Elsinore Canyon (25 page)

“There’s more,” he said. He slouched over his guitar and played some twingy twangy nothing, then stopped. “I’m a bad boy.”

“That doesn’t sound like you.”

He talked idly while he plucked. “Cat’s in the cradle, fork and a ladle, what have I done, what have I done, what have I done.”

“Are you talking about something in real life, Phil?”

“That’s all,” he said. That was all it had been for over an hour.

He shoved his guitar to the side and hurried past me out of the cottage. I followed him to the door and rolled out after him on the rocky ground as far as I could before my wheels sank into the sand. He ran and leapt his way down to the beach, and stopped at the water’s edge. I watched for another solid hour as he stalked the shore and stared out at the horizon.

Laurie stood at my side and peered down at Phil where he still lingered on the shore. “Thanks,” she said tersely. Marcellus’s truck idled nearby and he looked at me urgingly from behind the wheel.

I tried again. “You know it was an acci—”

“Yes, I’ve heard that several times.”

Marcellus stepped out of the truck and called. “I’ll give you a hand, Horst!” It would be hard to wheel back up through the rocks and dirt to my car, and Laurie certainly wasn’t inclined to help.

“Just to let you know,” I said to her, “he’s fried. If I were you I’d keep an eye on him.”

“I know my brother. I’ll know what to do for him.”

“Good. I hope you know what to do for yourself.”

She flew at me. “Oh, what’s that supposed to mean? I should let the Hamlets walk all over me? I should calm down and be
nice
to the people who shot my father?”

“What makes you think—”

“Calm
people. Plenty of them at the hospital. Their fathers haven’t been shot by one of the untouchable Hamlets!”

“I’m sorry, sorry.”

“You get along with them so well. Maybe you could pass on a message: I know they bury bodies.” She leaned over me. “My father worked for them for a long time, and not all their filthy secrets are safe.”

“I’ll tell them you said so.”

She leaned away, and Marcellus appeared; he pushed me up the soft slope to my car. I felt Laurie’s eyes on me as I transferred to the driver’s seat. Thank God once again, I was the smoothest crip in town. Press, swing, I was in, no fumbling or flopping for want of Laurie’s help. Marcellus ran ahead to his truck, and I followed him in my car up to the main house.

“Gives you an idea of what the drive up here was like,” he said as we entered his office.

“She thinks bodies are buried?”

“She’s throwing it around that the trip to the tropical paradise is fishy—some kind of escape plot. And she swears she’s going to shake all the skeletons out of the Hamlet closets. You might see it in the news; she’s talking to anyone who’ll listen.”

“Is there anything to it?” I asked.

“Fsh. Didn’t you ever listen to Polly?”

“Well, yeah. So. His bullshit lives on.”

Marcellus squinted. “That might make a good epitaph.”

As it happened, no epitaph was contemplated for the time being, as Polly lingered in his coma and his vital organs were functioning. I went back to Santa Barbara, banished from Phil’s company by Laurie. Since Dana had asked me to take care of him, I googled “delusional” and “trauma.” From what I eventually learned, there were a few other terms I could have plugged in, like “babbling like a loon” and “drooling.” I didn’t know yet that Phil barely recognized Laurie, demanded to see Mr. Hamlet and then just talked and sang a lot of nonsense at him, stopped eating and sleeping, and kept accusing himself of some unspecified crime. I waited and worried as usual. Dana was engaging in her favorite post-crisis mode of communication—torturing me with silence.

Dr. Claudia had passed out with her brain in disarray. The vital conversation with Garth, about getting Dana on a plane, had never taken place. When she awoke with her head in Oscar’s lap, she received a cascade of news that made her wonder whether she was still sleeping or hallucinating. That was well and good, Oscar assured her. Plenty of people would give anything to have such blissful ignorance of the night’s events. His sixth sense had told him to claim responsibility for the Maldives flight.

And this was now. It was the mellow part of the afternoon. She turned her smooth, tanned body against silk sheets and hung up the phone in the Green Suite, so named for the rich hues of its velvet and brocade décor. She had chosen it as the temporary, or perhaps permanent, alternative to the master bedroom, which had been scrubbed of Polly’s drops and traces although not the guilt and fear, which were indelible. Mr. Hamlet sat next to her, his arms spread across the plush headboard and the fingertips of one hand working the center of his forehead.

Dr. Claudia’s hand lingered on the phone. Turmoil like this could not last forever. If nothing else, it was running out of people to touch. Its essence was uncertainty, and some philosophical or physical principle would eventually force certainties to emerge. When she found the replies from Rosie and Gale, sent from the plane shortly after midnight, she had set her nerves to go off in twenty-four hours. Oddly, disconcertingly, nothing happened. Twenty-four hours passed, then another twenty-four, and now it was heading into another twenty-four without a word from the other side of the world. Dr. Claudia thought of Dana as of a hapless soul run afoul of some huge, ineludible machinery—a spider washed down a drain, a kitten left in a freezer—and wondered what Dana’s current stage of misfortune was. No desperate phone call from her, no notification from the State Department. The State Department, wasn’t that how it would happen? Or perhaps a public defender from Thailand, using Dana’s cell phone. Didn’t they make phone calls from prison over there?

The situation with Rosie and Gale was just as strange. The Singapore Air tickets were still unclaimed. Well, who knew? They were far away, with freedom and money. Southeast Asia didn’t seem like their type of playground to Dr. Claudia, but they might be doing nightclubs with a couple of billionaire boys from Arab latitudes or Slavic longitudes. Or they might be running up a monstrous tab all by themselves at some five-star resort. Lord, what was happening in that splotch on the map?

Dr. Claudia turned away from the phone to touch her husband’s bare knee. “He’s being looked after.” She sat up and stretched her hands out to him comfortingly. “Garth? We’re doing everything we can.” He allowed her to take him. She rolled between his legs and kissed the backs of his hands, then the palms. Then his fingers, one by one. She looked up at him tenderly. “There is nothing more we can do. It’s up to him, and his…his guardian spirit now. Garth, he’ll be fine. Youth is resilient. People have suffered shocks like this and come back.”

Mr. Hamlet gave her a soft, painful smile. “Are these things happening for a reason? I feel like something I did set it all in motion.”

“Garth, don’t take on such guilt—”

“Why is it such a
storm
of shit?”

“That’s the way it is with bad news. It comes in storms, not drops.”

“But this is a storm of storms.” He gathered his wife’s hair in his hand as she kissed the inside of his hip. “Polly comatose and fighting for his life.” She slid her lips down his groin. “Phil in that nether-world, no better than Polly.” The inside of his thigh. “Laurie spreading these rumors. I wonder if people are listening to her.” He curled down in bed and cradled his wife’s head in his hand.

“We’ve got to live with that,” she said. “It’s too clear what happened. We shouldn’t have…cleaned up, so quickly.” The phone rang again. She gave Mr. Hamlet a kiss and rolled away. He watched while she talked to some bearer of further bad news; her eyes lowered and her elbow stiffened at an awkward angle. She hung up. “Laurie’s here. She’s come straight from the hospital.” Mr. Hamlet bolted forward. “No, it’s not that. But someone has to talk to her.”

“I’ll go.”

“We’ll both go.” They pulled on their clothes and made a quick trip to the bathroom to swab off their coital musk.

At the door, Mr. Hamlet tugged the inside of Dr. Claudia’s elbow.

“What?”

“This isn’t the life I meant to give you. I’m going to make it better.”

“As long as I have you.”

He kissed her. They skimmed down the hall. Voices drifted up from the foyer: Miguel’s apologies alternating with Laurie’s hurt, angry syllables. “I’m not leaving without it! Call the police, go ahead! I’ll be happy to tell them why I’m here.”

Mr. Hamlet ran lightly off the staircase. “Laurie, I’ll help you. Thank you, Miguel.”

Laurie’s nose and eyes were chafed from crying. She turned them on Mr. Hamlet accusingly. “I can’t find my father’s hard drive.”

Dr. Claudia’s stomach churned. Polly’s files. Holy God, the most obvious thing in the world. She hadn’t even thought—where was her mind? Polly, that paranoid, indiscriminate scavenger, he could have collected—the things Danielle knew. Danielle had never mentioned him, never threatened anything about keeping records. And Polly wasn’t smart enough to read evidence—but someone else might be. She tried to speak evenly. “Which hard drive?”

“His laptop. It’s not at the cottage, so it better be up here.”

“All right,” Mr. Hamlet said calmly. “Let’s go look for it. Come on, Laurie. I’ll help you.” He held his hand out.

Laurie stared at the hand as if it was a dead rat. “When you say ‘go look for it,’ you’d better mean everywhere.”

“Of course I do. Every room in the house. Do you want to look in your father’s office right now?”

Laurie wavered, then surrendered to his gentle, engulfing hand. Dr. Claudia wondered. Was he a hypnotist of some sort? He was incomprehensibly perfect at these things. He was sincere. He meant this. It was why she loved him, but…wait, what were they doing? If she had been the one in charge, this wouldn’t be happening. They were climbing stairs, Laurie, Garth, Miguel, and herself, and moving towards Polly’s office. What was it he had said to her that filthy night? Records, notes, something “from Danielle’s own hand.” Paper? There still might be nothing. If there was, it actually might be better for Laurie to have it, Laurie with her pedestrian mind rather than someone flexible and imaginative.

They entered the office. Polly’s laptop was not to be found. Mr. Hamlet shook his head as he stood up from the desk. “If it’s not here, Laurie, I honestly don’t know where it is. I assume you looked everywhere in the cottage.”

“Of course.”

“Well, I told you we’d look in every room. I can have Marcellus walk through the entire house if you want to look some more.”

“You’re darned right I do. The entire house.”

It had to happen. Oscar, Perla, and Marcellus were summoned to the walking tour so no one could race ahead to hide anything or spirit anything off the property. For nearly four excruciating hours, Marcellus unlocked every single room, checking off every closet, every bath, the pantries, storage, work rooms, the kennels. As they cleared the more obvious areas, the offices and meeting rooms, Dr. Claudia felt her step and her heart begin to lighten. The thing really might not be in the house. In fact, someone might have seen to it already. She burned to take Oscar aside and ask him what he knew. She could not get a clue from his expression. For once, their signals seemed to bounce off each other.

At last, she took her husband’s elbow as they walked Laurie somberly out to her car. Laurie slammed the door hard and promised, looking straight ahead, “I’ll be back with a search warrant.”