My eyes pricked with tears. I picked up Barbara’s smiling image, and carried it outside, with the candle. I swapped candle and license on the plate, and held the flickering flame to one corner of the plastic. Black smoke curled into the dusk. I had to reignite the image again and again, and it took a long time to reach critical mass, so it would burn on its own.
Certainly longer than it took to strangle a woman to death.
I tried to be patient. I owed that to Barbara. The laminated plastic bubbled, scalloped, and blackened. Small flecks of grit floated up with the smoke. Finally, all that remained were a few curled, incinerated bits of ash.
The sky was growing dark. The air was still, though I could hear the faint hum of traffic below. I turned toward the ocean, where only yesterday Barbara had gazed with longing. I lifted the plate of ash to my mouth. I blew.
When the time has come to go alone and without friends …
I went inside and called Bill. Told him I’d be honored to share a meal with him and his family.
CHAPTER 7
“So, let me get this straight,” Bill said. “Your very first client as a private detective is a woman who didn’t hire you, and can’t pay you. Because she’s dead.”
I was enjoying a predinner beer on the patio with him and Martha. Maude and Lola were just inside the screen door, sound asleep in their matching, battery-operated cradle-swings. They rocked back and forth in a steady rhythm, like infant metronomes. They were swaddled tight, tucked deep in their carriers. With their round faces and tufts of red hair, they resembled a pair of chubby leprechauns.
The last time I saw them, they were tiny and bald. Barely hatched. Now they had hair, and two chins. Each.
“I hadn’t thought of it in those terms,” I said, “but I guess that just about sums it up.”
Martha said, “Bill, honey, be a little more encouraging. Everybody’s got to start somewhere.”
“Good point,” he said. “And who knows? Maybe dead clients are the best kind to have. I can see real advantages to working for someone who can’t talk.” He took a swig of beer. “Too bad she didn’t have a pot to piss in.”
Martha patted my knee. “Don’t take it personally-Bill worries about everything. He’s already figured out the safest route for the girls to walk to school, and they’re not even crawling.”
“Don’t remind me,” Bill said glumly. “Next thing, they’ll have boyfriends with Harleys.”
I pulled out my final paycheck and waved it at Bill. “Don’t worry. I’m still on the payroll one more week. Then I get unemployment, if I decide to register.”
“What do you mean, if?”
I shifted in my chair. “I don’t know,” I said. “It just doesn’t feel right to me somehow.”
Bill shook his head. “You and your feelings, Ten. You’ve earned unemployment, and then some.”
“But I haven’t. I got paid for the work I did. This is getting paid for work I’m not doing. I know it sounds crazy, but I feel like as long as I’m on the dole, I’ll be right back where I was. Not moving. Not changing. You know, stuck.”
Now it was Martha’s turn to look concerned. “But how will you support yourself?’
“I’ve got some money saved up. Anyway, I think I’ve figured out a new way to make money.”
“I’m not buying lip gloss from you, buddy. I have a lifetime supply,” Bill said.
Martha snorted. Her love of Avon products was legendary.
Maude/Lola let out a little squeal and rustled around in her swinging cocoon. Then Lola/Maude caught the vibe and started to wail. Martha stood up and walked inside, unbuttoning her blouse.
“So what’s the problem?” Bill asked.
I tried to put the niggle into words. “I‘m starting to think maybe money, I don’t know, carries its own weight with it. Like karma. If I’m really going to make this leap into supporting myself through my own talent, I have to trust that the money will come. Either I believe I’m of value, or I don’t. My entire life, I’ve been supported by one institution or another. I want … no, I need to see if I can go it alone.”
“Sounds like wishful thinking,” Bill said.
“That’s right,” I said. “But sometimes wishing works.”
Bill glanced inside at his nursing daughters, medical miracles tucked close like footballs, one on either side of his contented wife. He smiled.
“I guess sometimes it does,” he said.
The doorbell rang; both babies startled and broke into wails, and blissful calm became chaos in an instant.
Bill grabbed one beet-faced daughter, and Martha held the other to her shoulder and patted her on the back. I opened the door to a laughing brunette, loaded down with groceries.
“Ten, I’d like you to meet my sister, Julie Forsythe,” Martha called over the cacophony.
I stuck out my hand. The sister gave me a look over her bulging shopping bags, then twisted and lightly elbow-bumped my palm. Suave start, Tenzing. I relieved her of the two bulky bags. Her dark eyes were flecked with gold. A mass of soft brunette curls fell to below her shoulders. She was quite beautiful. Almost exactly my height, that is to say on the tall side for a woman, on the not-so-tall side for a man. Her arms were toned, her skin lightly freckled. She was strong, but her curves were full and feminine. I was very glad I’d changed into clean Levi’s and the dark brown T-shirt that Charlotte used to say matched my eyes.
I wasn’t looking. This wasn’t a date.
Julie said, “I don’t know if Martha told you, Ten, but I’m fixing dinner tonight. Want to give me a hand?”
I followed her into the kitchen like a meek puppy. Bill and Martha headed to the bathroom to give the twins their bedtime bath.
Soon Julie was briskly chopping carrots. I couldn’t help noticing the large butcher knife she was wielding expertly. Her hand was almost a blur. She was wielding her hips, too. Fascinating. She chopped with her whole body.
I blurted out the first thing that came to mind.
“How did you learn to chop like that?”
“Culinary Academy,” she said, without looking up from her task. She organized a neat pile of carrots, and moved on to the celery.
“It’s the first thing you learn in C-school-how to dice quickly without tiring your arms or hacking off your fingers.” She put down her knife and waggled her hands. “See? I’ve been a chef for close to ten years and I’ve still got all ten of my fingers.”
“And here you are with a guy named Ten,” I said. “Must be your lucky number.”
I winced. What had gotten into me? I was babbling like an idiot.
Julie played it just right. “Ten years, ten fingers, guy named Ten. Coincidence or …?” She let the sentence trail off dramatically. “Here.” She tossed me a Persian cucumber. “Show me what you got.”
She quickly illustrated the secrets to slicing and dicing while keeping fingers attached to hands. (Secret One: Tuck your fingertips under and push the vegetables toward the knife with your middle knuckles. Secret Two: Pay attention.) I even started to relax. Julie seemed about as far away from needy as any woman I’d met in a long time.
“So how long are you visiting for?” I asked.
“Don’t know. I may move here. I’m in town to audition for a job as sous-chef at the new W.”
She was moving here? I grabbed another cucumber and hacked intently.
“All righty then, here we are,” Julie said, picking up on my anxiety. “Two eligible, nervous urban professionals channeling their tension into chopping.”
I concentrated harder on the cuke.
“I don’t know about you,” she added, “but I’m getting worn out deflecting all Martha’s matchmaking candidates.”
“Tell me about it,” I answered. “The last two dates Martha engineered for me had all the forward trajectory of a set of dropped car keys.”
Julie threw back her head and belly-laughed. I found myself liking her a little more, especially the way she’d named our nerves out loud. Internal memo to self: next time I’m feeling anxious with someone, just express it. Possible exception: when I’m with a criminal brandishing a weapon at me: “I’m feeling a little anxious.” “Oh, you’re anxious? Let me take care of that-BLAM!”