by Sam Reaves
She instantly regretted her impulse when she saw that instead of Natalia it was Luis Menéndez that stood behind the counter. Abby stopped just inside the door and almost turned and bolted, but Luis had seen her, and as dejected as she was, Abby was not prepared to lose that much face. She approached the counter, Luis watching her with a sullen, heavy-lidded look. There were a couple of customers down one aisle but Abby barely noticed them. “Hi, Luis. Is your sister around?”
He shifted just slightly, slouching, his chin rising. “We don’t serve snitches in here.”
Abby blinked a few times. “Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I don’t want your business and I don’t want you hanging around my sister. Go back and tell the cops it’s over. They gotta find a new snitch.”
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Yeah, right. Frederick gets killed and the cops come for me. Because we had a fight, they said. How’d they know about that? Who was there? I don’t think my sister told them about it.”
Abby drew a sharp breath, anger flaring. “Well, it wasn’t me. That’s ridiculous.”
“Yeah. Get the fuck out of here.” He flapped a hand toward the door. “Go on, go tell your bosses if they want to infiltrate this here big Mexican drug cartel, they gotta do better than a silly-ass white bitch who can’t even speak Spanish.”
“You are out of your mind.”
“Get out of my store.”
Abby glared for a couple of seconds longer and got out. She got in her car and drove the three blocks to her house a little recklessly, telling herself: you will not cry. She parked on the lawn under the tree but sat with the engine idling. For a moment she wanted to turn the car around, point it toward the interstate, and floor it until she hit the George Washington Bridge. Better yet, ditch the car at the Indianapolis airport and be home tonight. She turned off the ignition, got out and went down the steps at the side of the house and let herself into her apartment. She slammed the door, went into her bedroom, flopped on the bed and pulled a pillow over her head and cried.
Abby was not especially a fan of the classical lute, but a renowned virtuoso was on campus for the first guest concert of the year, and she quailed at the thought of an evening alone. She devoted an hour to grading problem sets, five minutes to hair and makeup, and thirty seconds to the question of whether to drive. The concert was in the college’s spanking-new arts center on the north side of campus, an easy walk and a trivial drive away. Abby considered the prospect of walking home alone after nightfall and grabbed her keys.
The parking lot at the side of the arts center was nearly full when she got there. She sat in her car, watching a steady flow of students coming across the green, making for the broad front steps of the auditorium. Ben will be here, she thought. For a moment she was on the point of restarting the car and fleeing.
The sight of Philip and Ruth Herzler emerging from their car rescued her. Abby took the keys out of the ignition and timed her exit to cross paths with them. She managed to put on a bright face as she greeted them and fell in step. They seemed glad to see her and her spirits rose. “I’m not sure I could even reliably identify a lute,” she confessed as they entered the hall.
The classical lute, it turned out, produced music that was melodic, soothing and highly soporific. Abby began to fight heavy eyelids shortly before intermission. When the lights came up she revived enough to follow the Herzlers up the steps into the lobby. Coffee was being dispensed from behind a counter on one side and Abby gave it a long look, but the Herzlers seemed uninterested and she felt inclined to cling to them. She smiled at a couple of students who caught her eye but tried not to let her gaze wander.
“So, things running smoothly, I hope?” said Philip. “I got the impression the other day at lunch that you were feeling a bit harried. I hope you got your papers graded.”
“I did. But that wasn’t the real problem.” She hesitated: Did she want to unburden herself here? The looks of expectant concern on the Herzlers’ faces decided her. She made a quick scan of the crowd, lowered her voice, and said, “I’ve got a student who’s veering way over the line with personal remarks.” She told them about Ben.
“Not unheard of,” said Herzler when she had finished. “But it’s always disturbing. Did you talk to Bill Olsen?”
“Just by e-mail. He told me to document everything, and if it happens again refer it to the dean of students. I’m not sure why I have to wait for another creepy remark to do that, but I’m willing to follow the rules.”
“You can always go talk to Richard Spassky. There are procedures, and they’re excruciatingly slow, but he’ll appreciate the heads-up. And he’ll be on your side. Talk to him tomorrow.”
The crowd around them shifted and Lisa Beth loomed at Abby’s elbow, gaunt and gimlet-eyed. “Hello, kids. Everybody enjoying the show?” Just behind her came her husband, beaming at them with his usual bonhomie.
“It’s a change of pace from the Rachmaninoff, isn’t it?” said Ruth.
“Real toe-tapping stuff,” said Jerry.
“Jerry’s under orders to pinch me if I start to snore,” said Lisa Beth.
Herzler’s face took on a frown. “I saw your story about this killing,” he said. “That is just unbelievable. Have they really not found the man’s head?”
“Not as of this afternoon. Hence the media circus over by the police station. They’ve had all the Indianapolis TV stations and one from Chicago jostling for space in the parking lot. They’ve confirmed it’s Jud Frederick’s body, from the prints, I believe, but his head’s still AWOL.”
Ruth shuddered. “Horrible. Why would anyone do that?”
Lisa Beth shrugged. “It’s not unprecedented. There was a case in Texas, I believe, not too long ago, where the killer made off with the head. The cartels down in Mexico started the fad, apparently. They dump the head with the person they want to send a message to.”
They all contemplated that for an uncomfortable moment. “Not that I think that’s what’s going on here,” said Lisa Beth. “I’m a skeptic about this Mexican angle.” She turned to Abby. “How are you, sweetheart? Hanging in there?”
Startled, Abby said, “So far, so good.”
“Is your landlord here tonight?”
“Um, not that I know of.”
“OK, didn’t mean to insinuate anything. His folks always came to these things. I guess he’s not a lute enthusiast. How is young Ned as a landlord? Satisfactory?”
“As a landlord? Great.”
They stared at her, apparently waiting for more. Herzler rescued her by saying, “Young Ned? I think he must be in his midforties by now. He was still in high school, I think, when we first got here.”
Ruth laughed. “Goodness, have we been here that long? I remember he was a really friendly kid, but kind of wild, or so they said.”
Lisa Beth said, “Yeah, there was some friction in the family, as I recall.” She looked at her husband.
Jerry shrugged and said, “I heard Tom McLaren call him a wastrel and a prodigal son and so forth on occasion. It just seemed they were estranged. It was kind of sad. I don’t know if they ever reconciled before Tom died.”
“Ned had a somewhat mysterious career,” said Ruth.
Abby said, “He was a mining engineer. Mostly in Africa. That’s what he told me.”
“Yes. But there was always something . . . vague about that. We would ask about Ned, and Tom and Nancy would say something like, ‘Well, we’re not really sure where he is right now.’ And then somebody said, on the usual good authority that is never identified, that he was in the CIA.”
Lisa Beth made a scoffing noise. “Sounds dubious to me. Sounds like Tom McLaren romanticizing. But who knows?”
Ruth shrugged. “Anyway, he was away for years and then came back. And he’s kept pretty much to himself since he did.”
A chime sounded and the lobby lights dimmed for a moment, and people began to move toward the doors to the auditorium
. Abby started to drift in the wake of the Herzlers but felt Lisa Beth’s hand on her arm, gently holding her back. They halted and Lisa Beth murmured in her ear, “So how’s the morale? I’m sorry if I shocked you the other day.”
“Well, there’s been no sign of Mexican hit men in Hickory Lane yet. Or severed heads.” Abby flashed a smile. “I’m all right as long as it’s light out. At night it gets a little scary.”
“I can imagine. Listen, if you need company, don’t hesitate to call. I can come over and just be there if you want. Or you could come over to our place, just hang out for an evening, get some work done, have a glass of wine, just not be alone. I don’t know if that appeals to you. I’d put Jerry on notice not to pester you with shaggy-dog stories and reminiscences of student days in Bloomington.”
“Thank you, Lisa Beth.” Abby looked into the older woman’s face, seeing past the cultivated severity of her looks to something softer in the dark eyes. “I may take you up on that. I appreciate it.”
“Oh, honey, any time. Well, you’d better go catch up with Philip and Ruth if you want a comfortable seat to nap through the rest of this. What’s the matter?”
Abby had started to turn but stopped, catching sight of a figure on the other side of the lobby, alone in the thinning crowd.
Ben Larch stood staring at her, hands in his pockets, head jutting forward, the look on his face troubled, as if the sight of her pained him.
“Nothing,” said Abby, breaking eye contact and starting to move again. “Nobody worth talking to.”
Abby prided herself on her rational faculties, her power to dominate the lizard brain with the primate brain. It comes down to timing, she thought, stepping carefully as she descended the stone steps at the side of the house, keys in hand, the light high on the eaves illuminating grass and trees within a fifty-foot radius behind the house. I can get the door open, slip inside, and throw the bolt in three to five seconds, faster than a man waiting in the darkness at the edge of the woods can cover those fifty feet.
I just have to make it to the door before he steps into the light. She paused at the foot of the steps, searching the penumbra, listening. Two hundred yards away there was the sound of traffic on Jackson Avenue behind its screen of trees. There was the soft rustling of branches, the distant trickle of water in the stream, somewhere out in the dark the high-pitched cry of an animal. Abby waited, feeling her primate brain asserting itself. When she felt sure, she stepped briskly toward her door. As she pulled open the screen door she took a look over her shoulder, saw nothing, and froze.
Sight and hearing were not her only senses. She sniffed, aware of a pungent odor, familiar but surprising, wafting on the gentle breeze. Someone was smoking marijuana, not too far away.
Abby twisted the key in the lock and ducked inside, slamming the door and shooting the deadbolt home. Primate brain, she thought, do your stuff. Who smokes dope around here? Ned? The retired doctor next door? How far can a night breeze carry a scent? All the way from frat house row?
Abby turned and leaned back against the door, replacing her keys in her purse, shoulders sagging. The smell of a burning joint near a college campus was nothing to panic over. There were other matters to attend to. She put down her purse, kicked off her shoes, and then stood for a moment, wavering, looking at the sideboard backed against the wall at the foot of the stairs.
Early on, mildly curious and by way of familiarizing herself with her new home, Abby had poked around briefly in the sideboard, sliding open the drawers, turning the key that sat in the lock to pull open the double doors enclosing the bottom shelves. The drawers were full of junk, dog-eared decks of cards and stray lenses from long-broken pairs of glasses; the shelves underneath held old board games, discarded glassware and a box full of old photographs and envelopes.
Abby had scrupulously replaced the box after identifying it as a trove of family memorabilia; it was none of her business. It still wasn’t any of her business, but her curiosity regarding her landlord had been piqued again, and now a mischievous voice was telling her that if there was anything especially private here, it wouldn’t have been left for her to find. She opened the sideboard, pulled out the box, and took it to the sofa. She set it on the coffee table and with the slightest twinge of guilt began to paw through the photographs, faded prints from a time before digital cameras.
They appeared to date from the seventies and eighties, judging by clothes and hair. Ned was easy to spot in a Little League uniform or a high school yearbook shot, impossibly young but unmistakable. With him were people Abby identified as the family: Here he was with his parents and sister, all dressed up at her high school graduation. Here was Ned with a prom date, looking self-conscious in a rented tux, the girl smiling dutifully, clutching her corsage. Here was Ned with Everett Elford.
They were standing side by side, T-shirted and squinting on a sunny day, farm buildings visible behind them. Ned was thin and wiry, Everett more solidly built but not yet going soft, a couple of robust kids in their late teens. They were working hard to look tough, scowling at the camera, and not quite pulling it off despite the guns they were brandishing. They both held handguns, fingers on the triggers, muzzles to the sky, affecting a gunslinger pose. They didn’t look particularly tough, but all it takes is a gun to make a boy look dangerous.
Abby frowned at the photo for a moment and then shoved it back into the box. She rose and took the box back to the sideboard and shut it away, turning the key in the lock. None of my business, she thought. All he is is my landlord, and anything else is idle curiosity.
Richard Spassky was a squat bulldog of a man who affected a handlebar moustache, a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows and a gruff demeanor that no doubt served him well in his capacity as dean of students at Tippecanoe College. “These things are lamentably common,” he said, giving Abby a sour look across the desktop. “Hormones and all that. But you have to stamp on it, of course.”
“It’s an aggression,” said Abby. “Once I’ve made it clear the attention is unwanted, anything after that is an aggression. I hope I don’t sound too stridently feminist.”
Spassky raised a placating hand. “Please. I am entirely in sympathy with you. We don’t tolerate this kind of thing. We have procedures to deal with cases like this.”
“Yes, I looked at them. They seemed a bit . . . cumbersome.” Abby had scrolled through them on her laptop, trying to follow the trail from Initial Assessment through Title IX Investigative Report to Appeal Process. “I don’t want a Trial of the Century. I want this resolved as quickly and quietly as possible so the class isn’t disrupted. For starters I wonder if somebody couldn’t just sit this kid down and tell him to behave. And if he doesn’t, I want him out of my class. Is that reasonable?”
Spassky nodded once, failing to look Abby in the eye. “Perfectly. Unfortunately, people aren’t always reasonable, and that’s why we have impersonal, cumbersome procedures.” He sighed and met Abby’s gaze at last. “I’ll start by talking to him. What was the name again?”
Abby could see that Natalia’s head was not in the game today. The poor girl was stuck, staring at the figures on the page with the desperate look of a trapped animal scanning the walls of the cage. “Can you factor that out for me?” Abby asked gently.
Natalia gave it five more seconds and then closed her eyes and let her head droop until it rested on the notebook. “I’m sorry.”
Beyond the window, branches tossed in the sunlight. Abby put a hand on the girl’s back. “What’s the matter?”
When Natalia’s head came up, her eyes were glistening. “We’re going to lose the store.”
“What? Why? What happened?”
Natalia wiped tears from the corners of her eyes with a single finger, the nail painted bright red. “My daddy’s cooperating with the government. His lawyer is trying to get him a deal. But part of it is that they’re taking the store away from us.”
“How can they do that?”
“I don’t kn
ow. It’s all something the lawyer did. My daddy might not have to go to jail, but he won’t have the store anymore. I think the government’s going to sell it. I don’t know what we’re going to do.”
“Oh, Natalia. I’m so sorry.”
“I know he did wrong. There’s no excuse. He said so. But if they take the store, then we don’t have anything. My daddy’s just like, going crazy. He looks like he’s sick, he’s walking around talking to himself. And he gets these phone calls, people yell at him and he goes out into the yard where nobody can hear what he says and he argues with these people, and then afterwards he just stands out there rubbing his face and looking worried. My mama just sits in the kitchen and cries. And Luis is mad at everybody all the time.”
Natalia sat with her eyes closed, one hand over her face. Abby waited for a while and said, “Luis thinks I told the police about him fighting with Frederick. Just in case you have any doubts, I didn’t.”
“I know that. That’s stupid. I told Luis so. He’s just being a jerk.” She turned wide eyes to Abby. “My father’s a criminal. My brother is, too. Do you know how hard that is for me? I don’t even know how to think about it. I mean, I love them both. But how can they be so bad? Luis, OK, it was these terrible guys he started hanging out with in Indianapolis. But how could my daddy do that? How could he steal all that money? I actually asked him that. I freaked out at him and screamed at him. And he just said he was trying to make money for us, for the family. And I told him I would rather be poor. And now it looks like I’m going to get the chance.”
The look she gave Abby was so desolate that Abby had to reach for her, and they just sat in an awkward embrace for a short while. When Natalia drew back she said, “If my daddy goes to jail, or if they go back to Mexico, I don’t know what will happen to me. I don’t want to go to Mexico. This is my home. What am I going to do?”
