Summer of the Dead (20 page)

Tiffany's interruption came in a blaze. “Don't you worry 'bout me. I'm
fine
. Okay? Gonna be just fine. Both of us. Got it all taken care of.”

“Really.” Rhonda looked mildly skeptical and gave Tiffany a chance to add to her explanation. Nothing was forthcoming.

“Yeah,” Tiffany finally said. “Really. We're gonna be fine. Told you that. Got lots of help, matter of fact.”

The little girl squirmed in her lap, struggling to sit upright. “Mama.”

“Hold on, honey,” Tiffany replied to her child. “Mama's saying good-bye to these nice ladies. Then you can have some cereal, how 'bout it?”

“But, Mama—”

“I said
hold on
!” Tiffany snapped, giving her a hasty shake.

Bell nodded at Rhonda, and they rose from the couch. Time to go. At this point, they were only annoying Tiffany, riling her up. Bell didn't want to think about how that annoyance might manifest itself later, when it was just mother and child—with nobody around to witness the end results of Tiffany's temper.

“Mama,” Guinivere said, her soft voice still slurred with sleep, “these ladies gonna visit? When we go to our new house?”

Bell and Rhonda looked at Tiffany.

“Mama?” the little girl persisted, wriggling and shifting. “Them comin' to our new house?”

Tiffany patted her daughter's head. Short, nervous pats. “Shhh, sweetness. Don't know. You be quiet now.” Her eyes flicked up to their faces. “Was thinkin' about moving. That's all. Nothing's for sure yet.”

Silence ensued. It seemed to merge with the heat, consolidating into a single oppressive force that pressed down on the surroundings.

“New house,” Bell said. She glanced around the cramped trailer. “That'll be nice. Glad you can afford it. I guess Jed had a good life insurance policy, huh?”

“Yeah.”

“What's the name of the company that issued the policy?”

“Don't remember.”

“How about the agent?”

“Don't remember that, neither.”

“You've got records, though, right?”

Tiffany shrugged.

Bell said, “Could you check for us?”

“No.” Something else moved into Tiffany's voice, something darker. “You gotta go now. Need to take care of my little girl. Get her some lunch, okay? That okay by you all? Case you missed it, I'm her mama. I'm responsible.” Tiffany didn't look at them. Instead she focused on the child in her lap, cuddling her, cooing at her, murmuring to her: “There's a good girl. There's mama's sweet little girl.”

They let themselves out.

*   *   *

Before they even reached the hard road, Bell had split up the list. “I'll pay a call on Odell Crabtree and see how he figures into all of this,” she said, “and I'd like you to track down any recent payments into any bank accounts belonging to Tiffany Stark. From a life insurance company—or from any other source.” A source, Bell elaborated, such as someone who might want to buy Tiffany's silence about the precise nature of what had turned out to be Jed Stark's final assignment. “Got to find an explanation for the fact that someone as poor as Tiffany Stark—with a child to raise—is so cavalier about future expenses,” Bell concluded. “And ready to move into a brand-new house.”

“Gotcha.”

Bell didn't have a subpoena, of course, to compel a bank officer or anyone else to provide the information. But she didn't need a subpoena.

Not when she had Rhonda Lovejoy.

 

Chapter Nineteen

Bell's dreams could be frantic and unsettling. Often she had trouble falling asleep, and her dreams, when they finally came, had to do their work in a hurry. Thus they were as cold and abrupt as a drive-by shooting. Drive-by dreams—that was how she thought of them. They were black-hearted marauders who hardly paused long enough to do anything but spread panic, disorder, and dread. And then they were gone again.

This dream, though, was wonderful. It was languid and golden; it was a dream that made her feel warm and safe. She sensed Clay Meckling stretched out there beside her. They'd been lovers for only a few months, but she missed him—God, she missed him—and missing him was a dull ache that she never acknowledged during daylight hours, and the pain went away only during dreams like this one, beautiful dreams, dreams that wrapped her up and—

“God
damn
you to
fucking hell
.”

Bell, jolted awake by the words, felt herself being dragged toward the side of the bed. The room was dark and someone was pulling at the sheets, pulling hard and fast, and she was skidding over the edge. She tore at the fabric, trying to hang on, dangling for a second or so, but then she hit the floor with an ugly
whump
. Pain shot up her side. The words continued to pour down on her:

“You goddamned fucking bitch. You had
no right
. No right, do you hear me? It's
my
fucking life.
Mine
. Got that?”

Bell still couldn't see a thing, but there was no doubt about who loomed up there, flinging obscenities. When Shirley paused, needing a breath, Bell grabbed the chance to speak.

“What the hell?”

“You
bitch
. You
bitch
.” Now Shirley began to pace around the room, repeating the two words in a low-pitched snarl.

Bell's first instinct was to respond in violent kind—to grope for her sister's leg and pull her down, as if she were eight years old again, and she and Shirley were quarreling, wrestling, settling their differences with kicks and slaps and opportunistic yanks of hair.

She forced herself to calm down. The floor was hard, but it was also cool, cooler than her bed. She pushed the heels of her hands in her eye sockets. “Jesus,” Bell said. “What time is it?”

Shirley stopped pacing. “I don't have a fucking
clue
what time it is. And I don't care. You know what, Belfa? You really screwed me over this time. Hope you're happy. Hope you're just tickled pink. Finally,
finally,
things were starting to go right for me. Matter of fact, they were going really great. And then you go behind my back and stick your big fat fucking nose in my business, and now—”

She stopped.

Silence. The sharp point of Shirley's anger had broken off like a pencil tip. Bell could sense it. This was another of her sister's sudden swerves. Another emotional U-turn from rage to blankness.

“Hey,” Bell said. She tried to sound lighthearted. “Give me a hand here, so I can get off the damned floor. Unless I broke something in the fall.” She reached up. At first, there was no response. Then she felt Shirley's thin fingers wrapping themselves around her wrist.

“Easy,” Bell said. She groaned as she rose, staggering a bit before she found her feet. “I'll say this. You sure know how to make an entrance.” She pulled down the front of her T-shirt, bunched and cockeyed from the dumping.

Shirley was breathing hard now. In this moment the two of them seemed to belong to different species: Bell, soothing and amiable, trying to dial down the tension in the room; Shirley, distraught, filled with anger and confusion, hoping to get through the next few seconds without doing something unforgivable.

“You know what, Belfa? It's all a big pile of shit.” Shirley's voice was ragged and lost-sounding, as if it had traveled a long way to get here and wore the marks of the road.

“Could be worse.” Bell was still striving for lightness. “Startle me like that again, and I just might reach for the twelve-gauge I keep under the bed.”

No response.

“Come on, then,” Bell said. “Let's go downstairs. Neither one of us is liable to get much more sleep tonight.”

Bell made the coffee. The clock on the stove told her that it was just past three on Saturday night.
No,
she corrected herself.
Sunday morning now
. Shirley sat at the kitchen table, head down.

After the trip to Steppe County, Bell had dropped off Rhonda and then put in an afternoon of paperwork. Made a quick trip to Lymon's Market for some groceries. A quiet evening: First Patsy Cline, then Mozart, on the iPod dock. A cold Rolling Rock. Another. Still no word from Shirley. At 11
P.M.
Carla had called, giddy with more details about the internship, which would start next week: She'd live with Sam's friends, Nigel and Natasha Hetherington, in their home in Central London. “It's going to be awesome, Mom,” Carla said. Excitement danced in her voice. “I'll text you every day. Twice a day! With lots of pictures. Swear. And we can Skype.”

A little past midnight, Bell had gone to bed. And then, a few hours later, she was awakened by an angry, flailing woman whose towering rage had now fallen back into an almost catatonic sadness.

Shirley stared at her hands. Her flannel shirt, sleeves rolled up to her elbows, was wet with sweat; it stuck to her back. Her gray hair was brittle and frayed-looking, and her eyes were pink and swollen. She started to light a cigarette but stopped before the lighter came to life, and then she swiped away the pack, the lighter, the ashtray, from the section of the kitchen table in front of her, all in one fed-up gesture.

“Okay,” Bell said, turning around. “Ready in a jiff.” The coffeemaker was popping and wheezing and fussing, as was its custom.
Sounds like an old man blowing his nose,
Carla always said. And Bell always replied,
Gross
. And then they'd both laugh.

It really did sound like an old man blowing his nose. Bell shook her head. God, she missed Carla. Was there any end, she wondered, to missing people?

She sat down. She was surprised at herself, frankly, for not being more pissed off at Shirley. Waking her up like that, pulling her out of bed, was a shitty thing to do. The reason didn't matter. It was shitty, plain and simple.

Bell touched her sister's skinny forearm. Then she took her hand away again, because she knew Shirley well, as well as she knew herself, which meant she also knew this: a touch was okay as long as it didn't go on too long. Shirley's smell was not fresh, but nor was it definitely bad. She smelled like cigarettes and perspiration and earth. She smelled like some of the people who came into Bell's office in the course of a day, country people, the ones who didn't have an appointment; something bad had happened to them and they needed help. A husband or wife had run off, a neighbor had stolen something, a child might or might not be involved in drugs.
Can't you investigate? Can't you make it better? Can't you do that? Ain't that your job? Ain't you the law?
These were people who worked with their bodies all day, every day, and there was a certain kind of sweat that never came out of a garment or out of a life, no matter how often you tried to wash it. Just didn't. That was how Shirley smelled.

“Did I hurt you?” Shirley said, inclining her head toward the second floor to indicate the abrupt start she'd provided to Bell's day. “Hope not.”

“I'll live.”

“Real sorry, Belfa.”

“Apology accepted. Okay, then. What's going on?”

“Got thrown out of Tommy's tonight.” Shirley picked at a spot on the tabletop. “No, that ain't right. Not thrown out. I never got in. Tried to. I was with Bobo and the band. We're playing there. But they stopped me at the door. Just me. Everybody else, fine. But they said I wasn't welcome. I told them to go to hell. Then the boss come out. Tommy LeSeur. He said it was your doing. Said you'd told him not to let me in. What the hell are you—?”

“Shirley,” Bell said, interrupting her, but doing it gently. “Listen to me. Not the kind of place you need to be hanging out.”

“I didn't have nothin' to do with that murder the other night. Told you that.”

“Yes, you did. That's not what I mean.”

“Then what the hell
do
you mean, Belfa? 'Cause the way it looks to me, it's just you interfering. Trying to control me.”

Trying to keep you out of trouble
.
Watching your back
. That was what Bell wanted to reply, but didn't. Her aim was to settle Shirley down, not rile her up all over again.

“And you know what?” Shirley said, jumping ahead, taking advantage of Bell's delay in answering. “Don't need you to take care of me, you got it?”

“Look,” Bell said. “Tommy LeSeur is a bad guy. A really bad guy. Coming within ten miles of him or his kind is not a good idea. If you want a fresh start, then you ought to steer clear of that place.”

“I told you,” Shirley's voice was calm, but agitation lurked just behind it. “I'm Bobo Bolland's manager. The band plays there a lot. How the hell can I manage 'em if I ain't allowed in the place they're playin' in? Don't make no sense.”

Bell picked up Shirley's lighter. With her thumb she rubbed its little plastic side, then set it back down on the table again. Buying time.

“Tell me,” Bell said, “about this ‘manager' thing.”

“Nothing to tell. Just like it sounds. Bobo needs somebody to book gigs for the band, make a YouTube video, pass out flyers, and such like. They're getting real close to a recording contract, Belfa. It's gonna happen.”

“Does he pay you?”

Shirley was beginning to get angry again. Bell could see it in her face: Her jaw was set tight, her chin tilted up. She raked the back of her hand across her red nose.

“Shit, yeah, he pays me. What do you think? It's a
job,
Belfa. For Christ's sake.”

“Can't be much.”

“No. Not yet. But that's how it works.” Shirley's voice was speeding up, bit by bit, as she made her points. “I'm getting in on the ground floor. Later, once he makes it big, I'll get a percentage. I got it all in writing, Belfa. I ain't stupid, okay?”