A few years of no contact drifted by. The last time I saw her was at our fifteenth high school class reunion, the month before. She was happy, she said. Business was good, she said, though she had not made her million yet; what the hell, goals were made to be ignored. Or anyway, adjusted. Was money still her main goal? She shrugged. What about her personal life? She was married and had a little girl, four years old.
“I still think John was the love of my life,” she said. “Sometimes at night I still think of him. And cry a little.”
John was killed in Vietnam.
“Me too,” I said.
She was wearing layered clothing, earth tones. She had on a clunky, funky necklace. She still had her nice little shape, her freckles, her red hair in an attractive shag. “I wish you could see my little girl,” she said.
“I’d love to. Who’s staying with her?”
“She’s with her daddy.”
“I haven’t seen J.T. for a long time.”
She shrugged. “We’re separated.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, uh, what’s your little girl’s name?”
“Sunflower Moonbeam.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She grinned. “I’m relieved you didn’t bite on that one. I’m not that burnt-out an old hippie. Her name’s Malinda. Mal for short.”
“You’re just saying that.”
“No — it’s true.”
“That’s nice. That’s sweet.”
“You never really forgave me, did you, Mal?”
“For what?”
“You know.”
I knew.
“I tried,” I said.
“I cut you too deep, didn’t I?”
“I guess.”
“I’m sorry.”
“I know.”
“I’m glad I got to see you again.”
“I am too.”
“I’m just in Iowa City, you know. We should see each other more often.”
“We should. Let’s make a point of it.”
A month later, and she was dead.
2
The phone rang me awake.
He must’ve let it ring twenty times or I would have just worked it into my dream and ignored it; but finally I was shuffling out of bed, glancing at the fluorescent hands of the little round clock on my nightstand, heading for the phone, grumbling.
“Y-yes?” I said. My voice must’ve sounded as thick as my mouth felt.
“Mallory, sorry to wake you. It’s Sheriff Brennan.”
“Brennan?”
“Yeah. Sorry. Look uh — I got a situation, here, and—”
“It’s three o’clock in the fucking morning!”
There was a pause, then: “Do you eat with that mouth?”
I tasted my tongue. “Maybe not, from here on out.” My brain was gradually sending me the signal that Brennan wouldn’t be calling at this hour unless it was an emergency. I waited for him to confirm that suspicion.
He did: “A friend of yours is dead. Little Ginnie Mullens.”
The phone sits in a recess in the wall in the nook that joins the bedroom, office, bathroom, and dining room of my small house. By the phone, there’s a chair. I sat in it.
“Mallory?”
I sighed. “I heard you.”
“You don’t seem very — surprised.”
“I haven’t had time to get around to that yet.”
“Shot in the head.”
“Oh, no.”
“Looks to be a suicide.”
“Aw, shit.”
“I thought you’d want to know.”
“I–I do. Uh. Thank you for calling.”
“She was a friend of my son’s, you know.”
Brennan was the father of my late friend John. Who’d died in Vietnam. Who’d been Ginnie’s high school sweetheart.
“Yeah. I know. Brennan?”
“Yeah?”
“This could’ve waited till morning.”
“Yeah, suppose it could’ve.”
“I’m not giving you a hard time for calling — I appreciate it and everything. But why didn’t you wait till morning?”
He cleared his throat. Brennan’s not the type to get nervous; he’s a big man in his fifties who has been sheriff of Port County for as long as I can remember. The kind of sheriff who wears a Stetson hat and gets away with it.
But he seemed awkward, even nervous, now.
He said, “Thought you’d rather hear it from me.”
I smiled. This was no time to be smiling, and maybe that was my nerves. But Brennan and I had never gotten along really well; not when John and I were friends in high school, or even when we went to Vietnam on the buddy system together, or especially when I came home and was a long-haired vet actively against the war. Especially not then.
My hair was shorter now, and I was a respectable citizen. I wrote books. Didn’t make a fortune at it, but was no longer just a scruffy guy living in a trailer on East Hill who talked about wanting to write. I was a clean-shaven “author” who lived in a house. More a bungalow, but anyway not a trailer, though still on East Hill.
Yeah, I’d arrived. I was straight again, and down on drug use, and up with people, and all the square things Ginnie had made fun of me for when we were drifting apart our senior year in high school.
“Are you okay, kid?”
I wasn’t a kid anymore, either, but somehow I liked hearing Brennan call me that — over the phone at least. It was comforting, in some weird way. I wiped the wetness off my face with my hand and wiped my hand on my T-shirt.
I said, “Let’s not kid each other. You don’t think enough of me to do me any favors, Brennan. What’s this about?”
There was another long pause. Another clearing of his throat. And then a forced laugh.
“Yeah, well, I know we’ve had our bad moments. But you were my son’s friend, and—”
“Brennan. What?”
“I’m still at the scene.”
“The scene?”
“Of the crime.”
“Crime? You said it was suicide.”
“Suicide’s a crime, ain’t it?”
“Suicide sounds like the sort of case you could solve even without my help.”
“Let’s not bicker, son.”
Hearing him call me “son” sent a lump to my throat. I couldn’t tell you why.
But I said, “Sorry. That was uncalled for.”
“Yeah, it was. How would you like to come out here?”
It was a farmhouse on a blacktop just off Highway 22, just past West Liberty. A big, stark white two-story with gothic lines set in a valley between two hills, sitting against a clear, starry summer sky. In the daytime this country looked like Grant Wood had painted it, and the farmhouse might’ve been the one his couple with the stern expressions and pitchfork posed in front of. At night it was just a farmhouse, and in the moonlight the rich rolling hills looked a barren gray. The only color was provided by the ambulance pulled into the graveled drive, its cherrytop turning and painting all in its path red, as two young men were loading a covered stretcher into the back. I got out of my car and walked over.
Big Brennan, badge pinned to the light summer jacket over his cream-colored shirt, stood with his hands on his hips, gun-butt jutting, and pushed his Stetson back on his head, smiling tightly at me. He brushed a well-greased lock of brown hair off his lined forehead. He looked like a Marlboro man, only he didn’t smoke.
“Nice of you to come.”
“Nice of you to ask.”
There was an awkward moment. Twice over the last eight years I’d been involved in murder cases that Brennan had handled. I am by no stretch of the imagination a detective, professional or amateur or anything else. My writing has dealt with crime, however, which is, I guess, the connection. Anyway, those two times, Brennan had been less than hospitable to my presence. Understandably. I was a civilian, getting in the way.
On the other hand, I had proved unexpectedly helpful in both instances. And the last of the two instances — a couple of years ago — had left Brennan and me in a state of uneasy truce.