(23)

When I woke up, sunlight was bathing my face. I climbed out of bed, not having been visited by my father’s ghost, or if he had shown up, I’d been too exhausted to give a damn.

I discovered my side had swollen up like an overheated tire and my hip bone throbbed. Moving about was no more difficult than trying to drag a wounded rhinoceros off the sheets and dress him in footie pajamas.

I groaned and yipped a little as I eased out of my nightclothes, which was my underwear. Pulling those off was like removing my skin with rusty pliers.

I heel-toed to the bathroom, got into the shower, let the hot water run over me for a long time. I toweled off, took a couple of aspirin I had in my shaving kit, shaved, brushed my teeth, and put on one of my clean shirts. I combed my hair. Doing that felt like I was pulling wire out of my head.

I was limping my way to my car to get breakfast and had just reached the curb when I saw there was a blue current-model Chevy parked down the street from the boardinghouse. The woman behind the steering wheel was watching me.

She was too far away for me to tell much about her. She hadn’t put burnt cork on her face or added orange clown hair to her head. She didn’t get out of the car and come down to beat me up, so that was a plus.

Coincidence, maybe. She might have been looking for a lost cat in the neighborhood and it was standing next to me.

I checked. No cat.

I thought about walking down to ask her what she was up to, but didn’t. She inconsiderately tossed a cigarette butt out the window.

I drove to the café, parked, and went inside. I found a booth, and no sooner had I settled than the woman driver came into the café.

She was fifteen to twenty years older than me, quite attractive in an “I’m going to give you playground suspension” kind of way. Her hair was black and almost to her shoulders. She had well-shaped bones. Her eyes matched her hair. She was nicely turned out in an orange dress, and she had silver bangles on her wrist and hoops in her ears and wore black open-toed shoes with low heels. A black purse only a little larger than a man’s wallet was slung over her shoulder by a strap. If she’d broken a hundred-dollar bill, the change wouldn’t fit inside.

She sat down on the seat across from me. Did it gracefully, like a woman who had been to a few bigwig soirees and didn’t mind a local café either if they offered good service.

I didn’t say anything. I had time.

Apparently, so did she. She smiled at me. Some money had been spent on those teeth. “May I buy you breakfast?” she said.

“May I ask what for?”

The server came over then, a young, freckle-faced woman in a white uniform that had the café’s logo stenciled above the shirt pocket. She was smiley and crisp.

The lady ordered coffee and an English muffin, butter and strawberry jelly on the side. I had pancakes and sausage, and if I could remember what kind of syrup I asked for, I could die a happy man.

“My name is Christine Humbert. Ring any bells?”

“You know Saul, my old boss, right? You’re the editor of the paper here.”

The coffee arrived. A pot and cups, sugar and milk.

“That’s right.” She dipped her spoon into the sugar bowl and stirred the spoon-load into her coffee. She added a splash of milk to it from a tiny pitcher.

I sat and waited.

“I heard about what happened last night, Danny.”

“From whom?”

“Mrs. Chandler called me last night. Kind of late. Said you were very brave. Saul told me you were coming, and if you came to me for a job, I should be nice to you. Mrs. Chandler is a friend of mine, by the way. I came to see you this morning, recognized you from her description, and since you were leaving, I followed.”

“What happened last night—that’s not going in the newspaper, I hope?”

“No. Mrs. Chandler told it to me in confidence.”

“It’s not that confidential. You’re telling it to me.”

“Mrs. Chandler is generally tight-lipped. I think she wants to put you and me together at the paper. She has some bones to pick with this town, and so do I. Husband of hers was a horrible man. Her high-school sweetheart. He was on the football team and she was a cheerleader. That was long ago. Cheerleaders wore more clothes then. I’ve seen the photographs.”

“This the husband that fell down the stairs?”

“She just had the one. Bert. And yes, he seems to have lost a step. Anyway, she told me what happened to you, and a few questions later I realized you’re the one Saul asked me to give a job.”

“I haven’t asked.”

“Not yet. Maybe not at all. But may I lay out a proposal for you?”

“I have a novel to write. Some affairs to settle in town.”

“I might have an idea why you were attacked last night.”

“All right,” I said.

Right then our orders came out. They were placed on the table and our waitress went away.

Christine spread butter thinly on half of her muffin, added a touch of jelly, and took a delicate bite. A mouse couldn’t have nibbled less.

“I think it’s the town elders that arranged that business last night,” she said.

“Why?”

“You’re meddling.”

“I didn’t know I had meddled enough for anyone to know I was meddling.”

“Someone decided you were. Discovering those bones. Wouldn’t take more than fifteen minutes for the town to have that information.”

“Ronnie really discovered the bones. I didn’t even think to look in those car trunks. She did.”

“I know Ronnie. She tries to do her job right. I know you lived with her parents awhile.”

“Things you know, I’m starting to think you might just know Shirley or Jay at the coroner’s office. And one of them could be the blabbermouth about all that. I haven’t discussed that business with Mrs. Chandler.”

“Shirley is my niece. Lovely girl. Thing is, she didn’t gossip. She told me some of it because she went to the Hall of Records to do some research for you and Jay, didn’t find what she wanted. She asked if I could supply some of what she needed from the newspaper morgue.”

“Could you?”

“She came and looked through some things, made some notes. I don’t know exactly what she found. But you have experience in journalism. You know how to get results. You can probably find more than she did. Your old boss told me you were a real bulldog. I’d love you to come work for me.”

“Did Saul tell you I’m writing a novel?”

“He mentioned it less than you have. But novel or no novel, you came here because of what your father did. It’s a well-known event in this town. Story has been floating around, no pun intended, for years. Fact that you lived with a black family for a few months is curious to people. There are old-time racists here who think you doing that, a white child, would be the equivalent of your living with wild animals, like Tarzan being raised by apes. They might even think black would rub off on you.”

“Those sons of bitches can kiss my ass,” I said. “The Candleses are wonderful people. Better than my family ever was.”

“Not everyone here is a bona fide racist, but there are a lot who prefer to go along to get along. Chandler said one of your attackers was white, one black. It’s nice to see even here in East Texas we can have racial cooperation, a lack of prejudice among thugs. Here’s what I’m thinking. They’re afraid you’re going to find things out they don’t want found out. Things that might not have a thing to do with your father or him killing your mother.”

“Part about my mother is unproven at this point. The bones found in my father’s Buick are definitely not hers.”

“Why are you sure?”

“Rather not say. I feel like I’m being interviewed for an article in the paper. You know more about me than I do you. I think you’re using what you know as bait to fish for something bigger. I don’t have anything bigger.”

“Habit. I may run a small-town paper, but I’m an investigative journalist at heart. I worked for a large paper in Dallas at one time. But this place has its own hidden demons. And you, you’re part of a town mystery. And the mystery is bigger than what happened to you. I know that. Lots of people know that, but no one knows the answers, and the real owners of this town, the city council, they are excellent at keeping secrets, some of which I suspect are dark and nasty. You are writing about this town, what happened to your father and mother, right?”

“I don’t know,” I said.

That was a lie. The other day, when I wrote my pages, they had been fictional but based on my experiences. It was highly possible I might retool them to make it more autobiographical.

“Want to research your book and at the same time dig into what goes on here in town while being paid? Write articles about it for my paper as you investigate? You can use those articles to put your book together. Get paid twice that way. Think about it.”

She was smiling at me. Such a nice smile. She was like a black widow spider with investigative skills and an English muffin.

Still, regular money coming in could keep me from spinning out my advance, which wasn’t all that significant.

I sipped my coffee, poured another cup from the pot. “I don’t want a nine-to-five,” I said.

“Okay. But I need some sort of reports from you so I can know where you are with things. First article within a week, and after that, one every week. They will be printed on Sunday. Latest turn-in time would be Fridays. You miss an installment now and then or the research doesn’t pan out, we can recalibrate. That’s a lot of liberty, Danny.”

“What’s it pay?”

She told me. It wasn’t that good, and it wasn’t that bad. Enough a mouse could pretend to be a bear for a while.

“Paper has a morgue with lots of research items about the lake and the old Long Lincoln. You might need that. It’s much better than what the library or the Hall of Records has. Being a reporter for the paper will open a few doors. It’s not going to be like the New York Times, but it’ll help if you’re on the staff. Add to that your natural good looks, which from this viewing seem plentiful, and you’ve got a double-barrel attack going.”

“You know plenty about me. What’s your backstory?”

“I grew up here. Moved off, went to college, got a journalism degree, worked for real papers for several years, then my parents got old. I came back here to help them about five years ago. Within a year they were both dead. I inherited some money. Went to work for the paper, ended up editor, then publisher. I always planned to leave, go back to the city, but I didn’t. I’m a big frog in a small pond here. I like it, you want to know. Strange place. Missing people. Those bones in car trunks. The lake and people drowning in it. It’s like that goddamn lake is made up of misery, pettiness, every mean, soulless act you can imagine, all of it wet with robber-baron dreams. This town is full of oddities, Danny.”

“You make it sound almost supernatural.”

“I’m not ruling that out. Not ruling anything out.”

“What if there’s really nothing to it and you’re just paranoid?”

“Then I’m paranoid. But I’m going to bet you’re paranoid with me. And if you’re not paranoid, I’m going to guess you are at least curious, and maybe, just maybe, you’re thinking you might turn this into a book that really makes you some money and puts you on the map. I know ambition when I see it in someone’s eyes, because when I look in the mirror, besides seeing an excellent-looking woman with good bones, I see that same ambition in my eyes. So, question is, do you want to find out what the hell’s going on or not?”

I only considered long enough to sip my coffee and put the cup down.

“I think I do.”