The intruders are experienced, that he knows. They choose to break and enter at dusk, the monochromatic hour when form and shadow are indistinguishable—a poor time for photography, but an excellent time for an old man’s nap. Which is exactly what Emery Kolb is occupied with when the side door of the garage squeaks open (the hinge as good as a watchdog), and a flashlight fairly blinds him as he sits straight up and calls out, “Hands in the air, you bastards, or I’ll shoot!”
“Oh dear,” replies a lady’s voice.
“For the love of Pete,” cries a man, “put that thing down before you kill someone!”
“Lower your light!” Emery orders. His hands are shaking. He was right in the middle of a dream about river otters.
“You’re a damn fool,” grumbles the man, “but I’d be a greater fool to lower my light. We used to hunt deer this way, remember?”
“Come forward!” barks Emery. “Show yourselves or I’ll blast you to high heaven!”
“If someone’s got a gun, they often intend to use it,” the lady points out. “Emery Kolb, we’re—”
The sound of his name startles him. And his blindness. And the fact that there’s another one outside, maybe a whole gang of them—he can hear them moving and whispering and knocking on the garage door. His finger jumps. He’ll admit he hasn’t used a weapon since he used to shoot at tin cans with his brother Ellsworth. He has no intention of using this firearm, despite what the lady says. He just wishes that fellow would lower the damn light—or snap the picture. At the thought of it, his finger acts on its own and squeezes the shutter, and the gun, belching smoke and powder and an ungodly noise, kicks him in the shoulder and knocks him out of his chair. He lands flat on his back on the cement floor, and the first thing that seems unusual is the silence. He doesn’t feel dead, though the possibility crosses his mind.
He wakes up in a muddled state, with a lady hovering over him in the dim light of the garage. He immediately rules out the possibility of heaven because she’s dressed in trousers and has no wings. It is, in fact, a person known to him: Elzada Clover, his old friend. “Who did I kill?” he asks. He feels he can trust her.
“Not Lowell Dunhill, I hope.”
“Now, why would I do that?” He frowns and reaches for her hand. “It’s good to see you again, Elzada.”
“That comes as a surprise,” she says evenly. “A man who just tried to shoot me.”
“I was aiming at the other fellow, the one with the light. I didn’t hit him, did I?”
“I’m sure he’ll tell you himself.”
“He’s still here, is he? I hope he’s in better shape than I am.”
“You’ll live,” she says without emotion.
“Ah, you’re a tough old boot, Elzada. Just remember who saved your derriere.”
“My life is what you saved, reaching into the river to fish me out below Upset Rapid.”
“Aw, Nevills would’ve grabbed you if I hadn’t. He liked you, that Nevills did.”
“Enough to save me from drowning. But you were the one who did it, and I’ll never forget it. That’s the second reason I’m here.”
“What’s the first?”
“You asked for me, apparently, though you haven’t done one thing to make my job easy. I’ve tried to defend you, Emery, but it’s no use when you continue to do everything in your power to incriminate yourself—”
“Incriminate? I just keep my mouth shut.”
“And shoot at people.” Elzada sighs and shakes her head. “I’d like to go home. I miss my plants. But I need to examine the cause of all this trouble before I give up and pack my bags.”
“You’re looking at him,” says Emery without remorse.
She smiles despite herself. “Not you, though I’m happy to report your self-importance hasn’t suffered one bit. It’s Billy Bones I’m here to see. I brought Gavia Immer with me, and someone else.”
“The fellow I tried to pop off?”
“That’s right.”
“I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s not even my gun. But you have no idea how they’ve been after me. A man has his property and at some point he’s got to defend it.”
“I hear you’re in possession of a skeleton,” says the fellow, coming up behind Elzada Clover. “Is that what you’re calling your property? If so, I guess it’s my property too. Or did you steal my share of this place when I wasn’t looking? I can’t quite remember how that all fell out?”
He’s a normal-looking fellow but for the fact that he’s dressed in his pajamas. The light is poor and Emery’s still seeing shooting stars from his fall. He tries to sit up but lies back down again. “Who is it? Who are you?”
“Who is it? Why, you’re worse off than I thought. Who do you think it is?”
“Not my brother Ellsworth.”
“The very same, brother Emery. That’s my gun you almost got me with. I never thought I’d meet the barrel end of it.”
“Well, what the hell are you doing here?” cries Emery. “Help me up, will you? If you hadn’t shone that light in my eyes I wouldn’t have tried to kill you. What are you dressed in those pajamas for? All those movie stars out there, they go around in their pajamas?”
“At night they do.”
Emery grins and shakes his head. “You were never any damn good.”
“Meet my brother, the murderer,” says Ellsworth with a snort.
“Don’t believe everything you hear. Unless you hear it from me.”
From the back of the garage Gavia Immer announces, “I can see it from here, Professor. I believe I’ve found what we’re looking for.” She wheels herself forward. “Where I come from in New Jersey, we call that a skeleton.”
“Don’t touch it,” warns Emery.
“We’re only going to take a closer look at it,” she assures him.
“It’s laid out on the tool table back there just like I found it in the boat. Every bone, just like I found it, and a body has more bones than you want to know about, Miss Immer, in places you’ve never thought of before, like a great big puzzle. Go ahead. Ask me how I did it.”
“I know how you did it,” says Ellsworth. He brings his hands to his face and clicks an imaginary picture.
“You photographed it!” cries Elzada. “But how did you get below the deck?”
“I pulled the deck right off.”
“Dry rot’ll ruin a boat quicker than wet,” Ellsworth says, nodding.
“I’ve been intending to do it for years. That’s how I came across the thing to begin with.”
“It was planted there,” says Gavia.
“Of course it was planted there.”
“By someone who expected it would never be found.”
“Or more likely by someone who knew it would be found. By me. Many years later. When I finally went to work on my old boat.”
“But who would that be?” asks Elzada.
“I can think of two people who had it in for me. It could be one of them or someone else entirely.”
“For heaven’s sake, Emery! Who?”
“One of them’s standing right here. My brother, Ellsworth. We started quarreling thirty years ago and never seemed to quit. He knew better than anyone how long it would be before I got around to fixing up the Edith. I always said I was going to, but I never did. He knew that.”
“The whole town knew it,” says Ellsworth with a laugh. “You’re just trying to get my goat.”
“I’m just pointing out the facts.”
“Your side of the facts, maybe. My side is different. I left the state in 1924 and never came back. Not even to plant a body in your boat. Though I wish I had, seeing how peeved it gets you.”
“Peeved? Who’s peeved?”
“You’re peeved.”
“I’m not peeved.”
“I think you are.”
“Gentlemen,” says Elzada Clover. “Please.” She turns to Emery. “You said there were two people who had it in for you. Who was the other?”
“Th
e other one,” says Emery slowly, “is someone I have a feeling about, but only a feeling. Add to that the fact that the old boat carries her name, and to hide a body in it would be her kind of humor, as well as a clue. She reads romances, and I believe those books are known to warp the mind.”
“Edith?” asks Elzada. “Edith who?”
“Edith Chase is who he’s talking about,” says Ellsworth. “A girl we once knew.”
“The postmistress? What on earth would be her motive for murder? Or yours, Ellsworth? We have to have a motive.”
“Not for murder, necessarily,” Emery reminds her, “but for hiding a body.”
“But why would someone hide a body someone else killed? It doesn’t make sense. And as far as I understand, he had no enemies. He was well liked by everyone. There was, of course, the business of his involvement with Mrs. Hedquist, but Mr. Hedquist hardly fits the picture of the vengeful husband. I can’t imagine him putting a gun to Dunhill’s head.”
“Dunhill?” asks Emery. “What does Dunhill have to do with it?”
“Lowell Dunhill,” says Elzada. “Isn’t that who we’re speaking of? The man whose remains are back there on your table?”
“Oh, that’s not Dunhill. There’s no question of that.”
“But the bullet hole, Emery.”
“It’s there, right where you reported it to be, that night on the river when you took me and Lois into your confidence. Right at the base of the skull, Elzada. This is who you saw. This is the body Amadeo dragged up from the river. But it isn’t Lowell Dunhill. It never was. You couldn’t have noticed it then because the fellow was wrapped in a sheet, and before that he’d shot the rapids and banged himself up pretty well and twisted some limbs. But if you look at him now, you can see it plain as can be. Lowell Dunhill was a southpaw. He was teased for it; it was part of his charm. But this fellow, on the left side, he couldn’t pick up a pencil to write with. And if you don’t mind me saying so, in the lover-boy category, he wouldn’t be much of a contender. The man has a withered arm, Elzada. The bones are half-size. He’s all crippled up. Go and see for yourself.”
“What did I tell you, Professor?” says Gavia Immer with a satisfied smile. “Lowell Dunhill’s alive, because apparently he’s not dead.”
The Miracle of Travel
Union Station in Los Angeles, with its tiled floors and walls, with its high windows and wooden ceilings, its echoing bustle and crush of human life, and vendors selling sandwiches and cheap charm bracelets, and people from other countries wearing what look like sheets with towels around their heads, and children spilling out of blankets laid across cushioned benches, and babies swaddled in colorful cloths, and strange languages ringing like the sound of cicadas, and rows of palm trees teeming with parrots and doves—why, it all makes Dotty Hedquist dizzy and she has to sit down. Right there on one of the benches, next to the babies. It reminds her of Morocco, where she’s never been, and Rome, where she imagines the pope walking around in scarlet slippers and a high gold hat, touching his holy staff to the little children and mumbling a prayer to keep them safe. She feels like a pilgrim, and she’s frightened. She hasn’t told Lowell she’s coming. She hasn’t seen him in close to a year. She was hoping he’d call, as he frequently does now, late at night, with the sound of a restaurant or street traffic behind him, but he didn’t. She has the address of his sister-in-law in Santa Monica, which isn’t far from Los Angeles, and she intends to go there as soon as her dizziness passes. He’s told her over and over again it isn’t safe to come to him, he’ll come to her, and in fact for the past thirteen years they’ve met in the middle—in a hunter’s lodge in the Sierra Nevada, in a quaint bungalow in Death Valley, in a motel run by Arabs in Needles, and in a number of other places that bear no trace of his life or hers. Plain gray walls, bland food, and a diet of love—and cigarettes. She even smokes a little herself when she’s with him. As she sees it, she isn’t coming to him but to his sister-in-law’s. A cup of tea and a Danish might pep her up.
How in the world do all these people fit inside the trains? she wonders. She pays the vendor and thanks him and sits on her luggage to drink a very nasty-looking cup of tea. Very black. The kind that takes the lining of your stomach and rolls it like a rug and forces it upward into your throat. The Danish is stale and filled with crusty cheese. But isn’t travel a miracle? It makes infidelity so easy. Here she is, in the city of Los Angeles, eating a rather poor breakfast, but soon to be in Lowell’s arms, and only hours ago she ate her supper in Flagstaff, at the Howard Johnson’s, where Oliver, dear old Oliver, ordered his usual fried clams. She hardly slept a wink on the train, aware of every jolt, but the ghastly tea and Danish have refreshed her, and she carries her suitcase out to the curb to find a taxicab.
Number 424 Ashland Avenue is a green clapboard house with a wide front porch and a large square window facing the street. It sits on top of a hill, in the shade of a tree. Dotty asks the driver what kind of tree it is, and he tells her it’s a eucalyptus. She climbs the steps to the porch, lugging her suitcase. Suddenly she wishes she’d packed more economically: a change of clothes and her bathroom things and a magazine. But she can’t very well leave it all behind, so up it comes with a bump and a plunk. She stands on the porch, realizing to her dismay that she’s forgotten Lowell’s sister-in-law’s name. She’s married to his brother, Owen. That’s right. But her name? Gloria? Vivian? Violet? Oh, it might as well be Mesopotamia. Well, there’s only one thing to do, and that’s ask. She leans forward and places her finger on the bell and presses lightly. From inside the house she hears a sound like a calf bleating, then the sound of footsteps shuffling toward her across what she imagines to be a solid oak floor.
The door is heavier than it appears. It swings open slowly to reveal a woman much younger than Dotty, with startling white hair. It’s cut just above her shoulders and frames a pleasant round face. Her skin is the color of walnuts. She’s wearing a yellow housecoat and no shoes, and no makeup to speak of. She peers at Dotty with some confusion and says, “You are very early, no? We have it in the back. You come around and look.” She starts to close the door but Dotty says, “No, I’m terribly sorry, but I must not be who you think I am. I’m not here to see anything at all.”
“No?”
“No, you see, I’m—”
“Maybe you want something you don’t need.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“We sell not just the hideaway bed. A nice electric mixer, all new. Picture frames. My husband’s camera. He don’t want to sell it, but what we gonna do? Honey!” she calls over her shoulder. “Viejo. We got a visitor. A lady. You wait,” she says to Dotty. “I go in and see if he’s dressed. Sometimes he don’t want to get up and come to the door in his pj’s.”
From within Dotty hears muffled voices—the sister-in-law and a voice that must be Owen’s. She glances through the open door and sees a large shadowy living room without a single piece of furniture in it. Beyond that a dining room with only a card table and two folding chairs. Hard times have fallen upon the Owen Dunhill family, it seems. She hears the sister-in-law returning. The yellow housecoat hangs open, revealing a pink nightgown covered with tiny blue noodles. The sister-in-law rests her cheek against the back of the door. For a moment she simply looks at Dotty, and it’s then Dotty notices the milky cataracts covering both her eyes. The sister-in-law holds the door handle and lifts her left foot and rests it against her right knee. She’s a hefty woman, short and square. Her feet are large and flat. She isn’t a ballerina by any means. Her chin juts forward and her head tilts slightly, as if straining to hear. But she seems comfortable standing there on one leg, cooling her face against the door. This puts Dotty at ease as well, and she says, “I’m terribly sorry to bother you this early in the morning, but I’m looking for Lowell Dunhill.”
The woman’s face sags, as if pulled from below. Her white hair slants forward. “Wait one minute,” she says, returning her foot to the floor. “I get my husband.”
>
From inside comes the unpleasant smell of garlic and cigarette smoke. The voices are scarcely audible, whispering angrily. Dotty waits on the porch. Somewhere a loud clock ticks the seconds. She sits on her suitcase and looks out at the street. Was it foolish to come? At home right now Oliver is making his breakfast, a BLT, and Jane is packing a sandwich for Morris, though her heart isn’t in it. A dutiful sandwich, Dotty knows, a kind she is very familiar with. She packed them for years when Oliver carried his lunch to work. A slice of resentment and a great big chunk of irritation, with mustard or mayonnaise, on white bread. She wishes now she’d been more patient, that she’d been able to be more kind.
A car goes by and she realizes she can just stand up and walk away. Her body’s in Santa Monica, but her mind’s in her kitchen at home. She leaves her suitcase on the porch and starts down the steps, not knowing where she’s headed but allowing her legs to lead the way. They take her around the side of the house where the Dunhills’ fat black dog woofs at her from behind a picket fence. She opens the gate and steps through, as easy as that, and the dog retrieves a tennis ball from the dirt and presses it into her hand and woofs excitedly. She throws the ball as far as she can, though she never did learn how to handle a ball properly. The dog chases it into the backyard, which is mostly bare, with trees along the edge. The strangest trees she’s ever seen. Banana trees, the fruit bright green and growing upside down. A whole tree of avocados. The back of the house is shadier than the front, and the paint is peeling. Outside the back door a stone patio is strewn with the extraneous contents of the Dunhills’ life. A stack of firewood, a hideaway bed and mattress, a lumpy sofa, a hi-fi, stacks of records, a bowling ball, a box of women’s shoes, jigsaw puzzles, kitchen bowls and utensils. Why, what on earth could have happened to the unfortunate couple? This certainly isn’t the moment to press them for news of Lowell. She decides she will turn right around and leave, without saying good-bye, without disturbing them further. But then the electric mixer catches her eye—a KitchenAid, the very best—and next to it, three good-as-new Oxford-cloth shirts, still in the package, one white and two blue. Dotty glares at them and they seem to glare back. Her gift to Lowell all those years ago. Somehow they’ve ended up here. Dotty of course has the rest of them, her keepsake from that terrible time when she thought he was dead, when she stood in his cabin desperately needing some part of her lost lover to take with her. And then a few months later the telephone rang and there he was, at his brother’s house in California. What confusion. She didn’t believe it at first. She thought she was talking to a dead man, a ghost. And then the terrible secrecy. For if Emery Kolb had found out his intended victim was alive, he would have tried to kill him all over again. But as it is, Emery suspects nothing. Dotty has this from Amadeo, who has ways of knowing things without appearing to know anything at all.
The Butterflies of Grand Canyon Page 21
