Trip Wire (6 page)

There was no fooling me, though. He hadn’t been reading the paper; he’d been asleep in his chair, nodding after a couple or four vodkas.

“I’ve been trying to catch up with you for days,” he said. “Where have you been?”

“I’ve got to pee, Owen. Bad.”

“Come on in.”

There was never anything to eat at Owen’s. Useless in a kitchen—that was one of the many things we had in common. Lipton tea was about the best he could do. I sat in the divine wreckage of his living room with the warm cup in my palms, filling him in on all that had happened, and apologizing for not being in contact sooner.

“None of it makes any fucking sense,” I said at the end of the narrative. “I don’t know what to do now.”

“Pick up the telephone. Make your peace with Detective Klaus. Tell him what you saw this afternoon.”

“I can’t do that yet. Not until I know what the deal is with Barry and Dan. I rat on Barry and the police catch up with him and Dan. You know what Chicago cops are like. They could go in with guns blazing, no questions asked. Can you imagine how awful I’d feel? How guilty?”

“How awful would you feel if they had something to do with the murders and you let them escape?”

“That isn’t possible.”

“How do you know that? Leave it to the police. Please.”

“That’s the trouble, though. The police. Something isn’t right. It’s not right the way they’re fixed on Dan as a suspect. And it’s not right they haven’t located him. Any more than it’s right that Barry would be the one to stick his neck out by hiding Dan. I don’t know, Owen. I don’t feel good about telling them before I talk it over with Taylor and Beth and Cliff.”

“Your loyalty to your roommates is admirable. But you’re not a detective. Go home to your aunt and uncle where you can commence to mourn like anyone who’s just lost a close friend.”

“I’m loyal to Wilton. I’m not going to let go until I find out what happened. After that, there’ll be lots of time for me to mourn.”

“You’ve already started, my friend,” he said. Then he got up to make himself a drink.

I didn’t want one, so he brought me a club soda. I held it in my lap, not talking anymore. Owen sat next to me on the sofa and laid the inside of his hand gently across my forehead. “You need looking after.”

“I’ll be all right. You know, I’m loyal to you, too, Owen.”

He smiled. “Don’t think it goes unnoticed.”

We were quiet for a while longer. “Is London nice?” I asked.

“Yes. I liked it a lot.”

“God, I wish I were there now. I’d rather be anywhere, doing anything other than thinking about Wilt being dead.”

“We could go to the movies. I’ll see just about anything, except don’t make me see
Bonnie and Clyde
again.”

I let myself fall against him. “A friend is a miracle. Remember you said that?”

“Did I? I guess.”

“I’m scared, Owen.”

“I know. Why don’t you lie down for a bit?”

I pressed myself closer to his heart. “You mean with you?”

He didn’t answer.

“A few minutes of feeling safe,” I said. “Being close, forgetting. Maybe you need that, too.”

He didn’t answer.

I straightened, moved away, too embarrassed to look at him. “I guess that’s not what you meant.”

“No. But—”

“It’s okay. I shouldn’t have said that. I’m a total feeb. If you were the least bit attracted to me, you’d have said so long ago.”

“No, I wouldn’t. I wish I could explain. This is hard to talk about.”

“You bet it is. I’m sorry. I forgot there for a moment that I’m just goofy little Cassandra with the big legs.”

“You’re going to be a splendid woman. Maybe you can’t see it just now. But wait a bit.”

“You mean when I grow up.”

“Sort of. You’ll grow up, like you say, and be the toast of the town.”

“What town would that be?”

“Somebody’s town. Look, you’re already breaking hearts.”

“I never broke anybody’s heart.”

“Oh, really? Why don’t you talk to Nat about that. Or did you forget what you just told me ten minutes ago?”

“Okay. I’m being shitty to him.”

“And not particularly sorry for it, right?”

“I’ll take a beer now, if you have it. But as long as we’re on the subject . . . I mean, since I’ve already made a fool of myself, I may as well ask you something else. Once and for all.”

“What?”

“Are you gay?”

“Excuse me?”

“I don’t mean to insult you. But, are you, Owen? Annabeth thought I’d already slept with you, and when I told her we never did it, she said maybe it’s because you’re—well, gay.”

“I’m not homosexual. Sometimes I’m not even sure I’m sexual. I kind of decided my uncle Jude was right about the wisdom of keeping to yourself.”

“What does that mean? He never had sex?”

“Not as far as anyone knows.”

“And that’s what you want to be like? Are you nuts?”

He laughed.

“Was Uncle Jude a drunk, too?”

“Yes, of course.”

“You know what I think? I think you’re full of shit, Owen. I bet if Jane Hayer threw herself at you the way I did, you’d go to bed with her.”

At the mention of his long-legged, curly-haired colleague, the Romantic Poets lecturer who always managed to seat herself near him at faculty teas, he looked away from me.

Dead giveaway.

“Oh, shit,” I said. “How stupid could I be? You fucked her, didn’t you?”

“Stop that.”

“Oh, yeah, you did.”

“Stop it. Listen, Cassandra, maybe you’ve been moving a bit too fast. Your transition from studious country mouse to foul-mouthed hippie chick might have happened just a little too fast.”

And it isn’t at all becoming, as my aunt Ivy would say. Too fast. I couldn’t deny there was something in what Owen said. Where I had been shy and insular—what seemed like just yesterday—I was now brash and aggressive. And even I had to admit it didn’t always feel right. It didn’t always feel like me proudly rolling joints and setting up the communal bong like a pro, throwing around the four-letter words. The old Cassandra had to go. I knew that much. But sometimes I lost control of who I was replacing her with.

And now I’d made a clumsy pass at my beloved friend. He’d rejected me and I’d turned ugly. What unspeakable thing would I do next? Chase him around the room like an old lech in a Dagwood cartoon? He was right to put me in my place. Oh, God, I was mortified.

Owen tried to make me stay, but I wouldn’t hear of it. I hurried down the stairs without a backward glance. I’d never felt more lumbering and unlovely in my whole life.

I had gone there seeking refuge, a way to stop thinking about the murders and everything else that was weighing on me, even if just for an hour. But apparently there was to be no rest.

No rest.

7

Unhinged by the scene with Owen, I stopped at the coffee shop on Lincoln Avenue and ordered a cheeseburger with onion rings and extra fries. No way to get slinky. But I forgave myself for the orgy of grease. I was ravenous. Before going to see Jack Klaus that morning, I had tried to eat a bowl of Mia’s hand-mixed granola, but it stuck in my throat.

It had turned bitter cold again, and I’d lost my muffler somewhere. The powdery snow sifting down the back of my collar was like freezing ground glass. I pressed on along the darkened streets. The closer to home I got, the more watchful I became. I was afraid Nat might be waiting to ambush me again. Not only was I checking out the face of every man I passed on the sidewalk, I even began to look with suspicion at the cars moving slowly on the slippery road. Once or twice it seemed that a dark-colored sedan was keeping pace with me. I was being paranoid again. Stupid. Nat didn’t own a car.

Chicagoans can’t afford to be sissies about frigid weather. The shoppers going in and out of the neighborhood boutiques were bundled in hooded parkas and six-foot-long scarves, going on with their holiday errands despite the weather. I counted that as a blessing—plenty of people about.

Last year, about fifteen minutes after the release of
Sgt. Pepper,
head shops started springing up on every other corner of the North Side. In this neighborhood, if you run out of rolling papers or feel the urgent need at midnight for penny candy or a copy of the
Bhagavad Gita,
help is never far away.

The head shop is also a place to pick up the newest Kurt Vonnegut and sign up for a macrobiotic cooking class, buy a tarot deck or a framed photo of Chairman Mao. The geniuses behind the concept had a perfect read on the youth market. They’d hit on a brilliant way to merchandise to the anticonsumer sector.

The busy shop where Annabeth and Clea worked was called the Glass Bead, so named because the owner was an avid Hermann Hesse reader. But the Glass Bead had expanded way beyond the standard inventory of sandalwood incense and Top rolling papers. It now carried secondhand fur coats, Guatemalan ponchos, coffee beans from Africa, Dylan’s last LP, or for that matter Dylan Thomas’s last, India print bedspreads, straw tote bags from Mexico, hammered copper earrings, turquoise belt buckles. When good little hippies died they didn’t go to heaven, they landed here on Lincoln Avenue.

A poster of the guys in Buffalo Springfield hung behind the counter where Annabeth, recently promoted to manager, stood sorting sheer cotton blouses into small, medium, and large piles. She was biting down on her bottom lip as she worked, her movements jerky and robotic.

That wasn’t Buffalo Springfield on the sound system. It was Ravi Shankar. Annabeth seemed to lean into the music. It took a while for her to notice me.

“Sandy. I didn’t see you.”

“I know. You look—” I began.

“Yeah,” she said. “Not so hot. You, too.”

“I just wanted to get warm for a minute.”

She laid her delicate fingers on my cheek, and then picked up my hand and began to chafe it. “Wow. You’re frozen solid.”

Annabeth was a classic slinky. Men had flocked to Mia’s side, attracted by that willowy Mother Earth essence. But Annabeth, in her mini-minis and dangling earrings, was the kind of girl men flat-out lusted after. In fact, it didn’t even seem right to call her a girl. Slinkies were women, not girls.

We stood there in silence for a minute.

Finally she asked, “You still freaking?”

“I barely know where I am.”

“Yeah. Right on to that.”

I stamped hard a few times, trying to shake out the numbness in my feet.

“Where’s Clea?” I asked.

“She quit. She’s so messed up behind what happened, she doesn’t want to be anywhere near the commune now, or even on this side of town. I don’t blame her.”

I waited while she helped a customer.

“I didn’t want to come to work today, either,” she said. “I just wanted to stay inside the apartment.”

I snorted. “Yeah. Safe inside our building. Where nothing bad ever happens.”

She made a face. “You’re just like him, Sandy. Even when something terrible happens, you can make a joke.”

Just like him. She meant Wilton, of course. Time was, I’d be bursting with pride to be told that. Now it just hurt.

“But I guess you’re right,” Beth said. “It is spooky in the apartment now. What are we supposed to do?”

“1 don’t know. It’s shit either way.”

She picked up one of the scratchy wool ponchos and wrapped it around her. “Speaking of shit . . .”

“What?” I said.

Detective Norris, red in the face, was walking toward us. “Cold enough for you girls?”

Neither of us answered.

“How’s business?” he asked Annabeth.

“Pretty much like it was the last time you swung by here,” she said. “I’m very busy. And, no, I haven’t heard a word from Dan Zuni.”

Norris turned to me then. “What about you?”

It was almost as if he was reading my thoughts. The second I saw him striding toward us, I flashed on Barry in the Volvo and my speculation that he might know exactly where Dan was. I hadn’t even decided whether I should tell Annabeth about it, let alone the cops.

Another customer interrupted just then. Beth left me alone with Norris, damn it, whose eyes I couldn’t meet.

“Did you hear me?” he demanded.

“Yeah, yeah, I did. Like she said, we don’t know where he is. We’re not hiding him in the basement or anything. Look. Wouldn’t you be better off conducting a real investigation—trying to find out who killed Wilton and Mia—instead of hounding us like this?”

“Now, why didn’t I think of that?” He took out his cigarettes, lit one, and let his gaze roam the store. “So this is where all the cute hippie chicks hang out.”

“Hey, I’m serious, okay? You’re treating Dan like he’s public enemy number one, when he didn’t have anything to do with those killings. But I’m telling you—don’t hurt him when you find him. You’ll be sorry if you do.”

That got his back up. “Threat? You think your family’s got that much pull with the PD in this city?”

“I’m not threatening you, Detective. I’m asking you to think.”

“Yeah. Okay. You say he didn’t do it, it must be so.” I noticed that he was grinning now. “I’ll tell ya. Your roommate’s got a great little shape to her.” The big creep was staring at Annabeth as she walked back toward us.

“I’m going home,” I told Beth, and then turned to Norris, “unless you’ve got something else to say to us.”

He took in a huge gulp of the dope- and incense-infused air. “Nope. Long as you understand you don’t leave town until I say you can. You girls can finish your tea party now.”

“Ha ha,” Beth said when he’d walked off.

“I’m tired as hell, Beth,” I said. “I’m gonna go.”

“You okay walking home alone?”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Besides, there still seem to be uniformed cops everywhere. I guess they’d help out if somebody tried to snatch me.”

“Are you sure? Taylor’s picking me up tonight. I don’t feel so great about closing up by myself. You could hang out until he gets here.”

It just kind of burst out of me then. “Listen, Beth. I couldn’t say anything while Norris was here, but . . . I mean, I don’t even know if I should say anything, period.”

“About what?”

“Nothing. Just come home with Taylor. We can talk about it then.”

“You’re scaring me.”