by Jeff Crook
“Thank you,” I said.
“Was she very old?
“Not so old. She died the same way as my grandfather, and about the same age.”
“Well, now you know how many years you have,” she said. I didn’t find much comfort in that. There weren’t so many years between me and my mother. “Count yourself lucky to have had a mother. I never knew mine. She died when I was very young.”
I tried to picture this tragic figure of a young mother. I wanted to see her standing over Ruth, her ghost watching and waiting patiently. I wanted to see her father Gus, or old forgotten Lonnie, left for dead seventy years ago, still crawling home across the dark bottom of the lake. But Ruth was alone, utterly alone, abandoned by both the living and the dead, frail in her chair, burning away in the sun before my very eyes. There was no room in her life for anyone else. I couldn’t see their ghosts, but I could almost see her fierce, enormous spirit burning up the last of her flesh. The liquor seemed to be the only thing keeping her alive.
She went on, talking sleepily between sips of her toddy. “But I can’t complain. I’ve lived a full life, a storybook life in many ways, a life some might envy and others would surely condemn. I was young and beautiful, and I remained young and beautiful well past the age when most women start thinking about grandchildren. I’ve been a movie star, an outlaw, a respectable planter, and a paid whore. I have loved and lost more men than I wish to remember.”
“Mrs. Ruth, I’d like to take your picture one day.”
She held out her glass and I topped it off from her flask. “Suit yourself. There’s not much to look at anymore. But you’d better not wait too long.”
“You’re still a beautiful woman,” I said.
“My body has betrayed me. Too many cigarettes, too much corn liquor. When I got my first gray hair, I knew the end was near. Now I am old and helpless with cancer. But that’s not what is killing me. I am bored, Jackie, bored to death. You can’t live the kind of life I’ve lived and be content to end your days surrounded by people so weak of mind they don’t even know when they’ve pissed themselves.”
She finished her whiskey and I downed the last of her flask in one icy, incandescent swallow. A long sleek cigarette boat roared by close enough to feel the mist of its prop spray, dragging a long, skittering ski rope across the water behind it. There was no sign of the skier.
“Can I get you anything else, Mrs. Ruth?” I asked.
“To tell the truth, I’d betray Christ to the Romans for just one puff of your cigarette. Luther won’t let me have them.”
I gave her one from my pack and dug a lighter from my pocket. The cigarette resting effortlessly between her long, frail fingers gave her hand a grace it had almost forgotten. She licked her dry lips impatiently and smiled.
“Turn off my oxygen, first. I don’t want to set myself on fire.” I did as she asked. She pulled the oxygen hose down around her chin. “I don’t really need this, you know. I just wear it because it’s so damn sexy.”
27
THE FIREWORKS WERE SCHEDULED to start around nine and every volunteer fire truck in the county was standing by to douse the least little spark, lest it burn down somebody’s Maserati. It was getting dark and Deacon hadn’t shown his face since supper. Mrs. Ruth was staying at Luther’s house—they had hired a nurse to sit with her—so my transportation options were dwindling faster than the twilight. I looked around for a decent park bench to spend the night, but all I found was Luther’s porch swing. That’s where Jenny found me, curled up with a bottle of wine for a pillow. It was past my bedtime.
“Having fun yet?” she asked. Her glass was empty so I filled it. She sat beside me and kicked the swing into motion.
“Loads.”
“This is the first time I’ve gone to one of these parties alone,” she said. That confession hung out there like a slow curve over the plate, but I didn’t swing. She played with her wineglass for a while. “I almost didn’t come, but Cass and Eli wanted to see the fireworks.”
They could have watched the fireworks from her house, and I didn’t see her kids anywhere. Something else had brought her out.
“Have you seen Deacon lately?” she asked.
“Not since dinner.”
“He’s probably hiding from Holly. It’s disgraceful really, the way she chases after him.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“Really?” She kicked off her sandals and tucked her legs under her butt, made herself comfortable. “We should be able to see the fireworks from here.”
Senator Mickelson seemed to have the same idea. He crossed the veranda and wedged himself between us on the swing.
“Jenny, my dear. So good to see you,” he said. “How are you holding up?”
“Just taking it day by day, Bill.” So she was on a first-name basis with the president pro tem of the Senate. This girl was full of surprises.
“Sam was a hell of a man and a good friend. I miss him.”
“So do I,” Jenny said. Even the good senator. I couldn’t turn over a rock without finding another of Sam’s closest friends. It was starting to look like the only way I would find his killer was if I moved in and became one of these people.
“It was good of Luther to invite you to his table. He tells me they’re voting for a new treasurer at the next homeowners’ meeting. I’m putting in a word for you.” Jenny’s phone rang and she answered it. The senator turned and put his hand on my knee.
“As a resident, I get a vote. And what about you, my dear? Jackie Lyons, isn’t it?” Like most politicians, he had a gift for putting names with faces. “I’m sorry if I seemed forward with you earlier. Ruth just told me you are her guest. Any relation to Reed Lyons?” Not just putting names with faces. He had a detective’s knack for putting names with other names. It probably served him well when it came time to pry open people’s pocket books.
“My ex,” I said.
“It’s a small world, isn’t it? Reed is one of my biggest supporters in Shelby County.” He massaged my knee with his hand. The mint in his julep barely disguised the dead animal reek of his breath. All his front teeth were caps. His back teeth smelled like they were rotting in his face. “How long have you two been divorced?”
“Not long enough,” I said as I lifted his hand from my knee. He nodded and stood, doffed his cap and ran a hand through his wavy hair.
“I hope I can count on your vote this November.”
“Do I have any choice?”
“The Republicans always run a token candidate to keep me honest.”
As he walked away, Jenny turned off her phone. “Senator Mickelson is something of a ladies’ man,” she whispered.
“He’s quite the little sailor.”
“That was Deacon,” she said as she dropped her phone into her purse and stood. “He’s at my house. Eli fell asleep, so he took both kids home. Holly’s with him, and he asked me to please hurry home before she takes her clothes off.”
“Is she drunk?”
“Holly doesn’t have to get drunk to take her clothes off.” She waited as though it was assumed I would join her. For some reason I resented the assumption, no matter how reasonable. Deacon was my ride home, unless I wanted to sleep in the park, and somehow I doubted Luther’s rent-a-cops or Stegall’s goons would let me camp out on their playground. But more than that, I had an idea of where I could rent a room on a more permanent basis. Granted, it was slightly used and the old owner was still hanging around knocking pictures off the walls, but I was used to that. At least it was clean. It was close to work, and there was a bar downstairs that never closed.
“I’m ready to go whenever you are. Where did you park?”
“I walked. It’s miles around the lake by car, but it’s not far on foot. Just across the levee.”
* * *
It was miles by foot, too, or seemed like it—across the park littered with families sprawled on blankets waiting for the fireworks to begin, through the empty softball field and past
home plate still speckled with Eugene Kitchen’s nose blood. The party was still going strong under the trees, but most of the boats were off the lake.
We crossed the levee, through the high, dry grass crackling and turning to dust beneath our feet, with the lake bright and dark on one side and the forest full of distant laughing children on the other. Jenny showed me the spillway, but there wasn’t any water going through. “The lake is low for this time of year. It hasn’t rained in forever,” she said, gazing up at the dull stars. I assumed she and Deacon had been maneuvering for weeks to bring me to this spot, but now that we were here, Jenny seemed reluctant to go any farther.
Until that moment, I never realized how difficult it must be for her, how frightening to walk toward that place where her husband died, with me walking at her side, wondering if I saw him, wondering if I was pretending not to see him. Like a child cowering under the covers while her mama pretends to check under the bed for boogie monsters. Jenny stood looking down at the spillway, biting her lip and swinging her handbag against her thigh, trying as hard as she could not to cry.
“Let’s go,” I said, taking her hand. She let herself be pulled into motion. And for a second I wondered, if Sam did show, would I be able to maintain awareness in her presence? Jenny was too sharp a steersman not to notice. Lucky for both of us he spared me from having to tell the sort of lies that normal people tell to comfort themselves.
“Sometimes I sense Sam,” she said when we were safely past the spot. “I wake in the night and I can almost feel him lying beside me. And there are times I can still smell Reece in her room. Her head had the strangest smell, like freshly turned earth. When she was a baby, I used to hold her and just breathe.”
We arrived at the house and found Holly swimming laps in Jenny’s pool. She was still wearing her swimsuit. Deacon greeted us at the back door. He looked like he had been mauled. “Thank God you’re here,” he whispered.
Jenny laughed and helped him straighten his tie. “In the nick of time.”
28
AT NINE O’CLOCK THE FIREWORKS started and we went outside by the pool to watch. Holly floated on her back at the pool’s edge, barely breathing hard after her workout, a plastic cup of wine resting on her breastbone. She was too cool, too relaxed, too much like a pretty girl in a Jimmy Buffet song with nothing in the world to do, but whenever she rolled over to take a sip of wine, flames shot out of her eye sockets at Jenny and me. We’d interrupted the movie script that ended with her and Deacon naked in the pool while reflected fireworks exploded in their loins.
Cassie sat in Deacon’s lap so Holly couldn’t. I lay in a sunbathing chair beneath the moon, watching colorful explosions and trying to think of a way to move into Jenny’s house without her knowing why. I knew I wasn’t thinking clearly, but with the wine and the warm night whispering sweet nothings to my better judgment, moving in seemed like a fine idea, a glorious idea even.
Jenny liked her wine cold and kept bottles of it in a bathtub of ice by the door. I usually liked my wine out of a paper bag, provided it was whiskey and not wine, but this stuff helped cool the heat of the day’s sun radiating out of my pores. I could feel the skin starting to tighten around my eyes. I hadn’t spent that much time in the sun since I was a cop. Too much exposure would ruin my heroin pallor.
The wine helped me not to mind so much. The bombing seemed to last well past midnight. Holly got bored and walked to the end of Jenny’s boat dock. It wasn’t nearly as long as Luther’s boat dock, but Holly strutted it just as insolently as she had her father’s. I thought she had a boat tied off there—people seemed to use their boats like cars around here—but instead she dove in the lake.
“She’ll swim home,” Jenny said in answer to my surprise. “She does that sometimes.”
“Must be how she keeps her figure.” I could smell the smoke from the fireworks, and bits of burning paper and ash were starting to drift down, speckling the surface of the pool. Jenny covered her wine with her hand. I wandered inside to relieve myself, finished and climbed the stairs, not really going anywhere but finding myself in Reece’s bedroom all the same.
It was much as I had left it, everything in its place including the photo of Reece’s softball team hanging on the wall. I wondered if I could sleep here, or if I really wanted to. The bed was neatly made, the curtains folded back. I looked out the window at the reflection of the fireworks exploding in the water and the distant, tiny ripple that was Holly, far out in the dark water swimming with slow and deliberate strokes toward Luther’s house. My gaze strayed hesitantly down to the dark, overgrown levee where for the moment no ghosts walked or stumbled and fell.
I sat on the edge of the bed, wrinkling the pool-table smoothness of the bedspread, took my phone out and dialed a number I wasn’t supposed to know. It rang three times before a man answered.
No hello, no how ya doin’ Jackie old buddy, old pal. Just, “How the hell did you get this number?”
“Nice to hear your voice, too, Dr. Wiley,” I said. Paul Wiley was the chief medical examiner for the city of Memphis. He and I had crossed swords a time or two in days of yore. He didn’t like the fact that I did freelance photography of crime scenes for defense lawyer types. I didn’t like the fact that he was possibly the most colossal dick in all of Memphis.
“How long’s it been?” I asked.
“I’m hanging up now.”
“I need a favor.”
He didn’t hang up. He didn’t say anything, either. I think the idea of me asking for a favor must have caught him like a short hook. While he was still shaking off the cobwebs, I said, “Sam Loftin. Fayette County drowning, back in April. Local gravedigger ruled it a suicide. Know anything about it?”
He was quiet for a moment while he whetted his tongue. “Mrs. Lyons, in case it has slipped your mind, I work for the city of Memphis. If you have questions about a Fayette County suicide, I suggest you interrupt the Fayette County coroner on his Fourth of July.”
“Paul,” I said. “I think this guy was murdered.”
“All the more reason not to bother me!” He hung up as viciously as you can hang up a cell phone. Guys like him missed the old days when you could slam a phone down to really get your point across. I called him back, but the line was busy. He was probably calling the IT department to get his number changed.
I reminded myself that none of this was my business. I was here to shoot some photographs, nothing more. If Wiley didn’t see any need to investigate a possible murder just because it took place on the east side of the county line instead of the west, why did I? I owed Jenny and her family and their ghosts nothing. If I started digging around and turning up bones, I might only make things worse.
My life was complicated enough without inviting new complications. The last time I tried to play family doctor, I got the patient killed and damn near received the mortal chop myself, all over some ugly pictures wanted by a man with a shard of broken glass for a soul.
But I couldn’t help myself. It was like my heroin addiction. No matter how long you stayed clean, that gorilla never left your back. It was always there, whispering in your ear—just once, just once. Just this once, stick your nose into somebody else’s business. Never mind it might get chopped off. Just this once, you can poke around without losing yourself in it. Just this once, your own jacked-up problems won’t become a part of the problem. Move in with this poor woman, find her husband’s murderer, win her some insurance money, and maybe save your own soul in the process.
Such a damned liar, that gorilla.
If I moved in with Jenny, I knew I’d eventually steal that suitcase full of money hidden behind Reece’s closet. Just standing here in her room, I could hear the siren song of those unguarded Benjamins, promising me a good time. Sooner or later I’d need five bucks for cigarette money and the next thing you know I’m buying furs and summering on the Isle of Capri. Money like that would change my life forever and for the better and nobody would know I’d taken it except me and Dea
con and whoever put it there.
I should have slipped away, just like I did the day my mother died, slipped away and this time changed my phone number and never returned. I could have opened that window, climbed out on the roof and into the tree at the corner. I could see the route from the window. It would have been absurdly easy, so easy a child could do it, and nobody in the house would know she was gone.
Until it was too late.
By the time I returned downstairs, the patriotic aerial bombardment had ended. Cassie was in the den playing dolls with a girl in a red swimsuit. I hadn’t seen this girl before, but then again I hadn’t seen most of the people I’d met today. Maybe she was spending the night.
Jenny called Cassie to the kitchen as I entered. Deacon handed me a bowl and a spoon. “Did you have fun today?” Jenny asked her daughter.
“Un-hnn,” she shrugged as she took her ice cream and sat at the table.
“Can you give me a ride home after this?” I asked Deacon.
“My truck is at Ruth’s nursing home.”
Cassie looked up from her treat. “Where do you live?” she asked me.
“I live in a motel.”
“Are you on vacation?”
“Not exactly,” I laughed.
Jenny asked, “Which motel?”
“The Deertick. That is, the Detrick Motel on Highway 70.”
“I thought it had been condemned!” Jenny said in horror.
“What’s condemned, Mama? Is it going to hell?”
Deacon said to Jenny, “What if she stayed here?”
“For the night?”
“No, I mean move in.” He pushed his bowl aside and turned to me. “The money you pay in rent to that motel will help Jenny, and you get to move out of that fleabag.”
Jenny sat down next to him and smiled. “You could stay with us while you are working for Deacon, at least until they find your car. We have more than enough room.”
