The Summer Bones (5 page)

But it was her grandfather's appearance that shook Victoria the most. He lifted his coffee cup to his lips. The hand that once had been so strong and capable trembled so badly that little laps of dark liquid slid slowly down the sides of the blue porcelain to drip onto his plate.

A vigorous and commanding man, rigidly fair, uncompromisingly hardworking, and religious in the truest sense of the word, he had entered his eighties without giving an inch to the onslaught of age. Damon might have slowly absorbed more and more of the workload, but their grandfather still rose at dawn and did his part, never admitting to a weakness or an ache. Now he seemed somehow frail, with the knotted veins in his large hands blue and swollen, and the skin on his face stretched too tightly over the bones.

Damon didn't wait for the police officer to come to the door. He crossed the room to open the screen door and said, “Hi, Danny.”

“Damon.” The man came briskly up the steps. He was young, maybe thirty, with sandy hair and a face that might have appeared on a cereal box—fair featured, slightly freckled, ingenuously American. Not tall of stature or short, he was compact and nicely built.

Victoria vaguely knew him from the sun-washed summers of long ago, when she and Emily had spent hours at the local ballpark, watching the baseball teams play and devouring ice cream and hot dogs.

There was a general round of greeting. Danny Haase took a seat at the table and accepted the offer of a cup of coffee.
A true native
, Victoria thought wearily. The heat was so close she felt her clothes, as light as they were, sticking to her body like flypaper.

“How's your mother, Danny?” Her grandmother plopped a steaming cup of coffee on the table in front of him.

“She's fine, Mrs. Paulsen.” With a smile of slight discomfort, he picked up the coffee cup.

“I see her at church.”

“Yes, ma'am. Every Sunday. You know how she is. Wouldn't miss a day.”

A nod of approval—apparently, Mrs. Haase was acceptable folk. “She's a good lady.” Gran smiled sunnily, her graying hair like a halo around her placid face.

“Thank you.” Danny took a quick sip of coffee and glanced around the table.

“I don't see much of you though,” she continued conversationally. “What brings you by?” It was an innocent question, so inappropriate to the moment.

Victoria felt her cheeks slowly warm as an uncomfortable heartbeat passed.

Danny blinked in surprise and said, “I'm here about your granddaughter, Mrs. Paulsen.”

Victoria knew even before it happened that her grandmother would turn and look at her in puzzled question. The embarrassment she felt was not for herself, but for the loving and quick-witted woman who had been so important in her life, and who would have hated the awkward moment.

“He's here about Emily, Gran,” Victoria said gently, uselessly. She didn't need to look at her grandfather's face to imagine his expression.

“Emily has disappeared, Mildred, you know that,” a voice spoke clearly.

Victoria glanced at her mother. There was no sympathy in her expression for her former mother-in-law.

“What about my daughter's car?” Jane Paulsen asked Officer Haase in terse question.

He looked relieved, passing a surreptitious look from the pale features of Victoria's father, to his ex-wife's demanding face, to the rigid gray face of the old man at the head of the table, and then last, to Victoria.

“We don't have a lot of information. The car was found this morning on Dunn Road, in a little patch of woods right past the county line. Eric Moore owns that property. He was the one who found the vehicle.”

“I know the spot,” Damon commented quietly, and both her father and grandfather nodded. Standing by the sink like a lost child, her grandmother looked blank.

“It's roughly three miles from here. The vehicle itself was almost completely concealed by the trees, invisible from the main road. Mr. Sims thinks maybe his wife was headed here.”

No one said anything. It was a plausible theory. Emily dropped in, but so did everyone—lunch, dinner, it didn't matter. The door was always open and there was always coffee.

Victoria's father said, “That's not a direct route here. Why would Emily go that way?”

“Er … she
wasn't
here, was she?” Danny asked, looking around the room in polite inquiry. “On July 20? Her secretary says she left the office at about eight-thirty. It has been confirmed that she kept a nine o'clock appointment, and that the meeting took just a little over an hour.”

“She wasn't here, as far as we know,” Damon offered up carefully, dark eyes direct. “I was out in the north field working with Jim Baily on a new fence, but the old man came in for lunch and says there was no sign of her. Grandma doesn't remember her being here that day either.”

Damon always referred to his grandfather as the old man. In turn, he was gruffly called the boy.

Jim Baily was the hired hand; a sixty-five-year-old farming veteran who chewed tobacco continuously and rarely spoke two words strung together.

At the head of the table, Elmer Paulsen nodded his head in reluctant confirmation. He didn't look at his wife. To Victoria, the set of his shoulders begged Danny not to question her grandmother—not now, at least.

Danny caught on quickly enough. He nodded slowly. His eyes were very light, a pale ice blue. With his fair coloring, it gave him a transparent, unthreatening quality.

Victoria's father cleared his throat and spoke again. “Apparently she didn't make it here. And now you've found her car, abandoned. What happens next? What else can you tell us?”

“Not much.” Danny lifted his cup cautiously to his mouth and took a gulp.

“We're worried sick.” Victoria's mother spoke forcefully, her red lips forming the words with vengeance.

“Of course you are.” Danny lowered his cup, wiping at his mouth with the back of one hand. “But there isn't much to tell you right now. The crime scene unit was out to check the car, but it seemed pretty clean. No blood.” He smiled in patent reassurance. “No obvious signs of a struggle. I'll have the official report on my desk in a day or two.”

Victoria mentally gathered her nerves. The room was oppressive, the feeling of helplessness almost overwhelming. She cleared her throat and asked, “Could Em have deliberately left her car there? Maybe met someone and driven off in their car? I mean, is it possible?”

That light gaze flickered her way, showing instant interest. “Possible? You tell me.”

Her mother looked at her. Her father looked at her, his finely drawn features a mirror of the others. Her grandfather was staring down at his coffee cup as if the answers of the future could be deciphered from the stagnant remains of dark brown liquid.

She didn't glance over at Damon, but her grandmother had moved to do the washing up, and the water was running. Incredibly, she began humming in tuneless cheer, slipping dishes into the soapy water as if this were any other evening.

It was too hot. Pushing the heavy hair off of her neck, Victoria attempted to look noncommittal. “I don't know anything specific to support such an idea. I just wondered if there were any other car tracks nearby or anything.”

“The area has been pretty thoroughly checked, but I'll make a note. It's too bad it hasn't rained in so long. The ground is hard as a rock”

Checking the area—an ominous idea. If Emily had run off with someone, checking the area wouldn't be necessary. Checking the area meant a search for bodies, or a body—namely Emily's.

Swallowing, Victoria nodded.

Outside, dusk had lowered inexorably. The smell of recently cut grass fought with the essence of pig manure and damp earth. She began to wish it would rain.

The bruises
. Should she mention Emily's bruises? April was some time ago. Maybe a few bruises meant nothing. Certainly Emily had tried to brush the whole thing off as unimportant.

Danny finished his coffee and pushed aside his cup. The fair hair around his temples was dark with perspiration, turning a wet gold. There were matching rings under his armpits, staining his uniform. He cleared his throat, clearly ready to leave.

“The only really disturbing thing we found in her car was her purse,” he said.

“Her purse?” Richard Paulsen repeated hoarsely. “What about her purse?”

Danny gave a small sympathetic cough. “Like I said, sir, it was in the car.”

* * * *

Damon watched with jaundiced appreciation as Jane and Richard Paulsen warmed into the ritual salute before battle. A skirmish usually; just a few ill-chosen nasty words and a scathing return. The pattern was an old one. And over the years, he had grown quite sick of it.

“You should have asked more questions,” his aunt said bitterly as the sound of the departing police car drifted in the open window. “For God's sake, Richard, you should have asked more questions. The police never tell you a thing unless you pry it out of them.”

“Since when are you an expert on the police?”

“Your daughter is missing, Richard. Your
daughter
.” Jane Paulsen sat stiffly, her thin hands clenched in her lap. Damon had always thought of her as a beautiful woman, but that beauty was shaded and deformed by her worry and acrimony. “I guess you aren't as worried as I am, but I would think you would at least try to get what information you could.”

Richard turned his head and wearily looked at the lines of outrage and rancor in her face. “Just what is it I didn't ask that you so wanted to know? For that matter, what's wrong with your voice? If you want more answers, ask the questions yourself, Jane. And don't use the current situation as an excuse to pick a fight.”

“I'm done fighting with you.”

“Praise the Lord.”

Christ
, Damon thought and watched his grandfather heave himself out of his chair in an explicit communication of disgust, then leave the room. He wasn't particularly anxious to stay himself, not to sit through another dreary petty argument between two people who should be long done with each other.

However, Victoria sat, enduring it as if some sort of penance, her eyes looking wounded and unhappy.

“I thought maybe,” Jane said deliberately, “you would act like a man and take charge of this situation. For once.”

“Ah, would you like me to stand on the table and beat my chest?” Richard asked coldly. “I'm sorry if my male ego isn't strutting around enough for you, Jane, but frankly, I'm too worried.”

Victoria bit the underside of her lip and turned her head a fraction so she could look out the window.

Damon felt aversion to their compulsive insensitivity rise up like bile in his throat. The same scene had been played out, in varying words and insults, hundreds of times in the past two decades.

“Tori, let's go for a walk,” he suggested, walking over to touch his cousin's shoulder.
Before they get even uglier, before the screaming starts in, before the tears
—the words hung unsaid. Her skin felt warm under the tips of his fingers.

She looked up, a shadow of gratitude quirking her lips. Then she stood. Neither of her parents, who hadn't seen her in months, acknowledged them leaving. Nor did their grandmother, still happily humming over her dishes at the sink.

Damon took Victoria's hand and led her to the door. Bitter voices followed them.

“If you think you're worried—”

“Shut up, will you, just for one second—”

“Don't tell me to shut up—”

The air outside was a boon after the stilted atmosphere inside. Damon let the screen slam shut behind them in a sound that signaled freedom. The voices faded.

Victoria took a deep lungful of evening air and said, “Thanks, I owe you one.”

Damon still held her hand as they went down the porch steps and out onto the grass. He squeezed her fingers lightly and smiled wryly. “Don't mention it. I was also saving myself.”

“I'm not sure what happens to me when they start to do that. Some kind of paralysis, I guess. I sure as hell want to get up and walk out like Grandpa did, but I'm stuck there. The classic deer-in-the-headlights syndrome.”

“You care about them. They're your parents”

She laughed, a small incredulous sound. “It isn't some sort of filial duty that keeps me rooted to the spot. I don't even have the noble intentions of trying to help them work it out … no one could assume they would ever work things out. I don't know why I don't just walk away.” Letting go of his hand, she caught the swing of her hair by her cheek and looped it behind her right ear.

Her slim shoulders were golden in the setting sun. There was more gold in her hair, shining strands among the chestnut brown, the whole heavy mass loose around her shoulders. She looked pretty and healthy, but he knew her well enough to read the dark smudges under her eyes like a flying banner of distress. Victoria had always been naturally slender, but she was too thin; and he thought, as they walked together slowly across the warm grass, that she looked tired, very tired.

“How's the job?” he asked abruptly, changing the subject.

Her gaze followed the martins sweeping through the darkening air in low graceful curves. “Fine.”

“Fine?”

“Well, yes. Fine. I'm pretty busy.”

“A bit much, isn't it? School and a job?” It was a neutral comment.

“I have to pay for school. Hence, I have to work,” Victoria said simply. “Besides, I only have three semesters left. Don't big-brother me, Damon.”

“You look tired,” he went on, unperturbed. “Big brother,” whether he wanted it or not, was a role he'd assumed years ago.

“The past week has been a little hellish. At least the firm was terrific about giving me some time off.”

“They should be, shouldn't they? I heard something about one of the lawyers. Is it true?”