Along the Indigo

by Elsie Chapman

  twenty-two.

  Inside Seconds, the air of the pawnshop was the same as most of its merchandise—used, old, sad.

  Waiting impatiently for the one other customer in the place to leave, Marsden looked around, not even pretending to browse.

  Late afternoon sun burned in through the cheap Roman shade that partially covered the front window, a mellow gold. The light had an old-time feel, but it was more washed-out than nostalgic, and it glided over the shelves full of things now in limbo. A clock with wooden animals inside, loaded on springs. Assorted porcelain tea sets with apparent certificates of authenticity. Small televisions, lamps, dartboards.

  She knew each item was supposed to be worth something, to someone, somewhere. Maybe some of them were even on the rare side, were treasures in hiding.

  But she was pretty sure most of it wouldn’t compare to a piece of jewelry, whether its value lay in being brought in and sold or carried out, newly purchased. Hadley would know this, too. She wondered how many times he’d stood where she was standing, waiting for the store to clear to show Fitz his latest find.

  The bell over the entrance rang, and the lone customer disappeared through the door, a bad replica of a Tiffany lamp in hand.

  Marsden walked up to the counter, where the shop owner still stood counting cash into the till from the lamp purchase. A small and wiry kind of guy, he was surrounded by a wreath of smoke from the cigarette clamped between his lips. Hair worn in a severe buzz cut, a blond fringe of a crown over a narrowed hazel gaze.

  Marsden rarely came into Seconds—had no reason to, with nothing to buy and no money to buy anything with—but she knew who Fitz was, even if she’d never spoken to him before. Glory was small enough that not many faces went unnoticed. But now she was seeing him through different eyes, knowing he’d been one of her father’s best friends. She wanted to reach into his brain, take out his memories of Grant Eldridge, and have them be her own.

  The counter was the kind with a glass top, its interior hollow to make room for display shelves. Marsden peered down and saw rows of jewelry, the gold of necklaces and the platinum of rings.

  If Fitz asked, she could have told him the story behind too many of them, about the people Hadley had skimmed them from.

  A necklace with a ruby pendant, its former owner a woman named Nicole Dremont. She’d lived three states over according to the tiny print of the covert column in the paper. She’d dumped a handful of soil into her purse.

  A silver bracelet. Gina Laldeen, from California. She’d had a road map tucked into her pocket, directions to Glory indicated in bright red marker; covert dirt had darkened its folds.

  A ring fat with inlaid stones had belonged to Sebastian Walsh, a local whose parking tickets, found in his wallet, revealed how much time he spent outside the casino. Needle tracks skewered the insides of both elbows, showing how often he was at the pharmacies. His palms had been coated with the covert—just as there was no way to tell if that had been intentional or he’d simply caught himself before falling, there was no way to tell if the overdose had been accidental or if some voice had drawn him to the land.

  “What can I help you with?”

  She glanced up, unsure of how to start. She had never seen a script on how to ask a stranger what they might be hiding about their old friend’s death. “My name is—”

  “Marsden.” Fitz shut the till and met her gaze with his own, his expression curious. “Grant’s daughter.”

  It shouldn’t have surprised her that he would know her, but it did. What else did he know? “Yes, I—”

  “Does Shine know you’re here?” His expression was wary now, too.

  Had her mother told her father’s friends to stay away after he was dead? Was that the explanation behind Fitz’s wariness? “No. Does it matter?”

  “Not sure yet. If you’re looking for something specific, I can tell you what’s in the store. Is it a gift, or . . . ?”

  “I have questions, actually—about my dad. So I guess what I’m looking for are answers.”

  Fitz leaned back against the wall, exhaled cigarette smoke. “Your mom probably wouldn’t want you asking me. After your dad died, she was pretty clear she wanted us out of her life, which also meant out of yours. To Shine, we were just as bad as Grant’s gambling.”

  “She doesn’t have to know.”

  “Can’t you ask her whatever you need?”

  “I have. She can’t help. Which is why I’m here.”

  He shrugged. “Okay. Makes no real difference to me.”

  “You guys were friends?”

  “Sure, good ones. And Casper, and Eugene, and Quaid, too.” At the mention of the dead Quaid, Fitz crossed himself clumsily. “The five of us would go to Decks and just hang out, playing blackjack or whatever.”

  “My dad always lost money.”

  “We all did. And then we’d win some. That’s the game.”

  “The night he died, were you there? With him, at Decks?”

  “Of course.” Fitz’s face clouded and turned unhappy. “The four of us were with him, as usual. Why?”

  “The papers never said. They just said he’d been there, gambling, before he ended up in the Indigo.”

  “Well, we were there often enough that whoever the papers spoke to probably never thought to mention it. Like when you talk about the sky, you assume it’s blue, unless you say otherwise.”

  “Did he leave alone?” Marsden watched him, this man her father would have trusted, and found herself hoping he hadn’t been wrong to do so. Fitz didn’t seem dangerous or even much of a liar. But he was also one of Glory’s, a product of a town built on stories.

  “That night? No, we all left together. Or, more accurately, the four of us stayed while your dad was the one who left. Me and Quaid and Casper and Eugene turned back after we said goodbye to Grant out in the parking lot. The place was hopping, more so than normal—your dad had gone on a roll, and people had stuck around to watch. Dash came out and called us back, said it was too early to leave. But Grant didn’t change his mind, said he needed to leave.”

  “That wasn’t in the papers, either. The part about Decks being especially full.”

  Fitz smiled, but it was wry. “Sky’s blue, remember? This is Glory. There are gambling and card houses on every other block—there’s always someone having a winning night somewhere. Not news. Just like it’s not news when someone’s losing a week’s pay somewhere else.”

  Marsden knew her father had had those nights. She’d seen Shine cry over them. “Did he win a lot that night?”

  “Four grand.”

  She was startled. Eight years ago, four grand would have gone a long way for a family of three with another baby coming. It would have done wonders toward appeasing a young mother who had more things to worry about than celebrate.

  “Grant kept talking about how he couldn’t wait to tell your mom. I hadn’t seen him that happy in a long time. And you know, the guy didn’t win any more often than us, but it was sure something to watch when he did. As though those cards were talking to him directly. Or everyone else’s had turned transparent, just for him. So, yeah, no surprise that people gathered to watch. Just as it was never a surprise when some of those people decided they knew Grant like a friend, talking him up, wanting to absorb some of whatever luck he was having. That night was no different.”

  She thought of that four grand. Her father’s empty pockets. “Who were they?”

  “Just the same old guys who clung to everyone who had a winning hand. And the few out-of-towners who always end up drunk enough to do it too, forgetting they’re not locals. That night, there was this one guy watching Grant play, and I thought he was just one of those drive-bys. But then I overheard him and your dad talking. Turned out they knew each other, seemed to go back a bit together, even though I’d never seen the guy before. But that was Grant. Everyone claimed to know him.”

  Shine had said the same thing, Marsden remembered. Grant was like that, making people lo
ve him too easily.

  Shine had also said this of someone she’d known for a long time: Your father knew him, too. They were friendly enough.

  Brom Innes.

  The man she’d chosen to save her.

  Marsden shuddered. Was it possible it’d been Brom there that night at Decks, watching those games of blackjack? Could he have waited for her father to leave, knowing he’d won big, then followed him along the darkened highway, the crash of the Indigo and the building storm keeping him faded, unnoticed in the background?

  Brom, who had likely loved her mother in secret, because Grant Eldridge had been in the way?

  The idea left her cold—robbery was one thing, murder something else entirely. She forced the ugly thought, the chance that for eight years she’d considered all the wrong things, away. “That guy, was his name Brom Innes?”

  The shop owner lit a fresh cigarette. “Never asked, and he never told.”

  “What did he look like? Average height, light-brown hair, pale-blue eyes?” Even her description was bland and forgettable, the way she would describe a bowl of oatmeal. Just the way Brom was.

  Fitz scratched his head. “I can’t remember. I don’t know. Maybe?”

  “If I brought a photo, could you recognize him, do you think?” Peaches had an instant camera she could borrow.

  “Yeah, maybe.” He sounded doubtful. She didn’t blame him. Eight years, and she was asking him to recall oatmeal.

  “You look a lot like Grant, you know,” Fitz continued. “He used to keep a photo of you in his wallet. Showed it around once in a while, like we all hadn’t seen it before.”

  “He did?” It was such a normal thing to do, when their family hadn’t seemed very normal at all, and Marsden’s throat went tight.

  “I mean, he never really talked about you or your mom all that much. It always left him moody or quiet. Everyone’s got their fair share of demons, right? With Grant, they were all to do with family.” Ash dropped from Fitz’s cigarette onto the glass counter, a gray snowstorm. His face turned embarrassed. “Sorry. But it was what it was.”

  “No, it’s . . . fine.” And it was, though it was odd to hear someone talk about her father with more admiration than anger.

  “They were his weakness, you know? Cards. Each time he walked out of Decks with less than he’d gone in with, he knew he’d failed you guys. He could go from feeling on top of the world to lower than dirt, all in the span of a game, and you’d just see his eyes change.”

  “You don’t think it was an accident, him dying.” She knew Fitz would hear it as an accusation, but she blamed herself, too, for also believing what the town believed—that her father had walked into the Indigo all on his own.

  “I don’t know what to believe. Just like we can never be sure what happened to all that money he’d won. Taken by the tide after the storm forced him into the river? Lost at some other gambling house that he stopped at on the way home, not knowing the blackjack gods had already turned their backs on him?” The heart of Fitz’s cigarette flamed volcano red, then white hot, and over it, the pity in his gaze was nearly as searing. “The thing is, those gods might have blessed Grant that night, him winning what he did, but they still weren’t a match for the demons your dad had living in his head.”

  Outside the pawnshop, the sun had fallen low, a wide, hazy band of yellow slung across rooftops. The dust that filled the air was now road dust, the dust of summer heat, instead of the dust of the used, the old.

  Marsden biked home, thinking of this mysterious man she now had to find, so she could blame him for everything. Even if that man turned out to be the one her mother had decided she needed, the man her father had believed a friend.

  twenty-three.

  Staring out of her bedroom window, Marsden rubbed her eyes hard to make sure she wasn’t seeing things. Most people driving to her family’s land were careful to leave their cars parked farther up along the highway, so it wasn’t obvious right away where their owners had gone. Only once the covert revealed a body did a car get towed, the puzzle of the abandoned vehicle solved.

  The brown sedan—sides filmed over with road dust, rust peeking out in spots—was parked only feet away from the gaping mouth of the covert.

  She scrambled out of bed and into shorts and a T-shirt. After racing around to find them, she shoved her gardening gloves into her pocket. Wynn had stayed over Caitlyn’s house last night, now that her friend’s family was back from camping. It was why Marsden had let herself sleep in, delaying her dawn check of the covert, and now wished she hadn’t. Because Nina would know, too, as soon as she saw the sedan, what it meant. She would call Hadley. He’d beat Marsden to the body.

  Her breath came in gasps by the time she reached the wooden fence of the covert. Sweat dotted her forehead. The air was already blazing despite the early hour, singeing the town.

  It took her only minutes.

  She rounded a stand of pine trees and stumbled right over him. Her gloved hands landed on his front, her fingers sinking into the fabric of his shirt. An older man, with a lined face. Beneath the dappled sunlight, the covert’s supposedly holy soil lay in a streak across his forehead.

  Her hands worked quickly as she searched his pants pockets.

  One held a handful of soil; the other, a wallet and two one-hundred-dollar bills. She tucked the bills into her own pocket with shaking hands. It was the most cash she’d ever skimmed from a single body.

  The jewelry that he wore—a fancy-enough watch, a nice-looking gold ring—was likely worth something and yet completely useless to her.

  For a moment, Marsden was furious that Hadley would profit. That Fitz would, too, however he might feel about it. She reminded herself that she only stole out of necessity, but her fury simply changed to a kind of queasiness that filled her throat.

  And there was no gun in sight. No clear sign of injury. However he died would remain a secret, unless they revealed it in the paper or on the radio. They didn’t always do so, but sometimes it was included with the reports of his name, something she still needed.

  She figured out a long time ago that a lack of answers could be just as hard to think about as finality. Because uncertainty always made her thoughts circle back to Grant Eldridge.

  In an alternate world, this man might have been her father, the meaning of his death always to be a question.

  In yet another, his cash might have been Rigby’s note.

  I’m sorry, Jude, I never wanted you to know.

  Those were Rigby’s words, what he’d scrawled on that small piece of paper.

  Marsden could recite them by heart by now, so deeply were they burned into her memory from reading his note over and over again. She’d hadn’t known him, had never even spoken to him. But in her mind, he was another version of Jude, with the same lightly speckled eyes that hid secrets, except he’d be less angry and more sad and doing all he could to keep his little brother from hurting any more than he was.

  I told myself it was Dad.

  I didn’t want to stop.

  But I didn’t mean to do it.

  Jude reading those words might change him forever. Might make him think the way she thought. Might fill him as full of shadows as she was, so that he was as warped by the covert as she was. Because he would read those words about death and, instead of thinking about loss as anyone else might, he’d think of something darker, something closer to violence. It was what leaped into her mind—against her will, almost subconsciously—reading them.

  It was also what convinced her that Rigby had never really meant for his brother to find his note, not deep down. He would have been distraught when he wrote it and then stuck it in his wallet, folded into bills like the secret it had been. He would have been confused and vulnerable, not thinking straight.

  And what if someone else had found that note even before Jude or she had? Like another skimmer, who would have found it and discarded it.

  She didn’t think Rigby would overlook that chance. Him writ
ing that note, it’d been as though he’d confessed to a priest and that priest had then sworn to silence forever. Rigby had intended to die as thoroughly as though he’d disappeared into thin air.

  So, fine, I’ll be your priest, then, Rigby, Marsden thought as she finally got to her feet. And I will not judge.

  Making sure the scene was as she’d found it, she tucked her gloves away and walked back to the boardinghouse, thinking of what came next.

  First, she would call Hadley and tell him the news. He would come to the boardinghouse and talk to Nina about the tragedy of yet another body. He would go to the covert, more likely than not to skim the watch and ring, and she wouldn’t be able to stop him.

  Then she would find Peaches. She still needed to borrow her camera to take a photo of Brom . . . somehow. Marsden again heard Fitz’s recalling the night her father drowned, his report of a faceless man who’d been her father’s friend. The chill that ran its finger down her neck made her wish, for once, that the sun in Glory would burn even hotter.

  She would make breakfast for the guests and then eat by herself—Wynn wouldn’t be back until late afternoon.

  And then Jude would be over.

  Just the other day, she’d blurted out that she lived crippled with guilt and that her little sister called her by a name she could never live up to. She’d held his hand and pretended to not know a thing about skimmers. And then she’d brought him home and made him waffles.

  Waffles.

  When she could cook a freaking fantastic meal for more than a dozen people on any given day and barely break a sweat.

  But he hadn’t seemed to mind the meal in the least—or having Wynn around the whole time. And he’d been clear about not wanting to leave afterward. When they had finished eating and her sister had taken off to watch television to escape cleanup, she’d expected him to take off, too—Wouldn’t his father be wondering where he was? she thought. But he hadn’t, instead staying to help do the dishes. She remembered the shape and movements of his large hands as he washed and she dried, how nice his voice sounded in the wide depths of the kitchen, the laser beam of his eyes on her as she walked around, putting dishes away. And when Dany had come to tell him it was time for him to go home, his gaze—somehow devilish and soft and a bit perplexed all at once—locked on Marsden’s as he’d said goodbye, his smile painting itself onto her brain as he finally turned at the last minute and disappeared into the night.