “She's just refusing to see anyone.”

“Put the date, time, and location of the funeral on the answering machine message,” Gail suggested.

I continued to study the wooden sea turtle, the size of my palm. I noticed the lines sketched on its shell, its beak-like nose, its deep-set eyes. Nicole sat beside me, smiling now as if proud of what we had just done for Del, even if it hadn't led to much. Katie and Gail plopped down on opposite sides of the couch and stared off in different directions. Gail pushed her hair back off her face and let go a long sigh. I looked at my watch: seven thirty p.m. Beasley would be releasing Del's body in the morning. I was out of ideas.

My phone rang. When I heard Margaret's voice on the line, I went out to the porch for privacy. “The first contact was last week. The woman you met today expected to meet Del Tuesday afternoon, but Del didn't show.”

“So Del was trying to escape? Did you get any information from them about what was happening to her?”

“They wouldn't give me any specific information about her.”

I made the decision now to share with Margaret what I had learned about Talon from the anonymous fax.

“Jesus,”
she said. “Puppies? Who could do something like that? The underground people must have known about that incident, because they were really worried about Del, and you know, they see a lot. No idea who sent it?”

“No.”

“And he videotaped it? He videotaped the puppies after he'd maimed them? Huh, as interesting as it is horrific.” I told her about the cameras in Del's house, and about the sex tapes. Margaret took a deep breath. “You know those surveillance cases are usually the worst.”

“I do know.” There had been a knot the size of a fist in my gut ever since I'd entered Del's house, a twisting feeling that left me on edge, as if anticipating danger, but having no idea from which direction it would come.

Margaret said, “The domestic-violence-death autopsy team reviewed one case where the guy videotaped beating his wife, including the beating that killed her. The psychologist who testified for the defense in the murder trial said this man taped the beatings because he dissociated during them—like a blackout. It was too hard for him, when he came out of these things, to find his wife battered and have no idea how it had happened. Then there was another guy who taped beatings because he liked to masturbate to them later. Talon seems more like the second guy, I think. Or maybe a combination.”

She continued. “What happened to your friend seems especially tragic. The current laws are trapping women, forcing them to stay with men who are violent or lose custody of their kids to those men. Imagine that for a choice. Postfeminist fathers' rights discourse.” Sarcastically, she added, “You know all about it.” Then, “Call me cynical, but it used to be that a lot of loser fathers didn't give a shit about their kids after divorce. After the laws changed—deadbeat dad laws beefed up, child-support payments getting calculated according to the amount of time each parent had—all of a sudden, men are going to the mat for their fifty-percent timeshare. Not
sixty
percent, mind you. They don't want more work. They don't want to actually be responsible for doctors and back-to-school night, they just don't want to
pay
anything. When it means they might have to open their wallets, they're as precious about their parenting rights as they are about their penises. They're hiring lawyers, lobbying legislatures, getting gender-neutral language written into codes.” She laughed grimly. “If women had been as effective at getting equal pay as men have been at getting equal parenting rights—well, imagine what the world would be then. As it is now, because of these laws, women are doing all the work in half the time and with none of the financial support.”

She stopped. “Anyway, I'm sorry to go on like this. I'm not telling you anything new. It's just…” Margaret sighed. “Del must have been pretty desperate, Jenna, and she must have felt like she didn't stand much of a chance in court.”

I usually resisted and resented Margaret's diatribes, but in that moment, all I could feel was a sense of solidarity and gratitude. “Thank you for your help, Margaret.”

“Safe travels.” She hung up.

I closed my phone and stood in the warm air. Voices carried from the living room. I leaned against the porch rail, my gaze drifting to the melancholy houses around me.

*

“This can't be what Del meant,” Ida said about the statues. She was folded into the couch between Gail and Katie, staring at the letter we had retrieved from Sid. “It doesn't make any sense.” Her red hair was almost orange in this light, her tone somewhat restrained. “There was no other box, Nicole?”

“For the fourth time,
no
.” To me, Nicole said, “That guy you told me about. He can prove Talon lied about where Del died.”

Katie added, “And there are police reports.”

I sat on the floor next to Nicole, tugged at the shag carpet beneath me. “I don't know whether Jake's report will make any difference here.”

“Jenna,” Nicole said in frustration, “Del was hooked to a chain thirty feet under the water. How could that be an accident?” She shifted her weight, put her face in her hands.

“I'll give Beasley the information from Jake. Maybe it'll make a difference to Beasley, maybe it won't. I don't know. Beasley already knows about the police reports.”

Katie lit two cigarettes and, without asking, handed one to Nicole. Nicole took it with less than a nod of acknowledgment. I breathed in the scent of sulfur from the match against freshly lit tobacco, and longed.

Ida was still staring at the letter Del had sent to Sid. She shook her head, reading aloud,
“If anything happens to me, there is a box on the top shelf of the closet in my bedroom.”
She put the letter down. “It's weird.” Ida seemed more awake all of a sudden than she had since I'd arrived. “Del wouldn't have hidden anything in that house. Mr. Bleach-the-Sidewalk was too on top of her every move. And those fucking cameras were enough to…” Ida's mouth dropped open. “Oh my God.” She leaped to her feet. “Del's bedroom,” she near shouted, “Del's
old
bedroom.”

Heads turned. My eyes met Gail's—now fully engaged—as we lunged forward, falling over ourselves and each other to follow Ida down the hallway. Ida threw open the closet door and stepped on a suitcase to access the shelf. She scrambled around, moving objects, making shuffling noises, until we heard, “A box!” The suitcase she was standing on was indenting beneath her weight and beginning to tip as she balanced and reached. “There's a box up here.” Ida pulled the box out, gracefully teetering as the suitcase began to cave and topple. She rode it to the ground, stepping off just in time to achieve a soft landing. Then she grinned hugely, as if she'd just saved the day, and presented the box to me.

“Good job,” I said.

*

The box contained three close-up photographs of Del, like mug shots, her cheeks swollen and bruised, her lip cut, her nose bloody. Del was staring into the camera defiantly, daring it to lie. The photos of her like this were familiar to me, yet not. With the passing of the years my memories of Del had assumed more of dreamlike quality. I trusted less and less the image of her bruised face as I remembered it. Now, as an adult, I looked again at this bruised face and felt at once the unmediated horror and odd reassurance of confirmation.