Skunk Hunt (26 page)

I could think of any number of numbskulls
likely to try it. Not me, though. The very idea of flying sends my
sphincter into a tailspin.

"Then where do you think it came from?" I
asked.

"You don't have any idea?"

"I don't think any of us is in a position to
toss off $50,000," I answered dolefully. Then, more hopefully, "If
it's not the Brinks money..."

"Ha!" Kendle bounced like bear storming out
of her den. "You won't be getting it, at least no time soon. It's
in the station's evidence locker."

I was more disturbed by her glee than by the
resumption of poverty. She was so depressed over the setback that
anyone else's bad luck was bound to improve her mood. I suspected
she looked forward to the end of the world, or at least Mankind.
That would make her day.

I wondered if I should tell her about the
phone call and Skunk's posthumous declarations. Her news about the
money alerted me to the fact that there were forces at work here
far more sinister than I had anticipated. That gun tucked under her
flapping belly might come in handy. It might take her a few moments
to tug it out of its holster, but otherwise she was probably a dead
shot. She looked ornery enough to take on anyone who might be
lurking in my house. Unless, of course, she had been the one doing
the lurking.

I was reluctant to say anything more to her,
because it dawned on me she might be taping this conversation. She
might not even need to be wearing a mike. They can do that sort of
thing from satellites now, can't they?

"Why aren't you saying anything?" she
said.

"I can't tell you anything you don't already
know," I answered.

"You think I'm taping you, don't you?" She
seemed prepared to pull up her blouse to show me how wrong I was. I
jumped back in horror. "You're a suspicious little cuss, aren't
you?"

"These are suspicious times," I said.

"That means you don't trust anyone?"

"I suppose you could interpret it that
way."

"Hey, don't get hoity-toity on me," the
detective snapped, her fingers still hooked at the hem of her
blouse. I imagined her beating me to death with her chest. "You've
got a real problem here, seeing as you might be an accessory
to
two
crimes."

"The money in the farm house was stolen?" I
squeaked.

"We don't know," Kendle admitted after a
pause. She enjoyed having me on the ropes, but I also sensed a
startling vulnerability. Could she be feeling sorry for me? Or was
she still digesting a ten-course breakfast? "You're not much like
your father, are you?"

"I'm not an armed robber." Dumb me means
dummy. That wasn't what she was talking about.

"I mean you're not a complete asshole," she
said...almost coyly.

A roundhouse compliment. For a moment I was
dizzy from the impact.

"You might not be a hunk like your brother,
Jeremy, but you have a certain indefinable charm."

My God, was she going to jump me? I didn't
know if I should be fearful for my limbs or for my self-esteem. I
knew I wasn't Playgirl material. I couldn't even make the cover of
Jack & Jill. I'd heard about Facebook, and was sure they would
reject as unworthy any pictures or intimate details I cared to
post.

But only a louse would turn away a woman's
kind words, if that's what they were. I screwed up my eyes at her
(she was an inch taller than me) and shot her a smile that might
have been pleasant or smarmy or unchewable ham. Then I realized I
had an erection. I must be the only guy in the world who gets a
literal hard-on from a vague compliment. If she hadn't thrown in
that qualification about Jeremy I might have allowed myself to be
raped on the spot. 'Hunk' indeed.

Women are famous for their ability to pick up
cues. I don't think it's all that mysterious, seeing sad-sap men
have all the punctuation. Kendle's eyes flitted briefly downwards.
I was saddened when she cleared her throat and pulled back a bit,
going all business on me. I was so sad, in fact, that I made my
fatal error.

"Was that you calling from my house?" I
said.

"What call? When?"

"About ten minutes ago."

"A woman called you?" she asked. "A
roommate?"

"I live alone."

"Someone broke into your house and called you
from there?" She swelled like an alerted sea lion. "You haven't
called the police?"

"I guess that's what I'm doing now," I said
reluctantly, bowing to unpleasant necessity.

CHAPTER 15

We funneled our way through the students
crowding Pine Street, Kendle trailing me in her van. Cars were
stretched along the street in a shifting foundation of shiny
imports and downtrodden Motor City domestics. You couldn't tell the
locals for the Lexi. Unless it was Carl's iconoclastic pimpmobile,
pinpointing a vehicle that didn't belong in front of my house would
have been a chump's game.

In case you haven't noticed by now, I'm
not a mover and shaker. If my clones took control of world history,
we'd soon be back in the trees—caves would be too advanced. My
genetic forbears never led armies, raised skyscrapers, drained
swamps or contemplated the stars. They
might
have invented beer and inbreeding. So I
should keep my mouth shut about all the changes going on around me.
People without grit or innovation in their soul don't deserve to
comment on plunging markets or turbulent architecture. I wouldn't
take a risk if you planted me on a high-wire. I'd be stuck there to
this day, not going forward, not going backward, certainly not
going to either side. The students were on Oregon Hill because
someone had the gumption to found a university and the university
needed homes for their students. If the students were filled with
empty-minded exuberance, they were no different from any other life
form from the past. The McPhersons had been particularly adept at
stupefying inertia. So I shouldn't bitch about willful realtors or
the course of empire. You can grow tired of your own
complaints.

My short-lived euphoria was succumbing to the
doubts of wisdom. Sure, you can choose to see life in whatever
shape or form you want. But if you screen The Wolfman day after day
on your metaphorical VCR, you begin to see wolves everywhere. That
makes it kind of difficult to cheer yourself up. I glanced at
Kendle's van in my rearview mirror. Another wolf. They were
crawling out of the woodwork.

We parked. I stood on the waffled
sidewalk and tried not to look as she waddled my way. Thank God
none of the neighbors knew me. In the past, I would have been
pegged as a hard-up case. "Going after the chubs, are you?" Not
that the old residents were anything you'd want to present on
a
fashionista
runway. A bunch
of snaggle-toothed pie-faces stewed in moonshine and OxyContin,
with child-mothers happily shunting their runts in busted carriages
from one alleged father to the next. Worst of all, they had known
me, and known that I belonged among them.

Come to think of it, Kendle had something of
the untethered Hill look about her. I could easily imagine her
pulling a brown paper bag from under her blouse for a sip of
heartstopping rotgut.

"You want to stay out here admiring the view,
or you want to lead the way?" Kendle said, breaking into my
dementia. By the way she struck a pose, I presumed she meant she
was the view, and that I had been ogling her. Well, yeah, I guess I
had been giving her an eyewash, but that was only because she was
almost too scruffy to allow past my doorsill.

But she had a weapon. That was the important
thing. Until Jeremy's unwelcome revelation, I had been certain
there was no gun in my house. Now, unless Skunk had secreted away
an armory in the wall, I was confident my premises were as gun-free
as a school zone.

Oversalted irony is another McPherson
trait.

I nodded at a passing group of future
presidents. They all looked capable of prankish behavior. But
seeing as they were the educated elite, I scratched them from my
list of suspects.

I tested the doorknob before taking out my
key. No, I hadn't left it unlocked, the way I usually did.

"Think it was picked?" said Kendle with
professional
savoir
faire
.

"How can you tell?" I asked, leaning down,
looking for scratches on the metal.

"If it was done right, you wouldn't know."
She nudged me aside to apply professional scrutiny. "Any of your
girlfriends have a key?"

"Naw," I said. "I lock them out."

"Such a good, prudent boy," she said, her
blouse settling like a pup tent on her bosom as she stood erect.
"Well, I can't see anything. Don't your brother and sister have
keys?"

"Yes..." I admitted warily. "But why—?"

"Families are capable of anything," she said,
as though profiling the worst sort of serial killers. "What exactly
did this caller say? Did you recognize the voice?"

Did I ever.

"Someone was playing an old tape of Skunk," I
said.

"Your father?"

"Yeah." I gave her a suspicion-loaded glance.
"From the background noise, it almost sounded like a prison." In
other words, in view of her job and current assignment, it might be
a recording she had access to.

She raised and lowered her thick shoulders.
"Or a cafeteria?"

"It could've been," I said, adding, "A prison
cafeteria."

"You've got bars on the brain."

True that. After I opened the door she
brusquely pushed me out of the way. "Lemme take a look, first."

Barbara's recent visits had alerted me to the
sad state of my house's hygiene. I had wanted to lead the way, if
for no other reason than to cook up logical reasons for the mess.
As it was, Kendle would get a first-hand view of my slobhood, free
of editorial excuses.

Within five seconds I spotted the clue. Right
there, under her nose. There was no way the detective would know
its meaning. I remained mute.

It was obvious my visitor was gone, his
purpose accomplished. But if I said so to Kendle she would ask how
I knew. I had to let the charade continue. I was a past master at
wasting time, and had no qualms about sharing my talent.

She moved cautiously, pausing at every door
before inching into the next room. Her body seemed more massive in
the narrow hall. I followed almost involuntarily, as though I was
trapped in the gravity field of a gas giant.

"You're not much of a neat freak," she
whispered as she lumbered through what some people would have used
as a dining room, but which I employed for storage. Items large and
small left over from when this house had held the entire McPherson
family instead of a single differentiated mute. Chairs, tables, a
multitude of old knickknacks, all condensed into a single room.
While much of the house remained unchanged (down to the dust that
had accumulated since my mother last swept a rag over the
furniture), there were some things that were too much in the way to
leave in place. Heaped indiscriminately were Barbara's cosmetic
mirror, Smashbox and
Lancôme
bottles
(neither of which she could have afforded, so how had they gotten
here?), and old Harley Davidson Barbies. Jeremy's weights, posters
and Playboys. Mom's sewing machine, a pile of sewing patterns still
in their unopened envelopes, various pots and pans. A litany of
tools Skunk had used once or twice then dumped in a closet. All of
these things were marked for disposal. Yet with inheritance came
responsibility. The same arduous impulse that chained me to the
house kept me in the grip of these moldering odds and ends. My
family was hopelessly ephemeral, but the accretions endured. The
negative side was that I felt more nostalgic warmth for these
things than the people who had owned them. God knows, I never gave
or received a hug from Skunk. But his rusty hammer and screwdrivers
still prompt an inexplicable lump in my throat.

I hope it's not cancer.

Kendle gave the piles a slightly more than
cursory glance. Did she think the Brinks money was hidden in there?
The police had searched the house any number of times for any
number of reasons and had never found it. But they hadn't found
Jeremy's gun, either. C.S.I. is a fantasy show that employs an
inaccurate acronym for Pinocchio and Cinderella bust the Drug Lord
of the Rings. The benefit to me was the search for fingerprints. It
was the first time my house had been dusted in decades.

She skimped on the kitchen, where
cursory was
ne plus ultra
and
sine qua non
and
every other Latin smorg-fest you didn't want to know unless you
were into bacteriological warfare.

As she approached the stairs to the second
floor I swallowed a bark of protest. There was nothing sacred about
upstairs, except it was an unwanted repetition of downstairs.
Jeremy had been oblivious to how I had trashed the old homestead.
But I didn't want Kendle to know that I not only lived above a
pigsty, but inside of one, too. Upstairs contained all the dirty
laundry, literally and figuratively. I couldn't tell the detective
her tactics were pointless, but at least I could be consoled by the
fact that the mess would drive her away.

"You're sure the call came from here?" she
whispered as she panted up the last steps.

"Caller ID," I said, as though I was privy to
the latest in hi-tech snooping.

"And you don't have a cell?" she
inquired.

I looked at her blankly.

"Cell
phone
," she elaborated, adding sign language that
even a rhesus monkey could understand.

"Oh, no. Just a regular dial phone."

"I knew it couldn't be a
smart
phone." With a low snort she
turned to the first bedroom, which had once been Barbara's. I had
not bothered with it much beyond piling a few boxes in the corner
and removing the mirror (for reasons mysterious to me but probably
obvious to everyone else). My mother had striven to grace the house
with a few feminine touches, fighting stern male dominance with
traces of faïence and pink trim. But Barbara's room was raw female,
by which I mean the room you saw was the woman you got. Much of it
was incomprehensible to me. Spice Girl and Playgirl pinups (long
and long gone), dainty bottles which she had refilled from gallon
jugs of dime store perfume, a Betty Boop phone that she had rescued
from the dump and retouched with emphatic daubs of non-matching
acrylic paint. I wondered if the caller had used it, pressing his
face against Betty's thighs as he looped the tape to another inane
comment from Skunk. Barbara had created the female steroid. Not
muscle, but the kind of knock-you-down femininity that gave men
cramps without a hand being laid on them. I wouldn't say she was a
predator, but she presented an overabundance of bait.