“I got two things,” Belinda said. “First, the good news. I want to see you after work if possible. I have bought some very scanty panties and wanted to see if you are a real red-blooded male who will be overcome with passion when you see me in them.”
“That one you can count on. You can just wear your socks, and you’ll get the same results.”
“You like socks?”
“Actually, you could show up naked or wrapped in wool or wearing a beanie propeller and you would get my attention. But, hey, I’m not dismissing new panties. I’m all up for that, as we say when we’re having witty sexual repartee.”
“Not that witty.”
“What’s number two? Usually that means a bowel movement, but I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that’s not what you mean.”
“That’s the bad news. Timpson wants you in her office.”
“And me all out of dog treats.”
“That was nice work you did, especially since it looks to me you wrote it without a whole lot of information,” Timpson said. “Still, you found the good stuff.”
I was seated in the office chair, as before, and Timpson was in the chair behind her desk. She shifted it so that she was facing me head-on.
“I want you to stay on this assignment. You’ve started it, and your article was better than the colored boy’s would have been.”
“Oswald,” I said. “His name is Oswald. And unless he’s changed either his first or last name to Colored, I believe the term is black or African American. I don’t think he’s a boy either. Maybe you could have him drop his pants and we could see if his testicles have descended. That’s one way of telling. I am, however, sure he’s old enough to go on ahead and start picking cotton.”
Timpson watched me through watery eyes. “I ought to kick your ass out.”
I hadn’t meant to say that, but it had just popped out. I didn’t even like Oswald.
Timpson gave me a grin that almost caused her to lose her false teeth. It wasn’t a grin that said I like you, it was one that said, Okay, asshole, I’ll let that one pass. “All right then, you take the African American man’s place because his articles suck. How’s that? And, if he wants to come in here and drop his drawers and show me his balls, I’m on board. Now, be honest. His articles. Think about it.”
I sighed. “His articles do suck hind dry tit, and he seems to have graduated from the Winnie the Pooh School of Journalism. But I don’t want to be a police reporter. I like being a columnist. I’m not saying it isn’t fun, but I’m a columnist, and I don’t want to take Oswald’s job.”
“Yeah, well, you will be for a while. Follow up this murder-kidnapping thing. Does that work for you, Mr. Pulitzer Prize nominee?”
“It does.”
“Do what you need to do then. Get whatever help you need to get it done. Oswald if you have to. Talk to who you need to talk to. Go where you need to go. Write all the articles that pertain to this murder and kidnapping that you can. If nothing more is there, we’ll move on. But, if you can find out about the couple, their lives, research it. Later, you can do a column on the murders. Something like this happens, like that missing girl, shit, boy—It’s okay if I call you a boy, I suppose? Not that I want you to drop your pants.”
“You said you’d let Oswald, so that doesn’t seem fair.”
“I’ve heard the colored are better hung.” She scrunched up her mouth, and when she did, the bones in her face appeared to shift dramatically, like knobs and sticks under parchment. “If we’re all out of being cute, let’s get back to business. Bleed this crime for as many articles as you can. It’s going to sell a lot of papers.”
“Because of the murders, not the article.”
“The way you wrote it helped.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“Twice, already,” she said. “One was slightly veiled, this one is direct, and two times, that’s my quota. Or maybe it was three compliments. I can’t remember a goddamn thing anymore. Anyway, I’m short on any more shit from you. Push it, and I’ll write the goddamn columns and the articles myself and you can go home and pull your johnson while you read through the paper’s help-wanted section.”
“I hear you,” I said.
“I’m thinking of another thing, of putting you on an article about those preachers and the shit that’s going on between them. We’ve run a lot of stuff, but there’s a big shindig coming up with the colored preacher doing a talk at the university, and there’s all manner of bullshit coming down about a protest. I might want you to write that too. This thing has been going on for months, but with Judence’s big talk and rally coming up, I think we can get a really good story out of it. If anything goes down there, protests, what-have-you, we can play it until it runs out of air, then we’ll kick it around some more, see if it squeaks.”
“I really think you should consider Oswald for that one. He’d do better than me in the black community, and that’s who he’ll need information from, the community.”
“Even if his writing sucks hind dry tit?”
“Even if,” I said.
“You may have a point. People like to talk to their own kind.”
“That’s one way of seeing it,” I said. “Maybe not the way I would have chosen to express it, but—”
“Like I give a damn,” Timpson said.
I waited a moment. Nothing else was forthcoming. I stood up to go.
I went to the door, and she said, “Send the colored boy in, will you?”
30
After work I went over to Belinda’s and we made love and lay in bed talking, sniffing a candle that this time smelled like fresh-baked bread. I had to get me some of those candles. Maybe they would cover up my dead rat odor. Most likely I would just sit around the house hungry. I wondered if they had a chili candle, an enchilada candle. French fries maybe.
“How did Oswald take it?” Belinda asked. Between thinking about candle possibilities, I had been telling her about my meeting with Timpson, the fact that the boss had put me on the murder and kidnapping case.
“Like I had planned it. He was pissed.”
“How do you feel about it?”
“I like writing the columns, but this kind of stuff has its dark sort of charm.”
“It’s a big thing for our little paper.”
“Yep.”
“Cason. Something is bothering you. And even in my profound insecurity, I don’t think it’s me. Is it Gabby? Caroline? The stuff with her and your brother?”
“You know, funny thing is, I haven’t thought about Gabby all day. That’s the first time she’s come to mind in a while, and only because you mentioned it.”
“Me and my big mouth.”
“No…No. I think I’m getting better. Far as she’s concerned anyway. As for the rest of the stuff, yeah, I’m thinking about it. I have also started counting things again. There are eighteen thousand little black marks in your ceiling tile.”
“I hope you weren’t counting them while we were making love.”
“Only when you were on top.”
“Ha. Ha.”
“No, you took a little nap after we finished, either because you were so deeply satisfied with my manly abilities, or because you were bored, and that’s when I counted them. It’s something that hits me now and again when I’m stressed: the urge to count, to know exact numbers. I can’t explain it. But I want you to know, I did think about you a lot in between the dots.”
Belinda shifted in bed so that her pelvis was touching me. I could feel her pubic hair on my leg. “Anything else on your mind?” she said. “Now that you’ve got the dots out of the way.”
“World peace.”
“You shit.”
“Actually, something just came to mind when you moved like that, and in favor of honesty, I have to say it wasn’t world peace. It was another kind of piece.”
“You know what I mean,” she said, slapping at me. “Is there anything you want to talk about?”
“And you know what I mean. But, yeah, there is something else. Belinda, I may be an idiot, but I do have something to talk about, and I know it’s probably rude to say it, but I tell you this, you got to promise it stays between you and me. For now. Maybe forever. You know part of it, but I want to tell you the whole of it.”
“Is this a big moment in our relationship?”
“I think it is.”
“Then great,” she said. “Sure. What is it?”
I told her all of it. About Ernie and Tabitha, the DVDs, how they tried to blackmail Jimmy, about us taking the DVDs away from them, the fact that I hid them. I told her about being in the murder house. I told her about Jimmy planning to take Trixie out of town, have my parents meet them at the lake house. The only thing I held back was where I put the DVDs. For some reason, I thought that was something she ought not to know.
When I finished my story, I said, “I’m not even sure I should be seeing you, Belinda. Someone has my number, and anyone around me could be in trouble.”
“I’m not scared…Well, not that scared. I’m not going to stop seeing you.”
“Go slow,” I said. “I’m trouble on the hoof, even when I don’t mean to be.”
“I’m here as long as you want me around. Tell me what we need to do, and I’ll do it.”
“Timpson may not like it.”
“Timpson can go screw herself,” Belinda said.
“My, aren’t you rowdy. Come to think of it, she said I could use whatever resources I needed at the paper, suggested I take Oswald.”
“I bet he doesn’t have bread-scented candles.”
“I bet you’re right,” I said. “I think Timpson will go for it. She can get someone else to work the front desk.”
“When do you tell her?”
“Immediately.” I shifted and pulled her to me. “Well, almost immediately.”
31
I went into Timpson’s office and asked if Belinda could be my assistant, a reporter in training. Timpson put both hands on her desk and leaned forward and gave me a severe look. She stayed that way for so long I thought for a moment she had died.
“She’s gonna flop for you,” Timpson said, “tell her to do that on her own time, will you?”
I tried to look somewhere between shocked and mildly surprised at her comment, but I’m certain the best expression I managed was somewhere between being caught with my pants down and extreme constipation. When I spoke, all I could come up with was, “That’s not a nice thing to say.”
“You’re riding in her saddle, aren’t you?”
I tried to look shocked. “Where did you get such an idea?”
“All the people who know me, who have seen you two around town together, they told me. And they’ve seen your car parked over at her house late at night. I suppose you could be helping her lay carpet, but my guess is you’re laying something else.”
I studied the old bat for a moment. “You’re a little too smart and connected for your own good,” I said. “But okay. That’s on our own time. Always has been.” That was partly a lie, but it was close enough. “I like her. She likes me, but it won’t affect our work.”
“Relationships never affected mine.”
I almost said I could believe that, but held back.
“It’s not a problem,” I said.
“Not for me it isn’t. Do your job, and like I told you before, I don’t care what you do as long as it doesn’t cause the paper trouble. Same for Brenda.”
“Belinda.”
She and the chief needed to get together. They could rename the town population. Might as well, they were going to call people by whatever name they wanted anyway. Considering one was a policeman, the other an editor, you had to wonder why they couldn’t remember names correctly.
“Very well, then,” Timpson said. “Get on it, and take her with you. Besides, I’ve been thinking of moving her to reporter anyway.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“Got to see how she performs while she works with you. That will make my determination. When I refer to performance, I’m talking about the reporter part.”
I ignored that little jab, said, “She deserves the reporter job.”
“Not really, but I’m thinking Oswald might quit, and that way I got a replacement. He seems kind of pissy around me lately.”
I was thinking it might be all her nifty references to the colored, but I decided not to mention it.
First thing I did was go home and get the DVDs out of their hiding place; spent the morning going through them until I found Ronnie on disc with Caroline. They were a beautiful pair, and the way they went at it, it was like watching some very smooth porno film directed by a woman instead of a man. It was slow and sensuous, and I found myself getting aroused. I felt guilty about that, knowing there was a good chance Caroline was dead. I focused on that possibility, and became more clinical. I took in every aspect of Ronnie’s face offered to me. She was almost as beautiful as Caroline. In fact, they looked somewhat alike, except Ronnie was dark-haired and Caroline was blond. There was also something about Ronnie that was different. She didn’t quite have the unearthly beauty that Caroline had, but the way she moved, and smiled, she seemed warmer, sexier, more real.
I remembered what Belinda had said about Caroline borrowing personality and charm from her memory banks, and it occurred to me when you got past that incredible beauty of hers, the sexuality that was there because of her looks, there was in fact something missing. She moved her mouth in a passionate manner, but her eyes were as flat and uninteresting as the backside of a cardboard cutout.
I turned the DVD off. I had Ronnie’s image in my mind. I knew who I was looking for. I put Ronnie’s DVD with the others, packed up the ones I had looked through to find hers, took the one of Jimmy from between my books and put it with the others, then placed the box back in the closet hideaway.
I checked the notes I had on Ronnie, information that was in the stuff Mercury gave me. There was an address. I picked up Belinda and we drove over there. It was a duplex and Ronnie’s address was on the top floor. I walked up and knocked. A woman answered. She wasn’t Ronnie Fisher. She was good-looking, older than Ronnie would have been, said her name was Sharon Duran. I asked about Ronnie and she shook her head. Never heard of her.
I asked the name of her landlord, and got his number and called him. I asked him about Ronnie. His name was Leon Cripson, and when he talked, he sounded distracted, like he might be watching TV on mute, or perhaps checking his pubic hair for lice.
“Yeah, cute gal,” the landlord said, “moved out a while back.”
“How many months ago?” I said. I was sitting in the car with Belinda at the wheel. We were parked out front of Ronnie’s former duplex.
“Hell, I don’t know. You sure you’re a reporter?”
I gave him my name and told him who my boss was. I could almost hear him considering things over the line. “Must have been, oh, seven, eight months ago,” he said.
“Mr. Cripson, did you know Ronnie knew the girl who disappeared?”
“What?”
I gave him a brief explanation.
“Oh, yeah. I remember that. I remember because Ronnie was in the paper, saying something about it.”
“About some fines the missing girl owed.”
“That was it. I remember because the girl, what was her name again?”
I told him.
“Yeah, she was so pretty, and I thought Ronnie was pretty too. I remember thinking it wasn’t surprising they knew one another. Them good-lookers run in packs.”
“Did you ever see Caroline with Ronnie?”
“No. I don’t think so. I’d remember if I did, if that newspaper picture did her any credit.”
“Did Ronnie leave your duplex around the time that the girl went missing? Could it have been then?”
There was a brief pause. “She did. She went owing me some rent. I don’t know exactly when she got out of Dodge, but it was around then. Al
l I know is she didn’t pay me and didn’t pay me and didn’t pay me, and I went over and finally had to open the door and put all her stuff in storage. I called her cell number over and over, but nothing. I called up the college. They said she dropped out and went home.”
“And left all her stuff?”
“Don’t know she left it all, could have taken some things with her, but she left a lot of it behind.”
“Do you remember where Ronnie’s home was, the place she went back to?”
“No. I don’t.”
“So you have her stuff stored?”
“It’s in a storage stall. I should have already gotten rid of it, and I’m going to, soon as I can get around to it. Have Goodwill come cart it off after I sell what I can sell. It’s costing me more to store it than it’s worth.”
“Is there any way we could come look through it? We think she might know something about the missing girl, and there could be something that connects her to Caroline.”
“Really?” he said.
“It’s a thought,” I said.
“You mean it might help with a murder investigation?”
“It’s possible. Can we come look?”
“I guess so. But it has to be on these terms. You empty out the storage building. That’s the deal.”
“I can’t afford to buy her stuff.”
“Hell with that. I’ve decided to get rid of it all. Deal?”
“Deal,” I said.
32
I rented a U-Haul truck and Belinda followed me in my car over to the address the landlord had given me. I called just before we got there and he gave me the gate code.
There were rows of storage buildings inside a fence, and there was a little outfit by the gate with buttons on it. I pushed the buttons Cripson had told me to push. The gate clicked open and swung back on its hinges.
In front of the building with the number Cripson had given me was the big black SUV he told me to look for.
Cripson got out of the SUV when we drove up. He was a short, fat, bald guy who wheezed when he walked, like a huge basketball leaking air. He was pulling a little tank on wheels and he had tubes hooked up to his nose that ran back into the tank.