by Colin Kersey
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I showered for dinner, letting the hot water run until there was no more. While drying off, I observed myself in the mirror. The red-black bruises on my arm and rib area were turning blue and yellow. The nicks in my face from the speedboat’s bullet-shattered windshield were mostly gone. I could use a haircut, but it would have to wait a few more days. The beard that Heide had encouraged me to grow now seemed like a silly affectation and another link to the past. I searched in my bag for a shaving kit.
Vonda was the last to arrive at the dinner table after stopping to pour a glass of wine.
“My goodness, Gray,” she said. “Who would have guessed there was a cute man hiding under all that facial hair. Too bad you cannot see him, Val.”
Virgil and Stu studied me as if seeing me for the first time.
“You shaved?” Valerie asked.
“Got tired of seeing myself in the mirror. Not to mention dealing with the itch.” I brushed my hair back with my hands and hoped they would not notice the lack of socks and untied shoes or, if they did, would attribute my fashion sense—or lack of it—to being from Southern California. Putting on socks and tying the laces on my shoes was still too painful due to my damaged ribs.
The dinner conversation revolved around Saturday’s lotto which, according to Vonda, had reached over two hundred eighty million dollars.
“It’s all anyone could talk about at the office today,” she said. “I swear, everyone at the bank was withdrawing their life savings to buy lotto tickets.”
“You’re kidding,” Virgil said. “Why would they do such a foolish thing?”
“Same reason I would,” Vonda said. “First thing tomorrow, I’m going to buy forty tickets.”
Virgil laid down his knife and fork and frowned.
“Waste of money,” Stu said. “You’ve got better odds of being struck by lightning than winning the lotto.”
“It’s my money,” she said. “I’ll waste it if I want to.”
“What would you do with all that money if you won?” Valerie asked.
“What would I do?” Vonda’s face lit up. “First thing I’d do is take a little trip to Mexico, stay in the best hotels, see all the places Momma talked about.” She clutched her wine glass like it was a bird that might fly away. The rosé glittered blood-red in the light of the overhead lamp. “Then I’d pick out a Mercedes Benz. A big silver convertible with red leather seats.”
“What else?” Valerie said.
“And then, my dear, I would buy a whole new wardrobe: dresses, shoes, silky pajamas and underwear. Maybe the entire Victoria’s Secret catalogue.”
As she shimmied her shoulders beneath her t-shirt, I was struck by the differences in the sisters’ demeanor. My mother had loved dragging me to horticultural events when I was a kid. The knowledge had come in handy later while working for the landscaping firm, where matching the pots of flowers to the names of plants indicated on a rendering was a requirement. Whereas Valerie reminded me of a shy cornflower, Vonda was like a bold, sensuous calla lily.
“You’d be out of money in less than two weeks,” Stu said.
“With what you earn maybe, but not with that much money,” Vonda said.
“Couldn’t you shop on the interest?” Valerie asked. “Keep the rest in the bank?”
“Now there’s a smart girl,” Vonda said. “You can be my money manager.”
Valerie stared unseeing at the bowl of leftover mashed potatoes sitting in the middle of the table.
“Could you buy me some tickets, too?” she asked.
“You kids are crazy,” Virgil said.
I agreed with him but said nothing. I wondered what they would say if they knew there was a hundred million up for grabs sitting in a bank in the Cayman Islands. I recalled what Catania had said about the problem of locating the money. How many banks could there be— twenty, fifty, a hundred? And how difficult would it be to find the correct bank, discover the account name, and password for where the money was hidden? On the other hand, I thought the odds had to be at least as good or better than winning the lotto.
“C’mon, Daddy,” Vonda coaxed. “We’re just having fun. Doesn’t cost anything to dream. What would you buy?”
“Guess maybe if I had that kind of money to throw around, I’d get a new Cadillac.” He nodded absently and stroked his chin. “You know, when your mom was still alive, I had this idea of getting one of those big motor homes—the kind you see going down the road with a satellite dish on top and towing a small car or boat. But that was a long time ago.”
“Yea, Daddy! He’s my traveling man.” Vonda raised her glass in a toast. “Forget about the lottery. Why don’t we buy that motorhome and all travel to Mexico at the end of the season? Call it a reward for all our hard work?”
Virgil pursed his lips in a way that looked like he was giving the idea some thought.
I remained silent, remembering Heide’s face as she died and all that needless bloodshed for an insane dream of money.
Boom. Flash. “I fucked up.”
“How about you, honeybunch,” Vonda said, running her fingers playfully through the hair on the back of Stu’s neck. “What would you do if you won all that money?”
“Knowing Stu, he’d probably buy a six-pack and some beef jerky,” Valerie said.
Vonda threw back her head and laughed. Stu cocked his hand like a gun, squinted, and fired at Valerie, a gesture she was unable to see, but likely anticipated.
“I’d find four hundred acres someplace in Montana or Idaho,” Stu said, “where they don’t even have roads. Then I would build a big log cabin with a view of the mountains and pull up the draw bridge. Any strangers showed up, they’d be shot on sight.”
“Ugh.” Vonda grimaced. “Remind me again, why exactly did I marry you?”
She turned toward Valerie. “How about you, little sister?”
Everyone turned to look at her. For the first time since I had met her, she was wearing lipstick and her hair was parted. I wondered if she had managed this herself, or if Vonda had helped her.
“Music,” Valerie said. “Lots of classical music. Some new pots and pans and a greenhouse so I could grow my own herb garden.”
“Why Valerie,” Vonda said. “What a spendthrift you are.”
Stu chuckled. “We’re all talking about what to do with more than two hundred million and Sis here can’t come up with stuff that costs more than a few hundred bucks.”
“Buy me forty tickets, too, Vonda,” Valerie said. “I’ll get the money after I clean up the dishes.”
“Damn right, girl,” Vonda said.
“Wouldn’t that just take the cake?” Stu said. “It would be blind luck if you won, pardon my pun.”
“I’d also find a nice place to live,” Valerie announced.
Silence settled uncomfortably around the table. Vonda sipped from her wine. I noticed Virgil was frowning.
“Doesn’t anybody want to stay here beside me?” he asked.
“What’s to stay for?” Vonda asked. “Mildew? Senility?”
“Someplace in a city,” Valerie continued, her eyes closed. “An apartment over a bakery so I could wake up every day and smell bread and cinnamon rolls baking. It would have lots of big windows to let the sun in and a cage full of canaries to sing for me. Patsy and I would take long walks every day.”
Vonda looked confused. “But who’d watch out for you?”
Valerie frowned. “Why Patsy, of course.”
“She means who’d take care of you, Sis?” Stu repeated.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Anger flashed in Valerie’s voice. “Who does the cooking and cleaning around here? I’m the one taking care of you guys and getting no respect for it.” She smacked her open palms on the table. A spoon flipped onto the ground. I could see it glittering beneath the table, but resisted reaching for it, having learned the hard way not to help unless asked.
“You can’t even write a check,” Stu added.
/> “For your information, I can write digital checks with my computer. And if I had all that money, I would not need a damn checkbook, would I? And one more thing.” She stood up quickly, her face flushed. “I won’t be going on any family trips to Mexico. C’mon, Patsy.”
She grabbed the dog’s halter, and they left the room.
Right then and there I decided if I ever did find that hundred million, I would give some of it to Valerie. Maybe even buy her an apartment in Paris.
Virgil picked his napkin off his lap and laid it on the table. “I saw this coming. All this talk about money—money you do not even have. Remember what the Bible says, ‘You cannot serve both God and money.’ All it does is cause trouble.”
He pushed his chair back with a screech, stood, and headed for the living room.
“Think I’ll join Virgil,” Stu said.
“Wait a minute, hon.” Vonda looked at me. “We haven’t heard from Gray yet.”
During the conversation, I had silently continued eating and watching the others. Table warfare made me as uncomfortable as a jackrabbit in a pack of coyotes. My father had frequently used dinnertime as a boxing match. Meanwhile, my mother just sat there, drinking straight shots of vodka, and not saying a word.
“Yeah,” Stu said, amused. “Let’s hear what fuck-up would do with all that money.”
“I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’d be happy with what you already have.”
Vonda leaned back, a look of surprise upon her face. “Sounds like he wants our trout farm.”
In the silence that followed, you could hear the television in the living room. It was evidently a good time to buy a Toyota. “Our dealers won’t be outsold,” a voice enthused.
“I’m sorry.” I felt my newly naked face grow warm. “That came out sounding all wrong. I meant I would like to have a family someday. A quiet home in the country. A fireplace and a yard with a picnic table. Maybe even a horse or pony for the kids to ride.”
Vonda was not the only one who was surprised. This was news to me as well. Obviously, there was not a chance in hell of this happening. Not now. Not with a cartel hunting for me and eager to kill not only me, but anyone harboring me. But, as I was discovering, dreams do not die easy. Even unrealistic ones. Uproot one and another was sure to spring up to take its place.
“Not me,” Vonda said. “I’ve got to get out of here before I get old and moldy. As far as I am concerned, Gray, you can have the farm.” She stood and headed to the refrigerator. “All you have to do is win the lotto and it’s yours.”
The speculation finally at an end, she and Stu disappeared into the living room.
I had not noticed Valerie’s return until she spoke. “Are you going to help me, or not?”
I began gathering dishes and carrying them to the sink. “Want me to load the dishwasher this time?”
“Okay.”
She returned a minute later from the table with another load. Evidently, no one picked up after themselves at the Van de Zilver residence.
“I liked what you said,” Valerie said when we were alone.
“About what?”
“About having a family and a picnic table and a pony and stuff.” She rinsed the empty bowl in the sink. “It sounded nice.”
“I thought your idea of living over a bakery sounded good, too. That’s where the writers and artists lived in Paris back in the early 1900s. People like Ezra Pound, Fitzgerald, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, Hemingway. They called them garrets.”
Valerie smiled. Heide’s large, bleached teeth had illuminated an entire room when she smiled or laughed. Valerie’s smile on the other hand displayed small, even teeth that transformed her face into the first note of a quiet melody.
I looked out the window to the backyard. The light from the distant cabin glimmered, a lonely beacon in the dark cosmos. How long if ever, I wondered, until Heide’s death did not seize my heart in its frozen embrace?
“Would your kids be able to take music lessons?” Valerie’s voice interrupted my despair.
“My kids?” It took me a second to understand that she was referring to the conversation at the dinner table. “Oh, sure. Music, dance, art, whatever they wanted.”
Valerie was silent as she washed pans. “You don’t act like someone who lost a person they loved very much.”
“What?” I stared at her in surprise. “What do you mean?”
“I didn’t eat for more than a week after my mother died.”
“You’re kidding.”
She blushed, something she did frequently. “They took me to the hospital and stuck a tube down my throat.”
She rinsed the pan and placed it carefully on the plastic drain board with the others. “Didn’t you ever wish you were dead or want to hurt yourself? Or maybe hurt someone else?”
I thought it was a strange question coming from Valerie. On the other hand, I could now better understand wanting to hurt someone. Catania said they found a fair amount of blood in the smaller speedboat which I had plowed into. I remembered little of the collision, other than being tossed into the air, hearing an eerie scream as a body sailed overhead, and then waking in the hospital following a crash landing that knocked me out. I hoped the woman who had shot me and killed Heide was still lying at the bottom of Newport Harbor. The last thing I needed was for the crazy bitch to track me down for a little payback.
When I did not answer, Valerie hurried to fill the awkward silence that followed. “I’m sorry. It’s not something I should talk about. Forget it.”
Vonda showed up to pour herself another glass of wine. “Aren’t you guys done yet?”
“Just finishing,” I said, still disconcerted by the painful memory Valerie’s question had raised.
Vonda leaned in close to rinse her glass. She smelled of alcohol and Angel perfume. It had been Heide’s favorite fragrance. “Why don’t you come out and join us, Gray? Be a part of our big, happy family?”
“What about me?” Valerie said. “Aren’t I invited?”
“That depends.” Vonda hugged her sister with her free arm. “Don’t go screwing up this Mexico trip. I’ve waited too long for a vacation like this to have you do your PMS number and blow the whole thing.”
The news was still on the television when I entered the living room. Vonda was curled up next to her father in his La-Z-Boy, a fresh glass of wine in her hand. Stu was alone on the couch reading a car magazine. Valerie sat in an overstuffed chair in a floral pattern at least two decades old that echoed the couch. That left sharing the couch with Stu or a vacant rocking chair. I chose the chair.
Since Heide’s death, I had not had the opportunity or the urge to watch television. As I watched the local news, I found it depressing to learn that the drugs, gangs, and violence that plagued Southern California had likewise infected Sedro-Woolley and its surrounding neighbors. You would think that people who lived in such a breathtaking natural environment would be more in tune with health and exercise than needing to shoot up to get high.
Vonda made a derogatory comment about a television commercial. I did not say anything. Since sitting in a front-row seat to personal tragedy, I now found my former career ambition as an art director too unattainable to defend.
The news program ended a few minutes later. Virgil clicked off the television with the remote control. “Let’s hear some music. How about playing the Theme?”
Vonda stood and stretched. “Must be time for a bath.”
Valerie slid a CD into the multimedia player. Virgil shut his eyes as the first movements of a familiar piano concerto began to play.
“What is that?” I asked.
“Rachmaninov’s Rhapsody on a Theme by Paganini,” Valerie whispered. “It was Momma’s favorite.”
The music was gorgeous. It took me a few minutes to identify where I had heard it. Then I remembered it from an old Marilyn Monroe movie I had downloaded from Netflix.
When at last the music ended, Virgil sighed, and I thought he saw him wipe his eyes w
ith a handkerchief. “Now you, darlin’,” he said. “You play.”
“Oh, Daddy,” she protested. “I can’t really play this. It’s not meant for viola.”
“Yes, you can,” he said. “Please play for me, sweetheart.”
Valerie brought a case out of the bedroom. She removed a viola whose wood gleamed with a rich, golden patina. She plucked each of the strings to tune them and then, without fanfare, began to play the melody we had listened to just a few moments earlier. As she drew the bow across the strings, the sound was richer, fuller, and huskier than a violin. Valerie played with such passion that I found the hairs tingling on the back of my neck. A frown line etched her forehead and her violet eyes stared into a world I could not see or imagine.
“Encore,” I said when she had finished.
“That was lovely, darlin,’” Virgil said.
“Beautiful,” I added.
“Oh, she can play all right.”
I looked up to see Vonda leaning against the doorway in a bathrobe, her hair wrapped in a towel. She held her blood-red wine glass as if to study it in the light.
“My little sister can play like nobody’s business. Too bad she can’t see.”
Valerie flushed.
“Can’t play in an orchestra if you can’t see the conductor.” She smiled. “Ain’t that right, Val?”
Valerie laid the viola carefully in its case, latched it, and disappeared into her bedroom.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The next day following dinner, I was washing pans, grateful that the day was nearly done when Vonda entered the kitchen. Valerie had excused herself to take a shower, leaving me to finish the dishes and tidy up. Suddenly, Vonda was there watching me over the top of her ever-present wine glass.
“Can I get you something?” I asked.
She wore a cotton t-shirt and a pair of faded jeans. Her feet were bare, and I noted that her toenails were now brown. Her blond hair, worn in a tight bun when she had left for her job at the insurance agency that morning, now hung down around her slender shoulders.
