“Is that so?”
“It is, but I didn’t offer him much because there wasn’t much to tell him. He’s an odd one, the cowboy.”
“That’s good to know,” Hud said, as a jolt of unsettled nerves pulsed up his spine. “What about the CO? Sherman? Did he ever come in here?”
Tilt shook his head. “Nope. Not once that I can recall. He was a by-the-book kind of guy. At least, he appeared to be. You were more likely to see him out on the lake in his boat alone than here or any of the other bars around.”
“All right, thanks, you’ve been really helpful, Tilt.” Hud started to turn to leave.
“There was somebody else in here looking for you,” Tilt called out quietly.
Hud stopped and faced the man. “Who?”
“Goldie. Goldie Flowers. She said she’d give you a call when I asked her if she wanted to leave a message.”
Chapter Fifteen
Soft morning light filtered into the bedroom, rousing Hud from a deep, fitful sleep. Once he opened his eyes, he wasn’t fully convinced that he hadn’t traded one nightmare for another.
His memory of driving from the hotel to the shop was dim, distant. He’d been on the edge of too much whiskey and on the threshold of pain that promised to stay with him no matter what he did. Hud had still resisted filling the prescription for pain killers, had relied on the benign over-the-counter medicines and his own personal grit to give him a little bit of relief. He liked the numbing effects of whiskey nearly as much as he did pain pills. Except the next day, when the aftereffects were usually worse than the cure. There was always a price to pay. He had enough addictions to manage.
Somehow, he’d fumbled the key into the locked door and navigated through the darkness to his childhood bed. It was a well-worn path, one that he’d taken a million times, and he could always count on Gee, living or dead, to keep things the same as they ever were. If he’d encountered an obstacle, he hadn’t known it. Memory had guided him to safety and taunted him now that he had his eyes open.
Just like the rest of the house, Gee hadn’t changed his bedroom since the day he’d left for college in Ann Arbor. Everything was still in its place; the movie poster over the bed, the case of science fiction paperbacks on the far wall, and, he was sure, the Playboy magazines stuffed in between the mattress and box springs. She had known they were there, and knew boys would be boys. There was no stopping what came naturally as far as Gee was concerned.
A thin layer of dust covered everything. All the old CDs, the bed posts, even the flimsy curtains that looked like they had been a feeding ground for a squadron of moths. Gee’s last days had been weak, housework the least of her concerns. Up until then, everything got a weekly cleaning. It was as if she were expecting Hud and his mother to walk in the door at any second and pick up their lives where they had left off. Unspoken hope had been an addiction for Gee, even though her face and gestures suggested bitterness and pessimism. If only that had been her only addiction. It was the damn cigarettes and grief that killed her . . .
Hud sat up in the small twin-sized bed, rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, and confronted the pain of the past couple of days. It felt like he had been run over by a raging bull and then rolled in a hornet’s nest to top things off; his face felt like it was on fire. He hated to admit it, but Burke had been right in forcing him to take a few days off. He could barely think straight, much less go after a killer.
Coming back to Gee’s house, on the other hand, had been his own idea. He wasn’t comfortable in the bed, in the house, wasn’t sure that he ever would be, but he felt he desperately needed familiar surroundings. Not only to rest, but to recuperate and to see clearly, to see what lay before him and behind him. He needed a stable platform, and he longed to trust something, anything. He knew avoiding the inevitable was never going to solve anything, but he had resisted spending one night in the house for fear of the same thing. There was as much here that would hurt him as there was at the Demmie Hotel. But maybe from here he could see the big picture, find his way around.
Making it to the bathroom was a chore. His stomach was queasy along with everything else. After forcing himself to stand up and walk, Hud found his way to the shower and stood under the weak stream of hot water for what seemed like an hour. Afterward, he headed to the kitchen and fumbled around to make himself a pot of coffee. The kitchen had been Gee’s domain. Even Hud had been treated like a guest, waited on no matter the meal or the snack.
Like most of the surrounding cottages, Gee’s house had been built in the early 1920s, before the start of the Great Depression, as a summer getaway. It had been converted into a souvenir shop in the early 1950s, with a ten-by-twenty addition tacked onto the front by his grandfather. Over the years, the house had aged, the foundation settled, but the shop remained on a newer crawl space, so there was a six-inch step down into the house. A thick red velvet curtain acted as a door and separated the house from the shop. Just like everything else since Gee had died, Hud had avoided going into the shop, too. With the exception of making sure the Closed sign hung securely in the shop’s front window.
He poured himself a cup of coffee and sat down at the Formica-topped dinette table. It was the same spot he had sat in every morning, eating his breakfast cereal, before going off to school. There were two other chairs. One was worn from use and had been Gee’s, and the other, reserved for his mother, still looked new, untarnished. Hud sighed and looked deep into his cup of coffee. He had no desire to have a conversation with ghosts, which was one of the main reasons he had chosen to stay at the Demmie instead of coming back here.
There were no answers in the coffee cup, and no avoiding the ghosts, either. Memories of his mother danced just out of reach. She had been nearly lost from his sight in a haze of time, perched on the edge of a hangover, untouchable. Hud strained to hear her voice, but he was deaf to it now after so many years. He longed to hear her say his name, call him in for supper, anything. He wouldn’t care if she were screaming at him—which she never did—just so he could feel the vibrations of her voice in his eardrums and in his heart.
His mother was a tall shapely woman, always in a summer dress, it seemed, white or yellow, her skin tanned and healthy from ample time out in the sun, sitting on the beach, reading or slathered in baby oil and iodine, baking to a darker brown. She always wore a smile, and her fresh lipstick covered her red lips. Ray Ban sunglasses shaded her eyes from the sun, and she never had a hair out of place. “You have to keep up with yourself,” she’d told Hud more than once. It was a permanent image; one Hud couldn’t have altered if he tried—which he didn’t. His memory of her as happy and perfect was what sustained him, even though he knew it was nothing but a fantasy, only partially the truth. She had darker seasons. Not just summer. Alcohol came to claim its price from her the next day just as it did for Hud. Both of them suffered horrible hangovers.
The ghost of Gee, on the other hand, was all gloomy and decrepit, bent over in a cough or trying catch a breath of air. Green oxygen containers still stood stacked in the living room next to the couch. Lung cancer had taken her in the end. Years of smoking cigarettes had caught up with her, and, though she had been a big woman for as long as Hud could remember, the old, shrunken woman that had lain in the casket had hardly looked like Gee at all. Hud tried his best to conjure the younger more vibrant memory of Gee, but he couldn’t. All that he could see in his mind now was the more recent one. The sick one, the frightened one being eaten up from the inside out. The one that screamed that death was inevitable, that there was no stopping it for anyone. Hadn’t Gee suffered enough?
Hud had tried to quit smoking because of her, and he’d nearly succeeded until he’d taken the county detective job. The thought of a cigarette provoked him to tap the breast pocket of his bathrobe, but it was empty, propelling him to stand, to walk away from the ghosts at the kitchen table.
Hud reluctantly made his way to the red velvet curtain that separated the shop from the house. It still smelled
of cigarettes and bacon grease. He closed his eyes, grasped the warm ceramic handle of the coffee cup as if it would keep him from falling over or give him the strength he felt he was missing, and then pushed through the curtain.
It was like walking into a museum. The shelves were lined with perfectly folded T-shirts, most of which said: “Demmie Lake—A Little Piece of Heaven.” Some of them bore rainbows over a lake, while others had nothing on them other than three sailboats in front of half a red sun. The T-shirts had always been the cash cow of the shop—that and refilling the propane tanks for campers and gas grills. Filling the tanks had been Hud’s summer job once he was old enough. He hated the smell of it to this day: raw eggs mixed with something dead. Summers weren’t as long for him as they were for the rest of the kids. Gee always had something for him to do around the shop. She had, of course, wanted him to take it over when she couldn’t run it anymore, but that hadn’t been the case. Hud wanted nothing to do with the hard work of summer. He wanted to be as far away from the lake as possible.
He’d never felt like Gee approved of him becoming a cop, or had been proud of him at all. Every time he went to see her, she would always ask when he was coming back to where he belonged. The trips to see her grew sparser, until, in the end, he had stayed away almost a year.
The rest of the shelves in the shop bore coffee cups, ash trays, miniature cups and saucers, all with the same logo as the T-shirts. Gee bought them in bulk from a merchandise salesman who came around in the early fall, selling the next season’s wares to her. There was a fun section, one that held whoopee cushions, fake vomit, and dog turds for the practical jokers. There was also an adult section behind the counter: girlie magazines, books with dirty jokes, and squirt guns shaped like penises; anything for a buck. How could Gee keep such things from a curious boy? She didn’t have the energy or the inclination.
The front of the counter held rows of penny candy, or at least they had used to cost a penny a piece. Now it was a dime or a quarter. There was no escaping the smell of stale bubble gum. And, of course, floaties hung from the ceiling—multicolored rings with dragon heads, mermaids, and horses, which were best sellers. They were deflated and faded like ghosts of past summers, of forgotten childhoods and lost days.
Gee sold some fishing gear, bobbers, sinkers, and line, but she had never had any desire to compete with the local bait shops. She wasn’t having insects or worms in her house. The smell of such creatures was more than she could take, or so she said.
Hud wasn’t looking for treasures or keepsakes. His eyes went straight for the shelf under the cash register and found exactly what he knew he would: Gee’s cigarettes. She’d been a devoted smoker to the very end.
He set the coffee cup down on the counter, hesitated for a second, then grabbed up the pack of Chesterfields and proceeded to light a cigarette. The smoke burned all the way down his throat. Just like everything in the shop, the cigarettes were old and stale. Hud coughed and eased the discomfort with a long swig of coffee. He should have put some whiskey in it. Hair of the dog. He hadn’t thought of it, and, besides, he didn’t know if there was any alcohol in the house or not.
There was nothing for him to do in the shop. He wanted to get out of there as soon as possible. The ghosts had followed him. Including the memory of himself, of all of his summers before and after his mother had disappeared. He wished he could forget them, forget the boy he was, but that was impossible. There was no escaping the past.
A sound drew his attention to the front door. A car pulled into the lot and came to a stop, just as so many customers had in the past. Only this was no customer. The car was familiar. It was a county car, a Crown Vic just like he drove. Only it was not Burke behind the wheel. It was Detective Sloane.
“You know there was doubt about your account of the incident?”
“You read all of the report. I’m impressed.”
“It doesn’t bother you that they didn’t believe you?”
“They obviously did in the end, didn’t they?”
“If you say so.”
“The fact that I’m here speaks for itself.”
“Will you recount your movements that day from beginning to end for me?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“The fog of time is powerful. You know that. It’s all there. I stand by my testimony.”
“You’d be a fool not to, wouldn’t you?”
“Yes, wouldn’t I?”
Hud made his way to the door, unconcerned that he only wore a bathrobe. He opened it, with his coffee and cigarette in one hand, and stood on the threshold barring Sloane immediate entry into the shop. “Come to check on me,” he said, not believing a word of it.
“Something like that.”
Hud looked around her to make sure there wasn’t anyone else in the car or another cop car in sight.
“I’m alone,” Sloane said. She looked him up and down, from head to toe. “Rough night?”
“Something like that,” Hud said. “You want to tell me what this is about? I don’t think you stopped by to check on my personal welfare.”
“We need to talk. Do you mind?” She nodded, motioned inside, then glanced over her shoulder, looking down the road for a long second. She wasn’t sure she was alone, either.
“No, sure,” Hud said. “Come on in. But the place is a mess. I wasn’t expecting company.”
Chapter Sixteen
The two of them sat at the kitchen table doing their best to ignore the discomfort in the air. The faucet dripped steadily, and someone ran a chain saw off in the distance, getting their woodpile ready for the coming winter.
“Good coffee,” Sloane said. She was dressed in a plain gray pantsuit, typical for her, from what Hud had seen. He wondered what she looked like with her hair down and her curves pressed tight into a nice pair of jeans. Even with a raging headache, he couldn’t help himself from trying to find the beauty she had tried so hard to hide.
Tina Sloane had perplexed him from the moment they’d met. She put a lot of effort into being taken seriously. Too much as far as Hud was concerned. He wondered what she was afraid of, what she was hiding, and, of course, why in the hell she was sitting at his kitchen table first thing in the morning.
“So’d Burke send you?” Hud finally said.
Sloane shook her head. “He’d be pissed if he knew I was here.” She looked around the kitchen, taking everything in. She was curious, observant, cataloging everything she saw. Hud knew the look. There was no judgment on her face. “I always wondered what was behind that curtain,” she said.
“You came here as a kid?” Hud felt the urge to light another one of Gee’s Chesterfields but restrained himself. He searched Sloane’s face for a hint of familiarity but couldn’t find it. Thousands of kids had walked through the front door of the shop over the years. It was impossible to put a face to the past, but he couldn’t help trying. There was a wistfulness in Sloane’s voice, a hint of loss that Hud recognized without any urging.
“My dad would come over from time to time, go fishing with some of his friends.”
“His cop friends,” Hud said. It wasn’t a question.
She nodded, her eyes lost in a private memory. “We lived in town, but twenty miles away might as well have been a million on most days. It wasn’t vacationland on my street growing up.”
“You think it was easy where I grew up?”
“Never said that.” Sloane took a sip of coffee, peered over the brim of the cup the entire time, never taking her eyes off of Hud.
“I suppose it was tough being a cop’s kid,” he said.
“You saw that with Burke. It wasn’t easy for him, either.”
“His dad was a hard-ass. Makes him look like a puffball, even now. But I was a kid then, like you. He seemed like he was ten feet tall, carried the world on his shoulders. I don’t think I ever saw Burke’s dad crack a smile.”
“Me, either.”
“Cop friends. You’ve known Burke
for a long time.” Hud stared at Sloane’s face again, closer. It frustrated him that he didn’t know who she was. “How come I don’t know you?”
She shrugged. “We didn’t come over a lot, and when we did, I usually wasn’t let out of my mother’s sight for long. She was determined that I’d be a prim and proper girl, even though I wanted to be out in the boat fishing with the boys. We drank tea and ate cookies with Mrs. Burke while everybody else was having a good time. Hard to get dirty in a dress. I suppose I could have used the ribbons in my hair for fishing lures. My dad would sneak me away and teach me to shoot, how to handle a gun. I wanted to be just like him from the time I could remember.”
“So you’re one of Burke’s old pals, too. Some of the deputies have a chip on their shoulder about the chief’s crew. That it’s made up of all old friends; that that’s the only way to get a position around here.”
“Cronyism. Yeah, I’ve heard that, too. I just try to ignore it. We’ve known each other for a long time. So what? It’s really a small town here, especially after the season’s over. It’s green eyes and envy, that’s all.”
“Gee used to say that. There were a lot of green eyes coming and going around here.”
Sloane set the coffee cup down with a long sigh. “I’m sorry. I didn’t come here to tell you my troubles. I don’t know what came over me.”
“It’s this place,” Hud said. “It still smells like bubble gum and happier times. That’s what we sold. False happiness and plastic memories. That thing you take home with you and look back on fondly. It doesn’t matter that it was made in China, cost pennies to make, and was sold for a nice little profit. The drag of time doesn’t help, just makes it more appealing. Maybe the lake is the one place you thought you had the happiest day of your life. You’ll remember it when you see a T-Shirt or a floatie like you had as a girl, which I would have guessed would never have been the princess one for you. You must have been a huge disappointment to your mother.”
Where I Can See You Page 10
