The thick aroma drew some good memories forward from when he was a kid, watching his father work in the yard. Wanting to be like the man, like all men of Hangtree, standing tall with their adult mysteries, powerful arms, and faces like flint.
A strange, cold feeling passed over him. His vision blurred for an instant and it took a second to refocus. If he'd married Reb, and moved in with her, and took over her old man's house after his death, and spent years battling the bottle and his own ineptness, he might have wound up here doing this very same thing anyway.
He stacked the cordwood on the back stoop and thought it might be nice to have a fire tonight. He'd have to check the flue and see if it was clean enough to burn logs without smoking them out of the house.
There was no way he could fix the hole in the porch, but he did manage to use some of the cut two by fours in the corner of the garage to reinforce the stairs. He stood there holding the hammer, nails in his teeth, wood chips and sawdust in his hair, and a small rush of pride went through him. Not because he'd managed to spend a few hours filling out Reb's father's shoes, but because he realized that this wasn't the life for him and he hadn't made a bad choice in the first place.
Reb was at the screen door, trying it out. She looked at him and said, 'It doesn't close right. I can't lock it.'
'Who are you trying to keep out?'
'Jesus freaks and kids selling magazine subscriptions.'
'That's why I left the hole in the porch.'
She didn't laugh. She wore a face that said she'd never laugh again. 'Why'd you stack the wood in back?'
'It's getting cooler, feels like rain. I thought it might be nice to have a fire.'
'There's squirrel nests in the chimney. Come inside for lunch, if you're hungry.'
He put all the tools away and closed the garage and thought the home improvement chapter of his life had now been firmly shut. He walked inside and the cloying smell of detergent made him gag. He went around opening windows while she said behind him, 'Is it bad? I didn't notice after the first half hour.'
'It's pretty bad.'
It took a while but eventually the smell thinned. The place was cleaned up and looked much better than before. Maybe she was serious about selling. Perhaps she could get a good price for the house. You never knew when something was really quaint and when it was tobacco road.
She'd made a tuna salad and had set the dining room table again, but the candles weren't lit. They ate in silence. When he was almost finished he said, 'Thank you,' and wondered why he hadn't said it earlier.
'What are you thinking about?' Reb asked.
He hadn't been thinking of anything, but for some reason the name was on his lips. 'Ellie Groell.'
'Ellie Groell? Her? Why?'
'Her shadow was the last thing I saw of this town when I left it.'
'Jeez, that's creepy.'
No, it wasn't. It was pleasant. He'd been lonely and frightened and looking up at the Groell house had given him a sense of support. He didn't know why. It was getting a little ridiculous, the amount of things that he didn't quite understand.
'She still lives with her grandmother,' Reb said. 'The two of them alone in that big house. At least I think the grandmother is still alive. I could be wrong, she might be dead.'
Reb cleared the table and when she sat down again she had a glass and one of Jimmy Devlin's stolen bottles of Jack Daniels in front of her. She didn't offer him any. Sipping the whiskey got her quietly moaning with a deep pleasure, her eyes closed. When she opened them, she focused on him and said, 'Tell me what you've found out so far. About this thing that you came back here for. You discover that your old man didn't shoot the girl?'
'That's never been an issue. I know he did it. He told me so himself with nearly his last breath.'
'Then why's any of the rest of it matter, really? I mean, if this is about your father.'
'Maybe it's not about him, or not entirely.'
'You been talking to your wife?'
That seemed to be a switch in subjects, but maybe it wasn't. Since he'd been back, everything had become even more snarled together. 'I've been keeping in touch with my sister-in-law.'
'The one with all the kids. Your kids. You talk to her but not your wife?'
'I've called Joan, too, but she's never there.'
'Maybe she's got a new man. You said she deserved better.'
'She does, but it's not a man.'
'How can you be sure? You walked out and it's been a couple of years, right?'
He thought of Joan with another man and, though it made sense, he just couldn't bring himself to believe it. She'd stuck by him through so much already no matter how hard he tried to push her away. Her love was real, it had meaning even if he couldn't return it in full. He looked down at his hands and recalled, one instance after another, all the evil he had done with them, and knew he could never put them on Joan again without wanting to die.
'What about the money? You find out where your father hid it yet?'
She hadn't even asked if he'd figured out who'd kidnapped Mary Burke. The girl wasn't really a part of it, just the cash. She was even more bent than him. 'I told you, if he'd taken the money, he wouldn't have snuffed it a drunk in the gutter. Somebody else nabbed it.'
'You still planning on killing Edwards?'
'I don't think so. I had a chance the other day. He had one to kill me too, and he didn't.'
'Maybe you've both just got other things on your mind. Like you and the bad guy partner. A friend of mine saw you on Main Street with some characters. In a Rolls Royce.' She couldn't keep the excitement out of her voice.
'It was a Bentley.'
'That belong to your dealer buddy? Did he finally sniff you out all the way up here?'
He didn't like the way she said it. 'Would that friend be Jimmy Devlin?'
'No,' she said, 'it was somebody else.'
So she was still working Jimmy, had maybe even set him on Crease again along with the other Jimmys. What did she think that would earn her? Did she hope he'd get hurt so she could nurse him the way he'd taken care of her? Tighten the bond between them. Was that her play? To win him over, take her back to New York with him?
'Don't be too star-struck with fancy cars.'
'Why not?'
'Police impound them all, sooner or later.'
'Then you just go get another one. Isn't that how it happens?'
'The guys with two hundred grand in a briefcase under their beds are usually the cheapest sons of bitches there are. They're stressed all the time about spending the money. They're more worried about the IRS than they are the feds.'
'The smart ones figure their way around that, right?'
'Sometimes.'
Crease was going to tell her about Tucco and his whores, some of the things the guy did to the women that got on his nerves or didn't bring in enough cash. Where his business rivals wound up deep-sixed and knife-juked and glass-choked.
Except he knew that's what she wanted to hear. That it was all part of her dream, the hope that she might be able to grab a piece of that action, no matter the cost. She was more like Crease than he'd given her credit for. She'd been working her own edge. Maybe that's why he stayed with her, maybe he'd picked up on it that first night back when he saw her blood on the women's room door.
Call it what you will, she had her own style and was making her own fun.
He'd botched it. He'd thought he was helping her, but really, he was just keeping himself locked and loaded. He'd never be able to warn her off now. Anything he said would just pique her even more.
'A Rolls Royce,' she said. 'How much have you got put away, Crease?'
'Not much.'
