by E M Kaplan
“I meant that guy earlier—the one that you were going to have dinner with in your room. I saw them take the trays into your room. He only stayed for what, five minutes.”
“What?” Oh, crap. Get it together, she demanded of herself. He meant the cop, Detective Flores. Then, she went on the offensive, relief to changing her fear into aggression. She squinted at him. “What the hell? Are you spying on me?”
He looked embarrassed and offered her a sheepish grin. “I guess. So…it couldn’t have been a very good date.”
“It wasn’t a date. He was just dropping something off for me.”
“Something for the work you’re doing?” Patrick asked.
“No,” she lied. “I got a traffic ticket today and I forgot to sign something.” She was surprised at how easy it was to lie. Fear was making her want to deny anything and everything.
“That’s very personal ticketing service,” he said, but he seemed to buy it.
“It’s a small town, I guess. Anything to stick it to the out-of-towner,” she said.
“I can believe it,” he agreed. “But I wonder if it couldn’t have something to do with how beautiful you are.” He took a lock of her hair between two fingers. She had to fight not to immediately pull away. “So attractive. Do you even know?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Does rude equal attractive in your book?”
“You’re not rude,” he protested. “You’re…prickly. But in a nice way.”
“Masochist,” she said.
“At your service.”
She took a breath, residual fear finally loosening its grip on her. “Actually, I was coming to find you.” She managed a small smile.
“Me?” He looked surprised.
“If you’re done spying on people today, do you think you want to come over and help me eat this dinner for two that’s getting cold in my room?” Because curse her, but she didn’t want to be alone.
He grinned and said in that flat, southern California deadpan, which Josie could never tell hid intelligence or substituted for it, “I’m so flattered. I thought you would never ask.”
As it turned out, Josie didn’t have much of an appetite. Dinner was a small grilled filet mignon, done medium-well, with a chived baked potato with no butter or sour cream, steamed vegetables, and a green salad on the side. There also was some kind of fruit tart for dessert. American Home Cooking Lite, Josie labeled it. Her taste buds did an apathetic shrug. Nothing was wrong with the food really, but her stomach was wishing she were someplace else. Like, Greenland. Anywhere but here.
Patrick, on the other hand, fell onto the meal, pillaging it. Flat-out marauding. She was almost embarrassed to watch him savor the food so much while she could muster only a half-hearted sigh. She made the first cut into her meat.
“Oh my God,” he said with his mouth full. “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve eaten red meat?”
She paused, happy to get a rest between her slow, mechanical bites. “I’m aiding and abetting, aren’t I? This is contraband for you.”
“Yes, and I thank you heartily. I ought to give you the five hundred dollars I was trying to give Clay the other morning.”
“I think it was a thousand,” she reminded him.
“Well, even if I have to pay you, it’s worth every penny,” he said severing another bite from his meat. He plowed through the rest of his meal during the time it took her to grind about a quarter of hers between her molars and swallow it down. When she sat back, he was eyeing her plate, so she pushed it toward him. “For real?” he said.
“Go for it.”
“I’ll never forget you for this,” he said, shutting his eyes and moaning.
“Sure. Sure. That’s what they all say.” She watched him eat, feeling a little alienated by his gluttonous display. If she were to have a silent conversation with her stomach, she would say, See? You were like this once. Maybe she’d feel like that again someday. Before her career was in shreds. When he was finished, she gestured to the fruit tart, and he dug into it without hesitation.
He wiped his mouth with one of the cloth napkins and sat back, sated. “You know,” he said with a lop-sided grin, “You haven’t told me very much about yourself. Seems like when I’m with you, all I do is talk about myself. You probably think I have a huge ego.” She shrugged, which he took for agreement. He leaned forward, laying one of his hands over hers on the table. “Tell me something about you.” He ran a finger over a set of faded scars on her knuckles. “What are these scars from?”
#
She fought the urge to fib to him, to tell him that they were from working as a day slave in a Nike factory in some third-world country like Thailand. She wanted to lie when someone pushed her too hard or tried to delve too deeply into the parts of her history that were hers alone. So she was surprised when she heard the truth coming out of her mouth.
“After my dad died while I was in high school, I had a rough transition period. I got into some fights.”
His eyes widened slightly and he frowned. “You’re such a mystery to me.”
Thereby causing her to wish she hadn’t said anything. Nothing like someone commenting on the dish pattern while she was unveiling the main entree. “No big deal,” she said and drew her hand away.
He didn’t seem to notice she regretted telling him. Instead he said, “Hey, I remembered something I wanted to tell you. It’s about Peter and Michael and that girl, Denise. There was this thing that happened at a party once. The brothers organized this big party at the girl’s house while her parents were away. They had all the usual stuff. A bunch of alcohol. Some pot. Maybe a little coke. Loud music with people dancing and overdoing it. But they also arranged this weird mock wedding ceremony between Peter and the girl. Like an elaborate staged play. She went along with it, of course. And I think Michael was behind it. He dressed her up in a white veil and had a fancy bouquet of flowers for her. He performed a weird ceremony making sarcastic jokes. I don’t know. It was freaky, the whole thing.
“Anyway, a few months later, the girl got pregnant. Same old story. Her father was furious about it. I guess it probably threatened his political career—it was a small, conservative town after all. The endless, on-going conflict between the people in the town and the school heated up again. Townies were making speeches and writing letters to the newspaper. It was a pretty big deal. Between that and the pressure from the Williams brothers, the girl ended up killing herself.”
As he told her this story, he took her hand and held it. He unconsciously played with the ring on her thumb, rolling it between his own fingers. Josie felt a chill—even in the desert heat—when she heard, for the second time about a secret pregnancy. One wanted, one unwanted.
Patrick said, “She went into her father’s study, took his handgun from his desk, and shot herself right here.” He placed a hand on his stomach. “And then, when she didn’t die right away, she shot herself a second time in the head.”
Josie stiffened and pulled her hand away. “Good God.”
“I’ve thought about it over the years. The way she died always comes back to me. It tells me that she was strong. She was a strong girl, but she had wanted to die very, very badly.”
“I just don’t understand…How did he get away with it?”
“Get away with what?”
“With being responsible, for the most part, for killing that girl.”
Patrick sat back. “Oh, come on now. They didn’t kill her.”
“They?” Josie frowned.
“Well, him, that is. Peter didn’t kill her. No one killed her. She killed herself.” This was starting to sound a little familiar.
“Don’t you think he was responsible though?”
“Peter?” He thought about it. “If laws were about moral or ethical responsibility and not just the legal responsibility, I guess so. But they didn’t do anything to her, really—she did it to herself. We all were just a bunch of dumb kids. And some of us were dumber than others.”
<
br /> “Meaning Peter,” Josie said. She pushed her chair back from the table trying to get a little distance from him.
“Yeah,” he said. “Peter was the kind of guy who’d get really drunk and kill the neighbor’s cat. By the time he’d sobered up the next morning, he probably wouldn’t even remember what he’d done. Sober, he was always pretty harmless.” With a shiver, Josie thought about running into him that night at O’Malley’s. “You’re freaking yourself out over it,” Patrick said, noticing her reaction. “Let’s talk about something else before I drift off into a red meat induced coma. Seriously, let’s not get into this while we’re feeling so good this evening. We may pay tomorrow, but for now…well, let’s just enjoy the moment.”
“Actually, I did have something else that I wanted to ask you, now that you mention it. Something I just…well, I’m a little embarrassed to ask, but I don’t think you’re going to mind.”
He grinned in an anticipatory fashion, like he knew what she was going to ask him, and she wasn’t sure why. “Shoot.”
“My aunt and uncle are having a 50th anniversary party at their house tomorrow night. I kind of need a date, I think. Want to go with me? I don’t want to show up alone. And I can guarantee at least a metric ton of contraband food.” She didn’t mention she was desperate for any company at all right now. She didn’t want to be alone. Not with Peter Williams out there.
Patrick’s perfect eyebrows shot up. He was surprised, no doubt, and he took his time answering—long enough that she began to search for a way to retract her invitation without looking like an idiot. He was struggling with how to answer her, clearly. But then, finally, he said, “Sure. It might be fun to go for a little while. A lot of people are going?”
“Neighbors. People they’ve known over the years. A few here and there.” She didn’t mention it might be half of Tucson.
He nodded, looking thoughtful. “Okay. Sure.”
“We don’t have to stay long. Just get in, wave to my fans, and get out. I just have to make an appearance,” she said, which made him laugh in a nervous, high-pitched way, which in turn made her laugh. He was just so weird; she couldn’t get a handle on him. He was pretty and charismatic…and distracting. But also a little flaky and, when it came right down to it, also not Drew. So, there was that. But no one was Drew and no one would ever be Drew…even though he was mad at her right now.
Patrick ran a hand through his highlighted hair and pushed back his chair. “Thanks for the mighty fine meal, missy. Me and my stomach appreciate it.”
“Just as long as you aren’t cursing me in the morning,” she said. She thought for a second, from his lingering, that he was going to try to kiss her goodnight. But when he stood up and gave her only a funny little goodnight wave from the doorway, she was glad.
CHAPTER 19
She sat looking at the fallout of silverware and china, the rind of fat cut from his sirloin, and then she drank some water. From her wallet, she got out the little card with the fastidious numbers in Mr. Obregon's handwriting. It was already past eleven o’clock here, which meant it was much later in Boston. Two or three hours, she couldn’t remember—she never had gotten the hang of Daylight Savings Time because Arizona didn’t have it. Mr. Obregon was probably an insomniac or a guy who liked the late shows, but she didn’t want to alarm him on the off chance that he was asleep. All she could think of were his fragile, calcified arteries and didn’t want to take the risk that a middle-of-the-night phone call might give him a heart attack.
His business card didn’t have an email address on it, so instead, she decided to write up a report and use the hotel fax machine to send it to him. She found a sheet of stationery that had Castle Ranch embossed at the top of it with an etched outline of a string of foothills and a saguaro cactus, looking suspiciously like it was flipping the middle finger at the sky. She also found a pen in the night table, so she cleared away some of the dishes on the dinner table and got to work.
She started to write what she’d discovered about Peter Williams and the townie girl who had committed suicide, then stopped. If Mr. Obregon had known the family long enough, he probably already knew the whole story. But she thought better of it and wrote a couple of short sentences about it. If he knew that she knew about it, at least he’d have an idea that she’d been trying to find information, as meager a crop as her attempts had yielded. She wrote that she’d discovered Leann had been thinking about having a child. And finally, that there was evidence that Leann had been subject to domestic violence previously while staying in Puerta—most likely at the hands of Peter Williams—but that her death was caused by a bee sting and ruled an accident.
After she was finished writing, she read it over and sat back. It was pointless, most of it. Mr. Obregon probably knew it all already. Her notes were just the random thoughts of a questionably qualified observer. She sighed and slipped on her sandals. All the message had to convey, in reality, was that, yes, she was still doing her task and that she hadn’t been shoved into some cactus by the angry widower. Yet.
#
The only lights came from the pool. All of the bungalow windows were dark. Even her own room was tightly curtained and blacked out, she realized as she shut her door behind her. The light inside of the pool shimmered up through the surface of the water. The waterfall sluiced steadily into the pool, creating a gentle white noise that blended with the crickets. Then, the automatic pool filter switched on with a noisy roar and drowned it all out.
Josie, holding her paper to be faxed, walked around the pool to the lobby. Inside, the lights were faint—only one shining from the office behind the front desk. She went toward it and found the office empty. The fax machine was still powered up. It took her two tries to figure out that she needed to dial a 9 before the rest of the number. After that, the call connected, and her paper scrolled through the reader. The machine disconnected with a high-pitched beep, and then printed out a log sheet for her. She took it with her original and went back to the lobby.
With her hand on the lobby door, Josie pushed out to step into the deeper shadow of the patio. She heard a woman’s laugh. Then, the rumble of a man’s deeper laugh. Unnerved, she stepped back into the darker shadows of the patio where there were chairs. She didn’t mean to spy, she’d just wanted to be obscured from view where she could safely lurk and assess the danger level. She’d thought the place was deserted. Across the pool, a man and a woman emerged from the honeymoon bungalow. For a second, Josie’s pulse raced—she thought she was seeing ghosts. But that was ridiculous…right?
Hidden and still, Josie kicked herself her for first reaction—to slink back and remain unseen. Why hadn’t she just kept walking and gone to her room? It was as much her right as theirs to be there. And they certainly weren’t taking any pains to conceal their private intentions in a public place, she realized with further chagrin.
The man and the woman were now locked in an embrace and kissing with the vigor of newlyweds. Both of them in swimming suits, they moved toward the pool and the light. Josie realized with some shock that the man was Peter Williams and the woman was Tammy Roberts, the massage therapist. Within minutes, the two were in the water, their swimming suits stripped off, having what looked to be fairly public sex. Peter’s hands were under Tammy’s legs, supporting her, lifting her up and down against him. Tammy’s muscular shoulders were out of the water, the tops of her breasts bobbing, and her legs locked around him. Her red hair was suddenly drenched as she flung her head back in the water, the wide smile on her face lit up by the moonlight.
Josie observed their athletic display with morbid curiosity and…a little bit of disgust. All she could think about was Leann, the dead bride—and speculate if this side relationship had been going on longer for more than just a few days. The couple’s gusto made the relationship seem like it was a new one. But there was also a decided familiarity…Whatever the case, Josie hoped for little stamina. She didn’t know if she could take much more. She sighed, closed her eyes, leane
d against the back wall of the patio, and waited for it to be over.
Part 4:
Golden Anniversary
On Food and Memory—The taste of jackfruit can reduce me to tears, sweep me back to a time when the sound of a wooden cow bell or the smell of our teak furniture assured me of warmth and comfort. That brief, ephemeral blink of time when everything was right in the world.
Josie Tucker, unpublished memoirs
CHAPTER 20
Josie looked forward with a homesick curiosity to seeing the spread of food that would arrive, unsolicited, at her aunt and uncle’s house. Communities were always at their best when it came to events like funerals, bar mitzvahs, weddings, or anniversaries. And all the better if the event was a potluck, as far as she was concerned. And double that if it was a potluck that crossed social and ethnic boundaries. One man’s spaghetti is another’s Pad Thai—a cross-cultural noodle exchange could be somewhat magical.
People knew her uncle was bringing in a caterer to do some barbecue, but that didn’t matter. A party was a party, and no matter who was throwing it—even if a person’s 3,000 square foot “villa” was perched on the edge of the private golf course at the base of the foothills—in this town and with this crowd, no one showed up empty-handed. Might as well show up in a halter top and short-shorts to the Russian Tea Room in New York City. Might as well make herself a social outcast—though, most likely, in this crowd, someone would take her aside, actually tell her what she did wrong, and let her pass with a warning the first time. Come to think of it, that was pretty much the story of her teen years in general.
Josie knew there would be pyramids of steaming tamales, each carefully molded bed of cornmeal with a streak of red or green fire, nestled in its moist, golden husk. Baked goods that tasted much better than they looked. Casseroles thickened with a variety of cheeses. Salads of unusual marriages—marshmallows, walnuts, parmesan cheese. Plus, Uncle Jack’s contribution would be there—mountains of ribs, a fifty-gallon drum of beans and another of slaw.
