The Morgue and Me (10 page)

Bailey gave a little wave to her friend. “Abby’s married—she’s not interested.”

I tightened at the name and followed the path of Bailey’s eyes. It was hard to believe I hadn’t seen it before.

I clutched Mike’s arm.

“What is it?” he said.

“Chernobyl’s the one who found Mitch Blaylock’s body.”

 

 

Abigail Shales had the body of a twelve-year-old and the face of a forty-year-old. It looked the same as it had in the Employee of the Month picture at the Lighthouse Motel, except for the dirty orange color.

She and her snaggletoothed husband drank tall boys, sitting opposite each other in a booth. They looked like chess players, only there was no board between them and there probably never would be. I pulled up a chair. The detective at work.

Snaggletooth had a flowing mane of feathered black hair. He pushed his sleeves up his forearms. “What’s up?” he said in a mildly challenging way.

“Friend of Bailey’s.” I had brought over my Bud bottle for credibility with my subjects. I might have brought Bailey, too, but Mike was trying to make inroads. I set it on the table and looked at Abigail Shales. “I heard you found some stiff at the Lighthouse Motel.”

Abigail did a lazy shrug. Snaggletooth leaned back and said, “She sure as hell did. Gave her a pretty good scare.”

“Did not,” Abigail said.

“Well, I had to come over when I heard about it,” I said. “Hope you don’t mind.”

“Nah.” Snaggletooth leaned back, basking in their celebrity status.

“I’ve never seen a dead body before. What’d it look like?”

“Dead,” Abigail said. She crushed out a cigarette like it was a reen actment.

“Yeah, but, I mean, was he, like, sitting on the can like Elvis—”

Snaggletooth chuckled. “On the can like Elvis, that’s good.”

“. . . or you know, bleeding all over the place, or what?”

Abigail sneered. “It looked alive, only not.”

“That’s actually kind of deep,” I said.

She clasped her beer in her hands. “The guy was facedown; I don’t remember about blood. Sorry I didn’t take pictures for you.”

“Well, next time then,” I said. I was cracking Snaggletooth up.

“Shut up,” Abigail said to him.

They treated each other like wayward dogs in need of training. I backed away slightly. “Well, I didn’t mean to bother you,” I said.

“Sit down man, she’ll tell you about it,” Snaggletooth said. “Don’t be rude, baby. The guy’s just asking.”

“There ain’t nothing else to tell,” Abigail said.

“Oh, come on.” I think Snaggletooth wanted to hear about it more than I did. Abigail didn’t speak.

“It’s no big deal,” I said.

“No, you asked nice, she can tell you nice.”

“The hell I can,” Abigail said.

Snaggletooth pointed at her. “Watch out. I’m serious.”

She diverted her eyes to me. “He was a messy guy, okay? His room smelled like b.o. You happy now?”

“Why do you have to be such a bitch?” Snaggletooth said.

Abigail considered the question while she poured her beer. The head frothed down the sides. She finished pouring and slung it into Snaggletooth’s face. It splashed into his eyes and dribbled onto his shirt, at which point I concluded Abigail Shales wasn’t going to be any help.

Snaggletooth shot out of the booth, looked at her like he was trying very hard to restrain himself, and dripped out the front door.

 

 

When I dropped Mike off, the Escort’s clock read 12:40. My parents would be wondering where I was. I turned on the brights and watched for deer in the evergreens.

It was the best kind of night: total blackness, clear and still, full of mystery. I cut the radio and let the cool air wash over my cheeks.

I don’t know where he started following me.

I was shooting down Sheridan Road, passing the sign for Moby the Motorboat Salesman, when I first noticed the headlights behind me. A red light stopped me at a Shell station that had been out of business for years. Cracks in the shattered cashier’s window glistened in the streetlight like a spiderweb. The traffic signal hung low on the cross wires. It stayed red while the car drew up behind me. I flipped the mirror to ease the glare.

The shoreline provided the fastest route home. I turned onto Lakeside Drive and passed the harbor where Mike and I hung out, with fishing boats covered up in tarps for the night. The lighthouse stood at the end of the jetty, far ahead of me. At the intersection with Main Street, a flashing yellow traffic light reflected off the huge anchor decorating the plaza square. Raindrops started thumping against the windshield.

The car had been following me a hundred yards back the whole way. It didn’t feel right. I turned left toward the coast guard head-quarters to test him. He followed me, and then followed me again through two more turns on a pointless, circular route back to Lakeside. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and inched forward. The rain misted the pavement between us.

The car held back when we reached another red light at Washington, too far behind me to read the license plate. His brights were blinding me anyway; I couldn’t make out anything except the silver paint job. The signal clicked green. I jammed my foot on the gas.

The Escort accelerated toward a tricky part of road I’d ridden on my bike a thousand times before. Ahead of me, Lakeside Drive made a half circle around an outcropping of rock, veering right and then turning back left. I swung with it to the right and for a split second the Escort slipped loose of the road. My muscles tightened in fear, but then the tires caught again and hurled me forward.

I raced to get to the other side of the curve, where the silver car would lose sight of me with enough distance between us. On the far side of the rocks, I checked the mirror and didn’t see him. I braked and swept a hard left turn onto an unmarked street. The Escort barely missed the white-painted stones marking the road.

I cut my headlights. The road climbed steeply before splitting off in two directions, one of them toward Tina’s neighborhood. The Escort rambled up the hill, dropping gears for traction. I kept the accelerator to the floor, hoping the silver car hadn’t spotted me when it swung around the bend.

I chose the right fork, then made arbitrary turns until finally it felt safe to stop the car. My heart drummed as heavily as the rain against the hood, but I didn’t see any sign of the silver car. I couldn’t stand being in the Escort anymore. I got out and headed to Tina’s address—which, I admit, I had looked up in the phone book out of curiosity.

 

 

She answered the door in a long gray T-shirt that said I WISH THESE WERE BRAINS. Her voice got scared when she saw me.

“Christopher?”

“Can I come in?”

“God, yeah, what are you doing here?”

She set me down in her living room. My adrenaline escaped and I fell slack against the sofa.

“You’re shaking,” she said, rubbing my arms. Her jet-black hair, tousled with sleep, smelled of cigarettes. “What happened to you?”

“Somebody followed me. I lost him at the bottom of the hill.”

“Followed you?”

“Yeah. I went out with Mike. I was on my way home, and this car followed me.”

My Nikes had holes in them, and the wet grass had soaked through my socks. I took them off before I realized what I was doing. I shouldn’t have been that comfortable around her already.

Tina tossed aside my shoes. “Yeah, that’s good. Okay, I’m not exactly great at this hostess crap, but let me see what I can do,” she said, and went down the hall.

I lay down under a thin blanket piled on the back of the sofa. Petoskey had a thousand homes like Tina’s, matchbook-sized places with exteriors painted in bright pastels to attract summer renters. Hers was
Miami Vice
blue. She had a window open, and the lake air swept through like a tonic. My eyelids fell.

Tina’s voice called in from somewhere: “Tell me everything! Start at the beginning!” The strain of the night was hitting me, and I heard myself emit a feeble sound.

A towel and an AC/DC T-shirt landed on my face. “Hey!” Tina said, retreating to the kitchen. “You just woke me up at one in the morning, and I’m making you hot chocolate. Spill it.”

“Yeah, okay.” I toweled off, put the dry shirt on, and told her: about going to the Hideaway and talking to Abby, the way she bickered with her husband, and then finding the silver car on my tail. A television rigged with a homemade antenna was sitting on the counter between us, dividing the rooms. The cord hung uselessly a foot above the shag carpet.

Tina emerged with two mugs of hot chocolate and sat cross-legged on the floor. I tried not to stare at her shirt.

“Too bad you didn’t get that license plate,” she said, slurping her drink. “Are you really sure you were being followed?”

“Yeah. I did a U at the coast guard center, and he followed me the whole way.”

“All right. But I mean, why? What do you think they wanted?”

“I assume it has something to do with Mitch Blaylock.”

Tina leaned back on her elbows. “Well c’mon, genius, who do you think it is?”

I had no answer. Any number of people could have known we were looking into Mitch’s death—Kate Warne, the sheriff, Dr. Mobley, even the hotel manager—but what any of them would get out of tailing me, I had no clue. The chase was making less and less sense.

“Are you sure it wasn’t that Abby chick? Or her husband?”

“No, they’re probably still at each other’s throats.”

We turned it around in our heads for a while. I set my mug down on the coffee table, wedging it around Oreo crumbs and scattered DVDs and a bottle of Maker’s Mark. An oversized concert poster of The Clash hung raggedly on the far wall. A huge tropical plant sat in the corner of the room, between a stereo system and a bass guitar with a broken string. I felt warm under the blanket.

Tina got up and turned off the kitchen light. A lamp in the corner had a T-shirt slung over it, casting a red glow over the shadows. Tina looked down at me with dangling black hair. Her cheeks caught the scarlet light as she smiled and bent her knee into my stomach. “Slide, Clyde.”

She slunk down onto the cushions. “Don’t worry, I’m not going to try anything,” she said.

It was a deep sofa and there was room for both of us. But there she was, next to me, and I could almost feel the heat of her body.

Her breathing became regular, and I carefully propped up on an elbow, wired and taking it in. A postcard from San Francisco sat on the table, next to a ticket from a motocross event. It was frozen in a splotch of green candle wax. Beside it was a picture of Tina and a friend in front of Comerica stadium in Detroit, wearing dark sunglasses and smiles, an open blue sky behind them.

I focused on the image of Tina and held it in my eyes. I closed them and went to sleep.

 

 

I woke up at seven o’clock. It took me a second to remember where I was, and why. Tina’s face was right in front of mine, her eyes closed peacefully, her unpainted lips pink and thin. The night came back in a rush, and then the realization that I had never called home.

Tina didn’t move as I placed the blanket over her and got to my feet. It took me ten minutes and five drafts to write her the following note:
Thanks for the hot chocolate. Later, Christopher.

“
Y
ou have
got
to tell us if you aren’t coming home at night.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you aren’t in high school anymore, but that’s one thing you’ve just
got
to do.”

“I know.”

“That’s not a lot to ask.”

“I know, Mom.”

“That’s just courtesy. Your father and I don’t want to be up all night worrying about you. That’s a burden on us.”

“I’m sorry.”

“We treat you like an adult now. You don’t have to tell us where you are every second. But if you’re going to live here, you have to tell us if you’re going to be out all night.”

“Mom, I’m sorry, I know.” She
was
treating me like an adult—she hadn’t even asked me where I had been. A knife of guilt twisted in my stomach.

She sighed and laid her hands on her thighs. We hadn’t moved from the kitchen, where she’d been sitting in her robe when I got in. A quarter inch of coffee sat in the pot she had made sometime during the night. She sniffed, rubbed her eyes, and disappeared into the refrigerator.

The morning sun came hot through the kitchen window. It felt like the worst had passed, until my dad slipped into the kitchen, bleary-eyed. He trained an evil eye on me as he poured the last of the coffee. “Would you like to tell us where you spent last night?”

Buckle up
.

“I stopped by Tina’s. She’s the person from the
Courier
I told you about. That’s where I was.”

My dad sniffled away his morning grogginess. “This is the young lady you just met?”

“Yes.”

His eyes darted to my mom. In a split-second look they communicated volumes of unspoken fears, disappointments, general bafflement, reconsideration of their parenting techniques, conjectures on my future (tattoo parlors? rehab? reality TV?), and musings on the extent of their son’s sexual corruption and/or perversity. “We’d like to know when you’re going to be out all night.”

“Yeah. I know.”

“This woman Tina,” he said, “how old is she?”

“I have no idea.”

“Is something . . . going on with the two of you?”

“We talk to each other. Verbal communication is going on with the two of us. The occasional car ride.”

“And sleeping over,” my dad said.

“Not on purpose. Well, I don’t know . . . touché, I guess.”

“Okay, that’s that then,” my mom said, calling off the dogs. She turned from the stove, where some French toast had just started to sizzle. My favorite. It stabbed me in the heart.