Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Emerald slept for six hours without waking up, so I did too. That was amazing. We were up around five. I was a little groggy, so I barely remember changing her, tickling her until she was giggling, and then bringing her downstairs for a breakfast of rice cereal and crushed blueberries.
I do remember that the baby—and I—were covered with mushy blueberries when the landline rang. I grabbed it before the second ring, getting blueberries and cereal all over the receiver. The phone, the high chair, the baby and I were now covered. Had I gotten any breakfast into Emerald?
“Hello,” I whispered into the phone. The last thing I wanted to do was wake up my grandmother.
“How could you not call me!” Opal screamed.
And that was when I realized I’d never plugged my phone into the charger. It was sitting on my desk upstairs still dead.
“Um, my phone died.”
“Your phone died! Your phone died? Denny died!”
“I know. I’m the one who found him.”
“Carl found out on MySpace.”
I’d heard of MySpace. I should sign up. It sounds like it might be useful.
“I’m sorry. But you know, it sucks no matter how Carl found out.”
“He’s devastated.”
“I’m sure he is.”
“I’m going over to his house. You should come with me.”
“No. I really shouldn’t.”
“He’s going to have questions.”
“He doesn’t want the answers I have.”
“Okay… so lie.”
“No problem. ‘I heard that people had broken into this summer house to… do light drugs and have intellectual conversations. Denny was so interested in the conversations he stayed there for days and did lots and lots of the light, almost harmless drugs that his heart exploded, which couldn’t possibly have been as painful as it sounds because he died with a look of satisfied contentment on his face.’ Is that what you want me to say? ”
“Somewhere in between that and what you actually saw. I’ll pick you up in forty-five minutes.”
I hung up the blueberry-coated phone. I planned to go outside and tell her no again when she arrived, which didn’t mean I had nothing to do. First, I needed to wipe down my sister. Then I’d put her into the playpen long enough to take a shower.
Playpens were much more useful than I thought, and I probably should have relented and brought it out before now.
I really should pay less attention to random women I meet at Meijer than I had been.
I mean, ten minutes in a playpen was unlikely to scar my sister for life.
And if it did leave a scar, it was unlikely to be worse than the scars growing up with my mother would leave.
I knew my mother would come back at some point. Hopefully before Emerald was potty-trained, though after was a distinct possibility. Maybe she and her new husband would be heading back to Los Angeles and I could hitch a ride. With her and the baby. She might even need a sitter.
Having a new stepfather was always a problem.
This one was rich, of course. Usually they had some money, but this one really seemed to have a lot.
Enough to go bankrupt. Or rather, his company was going bankrupt.
Bankruptcy for rich people was like plastic surgery, painful while it was happening but rejuvenating afterward.
My guess was David would be rich again by the time my mother reappeared.
It was barely six o’clock in the morning when Opal showed up.
My grandmother wasn’t awake yet. The Today show hadn’t even started.
I had dressed Emerald in the pink snowsuit my mother had sent.
It was labeled nine months, but it fit her just fine.
I got her tucked into her car seat and she began to fuss.
So I gave her the plastic keys, which I knew would buy me a few minutes.
I put on my puffer coat, my Bassett Hound hat and stepped into my boots.
Of course, I wasn’t going with Opal. I’d explain that when she got there then maybe go out to breakfast—though I couldn’t think of anyplace open before seven.
Then after breakfast, I’d go to the sheriff’s office to talk with Detective Lehmann.
That was the plan, but then Opal was in the driveway honking her horn. That had to stop, she was going to wake up my grandmother and that wouldn’t be good. I grabbed the car seat and hurried out the back door. I went directly to the driver’s side.
She rolled down the window, and said, “Get in.”
“I’m not going with you.”
“You look like you’re going with me.”
“I’m taking myself out for breakfast.”
“Where? No place is open until seven.”
I didn’t have a good answer to that. Obviously, I wasn’t going to sit out in front of a restaurant in the middle of winter with a baby in the car. So, what would I do?
“I can’t stay very long. I have to go to the sheriff’s office.”
“Get in.”
I might not have, but I noticed my grandmother had gotten up and was now looking out at us through the porch window.
I wrangled the baby seat into the back of the ladybug—which, by the way, is challenging enough to suggest it might merit its own Olympic event—and then climbed into the passenger seat.
As she pulled out onto M-22, Opal said, “The visual of you with a baby is really wrong.”
“Thank you. I assume that’s a compliment.”
“It’s not.”
We were silent until we were driving through the village of Masons Bay. As we passed Pastiche, she asked, “How did you find him?”
“I went to see Ronnie, like you asked me to. He said he’d heard about the house they were using.”
“Do you think Ronnie sold it to him? The meth that killed him?”
The was an emphatic yes. Probably. But what I said was, “I don’t know. Does it matter?”
“And you have no idea who he might have been with?”
“No idea.”
I could tell she wanted someone to blame.
Someone other than Denny. But this wasn’t like other situations where someone sold you something and it killed you—it wasn’t a car that exploded on impact and you had assumed it was safe.
It wasn’t a new drug that had a nasty side effect of giving people strokes.
No, this was a situation where Denny knew exactly what might happen.
He knew that meth might kill him. And he had to have known the longer he took it the more likely it was that it would kill him. None of this was a surprise.
“It’s Denny’s own fault.”
“Don’t say that to Carl. If he wants to blame the man in the moon let him.”
“The man in the moon isn’t real.”
“And stop taking things literally. At least for an hour.”
Carl Burke lived with his mother, Ivy Greene, north of Masons Bay a half a mile from Patty Gauthier.
M-22 turned inland around there and began to climb, which was why Ivy Greene’s lot was much larger than Patty’s.
Patty’s house took up nearly her entire lot, while Ivy’s was built into the side of a hill and sloped down to the water.
The house was surrounded by trees, mostly evergreen and, given all the snow, looked like it belonged in the Alps.
It was three stories, an odd three stories.
The front door led into what was really the cellar.
You went through the laundry room into a family room.
I assumed there was a living room upstairs with a kitchen, dining room and bedrooms, though I’d never been there.
We knocked and waited. When nothing happened, Opal pushed the unlocked door open and went in.
“Really?”
“We have a baby with us. We can’t stay out here in the cold.” Then she called out, “Ivy! Carl!”
From deep in the house, Ivy called out, “Coming.”
We went into the family room with its beat-up leather sectional and TV. Emerald was beginning to fuss, so I unbelted her and took her out of the car seat. I bounced her around and swung her back and forth until she was giggling. Opal stared at us, and then muttered, “So wrong.”
Ivy came down the stairs. She was in her mid-forties but looked much younger, had dyed red hair which needed a touch up, and her lips were beginning to crease from having been pursed so much. Immediately, she walked over to Opal and hugged her.
“Thank you for coming. Carl needs his friends.” Then she looked at me with a touch of confusion. “I didn’t know you and Carl were close. Or do you just show up when people die?”
“Henry’s the one who found Denny. I thought he might be able to answer any questions Carl had.”
She looked at me suspiciously, as though I might suddenly start attacking people, but then Emerald let out a burp much too large for someone her size.
“My goodness. Is this your sister?”
“Emerald.”
“May I?” Ivy held her arms out to take the baby. I passed her over.
It’s strange the way we pass babies around.
They’re precious things, valuable. We’d never dream of asking to hold other valuable things.
If I had a rare piece of ancient pottery, no one would say, ‘oh lemme hold it’ and if they did, and I said, ‘no’ they’d understand.
But if I said, ‘No, you can’t hold my sister, she’s too precious’ no one would understand. Reluctantly, I handed her over.
After making a bunch of ridiculous sounds at my sister, Ivy asked me, “And how is your mother?”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“That’s right. I heard that she abandoned her baby. Although, I don’t know how she could. Emmie’s just so adorable.”
“Emerald,” I corrected.
Here’s the thing about relatives. When I say my mother abandoned us—and yes, I know I say that a lot—it’s one thing. But when other people say it, well, it’s vaguely insulting.
“She had some things to take care of,” I said, holding my arms out for me sister.
Reluctantly, Ivy gave the baby back to me. Then asked, “What sort of things?”
“She got married to Emerald’s father.”
“Oh, that’s lovely. How was the wedding?”
“Small.”
“You probably want to take her out of that snowsuit while she’s inside. You don’t want her to overheat.”
“We won’t be here long.”
Opal stomped on my foot. I gritted my teeth as I waited for the pain to subside.
There was a noise on the stairs and Carl came down. Ivy hurried over to the bottom of the stairs, nearly knocking Opal over. “Sweetheart, if it’s too much you don’t have to come down.”
“I want to see Opal.”
“All right. She’s right here.”
Carl had reached the bottom of the stairs. He looked smaller somehow. He was still tall, thin, and sharply drawn, but now… well it was like the difference between a watercolor and ink sketch. Denny’s death had drawn the color from him and left only dark scratches.
“Well,” Ivy said. “I’ve got coffee upstairs and cinnamon buns. I’ll bring them down.”
“You didn’t need to come,” Carl said as his mother went upstairs.
“Yes, I did. I’m so sorry, Carl,” Opal said.
“I meant him.”
Great. I didn’t want to be there and he didn’t want me there. This was going to be pleasant.
“He found Denny. I knew you’d have questions.”
His eyes flared, and he demanded, “Who killed him? Who killed Denny?”
“It was an overdose.”
“Were you there?”
“No. Of course not. I don’t do… meth.” Nor would I lower my standards enough to find people to have sex with while on—
“Then how do you know he wasn’t murdered?”
He had me there. I wasn’t one hundred percent certain, but Denny was known to be an addict, was found in a location where people were known to be doing drugs, he was naked, and there didn’t seem to be any indication of another cause of death.
“The sheriff didn’t send Detective Lehmann. They don’t consider it a suspicious death.”
“The sheriff is an idiot. And he lives in Florida.”
“Well, there’s that,” I had to admit. “But, honestly…” And here a lie seemed appropriate. “He looked peaceful. I’m not sure people who are murdered look peaceful.”
Yes, he looked more surprised than peaceful. But surprised didn’t mean murdered either. Murdered would be terror, horror, anger… and mostly fear. There had been fear on Bobbie’s face and there had been none of that on Denny’s.
Ivy came down the stairs with a tray holding a pot of coffee, mugs, cream and sugar, and the cinnamon rolls. She put the tray down on the coffee table, and said, “Help yourselves.”
I put Emerald back in the car seat and sat down across from the coffee, poured myself a cup and put a roll on a napkin. I was starving. And if I’m being honest, still a bit groggy from the Ativan I’d had the night before.
“He was murdered,” Carl said to his mother.
I had a mouthful of cinnamon roll, so all I could do was shake my head and mumble, “I middn’t zay…”
“Let’s wait to see what the sheriff says,” Ivy said.
“They don’t care. You know they don’t care.”
“Henry’s working for a private investigator,” Opal said.
“Really?” Ivy said. “How odd.”
“He could look into it. And he wouldn’t charge you.”
“Excuse me?” I’d managed to swallow. I also managed to move my foot before Opal could stomp on it.
“Would you?” Carl asked. “Would you do that?”
I really wanted to say no. I mean, it was obviously an overdose. One that Carl should have seen coming a long time ago. On the other hand, I realized it would get me out of there if I played it…
“I could talk to Detective Lehmann for you. See if there’s any reason to suspect it wasn’t an overdose. In fact, I’m due at the sheriff’s office soon. Opal’s going to drive me there.”
“At seven-thirty in the morning?” Ivy asked.
“They’re open twenty-four seven.”