Beautiful Dead

  Phoenix picked up the story. “They meet and it all falls apart. Arizona loses control and threatens Kyle. She swears she’ll stop him marrying Sable. We know he has a brutal temper—he strikes out, she stumbles, falls, and hits her head so hard she breaks her neck.”

  This was making a lot of sense.

  “Kyle’s scared,” I went on. “He doesn’t know if Arizona is alive or dead, but he realizes he’s facing the biggest problem of his life—how to explain what happened to Arizona. The water’s deep; he believes it’s the only way to solve his problem. So he lifts Arizona from the rock and tosses her into the lake.”

  Every detail seemed to slot into place now that we’d spoken it out loud. We’d convinced ourselves. But was it true?

  Phoenix nodded. “Then Kyle leaves. He doesn’t need an alibi—not many people know his connection with the dead girl. He acts stunned like everyone else when the body is eventually discovered. Later, the inquest hears Arizona was a loner; she was depressed. They give a verdict of suicide. No loose ends, no argument from the shell-shocked family. All neat and wrapped up.”

  “And the whole town is stunned because it’s the second death in weeks. First Jonas, then Arizona. I remember—that’s when people start to believe there was a curse hanging over the kids of Ellerton. No one’s thinking clearly. We’re all afraid.”

  “Kyle walks away.” Phoenix put the final piece in place.

  “That’s what he believes,” I added. “But he doesn’t know about the Beautiful Dead.”

  We sat together admiring our polished version of events. It made me more determined than ever to force the truth out of Kyle Keppler. “How long before dawn?” I asked Phoenix. “How much time do we have before we set out for Forest Lake?”

  He looked out at the stars and moon. “Enough time for you to sleep,” he answered. “I’ll keep watch. You rest now.”

  Amazingly I did sleep. Phoenix held my hand and didn’t let go until I woke at first light, when the sun rose, hot red and gold, over the eastern mountains. I opened my eyes and the first thing I saw was the warm light glowing on his face.

  “It’s today or never,” he reminded me, as if I needed it.

  We left the house like two thieves, climbing out of the upstairs window and jumping into my car. I let it coast down the drive in neutral, not turning the key in the ignition until we were clear of the house and heading for Centennial and the freeway beyond.

  “Forget Peak Road—take the back road to Forest Lake,” Phoenix suggested. “It cuts a couple of miles off our journey.”

  “Yes, sir!” I tingled with the excitement of the lonely streets and the fact that it was our final shot at solving things for Arizona. For once, because I had Phoenix sitting by my side, the idea of Kyle Keppler didn’t scare me. “We need to get to Forest Lake before Kyle leaves for work.”

  “And this time we don’t care if Sable sees you,” Phoenix decided. “We put all possible pressure on the guy to make him confess.”

  “You’ll be there?” I checked.

  “Every step of the way. Now step on the gas. Drive, Darina, drive!”

  We sped through dark mountains backed by a red-gold dawn, along a dirt road, raising a cloud of dust, and no other car in sight.

  Phoenix sat beside me wearing dark glasses, the round neckline of his white T-shirt making a strong contrast to the V of his half-unzipped leather jacket. I turned on the radio and listened to a country-western song about saying a final good-bye to the one you love. Cruel death comes and takes the girl. “Say good-bye, Marianna’s leaving. Say good-bye, Marianna’s gone.” The words leaving and gone, repeated so many times in the chorus, gnawed at me. I clicked off the power, and Phoenix didn’t protest.

  Minutes later we arrived in Forest Lake, the hick town trying to live off its history and barely crawling into the twenty-first century.

  Small wooden houses lined the roadside, beaten-up cars and trucks parked alongside it. Shutters were still closed; deer had strayed out of the forest and grazed the shabby, sloping lawns. The only light in town glowed under the awning of the diner where I’d drunk my cup of coffee and watched the stray brown-and-white dog.

  “We’re headed for White Eagle Road,” I told Phoenix, growing tense and gripping the steering wheel. I tried not to think too far ahead in case I lost my nerve.

  “Watch out—you ran a red light!” he warned.

  I never even saw it, to tell the truth. We were on the right street now, looking for Keppler’s red truck parked outside number 505.

  “I think this is it.” I pointed to the house with the rough wire fence and overgrown yard. But there was no truck, no dogs, no sign of life.

  “No one’s home.” Phoenix studied the run-down house. “How does that work? Where are Sable and the baby?”

  “Wait here. Let me go and knock at the door,” I told him, my stomach churning as I walked up the drive. I was looking for and not seeing the baby stroller, maybe laundry hanging out to dry. My knuckles rapped at the glass panel in the door, rousing a dog in the yard next door. But no one appeared from inside number 505.

  The neighbor’s Labrador scrabbled his claws against the wooden fence. He jumped up so that his blunt black face appeared, jaws snapping.

  “Jesus, Troy, quit that noise!” a voice said and a nosylooking, skinny, bleach-blond woman appeared at the fence. “What do you want?” she asked me, no more friendly than her dog.

  “I came to see Kyle,” I told her. “This is his house, right?”

  “Not home,” the woman grunted. “Work it out—it’s not rocket science.”

  “So where did they go?”

  The woman walked down to the end of her driveway and waited there for me to join her. “Who’s he—your boyfriend?” she asked, casting a glance toward Phoenix who sat with his collar up and his head turned away.

  I nodded. “Kyle and Sable—where did they go?”

  “Who cares?” The woman was cagey, her dog still snarling in the backyard. “The longer they stay away, the better I’ll like it. Maybe then I’ll get some peace.”

  I tried hard to look sympathetic. “Party animals, huh?”

  “Drinkers,” she complained. “Too much alcohol, and with a small kid to look after. It’s not right.”

  “They make a lot of noise?”

  “Yelling all the time.” She raised her eyes to heaven. “The dogs bark, the kid cries all night long. Last night it was bad as it’s ever been…Quit it, Troy, I’m trying to have a conversation!”

  The chunky Labrador took no notice. I soldiered on against a background of high-volume barking. “So—last night?” I prompted.

  “Kyle gets home late, smashed out of his head like always. Her brother shows up with him, too drunk to ride a straight line.”

  “Jon Jackson?”

  “That’s the one. They’re drinking buddies, and God knows what else.”

  I could have told her exactly the reason they showed up drunk last night—their route out of Foxton would have taken them past at least three bars. One beer to numb the pains in their guts and heads, another to settle the crazy thoughts about ghosts and corpses. But it would take more than two to get over what Hunter, Phoenix, and Iceman had inflicted on them. They would have stayed for a third and a fourth.

  “I’m on my back porch with the dog, so I hear everything.” The woman was off-loading big-time. She didn’t look like she’d slept much and I guessed she was glad to find someone who would listen. “Kyle falls over whatever crap is in the yard. He swears, the dogs yowl, the kid wakes up and starts to cry. Sable has had a bellyful, and she’s no shrinking violet, believe me. She gives him a hard time. Her brother weighs in on Kyle’s side. Soon there’s World War Three going on twenty yards from where I’m sitting.”

  “I hope no one got hurt,” I cut in.

  The woman shrugged. She made it plain that actual domestic violence didn’t come high on her scale of antisocial activity. “It’s the noise I can’t take,” she grumbled. “Sable
’s yelling that it’s the last time this is going to happen. She’s packing her bag and taking the baby to her mom’s place.”

  “Which she did?”

  The woman’s smile showed a gap between her two front teeth. “In Kyle’s truck. That really stuck in his craw. Sable’s out of there for good and he’s yelling down the street for her to bring back his truck, his dogs, and his baby, or he’ll kill her. What a joke. This is way past midnight, did I tell you?”

  “Sounds like Sable had taken enough b.s. What did the guys do after she left?”

  “What do you think? They drink a couple more cans. I set Troy on them, I’m so pissed. But Kyle kicks out at my dog, and I hear Jon say he’s getting the shotgun from inside the house. They laugh in my face when I go around to get Troy.”

  “Did Jon bring the gun?”

  The neighbor frowned. “I didn’t wait for it to happen. I grabbed my dog and pulled him back into my yard. I heard more cussing and then the sound of their bikes. I looked out of my window to see them ride off down the street—end of story.”

  Phoenix and I drove back to Ellerton as fast as we could without breaking any laws; too much was at stake to get stopped for a ticket. We reached Mike’s Motors by nine thirty a.m., looking out this time for Kyle’s black-and-chrome Dyna rather than his red truck.

  “Boy, Kyle’s brain must be hammering its way out of his skull,” Phoenix muttered as I parked by the concrete ramp leading up to the workshop.

  “Yeah, plus his wife just left him, remember? And you scared him literally half to death. I’m not looking for a rosy smile.”

  “If he showed up at work.”

  We looked around—there was no Harley parked nearby. “OK, so I go in and find out,” I decided.

  This time Phoenix didn’t let me go alone. Instead, he focused on his disappearing act, creating the glittering halo around his whole body then gradually fading into invisibility. “I’m right at your side,” he promised.

  It was so weird, to hear his voice and the soft sound of his footsteps walking up the ramp with me, but not being able to see a thing.

  “Hey,” I said to an older guy bent over the engine of a blue Toyota. “We’re…I’m looking for Kyle Keppler.”

  “That makes two of us.” Mike Hamill eased out from under the hood, then stood up straight. “If you see him before I do, you can warn him he doesn’t have a job to come back to.”

  I gasped, coughing as I breathed in the smell of diesel and engine oil. “You laid him off? Since when?”

  “Since eight o’clock this morning when he didn’t show up for work.” Hamill’s voice was flat, giving the impression that Kyle had overstepped the mark once too often. “He had his chances, but this time he blew it.”

  “He has a family,” I pointed out. “What happens to them if he doesn’t get his job back?”

  Mike Hamill lifted a dirty rag from a nearby oil drum and wiped his hands. He wore a long, dark mustache that made him look old and didn’t match his grayer hair and eyebrows. His jeans were loose and stained, his plaid shirt straining across a sagging belly. “Listen,” he told me, “this isn’t your business, but Kyle’s family is the reason I kept him in work so long. My wife is best buddies with Sable’s mom—the two of them put pressure on me to keep him in employment, yak-yak-yak—you know how women do. Plus, when he’s sober he knows his way around a car engine.”

  “So does anyone know where he is right now?” Time was ticking by—Kyle’s no-show was another serious setback.

  “Sleeping his way through the mother of all hangovers, I bet.” Mike lifted his cap and rubbed his forehead with the back of his hand. “The story goes his drinking got out of hand again last night—my wife heard Sable finally packed her bag and left.”

  I put on the best performance I could. “My God, that’s awful. His whole life is falling apart!”

  “A guy who drinks and plays around like that—it’s going to happen.” Mike went through into a tiny office and sat down on a revolving chair. He picked up the phone ready to dial.

  “When you say, ‘plays around,’ you mean other women—plural?” This time I was truly shocked—no acting necessary.

  “At least half a dozen,” he told me, his eyes starting to narrow as he wondered how come I was so interested in his ex-employee. “Listen, honey, if you’re Kyle’s current squeeze, you should know that you’re the latest in a long line. Over the years, Keppler has played pretty much the entire Ellerton field.”

  “I’m not his latest…whatever.” I took a deep breath then pushed for more information. “So he played around even after he got together with Sable?”

  Mike made a sucking noise through his teeth. “A wife and baby doesn’t change a guy like Kyle, but you try telling Sable that. Karen—my wife—did warn her he was cheating on her—a year, eighteen months back.”

  His stubby finger tapped numbers on the phone keypad. I only had time to squeeze in one last question.

  “Would that be when Kyle was in a relationship with Arizona Taylor?”

  Mike’s finger didn’t complete the dial. He looked at me from under suspicious brows. “The kid who drowned herself?”

  I nodded.

  “Yeah, around that time,” he said slowly.

  “She was my friend.”

  He hesitated. “Well, I felt bad for her—she was way too young. You or someone else who cared about her should have told her Kyle was bad news.”

  “I didn’t know she was involved until it was too late.”

  He flicked back eighteen months, remembering Arizona. “Poor kid, she could have done a whole lot better than Kyle Keppler. I remember the times she would hang out here, trying to act tough. She wasn’t—not really.”

  “Did she come to the workshop the day she drowned in the lake?”

  Mike’s dialing finger got ready again. “She came a lot of days, and, yeah, she did swing by that morning. She lost control a little when she found out Kyle wasn’t here—he was nursing his usual sore head, I guess.”

  “He missed work?” I needed to be doubly sure.

  “Yeah. Lucky I wasn’t busy that day. Later, we all heard the news about the girl—Arizona.”

  “Thanks,” I said, letting air out of my lungs in a long sigh.

  “This isn’t stuff you wanted to hear—right?” Mike Hamill was a decent guy and he picked up on my obvious disappointment. But he did get it totally wrong when he dumped me and Arizona in the same cheated-on category. “Kyle’s a good-looking guy and he can get whichever girl he wants, but you need to break off whatever it is you have going with him.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Honestly, honey, he’s not worth it. You can’t trust the guy even to give you the time of day.”

  The fact was, we’d gotten to ten a.m. on our final day and we were no nearer to tracking Kyle down. I turned in the direction I thought Phoenix might be and told him we were getting nowhere.

  He spoke from way in front. “We learned a lot from Mike Hamill,” he pointed out. “For starters, we know now that Arizona and Kyle didn’t arrange to meet at Hartmann.”

  “So we’re worse than nowhere,” I groaned. “We only had the one theory and now that’s blown apart.”

  A guy passing by caught me apparently talking to myself as I got in my car. He gave me an odd look then pulled out his cell phone. Hearing Phoenix sink into the leather passenger seat, I quickly drove off. “I wish I didn’t know that Kyle is a serial cheater,” I groaned, my hands tight on the wheel.

  “Yeah, it sucks.”

  We both thought about what the news would do to Arizona. “Do we need to tell her?” I asked.

  “That’s a hard one to call. I don’t think we do, unless it’s part of the final picture.”

  “Which we’re no nearer to finding out.” Frustration was eating at me as I drove toward the center of town. “He could be anywhere. How do we corner him if we don’t know where he is?”

  I stopped at a red light for pedestrians to use t
he crossing. Among them was a young woman pushing a stroller. It took me a couple of seconds to recognize her as Sable Keppler with her baby. “Oh my—”

  “Pull over,” Phoenix said, after going through the same delayed reaction.

  I turned into a gas station and we watched Sable meet up with a woman who looked like an older version of herself—the same dark hair and definite jawline. Small and slight, they were both dressed in tight jeans and loose jackets that drew attention to their thin-as-sticks legs, with striped scarves wound around their necks. They bunched together on the sidewalk, deep in conversation.

  “I want to hear what they’re saying.” Deciding to risk leaving the car, I crossed the road, as if I wanted to browse in a store window. A creak of leather and the faint sound of footsteps told me that Phoenix had come too.

  The store sold fishing rods, which was as fascinating as you can get. I tried to look interested in the reels, floats, and flies.

  “I bought diapers.” The woman, who I guessed was Sable’s mother, held up a plastic carrier bag. “What else do we need?”

  “I left Mischa’s feeding cup and bowl back at the house—her favorites.” Sable made a list. “Plus, I need baby wipes and comforters.”

  “OK, so we call the pharmacy on the way home. We can pick everything up there. Did Kyle try to call?”

  “Five or six times. I let it ring out.”

  “You’ll have to talk to him sooner or later.” Sable’s mother took the stroller and started to push it toward a parking lot. The baby strained at the straps, turning to see whether Sable was following.

  “Not today,” Sable insisted, taking her phone from her pocket and turning it off. I waited for them to move on a few paces then I started to follow. It felt very bad to be witnessing the wreckage of Kyle’s family—until now his wife and baby hadn’t seemed real. But here Sable was, her face pinched by the cold wind, her mouth set in a downward curve. And the kid had a name—Mischa. She was a pretty baby with dark curls.

  “Listen, Sable—I called your brother,” Sable’s mom admitted as they reached her car.