“You didn’t know her the way I did.”
“I knew her well enough. Same thing with Ty. He might have been cute, but he had no class at all. Anyway, enough of this. It’s over and done. There’s no sense going over the same ground twice.”
“I agree. We can’t change the past. No matter what went down, we’re accountable.”
“Exactly.” Kathy reached for the bottle and topped off her wine, wiping her mouth against the back of her hand. “Lola says I should talk to that divorce attorney from San Luis Obispo. Stanley Blum. He’s a real shark according to her. He charges a fortune, but he’s good. She says I gotta fight back, and I better be quick.”
“You remember Moral Rearmament?”
“Ha. You’re talking to the all-time champ here. Moral Rearmament was my middle name.”
“You still think it’s right? Absolute Honesty?”
“Are you kidding? Of course.”
“And that’s what friends do, help one another when we stray from the path?”
Kathy rolled her eyes in exasperation. “Look, Lies, don’t think I’m unaware of your snotty tone. You can be as mad as you want, but I did it for you. I agonized-honestly-but I had to follow my conscience. I make no apology for that so I hope you’re not waiting for one. You want to blame me? Well, fine, you go right ahead, but you should be thanking me instead. What if you’d ended up married to the guy? Have you ever thought about that?”
“Aren’t you even sorry?”
“Haven’t you heard a word I said? I’m not going to apologize for doing what I thought was right. I didn’t want you making a mistake you’d regret for the rest of your life.”
“Never mind. All right. I get that.”
“At long last.”
“I guess, if it came down to it, I’d do the same for you.”
“I know you would and I appreciate your saying that. You’re a good friend.” Kathy leaned forward as though to hug her, but Liza remained upright and Kathy was forced to convert the gesture into something else. She brushed a speck from her skirt and then took another sip of wine with a hand that trembled slightly.
“As a matter of fact, I did.”
“Pardon?”
“I did the same thing for you. You meddled in my life so I decided I should meddle in yours.”
Kathy lowered her glass.
Liza’s tone was mild but her gaze was unwavering. “I called Winston this afternoon. I told him about Phillip.”
“You told him?”
Liza laughed. “I did. Every last detail.”
I hadn’t meant to stay at Liza’s as long as I did, but once Kathy left, we had to sit and do a postmortem. Liza seemed lighter and freer than I’d ever seen her. We laughed and chatted until I happened to glance at my watch. 8:39. “Wow, I gotta get out of here. I didn’t realize it was so late. Where’s the sheriff’s substation?”
“It’s on Foster Road over by the airport. Here, I’ll draw you a map. It’s not hard,” she said. “The quickest route is to cut down from Highway 166 to Winslet Road on Dinsmore.”
“Oh yeah, I’ve seen that,” I said.
Liza drew a crude map on a paper napkin. The scale was off, but I got the general idea.
I tucked the napkin in my pocket. “Thanks. As soon as I get this last piece of information, I’m heading over there. I trust they have a copier. The originals are Daisy’s, but I want one set for my files and one set for theirs.”
“You’ll be driving home after that?”
“I have to. I’ve got a stack of files on my desk, plus mail, plus calls to return. If I don’t get back to work, I won’t eat this month.”
We hugged quickly. When I left, she was standing in the doorway, silhouetted in the light from the living room. She watched until I was safely in my car and then she waved. I started the engine and pulled away from the curb, taking another quick peek at my watch. Mrs. Wyrick struck me as a stickler for punctuality, someone who’d lock the door and turn the lights out if you were one minute late. She’d love nothing better than to shut me down.
The temperature had dropped and the night was considerably colder than it had been when I left Daisy’s. I sped over to Main Street, which turned into Highway 166. Traffic was light and once I had Santa Maria at my back, the darkness stretched out in all directions-broad fields of black rimmed in lights where a house or two backed up to the empty land. The air smelled damp. My headlights cut a path in front of me into which I rushed. I had only a rough idea how far away she was. This section of the county was uncomplicated, five or six roads that ran in straight lines, cattywumpus to one another so that they occasionally intersected. I was currently heading toward the ocean, which was somewhere ahead, fenced off by a low rim of hills marked in darker black against the gray-black of the sky.
Now and then I passed an oil rig and farther on a huge storage tank, lighted from below as though to emphasize its mass. Barbed-wire fences ran on both sides of the road. I could see the ghosts of irrigation pipes zigzagging across a field where the available moonlight picked out the lines of PVC in white. A stand of frail pines was the only feathery interruption to the skyline. I caught a flash of bright blue-Mrs. Wyrick’s house, a hundred feet off the highway and planted in the middle of a junkyard.
I slowed and turned onto the rutted dirt driveway. She lived in a landscape of rusted farm equipment, disabled vehicles, piles of lumber, wood pallets, and scrolls of chicken-wire fencing. This was apparently where old bathroom fixtures came to die once the renovations were done. I could see sinks, toilets, and upended bathtubs. In another area, sections of wrought-iron fencing had been laid against a wooden shed. There were sufficient discarded iron gates to enclose a pasture if you soldered them together side by side.
There was a doghouse, of course, and chained to it, a heavy-chested brindled pit bull. The dog’s choke collar made its bark sound like whooping cough was on the rise. I thought about Jake’s pit bull killing Violet’s toy poodle and hoped this dog was properly secured.
There was no place to park, but a hard-packed dirt lane encircled the house, where I could see lights still burning. I pulled in beside a vintage truck up on blocks, wheels gone, its black tailgate down. I killed the engine and got out. I kept my attention half-turned on the pit bull while I picked my way to the front porch. The wooden steps creaked emphatically, which threw the pit bull into a frenzy. The dog lunged repeatedly with such force that the shuddering doghouse humped closer by a foot. Looking out across the yard, I could see a number of old cars dotting the landscape. Maybe Mrs. Wyrick sold salvaged auto parts along with all the other junk.
The top half of the front door was glass, with a panel of cloth that might have once been a dish towel concealing the rooms from view. The sound from a television set suggested a sitcom in progress. When I knocked, the glass windowpane rattled under my knuckles. After a moment, Mrs. Wyrick peered out and then she opened the door. The overhead light was on in the living room and a brightly lighted kitchen was visible beyond it.
She was softer than I’d imagined her. When I’d spoken to her on the phone, I’d pictured a harridan, stooped, not quite clean, with flyaway white hair, rheumy eyes, and bristles on her chin. She’d mentioned her shed, and I had images of a crone who’d been saving Life magazines since 1946. I envisioned a house filled with newspapers, head-high, with narrow walkways between, stray cats, and filth. The woman who greeted me had a round, doughy face. Her body looked spongy, rising and swelling as she moved until the flesh filled all the little nooks and crannies in her dress. She may have had some fermentation action under way as well because the snappishness I’d encountered on the phone had now mellowed. She seemed vague and irresolute, and she smelled like those bourbon balls people give you at Christmastime. She was eighty-five if a day.