The Last Kind Words (38 page)

I snapped off the radio.

My attention dispersed, then refocused.

My exhaustion over the past several days was making it hard to keep my thoughts straight. My instincts were off. I didn’t know whether Collie had played me across some elaborate game or not. Was Gilmore really a killer, or a bent cop who was closer to my father than I was? I saw
Mal crawling across the grass almost directly beneath my bedroom window. The same dream called to me. Go with Kimmy. Drive away.

I looked out the window at Roxie Drayton.

She looked like her mother, the same dark intensity, the same lovely features—

She looked like—

She looked a little like Becky Clarke.

She looked a little like Cara Clarke.

She looked a little like—

She looked a little like Dale.

I shut my eyes and twisted my face aside.

She looked like Eve.

My sister had said,
Dad sneaks out at night sometimes. Grey is hardly ever around
.

I heard Flo’s voice, as loud in my ear as if she were in the backseat.
He still comes in here sometimes. Handsome. A touch of class. He knows how to treat a woman
.

I knew then who else was trapped in the currents of the underneath. I knew because it was my blood tide. I knew because we looked just alike.

I threw the car into drive and pulled away from the curb. The transmission moaned so loudly that Roxie dropped her purse again. I sped off. I called home and my mother answered. I asked, “Is Dale home yet?”

“Out with that Butch, I think,” she said with disappointment. “I hope the next boyfriend’s a doctor. Is that asking for so much?”

“The next boyfriend’s going to show up next week. Just keep your hopes in check that he’s a B student. Who else is home?”

“Who do you expect to be here? Your father’s in the garage. You want to talk to him?”

“No,” I said. My voice was too blunt. I tried to soften it up. “That’s okay. What about Grey?”

“He’s been out all night.”

“With Vicky?”

She let out a small noise of exasperation. “How would I know? Since
when do any of you tell me anything about where you’re going?” The irritation and frustration were taking hold. She’d been through so much, and it wasn’t over yet. She’d given everything she had to holding us together, and we kept falling further and further apart. I heard her place the phone against her chest, the heavy beating of her heart somehow calming me. “We need to sit down as a family again.”

“Pencil me in, Ma. I’ll call again later.”

“We’ll be here.”

I disconnected. I let my mind wander in ways it hadn’t before.

I heard my father’s voice.

I think your uncles have a touch of Alzheimer’s too. I’ve found them out in the yard in the middle of the night a couple of times, looking dazed
.

Who could get up that close to Mal to do what had been done to him? Who would Mal trust?

I shook my head as if I had an earache. I slammed my fist down on the steering wheel. I was wrong, I had to be wrong. I phoned Vicky and Eve’s television station. Like the last time, it took me ten minutes to work through the menu. Finally I got her.

“Hello,” Vicky said. “Victoria Jensen.”

“This is Terrier Rand. I’m looking for Grey. Is he with you?”

“No, he’s not, Terry, I haven’t seen him.”

I shook my head again. My throat was beginning to constrict. I coughed and licked my lips. “You haven’t seen him?”

“Not since the funeral.” I waited, and the pregnant pause took on all kinds of meaning. I had a feeling I knew what she was going to say next.
He’s no longer interested in me
. But no beautiful woman wants to admit that out loud. “I’ve been very busy with work. I just haven’t found the time to return his calls. And you know, Terry, I don’t want to speak out of turn here, but you and Eve make a wonderful couple. I think that—”

I cut her off. “Vicky, this is something of a rude question, and I’m sorry for it, but did my uncle stay with you that night we had the double date?”

“No, Terry, he didn’t. He said he didn’t feel well.”

“Thanks.”

“Tell him I’ll talk to him soon.”

I hung up.

Grey had slept with Eve. He had met Roxie. I thought about the peeper at Eve’s window watching the two of us in bed. Becky Clarke strangled during Collie’s spree. The missing knife.

Grey with his ladies’-man looks, owning a thousand women but not the one he’d truly wanted, the one who’d rejected him forty-five years ago. Like any of us, he was capable of violence.

“No,” I said. “No.”

Where had Grey been spending his nights?

I drove home. I’d been thinking of someone close to the family, someone who might have followed Collie that night, someone who knew our ways. I’d been thinking of Gilmore. I stepped harder on the gas pedal and jockeyed through the traffic. I kept pushing. Someone said, “No.” Someone had been saying that for a while. I checked the rearview. My lips were moving, but I didn’t know the voice.

I slowed when I got to the corner of our block. I eased up to our house and saw Grey’s car in the driveway. I pulled in, got out, and stepped up the porch. I wondered if I’d gone over the big ledge. I wondered if I was finding madmen around every corner because I’d already become one myself.

My mother and father were in Gramp’s room, cleaning and changing his pajamas. My grandfather’s eyes were focused on the ceiling but it still felt like he was looking at me.

My parents glanced at me. I didn’t know what to say. I wasn’t sure about what I’d found out or if I’d found out anything at all. The pulse in my belly was throbbing heavily. My father said, “Don’t stare, Terry. Old Shep’s got some pride left.”

“Oh, sorry.”

I turned away and started back down the hall. I moved to the bottom of the second-floor stairs. I looked up and could see shadows playing against the corridor wall. I heard the creak and thrum of water rushing through the pipes. I took a step, thinking, Maybe I should wait.

“Jesus God, what the fuck am I doing?” I whispered.

“Who’s that?” Grey called.

I climbed the rest of the stairs and stood in his doorway. Grey was stripped down, with a towel around his waist, about to step into the running shower. He was laying a suit out across his bed. Steam coiled through the air.

I said, “Can we talk for a minute?”

“Let it wait until I come out, right? This goddamn floor is like ice.”

“Sure.”

He padded to his bathroom and shut the door. I had maybe ten minutes to search the room. I hit all the key spots where anything of importance might be hidden. I found forty g’s in cash split among three caches but nothing else of note. If Collie’s knife was here, I couldn’t find it. No trophies, no newspaper clippings. I needed proof. I needed to know for sure. His wallet was on the corner of his bureau. I went through it and discovered nothing that mattered.

I checked the suit he was about to put on.

I reached into the inside jacket pocket and found a photo.

It was old. It showed a pretty teenage brunette smiling happily, head half turned over her shoulder, her hair a wild flurry in the wind, dark and blurred branches of shaking trees in the background. I didn’t have to guess who she was. The only girl he’d ever truly loved. She looked a little like Rebecca Clarke. Roxie Drayton. Dale. All this time later, all the times I’d heard the same story, and I still didn’t know her name. She’d left him at the altar and broken his heart, and in his sickness she continued to haunt him, crawling through the seams of his mind. Every young pretty brunette became a part of the same obsession. My mother had said it herself.
An older man who can’t let go of his own youth, who’s preoccupied by the past … Too much silk and not enough sand
. She just hadn’t realized how far he’d gone.

Inside jacket pocket. Right over his heart.

I could see him putting the suit on, working the tie until it was perfect, then slowly dragging his thumb across the left side of his coat like he was touching the cheek of the woman.

Maybe I should do a more thorough search, check the rest of the house, his car. Maybe I should wait and watch him longer now that I suspected.

But I wasn’t a patient man. I couldn’t imagine leaving him alone in this house another night with my sister near him. I didn’t know how far into the underneath he was. I didn’t know if I was right or wrong about him. Maybe Collie was going to his bunk each night laughing himself to sleep that I was out here running in circles. Maybe Gilmore hid his trophies elsewhere. Maybe there was a killer in the woods watching the house right now. Maybe my father had gone to see Kimmy for some other reason.

I had to get Grey alone.

I went to my room and shut the door. I thought of all the years I’d spent here feeling safe, surrounded by my family, my father and uncles on watch. I could feel the underneath tugging at me, that insane sense of panic trying to make me jump the wrong way. Vertigo made my legs wobble and I reached out to touch the wall. Behind it was our legacy, three generations of junk.

I sat on the bed and put my head between my knees. When the dizziness passed I called information and got the number for Rocko Milligan’s pawnshop. He answered on the fifth ring with a flamboyant, “Yallooo?”

“Rocko, this is Terry Rand.”

He sucked air. “Holy shit, a ghost from the past. Let me guess, you’re on the narrow and you met a girl you want to marry, and now you need a good deal on the ring. You know I’m the man to talk to about that.”

“Not entirely on the narrow yet, Rocko, but if I ever gear up for marriage, I’ll get the ring from you. Now listen to me. Do you ever sell my father figurines?”

Rocko coughed out a chuckle. “Terry, not for nothing, but your father is loopy for the fucking things. I don’t get it. They’re not worth shit.”

“When was the last time he came by?”

“He hits me up every month or two. Been a while. I think he goes
out east, checks the antiques shops in the Hamptons for this crap. The old ladies out there like their porcelain too. Or they did years ago. Now their grandkids are inheriting it all and dumping it at garage sales.”

“I want you to call him for me,” I said. “Tell him you’ve got a few nice pieces in.”

“I never call him, Terry, he just comes in on his own.”

I listened to Grey moving around in his room, getting dressed across the hall. I almost hung up because it all suddenly seemed so stupid to me. I’d been wrong about everything so far, why should this be different? But I continued to clench the phone to my ear. “I’ll square up with you and make it worth your time.”

“My time’s worth two C-notes,” Rocko said.

“Fair enough. Call him now.”

I walked downstairs. My parents were on the couch, watching a news channel, with Gramp in his chair beside them, a blanket over his lap. His hair had been trimmed. His face was clean and pink. He smelled of baby powder.

My father turned his head in my direction as if to say something, but he didn’t get the chance. The phone rang and he stood to answer. I took his seat and pretended to be interested in the news. My mother was tsking and saying how terrible, how sad. My father asked Rocko what was so special about the pieces, and Rocko must’ve known what to say, because my dad actually said, “Oohh,” with a great delight. It was a sound that at once amused and alarmed me. It was further proof I didn’t know my old man as well as I thought I did.

He hung up and reached for his jacket off the back of the kitchen chair. “Rocko Milligan’s got some bisque figurines from ’46. Another buyer is interested so I’m going to run over there.”

“You should go too, Ma,” I said. “I’ll watch Gramp.”

She frowned at me. “What? To a pawnshop?”

“The two of you can go out to dinner.”

“He didn’t ask me to dinner.”

My father looked a little embarrassed, but his expression quickly shifted to one of enthusiasm. The bisque figurines had put him in a
tenuous good mood. It was an overreaction in the face of Mal’s death, but I was glad for it. “You want me to take you out to eat tonight?”

“I didn’t say that. I’ve still got half a roast in the fridge. Why would we go out to dinner?”

“Leave the roast. We haven’t gone out together in a while. We can eat at the Nasgonset Inn. We always liked their Italian.”

“They have a good house wine. All right. Let me get dressed and put my face on.”

“You look fine,” I said.

“He’s right,” my father agreed, “you’re beautiful. And I don’t want to wait two hours or we’ll never get out of the house. Come on.”

My mother reluctantly agreed with a timid smile. Once again I grew aware of just how burdened they both were by how ugly things had become over the past few years and my part in that. This might be her last smile, the last I’d ever see. My name would be spoken with shame from now on, just like Collie’s. I almost took a step toward her, but my dad gripped her hand and led her out the door. She looked over her shoulder once and met my eyes. I watched his back muscles moving beneath his shirt as he walked onto the porch. Outside, JFK lumbered to his feet and licked my father’s hand. My mother gave the smallest of waves. Then my old man tugged her across the porch and to the car. I watched my parents pull out of the driveway.

I looked at the ceiling and listened to Grey’s footsteps. My breath hitched. I shut my eyes and tried to center myself, but too much flashed across the screen of my mind. I kneeled beside my grandfather’s chair. I had no idea what he’d seen, what he knew. Maybe he did have some shame left, maybe not. His chin was resting against his chest. I reached for the remote and turned the cartoons on for him with the sound down low. His head lifted.

I smelled Grey before I saw him. His vegetable moisturizers, aftershave, citrus conditioners, the minty mouthwash. He was ready to go out. I didn’t know where. Which woman would he chase tonight? A few thin shafts of sunlight crossed behind him as he moved into the living room. He was in a charcoal suit, white shirt, and power tie. A shiver
passed through me. There was something chilling about seeing him so well dressed now.