“Oh, good grief. Would it be so terrible to spend her birthday with us?”
“She wanted to spend her birthday with Kellen. He bought her a lot of ice cream.” I laughed at the thought of her eating thirty-one scoops of ice cream, but nobody else did.
“I thought she’d outgrow having a crush on him. Some big, dumb motorcycle hooligan. And that filthy tattoo on his arm. I mean, do you girls think he’s cute?”
“Gag me with a spoon,” Leslie said.
I did a Wavy shrug, because I didn’t even think Leslie’s lifeguard was cute. I hadn’t yet seen a boy I thought was worth having a crush on.
“Well, she’s always been different,” Mom said.
“I bet she’s pregnant by the end of the school year,” Leslie said.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
I wanted to say, “It means Leslie is a bitch,” but I kept my mouth shut.
“You know she’s having sex with Kellen,” Leslie said.
“I most certainly do not know that.” Mom tapped the brakes and looked at Leslie, who stared straight ahead.
“Well, she is having sex with him. Now you know.”
“You don’t know that,” I said. I still thought it was one of Wavy’s weird games.
“She said she went all the way with him,” Leslie said.
“Yeah, but—”
Mom braked hard and pulled over to the shoulder.
“What do you mean she said she went all the way with him?”
Leslie sighed like she was bored. “We asked her about her wedding ring, and Jana said, ‘Do you go all the way with him?’ and Wavy said, ‘Yes.’”
“What wedding ring?” Mom’s hands shook as she put the car in park.
“That ring she was wearing with the diamond.” Leslie smirked.
“Oh my God.” Mom said it about ten times and then she said, “I can’t believe you two have been keeping this a secret. Shame on you. Shame on you both. Tell me everything. Right now.”
We told her everything. No, not everything. Neither of us was brave enough to say, “Hot. Hard. Desperate.”
Mom put the car in drive and turned around. We were going back.
I felt like a traitor and I was glad the lifeguard had ditched Leslie. She deserved to lose her boyfriend for ratting Wavy out like that.
On the drive, Mom talked to herself, saying, “Oh, God, Val, how could you let this happen? You let this guy come around and you didn’t ever think there was something funny going on? It didn’t seem right to me. The way he touched her.”
I didn’t say it to my mother, but that was what struck me: Wavy let Kellen touch her.
* * *
Mom didn’t go back to the garage. Either she didn’t remember how to get there or she wasn’t ready to confront Wavy. At the farmhouse, there was a car in the driveway.
“Thank God, she’s home,” Mom said. She parked and opened her door, but Leslie and I stayed put. “Come on, you two. You’re involved in this.”
“Mom!” Leslie’s desire for revenge had gone to cold fear. Mom was going to make us tell Aunt Val everything.
I trudged up the stairs behind Leslie and Mom, my stomach in knots. The door stood open a couple inches. Mom knocked on the frame and called, “Val? Val? It’s Brenda.”
Nobody answered, so Mom pushed the door all the way open.
Beyond a certain amount of blood, your brain freezes up, like there’s a limit to how much blood it can understand. There was more than that in the kitchen. Past Mom’s shoulder, I saw a body lying in the doorway to the hall. A man in jeans and cowboy boots lay facedown in a puddle of blood. More blood was splattered on the wall and bathroom door.
Leslie bent over and vomited on her own shoes. That’s when I saw the woman crumpled on her side on the kitchen floor, with a chair toppled next to her. I knew Aunt Val from her long, brown hair soaked in blood.
I don’t know what other people would have done in that situation, but my mother walked around the table, picked up the phone and dialed 911. While she was waiting to be connected, she said, “Get your sister a cold, wet washcloth.”
That was Mom’s solution when someone vomited. I was supposed to step over my aunt’s body, go into the bathroom, stepping over another dead body on the way, and get Leslie a cold, wet washcloth. It wasn’t going to happen. Mom, she was on autopilot, trying to follow some inner guidelines for What to Do in a Crisis.
“Yes, my name is Brenda Newling and I need to report an emergency. My sister’s been—I think she’s been shot.” Mom started off all business, but by the end her voice was shaky.
While the 911 operator talked, Mom picked up a dish towel and turned on the kitchen faucet.
“It’s off County Road 7. Near Powell. I don’t know. I don’t know the name of the road.”
All we had were a series of landmarks and turns written on the back of an envelope. Maybe the road didn’t even have a name. Mom frowned, her lip trembling, as she wrung out the towel. She held it out to me, but I was paralyzed.
“God, I don’t know! It’s Valerie and Liam Quinn’s house. You turn off the highway after the tractor dealership and take the left. There’s a silo there with a tree growing in it. I think it’s four miles and—coming from Powell. What do you mean is it Belton side or Powell side? I don’t know what county it’s in! Amy, please.”
She was waiting for me to take the towel. I made myself move, following the same route she had taken, around the table on the opposite side of Aunt Val. The towel felt good in my hand. Fresh. Cool. Not hot and sticky like the blood that was attracting flies.
A few drops of water dripped off the towel, and Mom and I watched them fall to the floor. That’s why we saw it at the same time: a footprint in blood. A small one, and then another, a trail of them going toward the back door.
“Oh God, Donal.”
Mom laid the phone on the counter and followed the footprints out the door. In the dirt at the foot of the porch steps, there were no more prints. The blood had dried or soaked into the ground. Mom looked toward the road, the barn, the meadow.
“Wavy,” I said, because at that moment, I realized her mother was dead.
“Get in the car,” Mom said.
Leslie and I stared at her.
“Now! We have to tell someone who can help. Someone who can tell the police where this is.”
Mom drove down to the ranch without making us put on our seat belts. As we pulled up in front of the trailer, Sandy came down the steps. Her tanned legs seemed a mile long below her white shorts. She smiled at us. Beautiful. Something to look at that wasn’t blood.
“Hey, girls.”
“Where’s Donal?” Mom opened the car door and got out.
“Oh, he went up the hill to see Val. She’s up there now, if you want to see her.”
2
BUTCH
I don’t know why, but Liam had a taste for crazy women and dumb women. My ex-wife wasn’t a beauty queen, but at least she had half a brain in her head. Not Sandy. She came into the lab at full tilt, running in high heels with her tits bouncing, never even looked to see if it was safe.
“It’s Val. There’s a problem,” she said.
That wasn’t news. All Val did was cause problems.
“You’re going to have to take care of it, Sandy. We’re busy down here. Where’s Liam?”
“He took the bike out. It’s serious, Butch. You have to come.”
I left Vic and Scott to cook, and followed Sandy out.
When I got to Sandy’s trailer, there was a woman on the porch. An older, straightlaced version of Val with housewife hair and a pink sundress showing off her chubby arms. Val’s sister, Brenda. She looked shaky and the two girls sitting in the car looked freaked out.
I figured it was some bullshit problem, because people like Brenda get upset easy. Maybe they’d gone up to the house and caught Val and Liam in one of their fighting and fucking moods. Maybe Val was high. Maybe Liam had given her a taste of the back of his hand. If she’d bee
n my wife, I would’ve done it more often.
“Hey, Brenda. We met once before. I’m Butch.” I held out my hand but Brenda just stared at it.
“Val and Liam are dead. I think they’ve been murdered.”
I pulled my hand back, I was that shocked. Sandy started screaming.
“Liam! You didn’t say Liam! You didn’t say! Oh my god! Liam!”
“Shut up, Sandy. Calm down and let me think.” I wasn’t some wet-behind-the-ears idiot, and the first thing I thought about was the lab.
“What happened?” I said.
“I don’t know. I think they’ve been shot. And Donal’s missing. I didn’t know the address to tell Nine-One-One.”
I could see if I didn’t play things right, I was going to have a bunch of ruined product and the cops sniffing around. What I needed was help. Kellen could say he didn’t have the stomach for dirty work, but you could’ve fooled me. We once went to take care of some former business associates of Liam’s who backstabbed him. Kellen wouldn’t pull the trigger, but he didn’t blink when I did. That’s what the situation called for. Somebody who wouldn’t blink.
I left Brenda and Sandy on the porch and went into the trailer. I called the shop and let it ring a dozen times. Nobody answered at Kellen’s house, either, and when I tried the shop again, I got a busy signal.
Brenda came in and said, “Did you give them the address?” She thought I’d called the cops.
“Yeah, they’re on their way. Look, we’re gonna take care of this, okay. Your girls are pretty upset, I bet.”
She nodded and the first tear snuck out.
“I know, Brenda. I’m sorry. This has got to be so hard for you. Here’s what we’re gonna do. Sandy, get in here.”
Looking like a raccoon with her makeup running all over the place, Sandy hiccupped and said, “Butch—he—he didn’t even—”
“Sandy, you have to pull yourself together. We’ve got things to do. I’m gonna take Val’s sister and her girls into town. You go down to the barn, and tell Scott to wrap things up down there. Do you understand? And tell Lance to go up to the farmhouse. To meet the cops.”
“What about Donal?” Brenda said.
“Don’t worry. I haven’t forgotten about him. Sandy, you and Dee go up in the meadow. When you find him, bring him into town to Kellen’s.”
“I should go with them,” Brenda said.
“No. I don’t want you getting lost up there and you’ve got your girls to take care of. So you come into town with me.” Last thing I needed was her wandering around out there, while I tried to get the lab cleaned up. Wherever Donal was, he knew how to get home.
“Why don’t I drive you over in your car, Brenda? Is that okay?” I said.
That way, I was in charge, and it left the guys any vehicles they needed to haul stuff away. My plan was to go by the garage and get a key to Kellen’s house. They’d be out of the way there, because I knew Kellen didn’t keep any product at his house.
After we got Brenda and the girls settled, Kellen could come up to the ranch and help me figure out what to do. We’d have to call the cops, but not until we cleaned up and had a story in place.
3
AMY
Kellen’s garage was the same as any other run-down mechanic shop you see in little towns. Two garage bays, both doors standing open. Lawnmowers and motorcycles in various states of disassembly. On the back wall were a window and a door. Parked there was what I knew had to be Kellen’s motorcycle. The fenders were chromed and all of it was covered in stars.
“I bet he’s in the office,” Butch said, but when he pushed the door open, he said, “What the fuck?”
Through the open door I saw what everyone else saw, I suppose. Wavy on the desk, leaning back on her hands, completely naked, resting her bare feet on Kellen’s legs. He was in the desk chair, his shirt off, his pants open. I didn’t notice any blood, although later that was all anyone talked about—the blood on his desk blotter. Small amounts of blood are almost invisible when you have a puddle of blood burned on your retinas like a sunspot.
I saw what everyone else saw, except that at the moment the door swung open, I saw Wavy smiling before her eyes went wide.
Kellen stood up, and as he fastened his fly, Butch lunged at him and swung. Butch punched him in the face and all Kellen did was say, “Goddamn, Butch, let her get dressed before you come in here and try to kick my ass.”
He didn’t look like he’d been punched until he saw Mom, Leslie, and me.
“You son of a bitch,” Mom said. “How long have you been doing this? How long?”
“Okay, ma’am, I know—I know how it looks.” Kellen put his hands up, like he was surrendering, or preparing for Mom to fall on him like a hungry lioness. “But I love her. We’re gonna get married.”
Kellen picked up a piece of paper from his desk and held it out to her. She took it and glared down at it, her face getting redder.
“Val and Liam know, okay? I bought her a ring and Liam signed the paperwork. He signed it today and the judge says—”
“Liam can’t give you permission to marry her anymore!” Mom twisted and tore at the paper until it was just a pile of scraps at her feet.
Then I understood the dead man in the hallway of the farmhouse was Uncle Liam.
While all this was going on, Wavy got dressed, pulling up her panties and tugging on her T-shirt and skirt. As she stomped into her boots, Mom stepped around Butch and reached for the phone that was lying off the hook on the filing cabinet. As she did, she looked down at the desk blotter and said, “You’re going to burn for this, you fucking bastard.” I’d never heard her use the F-word before.
Mom put the receiver to her ear and, for the second time that day, dialed 911. When the operator answered, she said, “I want to report a rape.”
“Wait, Mrs. Newling. Just wait.” Butch, not Kellen, said that.
“What’s the address here?” Mom said.
Sitting back in the desk chair, with a hand to his head, Kellen gave my mother the address and she repeated it to the operator.
“My name is Brenda Newling. It’s my niece. Yes, yes, I did make that earlier call. I had to leave there. I—no, this is not a prank. I was there and they were—” Mom’s voice got louder and louder until she was silent for a moment. “They’re there? You have someone at the house?”
Until then, Butch had been shaking his head, but he came around the desk and jerked the phone away.
“You dumb cunt. You called the cops out to the house? You called the cops?” he said.
“Valerie and Liam are dead! Somebody shot them! Yes, I called the police!”
“Fuck! Fuck!” Butch tossed the phone on the desk and ran out through the garage. A moment later we heard the car start and drive away. He’d left us there.
“Oh, sweetheart, I’m sorry,” Kellen said.
Mom looked at Wavy and realized what she’d done: blurted it out with no warning. I’m calling the cops on your fiancé, and by the way, your parents are dead. Wavy started trembling. Kellen put his hands on her hips and walked her back until she was sitting on his lap. Wrapping one arm around her shoulders, he tucked her head under his chin. He kissed her hair and said, “I’m here, Wavy. I’m here.”
It seemed like that would be the end of it. Mom would stop yelling and saying awful things, and Kellen would take care of Wavy. He obviously knew how.
They were still sitting like that five minutes later when a police car pulled up. Mom went outside and, when she came back, two sheriff’s deputies were with her.
“Why don’t you girls step outside?” the younger deputy said, while the older one went into the office.
“Come on, Junior,” he said. “You’re gonna have to come with us.”
“Give us a couple minutes, okay?” Kellen said.
“No, you need to let go of her and stand up.”
“Jesus, Delbert, she just found out her mother’s dead. Give us two goddamn minutes.”
The d
eputy stepped back and we waited. Kellen set Wavy up on the edge of the desk and for a while they hugged each other. She whispered in his ear, and then she kissed him. That didn’t help the situation with the deputies, because it was a movie kiss, like when the hero and heroine are saying good-bye, and maybe they’re never going to see each other again.
The older deputy said, “That’s enough of that. You need to step back and put your hands on your head, Junior.”
Before he did it, Kellen reached into his pockets and tossed a handful of things on the desk: keys, bolts, a pocket knife, and loose coins that rattled across the desk and tumbled to the floor. He unhooked his wallet and tossed it on the desk, too. I could tell he’d done it before, from the way he turned around and laced his hands on the back of his head. The deputy cuffed him, while Wavy sat on the desk, watching.
The deputy turned to Mom and said, “Normally, we’d get another patrol car to take her to the hospital, but things are a little crazy today. We’ve got a real situation up at the Quinn place.”
“I know. This is their daughter. Have they found her brother yet?”
“Holy crap, ma’am. That’s the Quinn girl?” The deputy blinked. “I don’t know. I didn’t know he was missing.”
“I told Nine-One-One.”
“Well, a whole lot’s happened since then, so I’d better radio the sheriff and let him know.”
“Delbert!” The younger deputy shouted from the far garage bay. “There’s blood over here. A lot of it.”
“Ma’am, I need you to get these girls out of here. If you could take them out to the drive so I can secure this place.”
Mom gathered Leslie and me around her, but when she tried to bring Wavy into our huddle, Wavy refused. She put her arms around Kellen, where he stood next to the desk. Mom grabbed the back of Wavy’s T-shirt and tried to pull her away.
“Miss Quinn, you need to step outside,” the deputy said. Wavy didn’t move.
“Wavy, it’s okay.” Kellen couldn’t put his arms around her, but he leaned down and kissed her. “Go outside with your aunt. I love you. It’s gonna be okay, sweetheart.”
She looked up at him and shook her head, but she let Mom lead her away. Even though Wavy wasn’t fighting anymore, Mom kept her shirt clutched in one fist as we walked out through the garage. As we passed the other deputy, we saw what he was looking at. There were a dozen quarter-sized drops of blood on the floor and on a nearby workbench a puddle as big as a dinner plate. An hour before, I might have thought that was a lot of blood, too.