Thicker Than Blood

by Penny Rudolph

  “The cat.”

  “’Fraid not. He wasn’t up there, and the food I put out here ain’t been touched. He may have run off, dear girl.”

  “Keep putting out the food, okay?”

  “Don’t you worry yourself about that,” Irene promised.

  Rachel was placing the receiver back on the hook when she heard the low hum of a motor. Tires crunched on gravel, the motor stopped, doors slammed.

  With trembling fingers, she lifted the edge of the faded green-and-orange drapes, sighed with relief and thrust open the front door. Goldie was picking her way along the long path from the driveway. Behind her was Hank.

  “You sure you weren’t followed?” Rachel kept her voice barely audible.

  Goldie shook her head. “Not unless they were flying over our heads. Not a soul on the road behind us. God’s wonder we found this place at all. How’d you get here? In a space ship?”

  “Where’s your car?” Hank asked from behind her, brow furrowed, eyes tense.

  “Parked down the road,” Rachel whispered, gesturing with her chin. “Maybe you should do the same.”

  Hank’s scowl deepened. “Are you that scared?”

  “Yeah. I am.” Rachel heaved a sigh. “Thanks for coming.”

  He eyed her for a moment, taking in the ragged blanket around her shoulders, the mussed orange hair. “I’ll move the car.” He turned and jogged back to the driveway.

  Rachel hugged Goldie. “My brain is out of gas. I don’t know what to do.”

  “All you got to do is get inside. I sure as hell didn’t drive all this way to hang out in the cold rain. You get struck by lightning? Is that what did that to your hair?”

  Rachel put her hand to her hair. She had almost forgotten. “It’s cold inside, too. I guess it’s the altitude.”

  Goldie inspected the cabin room by room. “Orange hair, no heat, no hot chocolate. What kind of a welcome is this?”

  “The wall heater doesn’t seem to be working.”

  “There’s a half ton of firewood out there,” Goldie said over her shoulder as she flipped open kitchen cabinets and drawers. “You ain’t gonna get warm standing there, honey. Sure to heaven you didn’t come up here without a coat?”

  Rachel stared at her blankly for a moment, then put on the red parka she’d thrown over the back of the sofa. “Don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

  “Guess you had yourself a couple big shocks. Shit happens. It just ain’t a real good idea to wade around in it.”

  “So what’s this all about?” Hank was standing in the doorway.

  “That’s what I need to figure out,” Rachel said. “But I haven’t been able to think.”

  Goldie squeezed her shoulder. “Thinking never did make anybody warm. You get some wood in.”

  “You figure it’s safe to have a fire? Someone might see the smoke.”

  “Frostbite,” Goldie said, “is sure enough not safe. I’m going into town to get some real groceries. Then we will sit down and you’re going to talk.

  “I know, you just moved the car,” Goldie said to Hank. “Give me the keys.” He tossed them to her. “Maybe you could take a look at that furnace,” she said.

  Rachel followed Goldie out and reappeared cradling two logs, her chin steadying a wobbly third. She stacked them in the corner, then brought three more.

  Hank was tinkering with the heater. “These things usually work better if you light the pilot,” he said, striking a match. A ring of blue flames flared. He adjusted the burner and sat back watching Rachel stack the wood.

  “It was damn scary when I found out you’d disappeared,” he said. “Why didn’t you at least call?”

  “I tried. Kept getting the machine.” She tried to smile but the effort only tightened her lips. “I was afraid to leave a message.”

  By the time Goldie returned, Rachel had made an attempt at cleaning the kitchen and Hank, sweatshirt sleeves pushed up, was using an old paper sack to coax a trio of rain-dampened logs to burn.

  “This is more like it.” Goldie slung the first of five bags of groceries onto the counter. “And what I got here will make it even better. Never mind the coffee. We’re going to hot up this cider.”

  Rachel shrugged and went to sit stiffly in a chair near the fireplace. In an earlier life, the chair’s upholstery had boasted huge blue flowers that had now faded almost to white. The generous stuffing had shifted over the years so that it tended to swallow its occupant.

  Whishing and clanking sounds issued from the kitchen until Goldie appeared with cups balanced on an old bar tray and joined them by the fire.

  Rachel recited again how she had found Charlotte, the mess she came home to, almost breaking down when she got to Clancy’s disappearance.

  “This whole thing is wearing thin enough to read the newspaper through it,” Goldie muttered.

  All three stared into the fire. When a drop of sap exploded like a rifle shot in the silence, Rachel almost spilled her cider.

  A look passed between Goldie and Hank, who cleared his throat. “I’m afraid I have a couple of things to add to the events of the past few days,” he said, his face lost in the shadows in the darkened room.

  “We were going to wait till you were in a better mood,” Goldie added, “but looks like we might be too old to remember by then.”

  Feeling like a bit of dust in the path of a broom that was relentlessly sweeping her to hell, Rachel slid her eyes toward Hank. “Is it Clancy?”

  Hank and Goldie both shook their heads. Hank propped his feet on the cracked-vinyl hassock. The laces of his scuffed hiking boots were knotted in several places. “The cops are looking for you, too,” he said finally.

  “I know that,” Rachel said. “I talked to Irene. Probably something to do with Lonnie, or the garage.”

  “Afraid not,” Hank said. “Something to do with fingerprints. Apparently yours were all over the place at Charlotte’s.”

  The long stream of air that escaped from Rachel sounded like a punctured bicycle tire.

  “But why, if they think it was suicide…?” She turned to Goldie. “Your brother’s friend have any luck in Riverside?”

  “They told him there was a gun, registered to Charlotte herself, in her lap.”

  Rachel stared at her. “No way. There was no gun. Certainly not in her lap. I was upset, not blind. I couldn’t have missed that.”

  Hank leaned back and closed his eyes. “Why would they take prints at all if they were so sure it was suicide?”

  Goldie put her feet on what passed for a coffee table. “My brother’s buddy, Sammy, talked to some detective in Riverside. The dick said there was some doubt that the prints on the gun were consistent with someone shooting himself. Sammy’s a little edgy now because they want more information about his ‘informant.’”

  Rachel drummed her fingers on the chair arm. “But Harry is dead. Why would someone kill Charlotte? This doesn’t make any more sense than that plane disappearing.”

  “I keep forgetting about that damn plane,” Goldie said. “You think it’s connected?”

  “Not necessarily,” Hank said. “Might just be a failed smuggling job.”

  “You never saw the pilot?”

  Hank and Rachel both shook their heads.

  “Seems like a pretty good chance he mighta seen you, though.”

  Rachel slapped her hand over her mouth. “I think I lost my key out there. Maybe that’s how my apartment got trashed.”

  “We have to go to the police,” Hank said. “You have to tell them that.”

  Rachel gazed at the rough beams of the cabin ceiling trying to conjure up the scene of the crash. “We can’t even prove there was a plane.”

  The cabin’s atmosphere seemed to whir with thoughts from all three.

  “There was a granular powder spilling out of one of those boxes on the plane,” Rachel mused. “It looked a lot like the stuff I found in Lonnie’s kitchen.”

  “The same as what was in the envelope behind th
at guy Jason’s toilet?” Goldie asked.

  Rachel nodded several times. “I think so.”

  “Too bad you didn’t take a little handful of it,” Goldie said.

  “I did. It got ruined. I put it in the trunk of my car and a bottle of bleach leaked all over it.” Rachel was staring at the fire as if answers might rise from the flames. She shifted her gaze to Hank. “I saw a long, flat building by that reservoir. What’s in it?”

  “At Coyote? Just a place to stash equipment and supplies.”

  “Any staff there?”

  “On a regular basis, just one guy, I think. He lives there. We send out others from time to time. There are two or three houses on the other side of the lake. Most of them haven’t been used since they finished building the aqueduct.”

  Rachel frowned, her eyes far away.

  Hank looked back at the fire. “Why did Charlotte ask you to go to Riverside?”

  “I don’t really know,” Rachel said. “I’d been asking her about records that might show who had driven that company car the day Jason was killed, but I didn’t figure that mattered any more after Harry did his swan dive.”

  “So who killed Charlotte?” Hank asked.

  “Or did she off herself?” This from Goldie.

  “I’d stake my life there was no gun,” Rachel reflected to no one in particular. “Someone had to put it in her lap after I left. Unless.…” She paused, staring into empty air as if seeing something. The words exploded from her: “Someone saw me there.”

  Chapter Forty-two

  Goldie looked as if she had seen a snake. “You think you walked in on a murder?”

  Rachel pulled her legs up under her in the chair. “Kind of sounds like it, doesn’t it?”

  The silence stretched out as all three tried to fit another piece into the puzzle.

  “I give up,” Rachel said and turned to Hank. “But you said there were a couple of things.”

  Hank tipped his chipped cup and swallowed the last of his cider. “When I couldn’t find you, I thought you might be at the hospital with your dad. The hospital staff was real evasive when I called, so I went over to the hospital. I said I was his son, and I wanted to see him.”

  Rachel stared at the cartoon image of a reindeer on the side of her cup.

  Hank went to reconfigure the burning logs. “Finally an administrator took me into a private office,” he said over his shoulder, then paused.

  Finally Rachel asked softly, “Why?”

  Hank straightened and looked at her. “He said your father has disappeared.”

  She leaped out of her chair. “My God! When? How?”

  “They don’t know.”

  Rachel’s fingers twisted the coarse orange hair that didn’t seem to belong to her. She reached for the parka she had discarded in the fire’s warmth. “I have to find him.”

  Goldie grabbed Rachel’s arm. “You can’t. An hour ago you were scared to open the door, now you’re a Green Beret?”

  Rachel gaped at her. A burning log punctuated the quiet with a hiss.

  Goldie’s matter-of-fact voice bisected the silence. “Listen, girl, for the past hour you’ve been saying someone is trying to kill you!”

  “And now they have my father!”

  “We don’t know that,” Hank cut in. “All we know is the hospital doesn’t know where he is.”

  Rachel sank back into the ample lap of the chair. “Jason, Lonnie, Harry, Charlotte, and now my father…Pop never even met the others.”

  Goldie nodded. “According to you, neither did Lonnie. But…they all knew you.”

  Rachel was looking at them, but her mind was somewhere else. “Pop struck a guardrail,” she said, in the voice of someone in a trance. “On the Long Beach. A one-car accident. Not the cop at the desk, or anyone at the hospital said anything about his blood-alcohol. He had a couple of drinks with us, remember? But that was all.”

  “Look,” Goldie said, “I know he’s your dad, but maybe he stopped somewhere after that.”

  “He’s no saint,” Rachel said, “but the cards were more important to him than booze. He never drank much when he was playing. Said it affected his game. The point is, he was driving my car.” Her voice rose, razor thin. “Did someone run him off the road?”

  Hank said, “You mean someone was trying to kill you and got him?”

  Goldie’s cheeks puffed up as if she were blowing out candles. “Jesus, Mary, and Martin Luther King!”

  The three argued, pondered, and solved nothing.

  After they had gone over it for a fourth time to no avail, Goldie rose and put on her jacket. “Almost forgot I’ve got a job. You just stay put,” she motioned to Rachel. “I’ll be back as soon as I can get away. And I sure enough got to find some hair dye. You look like a neon sign in a red-light district. Promise you’ll call if anything happens.”

  Rachel agreed. She was getting sleepy.

  Hank was reaching for his own jacket.

  Goldie swung her eyes to him. “Any chance you can stay here?”

  Rachel looked at the floor.

  Hank looked startled.

  “No use pretending this isn’t bad business,” Goldie went on. “Real bad. They just might be looking for you, too, Hank. You been hanging around that parking lot, you were at the hospital with Rachel, you saw that plane crash.”

  “I didn’t bring any clothes,” Hank said.

  “So go down to Gorman and buy some. Supermarkets even sell clothes these days.”

  “I’ll be fine by myself,” Rachel said. “I’d rather be alone.”

  Hank hesitated, then took off his jacket.

  “Good.” Goldie opened the door.

  Rachel locked it behind her and turned to Hank. “Look, I know we’re…but….”

  “Just go to bed. I need to do some thinking.” He sat down again in front of the fire.

  333

  The black-triangle head of the snake rose above the water. Its eyes, two tiny beads of light, were trained on something: a tiny tortoise, mouth wide with panic. And behind the tortoise floated her father’s face, the eyes dead. Saliva cascaded from the snake’s inch-long fangs. Little sobs from the tortoise crescendoed into a shriek.

  “Rachel. Rachel.” The voice was saying her name over and over, louder and louder. “Rachel!” Strong hands shook her shoulders.

  The huge dark triangle wove back and forth. A light behind it prevented her seeing the eyes. She tried to get up. To run. The snake wound itself around her. She tore at it but it held her down until she stopped struggling.

  A dim yellowish light began to seep through the edges of her mind like water into a tent. The face above hers was silhouetted against the light from the door.

  “That must’ve been one hell of a dream.”

  Her tongue seemed made of sawdust. She swallowed, then tried to sit up.

  “Lie down,” Hank said, his voice was almost a whisper. Arms gathered her to him and she clung to his shoulder—a bird clinging to a branch in a wind storm.

  333

  Bacon crackled and popped in the pan as Rachel turned over the strips. “Good morning.” Her voice ended in a chuckle as she watched Hank stagger from the bedroom, squinting against the sun that flooded through the open windows.

  “Can’t remember where the john is,” he rasped in a sleep-thick voice.

  She pointed at the door with a fork. “Breakfast coming up.”

  “I can’t eat this early in the morning,” he mumbled, sagging onto a chair at the kitchen table. The chair seat had been clumsily covered with dark green plastic.

  Rachel put a cup of coffee in front of him. “It’s six-thirty already.”

  “Oh, God,” Hank moaned. “An early riser.” He propped his forehead in his hand. “A sanctimonious early riser.”

  “As soon as you’re awake, I’ve got some ideas.”

  “Not the strenuous sort, I trust.” He took a gulp of coffee and choked. “I’m not the type who wakes up whistling and pawing the ground.”
>
  “Could’ve fooled me.”

  Mournfully, he took another swig of coffee.

  Bacon, eggs, and a quart of coffee later, Hank was pacing the room while Rachel, in jeans and an old black wool turtleneck, squatted on the floor in front of the fireplace scraping up ashes.

  “Maybe we’re trying too hard to tie everything together,” she said. “Maybe some of it was just coincidence.” She brushed her hair from her forehead, leaving a smudge of ashes. An unwelcome thought crept through her head, leaving a trail of ghostly cold in its wake.

  She swiveled to face Hank and sat back on her heels. “Jason, Lonnie, Harry, Charlotte, Pop.” Her voice quavered on the last. “You knew all of them, too, except Lonnie, and maybe he was a coincidence.”

  Chapter Forty-three

  “You think I had something to do with all this?” Hank’s voice almost squeaked.

  “Did you?” Rachel asked bluntly.

  “No! For God’s sake! How can—?”

  She cut him off. “How long have you been with InterUrban?”

  “Why?”

  “It’s a simple question,” Rachel said.

  With each word, the lines in her forehead deepened until the mistrust hung like a spiderweb in the air between them.

  At length he said, “A long time. They took me on as a diver when I was fresh back from Brazil and the Peace Corps.”

  “A diver?”

  “Someone has to go down in the reservoirs to check algae and stuff. That was my first job.”

  “And then?”

  Hank examined a spot just over her head. “And then I finished school, moved into plant operations, then to headquarters as a lab tech in water quality.”

  She studied his face. Something there seemed to still her suspicion and she asked more calmly, “What was Jason like?”

  Hank sighed and brought his eyes to hers. “You keep asking that. He was a mixed bag. When he wanted to, he could charm a rattlesnake. But he could go mean in an instant and turn on you.”

  “That ever happen to you?”

  “Once. He wanted me to jigger water supply statistics.”

  “When was that?” Rachel asked.

  “A couple years ago.”

  “Did you do it?”

  Hank shook his head. “I wouldn’t do it myself, but I went along with it.” He glanced at Rachel then down at his feet.