WE ENDED UP at the Sea Captain’s House on North Ocean Boulevard. So much for Emilio’s advice. At least he’d pointed us in the right direction. On our way out of the hotel Jeri had asked the desk clerk what she recommended. The woman, a cheerful redhead in her twenties, said the Sea Captain had the best food on the Strand.
A former bed and breakfast overlooking the ocean, it had a lot of rambling rooms, dark wood, heavy tables and chairs. By the time we got there the water was purple black, foaming under a sky full of rose and orchid clouds, going black. To the north and south, the condos and nightspots along the Grand Strand had come alive with lights.
I had French bread, she-crab soup, and a platter of crab cakes and bass. Jeri had the soup and baked catfish on a bed of wild rice. And we had wine, a full bottle of Mondavi Chardonnay 2007 that set the tone for everything else that took place that evening.
“To the PI’s life,” I said, toasting us.
“Yeah, right.” She raised her glass, gave me a smile that showed perfect white teeth.
“If not to that, then to expense accounts and filthy-rich clients.”
Her smile widened. “To filthy clients.” She clinked my glass with hers and took another good-sized sip.
I had an excellent crème brûlée for dessert, but Jeri was in a perpetual karate-training, employee-thrashing, waist-watching mode, which apparently didn’t include empty calories. She poured the last of the wine into her glass and watched while I made a pig of myself.
“One bite?” I offered. “A nibble?”
“Nope.”
“Want to smell it?”
She smiled and shook her head, hair dancing, then drained the last bit of wine from her glass.
It was full dark by the time we went outside. I’d had less to drink than Jeri and outweighed her by about a hundred pounds—which hadn’t meant anything when it came to shoving and judo, but meant something in terms of sobriety.
“I’ll drive.” Deftly, I grabbed the keys from her. It was a sign of trouble that I did it so easily, like David Carradine in Kung Fu, snatching pebbles from the Master’s hand.
“Don’t trust me, huh?” she said.
“I trust you. I’ll drive anyway.”
“Coward.”
I nosed out onto Ocean Boulevard, prepared to turn left, back to the Meridian. “No,” Jeri said. “Go right.”
“What for?”
“Let’s go up to North Myrtle Beach.”
“What for?”
“A drink, maybe a dance. Explore.”
I was going to say “What for” again but decided not to push my luck. She was still tough, not drunk enough for me to risk another rib shot. And although it was nearly ten o’clock here, it was three hours earlier in Reno. I decided I could stay awake another hour or two.
I got onto Business Route 17, drove past the Carolina Opry, then merged with freeway traffic rolling north on Highway 17. The river of lights flowed past dark golf courses, tidal flats and lakes on one side, the Intracoastal Waterway on the other. Up past Briarcliffe Acres and the town of Atlantic Beach, then into North Myrtle Beach. We ended up at Crazy Zach’s on Second Avenue near Tilghman’s Pier. Zach’s was a huge place surrounded by palms, featuring four different bars, each with a different kind of music, take your pick, the whole thing more or less contained under one roof.
We parked, walked through splashes of neon, ground lighting, and the laughter of kids. To me, now pulling forty rather than pushing it, kids meant men and women Jeri’s age or younger, further evidence that life is not only unfair, but that the good years are too damned short. We went inside, out of a rising wind coming off the ocean, making palm fronds rattle. Somewhere out there, Beryl was on the way. I thought it would be fun if they name the “D” storm Dori or Doreen, after my mother. Mom would make a terrific hurricane.
I steered us away from “Get Ur Freak On” and into what seemed like the tamest of Zach’s bars, at least for the moment. A song was playing that I didn’t recognize, no surprise there, but at least it wasn’t ear-shattering. And it had a modicum of musical quality to it.
When the Beatles first hit America I wasn’t yet in the planning stages. I was raised on “Help!” and “Penny Lane” and “Hey Jude,” which weren’t quite oldies at the time, but getting there. If there was any sort of message or subtext to any of those songs, it went right by me. Of course, “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” referred to LSD, but I didn’t pick up on that either. I was too busy spinning donuts on my hot wheels. These days, you can tune into exploitative sex, instructions regarding suicide or homicide, and encouragement to kill policemen or rape your ho. Our de facto youth guidance counselors, many of them rappers, sometimes end up in prison, which seems like a damn good idea to me. The garbage in their songs turns to shit in the real world. They hit the wall and burn. I smile and sleep better every time that happens.
Jeri and I sat at a table with a candle on it in a dark corner of the room, twenty feet from a dance floor of polished wood. The room held about forty people. I ordered a Bud Lite and Jeri got a strawberry daiquiri in a glass the size of a birdbath. It was a Monday night, quiet enough that we could talk, if we kept our heads close together. She told me more about her brother Ron, and her father, mother, and a sister, Alyson, twenty-five years old, with two out-of-control kids, a self-destructing marriage and an on-again-off-again drug habit—cocaine, a step up from marijuana. Alyson was living proof that if it was handed to you, you might still not end up with any of it, because “it” was vapor, illusion. You can’t hold the hard work of others in your hands. Only you are real, who and what you are, what you make of your life. Jeri’s words, not mine. Too bad, since they rang so true.
When I asked her about powerlifting, her face came alive. She told me it was her drug, that and judo, Aikido, a little tae kwon do.
“Not private eye work?” I asked.
“You kiddin’?” By then she was working on her third daiquiri, stirring the icy slush with a thin red straw. I’d dropped down to Diet Pepsi, letting the sugar high lapse. “Six years ago I weighed a hunnerd ’n’ fourteen pounds. Good pounds, ’cause of the judo, but I’m one thirty-two now, you believe that? I’m twenny-eight years old, Mort, five three an’ a half, and I’ve never felt better or more thorou’ly alive in my whole life.”
She was also more than a little thorou’ly drunk, face flushed, eyes bright. I said, “You missed blood pressure, cholesterol count, waist and shoe size, and all kinds of important astrology stuff.”
She stared at me for a moment, then laughed. “I just mean…I feel great.”
“I’m glad.”
She punched my shoulder. “You shit.”
“No, I mean it. Christ, you look terrific.” I rubbed my shoulder. Maybe I could get the hotel to send up an ice pack for it later.
“Yeah?”
She was pleased, I could tell. Her eyes were out of focus and her mouth looked softer, almost kissable—an unexpected thought that made me uncomfortable.
“Yeah,” I said.
She sipped her drink. “I’m a Libra. I wear size seven shoes. Waist is twenny-six, an’ I’m a thirty-four B.”
Yep, drunk as a skunk. Otherwise that 34-B thing wouldn’t have made it out of her mouth.
Ten minutes later, I was ready to call it quits. That’s when she ordered her fourth daiquiri, drank a quarter of it as soon as it arrived, then hauled me out of my chair and onto the dance floor. She was limber and sinuous, alluring in a compact, well-lubricated way, eyes bright, out of focus. She moved well, with lots of nice gliding hip and waist movement that might have drawn applause in Rio. I moved like I hadn’t danced since Lennon was alive, and hadn’t enjoyed it then.
Men’s eyes followed her across the dance floor, and more than a few women’s as well. Jeri didn’t notice, didn’t care.
Back at the table she said, “You’re stiff, Morry.” Her tongue was starting to go.
“It’s probably the wig.”
“So…take id off.”
“And cause a riot?”
“You won.” She looked around. “Idz dark. No one here’d care if you kill mayors or anything.”
So I took the silly thing off, stuffed it like a dead Pekingese back against the wall. I gave it a hard look and said, “Down. Stay.” Jeri laughed.
A slow dance started up. Jeri dragged me back to the floor, then clung to me like a starfish to an oyster with her cheek pressed firmly against my chest, hair on her head tickling my chin.
She looked up at me with luminous eyes. “‘S nice, huh?”
“Very.”
I could feel her breasts. They were solid, like the rest of her, but yielding under the pressure between us. She was warm. The pressure increased, and the yielding. Her hands moved on my back. None of which computed with what she’d said that first day in Reno, the day we’d met.
Partway through her fifth daiquiri I had to hold her up on the dance floor, sort of carry her around, holding her against me.
“We oughta go soon,” I said.
“Yeeowww,” she murmured, almost a purr. I hadn’t had much in the way of conversation out of her in the past twenty minutes.
“Let’s go, Jer.”
“O-yeah, les’go, uh-huh. Bag-oo da ‘ot’l.”
Not a good sign. I recovered the Pekingese, Jeri’s purse, and guided her out the door to the car.
I got on 17 and headed south, toward the glare of lights that was Myrtle Beach, one very drunk Geraldine DiFrazzia, PI, beside me with her head resting on my shoulder.
Her face tilted up at me. “Iz Kella ver’ pridye?”
“What?”
She struggled to speak. “Is Kelya ver’ priddy?”
“Kayla? Yeah, she is.”
“Priddyer ‘n me?”
“C’mon, Jeri.”
“Iz, izn’ she?” Her head lolled. “You god ’er, you do’n wan’ me.”
I didn’t know what to say. Maybe nothing would have mattered. It wasn’t likely she would remember any of this in the morning. But it mattered to me.
I was formulating a half-assed reply meant to clarify the situation when she began to snore.
Just as well.
I settled back, drove the car.
* * *
I had an attendant at the Meridian park the Mustang and leave the keys at the front desk. Jeri stumbled along as I helped her into the elevator and up to our floor. The activity woke her up some. I steered her toward her room.
“No,” she said suddenly. “Your room, Morry.” How she was able to tell one room from another, I didn’t know. I didn’t think she could see walls at that point.
She wouldn’t have it any other way, however, so I opened my door and half-carried her inside.
I plopped her down on the bed.
“Oof!” she said, landing on her back, then she struggled to sit up. I helped her. She started to unbutton her shirt, then gave up. “You do id,” she said.
I unbuttoned it, not without misgivings. She took it off, flapping one arm to free herself, then said, “Bra,” looking at me with ten-pound eyelids.
“You sure?”
“Uhdo id.”
I unhooked it. It was one of those ultra-sheer numbers that offered support but didn’t hide much. She shrugged it off. She had wonderful breasts, firm, capped with dark, medium-sized nipples.
She rubbed them absently, then slowly toppled onto her left side and passed out, snoring so faintly it was barely audible.
“Jeri?”
No answer.
I lifted her feet onto the bed. She was solid and muscular, but she’d lost that etched and steely look I’d seen in her gym. She was catlike, a lynx, slack now, but with an underlying readiness—a much different type than Kayla, but every bit as sexy.
I pondered my next move. She probably needed a shower. I know I did. But I was damned if I was going to give her one and have her wake up in the middle of it and rip my heart out—or wake up the next morning, see how clean she was, put two and two together, and rip my heart out, an organ I have valued highly over the years.
I removed her sandals, then stripped off her pants. She wore dark-blue bikini panties, no lace. I left those right where they were. I pulled back the covers on one side of the bed, rolled her over, then covered her. I hung up her shirt and folded her slacks over the back of a chair. I left, after rummaging in her purse for the key to her room—one of those cards with a magnetic strip.
In her room, I phoned home again. Still no answer. I didn’t like that one bit, but there wasn’t anything I could do about it. I took a long shower, hot then cool, toweled myself dry, then grabbed the TV remote and went to bed. I caught the last of the news—sports—and Leno’s monologue. No mention of those murderous ne’er-do-wells, Mortimer or Dallas Angel. We’d fallen off the national radar screen, disappeared beneath a fresh layer of murk. Scandals, a roller-skating dog, weird medical findings, the latest problems with Obamacare, and a bungled bank robbery had eclipsed us, thank God.
I turned off the tube and settled into the sheets. Visions of Jeri in the next room toyed with the more impressionable regions of my brain, then I sank down into a deep, dreamless sleep.
* * *
The rain came at 2:05 that morning, a sudden rattling against the window that jerked me awake. It sounded like tiny stones at first, distinct hits, then a barrage, escalating to a low continuous roar of wind and water that finally lulled me back to sleep.
I woke up a few minutes past three when Jeri turned on the light by the bed and looked down at me, swaying slightly on her feet. Her hair was damp and tangly and she had a towel wrapped around her. Rain was still thundering down. I had the idiot idea that she’d been out walking in it.
“I threw ub,” she said, speaking with effort, doing a pretty good job of enunciating, all things considered.
“Did you?”
“I didn’ make id to the bathroom. The bed’s a mess.” She blinked owlishly at me.
“Why am I not surprised?”
“I toog a shower. I’m clean. Can I sleeb here, Mord, wisch you?”
“That could get complicated, Jeri.”
“You mean ’cause of Kelza?”
“Kayla.”
“I need sleeb. I’m so dizzy. I won’…try anythig, I promiz.”
“Are you all through throwing up?”
“Yes.”
I patted the bed next to me. She turned off the light and came around to the other side. I heard the towel drop, then she slid in beside me. I couldn’t tell how she was dressed, but she’d just come from a shower and all I’d seen was that towel, so odds were she was naked, which is the kind of deductive power that separates world-class PIs from your run-of-the-mill PIs.
“How’d you get in?” I asked.
“I use the phone by the elevadors and call down an’ tol’ ’em I logged myself oud by assident.”
“Wearing only a towel?”
“Well, I didn’ tell ’em thad. A kid broad a mazzer key. Nod a big deal. I bet weirder things habben ’round here alla time. I mean, this is my room.”
“A kid, huh?”
“Sorta. He was like aroun’ twenny.”
No doubt Jeri had made his day, or night. For a while I listened to the downpour outside. It was a soothing sound, watery, something you don’t hear much in Reno.
“Mord?”
“Yeah?”
“Juss lizzen to id. All thad rain.”
“It’s great. Christ, I miss rain. I guess people who live here probably get sick of it, but after years of Nevada…”
“I know.” For a moment we lay there, listening to it. “Mord?”
“Yeah?”
“Could I like…hold you? Juz for a while.”
“Sure.”
She shifted in the dark, pressed herself against my side, and put an arm across my chest. I smelled rum and wine on her breath, and toothpaste, and soap. She suddenly felt more real to me, more human. Not that iron piston I thought I knew, but a young, vulnerable woman trying to get by in a rough world. Twenty-eight years old. To me she was young, but she would see herself approaching thirty. She would be staring at the hard press of time, wondering where the last five years had gone, starting to have an idea how fast the next five would go.
I thought about Kayla. Would she care about this? Hard to say. Would she understand? Hell, did I? I decided I didn’t, not entirely, but that was nothing new. I have a history of not understanding things, then having them slam into me at high speeds.
She was warm. She was wonderful. She was hard and soft and pliant and naked and everything one might hope for in a woman. This gumshoe business was definitely underrated.
I was confused as hell. I felt every breath she took. I switched off the words and listened to the rain, secure in this temporary womb, the wild din and wet of it out there beyond the windows, howling off the ocean, glad that it wasn’t a full-scale hurricane.
Jeri shifted her arm, placing her hand on my chest. Her elbow ended up touching my erection.
“Oop, sorry,” she said, moving her arm an inch.
“It’s okay. Go to sleep.”
“Not so awvly sorry, Mord.”
* * *
She drifted off.
I knew what it was, of course. Pheromones, a la Mike Hammer. Spores, burst out of an unknown pod, fatally attractive to the fair sex. I had acquired it or them that Monday when I’d woken up as a private investigator, a whole new man. It had started about then, all these women.
Before Monday—year upon year before, after Dallas divorced me—I’d lived a traditional IRS life of longing and near-celibacy. God’s curse, no doubt, as if sexual fulfillment was not meant for those who confiscated the piggy banks of eight year olds and spread misery throughout the land with the steamroller weight of the federal government behind them. But of course, the rationalization is that it’s a lousy job and somebody has to do it. Which wouldn’t be true if we had a rational tax code.
Since Monday I’d had three gorgeous women in my bed and one scantily clad beauty beckoning to me from a doorway, even if she was a scary little brat.
Greg hadn’t been wrong, the cad. He’d been trying to throw me off track, wanting to keep it all to himself. But I figured it out, Greg, you twerp. Now I know. Except you didn’t have to die. There was plenty of it to go around, enough for both of us.
So darn much of it.
* * *
I woke up at eight thirty. Jeri was still out cold. I slid quietly out of bed and hopped into the shower to wake up, running the water hot, then cold, like the night before. When I came out in a towel, she was standing at the window, looking out at the storm, wearing nothing but panties.
“How’s your head?” I asked.
She didn’t turn around. “Hurts. I’ll be okay.”
“What time’s our flight back?”
“Not till four fifteen.” Her speech had improved markedly in the past few hours.
“How’s that storm looking?”
She turned her head. “Wet. Windy.”
“Think we can make it? I’m worried about Kayla. She’s not answering the phone.”
Jeri faced the storm again. “We’ll make it. If they haven’t closed the airport.”
We ate at a place called Aleece’s. Jeri toyed with her oatmeal and toast. I had grits with butter, salt and red-eye gravy, scrambled eggs, ham, sausage, two plates of toast and strawberry jam, coffee.
“Gawd,” Jeri said, staring at her oatmeal. Her skin had a pale greenish cast.
“We oughta stay another night,” I said. “Go out drinkin’ again. Paint the town red from one end to the other.”
“Ha, ha. You’re so not funny.”
I leaned closer to her. “Even when you look like hell, Jeri, you look good.” And I meant it, but I wasn’t sure why I said it. Maybe I was trying to make her feel better.
She almost smiled. “Go fly a kite, buster.”
Buster paid the tab and we went outside into a downpour that turned the whole world gray and misty. Visibility was a quarter mile. Jeri drove. She wanted to do something. I didn’t object since she was steady on her feet. I wanted to get a look at the country, what little of it could be seen from inside the unruly fringe of a tropical storm.
We went west on Highway 501, past 17 and the Intracoastal Waterway, past tobacco fields, half a dozen misty golf courses, the Myrtle Beach Speedway, shaggy waterlogged cypress, tupelo and palmetto, creeks full of brown water. Rain slanted down, unending buckets of it that turned the highway into a quarter-inch-deep sheet of gray water and oily bubbles. Jeri had to keep the speed down to avoid hydroplaning.
We turned onto Business Route 501. Houses outside Conway came into view. Watery neon signs glowed in the dimness beneath a turbulent sky. Conway was a town of about twelve thousand people, a bucolic place of modest but generally well-kept Victorian, Georgian and Federal houses, Colonial, some recent nameless junk. It looked like the kind of place a person named Jewel Holmquist would live. Spanish moss swayed in the limbs of live oaks, dripping water. Water raced down gutters and flooded street corners in dirty swirling pools, clogged with leaves.
We stopped at a small market on a corner. The place had two gas pumps and an empty bench out front, RC Cola signs, the ghost of a fading Nehi ad painted on a brick wall. A traffic light danced on a wire strung across the intersection.
We dashed inside. A morbidly obese woman in a blue housedress was behind a counter smoking a cigarette, watching a tabloid show on a small television, something about pregnant teenage hookers who’d returned home with AIDS. Educational and uplifting. Who could ask for more at ten in the morning? Jeri asked for directions while I tried to look interested in a selection of flavored potato chips, extra crunchy Cheetos, and spicy pork rinds.
Back in the Mustang, we dripped water on the seats and grinned at each other.
“Wow,” she said, wiping water from her face.
“Watch out. That shirt’s going see-through. The bra, too,” I added unnecessarily, but included it for the sake of completeness and accuracy.
“If it bothers you, don’t look.”
“Doesn’t bother me.”
“What’d you mention it for?”
“Just so you’d know.”
“Yeah, well, I know. Not much I can do about it, is there? If it bothers you, don’t look.” She gave me a look.
I shrugged. “Doesn’t bother me in the least.”
“So we’re all good here, huh?”
“Great.” She backed out and took off. We went down a main street with a few traffic lights, turned left, then left again, cruising slowly through a neighborhood of older homes, mostly two-story houses with gables and clapboard, deep porches, old oaks bearded with moss in the front yards.
Jeri slowed the car, pointed. “There it is. Six eighty-eight.”
It was half the size of Sjorgen House in Reno, but similar: white clapboard, a turret, gingerbread trim, two red brick chimneys, one at either end of the house. The windows were dark. Its gutters were overflowing with rainwater, and a For Sale sign was in the front yard, shuddering in the wind.
“C’mon,” Jeri said, opening her door.
We ran to the porch. I rang the bell, water leaking down my back from my hair.
The house looked empty, felt empty.
I rang the bell again. Jeri cupped her hands and peered in through a window. She looked at me and shook her head.
I turned, looked back at the street. “Now what?”
She rang the bell eight or ten times, then knocked, hard, tried the handle. It was locked. Finally she gave up. “Now we go talk to the neighbors.”
We dashed across the street to a Georgian house with a hipped roof and columns, red brick, splashing through what seemed like one continuous puddle.
A spindly woman opened the door, hair done up in a bun, eyes dark. “Yes?”
“Do you know the people who used to live over there?” Jeri asked, pointing across the street.
The woman’s face went stony. She shut the door without a word. Jeri looked at me, shrugged.
“Not what you’d call a good sign, huh?” I said.
“Not very, but it’s a sign, Mort. Let it register. C’mon.”
We ran down to the next house, arriving under a porch overhang as soaked as if we’d stepped out of a shower. Jeri’s shirt was all but transparent.
“You better hope a guy answers,” I told her.
“You ring, okay?”
I did. A man in his seventies opened the door and looked out at us. “Hep you?” He looked past me to Jeri. He had a twenty-pound cat in his arms that might have been dead, except that it was purring like a moped with a bad muffler, peering at me with one yellow eye.
Jeri edged around me. “We were wondering if you know the folks in that house.” She pointed.
“What’d you want to know?”
“Well, where they are, for one thing.”
He looked at her for a moment, then at me. “Better come on in, huh? Wet out there.”
We trailed him into a parlor that had been decorated by a woman, which I recognize as a sexist remark and not necessarily true, but the room was full of flowered sofas and chairs, lace curtains and doilies, a red velvet loveseat, ceramic and jade figurines, a few dolls in satin dresses. But whoever had decorated the room was long gone, or so I thought by the film of dust covering everything, and the brown plants in pots by the windows, as dry and dead as cornstalks in December. Jeri and I stood in the room, looking around.
“Holmquist,” the man said. “Either a you kin?”
“No,” Jeri replied.
“Know ’em pretty good, do ya?”
“Not really.”
“Then why’re you lookin’ for ’em?”
“I’m a private investigator,” Jeri said.
He looked her up and down, then grunted, evidently satisfied with the explanation. He stuck out his hand, which both Jeri and I shook. “Name’s Kennedy. Kennedy Lynch.” He held up the cat and grinned. “This here’s Johnson, vice president. Go on, sit wherever it suits ya. Water’ll dry all right.”
He didn’t offer Jeri a towel, so either he liked the look or it didn’t occur to him.
Jeri and I sat on a couch. Kennedy and Johnson took an armchair facing us. Kennedy had on khaki slacks and a brown sweater covered in cat hair. The hair on his head looked as if he’d slept in it for several weeks since it had last seen a comb. A stale smell of bacon hovered in the air, and a powerful reek of Old Spice.
“Ask yer questions,” Kennedy said when he was settled.
“Are the Holmquists gone?” Jeri asked.
“Reckon so. Place’s been sittin’ empty for over two months now. Realtors come and go. Housing market’s not so good around here right now. Might be too hot, muggy. Be better in September.”
“Do you know where they went?”
“Didn’t consult me, ma’am. Though if I had to guess, I’d say Reno. Way out in Nevada.”
“Please, call me Jeri.”
Kennedy smiled. “Jerry. That there’s a man’s name.” He stroked Johnson’s fur, eliciting a purr as loud as a muffled paper shredder.
“Reno?” Jeri said. “Why Reno?”
“That’s where they’re from. They come an’ they go.”
“Do you know Jacoba?”
“Knew her, yep.”
“Knew?”
“She died about twenty years ago. You don’t know much, Miss Private Eye.”
“I’m trying to find out,” she said.
“Jacoba was simple. Beautiful, but about as simple as they come,” Kennedy said.
“How did she die?”
“Story is, which my Olivia got over the back fence and you kin take that for what it’s worth, is that she fell, slipped and hit her head in the tub.”
“What about Jewel?”
“She died too, couple a years back. Near a hundred years old, she was. After that, it was just those two women.”
“Victoria and Winter.”
“Yep.” He looked fondly down at Johnson. “I’ve been in this house goin’ on forty-six years. Jewel Holmquist was here long before that. Wouldn’t take up with no man, that lady, not that I ever tried.”
We waited. Jeri took my hand. It was warm, small, as firm as a chunk of cured ham.
Kennedy went on: “Long time ago, upwards of forty years, Jacoba showed up. Came all the way from Reno. Jewel’s sister sent her. I don’t recollect her name, though, the sister’s. Pretty as a picture, Jacoba was, but just a kid. Pregnant, which’s why she come out. Just startin’ to show.”
“Did she have the baby?” Jeri asked.
“Yep. Jewel named ’er. Called ’er Victoria, but I s’pose you’d know that, huh?” He gave us a squinty look.
“How were they?” I asked.
“What d’you mean?”
“As a family. How did they act?”
He shrugged, running a hand over Johnson’s fur. Cat was lucky to have any left. “Quiet. Kept to themselves. Jewel took ’em off to church Sundays, Jacoba and Victoria. Other than that, I didn’t see ’em around much.”
“Except…?” Jeri prompted.
“Well, I seen ’em a few times, now and then, over the years—Jacoba and Victoria. Down at the store, around. Nothing regular. Victoria was a kid, but when she was seven or eight years old she was like a mother to Jacoba, tellin’ her what to do, doin’ things for her. I saw her tie Jacoba’s shoes once, right out in front of the house. It didn’t take no special insight to see that Victoria loved her mama, simple as Jacoba was.”
“Do you remember what year Jacoba died?”
He thought about it, then started counting on his fingers, lips moving silently. Outside, the storm raged. The water sounded like birdshot against the window. It ran in sheets down the glass, causing the street to ripple wildly.
“Be about twenty years, I’d say. That was the year my grandson Ricky was born. If Olivia was alive, she’d know to the day, God rest ’er.”
Twenty years. That sounded familiar. What had happened twenty years ago? Something. I could feel it clumping around in my brain, trying to get out. Things do that more now than when I was thirty, facts trapped in there like convicts serving a life sentence.
“How did Jewel and Victoria take her death?” Jeri asked.
“Jewel was okay. She took most everything like an old Marine. Nothing bothered her. I called her Rushmore, after the mountain, all those stone faces. Olivia’d shush me when I did, but Jewel had that look. Victoria took Jacoba’s passing pretty doggone hard, though, way I heard it. Fourteen, fifteen years old. Olivia said she was a handful. Got that over the back fence too. Probably true, though, since Victoria went back to Reno not long after Jacoba died.”
Jeri looked at me in surprise.
Kennedy stroked the cat. “I heard tell Jewel couldn’t take any more. You know how kids can be.”
“But then—Victoria must’ve come back,” Jeri said. “You said she and Winter left only recently.”
“Oh, yeah. Victoria came back, all right. She was only gone for a couple or three months.”
“How was she?” Jeri asked. “Better?”
“All depends on your point of view. She was as pregnant as two cats, that’s how she was.” He smiled at the expression that bit of news put on Jeri’s face.
“With Winter,” I said.
He nodded. “Yep. Victoria swelled up, then by and by along came Winter. Weird doggone name, huh? Cute kid, though. Grew up beautiful, like her mama, but thin. Not enough meat on her, I always thought.”
A moment of silence spun out, filled with the sound of wind and rain.
“So Victoria and Winter lived with Jewel?” Jeri asked, trying to keep Kennedy talking.
“Yep. Kinda peculiar, those two.”
“What do you mean?”
“If ’n you saw Victoria, you saw Winter.”
“You mean they were close?”
“Close, yeah. Like each was the other’s shadow. Never saw anything like it.”
“Well, they were mother and daughter.”
“Even so.” He rubbed Johnson’s ears.
A thought occurred to me. I said, “Did Winter go to school?”
“Victoria taught her. Home schooled her. All the rage, now, from what I hear. Not quite so much back then.”
“She never went to a regular school?” Jeri asked.
“Not that I ever saw. Other kids’d take the bus. Stops right out there on the corner, but I never saw Winter get on with ’em. Like I said, if you saw Winter, you saw Victoria. Two of ’em was like Siamese twins.”
More silence. Jeri squeezed my hand. It felt nice.
Finally, I said, “Has there been any trouble around here lately? Say in the past year or two.”
“What kinda trouble?”
“Nothing specific. Just…anything serious. Something that might get the police involved.”
Kennedy pursed his lips, thinking. “A kid a couple of streets over was killed. Caused a fair commotion for a day or two. Boy was only seventeen.”
“How long ago?”
“Couple or three months back.”
“How’d he die?”
“Gunshot, from what I heard. Drilled ’im right through the heart. Bullet went straight on through, didn’t tear up much inside, so they’re thinking .22 caliber. Probably the reason no one heard anything, too. Detectives come around asking everyone in the neighborhood if they saw anything, heard anything. I was sorry I couldn’t hep ’em any, but…” He shrugged.
“Did they catch the killer?”
“Not that I heard.”
I thought about that, couldn’t make anything of it. I looked at Jeri. She shook her head at me.
“Anything else?” she asked.
A few seconds ticked by. “Was a suicide some years back. Two houses down.” He nodded up the street. “Guess it’d be four years ago. Arvin Weldon lost his job, got himself fired, hung himself off his second-floor banister with a bedsheet. Didn’t know him all that good. Guy was something of a loner, kept pretty much to himself. We’d talk about the weather if we ran into each other, that’s about it.”
I couldn’t make anything of that, either.
Half a minute of silence dragged by.
Jeri squeezed my hand again and gave me a look, a little shrug with her mouth that meant she’d run out of questions. I didn’t know what else to ask, either.
I started to get up, but suddenly Jeri’s hand tightened on mine and she held me down. She was looking at Kennedy.
His eyes were bright, eager, waiting. There was something more, secrets floating around in that dark light in his eyes. Jeri had spotted it.
“What else?” she asked him.
Kennedy smiled mysteriously, eyes shifting between us. “That girl, Winter, turned into quite a looker, same as her mama.”
I’d told Jeri as much, and Kennedy had said the same thing a few minutes ago. But there was more to it. “Yes?” Jeri prompted him.
“History,” he said slowly, “has a way of repeatin’ itself.”
“What do you mean?”
Whatever it was, it was good. He wanted to drag it out, savor it, chew on it a while, but couldn’t figure out how to go about it. At last he shrugged and said, “Four, five years ago, the two of ’em took off for a while. Month or so. When they got back, Winter was pregnant. Just like her mama, just like Jacoba. Fifteen year old, she was, an’ knocked up.”
I felt cold at his words. Jeri leaned forward a little.
“Had a kid, too, name of Miranda. My Olivia died that same year, September. Only way I can remember anything nowadays, seems like. Either a you want some ice tea?”