The Skeleton Box (31 page)

“Mom told me she was going to do it, then she said you were doing it.”

Darlene shook her head. “She’s mistaken.”

No, I thought, Mom wasn’t mistaken. “I can go with you tomorrow, after the arraignment.”

“The arraignment,” she said. There was scorn in her voice.

“What?” I said. She was staring at our entwined hands. “You don’t really think Breck was there that night, do you?”

“I don’t know what to think,” she said. “I’ve never seen Dingus like
this. You’re right. He’s off his rocker. Hauling in all those people. Even arresting D’Alessio. Come on.”

“He’s feeling the pressure. Do you have any hard evidence at all on Breck?”

“Just because we’re here now doesn’t mean I’m obliged to be unprofessional.”

“I—”

“This is my mother.”

She was fighting not to cry again.

“I understand. I can’t believe you’re still on the case. You’re—”

“Don’t. Don’t say a word about courage or any of that bullshit. I’m just doing what I do, just like Sunday night with Mrs. Morcone and that damn raccoon.”

“It’s all right, Darlene.”

“No, it’s not, goddammit.” She pulled her hand away. “Look—this is off off off the record. We have, essentially, nothing. No fingerprints. No witnesses. Nothing. Dingus is praying the DNA guys find something. We just keep filling up the jail with people who didn’t do it.”

“But you’re going into court tomorrow.”

“He couldn’t let D’Alessio get away with rallying the people like that.”

“Judge Gallagher’s going to bite Dingus’s head off.”

“Well. We can certainly connect Breck to Nilus and make a case that he had motive to be in the house looking for something.”

“Like a map. Or part of one.”

“How would he know it’s there?”

“No idea, unless . . .” I thought of the woman who had approached Soupy’s mother. “I don’t know.”

“And why would my mother just blurt out ‘Nilus’?”

“They were talking about it that morning,” I said. “At least I think they were. I asked and they changed the subject.”

“Do you think they suspected this burglar wasn’t taking anything because he hadn’t found what he was looking for?”

“Yeah. Reminds me. Someone broke into Soupy’s parents’ house.”

“He didn’t report it.”

“What a shock.”

“Probably just some drunk kids.”

“Maybe.” I told her about the microfilm photograph I had seen at the clerk’s office, how all but one of the seven spelling-bee girls beaming with Sister Cordelia would, years later, have their homes broken into on bingo night.

“My mother’s house didn’t get broken into,” Darlene said.

“Maybe she was next.”

On the wall behind her head hung a framed aerial photograph of Starvation Lake. The water was indigo in the middle of the lake, shimmering to pale green along the shoreline. Pelly’s Point jutted into the water, evergreens leaning out from the bluff. Darlene’s father had ordered the photo for her from a shop in Suttons Bay. She had kept it because it came from him, although she said she didn’t know why she needed a picture of the place she had lived in all of her life, since it never changed anyway. I looked for our houses. There they were, next to each other, the big yard where I’d once tried to kiss Darlene lying between.

“Tell me,” I said. “Did your mother ever hear from someone supposedly doing a history of St. Val’s?”

Darlene thought about it. “When would this have been?” she said.

“Couple of years ago maybe.”

“If she did, she didn’t say anything to me.”

“Your mom wouldn’t have.” I told her about the woman who had called Soupy’s mom. Money had been offered, I said.

“God,” she said. “All these strangers.”

“What’s going to happen to you, Darl?”

“What do you mean?”

“If Dingus doesn’t keep his job.”

“I don’t know. With Mom gone . . . I don’t know.”

“I hope you stay.”

Darlene picked up our mugs and put them in the sink. Then she came and stood next to me. “My aunt Millie called,” she said. “She said Bea was acting like she’s getting ready to die or something.”

“What?”

“They spent yesterday afternoon basically getting her affairs in order. Went to see a lawyer about her will and took a bunch of money out of the bank.”

So it wasn’t even shopping and cribbage. Same old Mom. I could see Millie going along with it, standing by Mom’s side, then going home and rushing to the phone.

“She’s safe for now,” I said.

Darlene sat against the table facing me. “If I had just picked up my mom’s call, maybe we’d all be OK now,” she said.

“No, Darlene,” I said. “This is not your fault, or mine.”

Her eyes were filling with tears.

“What’s wrong?”

“The rug. It’s ruined.”

“What rug?”

“Me Sweet Ho.”

“Who cares?”

“I care.”

“OK.” I stood, put my hands on her shoulders. She looked up at me.

“I never told you,” she said. “Your mom was going to give me the rug.”

“When?”

“A long time ago. Before you went to Detroit.”

“Why?”

“Because . . . I loved it. Because I loved teasing you about it. Because it reminded me of all the fun we had together as kids, in your house and my house, out on the lake, up in the tree house. They were sweet places.”

“They were.”

“Bea wanted me to have it so I could”—Darlene put a hand to her mouth, swallowed a sob—“so I could have it fixed. So it would say Home Sweet Home. So I could, we could . . .”

“So you and I could have it in our house.”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No. No. Everything—there’s a reason.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do.”

She reached down and grabbed me by the belt and pulled me up against her. I wasn’t sure I wanted this yet, wasn’t sure I wanted to believe in this again. But I didn’t stop her when she rose on her toes and kissed me, while she undid my belt and unbuttoned my plaid flannel, while she pulled my T-shirt out of my jeans and shoved it up on my chest. “Wait,” I said, but she bent and flicked the tip of her tongue along the edge of my rib cage.

I woke up on my back, the living room carpet scratchy on my shoulder blades. Darlene was awake, looking at me from where her head lay on my chest.

“Gus,” she said. “What do you believe?”

“I don’t like the guy, but I don’t think Breck—”

“Not that. I mean
believe.
Like faith. My mother, she believed in God, the church.”

“Did you know your mom had a rosary at the office? Kind of like the one in my mom’s lockbox. She’d set it next to her sometimes when she was writing obits.”

Darlene closed her eyes. “What about you?”

“I don’t have a rosary,” I said.

“Please don’t.”

I looked around the room. My gaze fell again on the aerial shot of the lake.

“I don’t know.” I said. “I guess I believe in doing my best, trying to be a good guy, be nice to my mom, take care of the people I love. Is that good enough?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well,” I said, “I hope it is. It has to be.”

“Why? Why does it have to be?”

I knew the answer. I’d known it for a while, but I hadn’t had the guts to say it.

“Because I’m here, Darlene,” I said. “I’m here because you’re here. You’re why I came back after screwing up in Detroit. OK? Is that good enough?”

She picked her head up from my chest. I looked at her.

“Really?” she said.

“Yeah.”

She leaned up and kissed my neck, then let her head fall back on my breast. My eyes drifted back to the picture of the lake. I thought of how we used to lie on our backs on the raft in summer, our eyes closed, our fingertips touching. I thought of Mrs. B, fingering her rosary beads, silently praying, then setting the rosary down and typing. I thought of my mother’s rosary, hidden away in a metal box.

I nudged Darlene.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hm?”

“Why didn’t that body wash up on Torch Lake?”

She slid a hand down my belly and let it rest on the inside of one leg. “God, I’m tired. What are you talking about?”

“Sister Cordelia. You know. The sheriff who got re-elected way back when? Who solved the nun’s murder? Breck’s grandpa supposedly dumped her in Torch Lake. But the body never washed up.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes boats go down and don’t wash up. The tunnels.”

“Nobody’s ever found one of those tunnels,” I said. “It’s like Bigfoot.”

“You never really believe anything, do you.”

“I guess not.”

“Why does it matter whether the body washed up?” Darlene said.

I thought of my mother, lying in her cell, her hands crossed on her breast. I remembered her at my house, scrutinizing her fingers and nails, insisting they were filthy when they were not.

“Gus?”

“Mom knows,” I said.

“Mom knows what?”

“Mom knows where that nun is.” I sat up, dislodging Darlene. “We have to get her.”

“She’s in jail.”

“No. We have to get her and get going. Now.” Mom’s words came back to me. “Before someone else gets there first.”

D
arlene opened the back door of her sheriff’s cruiser and helped Mom slide in next to me. She looked tiny in her gray parka.

“Gussy?” she said. “What is going on?”

“You’ll see.”

“I want to go home.” She put a hand on the back of the seat, leaned forward, and addressed herself to Darlene. “Take me home, honey.”

Darlene pulled the car onto Route 816 and punched the accelerator. She replied without turning around. “I’m sorry, Mom C. You’re actually still in custody.”

“I hope you don’t get in any trouble,” I told Darlene.

“Christenson was the duty guy,” she said. “All those people from Tatch’s camp were keeping him pretty busy.”

“Where are you taking me?” Mom said.

Snow fluttered in the headlight funnels piercing the dark ahead of Darlene’s cruiser. The rear of the car shimmied as she eased into a descending hairpin. Mom grabbed at the seat, squinted out the window.

“Why are we going here? I hate this road.”

We were winding to the bottom of Dead Sledder Mile.

“Almost there, Bea,” Darlene said.

“Oh, God, not this road. Especially in the dark.”

Dead Sledder flattened. Darlene drove another mile, slowed, and came nearly to a stop. Mom was sitting up, watching. Darlene turned the cruiser onto a two-track, the tires groaning in the snow. The two-track wound upward through the dark trees.

“No,” Mom said. “Please, I don’t want to go.”

“It’ll be all right,” I said.

“Stop,” she told Darlene.

Darlene braked beneath a canopy of snow-laden evergreens.

“What’s the matter, Bea?”

“I know why you’re taking me here,” Mom said.

“Good,” I said. “Let’s go.”

Mom reached across the seat and grabbed my arm. “No.”

“Why, Mom? What’s up there?”

“Everybody has a past,” she said.

“What does that mean?”

“Gus,” Darlene said.

“The future is all that matters,” Mom said.

“Sorry, this is gibberish. Darlene, go.”

Mom moved as if to slap my face, but I caught her by the wrist.

“Darlene,” I said.

“Let go of me,” Mom said.

“Calm down.”

“I will.”

I let go. “You left the house the other night,” I said. “You snuck out to Dad’s tree house.”

“I don’t remember.”

“Don’t play the memory game.” I pointed through the windshield at the two-track. “You know what’s up there. Mrs. B knew what’s up there. Soupy’s mom knew.”

She looked out her window. “Louise loved money more than me,” she said. “Someone asked her. She told them. She wanted me to forgive her.”

“She told them what?”

Mom’s face fell into her hands. Her shoulders began to heave. I couldn’t afford to care. Not then.

“Mother,” I said, “I know you weren’t playing cribbage yesterday.”

“Go easy on her,” Darlene said.

“Why were you taking money out of the bank? Why were you going over your will? What are you afraid of? You hid the lockbox, then you made sure I had it. Was that a slip? Or did you really want me to know?”

“Please,” Mom said. She looked up, looked around, looked out her
window again. “The sun. The sun was going down. I saw it on the leaves.”

“Gus,” Darlene said. “Leave her.”

“She’s playing us,” I said. “There is no sun. There are no leaves. Enough of the secrets.”

“You were not there,” Mom said.

The car lurched into reverse. “She’s had enough,” Darlene said.

“All right. Stop. Now.” It was Mom. “I’m not a ‘her.’ I’m not a ‘she.’ Don’t talk about me as if I wasn’t even here. I’m still here.”

“I’m sorry, Bea,” Darlene said. “We’ll talk in the morning.”

“No,” Mom said. “No.” She turned and looked into my eyes. “The truth will not set you free, son. The truth is a burden.”

She told us.

Bea Damico had loved Rudy Carpenter since she was in the sixth grade. They had gone steady since the eighth. Watching sunsets from the beach at the public access, lake water lapping across their feet, young Bea and Rudy had talked of the day when they would marry and buy a house on the lake. It wouldn’t have to be a big house, just one big enough for the two of them and maybe two children, a boy and a girl, and maybe a dog. The first time Rudy told Bea he loved her, she made him promise that they would paint the house yellow, her favorite color.

And then, one June, the summer before her last in high school, came Eddie McBride, Rudy’s cousin from Ann Arbor. Like the other downstate boys who appeared at their family cottages in summer, Eddie had about him a confidence—Mama Damico called it swagger, as if the word was an obscenity—that made a girl think, for just a minute, maybe longer, that there might be something beyond Starvation Lake, beyond the Frostee Freeze and sock hops, beyond plunking for bluegill and water-skiing barefoot and making out on the dive raft at Walleye Lake.

Eddie was the cutest boy, too. All the other girls said he was the one they wanted to take them away, show them the big cities downstate. Bea didn’t want to think about that, but it was hard not to, because Eddie
was always with Rudy, and so always with Bea, and every now and then, when Rudy’s head was elsewhere, Bea would catch Eddie looking at her, and she would try to pretend that she hadn’t caught him, but his smile to himself let on that he knew she’d seen him, and he knew she liked him looking at her.