Square in the Face (Claire Montrose Series) (17 page)

“What?”

“Promise me something?”

“Of course,” Claire said, hiding her reservations.

“Promise that you’ll go out with me again and tell me all about what happened.”

She couldn’t say no, not when she didn’t know if she might need another favor from him. “I’d love to,” she said, feeling cheap.

As Claire unlocked the car door, her thoughts were tangled. Was Dr. Gregory interested in her romantically - or just in what she knew? After all, the Prices’ secret might be worth a lot to a man with a drug habit to feed. And what about what Dr. Gregory had said about the clinic? He had said that the clinic wasn’t set up for a hysterectomy. But how could he know what procedures Dr. Bradford could or couldn’t do, since he had told her he had never been there? Maybe she was being paranoid. Maybe Dr. Gregory just had allergies. Maybe it was easy to guess what the clinic might have, given Dr. Bradford’s focus on outpatient visits and uncomplicated births by young, healthy mothers.

Claire didn’t know what was true and what she was imagining. One image, real or not, filled her mind as she pulled into her driveway and turned off the motor. She imagined Ginny lying still and pale in the back seat of a car, the life ebbing out of her with each beat of her heart. And with only Dr. Bradford, with his cold wolf’s eyes, to care for her.

Chapter Eighteen

There was still a stretch of farmlands and fields between Portland and Minor, a taste of the country life Claire had all but forgotten about. The drive reminded her that it was spring, the season of young things. All the sheep had lambs, all the cows had calves, and the tail-switching mares watched their foals chase each other back and forth across the meadows.

The world outside her window seemed full of life - but her conversation with Lori at the hospital convinced Claire of the equal reality of death. If she didn’t find Lori’s daughter soon, then Zach would surely die. And even though Lori hadn’t reproached her, Claire knew that so far, she hadn’t proved to be much of a sleuth. Even if she did succeed in finding the girl, what then? There would only be more hurdles, one after another. The adoptive parents would have to consent to having the girl tested. And there was still only a one-in-four chance the child would match Zach. And even if all those nearly impossible things happened, what if Zach had the transplant and it failed? Tears pricked Claire’s eyes, making it hard for her to see. The truth was, Zach was dying now. And she didn’t know if there was anything she could do to stop it.

As her thoughts twisted and tangled, a half-grown calico kitten, orange and black spots on white fur, darted across the road in front of her.
 
Claire smoked her tires to avoid it, then watched as it disappeared into a mile-long stretch of green field. She suppressed the urge to get out of her car and try to save it, and put her foot back on the accelerator.

Minor now rated two exits from the highway, and in her confusion Claire took the one that hadn’t existed when she lived there. Soon, she was completely lost. In her memory, Minor was still an ugly two-story false front town. Two decades before, the sawmill had been the main employer, marked by golden heaps of sawdust a hundred feet high. The sweet smell competed with the sour stench of the paper mill a mile away. When she remembered Minor, Claire thought of Pancake Mills and Pie Shoppes, of wizened old men in ball caps and short-sleeved polyester shirts, of pickups held together by rust and their “I love spotted owls ... fried” bumper stickers.

The year Claire graduated was the year the paper mill went belly up, victim of laws that declared it illegal to dump untreated water directly into the river. Too expensive to retro-fit, the owners said, and moved on, leaving two hundred people out of work. People complained, but Claire remembered how the stink of chlorine had hung over the dead gray stretch of Bear Creek long after the mill was gone.
 

Minor was now an uneasy mix of old and new, with just enough of the old to make Claire really confused. Those few places she recognized - a Mr. Steak restaurant, Bear Creek Park, Sam’s Feed Store, a Mode O’Day that looked as if the same clothes had been on the same mannequins since the day she left - were now surrounded by businesses and homes that had sprouted up in the intervening years. She couldn’t fit the few pieces she recognized into her mental map of the town. She began turning left and right at random, sometimes passing nothing familiar for a long stretch, a feeling that was oddly comforting. When she did recognize something, like a weathered barn now slanting sideways and surrounded by houses, Claire felt completely discombobulated.

She drove past a sprawling shopping mall that looked as if it had sprung up overnight, but then behind it she glimpsed the Pietro’s she had worked at during high school. The first thing the manager had done after he hired her was to ask her to hem her red uniform skirt up six inches. She still hated to think how unquestioningly she had complied. When it was her turn to count out her till, the manager had always insisted Claire climb the stairs ahead of him to his little cubbyhole of an office, located behind the false balcony decorated with listing mannequins dressed up in faded flapper costumes. Claire supposed she should be thankful he had contented himself with looking.

Claire supposed Minor had been changing even while she lived there. For years its economic base had been the huge stands of trees that surrounded it. Over time, the big logs got scarcer and more expensive, and the city people and the environmentalists began to complain about the clear-cuts scabbing the land. Some of the same people Minorites called “tree-huggers” even moved into town, and the old-timers said that they were simply trying to get their piece of heaven before closing the door to anyone who might follow. One of them heard a bullet whine past his ear while he stood in his own front yard during hunting season.. Afterward, the town was divided by those who said it was because he was stupid enough to wear light-colored gloves (so much like the flick of a mule deer’s tail) during hunting season, and those who believed he should heed the shot’s warning and get out of town.

Now that it had been overrun by identical-looking housing developments and strip malls, Claire found herself somehow missing the old Minor. Still seeking someplace she recognized, she drove on. And suddenly there was Hubie’s Market, right in front of her, looking as weather-beaten and unattractive as it had when she was growing up.

Claire parked the car in the empty lot and went inside. It smelled just the same, of damp and wood-smoke from the cast-iron stove that sat in the middle of the store. Under a dozen different names, Hubie’s had been in operation for over a hundred years.

And Hubie still stood behind the counter with his arms crossed over his thick chest, looking as he probably had for the last quarter-century. Built like a fire-hydrant, he had steel gray hair combed sideways across his head. Even the way he regarded Claire suspiciously through the square black plastic frames of his thick glasses was comfortingly familiar.

The store even looked like it stocked the same items it had when she was a kid. It concentrated on the staples: cheap beer and wine, brightly colored junk food, and low-priced cigarettes. There was still room on the narrow wooden shelves for some of the other goods Hubie thought you might find necessary: plastic digital watches, fan belts, wrestling magazines, romance novels for the ladies, staple foods in tiny boxes (with outsize prices), brass belt buckles, ammo, fuses, dusty balls of twine, fireworks available year-round, thumbtacks, and, skewered inside a glass case, hot dogs that had been revolving since the beginning of the world.

 
“Good morning, Hubie. Do you remember me?”

He continued to stare at her, his expression unreadable. Claire hadn’t thought of him in nearly two decades, but now it was like the years had rolled back and she was twelve again.

“I used ride my bike here every Saturday”- she suddenly remembered it, a lime-green Schwinn with a banana seat and kick-back brakes - “so I could spend my fifty-cent allowance. Sometimes on chips or candy, or sometimes on milk or bread if we didn’t have any in the house. And after a while, you started giving me food, stuff you said you couldn’t sell because it was past the pull date or not what you ordered.”

He recognized her now, she could tell that, even if he didn’t smile. But then Claire didn’t think she had ever seen Hubie smile.

He grunted. “Skinny girl.”

“Pardon?”

“You’re that skinny girl used to come in my store, all hair and eyes and long skinny legs about as big around as a piece of string. You looked like the wind was about to blow you away.”

Claire felt a mixture of nostalgia and embarrassment for her old self. “Yeah, that was me. I never told you how much I appreciated your giving us stuff.” Hubie had given Claire more than just the bags of Doritos and boxes of Pizza Spins that she craved. He had also given her milk and half-cartons of eggs and one-pound bags of flour. Sometimes it had been Hubie’s generosity that had put food on the table at the end of the month. “I haven’t really been back to Minor since my mom moved us out. Everything looks different, but you and the store still look the same.”

“Times change, but people still got to have their smokes. I have to cut my margin pretty thin so I can still compete. But now they’re talking about putting in a Tobacco Town franchise a half-mile a way. Guaranteed lowest prices on beer and cigarettes. The minute they do, I’m closing this place down. I’ll make my old dog move over on the porch and give me some room.” It was the most Claire had every heard Hubie say at one time. “What brings you back here now?”

“I’m trying to find someone who lives here now. You wouldn’t know the Sanchezes would you, Cindy and Kevin Sanchez?”

He looked up at the ceiling, thinking, and then shook his head.

“Well, how about Pine Terrace? Do you know where that is?”

Hubie ended up drawing her a map on a grocery sack. Before she left, Claire picked out a bag of neon-red Extreme Cheetos. She tried to give Hubie a twenty dollar bill for it, no change necessary, but he wouldn’t take her money at all.

###

Pine Terrace turned out to look more or less the way Claire had expected it to. The neighborhood was so new that many of houses were surrounded by churned mud instead of lawn. On the edges of the development a handful of would-be houses were in the middle of being framed. Mud-splattered yellow bulldozers smoothed out spots for more construction.

To Claire’s eye, the finished houses all looked alike, cookie cutter construction painted in skin-tone mauves and beiges. As she drove down the street, the first impression was of a long row of two-car garages. The houses were so close that you could pass your neighbor the butter through your adjoining dining room windows.

She found the Sanchez address with no problem. A pinkish tan, it had two-stories and was set back from the street. The street itself
was
a problem. It was a cul-de-sac, meant for kids riding their bikes or an impromptu game of basketball. A stranger jogging by several times or an unknown car parked for an hour or two would be immediately marked as out-of-place.

Claire had to think of something. She had no more answers for Lori than when she had begun this search, and time was running out. She had to find out if the Sanchezes, with their Hispanic last name, had adopted Lori and Havi’s daughter.

An idea occurred to her. After driving a few blocks away, she parked in another cul-de-sac. She scrabbled through the contents of her trunk, all gifts from her previous boyfriend. Evan was an insurance adjuster who believed in being prepared for any type of calamity. Her trunk held flares, a tire pressure gauge, a fire extinguisher, a gray scratchy wool blanket, a tube of something called adhesive bond, extra fan belts, a red tool-chest full of Sears Craftsmen tools that she had no idea how to use, and a yellow banner that read “Call Police” in foot-high letters. Evan’s last Valentine’s Day gift had been a roll of quarters in case she ever broke down by the side of the road conveniently within walking distance of a pay phone. It hadn’t escaped Claire’s notice that his gift had cost just ten dollars. Finally Claire found what she half-remembered from Christmas three years ago, a brown fiberboard clipboard with attached pen. On top was an accident report form dense with type.

Slipping in behind the wheel, she drove back to the Sanchez house and parked in front. Not giving herself time to think, Claire picked up her clipboard and walked to the door. The fake brass knocker gave a hollow clunk when she let it fall. Narrow plates of yellow smoked glass were set on either side of the door, and for a long minute she watched the empty hall. In a hidden recess she spotted a doorbell. She pressed that, too, but the chimes died away without anyone appearing.

Claire was about to leave when a woman opened the door. Her dark straight hair was feathered against her cheeks, and she was wiping her hands on a white apron worn over navy blue leggings and a tunic. Cindy Sanchez, with an olive complexion that belied her white-bread first name.

“Hello,” Claire began speaking rapidly, trying to get some forward momentum going. “I’m from Alliance Survey and I’m asking homeowners in the neighborhood if they would be interested in supporting a bond measure to add a neighborhood playground for children. Could you tell me, ma’am, if you would vote for or against such a measure if it would add” - she pulled a figure from the air -”fifty-nine cents for every thousand dollars of your home’s assessed value?”

“Pardon?” Her hands still twisted in the apron, the woman looked at Claire with wide eyes. “My English is not so good.”

“Could I come in and explain it to you further, Mrs. Sanchez?”

The woman raised her hand to hide her smile. “‘Mrs. Sanchez?’ Mrs. Sanchez, she working. I am Josefina.”

“Oh, well, perhaps you could help me,” Claire said and put her foot in the door.

Dropping her eyes, Josefina took a step back. With her toe, Claire nudged the door open wider.