High-Caliber Concealer (28 page)

“He’d been out for several years, I think,”
said Nell with a shrug. “We got divorced while he was in prison.
And after he got out, he just bummed around. I told him not to tell
you because what was the point? He couldn’t be bothered to show up
and be a normal father, so what was the point of hurting you?”

Nikki wanted to shout or scream or punch
something. She rubbed her hands through her hair and then threw
them up in the air, slapping them down at her sides with a
resounding smack. “I can’t believe you never told me.”

“Well, after we moved to Seattle –”

“And bought a house with his drug
money.”

“I thought I would tell you, but you were
still young. And you had that habit of talking to people and
telling them things. I didn’t want anyone investigating us. It was
just easier. And I kept meaning to tell you as you got older, but
it never seemed like the right time.”

“And now’s the right time?”

“Well, my mother kept saying she was going
to tell you if I didn’t.” Nell’s lip pouted out in irritation.

“Wait, that’s what you’ve been fighting
about telling me? Not Grandma’s boyfriend?”

“Yeah.” Nell smiled awkwardly, then frowned.
“What do you mean, ‘Grandma’s boyfriend’?”

“Oh, my God,” repeated Nikki. She put her
hands on top of her head and took a deep breath like she’d been
running. “Oh, my God, Z’ev totally knows.”

“He can’t know,” said Nell dismissively.

“Of course, he knows! I’m sure he ran a
background check on me. No wonder he gives me that weird look every
time I say ‘Dad left.’”

“Your boyfriend ran a background check on
you?” Nell look horrified.

“Of course he did! He works for the…
government. He’d be an idiot not to make sure I wasn’t a Russian
spy or something.”

She walked around the car, hands on her
head. “This is so embarrassing. Jane probably knows. She must have
looked me up at some point. How could she not tell me?”

“Why would Jane know?” demanded Nell.
“Frankly, I wonder about that girl. She doesn’t seem very
bright.”

“Jane is a Mensa member,” said Nikki. “And
she didn’t just squeak in. She’s smarter than the next twenty
people you’ll meet. Probably the next one hundred. The reason she’s
socially awkward is that she spends the majority of her time trying
to figure out what’s wrong with us Neanderthals. And Mother, I
swear to God, if you say another word about one of my friends, I
will slap you.”

“I don’t think I like your attitude,” said
Nell, folding her arms across her chest. “You constantly take their
side. I am your mother. You are supposed to be on my side.”

Nikki felt one of the tiny muscles in her
eye twitch involuntarily.

“When you are on my side, maybe I will be,”
she said. Then she climbed into the car, slamming the door, and
started the ignition.

“You are not going to—” began Nell, but
Nikki had already hit the accelerator. The gas guzzling engine
roared to life and launched her back onto the road, leaving Nell
coughing on a cloud of dust.

Nikki drove north for twenty minutes,
ostensibly fleeing for Canada, but mostly just fleeing. As she left
the farms and ranches behind, the Colville Forest closed in around
her. The soothing monotony of pine merged with the hum of the road
under the tires and the chug of the engine. She rolled down the
window and let the wind buffet around the car, drowning out the
sound of the radio and everything but her thoughts.

A few more pine trees passed and finally she
pulled over in the barest scrap of shade caused by a straggly
evergreen. The engine clicked as it cooled. She found that in times
of stress her thoughts would turn to her old partner. Val Robinson
had been forty-something, sophisticated, and easily the coolest
person Nikki had ever met, but her take-no-prisoners,
keep-no-friends philosophy had been a shock.

Nikki closed her eyes and leaned her head
back, stretching out her neck. “I’m starting to think you weren’t
that crazy, Val,” she said to the empty car. Talking to Val’s ghost
in her car was becoming a bad habit. Val’s ghost never said
anything useful in reply. Usually she smoked a cigarette at Nikki
and said something useless, like “I told you so.” Nikki took a few
deep breaths and then reached for her phone.

“Hi,” said Jane, picking up. “Did you get
Ylina? Are you on your way back?”

“Jane, why didn’t you tell me about my
father?”

“What about your father?”

“Why didn’t you tell me my father went to
prison?”

“Your father’s in prison?” Jane sounded
shocked. Which meant, since Jane was an even worse liar than Nikki,
that Jane was truly shocked.

“Jane, have you ever run a background check
on my family?”

“No, why would I do that? It would be rude
to do that to my own team. I have very clear ethical boundaries
about data usage, you know.”

Nikki sighed, and rubbed her temple with her
free hand. She did know. This job was making her suspicious of
everyone. Suspicious and cranky. And hungry.

“Nikki, what’s going on?” asked Jane.

“I don’t really want to cover it on the
phone. I need you to do a few things for me.”

“OK,” said Jane.

“I need you to tell Grandma to go pick my
mom up. I left her out on Old Kaniksu Road.”

“You left your mom?”

“Yes. We’re not going into it.”

“OK, telling Peg to go get Nell. What else
do you need?”

“I need you to borrow Z’ev’s rental car and
come meet me at the library.”

“OK,” said Jane, from the shift in her
voice, Nikki could tell that Jane was already moving. “Should I get
the girls?”

“No, just you, I think. The library only has
two microfiche machines.”

“No problem. What else?”

“Bring a sandwich. I’m starving.”

“Got it. See you in a few.”

The line went dead. “See, Val?” said Nikki
to the resident ghost. “Friends are useful. I can rely on
them.”

The Kaniksu Falls Public Library looked like
it had been designed by Mr. Brady from the Brady Bunch, clad in
vertical wood siding, painted beige, and faced with a peculiar
multi-colored slate. For the last decade, the library had been run
by a series of dedicated librarians who attempted to lure the
town’s population of loggers and farmers into reading through
events and community outreach. It was working. There were three
separate book clubs, a movie club, and a youth garden, whatever
that was. A bulletin board inside the lobby announced that this
month’s General Fiction Book Club was continuing their Banned Books
series by reading
The Handmaid’s Tale
.

“Have you read
The
Handmaid’s Tale?
” The librarian’s nametag proclaimed her to
be Bronwyn Tully. She was tiny, with a brown bun, a hemp skirt, and
a pair of Birkenstocks.

“Yes,” said Nikki. “I didn’t like it. The
main character was too passive. But it’s very,” she paused, and
redirected her sentence. “Are you really getting any men to read
it?”

“Oh, yes,” said Bronwyn. “Our group is
actually about fifty percent male. Besides next month we’re reading
a Raymond Chandler. The trick is to keep the reading list lively.
And, of course, to serve cookies.”

“Librarians—pushing feminism since 1897,”
said Nikki.

“Long before that, dear,” said Bronwyn, her
eyes twinkling. “Now, what can I help you with today?”

“I’m here, I’m here,” said Jane, rushing
through the sliding door, panting slightly.

Bronwyn looked amused, but her eyes narrowed
slightly upon spotting Jane’s computer. “You’ll need to sign up for
a library card if you want to use our wi-fi.”

“No problem,” said Jane, then looked to
Nikki. “Do I need wi-fi?”

“Actually, I want to look up articles from
the Kaniksu Tribune.”

“How far back? And are you looking for a
specific topic?” Bronwyn was already walking them toward the back
of the library.

“About fifteen years. Topic was a drug bust
of a local resident named Phillipe Lanier, who was then extradited
to Canada. It would also have involved a Sheriff’s Deputy named
Merv Smalls.”

“Merv Smalls who’s now our sheriff?” asked
Bronwyn, glancing up at Nikki.

“Yes, that’s right.”

Bronwyn nodded and seemed to be thinking.
“Any way to narrow it down to a specific month?”

“The arrest, I think, would have been in the
spring.”

“That’s at least closer. Here are the
microfiche machines. I’ll be back with the film and show you how to
load it.”

Jane waited until Bronwyn disappeared into a
back office, but Nikki could tell by the way she was practically
hopping that it was a hard wait.

“Your dad was arrested?”

“Yes, for smuggling marijuana. Apparently,
he didn’t abandon his family. Apparently, he was actually sent to
prison in Canada.”

“Holy crap!”

“Pretty much, yeah.”

“And your mom didn’t tell you?”

“Not until today.”

“And we’re here to read the truth for
ourselves?” Jane clasped her hands under her chin, her voice
throbbing slightly. She had a very romantic view on the liberating
power of research.

“Not exactly,” said Nikki. “I believe that
she told me what she thinks is the truth, but there were a couple
of problems with her story. There’s also the fact that Ylina is
dead.”

“What?” Jane’s hands dropped. “Shouldn’t we
be doing something about that?”

“We are doing something about that,” said
Nikki. “I think the two events are related.”

“Here we are,” said Bronwyn returning a
stack of dusty boxes. She extracted the tiny roll of film from the
box and quickly and carefully inserted it into the machine. “Your
best bet is to turn to section B where they used to keep the Police
Beat. The editor used to enjoy making fun of ‘filthy hippies’ and
the like. He would most likely have published a drug arrest.”
Bronwyn looked from Nikki to Jane’s pent-up expression. “I’ll leave
you to it. Let me know if you need some other time frames.”

“Thanks,” said Nikki.

Bronwyn walked back to the front desk, her
skirt swishing as she walked.

“I wonder if there’s a course in discretion
included in the librarian curriculum.”

“Who cares about librarians?” demanded Jane.
“Can we please get back to Ylina being dead, your father having
been in jail, and how are those two possibly related?”

“My mother said that Dad bought cars at
Crazy Cooter’s, ‘fixed them up’ and then drove into Canada to pick
up pot. When he started to do it multiple times he switched to
having a tow truck driver tow it back across the border. The
problem is that my Dad had zero car skills. My grandfather used to
say that dad could talk a pig into bacon, but he had the mechanical
aptitude of a donkey.”

“Bill Pims! The owner of the auto body shop!
You said he was converting cars to go across the border. You think
he helped your dad?”

“I think he must have,” said Nikki.

“And then he must have taken over the
operation when your dad got arrested,” said Jane, nodding, fixing
the puzzle pieces in her mind.

“I don’t think so,” said Nikki. “When
Jackson and I were in his shop, he talked about a boss.”

“Well, then who’s the boss? Besides Tony
Danza.”

“I have some theories, but I want to look
through the old newspaper articles and see if Bill Pims or any of
Dad’s other associates ever got arrested or mentioned in the
paper.”

Nikki sometimes wondered, if things had been
different, if she had gone left instead of right, if she had never
met Z’ev or Mrs. Merrivel and joined Carrie Mae, if she would have
been a decent linguist or made it in the world of academics. It was
in moments like this that she realized the answer was a resounding
no. Searching through old newspapers did not fascinate her. It made
her bored and twitchy. Meanwhile, Jane giggled over the ads and
pointed out “really interesting” articles on town politics. They
found her father’s arrest quickly enough and, after that, a
smattering of mentions as the case wound its way through the court.
But Bill Pims’ name was absent from all records. In fact, nothing
about the smuggling scheme was ever mentioned. It was limited
strictly to Phillipe’s possession charge and his extradition.

After the last article, Nikki sat back in
her chair, kicked her feet out, laced her hands behind her head,
and stared at the ceiling. Her mother had always hated the pose.
She said it wasn’t feminine, but Nikki knew that it was because it
reminded her of Phillipe.

Jane, who knew what the thinking pose meant,
began to tidy up by reboxing the microfilm and collecting their
print-outs of the articles.

“It’s the only way it all fits,” said Nikki
to the ceiling.

“Mmm,” said Jane, who was used to this
too.

“We need proof,” said Nikki. “It’s going to
be a shock.”

“Mm-hmm,” agreed Jane.

“Someone to testify in court would be good
too, but I think it’s going to be a tough sell.”

“Well, yes,” said Jane.

“And Donny. I’ll have to persuade Donny to
cooperate, but I don’t think that will be a problem.”

“Not a problem.” Jane kept her voice pitched
at a soothing murmur.

“Right,” said Nikki standing up. “We just
might make it out of this without totally blowing our cover.”

“That’s nice,” said Jane, who clearly hadn’t
been worried.

“But first we need to go see Bill Pims.”

“OK!”

“Jane, are you doing that thing where you
have no idea what I’m talking about, but you’re going to be really
supportive anyway?”

“You always explain eventually and it helps
you to talk it out.”

“Thanks. Also, did you bring that sandwich?
I’m still starving.”

“It’s in the car,” said Jane.