“Don’t mind me,” I said. “Just making myself at home.”
“You get out of here right now!” he said. “I’m warning you!” He was holding the phone and shaking it at me.
“Did you call Leopold yet?” I said.
“I’m going to! Right now! You just wait until he gets here! What that man is going to do to you!”
I shook my head and looked down the hallway to my left. There were four doors in the hallway. One of them was closed. As I walked toward it, I started to hear a hissing sound.
“Don’t you dare go down there!” the old man said behind me. “Do you hear me? That’s her room, goddamn you!”
“Make the call,” I said.
“Do not disturb that woman! I swear to God, you’ll be sorry! She’ll give you the evil eye and you’ll have festering boils all over your body!”
That one stopped me long enough to roll my eyes. Then I gently knocked on the door.
“Festering boils!” he said. “I’m warning you!”
I knocked again, a little louder.
“Come in,” she said. When I opened the door, I saw Madame Valeska sitting in a rocking chair next to her bed. The clear tube ran from the hissing oxygen tank to her nose, just as it had when I saw her the week before. The same smell of medicine and menthol hung in the air around her. There was a lace blanket wrapped around her legs, and a book resting on her lap.
“You’re not going to give me festering boils, are you?” I said.
“I had a feeling I’d be seeing you again,” she said.
“I’m sorry to intrude.”
“It sounds like you’ve got poor William in a state,” she said. “I hope he doesn’t have a heart attack out there.”
“He’s calling your son,” I said.
“William comes over to sit with me during the day,” she said. “He’s very protective.”
“I’d just like to ask you a couple questions,” I said. “If you don’t mind.”
“Come closer,” she said. “Let me see your hands.”
I stepped into the room. It felt twenty degrees hotter than the rest of the house. The other chair, the chair William must have used when he was sitting with her, was a big old recliner on the other side of the room. I didn’t feel like dragging it over to her, so I went to her and stood in front of her with my hands out. It felt awkward looking down at her, so I went down into a catcher’s crouch. My legs didn’t like that one bit, never mind that I had spent a few years of my life doing this a couple hundred times a day.
When I was at eye level, she took my hands in her own. They were the hands of an old woman, made crooked by ninety years of use, but I could feel in them a surprising strength. “Now what is so important that you have to come into my house and make William so upset?”
“You remember Randy, the man who was here with me?”
“The baseball player,” she said. “Are you right-handed?”
“Yes,” I said.
“Your left hand shows your ancestry,” she said. “It’s what’s given to you at birth. Your right hand shows your present nature, and what the future may hold.” She took my right hand and traced the lines with a bent finger.
“He was shot last night,” I said.
“I am sorry to hear that,” she said. “He is alive, no? I would hear it in your voice if he had been killed.”
“Yes, he’s alive.”
She nodded her head. She still did not look up from my hands. “You have lived a very hard life,” she said.
“I was a catcher,” I said. “That’s why my hands are so beat-up.”
She looked up at me for an instant. “That’s not what I’m looking at,” she said. “Your fate line is ragged. It shows much misfortune.”
“He was shot in a small town called Orcus Beach,” I said. “Does the name mean anything to you?”
“No,” she said. “Your fingers are well separated. You are a very independent person. But your last finger is set very low, which means you’ve had to work very hard.”
I watched her white head as she held my hand. The oxygen tank hissed in the corner.
“Do you see how your first finger is bending toward your middle finger? That means you are a very persistent man. Very stubborn. And this separation between your head line and your life line, it means you need to work very hard on controlling your temper.”
“Orcus Beach,” I said. “That’s where Maria is, isn’t she?”
She looked up at me. “If that’s true, it’s news to me.” She looked me right in the eye as she said it. If she was lying, she was damned good at it.
“Ma’am, there’s a shotgun in this house,” I said. “Do you know where it is?”
A step behind me, and then a voice from the doorway. “You mean this shotgun?” It was William, back from his phone call, pointing the shotgun directly at my head.
“What are you doing?” I said, trying to keep my voice level. “Put the gun down.”
“William, dear,” she said. “Do as the man says. You’re going to hurt somebody.”
Hurt somebody, she says. If he unloads both barrels of that thing, he’ll do more than hurt somebody.
“William,” I said. “If you fire that weapon, you’ll kill both of us. Do you understand?”
“You can’t just barge in here without me doing something about it,” he said. The gun started to waver in his hands. His face was turning red.
“Put it down,” I said.
“You think I’m just an old man who can’t protect anybody?”
“Obviously, you can,” I said. “Now put it down.”
He looked at the gun. His face kept getting redder.
Goddamn it, I thought. The gun’s too heavy. He’s gonna slip and blow both our heads off.
“William!” I said. I could feel the sweat running down my back. “I swear to God, if you fire a shotgun from there, you’ll kill both of us! Do you understand me?”
“I’m sorry, Arabella,” he said. “I didn’t know what else to do.”
And then he lowered the gun. I got up out of my crouch, nearly falling over when my legs cramped up. The movement surprised him, and he started to bring the gun back up at me. I took it away from him. For a single moment, I felt like bashing his old fool head in with the butt of the gun. Instead, I made myself take a deep breath.
I had the shotgun barrel in both hands now. This is not what I had been planning on doing. Now with my fingerprints all over the thing, I’d have some explaining to do.
“Ah hell, as long as I’m touching it,” I said. It was a classic breach-action Parker, the kind of shotgun some of the older hunters still liked to use. I broke it open slowly so the shells wouldn’t eject across the room. They weren’t the buckshot shells I was expecting. They were slugs, which made sense if the owner was going after big game, like deer or bear.
“Well, the good news,” I said, “is that you wouldn’t have killed both of us after all. Assuming you didn’t miss.”
“I wouldn’t have missed,” he said. He was holding on to the doorframe with both hands, catching his breath.
“That’s great,” I said. “And of course blowing two slugs through my head wouldn’t have bothered the woman sitting right next to me.”
“William, dear,” she said. “You really need to think about things before you do them. You’ve always been too impulsive. You know that.”
“Go sit in the chair,” I said. “You’ve had a busy day.”
I looked at the gun again. If Leopold had used this gun to shoot Randy, I thought, then he didn’t hide it. He cleaned it and put in slugs. It was possible, but it didn’t seem likely.
“Where was your son last night?” I asked her.
“Ask him yourself,” William said as he slowly lowered himself into the chair. “He’s on his way.”
“Good man,” I said. “How long until he gets here?”
“Not long,” he said. “And he won’t be happy.”
I was waiting outside for hi
m when he finally pulled up in his truck. He hit the brakes with such a jolt it sent one of his ladders flying off the rack. When he came charging out of the truck, I moved out onto the cold, hard ground of his front lawn, my hands in the air, about shoulder height. With your hands up, you look like you want peace, but at the same time you’ve got them ready for anything else.
He didn’t say a word. He came right at me and started swinging. He was the same little fireplug I remembered from our first meeting, built like a bantamweight boxer. Today, he was wearing his white painting overalls, complete with the little white hat.
I blocked a few of his punches and then slipped one into the ribs. I shouldn’t have enjoyed seeing the wind go out of him, but I couldn’t help myself. When you get thrown down a flight of stairs, handcuffed to the wall, and then threatened with a shotgun, it’s not something you can let go of too easily. Even if the guy admits he made a mistake.
“Little different story, isn’t it,” I said, ducking a big overhand haymaker. “When you don’t have a shotgun or your muscle-head son hiding behind the door.”
“What the hell are you doing here anyway?” he said as he backed up to regroup. “You got no business here.”
“Randy got shot yesterday,” I said.
He stopped moving. “What does that have to do with us?” he said.
“Did you shoot him?” I said.
He shook his head. “No, I didn’t shoot him,” he said.
His little white hat had come off. It was blowing away. I looked him in the eye.
He was telling the truth.
“Why would you even think that?” he said. “What reason would I have to shoot him?”
“Because he found your sister,” I said.
“What are you talking about?”
“I know where she is,” I said.
His eyes narrowed.
Here it comes, I thought. This will tell me something.
“I know she’s in Orcus Beach,” I said.
The eyes. If he doesn’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll see the confusion in his eyes. If it’s the truth, he’ll look away.
He looked away.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said. But it was too late.
“How did Randy find out?” I said. “Did he come back here? Did you tell him where she is?”
“Of course not,” he said.
“Your mother? Your son? How about…” I stopped.
“Nobody told him anything,” he said.
“Maria’s daughter,” I said. “What was her name, Delilah?”
“No,” he said.
“He’s smooth,” I said. “He has a way of making you trust him. Especially women.”
“That’s impossible.”
“Think about it,” I said. “He came back here when you were at work. When your son was out doing whatever it is he does. He’s got a job or something, right? Let me guess; he works at a gym.”
“Yes, he does.”
“Delilah was here alone,” I said. “He came back. He talked to her. He told her about how he remembered her mother after all these years, how he just wanted to see her again, how he was going to try to help her…”
Leopold didn’t say anything. He stood there on the front lawn, shaking his head slowly. “No,” he said, so softly I could barely hear him. “No.”
He was still standing there on the lawn when I left. The image of him looking down at the dead April grass, shaking his head, it stayed in my mind all the way back to the expressway, all the way west across the state, with the map the bartender had made to get me to Orcus Beach.
When Delilah got home from school that day, she’d find her uncle Leopold waiting for her with some tough questions. Maybe it would be a relief to tell him her secret, that yes, the man had come back and asked her about Maria. She thought she was doing the right thing. She thought she could trust him.
You charmed another one, Randy. Maybe for the last time.
CHAPTER 14
It felt as if I had already logged a thousand miles that day, but back I went across the state as the sun went down, right through Grand Rapids, until I hit Lake Michigan. I turned north in Muskegon, running up M-31 to the outer edges of the Manistee National Forest. I passed a couple towns called Whitehall and Montague, the last real towns I’d see before heading to the shoreline. There was a sign inviting me to come see the world’s largest weather vane, but a man can only take so much excitement in one day. I took a little road called B-5 to a tiny place called Stony Lake, and then the road started calling itself Scenic Drive. It didn’t matter what they called the road, because you wouldn’t even be on it unless you knew where you were going. There were a few summer houses looking out over the water, then long stretches of road with nothing but pine trees. I had the bartender’s hand-drawn map on the seat next to me. I knew I was on the right road, and I was just starting to wonder if he had led me into the middle of nowhere as a joke, when I finally came to an intersection and the only traffic light I’d seen since leaving Montague, WELCOME TO ORCUS BEACH, the sign said. Below those words was the same picture I had seen on Chief Rudiger’s hat, with the cannon sitting on the mound of sand.
I drove through the town. It was dark. The only streetlights on the main road were mounted on wooden poles in front of the businesses-a gas station, an IGA market, a little video store. There were neighborhoods spreading out into the darkness on either side of the road, behind the businesses. From what little I could see, it looked like the bigger houses were on the west side of town, facing the water, or facing away from the town, depending on how you thought about it.
The town hall was on the west side of the street, attached to the fire department. I pulled into the lot and drove all around the place, thinking maybe I’d see a squad car. I didn’t. I stopped the truck and got out, went to the door in the back marked ORCUS BEACH POLICE DEPARTMENT. Looking through the glass door, I could see one desk with a police radio on it, a map on the wall, a bulletin board with a calendar stuck to it. There was nobody there. Maybe Chief Rudiger is on his way to Farmington, I thought. Maybe he’s following the hot lead I gave him about the shotgun.
Or maybe he was home reading the paper.
I got back in the truck and completed my tour of the place. The last streetlight in town burned high on its pole in the middle of an empty parking lot grown over with weeds. To the north, there was nothing but empty road leading into the night.
I turned around in the parking lot, my headlights sweeping across the building. It was a simple two-story rectangle, gray and silent, with thick glass block windows high on the walls overlooking the road. I remembered the county deputy saying something about a furniture factory closing. This must have been it.
I circled back into the center of town, back to the one gas station on the corner with the traffic light. It looked like there had been another station across the street, but that place was as empty as the factory. Even the pumps were gone.
I pulled in and gassed up for the second time that day. It was the old style of gas station, no roof over the pumps, no minimart to sell you beef jerky. Just a cash register inside, a shelfful of motor oil, and a rack of maps. The man came out and watched me as I pumped the gas. He was wearing overalls with STU written over the breast pocket in red script.
“Nice town you got here,” I said.
He looked out at the street like he needed to see for himself. “This town?”
“Have you seen Chief Rudiger?” I said.
“You looking for him?”
I gave myself a few seconds before answering him. The kind of day I was having, I didn’t want to start taking it out on innocent bystanders.
“Yeah,” I said. “I’m looking for him.”
“Haven’t seen him,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. I watched the numbers race by on the pump. I was about to set a new record for the most expensive tank of gas I’d ever put in the truck, thanks to the jacked-up price this guy was chargin
g. I guess he had a corner on the market.
“Everybody in town gas up here?” I said.
“Of course,” he said, leaning on the pump. “Why not?”
Because you could buy a gallon of beer for less than what you’re charging for a gallon of gasoline. “Oh, I just figure you know everybody in town,” I said. I gave him a smile.
“Yeah, most of ’em,” he said. “I suppose.”
“I’m looking for a woman named Maria,” I said. “You know anybody in town named Maria?”
“Not off the top of my head,” he said.
“Okay, no problem.”
“In fact,” he said, “I’m pretty certain that there’s nobody in this entire town with that name.”
I finished up the gas, squeezing it up to the next dollar. “Fair enough,” I said, pulling out some cash for the man.
When he took it, he gave me a long look in the eye. “You said you were looking for the chief?” he said.
“I’m sure I’ll see him,” I said. “Eventually.”
“I could give him a message,” he said. “I mean, if you don’t want to wait around. He might not be back for a while. He goes away for days on end sometimes.”
“He should be back,” I said. “He’s working on a case. I understand you had a shooting here yesterday.”
“Oh, yeah,” he said. “Yeah, we did.”
“Must have everybody in town pretty shaken up,” I said. “I don’t imagine you get many shootings.”
“Not too often,” he said. He looked at the ground.
“Where can I get something to eat around here?” I said.
“There’s a real good place down in Whitehall.”
“That’s twenty miles away. There’s no place here in town?”
“Not really,” he said. “There’s no place to speak of here. Not for eating.”
“What about that place down there?” I said, nodding my head toward the only two-story building on the block. The sign over the door said ROCKY'S.
“Oh, Rocky’s,” he said. “That’s more of a bar really. If you want something to eat, you should go down to Whitehall.”
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