Gage shook his head. "I'm glad I'm so predictable."
"Only in the best way."
"I'm not sure what that means."
"Me either. But he cares about you a lot, you know?"
"Alex? Yeah. I know. He can be a bit of a pain in the ass, but I don't know what I'd do without him."
She chuckled.
"What?" Gage said.
"Well, that's exactly what he said about you."
* * *
Since they'd only driven a few miles past the city limits, it was a quick jaunt back to Barnacle Bluffs Community College. It was the logical place to start, but he wasn't sure if any good would come of it with the school officially closed. He was therefore surprised when the van, cresting the hill and emerging through the thicket of Douglas firs, came upon the person he would have put at the top of his list.
"Berry?" Gage said aloud.
Connor Fleicher's mother was walking in the middle of the road, straight toward them, head down and hugging herself tightly. If he'd been barreling up the road like some of the kids did, he may very well have hit her—even dressed as she was, in garish pink jeans and a tight orange T-shirt so bright it probably would have glowed in the dark. As it was, he still barely managed to slam on the brakes and skid to a halt.
Even then, with the Volkswagen's engine still ticking, it was a long time before Berry looked up. With the light slanting from behind her and the air within the trees hazy and thick, it was difficult to read her expression through the Volkswagen's dirty windshield. But Gage could see enough to know that the pixieish woman clinging desperately to her youth that he'd met two months earlier was nowhere to be found. Her teenybopper clothes only made the contrast with the person wearing them that much starker. This frail thing was a zombie, her eyes flat, her skin pale and drawn tight over her thin face so that her cheekbones looked as sharp as razor blades.
"Jesus," Karen said.
Gage turned on his hazard lights. Slowly, as if Berry were a doe they were afraid of spooking, they both got out of the car. They didn't have to worry. Her only sign of movement was to sway slightly. Her short chestnut hair, styled with the candlestick swirl the last time he'd seen her, now lay flat and lifeless, her bangs clumped and plastered to her forehead.
A breeze of wet earth and fir shushed its way through the trees. Gage saw no cars in either direction. Using his cane, taking his time, he approached her straight-on. He tried a smile and got nothing in return. A few birds tweeted from the treetops, and down the road behind them he heard a muffled buzz of traffic on the highway, but otherwise it was quiet.
"Ms. Fleicher?" he said.
When she didn't answer, Karen touched her arm. It was only then that some amount of focus came into her eyes, a slow return to life, a few blinks.
"He's gone," she said.
Her voice was a hair above a whisper. Up close now, Gage saw she wore no makeup, all the little creases and wrinkles on her pale face exposed in the misty air, like hairline fissures in a white marble table. Her lips bore a few traces of red lipstick, patches of it like skin grafts.
"I'm sorry," Gage said.
She looked at him as if seeing him for the first time. "He's gone," she said again.
"I know," Gage said. "I'm truly sorry for your loss, Ms. Fleicher. Can we take you back to your car?"
"My car?" she said.
"Is it parked by the dorm?"
Her eyes welled up. "I can't go there," she said.
"You don't have to," Gage said.
"Came—came to get his things …"
"Ms. Fleicher—"
"He's gone … he's really gone …"
The tears hanging around the rims of her eyes finally spilled down her cheeks. Gage heard the low rumble of a truck coming up the road behind them. Taking Berry firmly by the arm, he guided her to the van, where Karen helped her into the backseat.
Gage climbed in the front and waited, hand on the ignition, for the truck coming up the road. It was actually an SUV, a black Ford Expedition—and when it passed them on the left, he saw the bald, broad-shouldered Arne Cooper glaring at him.
"Oh, this gets better and better," Gage said.
"Who was that?" Karen asked.
Gage started to answer, then remembered his passenger. He glanced in the rearview mirror. Berry slumped against her seatbelt as if it was the only thing keeping her upright, her face downcast. If she'd seen Arne, she certainly wasn't acting like it. He didn't know how she'd react if she came face to face with the father of the boy who was suspected of killing her son, but he didn't think it would go well.
"Ms. Fleicher?" he said.
She stared unblinking at the floor. He turned in his seat, speaking louder this time.
"Berry?"
She looked at him.
"You don't have to go there right now."
"Okay."
"How would you like to go somewhere and talk for a little while? Get some coffee?"
"Coffee?"
"Or something else. We could take you home, too, if you'd like."
"No. No, I don't want to go back there either. I can't go back there."
"All right."
"Not right now."
"You don't have to. Coffee, then?"
She looked at the floor. He was going to ask her again when she finally responded with a barely perceptible tip of the head. It wasn't exactly unbridled enthusiasm, but he'd take it. When he started the van, Karen was still staring at him, her face questioning, and he mouthed the words Arne Cooper, to which she responded with a silent Ah.
* * *
Ten minutes later they were seated in a corner booth at the Diner, a hole-in-the-wall affair a couple of blocks off Highway 101 that was Gage's favorite restaurant. Its actual name was McAllister's Family Diner, but it had possessed that name less than a year, the next in a long series of names as the diner had been sold from one owner to another, always limping along, never making enough to justify someone putting their heart and soul into it but always turning enough profit that some eager-eyed Portlander suffering a midlife crisis thought this was their ticket to a good life on the beach. So the locals pretty much just called it the Diner. Some of the old-timers called it Ed's Diner, after the original owner, Ed Boone, but he'd been gone over two decades and there weren't many locals still around who remembered him.
Someone had dropped a quarter in the jukebox, and Otis Redding's smooth baritone echoed off the black-and-white tile floor and the plain white walls, competing for attention with the loud sizzle of the griddle. The scent of bacon was in the air. Two old guys in wrinkled plaid shirts and grease-stained baseball caps, regulars Gage recognized, occupied a booth three away from them, and a UPS driver in uniform sat at the counter intently looking at an iPad, but otherwise the place was empty. Gage and Karen sat on one side of the red vinyl booth, Berry on the other. Three white porcelain mugs of coffee steamed the air between them.
"I don't—I don't know," Berry said. "I mean, I don't think … I can't remember if … well …"
She worried the edge of her napkin with her right hand, eyes glistening as if she might cry at any moment, the stencil letters of the word Diner in the window casting their shadow on her wan face. Gage had asked her, as delicately as he could, whether Connor had ever given the impression that he was in danger.
"I know it's really soon," Gage said.
She nodded as if he had said something quite sage. "I don't know what I'm going to do with—with the body. Ted says we should cremate him, but I don't know. I kind of want a funeral. I'd … I'd kind of like to look at his face one more time, but the bullet came in … came in the back … well, you know."
Karen reached over and placed her hand on top of Berry's, who smiled weakly in appreciation.
"Is Ted your husband?"
"Ex," she said.
"Is he from Waldport too?"
Berry started to answer, then, blinking a few times, looked at him with more awareness. "I read about you, you know. On the Int
ernet."
"Oh no," Gage said.
"You're kind of a famous detective."
"I wouldn't say that."
"That thing a year ago with the scientist guy. I Googled you, and stuff about it even came up on CNN. I'm not really a reading-the-news sort of person, but it seemed like a pretty big deal."
Gage shrugged. "It involved an old friend. I kind of got sucked into it."
"Is that what's happening here? You're getting sucked into this?"
"Something like that."
"But I don't understand. Jeremiah is locked up. He had the gun in his hand."
"I know."
"But you don't think he did it?"
"I just want to know for certain."
"The police seem certain."
"Yeah, well."
Berry folded the napkin in half, creasing the edge. "I don't think he did it either."
"You don't?"
Berry shook her head. "I have feelings about these sorts of things. I'm not a psychic or anything—well, maybe I am, but only a little. Just strong feelings. And I just don't think Jeremiah did it. But I haven't said anything, because everyone just seems so sure he did do it and maybe, I thought, maybe I'm just all mixed up because of what happened so my feelings aren't straight. But no. No, I don't think he did."
"Do you have any idea who might want to hurt him?" Gage asked.
"I could hire you," Berry said. "Officially. So you get paid."
"That's not necessary."
"I don't have a lot of money, but Ted does. He's a dentist. In Bend. Lots of rich retirees there with bad teeth, so he does pretty good. He could pay you."
"Please, Berry. I'm not doing this for money."
"Then why are you doing it?"
"Peace of mind. For Zoe. Because it's what I do." He shrugged.
"Oh."
They sat quietly. Otis Redding finished his song, leaving the sizzle of the griddle and the clink of silverware from the two old-timers in the corner. Gage took a sip of his coffee. Berry reached for hers, toying with the handle. From what he could tell, she hadn't taken a single sip. Outside the window, an ocean breeze sent a plastic bag from Jaybee's grocery skittering up the road.
"I don't know," Berry said. "I wish I … I wish I knew something."
"Did you talk to Connor much the past few months?" Gage asked.
Berry shook her head.
"At all?" Gage pressed.
"A couple times. On the phone. But only for a minute."
"Did he say anything that made you worry? Anything strange?"
"No. Not that I … well, that was the strange part."
"What's that?"
"Him not calling. Or not answering my calls." She rotated her cup around a few times, staring intently at the rising steam. "We used to be so close. Or I thought we were. We talked about everything. My crazy clients. His troubles at school. But once he was at BBCC, there was just nothing. It was like he didn't want anything to do with me."
"I doubt it was that," Karen said.
"I'm not sure what I did wrong."
"You didn't do anything wrong," Karen said.
"Did he ever say anything about Jeremiah?" Gage asked.
"Only that they were hanging out a lot."
"How long ago did they meet? Didn't you say something about it being at a Star Trek convention?"
Berry nodded and finally took a sip from her coffee. "It was this summer. Not that long ago. July, I guess. Yeah, a week after the Fourth. It was in Portland. I dropped him off at the convention center in the morning, then went shopping downtown. When I picked him up, he was hanging out with a group of kids. One was Jeremiah."
"How did Jeremiah get there?"
"Oh, I don't know. His mom maybe. I think he said something about his mom picking him up."
Gage tried to imagine the type of woman who would marry Arne Cooper and failed. "You mentioned trouble at school. What kind of trouble?"
"Oh, you know," Berry said, "the normal kind for a high school kid."
"Bad grades? Alcohol? Drugs?"
"No, no. Nothing like that." She sounded offended that Gage would even suggest such a possibility. "He always got straight A's. And his SATs were great. He didn't like the taste of alcohol, and he always said kids who smoked weed were losers. No, it was more just that he was depressed all the time. And some kids at school were always teasing him. He didn't fit in. He said he didn't care, but …"
She shrugged. The walls of her mental tent looked ready to collapse, and he debated about the next question. He'd been holding off, trying to get a sense of how Berry would take it, but he could tell that what little energy she had was almost spent. It wouldn't be long and she'd be back in her emotional cocoon.
"Berry, I need to ask you something," Gage said. "It might be important. Do you think your son was gay?"
There was a moment, a hesitation or a pause, before the reaction came, that Gage would dwell on later—a flicker of doubt before a curtain of indignation closed over her features. She blinked a few times, resetting. A flush of red spread across her cheeks.
"No," she said. "No, definitely not."
"I didn't mean to cause offense."
"Why would it cause offense? There's nothing wrong with it. Lots of people are gay. Elton John is gay. And, um, that talk-show host. Ellen … Ellen something or other."
"DeGeneres," Karen said.
"Right. That one. And Jodie Foster. There's more gay people than ever these days."
"They were probably always gay," Gage said.
"What?"
"Nothing."
Berry shook her head. "Connor wasn't gay. I would have known. I'm his mother, after all. And he would have told me anyway. We were very close. We talked about everything."
Her voice had gotten louder, more brittle. Gage wanted to press a little more, find out exactly what sorts of things they did talk about, but he could see the ice beginning to crack. It wouldn't take much, a little nudge, and she'd end up having a breakdown right there in the diner. The old-timers in the corner glanced their way.
"You feel ready to go back to the college?" Gage asked.
She nodded, though it was more like bowing her head in resignation than an answer.
Chapter 10
When they reached the campus, Gage expected to find a bevy of police cars, press vehicles, and other signs that something terrible had occurred in this place only a couple of days previously. He was surprised to find only one police cruiser parked near the building, the entrance cordoned off with yellow tape. There were a few cars packed outside the monolithic dormitory: a dented old station wagon, two small Hondas, and Berry's blue Suburban. Arne Cooper's Expedition was nowhere to be found.
"I don't want to go in there," Berry said.
"You don't have to," Karen said.
"I just want to get his things and go home."
"We'll do it for you," Karen said.
"I have to warn you, though," Gage said, "that his room is probably locked down as a crime scene. They're not going to be too keen on us taking your son's things."
"I don't need all of his things," Berry said. "Not now. I just want—I just want his pad."
"His iPad?" Karen asked.
"No, his drawing pad," she said. "He likes to doodle things in it. Mostly science-fictiony things, but it's important to him. I used to … um, put his drawings on the refrigerator when he was little. I still do sometimes. I just—I just didn't want it lost. I can get the other things later. Or never. I don't care, I guess. I just want his drawings."
"We'll see what we can do," Gage said.
The campus sidewalks, woven with shadows from the pines and slices of sunlight, were eerily vacant. He'd no sooner pulled the van into the spot next to the Suburban, however, when two young men appeared at his window. Their gray-and-blue uniforms looked remarkably like standard-issue police uniforms, except that they had only batons attached to their belts and the words BBCC Security emblazoned on their silver badges. One of them t
apped on Gage's window with his baton even as Gage had already started to roll it down.
"Don't do that," Gage said.
"Campus closed today, sir," the kid said, a redhead with a crooked nose. He was young enough that he had only acne on his forehead rather than the divots and discoloration that were acne's scars.
"Even my pottery class?" Gage asked.
"What?"
"I have Berry Fleicher with me. She just wants us to get her son's drawing pad. It's important to her."
The kid stared. The one behind him, who was much like his counterpart other than his dirty-blond hair, stood as still as a coin meter. It took so long for the redhead to react that Gage was starting to wonder if he'd even heard him, before he finally glanced in the backseat. He stood there staring for a long time before he looked at Gage again.
"I'll have to radio this in, sir," the kid said. "This is a secure crime scene."
"You do that. In the meantime, we're going in."
"Sir—"
Gage opened the door swiftly enough that the kid was forced to jump back a step. He ripped a radio off his belt with such fervor that for a moment Gage thought maybe the kid was going for some kind of weapon. By the time Karen was out of the car, he was already squawking into the receiver that they had a situation here, he needed authorization, roger roger, lots of other macho nonsense. Gage leaned in to check one more time with Berry to see if she was all right by herself, but she looked so forlorn, so collapsed and folded into herself, that he didn't want to take a chance that he'd cause her to disintegrate if he said even a word to her. He grabbed his cane and shut the door.
Heading for the building, cane clicking on the sidewalk, Gage glanced over his shoulder to see that the two guards followed them. The dormitory's front door opened and a square-faced man in a similar gray-and-blue uniform, his blocky gray hair looking two-dimensional, stepped out to greet them, still talking on his radio.
"Stand down," he said, his voice reaching Gage's ears from both the radio behind him and the man himself.
The Lovely Wicked Rain: An Oregon Coast Mystery (Garrison Gage Series) Page 8
