Red House Blues (23 page)

“What did he say when you asked him about
it?”

“Nothing. I haven’t asked him. Which touches
on something else I’ve wanted to tell you, Suzan. I haven’t seen
Tony much lately. I’ve been staying at your apartment. I know I
should have asked first, but I just had to get away from him for a
while.”

“You’re splitting up?” Suzan could not
imagine one of them without the other. They had seemed the perfect
couple.

“Maybe not splitting. I’m not sure yet,
Suze. He asked me to marry him before all this went down. Now I
don’t think I can trust him. He kept you in the dark when he could
have told you Sean was alive in Seattle. It goes without saying he
didn’t tell me because he knew I wouldn’t keep it to myself.”

“Even if it’s true, why would Tony tell
Sean’s friends that his widow was headed to Seattle looking for his
notebooks? Why would he want them to scare me away, or whatever it
is they’re trying to do?”

“Could be because you are a handy scapegoat.
He blames you for what happened to Sean. Or because you mean to
stir up dust better left to settle,” said Claire. “Or he might
think there’s something in Sean’s notebooks he’d just as soon not
know or not have you know. Also it could be he thinks you deserve
to suffer and fail as Sean suffered and failed. Who knows?”

She struggled to reconcile what she knew of
Tony with the picture Claire painted of a vindictive man who hated
his friend’s wife. After all, this was Tony “The Geek” Gabriola, as
Sean loved to call him, best friend since high school. When Suzan
first started dating Sean there were times she felt like an
intruder in their relationship but Tony went out of his way to put
her at ease, welcoming her like a long lost sister. From then on
the three of them had been nearly inseparable.

There was never a doubt Tony would be Sean’s
Best Man when Sean and Suzan married. At the reception Tony toasted
her, hugged her, called her Sweet Suze. Joked that if Sean ever got
tired of her he was ready to become husband number two. He wasn’t
serious. Tony was rarely serious. Which was a nice balance for Sean
who was too intense for his own good most of the time.

How could Tony want
somebody to break my kneecaps? Or worse. Impossible!
But at gut level she knew it wasn’t. It explained
so much. Using the hostel to contact Sean, Tony would have talked
with Cliff the deskman, likely the messenger boy whenever an e-mail
came in for Sean. Tony, on his supposed conference visits to
Seattle, would have gone to the clubs to hear Sean play. Met Sean’s
friends. Might even have visited the house on Fir Street where he
was staying.

Her head pounded. What threat could she
possibly pose to Tony and Sean’s Seattle friends? They were afraid
of something. That she’ll find Sean’s notebooks? Scraps of lyric,
observations, conversations scribbled in his hurried semi-illegible
script. Something incriminating? If that were the case and they
knew where the notebooks were why hadn’t they just destroyed
them?

Maybe it wasn’t about the notebooks at all.
Nothing hung together. There were way too many missing pieces.
Every time Suzan thought she saw a pattern it fell apart like a
broken chair.

“Okay, Claire, for now let’s say you’re
right about what Tony’s been up to. That makes it all the more
important not to let these jerks win. There’s more to this than a
few silly song lyrics. No one risks killing someone for anything
that dumb unless the writer was famous, which of course isn’t the
case. It’s about Sean’s death, I know it is.”

“All the more reason to get away from here
as soon as we can,” said Claire. “We’ll pass along what little we
suspect to the cops from the safety of beautiful downtown
Bellingham. It is the only sensible thing to do.”

“Forget it, Claire. Until I locate those
notebooks, if they exist, I am not leaving town. If you want to
help, maybe we’ll get the job done faster. But if not, I’ll keep
you posted on my progress.”

“Are you getting hungry?” she asked, getting
up from the chair.

“What?”

“Hungry. You know, food? As for me I’m
starving and I could use a cup of coffee. How about if I go find
out when they’re bringing the meals around?”

“You’re not going to try to argue me out of
staying?”

“What would be the use?”

“I suppose I should eat something, though I
don’t feel all that hungry. What time is it anyway?”

“Elevenish.”

“So late? I should be getting up if I’m
going to talk to Nick.” She started to sit up but Claire pushed her
back down against the pillow.

“Sorry, sweetie, but you can’t fly until the
doctor clears you for take off. You’d fall flat on your colorfully
scuffed face. What do you want me to ask this guy if I should, by
some miracle, get in to see him?”

“Just find him and let me worry about what
to do next.”

Chapter 22

The Red House

The tall woman was watching her from the
shadows between the sideboard and the kitchen door. She’s upset,
thought Alexis. She manifests when she’s upset. Doesn’t like
dissension in the household. Ferlin stirred her up, damn him
anyway.

Alexis pulled the canvas tight and stapled
it to the frame. With each satisfying ka-chunk as the staples sunk
into the bare wood she imagined cracking a few skulls.

Did that crazy old bastard
really think I wouldn’t know what he was up to?
It’s always something with him. A schemer since the last ice
age. But no match for me
. Alexis sighed.
Truth to tell she loved the old man but he could certainly push her
buttons.
I can’t allow him to play
dangerous games with our lives. Can’t have him letting that psycho
bitch into our house, no matter what the reason.

“What do you think I should do?” she asked
the shadow in the corner, not expecting an answer and of course
receiving none. The tall shape hovered a few feet from the tin
ceiling, undulating like pipe smoke. Alexis pried open a can of
sizing and commenced to splash it all over the canvas she was
working on. She was not in the mood to be fastidious.

Ferlin was getting careless. That he hid
things from her she had no doubt. But she had hoped he had better
sense than to mess with Marla. What possessed him to let her into
their house last night? Alexis had gotten home from the Comet just
in time to see the other woman storming down the back stairs like a
scalded cat. And to make matters worse, Ferlin lied about it, said
he didn’t know what she had wanted. He lied but why? What was he up
to?

“If only you could talk,” Alexis said to the
shadow. “You were probably eavesdropping from the chandelier when
whatever it was went down. Well, at least you don’t sob like the
one in the cellar.” The dark shape wavered slightly, its edges
bleeding into the floral pattern of the stained wallpaper. There
was something in the attitude of the fading form, a stillness that
felt reproachful, as if the spirit was disappointed in Alexis for
not correcting what was wrong.

Would that I could, she thought. Everything
had gotten so complicated, so out of hand. If only the slate could
be wiped clean and they could start over, go back to a time before
all the misery and death had descended on their household.

Alexis set the canvas aside
to dry, knowing she’d get nowhere with the painting today. She was
too distracted and irritated. The mundane issues of keeping the
household running needed her attention more than ever right now.
Without a firm hand what would happen to them all? Left to Ferlin,
the place would cave in under the weight of its own filth and
negligence. She constantly had to nag the rest of the housemates
into coughing up rent money or paying their share of the utilities
before the shutoff notices began arriving. How had she fallen into
the roll of housemother?
Sometimes I ache
to throw those lazy slackers out of my house.

The word “my” echoed in her mind. Yes, she
thought of the house as hers. She couldn’t deny it. Maybe, after
all, she ought to take Ferlin up on his offer to buy him out of the
house. Let him retire to some mobile home compound for elderly
hippies, before he did something that would get them all busted.
She’d consider it when she had more time.

Soon, with any luck, Nick would be released
from Harborview. Would he want to keep his room or would he be
moving out? Either way someone should go up there and change the
linen and clean the room. Which meant her. There was no one else
who’d bother or even think of it. The guys were hopeless slobs.

All except Nick, thought
Alexis. He was okay. It’d be a shame if Nick left. He hadn’t
deserved what happened to him. Worth a dozen of the others. Unlike
Pike. Sean Pike probably earned what he got. Always poking his nose
into other people’s business. Jotting notes and being a
pest.
Someone was bound to get fed up with
him eventually and set him straight
. But
kill him? You don’t decide to snuff someone just because he’s an
annoying asshole. Not unless you’re insane. That narrows it down,
she mused, to half the population of the Puget Sound Region.
Sobering thought.

A twinge of pain flashed
behind her eyes. Another migraine on the way, she thought.
Shouldn’t have had that final beer at the Comet last night.
Shouldn’t have gone out at all. Shouldn’t have done a lot of
things. Should have stayed home, gone to bed early.
Then I would have been here to kick Marla out on
her boney ass. Would have felt good. But would it have been enough
to get her out of their lives for good? No, probably
not.

Alexis stretched, loosening the tightness
between her shoulders and glanced to the corner of the room. The
tall woman had vanished, though that didn’t mean her energy wasn’t
somewhere close, keeping watch. There was always someone or
something watching over the house, thought Alexis. As if the house
had a weird hard-wired survival instinct. That thought was
strangely comforting. Kind of nice to think there was some kind of
spiritual force field keeping the old place together. Especially
considering how accomplished her living tenants were at screwing
things up. No telling how much damage they could do, left to
themselves.

She put the sizing brush into a jar of water
and went upstairs to Nick’s bedroom, noticing on the way that the
cold spot on the second landing seemed even chillier and creepier
than usual. The tall woman wasn’t the only disturbed entity at home
this morning.

***

Suzan was disappointed but
what had she expected?
Did I seriously
suppose he’d open his eyes as I crept into his romantically
shadowed hospital room, recognize me as a kindred sufferer, smile
through his pain and ask me to hold his hand?

Suzan had a fleeting image
of being enfolded in comforting masculine arms. They would share
secrets until the day nurse came on duty.
God, I must be more concussed than previously
suspected.

The reality saw her padding at slug speed in
blue hospital socks up two flights of stairs to ICU, gasping in
pain at every step. She had thought to avoid being spotted in an
elevator and ushered back to her room. She got as far as half way
down the hall to Nick’s room before being headed off by a
linebacker in scrubs. A sentimental cupcake of a linebacker as it
turned out who, after hearing her improvised tale of lost love and
languishment, let slip that Nick had checked out. For a frightening
second she thought he meant . . . on seeing her knees buckle,
linebacker clarified that her “lost love” had been transferred to
convalescent care that afternoon, the location of which he couldn’t
or wouldn’t divulge. Suzan was too late. And seemingly back to
square one. The guy might be anywhere. But at least she had learned
he was still alive.

The linebacker expertly escorted her via
elevator back to her own room, making sure a duty nurse tucked her
in with a sleeping pill to curb her wandering ways. Not that she
needed it. Suzan was in no shape to go running out into the night
chasing phantoms. She welcomed dreamless oblivion.

Morning arrived with a parade of medics, who
all seemed to have been clued into Suzan’s midnight ramble around
the hospital. Suspecting it signified some brain damage they had
missed, she was wheeled off for another MRI. Even after they failed
to find anything suspicious they delayed her discharge for another
day and a half just to be on the safe side. Suzan was going mad
with frustration but since her every fiber felt as if it had been
put through an industrial model food processor she accepted the
additional day of pain killers with as much grace as she could
muster.

Claire showed up after lunch with a box of
Dilettante Chocolates. Suzan treated her to chapter and verse of
her fruitless expedition to the ICU, accepted the chocolates and
sent her off find out what facility they had transferred Nick
to.

If only she knew the guy’s last name. All
she had was a hazy memory of large brown eyes set in a generous
face framed with damp crisp curls. A soft Byronic face. A face made
for laughing with a stubble-sprinkled chin that spoke of a man who
had been way too busy and engaged that morning to bother with
shaving.

Wonder what he looks like now after tangling
with the truck? For that matter, what did she look like? She had
avoided looking in the bathroom mirror but her face felt like a
slab of brisket. With time and luck their injured flesh and bones
would knit into an approximation of their former selves but
something had altered in Suzan that would never be made whole
again.

From the start, her agenda had been
mindlessly simple. Find out what happened to her husband, to her
marriage. She hadn’t been thinking clearly. It took someone
slamming her face into a wall to make her realize that love had
nothing to do with her need to understand Sean’s mysterious death.
No, it may have been years since she felt anything resembling love
for him. It was guilt that had brought her to Seattle. Guilt for
having betrayed him. Yes, there was that word again. The word Sean
himself had flung at her like a keen edged knife as he escaped
their marriage. She had betrayed him by not loving him enough to
save him, by not caring enough to notice his life was falling
apart. Suzan almost envied his escape because now she knew that on
a certain level she would never escape it so cleanly as he had.