[To Die For 01] - A View to Die For (2012) (26 page)

“Well, assuming you’re a better handyman than a programmer, I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind taking a look at the roof over our sunroom. The damn thing has leaked ever since they put it on, and I can’t get them to come back and fix it.”

I didn’t know whether to hit him or thank him. He really hit home with his wisecrack on my programming abilities, but I couldn’t believe my good luck. He was giving me the rope I needed to hang him with. “Sure. Anything for a neighbor. Can Taylor let me in to check it out? I will need to see where the water is coming in. There’s usually a telltale stain where it is leaking.”

“Sorry. No can do. The house is locked up tighter than Fort Knox. I changed the code so he won’t be having any parties while we’re gone. Bennet will be on him in a New York minute if he tries to get in. Can you try to fix it without going inside?”

I wasn’t about to miss out on the opportunity over something as simple as a security system. “No problem,” I answered with my own tired cliché and proceeded to leave the car. As I closed the door, I caught a glimpse of Amy watching me. It was all I could do not to reach over and kiss her goodbye.

I watched as they drove away after leaving me on the side of the highway. He didn’t even take the time to drop me at the front door. I waited for the Mercedes to disappear over a hill and then started toward the bar. There were only a couple of cars in the parking lot. That, I knew, would change in less than an hour; the lunch crowd would soon begin. The place was called the Pig’s Roast for good reason; they had great barbeque ribs.

When I entered, it didn’t take long to adjust to the light. Though there was little in the way of lighting, the blinds on the window tables were all up. There was a couple at one of the tables, and Tonto was sitting at his favorite bar stool. I took a seat next to him and patted him on the head. Sam was at the grill, but when I sat down, he turned. “I was beginning to think you went back to Colorado, Jake. How have you been?”

Tonto turned his head, so I could rub his ears. “Nope,” I said, “just trying to stay out of trouble.”

Sam flipped the burgers on the grill, added some cheese and onions, and then came over to the bar. He reached under the bar, opened a Coors, and handed it to me. “On the house, Buddy. I never had a chance to say how sorry I am about your father. He was a good man.”

“Thanks, Sam. I appreciate that. And thanks for the beer. I need it after being out in this heat.” Tonto must have loved the ear-rub. His eyes closed to near slits, and he began to purr.

Sam looked down at his cat and shook his head. “Traitor,” he said to Tonto then turned back to me. “Have you been walking?”

“No. I was driving Taylor’s truck when it ran out of gas. Hal came by and gave me a ride, said he’d call Triple-A, then dropped me off here.”

“Hold on Jake. I need to talk to you. Just let me take care of those two.” He went back to the grill and finished preparing the burgers. I started to get hungry. My usual fare of McDonald’s Doubles was nothing like the burgers he was making. He slathered the Kaiser rolls with mayonnaise, placed the thick patties with their cheese and onions on one slice, and a thick slice of tomato and lettuce on the other half. He finished off the plate with fries and a dill pickle.

I continued to rub Tonto’s ears with one hand while raising the cold bottle of beer to my lips with the other. While I sat there wondering what Sam had to say, Johnny Cash was singing about a boy named Sue in the background. About the only topic we had in common was Linda, so I figured he wanted to bring me up to date on her latest boyfriend. The front door opened just when Sue got his ear cut off. It was a guy wearing a long sleeved shirt rolled up to the elbows. He had his name embroidered underneath the Shell Oil logo. “Are you Jake Martin?” he asked when he saw me at the bar.

“Triple-A?” I asked.

“Yeah. Hal Morgan said I’d find you here. Don’t mean to rush you, but I’ve got a shit load of calls. Never fails when it gets hot. Cars start to vapor lock, and the idiots keep grinding on the starter until the battery goes dead.”

“Boy, you guys are fast,” I said, getting up to leave.

I looked over at Sam, who was still waiting on his customers. “I’ll stop by later, Sam. I can’t wait to try one of those burgers.”

Before he could answer, two more couples entered. He waved then hurried back to the bar as I followed the driver out the door.

* * *

When I pulled up to her house, Mother was in her garage with the door open. I parked in the street because her minivan was in the driveway. She stopped whatever she had been doing and came to the front of the garage. Her hair was tied up in a bun and covered with one of Dad’s old baseball caps. Her face was covered in a painter’s mask, and she was wearing one of his old long-sleeve shirts and work gloves. “Are you trying to die of heatstroke, Mom?” I asked, halfway up the driveway. The temperature had risen even higher now that it was mid-afternoon. It must have been close to a hundred.

She pulled her mask down and away from her face, so she could talk. It was one of those paper things held in place with rubber-band straps. “I’ve got rats in here, Jacob. I’d rather have heatstroke than die from some kind of rat virus. This would have never happened if you had cleaned up this mess sooner.” The tension on the straps was too much, and they broke, snapping her in the face.

I tried not to laugh at her startled reaction. She had the look of a person caught completely off guard. “Sorry, Mom. But I’m here now, so why don’t you go inside and cool off. I’ll finish up in there.”

She removed the mask completely, then my father’s gloves and shirt. She was wearing one of Dad’s oversized tee-shirts under his work shirt. It was soaked in perspiration. “You better come in the house and cool off too, Jacob. You’ll need the keys to the van anyway, so you can back that truck up to the garage,” she said while rubbing an invisible wound on her face. Then she turned to go back into the house.

I took a quick look into the garage before following her. The boys and I had removed all of the broken furniture and cabinets weeks ago. Only a pile of black trash-bags remained. Though I was at least ten feet away, I could smell the stench. It was no wonder she had rats. Someone must have put out raw garbage in one of the bags.

My mother kept her keys on a key-rack just inside her door. Some people never learn. After having her house ransacked, I would have thought she would try to make it a little harder for a burglar. All a burglar had to do was break a pane of door glass and reach in for the keys. I took her car-keys off the hook and called out to her. “I better get started, Mom. The dump closes at four.”

I bumped my head on the top of the van’s door frame as I tried to get in the driver’s seat. Mother had the seat too far forward for my six-two frame. I reached under the seat, feeling for the adjustment lever, and felt something sticky. It was a roll of duct tape that had become soft and gooey in the heat. I placed the tape on the passenger’s floor-mat and went back to search for the seat lever. Once I had the seat set to where my legs weren’t up to my chin, I got back out of the car and headed toward the garage in search of a rag to wipe off the glue on my hand. Mother would have what she called a ‘hissy fit’ if I got the mess on her steering wheel. That’s when I saw the hose Fred had retrieved from the truck during our initial cleanup.

The glue used in duct tape must be the stickiest glue made. Although the tape on the hose was long gone, dirt had stuck to where the tape had been, and in a flash, I saw the truth. I went to the rear of the van and got down to check the tailpipe. It too had the residue of duct-tape glue.

When I put the garden hose into the tailpipe, I could see it was only long enough to reach the back of the minivan. On a hunch, I opened the tailgate door and saw where there was a crease in the rubber gasket that seals off the door. I placed the hose in the crease. It wasn’t a tight fit, but it collapsed when I closed the door. I went back in the garage and fetched the PVC pipe I had seen earlier. After slipping the hose through the pipe and placing it back on the gasket, I shut the minivan door again. This time, it was a near airtight fit. I removed the hose and turned to see my mother, standing a few feet away, watching. Then, before either of us could speak, Megan drove up and parked behind Taylor’s truck.

My mother looked over at Megan, and then she turned back to me. “I wish you hadn’t done that, Jacob. Some things are better left alone. But bring your sister inside, so she can hear why we did it, too.” Then, without saying a word to Megan, she turned and went back to the house.

“What was that all about?” Megan asked when she met me in the garage. She was dressed a lot like Mother. She had on some of Kevin’s old jeans and a tee-shirt with a picture of the Ramones. I was surprised to see Kevin liked a band from my generation.

“She just added another piece that doesn’t fit the jigsaw puzzle. You better let her tell it,” I said and went into the house.

When we joined her in the kitchen, our mother was crying softly. There were some sandwiches and lemonade on the table. She must have come out to tell me about them, and then saw me checking out her minivan. “Your father only did it for Megan,” she said when we both sat down. “I didn’t even know about it until he called me to help him. You won’t tell anyone, will you Jacob?”

Megan first looked at our mother before she turned to me. “What’s going on, Jake? I feel like I just came in to the middle of a movie.”

I sat up in my chair and reached for one of the sandwiches. I wasn’t trying to be melodramatic, but it must have seemed that way. “This isn’t the time to play Charlie Chan. What the hell is going on?” she asked.

“I’m sorry, Meg. Mike really did commit suicide. Father staged the accident to cover it up.”

Megan’s eyes seemed to grow larger. “What? That’s ridiculous. Daddy couldn’t have done that,” she said then turned her attention to our mother. “Is that true, Mom?”

“Yes,” she answered without looking at Megan. “He borrowed Mike’s truck that day to take the lawnmower to the shop. When he returned the truck, he found Mike in your garage inside the minivan. It was still running, and he had a hose running from the exhaust pipe into the van.”

“But why didn’t you tell me?” Megan asked.

Mother looked up at Megan. She had stopped crying, and I could see the look of self-righteousness returning. “He knew you wouldn’t get a dime of the insurance if they found Mike that way, so he put him in his truck, drove it over by the dam, and made it all look like an accident. We didn’t want to involve you, in case we got caught.”

“Which also explains why the suicide note didn’t show up until Megan was arrested for murder,” I said to Megan. “Our parents must have destroyed the original, and then Mom wrote another to cover your ass.”

“Jacob! Please don’t use that language in front of me.”

“Sorry. But I am right? Aren’t I?”

“Not quite,” she answered, lowering her eyes again. “I wanted to burn the note we found with Mike, but your father insisted we keep it. Thank god I listened to him. It was the one thing that saved Megan from being charged with murder.”

Megan sat stone quiet. Her eyes went from me, back to my mother, then back to me. After what seemed like enough time for the realization to take hold, I spoke up. “I wish you had told us sooner, Mother. Megan could have taken that low-ball offer on the house and moved on with her life, and I could have gone home weeks ago instead of wasting my time playing detective.”

Megan finally spoke, “Does that mean you’re planning on leaving, Jake?”

“I was planning to go home next week for Allison’s birthday anyway. Now, I don’t see any reason to come back here. I can give what we know about Nixon to Bennet and head out of Dodge. After what he did to mom’s house, I’d like to see Nixon hang, but now that we know he didn’t kill Mike, there is no need for me to stick around.”

“You can’t tell Bennet about this!” Mother said in a high-pitched voice.

“No, Mom, don’t worry,” I answered while getting up to leave. “I won’t tell him about you and Dad. I was referring to some dirt Megan and I found on Nixon. I’ll let her fill you in. I need to take your trash to the dump before it closes.” I bent down and kissed her on the top of the head. “It’s our family secret, Mom.”

* * *

I barely made it to the dump before they closed. Bennet should have been out on patrol. He could have made his quota of speeding tickets. Taylor’s truck may look old, but under the hood, it had a massive four-hundred-sixty cubic inch V8. I made the hour drive to Sedalia in thirty some minutes. It was thirty minutes well spent. It gave me time to think before turning over the cell phone. I realized that Bennet might not be the best person to disclose what I knew about Nixon.

Ever since I came to town, Bennet had been trying to crucify me. I didn’t have a clue why. But I decided I’d better not give him a smoking gun that he could use against me. My safest bet was with Rosenblum. I decided I’d drop by his office with Nixon’s cell phone and the floppy disk from the recycle center. That way, I would be two states away when Bennet found out I had been withholding evidence.

I didn’t break any speed records on the drive back to Megan’s. There was no need to get back anytime soon. She and our mother had also had time to think, and God only knew what they had decided to do about the evidence we had on Nixon. When I made the turn onto Highway Seven and saw the sign for the Pig’s Roast, I remembered Sam had tried to tell me something when I had left with the tow-truck driver earlier. It was a great excuse to prolong the confrontation with my mother and sister.

When I entered, there were still several customers sitting in the dining room and a few more at the bar. The sunlight, now that it was past the horizon, came through the lakeside windows, but it didn’t light up the place much. In a few minutes, it would die out and only the dim lights of the table lamps would illuminate the room. I thought I spotted Linda serving in the dining room. Dim light can play tricks that way. After I took a seat at the bar next to Tonto, I realized it had been wishful thinking. The cat had no problem with the light and recognized me instantly. He was on my lap before I barely sat down.