"Well, she's bonkers then. I don't give a rat's ass about the prom, and I couldn't care less whether I go to college."
"Yeah, well, you just made my point."
"Oh, you going to get all holier-than-thou on me? Tell me not to throw my life away working at the gas station?"
"No. I would never presume to tell someone what to do with their life. I can't speak for Mattie, but I doubt she would either. She just wants you to . . . hold onto your childhood a little while longer."
"Fuck childhood. It's overrated."
"Well, I'd agree with you there. But you've got the rest of your life to be an adult. Why are you in such a rush?"
She shook her head. "What am I supposed to do, go back to playing with My Little Ponies and watching Dora the Explorer? I didn't want my life to go this way. It just did. And what the hell do you know, anyway? Why the hell would my life be better living with you?"
"It probably wouldn't," Gage said. "It would probably be a lot worse. I know my life would."
"Oh, gee, that makes me feel wonderful."
"Hey, I'm just being honest. You think I want a stubborn sixteen-year-old nihilist living with me who already hates my guts?"
She looked out at the fog. "I don't hate your guts."
"Well, great. That's something at least."
"I just don't want to have to take care of some cripple."
"Cripple?" Gage said, trying to feign irritation but actually feeling it. "You think I'm a cripple just because I have this cane?"
"No," she said. "You think you're a cripple because you carry that cane."
Gage was going to say that was bullshit, but as soon as he started to summon the words he wasn't so sure. She'd startled him with her perceptiveness, slicing through all his layers of self-delusion with one comment. He hadn't even agreed to custody yet, and he already thought parenting was a bitch.
"Well, this is going well," he said.
It didn't elicit a laugh, but he did see the first glimmerings of a smile.
"You see?" she said. "You really don't want to sign up for this on a daily basis, do you?"
"Honestly?"
She shook her head. "Why would I want something other than honesty?"
That got Gage to smile. These two were more alike than they probably realized. "Good point," he said. "No, I'm not sure. I didn't tell Mattie yes."
"Maybe if you say no, she'll give up the whole stupid idea and emancipate me."
"I'm not sure I'm going to say no either."
"Why not? If we're both going to be miserable, what's the point?"
"Mattie's the point."
"I don't—"
"It's her dying wish, Zoe. Maybe that's more important than either of us."
It was the thing that finally got through to her. She didn't answer, but she blinked a few times, eyes shiny and bright. He knew if he was going to make any sort of connection with her, it was going to be now.
"Look," he said, "I'm just being upfront with you here. No matter what happens, I promise you I'll always be honest, okay? I don't know if you living with me is a good idea. I'm pretty much an asshole and I know it. But here's what I do know. A week ago Thursday, I was walking on this very beach and I found a girl not much older than you, dead as can be. I'm trying to find out who killed her and so far I'm not even sure what her name is. It's like . . . nobody was looking out for her, you know? I think that's all Mattie wants—somebody to look out for you. Whether you live with me or not, I want you to know I'll be looking out for you, okay? If you don't want it, well, I'm going to do it for Mattie anyway."
She said nothing for a long time, then finally shrugged. "Whatever," she said.
"That's it?" Gage said. "I give you that whole Hamlet impression and the best you can do is 'whatever'?"
She gave him a sour look. "Don't flatter yourself. It was closer to Falstaff than Hamlet."
"Ah! A Shakespeare fan. That's one thing we have in common, anyway."
She sighed. "Okay, look, I get it. I want Mattie to be happy, too. So if you want to tell her yes, you'll be my pseudo-daddy or whatever, fine, I'll act like the meek little girl and tell her I'll go along with it. But I'm not living with you, and if you force me, you'll never hear from me again, got it? I'll check in with you once in a while, though. And I won't ignore your calls."
It wasn't exactly the sort of thing that would make Mattie happy, but Gage figured it was the best they could do under the circumstances.
"So you want to lie to her?" he said.
"You have a better idea?"
"No. Not really."
"Well, there you go."
With that, she headed down the beach—not back up the steps, but down toward where there were rocks and tide pools. He wasn't sure how much they'd really accomplished, how much bonding had really taken place, but it was the longest conversation he'd ever had with her so that had to count for something. When she'd gone a dozen paces, she turned back, already mostly faded by fog, a slender figure that could have been any girl.
"Hey, Gage," she called.
"Yeah?"
"Who looks after you?"
He didn't have an answer. She shook her head and turned away, disappearing into the fog.
* * *
Mattie was sleeping when Gage returned to her house, all five cats curled up around her. She was so still that for one dreadful moment he thought she might have passed away, but then he saw the telltale rising and falling of her chest, so subtle that he stood watching for a time just to make sure.
He took out the documents from inside his coat, where they'd been ever since she'd given them to him, and smoothed them on top of her dresser. Using his own pen, he filled out all the blanks, the little boxes that reduced his whole life to numbers, dates, and addresses, then folded the paper back up.
Her hands were clasped on her chest. Carefully as he could, he slipped the paper under them. She stirred but did not wake. One of the cats batted playfully at his hand.
Leaving her sleeping, he slipped out of the house.
Chapter 11
Quinn was not happy. That much was obvious. The police chief looked at the handwritten list of names again, his brow furrowing, his enormous eyebrows curling downward along with his frown. The blinds behind him were only partially open, but the angle of the sun shone directly into Gage's eyes, forcing him to shift his head a little to get a better look at him.
The secretary scurried in, dropped a stack of papers on a mound of other papers, and scurried out. A plate containing a half-eaten cinnamon roll teetered on the edge of his desk.
"You gave them to who first?" Quinn said.
"Carmen Hornbridge," Gage said.
"Yeah, that's what I thought you said. You really don't like me, do you?"
"Whether I like you or not is really immaterial."
"But then why drag a reporter into this, for God's sake?"
"It was part of the deal."
"Deal? What deal?"
"That's between me and Carmen."
Quinn dropped the names on his already cluttered desk. "Yeah, well, your deal with me is that you would keep me in the loop."
"I am," Gage said.
"But you gave them to her on Saturday! That was two days ago!"
To Gage, Quinn's voice sounded petulant and childish, like a sibling demanding that his lollipop be exactly the same size as his sister's. His instinct was to say as much, but he let it go. It wasn't because he liked the chief. It was only because he didn't want the extra hassle that particular Monday morning.
He looked at the chief with the well-it-is-what-it-is sort of resignation, as if events had merely unfolded without his control.
"Okay, fine," Quinn said, "I'll give it to my detectives and they'll check them out. Anything else?"
Gage thought about telling him about the message on his doorstep, but he didn't like how it would make him sound. He also didn't want the cops traipsing around his property looking for clues. "Nothing that comes to mind."
> "You got any theories yet?"
"A few."
"You mind sharing?"
Gage thought about it for a moment—or at least gave the appearance of thinking about it for a moment.
"No," he said.
"God damn it, Gage—"
"I'm not holding out on you. I just need a little more time to mull it over."
Quinn tore off a piece of the cinnamon roll and plopped it in his mouth. "I've got a couple detectives on staff who could mull it over, too. Maybe the more people mulling it over, the better."
"Oh, and I'd be too afraid they'd laugh at me, since the caliber of my mulling obviously won't be up to the caliber of their mulling."
"Gage—"
"But I will tell you this much. I've come to believe she was an aspiring artist."
That got Quinn to look at Gage with a more curious expression. "Really? Why?"
"Let's just say it came to me in a moment of mulling."
Quinn sighed. "I should never have made that remark."
"Here's what I'd like to know," Gage said. "If you were an aspiring artist, and you were looking for other like-minded artists, where would you go in Barnacle Bluffs? Are there popular hangouts where artists go?"
Quinn nodded and looked off into a corner of the room. "Well," he said, "I'm not really into the art scene, but three places come to mind. They might wander up to the community college in Newport. They might go to the Barnacle Bluffs Community Center. Or maybe they'd go just north of town to the Northwest Artist Colony. Of course, they might just end up on the beach smoking pot. That seems the most popular destination for kids, whether they're artists or not."
"Tell me about the Northwest Artist Colony," Gage said. "What is it?"
"What am I, the Yellow Pages?" Quinn said. "Find out yourself. Until I get more info out of you, that's all the help you're going to get."
He picked up his phone, Gage's signal to leave. That was the problem starting off a relationship on the wrong foot—it forever dictated how things proceeded from that point. Of course, he almost never started a relationship on the right foot, but it was something he'd gotten better at over the years. Threatening to tell the press that Quinn's wife was once a stripper, though, was most likely not the best way to break the ice. But it was what it was.
The kindly old lady at the Barnacle Bluffs Community Center was far more helpful. The little octagonal building was on the west side of Big Dipper, next to Ocean Waves Retirement. That should have been sign enough that the community center would be filled mostly with gray hair and walkers, which it was; the five rooms were packed with toothless bridge players, liver-spotted knitters, and other wrinkled occupants engaged in the sorts of crafts and hobbies that a spry nineteen-year-old wouldn't have been caught dead doing.
One room that the old folks used focused on water colors, their paintings based on the photos they'd taped to their drawing easels, and that's where Gage stopped. He asked who came the most and was directed to a wizened old woman with bright purple hair, a white shawl draped over her bony shoulders. She was painting a blooming yellow rosebush.
"You come here a lot?" Gage said.
She leaned over, cupping her hand behind her ear. Her skin looked like a piece of paper someone had crumpled into a ball and then done their best to straighten out again. "You'll have to speak louder, dear."
"I said, do you come here a lot?"
The woman smiled, flashing several gold-capped teeth. "That sounds like a pick-up line, honey. If you want to ask me out on a date, you should just say so."
"I'm afraid you'd be too much woman for me."
She laughed. "And you'd be right. What's on your mind, then?"
Gage pulled out the glossy headshot of the girl and showed it to the woman, asking if she'd ever seen her. The woman picked up the glasses hanging around her neck, hands visibly shaking, and studied the picture. She did so for only a moment before cringing.
"Oh, no," she said, "never seen her. That was awful what happened to her."
"You heard about that?"
"Well of course I've heard about it, honey. Get the paper every day. I may be old, but I can still read."
"I was led to believe she may have been an aspiring artist."
"Oh. Well. That's even sadder, then. The world not only lost a beautiful girl, but an artist, too. Don't think she'd come here, though. Who'd want to hang out with all these fuddy-duddies? Honestly, the only reason I come here is I look good next to all of these wannabes. My ego needs the boost."
"Somehow, I doubt that," Gage said. "What about this Northwest Artist Colony I've heard about? Think that might be a place a young artist would go?"
"That's where I would go if I was young," the woman said. "You can stay up to two weeks in one of the cabins, and if you don't have much money, it's no problem, you just have to do some chores. Most of the funding comes from donations. I go to their annual show every year and they do some wonderful things." She beckoned for Gage to lower his ear, and he did, allowing her to whisper the rest. Her breath smelled like peppermint. "I also hear that if you want to get laid, it's not a bad place to go."
Gage feigned astonishment. "Is that so?"
She nodded. "That's what I've heard, anyway. I don't have direct experience. But the action has to be better than here. The only man interested in me lately is this guy Phil, and he can't keep his mouth shut, and I don't mean he talks too much. He's just old and has a problem with his jaw—hangs open all the time, by God! I do have my standards, you know." She squinted at him, her eyes bright even through her cataracts. "What about you? You don't have a ring on your finger. You committed or on the prowl?"
He wrote Alex's bookstore number on a scrap of paper and handed it to her. "If you think of anything else, call this number. He's a friend of mine. And I wouldn't exactly describe myself as 'on the prowl.'"
"It's one or the other, honey. All right, you got that panicked look in your eyes, so I won't be holding you any longer."
"You kidding? I could hang out with you all day."
"Liar. Anyway, if you go talk to those kids at the Colony, you tell 'em if they want to sneak any grass down here, tell them to ask for Agnes Clayborne. They'd have at least one buyer."
"Okay. Are you sure that's a good idea at your age?"
"Honey, at my age everything's a good idea. Oh, and I like your cane, by the way. My second husband, God bless his soul, he had one just like it."
* * *
Using the pay phone outside the community center, Gage placed a call to Carmen to see if she'd dug up anything from the list of names. Right after he asked her, a man in an orange blazer across the street started up a jackhammer, tearing into a roped-off portion of the hospital parking lot.
"Nothing yet," she said, "but I'm working on it. Where are you anyway?"
He cupped his hand over his free ear to better hear her. A breeze cutting into the covered patio area where he stood, whistling into the receiver, made it even harder. When he told her, she laughed. When he told her who'd he'd spoken with, she laughed even more.
"Oh, I know Agnes. Did a feature on late-blooming artists a few months back and interviewed her. She's a kick. Good one to have in your Rolodex. Knows just about everybody in town."
"Good to know. Do you know how to get to the Northwest Artist Colony?"
"Those crazy hippies? Sure. Why, you think this girl was a Van Gogh-wannabe or something?"
"Or something. How do you get there?"
She told him. It seemed simple enough, just look for a certain mile marker north of town, and right after that there'd be a gravel road and a wooden sign with the letters "NAC" painted on it in white.
"Let me know if you find out anything from the list of names," Gage said.
Carmen laughed. "How? By carrier pigeon?"
"Sure. Isn't that how everyone communicates these days?"
"I hate to break this to you, Gage. But if you want to keep up with a woman like me, the least you could do is get a phone."
"Should I be trying to keep up with a woman like you?"
"Probably not," she replied. "So when are you going to return the favor and take me out to dinner?"
"You don't waste time, do you?"
"Why would I want to waste time? My biological clock is ticking. If I'm going to have a baby, I need to get going on it."
He was speechless.
"I'm kidding, Garrison. Jesus. I think I heard your heart stop."
"Maybe it did. How about this weekend?"
"Yikes. A girl might start to think a guy isn't interested, waiting that long. How about tonight?"
"I'm going to play a little poker tonight," Gage said.
"Ah. I assume you're looking to sit down with Jimmy Lourdenback. All right. Wednesday then. You can pick me up at the office at eight."
"You're something else, Carmen."
"Yeah, that's what all the boys tell me." She laughed, but it sounded a bit forced. "I keep telling myself it's a compliment."
* * *
Despite how straightforward the directions had seemed, Gage still drove by the gravel road three times before finally spotting the sign.
It had been nicely carved, but it blended in a little too well with the scotch broom bushes crowding the road. Most of the first-timers to the Oregon coast thought the yellow-flowering bushes were pretty—until they saw exactly how prevalent they were. The scotch broom—and this was something Gage had learned from reading one of Carmen's articles—was a transplant from England many years back. With no natural enemies in Oregon, they ran amuck, choking off all other vegetation. Crowds of volunteers came out every summer to hack them back, but they always returned the next year even stronger.
After ten minutes driving up a rutted gravel road, tires sloshing through puddles, each bump and jostle going straight to his knee, Gage knew he was getting close when he spotted a couple of tie-dyed kids alongside the road, sketching a fire-blackened oak. They smiled at him and, true to form, flashed the peace sign. Two minutes later, the road ended at a big brown building that might have once been a church, with wood shake siding, stained glass insets on the front doors, and a white steeple with a bell tower. The gravel parking lot was packed with at least two dozen cars, mostly VW vans and beetles.
The Gray and Guilty Sea Page 11
