Rainy City (23 page)

“You find her in Tacoma?”

I nodded. Kathy winced.

“How long is she going to sleep?”

“Maybe until morning. I don’t know. She was higher than a kite.”

“I’ll watch with her for a few hours. You go do whatever you have to do.”

I burned the Polaroids one by one, fluttering the remnants of each picture into the toilet bowl where they disappeared in a whirlpool. I watched the ashes swirling around and around, finally whooshing down into the sewer. Metro could have the scraps now. If they could make anything out of them, fine.

Later in the night, Kathy asked, “What was she on?” “Don’t know. I didn’t bother to look around the hotel room. I got a little out of control.”

Sometimes I caught Kathy gazing at me in an admiring way, her thoughts rambling, taking me in the way an old woman took in a sunset. She looked at me in such a way now. “You got out of control? How?”

“I stuck a knife in a guy’s leg.”

“The pimp?”

“How did you guess?”

“He the one who gave you that limp?”

“Yeah.”

“Tit for tat, I’d say.”

“We weren’t fighting. The fight was over, lie was finished. I just did it. I just picked up the knife and stuck it into his leg. I haven’t done anything like that in a long time.”

“Forget it,” said Kathy. “You got Melissa away from the creep. He deserves whatever he got, maybe more.”

“It was demeaning to be the one to give it to him, though.”

Kathy and I split shifts sitting up with Melissa. Neither one of us wanted her loping off into the night second time. During my last watch, from two to four, Melissa stirred and began sniveling into her pillow. Her head bobbed up, and with a start she spotted me, sitting in the darkness across from her.

“Are you Mr. Black?”

My sleepless voice came hard and gravelly. “That’s me.”

“Is Kathy here?”

“Downstairs.”

That seemed to settle her. Her head dropped back onto the pillow, and a few minutes later the quiet went away and I could hear her rhythmic breathing again.

I awoke to the sounds of sausages sizzling outside my bedroom door. Assuming Kathy was cooking up a spot of breakfast, I tugged on a pair of jeans and trudged, shirtless, into the kitchen. Melissa was at the stove. Clad in my robe, she had fried enough sausages and scrambled enough eggs for an army.

She turned to me, gave me a sheepish look, and said, “I hope this is all right. I figured you had to eat. I thought I’d fix it for you.”

“Fantastic. I’ll be right back.”

On my way back into the bedroom, I caught a glimpse of Kathy in the big chair in the living room, curled up like a cat, dead to the world.

The three of us sat around the small kitchen table. Kathy ate sparingly, but Melissa and I fought it out for pig-of-the-meal awards. I guessed it had been a while since the runaway wife had eaten anything substantial, anything more than a pocketful of pills and a tumbler of whiskey. Afterwards, Melissa sprang up and began washing the dishes, declining Kathy’s assistance. Kathy gave me a pinched look and sat back down at the table. We made strained small talk. When the dishes were stacked and drying, Melissa sat down purposefully.

“I’ve been thinking,” she said. “A lot’s happened in the last two weeks. I won’t pretend you both don’t know I was hooking. I’m not particularly proud of any of it, but I’m not going to blame myself. That’s one thing Helen taught me. Instead of living in the past and wasting all my time blaming myself, I’m going to move forward.” “But why?” asked Kathy. “The money?”

“Money? That’s a riot. I didn’t see any money. Rome took all that. No. He came at exactly the right time, I guess. Helen Gunther had convinced me in order to get better I had to finally confront my father. I tried. I really did try. But… I don’t know. I guess I wasn’t ready for it. I kind of cracked under the pressure. That’s when Rome came up. That Sunday. I didn’t really know what he was planning, but I didn’t want to have to think about my father anymore, either. It just got to be too much. That’s all. Entirely too much. Rome gave me some pills and I took them.”

Kathy, uncomfortable with the confessions, said, “Bur-ton must be home by now. We can go over and get you two back together. Then we can see about retrieving Angel.”

Melissa shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Aren’t you planning to get Angel?”

“It’s Burton. I’m not going to get back together. I don’t know why I married him. He’s sweet, but we’re not really a couple. He goes around on tippytoes trying not to offend me. He’s just not right for me.”

“What about Angel?” I asked.

“Angel can’t stay with her grandfather. I won’t allow that. She has to come back with me. If I have to get a job and put her in a daycare, then fine. We can live with that. You said something to me yesterday that shook it all loose, Mr. Black. You said I could give her more love than anyone else on earth. I’m never going to forget that.”

After climbing into one of Kathy’s shirts, which was too big in the chest, and donning a pair of Kathy’s jeans, which were too big all over, Melissa slipped into a pair of sandals and was ready to leave.

I drove her to Ballard in Kathy’s bug. Burton was already home. He came to the door. The look on his face was pathetic, a mixture of relief and anxiety. I waited in the car. It was almost half an hour before she emerged, alone. Burton watched her from the window like await in an orphanage.

She had showered and put on a pair of slacks and a beige blouse under a blazer. Her hair was pulled back into a crisp ponytail. She looked incredibly younger than she had yesterday at The Last Inn. And she was suddenly extraordinarily pretty.

“Did you tell him?” I asked.

She nodded.

“What did he say?”

“Not much. There’s not much fight in Burton,” she stated, flatly.

“I think you’re underestimating him.”

She didn’t hear me. Or she didn’t listen. “Where are we going?”

“Your folks’ place. I figure that’s where Angel’s bound to be.”

“You will come in with me, won’t you?”

“I’ll do whatever you think is necessary,” I promised. The relief was evident in her face.

“The only trouble is you might not believe some of what I have to say to him.”

“I don’t have to believe it.”

“I’m just…worried that you’ll think I’m going hooly-gooly. Father can convince people of just about anything. I have this terrible vision of us going in together and coming out separately, you going to your car and me being dragged away by three men in white.”

“Nobody’s going to drag you away. Not while I’m around.”

The battered Volkswagen bug was an odd contrast to the ritzy Crowell homestead. It stood in front of the door like something a stray dog had dragged up and chewed ragged. The Mexican maid answered the door.

“Hi, Pilar,” Melissa said, striding in past the stunned woman. “I’ve come for my daughter. Go get her, please.” Mouth open, the maid didn’t know how to react. She gaped at Melissa, then at me, then Melissa, and finally turned to Muriel Crowell when she marched into the room.

Muriel Crowell spotted me first and zeroed in on me.

“You!”

“Good morning,” I said jovially.

“Pilar! Call the police!”

“Hello, Mother.”

“Melissa!” Though she had been standing beside me, incredibly this was the first time her mother had noticed her daughter. “Where have you been? We’ve been worried sick. You’ve kept us worried sick. Where were you?”

“I’ve come for Angel.”

Stupidly, her mother said, “Angel?”

“You know the one,” I said. “Blonde hair? About this tall.”

“You don’t have to talk to me like that.”

“Where is she?” Melissa asked.

Muriel Crowell organized her thoughts and attempted to take charge. “She’s only in the other room. Don’t get into a tizzy. We’ve been watching her for you.”

Melissa bolted from the room past her mother. Muriel Crowell gave me a jaundiced look of pure chagrin and said, “I suppose you’re responsible for this?”

“I’d like to think so.”

“Angus will have something to say to you.”

“I’m looking forward to it. I brought a pen. I’ll take notes.”

“Smart aleck. Do you know what you’re doing? Do you think she’s capable of raising a child?”

“Don’t you?”

“Of course not. Melissa is barely capable of taking care of herself.”

“Whose fault would that be?” I asked, eyeing Muriel Crowell. The question hit her like a spear, impaled her with the sheer force of its logic.

“We can raise the child,” she said feebly. From the other room, bubbling laughter erupted, mother and daughter, then playful shrieks as sharp and as shrill as the breaking of mirrors. Muriel Crowell spoke louder, straining to counter the happy sounds from the other room, as if to drown them out with her own strident and cheerless truths.

“Where’s Melissa been hiding? Angus has been worried sick. I suppose she ran off with some man?”

“Where is your husband?” I asked.

Muriel turned her eyes fearfully upon me. “Angus will get you for this. Angus will make you pay. Don’t think he won’t.”

“Pretty serious business,” I said. “Getting a mother back together with her daughter. Think they’ll put me in the clink?”

“Smart aleck!”

Peals of laughter erupted from the other room before Melissa came through the doorway carrying Angel in her arms, Angel’s tiny wan arms wrapped around her mother’s neck. Soberly, the blonde tot looked around at the grown-ups and spotted me.

“Mommy. Mommy. You got the nice man.”

Melissa looked at me and hugged Angel. “Yes. I’ve got him for a little while.” Then she turned to her mother. “Muriel, where’s Angus?”

“You’ve never called me anything but Mother before,” Muriel Crowell said, looking to me for some sort of social support. I grinned like an imbecile on his first pony ride.

“You’ve never been a mother. I’ll call you Muriel. Where’s Angus?”

“Your father’s going to blow his stack when he hears you talking this way. He’s going to blow sky-high.”

“That would be in character,” said Melissa. “Where is he? Out prospecting?”

“He took the Winnebago to Monroe. He needs a three-day weekend now and then. Your father works awfully hard. Harder than you’ll ever know.”

“Cut the bullshit…” said Melissa. Her mother’s face fell like a bum cake. “Honestly. He treats you worse than an old shoe and you talk about him like he’s a saint or something. You oughta have your head examined.” Mrs. Crowell looked around the room, finally turning on me.

“You!” she said. “If it weren’t for you, none of this would have happened.”

“Sure,” I said. ‘And I work parttime with the Easter Bunny striping eggs.” Angel giggled but cut it off when she read the mood in the room, displaying remarkable instincts for someone her age.

“I wouldn’t want to be in your shoes when Angus hears about this,” Muriel Crowell warned, as we went out the front door. The maid shuddered in the corner, crossing herself repeatedly like a mechanical mannequin gone mad.

“Good-bye, Mother.”

“When Angus hears about this, you’re both going to be sorry you were ever born.” The maid nodded rapidly and crossed herself several more times. The last thing I saw through the closing door was her head bobbing -up and down. ?

“WILL YOU COME TO MONROE WITH ME SO I CAN TALK TO my father?” Melissa asked timidly, leaning in and strapping Angel into a seat belt in the back seat. “Is that too much to ask?”

“I wouldn’t miss it for all the bullets in Texas.”

“It’s a long drive,” she added, twisting around and focusing her pale blues on me.

“If you’re trying to talk me out of it, tell you right now, I get car sick,” I said. She shrugged, unsure of my meaning, and unsure of herself. She didn’t know what she was trying to do. “Until you shake this thing, I’m yours. Today, tomorrow, next week. I’m here for the duration. Don’t doubt it.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Initially, because Kathy asked me. But I got caught up in it. I want to help you. I want to see Angel in her right place. And I have some selfish reasons.”

“Such as?”

“I want to find out who smacked your aunt with that ketchup bottle. I want to know who strangled your psychologist with her own brassiere. If I hang around long enough, I might get lucky.”

We drove to Ballard and dropped Angel off with a jubilant but nonetheless subdued Burton. The child was reluctant to give up her mother so soon after their reunion, but Melissa bribed her with the promise of a pack of gum when she returned. I had forgotten how uncomplicated a child’s world was.

Monroe was maybe an hour from Seattle, north and a bit east, nestled just under the foothills of the Cascades. It was a tiny town, famous locally for the prison on the south side of the village. It wasn’t until we were almost there that Melissa spoke.

“Kathy said you thought the two murders were connected. But how could they be?”

“For one thing, if you had done it,” I said, “that would connect them.”

“Me?” She started laughing. “I might kill myself. It never occurred to me that anybody would ever think I’d kill someone else.”

“Or Barton. You discount him too easily. I’ve seen people more mild-mannered than Burton kill. When the provocation becomes right, almost anybody can kill. There’s also your mother. She hated your aunt. Then there’s some hired muscle your father paid, a guy named Holder. Your friend Bledsoe might have had his fingers in it. Was he with you all the time during the past few days?”

“Rome? I don’t know where he was. I can’t even remember where I was moet of last week.”

“Or your father. He might have done it.”

The pretty blonde in her ponytail and trim blazer touched my arm and said, “Do you know why I have to speak to my father? Why Helen Gunther told me I had to confront him?”

I liked the gentle feel of her hand on my arm. I liked it too much. I’ve got a notion.”

“What? What is it? What do you know?”

“I’d rather you told me.”

Melissa squirmed in her seat. “Would you think I was crazy if I said I saw my father kill somebody when I was a baby?”

Maybe she was crazy. I glanced over at her. “No. Of course not.”