Thought You Were Dead

by Nick Craine

  “Already?”

  “Too early?”

  “You jest.”

  “Sit on the porch?”

  “Too hot, don’t you think? Cooler inside, I’ll put on some music.”

  “Okay, then you can see the weird, cube-thing your dyke friend brought over.”

  “I have a dyke friend?”

  “That Elaine person.”

  “Elaine? She’s not a lezzie.”

  “Could have fooled me.”

  More jealousy! The greenest of emotions, sick green, khaki. Chellis would never in a mil have imagined that his person, his pathetic stretch of flesh, would become such a contested battleground. Suddenly everyone wanted him? Or wanted their edition of him.

  “She brought something?”

  “Come see.”

  On the coffee table’s glass top sat a plain chrome cube, about the size of a medium Rubik’s, but more puzzling than one of those maddening toys, for it gave no clue as to what its function might be.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “Dunno. She said it was a housewarming present. That’s all. She walked in, plonked it on the table, and left.”

  “God, don’t touch it. I should probably call the bomb squad.”

  “What’s her problem anyway?”

  “You. She’ll get over it. She’s never met a problem she couldn’t solve.”

  “I’d be glad to be friends with her.”

  “That’s my sis, magnanimous through and through.” He reached for the pitcher.

  “I don’t know about that. But I do know that you could use some lessons in female wrangling.”

  “Precisely what I’ve always thought. Send in a herd of the unruly creatures and I’ll do my best. Sit!” He pointed to the couch. “Is that how it’s done? Drink!” He filled the arty and grossly expensive-plustax martini glasses and handed one to her. “Her gift is either purely symbolic and she’s telling me I’ve turned into a bourgeois square, or it’s some sort of regulatory device. Just wait, if I have more than one of these fine libations you’ve concocted, which I absolutely intend to do, I bet you anything an alarm will sound.” He studied the cube. “I better give the old Puritan a call, get the instructions. Or destructions, more like.”

  “Don’t.” Bethany sipped and smiled. “That’s what I mean about the wrangling. It’s exactly what she wants. She snaps her fingers and you jump. Same with that employer of yours, that Mrs. Havlock you were telling me about.”

  Yes, he nodded, he had told her about Mrs. Havlock. Told her everything. Almost. When Bethany had asked him what he’d found out in Kinchie, he’d replied, “Nothing. Red herring.” Which had then allowed him to provide his own red herring by telling her about the provenance of that phrase. He didn’t feel as if he was being disloyal to his sister by holding back a snippet of information that only concerned Mrs. Hav. He was keeping it in reserve for her return.

  “I think she’s set you up.”

  “In this, you and Elaine are in agreement. But why? We have a symbiotic working relationship, we get along just fine.”

  “Chellis, men don’t have a clue about what women are really up to.”

  True enough, he supposed. Only another female might best understand the machinations of a member of her own sex. “Agreed, so why?”

  “For inspiration? Or kicks? Simply to see how it plays out? She’s a writer, good chance she’s unstable, most of them are basket cases. Ever meet one in person, other than her?” Bethany pointed her index finger at her temple and made a small circling motion, a gesture he hadn’t seen in years. He found this extremely cute.

  “She seems pretty sane to me.”

  “Seems, Chellis. Nothing is as it seems, right?”

  “Hey, I learned that in Eng Lit, too. Do you realize that both of our half degrees add up? Like us? Together we’re a learned unit.”

  “We are! So let’s use our smarts here. You have to see that she’s getting her jollies by playing with you, seeing what she can get away with, weaving some sort of web in which you’re getting more and more entangled. She’s creating a fiction with a real live person in it.”

  “Nah.”

  “Mais oui, mon frère. First she tries to unnerve you with the gory forensic research and that horrible title of her new book, then she sends you off on a fool’s errand and makes you think your life is in danger by hiring some lowlife to clunk you on the head. In the meantime she stages a disappearance. That you’re being fingered for. Just wait, they’ll pin that murder on you, too. That publishing guy? Also part of her plot.”

  “You should be the writer.”

  “No thanks. I’m not that desperate.”

  “If I pour you another drinkie, will you at least promise to provide me with an alibi when required?”

  “Darn right I will. No one’s going to intimidate you with me around.”

  “Most excellent sib!”

  “And that guy you mentioned, what’s his name? Rick?”

  “Dick. Dick Major.”

  “He’s involved.”

  “That I can believe. How, though?”

  “Dogsbody.”

  “Well I can assure you that Bunion and Hormone won’t like sharing their biscuits with Dick. They’ll tear him to pieces.”

  “Good,” she said, with a surprising amount of conviction.

  “Speaking of nourishment, what should we make for dinner?”

  A homey, everyday question that any old domestic boot might ask. But he felt a genuine thrill when he asked it, a thrill of pride that he had someone so close to ask it of, his fellow nestling. Food was an intimate subject after all. Think of where you put the stuff!

  “Aren’t we having it?” Bethany held up her empty glass. While he’d been musing, she’d beaten him to the bottom.

  “Hey, you’re a bigger soak than I am. The sipping sibs. My dear, do have another serving.”

  An hour later they were still gabbing and Chellis couldn’t help but think that he was the guilty party, the one who had prolonged it. But this ritual, their pre-dinner yakfest – sitting around shooting the breeze – it was his favourite part of the day. There seemed to be no end of things to talk about. They’d had spirited discussions about magnetic therapy, the latest Woody Allen film (there always was one), the war in the Middle East (ditto), and speculated about when the ebb to the right (and the accompanying undertow that dragged almost everyone with it) was going to flow back to the left. He for the when, she for the if. They veered easily into more personal topics, often comparing their childhoods, which made Chellis even more grateful for his permissive one. Bethany told him more about their mother, which admittedly didn’t give him a great hankering to wish her back from the grave. He did feel truly sorry that she’d had such a crummy life, and for his part it was comforting to know about her and oddly fulfilling. Bethany was helping him develop a posthumous relationship, a connection that was something to hold onto, a guide that helped him find his way. Not that she solved all the mysteries of his truncated bio.

  “I wonder why she called me Baby Beith?”

  “Your father’s last name? She never said, never called you that. Didn’t make it any easier to find you, that’s for sure.”

  “But you did.”

  “I did.”

  “Bet you’re sorry.”

  “Only if I don’t get dinner.”

  “God, it’s getting late. Night already. I’ve almost gone beyond it, I’m practically glued to the chair.”

  “Me too.”

  “It’s so quiet. No calls. Nary a supper time solicitation, that’s got to be a first.”

  “No free trips to Hawaii.”

  “No charities with their begging bowls, no credit card offers from the impoverished big banks who call every day because my sucker status is so well established. How’s the job search going by the way? How callous of me, I forgot to ask.”

  Bethany had been spending hours daily on his computer. Grit and application, qualities only available appar
ently in his family’s recessive gene package.

  “Revised the résumé again today. Definitely left out the summer I spent stripping.”

  “Paint?”

  “No, silly.”

  “That kind of stripping? You didn’t, did you?”

  “Afraid so. If I hadn’t had so much to drink, I wouldn’t be telling you.”

  He glanced quickly behind her, where he could almost see Elaine standing, hands on her hips, mouthing, What did I tell you?

  “You can tell me anything,” he said. “You realize that, I hope. Who am I to judge, it’s good money, lots of students do it. Wasn’t it awful, though, all those slimeballs leering at you and . . . all that?” He could feel his cheeks rouge-up like a schoolboy. The one area they hadn’t covered in their chats was their respective love lives. He didn’t want to know. She was his little sister, untouched by groping male paws.

  “One’s thoughts are directed elsewhere.”

  “Brave girl.”

  “Men are creeps,” she said quietly. She dropped her gaze to her hands that were resting open on her lap, palms up, her body language a declaration of her vulnerability. Then she raised her eyes to meet his. “But there are some exceptions.”

  “Me? I’m as creepy as the rest.”

  “What you are,” she said, with the slightest slur, “is mucho hunky.”

  “Ha, ha. Good one.”

  “No, I mean it.” She rose from the couch and moved over to him. She bent toward him, placing her hands on his shoulders. “I shouldn’t say this . . . but sometimes I wish we weren’t related.”

  “Yeah? You’re kidding? Okay, all right, I have to admit you’re pretty hunky yourself.” He ran his hands up her bare arms. “Beauty biceps, you work out, it shows.” She bent closer, while his hands continued their trip up her arms, her shoulders, her neck. He stopped, yanked his hands away. Hot, hot! What was he doing?

  “Want to wrestle?” She took hold of his recoiling hands and pulled him to his feet.

  He couldn’t stop himself, talk about magnetic therapy. He caressed her face, combed his fingers through her thick, faintly scented hair. What was that fragrance?

  “I wouldn’t mind,” he croaked. Her earlobes, they’d be delicately chewy, al dente. His hands detoured south. “Your, uh, chest, it’s so white. Like, I don’t know . . . a graveyard at night.”

  “This is a compliment?”

  “You bet.” He ran his hands over her breasts. Marvellous. Help. He placed a finger on a button of her sleeveless blouse, third one down from the top that was straining to hold the fabric in place. A black, skimpy bra peeked through. If he undid the button, he knew he would be undoing much more than a blouse. He ran his finger around its rim, around and around . . . oh deep, profoundly deep, shit.

  19

  Uh-Oh

  CHELLIS WAS STANDING in a phone booth ramming change into the coin slots and dropping most of it on the floor. Copper and nickel alloy rained down, a demotic version of Zeus’s spendthrift visit to Danaë. He did not much feel like Zeus. He felt more like one of those mythological guys who were ripped to shreds for their sexual presumption. He also felt all prickly and cold, as though he were standing exposed in this glass case wearing nothing but a panic crinoline, a scratchy, fright-tutu raying out around him.

  He had fled from the scene of the aborted seduction with absolutely no dignity and an excess of awkwardness, while mumbling something about having to make an emergency run to the drugstore. Farclas wasn’t exactly the Ozarks, but the general idea was that he was reluctant to father any relations that were quite that near. Bethany had always – in the week he’d known her – been incredibly understanding of his foibles and klutziness, but he had to think his precipitous departure had completely blown that. She’d be relieved to be shot of him, fed up and likely furious for being so rudely rejected. Good, maybe she’d leave . . . for it hadn’t been any high-minded scruple about diddling his own sister that had sent him bounding away like a terrified rabbit. No, he’d been more than eager to sample that forbidden fruit. (Forbidden vegetable? Somehow that didn’t sound quite so sexy.)

  After flying through his front door, he’d rushed over to his estranged neighbours’ house in the hopes that they’d take some pity on a desperate man and let him use their phone. He was having a heart attack, albeit a metaphysical one. On nearing their front door, however, he’d heard a couple of deadbolts slam into place inside. Only then had he noticed that they, or someone, had marked up their door with graffiti, a ragged script in black Magic Marker had defaced the delicate cream paint with the message: REAL OR NOT. Such an interesting statement, especially as it pertained to the residents within, but he simply didn’t have the time to entertain it. Evidently they were in more need of help than he, but he was not presently standing in the phone booth for the purpose of finding them immediate psychiatric care.

  Finally, he’d fed the machine enough cash to make his call.

  “Elaine?”

  “Chellis! There you are. I’ve been trying to call you for hours.”

  “You have?”

  “Did that rotary of yours need a nap, poor old thing?”

  “I . . . don’t know.”

  “What do mean you don’t know?”

  “I’m calling from a pay phone.”

  “Why?”

  “The button.”

  “Excuse me.”

  “The buttons on Bethany’s blouse are the same. I found one at Mrs. Havlock’s, outside in the garden, when we were there poking around. I put it in my pocket and forgot about it, forgot to mention it even.”

  This declaration was met by a contemplative silence at the other end of the line. Elaine then said, “What were you doing staring at her buttons?”

  “Nothing! They’re . . . noticeable.”

  “They’re big buttons?”

  “Small, she has small buttons. On this blouse she’s wearing.”

  “You must have been standing very close to notice. Is she still wearing the blouse? Or did you have to remove it to get a better look at the buttons?”

  “Stop it, Laney. The point is – ”

  “You don’t have to tell me what the point is. She’s trouble. That’s why I was trying to call you. I saw some guy go into your place today while you were at the hospital.”

  “You were hanging around spying on my house?”

  “Made a delivery, remember? But this was later. Just happened to drive by.”

  “Uh-huh. Love the cube, by the way. So what guy?”

  He felt a sudden rush of the green emotion himself. Despite everything. And when he considered – less panicky now that he was talking to Elaine – this ‘everything’ did not rest on a very substantial base of incriminating evidence. A button! What did that prove? Hundreds, thousands of women wore similar denim tops. What were the odds? The buttons on her blouse were identical to the one he’d found, but so what? Probably nothing but a coincidence. The button that had flipped him like a tiddlywink out the front door could be as blameless as any of its zillion docile mates that populated the world, their working lives spent doing and undoing, doing and undoing, then retirement in some granny’s cookie tin. Before fleeing, he should have at least done a quick survey of the whole button terrain to see if any were missing.

  “Tough-looking dude. She have a boyfriend, your ‘sister?’”

  “Not that I know of. But why shouldn’t she?” This he asked with a faux-rational calm, although there was a giveaway surge of static on the line caused by his hyper-agitated brain waves.

  “Chellis, you’re being willfully obtuse. Surely she would have told you, since you two spend so much time together, supposedly talking. Come on, it’s all dodgy. Including that clipping. I checked in the Library Archives, the old newspapers, and there’s a page missing from the Gazette that corresponds with the time that ad would have appeared.”

  “My, but you’ve been working hard on this case.”

  “Someone has to. You’ve been too busy mo
oning around like a sick puppy.”

  “Calf.”

  “What?”

  “Sick calf. If you’re going to resort to clichés, you should get them right.”

  “Fine. Calf. Better a sick one than a dead one, but it’s time to wake up.”

  “And smell the coffee?”

  “Yes. Come stay at my place for the night. You’re not safe as long as she’s at yours.”

  A sleepover at Elaine’s! What he would have given for this invitation a mere week ago.

  Speed of light he would have appeared on her doorstep, toothbrush in one hand, the other a free agent.

  He sighed. “Elaine, I found the clipping before she moved in.”

  She sighed competitively and forcefully, apparently trying to blow the dust out of his head. “You don’t suppose she could have slipped into your place before arriving at your doorstep, do you? When you were in Kinchie, say?”

  “Impossible. Place was sealed up tighter than a drum.”

  “I thought you didn’t resort to clichés?”

  “Tighter than Vaughan’s – ”

  “Don’t go there!”

  “God, I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “Face it, your rickety old house is not secure. An ant could break into it without much effort.”

  “Sounds far-fetched to me. But while we’re on the topic of criminal behaviour, you didn’t destroy Dick’s wallet, did you? It might come in handy.”

  “What do you mean, I don’t have his wallet. I wouldn’t touch his filthy wallet if you paid me. If you paid me, Christ, another one.”

  “Don’t fret, speech is mostly hackneyed prefab anyway. So you don’t have it?”

  “I don’t. But I bet you I know who does.”

  “C’mon Laney, you want to blame her for everything. Just because you don’t like her. Next you’ll be saying she bumped off Mrs. H.”

  “She probably has, which is why you should come stay over. You could be next.”

  “Who’s the neurotic one now? But thanks anyway, maybe I will. I dunno, don’t wait up. I need to get some air.”