Wednesday
The phone was ringing when I let myself into the ranch house. As I went to pick up, I noticed the time on the old-fashioned kitchen clock: 12:23.
“Happy Halloween, McCone.” Hy.
“And the same to you.” I’d completely forgotten what the date was.
“Where’ve you been all this time? I’ve left messages on the machine, and on your cell.”
“Sorry I haven’t checked either. Where I’ve been is an awfully sad story.”
His voice sharpened when he asked, “What’s wrong?”
I went over the events of the evening.
“Jesus,” he said when I’d finished. “Poor Ramon. How’re you?”
“I’m handling it.”
“And?”
“That’s all. I was there for Ramon when he needed me. Now the county sheriff can deal with it.”
“… Right.”
“What does that mean?”
“Nothing, really.”
“You think this is going to suck me in, don’t you? You think that next thing I’ll be prowling around, trying to find out who killed that woman.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Well, good, because it’s not going to happen. That part of my life is over.
“I hear you. Have you made any decisions yet? About your future?”
“No, not yet.”
We went on to discuss his day, our cats, and his coming up here on the weekend. After we ended the conversation, I took a hot shower and crawled into bed.
All I wanted was to blot out the events of a long, horrible day. Maybe if I could do that, even for a few hours, I’d be able to distance myself from Ramon’s trouble.
Maybe.
At around ten-thirty that morning I was washing out my coffee cup at the kitchen sink when Sara Perez’s SUV drove in and parked next to Ramon’s truck. She got out, looked inside the truck. Then she spotted me through the window, waved, and moved toward the house.
Sara was a short, heavy woman with gray hair in a long braid that hung nearly to her waist. In spite of her girth, she moved gracefully. A native of Oaxaca, Mexico, she was a midwife and concocter of herbal medicines, assisting at births and dispensing natural panaceas in remote towns all over the county, as well as a writer of children’s books aimed at the state’s soon-to-be-dominant Latino population.
When I met her at the mudroom door, I saw that her eyes were worried, her full lips cracked and raw as if she’d been nibbling at them.
“Ramon didn’t come home last night,” she said. “I heard about Hayley. The radio said he found her body and that you were with him.”
I motioned her in from the cold. “Ramon asked me to drop him off in town, and that he’d call you for a ride home. He had to break the news to Miri.”
“He go to her house?”
“Yes, he had me drive him there, but-”
“She was off someplace, or passed out drunk.”
“That’s what he thought.”
“Well, I’ve tried calling Miri’s. No answer there.”
“Last I saw him, he was going to look for her in the bars.”
“May I use your phone?”
“Sure.” I motioned toward it, went to pour her a cup of coffee.
“Bob?” she said into the phone. “Sara. Did my man come in there last night looking for his miserable sister?… Yeah… Right, about what time?… Thanks, Bob, I appreciate it.”
To me she said, “He went to Zelda’s, Miri hadn’t been in.” Sara dialed again and left a message on a machine. Made another call. “Jenny, it’s Sara. Did Ramon…? Right. She wasn’t… I see… Will you call me if… Thanks.”
She turned to me, took the cup of coffee I held out. “Those’re the only bars in Vernon,” she said, “and the one where I got the machine has eighty-sixed Miri so many times she’d never go there. Ramon was at the other two a little after midnight, asking for her. She hadn’t been in.”
“Maybe he went back to Miri’s and found her there.”
“And now nobody’s answering the phone?”
“That
Sara shook her head, her braid switching from side to side. “I can’t. The last time I tried to reach out to Miri, she threatened me with her shotgun, said she’d kill me if I ever came near the place again. Now, with Hayley dead, she’ll be ready to take on the world. Will you go for me?”
Sara’s dark eyes pleaded with me.
“I don’t have anybody else to ask,” she said. “None of our other friends want anything to do with Miri.”
She looked so alone. If I could bring Ramon back to her…
“I’ll go,” I said, “and call to tell you what I find out.”
Before I left the ranch house, Ted phoned. After he gave me his daily report he asked, “Any idea when you’re coming back to the city?”
“No. Why?”
“We miss you. The place isn’t the same without you.”
And I wasn’t the same without it. But I wasn’t the same when I was there, either.
“Shar?”
“I’m here.”
“Look, we’re doing what we can to hold this agency together, but we need you.”
“The agency seems to be doing fine without me.”
Long pause. “You sound so… cold.”
I supposed I did. A frozen shell around my emotions was the best way to distance myself from the people I’d known and cared for all these years.
“I’m sorry, Ted. I’m… preoccupied this morning, that’s all.”
“Shar, this is me you’re talking to. Ted, from the old days at All Souls.”
The poverty law cooperative where we used to work, he as secretary and me as staff investigator. When I’d first met him he’d been sitting with his bare feet propped on his desk, working a
I said, “I know who I’m talking to, Ted.”
