Damaged Goods (28 page)

“Yes, I remember.”

She glanced around the large, nearly empty warehouse at the assortment of used items that were now stacked into neat piles, and winced. “Is Carl here?”

Hershel frowned. “No, I haven’t seen him in three days.”

She let out a wail that stunned him.

“What’s wrong?”

She tipped her head back and howled again, then spoke rapidly in Spanish.

“Please,” Hershel said, guiding her into his office. “Sit. Tell me what’s wrong.”

She went on in rapid Spanish, her voice pitched high and mournful.

“What is upsetting you?”

“I think it is him,” she said, tears catching in her throat. “I think it is Carl.”

“Who?”

“The body they took from the river.”

Carl’s bruised face and swollen jaw came to mind. The way he had limped around the day before he disappeared. Hershel had forgotten to mention that to the woman on the phone this morning.

“What body?”

“This morning they take a body out of the river. By Campo Rojo. A fisherman found it. I am fear that it is Carlos.” She took a breath, her tears beyond control. “He tells me he is here.”

Hershel shook his head, and Yolanda put her face in her hands and cried.

The new soft-soled shoes were rubbery under Silvie’s feet. She’d driven down back roads, heading west from Kyrellis’s place, into green valleys of farmland rimmed by low hills blue beneath the winter sky. She marveled at the way Oregon seemed to segregate its cities from its agriculture with abrupt, hard lines. A last row of close-in houses with tiny yards butted against an expanse of fallow strawberry fields. Hemmed in and cramped, as if they’d run out of room, when in fact all the space one could possibly want lay there for the taking. Driving the winding, narrow roads with names like Rood Bridge and Bald Peak, she’d find herself suddenly in the middle of a nameless community, and then, with as little warning, back into the open of a hay field or a dormant orchard. Nothing like the meandering businesses and homes, strung together like cheap beads, that contoured the highways between Wyoming and this odd, damp place. At last she found a sign directing her to Hillsboro. There she discovered a strip mall with a Payless shoe store. The sneakers would do for a while. As she navigated her way along the unfamiliar roads, trying to find Scholls again, she considered trying Kyrellis once more. It hadn’t bothered her to find that he had company, but she knew the reprieve was only temporary. By the time she’d turned around and pulled onto the road
again, she was already searching for another opportunity. She told herself that the task ahead was not important; it was the end goal that mattered. As she considered Kyrellis’s demand, it was curse or cry. She cursed Jacob. And she pushed away a nagging doubt about Hershel. Had he shared information with Kyrellis? If she couldn’t trust Hershel, she couldn’t trust anyone, and while that might well be true, she needed the protection and shelter he provided. She would use him if necessary.

As she came up on Scholls Ferry Road, very near where she’d first met Hershel, instead of turning right onto the familiar road to the auction barn, she went straight, deciding that now was as good a time as any to negotiate the return of the photos.

Hershel had tried to persuade Yolanda to stay until he could give her a ride home, but she refused and walked down Scholls Ferry still crying and speaking Spanish in mournful tones.

Stuart had joined him at the front door, watching the sad little woman stumble away. He looked thoughtfully at Hershel and said, “I think she’s in love with him.”

“Does seem to be more there than meets the eye.”

“Nice knockers,” Stuart added, then gritted his teeth at his own remark.

“You’re such an asshole.”

“Oh, come on.” Stuart shrugged and walked out to greet a customer who had pulled in and backed his truck up to the front of the building. A sheriff’s patrol pulled in a minute later, and Hershel turned from the customer to meet the officer. He’d been half expecting this visit, since he’d called in a missing person on the same day that a body was found in the river—according to Yolanda, anyway. The grim coincidence hollowed out his center.

“This your place?” The officer started talking before he reached the door.

“It is. I’m Hershel Swift.”

“Your missing Abernathy the same one that lived at Campo Rojo?”

“Yeah. The last time I saw him, he was beat up pretty bad. His face was a mess, but he didn’t say what happened.”

“We’ve got that information. A passerby filed a report about a fight on the highway near the camp. We know Abernathy was involved, but the others were gone by the time the sheriff arrived, and no one at the camp would talk.”

Hershel couldn’t think of anything else he might add. “A woman from camp … she came by and said someone found a body.”

“Yeah.” The officer seemed reluctant to share information, pausing and looking out across the orchard. “We’re still investigating.”

“Was it him?”

He turned in the direction of Campo Rojo. “It was a male.”

“When will you know for sure?”

“That’ll be difficult. It’s missing its head.”

Hershel seemed unable to fully comprehend this information. Why would someone do that to Carl? He was such an easygoing man. Friendly to everyone. “Must be someone else,” he said. “Nobody hated Carl Abernathy enough to kill him and … and do that.”

“Immigration did a sweep of the camp after the fight. It’s possible that this was retaliation.”

“Retaliation?”

The officer handed Hershel a card. “Call me if he shows up, or if you hear anything you think would help us identify the body from the river.”

Carl dead? He shoved the card into his back pocket. No one could want Carl Abernathy dead. Barely anyone knew that he was alive.

After a few wrong turns, Kyrellis’s greenhouses appeared, then his driveway. Silvie’s stomach tightened. She sat in the truck for a few
minutes. The house appeared dark, no sign that he was home. She slid out and approached, pausing to touch the potted rosebush in full bloom on the front step. She bent to smell the flowers so out of place in the winter cold, and they brought Jacob to mind. A strange braid of longing and loathing twisted through her—a familiar confusion. She didn’t know whether to curse him or beg his forgiveness. She pressed the doorbell and listened to the faint chime inside the house. After a moment Kyrellis appeared, looking pale, with his hair matted up on one side as if he’d been sleeping. He carried a pistol.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” he said, looking at the gun, then setting it down on a low table in the entryway.

“You invited me.”

“Yes, but when you left earlier I assumed …” He stepped aside and motioned her in.

“I wasn’t going to come inside while you had company.” She was greeted by the smell of vomit. She turned and studied him.

“I’m not feeling well,” he said somewhat indignantly.

“I’ll come back another time, then. It’s getting late, anyway. Hershel will be wondering.”

“I suppose that’s best.”

“Let’s just understand each other, though. What do I have to do to get my things back?”

He rubbed his hair and sighed. “Let’s walk. I need some fresh air. I’ll show you my garden.”

“And you’ll tell me the exact terms of this agreement.” The force in her voice surprised her.

“Do you like roses?”

“They aren’t my favorite.”

“That’s a shame. A woman who doesn’t like roses,” he said silkily. “You must be one of a kind.” He led her through the kitchen to a back patio, which was covered with blooming bushes in a rainbow of colors. “I raise the finest floribundas in Oregon.” He fondled a striking yellow flower. “This is called Southampton. And this”—he
pointed to an apricot-colored rose—“is Chanelle.” He let his eyes travel the length of her frame. “What woman doesn’t love a rose?”

“They’re nice, but they’re just flowers.”

He snorted in disgust. “Nice? You’ll never see finer. Come see the greenhouse. I’m propagating a new variety.”

She followed him out into the gray afternoon, searching for something to say. “My mother’s roses always had bugs on them.”

“Yes, there are ones that prey on new buds, snatching away their potential. You can kill the predator, but the flowers are ruined.” He turned his eyes on her, and she flushed. Her cheeks were burning.

“What do you do about them?”

“The right poison will take care of any predator.”

He was reverent about touching the petals of his roses. He whispered the names as they passed. “Sweet Promise. Virgo. Gentle Touch. Meteor.” The bushes were lush and popping with buds where he kept them in the greenhouses. But the buildings were coated in green algae, and the plastic fabric was torn. Weeds sprouted through the gravel at their feet, and the long tables where he did his potting were angled downward in rot, as if the earth were pulling them into itself.

“How do they grow like this in the winter?”

Kyrellis lifted a bottle from a nearby table and handed it to Silvie. She unscrewed the cap and held it to her nose, but he yanked it back and resealed it. “It’s several times more potent in liquid form and absorbs quickly. It can kill you, too, Silvie, not just bugs and fungus. You wouldn’t want to get that on your skin. Goes right through. And you don’t feel a thing.” Then he laughed, and it sounded almost jolly.

When Kyrellis had shown her his propagation house and the hundreds of tiny stalks sprouting their first leaves, he seemed to have
run out of things to talk about. The fresh air, or the roses, had invigorated him and he glanced often at her.

“Come tomorrow,” he said. “We’ll start our work.”

“I’m waitressing tomorrow. Karen is short-staffed.”

“Tell Swift you’re going in early. Shower first. I want you fresh.”

Her shoulder blades contracted tightly. “I want to know exactly what it’s going to take to get all the pictures back.”

“We’ll discuss that tomorrow.” He waved a hand in the air as if to dismiss her.

“No, today.”

He sighed. “You’ll get your photos.”

“All of them. I won’t agree to anything unless I get every single one back.”

“If you insist. But not all at once. I like to savor the pleasure, if you know what I mean.”

“Tell me what you have in mind.”

“You’re taking all the mystery out of this, my pet. How about one for one. A favor for a photo.”

“What? No. There are at least thirty pictures in that box.”

“No, there aren’t. I gave one to you already. And I gave one to Hershel.”

Hershel had one of her pictures? Why hadn’t he said anything? Why hadn’t he returned it?

“I wonder what he did with that one?” Kyrellis mused. “It was one of my favorites.”

“I’m not going to fuck you thirty times,” she said. “Or even twenty-eight. Not even once if you don’t come up with a better deal than that.”

“My, you
are
tough. Is that the Wyoming in you? I’ve heard girls from that part of the country are like rodeo ponies. Is it true?”

“You’re a pig.”

“Now now,” he warned. “Let’s not have that or there won’t be a deal.”

“I’ll come Friday, when Hershel’s receiving furniture for next
week’s sale. After my shift at the South Store. I’ll choose ten photos. Then you can have your way. But … no marks.”