The Nomination (23 page)

When she left, she'd either take Li An with her—he guessed she drove that big old Wagoneer because it was easy to load a wheelchair into—or she'd leave Li An home alone in her wheelchair.

Either way would work for Eddie Moran.

At 4:58 the man and the girl exchanged hugs and cheek kisses with Li An and went around to the front of the house. The blonde went with them. She and the girl hugged each other. She shook hands with the guy.

Moran noticed that the guy was carrying a white plastic shopping bag. He wondered what was in it.

MAC HADN'T SEEN Katie so animated and enthusiastic since . . . well, since before that fateful March night over a year ago. Simone was “so interesting” and Jill was “way cool.”

“Did you realize,” Katie said, “that they don't have a TV in their house? They don't even get a newspaper. They listen to music and read philosophy and religion and poetry, and they meditate and eat organic. I think that's so admirable.”

And Katie went on in that vein for the first fifteen or twenty minutes of their drive back to Concord.

Then, abruptly, she stopped, blew out a breath, and muttered, “Well, anyway ...”

Mac didn't want it to end. “So what else did you and Jill talk about?” he said.

“Simone,” said Katie. “She's dying.”

Mac glanced at his daughter sitting beside him. Her face was turned to the side window. He guessed she was crying.

E
ddie Moran was back in his hemlock cave before sunup on Sunday morning. Except there was no sunup. Gray clouds blanketed the sky, and around the time the sun should have come up, a soft rain began to drizzle down.

He stayed there all day. It was dry and snug under the hemlocks. As long as he kept his back against the trunk, only an occasional drop of rainwater fell on his legs.

He ate his apples and candy bars, drank from his water bottles, and blanked his mind against the passage of the empty hours. Now and then he peered into the windows of the house through his binoculars. He'd stayed after dark the previous evening so he could watch the house when the inside lights were on. He thought he had a pretty accurate picture of the layout. Li An's bedroom was downstairs in the corner room. The blonde had the room next to it. Saturday night, at least, each woman slept in her own room.

He sketched the floor plan, including the location of the interior and exterior doors, in his notebook. It appeared that the women left all the outside doors unlocked except, possibly, when they went to bed. Unlocked doors. That was more than he had any right to expect.

At 2:23 in the afternoon, the blonde, wearing a yellow slicker with the hood pulled over her head, came jogging out of the house, climbed into the Wagoneer, and drove away.

She was back at 3:51 and trotted into the house with a plastic shopping bag in each hand. She'd been gone about an hour and a half this time. This was the second time in two days that the blonde went out in the afternoon for about an hour and a half.

When darkness fell, Moran stuffed all his gear into his backpack and wended his way back through the wet woods to his Explorer. There were still a couple of other vehicles parked there by the stream. It made him smile. These trout fishermen, out there all day in the rain, and they didn't even know enough to quit when it got dark. How much fun could that be?

He'd eaten his dinners at different diners each night. He liked diners. They served good, plain food, and they were cheap. Even though Larrigan was covering his expenses, Moran had no interest in extravagance.

There were a lot of diners in the area. Moran guessed that fishermen favored diners for their fast, cheap food and their long hours. This time he stopped at a place that he'd spotted off the highway about halfway back to his motel. He sat in a booth and had the meatloaf, mashed potatoes, mushroom gravy, peas, and a slab of cherry pie. Minimal conversation with the waitress. Not too friendly, not too grouchy. Wearing the horn-rims. Keeping his nose in the newspaper.

No reason why anybody should ever remember him.

JESSIE DROVE ALL day Sunday, following secondary highways in a northeasterly direction through Illinois and into Ohio. The land was lush and green but flat and uninteresting, and the miles burned away under the big solid Cherokee. She had decided to follow the lakeshore route—Lake Erie through Ohio and Pennsylvania, then Lake Ontario along the northern border of New York state. It was a part of the country she'd never seen.

Eventually—maybe—she'd turn south into the Catskills and find the town of Beaverkill. She'd come this far.

She had to give it serious thought, though. It seemed like a big thing, meeting the woman who might have given birth to you after not knowing her all your life, and not caring to.

In the late afternoon she found a motel outside of Cleveland. She showered and changed and had dinner in an Italian restaurant, shrimp and risotto and two glasses of Chianti.

When she got back to her room, she flopped down on the bed and thought about calling Simone Bonet again. It had been rude, hanging up on her like that the other night.

But she guessed that if she called again, she'd probably hang up again. Jessie wasn't quite ready for this. Not yet.

MONDAY TURNED OUT to be a warm, sunny day, a few puffy clouds, just the barest whisper of a breeze. Eddie Moran had already been sitting under the hemlocks for about three hours when the blonde, wearing tight-fitting, low-cut blue jeans and a little pink T-shirt, displaying a delicious glimpse of her trim midriff, wheeled Li An out onto the deck. It was 9:03.

The two of them ate breakfast out there. When they finished, the blonde stacked the dishes on a tray and took it inside. A few minutes later she came back out holding a rectangular black object about the size of a cigarette pack. She placed it on the table at Li An's elbow.

Through his binoculars, Moran could see that the object was a mini tape recorder.

Li An and the blonde talked for a few minutes. Then the blonde flipped the recorder open and inserted a cassette tape. She handed a little microphone to Li An. It was attached to the recorder by a wire.

The blonde kissed Li An's forehead and went inside. Moran could see that Li An had begun talking into the recorder.

“HELLO, DEAR MAC. I promised you I would talk about my movie life, and I will try to do that, although I know you will be disappointed. It was nowhere near as scandalous or glamorous as all the rumors about me would make you think.

“It was so lovely to see you again and to meet your darling Katie. She is a dear girl and oh, so bright. She is very sad, though, as you know. As you are yourself, dear man. I am sure time will heal you both, but if you and Katie could just find somebody you trusted, somebody to talk with, somebody experienced with grief and skilled at listening . . .

“I apologize. I should mind my own business. Jill was very charmed by Katie, you know. She suggested we invite her to come and stay with us for a while. I can't imagine that you'd allow her to do that. Anyway, it probably wouldn't be a good idea. With my illness, it just wouldn't be much fun for a teenage girl, as much as we would selfishly enjoy it.

“I think Jill gets lonely sometimes. I don't know why she stays with me.

“I didn't even try to make a tape for you yesterday. It was a rainy Sunday. A bad day for me. Why is it that so many Sundays are rainy? I was feeling quite blue all day. I can't always tell whether it's my disease or other things like the weather that affect my moods, but yesterday my medication wasn't much help.

“I was thinking about Jessie, of course. My May, my daughter. I woke up feeling gloomy and pessimistic. And yesterday was so gray and rainy that the feeling never really left me. Perhaps it was spending time with your Katie. It made me realize that I have missed my daughter's entire life.

“I am better today. The sun is warm out here on the deck, and the birds are singing, and I plan to stay out here all day long. I believe Jessie will call. Maybe today, but if not today, sometime. I believe that.

“You see? I can only think about Jessie, and I am not telling you the story of my life. It seems so inconsequential. Who would ever care enough to read our book?

“Well, you are the writer. Maybe you can make it sound interesting.

“Dear Mac. I intended to tell you stories and recite names and dates and interesting Hollywood facts, and I shall, I promise. But not right now. My mind is on May. Jessie, I mean. Now I am tired. A little nap will refresh me, I'm sure.”

AFTER SIXTEEN MINUTES by Moran's watch, Li An put the microphone down on her lap, and a minute or so later her chin slumped onto her chest.

The blonde came out immediately, as if she'd been watching and waiting for Li An to go to sleep. She moved the microphone onto the table, turned off the recorder, adjusted the blanket on Li An's lap and knees, then bent down, touched her face, and kissed her cheek.

An hour later the blonde came out again, this time with a glass of juice or something. She woke up Li An and sat there watching her while she drank.

Then the blonde pushed Li An in her wheelchair off the wooden deck. Moran had observed that a flagstone walkway completely encircled the house, and now he saw its purpose. The two women went slowly, stopping often to point into the gardens, which were blossoming with flowers of many different colors. A couple of times the blonde picked a flower and gave it to Li An, who held it to her nose. From where he was hiding, Moran could hear their voices, and sometimes a little burst of laughter. The blonde kept touching Li An's face and hair and hands, and the way Li An looked up at her, it was pretty obvious that they really loved each other.

They finished their circuit at 12:39, and the blonde pushed Li An up onto the deck and then into the house.

They came back out at 12:56. Moran figured Li An had to go to the bathroom or something.

At 1:14 the blonde brought out sandwiches and drinks on a tray. The two of them ate their lunch together, and Moran took that opportunity to eat a Hershey bar and have a swig of water. After two and a half days of watching and remaining still and being stealthy and taking notes and peering through his binoculars, he had it figured out. Eddie Moran knew better than to move prematurely. His patience never wore thin. But now he was ready. He was looking for the right time.

It came at 2:06, when the blonde got into her Wagoneer and drove out of the driveway. Li An was dozing out on the deck.

He'd keep it to fifty minutes. It took at least twenty minutes to get anywhere, and twenty minutes to get back, and even if she only bought gas or picked up the mail or bought a gallon of milk, that would take another ten minutes at least. Fifty minutes would be safe.

So as soon as the Wagoneer disappeared down the driveway, Eddie Moran put his flashlight into his pocket and crept out of his clump of hemlocks. He left the rest of his stuff right there. He'd be back for it.