“Hello?” It was a girl’s voice, worried-sounding, and with a slight Southern hitch to it, but other than that, not very much like Audrey’s voice.
“You left me a note, with this phone number.” George sounded as though he had a bad cold.
“Are you the one here from Mather College?”
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“I was friends with Audrey.”
George shook his pack of cigarettes until one filtered end appeared. “So was I, I thought, but I guess I wasn’t.”
“She didn’t go to college,” the girl said.
“Well, someone did. What’s your name?”
“It’s Cassie Zawinsky.”
“So you knew that Audrey didn’t go to Mather?”
“Yeah, I did.”
“Do you know who went in her place?”
“I don’t know her name, but I know that someone did. She was from Chinkapin High, I think. You met her, you knew her, right? What was she like?”
“She was my girlfriend. She was nice.” George lit the cigarette. The first drag unclogged his nose a little, and he could smell blood.
“But you don’t really know anything about her?” Cassie asked.
“Look, I have lots of questions for you too. I don’t even know how you know I’m here or what you’re trying to figure out. Maybe we could meet?”
“I could do that.”
“Do you know the Shoney’s off the highway?”
“Sure.”
Two hours later, showered, dressed, with a bruised nose and a cracked and sticky lip, George waited in a back booth, an extra large Coke in front of him.
Shoney’s was filled with couples, old ones who were alone and young ones with boisterous kids. Cassie was easy to spot when she walked in—alone, George’s age, wearing a man’s vintage suit vest over a Crowded House T-shirt and a pair of tight, ripped jeans. George waved in her direction, and she came over, slid in across from him.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
“Two guys met me at my motel and wanted to know what I’d done to Audrey. Maybe you know something about it.”
“What kind of guys?” She had short reddish hair, small blue-green eyes, a button nose with a snub tip, and a huge mouth with big white teeth. It didn’t help her looks that she was wearing about a quarter-inch of bright red lipstick and some of it had come off on one of her canines.
“I don’t know. Jocks. One of the names was Scott.”
“Oh jeez. Scotty’s my brother. Was the other one skinny with Frisbee ears?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s Kevin Lineback, my brother’s sidekick. Ah jeez, I’m sorry about that. They had no . . . They wouldn’t’ve even known you were here if it wasn’t for me.”
“I still don’t understand how you knew.”
A waitress appeared, and Cassie ordered a Dr. Pepper.
“So you were at the Becks’ today, right?” she said. “Did ya see Billy Beck, Audrey’s brother? Yeah, well, he was the one who called me and told me, probably about a minute after you left the house. Thing is, he was like the only other person besides me who knew that Audrey wasn’t planning on actually going to college, and he knew I knew, so he called me right away. My brother, the a-hole, must have overheard me talking on the phone with Billy. That’s what I figure anyway. Scott went out with Audrey for about five minutes last summer, and he’s all hung up on her still.”
“How did you know to leave a note on my car?”
“Billy told me that you followed the policemen to the station. And he told me what your car looked like. I figured that I’d leave just a phone number. That way if anyone else saw it, it wouldn’t give anything away.” Keeping her hands down by her sides, Cassie leaned forward and sipped at her Dr. Pepper through her straw. She looked pleased with herself.
“So how did Scott and his friend know where to find me?”
“Billy. He told me over the phone, and I must’ve repeated it out loud or something, because Scott heard. Or else he listened in. I have a phone in my room, but it’s not my own line, so anyone can pick up anywhere else in the house. Anyways, that’s how Scott found out where you were staying. I guess he beat me to you.”
“So what I don’t understand is why Audrey didn’t want to go to school. She must’ve applied.”
“She had to. Her parents made her do it. She’s like one of the few kids from Sweetgum who could even afford to go to a four-year college, let alone get into one. Anyways, her parents told her she had to go. She picked Mather, I think, because it was so far away. But she didn’t want to go. At all. She was into this guy Ian King—”
“From Gator Bait.”
“Oh my gosh, you’ve actually heard of them.”
“No, not really. The detective told me about them today. He said Audrey went off with this guy Ian.”
“That was her plan—what she told me anyways. She was telling her parents she was going to go to school, and then she was just going to skip town. She figured, what could they do to her if they couldn’t find her?”
“But then she found someone to go in her place?”
“Yeah. The thing is, Audrey didn’t tell me so much about it. We were friends, Audrey and me, but not like best friends forever or anything. We all kind of grew up together. My dad knows her dad. My mom knows her mom. That’s how come Billy and I know each other, and Scotty and Audrey. It’s like a family thing. So when Audrey told me she wasn’t going to go to school, I was like . . . I don’t know. But then she told me that she met this girl from Chinkapin who kind of looked like her, and she was totally smart but came from a bad family with no money, and she wanted to go to college real bad.”
“How did they meet?”
“Forensics, I think.”
“What’s that?”
“Competitions for the debate club. I don’t know so much about it.”
“But she never told you this girl’s name?”
“I think she got spooked that she told me so much as it was. As I said, we weren’t best friends or anything. She told me I better not rat her out, and I promised that I wouldn’t. I guess now I feel a little guilty. Maybe I should’ve said something.”
“Refills, guys?” The waitress had materialized.
They both nodded.
“Have you two figured out what you want to eat?”
George said, “I’m actually not that hungry.”
“You wanna split a plate of fries?” Cassie asked. “They’re good here.”
The fries, crinkle cut, arrived in ten minutes on a big oval platter. Cassie had a lot more to say, but the crucial information had already been spoken. The girl George was looking for was from Chinkapin, and she was on the debate team. The following day he could find her name by going through yearbooks again. What he hadn’t decided was whether he would try to do that on his own or enlist the help of Detective Chalfant.
George walked Cassie to her car. She looked up at the star-flecked sky. “Look, it’s the Big Dipper,” she said, pointing.
“You don’t think this other girl had anything to do with what happened to Audrey, do you?” George asked.
“Sure, I thought about it. But Audrey was pretty into drugs, so who knows, you know?”
“Will you call me if you find out anything more?”
“I promise. And don’t worry—I’ll tell Scotty you had nothing to do with this, and he won’t bother you again.”
“I’ll be ready for him next time.”
“He’s kind of mean.”
“I noticed.”
Sporadic bursts of rain came in the night as George lay awake, his face still aching, on his broken mattress. The joints of the weathered motel clicked and whistled. Cars on the highway cast shadows that wheeled through the room, long to short to long again. George filled the ashtray with butts and turned the television on and off several times. At dawn, when the wind had died and the rising sun bathed everything in the same thin light, he fell asleep, lips stinging, mouth
thick with the taste of cigarettes.
He called Chalfant in the morning, told the detective that he thought the girl they were looking for might come from a neighboring town; maybe he could look at more yearbooks. George told Chalfant he thought Chinkapin was a possibility. Chalfant told him to come by the station after lunch.
Dan Thompson lent George the car again. “You speak Mexican?”
“Sorry, no.”
“That’s okay, but it would help. I do need one favor from you. There’s a Mexican joint—Abelito’s—you know it?” He wore the same light tan suit again, but with a different matching set of tie and handkerchief. Today they were a shiny neon blue.
“No, but I can find it.”
Thompson gave him the avenue and the cross street, and the paperwork that needed signatures.
George timed his errand to coincide with lunch and ate at the busy Mexican place. The food was good, but he barely had an appetite. He knew with what felt like certainty that in a few hours he would find out the true identity of the girl he’d known as Audrey. How soon after that would he be able to see her again? He paid for his meal and drove to the police station.
Chalfant was out, but Denise had left a stack of yearbooks, including Chinkapin High’s, in his office. Left alone with the books, George started with the most recent. Instead of looking at the individual photographs first, he flipped toward the back, where there were group shots of clubs and teams. He found “Speech and Debate,” a half page with a black-and-white shot of about seven students in two rows, and nervously scanned the faces.
There she was. Her hair was not the same in the photo—it was longer and feathered and somehow looked blonder—but the rest was the same, the face, the posture, the half smile.
He read the names printed along the bottom. She was in the second row, third from left: L. Decter. He flipped the pages back to the early section of the senior portraits and found her: Liana Decter. She wore a black, scoop-necked dress and a string of pearls. He stared at the picture for a long time, her eyes staring back at him. They told him nothing new.
He closed the book but kept it on his lap. Ever since Denise had ushered him into the office, he hadn’t heard any activity at all in the hallway. He made his mind up. Leaving the yearbook behind and casually walking out of Chalfant’s office, George passed through the reception area when Denise had her back turned and a file cabinet was open. He swung through the glass doors and into the warm gusty day.
There were six Decters listed in the Chinkapin area. He started with the first and dialed the number, deciding to simply ask for Liana, no matter who answered. Two of the numbers rang and rang—no answer, no machine—and one produced an unpromising message. Twice he was told that he had the wrong number. But on the final try a man’s voice, in response to his question, said, “Who’s asking?”
“I’m a friend of hers, sir.”
“You gonna tell me your name, or do you want me to guess?” The voice was old and wavery, with a thick, phlegmy sound to it.
“My name’s George Foss.”
“All right, George. I’ll let her know you called. Can’t promise you she’ll call back, but that’s your goddamn problem.”
“Thank you, sir.” George rarely referred to anyone as a “sir,” but he realized he’d taken up the habit since arriving in Florida. “Can I give you my number?”
“What, she don’t have it already?”
“No, sir.”
“Then fuck you, boy. You think I’m my daughter’s dating service?” He hung up.
George looked down at the phone book, spread open across his thighs. His index finger, white at the tip, was pressed against the number he’d just called. There was also an address.
K. Decter lived on Eighth Street, and after driving for half an hour, George found it. It was in one of the more run-down sections he’d seen so far. Boxy houses with paved-over yards, most with two or three junky cars in front of them. A drainage ditch filled with greenish water lined the road instead of a sidewalk. Behind the houses ran a fence, and behind the fence was a stagnant-looking artificial lake. Even the palms along the street seemed old and tired. Yellowed fronds littered the ground.
George drove slowly, looking for number 401. He had to turn around once but found the place, not because it was marked, but because the house next to it—397—was. The house at 401 was sided in faded vinyl. Parked in its carport was a battered-looking pickup. In the small patch of dirt was an oak tree, dripping with dirty gray beards of Spanish moss. George, assuming that only the father was at home, decided to watch the house. He pulled his car onto the side of the road under the oak, hoping its shade would keep the car both cooler and less conspicuous.
After half an hour, George realized it did neither. The inside of the Buick heated up like an attic in July, and the few cars that had passed him had all slowed down, their inhabitants craning their necks to get a better look at their neighborhood’s intruder, the perv in the paneled car. He realized it was only a matter of time before one of them stopped or someone emerged from a nearby house to ask him just what the fuck he thought he was doing.
Those worries competed with a riot of thoughts. His proximity to the home of Liana Decter—also known as Audrey Beck—was conjuring a whole reassessment of her character, her upbringing. He wondered if she had taken the opportunity to switch identities with Audrey as a way to escape some calamitous fate on this very street. And what had been her long-term plan? Could she have gone on being Audrey Beck indefinitely? Maybe she could have at Mather College, all those miles and states and realities away, but eventually the truth would have come out. And in fact it had. Audrey’s death had ensured that. George grappled with all he had learned in the past twenty-four hours while also trying to work out the logistics of what exactly he was doing, staked out in a car. It was Liana he was hoping to see, emerging from her home or returning to it. He wanted to get to her first, to hear her side of the story, to warn her of what was coming, to tell her that the police were aware that Audrey Beck had never been to college.
A car pulled up across the street, some sort of unidentifiable muscle car bubbling black exhaust smoke. George slid in his seat, an unlit cigarette between his lips.
The car door swung open, and a gangly, denim-clad man unfolded himself from it. He looked to be in his late twenties, with long black hair pulled back into a tight ponytail and a face that, from a distance, looked pale and small-featured. He was wearing Ray-Bans.
George watched him cross the street with a long, swinging gait and idle up to the Decter residence. Because of the position of the Buick, under and slightly behind the oak, there was no clear sight line to the front door, but after two minutes the man reemerged into view and casually strolled toward George in his car. Before he arrived, George quickly lit his cigarette, the filter of which had become wet between his lips.
The man placed one hand on the roof of the car, the other on the window frame, then dropped down a considerable distance to place his plate-size face almost into the car. His eyes, an almost pretty blue, scanned the interior of the vehicle. George wanted to speak first but could not think of what to say.
“How ya doing?” the man said, his voice casual, friendly enough to be on radio. George noticed that he had a pencil-thin mustache right over his colorless lip. He had high cheekbones for a man.
“Not bad.”
“I won’t ask ya what you’re doing out here because I know. Liana told me all about you. She said you were a good kid from a good family.”
“I just want to see her.”
“Oh, I know you do. That’s totally understandable. I think, under different circumstances, she would want to see you too. But you have to understand that right now is not a good time. She told me to ask you to leave town and go back to college.”
In what he hoped was a reasonable tone of voice, George said, “So what will happen to me if I don’t go back to college?”
There must have been some calculable time that it took for
the man with the ponytail to move his hand from the roof of the car to the base of George’s throat, but George could never have measured it. One second he was finishing his question, and the next he was struggling for breath, the man’s large-knuckled hand simultaneously constricting his throat and pushing him back against the headrest.
“It looks like someone already hit you recently, so you’re probably thinking that taking a punch isn’t so bad. Let’s see what we got here. . . .” The man explored George’s face with his free hand, turning it delicately one way and then the next, like a plastic surgeon examining a woman with crow’s feet. “This must’ve hurt when you took one in the nose.” The man pressed against George’s tender nose with a thumb as wide and flat as a coffee spoon. George reflexively lifted an arm to protect himself.
“Don’t fucking move.” The man squeezed tighter around George’s throat and pressed harder with his thumb against his nose. Fresh blood trickled down George’s upper lip and into his mouth, and he could hear the sound of cartilage grinding together. “If I hit you in the nose, you wouldn’t be up and about the next day. It would be permanent damage. You’d have nothing left but a flap of skin in the middle of your face. You understand what I’m saying to you?” The man moved George’s head up and down like he was a ventriloquist with a dummy. “Good.” A car drove slowly by but didn’t stop. The ponytailed man was unfazed.
“All right, George, I’m going to take off now, and I suggest you do the same. If you see me again, it means that you are about to endure some terrible pain, so you better hope you don’t ever see me again.”
The man released George’s face and stood. George wiped the fresh tears away from his cheek and took a deep, painful breath. He knew he was going to cry at some point, not just tears but sobs and snot, but he thought he could hold off until the man was out of sight. Outside of the car, the man adjusted his tight black jeans—they were topped by an enormous belt buckle with the Jack Daniels logo. Then he strolled, as casually as he had arrived, back to his low, dark car, folded himself into it, and drove away.
The Girl with a Clock for a Heart: A Novel Page 13
