Crazybone

14

I caught Emily’s hand and drew her with me around to the side of the house opposite the carport. I did not want Karen Meineke to see the two of us standing in plain view; it was liable to panic her. We got into heavy tree shadow just before a beat-up yellow Volkswagen van rattled into sight, polluting the air with blackish smoke from a defective exhaust. If the driver noticed my car parked on the turnaround, it didn’t alarm her; the van came up the driveway and into the carport without slowing. The noisy engine and the defective pipe combined to produce an explosive farting sound when the ignition was switched off.

The woman who stepped out and came around to open the rear doors weighed at least forty pounds more than she had on her wedding day, a lot of the extra poundage in bulging hips that rolled and wobbled inside a pair of jogger’s sweatpants. Her hair was a hennaed red now, long and stringy under a dark-green stocking cap. While she unloaded a couple of grocery bags, her back to the house, I whispered to Emily, “Stay here until I call you.” She nodded and I moved out into the open, walked slowly toward the carport.

I was halfway there, adjacent to the stairs again, when Karen Meineke turned and saw me. She had a grocery hag in each arm; she almost dropped one, recovered just in time, and then came up on the halls of her feet and swiveled her head left and right like a trapped animal looking for an escape route. That initial reaction lasted four or five seconds, as long as it took her to realize I was alone and not particularly menacing — empty hands, casual movements. Then she seemed to suck in a breath, gain control of herself. She came forward jerkily to meet me.

“Who are you?” Thin, shaky voice. Deep-sunk eyes wary and hiding things. “What’re you doing on my property?”

“Waiting for you, Mrs. Meineke.”

“Why? What d’you want?”

“Information.”

“About what?”

“You and your sister.”

“My — I don’t have a sister.”

“Sure you do. Ellen. Ellen and Lynn, sisters.”

The hidden things crawled into the light of her eyes, and they were the naked shapes of terror. “Jesus,” she said in a sick voice, “oh, Jesus, you... you’re...”

“That’s right. The detective Ellen told you about.”

She backed up a step, and for a second I thought the fear might goad her into flight. That might have happened if the one bag hadn’t slipped again, this time free of her clutch. The sound of it splitting on the hard ground seemed to freeze her in place. She glanced down at the scatter of canned goods, cookie packages, a burst quart of milk. When her eyes came up to mine again they had a stunned sheen. Her face was as white as the spilled milk.

“I’m not gonna talk to you,” she said.

“You’d better, Lynn. For your own good.”

“Karen. My name’s Karen. You get out of here and leave me alone. This is my property, you have no right to be here. I don’t have to talk to you, you can’t make me...”

Babbling. I waited until she ran down. Then I said, “What happened ten years ago?”

She shook her head. Shook it again, hard enough to wobble chins and jowls.

“Why did you and your sister change your names?”

“No,” she said. “No!”

“Where’s Ellen now?”

“I don’t... how do I know where she is?”

“She went back to Greenwood Friday afternoon,” I said. “Why? Who was she planning to see?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. She... nobody came here Friday, nobody’s been here in weeks—”

“There’s no use in lying. I know she was here. I know she brought Emily with her.”

“No. Leave me alone.” The fear was a living thing in the woman’s body; it made her quiver, jerked her legs into motion. She backed up another step, looking down again at the split bag of groceries, then went sideways in a kind of unsteady loop away from me toward the cabin. I let her get to within half a dozen paces of the stairs before I moved over to block her.

“You get out of my way,” she said without looking at me. “If you don’t leave me alone I’ll call the law. You hear me? I’ll call the sheriff and have you arrested...”

“No you won’t. Then I’d have to tell them what I already know about you and Ellen.”

“You don’t know anything. You can’t make trouble for me.”

“I know enough,” I said. “I’d have to tell them what you did to Emily, too.”

“...What?”

“Emily. Locking her up in that studio of yours. No heat, no toilet facilities — that’s abuse, Mrs. Meineke. Child abuse and child endangerment.”

“You... found...” She choked on the rest of it. Her face was splotched with red now, as if droplets of blood had been stirred into the milk-white.

“That’s right, I found her. And I let her out.” I raised my voice. “Emily, you can come over now.”

Karen Meineke stared as her niece appeared. Emily stopped beside me, as close as she’d stood before. She didn’t say anything; she just looked at the woman with those wide, tragic eyes.

“I never touched her,” Karen Meineke said. “I never hurt the kid. You tell him I never laid a hand on you, Emily.”

“She already told me,” I said.

“I had to put her in the studio. Her mother... Oh, shit, I never wanted her here in the first place!”

Emily said, “I don’t want to be here. I want to go home.” Her small fingers clutched at my coat sleeve. “I want him to take me home, Aunt Karen.”

The woman stared at her with cringing amazement. “What’s the matter with you? Your mother’s coming back for you.”

“No, she’s not. She’d’ve been here by now if she was. Please, Aunt Karen?”

“Ellen... your mother... she’s coming, I tell you. She has to. If you’re not here, she’ll... No, you’re staying right here with me.” Karen Meineke was sweating now; she reached out with her free hand to clutch at the porch railing, as if she might suddenly be feeling dizzy. “God, I wish I’d never... I wish...”

“Never what?” I said. “Never had a sister? Never done what you did ten years ago?”

“I didn’t do anything. It wasn’t me, it was them... Ellen and that bastard she... It wasn’t our idea, they talked us into it.”

“You and your husband, Charles Willis.”

She winced at the name.

“What did they talk you into doing?”

“I can’t tell you. I won’t.”

“I’ll find out one way or another. And soon. You know that. You know you can’t keep on lying and pretending.”

“Damn you, leave me alone! If you don’t, I’ll—” Hot little flicker in her eyes; she’d had a sudden thought. It straightened her up, gave her the impetus to push past me and start up the stairs.

When she’d gone partway I called. “If you’re going after a weapon, say a handgun, I don’t think you’ll find it where you left it.”

The words stopped her. She pivoted, both arms hugging the remaining grocery bag to her chest. “You... you were in my house. You broke into my house!”

“Did I? Front door doesn’t seem to be locked. Besides, you weren’t here — you don’t know if I was inside or not.”

“Broke in and stole my gun—”

“I’m not a thief,” I said. “Misplaced weapons have a way of turning up. Empty, even though you think you’ve left them lying around loaded.”

“You son of a bitch!” She screamed the epithet at me. And lumbered up the rest of the way and banged into the house.

As much to myself as to Emily I said, “It’s no use. I’ll have to find out some other way.”

“Do I have to stay here with her?”

“I’m afraid so. There’s no other choice.”

“For how long?”

“Until your mom comes or I find her first. If she does show up, you tell her to take you straight home. Tell her she can’t run and hide anymore, I’ll find her wherever she goes.”

“She isn’t coming back here,” Emily said.

Ah, Christ. I had my doubts, too, but I didn’t want her to know it. I said, “You’ll be all right here. Your aunt won’t lock you up anymore.”

Those dark, pained eyes moved over my face; I could almost feel them like a feather touch on my skin. “You’ll come back, won’t you? You won’t just leave me here?”

“I’ll be back. As soon as I can.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

Eye contact for a few more seconds. Emily broke it, took a couple of hesitant steps away from me — and changed her mind and came back and threw her arms around my waist, hugged me briefly and very hard. Then she ran up the stairs and into the house without looking back.

I fell lousy, standing there alone in the sun. I felt like the world’s biggest shit.

All the way into Gualala I beat myself up about leaving Emily to the not very tender mercies of her aunt. But it was the only option, just as I’d told her. If I had taken her with me and Karen Meineke decided to be vengeful, I’d be wide open for a kidnapping charge. And I couldn’t keep doing my job if I had a kid to watch out for, could I? Verities, sure, but they didn’t make me feel any better about it.

In the village, because my empty stomach was giving me hell, I stopped at a seafood restaurant that looked as though it catered to local trade and made short work of a bowl of clam chowder. Emily had said she thought her uncle still lived somewhere in the area; there was no listing in the local phone book for a Mike Meineke — I’d checked the restaurant’s pay-phone copy on the way in — so I asked my waitress if she knew him. No. Same response from the handful of other patrons.

From there I made the rounds of other local businesses. The fourth place I tried was The Fisherman’s Bar and Grill, on Highway I north of Port Creek Road. The bar was presided over by a big, bearded gent with hair as thick as fur on his arms and hands. When I asked him he if he knew Meineke, he said, “Looking for the man why?”

“Good news for him,” I lied. I handed over one of my cards. “I work for an attorney in San Francisco, executor of the estate of one of Mr. Meineke’s relatives.”

“Left him some money, this relative?”

“A small bequest, yes.”

The only customer within earshot, a wizened little guy drinking draft beer, leaned toward us and said, “If it’s more than five bucks, you can leave it right here with Hank. This is where Meineke’ll come spend it anyways.”

“You know him, then.”

“Sure, we know him,” Hank said. He winked at the customer. “Mike’s been known to take a drink now and then.”

“That’s a fact,” the little guy agreed. “If he has to knock you down to get hold of the bottle.”

The two of them thought that was pretty funny. I didn’t, particularly, but I laughed with them so they’d be inclined to answer my next question.

“Where can I find him?”

“Well, if he’s sober,” Hank said, “he’ll be up at the Wilkerson property. Hollywood people, the Wilkersons, come up here two weeks out of the year. Must be nice to be rich.”

“What does Meineke do there?”

“Lives there, takes care of the place.”

“Far from here?”

“Six, seven miles. Up north of Anchor Bay.”

“I’d appreciate directions.”

He asked shrewdly, “Get you something to drink first?”

I ordered a beer I didn’t want, bought a refill for the little guy and a shot of bourbon for Hank. That made the three of us drinking buddies and got me directions explicit enough for a backward child to follow.