Zero at the Bone (11 page)

Katherine stood up in one quick motion. “I don’t have any grudges.”

“Well, that would make you the only one.” Sophie picked up her bag and slung it over her shoulder. “I have lots of grudges and I’d love to tell you about them now, but I’ve got my AA support group in ten minutes. I’d cancel, but they’d all say it was resistance. And I really need it. So we’ll save the catching up for tomorrow. Okay?”

Katherine nodded.

“Around six. God, you probably don’t even know where we live.”

“No. I don’t.”

“Claire Avenue, 312. We’re in the book if you forget or need to call.” As she started through the door, she stopped and looked back over her shoulder. “Sorry about Lester and everything. I really liked him. See you tomorrow.”

Katherine watched from the door as Sophie folded herself into a silver BMW. This was something totally new. A cousin. Family. Was it a good idea to go to dinner? Sophie’s parents might not want to see her, probably didn’t. Well, she would go whether it was a good idea or not.

A faint stab of guilt caught her in the stomach. Her mother would not want her to do this. She had made Katherine promise never to try to contact her family. But Leanne was dead. And there had to be some statute of limitations on these family feuds, didn’t there?

She gestured Ra to come into the cool house and closed the door. The Lab got up from the hall rug and the two dogs sniffed each other for a minute. Then they plopped down close to one another on the cool brick floor in the front hall.

Katherine returned to the studio and studied the pictures her father had taken of her. They showed a woman so alive and absorbed that she was almost beautiful, the first time Katherine had ever thought herself so. That was what her father had seen and he had loved it from afar. Something had prevented him from making contact with her, but that something wasn’t lack of love. Her eyes burned with the effort of holding back the tears. He did love her. All those years she’d yearned for him to come, he did love her. What was it that had kept him away?

She walked slowly to the door, as if in a trance, locked it, and returned to sit in front of the pictures. She gave up resisting and the tears began to flow again, stinging the skin of her cheeks as they fell. He did love her, and had wanted to do something to help her. Really that was enough, just knowing that. Somehow losing the house and kennel and even Ra didn’t seem quite so devastating a prospect as it had. Her father had loved her and he had wanted to help.

When she was finished, it was almost dark outside. She stood up and walked around the house turning on lamps. She felt an absolute certainty now. Her father had promised money; it had to be somewhere.

And there was something he wanted her to do for him. She would discover what it was and she would do it.

8

KATHERINE’s first impulse was to jump into the car immediately and find the Lamar Boulevard Self-Storage, see what was waiting for her there. But she needed to take care of business first. If she was going to stay here tonight, she’d have to call Joe and cajole him into staying to take care of the kennel.

Before making the call, Katherine wandered through the tiny house, absorbing the neat feel of the small, well-ordered rooms. There was nothing ugly anywhere. It was sparsely furnished, but what was there was handsome and practical. It was a house organized around the interests of the occupant. The studio was set up for work. The small second bedroom had been turned into a library with a wide range of books on animals, photography, and some fiction. The only furniture in the room besides the bookshelves was an easy chair with a gooseneck reading lamp next to it. Later, she decided, she would go through the books more carefully, and spend some time in that easy chair.

In his bedroom, she sat down on the bentwood chair in front of his open rolltop desk, composing herself to call home. Her eye explored the contents of the cubbyholes at the back of the desk. In the first hole was a green plastic checkbook, a sheaf of canceled checks, and some bank statements. She pulled out the checkbook and opened it, aware of how personal an item it was.

She imagined someone going through her checkbook—the declining income over the past two years, the huge medical bills for Leanne, the balance close to zero right now. It would reveal a great deal about her life. She felt a smile creeping across her lips. Maybe she could come to know her father through his checkbook.

She flipped it open and paged through the check register to his most recent entries, written in the same bold, loopy handwriting as the letter to her. On October 2, he had made a deposit and paid some household bills, his last entries.

She looked back at September, his last full month of life and checked his deposits. It appeared that he was paid twice a month—$1119.50 on the first and the fifteenth. She ran her finger down the payment column of the register. He also paid his bills on the first and fifteenth. His regular monthly expenses—mortgage payment of $646.55 plus gas, electricity, and phone—added up to about $730. His only extravagance seemed to be a check written to Total Camera Mart for forty dollars.

So how come a man with such frugal habits has to take out a second mortgage on his home and dies in debt? Did he have some secret vices?

She pulled a pencil from the desk drawer and ran the eraser slowly down the payment column, working backward from October 2—through September, August, July, and then back through the rest of the year.

When she had finished, she leaned forward and began circling certain entries with the pencil.

Damn. With the exception of this month and last month, going back to when the register was started fifteen months ago, he had written a check for $1300 to Travis Hammond on the tenth of every month. Thirteen hundred dollars every month! No wonder he was in debt. That left him less than two hundred dollars a month to live on, after his fixed expenses.

What was the payment for? Why hadn’t the lawyer mentioned it? It couldn’t be for legal services, could it? She did some quick calculating. Over the last fifteen months, her father had paid out $16,900. That sure as hell wasn’t the fee for drawing up the simple will Hammond had shown her.

She rooted around the cubbyhole to see if there were more old check registers, but she didn’t find any. She opened the drawer and rummaged through the papers there. No check registers. She wondered where he kept his old banking.

Katherine leaned back in the chair and pressed her thumbs into the base of her neck. Why was her father paying a lawyer the lion’s share of his salary for the last year? For what?

Well, she would certainly find out.

She picked up the phone, called information for Travis Hammond’s number, and dialed it. It was the office number. A woman’s tape-recorded voice said the offices of Hammond and Crowley were closed and would reopen at nine tomorrow morning. She could leave a message at the tone. Katherine left her name and her father’s phone number, saying it was urgent Travis Hammond get back to her immediately. Then she stood and looked down at the checkbook lying on the desk.

There’s something rotten here. Wait. Maybe the money was being invested for him. That’s possible. And if he’d been making regular investments, that would explain his having enough cash to help me out now. But Mr. Hammond would have told me. Unless … she pictured the lawyer’s troubled face. No. Impossible.

She sat down at the desk again and pulled out the canceled checks neatly arranged in one cubbyhole. She thumbed back to August and pulled out check number 5897. Dated August 10, it was made out to Travis Hammond in the amount of $1300. It was stamped “Paid.” She turned it over. In the impeccable handwriting of one who grew up in an era when penmanship was taught, was written, “Pay to the order of account #340-980-43, Belton National Bank. Travis Hammond.” Under that was stamped “Belton National Bank, August 15, 1988.”

But why no check last month? Or this one? The tenth of October had passed almost a week ago. Just to make sure he hadn’t written one and not recorded it, she went through all the canceled checks for September. Nothing to Travis Hammond.

I’ve got to talk to him right now. This is driving me crazy. I’ll try him at home. She called information, but the number was unlisted. Damn. She’d have to wait until morning to find out about this.

She looked at her watch—eight fifty-five. Oh, my God, Joe! She still hadn’t called him. He had been expecting her back by dinnertime. She couldn’t put it off any longer. She picked up the phone and dialed. Joe answered on the first ring.

“Joe. This is Katherine. Sorry I haven’t called, but things are crazy here.”

“I heard from the police your father died. Sorry to hear it. I hope it’s okay that I told them all the stuff they asked for.”

“Yes. Of course, it’s okay. Are things all right there?”

“Yup. Jack Reiman came and the Starks came a day early for Candace, so she didn’t get her going-home bath, but they’ll learn to call ahead.”

“Yeah. Joe, I’m going to stay the night here. I have to do some things in the morning. Can you take care of things there? Why don’t you get Rosie and Carlitos to stay with you?”

“Okay. But—”

“Your check. I know. I’ll come home tomorrow and pay you. I promise. Okay?”

“Yeah, okay.” He sounded like a peasant with centuries of oppression on his back.

“Would you call the Kielmeyers and tell them what happened, that my father’s dead? I promised I’d call them. Tell them I’ll call in the next few days, okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.”

She hung up and grabbed the phone book from inside the bottom drawer. She looked up Lamar Boulevard Self-Storage and punched out the number. A gum-chewing voice answered on the fifth ring and told her they were open every night until ten.

Katherine looked at her watch. It was nine, exactly. She had an hour. She located the place on her Austin map, loaded Ra into the back of the car, and exceeded the speed limit getting there.

Lamar Boulevard Self-Storage was on the ugliest strip of road she had seen in Austin. Sandwiched in between a Pizza Hut and a discount furniture warehouse, the entrance was marked by a huge billboard announcing,
YOU LOCK IT. YOU KEEP THE KEY. OVER 1800 SPACES
. The gate in the high chain-link fence held a sign warning,
GUARD DOG ON DUTY
.

It was an enormous complex, covering many acres. Finding unit 2259 might take a while. As she drove past the office, a ramshackle trailer resting on cinder blocks, she decided it would be better not to stop and ask. Why? she asked herself. I’m just a daughter going to look at her dead father’s effects. I’m not doing anything wrong.

On both sides of the driveway stretched endless expanses of identical long, low, flat-roofed, barracks-like buildings, constructed of concrete slabs covered by a pebble-like texture. Some had corrugated metal doors large enough to drive a truck through, but most had standard-sized gray-painted metal doors with hasps and padlocks. Just as she had envisioned.

The place was totally deserted and very dark. There was no moon; the only light was supplied by a 40-watt bulb hanging on a utility pole every hundred yards. She was glad Ra was with her.

After driving the length of the complex without finding the right number, she arrived at the back fence, fourteen feet high, with barbed wire on the top. The strip of dirt next to the fence was a dumping ground for old cannibalized cars and decrepit boats with hulls rotted out—a cemetery for dead machines.

She followed the fence until she reached a road running through the other side of the complex. So far she had passed buildings numbered 1 through 19 and seen no signs of life. It was a city of the dead, a ghost town.

She spotted building number 22 and turned into the shadowed alley running between 22 and 23. About halfway along, she located it—2259 was stenciled on the door. She stopped the car, turned off the engine, and searched through the keys on her chain until she found the small one. She held it between her thumb and index finger for a few seconds, warming the metal. For luck.

Before getting out of the car, she looked both ways down the long rows of locked gray doors. She had not seen or heard another living soul. “We don’t like it here, Ra, do we?”

She climbed out and opened the back for the dog. “Heel. You stay right here with me.” They approached the door. The lock was new and shiny brass. On it was engraved, “Arbus. Germany.”

“Oh, Ra. This is it. Oh, boy.” He wagged his tail wildly at the excitement in her voice.

Before inserting the key in the padlock, she looked up and down the long rows once more. The key slipped into the lock. A slight turn clicked it open. At the click she felt something shift inside herself. It was as if at that instant she had begun some secret collaboration with her father. It made her feel close to him.

She took the lock off, slipped the hasp, and hung the open lock back on the hook.

With her right hand she pulled the heavy door open, keeping her left hand on Ra’s neck. When she felt his hair prick up and the sudden rumble shake his body, she leapt back from the opening, slamming her hip against the car. Ra held his ground, growling and leaning forward toward the darkness inside.

Katherine’s whole body throbbed with her galloping heartbeat.

No. I couldn’t have seen what I think I saw.

In the faint light from the bulb at the end of the row, she thought she had glimpsed a glittering animal eye and thick black-and-tan fur.

It had looked like a huge dog.

No way.

Ra was standing at ease now, waiting for her. When her pulse had slowed to a trot, she took two small steps forward and peered in again. “What is that, Ra?”

This time she knew it wasn’t real. Real, but not alive. “God, that scared me. You, too, huh? What a pair we are, scared by a stuffed dog.”

She stood at the entrance and studied it. The dog was a handsome German shepherd mounted on a wood platform, standing alert, ears perked up. The glass eyes were amazingly realistic. But why would someone do this? Sick. Was this Pasha?

He’d said something in the letter. Remember Pasha. What a good watchdog he was. Yes, a watchdog. I do remember. Pasha was a great watchdog. He made me feel safe. Something in the house terrified me and he made me feel safe. But safe from what? I can’t remember.