Old Chaos (9781564747136) (21 page)

Meg gasped. “What? They made you defend it tonight? Oh, Charlie!” She gave his shoulders an impulsive hug, and the coffee on the table slopped. “That’s wonderful, in spite of the lousy timing.”

“Hey!” Laughing, he grabbed a paper napkin and mopped. “Dad was pleased. Jealous, too. He has a master’s in education, but he always wanted to go for a science degree. Started a family too soon, I guess.”

“And your mother?”

“Well, it’s a little hard to tell.” He looked at Meg over the rim of his cup. “She had a stroke when I was in high school, so she doesn’t speak much, but she made rah-rah noises and hummed the Wisconsin fight song.”

Meg was shocked. She forced a smile.

“For some reason she’s always been able to remember tunes.” Charlie shook his head. “The brain’s a funny thing.”

“It is,” Meg said gently, “and there’s obviously nothing wrong with yours.”

Charlie’s ears turned red, but he grinned and saluted her with his cup. “Cheers.”

“What
am
I thinking?” Meg darted to the liquor cupboard. “This calls for single malt.”

“Scotch?” Charlie drooped, wistful. “You mean you don’t have Jameson’s?”

“What’s the occasion?” Rob stood in the doorway wearing the white karate outfit that always reminded Meg of pajamas. “Hi, Charlie.”

Charlie lifted his glass.
“Sláinte.”

Meg explained, watching Rob’s face. His eyebrows shot up. Then he looked blank. After a moment, he smiled. “That’s good news. Congratulations, Dr. Neill.”

Charlie took a swallow. “It’s Dr. O’Neill, thanks.”

The two men stared at each other.

Rob burst into laughter. “I can’t believe I said that.”

“Maybe you just adopted him,” Meg said helpfully and poured Rob a very small glass of whisky.

T
HE WOMAN WHO entered Meg’s office at the library the next afternoon was the kind who always set Meg’s nerves on edge. Everything about her
matched,
from the crown of her exquisitely tinted hair to the soles of her spectator pumps, so retro and so right, they defined retrocity. She wore a raw silk pantsuit in a subtle shade that couldn’t be called beige, and her beautifully preserved and manicured hand—extended for a genteel handshake-bore a ring with a stone not quite as big as the Ritz.

Meg pressed the flesh. It was warm.

“I’m so glad to meet you, Mrs. McLean.” People often made that mistake. Meg had never married. The woman’s voice fluted—a bit high, a bit girlish. “I’m Dede Marquez, Kayla’s mother.”

“I hope Kayla’s bone graft is going well,” Meg ventured.

“Ah, it’s early days. I consulted her surgeons, of course. It will be some weeks before they do the actual graft.” Unbidden, Mrs. Marquez sank onto the patron chair beside Meg’s desk. “I wanted to thank you in person for visiting my poor girl at the hospital. I had no idea it was so far from Klalo.”

“Neighbors sticking together,” Meg murmured.

Mrs. Marquez looked at her as if she had said something quaint but smiled graciously. “You took pity on my child, so I thought you might take pity on me, too. I’m staying across the river at the Columbia Gorge Hotel. Will you have dinner with me tonight? Otherwise I’m doomed to a book and room service.” A fate worse than death.

Meg’s mind raced. She was a little tired of accommodating Rob’s non-schedule. She could leave stew in the oven and a message on his voice mail. What the hell?

Three hours later, suitably rigged out, she drove her Accord upriver. The low, narrow span over the Columbia to Hood River made her nervous. Like the Bridge of the Gods at Cascade Locks, it was a two-lane toll bridge. None of it was elevated, fortunately, but the roadbed was a steel grate, open meshwork through which you could see the water if you were so inclined.

The car’s tires hummed one note on the approach and a higher pitched sound where the drawbridge crossed the main channel. Though they didn’t skid, the tires felt as if they might. There was little traffic. Sullen gray beneath the grate, heavy with snowmelt, the Columbia powered its way west. The tollbooths with their metal bars blocking the exits lay on the Oregon side. Meg handed over three quarters, waited for the bar to lift, and made her way along the freeway to the small resort hotel, which was notable for its food and its view of the river.

It was a pity she and Dede Marquez had nothing in common other than gender and a certain willingness to be pleased. In the course of the evening, Meg came to understand that Kayla’s mother had made a lucrative career of marriage, that she never read anything other than fashion rags and
People
magazine, and that she loved her only child without the least understanding of what made Kayla tick. At least she was trying. She wept a little about the damage to Kayla’s face, but she had faith in cosmetic surgery, so she wasn’t inconsolable.

About halfway through the entrée, Dede dropped her fork onto her plate with a delicate clatter. “Oh, my word, it can’t be.”

Meg craned. Cate Bjork had just entered with a casually dressed couple of about her own age, both of whom looked sullen. The man was shorter than both women.

“I wondered where Katie wound up.”

“Katie?”

“Now what is her surname? She married that banker.”

“Bjork.”

“Goodness, do you know her?” Dede beamed at Meg as if she had just passed a social test. “Whatshisname is such a dull man, almost as dull as my ex. I married an investment banker, too. Very wealthy, very boring—the longest five years of my life. You have no idea. Katie and I suffered together. A dear, dear friend.”

But not in touch.

Dede rose. “Forgive me, Meg. I won’t be a minute.” And she strode across the room to the table where the maître d’ was seating the commissioner and her guests.

Meg ate slowly and watched body language. Dede was gone more than one minute and less than ten. Meg thought she met with a cool reception. When she returned her cheeks were flushed, but she didn’t say anything negative.

She picked up her fork and toyed with a morsel of veal fricandeau. “Just imagine. Katie tells me she’s a county commissioner now. What in the world is that?”

Meg explained. Briefly.

“Ah. Sounds dire.” Dede took a gulp of a wine that should have been savored. “Well, it will give her something to do with her time while she sorts out her family troubles. Apparently Lars has Alzheimer’s. He’s nearly eighty, you know. Much older than she is.”

Meg thought that over. She hadn’t had much contact with the elderly man at Beth’s dinner.

“Lars’s son Warren has locked horns with her before. That’s Warren with his wife at Katie’s table. Lars’s children blamed her for their parents’ divorce. Kids do that.” Dede chewed and sipped, then added, with relish,
“She
has power of attorney, though, so my money’s on her. It was shrewd of her to move Lars north.”

“Did she move him, or did he move her? Alzheimer’s progresses fairly slowly in the early stages.”

Dede’s eyes narrowed. “Good question. No offence, but I have a hard time imagining Katie choosing Klalo. Seattle, yes. How long have they lived here?”

“Five or six years,” Meg said. “She’s been active in Gorge preservation groups and environmental causes. She was elected to the Board of Commissioners in December.”

“She was big in the Sierra Club at home.” Dede gave a girlish giggle. “Home! Listen to me. Home is Los Cabos now.” And she gave Meg a detailed picture of just how wonderful it was to live in Baja and what a lovely condo her new husband had bought for them to retire to.

Meg listened with what she hoped was a sympathetic expression on her face and watched the commissioner quarrel with her middle-aged stepson. Or rather, since nothing about Cate Bjork betrayed either tension or hostility, Meg watched the stepson quarrel with Cate.

Rob ate his solitary dinner around eight, tidied the dishes, and settled down at the kitchen table to brood over photocopies of Fred Drinkwater’s financial records and Linda’s report on them. Every few minutes he found he had to walk around to ease the cramps between his shoulders, so he gave up in disgust and walked to the municipal pool for a swim. Swimming was about the only form of physical exertion his doctor had not warned him against.

He didn’t swim laps. He tested assorted muscles with three breast strokes here, one butterfly there, half a lap on his back with his legs doing most of the work. The crawl was too wrenching.

The Olympic-sized pool, gift of a philanthropic lumber baron shortly before the last planer mill closed, boasted times set aside for family swims, youth training, senior aquatics, and so on. Nine
p.m.
was the hour Mack had claimed for his deputies’ fitness program, and two rookies from the uniform branch were dutifully plowing their way up and down the far lanes. Otherwise the vast expanse of water was empty of life. Cops were more likely to use a gym. Rob made a mental note to remind his people the pool existed. Then he gave himself over to wallowing, which was symbolically appropriate.

He thought about Mack, trying to say good-bye, but it was too soon to sink into that black pool. His mind drifted to Meg. They were going to have to resolve something. He loved her, and she said she loved him. There was a logical solution, but neither of them viewed the institution of marriage with enthusiasm. Still, Rob felt at home in Meg’s kitchen, not to mention her bedroom, as he had never felt in his grandmother’s huge house, or anywhere else.

He took three lazy sidestrokes and flipped over. He had no trouble at all with the idea of spending the rest of his life in Meg’s company, but he wasn’t sure she felt the same. And there were their daughters. He hadn’t yet met Lucy. After Christmas, when Meg returned from a lightning trip to Palo Alto to see her daughter, she had met Rob’s daughter, Willow, and they had dealt with each other politely. Willow had good manners. She was almost always polite.

He flipped to his back and stared up at the tiles on the distant ceiling. Polite was not good enough for Meg. She deserved better. Well, there was time. Willow was sixteen, with other things on her mind. Boys, the SATs, boys, an upcoming study tour in France, boys, her too-long hair and too-brittle fingernails, the Amazon rainforest (she wanted to save it), boys, the deficiencies of her iPod, boys. Maybe Willow would stumble across a nice French convent on her study tour.

He flipped to his stomach and tried the breast stroke, which was almost tolerable if he pushed the water hard with his legs. He was no kind of jock, but the fact that he might have to give up karate troubled him. Karate was too much a part of what kept him steady, central to the path he had walked when he stopped being Bobby all those years ago and began to learn how to be Robert. His father had changed his name, too, when he changed his life.

His thoughts slid sideways to Charlie. Calling his cousin Dr. Neill had been a dumb mistake. Rob wondered whether he was trying to create a virtual Clan Neill in the murky depths of his subconscious mind. He’d invited Charlie to join, and Charlie had declined. Fair enough.

He heard a crescendo of splashing as the other men left the pool. They shouted something, probably to him, and he raised an arm in farewell. Then he wallowed some more. He got out only when the manager dimmed the lights.

On the short walk home, he was still testing his muscles, and his mind was still adrift, so he didn’t see the attack coming. He had taken Fifth Avenue to Oak, because Fifth was well-lit. Oak was a residential street with handsome Craftsman houses. Halfway along, an overgrown hedge hung out over the sidewalk in the shadow between two streetlights. A muted shuffle from behind and a quiver in the hedge were the only warning he had of the attack, but his body took over.

He jumped right, bounced off a parked car, and whirled with his left arm swinging up. He thought he probably shouted. Something stung his arm, but his defensive swing knocked a knife from the first man’s hand. Both attackers crouched together, facing him, wide-eyed and unarmed. They were young and not very big. A growl rumbled from his throat. He leapt forward, slashing at the shorter kid’s nose with the edge of his right hand. He made contact with a satisfying crunch.

Blood spurted. The boy let out a screech in Spanish, and both of them fled along Oak Street, running flat out. They dodged left into the alley that led to the back sides of half the shops in town. Rob slid to a stop, groped for his cell phone, and hit the button to call 911. Behind him, lights had come on in the smug Craftsman houses.