Billy’s tears welled. “Thank you. But how could she be poisoned, no one would do that. I’ll show you where she kept her whiskey. Could one of those bottles have been that way when she bought it?”
“They were bottles with labels, and sealed? Not someone’s home brew?”
“From the market, yes. She didn’t suffer, then? Except . . . she must have been sick from the poison. But she was dead when the fire began?” Billy couldn’t seem to get beyond that. He wiped his sleeve across his face, and Max put his arm around him.
“Did your neighbor know where she kept her whiskey?”
“Emmylou? Probably. Gran always had a bottle. If Emmylou watched Gran much, she might have seen her go in the cave. You don’t think Emmylou hurt her? She wouldn’t. If she saw anyone else go in the cave, she’d have said, she’d have told Gran.”
“Did they get along all right?”
“Yes, they’d go back and forth for coffee, breakfast sometimes. Emmylou doesn’t drink, but they got along fine. Emmylou tried to see that Gran ate, she’d fix something for the two of them, and for me if I was home. They were fine—until Emmylou couldn’t pay her rent.” Billy shifted on the fence rail. “Gran wouldn’t let her live with us. Emmylou asked if she could, just for a little while, until she found a place to rent, but Gran said our house was too small. Well, there was just one room, our two cots, the stove and table. That’s the only argument they ever had. Emmylou had nowhere to go and I guess not much money. She has another friend in the village, but she’s gone off somewhere. Gran wouldn’t let her stay, but they didn’t fight, exactly.”
“Do you know where she went?”
Billy shook his head. “I guess she’d have to live in her car, an old green Chevy, a four-door.”
“Did Gran keep money in the house?”
He looked down at his worn boots. “Under her bed, under the floor. At least some of it was there. She thought I didn’t know. She’d cash her paycheck, give me some for food, keep the rest for whiskey. Mr. Kraft always gave her money, a wad of money. Maybe she kept that somewhere else.”
“She didn’t put it in the bank?”
“No. In a little tin box under the floor. She thought the box was fireproof. That’s all I know of. Maybe it all burned up.”
“You think Emmylou knew where the money was hidden?”
“I don’t know. I knew, so I guess she could have.”
They were quiet, Billy scraping his boots on the fence rail to dislodge the dried mud from his heels. When Max asked who he should notify about Gran’s death, besides Erik Kraft and Billy’s two aunts, Billy said, “There’s no one else. And my aunts . . . Gran hasn’t seen Debbie in years, she lives up in Oregon. Aunt Esther lives in the village, but she hardly ever came to see Gran. Except at Christmas. She’d bring a basket of food like we were some kind of charity case. She hated that we lived there, she was always so snooty. She hated that Gran drank, she always acted mad at Gran. She didn’t like me much, either. I don’t know why she came.”
“Did your gran ever get any letters, did your aunt Debbie write to her?”
“I never saw any letters. Usually Emmylou brought the mail in from the highway before I got home. I guess Debbie could have written, but Gran never said. Why wouldn’t Gran say, why would she keep that secret? I saw Debbie’s phone number in Gran’s little address book, but Gran never said she talked to her. I guess the book got burned, too.” The boy’s voice was flat, shut down. These two aunts had never been his family, had never tried to be. The two people he cared about had both been taken from him, his mother when he was eight, and now his gran. Now he had no one. A lone child, trying hard to become a man.
Max said, “You don’t know who your father is.”
Billy shook his head. “Before Mama died, she said it didn’t matter, that I only needed her. But then she died.”
Max shifted his position on the fence.
Billy said, “Gran would never talk about it, she said Greta wouldn’t tell her which boy she’d been with, she said the high school was way too lenient, letting the kids do anything. Then she’d start drinking more, and didn’t want to talk to me about it—like it was my fault I had no father. I didn’t understand all of it, then. I was only eight.
“Well,” Billy said, “no one came looking for me. No one ever came there saying he was my father.” He turned to scratch the ears of the bay pony, hiding his face from Max. “After the accident, after Mama’s car went off the bridge, Gran said it was her fault, it was her fault Mama died.”
“Why would it be her fault?”
“Because they fought, because Mama got so mad she ran out in the storm, took off in the car, got in a wreck and died.”
The boy’s words startled Joe. Brought his nightmare reeling back again: the stormy night, the two women yelling at each other, the child huddled on the cot. Shivering, he pushed the memory aside. He didn’t want to think about it, the unbidden nightmare sickened and scared him.
Billy said, “Gran would never tell me what they fought about that night. If I bugged her, she’d just drink more. Before Mama died, she didn’t drink so often. That night, the night Mama died, they were yelling and screaming, and when I tried to make them stop, they yelled at me, told me to go to bed and shut up. It was raining hard. Mama screamed at Gran that she didn’t understand anything and started to cry and slammed out, I heard her take off fast up the road, for the highway.”
Ducking his head, he straightened the pony’s mane. “That was the last I ever saw her. Except for her funeral. That night after the cops came to tell us Mama was dead, Gran said she should have stopped her, should have grabbed her keys, made her stay in the house. But she couldn’t have,” he said angrily. “You couldn’t stop Mama, she’d never listen. You couldn’t make her listen.”
Joe sat shivering, stricken, seeing the scene Billy had painted, reliving his nightmare, every word and every move, the feel of the rain, of his soaking fur. Savagely he licked at a front paw, wished he could lick away the dream as easily as dislodging a blade of grass—wished he could lick away the cruelty of the world, all the ugliness of humankind.
“After Mama died, there was always a bottle. By the stove, by Gran’s bed, under the covers. She stank of whiskey, and it made her mean. I hate the smell. She didn’t want to eat, she’d come home from work with no groceries, nothing in the cupboard, maybe crackers. That’s when I started working at the Peterson ranch, cleaning stalls. They didn’t turn me away because I was so young, I’m good with animals, I did good work for them. I earned enough to buy beans and bread on the way home.”
Joe looked up the lane as Clyde pulled in off the highway, the red king cab kicking up gravel and dust against the taller grass at the edge of the long dirt drive. He parked near the stable, got out and slid his old, folded camping cot out of the bed of the truck, along with some folded blankets and a striped mattress just about thick enough to make a small cat comfortable. Billy dropped down off the fence, took the load from him. Max said, “Get your cot set up, then I want to walk down the hill, have a look at Gran’s cave.”
Billy nodded and disappeared into the stable, as Max fetched a heavy flashlight from the cab of his truck. Joe waited until the chief and Billy headed down across the north pasture, then he slipped into the rank grass outside the fence and followed, slinking along unseen, the tall blades tickling his ears.
8
Where the pasture fell away to the delta below, Joe crouched under the fence among the tall weeds, looking down on the burned shack. Detective Garza was moving slowly through, sorting among the debris, his jeans and blue sweatshirt smeared with ashes, the pockets of his dark windbreaker bulging with what were surely small items of possible evidence, each secured in a paper or plastic bag. Garza’s tan Blazer stood parked near Hesmerra’s rusty old Volvo with its thick coat of smoky ash. Directly below, Max and Billy were clearing the cave entrance, moving the rotting doors and cobwebby boards away from the opening.