A String of Beads (20 page)

“Am I making him jealous by worrying about Jimmy?”

“He’s not jealous,” said the woman. “Maybe you think he should be.”

“I’m not interested in Jimmy that way. But being around him makes me—I don’t know—miss
something.”

“Jimmy looks like a Seneca and speaks Seneca with you as your father did, so it’s
natural to feel the connection. You think that you were supposed to marry a man like
Jimmy but didn’t, so you feel guilty, and now you feel guilty for feeling guilty because
that’s not fair to Carey. I can tell you that you were right to pick the man who didn’t
just give you a faint friendly feeling. Instead you took the one who gave you a trembling
in your stomach and weak knees.”

“If I stay home with my husband, what will happen to Jimmy?”

“You won’t do that. Being Jimmy’s guide is something the clan mothers require of you—that
life demands of you. But you’ve got to do whatever you’re going to do soon. Time isn’t
helping you.”

“That’s your advice? Hurry up?” said Jane.

“Jimmy’s enemies are getting more powerful, so you have to be quick. Follow the poisoned
stream to where the spring seeps out of the ground. Find out everything you can and
then do what you have to. But you have to act soon. Jimmy won’t see the man in the
forest before he swings the club. You might.”

Jane woke while the sky was just lightening from black to blue gray. The stars outside
the window were still bright and glowing, but she could see the leaves of the old
walnut tree on the far side of the carriage house. She sat up, still naked, slid out
from under the sheet, and looked down at Carey sprawled beside her. He always slept
with an innocent, peaceful look on his face, especially after a night like last night.
He undoubtedly had disturbing dreams sometimes, but white people didn’t study their
dreams, or make much of them.

She got up and walked quietly out of the room, passed the master bathroom, and continued
down the hall to one of the bathrooms attached to guest rooms and turned on the shower.
The warm water felt good.

A few minutes later she saw through the glass door of the shower that he had appeared.
“Dr. M.,” she said. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

He opened the shower door and stepped in with her. “I woke up alone and came looking
for you. You’re home now, but you won’t be soon.” He sidestepped past her, ducked
under the shower and got wet, then scrubbed himself with soap.

She was very still. “You know that?”

“Since I saw you in the kitchen last night I’ve been listening for you to say this
was over—that Jimmy Sanders was safe and you were home for good. You haven’t said
it, so it isn’t over.”

She hugged him, feeling the water spraying her back. “I’m sorry, Carey. I don’t have
a choice right now.”

“I know you think that,” he said. “I was here for the beginning, the day they asked
you to take this on. I didn’t like it, and I still don’t like it. Last night wasn’t
the time for the argument. Is this the time?”

“I don’t think so.” She turned off the shower, took his hand, and stepped out of the
stall with him. She tossed him a bath towel, took one herself, and led him into the
guest room. They made love gently and then passionately, and lay lazily on the bed.
After a time she could tell he was looking at her.

He leaned over her and kissed her. “You’re leaving right away, aren’t you?”

“As soon as I check the refrigerator to see what you ought to have but didn’t buy
for yourself, and go to the grocery store. But when I get back, we’ll spend about
three days just going from room to room doing this.”

14

J
ane spent the morning preparing to leave home. She packed the clothes that she would
need in a small suitcase and included her empty backpack inside, two more packets
of identification and credit cards, and more cash. She walked to the nearest grocery
store, which was only about a half mile down the road, bought food for Carey, and
walked back. She left a bottle of eighteen-year-old Macallan single malt scotch on
the kitchen table with a crystal glass to hold down her note to him. All it said was:
“There are still fourteen more rooms in this house.” That would give him something
to think about.

She said quietly to the empty house in Seneca, “Thank you for visiting me in my dream,
grandmother. I’ll name you Keha kah je: sta e.” It was literally
my black eyes
.

Jane went outside, locked the door, and walked down the road to the bus stop to catch
the bus to the station at Sheridan Drive and Getzville Road. She caught the rural
service bus to Lockport, took another to Batavia, but got off at the Pembroke exit
of the thruway. She took out her copy of the service order Ray Snow had given her
when she’d left her car with him. She dialed the number she found on it and heard,
“Snow’s auto.”

“Hi, Ray. This is Jane Whitefield.”

“Hey, Janie. Are you coming back for your car?”

“Well, I’m making my way there. I’ve gotten as far as the Pembroke rest stop on the
thruway. I took a Greyhound.”

“Get yourself a cup of coffee. I’ll be there in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

“See you then.”

Twenty minutes later, she saw her white Volvo S60 coast along the exit ramp into the
parking lot, and then glide up to the building. Jane tossed her suitcase on the backseat,
sat down beside Ray, and fastened her seat belt. Ray smiled. “How was your hike?”

“Tiring. Thanks so much for picking me up, Ray.”

“No big deal. We do this all the time for our customers, and most of them don’t have
such nice cars.” He drove toward the ramp back onto the thruway.

“I’m glad you like it. It’s about six years old.”

“Mechanics like a car that’s been cared for, and I like them better if they didn’t
just come off the lot. I buy a few used ones now and then and fix them up for resale.
If you ever want to get rid of this one, don’t trade it in. I’ll give you a better
deal.”

Jane looked at him through the corner of her eye. “Do you happen to have any cars
you’ve fixed up at the shop right now?”

“A couple.”

“I’m wondering if you have one I could rent for a while.”

“So you found Jimmy.”

“If you knew something like that, then sometime you might get asked about it under
oath. You’d have to tell the truth. Fortunately I don’t know who you’re talking about.
But what about the car?”

“Sure. I’ll rent you one.”

“I’ve got to be clear about this. I might not be able to return it in mint condition
or right away. But I’ll pay for anything that happens to it.”

“Fine,” he said. He looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then returned his eyes
to the road ahead.

They drove up to Snow’s garage and he parked Jane’s car in a row of other cars of
various makes and models. He walked over to a Ford Mustang that was red with black
stripes running along the hood, roof, and trunk. “I put a five-liter Racing Crate
Mustang Boss 302 V8 in there. It’s supposed to deliver four hundred forty-four horsepower,
but I brought everything else up a notch too, so it should be faster than that.”

“I was thinking of something quieter, a little less vivid.”

“I’ve got that too,” Ray said. He stepped up to a small navy blue car and patted it
on the trunk. “This VW Passat is a good, reliable car, and one you can hardly see
if you’re standing beside it. I haven’t done anything but a tune-up, because it runs
great and doesn’t have dents or scratches. That’s not the kind of car that interests
me much.”

“That’s perfect. Dull is good.”

“Hold on a second.” He went into the shop and opened a drawer behind the back counter,
then came back with the keys. He handed them to her.

“What about my Volvo? Can I pay now for the work you did?”

“No. It’ll be easier to handle everything at once when you come back. Besides, I heard
something when we were driving on the thruway a few minutes ago—a little faint whine.
It could just be a fan belt, or it could be a transmission problem. I’ll have to keep
it to check it out. That VW is your free loaner until your car is ready.”

“Gee, Ray. You’re such a lousy liar I’ll trust you forever.”

“Thanks. By the way, the car came from Pennsylvania. The old license plate is still
in the trunk, and it’s current. Maybe you’ll find a use for it. Say hi for me to,
uh, any old friends you happen to meet.” He took Jane’s suitcase out of the backseat
of the Volvo and put it in the backseat of the Volkswagen.

“I’ll do that.” Jane got in and backed the VW out of its space. She could already
hear the smoothness of the engine. She drove down the road a few miles to the thruway,
and then east to Rochester and stopped at the Hyatt Regency hotel on East Main Street
adjacent to the Convention Center. The hotel was large, fairly new, and had been renovated
within the past couple of years. She checked in and gave the desk clerk a credit card
in the name of Janet Eisen.

Jane had built Janet Eisen over a period of six years, beginning with a birth certificate
that had been inserted into the records of the county clerk’s office in Chicago. She
had gotten an Illinois driver’s license, a diploma from a long-defunct local parochial
high school, St. Luc’s. In time Janet Eisen had submitted her resume to a few online
employment agencies. The resume listed a BA degree from North Ohio Business and Technical
School, an entity that had gone bankrupt in the 1990s, but had a ghostly afterlife
due to the efforts of a man who sold artfully concocted academic transcripts. Janet
Eisen had also applied for everything she could get without much risk or effort—library
cards, gym memberships, magazine subscriptions, frequent flyer ­programs—so within
a year or two she had been firmly established in an online existence. Jane had even
inserted a few articles about her in online publications so anyone checking her name
on Google would find her. Jane had hired her to work in McShaller, Inc., the consulting
business Jane had incorporated fifteen years ago. Jane used the business to run credit
checks and buy information, but it also allowed the fictitious Janet Eisen to give
imaginary people jobs, employment histories, and glowing recommendations.

Jane didn’t have a clear idea of who might be searching for Jimmy—or for her—or what
resources they might use. Today she was making sure that if someone searched, she
would be in a spot that was far down the list of likely hiding places. This hotel
was big and full of business people just like Janet Eisen who were in Rochester for
conferences, business meetings, and sales visits to local companies. As soon as Jane
had checked in at the hotel she walked down Main to the convention center and registered
for the convention that was starting that day. It was a convention for the medical
information storage and transcription industry, and would last a week. She paid a
two-hundred-dollar fee, accepted a folder full of information about meetings and presentations,
and a map of booths in the Convention Center. While she waited, her name badge was
printed and inserted in a plastic case that hung from a lanyard. She put it around
her neck so she looked like everyone else, then walked back to the hotel with a few
of the women from the convention.

She went to the hotel business center and signed on to a computer using the account
of McShaller Systems, her consulting corporation. She read the
Buffalo News
, the
Rochester
Democrat and Chronicle
, the
Livingston County News
. She scanned every article about Jimmy Sanders or Nick Bauermeister. They all had
the same things to say about the case: Bauermeister had died of a single rifle shot
fired through the front window of the house he shared with his girlfriend, Chelsea
Schnell, age twenty-three. Police had interviewed neighbors, friends, employers, co-workers,
and then begun seeking Jimmy Sanders for an interview because he’d had a fight with
Bauermeister and been charged with assault. They had left messages, but had not connected
with him yet when a man came forward claiming to have sold a .30-06 rifle and a box
of ammunition to Jimmy at a garage sale a couple of weeks before the murder.

Jane wrote down the name of the girlfriend and then looked up the address. She wrote
down the name of the supposed gun seller, Walter Slawicky. The Livingston County paper,
which was published in Geneseo, had seen fit to include a few details that the big-city
papers had left out, including Nick Bauermeister’s employer, a storage company called
Box Farm Personal Storage on Telephone Road near Avon. On the computer Jane ranged
further in space and time, searching for the names of Bauermeister, his girlfriend,
his employer, and the gun seller in any context, asking the engine to search the past
five years up to the present day. Whenever she found anything she printed the page.

When Jane had exhausted her search, she tried to assess what she had. The most interesting
person to look at first would be the man she knew was lying to connect Jimmy with
the crime. She found Walter Slawicky’s address online. He lived on Iroquois Road in
Caledonia. She looked at views of the house from street level and from above, then
signed out.

Jane went back upstairs to her room, plugged her cell phone in to charge, set the
alarm on it, and lay on the bed. She was asleep in a few minutes, still tired from
the late night with Carey. At ten the alarm went off. She got up, dressed in a pair
of black jeans, black running shoes, and a black pullover sweater. She took out a
black baseball cap, but didn’t put it on yet. She wore a light gray hooded sweatshirt
to counteract the unrelieved black, then took the stairs to the garage and got into
her Passat.

The drive from Rochester down Interstate 390 to Caledonia was easy and fast at night.
Her car was small, dark, and nondescript, so she felt confident leaving it parked
along the street in Caledonia where there were a few restaurants still open. The line
of other cars at the curb would camouflage hers, and she expected to be gone before
the bars closed. She took off her hoodie, put on her baseball cap, and got out to
walk.

Slawicky’s house was on the opposite side of the street, but Jane approached it by
staying along the side where the shadows were deepest and hurrying past any building
that cast light on the sidewalks. When she found the address she could see that the
house had lights on. Someone must be at home. She crossed the street.

As she approached the house she looked carefully in all directions to be sure there
wasn’t anyone on the street and nobody standing at windows to notice her. She slipped
into the yard, then moved along the tall, untrimmed hedge at the border of the property,
letting it hide her silhouette.

The house was an old one, probably from the late nineteenth or early twentieth century,
with a sagging covered porch and tall, narrow windows that looked cloudy as though
they hadn’t been washed recently, and wispy whitish curtains behind them.

When Jane was as far back in the side yard as the first window, she glided silently
to the side of the house and looked in. The window showed her a small dining room
with an old table that had a number of rings in its finish from years of wet glasses,
and a vase in the center with dusty silk roses in it—a faded red and a white that
was now yellowish. A still-folded newspaper and pieces of junk mail were strewn around
on the surface. She saw no signs of a recent female presence, and no female belongings.
She was fairly sure no man would buy fake roses for his house. This looked like a
house Slawicky had inherited from elderly rela­tives and never cleaned.

Through a wide opening beyond the dining room table she could see a darkened living
room where the changing glow of a television set was visible on the ceiling. She moved
into the deeper darkness away from the dining room window and toward the living room.
She picked a window on the television’s side where she would not have its glare in
her eyes. What she had to minimize now was motion. If Slawicky’s eye caught movement
he would be unable to keep from turning to look. She slowly moved her face close to
the side of the house and brought only her left eye near the corner of the window.

There he was in a chair in front of the television set. He was about forty-five to
fifty years old, and his hair on top was retreating to the back of his skull. He was
broad, and wore a light blue T-shirt that rose above his pants to reveal a round,
hairy belly. There was a bottle of beer in his right hand and occasionally he lifted
it to drink, but his eyes remained aimed at the television set, the pupils barely
moving. When he drank, the pressure of the bottle to his mouth made his small round
nose bob up and down.

The furnishings in the living room were consistent with everything Jane had seen so
far. The couch was swaybacked and the arms had ladders of frayed fabric where people
had leaned on them. The chair where Slawicky sat matched the couch, and both looked
as though they had been bought by an earlier generation, and inherited with the house.
The chair was aimed precisely at the television screen. Jane caught a reflection in
the dark window across from the television set, and decided get a better look from
another angle.

She moved around to the opposite window where she could see the television set. It
was well over five feet wide, a plasma high-definition screen of the sort that she’d
seen in stores for around four thousand dollars. In the two corners at that end of
the room were pairs of detached speakers, two tall and two short. She had no idea
of what those had cost, only that it was more than most people would have paid to
hear every whisper of the inane commentary on televised games.