Shorts - Sinister Shorts (8 page)

He parked in the mud in front of the store. The young woman who came out to meet him looked familiar, though her hair was longer, a nice brown instead of the yellow he remembered, and the plucked eyebrows and lipstick and earrings were gone. She was plainer than she had been, but she looked better, too, healthier. He remembered that line between her eyebrows, too, of chronic puzzlement or discontent.

“You took your time. I suppose you don't remember me,” she said. “Valerie. From the year after high school, when we were both working at the supermarket in Camden.”

“I knew right away it was you,” he said.

“It's been a few years.”

“Not so many.”

“Come on in for a minute.” She opened the screen door for him, and as he passed into the cool darkness he smelled her scent, vanilla and roses, seemed to feel her hair brush against him, soft as a spiderweb. She went around the counter and he sat down on a tall stool.

“This place hasn't changed in twenty years,” he said, looking around at the old refrigerator unit that held the bait, and the candy bar rack, and the ice cream bin. “I used to ride my bike down here as a kid in the summer, sit out back under the trees and watch the waterfall. The fisherman used to set up nets there and catch the fish just before they went over.”

“My husband and I bought the store and the motel last year,” Valerie said. “The rain's killed all the business.”

“You look good.” Her mouth, he remembered that, too, the taste of lemonade and whiskey.

“You, too, I think. It's hard to tell with those sunglasses on. I've seen you drive by in your patrol car. You used to be such a hellraiser, if you don't mind my saying so. You were so funny. I guess you must have got ahold of your drinking, becoming a deputy and all.”

“I straightened up about five years ago. AA did it. Learned a lot. How about you?”

“I kept on until I hit a bad bottom. Went down to Sacramento for detox. That was two and a half years ago.”

“You had any slips since?” Tim said. She was so different, calm, mature, not the frenetic girl he had known. He didn't feel inclined to hike down to the foot of the falls until Bodie got there, anyway.

“Slips? No, I watched my husband start down the tubes where I had been, and I thought for the children I better not give up.”

“Whatever works,” he said, and she smiled. “So you got married. How many kids do you have?”

“Two boys. They're little. My mom watches them while I'm working.”

“Where's your husband now?”

“He just got laid off from his job in Camden. At the water company. Ed Strickland.” She was still looking him over. She said. “You put on weight. You do look older, Tim.”

“Last time I saw you, you were lying in the grass behind the market beating time with a bottle of vodka in your hand, singing every verse of ‘Hotel California.'”

“I guess that was a good party,” Valerie said. “I wouldn't know. I can't remember much about that year.”

“I know what you mean,” Tim said. He smiled at her, too. What passed between them then was a recognition, hesitant, tenuous. Not like the old days, when the booze dissolved the barriers. They heard the ambulance siren.

“Guess we better go outside,” he said.

“Sure. I'll take you down there.”

She walked lightly, jumping along the rocks, wearing a long flowered dress and brown hiking boots. Bodie and Doc Ashland and the med techs followed behind her, carrying the stretcher, and Tim brought up the rear.

The falls dropped about fifty feet onto sharp rocks. It sounded like static, white noise overpowering everything else. The water went over fearlessly, even joyfully. He felt something inside himself stir in response.

They scrambled down the steep hill, following the water, out into the brush. “I was running my dog,” she said breathlessly. “Over there, by the rocks. The river's so high it's flooded the trail, so we were bushwhacking. And I saw-that black foot sticking out. See it? I didn't go any closer. I just ran up the hill and called.”

Tim just barely saw it, a shadow against other shadows. Valerie had sharp eyes. “You go back up, now,” he said. “I'll talk to you later.”

“He's dead. He went over the falls. I don't want to see the rest of him,” she said. “Okay, then.”

Roy Ballantine's body lay facedown in the mud, legs spread and knees drawn up. “In that wet suit, he looks like a big drowned frog,” Bodie said. While the medics moved around the body, Tim and Bodie took pictures and hunted around in the bush. An hour later, they helped load the body on a stretcher. Black-bottomed clouds moved over the sun as the temperature dropped. They were covered with mud. “Let's go up to the store, see if Valerie'll give us some coffee,” Tim said.

She did better, finding them chairs to sit on and letting them wash up, too. She had lit the stove, and they sat around it.

“More rain,” Doc Ashland said. “It's a record year.”

Tim told them about the money and said, “He botched his fake suicide, I'd say. He jumped off the bridge. He was going to climb out of the river downstream, peel off the wet suit, take the money, and leave town.” He felt warm and comfortable. Valerie was behind him, but he could feel her eyes pressing, like soft curious blue daggers in his back.

“I've never seen the river this high,” Bodie said. “He got carried down the stream and went over. I almost feel sorry for him. He had it worked out pretty well.”

“He got bashed up bad going over, so I can't be positive, but I'm thinking all the injuries are consistent with the wet ride he took,” Doc Ashland said. “I'll do a complete autopsy tonight. Idiot, thinking he could use the river.”

“Good concept, poor execution,” Tim said.

“The Great Escape,” the doc said. “I thought about it myself, back when I was about to get drafted for the Vietnam War. Disappear, start over.”

“We didn't find much around him or on him,” Bodie said. “No money. If he had a pack strapped to him, it might be downriver. We'll start looking right away.”

“He'd need transport once he got out,” Tim said. “Bodie, you look hard for a car or motorcycle out there in the trees, too.” He got up. “I'm going to have to go tell Anita. You coming, Bodie?”

The crew came back and searched the banks of the river for three days in pouring rain, but they didn't turn up a thing. Doc Ashland finished the autopsy, saying all he could add was that Roy didn't have any alcohol or drugs in his system. And that the cause of death looked like drowning, though Roy was so beat up from the falls he might have died anyway.

The fourth day, a man in a gray suit came driving up to the sheriff's substation in a brand-new Jeep Cherokee. Tim came out to meet him. “James Burdick, Gibraltar Insurance,” he said, shaking hands. “I thought you might have some sun this high up.” Burdick was short and solid. He smelled of cigars.

“It'll be back,” Tim said.

“I read your report. You sure your men have searched that river high and low for the money?”

“It's not there.”

“Because if it doesn't turn up soon, I'm going to have to issue the old man another check. He's hired a lawyer this time and he's making a fearful racket. I don't work directly with the agents, so I didn't know Roy Ballantine. Did you ever think he'd do a thing like this?”

“I'd heard he was gambling, getting into debt. Maybe I should have paid more attention.”

“If we do pay that geezer Bayle off again, we're going to try to recover from Ballantine's estate.”

“Anita's going to need money. I doubt she'll be getting any of the life insurance he was loaded up with.”

“She can always file bankruptcy,” the Gibraltar man said breezily. “Can we go inside? It's freezing out here.”

Anita came to see him the next day. She had fixed herself up, but the old spark had been replaced by something just old. Events like losing a husband could make a woman cross the line into age in one night. Tim had seen it before.

“Let's talk frankly, Anita,” he said. Her eyes burned at him for a minute, then extinguished again. “I've been listening to the gossip. I heard some things I need to check out with you.”

“Like what?”

“For example, that you were getting ready to leave Roy, take Ginny and Kyle.”

“So what if I was?” she said. “So you've been listening to the women in this town, stabbing you in the back when your husband's just died…” She started crying, lightly and easily, like the rain falling outside the door. “He'd gambled away our savings. He didn't care about me anymore. Yes, I was thinking about leaving while I still had some self-respect. Of course, he's taken even that away from me now.” But the lift of her chin into the air said, he can take everything else, but he won't take my pride.

“Did you know he was going to steal the money?”

“Of course not-”

“Marriage is an odd state. We let another person come so close, they can read our minds,” Tim said. “I think you knew.”

“I can't believe you're saying this. You're accusing me of killing him so I could have the money, like I dressed him in a wet suit and tossed him over the bridge? He weighed over two hundred pounds. I don't have to listen to this. I'm going home.”

“You might want to wait another few minutes,” Tim said.

“Wh-why?”

“Because Bodie's out there searching your house and yard. I'm sorry, we have to be sure.” He handed her a copy of the search warrant.

“That woman is so broke all we found was letters to her sister asking for loans,” Bodie said later. “We dug around the backyard, knocked holes in the walls, tossed the garage. Found a family of skunks. There's no money there.”

“We had to try,” Tim said. “You want to eat over at the hotel restaurant tonight? My treat.”

“My grampa's in town,” Bodie said. “My mom's making a turkey. You're more than welcome…”

“No, you go on. I've got my heart set on a piece of apple pie from the restaurant,” Tim said.

He locked up at five. It was a warm clear night, and the street was lined with the cars of the isolated cabin owners from miles around who didn't get into town that often. He saw some loggers from Camden he knew, said hello, walked up the wooden steps to the Placer Hotel Restaurant.

After dinner Tim was trying to make up his mind whether to drive to Camden for a movie or to go home, when he saw Valerie's husband out front, careening toward his car. He hustled over and took his arm, saying, “Oh no you don't.”

“Leggo,” Ed Strickland said. He was a strong boy, but Tim got him over to the porch and half-threw him into the wicker chair.

“Stay there while I call a taxi. You can't drive like that,” he said. Strickland's disheveled blond hair fell across his eyes and he blew out cheap Scotch vapors.

“I'll just walk back to the hotel, if you're gonna make a federal case out of me having a few,” he said.

“You need to go home.”

“The hotel is my home, Mr. Deputy Sir,” Strickland said. “I moved here recently.”

“Valerie and you…”

“It's all her fault,” Strickland said. “She wanted to buy the damn place. Then the tourists stayed away because of the rain. I got laid off. Then she threw me out because I couldn't find any other work. It's not my fault. She's a hard-hearted b-”

“Watch your mouth,” Tim said, cutting him off. “If you don't have any money, how are you paying to live at the Placer Hotel?”

Strickland gave him a sly look from under the hair. “You ever played poker with me? I have had one humongous streak lately. Best of all, she hasn't got any paycheck stub to look at, so she can't come after me for some of it. Can I go now?” He got up and wove across the street, waving away the traffic. Tim sat down, watching.

The next morning, early, he drove back to the portage point. Gray mist seeped around the dripping trees. Valerie opened the door to the motel office, looking surprised and maybe pleased to see him. She still wore her robe, a long blue silky thing. Her hair was wet from the shower. She hastily took off the specs she was wearing, invited him in.

“The kids just left for school,” she said. “They left some eggs in the pan.”

“Sounds good,” Tim said. While he ate in the warm little kitchen, she washed the dishes. Finally, she sat down across the table from him with her coffee. She said, “I know you have some business or you wouldn't have come. So go right ahead.”

“It's about Ed,” Tim said.

“Ed? Did he do something?”

“I don't know. He says you and he have split up.”

“Trust Ed to tell everybody in town,” Valerie said.

“When did this happen?”

“Oh, I guess it was the day after I found Roy. Ed and I, we never were suited for each other. We were party pals, you know what I mean? When I sobered up, I found out there was nothing else between us.”

“He's got a fancy room at the Placer Hotel,” Tim said. “How does he pay for it?”

“Well, I can tell you he doesn't pay on credit. We have no credit,” Valerie said. “He isn't working around here, or I'd know it. I suppose he's having a winning streak.”

Her robe softened the hard planes of her face. Her damp hair shone like satin. He wanted to touch it. He drank some more coffee, and said, “I didn't know there really were such things.”

“You stop believing in all that nonsense when the drinking stops,” she said. “Yeah. He might be winning this week, but next week is another thing entirely. He doesn't think that way, though.”

“Not like us,” Tim said. “Upright and sober. I'm thinking maybe Ed found the body with the money before you got out there, picked a fight with you, and left.”

Valerie's jaw dropped. She shook her head. “You mean he might have two hundred fifty thousand dollars socked away somewhere? I can't believe it. He could never keep it a secret. He'd just have to brag about it.”

“Now that you think about it, did you notice anything in his behavior that day, you know, going outside for a long time, anything like that?”

“Just the usual foul mood when he has a hangover,” Valerie said. “I slept late that morning and didn't go out with Ginger for her walk until ten. But I still-”

“I hate being sober,” Tim said. He rubbed his jaw, wondering what brought that comment on. She would understand, that was it. He could talk to her, and she would understand. “You ever feel that way?”