by Deb Davies
Charles sat down and gave Arnie a quizzical look. “Who drinks fermented onions?” he asked. “Why are you in a mood? I thought I heard you chatting up Laurel. I’ll swear you walked away whistling.”
“Fuck off,” Arnie said. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Pearl slid around his ankles, and he shoved him aside.
Charles moved his cup closer to Arnie, so that the steam floated into Arnie’s face.
“Laurel dump you? Out with it.”
“I’ll slug you,” Arnie threatened.
“Don’t go berserker on me.” Charles set the cup down on the far side of the steps. The two sat in silence that, if not companionable, became less strained.
“Murphy’s gone,” Arnie said. “I walked over to see him. There’s almost no trace he was ever there. Walden. A Bible. A manual of military training. A blanket on a cot.”
“Any signs of a fight?” Charles asked.
“Not that I could see. Those walking sticks in the corner. An old aluminum coffee pot hanging over the fireplace. Not even a change of clothes. We’ll check for fingerprints, but I think he left. Departed. Skedaddled.”
“Did you get anywhere when you went to talk to the Marshes?”
“Not really. One of their kittens died in its sleep.”
“Any chance of poison?”
“Guess not,” Arnie said. “They had Sanjay check it. He said it had a heart murmur when he’d first seen it, but he hadn’t thought it was significant and hadn’t wanted to worry them with it.”
“In other words, he fucked up,” Charles said, looking indignant.
“As do we all,” Arnie said. “Anyway, they’d just finished burying it under lilac bushes, in a plot that is their animal cemetery. Every critter they’ve ever owned is buried there but the horses, which take a backhoe and a lot of space to inter. All in all, it was a gloomy conversation. They agreed George’s parents and grandparents had gone through some financial struggles but came out squeaky clean. The only thing they could suggest about Murphy’s disappearance was that we check out farms that just had a horse put down. Said more than one farm wife disappeared under a nag.”
“I’ll bet they didn’t say it that way.”
“You’re right. They didn’t.”
“Hey, Arn.”
Arnie gave him a mulish look. “No one calls me Arn.”
“Maybe they should. Sounds like a Viking name. Arn Sweener Swaggerson, son of Scyld, great among the Geats.”
Arnie didn’t say anything. Charles looked concerned.
“You look banefully burdened.”
“I am that,” Arnie said.
“Something besides Murphy being gone.”
Arnie stretched his legs out and leaned his arms back on the step behind him. The wood held the day’s warmth.
“I didn’t save a kid’s life.”
“What kid?” Charles sat up, startled.
“By any chance did Claire tell you a Sanjay story? About Sanjay and Zoe rescuing a lamb?”
“The black lamb video maker. She did,” Charles said. “We were sorting coins and comic books in the basement. I think she told me because telling the story cheered her up.”
“Claire would like an ‘everything ends happily ever after’ story.”
“But it didn’t, did it?
“He’s not dead, but he’s in a world of trouble. Heading for prison, I suspect. It’s a long story. You sure you’re up for this?”
“Sure. You need more coffee?”
“I need a good stiff drink,” Arnie said. “No. Don’t get it. I’m on duty.”
“Seems like you’re always on duty.”
“Seems like,” Arnie said. “So, I stopped in at the department when Elaine and Bertram were here. An elderly man—elderly being anyone older than I am—was bitching about his neighbor’s barking dog. Normally, we’d think, turn down your hearing aid, Grampa, but this guy didn’t seem like the grampa type. He said he was worried about the dog, said he had never heard it do that. So I said I’d stop by, and once I asked headquarters to check the address, I realized the people who live there are the parents of the video perp. This wasn’t good.
“When I got to the house, I asked Gramps to go home. I didn’t want him standing on the sidewalk and getting in my way, maybe drawing a crowd. I didn’t want to tell him he could get hurt, but I was thinking that could happen.
“Front door, back door were all locked up. The dog was growling and howling. There weren’t any lights on. No one answered the phone. No one answered the door. There were packages piled on the porch, and the mailbox was overflowing.”
“That sounds like, what? Someone was dead in there?” Charles asked.
“I didn’t know. I had dog biscuits in my pocket, but I pulled my gun out just in case and used a lockpick to get in. It was a nice door; why bust it? ‘Good dog, good dog, good boy,’ I said, thinking I was going to get my knee chewed off.
“By the time I was in the entry way, the dog was groveling for attention. It was a white mutt of some kind, only it wasn’t white anymore.”
“Blood?” Charles’s eyes were wide.
“Dog shit. No one was home. I went through every room—you know, the routine. The dog stuck to my leg, whining and slobbering on my feet and shaking, as though I was the only friend it had in the world. I rubbed its ears and its stomach. It didn’t want the biscuits I’d brought. No wonder. I found an empty bag of dog food on the kitchen floor and an almost full bag, torn open, right next to it. There were kibbles all over the place and there were five pails of water set out near it—two almost empty and the others pretty much full. The dog had shit all over the house and then walked through its own feces.
“I definitely did not find any sign of the ‘I’ll get him into counseling’ father. I called Dannie Christie, Elaine’s partner, and in less than fifteen minutes, a couple of guys pulled up to take the dog away, telling ‘Snookums’ he could sleep in their bed after many ablutions with their shampoo and conditioner. LGBT people take in strays in. That’s one thing you can count on, Charles.”
“That’s it?” Charles’s furrowed his brow at Arnie. “That’s the story? What about the kid?”
“We put out an all-points bulletin. A Roscommon officer named Bob Duncan found him in a closed-up summer home, so drunk and high—who knows on what, now that fentanyl’s around—that when he resisted arrest, he shot his girlfriend, who was trying to defend him. She turned toward him when he shot, and he just nicked the jugular, but that was all it took. When she bled out all over him, the kid went catatonic.”
Charles said nothing.
“Fuck,” Arnie summed up. “I should have checked up on the kid. Seems like he and his girlfriend enjoyed a vandalism spree every time the boy’s parents went to Vegas. Maybe before, he and Dead Girl had taken the dog with them, fed it pizza. I don’t know. All I know is, I could have followed up. Or put two and two together. Screwed up kid, video maker, he and Dead Girl shooting porn, only it wasn’t even real porn, Duncan said, just pathetic—nothing most kids haven’t seen—except for the fact that he and D.G. had a lot of piercings in places most people wouldn’t want pierced.”
“Christ,” Charles said.
“The kid’s screwed,” Arnie agreed. “He’s no longer catatonic, but he might be better off if he was. Not that we know fuck-all about mental disorders. He’s gonna get crucified. By police, by his parents. I don’t know if he ever had a chance. But he’s really, truly screwed.”
“You sure you can’t have a drink?” Charles said.
“I might not stop drinking.”
“Nothing that happened, or will happen, to that boy is your fault.”
“I’m not sure,” Arnie said. “God, I wish I could get a break in Claire’s situation. I just sit here, a fat fart, getting nothing done.”
Charles said, “I know how Pearl gets in.”
“Christ on a crutch. Tell me.”
“I can do better than tell you. Get up. I can show
you, but we have to let Pearl out.”
While they were outside, Charles opened a can of cat food and waved it tantalizingly in front of Pearl. He then shut the screen door in Pearl’s face. Pearl, attracted by the fishy smell, backed away, his feelings hurt. Charles and Arnie made a deliberate racket when they descended the cellar stairs. Five minutes later, they were sitting on the basement floor near the Ping-Pong table that still held a few comic books.
“Shhh,” Charles said. “Look straight ahead. Keep quiet.”
The basement was mostly empty. Looking straight ahead focused their attention on the old oak cabinet. As Arnie watched, a small, black, weasel-like head began to squeeze itself, inch by furry inch, from the back of the cabinet. The space was so small, Pearl’s ears and whiskers were pinned back.
“Gawd,” Arnie whispered. “Looks like a bat in a stocking cap.”
“Pearl shouldn’t be able to do what he’s doing. Cats use their whiskers to see if they’ll fit through narrow spaces,” Charles said. “According to his whisker length, Pearl can’t fit through the space between the basement wall and the cabinet.”
Pearl’s body was now oozing up through the space.
“Mreow?” Pearl commented. Having popped free of his confinement, like a bubble emerging from the puckered mouth of a child, he looked regally down at them. Charles expected him to throw kisses. He licked his bushy tail with fastidious care before descending to the floor to rub against their shoes before starting in on the food.
“How the hell did you figure that out?” Arnie was flabbergasted.
“Patience,” Charles said.
They waited while the cat ate its food before looking at the oak cabinet. Then Charles fussed with the wooden peg he’d found on the back of the cupboard. “I don’t want to break it,” he said. Eventually, he managed to press in on the peg, which worked as a swivel, and the whole closet-like structure swung out.
Pearl gave him a look that said, “You cheat. I did it without hands.”
The men were facing a rough-set doorway to an older part of the basement.
Charles pulled out a flashlight.
There was nothing to be seen. The dirt floor stretched before them. In one corner, an old dressmaker’s frame had been abandoned; in another, a wooden frame tennis racket without strings tilted against a wall. A barred door to the outside was slightly off kilter.
“Got mead?” Arnie asked.
Jen came home after ten days in the hospital. She was installed in the first-floor bedroom. Laurel was given the recliner, which was moved just outside of Jen’s room. Claire slept on the couch. Charles continued to sleep on the book room floor.
Soon Jen was being helped by an occupational therapist, and the bedside commode became a thing of the past. A physical therapist made her lift arm weights, work on core strength, and flex her right foot, its arch, and empurpled toes. Bill and Barbara Marsh came by almost daily, sometimes bringing broth—beef, not from their chickens. They often brought at least one kitten with them. Black Pearl generally ignored their presence, following Claire most of the time, but sometimes, during the day, he would sleep with Jen. Pearl would insinuate himself next to Jen in one smooth pour, like the pour of sun-melted chocolate squares.
Charles sketched, wrote a little, and sometimes took over for Laurel, who often read to Jen from one of the children’s books Jen had loved as a child. Right now, they were reading Elinor Lyon’s Run Away Home. Charles had gotten to the point in the book when the lorry driver knows Cathie is behind him because he can smell peppermint bull’s-eye candies. Jen’s room, of course, did not smell like peppermints; it held the slight fragrance of butterfly bush blossoms. The flowers did not last overnight, so each day, Laurel looked for heather, cosmos, or whatever was blooming, and recreated a purple bouquet. Life had taken on a new daily pattern.
Then, out of nowhere, David stood in Claire’s kitchen, introducing his new love, Bethanie. Bethanie was pert and bleached blond, and held a vase of eight pink, short-stemmed roses. Claire, who’d been on a ladder finishing the last cupboard, descended grudgingly. Her shoulder ached. She focused on David. They hadn’t heard one word from him since Jen had nearly died.
“I want to see Jen,” David said, as though he’d been prevented from coming.
“We both do! Poor girl!” Bethanie’s lipstick was the same shade as the roses. She was wearing a white, lace smock top over pink-and-black patterned stretch pants. Her black, chunk-heeled sandals brought her close to Claire’s height.
“We came as soon as we knew!” Bethanie said. “We were visiting my parents, and David had left his cell at home so we could all just chill out, with no worries. We had the nicest Labor Day weekend. Then we got back home, and there was the ring you sent so David could give it to me! Doesn’t it look pretty with this nail polish?” She extended her left hand in a gesture that at one point in time would have signaled the hand could be kissed. “Of course, then we found news about Jen. What a terrible thing! David was absolutely devastated!”
“You’ll have to wait a couple of minutes. Jen’s with a physical therapist. Do you want to sit down?” Claire asked. “Laurel’s ring looks great on you.”
It did look great. Laurel had always chewed her nails, and right now, her knuckles were swollen, maybe with a little arthritis. Claire could picture her friend’s hands and felt a great surge of hate, mostly at David.
She swallowed hard. “How did you two meet?”
“I do marketing for the college,” Bethanie said. “I do campus tours for high school kids!”
“You’re supposed to say ‘young adults,’” David chided her.
Bethanie brought her left hand to her mouth and looked as though she was going to chew her nails.
“Ah-ah-ah,” said David.
Ohhhh. She’s still a baby, Claire thought, and sent a glare at David that made him back up a step.
The therapist exited Jen’s room and grinned at the group in the kitchen.
“My God, Jen’s a worker!” he said. “I’ll be back next week to check her, but until then, she can practice with the soft walking cast. Not just in her room. Young orthopedic patients are like puppies. Once they heal, you can’t keep them down.”
“I’m her father,” David said, extending his hand.
The therapist gave him a blank look and a perfunctory handshake. “Didn’t know you were in the picture at all,” he said. “I met Laurel shortly after Jen got hurt, of course. One of you must have good genes. Ma’am,” he nodded to Bethanie, “you can take those flowers in.”
Claire went to the refrigerator, opened a bottle of beer she didn’t like, and drank out of the bottle. She sat back down at the table and eavesdropped shamelessly. The house was reasonably small, and the now bare floors made conversations reverberate.
“How wonderful to meet you!” That would be Bethanie.
Then Jen’s voice: “Careful hugs! Don’t step on my foot, Dad! What pretty flowers. Where can we put this vase?”
Mumble, mumble. Jen’s room was already filled with books, a breakfast tray, cards and letters, a pile of clothes and towels left within easy reach, and a carving of a quail Charles had bought at Everything Michigan, leaving little room for a vase of flowers.
Mumble, mumble, mumble.
“Don’t move the quail,” Jen said. “Put the vase on the windowsill. It’s narrow, but the vase should fit there.”
Claire could hear David’s voice very clearly.
“Thought you might want to come home with us,” he said. “This house isn’t safe. I’m sure our insurance company will sue Claire.”
The river is a public waterway, you dipshit, Claire thought.
“The house is safe enough for Mom, but not for me?” Jen asked.
“Your mother is old enough to make up her own mind.”
Jen will love that, Claire thought.
“Dad, my physical therapist is coming back next week. And I have to go to the hospital here, have X-rays, and be checked by my orthoped
ic surgeon.”
“I guess we could come back for you next week.” David sounded magnanimous. “Or, well, whenever. Bethanie would like some company when I have to work at night.”
Oh, David, Claire thought. The kind of night work you were doing when your foot got broken?
“We could have fun,” Bethanie said. “We could go clubbing!”
“Not dancing much just now,” Jen said.
“You must be Bethanie.” Laurel’s voice. Claire didn’t know where she’d been. Out on the patio with Arnie?
“Hi, Mom. Bethanie, this is my mother, Laurel.”
“It’s a pleasure to meet you,” Laurel said to Bethanie. “After all, we have a lot in common.”
David said, “That wasn’t funny, Laurel. Have you been drinking?”
“When did you get so stuffy, David?” Laurel asked. “Quite the father figure, aren’t you?”
“Mom! Take your sarcasm out of my sickroom. Dad, you and Bethanie should leave too. I’m supposed to lie down and deep breathe, or something.”
“Oh, my God!” Bethanie’s voice. “That’s such a gorgeous ring! David, did you see it? Where did you get it, Laurel? Can I try it on?”
Mumble, mumble, mumble.
Claire got a second beer and fled to the basement.
Charles was there, looking worried.
“Jen can be up and practice walking by herself in that cast.” Claire waved the beer at him. “I’m celebrating. Want some?”
He waved away the beer and gave her a profound kiss. It was the first time they’d touched since Jen got hurt, and she found herself weak in the knees.
“We can’t use the Ping-Pong table,” she said. “It would collapse.”
“Actually,” he said, “I thought I’d regale you by retelling my story of how I tracked Pearl.”
They could just barely hear conversation upstairs.
“What’s Laurel going on about?” he asked.
“I’ll tell you later,” she said. She kissed him and then suffered through what would obviously become the saga of Black Pearl and the Mysterious Cabinet. Today, she thought, I am happy again.
