The Legionnaires saluted and moved back and the crowd began to file away, a few stopping to shake the minister’s hand, others pausing to say a word to Curt and Laurel. I let most of them move on before I told Starbright to wait for me and walked to Carol’s side. When she saw me coming she started to hurry away, then stopped, more afraid of notice than of me. “Hi, Carol,” I said.
With the hand that held the hanky, she pressed her dark glasses closer to her eyes, shielding as much as they could shield. She lifted her other hand then, and I took it in mine. “It’s been a long time, Marsh,” she said, her voice low and flat, expectant.
“It’s been that,” I said. “How are you?”
“Fine. You?”
“Fine. You look good, Carol.”
“You, too.”
We stood in silence then, surrounded by the dead and by our memories. Carol was leery, wondering what I was up to. I didn’t quite know myself. “Is that your wife with you?” Carol asked finally, glancing quickly at Starbright.
“I’m not married. That’s Billy’s friend. Her name’s Starbright.”
Carol jerked her hand away from mine, then realized the gesture was revealing and gripped my arm to disguise whatever it was she felt and thought. “I know about you and Billy, Carol,” I said quietly. “At least I know what people say. And I know you and Chuck have split. I saw Chuck yesterday.”
Carol looked at me closely, trying to read my attitude, then glanced around to see if we were being watched. “How did he die, Marsh?” she asked in a whisper. “I have to know. Did someone kill him?”
“I think so,” I said.
“Oh, my God.”
“Do you have any idea who might have done it, Carol?”
“I … no. Of course not.”
“Come on, Carol. You were thinking of someone. Who was it?”
“Is there any evidence, Marsh? Do the police have suspects?”
“No. They’re calling it suicide.”
“It wasn’t suicide. That wasn’t Billy.”
“I don’t think so, either. Do you think it was Chuck, Carol? Did Chuck know about you and Billy?”
Carol glanced wildly about her again, looking for help or lies. “Not here, Marsh. I can’t talk here,” she said finally.
“Where?”
“My place, I guess.”
“When?”
“Tonight? Ten or so?”
“Fine. Where are you living?”
“Six twelve Jefferson. Across from the drive-in bank.”
“I’ll be there.”
Carol started to move away, then looked at something behind me. I followed her stare and saw Starbright’s swollen profile. “So that’s her,” Carol said softly. “She’s pregnant, isn’t she?”
“Yes.”
“He told me about her. He loved her a lot, actually.”
“That’s good,” I said. “I hope someone will love their child.”
“I will,” Carol said. “If she stays in Chaldea I’ll look out for it. I really will.”
I bent and kissed her above her glasses and below her bangs. “See you later, Carol.”
“See you Marsh. I’m glad you’re back, but you’re not going to like some of the things I have to tell you.”
“I haven’t liked anything I’ve heard since the minute I hit town.”
I left Carol and walked through mourners back to Starbright. “Who was that?” she asked me.
“A woman named Carol Hasburg.”
“Oh. Her. Billy knew her.”
“I know.”
“She’s real nice-looking. For someone that old.”
I smiled. “I’ve known Carol a long time,” I said. “We were classmates.”
“Billy was using her,” Starbright said abruptly.
“For what?”
“I don’t know. He just said he was using her, that’s all. Can we go now?”
“I want you to meet the family, first. Your child’s grandparents. I want them to know who you are.”
“Do I have to?”
“I wish you would. For the child, if nothing else.”
“Well, I’ll do it, but they won’t be happy about it. I know what they think. Billy told me.”
“Let’s just see, shall we? Maybe they’re not that bad.”
I took her hand again and pulled her to where Curt and Laurel were standing, talking quietly with Tom and Gail. The four of them looked at me and then at her and then at me again, then collectively retreated a single step. Their expressions ranged from Tom’s amusement to Laurel’s fright. I realized what I was doing might be the wrong thing for everyone but me, but I plunged ahead. “This is Starbright,” I said. “She lived out at the farm with Billy. Starbright, these are Billy’s parents, Curt and Laurel Tanner, and his aunt and uncle, Tom and Gail Notting.”
“Hi,” Starbright said.
Gail was the only one who returned the greeting.
“Starbright is pregnant,” I went on, as bland as bouillon. “She’s going to have Billy’s child in, what, two months?”
“Three.”
“She’s sure it’s a boy. A Tanner boy. I thought you all should know.”
Curt’s face was as dark as the dirt Billy would soon be wrapped in; I thought for a moment he was going to hit me. Laurel hid behind his heavy shoulder as though to avoid contamination. Gail wore a smile that could have meant peace or war. When someone finally spoke it was Tom. “Were you and Billy married, Starbright?” he asked with false bonhomie.
“No,” she said. “Not like you mean.”
“So we don’t have to treat it like a Tanner, do we?” Tom’s eyes and rhetoric were trained on me.
“Why wouldn’t you want to?” I asked.
“Oh, I’m just getting the options straight,” Tom said. “I think that’s all we need do just now, don’t you?”
“You might have options,” I said to Tom. “I don’t think Curt and Laurel do. This is their grandchild. The only one they’ll have.”
I had hoped Curt would go along with me, would indicate he was willing to embrace Starbright and her baby, or at least not shun them. But he didn’t. He just looked stricken, impossibly wounded by what had happened to him over the past days, including the dilemma I had just presented him. And then I remembered Billy’s disease, and what the dioxin might have done to the fetus, and I could think of nothing to do except retreat.
I guided Starbright away. Somewhere to the left of me I heard Matt telling someone about asphalt pads and covered lanais. “See you at Curt’s, Marsh?” Gail called out. I turned and nodded and then walked on, hoping to hear more from someone in my family but hearing not a word.
Starbright hurried to keep pace, then gripped my arm and stopped me. “I don’t need them for anything, Mr. Tanner,” she said fiercely. “I can take care of my baby just fine.”
“You might not need them, but I think they’re going to need you,” I said, and then walked on.
When we reached the car I helped Starbright inside, then told her I’d be back in a second. For three long minutes I walked through the cemetery, searching for the grave of my parents and finally finding it, one section east of where I thought it was.
The stone was simple, the flowers fresh, Dad’s American Legion marker slightly tilted and tarnished, a charred daisy, its face twisted toward the sun. They’d been dead more than a quarter of a century, dead before I really knew them, before I realized how much they had and could have taught me. People said nice things about them, and I believed the words, but they were probably better or worse than the image I carried in my bag of childhood memories, ever different from what I thought they were.
I gazed at the mound of grass, at the earth that bore our roots. Matt’s viral materialism was down there, and Gail’s obstinacy, Curt’s martyrdom, my own befuddlement, all our traits growing from the union of those bodies, and from the bodies that bore them. I waited a while longer, said hello and then good-bye, then felt a hand fall lightly on my shoulder. It wa
s Arnie Keene, my old teacher and my parents’ old friend. He seemed to have aged since I’d seen him in the coffee shop. I began to wonder how well he’d known Billy.
“They’ve been gone a long time,” he said softly, looking where I had been looking, thinking private thoughts.
“Forever, in a way,” I said.
“It seems like yesterday to me,” he replied.
No one said anything for a moment. The murmurs of the people at the gravesite floated toward us like a muffled motor. “Do you remember her well?” Arnie asked at last.
“Mom? Sure. At least I think I do, but it may be more from pictures than from life. She had a lisp. And always said ‘gosh darn.’ And made peach cobbler all the time.”
“She was a wonderful woman.”
“So they say.”
“The accident was so ridiculous, you know. They just drove right off the road and into a tree. Right on the edge of town, by the new supermarket. Your dad probably drove down there at least once a week. It’s almost as though it was a divine punishment. Craig, too. I feel the same way about my son’s death.”
I’d thought as much about divinity as I cared to for one day. “It does seem weird,” I said. “What time of night was it when they crashed?”
“Eight. Dusk.”
“He didn’t drink, did he?” I asked. “I don’t remember him as a boozer.”
“No. She didn’t, either.”
“Hard to figure,” I mused, ready to leave. But Arnie Keene still lingered, his eyes transfixed by the granite marker that rose before us.
“I think they must have been fighting,” he said slowly. “Arguing about something. And your dad looked away from the road for a moment, perhaps to make a point, and ran off the road. That’s what I think must have happened.”
He looked at me for confirmation. “Sounds plausible,” I agreed. “I’m sure they fought, like every couple does. I can’t remember that much about it, though. I know he’d get mad if dinner wasn’t ready on time.”
Arnie Keene smiled thinly. “Yes. She felt he was too demanding about household matters. And other things. He could be quite stern, at times.”
“You must have known them well.”
He nodded. “This is such a small town. We see our friends several times a week. Almost daily in the summertime. You learn a lot over the years.” He paused. “Enough to think that if things had turned out differently they’d still be alive. That’s what I can’t … I mean, well …”
I looked at him. He seemed gripped by something far more powerful than nostalgia. “What is it, Arnie?” I asked. “Is there something about them I don’t know? Something about their death?”
He shook his head quickly. “No. Nothing. I’m sorry, Marsh. It’s just that they, well, they were very special to me. Even after all these years I still miss them terribly. It’s never been the same since that day; I’ve never been as happy. Does that seem strange?”
“A bit.”
“Maybe when you’re older you’ll understand.”
“Maybe,” I said, then said I had to leave. “Are you coming out to Curt’s?”
“No, I don’t think so. Please express my condolences. Billy was a complex young man, but I enjoyed him. I think he would have contributed a lot.”
“I’ll see you, Arnie,” I said. “Give my best to Ann.”
“Of course.”
Arnie Keene looked down at the gravestone one more time and closed his eyes for a long moment, then opened them and walked toward the other departing mourners. I went back to the car and drove Starbright back to WILD. When we got there I told her I would call her before I left town, to give her my address and telephone number in case she ever needed to reach me or decided to go to California. Then I drove west out of Chaldea, over the twelve miles between me and Glory City, my mind as dead as Billy and my mom and dad.
Seventeen
It had never been a city, and whatever glory it had once suggested to its founder had surely vanished unattained. The majority of houses were either boarded up or stripped to the foundations, which peeked above the earth like fortifications for a private war. Except for the highway that split the town, the streets were neither paved nor peopled. Commerce was confined to a gas pump, a feed store, and a tavern. There had once been a bank and a drugstore, but they were closed—the town profiting from neither money nor neuralgia. Why Curt lived in Glory City was a mystery. The obvious guess was that he had wanted to surround himself with desolation, to do some painful penance. Perhaps with Billy’s death the need for suffering would vanish, or at least evolve.
I found the house easily—it was the only one in the block that appeared inhabited. The plastic sheets stapled over the windows rattled in the wind like regimental guidons. Hay bales ringed the brick foundation to fend off winter winds. The roof seemed too low to allow people to stand with pride beneath it.
As I walked to the door an old couple drove by in a rusted Dynaflow, inspecting me the way they would inspect a Martian. I waved and they waved back. The big car was as incongruous as a pterodactyl. Except for the Buick the entire town seemed still, in mourning for Curt’s loss, in awe of his shame.
No one answered my knock, so I let myself inside. Tom and Gail sat in the front room, surrounded by antique trappings splashed with doilies, looking at everything but each other. The couch they were sitting on was draped with a pale wool blanket. The floor beneath their feet was planks of painted wood. The paper on the walls was the color of blood and water and was decorated with even rows of roses. The only book in sight was a Bible. The way its spine was bent, it was clear it had borne too great a burden for too great a time.
As I was about to say something to Gail, Curt came lumbering into the room, still dazed by the day. When he saw me, his face and eyes turned immediately away. I walked to Curt’s side, still conscious that in trying to help him I had hurt him more. “If I was wrong to bring Starbright to the cemetery, I apologize,” I said to him. “Maybe it wasn’t my place.”
“Maybe it wasn’t,” Curt agreed flatly.
“She’s a fact, though. She and the baby. I just thought you ought to know.”
“Me and the whole town.”
“For God’s sake, Curt. Haven’t you stopped worrying what people are going to say?”
“If you live here, you can’t ever stop worrying about that.”
“The hell you can’t. Besides, from what I’ve learned, people have said everything they could think of to say about Billy already. Why don’t you just decide what’s right and do it?”
“I don’t need you to tell me what’s right, Marsh. I never did.”
“I know you don’t, Curt. I always learned those things from you.”
It was far past time for me to let Curt win. “Maybe I got a little overwhelmed by family obligations,” I went on. “Easy for me, I guess, since I don’t have a family of my own to worry about. So I’ll shut up. And I don’t think you’ll hear from Starbright unless you ask for it. She’s not the type to beg.”
“Billy wouldn’t have been with her if she was,” Curt said, and rubbed his huge hand over his face and sighed from under it. The hand was scarred, its surface as gnarled as a gourd. “It’s just too soon, Marsh. We’ll do right by the baby. If the girl lets us. But don’t expect too much right now, okay? There’s been so much … so much …” His voice broke like rotted timbers.
“I know, Curt.” I hesitated then, unsure of whether to say what I thought I had to. But I’d made so many mistakes with Curt already, I finally decided I might as well make another. “There’s a good chance Billy was murdered, Curt,” I said quietly. “In fact, I’m sure he was.”
He only half heard me. “What was that?”
“I said I think Billy was murdered.”
“You think,” Tom chimed in from the couch. Gail admonished him with a frown he didn’t see.
“Then who did it?” Curt asked me.
“I don’t know. I’m trying to find out.”
�
�How?”
“By talking to people.”
“About what? How will that help?”
“If I learn enough about Billy, I’ll also learn who had a reason to kill him. If I take a strong enough motive to the sheriff, maybe he’ll take the investigation the rest of the way.”
“Everyone had a reason to want Billy dead,” Tom said, again the curmudgeon. “You can start with me.”
There was a time to go into that with Tom, but the time wasn’t now. I ignored him and looked at Curt. “Murder,” Curt said, and made the word itself a sin.
“The sheriff says suicide,” Tom pointed out. “Why don’t you let him handle it? I don’t think we need a big-city detective in on this. Not even the great Marsh Tanner.”
“Would you rather it was suicide, Curt? Does that make it easier, to think Billy took his own life?”
“No. No. How could it?” Curt started out of the room, then stopped. “I just don’t want to talk about it anymore, Marsh. What good will it do, thrashing around after the killer? I mean, we all know the kind of people Billy hung around with. That girl and her like. That guy Zedda, who ought to be in jail. If he was killed, one of those hippies did it. Maybe we should just leave it lay. Let him die, Marsh. That’s what I think. We should just let him die.”
Curt turned toward the kitchen again and my final words were to his back. “He’s already dead, Curt. He’ll stay that way no matter what we do. The question is, will life be easier for you, knowing Billy’s killer is walking around loose?”
“Compared to other things, it just might,” Curt said over his shoulder.
“What other things?”
“Learning something about Billy that will hurt us more than we’re hurt already. Hurt us more than we can stand.”
Curt rushed from the room and the next eyes I saw were Gail’s. “It’s not your business, Marsh,” she said sadly. “Curt’s the one who has to live with it. Not you.”
“I’ve been around families that have suffered a loss like this before, Gail. If the last chapter is never written, the book is never closed, the uncertainty does more damage than the original deed.”
Fatal Obsession Page 14
