Except for the Bones (4 page)

“Jesus.” Jeff was sitting straighter in his seat, staring.

“What?”

“That’s a dead-end road. A cul-de-sac. Don’t turn into it. Go on by.”

“A dead end?”

“Yeah—Jesus—I know where he’s going. Now I know.”

“Well?” she demanded, stopping the car and setting the parking brake. “Are you going to tell me?”

“He’s going to the landfill. That’s all he can get to, down that road.”

“What d’you mean, the landfill?”

“They’re bringing in dirt and rocks and shit from all over this part of the Cape, and dumping it. They’re going to make an overpass, something like that. Every day, the dump trucks come. Pretty soon there’s nothing but piles of shit. They bulldoze down the piles, and they start all over again.”

“Jesus,” she whispered. “That shovel …”

“Yeah.”

L
YING ON HER BACK
, naked, aware that she dreaded what she would see, what she would feel, yet aware that she must do it, Diane let her eyes come slowly open.

Yes, they were lying side by side in the motel room she’d rented last night. It was the same scene she’d played twice since they’d known each other: awakening in a strange room, remembering the night before as if it had happened to someone else: a different person, in a different place. She’d felt herself blushing as she watched the clerk take his time checking out her credit card and her ID. And when the clerk finally handed over the registration chit, smirking, she hadn’t had the stones to ask him the price of the room. Finally he’d told her, the son of a bitch, doing her a favor, she with her gold VISA card, a five-thousand-dollar limit, him with pimples on his face, just another townie. All of them hated the summer people, the tourists. Even Jeff, really. Hating was Jeff’s specialty, the thing he did best.

Now she felt the bed shift as Jeff moved. Lying still, she let her eyes close. This morning—here—now—she couldn’t talk to him, couldn’t look at him, not yet. First she must free herself from the memory of the human hand falling out of the trussed-up bundle being dragged over the patio toward the carport.

The time, she knew, was early; the sun was still low in the sky. It had been almost two o’clock before they’d found the room, undressed, got into bed, began to make love. It had been quick, last night. Quick and rough and meaningless.

Driving toward town last night, back from the road that led to the landfill, they hadn’t talked, hadn’t said a single word to each other about what they’d done, what they’d seen. She wasn’t even sure Jeff had seen the hand, dragging across the flagstones.

He was moving again. Stealing a look, she saw him sitting on the edge of the bed, his back to her. His back was hairy, with tufts at the shoulders. He was shaking his head. But slowly, carefully, as if something might rattle loose. Now he rose, steadied himself, walked to the bathroom. It was a hangover: last night’s booze and pills were dropping Jeff hard.

She turned on her right side, found her watch, lying on the table beside the bed. But the numerals were blurred, fuzzy. Had her eyes suddenly gone bad? During Prohibition, she’d once read, people went blind from bad liquor, ethyl alcohol, substituted for grain alcohol. She blinked: once, twice. Yes, the numerals were sharpening: thirty-five minutes after six.

Yesterday at this time she’d been asleep in Manhattan. There was a song from the forties or fifties, a soft, syrupy, sappy ballad, something about the difference a day made:
twenty-four little hours
was the refrain, more retro-chic to go along with old telephones and radios and jukeboxes with bubbles running endlessly through colored neon tubes.

She’d gotten up about nine o’clock yesterday. Her mother had been in the kitchen, drinking coffee and smoking a cigarette. Mail had been scattered on the countertop, and when her mother looked her full in the face, she immediately guessed the truth: her grades had come. Silently, every line of her body registering contempt, her mother had handed over the computer printout: two Ds, one D-minus, one C-minus. There’d been the letter from the dean, too, brief and to the point: probation next year, with a “review of the situation” at the end of her first term.

Using words they’d never used before, they’d fought for almost two hours. Then her father called, from San Francisco. It was interesting, one part of her observed, that both parents had gotten her grades at the same time, the same day. And, God, how predictable it was, the difference in their reactions. Her father had been disappointed, let down, at a gentlemanly loss. Her mother had been flat-out furious.

So she’d left. She’d crammed a change of underwear and her diaphragm and her stash and a half-finished paperback into a tote bag, stuffed her wallet in her purse, and slammed out of the apartment. She’d gotten in her car and started to drive. After a few miles she’d realized that she was going toward Massachusetts, meaning that she was going to the Cape. It was, after all, the only place that meant anything to her. If she found Jeff, fine. If she didn’t, fine. There was always the booze and the pills. Xanax. Nirvana in a capsule.

And then, trick or treat, Halloween in July, the whole world had tipped, tilted toward her.

So that, treat and not trick, she was in command. Completely, accidentally, incredibly in command. Money was only money, grades were just grades. But the law was the law, never mind the benefit balls or the dinners with senators or
Forbes
magazine. It all came down to the law, a tooth for a tooth, kill or be killed.

Diane Cutler. Goddess for a day. Whatever power Preston Daniels had, she could cancel it out. Fuck with Diane Cutler and she’d press the button. All fall down.

But where was the pleasure; which way was the high? They hated each other, she and Preston Daniels. Sometimes it seemed that her hatred for him was the center of her life, all that kept her focused.

So why, now, was the void still there? Her finger was on the button, her foot was on his throat. So why did—?

The toilet was flushing, the bathroom door was coming open.

“You, too, eh?” He looked down at the floor, found his shorts, sat on the edge of the bed, began pulling the shorts over his knees, his buttocks. Jeff was only twenty-two, but already a roll of fat circled his waist. “You can’t sleep either?”

She made no reply.

“I’ve got to drive into Boston. One of the pants pressers broke down Saturday. It’s a steam coupling.”

Silently she nodded, watched him dress. If he cared anything about her, really cared, he’d come to her, kiss her, caress her. He’d want to make love to her in the light of morning, not always in the dark, not always stoned. He’d tell her how beautiful she was, naked.

He rose from the bed, went to the window, adjusted the blinds. “The fog’s in.”

“Is that a fact?”

Would he hear the sarcasm, pick up on the contempt? Last night, they’d seen something terrible. In bed, desperate, stoned, they’d clung to each other, turned each other inside-out. Yet now he was standing across the room, looking out the window, telling her the fog was in. He was dressed in black jeans and saddle-buckled black boots and a plaid work shirt, a biker without a bike, the story of Jeff’s life.

He turned away from the window, looked at her, frowning, his thick eyebrows almost meeting above dark, grudging eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“What’s
what
supposed to mean?”

“You know what I mean.”

She sighed, pushed herself up against the headboard, covered herself. In daylight, she knew, her breasts wouldn’t turn him on. He’d look, then look away. “Why do I get the feeling that this conversation isn’t going anywhere?”

He moved away from the window, came toward her. But, a few feet from the bed, he stopped, stood looking down at her.

“So what’ll we do?” he asked. “About last night, about what we saw.”

Suddenly she realized that she was looking away. Suddenly she couldn’t meet his gaze. Why?

“We gotta talk,” he said. “It’s crazy, not talking about it.”

“Don’t worry. Go to Boston. Don’t worry.”

“Don’t
worry?”
Suddenly his voice rose, a loud, plaintive lament. Followed, instantly, by a quick, cautious look at the wall. Could they be overheard? “Christ—” Voice low, he stepped closer to the bed. “Christ, someone
died
out there. We should do something.”

“Not ‘we,’” she answered.
“Me.
I’ve got to do something. Not ‘we.’ You go to Boston.”

“Oh, yeah?” It was a hostile, petulant rejoinder: a boy on the school yard, taunting another boy, picking a fight. The two words were always the same:
Oh, yeah?

“I saw it too,” he was saying, still speaking in a low, tight voice—hissing, almost. “I saw everything, just like you did. I’ve got the same rights.”

“The same rights?” She shook her head. “What’re you talking about, you’ve got rights? What rights?”

“What’re you saying? You just going to forget it? Is that what you’re saying? Someone—Christ—someone gets killed, gets buried somewhere out in that landfill, for Christ’s sake, and you aren’t going to do anything? Is that what you’re saying?”

“You go to Boston. I’m going back to sleep. When I wake up, I’ll think about it.”

“And then what? After you think about it, then what?”

“Look, Jeff—forget it, all right? It’s got nothing to do with you.”

He was standing with his booted feet spread wide, hands in the pockets of his not-quite-clean jeans, another muscle-bound biker imitation. Now, she knew, he would run through his tough-guy sequence: two or three disgusted shakes of the head, followed by a hunching of the shoulders. “No,
you
look, Diane. You look, and you listen. And you better listen good, because I’m only going to say it once. Now—” Another bully-boy pause, for emphasis. “Now, neither of us knows what happened last night. But both of us saw Preston Daniels, Mr. Big himself, stuffing someone in his Cherokee and driving out to the landfill. And, surprise, it turns out that we’re the only ones to see him do it. There was just me and you and Preston Daniels—plus whoever was wrapped in that blanket, or whatever it was. Now—” Another pause. “Now, it’s pretty plain that whatever plans you got, they don’t include me. Which means that, as of now, as of right this minute, whatever plans I’ve got—well—that’s my business. Right?” He turned, went to the door, opened it, and left.

D
ANIELS PLACED THE SPRAY
can of cleaning solvent on the coffee table, placed the sponge and towels beside the spray can, stood motionless, staring down at the assortment.

A slab of stone …

Clearly, he could visualize the tabloid headline:
TWO-TON COFFEE TABLE IS BILLIONAIRE’S UNDOING.

And the lead paragraph:
“Unable to remove the rug stained with the telltale blood of his mistress, unable to clean the rug without leaving telltale stains on the polished oak floor beneath the rug, Preston Daniels was arrested yesterday for the murder of Carolyn Estes, who was known to have spent at least two love-nest weekends with Daniels on Cape Cod.”

A plastic drop cloth, the kind painters use … If he could find a store open, he could buy a drop cloth, put it under the rug, protect the floor. There was a hardware store in the village. When did it open? Was it open now? Could he—?

The telephone, warbling.

Should he answer?

Yes, he must answer. There were decisions to be made, contracts to sign. Monday morning, nine o’clock. On his desk, Jackie would have already placed a digest of his appointments for the day, all neatly typed. So he must talk to Jackie, the only associate who had his private Cape Cod number. Only Jackie, the one person he could really trust.

“Yes. Hello?”

“Preston?” Just two puzzled syllables. But with it went all hope, everything gone, lost. Millicent, calling from New York.

WIFE EXPOSES BILLIONAIRE’S LIES, SUES FOR DIVORCE.

“Millicent?” It was, he knew, a silly-sounding, ineffectual response.

But why was she calling? How could she have—?

“I thought you were in Atlanta.” Her voice was cool, measured, cautious. Millicent, reflexively suspicious. Speculating.

“I—the conference blew up. One of the principals—his name is Powell, I don’t think you know him—he had chest pains after lunch yesterday. So I decided to come up here, unwind. I should’ve called you. Actually, I was headed for New York, but the weather turned bad. Bruce found out that Barnstable was clear, so we just came over the top of the New York TCA.”

Was he saying too much, explaining too much—protesting too much? Was he—?

“Is Diane there?”

“Diane?” Thank God, he could ask the question straightforwardly, truly surprised, no calculation required, the luxury of innocence. “No, she’s not here. Why?”

“Oh—” In the single word he could hear it: the constant mother-and-daughter refrain, that long-running third-rate tragedy. Or was it a farce?

“Oh—” came the drearily predictable follow-up, the lamentation that never ended. “—we had a fight yesterday. Her grades came, from Swarthmore. Actually, they came in Saturday’s mail, but Dolores misplaced part of the mail, the usual. I think we’re going to have to let her go. I just don’t see any other way. We should talk about it, tonight. We—”

“Millie. Let Chester handle it. That’s his job, to keep things running smoothly. Tell him to fire her, and hire someone else. Christ, Chester’s paid good money, to—”

“Could Diane be in the village, do you think? She left about three, yesterday. Slammed out, the usual. She’s on probation at Swarthmore next year.”

“Well, she’ll—”

“Where else would she go, if she didn’t go to the Cape?”

“Listen, Millie, I’ve got to—”

The phone warbled, another line. Thank God, reprieve.

“Listen, Millie, that’s Jackie, I’m sure. And I’m running late.”

“We’ve got the dinner at the museum tonight. I’m introducing Dr. Granger, you know. So we’ll be at the head table.”

“I’ll be home by six.”

“And if you see Diane—” Heavily, she let it go unfinished.