Dead Floating Lovers (14 page)

“We told him and he understood. Seemed relieved, as if he thought it could be something else. He didn’t give in on much, though. Said he might still go see the state police, if we don’t help him get the bones released. They sure are hot on burying that woman. I don’t blame them, I guess. I feel a little the same about getting Chet buried. His sister’s coming up in a few days. We’re with Sullivan.”

“What did Lucky say? Is he doing anything to you over the evidence tampering?”

“Putting a letter in my file, is all. Says he’s got to do that but he can keep it kind of vague so maybe it won’t be clear to anybody looking in there. Says he might have to tell Detective Brent, what with the Indian threatening us if we don’t help him get what he wants. I hope not. That Brent can be such a strait-laced prude.”

“Did you give him the dog tags?”

“Lucky? Sure did. But I’m going to get ’em back when all of this is over. Only right. I explained that they were my wedding present and all. The chief is a good man. He understood.”

“Then you’re out of the woods on this.”

“Looks like. Pretty much.”

I told her I had phone numbers for the families of the missing girls, all except Lena Smith.

“Let’s get busy tracking them down. We’ll go back out to Peshawbestown, call on some of those Smiths.” I heard her yawn over the phone. Rough morning with the little people, I guessed. “Somebody will know who Lena Smith is. They keep track of each other. I’m going over to The Skunk now. See if anybody remembers Chet and the woman he was with. Maybe they got a name. Or something.”

“Brent suggested talking to people at that mill where Chet worked.”

“Yeah. I’m planning on that.”

“I’ve got that dinner at Jackson’s tonight. We can start first thing in the morning.”

“Why don’t we meet at your house? The earlier the better. Then we’ll head out to Peshawbestown. And I’ve got some other things I want to talk over with you. What time you getting home tonight?”

I shook my head. This was kind of nosy. “I have no idea. Depends on how much fun we have.”

“So, that Bill from the paper’s going to be there, too? And a girlfriend. Good. I’m glad you won’t be alone with what’s his name. Don’t trust him as far as I can sling him.”

“Don’t worry. I’ll be fine.”

“Well, don’t get talked into anything.”

“Like what?”

“You know what I’m talking about.”

“Oh, for God’s sakes, Dolly. I’m not sixteen.”

“Yeah? Well, sometimes you act about twelve. Keep your pants on and you won’t get your heart broken all over again.”

With that last bit of motherly advice, Dolly hung up.

I slammed my phone down, muttered the things I’d been ready to tell her, picked up my salad bowl, my salad tongs, my purse, my keys, and took off for the dinner party.

Heavy black clouds swept in from the west by the time I got to the Cherry Street Market in Kalkaska. A storm coming. I picked bright red tomatoes, arugula, and tiny green onions from the outside bins under striped umbrellas. Asparagus wasn’t in season yet, but what they had wasn’t heavy or woody. It would grill up fine, I thought, and picked through the basket for the straightest and greenest spears.

Inside, as I maneuvered my way through the other people with baskets, into the tiny space leading to two cash registers, I couldn’t help but buy myself a white chocolate cookie for the road. Cherry Street Market is one of my favorite places, though they closed at the beginning of December each year and didn’t reopen until April. That’s when the flowers began to come in, at least a few pansies, and then on to Mother’s Day with the flats and pots of flowers I coveted—every one of them. Between December and April I felt bereft. Like Emily Dickinson’s “hill of April,” when the Dickinson larder had gone empty, I thought of winter as my own personal time of drought.

In Traverse City, I hit the Blue Goat first, buying a bottle of red from Château Chantal and a bottle of white from the Leelanau Cellars. After that I was off to the Grand Traverse Pie Company for a cherry pie still warm from the oven. Then over to Bay Bakery where I walked up the steps of the old building and into the smells of childhood. Maybe not
my
childhood—my dad never went to real bakeries. He bought off the shelf at Kroger’s. But those smells came from somebody’s childhood. The smell of baking bread had to be buried deep in the human genetic code.

I walked out with one loaf of bread for Jackson and one for me; one banana-nut bread for Jackson, and a scone for me. No time for Eurostop. It was already a quarter to seven.

Between the cookie and the scone, I felt full before I got to Jackson’s. I pulled up the sand drive under the tall pines just as the rains came. I parked beside the log cottage on a high bank of Spider Lake. Other legs of the spider led off around bends and into deep coves. The lake ran up to wild banks where old cottages settled into the earth behind walls of reeds and tag alder.

Jackson’s place sat spread out under long-needled pines. The front porch faced the lake. Inside, his ceiling soared up two stories and had high windows across the front. There were two bedrooms upstairs. The larger one, at the front, was his. The smaller, he used as a study.

I had visited twice before, to pick up work when he didn’t have time to deliver it. He was pleased with his temporary house: plenty of room with space to entertain, and the lake for swimming and boating. I wasn’t crazy about it. Too big and too open. Too filled with the nondescript stuff people left in rentals. Always that ubiquitous jar of Florida shells having nothing to do with Michigan.

I lugged my grocery bags and the finished manuscript chapters in the door and yelled that I had arrived.

Jackson clumped down the log staircase from his study and grabbed me up in his arms, bags and all.

“I don’t know how to thank you. I had the whole morning to work.” He half whirled me once, then let me go. He stood back to admire my silk shirt and the old gold necklace I’d found at a resale shop.

“Lovely, lovely, lovely,” he enthused.

“Pay me,” I growled and handed him the bills for the food.

He looked down at the bills, smiled at me, and stuck them in his pocket. I’d get paid later, if he figured out what the wadded paper was when he took his pants out of the dryer, after he washed them.

It didn’t take long to set the white wine in the fridge, open the red to breathe, line up the vegetables on the counter, make my salad, set the table, and help Jackson flatten patties out of the hamburger he’d bought. We were almost ready when, at seven thirty, Bill called through the open door and hurried in with a small pretty redhead beside him. Together they held a wet newspaper above their heads, protection from the soft rain still falling. Bill set a bottle of wine on the counter.

As Jackson got them settled in the living room, I poured the wine: white for Ramona Sheffield and me. Red for the men. I couldn’t help but take in everything about Bill’s date. Fashionable glasses that seemed to fit, unlike Bill’s. Her nose was off center enough, green eyes too far apart, mouth a little wide. She wasn’t beautiful, maybe not really pretty. She was somewhere close to my age, thirty-four, and about in my league. I liked to think that women like us would be called striking, if not beautiful.

Phooey, I told myself, using one of my Dad’s terms for a peculiar situation. Bill meant nothing to me. I had no right sizing up his date. And no right to the niggling jealousy I felt.

We sat and talked until the rain stopped and Jackson could light his grill. The men cooked the hamburgers and asparagus. I heard them laughing as I stood behind the counter dressing the salad while smiling tightly at Ramona, who insisted on resetting the table. I’d forgotten napkins. I’d forgotten water glasses. I’d forgotten salt and pepper. I’d forgotten … oh, who cared what else I’d forgotten. This wasn’t my party.

The food was good. Ordinary. I mean, what can you do with a burger? The asparagus tasted great, grilled in a little olive oil. My salad was … a salad. The bread was a hit. By the time we got to dessert, everybody dug into the pie as if it were the first course.

I sat across from Bill, trying not to notice how comfortably his big bear of a body fit into the armchair, and trying not to laugh out loud as I got the finger again and again when his glasses slipped down his nose.

We talked about town politics—a new mayor had recently been sworn in. Jackson soon grew bored with local stuff and changed the conversation to an upcoming national election, quickly offending Ramona.

“What an elitist attitude,” she said, putting her fork down and sitting up in her cane-backed chair.

“Not at all,” Jackson leaned back in his chair too, the way he did when settling down for a good fight. “You’re looking at events with a populist eye. Being soft is all right, as long as you don’t do any real harm …”

Now Bill joined in. I stayed out of the discussion because I agreed with Bill and Ramona, but didn’t like thinking of the two of them as a team I might join.

Eventually they all agreed to disagree and laughed that constricted laugh people give when they are slightly angry but know they shouldn’t be. Soon they discussed Ramona’s job with the Dennos Museum and an upcoming exhibit of Inuit art.

I watched, adding little. Something wouldn’t allow me to enjoy this pleasant dinner with pleasant company. When I tried to smile or joke, I ended like a balloon poked with a stick: deflated. I didn’t like seeing Bill with a woman. I liked picturing him in that messy office at the newspaper. I liked hearing his deep voice over the phone. And if he was going to be anybody’s friend, I wanted him to be mine, not Jackson’s and not this Ramona’s. Whoever this woman was, they didn’t appear close. You can tell if people are sleeping together by how they touch and lean when they are standing. They kept their distance and seemed to simply enjoy being in each other’s company. Still, though I had made myself feel better, I wasn’t happy.

Jackson was interested in her. He gave Ramona his attentive look after their small political tiff. Knowing him, he would pour on the charm, get her on his side, maybe even go after her, and then drop her as punishment for disagreeing with him.

Not a pretty side of Jackson.

I decided not to like Ramona, and to make fun of her as soon as she and Bill left. Or not make fun—Jackson would catch on to what I was doing—but at least make her unimportant.

We all agreed finally that it had been a very nice evening and that we must do it again. Jackson and I stood in the doorway waving them off and pointing to the glorious sunset—all those wild reds and mauves and pinks of a spring sky.

“Why don’t we take a swim?” Jackson suggested when they were gone. His arm lay across my shoulder, his good-looking face smiled down into mine.

“No bathing suit,” I said, shrugging off his arm and turning back into the house.

“I wouldn’t mind,” he called after me.

“Your neighbors would.”

There were dishes to scrape and pile into the dishwasher, food to put away, a table to clear. Jackson stopped me, told me not to worry about the mess—he had a woman coming in the next day. We’d get the food cleared and that was enough.

“And we can do all of that later,” he smiled, looking down at me.

I gave in, sat down in the living room, and accepted the glass of wine he brought me.

“Thanks for the pages. I have more—if you think you’ll have the time.”

I was going to ask to be paid from then on. He must have an allowance for secretarial services. I was even going to suggest that without payment for my services I couldn’t keep on working as hard as I had been for him.

I was going to do many things for myself.

I sat still, sipping the wine, listening to Jackson’s low voice as he told me how he appreciated my help and how he felt so comfortable—the two of us the way we used to be.

As if something wormed into my brain, I found myself agreeing, laughing lightly about other dinners we’d given—some that went well, some that were disasters, where guests got into snarling arguments and stormed out.

Soon he took the glass from my hand, pulled me close, and kissed me.

It was all so easy and familiar. As if I hadn’t a worry in the world, I leaned my head against his shoulder and took in a few deep breaths. We watched as the dying sun played off the lake in skittering diamonds. If anyone had asked me right then what I’d been so desperate about a few hours before, I couldn’t have come up with a thing. Here, with Jackson’s lean body against mine, I hadn’t a worry. There I was, in a past life in Ann Arbor. Nice house, nice furniture, nice garden, nice friends, nice job. No money worries. No unsold novels. No perfidious dog. No Indians after me. And on and on …

I sighed heavily as Jackson kissed me. It wouldn’t be bad, I thought, looking up and smiling, to be back with him. Maybe he had changed. Maybe there would be no other women. Maybe we could be the couple we’d pretended to be—loving, faithful. The kind of people who go on year after year, contented simply to be together.

I snuggled against him.

When he led me upstairs to the bedroom there was no pushing or pulling. I was as eager as he was. It had been a long time for me. No sex. No love. Three years. Not a good life for a woman in her thirties. Just the smell of him was so good. And the warmth of his arms, and then his whole body.

Maybe this wasn’t a step backward, I told myself, as Jackson unbuttoned my silk shirt and pushed it back off my shoulders to fall to the floor. Maybe this was where we were supposed to go next. At that moment I stopped thinking and let myself simply be.