by John Dunning
“Some kind of one. Crystal hoped you could help us.”
“If I could, God, you know I would. I haven’t got a clue where she might be. Just a minute, this water’s boiling.”
I heard the sounds of water pouring and the tinkle of a spoon stirring in the coffee crystals. She came out with two steaming cups, insisting that I stay in the chair. She sat on the floor against the wall and looked at me through the steam rising from her cup.
“I haven’t got a clue,” she said again.
“When was the last time you saw her, or heard from her?”
“Haven’t seen her in…must be more than a month ago.”
“Any mail from her…cards, letters…anything?”
“No, nothing.”
“I’m looking for one letter in particular. I’m not sure if it’s had time to be delivered yet. She may’ve mailed it Friday night.”
“To me, you mean?”
“We don’t know. Crystal thinks that’s a possibility.”
“Probably come tomorrow then.”
“If it does, would you let me see it?”
“Yeah, sure, if it’ll help; I’ll do anything I can.”
We sipped our coffee: I could see her running it all through her mind.
“If she mailed something to me, it probably wouldn’t come here. I haven’t seen her since I moved into town. She’d send it out to my mamma’s place in Snoqualmie.”
“Could we ride out there and see?”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll have to take off from work…my boss is a little touchy about that…I’ll just tell him I’m taking off. If he fires me, he fires me.”
“I don’t want you to get fired. Maybe I could go check the mail for you.”
She shook her head. “No, I want to go too. You’ve got me worried. Jesus, I hope she didn’t hurt herself again.”
“Crystal said you were special friends.”
I saw a tremor of feeling ripple through her. “Oh, yeah. She’s like my soul mate. I don’t mean…”
I knew what she didn’t mean. She said, “We were just great together, all through grade school, then high school. We were inseparable. If I wasn’t sleeping over there, she was over with my mamma and me. We’d sit in our rooms and talk about boys, and the drudgery of life at Mount Success.”
She gave a sad little laugh. “That’s what we used to call Mt. Si High—Mount Success—because so many of the people who went there seemed to go nowhere afterward. They just stayed in that little town forever. I never understood that, but now I do. Here I am in the big city and all I want is to get back home.”
“Why don’t you? It’s only twenty-five miles.”
“It’s a lot farther than that.” She shrugged. “I had to get out of there. My ex lives there and he’s bad news. If I went back, he’d just hassle me.”
“Crystal said you and Eleanor had drifted apart, then got together again.”
“The drifting was my fault. I married a guy who was a jerk. Want some more coffee?”
“Sure.”
She got up, poured, came back, sat. “That’s the first time I ever said that. My husband was a jerk. There, maybe now I can get rid of it. He was a grade-A heel.” She laughed. “Hey, it feels better all the time. Maybe if I call him what he really was, I’ll be good as new. Wouldn’t be very ladylike, though.”
I let her talk.
“Ellie tried to tell me what he was like, that’s why we almost lost it. I didn’t want to hear that. But the whole time I was married to this fella, and carrying his children, he was trying to make it with my best friend. What do you do with a guy like that?”
“You leave him.”
“Yeah. And here I am, bringing up my children in this palace. Working in a bar and giving most of my money to the day-care people. Wonderful, huh? But I’ll get through it.”
I leaned forward, the coffee cup clasped between my hands, warming them. “Amy, I don’t have any doubt of that at all.”
She smiled that sweet smile. I thought of Rosie Drimeld, the lighthearted heroine of Cakes and Ale . Maugham would’ve loved this one.
“The great thing about Ellie, though,” she said, “is, she never let it bother her. The hard feelings were all on my side.”
“But you got over it.”
“Yes, thank God. Even an ignoramus sees the light if it’s shined right in her face.”
“And Crystal said you two got together again and patched it up.”
“My mamma died. Ellie came to the funeral and we cried and hugged and it was all over, just like that. Then I found that stuff of hers…”
She looked away, as if she’d touched on something she shouldn’t be talking about.
“What stuff?”
“Just some things my mamma had.”
“Things…of Eleanor’s?”
“Not exactly. Just…stuff. Papers in Mamma’s stuff…it really isn’t anything.”
I felt a tingle along my backbone. “Tell me about it.”
“I can’t. I promised.”
I looked straight into her eyes. “Amy, whatever you tell me, I’ll try not to let it out. That’s all I can promise you, but this may be important.”
Her eyes were green: her face radiated hope, her eyes searched for trust. But she was also a child of this planet who had begun to learn that you can’t trust everyone.
“I don’t even know you.”
“Sure you do.”
She laughed at that and I laughed with her.
“You don’t know, do you,” I said, “about the trouble she got in, down in New Mexico.”
Her eyes opened wide. No, she didn’t know.
I told her.
Tears rolled down her cheeks. “I knew it, I knew it, I just knew something bad was gonna come of this. This is my fault, I should’ve burned it, I never should’ve shown it to her.”
“Shown her what?”
“When Mamma died she left me some stuff. God, you never saw so much stuff. My mother was a pack rat, that house of hers is just full of stuff, it’s packed to the rafters. You won’t believe it when we go out there. I know I’m gonna have to start going through it, it’s got to be done, but I just can’t face it yet. I’ve got to soon, though…that house just has to be cleared out.”
It seemed she had lost her drift in the maze of problems she had to deal with. She got it back, looked at me, and said, “There were some papers in Mamma’s stuff…things I thought Ellie should see.”
I nodded, urging her with body language.
She got up and went to a little end table half-hidden by the couch. I heard a drawer squeak open and saw her leafing through some papers. She pulled out a manila envelope, came over, and got down on one knee beside my chair. She opened the flap and handed me a photograph.
It was an eight-by-ten black and white. It was Eleanor in jeans and a sleeveless blouse, taken in the summertime in good light. She was leaning against the door of an old frame building, smoking a cigarette and smiling in a sly, sexy way. “Nice picture,” I said.
But I looked again and in fact it wasn’t a nice picture. It was her eyes, I thought, and that killer smile. She looked almost predatory.
“It’s not her,” Amy said.
I turned the picture over. On the bottom, handwritten in fading ink, was an inscription.
Darryl’s printshop, May 1969 .
35
Isn’t that a kick in the head,“ Amy said, looking around my shoulder. ”Imagine looking at a mirror image of yourself, in a picture taken the year you were born. I thought about it for weeks, you know, whether I should show it to her or not. I knew the minute I saw it that nothing good would come of it. I felt all along that I should’ve burned it.“
“Why didn’t you?”
“It didn’t seem like I had the right. It wasn’t my call to make.”
“What did you do?”
“One day I just showed it to her. She had come out to Mamma’s to help me get started on going through things. We putzed around all
morning on the first floor—I didn’t even want to go upstairs where all this stuff was—and we were sitting in the kitchen having lunch. It had been on my mind all morning, and I still didn’t know what to do. Then she looked across the table at me and said, ‘You’re like the sister I never had, you’re just so special, and I’m happier than you’ll ever know that we’re okay again.’ I felt tears in my eyes and I knew then that I had to tell her, there was no stopping it, and the best I could do was put a happy face on it.”
“How did she take it?”
“I couldn’t tell at first. I was hoping she’d look up and shrug it off, say something like, ‘Yeah, I never told you, I was adopted,’ and that would be the end of it. Then we could laugh about it and let it blow away and I could rest in peace knowing I’d done right by her. But the longer she sat there, the worse it got, and I came around the table and took her hands, and I knew for sure then that it had just knocked her props out. Her whole world was scrambled, it was like she couldn’t think straight for a long time, like she couldn’t get a grip on what she was seeing. I put my hand on her shoulder and said something stupid about what a coincidence it was, but we both knew better. There’s no way.”
“Then what happened?”
“She said she had to go home, she wasn’t feeling well. And she left.”
“Did you see her again after that?”
“Yeah, she called the next day and asked if she could come out to the house again and look through the stuff in the attic. So we did that. I worked downstairs and she sat all day in that hot attic, going through papers and old letters.”
“Did she tell you if she found anything?”
“All I know is, she didn’t take anything…just the one picture of this woman. I think she made some notes though.”
“Were there other pictures?”
“There was a whole roll taken at this same place. I think Mamma took them; it’s her handwriting on the back and I know she was doing some photography then. There were maybe twenty shots of different people.”
“Do you have the other pictures?”
“They’d still be out at the house, up in the attic.”
“Were they people you knew?”
“Mostly, yeah: there were pictures of Gaston and Crystal and Archie. God, were they young!”
“What about Darryl and Richard Grayson?”
“I don’t think so. But I wouldn’t know them if I saw them. I think they were just friends of Mamma’s, way back then.”
“Do you know if Eleanor ever told Crystal about this?”
“No, and I wasn’t going to. I felt like I’d done enough harm.”
“Then it’s possible they still don’t know.”
“Yeah, sure it is. But we can’t tell them. The last thing Ellie said to me was not to tell anybody, especially not Crystal and Gaston. She made me promise I wouldn’t.”
“It takes courage to break a promise like that. Sometimes you have to, if the person’s welfare is at stake.”
“Is that what you think?”
“I don’t know what I think. Has anybody else been up in that attic since your mother died?”
“There was a man who came, just after it happened.”
“What man?”
“Just a minute, I’m trying to think, he gave me his name. He said he was an old friend of Mamma’s who saw the item about her funeral in the newspaper.”
“What’d he look like?”
“Old…older than Mamma, even. Kinda frail.”
“What did he want?”
“He said she had promised to help him on something he was writing…some magazine article. She had some information he needed to make it work.”
“Why didn’t he get it from her while she was still alive?”
“He was going to. Her death was pretty sudden. She was in the kitchen, peeling potatoes for supper, when her heart gave out.”
“So what did you do?”
“About this man, you mean?…I let him look through the attic. I didn’t think there was anything special or valuable up there.”
“This was even before Eleanor got up there, then?”
“Yes, at least two, three weeks before.”
“And you don’t remember this man’s name?”
“It’s right on my tongue, I’ll think of it in a minute.”
“Did he take anything out of there?”
“Not that I remember. He did have a big canvas briefcase with him. I suppose he could’ve put something in that. I don’t know, maybe I shouldn’t trust people so much. Do you think he took something?”
“If you remember his name, I’ll see if I can find him and ask him.”
She shrugged.
“You said your mother may have shot the picture herself. Did you ever ask her about her life when she was young—who her friends were, what they did, stuff like that?”
“I was a kid. You know how it is, all I ever thought about then was kid stuff. Now I wish I’d taken more time with her, but then we were all into boys and music and makeup. When you’re a kid, your parents are probably the least exciting people in the universe. And you never want to learn too much about them, you’re always afraid they’ll just be human, have the same failings and hang-ups you’ve got.”
“You said there was other stuff in the attic…besides the pictures?”
“Tons of stuff…boxes and boxes of records and papers and letters. It just fills up that attic.”
“What was the purpose of it? Did she ever tell you?”
“She always said she was going to write a book about Mr. Grayson, who had been her friend for years.”
“Did she tell you how they met?”
“No.”
“What about your father?”
Her brow furrowed: dark clouds gathered behind her eyes. “What about him?”
“Who was he?”
“Just a man Mamma knew. He wasn’t around long.”
“Was his name Harper?”
“What’s that got to do with Eleanor? My father’s been nothing in my life.”
“It’s probably got nothing to do with anything. It’s just a question a cop asks.”
“My father’s name was Paul Ricketts. I don’t know whether he’s dead or alive.”
“Was he there then?”
“When?”
“The year we’re talking about…1969.”
“He must’ve been, at least for twenty minutes.” She blushed a little. “I was born that year.”
“Where’d the name Harper come from?”
“It was Mamma’s family name. She never married this man. I really don’t see why you’re asking me this.”
I backed off. I didn’t want to lose her. “I’m just trying to find out who was there, who’s still around, and what they might know. What about this book your mother was writing?”
“She never wrote a word, never had the time. It was always tomorrow. ‘Tomorrow I’ll get started.’ But tomorrow came and guess what?…She didn’t have the time. She always had to work two jobs to keep me in shoes and have good food for us to eat. And then that other Grayson book came out, you know, by that woman at the Times , and that put the kibosh on it. Mamma knew she’d never write anything after that.”
“But she did keep the material?”
“She never threw away anything in her life.”
The thought that had been building in my mind now occurred to her. “Are you thinking maybe Eleanor found something up there in Mamma’s stuff that caused her to go to New Mexico and break into that house?”
“There’s a fair chance of it. That does seem to be where everything started coming apart for her.”
“Damn. Makes you want to go out there now and start looking through it, doesn’t it?”
“If that’s an invitation, I’d love it.”
She shook her head. “The house is dark, there’s no power, they turned off the lights three weeks ago. And I’ll feel a lot better tomorrow without the kids. I can drop ‘em in d
ay care at seven-thirty and we can head out then.”
“If that’s what you want.”
“I’m as anxious as you are. I’m just not crazy about having my kids spend the night in a dark house in the country…you know what I mean?”
“In the morning then.”
But she was my one real link to the past and I hated to leave her there.
Then I realized I didn’t have to.
36
I talked her into my room at the Hilton with little effort. I explained it away as a room I had rented but couldn’t use, and she wasn’t inclined to ask questions. To her it was a Wheel of Fortune vacation: two nights in Oz, with a color TV, a king-size bed, and room service. I told her to order whatever she wanted, it was already paid for; then I left another hundred on deposit at the desk to cover it. It was after nine when I got over to Mercer Island, a wooded, hilly residential neighborhood just across the bridge from the city. Mercer dominates the lower half of Lake Washington: you come off Interstate 90 and swing along a spectacular bluff that overlooks the highway; then you curl back inland on a street called Mercerwood Drive and up past some expensive-looking real estate. It was not a place I’d imagine a working reporter to live in. So she had a boat, pricey digs, and a job that let her write her own ticket: I still couldn’t imagine the Times paying her more than fifty grand. As I backtracked west, the houses seemed more ordinary. I turned left, deadended into a high school, and eventually found my way around it and came into her block.
It was an older house with a well-lived look to it. It sat on a large lot surrounded by trees. I pulled into her driveway and fished out the package she had left me from under the seat. She had left the night-light on as well as two lights inside the house. I got out and walked up like I owned the place.
The key was in the flowerpot, just where she’d said.
I came into a dark hallway. A brief memory of Pruitt’s house flashed through my mind before the place burst into life—two golden retrievers charged from the rear in joyous welcome. I got down with them and roughed them the way big dogs seem to like it. Mitzi and Pal, the tags on their collars said. Mitzi was especially affectionate and I felt welcome, less like a stranger in this town of endless rain.
The hall opened into a large living area. There was a TV, VCR, and disc player, all the comforts. Just off the big room was a dining room, with a mahogany table that seated eight, and beyond that was the kitchen.
