Turtle Moon (9 page)

He tries not to think much about the way his stomach feels. He always laughed at Boy Scouts and nature-lovers, but now he has no idea of what's edible. Raw sugar cane, a tiny fish caught in the pond, the green figs in the branches above them. They don't have to talk for him to know that the baby is hungry. She tugs a little harder on his jeans and starts to whimper. In a little while he will have to think about what to do next. In cases like this, there is always a plan. The authorities have probably already gone through his possessions, the stolen money and cigarettes, the green birthstone ring he swiped from a classmate right before gym. How many dragonflies would it take to make a meal? How can he catch them without falling headlong into the pond?

If he could speak he would tell himself not to be afraid, but since he cannot, he takes the peanut butter sandwich out of his backpack, breaks it into four neat pieces, then watches as the little girl eats every bit, including his share.

Some mothers, when handed a black-and-white photograph, taken at the instant their child committed a crime, will swear their boy spent all night right beside them on the couch. They'll hang on to their son's shirttails rather than let the police take him away. They believe not in what they see but in what they know in their hearts to be true. But when a woman hasn't slept all night, when she's left the window open so that the thick night air has given her a migraine nothing can cure, it's possible for her to believe that her child may be guilty of something. This doesn't mean she won't fight just as hard as the trumpeter swan, who will peck to death any creature that dares to approach her fledgling, and whose enormous white wings will beat against any real or imagined threat. The difference is a simple one.

If a fledgling is born deformed-a broken spine, a wing cracked in half-the mother kills it herself rather than allow it to suffer. The trumpeter swan, after all, sees in black and white.

It is a little past six, on the third day of May, and after going through every possible explanation for her son's disappearance, Lucy finally telephones Evan. She knows he'll blame her, and he starts right in.

"Jesus Christ, Lucy! Don't you keep track of him? Are you saying that he gets up for school whenever he pleases and maybe he makes it there and maybe he doesn't and damned if you know!"

"You're the one who keeps encouraging him in these fantasies about going home," Lucy shoots back. "It's you."

"Yes, he's excited about coming home this summer," Evan counters. "Why shouldn't he be?"

Lucy thinks about the calendar in Keith's closet; the last day of school is circled in red with bombs going off around it. Home, it says in Keith's wavering script.

"Lucy?" Evan says.

He doesn't need to tell her it's her fault, and maybe that's why she can't admit how much has gone wrong. If she hasn't been able to discuss the stealing and the suspensions from school, how can she begin to explain that a murdered woman's gold rings have surfaced in a grave she and Keith dug together? She thinks about Julian Cash pulling her to him. For twenty years, Evan believed whatever she told him. Lucy has always suspected that he never truly knew her because she didn't allow it; now she's not so sure. Julian Cash identified each one of her lies long before she dared to speak it.

"I'll fly down this morning," Evan says. He's an architect in a large firm, and when Lucy and he were married he never took any time off.

That's changed since the divorce. Now he doesn't go into the office on Friday afternoons and he accepts less important clients, summer houses in Bellport, family room additions. "I can leave right now."

"No," Lucy tells him. "You can't. He may already be on his way to New York."

"Jesus," Evan says. "You're right. I'll stay here.

God damn it," he adds. He sounds exhausted.

"Look, let's not blame each other for everything that's wrong with him.

We can't do that."

"We used to do that," Lucy says in a small voice.

"Well, that was okay," Evan says gently. "We were married."

She can't stand it when he's nice to her, and what's more, she can't stay home waiting for Keith to be caught. What she needs is bargaining power, just in case.

"I'll call you the minute I know anything," Lucy tells Evan, and she knows she sounds as if she really means it. After she hangs up, Lucy clicks on her answering machine, then gets dressed and washes her face with cold tap water. She puts on a pair of dark glasses to hide her puffy eyes and drives down to the Sun Herald. She doesn't even have to look for Paul; he comes up behind her while she's locking her car.

"Tough luck about your kid," he says.

Lucy whirls around to face him. They're both wearing sunglasses, so neither one has the advantage. Between them heat rises off the blacktop in pale, snaky lines.

"Sooner or later a kid with his record for trouble always winds up running away," Paul says.

"Statistically."

Lucy realizes that her mouth must have dropped open, because Paul grins and says, "And how do I know he's taken off?" He taps his skull gently, as though it contained a secret weapon. "Look, don't worry,"

he tells Lucy. "He'll wind up in Atlanta or San F5ancisco or back with his pop. I'd bet money on it.

Lucy smiles up at Paul; it gives her some curious, bitter pleasure to know that her son's companion is the missing baby Paul would so love to find.

"Tell me about Karen Wright," Lucy says as she trails along toward Paul's parked Volvo.

"That's not her name," Paul says. "Not her hair color, not her age, not her driver's license." He suddenly turns on Lucy. "Why? What do you know about her?"

"Nothing," Lucy says. She takes one step back and adjusts her sunglasses.

"If you ever want to get out of obituaries, you have to start paying attention to details," Paul says.

"You're right," Lucy says. She bites her lip, just a little, not enough to draw blood.

"Ever ride the elevator with her?" Paul says, as he jerks open the door to his car.

"Well, yes," Lucy admits.

"Ever sit by the pool with her? Borrow her suntan lotion?"

"I guess so, Lucy says.

"Then you probably know at least ten things about her that could lead us straight to her, if you were paying attention to details."

After Paul's car has disappeared onto West Main Street, Lucy stands on the asphalt beneath a blue cloud of exhaust. She takes off her sunglasses and pushes them up on her head. In the rich, lemon-colored light of morning, a morning that is already far too hot, Lucy has just begun to realize that, without having paid the slightest bit of attention, she knows more about her neighbor than Paul Salley ever will. She knows where Karen had her hair cut, not only here in Verity but back in her other life. Back in New York.

"Honey, you're going to fry out here," Kitty Bass says.

Lucy is so spooked by the sound of a human voice beside her that she lurches forward. Just for a moment, the voice sounded like Karen's, sweet and flat and very far away.

Kitty puts her arm around Lucy to steady her.

"You shouldn't be here anyway. You should be home waiting for Keith.

The question isn't whether or not he'll show up, it's how much you're going to yell at him when he does. And stop thinking about that dead woman."

"Who should I think about?" Lucy asks. "Julian Cash?"

"Are you serious?" Kitty says. "Listen, I can tell you anything you need to know about Julian."

She fans herself with her hand, and the two silver bracelets on her wrist hit together and sound like bells. "Number one? Stay away from him."

"I'd like to," Lucy says. "But he's the one looking for Keith."

"Well, that's fine. He's good at that," Kitty says.

"Believe it or not, he once broke my Janey's heart, about a million years ago. After that we all thought he was going straight to hell, but he went into the army instead."

Lucy promises Kitty that she'll go- home, where she'll force herself to eat some solid food, then lie on the couch with a damp cloth on her forehead.

But instead, she drives toward the intersection of West Main and Seventh, and she' lucky to get a space right in front of the Cut n'

Curl.

"Lucy, I'm booked," Dee says when she sees her. "Take a number. I won't get to you until after lunch." She leaves her current client sitting in front of the mirror with a towel wrapped around her head.

"I heard about your son running away," Dee says mournfully. She takes a Kent Light out of her smock pocket and reaches for a pack of matches.

"I thank God my two boys are grown up and on their own. They can drive you crazy real easy, without even trying." Dee reaches up and takes a strand of Lucy's hair in her fingers so she can examine the color. "I still think you should tint this," she says. "Nothing permanent.

"You cut Karen Wright's hair, didn't you?" Lucy asks.

Dee inhales deeply and nods. "Can you believe it?" she says. "She was in here two weeks ago.

From now on, I'm double-locking my front door at night."

"Did she have a boyfriend or anyone she was really close to?" Lucy asks.

"That little girl of hers. That's who she was close to. That baby would sit right in her lap and not move an inch while I shampooed Karen.

I hate to think of where that little girl is right now.

"She didn't work?"

"Full-time mother," Dee says. "You say that to some people these days and it's like you're committing a crime. Dee stubs out her cigarette in an ashtray. "She wasn't a real big tipper," Dee admits. "Not that I held it against her. I think she was running low on cash. She never used a credit card or a personal check, which I appreciate. She paid cash. Whenever she was broke she used to joke about running up to Hartford Beach." When Lucy looks blank, Dee adds, "You've obviously never been broke."

"Not yet," Lucy says.

"The pawnshop's up in Hartford Beach. A lot of engagement rings wind up there when the rent is due."

It takes Lucy fifteen minutes to get to Hartford Beach, in spite of the fact that her Mustang is starting to stall at red lights, and another fifteen minutes of circling around until she finds Hallet's Pawnshop.

When she turns off the ignition the cooling system just gives out and the radiator tarts to boil over. Lucy jumps out and wrenches the hood open, then leaps backward to escape the hot spray of water. She knows that back in New York the azaleas and dogwoods are already blooming.

Here, in Hartford Beach, the wild lime trees that grow up through the cement are wilting in the heat, and they stink, like cheap after-shave.

When Lucy steps out into the street to look for a gas station, her shoes sink into the asphalt. To the right are the pawnshop, a McDonald's, and a Sun Bank. To the left is a Verity police cruiser so encrusted with dirt you'd have to look twice just to make certain it said "K9" along the side. Julian Cash gets out and leans up against the hood so he can stretch his back. He's got a warm can of Coke in one hand, which he raises in a greeting. All the cruiser's windows are rolled down, so Loretta can stick her head out and get some air.

"Kind of makes you wonder how dogs can stand it in this heat, doesn't it?" Julian says as Lucy approaches him. "Seems like they'd just go crazy and attack the first person who passed by."

"I can't believe you did this," Lucy says. "You followed me."

"You lied to me," Julian says. "You were never going to tell me your boy buried that shoe box, so I figure I don't owe you very much."

"Oh, really?" Lucy says. You owe it to me to be looking for my kid.

That's what you're supposed to be doing."

"I just wanted to make sure you didn't know where he was."

Julian finishes his Coke, but Lucy knows that he's watching her carefully.

"I don't," she says.

"I know that now," Julian admits. "You're too busy looking for the dead girl."

"Woman," Lucy says.

"Around here we call each other boys and girls," Julian says. "Since growing up is such a tragedy."

Julian reaches for a cigarette and lights it, just so he'll shut up.

He has no idea why he's talking so much; it's as if someone has pushed a button inside him and he's saying everything he never said before.

Things he never even knew he thought.

"I'm sure Kitty Bass told you a whole lot about me. But you know that old joke about Kitty."

He really can't stop himself; he must have some kind of talking disease. "Bigmouth Bass," he says.

When Lucy eyes him coldly, he adds, "I didn't invent this joke, you understand. I'm just repeating it. Personally, I really respect Kitty."

"Are you going to continue following me?" Lucy asks. Her face is flushed and her dress is so wet it clings to her like a snake's skin.

"No," Julian says. "I'm going to call Marty Sharp's towing to come pick up your car while you go on and see what your neighbor pawned.

Then I'm going back home to get my other dog.

Lucy gets a funny look on her face, as if she's holding everything deep inside, and if she lets go, even for a second, she'll wind up in tears, right here on the sidewalk.

"I was out for four hours this morning with Loretta, and we came up empty. This other dog of mine is an air dog. That means he's supersensitive." Julian is yakking so much his mouth hurts. He's begun to suspect that if they stand here much longer a catastrophic mistake might result, a month-of-May sort of mistake, the kind that can change your life forever.

"Go on," Julian says. "I'll call the tow truck."

Julian calls in to the station and has them contact Marty's towing; then he sits in the cruiser, where the temperature must be high enough to boil human blood. He keeps his eye on the window of Hallet's Pawnshop; the green awning above the door hasn't been changed for years.

When Julian was thirteen he walked here from Verity and back, twelve miles each way, just so he could buy a bowie knife. He never thought about who the hell had been so desperate he'd trade in a knife with a real bone handle for some spare change. Julian kept that knife for years, hidden behind some loose boards in Miss Giles's pantry; he used to clean the blade with rubbing alcohol and a soft flannel rag. He knows Lucy has discovered something as soon as she walks out of Hallet's door; she's got that hurried gait Loretta always has when she picks up a scent. Lucy goes to her car, circles it, then grudgingly walks over to the cruiser. When she gets into the passenger seat, Julian makes sure he's still watching Hallet's window.