Blood Orange (33 page)

s soon as David left for work on Saturday morning, Guadalupe
\arrived from Tijuana.

Dana could not spend another day cooped up with just her guilt
and Bailey for company. She stopped first at the Filmores’ storage
unit, to which Marsha had given her the key the day before. As she
opened the door, a wave of warm air smelling of stale cigarettes engulfed her and a dim interior light switched on automatically, revealing a long, narrow space filled from floor to ceiling with plastic
storage bins, cardboard boxes, and dark, oppressive-looking Victorian
furniture. Standing at a right angle to the door was an armoire almost eight feet tall made of some dark red wood like mahogany and
embellished all over with carved fruit and vegetables and the heads
of birds and fish. The mirrors on the doors were etched with pastoral shepherding scenes. Dana could not decide if the piece was
very beautiful and unusual or a nineteenth-century monstrosity. She
opened one of its doors and inhaled a whoosh of tobacco and perspiration smell so strong she turned her head aside and took a step
back, almost stumbling on a stack of books. Then she reached in and slipped the sable-colored, full-length mink coat off a wooden
hanger.

Without thinking, she put her arms into it, and pulled the shawlcollar up around her neck and laid her cheek against the lush, silky
fur. In the pocket her hand touched a piece of paper. She pulled it
out and looked at it. It was a receipt, and Dana recognized the date
immediately.

two hours later David knocked on Marsha Filmore’s door. She
- opened it wearing jeans, a black T-shirt, her fur coat, and no
shoes. “Come on in, Counselor.”

The bed was unmade, and the overheated air smelled of cooked
coffee, tobacco smoke, and microwaved meals. A black bra hung on
the knob of the bathroom door.

David eyed a half-full glass of wine sitting in a moist ring on the
table.

“Care to join me?”

“We have to talk, Marsha.”

“Sit down, then. Talk.”

Her skin was the color of oatmeal, with raspberries of pink on
the cheeks, and her thin, straight hair lay flat and uncombed against
her head. David remembered one of Filmore’s offhand remarks
during an early interview, something about his wife being plain but
serviceable.

Without preamble David told her about Dana’s discovery of the
garage receipt. Listening, she sat still, her head cocked slightly to
one side.

“And?”

“Marsha, don’t pretend you don’t get it. The receipt says you got
a loaner car from the garage on the day Lolly Calhoun disappeared.
A two-thousand Honda Accord. Have you told anyone you took the
car to the garage?”

“Of course not.”

The window by the table looked over the side yard and deck and
right into David and Dana’s kitchen. It was not a stretch to imagine
Marsha Filmore sitting at her table night after night, drinking and
smoking and watching his family. With the windows open she could
probably hear them talking. His jaw began to ache.

“Let’s start at the beginning. How did you pay to have your car
fixed?”

“Cash, of course. We always pay in cash because we don’t want
anyone poking around in our business. They can find out all sorts of
things about you if you use cards to pay.”

Moby sauntered out his pet door and across the deck. He still
limped a little from where he’d been hit by the white van. He
walked to the edge of the deck and thoughtfully looked down at the
grass. Like a swimmer testing the water, he gingerly lowered one
paw and then another, his hind end following after.

“If the jury finds out about Shawna-“

“She has nothing to do with this. You should just forget about
her.”

“I can try to keep her off the record, but Peluso’s going to do
what he can to make sure it gets out. I wouldn’t be surprised if the
press gets wind of it about the time impanelling starts.”

“But she’s … irrelevant.”

“Really?” David said. “Are you sure of that?”

Marsha stared out the window.

“Tell me what happened.”

She pulled a handful of lank hair around in front of her face and
looked at it. “It was a long time ago. I’m not sure I remember exactly.”

“Try. Tell me about Shawna.”

Marsha dropped her hair and stared at the butcher-block tabletop. “She was never right. From the beginning she didn’t smile and
gurgle like other babies, and when she got older she never could
just ask for something, she made this mealy little baby sound. She
was almost four years old, but she just stood there with her arms out
and whining to be picked up or carried or given something. Frank
didn’t believe in holding her; he said it’d spoil her, but sometimes I
did when he wasn’t there.” She looked at David. “I mean, what was
I supposed to do? If I picked her up, she got quiet, but then I
didn’t have enough time for Frank, and that upset him, so we got
this maid named Tina, and she was okay, I thought, only Frank didn’t
like her because she spoiled Shawna, and she was nosy, too, always
poking around in our business, so we had to fire her. Shawna cried
for days. Even when Frank spanked her she wouldn’t be quiet.”

David rubbed his jaw, just below the earlobe.

“And then one day … she was gone, and I got frantic, so did
Frank, and after two or three days the police found her in that well
and she was dead… .” Marsha stared into the bottom of her wineglass. “Afterwards he told me what he did, and he helped me understand why it was … not so bad. Better for Shawna, actually.”

If she knew what she said was monstrous, it did not show on her
face. David loosened his tie and undid the top button of his shirt.

Marsha said, “Have you ever studied population management?
Frank has, and he says the world just doesn’t have room for children who aren’t strong. Tough. There’s a finite amount of resources
to go around.” She lit a cigarette, shaking out the match with a flick
of her wrist. “In the beginning, before he explained it to me, I was upset and said I’d go to the police. He said the police in Rosarito
were no good, and if he told them I did it, they’d believe him.”

“You’re afraid of Frank.”

He watched her throat move when she swallowed.

“Has he threatened you, Marsha?”

“We’re going to Idaho to live. Get a fresh start.”

David remembered his first impression that Marsha Filmore was
like two women in one body: the competent bookkeeper who could
run the office of a major drugstore chain, and a woman in thrall to a
husband who’d driven the gumption out of her. A bully bearing
mink and diamonds could buy a lot of acquiescence.

David said, “Let’s go back over what happened the day Lolly
disappeared.”

“What do you want me to say?” Her face brightened suddenly,
and her hands dropped to the mound of her stomach. “She’s kicking.” She smiled for an instant, then just as quickly seemed to collapse in on herself. David expected her to cry, but she didn’t.

“Frank said I was too old to have another baby, and he doesn’t
think I’m a good mother, anyway, because of Shawna. He was angry
when I told him I was pregnant. Now he acts like he’s happy, but I
thought he’d kill me when I showed him the test result. It’s the only
time he ever hit me.” She stubbed out her cigarette. “The trouble
with me is I don’t have a really strong mind. Not like Frank. He says
when they were handing out character, I stood in the line for waffles.” She covered her mouth with her hand and giggled. “It’s true. I
don’t know what I want half the time. Sometimes I wish I’d never
conceived this baby, and I think if she were to die I wouldn’t care a
bit. Other times I can’t wait to see her and hold her. I have fantasies
about what she’ll be like when she grows up. Like maybe she can be
a dancer; I always wanted to be one.” Her shoulders dropped, and,
angrily, she swept her wineglass off the table and onto the carpet. “What: do I know? There probably aren’t any ballet teachers in
Idaho. Frank says I’m a wimp and I haven’t got backbone and that’s
why he has to be in charge. Sometimes I think he’s right; sometimes …” She raked her hands through her hair. “Have you ever
been where you don’t know anything for sure? These days everything’s just mush in my head.”

David realized he had been holding his breath.

“I don’t think you’re a wimp, Marsha. I think you’ve been under
huge pressure.”

“Really?” As if this had not occurred to her.

“Tell me the story of Lolly, Marsha. Maybe I can help you sort
things out.”

She shook her head.

“You don’t have to be afraid. He won’t hurt you.”

“You don’t know. Frank looks like an ordinary man, but he’s
not.”

“Where did you change cars?”

She sighed and laid her hands flat on the table before her. “He
called me. Then I drove over to Ralph’s parking lot, the one underground. We switched there. He told me he needed my help. He said
there’d been an accident.”

“Did you ask him what kind?”

“He just said some trouble with Lolly but he was going to fix it.
He told me not to worry because worrying would make my baby
sick and maybe retarded.”

In the Miranda Street Park a couple spread what looked like an
old chenille bedspread on the grass. Even at a distance the girl’s hair
was so blond it looked like sunlight. The breeze kept making a mess
of it, and she kept smoothing it back. He remembered fall in Ohio,
the roar of the Miami fans, and the crisp cut of the air against the
back of his throat when he took a deep breath and ran out onto the field. He wanted to be young again, with nothing more complicated
on his mind than the black-and-white of a football game and
whether he’d get laid afterward. A loathing for the work he did and
the people he did it with rose within him. He felt Frank Filmore’s
evil suffocating him.

“You’re sweating,” she said. “Frank hardly ever does, but his
face was all shiny when we changed cars, and he was excited in a
way I didn’t like; he spooked me. Plus I could smell the chloroform.” She smiled at David. “It has a nice smell.”

“Did you see Lolly?”

“No. He said she was in the trunk. In a plastic bag. Frank’s very
fastidious.”

“Did he tell you she was dead?”

“She wasn’t.”

“He told you she was alive?”

“He said so. Yes.”

“And you believed him.”

She looked surprised. “Of course I did. What happened was an
accident. He only meant to frighten her so she’d learn her lesson
and stop whining.” A tear slipped down her cheek. “What was I
supposed to do? If I called the police and something happened so
he didn’t go to prison, he’d come after me. Frank can be very mean.
I suppose he’s got all of you charmed, but if you knew him … “

“I’m not charmed.”

“He said your partner, the black woman, she was hitting on him.
The blonde, too.”

“He’s lying, Marsha.”

“No. He can tell about people. Sometimes he knows things they
don’t know about themselves.”

“There’s nothing personal in any of our relationships with your
husband, believe me.”

“Don’t underestimate Frank, Mr. Cabot.”