On the drive over to the Wolvings, I picked up two six-packs of Bell’s Brown Ale for Tim, and a whole armload of flowers for Tina. After I left the shop, I got to thinkin’ that maybe Tim didn’t drink—I couldn’t decide if I’d seen him with wine at Meryl’s mentalist get-togethers—but in the end, I figured it didn’t matter. If he didn’t want it, I’d take it back, drink it myself.
It was nearly August, and I felt better. Mostly. I hadn’t been driving much, just back and forth to Oelson’s for supplies, and more than one renter had found me asleep at the front desk, once with a puddle of vomit about six inches from my face. Doc Green, whom I’d taken to calling Dr. Mortality, had been right about the detox: kicking whatever she’d been feeding me had been one rough bull to ride. Upchucking and sweats, fevers and chills, seein’ whole galaxies of stars, throbbing headaches, wishing I were dead—yeah, I felt all of that and more, but the worst part was that sleep wasn’t a refuge. Every time I passed out, there was Trooper DeKoven offering me the next in an endless series of hellfire tirades about responsibility and owning up and paying for my sins. Only at the end, when the drugs finally kicked free of my system, did he finally fade into the background, and not a minute too soon. The good doc had had it in for me, sure, but she’d never realized that in DeKoven, she had a collaborator.
The truth was, I knew what she’d been feeding me. The Silvas’ pet doctor had done what Mariel had said, and they’d passed on the results of their Seitapar and E-Tecrased analysis straight to Renner’s phone. Once he sent along the .pdf, that was the last nail in Sienna Green’s coffin so far as I was concerned. I didn’t know most all the chemical names, but the lab had added a scathing summary at the bottom of the page. “Rat poison,” they wrote, “does not belong in anyone’s medicine cabinet, or in tablet form. Nor do benzene and crack cocaine. We’ve submitted these samples to the FDA and Interpol. Whoever manufactures them needs to be put out of business, possibly with extreme prejudice.”
Well. That much was done, at least for a while.
The E-Tecrased wasn’t much better, but it wasn’t outright poison. That stuff was caffeine and a whole monkey-barrel of major narcotics. Uppers on top of uppers. No wonder I loved takin’ that stuff. No freaking wonder. Iris had been right to call me a junkie, and the reverend should have. I wondered sometimes why he hadn’t.
Me and Renner hadn’t seen each other since we’d got back, except once when I’d checked on him at Munson. Not that our in-town stranger act was any real surprise. We simply weren’t everyday kind of friends. Most men aren’t, when you get right down to it, at least not without an intermediary, like sports or a favorite spot in a line-up of well-loved barstools. I knew I’d see him eventually, if only to help out with the next phase of his cockamamie model Neil House Hotel—which frankly, thanks to me, was damn close to museum quality.
At the Wolvings’ drive, I honked once to let them know they had a visitor, and I got my gifts bundled into my arms. That fountain of flowers, a real spray of gladiolas, just about hid me from view, but when Tina opened up, she knew me right away.
“Dale,” she said, no more, no less.
“Tina, good to see you,” I said, and then felt stupid, ’cos I couldn’t see her at all. I shoved the flowers toward her. “Got you a present.”
She didn’t take them. “How long have we known each other?” she asked, and I could tell just by her voice that she hadn’t let go of the door.
“I don’t know. Three, three and a half years? Here, will you take the God damn flowers?”
“Tim’s allergic.”
“Great. Don’t tell me he’s allergic to beer, too.” I set the flowers down on the stoop with a sigh that I’m sure was needlessly enormous, but I kept hold of the beer. It was the only peace offering I had left, and I figured having it handy might keep a lid on my rising temper.
Now that I could see her, the whole visit got rockier still. Tina had on the sort of outfit that most people don’t wear outside the bedroom, and never to answer the door. It was a little black teddy sort of number complete with garters and thigh-high stockings, all of which left her polar-white belly button clear for all to see. On her face, she’d painted a black bandit’s mask, so she looked like a raccoon. On her head, she wore a satin top hat, and on her feet, classy black stilettos that I didn’t dare think of as fuck-me pumps. As for what she had on ’round her lady bits, suffice it to say it was black and tight and there weren’t much of it.
Any normal red-blooded American male would have gotten a rise out of that view, but on that day, I guess I couldn’t manage to be a single one of those things, ’cos the more I took in Tina, who frankly looked stunning—far better than I’d ever have thought possible—the more I thought about Jill, and how she’d looked when I’d tracked her down at her office, waving the letter she’d left on my—on our—bed. The worst part was that Jill, at least in my presence, didn’t cry. I’d assumed she would. Hell, I knew she would. But she just sat there, quivering and hurt and angry and flushed, with some kind of titanium steel bars set between herself and tears. Damn it, if she’d cried, I could have comforted her. If she’d cried, I could have made everything all right. When she didn’t, I had nothin’ left except retreat, and banishment, and another ten days of on-my-own detox back at Shelter From the Storm.
I wrote her letters, every single day. Cards, too: the finest, most expensive cards that Hallmark ever put out. I sent emails. Flowers. I figured out where she was staying (at a cousin’s) and had bottles of wine delivered—in wicker baskets, no less. No good. What I got for my trouble was a visit from Larry Karlson, in his sheriff’s car and in full uniform, to let me know that if I kept “harassing” “Miss Young” he’d have to set me up with a restraining order.
Now Larry and I go way back, or as far back as two men can given that I’ve only been in Michigan a hair over four years, and we talked it out over the hind end of a six-pack, but he was not to be moved, even though he was on my side start to finish. “The law’s the law,” he said, “and the law don’t care how much you love this girl. You’ve gotta back off, okay? You’ve just got to.”
I still didn’t know what exactly Dr. Mortality told Jill, or how. Nor did I know when. All I knew was that she’d made good and sure that Jill was the price I’d pay for hounding her out of town.
Except it hadn’t been me who’d done it. That was all Renner’s doing, with a little assist from Bonesy, and the reverend, he hadn’t paid any kind of price at all.
Now, faced with half-naked Tina Wolving and with nothing much left in my arsenal except a bad stomach and a lot of pent-up anger, I said, “Can I come in?”
She made a flicking gesture with her hand, a movement meant to indicate everything she had on—or didn’t have on—head to toe. “Now is not really the best time.”
From somewhere deep in the bowels of the house, I heard Tim call out, “Hey, Tina! Are you coming back? Who’s at the door?”
One thing I knew for sure, I did not want to see what Tim was wearing. So much for inviting myself in.
“Think what you like,” she said, “but we’re rehearsing.”
I cocked an eyebrow.
“Cabaret,” she said. “We do a cabaret act. Tim plays piano. I sing and dance.” She did a quick move that might have been a shuffle-ball change by way of demonstration. Whatever it was, I had to admit it looked, even in a doorway in broad daylight, something close to slick.
“Fine,” I said, and I set the six-packs on the stoop next to the flowers. “But just so we’re clear, this here, and me coming today, this was a peace offering. Your toaster was right on. I’m sorry I couldn’t see it at the kickoff, but I guess nobody’s perfect. So this is me saying thank you, and…” I swallowed, conjured up a mental image of a big tall sword and me falling on it belly first, and managed to finish my sentence. “I’m sorry. I’m one of the good guys, I really am.”
With that, I turned on my heel and walked back to my truck, wondering as I went why anybody needed an actual restraining order when the world was already hip deep in all manner of No Trespassing signs.
I hauled open the driver’s side door, but then a last thought struck me, and I looked back to Tina, who hadn’t moved, and didn’t seem to mind that she was displaying herself for the en-tire neighborhood to see. Not that there was anybody around. No traffic, and what houses there were had that work-week look: quiet and likely empty.
“Hey,” I called, “can I just ask, what in hell do you two do for a living?”
I damn near couldn’t believe it, but Tina laughed. “Dale,” she said, “do you realize that in all the years we’ve known you, that’s the first time you’ve asked us about us?”
I froze, ’cos I just knew that weren’t the case. Sheer hooey. False memory syndrome, or worse, an outright lie.
Or was it?
Once I got a better grip on my voice, I said, “That’s somethin’ I guess I need to work on. And I will. Work on it, I mean.”
“I guess I look forward to that.”
I sighed and stared at my boots, which suddenly seemed just south of silly in a burg like Traverse City. Work boots, sure, but cowboy boots? I mean, it was a real good thing that I could once again get my right foot inside any shoe at all, but when was the last time I’d set up shop on a ranch, much less put a saddle on a horse?
To Tina I said, “So does that mean I don’t get an answer?”
Shaking her head, she said, “We own a gutter replacement company. Double T. You’ve seen the billboards, I know you have. I think one of our teams even did a couple of your cabins a few years back.”
“No way.”
“Sure. You just never saw us. We stay out of sight, mostly work from home. I mean, we used to be right there, you know? Up on the ladders, hauling materials, you name it. But what can I say? In the old days, we would’ve went on pretty much every job, but not now. We’ve risen in the world.” She crossed her arms as if finally aware that her breasts and most of the rest of her were currently a matter of public record, and she looked first left and then right, checking out the street. Then she returned her attention to me, head cocked. “Look, you can come in if you want. For a minute. I’ll re-introduce you to the R1490.”
I shook my head. Despite myself, even despite Jill, that outfit of hers was beginning to get my attention. “Maybe some other time.”
Tina didn’t push the point. “So we’ll see you next week, at Meryl’s?”
“Yeah. Maybe.”
Tina stepped outside long enough to pick up the two six-packs. As she bent over, I did the right thing and looked the other direction, down at the F-150’s muddy floor. The last thing she said before I drove off was that she’d tell her brother I’d stopped by.
I ran by Ace on the way home, picked up a jar of spackling compound, and spent the afternoon buried in repair projects, one cabin at a time. It was a better afternoon than some, I suppose. Jill wouldn’t stay out of my thoughts for more than two minutes at a stretch, but at least I only got the shakes twice. Progress, right? The first few days after getting home, I’d been laid out almost hourly.
Doc Mortality’s offices had been razed by the city within twenty-four hours of Renner and me bein’ escorted out—in cuffs, no less. They didn’t hold us for long. I mean, hell, what were they gonna charge us with? And the more they looked into “Doctor” Sienna Green, the less they liked what they found. Every medical license she had was forged, faked, or stolen. Most all her patients needed hospitalization for one thing or another, and every last man jack of them had gotten sicker, not better, under her care. From Larry Karlson, I heard rumors that more than a couple city councilmen plus the chief of police were all in a dither, because paperwork was comin’ to light that made it real clear that they’d fast-tracked everything the good doctor had needed to open up her practice—which, as it turned out, hadn’t even been a year old when I bumbled through her doors. As for the witnesses to Doc Green’s fight with Bonesy, they told such outrageous and conflicting stories that nobody but nobody believed them. Blood and gore, fountains of it, that was about the only detail on which any of them were consistent, and law enforcement finally threw up its collective hands and wrote the testimonials off to an excess of slasher movies and hyper-violent videos.
The real problem was, there weren’t no body. Doc Green was missing, sure, but she wasn’t presumed dead. Larry told me she was officially on the “wanted” lists, and her name had been sent on to the FBI. I considered telling him they shouldn’t waste their time, that Sienna Green, when next she popped up, would have a whole different name and probably different hair. I wondered, with a kind of pang I wasn’t proud of, what she’d look like as a strawberry blonde.
Late afternoon meant it was time to get up to the office in case of any check-ins. In better days, some of them not so long ago, it wouldn’t necessarily have had to be me holding down the desk. Once upon a time, I’d had an assistant to cover at least a third of the more important shifts. In fact, there’d been a steady parade of assistants over the years, mostly passing-through folks, college kids, people in need of a spot of extra work to make ends meet, and most of them, no matter how transient, were great to have around, but the last one—the best one—had been a warm and wonderful gal by the name of Jill.
I pushed the door open and banged my way inside. I had a couple of choices, pretty stark in their way, and it was time to pick my poison. On the one hand, there was the Yellow Pages. See, I’d just the day before bumped into Bradley Festus, and we’d shot the breeze for a while talkin’ about this and that, and he’d said without a second’s hesitation that chemo sucked. As for radiation, he’d only had one dose, and already it hurt like hell to take a whizz and his underwear was chafing somethin’ awful. Then he asked if I’d got myself to a doctor for a check-up.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “Been there, done that.”
Cynicism aside, I knew that what I ought to do was set down my tools and reach for the phone. It had only been a stroke of bad luck the first time around, right? Lightning never strikes twice. I mean, what were the odds that the next doctor I picked at random from the Yellow Pages would be some kind of hell-spawn relative of Dr. Mortality?
Next to none, that was the answer, clear as a pig in mud. One in a million.
And that was what I’d lost with Jill: one in a million.
I set my tools down. I took a long look at my dog-eared Yellow Pages, and then, with my cowboy boots leading the charge, I headed straight for the whiskey.