The Deader the Better (5 page)

Rebecca kept one arm entwined with
mine as she sipped a Starbucks latte through a red plastic straw. We
had the upper deck to ourselves. The tourists had lasted all of five
minutes in the wind before packing their cameras and scurrying inside
for a cuppa joe and a prune Danish. Regular commuters stay in their
cars for the twenty-minute passage between Edmonds and Kingston. They
figure the six-dollar fare is bad enough without blowing any more
hard-earned cash upstairs.

Rebecca used a gloved hand to point
north.

“Look,” she said.

Fifty yards to starboard, silhouetted
against the pale yellow slope of south Whidbey Island, a sea lion
poked his glistening head through a carpet of kelp. His thick neck
twisted nearly in a circle as he sought whoever had disturbed his
afternoon nap. I watched as his bright blue eye fixed us in space
and, as he then rolled onto his side, he made what I took to be a
dismissive gesture with his flipper and slid silently beneath the
surface. I threw an arm around Rebecca’s shoulder and pulled her
close.

On the rusted car deck below, Misty
McMahon stood clutching the yellow safety rope, her back to the
forwardmost cars, staring out over the onrushing waters of Puget
Sound as if she were expecting something familiar to come floating by
at any moment. The stiff wind puffed the red ski jacket around her
small frame and caused the new blue jeans to flap and snap in the
breeze like pennants.

“The jeans are a little big,” I
commented.

“It’s the style,” Rebecca said.
“Baggy’s all the rage.”

Misty had spent what was left of last
night and most of this morning in our guest room. I say
spent
because I was certain she hadn’t slept. Maybe I was afraid she was
going to make a run for it, or maybe it was just a matter of having a
stranger in the house. Either way, I spent the night with the sound
of her shiny little shoes rolling through my head like claps of
thunder.

Around ten A.M., while I was calling
Constance Hart, Rebecca ran downtown to The Bon Marché and bought
the kid some new duds. She was right. No way we could bring the girl
home to grandma in the Lolita outfit. While she was gone, I segued
into domestic mode. I don’t know why, but whenever I’m feeling
bad, I like to feed people. God knows I’m no Julia Child, but
stress me out and I start inviting people to dinner. People we
haven’t seen in years. Rebecca claims it’s my twisted way of
nurturing people. Way I see it, hassles make me hungry. I warmed four
poppyseed muffins, toasted a couple of cinnamon-raisin bagels, set
out some butter and some raspberry preserves, sliced up a cantaloupe
and some fresh strawberries. Crystal tumblers for the OJ. Place mats.
Napkin rings. The whole nine yards. Eat your heart out, Martha
Stewart.

It was eleven-fifteen before the
three of us sat down at the kitchen table. After a dozen increasingly
feeble attempts at conversation, I was forced to consider the
possibility that the kid was still too stoned on whatever she’d
been taking to make conversation. She’d answer yes and no if you
asked her direct questions. She’d mumbled a thanks for the half a
bagel she’d torn to pieces but hadn’t eaten and at one point
asked if it would be okay if she went to the bathroom, but that was
about it.

When Misty finally left the breakfast
table and went upstairs to get dressed for the trip, Rebecca crossed
the kitchen to the sink where I was rinsing the dishes, spun me
around toward her and put both arms around my neck. She gazed deep
into my eyes. I hate it when they do that.

“You can’t fix it for her, Leo. I
know how badly you want to, but you can’t.” She pulled me close
and kissed me on the neck. “You’ve already done everything you’re
good at. Leave her alone.”

She was right, but it didn’t
matter; something inside of me wanted to do something more. For whom?
I don’t know. At that point, I didn’t much give a shit. Rebecca
let me go and took a step back.

“Know what she said when I brought
her the new clothes?”

she asked.

“What?” I growled.

I was being crabby, so she made me
wait.

“She looked down into the
bag”—Rebecca sighed—“and then she asked me if this meant she
should take off all her clothes now.”

Constance Hart stepped out onto the
porch, closing the door behind her. The house looked more like a
commercial hunting lodge than a single-family dwelling. A rambler.
River rock and polished logs spread out for what seemed like a
quarter mile along the rim of a small butte. Behind the house, the
land sloped quickly away, pulling the eye down toward a five-acre
mountain lake and the valley beyond, where an unbroken series of
natural meadows and first-growth forest ran all the way to Puget
Sound, shimmering like a black mirror some three or four miles in the
distance. I hadn’t expected her to return so quickly. After the
bizarre scene in the driveway, I figured we were going to be a while.
Not once during the hour-and-a-half journey had Misty McMahon uttered
a syllable. Just sat there staring out the side window, picking at
her fingers and humming something under her breath…until we drove
up to the back of Constance Hart’s house, that is. I heard her stop
humming. Suddenly she sat forward in the seat, and I saw a glimmer of
recognition in her eyes. Before Rebecca managed to bring the Explorer
to a complete stop, Misty had jumped out onto the pavement, pushed
her way through her grandmother’s outthrust arms and disappeared
into the house without so much as a word. I stood, one foot on the
asphalt, half in, half out of the passenger seat. Constance Hart shot
me a puzzled look. When I merely shrugged, she followed the girl
inside. I’d figured getting Misty settled would take maybe a half
hour, so I was stretching my legs around the yard; Rebecca sat in the
Explorer, listening to Frank Sinatra pledge his love to Chicago while
she read the
Seattle Weekly
. Ten minutes later, however, I’d
just gotten started checking out the spectacular scenery when
Constance Hart reappeared. She walked slowly. Looking down at the
flagstone path. A thick shock of gray hair had escaped the tortoise
shell clip and now flitted about in the wind like a silver web. She
lifted her chin as she spoke.

“Misty wants to be alone.”

Her voice said it matter-of-factly,
but her eyes frisked me for an explanation. I didn’t have one, so I
kept my mouth shut.

She looked back over her shoulder
toward the house.

“I had hoped…” she tried again.

“I know,” was the best I could
manage.

Constance Hart folded her arms across
her chest and paced in a small circle. A hundred feet above us, the
wind rushed through the treetops like traffic.

“I’m not going to hurry her.
About anything.” She said the lines as if she’d rehearsed them.
“I’m going to let her get settled into her new environment. Move
at her own pace. After that…” She let it ride.

“Give it time,” I offered.

“She’s been through a great
deal.”

Despite all she knew, she wanted me
to tell her I’d found the kid in church, but there was no way I
could help her. Instead, I stood there in the driveway listening to
the wind, shifting my weight from one foot to the other, hoping that
Constance Hart wasn’t reading me as easily as I was reading her.

I unzipped my jacket and pulled out
the envelope that had been resting against my ribs. The paper was
warm as I held it out.

“I wrote you up a report,” I
said.

She shook her head. Stiffened her
spine. “No,” she said. “I have no need to know what’s in
there. I already have everything I want. You found my granddaughter.”
She waved her hand. “As far as I’m concerned, Misty’s life
starts over today. Right here, right now.” I returned the report to
my ribs and zipped the jacket.

Her earlier words still rang in my
ears. “After that…” she’d said. Yeah, what about after that?
They sit down to a nice heart-to-heart talk? Some bizarre version of
how I spent my summer vacation? What then? Then they go down to the
school district and register Misty for the eighth grade? She tries
out for cheerleading? Becomes Homecoming Queen? Marries Brad from
Microsoft. Births Tyler and Courtney. Maybe I was having eye trouble,
but I just couldn’t see it working out that way.

She wasn’t going to read my
report. This meant I wasn’t going to be able to appease my
conscience by telling myself that my recommendations had been right
there in black and white. No such luck. I was going to have to step
up to the plate and come out with it. I was sorting through my mental
euphemism file when she reached into the patch pocket of her red
jacket. Two checks folded in half. She unfolded the checks, separated
the two, held one of them out toward me.

“What we discussed on the phone for
expenses and your fee,” she said.

While I took it from her hand and put
it into my jacket pocket, I used my other hand to wave off the other
check.

“There’s no need—” I began.
She cut me off.

“I insist,” she said. “You did
what others failed to do. You returned my granddaughter to my side.”

Reluctantly, I stuck the check in
with the other. I knew what was coming. Above us, the wind was
building. Bits of tree debris ticked off the roof of the house.
Behind me, one of the massive trunks groaned inside its silver bark.
I shivered.

“Misty’s probably going to need
to—” I began. She met my eyes with a granite stare. “Yes?”
she interrupted. I’d seen the look before. Happens when you bring
kids home. I’d done my duty. I’d been well paid. I was now
supposed to show some class and get my act up the road. Preferably
move away…say, to the planet Neptune. One minute Saint George. Next
minute the dragon.

“She’s probably going to need to
see a doctor,” I said. For a moment, I saw hatred in her eyes. “If
there’s something—” she began. Quickly I interrupted. “Nothing
specific.”

I kept my eyes on hers. They were
black and filled with denial. The strained silence swallowed the
sounds of trees and wind. I forced myself to maintain eye contact. No
blinking allowed. It took a while. After what seemed like minutes,
her eyes suddenly lost their luster and her face turned the color of
custard.

“Oh…you mean…”

“Yeah. You ought to get her tested
for AIDS,” I said. “Just as a precaution.”

She opened her mouth to deny that
anything so unspeakable could possibly have entered her realm and
then slowly closed it again.

“Yes,” was all she said, before
turning on her heel and starting back toward the house. I stood in
the driveway until she disappeared.

IN MY BOOK, THERE’S NOTHING WORSE
THAN SOMEBODYtrying to cheer you up when you’re down. When I’m
feeling bad, I want to roll in my sorrow like a pig. I want to hear
Buddy Guy shout the blues or Tom Waits sing songs about old men in
wheelchairs and waitresses with Maxwell House eyes, marmalade thighs
and scrambled yellow hair. I want to drink bourbon till I spill a
couple drinks on the carpet. Maybe shed a tear or two for the
miserable state of the human condition. Then maybe, if nobody’s
looking, shed a few more about the state of my own miserable ass.
Most of all, though, I want to be quiet…quiet and alone. I kept
telling myself it was one of those
Men are from Mars,
Women
are from Venus
kinda things. For the past twenty minutes, Rebecca
had been rambling nonstop. Early on, it was about how I should be
proud of my role in returning Misty McMahon to the bosom of her
family. How there was nothing to be depressed about. After that…could
a been anything. I zoned her out.

She poked me in the arm. We were
pulled over on the side of the road at the junction of Routes and 1.
Home was left.

“Well?”

“Well, what?”

“Do you want to?”

“To what?”

I heard her sigh. “Have you been listening to me?” she asked.

I figured I’d save myself Act One wherein our hero denies all.

“No,” I said. “I was somewhere else.”

She took one hand off the wheel and put it on my shoulder. “You
okay?”

“Tired, I guess.”

She made her “poor baby” face and asked, “Did she give you a
bonus?”

“Yeah. I think so.”

“How much?”

I shrugged. “Haven’t looked.”

I fished in my jacket pocket for the checks. First one made out
for fifteen hundred and sixty dollars. My bill. Opened the other.
Blinked. Counted zeros. Whistled.

“How much?” Rebecca asked.

“Ten grand.”

Next thing I knew, she was enthusing again. About god knows what.
Making a conscious effort not to sigh, I stuck both checks back in my
jacket pocket and picked up the conversation the last place I could
remember.

“Do I what?”

I should have known better.

“Never mind,” she said.

God, how I hate the old “never mind.” Always makes me feel
like a circus animal. Cue the calliope music. Jump, Leo. Roll over.
Good boy.

“No…really,” I tried. “What is it you asked me if I wanted
to do?”

She sighed, but cut me some slack. “Take the long way home.
Maybe spend the night over at Ocean Shores or Grayland or someplace
like that.”

I thought it over. I’d wondered when she volunteered to come
along today. Wondered more when she’d practically insisted. On her
off weekend, too. Officially, her hours as a forensic pathologist
for the King County medical examiner were nine to five, Monday
through Friday. Three weekends a month, however, she was on call and
seldom got all the way to Monday without having to make at least one
guest appearance at the morgue. Way I figured it, after failing to
cheer me up, she’d probably feel compelled to resort to gratuitous
hotel sex. What could I do? Might as well go along with the program,
huh? Wadda guy.