It took only an hour for her to load a beat-up eighties-style Volvo with suitcases and cardboard boxes. She turned right on Beech Street. I cursed at not having Esteban’s car to tail her, but it didn’t really matter. Right was south toward I-70, the big cross-country highway that could take her all the way to Los Angeles in the west or New Jersey in the east. I memorized the license plate, wrote it down for future use, walked back up the driveway, broke in through a side window. The white furniture was the only thing that wasn’t tossed, although the sofa had been pushed way up against the wall, maybe to give her room to pack.
And pack she had.
Drawers opened, clothes scattered, pictures ripped from the walls, a bed stripped. Method to the madness. They had rehearsed this.
No photographs, no diaries, no books.
No books. I thought at the very least I’d see some of his books, maybe flip through the titles while Karen made me a cup of coffee.
I rummaged in the trash but even that gave no clues, just a few nondescript bills. Everything incriminating gone. Tonight it would be burned and dropped in a trash can at some random truck stop.
I put a plastic bag over my arm and shoved it down the U bend of the toilet, but that was clean too.
I did the whole house. A quick brace and then a longer backward trace.
Nothing.
I sat on the sofa.
Memories. Guilt. Tears. Ricky said not to fall for that trip, and he was right.
Be like an alchemist. Transmogrify guilt to anger. Easy after Karen had brought his death so vividly to my mind.
I stood, addressed the void: “I don’t know what you thought you were doing here, Dad, I don’t know what you filled her head with, but you did a number on her, all right, just like you did on us. And… and I want you to know something: I’m angry at you, I’m angry that you left us, that you didn’t write, that you missed my quince and you sent nothing. I haven’t done a poem since you left, and Mom’s half crazy, and we’re all stuck in Cuba. You fucked us, old man, fucked us good.”
I left through the front door and had gone a kilometer along Beech before I turned and walked back.
Something was nagging at me. Something about the sofa.
In through the window.
No reason for her to move it.
I shoved it and found the place where she’d tried to rip up the floorboards.
She’d spent some time on it but she didn’t have a claw hammer and she was in a terrible rush.
I did have a hammer.
I smashed out the nails and ripped up the floor. One board, two boards. Dirt. A plastic bag. Inside the bag another bag, inside the second bag a gun.
Dad’s? I looked at it. It was strange. It was certainly a clue. If I had the time I’d check it out.
I sat back on the sofa. Sat there for a long time. Light marched across the floor.
The patterns changed.
A gnawing sound. A mouse investigating the mayhem. It looked at me with surprise.
Run, mouselet, I spare thee.
Yes. Run, run, run from the Cubans and enemies real and imaginary.
I fished in my pocket, found where I had written Karen’s license number, ripped it up, and flushed the pieces down the toilet.
You’ll be safe, Karen.
Safer, at least, than your husband’s killer.
No. That poor bastard. I wouldn’t want to be him a few hours from now, on a sad, cold, December night in Nowhere, Wyoming.
15 THE BOOK OF CHANGES
The arithmetical process of elimination. Our two primary suspects and Esteban were three of the solutions to the case, but they weren’t all of the solutions, and I knew I wouldn’t be comfortable until I had dealt with every possibility, no matter how remote. At this last stage of the game I knew I was going to have to see about Ricky’s golf cart. I probably should have investigated this one first, but I’d been putting it at the back of my mind. It would be a ridiculous way for a man to die. Run over by a purple golf cart whose speed topped out at ten kph, but all ways to die were equally absurd and somehow in all this craziness it wouldn’t have been inappropriate.
The Scientology Drop-In Center was next to Donna Karan.
I decided to drop in.
Metallic walls, massive air-conditioning pods, dark, uncomfortable-looking chairs around an ebony coffee table. Scientology magazines, newsletters, booklets, and of course various texts by L. Ron Hubbard. The reception desk was a long curve of black marble. I’d never seen black marble before and I was impressed.
I stood there and ran my fingers along the grain.
The receptionist looked up.
Pretty, with a Stepford hairdo and dress, she had a glazed Hero of the Revolution expression about her.
“Yes?”
“I was wondering if I could see Toby Armstrong. I’m an insurance inves-”
“Oh yes. Toby’s available right now if you want to go in. It will have to be brief, he’s auditing at two. IV Room number two, first on the left.”
IV Room #2.
Toby was sitting behind a desk, surfing the Web on a tiny silver Toshiba laptop. He was skinny with a raggedy gold sweater, blond hair, and a sallow, distant expression. His eyes were black, tired, and startled when I came in unannounced. He quickly pulled down the cover on the Toshiba.
“Can I help you?” he asked.
“Yes, I read that you crashed a golf cart at-”
Toby stood and offered me his hand. It was moist, limp, the nails dirty and bitten to the quick. He rubbed his face, sat back down, and reached into a drawer under his desk. He brought out a long white booklet and a pencil and passed them across to me. He didn’t appear to have taken in what I had begun to say. “I suppose they told you that this is going to have to be quick. I’ve got an audit at two,” he muttered.
“So they said.”
He stood again, his left eye twitched alarmingly for a moment, and then, abruptly, he left the office.
“Wait a minute,” I said. I went to the door and tried to follow him but it was locked from the outside.
“Excuse me! Excuse me!” I called out.
The door opened and the receptionist came back in. She was holding a glass of water.
“Oh, please take a seat, Miss…”
“Martinez.”
“Please take a seat, Miss Martinez. Just fill out that questionnaire and Toby will be back in to see you in a moment. And do drink the water, it’s very dry in here.”
She gave me a winning American smile and I found myself sitting.
The door closed.
I drank the water, opened the questionnaire.
I faked the career history and personal data pages, info dumping a fictional CV I was quite proud of. Inez Martinez 3.0 was a young Latina from Denver, who had become an insurance agent after attending Harvard University. Hmm, was that credible? Harvard, well, it was too late now. I’d made her magna cum laude and a member of the basketball team.
I started answering the other questions. It was amusing. A distraction.
They grew increasingly weirder as the pages turned.
Q. 43: “If your mother divorced your father and married someone of a different race would you A) Be angry? B) Be happy? C) Be worried about the opinion of others? D) Have no opinion?” I wrote D.
Q. 89: “When you are hunting and the quarry enters your sights, do you squeeze the trigger with A) Satisfaction? B) Regret? C) Joy? D) Emptiness?” I wrote D again, thinking about nightmares of dead men in the desert.
Q. 100: “If it were proven that there was life on Mars would you A) Move there? B) Stay on Earth? C) Question the findings of the scientists? D) Reevaluate your religious beliefs?”
Q. 102: “Where are you most at ease: A) The nonsmoking section of a cinema? B) A discotheque? C) An airport departure lounge? D) An airport arrivals lounge?”
I had just finished question 200 and closed the booklet when Toby came back in.