by Carter
She said it with a snicker and I almost snapped at her, which of course would have looked insane to Bernie. As it was, he must have caught at least the sense of her comment, because he glanced around the room.
“Is she—she here now?”
“No,” I said.
“Oh. Are there—are there other ghosts here?
“No. It’s just us.”
“Hey!” Billie protested. “Thanks a lot!”
Bernie went on staring at me with his laser eyes, but I couldn’t tell if he’d picked up on her comment. I really had to fight the urge to glare at her. There was no need to complicate the situation, and telling him that my dead wife was in the room would certainly do that. We were fortunate that no other ghosts were in the room. If there had been other random ghosts, I would have lied just the same. The truth may set you free, as they say, but being free wasn’t always what you wanted. Sometimes you just wanted to get things done.
“I want to believe you,” Bernie said.
“It’ll make things easier if you do,” I said.
“Is this because of your, um, shooting?”
“You read about that, huh?”
“It was hard to miss,” Bernie said. “Type your name in Google, and all those news articles come up.”
“Just imagine if I’d gotten on Oprah,” I said.
“How many ghosts are there?”
“A lot,” I said. “Look, we could spend all day taking about my condition, but it’s not going to get us any where. What will get us somewhere is if I ask the questions and you answer them.”
“I’m still not sure I believe you.”
“Then pretend, for Karen’s sake. What’s the worst that could happen? If you get the impression I’m trying to manipulate you somehow, you can always refuse to answer. But if there’s even a chance that what I’m telling you is true, wouldn’t you feel terrible not doing what you can to help her?”
He looked at me impassively for a moment, considering, sizing me up, then he rose and went to his window. Hands shoved in his pants pockets, he gazed out at Front Street and the river beyond. In the silence, the murmur of lunch-hour traffic far below was louder, though still barely louder than a whisper coming to us from another room.
“Fifty bucks says he’s thought more than once about jumping,” Billie said.
Bernie glanced over his shoulder at me. “What’s that?”
“Didn’t say anything,” I said.
“Oh. I thought you … Well, never mind. I have to tell you, there are times I’ve been sure Karen was near me. Like she was watching me. I know it sounds crazy.”
“Obviously not to me, Bernie.”
He chuckled. “Right. Obviously not to you. Okay, then. I’ll play along.”
“That’s all I ask.”
“So she thinks she was murdered?”
“You don’t?”
He returned to his wingback chair, but instead of sitting, he stood behind it and grasped the back of the chair with both hands. With me sitting and him standing, his height and size advantage over me felt as if I was looking up at King Kong.
“I have to say it didn’t even occur to me,” he said. “Karen had a pretty serious drinking problem. She’d gotten into a lot of accidents. She seemed depressed all the time, but she wouldn’t say why. A lot of people thought it might have been suicide, but I wasn’t sure. I thought maybe she just jammed on the gas instead of the brake. The autopsy showed that her blood-alcohol level was .28. That’s high enough that up can seem like down. But murder? I don’t know. I guess maybe I was naive.”
“She’s convinced someone messed with her brakes,” I said.
“And she thinks maybe Tony did it?”
“She hopes not. She thinks maybe he got himself in trouble and maybe she was killed as revenge—that maybe he’s in hiding because he’s afraid for his life. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
“No,” he said, but I saw a flicker of confusion pass over his face.
“Anything you can tell me could be helpful,” I pressed.
“I have no idea where he is.”
“Don’t you think it’s odd that he disappeared so soon after Karen’s death?”
“Yes. But there are a lot of things about him that I thought were odd.”
“Such as?”
“Oh, lots of things. Like how they met. It was at our firm’s luxury suite at the Rose Garden, when the Lakers were in town playing the Blazers. I couldn’t go and offered her my seats. I’d do that when I couldn’t go—offer the seats to my kids, and it was her turn. He told her he’d gotten invited by the son of one of the partners, somebody he’d met because they were on the same racquetball league. But later, when I asked the partner, he told me his son didn’t even play racquetball.”
“Did you confront him about this?”
Bernie shook his head. “By the time I found this out, she was so head over heels in love with him, I thought, What was the harm? Maybe he snuck into our suite. He wouldn’t have been the first. And when I met him, he was very charming. Maybe too charming. A very slick operator. There were other little things that just didn’t seem to add up, but they were so happy. He was very good to her—probably the best I’d ever seen a man treat her. And you have to understand … Karen wasn’t a very happy woman. She tried so hard to be happy, but it always seemed like she was paddling in a sinking boat.”
“I know the feeling,” Billie said.
“So you didn’t want to root against her,” I said.
“What father would? Maybe it blinded me. I figured he took off because he couldn’t stand to be reminded of her. Money didn’t seem to be an issue for him. He seemed to do quite well as a day trader.”
“Day trading? Are you sure he made his money that way?”
“I never had reason to assume otherwise,” he said, but there was that odd, fleeting expression of puzzlement again.
“He’s hiding something,” Billie said.
“Maybe,” I said.
“Maybe what?” Bernie said.
“Oh, sorry, just thinking aloud,” I said, embarrassed I’d responded to Billie. It was very difficult, no matter how much practice I had, to completely ignore another person in the room when they were speaking to me—even if they were dead. “Are you aware that your daughter changed her will just before she died?”
“My attorney—our attorney, did indicate that it was a recent will. But all of us update our wills frequently.”
“And you didn’t find it odd that Tony was cut out?”
“I didn’t know that was a change. I assumed it’d always been that way—because he had his own money. They did have a prenup, after all. If they got divorced, he wouldn’t benefit. That was his idea. It was another reason I was willing to overlook some of my misgivings about him.”
“So she didn’t confide in you her worries about him?”
“No.”
“Are you surprised?”
“Am I surprised, what? That she had concerns about him or that she didn’t confide in me?”
“Both,” I said.
“Well, I guess I’m surprised now that she had concerns, but not that she didn’t tell me about them. We weren’t … close.”
“Are you close to your other children?”
His face darkened. “What does that have to do with Karen’s death?”
“I guess that’s a no,” Billie said.
“I don’t mean to offend,” I said. “At this stage, I’m just grasping at straws, trying to get some idea where he might have gone. Were any of your other children close to Karen?”
“Who knows?” he snapped.
“Please. It could be helpful.”
“I don’t know. Maybe. I know the girls all got together for dinner and cocktails and that sort of thing. Travis—not as much. He’s much younger than them. By a good ten years. He was … something of a surprise.”
“He live with you?”
“No. I get him every other weekend an
d three weeks in the summer. The rest of the time, he lives with his mother. Or he did, until a couple months ago. He’s in his first year at Brown. Actually, I guess that means I won’t get him at all, unless he comes of his own volition.” His tone had turned bitter.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Why should you be sorry? His mother just poisoned him against me, that’s all. It happens. At least I’m not paying her child support anymore. That’s something.”
I really had no desire to take a stroll down memory land mines, but I also had no idea what bit of information might lead me in the direction of Tony. “Divorce is always painful,” I said, and it came out lame enough that I wished I’d changed the subject.
“Oh?” Bernie said, his bitterness only increasing. “Have you gone through a divorce, Myron?”
“No.”
“Well, then maybe you should shut the hell up about it.”
“You’re probably right.”
“You’re damn straight I’m—”
“But I do know about losing a wife. Mine committed suicide.”
That stopped him dead in his tracks. He gaped at me with that big bulldog face of his, his knuckles white from gripping the back of the chair so hard.
“Well,” Billie said huffily, “I was wondering when you’d toss that one out there.”
“I didn’t know,” Bernie said.
“Why do you take such a perverse pleasure,” Billie continued to rant, “in bringing that up at every opportunity?”
“I don’t do that,” I said.
“Like hell you don’t,” Billie shot back at me.
“You don’t do what?” Bernie said.
“Sorry,” I said. “Just thinking aloud again. My point is—”
“You’re an asshole,” Billie interjected. “You know I hate thinking about it and yet you keep bringing it up.”
“—I know what it’s like to lose a wife,” I said, talking right on top of her. “Different ways, of course. But I’m just saying I know the pain when the women you love abandons you. But I can only imagine—””
“Screw you!” Billie said.
“—what it’s like when you feel like the love you had for her—”
“I came back, didn’t I?”
“—just wasn’t enough. No matter how much you loved her, it just wasn’t enough.”
“You’re being a jerk!”
Bernie took this all in—at least, my half of it—with an expression of skeptical puzzlement. That was all right. I was puzzled, too. Sometimes I was overcome with these piques of irritation, who knew where they came from, when I felt the need to jab Billie in as many sore spots as possible. My only defense was that she did the same thing, which was a pretty poor defense in the grand scheme of things, but there it was. Billie, stewing in her anger, crossed her arms and turned toward the door.
“Well,” Bernie said, “marriage is a complicated business, I’ll give you that.” He glanced at the clock on the wall, one that looked like it had been made from driftwood. “I’m afraid I have an appointment across town, so I’ll have to wrap this is up. Is there anything else I can do for now?”
“A couple quick questions,” I said. “First, I understand your inheritance makes you quite wealthy. Can I ask why you went into law?”
“That’s an easy one,” Bernie said. “I’m just not the type to sit around doing nothing. Unfortunately, that’s not as common a trait in the Thorne family as I would hope.”
“Karen and Tony,” I said, “did they live together?”
“Yes, in her condo. He moved in with her.”
“But he had his own place in the beginning?”
“Yes. Well, now that you mention it, I don’t know. I was never there.”
“Their condo, who owns it now?”
“I do. She willed it to me. I admit, I haven’t done anything with it. Just stopped in now and then to make sure everything’s okay. Threw out some food, turned down the heat, that sort of thing. It’s … hard being there.”
“Think I can get a key?”
“Why?”
I shrugged. “When you’re looking for a needle in a haystack, first you have to find the right haystack. At this point, I have no idea what I’m looking for until I find it.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “All right. I put a lockbox on the doorknob. I’ll give you the combination.”
“And one last thing to discuss for now,” I said. “I saved the most important for last.”
“Oh?”
“My fee.”
“Oh.”
“Karen said you would cover it.”
“How much?”
I told him. He nodded and stepped to his desk, cutting me a check for the retainer and telling me to send the invoice to his attention at a post office box address he wrote on a yellow sticky note, and not to the law firm. He did it all so quickly and without any kind of fuss that I wondered if my rates were too low. He also jotted down the address of his daughter’s condo and the lockbox combination. While I was waiting, Billie muttered something under her breath and walked through the closed door to the hall.
Pocketing the check in my coat, I said, “Do you want to be kept up to date on what I find?”
“Yes, certainly,” he said, “but only when you have something meaningful. And if I think of anything else, I’ll certainly let you know.”
He crossed around his desk and extended his hand. We shook, and it was like trying to shake hands with a bear. I suspected he was going easy on me and yet I still found my bones grinding. I told him I’d be in touch.
“I have one more minor request,” he said.
“Yes?”
He fixed his gaze on his shoes, suddenly sheepish. “Could you, um, bring Karen in with you?”
“Well …”
“I really want to talk to her.”
“I don’t do séances, Bernie. It’s not my style.”
His sheepish embarrassment quickly faded, his eyes turning hard, his scowl as threatening as if he’d pointed a gun at me. “Since I’m paying your fees,” he said thickly, “maybe you could make an exception just the once. What do you think?”
That scowl, coupled with the painful memory of his handshake, was as good a warning as any that it wouldn’t be a good idea to get on Bernie Thorne’s bad side. Still, I didn’t like being bullied, no matter who was doing the bullying. I took the check out of my pocket and held it out to him.
“No hard feelings,” I said, “but best to part ways now.”
“What? Now hold on here—”
“I’m a private investigator, Bernie.”
“I understand, but—”
“I may have some special talents that other investigators don’t have, but I’m paid to investigate. Not to wash cars, clean someone’s shoes, or even help them commune with the dead. I investigate. If you hire me, that’s what I’ll do for you.”
“Okay, okay,” he said, hands raised in a gesture of surrender. “Put that check back in your pocket. Let’s pretend I never asked.”
Pausing long enough to make sure my point had gotten across, I put the check back in my pocket and turned to the door. Then, before opening it, I glanced over my shoulder at him. Grimacing, looking appropriately chastened, he was retreating behind his battleship of a desk. As big as he was, he still cut a fairly lonely figure. Other people might not have been able to see it, but I was a man who trafficked often in loneliness.
“Maybe I can put it together,” I said.
“What?”
“You and your daughter. A meeting. No promises, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Then, before he could thank me, I stepped into the hall and went in search of my wife.
Chapter 8
For my first few forays into the outside world, Billie took me on walks around our house, but it didn’t take long for that to get old. There were certainly plenty of ghosts strolling the streets of our Sellwood neighborhood, but I was never going to get back on my feet if all I could manag
e were fifteen-minute jaunts to the park and back while still breaking into a cold sweat half the time. The first Saturday in July, I woke with an impulsive desire to get bolder in my efforts, and before I lost my courage, we boarded the MAX train and fifteen minutes later were stepping onto the red brick sidewalks of Pioneer Square.
I raised my hand to shield my eyes from the sun, surveying the gleeful chaos in front of me. There were people everywhere—thousands of them, more people than I’d ever seen in Pioneer Square before.
“Well, here we are,” Billie said, and I could already hear the I told you so in her voice.
“Well here we are,” I said.
Going from moving to standing still prompted a spell of dizziness, a head-swirling condition that just about anything seemed to trigger these days, but I stayed calm and waited for it pass. It always passed, thank God, and I certainly wasn’t going to tell Billie about it.
Like elsewhere, the people came in all shapes and sizes, in all manners of dress, the fashions from all periods of time. Once again, I reached for her arm, and once again, I felt stupid for doing so. How many times did I have to learn that lesson? The event taking place on that particularly sunny morning was called Sand in the City—a festive fundraiser where teams compete to design sand sculptures and donations go to needy kids. The competition was already going full throttle by the time we got there, groups of adults and kids in matching T-shirts working feverishly around massive castles, elephants, mermaids, and various other creative displays.
“You sure you want to do this?” Billie asked.
“I have to do this,” I said.
A welcome breeze, light but warm, carried the aromas of barbecued hamburgers and teriyaki chicken. We headed for the roped-off areas, falling behind a family in matching Birkenstocks and Hawaiian shirts. Two vagrants in camo walked by with a flea-ridden dog between them. A young blond girl of ten or twelve helped an old woman with a walker. Two black guys in garish purple attire danced around an old boom box blasting out hip-hop. A juggling clown entertained a dozen clapping children. A bald, barefoot man in a toga wandered past me, muttering to himself in a language I didn’t recognize.
I glanced at Billie, who for some reason was wearing an all-black sweatshirt and matching sweatpants. I figured she was in one of her nihilistic phases. “A ghost?” I said.
