Tracy came over to us. “How ya doin’?” she said. “You think Sarah would take another story from me this soon?” she asked me.
“Looks like all the news is happening up here,” I said. “Maybe we can set up a bureau, you and I can run it. What’s happening?”
“Tiff Riley didn’t show up for work this morning, or so they thought. He was on late last night, was supposed to be here first thing this morning, nobody could find him, so they called home and got his wife, Edna-that’s why they called him Tiff, because he was always arguing with her on the phone, his real name was Terrence-and she said he’d never come home the night before. She figured he got drunk or something. Anyway, someone was putting together a fertilizer order, went around to where they store it, they find Tiff there.”
Tracy was pretty excited as she told it. Clearly, what with Morton Dewart and now Tiff Riley, she was having a terrific week, journalistically speaking.
“What happened to him?” I asked.
“He got stabbed.” She pointed to her own stomach. “Right here. Couple of times. I took a peek in there. There’s all kinds of blood on the floor. The guy who got eaten by the bear? That was the first dead body I ever saw, and now, like two days later, I get to see another one. Do you think there’s any chance The Metropolitan would hire me on? Like, as staff? I could move to the city, no problem. I know you get a lot of dead bodies down there, and I could look at one every day if I had to.”
“You’d probably be best talking to Sarah about that,” I said. Just inside the garage door I could see Orville questioning an older man in a green shirt. “Excuse me,” I said. I walked over, approaching from Orville’s blind side so I could hear what they were talking about without him having a big hissy.
The man in the green shirt was saying, “He was on late last night. It’s not like we have a security guard or anything, we’ve never had much need for anything like that, but Tiff was always happy to work late if that meant not going home to Edna, and there was a lot of tidying up to do, so he offered to hang in and make a bit of overtime, lock up when he was done. Got here this morning, didn’t notice much out of the ordinary, but Tiff was due in at nine, and by ten-thirty there’s still no sign of him, so I called Edna, and she hadn’t seen no trace of him either. So we started to wonder where he was.”
“Who found him?” Orville asked.
A young woman in a green shirt took half a step forward. She looked rattled, like she’d been crying earlier. “I was just doing some inventory work when I found him, found Tiff, down aisle nine. He’d been, like, stuffed in between some bags of fertilizer so you wouldn’t see him if you were looking down the aisle, you’d only see him once you got there.”
“Tiff have any enemies?” Orville asked.
The older man and the other employees shrugged. “Not really,” said one. “Everyone liked Tiff,” said another.
“Is there anything missing?” I asked.
Orville whirled around. “What the hell are you doing here?”
I said nothing, hoping maybe someone would answer my question. I guess the employees sensed the instant tension between us and decided it was better to answer questions posed to them by the police chief, rather than strangers.
Orville turned his back on me, hesitated a moment, and said, “Well, is there?”
“Uh, we haven’t really done a complete check yet,” said the older man, who I figured must be a manager or owner, or both. “We’re going to do that, just as soon as we can. We’re all a bit shook up.”
“Some of the fertilizer’s gone,” said the woman who’d found him.
“Fertilizer?” said Orville.
“Quite a bit,” she said. “Twenty, thirty bags, I’d say. I’ll have to check.”
Orville scribbled down some notes. “What the hell would anyone steal bags of fertilizer for?”
I said, “Maybe so there wouldn’t be a way to trace that kind of stuff to the purchaser.”
Orville turned around slowly, let out a sigh. “Okay, why would anyone not want somebody to know they’d bought a lot of fertilizer?”
“Maybe because of what it contains.”
Dad had worked his way over and had heard the last few exchanges. “Ammonium nitrate,” he said. Dad, I seemed to recall, was fairly good at chemistry back in his high school days.
“What the hell is ammonium nitrate?” Orville asked.
“If Timothy McVeigh were still alive,” I said, “you could ask him.”
14
Driving back into town, I said to Dad, “Wasn’t one of the reasons you moved up to Braynor so that you wouldn’t have so much to worry about?”
Dad snorted. “Wasn’t that why you moved to the suburbs?” We hadn’t talked a lot over the years, Dad and I, but he knew all about what had happened when I moved my family from downtown to the suburban enclave of Oakwood, where my friend Trixie still lived and plied her trade. The plan had been to find a safer place to live, and it had backfired rather spectacularly.
“Things don’t always work out the way you expect, do they?” I said, offering him a grin.
“I didn’t move up here trying to avoid a high crime rate,” Dad said. “I just wanted a simpler life.”
“I was remembering that time we came up around here with the tent trailer,” I said. “I found you down by the lake, your feet in the water, just sitting there, and you looked more peaceful than I’d ever seen you. And then, once we got home, you were your old, cranky self.”
Dad smiled. “I don’t know how I did it for so long. The whole nine-to-five, Monday-to-Friday thing, commuting, the suit and tie, the ass-kissing, day after day, week after week, month after month, year after year of numbers. Numbers, numbers, numbers.”
“I’m guess you get a lot of those in accounting,” I said.
“And I loved numbers. I guess I still love numbers. Numbers impose order. They make everything work. They create this, this sense of balance in the universe. There’s nothing quite so satisfying as when things add up the way they’re supposed to. But one day, I’m sitting at my desk, doing the Fiderberg account, they had this chain of office supply stores, and I’m looking at the numbers, and it was like I’d never seen them before. I was looking at a three, the way it’s like two incomplete circles stacked atop each other, and I thought, why is that a three? Who decided that three things would be represented by a symbol that looked like that? Why couldn’t it have been a straight line coming down into a semicircle, like a cup? It would have made just as much sense. And then I started looking at all the numbers that way. Why is a seven a line across and then down on an angle? What does that have to do with seven things?”
“You’re scarin’ me, Dad,” I said, but when he looked at me he could see that I was kidding.
“I decided I’d had enough. Your mother was gone, I was ready to do something else, to leave all that bullshit behind. And I remembered how at peace I felt up here, how I might be able to relax in a way I’d never been able to before. I found Denny’s Cabins, and I liked the fact that there was just five of them. A single digit. Something manageable.” Dad pointed to Henry’s Grocery. “We need a couple things.”
“Perfect,” I said. “I can get a toothbrush.”
I pulled over to the curb, put the truck in park, killed the ignition, but made no move to open the door.
“Do you think Mom would have liked living up here?” I asked.
Dad lips went in and out while he pondered that. “I’ve thought about that. Because,” he struggled for a moment here, “I still miss her. I mean, Lana’s terrific, and we have fun together.”
I smiled, and resisted the temptation to tease.
“But there was only one woman like your mother.” Dad blew his nose into a handkerchief, shoved it back into his pocket. “She put up with a lot with me.” He looked out his window so I couldn’t see his face. “And anything she ever did, it was nothing compared to what a pain in the ass I could be to her. That’s why I think she might have liked i
t up here, because living here has made me a better person, I think.”
“We all have our moments,” I said. “You should talk to Sarah about me.”
Dad nodded, still looking away. “I don’t know whether you’ve ever noticed this,” he said, “but I can be a bit difficult to get along with at times.”
“Really,” I said. “Where I work, this is where someone would shout ‘Stop the presses!’ ”
He smiled tiredly. “Yeah, that’s a bulletin all right. I just kind of like things done a certain way, and all the things I’ve ever done, as a husband and as a father, it’s been to make sure you and your mom and Cindy were safe.”
“Yeah, well, I think I understand.”
“And that meant that sometimes I may have nitpicked a bit,” Dad said. “I was hard on your mother.”
He was being so forthright, I thought maybe I could broach that period of my youth that remained the most shrouded in mystery, when Mom left for six months.
“Is that why Mom went away, that time?” I said. “Why she walked out on us?”
Dad seemed to be focused on the lock to the glove box, staring at it. “That’s hard for me to talk about.”
“This is going to come out sounding, you know, accusatory,” I said, hesitantly, “but what did you do that made Mom leave?”
Dad kept looking at the glove box, poking his tongue around the inside of his cheek. “Let me tell you what we need,” he said.
“Hmm?”
“We need some milk, some cream for coffee, since that’s the way you take yours, something for dinner. You pick something. I don’t care. Pork chops, a roast chicken, whatever the hell you want. I’ll just wait here and listen to the radio. Wait, let me give you some money.” He was reaching around to his back pocket for his wallet.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“No, no, you’re my guest. I can pay for the damn groceries.”
“Dad, forget it.” I had the door open and was crossing the street before he could protest any further.
I grabbed a small plastic basket, figuring I wouldn’t be buying enough to justify a big wobbly cart. I bought myself a toothbrush and toothpaste and a basic plastic comb, then headed for the meat section. I looked at steak and pork tenderloin and cuts of chicken, settled on some thick butterfly chops, then checked out the varieties of instant side dishes. I had a package of Uncle Ben’s wild rice in my hand when I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, something short standing next to me.
I turned and saw young Jeffrey Wickens standing there, and not far behind him, pushing a cart, his mother, May.
“Hi,” said Jeffrey. “Remember me?”
“Of course I do,” I said. “You’re my Star Wars guy. How are you, Jeffrey?”
“Good.” He nodded. “I’ve already done all my school for today.”
“Isn’t that great,” I said, smiling at May as she drew closer. “Most kids, they’re probably still in school now, will be for a couple more hours.”
“I know,” he said. “Sometimes I wish I got recess, though, so I could play with other kids.”
I nodded my understanding. May, a smile still evidently beyond her, said, “Hello, Mr. Walker.”
“Zack, please,” I said. “Nice to see you again. Picking up a few groceries?” A keen observer, that’s me.
May Wickens nodded. “We need a few things,” she said flatly. “Jeffrey likes to come with me when I shop. It’s nice for him to get away from the house.” She paused. “Nice for all of us.”
There was something about her eyes. A pleading quality. They were tired, and sad, and it wasn’t hard to figure out why, losing her boyfriend earlier in the week. But there was more than mere grief in May Wickens’s eyes. She had the look of a hostage who doesn’t expect the ransom will ever come.
“I’d just like to say, once again, thank you for dinner last night,” I said, putting the image of the impaled mouse aside for a moment, “and tell you how sorry I am about Mr. Dewart.”
May’s eyes looked down. “Thank you,” she said. She seemed to be wanting to say something else, her lips parting, then closing.
“Jeffrey,” she said, “why don’t you go pick out a cereal and maybe some cookies?”
“Sure,” he said, and scurried off.
I leaned in a bit closer. “Are you okay?”
She raised her head, looked to the side, avoiding direct eye contact. “I, I just…”
I waited. I was about to put a hand on her arm, up by the shoulder, but held back, not sure whether that was the right thing to do, especially in a place as public as this grocery store.
“What is it again that you do, Mr. Walk-Zack?”
“I’m a writer,” I said. “I work for The Metropolitan. I write features, mostly. And I’ve written some books.”
“So you work for a newspaper?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know if I should be talking to you.” Her eyes darted up and down the grocery aisle.
“I’m not interviewing you,” I said. I gave her my friendliest smile. “We’re just talking. That’s all.”
“I just, I wish I had someone to talk to.”
“Sure. Listen, would you like to go get a coffee? Lana’s is just a couple of doors down. It’s good coffee, and I can recommend the coconut cream pie.”
“I don’t know,” she said.
“I’d be happy to buy you a coffee. I’d even like to, if it wouldn’t upset you too much, ask you a couple of questions about Mr. Dewart, about Morton. I mean, there’s been so much activity around our place related to what happened to him, but I don’t feel that I know a single thing about him.”
“Maybe, if we went quickly,” May Wickens said, her eyes still scanning. “Let me, let me figure out what to do with Jeffrey. He can’t know, he’ll tell them, I mean-”
“Sure,” I said. “If you don’t want to be seen leaving with me, I’ll just head over and meet you there.”
Suddenly, Jeffrey was back, dumping two boxes of sugary cereal and a bag of Oreos into May’s basket. “What else can I get?” he asked.
“Very nice seeing you again,” I said to May, and then to Jeffrey, “You take care, okay? You get any more cool Star Wars stuff, you show me, okay?”
“I’ve got a Millennium Falcon,” he said.
“And a Han Solo figure?”
“Yup.”
I put a hand on his shoulder. “You take it easy, okay? And take good care of your mom. She’s had a tough week.”
“Sure thing,” Jeffrey said.
I got to the checkout and tossed a local paper and a magazine onto the conveyor belt with my few items. While the cashier was ringing them through, the white-coated Mr. Henry reappeared with his clipboard.
“Would you like to sign our petition to-”
And then he recognized me as the son of a bitch who wouldn’t sign it the last time I was in.
“Oh, you,” he said, still looking like he was picking up a bad smell off of everyone around him.
“Still not interested,” I said.
“So you don’t care that our parade, this town’s traditions, are being hijacked by special interests out to promote their agenda?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Those gays, and the lesbians. They want to ruin our parade.”
“I see,” I said. “Can I ask you something?”
“Sure.”
“You’ve heard about those starving kids in Africa?”
He nodded.
“Global warming and the depletion of the ozone layer and how the polar ice caps will probably all melt someday and we’ll all be underwater?”
He nodded again, but his eyes were narrowing.
“Crack babies? The shortage of safe drinking water in the next few years? Rogue nations with nuclear bombs? You’ve heard of those things?”
Henry nodded a third time, and this time he spoke. “What’s your point?”
I tapped the petition on his clipboard with my fi
nger. “And this is what you’re collecting signatures for? This is what’s got your shorts in a knot?”
I handed over a twenty to the cashier, grabbed my bagful of items, and said to Henry, “I’d love to chat longer, but my boyfriend gets very pissy if his lunch isn’t on the table on time.”
I walked out of the grocery store, past a phone booth, crossed the street and opened the door to the truck.
“Tell me how much you spent and I’ll reimburse you,” Dad said.
“I don’t think I’ll be able to shop there again,” I said. “In fact, you might not be able to shop there again.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Dad, you okay here for a while?” I said. “I ran into someone in the store, I’m just gonna grab a quick coffee, I’ll just be a few minutes.”
“Who?”
If I told him, he might object, or at least have more questions than I had time to answer. “Just sit tight, okay? Here, I bought you The Braynor Times, and a Newsweek.”
“I could stand to pee,” Dad said.
“We all stand to pee, Dad,” I said. “That’s what makes us men.”
“Are you going to be long?”
“Can you last fifteen minutes or so?”
“Just try to be quick.”
I ran down half a block to Lana’s, caught her eye as I walked in, and took a table in the back corner. There was no sign yet of May Wickens.
Lana strolled over. “Where’s your father?”
“I ditched him,” I said, giving her my just-kidding smile. “Listen, could I trouble you for a couple of coffees? I’m supposed to be meeting someone.”
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