Keepers. Brenda closed her eyes. “That’s true,” she said. “OK, Noelle. Thank you.”
She cradled the phone and laid her head on the smooth, cool butcher block table. In the last few minutes, the kitchen had gone dark. The table was hard under her cheekbone, and it smelled of polyurethane. The sensation must be like the last moments for someone laying her head on the block in the Tower of London, or on the Place de la Concorde. Guilty as charged, she thought.
A knock. “I’m out here,” Rayette called.
It’s your fate, Brenda thought, and sat up. You will not be allowed to be alone, even though that’s what you are. In the dark, Rayette was waiting outside the cage, holding another plate. Brenda went out and opened the screened door.
“Nice night,” Rayette said as she stepped in. “We’ll have fog later. It’s dreamy to see, coming in off the Gulf. I heard you crying. Most people don’t want to eat when that happens, but I always do. Like a pig.”
“I drink milk,” Brenda said. “It’s some kind of regression therapy.”
“This is carrot cake,” Rayette said. “It goes great with milk.”
They went inside. As Brenda stepped back into the kitchen, Rayette paused in the living room. “No lights on,” she said. “That’s not a good sign.” Now she followed and set down the cake. Brenda got the milk and brought glasses to the table. Rayette poured. Brenda snapped on the overhead light, then brought plates and forks, paper napkins.
They both sat. Rayette began cutting the cake. “Ninety seconds ago I wouldn’t have believed it,” Brenda said. “Now, I think this is just what I need.” She took up her fork.
“It’s your friend, isn’t it? The man from Wisconsin.” Brenda nodded. “He’s refined,” Rayette said. “Not the frufru kind, but, you know. A gentleman.”
“Yes, he is. But for this to work, we have to talk about something else.”
“All right.”
“I didn’t have cake. I had brats.”
“Pardon? You mean bratwurst?”
Brenda forked in cake and drank her milk. They ate to sounds of traffic in the distance. The swimming pool’s pump shut down outside.
“I’m sorry,” Brenda said. “I have nothing to say.”
“It’s all right. But I have to tell you, I don’t feel good about Pat Sweeney.”
Neither did she. And yet Brenda was forking in carrot cake, certain she could eat the whole thing.
“What we found there?” Rayette said. “The house all open, with his car still in the garage? I know the man, and it doesn’t fit.”
“What the hell fits when you lose your whole family?”
“Well, okay, that’s true. Maybe not much.”
Brenda used her napkin, seeing him in the hat with tees and buttons, his fancy golfer’s shoes. “I saw enough to know he was a person of order,” she said. “The way he made his preparations.”
“Like that was how he could finally do it,” Rayette said. “Like, once everything’s done, there’s just one more thing on his list.”
Brenda put down her fork. “You’re right,” she said. “He didn’t kill himself. He couldn’t. He still had chores to take care of. But I think he’s dead.” She stood and wiped her mouth, reached down for the last of the cake on her plate and put it in her mouth. She took a long swallow of milk. “I have to go.”
“Do you want me to come with you?”
“I’d be grateful if you stay here. Just in case someone calls.”
“Sure, but give me your cell number. Do you think he’ll come back? Your friend?”
“That’s why I’d like you to stay.” Brenda finished her milk. “He has every reason to leave, but I hope he doesn’t.”
◆◆◆◆◆
At Donegal Boulevard, she turned in the direction of Sweeney’s house. She would make one last check. He wasn’t there, but she needed to be sure. Why was that? Driving, she did not want to think about it, but knew why: to be sure Sweeney was gone.
People out walking appeared in her headlights. Ground fog now hung heavy over the dark golf course. She remembered Charlie, the solid mass of him all at once standing above her at the Ivy house. Minutes later, when she told him the truth, the weight of his disappointment had settled in his face and on his shoulders. It had been something like fog, wrapping him in wordless evidence of what she meant to him.
Say it, Brenda thought. You don’t want Sweeney dead. You just want him gone. You want him to disappear.
He disappear—
Ray had used that word on Saturday as they neared Immokalee. He’d been talking about someone named Kleinman, an owner of nursing homes. Kleinman had made James Rivera his protégé, and that had made a Haitian employee jealous. He take a weed whacker and cut Quinto’s face, the scar you see. Pretty soon, the guy disappear.
She turned at Sweeney’s street. At the far end, the street lamp revealed his open garage. A truck was parked inside, and Brenda’s heart sank. But the truck might mean Sweeney was all right. Now she wanted that. He too was a keeper, and she felt an obligation.
She pulled up and walked quickly into the open garage to the house entrance. The door was still unlocked, and Brenda stepped inside. “Patrick?” She listened, feeling her heart thud, smelling stone or tile mingled with traces of Szechuan spices and hoisin sauce.
“Patrick!”
Relieved, conflicted, she stepped back down into the garage, closed the door and walked toward her car. You are not a bad person, she thought. You will call the police, you will answer their questions and take their looks. She opened her car door and faced the garage.
Only now did she see that the space next to the van was empty—Sweeney’s own car was missing. Rayette had cupped
