Honey

by Brenda Brooks

  “And you’re certain nothing was stolen.”

  “Nothing that I could see.”

  “And nothing ‘thrown around,’ as you put it?”

  “A bit of book and paper chaos in my mother’s office, as always.”

  “Your mother was a therapist, I think?”

  “Uh huh. So maybe the guy was looking for guidance.” He got that droll look Honey and I often exchanged and then asked what made me think it was a guy.

  “Isn’t it usually?”

  “Only sometimes. Sex, money, and death — the great levelers. But tell me something: do you still have the photograph I showed you the last time we met?”

  “It’s around somewhere.”

  “What if I told you that we discovered your personal banking information in that guy’s car the night we found him with a bullet in his head, and that he was an associate of this woman Aurbuck swindled and ditched, Eva Lynch?”

  What do you say to a jam-packed question like that? I just stared at him, reluctant, amazed, which was pretty much the only sensible answer. He said they had reason to believe Lynch may have hired that man, Ivan Haines, to break into the house on Montague, and then somewhere along the line she decided he was a liability, or simply no longer needed him. He made some remark about how that was when she promoted him to “captain of the ship” and described how they found his body in one of Aurbuck’s fancy boats.

  “Forgive the terrible humor,” he said. “Sometimes stupid gags and ugly neckties are all a cop has. But bear with me for one more thing. We’ve been trying to locate Aurbuck’s business partner in regards to a whole slew of irregularities at the bank. We found him two days ago out at the site of the bogus vineyard property. I’d rather not say how — you might say he was guarding the entranceway. Hard to know for sure, but it’s possible that certain financial pressures might have taken their toll.” He stuffed the rest of the croissant in his mouth, balled up his napkin, and dropped it on the plate.

  And then he did ask about Honey after all — though we were back to “Ms. Ramone.” He didn’t wait for me to lie. He said he knew that she had worked with Aurbuck at one time, and he couldn’t help thinking that Honey might have run across Ms. Lynch in her travels, though he sincerely hoped not.

  “I have to tell you, I find Ms. Ramone’s reluctance to appear, or even make contact, troubling. If I were you, I’d be itching to give her a good talking to when, and if, she turns up. Especially in light of your relationship.”

  He paused and looked at me carefully, a gentle half-smile on his face, and said, “Don’t underestimate me, Nicole. I’m not as square as I look.”

  He put his notebook away and went through his pockets, found some change, and dropped a tip between our cups. He acknowledged that he’d disregarded certain protocols in speaking so frankly, and he should probably learn some discretion, but based on everything his office had learned it wouldn’t surprise him if Ms. Ramone had her own pack of troubles with this Aurbuck character back in the day, and having learned a few things about how this guy used women, it probably wasn’t lightweight stuff. He asked if she had been stressed before she disappeared. Had we received any odd communication or phone calls? Was there any reason, as far as I knew, that she could be blackmailed or coerced by someone?

  “Anything at all that you wish to tell me?” he said. “I can be as good a listener as you.” When I didn’t answer he got up and buttoned his coat.

  “Well, then, all I can do is run the numbers. And how I break it down is this: Ms. Ramone has either intentionally gone AWOL or she’s missing. If the former, maybe she’s joined up with a mentally deranged and desperate woman wanted on suspicion of two counts of murder. If, on the other hand, Ms. Ramone is truly missing, then she may have a whole different kind of trouble on her hands. And that seems to suggest that you do too.”

  He took another business card out of his wallet and set it down on the table in front of me, along with a picture.

  “That’s Eva Lynch,” he said. “And here’s my card, in case you’ve lost track of the other.” The woman in the photo had pale blue eyes, striking in contrast to her dark collar-length hair, one of those shagged-out styles. It was a casual shot, a stunning northern lake in the background and a beer perched on the arm of one of those pricy teak patio loveseats. She was attractive, especially without those clunky tortoiseshell eyeglasses.

  Before Detective Smith turned away, he said, “I couldn’t help noticing that you’re not wearing your ring.”

  I glanced at my hand. I’d left the “Love Me Tender” horseshoe ring back at Havenhurst on Honey’s bureau, beside the keys to the wasted MG.

  “Might not be the best time to stop packing a lucky horseshoe,” he said.

  18.

  The clock above the Sugar Bowl’s barista station seemed to triple in size, its hands lurching through the minutes like a clock on a tower, hammering each second home.

  It started to snow. I waited until Det. Smith reached the intersection and turned the corner, then forced myself to linger another ten minutes. By the time I left the café it was snowing hard and the wind had picked up, gusting all the way down Broad and out through town to the corn fields and line of gray trees beyond. Shops starting closing, people got back on the road and made for home. My first thought was to grab a taxi to Havenhurst, pick up my car, and head out to Villa Capri, but Blue Angel cabs only had two cars left in Buckthorn and neither of them were in sight, so I started walking. Deadline Xmas. Did Lynch’s demand mean one minute after midnight and no promises? Or did I have all day? The old hourglass lodged in my mind, full of sifting snow.

  It was about 6 p.m. and I hadn’t dressed for the weather: a pair of sneakers, windbreaker, no gloves or hat. I had thought I’d be back at the house by then, pacing to and fro and imagining how I’d give Honey what she had coming, and then take it all back again. That video kept playing through my mind: her all trussed up on the bed in the RV, that expression in her eyes. Two blocks away I saw a cab parked outside the 7/11, motor running, roof light on. The driver was inside buying a package of cigarettes and yakking with the cashier. When I asked him if he could take me out to Havenhurst he said the roads were closed until morning. “How about Villa Capri?” I said. Same thing. He was sticking to fares in town because his tires were crap. I thanked him, went back outside, got in his cab, and drove away.

  He was right about the tires. I slid into a post box, threw the cab into reverse, and charged off again, fishtailing and sliding all the way to motel row, slowing only when the Capri’s diver in her red bathing suit came into sight, the snow falling into her little patch of neon waves.

  I tucked myself in next to the old railway station as before and waited for the RV to surrender some secret, a shred of information that might help me know what to think, or do, and when to do it. Shadows moved around inside, barely discernible against the venetian blinds. Snow fell heavy and fast on the windshield and built until it was half-dark inside the cab, blocking out the ruin of the train station, the torn-up tracks and rusted rail cars. The Capri’s neon pulsed against the crust of snow: red, yellow, blue. I let it build, then touched the wipers and swept it away.

  About half an hour later, the door of the RV opened. What if Honey stepped out of the trailer? That would mean that she had the freedom to come and go — and hadn’t gone.

  But it wasn’t her.

  She walked around to the side of the RV, opened an outside hatch of some sort, and searched around. She wore no overcoat, no toque this time — just jeans and a hoodie. She pulled the hood over her hair and bent down to sort through the contents of the compartment and then straightened up, something in her hand. And then, just as I rolled the window a few inches down to get a better look, the taxi’s radio flared in the silence: the dispatcher trying to locate my driver, or my driver attempting to find his stolen car. I sank down in the seat, reached forward, and switched it
off. She gazed through the falling snow for five, seven, nine seconds. Just then the wind rose and rattled the swing set behind the trailer, a sharp tear in the night’s hush. She turned and walked back to the RV, stepped in, and closed the door.

  * * *

  An hour later nothing had changed: lights still on, quiet inside. I reached into my pocket to check my cell and remembered that I’d left it at home, trying to get away from the madness. And now there I sat twenty yards from that madness and Honey couldn’t reach me if she wanted to, and maybe she did. It crossed my mind to pull up to the door, tap the horn, and inquire if anyone had ordered a taxi. While I chatted up the woman who’d gone over the deep end, Honey could slip out through the bathroom window, because isn’t that how it works? But what if it didn’t? No sign of life in the motel manager’s office. He’d probably made a beeline for home when the storm began, so there’d be no assistance there.

  By 11 p.m. I couldn’t feel my fingertips. Whenever the video of Honey, gagged and tied, started rolling through my mind I replaced it with something else: me and her in bed in Vegas, or a loop of the two of us through the years. I had just convinced myself to get out of the cab, go up to the door, grab that little camping hatchet, and damn the consequences when tap, tap on my driver window.

  I rolled the window down enough to see his unshaven cheek, the Rudolph tie-clip, and smell the Fisherman’s Friend lozenge on his breath.

  “What’s going on, Nicole?” he said.

  He motioned me over, opened the door, and slipped in beside me.

  An inch or two of snow encased the windshield once again and we sat there together as if in a diving bell at the bottom of the sea, the neon coral surging in the distance. He said that a very long and entirely frank chat was in order, but there wasn’t time. He told me that he’d parked his car in front of Frank’s Pawn Shop two blocks down, because that’s what you do when you want to keep an eye on someone without their knowledge.

  “At least two blocks away in front of an active business, even if it’s closed, rather than draw attention to yourself by parking beside an abandoned station that hasn’t seen a train in twenty years. You’re lucky, color-wise, that it’s Blue Angel and not Yellow Cab.” All of this was said in an eerily familiar tone. Who was this guy anyway? Had my mother somehow gotten to him before she died and made him promise with a capital P: never let her tough love die?

  “Here, put these on,” he said and handed me his gloves.

  We stared at the RV.

  “I know it’s pointless to tell you to get out of the taxi and walk back to my car, so I won’t waste our time on that. I guess you know that’s Eva Lynch inside.”

  “I do now,” I said.

  “And that’s Ms. Ramone in there with her, isn’t it?” I didn’t have to say a thing. For the first time in all our exchanges I let my unguarded face answer for me. He sat back and took his cell phone out of his pocket — except it wasn’t his, it was mine.

  “You received another video,” he said and apologized for having to expropriate the phone. He said the video had come in an hour ago — and he didn’t like what it told him. He pulled his cuff down and flashed the light on his watch.

  “What about the video?”

  He didn’t answer. I asked again and reached for the phone. He shifted it to his other hand and into his pocket.

  “I know you’ve been to the bank, Nicole. And I know Eva Lynch is blackmailing you — maybe the two of you. I may even know why.”

  “Give me that phone,” I said.

  He turned in his seat to face me.

  “Listen carefully, because in about four minutes I’m going to get out, walk around the back of the RV, tuck myself in, and wait there. I want you to back out and drive the cab around the block to the main entrance of the Capri, and then straight up to the trailer, headlights facing the door. Nicole, are you listening?”

  All I could manage was a nod.

  “Leave the motor running and tap the horn, as if you were picking up a fare. She’ll look out the window to see who it is and assume you’ve gotten the wrong address. I’ll be standing to the left of the trailer door, in the shadows. Honk again — and again, if necessary, until she opens up and tells you to go fuck yourself.” He gave me a small smile. “Then I want you to switch the headlights on bright and leave them on. You must do this before she goes back in, while her eyes are on the cab, on you, so the brights will blind her long enough for me to approach from behind. That’s vital.” He said we didn’t have much time. “Can you do it?” He saw I couldn’t get my mind off the video and took my hand.

  “Look at me,” he said. “Things have gotten serious, but maybe they haven’t gone too far. Now’s the time to find your moxie. Because I have a feeling both you and Honey have that in droves, though it may have gone off the rails somewhere along the line. Are you with me?”

  “All the way.”

  “I knew you would be.”

  He opened the door and got out. “Wait until I’m there.”

  I watched him pass through the shadows along the Capri’s perimeter, behind the swing set, and conceal himself next to the steps leading up to the RV’s door, then I started the cab and backed slowly out of the lot, down the length of the train station, past his car, shifted into drive, and continued around the block, skidding and sliding all the way. My watch said it was about five minutes to midnight and I realized that the last video from Lynch, whatever else it showed, must have included the answer to my worry about the deadline: did I have until midnight, or all of Christmas Day? Now I knew.

  I drove into the Villa Capri’s lot, past the neon sign, and continued along the row of empty units, snow drifting in webs across their windows. When I reached the RV I turned and parked so that the headlights faced the door, as Smith had directed, and tapped the horn. He gestured from the shadows: again, and harder. The wipers seemed to beat in time with the neon, as if the taxi had been wired into the works somewhere. I leaned on the horn. When the door didn’t open, Smith stepped out of the shadows, gun in hand. He drew his hand across his throat — kill the lights — and moved toward the entranceway and up the steps to the door.

  She appeared as suddenly as he had himself, as if assembled from nothing out of the blowing snow, and approached him from behind. And then the hatchet in her hand got wired into the works too and flashed under the neon’s yellow, blue, red. When she flailed at him with the axe he fell backwards down the steps, tried to get up, then lay still. She turned and came toward me. Just as she reached the car I switched the brights back on and she stood there in the glare, her arm shielding her eyes, the weapon raised. On she came, and then stopped and stood for a few seconds — and collapsed across the hood of the car, her blood seeping into the freshly fallen snow. At first I didn’t understand. I never heard the gun.

  I ran to Smith and crouched over him. The Rudolph tie clip came to life and flashed crazily at his chest. I pulled the cell from his pocket, called 9-1-1, and then up the RV steps and down the hall into the bedroom. I didn’t think anything could be eerier than the chaos I imagined, but the RV’s interior was neat and tidy, obsessively so — not like Honey at all. Only the bedroom was in disarray, and down the darkened passageway — a hellish banging, like someone trying to break through the wall with a sledge hammer. For a few seconds I convinced myself that I’d see Honey standing there, wild-eyed, hauling back to strike another blow. And I’d take the hammer from her hands and tell her, You can let go now. No, really. It’s over.

  And suddenly it was over — in all the wrong ways. Because she wasn’t there. An emergency exit window had been pushed away and set about crashing in the wind — nothing but acres of white, wind-swept fields spread out beyond; the pure, virgin snow of Buckthorn County. Not a track in sight.

  * * *

  They scoured the RV the next morning. It was clear Honey had been there for days after the bank meetings in Torrent. The
T-shirt she had worn in the video lay on the floor in a tangle of bloody sheets next to the bed. The police began to conjecture that when things started to heat up, Lynch got rid of her and continued with the charade. “Ceased to have need of her,” Detective Smith might have said, if he hadn’t been lying unconscious over at Buckthorn General.

  The news reports said that when they searched Lynch’s van they found a wardrobe of expensive outfits, men’s, women’s, custom most of it, all lined up on hangers or folded neatly into storage drawers. Maybe this was the sum of what remained after Aurbuck decimated her inheritance, the useless trappings of the life she was forced to shed.

  I knew there might be trouble when Smith came to, because he would have seen the cell phone video of Honey and me doing that craziness behind Havenhurst. I was surprised I hadn’t already been arrested and expected as much all along. But she was gone, so what did it matter? I’d just wait for whatever might come.

  * * *

  Christmas passed into the new year. I lost track of time and began taking long drives searching for a sign of some kind. Sometimes I parked and looked out over the abandoned golf course next to Havenhurst, its tattered flags snapping in the wind. The parking lot remained empty, the whole building dark except for the subterranean light in the foyer.

  Other times I drove to motel row and sat staring at the Eldorado out back of the Capri: long, slim, and silver — streaks of snow across its hood and drifts up past the rocker panels. Before the police dragged it off to the compound I had a look inside. Inez’s old cassettes cluttered the dash, as ever. Old paper cups lay scattered on the floor. The keys were in the ignition so I slipped behind the wheel and gave them a try: a click and then nothing. Even so there was a certain defiance in its silence, as though the moment I turned my back it would rumble to life and begin its charge across the field and lift off into the winter sky. I liked that thought and returned to it often.