The Long and Faraway Gone (27 page)

“Across the street from the hotel to the west,” he said. “What is that? It's a burrito place, I think.”

“It's a Chipotle.”

“Twenty minutes. Okay?”

“Okay, Mr. Rivers. Thank you, Mr. Rivers.”

When Wyatt got to the Chipotle across from the hotel, Chip was already there, seated at a table, his broad shoulders bowed around a napkin he was carefully shredding into a thousand tiny pieces.

Wyatt sat down across from him. Chip looked up. His cheeks were even rosier than Wyatt remembered, as if someone had given them a few hard slaps. Wyatt couldn't tell if he'd been crying. Maybe he had.

“It's bad news,” Chip said, “isn't it, Mr. Rivers?”

“It's no news.”

Chip wasn't sure what to do with that. He swallowed. He picked up another napkin and began to shred it.

“No news at all?” he said.

“None worth reporting.”

Wyatt knew that was probably a lie, but he saw no reason to tell Chip about the male barista at Starbucks or the hand squeeze that Wyatt had witnessed between the barista and Chip's wife. A little information could be a dangerous thing, and he didn't want Chip jumping to any conclusions based on partial, potentially misleading evidence. Maybe Chip's wife was banging the barista, but maybe she wasn't. Maybe she was banging someone else entirely.

“But you saw my wife?” Chip said.

“I did.”

“So no news is maybe good news?”

“No news is no news,” Wyatt said. “Here's the deal, Chip. Why I wanted to talk to you in person.”

Chip scooped up pieces of shredded napkin and clenched his fist hard. “Are you married, Mr. Rivers?

“No.”

“But . . . you've been in love? Really, really, really in love?”

“Chip—­”

“Because when you lose that, when you think you might lose that—­you just feel broken. It's the worst feeling in the world.”

He loosened his fist and sprinkled bits of shredded napkin across the table. Wyatt was glad he hadn't said anything about the barista, the hand squeeze. Chip, with his bashful smile and rosy cheeks, the sweet-­tempered demeanor, didn't seem like the kind of guy who would flip out and open fire on the man who might or might not be banging his wife. But there was something there, a dark nuclear throb far belowdecks. Wyatt realized he'd picked up on it in the elevator, the first time they met.

Who knew what a broken heart could drive a man to do? Well, Wyatt supposed, everyone knew.

“I know you want an answer, Chip,” he said.

“I do, Mr. Rivers. I just want an answer.”

“I get that. But I'm not your guy.”

“If it's about the money, then—­”

“It's not. You need an investigator who can give you his full attention, Chip. I told you when we met, I'm working another case.”

“But maybe—­ What about when you solve that other case, Mr. Rivers? I mean, if you're close to solving that case? Then I can just wait and—­”

Wyatt laughed. “Chip. You'd probably die waiting. That's how close I am.”

Chip's eyes pleaded. Before he could say anything else, though, a woman came over to their table. She was smiling. She smiled at Chip and then smiled at Wyatt.

“Did you hurt your hand?” she asked Wyatt.

She'd seen the bandage on his hand. Wyatt was confused. Did he know her? He didn't recognize her.

“Just a few stitches,” he said.

“Can we pray for your hand?” the woman said. She pointed to another woman, also smiling at Wyatt, a few tables over.

Wyatt thought he'd misheard. “Pardon me?”

“They want to pray for your hand,” Chip said.

Wyatt searched for a response appropriate to the situation. “No, thank you,” he said finally, giving up.

Her smile faltered. She walked back to her table and said something to her friend. Her friend's smile faltered.

“That was kind of weird,” Chip said.

Wyatt held out his hand, his good hand, for Chip to shake. He wanted to get the hell out of there before Chip remembered that forty-­five seconds ago he'd been in the process of falling apart. He wanted to get the hell out of there before Chip resumed doing so.

Chip shook Wyatt's hand.

“I wish you the best, Chip,” Wyatt said. He meant it.

He walked back across the street to the hotel parking lot. As, wouldn't you know it, the stitches in his palm began to ache. And—­this was clearly the vengeful God of the Old Testament at work here—­the bar in the hotel lobby didn't open until five o'clock on Sundays.

Wyatt drove down to the Plaza District and found the tattoo shop, Ink & Roses. It was closed all day on Sunday, but the lights were on. Wyatt rapped on the shop's plate-­glass window until a heavyset guy in a black T-­shirt emerged from the back. The guy crossed his arms and stared at Wyatt.

“I'm looking for Dallas!” Wyatt yelled through the glass.

The guy gave Wyatt the finger and then a thumbs-­up. A mixed message if ever there was one, but Wyatt managed to sort it out:
Fuck you, dickhead, for ignoring the Closed sign,
and
She's upstairs.

Wyatt walked around to the side of the building. A flight of stairs led up to the apartment on the top floor. Wyatt knocked.

After a few seconds, Dallas opened the door. No makeup, her hair piled precariously on top of her head. She didn't seem surprised to see Wyatt.

“Hey there, you,” she said.

“I was in the neighborhood.”

“Were you, now?”

Her skin was pure cream, an immaculate canvas for all those colorful tattoos. The phoenix rising from the ashes, a woman's face painted to resemble a Día de los Muertos skull, a vine bristling with poisonous-­looking flowers. Beneath the thin cotton fabric of Dallas's T-­shirt, Wyatt could see the rumor of even more tattoos.

“I'd never lie to you, Dallas.”

“You know that's my last name, don't you?” she said. “Dallas is?”

Wyatt hadn't known that. “What's your first name?”

“Tiffany.”

“Tiffany. You don't look like a Tiffany.”

“That's why everybody calls me Dallas.”

She opened the door wide. Wyatt stepped inside. A one-­bedroom flat, sunny and tidy. On the wall in the living room was a large oil painting, a version of the phoenix on Dallas's arm. Moon-­faced dolls filled a bookshelf, along with framed photos and a vintage red Bakelite telephone.

“Beer or whiskey?” Dallas said.

“Sure.”

She smiled and went into the kitchen. Wyatt picked up a framed photo. In it Dallas was maybe eight or nine years old, grinning cheek to cheek with a woman Wyatt supposed was her mother. The daughter, Wyatt saw, had inherited her mother's nose, her feline eyes.

Dallas returned and handed him a glass with two fingers of scotch.

“That's my mom,” she said. “She used to work at the Land Run, too, way back when. She worked the door. How do you like that?”

What was it O'Malley used to say about the relationship between past and future? Wyatt couldn't remember. O'Malley's theories were endless and arcane.

“Where's your mom now?” Wyatt said.

“Florida.”

Wyatt observed that every photo was just mother and daughter. He picked up one of the moon-­faced dolls.

“I can't remember what they're called,” he said. “I remember they were very popular. There were fistfights at Christmas.”

“Cabbage Patch Kids.”

“That's it.”

She took the doll from him and pressed it to her nose, breathed in the scent.

“My father used to bring me those.”

“Where's he?”

“Gone. He died when I was little. Killed.”

“I'm sorry.”

She shrugged. “I don't remember anything about him. He got my mom pregnant and ran out on her. I remember the way he smelled.”

“Tell me about this old telephone.”

Dallas took the glass of scotch from Wyatt's hand and set it on the shelf.

“You want to see the rest of my place or not?”

The bed, through another doorway, was unmade, the sheets invitingly rumpled.

Wyatt thought about how nice it would be to step into that room, into this woman's life for a while. How nice she would feel pressed against him, his mouth on her neck and her ribs beneath his fingers. Wyatt would be able, for an hour or a week or a year, to stop asking
why.

“I don't think so,” he said.

Her feline eyes remained unperturbed. Or seemed to. “Okay.”

“I'll see you around.”

“I guess.”

Wyatt went back to his car. He used his phone to search for nearby pizza places and picked the one that popped up first. Hideaway Pizza. He called in an order for a large cheese and a large pepperoni.

Candace had just pulled in to her driveway when Wyatt arrived. She glanced at him, at the pizza boxes, and then went around to the backseat to unbuckle Lily.

“I was going to call you,” Candace said.

“Have you guys had lunch?”

Lily climbed out of the car. “Hi, Wyatt.”

“Hi, Lily.”

“We went to the Science Museum.”

“Was it fun?”

Lily considered the question gravely. You could see her stacking the weights, lining up the measures, checking her math.

“Yes,” she said finally.

Candace handed Lily a small pink backpack, decorated with the face of a Disney princess Wyatt couldn't place—­one of the newer, multicultural ones. Candace handed Lily her keys.

“Go on inside, baby. I'll be there in a second, okay?”

“Okay.”

Wyatt watched Lily climb the steps to the porch. She unlocked the front door and went inside. He gave it another try.

“Have you had lunch?” he said. “I thought Lily might like pizza. Kids like pizza. That's my understanding. That, actually, is the beginning and the end of my understanding.”

Candace slammed the car door shut. And then she yanked it back open, just so she could slam it shut again, even harder.

“You!” she said. “Are! Un! Be! Lievable!”

Wyatt didn't know what she was talking about. He did know better than to ask. Any way he asked would make him sound like a smart-­ass.

“I called Dallas a few minutes ago,” Candace said. “To see if she could watch Lily today for an hour or so? And she said you just left.”

“Candace—­”

“I can't believe you're doing my bartender and not working on my case!”

“I'm not doing your bartender.”

“Then why were you over at her place?”

That question was more complicated. “Candace—­”

“I don't care!” she said. “I don't care who you're doing or if you're doing anybody! I don't care if you bring over stupid pizza at two o'clock when every normal person has already had lunch! Do you know what I care about?”

Wyatt kept his mouth shut. Candace was really pissed, more pissed than he'd ever seen her. He set the pizza boxes on the hood of his car and walked up the driveway to her.

“Do you?” she said.

She opened the car door and prepared to slam it again. Wyatt reached for her wrist to stop her but then—­the look Candace gave him—­thought better of it. She slammed the door so hard the car rocked.

“What
have
you been doing?” she said. “I mean, seriously? Besides my bartender. Ha. Have you been doing
anything
to help me? Gavin said you were like the best private detective he'd ever worked with.”

Again Wyatt kept his mouth shut. This time because he couldn't argue Candace's point. What
had
he been doing? In the past twenty-­four hours, he'd spent roughly five minutes thinking about Candace's case. Maybe less. He should have been pressing Finn's manager for the list of fans, he should have already started bracing them. And before that? Wyatt had been off his game the minute his plane touched down in Oklahoma City. He'd never, he knew, really been present.

“What happened?” he said. “Why were you going to call me?”

“Mr. Eddy's brother called me this morning. He said he was going to get the court to reopen the estate.”

“He can't do that.”

“He said his lawyer can. He said I better get a lawyer, too. The best one I can afford.”

“He might be able to get probate opened again, but he won't win.”

“Does he have to?” Candace said. “I'm not stupid. He said I can sell him the Land Run now or I can sell it to him later.”

So that was Jeff Eddy's play, to make Candace spend so much money on lawyers she'd have to take a lowball offer.

Wyatt shook his head. “It's okay,” he said. “You don't have to worry about any of that.”

“Oh?” Candace said. “Really? I don't?”

“No.” He smiled. “Trust me.”

She looked like she was going for the car door again but then stopped. Lily had emerged from the house and was standing on the porch.

“Hi, baby,” Candace said. “What's wrong?”

Wyatt felt it, too. A ripple of uneasiness moved through him, almost too faint to notice—­a pebble dropped into a pond.

“Mama,” Lily said. “I don't understand.”

Another pebble dropped into the pond.

“Don't understand what, baby?” Candace said.

Without another word Lily went back inside. Candace followed her. Wyatt followed Candace. Everything in the living room looked normal, everything in the dining room. And then a gust of chilly air raised the hair on the back of Wyatt's neck, and he noticed the open window in the dining room, the splintered casement. Candace noticed it a second later. Wyatt felt her tense.

“Go outside with Lily,” he told Candace. But Lily was already halfway down the hall leading to her bedroom. Candace caught up and stopped her before she could go in. Wyatt stepped in front of them both. He looked through the doorway.