to know about, Jude?”
So there was no warrant on him in Florida. That didn’t make sense. He had attacked a woman and her child, been shot, been in a collision—but if he was a wanted man in Florida, Nan would already know about it. She would already be planning his plea.
Nan went on, “You came south to see your father before he passed away. You were in an accident just before you reached his farm. Out walking the dog by the side of the road, and the two of you got hit. An unimaginable chain of events, but that’s what happened. Nothing else makes sense.”
The door opened, and Jackson Browne peeked into the room. Only he had a red birthmark on his neck that Jude hadn’t noticed before, a crimson splotch in the rough shape of a three-fingered hand, and when he spoke, it was in a clownish honk, his inflections soupy and Cajun.
“Mr. Coyne. Still with us?” His gaze darting from Jude to Nan Shreve beside him. “Your record company will be disappointed. I guess they were already planning the tribute album.” He laughed then, until he coughed, and blinked watering eyes. “Mrs. Shreve. I missed you in the lobby.” He said it jovially enough, but the way he looked at her, his eyes hooded and wondering, it sounded almost like an accusation. He added, “So did the nurse at the reception desk. She said she hadn’t seen you.”
“I waved on the way by,” Nan said.
“Come on in,” Jude said. “Nan said you’d like to talk to me.”
“I ought to place you under arrest,” said Detective Quinn.
Jude’s pulse quickened, but his voice, when he spoke, was smooth and untroubled. “For what?”
“Your last three albums,” Quinn said. “I got two daughters, and they play ’em and play ’em at top volume, until the walls shake and the dishes rattle and I feel I am close to perpetratin’ dough-mestic abuse, you understan’? And this is on my lovely, laughin’ daughters, who I wouldn’t under normal conditions want hurt for any reason nohow.” He sighed, used his tie to wipe his brow, made his way to the foot of the bed. He offered Jude his last stick of Juicy Fruit. When Jude declined, Quinn popped the stick into his mouth and began to chew. “You got to love ’em, somehow, no matter how crazy you feel sometimes.”
“That’s right,” Jude said.
“Just a few questions,” Quinn said, pulling a notebook out of an inner pocket of his jacket. “We want to start before you got to your father’s house. You were in a hit-and-run, is that it? Some awful kind of day for you and your lady friend, huh? And then attacked by your dad. Course, the way you look, and the condition he was in, he probably thought you were…I don’t know. A murderer come to loot his farm. An evil spirit. Still, I can’t think why you wouldn’t have gone to a hospital after the accident that took off your finger.”
“Well,” Jude said. “We weren’t far from my daddy’s place, and I knew my aunt was there. She’s a registered nurse.”
“That so? Tell me about the car that hit you.”
“A truck,” Jude said. “A pickup.” He glanced at Nan, who nodded, just slightly, eyes watchful and certain. Jude drew a deep breath and began to lie.
51
Before Nan left his room, she hesitated in the doorway and looked back at Jude. That grin was on her face again, the stretched, forced one that made Jude sad.
“She really is beautiful, Jude,” Nan said. “And she loves you. You can tell the way she talks about you. I spoke to her. Only for a moment, but…but you can tell. Georgia, is she?” Nan’s eyes were shy, and pained, and affectionate, all at once. She asked the question like she wasn’t sure if she really wanted to know.
“Marybeth,” Jude said firmly. “Her name is Marybeth.”
52
They were back in New York two weeks later for Danny’s memorial service. Marybeth wore a black scarf around her neck that matched her black lace gloves. The afternoon was windy and cold, but the gathering was well attended nonetheless. It seemed everyone Danny had ever chatted up, gossiped with, or blabbed to on the phone was there, and that was a lot, and none of them left early, not even when the rain began to fall.
53
In the spring Jude recorded an album, stripped down, mostly acoustic. He sang about the dead. He sang about roads at night. Other men played the guitar parts. He could handle rhythm, but that was all, had needed to switch back to making chords with the left, as he had in his childhood, and he wasn’t as good at it.
The new CD sold well. He did not tour. He had a triple bypass instead.
Marybeth taught dance at a tony gym in High Plains. Her classes were crowded.
54
Marybeth found a derelict Dodge Charger in a local auto graveyard, brought it home for three hundred dollars. Jude spent the next summer sweating in the yard with his shirt off, restoring it. He came in late each night, all of him tanned, except for the shiny silver scar down the center of his chest. Marybeth was always waiting just inside the door, with a glass of homemade lemonade. Sometimes they would trade a kiss that tasted of cold juice and motor oil. They were his favorite kisses.
55
One afternoon, close to the end of August, Jude wandered inside, sweating and sunburned, and found a message on the machine from Nan. She said she had some information for him and he could call her back anytime. Anytime was now, and he rang her in her office. He sat on the edge of Danny’s old desk while Nan’s receptionist patched him through.
“I’m afraid I don’t have a lot to tell you about this George Ruger person,” Nan said without any preamble. “You wanted to know if he’s been mentioned in any criminal proceedings in the last year, and the answer to that appears to be no. Maybe if I had more information from you, as to exactly what your interest in him is…”
“No. Don’t worry about it,” Jude said.
So Ruger hadn’t brought any kind of complaint to the authorities; no surprise. If he was going to bring a suit, or try to have Jude arrested, Jude would’ve known about it by now anyway. He hadn’t really expected Nan to come up with anything. Ruger couldn’t talk about what Jude had done to him without risking that it would come out about Marybeth, how he’d slept with her when she was still in junior high. He was, Jude remembered, an important figure in local politics. It was hard to run a really effective fund-raiser after you’d been accused of statutory rape.
“I had a little more luck concerning Jessica Price.”
“You did,” Jude said. Just hearing her name made his stomach knot up.
When Nan spoke again, it was in a falsely casual tone, a little too cool to be persuasive. “This Price is under investigation for child endangerment and sexual abuse. Her own daughter, if you can imagine. Apparently the police came to her home after someone called in an accident report. Price drove her car into someone else’s vehicle, right in front of her house, forty miles an hour. When the police got there, they found her unconscious behind the wheel. And her daughter was in the house with a gun and a dead dog on the floor.”
Nan paused to allow Jude a chance to comment, but Jude didn’t have anything to say.
Nan went on, “Whoever Price drove her car into took off. Never found.”
“Didn’t Price tell them? What’s her story?”
“No story. See, after the police calmed the little girl down, they took the gun away. When they went to put it back where it belonged, they found an envelope with photos in it, hidden in the velvet lining of the pistol’s case. Polaroids of the girl. Criminal stuff. Horrible. Apparently they can establish that the mother took them. Jessica Price
