Rebecca Schwartz 05 - Other People's Skeletons

by Smith, Julie

  “Yeah, he just came out and hit me…. Hey, what’s wrong?”

  Rob had been so engrossed in his story, which I think he more or less perceived as funny, that he hadn’t noticed the lower half of my face trembling or my funny voice. By now I’d teared up, and great, embarrassing trails of saltwater were making their way down my face.

  “Look, I’m okay— it didn’t hurt a bit, honest.” He paused, trying to figure me out. “Rebecca? Hey, I didn’t know you cared.”

  “It’s not you. It’s just so sad— first the mom and now maybe the daughter. And that poor man half out of his mind about the whole thing.”

  “Yeah, well, he drinks, too.”

  But I was sunk in the Dunson family drama, and sobbing.

  “Hey. Hey, hold on a minute.” He looked nearly as confused as when Adrienne had cried and needed him to hold her. But he had the sense to gather me up without being prodded. “It’s okay. That’s a good girl. Cry all you want. That’s a baby.” If I weren’t in such a state I would have fallen off my chair at the realization he even knew these phrases. Perhaps he’d been dating a mother with a baby.

  Finally, when I was starting to get a grip, he pushed me away, as he had Adrienne, and looked me straight in the eye, assessing. “Something’s wrong. Something’s really wrong. This isn’t like you. You’re raw. That’s why that story got you, because your hide’s thin.”

  Hide was a good word in the circumstances, one Dr. Freud would have approved of; that was what I couldn’t do anymore.

  I tried to muster bravado. “I’m scared, that’s all.” I spoke as if it were nothing. “I had a breast biopsy yesterday.”

  His face was a picture of confidence shattered: one minute I was strong, healthy Rebecca, the next I was a broken victim. His voice was a croak: “You have…” long pause “…cancer?”

  “The test results aren’t in. But I’ve got a lump, and I’m scared. I’m a little weird.” I said again, “That’s all,” and wondered if that would satisfy him, if he would change the subject.

  He said, “Why didn’t you tell me?” nearly whispering, incredulous.

  “I just felt like it was more than anyone could deal with right now. Chris’s career depends on my being strong. I didn’t want to be a liability.” He looked utterly unbelieving. “I don’t know! I just couldn’t talk about it. It was too close to the bone to hand over to another human being— and it was killing me not to do that. You see how I am. It was nuts.” I let that stand for a second and then I blurted, “Don’t you have any secrets?”

  He just stared, alarm in every cell, every bit the trapped fox Dunson had been. I didn’t let him off the hook.

  I said, “Come on, you know mine. Don’t you have one?”

  In a moment he recovered enough to say, “You don’t have to change the subject. You can talk about it.”

  But I was thinking about that look, the trapped-fox look, and what it meant. He’d never told me he loved me, I thought, never told me good-bye when I broke away, never said he’d miss me. Never anything, I thought. Does he have feelings? Are they his secrets?

  I thought I’d hit on something. I knew he had feelings, some of them for me— I could tell by the look on his face when I said the B word. But never, never was I going to hear it from Mr. Rob I’m-a-self-contained-unit Burns. The thought of it made me cry again. Through what was left of my formerly tough hide, just a veil of thin, thin skin, I seemed to be absorbing everyone’s pain.

  “Beck? Beck, what is it?” The silvery mane of my father— and the rest of his head— poked in the office. “Daddy!”

  “I— uh— I guess I should have called.” He looked acutely embarrassed, and then angry. “Rob, what’s going on here?” He spoke like some medieval king challenging a knight who’d made his daughter cry. The last thing I needed was time travel to the twelfth century.

  “Dad, this is none of your business.”

  Like a dog paddled for something it doesn’t understand, Rob stared at the floor. My hero. “Hello, Isaac.” My father gave him the glare that had been turning witnesses to jelly for nearly half a century. In a moment, Rob would confess on the stand: “I did it! I killed Rebecca with my little hatchet.”

  I wanted to yell at them both. I turned to get my coat and in the process heard Rob say, “I was just leaving.” I shrugged into the jacket, turning back to Dad, seeing Rob’s back. He didn’t even say, “See ya,” having apparently forgotten my existence.

  “Come on, Dad, let’s take a walk. Suddenly I need a whole lot of air.”

  My father was nearly seventy. Was he too old a dog to learn anything? Probably, but I felt stepped on; surely feminism began at home.

  I was so angry I didn’t speak on the elevator ride, and only when I felt a blast of cold air (in San Francisco we have it even in August) did I speak. “You know what that felt like? Like not being in a room at all. You had no right to accuse Rob.”

  “I didn’t accuse him.”

  “The hell you didn’t! Your voice did, and the question did. Whatever was going on in there was between Rob and me, not Rob and you.”

  “You’re my daughter.”

  “I’m an adult. Also, what was going on was not your business. But be that as it may, if you wanted to stick your nose in, I was the person to address, not the other person because he happened to be male.”

  “I was trying to protect you.”

  “My point exactly. I’m not two, Dad. I can protect myself.”

  “Well, it looked like you were doing a piss-poor job.”

  Dad, it had nothing to do with Rob. I was upset because I might have cancer.

  I couldn’t say that now. As inappropriate as it was for Dad to try to protect me from Rob, it would have been great to have some paternal comfort about The Thing. But I couldn’t ask now. I’d gotten up this head of righteous indignation that said, Don’t mess with me, I'm strong. I couldn’t switch gears in mid-tantrum.

  In the end, it was better, I guess. I had hated being treated like some teenage princess by my very politically correct father, but now that that was over, the anger it left in its wake felt a lot better than feeling sorry for myself.

  We walked in silence for a while, me huffing with righteousness and Dad thinking it over, I guess. Finally, he said, “I’m sorry, Beck. I won’t do it again.” But his blue eyes twinkled. “Maybe.”

  “Okay.” I put out my hand. “Truce.”

  He sighed. “I thought I’d finally passed Feminism 101.”

  “Just don’t open any doors.”

  He laughed. Mickey objected to this, though I didn’t. I said, “What made you drop by, anyway?”

  “I wanted some of Alan’s fabulous coffee.”

  “Bleeagh. Well, I’m glad to see you. I wouldn’t mind getting your opinion on McKendrick and Chris.”

  It was probably what he’d come to talk about anyway. The story had been heavily covered by all the local media, but aside from a polite call the first day, both my parents had pretty well kept their noses out of it. Which was a great thing, especially in the case of Mom. But Dad was the best lawyer in town, and since I had access to a free opinion, I was going for it.

  He said, “Are you sure she didn’t do it?”

  “What!” I couldn’t believe my ears. Chris was family.

  He patted the air, okay-okay. “Just checking. You’d have some intuitive feeling if something didn’t ring right.”

  “Do you rely on intuition a lot?” I hadn’t told him about Chris’s little psychic problem.

  He looked shocked. “All the time. Don’t you?”

  I pondered. “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  “I’ll tell you what mine says now— or maybe it’s just common sense.”

  “What?”

  “Chris knows something.”

  It was all I could do not to say, ‘How dare you question her? How could you?’ Instead, I said, “She says she never even met McKendrick.”

  “Well, then, I’d believe her
on that. But it wasn’t coincidence her car was used. How could it have been? Someone had to follow her to that movie.” (I’d made the Raiders meeting a movie so as to keep her secret, yet make clear she didn’t have a decent alibi.)

  “All she’ll say is she doesn’t have any enemies.”

  “Famous last words. Look, she probably knows something she doesn’t know she knows. Could it be that?”

  “I think it could. But what?”

  “Maybe she should try hypnosis.”

  “It’s a thought.” A formidable thought. Here was someone who already spent lots of her time in a trance. If we could find a reputable hypnotist, it could be a great shortcut. I told Dad about Tommy La Barre.

  He shook his head unhappily. “I don’t know, Beck. You better hope it’s not him. This is the kind of guy who’s going to have an unshakeable alibi.”

  “If he hired someone, maybe they’ll turn up.”

  “How? You think they’ll find Jesus and suffer remorse?”

  “I thought you might have some ideas.”

  “Thanks for the vote of confidence. When looking for a hit man, see Isaac Schwartz.”

  “Omigod, that’s a great idea. I just meant I thought you might be able to think of a strategy. But come to think of it, you know half the unsavory characters in town.”

  “And those I don’t know probably carry my tattered business card just in case. But La Barre’s probably connected. I stay as far as possible from those people.”

  “Yes, but some of your ex-clients probably know people who know people. How about making some inquiries?”

  “People get killed for that kind of inquiry.”

  “Come on, Dad. Nobody’s going to kill Isaac Schwartz— who’s going to be the killer’s lawyer when his case comes to trial?”

  “With all due modesty, you have a point. Okay, I’ll phone around. But I just gave myself an idea with that remark about my esteemed clientele carrying my card. Maybe that’s why McKendrick had Chris’s number— because she’d been recommended as a lawyer.”

  “But why hasn’t the person who recommended her come forward?”

  “Well, that’s easy. Because they don’t know her car was used in the murder and couldn’t possibly know her name and number was in his pocket.”

  “I don’t know— I’ve talked to a lot of McKendrick’s friends.” But I knew it need not be a friend. It could be the most casual acquaintance. And the theory still didn’t explain why her car was used— unless that person was the murderer.

  Now that had merit. But still— why frame Chris?

  I figured I must have formed something in the neighborhood of fifteen theories about the type of person who’d killed McKendrick and the circumstances under which it had happened, yet none of them covered everything. Everywhere I turned there was some dead end, some unexplained detail. It was the most frustrating thing I’d ever run into.

  “Rebecca Schwartz. Roger DeCampo.” The Cosmic Blind Date was standing right in my path, blocking my way, sounding like a prison guard and holding out his right hand to be shaken. In a daze I obliged and introduced Dad. “What are you doing in these parts?” I asked.

  “You know that little problem I told you about? The one you’re going to help on? I came down to do a little work on that.”

  “But, Roger, I thought we agreed I couldn’t take the case.”

  “We didn’t agree to anything. You said you wouldn’t, that’s all. But you will.” He gave me one of those bottom-of-the-face smiles; frankly, I found it chilling.

  “Nice to see you, Roger.” I glanced at my watch. “I’m afraid we’re late.”

  I pushed past him, Dad following a little reluctantly— he hated rudeness.

  Roger shouted over his shoulder, “I’ll call you.”

  “Former client?” Dad said.

  “I’ll tell you all about it. But first, what’s your take on him?”

  “He seemed to be having a little trouble with reality- saying you’re going to take a case you’ve refused. And I didn’t like the smile.”

  I wondered if Chris had been right about Roger all the time.

  I told Dad the story. “What do you think?”

  “Well, I guess he must be a little nuts. I mean, even if the subject weren’t UFOs, how could a sane person get so involved with other people’s obsessions?”

  Suddenly I had a new thought. He’d said to me, “It may not be obvious to you, but I am one of the major players of the universe.” I’d thought he was joking, what else was I to think? But maybe he was just a guy who wanted to belong, and the UFO club was what had invited him.

  I thought about the human need to be special, how we all want to believe we’re somebody just a little more important than the next guy. What if you had nice friends, perfectly ordinary, but also very special people who told you you’d been seen at the Interplanetary Council? I tried to imagine people saying it to me: “Now, Rebecca, it’s written in the Akashic Records. You! Yes, you. Well, you’d better believe it because it’s true. You’re really a very important person, galactically speaking. Sure, the world’s full of lawyers, but how many of them are making the kinds of decisions that influence the course of history?”

  I’d at least be intrigued. And if they were people I really trusted, really liked very much— Chris and Julio, say— I might, in time, come to want very much to join their club, in much the same way I’d suddenly embraced Chris’s psychic world view. What a wonderful escape it would be! I wouldn’t be crazy, really. Just someone who had crackpot ideas. But if I started to live more and more in that world, I’d probably get weirder and weirder, much as Roger seemed to be doing. It was a little like a cult, I thought— sort of a pervasive self-hypnosis.

  Dad said, “Still, I knew a perfectly nice woman who’d been abducted by spacemen. Someone I respected. I didn’t know about the ETs until I’d known her a few years— she got tipsy at a party and told me about it.”

  “Do you think she was lying?”

  “Actually, I’m inclined to believe it. She seemed pretty damn sure.”

  “You believe in ETs?”

  “Well, I didn’t till then.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chris hadn’t been in the office when I left, but she was very much there when I got back— and practically on fire: “I’ve got the missing piece.”

  I sank down in her clients’ chair. “Well, for God’s sake, what is it?”

  “It’s something in the past all right, just like Rosalie said. But it’s so trivial, just so tiny, you’d never think of it. And you’d never in a million years connect it with some big drama in your life.”

  I was going to jump up and down and scream if she didn’t tell me soon.

  “I went home and looked in my kitchen, like Moonblood said, and there wasn’t a damn thing there that isn’t always there. But then I went to bed and I had this weird dream, about hanging up my clothes on a hook. Then when I got up, there it was— the hook, bigger than life, right in my kitchen, exactly like Moonblood said.”

  “What hook?”

  “The one where I keep my extra keys— to the house, I mean. But there might— just very, very possibly might— have been a car key, too. The hook’s behind the door, which I never close, so I didn’t even notice they weren’t there; I guess Pigball forgot to return them.” Her normally charming habit of forgetting names was now up there— for irritation value— with guys who call you “doll.”

  “May I ask which Pigball?”

  “My friend Roxanne, who cat-sits when I go away for the weekend, or on vacation or something. I’ve known her forever— well, since high school, actually; she’s from my hometown. We don’t have much in common, but we’ve always kept in touch. Anyway, she’s a freelance something— editor, I think, and she does this kind of stuff for a few extra bucks. It’s been nearly a year since I’ve been anywhere at all— but for all I know she’s had the keys a lot longer; I never think about whether she does or doesn’t have them because she�
��s a good friend and I trust her— and I always know I’ll be calling her again for the same job.”

  “Have you talked to her?”

  “Her phone’s disconnected.” Seeing my fallen face, she said, “But not to worry. I have her mom’s number in Virginia. I was just about to call when you came in.”

  “I’ve got to ask you something; I just have to. How could you forget your extra set of keys?”

  She looked hurt. “Well first of all, in my mind they weren’t missing. I just never thought— because they’re always there, where they’re supposed to be.” She touched her long nose. “And second, they’re house keys. I seem to have this dim, dim recollection of once putting a car key on the ring, so I’d have a complete set. But I don’t know if I did it or just thought about it once or twice.”

  Kruzick, who’d been lurking in the doorway, trotted out his best Eddie Haskell voice: “May I make a suggestion? How about calling Roxanne’s mother?”

  “Roger,” Chris said, and for obvious reasons the word made me laugh.

  She dialed. “Mrs. Niekirk? Chris Nicholson. Oh, gosh, it has, hasn’t it?”

  Been a long time, I filled in, and hoped the pleasantries weren’t going to go on at the normal Southern length.

  Finally, she said, “I was wondering— I think Roxanne’s moved and for some reason I don’t have her phone number. Do you think— oh, she’s there? Well, yes by all means.” Pause. “Roxanne Niekirk, whatever do you think you’re doing, leavin’ town without tellin’ me?” Her accent had kicked back to life. “Oh, hey. Darlin’, what’d I say? Listen, I’m really, really sorry.”

  I gathered that Roxanne’s reasons for leaving town weren’t the happiest. But neither Kruzick, who by now had come in and sat down, nor I, were delicate enough to leave. We listened as Chris soothed her friend and then worked up to asking about the keys. Which apparently provoked a whole new flood of tears. Chris soothed a little bit more and then her end of the conversation began to tend more toward the occasional “uh-huh” or “yes”, accompanied by alert nods and vigorous finger drumming; even note taking now and then.

  After a time, she said, “I think I might have some bad news for you. Jason McKendrick died about a week ago.”