A Stranger Lies There (7 page)

I wondered why Branson hadn't spilled the beans on me just for the fun of it. Maybe he thought it would be more amusing to drop a few hints and see what the press came up with.

“There's nothing to talk about. You must've misread him.”

“Maybe,” Parker admitted, then pushed on. “So what were your first thoughts when you saw the body? Ever seen something like that before?”

“This conversation is over, Parker.”

“Take my number in case you feel like talking.”

“I know where to find you, but it's not going to happen,” I assured him. “Good night. And you can lose my number.” I hung up the phone. “Damnit.”

“This is going to be bad,” Deirdre said. “Maybe if we give them just a little, they'll back off.”

“You know that's not true, Deirdre. It'll just make it worse. If they know they're not getting anything they'll eventually give up.”

Deirdre didn't reply. I reached for the answering machine and pressed the “play” button.

“Yeah, this is Chris Anders from KMIR-TV in Palm Springs,” a voice announced.

I cut it off and hit “delete,” then ran through the rest. Nothing but reporters, Parker and Sheehan among them. Bloodhounds locked on a scent. I deleted them one by one, getting more steamed as I did so. When the phone rang again I yanked it out of the cradle and hurled it against the opposite wall. Deirdre jumped, then recovered. Gave me a look like a disappointed mother at a misbehaving child. I felt like one, embarrassed at my loss of control.

“Beautiful, Tim,” she said. “Feel better?”

“Sorry. I shouldn't have done that.”

Deirdre glanced at the damaged wall. “You done redecorating? Or you want to try the bedroom next?”

We could hear the phone in the bedroom ringing, and since the handset I'd demolished was a cordless model, the base with its built-in answering machine was still intact. It answered a moment later. After the beep we heard yet another journalist pleading for an interview. I let it go, resigned to the intrusion. Tried to ignore it as I sat back down at the table. My blood was boiling but the iced tea was cool and refreshing, the glass slippery with moisture.

Deirdre sat down and sighed, studying me as the reporter hung up.

“I said I was sorry,” I repeated defensively.

Deirdre shook her head and looked down at her iced tea. She was making sweat rings on the table with the glass and joined two of the circles together. Then she absently wiped them away, leaving a smeared puddle, and lifted her eyes to mine.

“We gotta try and relax,” she said. “We can't let this get to us. They'll find the killer and then it'll be over. We just have to keep it together until then.”

“I don't think I'll get that scene out of my head any time soon,” I answered.

“You mean … when you found him?”

I nodded, my eyes sliding away from her.

“Fucking Branson,” she muttered. “He had no right—”

“I would have gotten to this point whether he'd unloaded on me or not. This is what happens when you screw up as bad as I did. It just keeps coming back. In different ways. Under different circumstances. Doesn't matter if Turret's been in prison all this time. In my mind he's right here.”

“He doesn't have anything to do with it, Tim.”

“I know. I just wish my heart—and my gut—agreed.”

Deirdre reached out and ran her hand through my hair, her voice close to a whisper. “There's no way you can undo the mistake you made. I thought you'd come to terms with that.”

“I thought so too. Maybe I was just fooling myself.”

“But it was so long ago. Why do you keep going back?”

Because I haven't found a way to fix it yet
.

Deirdre studied me for a moment. Then a look of defeat spread over her features. Maybe she recognized in me the same determination she drew on to guide her clients through their pain.

“Please leave it alone,” she said, knowing it wouldn't change my mind.

“I'm already involved, Deirdre. Whether I like it or not. At the very least, he died on our property. I can't just let it go.”

“Why not?”

I flashed on the image of the boy's hand falling out of the body bag just before the door of the coroner's van had shut, hanging over the stretcher in a silent entreaty. Nobody had noticed it but me.

“You know what it's like being somebody's last resort.”

Deirdre looked away, unable to argue. “I don't want to lose you. Sometimes it feels like you're barely with me. That your only true companion is the guilt you've harbored for thirty years.” She put her head in her hands and when they came away, her voice was trembling. “The only person who can forgive you is yourself, Tim. It will come from here,” she said, tapping her chest, “but only when you let it all go. Don't you see that?”

I looked into the darkened hallway behind Deirdre, clawing at shadows. Deirdre stood up to leave, then turned back to me. “Aren't I enough? Haven't I filled up the dead spaces inside?”

CHAPTER FIVE

Later I found myself in the workshop, which I'd converted from the two-car garage after I bought the place. It was quiet as a church, the extra sound-damping insulation I'd installed when Deirdre moved in working all too well tonight. None of the outside noises of traffic or wind were able to intrude, and the silence became oppressive and intimidating. Usually I could come out here and not have to think about anything—occupy my attention by working on some small, intricate item. Or use the noise of the power tools to drown out everything else.

Now I wandered aimlessly between the benches and machinery, idly inspecting various pieces of unfinished work, turning them over in my hands without really seeing them. The polished metal equipment gleamed under the soft fluorescent light, and I could smell the sawdust I'd neglected to sweep up. One of the fixtures began to buzz and flicker randomly; the ballast would probably have to be replaced.

I drifted toward the blinking bulb, thinking about everything Deirdre had said a few minutes earlier. She was in the shower now, washing off the day's dirt while I brooded out here, sticky with sweat. In the solitude of the shop, the right thing to do became less clear-cut. Who was I really serving by not staying out of it? If I answered honestly, I knew it was only myself, not Deirdre and certainly not the victim, whom I didn't even know.

The bulb was still flickering over my head. I reached up and gently twisted it, felt one of the contacts engage in the socket. The fixture lit up brightly, no longer blinking.

Deirdre was right. The boy was dead. I wouldn't indulge my tendencies toward guilt or self-pity any longer. I was out of it.

My head clear for the first time since yesterday morning, I walked over to the bench where I'd left several of the smaller pieces for a French provincial dresser I was building. The design had come from an old friend I hadn't seen in a while.

In prison, an old trustee named Walter had befriended me. Over the course of a few years, he taught me everything he knew about woodworking, his trade before being convicted of murder. He'd killed his granddaughter's preschool teacher, who'd been caught by a custodian molesting her after hours. Filled with rage, Walt took matters into his own hands, then turned himself in. They gave him ten years, a long time for a man his age. Federal time because the molester was a teacher for the Head Start government program. But Walt was treated like royalty in prison after word spread that he'd gotten rid of a child molester. Many privileges were his for the asking: cigarettes, snacks, a TV in his cell. Another perk was the job of running the prison woodshop, where he built and repaired tables and chairs from the mess hall and library, and furniture from the administrators' offices, among other things. With over thirty years in woodworking, he had a lot of knowledge and expertise to impart. Just watching the touch he had in his strong, nimble, well-worn hands gave me a great respect for the craft. It seemed ironic, though, that a prison term could have provided me with such a fulfilling and gratifying trade, one that also paid so well.

After moving out here, I'd built a steady business slowly, one customer at a time. Most of my tools came from garage sales and business liquidations. I rented a space at Village Fest, the weekly craft fair and farmer's market held in downtown Palm Springs. There, I sold the furniture I built and refurbished, and developed a discriminating clientele who appreciated the craftsmanship of my work. The piece I was working on now was for a customer in Las Palmas, the wealthy, old money section of Palm Springs.

The bottom rails for the dresser were the first things I looked at. They'd been kerfed, soaked in water, then bent by using clamps tightened on the wood until the proper curve was attained. By now, they were sufficiently dry, so I removed the clamps and inspected the rails. They perfectly matched the contours of the cabriole legs sitting next to them.

I brought the legs to another bench, where I'd left the molded drawer fronts I recently assembled and shaped. Those needed some light sanding to smooth out the seams, but I decided to finish off the legs I'd just put down instead. I found the headset radio and turned on KCLB-FM. John O started a set about drug abuse with a Guns N' Roses song called “The Garden.” I wondered if Deirdre was listening inside.

I began the final shaping of one of the dresser legs by tightening a vise around the lag screw bored into it. Picked up a wood rasp to round the foot, turned up the music a little and set to work. I'd just gotten into a rhythm of short, even strokes in time with the music when I thought of something that had been bothering me since yesterday, niggling at the back of my brain.

I put the file down and removed my headphones, not bothering to switch the radio off. I went into the house. Deirdre was in the bedroom with the TV on and no sound, and I got no response from her when I turned it off. She was asleep on top of the covers, the house still warm at this hour. I watched her for a moment. Her breathing was deep and peaceful. A faint smile on her face. What was she dreaming about?

The clock on her side of the bed glowed a liquid green. Almost ten. It sat on one of the night tables I'd built when Deirdre moved in, and I remembered the time a few months later when she spilled nail polish remover on the tabletop. It damaged the finish and left an ugly mark. Deirdre had been upset for hours, crying that she'd ruined the only bedroom set we would ever have. Before then, I'd been unsure of her thoughts on marriage. The following day I proposed.

I went out the front door into the electric desert night. My car was sitting at the curb. I opened the trunk and peered inside, searching for the heavy duty flashlight we kept there for emergencies.

The flashlight hadn't been used in years and I hoped the batteries weren't dead. But the light barreled out brightly, stabbing the darkness. I hurried across the street to where Branson and I had talked yesterday morning. I pointed the flashlight into the gutter, sliding the beam back and forth. Nothing. I wondered if I had the right spot, looked up at the house and knew I did. Remembered the wind blowing Branson's cigarette ash and widened my search. A moment later, found what I was looking for.

It was in the street now, flattened by a few tires. An empty matchbook. I turned it over and saw

BLUE BIRD MOTEL

INDIO, CA

in blue letters across the front. A small bird between the name and the location. The cardboard had been dimpled from the gravel in the street. One of those narrow ones, looked like eight matches, all gone now.

The cops had missed it. They probably hadn't come anywhere near it, other than when Branson had parked here, since it was across the street and two houses away. I looked up and down the block. Nothing moved. The wind had died down, and an expectant pause seemed to hang over the area. The hair on my arms was standing up, as if there were a static charge trembling in the atmosphere.

I sat down at the curb, thinking. The matchbook didn't appear to be very old despite having been run over. I tried to remember what Branson used to light up yesterday. Saw him flick a lighter and put it back in his pocket. So I knew the matchbook wasn't his.

Pure luck that I'd found it. My eyes had seen it yesterday, but my brain hadn't. Rattled around upstairs for two days, until my hands were busy and my mind was relaxed. But where did it come from? Did it even matter?

I decided to do my thinking inside. Locking the front door behind me, I went into the kitchen and put the flashlight and the matchbook on the counter. The phone was sitting there, now without its mating handset. That was still lying in pieces on the floor, under the dent in the wall on the other side of the kitchen. In the shadowed room, the hole looked deeper than I knew it was. I went over and inspected the drywall, running my fingers over the damage. A little of it flaked away and fell to the floor in tiny chunks next to the broken phone, tapping the polished hardwood as they landed. The sound was amplified by the silence of the rest of the house. The harm I'd done to the wall looked repairable, but I couldn't say the same for the phone. I picked it up and laid it on the kitchen table where it sat in silent rebuke.

There was a bottle of bourbon on one of the top shelves. I poured three fingers in a glass, and sat down at the table with the drink and the matchbook. Absently turned it over in my hand, as though I was doing a card trick. I gulped half the bourbon and it burned on the way down.

The Blue Bird Motel. I'd never heard of it. Probably a low-rent, pay-by-the-week or -month place off the beaten track, light-years away from the glitzy resorts that populated the Palm Springs area. The fact that it was in Indio, and not part of a chain, suggested that.

Again I wondered if the matchbook had anything to do with anything. Probably just a random piece of trash. But the cardboard was still shiny and stiff, the only mark of wear being the pavement dimples. So it hadn't been there too long.