Chloe Vogt did not answer the number Jennifer had found.
I’d keep trying as I drove into town. Also keep trying to reach Dell in case he had another number. The cloudburst had passed, trailing a rainbow for a short distance.
In the meantime, I went to Vegas again — Thurston’s version in Sherman, Wyoming. This time in daylight, which did not help the décor or the host.
“Oh, God, you again.”
He couldn’t even be original with his greeting.
I decided I wouldn’t be, either. “I want to talk to you about Chloe Vogt.”
I did walk in today, but not past the foyer.
“You knew Chloe from Zanesville. Have you followed her all along or did you suddenly find her and realize the value of her information?”
“I don’t know what you’re—”
“Why do you take so much luggage to Denver to get your hair cut?”
“You are demented. Absolutely—”
“Large suitcases every trip. Are you taking your wardrobe for image consultant Chloe Vogt to go over? If you’ve hired her, show me the payments. That’s all you have to do and I’ll shut —”
“Image consultant? Image consultant? Thurston Fine does not need an image consultant.”
He was right. An image consultant for him was the proverbial lipstick on the pig of his journalistic inability.
“We have photos of you going into Chloe Vogt’s door with your suitcase.” Not great photos, but Jennifer would keep searching.
“Nonsense.” I hadn’t dented his confidence.
You know how he doesn’t see anything but his own wonderfulness. Leona had that right.
Remembering speculation about him being a really, really bad drug mule, I asked, “Thurston, have you noticed the contents of your suitcases not being exactly as you packed them when you reach your destination?”
He snorted. “You’d think baggage handlers couldn’t possibly mishandle suitcases enough to disrupt my clothes so badly, time after time.”
The sound I heard was me, trying not to laugh.
“I don’t know what you’re—” His mouth sagged open a second, then snapped closed. It jutted his chin out.
That twanged a recognition somewhere in my head where I stored non-essentials. No, several levels below non-essentials. Inconsequentials.
And then it combined with what Mike said about something changing with Thurston in the past couple months.
And I knew.
Thurston’s chin was more of a chin than it used to be.
There are certain basic rules in life you follow because not following them can get you hurt. Basic rules, like putting your foot on the ground when you walk, rather than, oh, say, walking on a rope swaying in mid-air.
The basic rule about asking questions is to know what question is about to come out of your mouth.
Ideally to think it through first, to even have a strategy where the first question lays groundwork for a second question that takes you to a third, and eventually leads to a destination.
I broke that rule.
The one about questions. Not the one about walking a tightrope.
“Did you have surgery, Thurston?”
“What? Surgery? No. What are you talking about? What a question. Have no idea what you’re talking about. Babbling. Utter nonsense.”
The most naïve person on earth wouldn’t buy that performance.
But knocking at that door again when he’d busied himself piling word furniture in front of it wouldn’t work.
“You must have done something, because—” Here’s the important part. “—something looks different.”
“You think so?”
I latched onto his eagerness. “Absolutely. But if it wasn’t surgery — and who could blame you if it was, because that’s a permanent solution. One and done and forget about it. But if it wasn’t…” I watched him closely for any sign of dismantling the barricade at the door. “…then you found an effective alternative. I’m impressed anything other than surgery could make such a difference.”
“It has made a difference.” No longer asking my opinion, but stating his own. “A fresher look.”
“For sure.”
“Not so tired.”
“Exactly.”
“More virile.”
There was only so far I could go with this.
A stream of possibilities flowed through my head. Pills were marketed as adding, ahem, virility. Though I’d never heard them touted as firming other areas of the body and those late-night ads certainly would have mentioned that. “Injections?”
“Of course.” His confirmation came with a side order of smug.
“For what?”
“You know for what.”
“I don’t. I mean, not precisely.”
“Don’t tell me you haven’t had them.”
“I still don’t know what them is. You’ll have to be clearer.” Which is often what I thought when I heard his version of reporting.
Disbelief gave way to craftiness. “If you tell me what kind you’ve had, I’ll tell you all about it.”
“Okay.”
C’mon, you would have made that deal, too.
“Tightening. That’s all. A little tightening here and there. Nothing major at all. Around the eyes, in the forehead, under the chin. You know.” He came this close to wink-wink, nudge-nudge. “Now, tell me. Have you had wrinkle ironing? I’ve heard the follow-up is extensive. And if you don’t keep up with the regimen it can set you back even more than where you started.”
“Wrinkle ironing?” I repeated.
“I knew it, I knew it, I knew it. I have to say—” He narrowed his eyes at me, like he was picking out a turkey for Thanksgiving. “—you are doing a fine job with the follow-up. I decided against it, at least for now because my schedule is so demanding.”
Those daily naps, you know.
I suddenly thought of Fawn reporting Melissa being worried about Thurston taking risks.
“What about the dangers?” I asked.
“Greatly exaggerated. Especially for someone with my constitution. Why, the doctor told me the strands of my DNA might as well be composed of steel for how strong it is. As for the cost of the treatments, that’s taken care of, too.” He broke off his self-amused chuckle. “Where are you going?”
“The Sherman Supermarket.”
* * * *
I peeled out of Thurston’s neighborhood with Diana-like speed, but slowed to answer the phone.
“Mike, I’m on my way to the supermarket. I can’t talk and risk losing this thread. Didn’t even want to risk the phone IDing you, because it might have distracted me.”
“From what?”
“They call them strands and give them fancy letters.”
“What?”
“That’s what Penny said. And Billie. It’s i-e, not y. Actually, not the supermarket. I’m going to see Penny.”
“I figured that.” He sighed. “This is one of those things you’re not going to tell me, isn’t it?”
“I always tell you eventually.”
“After tormenting me,” said the martyr. “You could leave the phone on—”
“Not this time. Bye, Mike.”
* * * *
Hallelujah.
No one was in Penny’s lane.
She stood at her register, blatantly listening to the chit-chat between the cashier three rows away and a customer with a month’s worth of food.
That was remarkable — a customer chose another cashier over Penny when her line wasn’t practically out the door. On the other hand, this customer and that cashier looked an awful lot alike. Sisters? That would explain it.
I swooped in so fast — and from the front of the store — I startled Penny.
She recovered quickly enough to start her routine greeting. “Well, hi there—”
“Penny, you said the other day that you told Billie that getting the test as a birthday present wasn’t a good idea. That was Billie and Greg Itson?”
“—Elizabeth. You’ve been working so much, I got worried about your supply of cookies. Uh-huh. Told the boy—”
“Greg Itson, the deputy from Horse Creek County?” I needed to be sure. I knew the boy referred to the store’s manager, who was at least forty.
She frowned down at the empty and unmoving track leading to her register.
“—to order more. If there aren’t any on the shelves, I have some in back for you and there’ll be a delivery next week. That’s him. If that’s not enough—”
Between the pointed look at her conveyer belt and the reference to the cookies, I got the hint. I grabbed a candy bar from the nearest rack and set it on the belt. She immediately started it down the track toward her. “A test about their baby? The paternity or—”
“—I’ll get him to get some in from Cody or— The baby? No. Not Isabel’s. No question there. Not with those two. Greg’s. Opening that can of worms so it’d spill all over. Worms —”
“Why would Greg getting an ancestry test not be a good idea?”
With the candy bar rung up, I got another frown. I jerked a magazine out of the closest rack and added that.
“—that twist and tangle and you think you’ve got the end of one but turns out it’s the middle of another. Old ways and shames holding on. And when there’s love and pride — fierce love and fierce pride — mixed in and what you tried to do turns out the opposite of what you’d hoped and those who love you, no matter what the blood, carry on the burden—”
“Greg Itson was adopted.”
“—of the ones before, trying to make things right. Of course. Didn’t I just say so? If that’s all, Elizabeth—”
“No, no. I’m getting more.”
Cans of worms. Ancestry test not a good idea. Blood.
I tossed a pack of gum on the belt, as far from the register as I could. Why couldn’t this darned thing go slower? Or backward. “But Greg didn’t know his blood parents until—”
“Kept Terence Itson alive after his daughter died, having a grandson. Might’ve thought he’d be one not holding with adoption, but there was a tie between those two from the first second. Little bitty baby, but holding onto his Poppy’s finger as strong as anything. But that’s past. And now —”
“—the test results.”
“—pop comes the top of the can off. Worms all over.”
“So it had to be local people,” I said, half to myself. Because Penny couldn’t have predicted, nor witnessed the worms coming out of that particular can unless she already had an inkling…
“A good thing he’s gone now —”
“Who? Who are the birth parents?”
“—the worm’s out of the can. Might’ve been looking over his shoulder, fearing he’d lose Greg. Isn’t that always the question? Though even with a name, you can hardly know who the person really was, especially when they’re gone. Well, bye —”
“No. No! Not this time. You’re going to finish telling me.”
She frowned at the empty belt again.
I grabbed a variety of candy bars — she wasn’t going to ring up multiples on me this time — dropped one to start its path to Penny, then loaded my crooked arm with as many as it could hold. Peripherally aware of someone moving from Penny’s lane to the other checker with a number of backward glances toward me.
Didn’t care.
“Give me a name. I don’t care about a person not really being who you thought they were.”
“No chance to know who they really were then.”
I tossed a candy bar back to the start of the belt. Penny watched it coming toward her with a slightly puzzled expression, as if she didn’t know how to deal with this situation … except by ringing them up one by one.
“Those that knew thought it would go the other way, so they must not have known her. Went right along with it all, quiet as a mouse. Never seemed to mind or wonder and now she’s gone for good and the past—”
She’s gone for good.
Dead. But who?
I kept feeding candy bars onto the belt, like feeding coins into one of those fortune-telling machines to keep it talking.
“—can’t be changed. Be a mess if it could be changed if you asked—”
Melissa was dead, obviously. But she was around Itson’s age. Younger if I had to guess. How could she possibly—?
“Her mother,” I said. Maybe louder than necessary. I dropped my voice. “Melissa’s mother. Barbara Boesch. She was Greg’s mother.”
Our wait for the next of kin had been useless. The distant cousin in Aliquippa, Pa., was not the next of kin. The next of kin was the first to know, since her half-brother found Melissa’s body.
Another candy bar toss. This one didn’t make it all the way to the beginning of the belt, so it wouldn’t buy me as much time as my good tosses.
“—me. Just have different problems from the ones they’ve got now. Barbara Fyall when that all happened. Before she met Dodd Oxley. Then Barbara Oxley. Then Barbara Boesch. Though Fyall was what mattered to her. The family and that’s why—”
“Greg Itson found out Barbara Fyall was his birth mother from an ancestry test, but not until after she’d died. So he—”
“—she went along so meek. Left it all to her parents. Like she left the mess with Magnus Boesch to her daughter.
“—went to Melissa, his half-sister. And, what? Did they get along? Fight? Was she shocked? Frightened? Did she—?”
“Well, bye now.”
I’d run out of candy bars.