by Alan Lee
“Yes. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
“Where are you now?”
Argh. Think faster, Mackenzie. “Interstate 81, heading…north.”
“See you then!” and she hung up.
I enjoyed the youth and their energy. Very little of my daily interactions could be described as vibrant exclamations.
Twenty-five minutes later I spotted her trotting across the street and into Owens. I waited three minutes and followed her in.
She waved to me from a line and dramatically pointed at a table where I should wait, amidst a sea of other youths. I obeyed and got a thumbs up from her and askew glances from kids who looked vaguely like her but less shiny.
She returned with two coffees and two boxes of Chick-fil-A nuggets and she gave me half. I remarked, “It is not you who should be supplying the food.”
“You’re helping my dad, and each semester I have meals going to waste, so…” She shrugged.
She looked bright and sparkly, as though at any moment she might take a selfie for Instagram and get ten thousand hearts or likes or favorites or whatever the hell they were.
We ate and drank some and I said, “I found Georgina Princess Steinbeck and I’m now her owner. More or less.”
“Oh good! Does Dad know?”
“Yes. Or he did, temporarily. Part of the reason why I’m currently her owner is that he doesn’t want to be.”
She laughed and quickly squeezed my wrist. “I figured. Does this put the issue to rest? In his mind? I hope so.”
“Not yet. I’d like to talk to you about the ongoing questions.”
“Okay. Absolutely I want to help.” She nodded, less eager though.
“Three things to discuss.” I held up three fingers—my pinky, ring, and middle fingers. “The first thing I know. The second thing, I got a guess. The third, I’m clueless.”
She ate a nugget and looked a little nervous.
I said, “First, I know you were at the crash. Presumably you were in the car when it went off the road. You used a fake name, but you were there. I spoke to the officer. No biggie—you panicked. I’m not sharing that with anyone.”
She didn’t respond but gazed into her coffee. Her face lost some color the same way her father’s did. If I’d mentioned this over the phone, she might deny it; lying is harder face-to-face.
I said, “It’s been bugging me—why were you there? Whatever the reason, it was worth lying to the police. And then I found the shed in the woods with your father’s Jeep.”
Her breath caught and the surface of the coffee in her cup trembled. “You know about that place?”
“I do.”
“How?”
“I do this for a living. I snoop and learn. The Jeep is still up there.”
She nodded.
I said, “The Jeep helped me divine the reason you were in the wrecked Audi that night. That, and a photograph I saw at your father’s house.”
“Which photograph?”
“The photograph of you getting your first car. Know the one? In the kitchen on the wall?”
She nodded.
“You smiling with the Audi, with the big red bow.”
She nodded more.
“So this is the second thing, Alex. I don’t know for sure, but I have a guess. You were driving the night of the accident. Ulysses didn’t drive off the road—you did. The Audi was registered to him but it was your car. That’s why the Jeep is still up there, because it had to be left—”
She stood suddenly. “I don’t…” She walked away. Not a storm off but close. I waited. She got near the exit and paused. Some students went around her and gave her second looks. After a minute she moved to a nearby table and sat. Her shoulders hunched and her head bowed and she cried. Twenty-five feet away from me.
Mackenzie August, you charmer, you.
I waited five minutes while she cried and sniffed and blew her nose in a napkin. Her friends saw her and checked, and they talked and then her friends left.
She looked at her phone. Scrolled the screen a while. Stood and came back.
Her face looked swollen and blotchy and she said, “So? So what. So I was driving.”
“So you feel responsible, even though you aren’t. So it’ll eat at you the rest of your life, Alex. I know how these things work. You wake up remembering it. You blame yourself. You hate yourself. You want to forget and you can’t, and the worst part is you can’t tell anyone. I bet I’m the first.”
She hugged her elbows. “My father isn’t paying you to bolster my mental well-being.”
“That’s free of charge. Because I like him. And I like you.”
She sat, laid her head down and made a sobbing sound into the surface of the table.
“The Jeep is still up there because you came to pick him up. In your Audi. Him and the mysterious woman.”
She didn’t move her head.
I said, “It’s not your fault, Alex.”
“Yes. Yes it is.”
“No. It’s not. I can prove it. Your dad called you because he’d gotten drunk and set fire to the shed and badly burned himself. Right?”
She raised up. Reached for napkins to wipe her eyes and mop the pool of tears she’d left on the table. “Jeez, Mr. August. How do you know all this? All this awful shit I thought was long gone.”
“Rose told me a nurse tended your father’s burn wounds. But I saw the pictures and the Audi hadn’t caught fire when it crashed. So why was he burned? Then I saw the shed. He’d burned himself. I’m amazed you found that shed at night and that your Audi made it up the trail.”
“It didn’t.” She half-laughed. “They couldn’t drive because…” A pause to blow her nose. “You’re right, they got drunk. Knocked over a candle or lantern or something. My father never drank but he…he was blasted. Alcohol poisoning, I think.” All her words sounded funny, her nose too congested to articulate.
Blood alcohol content that high can lead to amnesia, especially combined with additional head trauma.
I said, “How’d you find the place?”
“Somehow she had the GPS coordinates for the shed. She was drunk too, really drunk. A miracle she figured out how to find the longitude and latitude. The Audi got close but couldn’t get over a ridge. I had to help carry him half a mile.”
I didn’t tell her, but it wasn’t a miracle—Ulysses had been up there before with the express purpose of nailing the GPS coordinates. And then tattooing them on a puppy.
I said, “The women, his girlfriend?”
“I guess. Sure. At the time.”
“He was in bad shape.”
She nodded, looking at the tissue and sniffing. “Awful.”
“The alcohol and the burns.”
“Yes.”
“And you were shaken and racing to the hospital and lost control of the Audi around the tight turns coming down Bent Mountain.”
The structure of her face crumbled again and her lip quivered and she nodded more. “I nearly crashed at the top. I swiped a guardrail. He was blitzed and throwing up, and he said, ‘If we crash, tell them I was driving. Okay Alex?’ He kept saying my name over and over. ‘Okay, Alex? Alex? Right?’ And then he’d throw up more. And when we did crash…the woman insisted. She said, ‘Tell them your dad was driving so you don’t get in trouble.’ And when the police arrived, that’s what she said. So…”
“Don’t you see, Alex? Not your fault. They needed a hospital but they called you, not an ambulance. It’s impossible to drive well when your father is dying in the passenger seat. You had to shoulder the burden of other people’s foolish mistakes.”
She reclined in the chair, dropped her head back, and closed her eyes. “That was a bad night. I tried to forget it.”
I said, “You gotta talk to someone about this. The weight crushes you.”
“Like counseling? I don’t want to. Can’t afford it.”
“You trust your mom enough to talk with her? She doesn’t know the truth, I don’t think.”<
br />
“She doesn’t. But she’s with Gordon now. And I hate that guy. We all do.” She erected herself and cleared the tissues and took them to the trash. Returned and got another and blew her nose again but it didn’t help. Gave me a wry smile. “You want to know who the mysterious woman is. That’s the third thing you want to talk about.”
“Yes.”
“I’m not telling and I think you should let that part go. Dad doesn’t even remember her, and it wouldn’t help anything if you find out.”
“It might.”
“Mr. August, this whole thing is so sad. Right? It’s awful. What good is this doing?”
“It’s the truth.”
“So?”
“The truth has a way of freeing us.”
“Doesn’t feel like it. Are you going to tell anyone? That I was driving?”
“Of course not. You suffered enough. But I think you should. Someone you can trust,” I said.
“I don’t have a boyfriend.”
“You could tell your mother.”
“She’s better at pretending than you think. We get along, but… I don’t know, it’s complicated. When they split, I stayed with Dad and she…she wanted money in child support and it hurt our relationship.”
“Money has a way of doing that,” I said.
“So are you done? Can you leave this thing alone now?”
“I’ll leave you alone. I promise.”
“What else is there?”
“An excellent question,” I said.
“You’re going to find out. You’re good at this, I can tell.”
At the moment, watching her dab her eyes and sniff, I didn’t feel like it.
Chapter 29
I had most of the puzzle finished. Over fifty percent. And the remainder was constituted by only two pieces.
Who was the woman?
Why tattoo the dog?
I had guesses about both.
Other than making beautiful young girls cry, I was having a ton of fun. I preferred this to cage matches in Naples.
I waited in the woods behind Robin Hood, on a path leading to the Mill Mountain Star, and I watched Ulysses’s house at a distance of fifty yards.Temperatures fell into the forties and I shivered and stamped and waited for Rose to go somewhere.
Less fun.
Finally, about three in the afternoon, the garage door purred open and an old Mercedes A-Class backed out. Rose at the wheel. She motored down Robin Hood and out of sight. I waited ten minutes and knocked on his door.
I wore cologne. But a starkly different brand and scent. Less musk, more fruit.
Ulysses himself answered it. Wearing loafers and a black turtleneck and corduroy khakis.
“Afternoon,” I said.
He nodded politely. There was no flicker of recognition in his eyes—I was a stranger. Fascinating. “Good afternoon. Help you?”
I wore the blue shirt of a handyman and I indicated the bag of tools I carried. “Sorry I’m late, Dr. Steinbeck. Here to check the thermostat. Heater’s acting funny, Rose said. She mentioned you wouldn’t remember I’m coming.”
He nodded the nod of a man resigned to memory loss but not entirely crushed by it. “I forgot she called you.”
“I’ll only be ten minutes and Rose said to let myself out. Sound good?”
“She’s the boss,” said Ulysses and he stepped aside. “Thermostat’s in the kitchen. If you need me, I’ll be in my office.”
“Perfect. Thanks, Doc,” I said.
Robbing this man would be hilariously easy. Should warn Rose.
I deposited my bag down in the gourmet kitchen, salivated over the Wusthof knives, debated cooking a five course meal, decided against it, and moved into the living quarters beyond. Found a main hallway and staircase. My guess— they didn’t live upstairs; they took up residence on the main floor so there I searched.
Rose’s bedroom was first. An open J.D. Robb novel rested on the nightstand, face down. Bed made. Laundry put away. A vase on the dresser with flowers three days past bloom. Two framed photographs with her son. Phone charging station. Thin necklaces hanging on the mirror.
The bathroom Rose used was the bathroom across the hall. The usual stuff—a brush clogged with her long brown hair; shower with assortment of shampoos and conditioners; contact solution; hair dryer; a pill box. I could invade her privacy and inspect her prescriptions but that wasn’t why I came.
I moved on.
Ulysses’s bedroom was the master. Still orderly but less so. I found what I wanted immediately—notes on the wall for him to see as soon as he woke each morning. The largest was a decorative oil painting dominated by a sweet message—
Good morning, Ulysses.
The most important things for you to know are this:
Your family loves you.
You are not in debt. No one is mad at you.
Your health is good. Your daughter is happy.
Your schedule is clear. Your friends might drop by.
And you have memory loss.
You read this yesterday too, but you forgot already.
You’re going to be okay. Take a moment to breathe.
And don’t panic—today will be a good day.
This annotated oil painting was framed and remained on the wall permanently. Large and prominent. Below the note about not panicking were functional suggestions about the best way for him to cope with this fresh news and get started with the day.
Jeez. I scrubbed at my hair, battling intense but brief claustrophobia. Imagine waking up to that every. single. day. Each morning a dizzying sensation as you read the news for the first time. Again.
Now that I thought about it, he might need to read this painting several times during a twenty-four-hour period. Wow.
A little whiteboard hung adjacent, on which Rose wrote notes. For example, she was grocery shopping at three and would be back by four-thirty.
Below that, another painting. Framed but smaller. This one had less dust on it, probably because it was taken off the wall occasionally, due to company.
My dearest Ulysses,
You and I are in love. Sometimes you remember this but usually you do not, and that’s okay. The gap in your memory begins a few weeks before you proposed.
You remember me most often as Rose, the housekeeper, a woman you love in secret.
But in reality, between us there are no secrets. I am the woman who adores you most in the whole world. And you loved me before the car crash you’ve forgotten.
We will never get married.
But we will be together forever.
Come find me in the house! I look forward to seeing you every day.
I love you. Always.
Rose.
A Polaroid was taped to the frame, the two of them kissing. She wore an engagement ring. Looking younger and carefree.
The impact knocked my knees out. I sat heavily onto the floor. She was the mysterious woman, obviously.
I should have known. And I had on some level.
But I had NOT known that Ulysses had proposed.
He’d proposed, but then the accident, and…
And she stayed. She stayed with a man who didn’t remember he loved her.
For half an hour I couldn’t find the strength to get up.
I sat in my car later that day. Unable to turn the ignition, still numb from the evidence of unconditional love in the face of constant pain. Rose Bridges, my new hero.
My phone rang. Marcus Morgan calling.
I shook myself free of reverie. One does not ignore calls from the local cocaine lord.
I put it on speaker.
He said, “Got a call from Tom. You remember Tom.”
“Tom Garrett. One of the Kings, looks like Mr. Rogers, runs identify fraud. Big fan of mine.”
“That he is. Got a call from Tom. He did a little digging into the, ah, windfall from your gladiatorial endeavors.”
“I won the Gabbia Cremisi in Naples and now I’m rich.”
&nb
sp; “You half right. But fuckers say they keeping your winnings,” he said.
“I’m not surprised.”
“No?”
“I broke out of their cage and killed their guards and burned down their billion dollar hotel.”
“Manny the Marshal burned it, matter fact. He set the fires. I know cause I was there and I wasn’t in no damn cage.”
“Maybe so but I’m taking credit. No one hit him; they all hit me,” I said.
“This ain’t a world of legal recourse or justice. They say they keeping it, they keep it. Their eyes, you broke the deal.”
I snorted. “The deal.”
“A gentleman’s world running on deals and relationships. Only problem, the gentlemen be gangsters.”
“Your first book, Marcus, should be titled The Gentlemen Be Gangsters.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
“So if I want my money—”
“Hafta go take it. Kill’em all. Might start a war with the whole damn Camorra,” he said.
“Nah. I like what I do and I’m dating an attorney.”
“Thought you might let it go. Ain’t yo style.”
“You killed What’s-his-name, so who’s running the show in Naples now?”
“Don’t know, don’t care.”
“Well, tell Tom they can keep the money long as they build a museum for children and erect a statue of me out front.”
“Yeah. Fo’sure I’ll tell him that.”
“Out of curiosity, if I demanded my money and started a war with the Camorra, would the Kings back me up?”
He sighed loud enough for the receiver to distort the sound. Took another moment before answering. “A good damn question, August. Winning the tournament? That’s a big deal. Made the Kings proud. Now the council running the thing slights you, means they slight the Kings too. You as famous as The Prince, remember him? But, be that as it may…you ain’t exactly the Kings’ golden son. So…I don’t know, August.”
“I’m not gonna push the issue.”
“One more thing. The sale of Veronica Summers’s property is finalized. I already got a handle of the wholesaler issue. But it’s creating waves with specific individuals.”
“Like Darren Robbins? And the men who love Ronnie? And the men who fear us both?”
