The Skull Ring (11 page)

"I need a favor from you," she said.

"I can't figure you out."

Neither can I
.
"Will you check with some of your contacts in the police department and the D.A.'s office?"

"Look here, Julia. My friends are starting to think I'm weird, turning down dates with sweet, young,
interested
women so that I can save myself for you. And I'm starting to get tired of waiting. I mean, I love you, but–"

"When you love somebody, you don't impose conditions," Julia said.

"Where did you get that little nugget of wisdom? From one of your shrinks? As if
you
know the first thing about love."

"Mitchell—"

"Have you ever loved anybody, Julia? Besides yourself, I mean? And the little voices in your head?"

"Mitchell, please don't get mad." Her voice cracked. "I'm trying—"

"Jeez," he said, exasperated at her tears. Surrendering. "Okay. What do you want me to do?"

Say you're sorry, for one thing.

But she knew he wouldn't. Mitchell was never sorry. "Could you check around, see whatever happened with the investigation into my father's disappearance?"

"Julia, we've been through that a hundred times. The case is dead. No leads. He just walked off the face of the earth. Why can't you let it go and get on with your life? Sometimes I think you wouldn't be so crazy if you left the past alone. Hooded men and all that crap."

She squeezed the phone until her knuckles were white. Eight years. She'd known him nearly a third of her life. In those early years, they had made passionate love often, and she had unfolded like a flower beneath the sun of his affection. Then her problems had started, tiny paranoid thoughts, a nervous stomach, a sense that she had forgotten something important. Soon came the little surprises, the bad dreams, and the blame.

Mitchell had encouraged her when she first started seeing Dr. Danner. He had already elaborately planned their future and saw therapy as only a minor detour on the road to their eternal bliss. Over the years, though, as he became more mercenary in his law practice, he'd grown stubborn and possessive, angry at her both for her weakness and for her refusal to marry him. He'd given her an obscenely large engagement ring that she kept in a safe-deposit box. What was scary was that she couldn't let him go, couldn't grant both of them their freedom. This was love held hostage, love with a gun to its head, love in a straitjacket.

"Will you do it for me?" Julia asked when she had regained control of herself. She didn't want to prostitute herself by tempting him with her flesh when her heart and mind wasn’t fully ready, but she could appeal to his ego. "You know how to get things done. People jump when you call, Mitchell."

"Well, I'll give it a try.” He sounded mildly assuaged. “No promises, though.”

"Thanks, Mitchell. I'll call when I get in to Memphis International."

"Can we at least have dinner together?"

"I'd like that," she said. And she realized she
did
look forward to seeing him. Mitchell had helped her get through the car-crash death of her adoptive parents, providing moral support in his own domineering, Leonine way. Sometimes she wished she could adopt more of his philosophy, just give in and be his country club ornament, the one who completed his image of the successful young professional.

"See you in a few hours," she said. "Bye."

She made flight reservations and took a shower. Her suitcase was nearly packed when she heard a knock on the front door. She tightened her bathrobe and went to the living room,  peering through the crack in the curtains. Walter's Jeep was parked at the curb.

She hadn't called Mr. Webster about any repairs. What was the handyman doing here?

"Hello?" she called from behind the closed front door. Perhaps she should have waited to see what he would do first. If he were a Creep, he might try to break in one of the windows. Then she remembered that he probably still had the key to her house, the one he had gotten from Mister Webster.

"Hello, Miss Stone?"

He could come right in if he wanted, and she couldn't do a thing about it. She considered what Mabel Covington had said about Walter’s wife.

She glanced at the phone. The cops might need fifteen or twenty minutes to respond to a call this far from town. Plenty of time for Walter to do whatever he had in mind, unless he was one of those meticulous Creeps, the kind who liked to slowly peel his victims like ripe peaches—

She pressed her fist to her forehead.

"Miss Stone?" Walter repeated.

"What is it?" she asked, careful to control her voice, trying to sound unconcerned.

"I was just on my way into town, and I had something I thought you might like."

A knife to the throat, maybe? Or a screwdriver punching me a third eye socket? Or whatever you did to your wife when you took her to the woods on Cracker Knob?

In jurisprudence, suspects were innocent until proven guilty.

Julia remembered the kindness with which he’d treated her.

"Hold on a second," she called.

She glanced at the phone, decided against it, went to the bedroom and slipped off the robe. As she slid into a T-shirt and jumper, she thought she heard something bump against the window. The glass was misted from the shower's steam, so she saw nothing. She collected the mace from her purse and held it behind her back, and then returned to the door and opened it.

Walter stood off the edge of the stoop, by the snowball bush. He looked ill at ease, without his baseball cap and wearing a short-sleeved knit shirt instead of his usual flannel. Like a starched golfer instead of a carpenter.

"Sorry to drop by unexpected," he said, his cheeks crinkling as he tried to smile.

Julia pushed her wet hair behind her shoulders. "Is something broken that I don't know about?"

"Uh, no. I was just passing by, and I thought of you."

"The electricity has been fine," she said. Did Elkwood handymen drop by to check up on their work? Was that another of the maddening unwritten rules of mountain pride, along with extending invitations to church?

"Good. Wouldn't want the house to catch on fire."

"Thanks for checking," she said. "But I'm afraid I'm in a hurry. I've got to make a flight."

Walter nodded, the smile frozen on his face, squinting in the day's brightness. "Where you fixing to go?"

"Memphis."

"Oh. Old friends, I guess."

"Something like that."

"I won't keep you, then. I brought something I thought you might like." He pulled an envelope from the rear pocket of his jeans and gave it to her.

Julia looked across the street to the apartments, and then shifted her gaze to Mrs. Covington's house. She peeled back the flap and peered inside the envelope, expecting one of those cartoonish Bible tracts that showed the car-crash victim wandering through the flaming tunnels of hell and eventually realizing he was dead and it was far too late for the salvation offered by John 3:16.

Her first peek, however, suggested photographs.

She pulled them out. Not photographs, but baseball cards.

Ozzie Smith. Jack Clark. Willie McGee. Ted Simmons. A few scrub pitchers and utility infielders, the Julian Javiers of the world. And some older cards, Bob Gibson, Lou Brock, Ken Boyer. And the last . . . probably the greatest Cardinal ever. Stan Musial. The Man.

"Do you like them?" he asked, his eyes wide and serious.

"Yes, they're wonderful!" she said. "My father used to give me baseball cards when I was little."

Walter grinned at her happiness, his slightly crooked teeth making him look innocent and young. "One of my buddies gave them to me a long time ago. They were tucked away in a drawer. I got some others, too, but they ain't Cardinals."

"That's really thoughtful of you," she said. "But I can't take these. They must be valuable."

"Some of the old ones might be worth a little bit of money, but value is from what you care about them," Walter said. "I don't care that much. I bet you could care about them more."

That made sense, in a strange kind of way. She studied the cards. Pieces of the past. But not a bad past, because in the photographs the outfield grass was green, the players smiled, and baseball was just a game.

"Well, I'll let you go," Walter said. "Hope you have a good trip."

"Thank you, Walter," was all she could think of to say. "This is the best thing to happen to me since I've been to Elkwood."

He waved as he drove away, the cloth top off his Jeep, his hair ruffled by the wind.

Julia sat on the couch and looked at the cards for a few minutes, read the statistics on the backs, spread them out on the coffee table. She arranged them into a lineup, setting the batting order by position. The smile felt good and rare on her face. She'd almost forgotten such simple, childish delights existed.

She set the VCR to tape the evening's doubleheader, finished dressing, and drove to Charlotte-Douglas Airport, where she caught a jet. As the plane lifted off the runway, she embraced the freedom of flight and vowed to leave her mental baggage behind, even though she wasn’t sure what memories were tucked inside it.

CHAPTER NINE

On the approach to Memphis, Julia marveled at the lights of the big city, a million stars spread against a dark backdrop, the Mississippi like a galactic rift. After the months in the rural Blue Ridge Mountains, the crush of people at the airport seemed senseless, like a stampede of cattle into the slaughterhouse.

Mitchell met her as she debarked. He wore his unbreakable lawyer's smile, a Rolex, a tailor-cut pinstriped suit, shoes so gleaming that he could check his dark, curly hair in them. Perfect Mitchell. Still perfectly, utterly the same as when she had last seen him, as when she had first seen him. He didn't age, only accumulated thicker layers of sameness.

As he headed toward her at the luggage conveyor, she wondered why she couldn't be grateful for the stability he offered. All she had to do was say "Yes," and she could be Mrs. Austin by April. Sure, he would irk her from time to time, would grant only the perfunctory four minutes of intercourse before rolling over to call his stock broker, would pat her on the hand and call her his "Little Woman," would smother her with boring endeavors like tennis dates and new window treatments. But he would never, ever create a bad memory for her. In fact, she was quite sure that, after a lifetime with him, she would have very few memories at all.

And that might not be such a bad thing.

They hugged stiffly, him looming over her, trying to press her breasts against him. He kissed her cheek before finding her lips. No tongue, and she didn't offer hers. His cologne was musky and sweet.

"You're looking great," he said, letting his eyes roam over her figure. If he noticed the weight she'd put on, he didn't say anything, but he might have been calculating its effect beside the country club's pool, and how a small bulge around the bikini lines might affect that complex formula of social standing. Arm candy couldn’t eat candy, at least not too much of it.

"You're looking perfect, as usual," she said.

"I work at it," he said. Truer words never spoken. Another thing about Mitchell, he was pretty honest for a lawyer.

"Did you find out anything about my dad’s case?" she asked.

"A little, but can't it wait? I got us reservations at The Blue Note, and it wasn't easy, let me tell you. Even Mitchell Austin has to grease a few palms to get a good seat in this town."

Now he was referring to himself in third person. How the mighty had risen in her absence.

He pointed to her hand. “Hey, where’s the rock?”

She mulled the short list of lies and came up with a tired one. “I was cleaning the stove before I left and didn’t want to tarnish it. I was in such a rush packing, I forgot to put it back on.”

“Jesus, Julia, do you know how much that cost?”

She supposed in the five-figure range, but she merely said, “Don’t worry, I left it in a safe place.”

“You’re not waffling, are you?”

Lying got easier with practice, and she served it up with one of Mitchell’s pet phrases. “No, Mitchell. I’m sticking with the game plan.”

He smiled but the gesture didn’t reach his eyes. He took her hand and dragged her toward baggage claim.

They caught a cab downtown, Julia gawking at the skyscrapers like a tourist as Mitchell possessively put his arm around her. He helped her out when the cab pulled to the curb. The muggy air on the sidewalk settled around Julia like a second skin. The car exhaust, the noise of traffic and evening commerce, the kaleidoscopic neon and flashing lights all kept her off balance. How had she survived this sensory overload for so long?

They had a cucumber salad for openers, Mitchell ordering wine, Julia sticking with lemonade. "So, tell me what you found out about my father," she said.

Mitchell arranged his napkin with a flourish. "Later. This meal is costing a small fortune. You can pay me back by gazing into my eyes and melting."