A String of Beads (26 page)

All the other dreams but that one seemed to shade off into a second part. It got dark.
Men had shot him, but in the dream their pistols had thrown flames. Next he would
feel the stab of pain as the fire tore through the muscle of his leg. He supposed
that these sensations were triggered when his medicine wore off and the pain woke
him.

The leg was worse than painful; it was damaged. He had always been a runner. He loved
running, and had been a habitual runner for over thirty years. If last night had left
him permanently crippled, it would turn that pleasure into agony and sorrow. When
he’d been a kid he’d hated school until he discovered that his running didn’t have
to be just a way to forget the fact that other kids had friends, money, and nice clothes.
He got to run on the cross-country team in the fall and the track team in the spring.
Running had given him an identity and acceptance.

Ike had been a farm boy whose family lived on somebody else’s farm and worked for
next week’s groceries while they tried to make this week’s last. They were lucky if
there was enough money left over to put gas in his father’s old Ford pickup. The Lloyds
were backwoods people who had come up from Pennsylvania when Ike was about ten. Through
his childhood he and his father had hunted. The Lloyds had been meat hunters, and
they’d weighed the cost of each shot against the value it could bring the family.

One of the memories that reappeared in his sleep tonight was a day when his father
had wounded a deer. His father walked with a limp because of something that had happened
in the army, so Ike had been the one to run after the deer. His concern had been to
keep the deer from running all day in pain and then coming to rest in a secluded copse
somewhere deep in the woods to bleed out, so its death and suffering would be completely
wasted. Ike had run through the forest tracking the buck until he caught up with it,
shot it through the head, hung the carcass, dressed it, and brought it home. Ike’s
father had cut the meat, then preserved it in the farm freezer. Ike remembered his
mother defrosting pieces of the venison all the next winter, and each time they had
it, his father would repeat the story of Ike running it down to prevent the sin of
wasting a life.

Ike was beginning to feel fully awake again when the night nurse came in. This one
was much taller—maybe five nine or ten, and thin, with olive skin but bright blue
eyes. She wore a cap on her head that covered her hair and a white surgical mask over
her nose and mouth.

At first he’d thought she must be one of the surgeons who had taken care of his bullet
wound, but she was a nurse all right, because she fussed with things—moving the rolling
stand so his call button was about seven feet from him and he couldn’t even reach
the damned thing, opening a drawer on the other side and putting his stuff—wallet,
watch, phone—into a plastic bag in the bottom drawer of the built-in dresser in his
open closet. He didn’t exactly mind that part. He had thought Molly would take all
that with her when she’d left tonight to go put the kids to sleep. And he didn’t really
care where the nurses put things. They’d sort it all out another day when he was released.

“Did the other girl go home?”

“You mean the nurse?” the new one said.

“Yes. I guess I shouldn’t have said ‘girl.’ I’m not a jerk. I’m just kind of lazy
headed right now. Drugs and all that.”

The new nurse said, “It’s okay. Everybody knows you’re the good guy, Ike. I guess
her shift ended. But you’ll probably see her again tomorrow.”

“Did you come to give me another shot?”

“No. I came to talk to you a little. But I’ll leave soon, and when I do we can ring
for the next one.”

He said, “Are you afraid of getting me sick?”

“You mean the mask? No, it’s not to protect you from my germs. It’s to protect me.”

“Oh,” he said. “You called me Ike. Who are you?”

“You don’t recognize my voice? I’m the woman who borrowed your shotgun last night.”

“What?”

“I shot the man who was coming around the RV to get you in a crossfire. I hit him
in the chest. I think I hit one of the others too, but not very seriously. I didn’t
go after him or his friend because it seemed more important to call for help to get
you taken to a hospital.”

He rolled and lunged for the call button, but it was out of his reach.

“Don’t do that,” she said. “You’ll only hurt yourself.”

“What do you want?”

“Information. I watched the local news this evening, and they told the story of what
happened, sort of. A couple of things were missing.”

“What were they?”

“One was me.”

“You want publicity?”

“No. If keeping me out of the story was your idea, thank you. The other thing that
was missing was the man I shot.”

“You must know that the local news isn’t going to know everything, or get everything
they hear straight.”

“No, Ike. Too much time has passed for them not to have noticed a dead or wounded
man. The police have had control of the scene for almost twenty-four hours.”

“Have I been here that long?”

“Approximately. But so far the news people haven’t mentioned a man or a body. That
struck me as odd.”

“Maybe he got away.”

“I hit him in the center of his chest from closer than forty feet. When I last saw
him he was lying on his back with his arms splayed out. Your ammo is number four buckshot,
right?”

“Why do you care? If he’s alive he can’t find you.”

“I want to know who he is and what those men were doing at Slawicky’s.”

“I don’t know, and I don’t know why he’s missing,” said Lloyd. “I saw him go down,
and I’m pretty sure I saw blood after he was lying there. But from that moment on,
I was only worrying about the other two, and I think shock was setting in. If you
hadn’t reminded me to use my belt, I might have bled out.”

“You’re welcome. I have some things to tell you too.”

He sighed. “You must know that I’m not on the case anymore.”

“You’re the only one that I can tell. Nick Bauermeister was a thief—a burglar, to
be precise. I found his break-in kit, mask, and a loaded gun in a toolbox under the
workbench in his basement. He was storing bags of salt for winter, and the ones in
the center of the pile all have jewelry in them. His girlfriend, Chelsea Schnell,
is having an affair with his boss, Daniel Crane. And Walter Slawicky never sold a
rifle to Jimmy Sanders. He lied to the police about that. I think somebody paid him.”

Lloyd said, “I saw the new Porsche in his garage, and of course it was hard to miss
the motor home. He doesn’t seem to have a job.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said. “I’ve got to go now. Sorry I had to move your phone
and call button.”

“What has this got to do with you? Who are you?”

“Why do you care? Do you want to send me a thank-you note?”

“I’m officially ordering you to tell me your name.”

“Thanks, Ike. Get well. When I’m gone, if you want the nurse, just pull the blood
pressure clip off your finger. It sets off an alarm at the desk, and they’ll come
to reset it.” She opened the door and stepped out into the hallway.

The beep-beep tone went off at the nurse’s station and when the nurse got up and hurried
toward Ike Lloyd’s room, she didn’t see the woman in scrubs who strode past her station
behind her and kept going to the elevator.

Jane descended to the ground floor and walked outside through the door where the garbage
was taken from the cafeteria kitchen to the dumpsters. She went past the enclosure
where the big air-conditioning condensers and heating plant were. She didn’t remove
her mask and cap until she was far from the hospital’s security cameras and enveloped
in darkness once again.

20

J
ane changed her clothes in her car. It was still dark when she drove to Avon and along
Telephone Road. As she passed the long driveway to Chelsea Schnell’s, she took time
to study the house. There were no signs that anything had changed. Sometime soon,
she hoped, Ike Lloyd would repeat what she’d told him to the police officers who had
taken over Jimmy’s case. They would obtain a search warrant for the little house,
and find the gun, tools, and stolen jewelry. He could be calling them now. How long
would it take to obtain a warrant?

Jane looked at her watch. It was 5:00
AM
. She parked her Passat in the row of cars at the gas station down the road and walked
back along the deserted stretch of Telephone Road to the house. If she was going to
take another look, this had to be it.

This time she walked into the field by the house to the back where the stand of maple
trees and the high thickets would hide her if the police came earlier than she had
anticipated.

She walked to the rear of the house, climbed up onto the back porch, went to the kitchen
window, and studied the room in the light thrown by the fluorescent above the stove.
There were no dishes out, and the coffee pot was disassembled on the counter. She
moved to the garage and saw through the side door that Chelsea’s car was parked there,
went to the bedroom window and moved her eye to the corner, then pulled back.

The bed was smooth, the bedspread pulled straight and tight, and the pillows arranged
neatly in a double row—bright decorative ones in front, and white pillows behind.
Nobody was home and nobody had slept here.

Jane moved to the sloped cellar door, unscrewed and removed the hasp and its padlock,
and went down the steps. She had not expected to enter the house, but she still had
the small LED flashlight she’d brought with her to the hospital. She picked up a rag
to open Nick Bauermeister’s toolbox and checked to be sure that the tools, mask, and
gun were still there, then touched the middle bags of salt to verify that the jewelry
was still there too. Finally she climbed the wooden steps to the kitchen.

Something had changed. The small kitchen was still neat and orderly, but it was stuffy.
The air had stayed in the same place for too long because the doors and windows had
been closed. She stepped to the refrigerator and tugged it open. A sour smell hit
her, and seemed to be coming from the open milk carton on the top shelf. She peered
through the glass tops of two drawers at the bottom and saw one full of lettuce with
faint brownish streaks and leaves with curling edges. There were tomatoes with skin
that had begun to pucker slightly. She closed the refrigerator and moved to the living
room.

There were plants in pots lined up on a windowsill. They looked limp. Jane touched
the soil in a couple of them, and they were dry. Chelsea had not been home in a while.
Jane pulled her hand back into her sleeve and picked up the telephone. There was still
a dial tone.

She went to Chelsea’s bedroom and checked the closet and dresser. She thought there
were a few articles of clothing missing since her last visit, but most of them were
still there. She moved the chair to the closet, stood on it, opened the small attic
access door, and used her flashlight to look, but all she saw was a layer of pink
insulation that had been installed long after the house was built.

She closed it carefully and went through the house again, looking under pieces of
furniture and in the usual hiding places—the freezer, inside pots and pans, taped
to the undersides of drawers, behind the plates of switches that didn’t seem to operate
anything, and behind heating grates. As she searched, part of her was listening for
the sound of police cars, and as long as she heard nothing, she kept searching. At
last, she ran out of places to look.

Jane went down to the basement, up to the cellar door, and out. The sun was bright
and glaring. She replaced the hasp and padlock and went across the field to the gas
station and retrieved her car. As she drove along the road, there was a steady stream
of cars going in both directions, people taking their kids to school or going to work,
but no police cars. She looked at her watch. It was nearly eight already. Daniel Crane
would be leaving for work.

DANIEL CRANE DROVE TOWARD HIS
storage business, but he didn’t feel right about leaving home. Maybe he didn’t really
have to go in today. He took out his phone and called the office.

Thompson picked up. “Storage.”

“Box Farm Personal Storage,” Crane said. “I’ve told you guys about eighty times.”

“Sorry Dan. I was on my way downstairs, and Harriman was on the phone at my desk so
I had to run over here to get it, and I was afraid the caller would give up.”

“Okay,” said Crane. “Four words. Box Farm Personal Storage. I don’t know how I can
build the business if you guys don’t sound professional.”

“Sorry. I’ll be more careful.”

“What I called for was to see if Mr. Salamone let anybody know when he’s coming today.”

“I haven’t heard. Let me check.” Crane could hear the rubbing sound of a hand covering
the phone, and a faint voice calling across the room. “Nope. He hasn’t called or anything.
Nobody’s called and asked for you yet, either.”

“Okay,” said Crane. “I’ll see you in a little while.” He hung up, then pressed the
phone number of the office again.

“Box Farm Personal Storage.”

“Very good,” Crane said. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?” He hung up again and slid
the phone into his jacket pocket.

He had hoped Salamone might have called to tell him when he was coming, or even better,
that he wasn’t coming. Salamone had already missed making his usual rounds yesterday,
and of course, he hadn’t called. Why should he? Making people wait and not showing
up was a way of keeping them off balance. They had to think about you on that day,
and each day after that until you finally appeared.

Crane had wanted to stay home with Chelsea this morning. He’d had trouble with her
last night, and he really wanted to see what her state of mind was going to be today.

They had gone out to dinner and a play in downtown Buffalo, and he had expected that
afterward she would be bright and cheerful and talkative. The play had been a revival
of O’Neill’s
The Emperor Jones
. To him it had been a little stagey and dull, but Chelsea had watched it intently,
so he had assumed she’d liked it. She had been quiet on the drive home, but not sullen
or withdrawn.

After he pulled the Range Rover into the garage and got out, she had just sat there
for a minute. At first he thought she was being a grand lady and waiting for him to
walk around the car and open her door for her. That would have been okay—
was
okay in his mind when he’d come to her door. To him it had been a sign that she was
feeling comfortable with him, relishing the fact that he loved her—happy that he was
attentive enough to sense what she wanted.

That hadn’t been it. When he had swung her door open she simply sat there looking
straight ahead.

“Honey?” he’d said. “Chelsea?”

She had reacted only after he said her name, and then it was as though he’d nudged
her from a reverie. She’d looked at him and then got out. As he followed her to the
front door he said, “Are you all right?”

She had not answered at first, but then she said, “Yes.” But she had sounded too firm,
too assertive.

When he opened the door she went in ahead of him and kept walking, never stopping
on her way across the living room and through the gallery toward his bedroom—their
bedroom. When he finished locking the door and turning up the lights he looked again
and his last sight before she disappeared through the arch to the gallery was her
reaching up to grasp the zipper at the back of her dress. When she did that the dress
was pulled tighter across her bottom and waist. Her thin, graceful fingers tugged
down the zipper a few inches and he saw the bare white skin below her neck for an
instant.

He felt his pulse quicken. She was going to the bedroom taking her dress off. Chelsea
didn’t usually initiate sex; she acquiesced to it. Crane began to feel good. Maybe
his life was about to get even better. He tried to keep his anticipation in control.
It was late, and she just might be tired. In a minute she might come back out wearing
flannel pajamas and fuzzy slippers and say good-night. He considered. How did he want
her to see him when she returned?

He wanted to look confident and relaxed. He opened the bar hidden on the left wall
and poured himself a cognac, and set a second glass next to his, with the bottle beside
it as an invitation. She had turned down drinks lately. She’d said something about
alcohol not agreeing with her. It had occurred to him that it might have been a reaction
to the powder he had put in her drink the night they’d first had sex. He hadn’t mentioned
that to her, of course. He sipped his cognac and waited, trying not to picture her
in the bedroom naked, waiting for him to join her. The house was silent, and he thought
he could hear his own heartbeat. Was the cognac a bad idea? He took a cocktail glass
off the shelf and poured her a diet ginger ale.

He heard the bedroom door close, and then the flap of rubber on the tile floor of
the gallery, and then turned to look at her.

She was wearing the tank top and shorts she’d often worn when he had visited her at
her house, and a pair of flip-flops. He tried to stifle his disappointment.
Okay. She looks beautiful, and in that outfit she must feel comfortable.

She didn’t. She looked anxious and miserable. Then he noticed the strap on her shoulder.
What was that?

“Hi, baby,” he said, and forced a smile.
“Have a ginger ale?” He held it up.

“I—” she said, then paused, like a stutterer who had to start over. “Sure.” She stepped
closer and took it, then stepped away with it. She slipped the strap off her shoulder
and set her overnight bag on the floor. “I need to talk to you.”

“Okay,” he said. His mouth was suddenly dry. He sipped his cognac. “Come and sit down.”

She looked undecided, and he realized that she had made some plan that had not included
sitting down. But she turned and walked with him to the semicircular couch coiled
around the big polished walnut coffee table. Her expression was serious, troubled.
Could she be breaking up with him?

As though she were answering, she said, “This isn’t working out.”

He felt an emptiness in his stomach. He watched her, silent.

She began again. “You’ve been really kind and generous, and a true friend. You were
the only one of Nick’s friends who even kept in touch with me. Nobody else gave a
crap. Their girlfriends, who were always chatty and supposedly my friends, didn’t
bother to call after the funeral. I would have thought you’d be the least likely to
care, because you were the boss and older and everything. I’ll always be grateful
that you were there for me.”

Maybe this wasn’t as bad as he had first feared. He knew he was walking along the
edge of a precipice, but what she’d said made him decide to be bold and honest. “I
did it because I love you.” He watched her face, hoping it would show something—if
not joy, at least pleasure, however mild. Even surprise would give him a foothold
he might be able to use, a chance to save himself. But her head gave a tiny involuntary
shake, like a shiver.

Chelsea said, “This is my fault. I didn’t intend it, but I guess I’ve been leading
you on. I wanted to give us both a chance to see if we could be happy together, but
I should have been smarter about this.”

“You did nothing wrong,” he said. “Don’t think of it that way.” He swallowed hard,
then stood. “Jesus, my throat is dry.” He went to the bar, reached into the refrigerator
and got another ginger ale, and poured it in a glass. While he was there he reached
under the bar to the cardboard box there and took one of the little brown envelopes.
As he walked back to the couch he palmed it and held it in his left hand.

He sat down and drank, looking at her and noting the position of her glass.

Chelsea had gathered her thoughts while he’d been away. “This is the time to be open
and honest. I went out with you because you’re such a great guy, and I felt safe with
you. I felt I could talk to you about anything, but that you wouldn’t make me relive
Nick’s murder. The first night we went out, I enjoyed it and forgot how sad I was
for a while. I was distracted, and I was drinking, and I guess that one night I got
carried away.”

Crane realized Chelsea was being absolutely sincere. She had actually remembered none
of that night—passing out, his carrying her to the bedroom, moving her this way and
that as he’d stripped her, the sex. The powder was magical. It had absolutely erased
her memory. He had never used GHB before that night, but it had lived up to its reputation
completely.

He could see she was blushing, and that it embarrassed her to look at him, but she
wanted to be sure she was getting through to him. If she couldn’t see his hurt, then
she couldn’t be sure he was hearing her.

She said, “The next morning I realized I had passed out at some point and a lot was
a blank. I must have thrown myself at you, and so we’d had sex. I decided that since
I’d done that, I owed it to you, and to me—I’m not saying I was being unselfish—to
try to see if this was what we both really wanted, or just a drunken mistake.”

“It wasn’t a mistake,” Crane said. “I know this has been awkward for you, so soon
after Nick died. But we hardly ever get to choose when it’s time for things in our
lives, good or bad, to happen.”

Chelsea reached out and touched his hand, and he took it as permission to come closer
on the couch. “It was good. It was,” she said. “But it’s still a mistake, and I’m
so, so sorry.”

She began to cry. She bent her head down and he hugged her. He could feel her sobbing,
and he could tell her tears were making the shoulder of his sport coat wet. While
he held her with his hands behind her back, he tore off the end of the envelope, transferred
the envelope from his left hand to his right, and poured the envelope into her ginger
ale, trying to make his gesture quick and measure the dose by eye. Was that too much?
He slipped the empty envelope into his coat pocket and brought his hand up to pat
her tenderly. He stayed there, could have stayed there forever holding her, but after
another minute or two she straightened, her head came up, and he had to release her.