Night Kill (11 page)

I fired up my computer and dug up a selling price on the Internet. A call to my dad confirmed that it was in the ballpark and another call set up a newspaper ad for Sunday of next week. If I got the price, the truck loan would be cleared, with a little left over. I celebrated with a bag of chocolate chip cookies, picking out the chocolate chips before sharing one each with Winnie and Range. Chocolate’s not good for dogs, but it’s dandy for me.

I suited up in work boots and a rain jacket and went outside to prepare the truck for sale. As usual, the gravel road in front of the house was deserted and there was no sign of the neighbors. The lawn was high, but too wet to mow. After washing the outside of the Dodge, I climbed inside, out of the wind, and rounded up gas receipts and candy wrappers, removing the last traces of Rick. The stack of CDs contained some puzzlers: Carlos Nakai playing flute in a canyon, Buffy Saint-Marie, a sampler of traditional Native American drumming. Indian music wasn’t in Rick’s usual area of interest. The blues were his staple, but he would seek relevant music for any new interest. We had a couple of bagpipe CDs from his get-in-touch-with-his-Scottish-side phase, one of frogs croaking in a Georgia swamp from researching amphibians, German drinking songs for microbrew…

These were still shrink-wrapped, so probably purchased a day or two before he died.

I recalled the brown mailing envelope he’d had in the truck the last time I’d seen him, but it wasn’t there.

After a quick late lunch, I decided to drive the Dodge over to the folks to use their canister vacuum cleaner. My upright wasn’t designed for the job. The dogs were keen for another ride. They’d been housebound all week and I yielded. We caught the freeway and drove south, then crossed the bridge over the Columbia River to Oregon. Pricey little boats bobbed at the moorage below. The neon horse at Portland Meadows racetrack galloped and galloped in place. An accident had tied up the right lane and I slowed to let a trapped van escape into the left lane. The van driver repaid the courtesy with the traditional Northwest thank-you wave. A few more miles took us to an exit for southeast Portland. This was where my roots were, a neighborhood of lawns and old wood-frame houses, with a few new fourplexes thrown in. Old maples in the parking strips arched branches across the streets and gilded sidewalks and gutters with glowing yellow leaves.

I parked in the folks’ driveway in the chilly late afternoon. A new neighbor on the north side, a woman I’d met once or twice, was huddled in her parka, leaning over her fence staring into my parents’ backyard. I followed her gaze and walked to the back gate. The garden was overflowing with wet green things and a few bright blooming things, even in winter. Mom got the plant gene; I got the animal gene.

She had her back to us and was doing a little dance, stamping up and down, rather crane-like. Then she poured something onto the brick walkway and a cloud of steam rose up. She looked perky, in jeans, sneakers, and a bright yellow sweatshirt, with her curly hair bobbing. The hair was definitely getting gray. She stamped a couple more times, then more steam from the bricks. This time I glimpsed the teakettle in her hand. The neighbor—Lucille? Lucy?—turned to me and said dryly, “Yesterday she was hurling apples at squirrels” and clomped back into her house.

“Mom? What are you doing?” I inquired as I opened the gate, wary of getting scalded.

“Oh, it’s you! Good! Your dad’s gone to the shop.”

“Mom, what on earth are you doing?”

She looked a little offended. “I’m killing off Scotch moss that’s doing entirely too well. It wants to take over this whole walkway. It’s not really a moss, of course, it’s a flowering plant. True moss is nowhere near that invasive. I figure boiling water is a good way to kill it without a lot of work. And it’s still organic gardening.”

“So, Mom, why the little dance? Part of the ceremony?”

“Ceremony? What an imagination you have! Big earthworms, nightcrawlers, live under these bricks. I’m scaring them deeper so they don’t get cooked.” Her tone said that any fool should have figured that out. Well, I’m not just any fool.

I’d have to remember to tell Lucille. Or Lucy.

Mom patted Range and Winnie politely, with a reminder to stay the hell out of her flowerbeds. I told her what I was there for.

“Don’t forget to pull up the floor mats and vac underneath. And remember to check the glove box.”

I dragged out the vac and found a long orange extension cord in the basement and went at it. That done, I stood back to admire my work. The hubcaps gleamed; the stripes flashed. “Vinyl,” my father had sneered, not in Rick’s hearing. “Factory job.” Sign painters reserve their respect for hand striping. No matter, the truck looked sharp.

Dad came home soon after, tall and competent, solid in jeans and a heavy green shirt. I get my height from him, and my brown eyes. The curly hair is from my mother’s side.

It wasn’t that hard for them to persuade me to stay for dinner. We had, it turned out, an unspoken agreement not to talk about Rick or my emotional state, and I was grateful. After meatloaf, baked potatoes, and fresh-picked chard with a speech from Mom about the perfidy of leaf miners—a bug, I gathered—and their inroads on the chard crop, we ate a little blueberry shortcake and I felt the best I had in some time. Full stomach, happy dogs underfoot, clean house to go home to.

“How’s work?” Dad asked.

“Um, I switched over to Birds. It’s interesting. I work with a guy named Calvin. What’s on TV tonight?”

My parents exchanged one of their content-dense glances—“thank heaven” plus “she didn’t tell you either?”

“You mean you aren’t working with the lions anymore?” Mom asked cautiously.

“Right. Penguins, ducks, hawks, like that. I’ve always liked birds.” My voice was calm, casual; so far, so good. I went for a second helping of shortcake.

“Humm,” said Dad.

Mom said, “I’m glad you finally got out of there. Good thing your boss had another spot for you.”

Dad put his fork down and set his wrists on each side of his plate. He looked at me and waited. He doesn’t do that often.

“What?” I asked.

“About this job change.” He waited, watching me. He was good at waiting. It always works.

“I had a little episode with Rajah, the tiger, nothing serious.” I was an adult; I didn’t have to do this. But the shortcake had weakened me. “I think somebody let him out when they shouldn’t have. Wallace thinks I was too distracted to pay attention and didn’t lock the doors properly. Anyway, nothing bad happened, but I had to leave Felines. I’d really rather not talk about it anymore, if you don’t mind.”

Dad looked startled and a little white around the lips. Teach him to pry. He shared a quick glance with my mother, but dropped the subject. We cleared the table in silence.

After the TV show, something with cops, car chases, and young women in swimsuits, Dad lurched out of his recliner and headed toward the kitchen to deal with the dishes. Mom flipped to the middle of a movie. A taxi driver in a Hawaiian shirt was haranguing Nicholas Cage. When a commercial came on, she thumbed the mute button. “Iris,” she began, using her reasonable voice, “have you given any thought to a fresh start, like going back to college? This might be a good time to think about your future.” Her disappointment when I quit college was still vivid, as if it were her personal failure.

“We’ve had this same conversation for years,” I started, vowing not to lose my temper, just to make my position clear until she dropped the subject. “I like my job. I’m on emotional overload because of Rick’s death and it’s actually a really bad time for me to make any major changes.” That came out well, I thought.

“You never gave college a fair chance. You’re older and you might like it better.” She leaned forward—earnest, hopeful, relentless—in the gray wing chair. “You have the brains, if you want to use them.”

“I like what I’m doing. I use my brains plenty on the job.” I got up out of the rocking chair. Time to get gone before this devolved into another yelling match. I called the dogs and found my jacket.

Mom insisted I take a bag of leftovers. “It’s not like you ever cook,” she muttered under her breath, so that I wouldn’t think she was going soft. I was careful not to hear it.

The argument with Mom faded on the drive home, eased by a full stomach. Our wrangle was even comforting, in a familiar, irritating way, like the mild rain speckling the windshield. Maybe it was the shortcake, but I was feeling good. The dogs shifted around on the passenger seat, too crowded to settle down, but I didn’t want them out in the wet in the truck bed. I’d wipe the seat down before potential buyers checked it out.

I reached for a CD, but there weren’t any. I’d cleared them out. What was up with Rick and the Indian music? The blues were always in favor, but he’d had his songs-about-cars phase and a fling with the Japanese shakuhachi flute. Maybe the Vultures’ Roost, Rick’s favorite tavern, had featured Native American music recently and gotten him interested. Probably that was where he’d started drinking after the party. Was it open that late?

The last of a week’s supply of self-discipline brought me to the Roost’s parking lot, north of downtown, between my house and the zoo. I’d take care of this, then go home to clean sheets and the sleep of the virtuous.

The hours on the front door confirmed that it was open until 2:00 AM. Rick could have left me at midnight, gotten loaded here, and driven to the zoo. The Roost was jammed, not a good night to talk to the staff. All the knotty-pine booths were full. I waited for a stool at the counter and ordered coffee. No live music tonight, instead, a disorienting alternation of indie rock, Celtic wailing, and vintage country, incompatible tastes warring at the jukebox. I didn’t see anyone I knew. The crowd was my age or older, jeans and parkas for the most part. The seat next to me at the counter opened up, and a guy in a black knit shirt and black jeans slid in. Thin face with a sharp nose, dark hair mowed down to a stubble, a big chrome wristwatch that looked to have a zillion features.

“Buy you a drink?” He waved his beer glass at me.

I shook my head. Where was the coffee?

“I know a place that’s got more happening,” he offered. “Comedy hour and killer buffalo wings.” He had an indoor pallor, probably from a job that required a lot of keyboarding and many obscure technical terms.

I gave him the minimum polite smile and turned away. A touch on my elbow startled me.

“You came in with Rick. You his wife?” It was the head barkeep, a big woman I remembered from my last visit months ago.

“Yeah. I’m surprised you remember.”

“I remember everyone. He came around a lot, for awhile.”

“He liked it here. Better than home.”

“Yeah.” She leaned an ample hip against the bar, straight blonde hair falling around her shoulders and chest. She wore a tight pink vest with a zipper, a generous scoop at the cleavage, and billowy purple pants tight at the ankles. “He was a regular. But it didn’t last, you know? What he told me was so long, wouldn’t be seeing me anymore.”

“When was that?”

“Well, I don’t remember exactly. He said he had another woman, had to choose. It was a joke, see? Wasn’t anything between us. He was talking about you, or me and the brew. He was getting a little too into it, you know? He was a good guy—fun—so I was sorry he wouldn’t be around. But he figured he had to take care of business.”

“He showed up the night he died?”

“No, must have been a couple of nights before. He was a great guy. I really liked Rick, you know? I’m so sorry it ended like that.” She gave me a half-hug with an arm as big as my thigh. She smelled of roses and hair spray.

“You’re really sure he wasn’t here the night he died?”

“Honey, wouldn’t I remember a thing like that? We were all talking about it when it came out in the papers.”

The guy on the next stool leaned toward me. “Look, if you want to talk about it, I’m a great listener.”

The big woman said “Git,” without raising her voice.

He studied her, checking that she really meant him. Drained his beer to show he couldn’t be buffaloed. Got up and left.

She patted my arm and sailed into the crowd like an elephant matriarch through a flock of guinea fowl.

A harried young man with a ponytail slammed my coffee on the counter and turned away. I grabbed his wrist.

“Hey, you ever have any Native American—Indian—music here?”

He curled his upper lip in amazement, shook his head in pity, and was gone.

I dropped two dollars on the counter and escaped, but not before confirming the lack of whiskey, rum, and vodka bottles behind the bar. The Vultures’ Roost dispensed only beer and the odd glass of wine, not scotch or other spirits.

The rain had picked up. The truck cab reeked of dog breath. I backed out and pointed it home, wondering at the comfort of the big woman’s hug. Rick told her that he chose me over alcohol, exactly what he’d said to me.

Tears lurked at the back of my throat, softer ones than usual.

At home, I pulled up next to my own truck. I let the dogs out, unlocked and opened the front door, then stood baffled on the little cement porch with rain tapping my hair. Smoke drifted out; the dogs clustered close to my knees. I reached in to flick on the living room light and confirmed that my house was on fire.

Chapter Ten

The living room was oddly dim, the ceiling light thwarted by thick smoke. Flames flickered red and yellow. I couldn’t believe it. Someone had broken into my house and set it on fire. It was going to burn up, along with all my stuff, whatever hadn’t been stolen. Through the smoke, the room looked seriously disheveled—sofa cushions on the floor, CDs stripped off their shelves and strewn around, books sprawled open on the rug. I made out something more significant across the room: newspapers dumped out of the plastic recycling bin and heaped up against an inside corner of the living room. The source of the smoke and flames.

Impotent rage held me rooted on the porch until the smoke drove me back. Movement restarted my brain.

Call 911, that was the obvious step. My keeper’s salary required choosing between health insurance and a cell phone, and I was thinking I’d made the wrong choice. Rick had a cell phone, but it hadn’t survived his last night any better than he had. I looked around at the neighborhood. All windows dark; nobody home. Okay. Get back in the truck with the dogs, drive to the convenience store two miles away and make the call. I started toward the truck and stopped.