The Best American Mystery Stories 2001

Dan Leone Family

From Literal Latté

My brother’s house would look like all the other houses in that part of the state: one of those prefabricated “snap-together jobbers,” he called it. White. Small. Last one on the left after the road turns to gravel, before it ends in a T.

“Dave,” I said, “are you sure you don’t mind seeing me?”

“You’re my brother,” he said.

There was a pause. I moved the phone from my one ear to the other. “Thank you,” I said.

He gave me permission to go on in; the back door would be open. “I get home from work around six,” he said. “If you get there before then…” There was another pause, a longer one, which made me think he was really thinking about it. “There’re leftovers in the fridge,” he said. “Clean towels in the bathroom closet. Movies, music… Make yourself at home.”

He didn’t say anything about a girlfriend, though, and I caught her entirely off-guard in the bathtub. No bubbles.

“Don’t hurt me,” she screamed, crossing her arms and kicking her legs up in front of her. Water splashed over the edge of the tub.

I jumped back into the hallway and reeled around the corner, out of sight, almost pissing and shitting myself at once.

“Don’t hurt me don’t hurt me don’t hurt me. Money in my purse on the table in there. Oh my god.” I could hear her reaching for a towel, water dripping. “Anything you want. Anything. No need to hurt me.”

I opened my mouth but nothing came out. My knees were clacking against each other like bowling pins, the road still rolling under me, thunder in my ears.

“Purse on the table. Just take it and go. No sense in hurting me. I won’t call the cops. Just get it and go, OK?” She never stopped talking, not even to breathe, which made me consider the possibility that she was planning an ambush, keeping me occupied with her blah blah blah and then, thwack, a toilet plunger through the heart — so I figured I’d better rally the troops and say something.

“Dave’s brother,” I blurted. “Sorry.”

“On the kitchen table. I’ll cooperate,” she said. “Anything you want. What? What did you say?” she said.

“I’m Dave’s brother. I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, between breaths. “I’m sorry I walked in on you. He said I could let myself in. I’m sorry.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I’m really sorry,” I said, hands on knees, thinking: I’ll kill my brother for this.

She was catching her breath too. After a while she said, “I’m drying off.”

“I’m not looking.” I closed my eyes. “I’m not a creep or a criminal. I’m just a guy. Just Dave’s brother,” I said.

“I’ve met all his brothers,” she said. “He didn’t tell me he had any more.”

“I can explain that,” I said. “I’ll show you identification if you want. We’re brothers. I just fell out with the whole family a long time ago. Years. Before I called, we hadn’t spoken to each other in ten years. How long have you—?”

She stepped out of the bathroom in a short-cut bathrobe with her hands in the pockets, a sheepish half smile on her lips. “My god, I’m so embarrassed,” she said. Her wet, brown hair clung to her forehead in girlish curls. I could smell her cleanness and I could feel the warmth of her bath radiating off of her.

“My name’s Thomas,” I said.

“I’m Ellen.” She made a vague motion with her right hand — a wave, I realized too late. My hand was already out there, awkward. We shook hands. It didn’t last long, but it was the first human touch I’d felt in at least a week, and the electricity of it stayed with me afterward. “So,” she said, “I guess Dave didn’t mention me to you any more than vice versa.”

I shrugged. “Ten years,” I said. “I called from a phone booth in Wyoming. We didn’t have much time to talk.”

“That’s OK,” she said, “Are you hungry?”

“More than anything,” I said, “I need to use the bathroom. I’ve been driving for a long time.”

“Go ahead.” She stepped aside, smiling all the way now. “Careful,” she said. “The floor’s wet.”

She was still wearing the bathrobe when I came out. Instead of getting dressed, she was standing at the counter in the kitchen, making chip-chopped ham sandwiches.

“You like mustard?” she said.

“Sure, but you don’t have to feed me.”

“I’m hungry too. Sit down,” she said.

I walked past her and sat at the kitchen table. There was the purse.

“There’s the purse,” she said.

“Ah. Where your money is, if I’m not mistaken.”

She laughed. It was a sexy laugh. It was a sexy bathrobe. I could see what my brother saw in her. Over sandwiches, with the sinking December sunlight slanting in through the kitchen window, I got a better look at her face. Her cheeks were freckled at the cheekbones, but other than that her complexion was clear as cellophane. She could have been looking out at me from the cover of a magazine on the rack at a gas station, except that one front tooth was chipped and her nose was crooked. She was real and beautiful. There was mustard on her chin.

“So tell me,” I said. “How long have you known my brother?”

“Long enough.”

“Long enough. What?”

“To know him,” she said. “He doesn’t tell me stuff. He’s Mister Mysterious. So tell me yourself. I won’t judge you.”

“Tell you what?”

“Why don’t I know you? Why your brother — why your whole family would erase you like that. I’m not judgmental.”

“Then why do you want to know?”

“To understand,” she said. “I feel like we’ve… well, the way we met, I mean.” She paused, flashing the same sheepish half smile, and then continued more quickly. “Like we’ve been through something together I guess. Which gives us a bond, which makes me curious. That’s all.”

I set my sandwich down and looked out the window. It was a picture window, facing west onto a down-sloping weed yard, a scummy pond, and a stubbled cornfield. If we sat there for long enough, I’d be able to witness my first straight-on, non-rearview-mirrored sunset in days. “Do you live here?” I said.

“We’re married,” she said.

I looked at her, but I couldn’t tell from her look if she was kidding or not.

“Are you kidding?” I said.

She showed me her wedding band, which was sandwiched on the same finger between two prettier, fancier rings.

I didn’t know what to say. “Congratulations,” I said.

“Thank you. You know what the best thing about getting married is?” She said, standing up and walking toward the sink.

“No,” I said.

She picked up a marble rolling pin out of the dish rack and held it up before her like a torch or trophy. “Presents,” she said.

“How long,” I said, “have you been married?”

“Long enough.”

“Uh-oh.”

“No. That’s not how I meant it.” She set the rolling pin down, picked a couple of mugs out of the rack, and took them to the refrigerator. Because of the incoming sunlight, I could see every individual particle of dust in the kitchen air between us. “Do you want some purple Kool-Aid?” she said.

I couldn’t believe my brother hadn’t told me he was married.

“You guys drink Kool-Aid?” I said.

“Mostly Dave,” she said. “Do you want some? Or can I get you something else? Water? Juice? Beer?” It was one of those vertically split refrigerator-freezers, and she was speaking into the refrigerator half of it. “Well?” she said.

“I’m thinking. I’m thinking,” I said.

She closed the refrigerator door and opened the freezer. Steam poured out and around her bare feet and all the way up while she was getting ice cubes.

Wine, I thought. Red wine and candles and classical music. But I was afraid to say so because what kind of wine, if any, would purple Kool-Aid drinkers be likely to have on hand?

“Tell you what,” I said. “I brought you a bottle of my favorite wine from California. What say we crack it open?”

“You brought Dave a bottle,” she corrected.

“And you,” I said. “Only I didn’t know about you yet is all.” I pushed back my chair and stood up just as she was sitting back down. “I’ll go out to my van and get it,” I said. “And when I come back, I want to hear how you and Dave met each other.”

“It’s not much of a story,” she said.

“I’m no critic,” I said.

The back door opened from the kitchen onto a homemade wooden porch with two barbecue grills, a couple of slat-backed plastic chairs, and a cat. On my way down the stairs the cat, timing its steps perfectly, walked from the railing onto my shoulder, then curled around my neck. I wore it like a scarf across the yard and around the corner of the house to where my van was parked. The cat wanted in, of course, but enough was enough; I shook him off at the sliding side door. There was too much trouble in there for a cat to get into.

As for me, the trouble was everywhere else. Going into the van, with all its smells and other oddities, was like snuggling back under the covers and into a good dream after a midnight run through the cold, hard facts of life in the bathroom. I was tempted to slip into the driver’s seat and go, call my brother from Indiana, maybe try again to see him on the way back across.

But it was a passing thought. When you’re on the road, if you’re me, you’re not on the interstate, first of all, so you’ll occasionally catch a fleeting glimpse of some little domestic scene, such as two brothers playing driveway basketball, or a man and a woman sitting at a table in the window, drinking coffee and talking. If you’ve been traveling for any amount of time, like me, you might even be inclined to envy them. But if that man and woman are as typical as the next man and woman, at least one of them is noticing your car whiz by, wistfully, envying you.

The train whistle is always blowing, in other words, and so is the tea kettle.

Or, for our purposes, the van, all my things in it, my music, my mess, the mattress on the loft in back, the card table, the travel mugs and bags of sunflower seeds… it was mighty inviting, all of it; but so was a bottle of wine and dinner and a good night’s sleep on my brother’s couch. Hot shower, thermos of coffee, a couple of hugs, and I’d be off bright and early in the morning… catching fleeting glimpses into other people’s homes, no doubt — no doubt wishing I was still in bed somewhere, or enjoying a leisurely home-cooked breakfast, or playing basketball with my brother in our driveway.

Is that life, or what?

“We met in a muffler shop,” Ellen informed me while I was pouring the wine into a couple of juice glasses.

“Wait a minute,” I said. My brother — I knew this much — had always been the academic type, aspiring, last I heard, toward an advanced degree in anthropology. “Dave was working in a muffler shop?” I knew as soon as I’d let it loose that it was a dumb question.

“No. I was,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“For what?”

“To assume that since it was a mechanical job—”

“Oh, I wasn’t a mechanic.” She showed me her fingernails, which were clean and long and perfectly manicured. “I worked the register.”

“Oh. OK,” I said. “I’m sorry I interrupted you. Go on.”

“End of story,” she said. “You didn’t interrupt me. I was done.”

I laughed.

“No, really. That’s all there was to it.”

“So let’s review the basic tenets of the story,” I said. “You met in a muffler shop.”

“He needed a muffler,” she said. “I rang him up. He asked me out. I said yes.”

“And next thing anyone knew…” I said.

“Happily ever after.” She twisted the three rings all together.

I lifted my glass to clink with her. She didn’t return the gesture. “I’d like to propose a toast,” I said. Then she caught on. “To your story,” I said.

“And to yours,” she said. “Whatever it is.”

We clinked and drank and Ellen said that she liked the wine and I said yes, wasn’t it lovely? It was my favorite “cab.” I had a couple of cases of it in the van. Don’t worry, though, ha ha, I never opened a bottle until after I was done with the day’s driving. Ha ha ha.

“You could still be a killer, you know,” she said.

“Excuse me?”

“It occurred to me when you went for the wine.” She took a sip of it without taking her eyes off me, but there was no fear, not even genuine distrust in them. “Maybe you looked us up in the phone-book. Maybe you saw his name on a piece of mail. For all I knew, you were going to come back in here with a gun or something and rape me.”

“What are you talking about?” I reached into my pocket for my wallet.

“I don’t need to see your credentials,” she said. “If you were going to rape and kill me you’d’ve done it by now. I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insult you or anything. I was just telling you how it was, in my head. You don’t look very much like Dave.”

“No. I never did.”

“Are you nervous to see him?”

“Yes. I almost left,” I admitted. “I thought about it.”

“I wondered if you were going to do that,” she said. “But then I’d’ve known you were a killer. So tell me: What is your story? Where do you live? Where are you going? What do you do? I still can’t believe that he never even told me about you — anything. That you existed, for example.”

“He’s not much of a talker, is he?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “He’s certainly not.”

“I live in Seattle,” I said. “I’m between jobs right now. I used to work in a print shop, but I quit.”

“So where are you headed? Anywhere in particular?”

I thought about it. “No,” I said. “Not really. I mean, I know I’m going to New York City, and I know I’m going back to Seattle, and I know I’m taking the scenic route. But it’s not just a vacation, either. What do you call it, like in a fairy tale, when—”

“Honeymoon?”

“Honeymoon? No,” I said. “You know, like ‘slay the dragon,”‘ I said, “or ‘bring me the broom of the Wicked Witch of the West,’ or East.”

“A quest?”

“Yeah, that’s what it’s pretty much turned into, I guess. For me. This trip.” I took the last drink of my wine and poured myself another glass, then topped off hers too.

She looked confused. “So,” she said, “what is the quest of your quest?”

“I don’t know.”

“You have to know,” she said, “if you want to call it that.”

“I don’t know if I can tell you. I mean, I don’t know if I know. Exactly.”

“Oh.” She looked disappointed. She looked down, but then almost immediately her eyes bounced back up, charmingly, disarmingly hopeful. “You can tell me,” she said.

And the way she said it, the way she looked at me, saying it, the simplicity of her conclusion and its expression, led me to believe that I could tell her.

“I won’t tell anyone,” she said. “I can keep a secret. I promise. And anyway there’s always someone, isn’t there, some good witch or imp or elf or woodchuck or something who helps the hero out? Nothing serious, just a little information or advice, or a good-luck charm, or the right weapon.”

I thought: Woodchuck?

“Maybe I can help you,” she said. “That’s all I’m saying.”

I didn’t say anything for a long time. Neither did she. I looked around at all the walls for something to look at. I looked at the refrigerator, and I looked at the countertops. No art, no pictures, nothing but a plain old institutional clock on the wall above the stove. “I don’t know,” I said, looking into my glass.

But by the time we finished that bottle of wine I was thinking that maybe she could help me, sure, although I couldn’t have put into words any specific way in which I needed help. I invited her to come out to the van with me to get another bottle.

“We should save some for Dave,” she said.

“I’ve got plenty,” I said.

“Let’s go then,” she said, and when she stood up I could tell she’d probably had enough to drink already.

“You might want to put something on,” I said. “It’s pretty cold out there.”

“I’m OK,” she said. “I can handle it.” She picked her purse up off the table and brought it with her. “How long can it take to get a bottle of wine?” she said.

I didn’t know what to say to that. I didn’t know that I was going to do what I did, but of course I did, or else why would I have wanted her to come out there with me? I opened the side door and she climbed in and knelt on the floor, looking around at everything, smiling like a kid.

“Home,” she said, lifting one of the curtains and peeking out the window at her own house. “It’s homey in here.”

I crawled past her to the back of the van. With trembling fingers I unlocked the lock on the wooden door I’d built under the loft, and I showed her my growing collection of thrift store wedding dresses. They were hanging on a stretch of rope, kept separate from each other from the waist up while the bottoms flowed together into a churning, foamy sea of white lace, tulle, polyester, and satin. The smell alone was enough to bring tears to your eyes, but Ellen dipped into the white with both hands, feeling the fabric, and she almost lost consciousness. She tilted from her knees onto her side and then back. The purse landed under the card table and her robe fell open.

“Are you OK?” I said, trying to avert my eyes while she righted herself.

“I got dizzy,” she said. “The wine. I’m OK. So,” she said, “this is your quest?”

I said, “No. Not really. I mean—”

“Do they fit you?”

“They don’t have to,” I said. I grabbed another bottle of wine. “Let’s get back inside,” I said. I helped her out of the van and closed the sliding door just as the cat was about to sneak in. He gave me one of those half-eyed if-looks-could-kill cat looks, and slinked underneath the vehicle. I wondered if I’d run over him on my way out in the morning.

“So, have you been raiding people’s attics, or what?” Ellen asked once the wine had been poured.

It occurred to me that we’d left her purse in the van.

“No,” I said. “I’ve been hitting thrift stores.”

“Are they expensive?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do people look at you funny?”

“Yes.”

“Do you enjoy it?”

“The funny looks?”

“Yes.”

“Yes.”

“How many do you have?”

“Nine or ten.”

“How many do you want?”

“Hundreds.”

She laughed, pleasantly, understandingly even, and went on asking the easy questions. The sun went all the way down, however, without her ever asking why, and I loved my sister-in-law for that.

It must have been about time for my brother to come home, about six, when she said across the table to me, “I have one.” The second bottle was half empty, at least, and the room was almost all the way dark. “It’s in the closet,” she said. “Want to see it?”

“Sure. Why not?”

She flicked on a light on her way out of the kitchen and I closed my eyes so as not to have to see anything too clearly. I could hear the clock ticking and I could hear metal hangers sliding in another part of the small house. I wondered what Dave’s car would sound like in the driveway, what kind of car he would drive, how he would feel if he came home to his wife showing me her wedding dress. Hopefully bad. It would serve him right, not inviting me to his wedding.

I thought she was going to just show it to me, but more time than necessary passed and I had to open my eyes and look at the clock. It was six-fifteen.

“Hey, I need you in here,” she called from across the house.

I emptied my glass and took the bottle with me.

My brother’s wife was standing in front of a full-length mirror in their bedroom. Our eyes met in the glass. “Zip me up,” she said.

I set the bottle on the bureau and walked to her and zipped her up.

“Now step back,” she said.

I went back to the bureau and picked up a small black statue of a crow welded together out of scrap metal. It was skinny and scary, but it was the only decorative touch I’d seen in all I’d seen of their house, and I liked it.

“Believe it or not,” Ellen said, fitting the veil onto her head, “I’ve actually lost weight since I got married. How often does that happen?”

“I don’t know,” I said, exchanging the crow for the bottle. “Does it feel loose?”

“A little bit,” she said. She whistled a measure or two of “Here Comes the Bride.” Then, turning to face me, she cut herself off, saying, “This is pretty much what I looked like.” She curtsied. She looked cute.

“Sorry I missed it,” I said.

“Me too,” she said. She smiled. I took a hit of wine. “Dave’s going to get it for this,” she said.

“No no no no no no,” I said, handing her the bottle. “It’s my own fault.”

She took a drink and handed it back.

“You know what I’m thinking?” she said.

“No.”

“I think it might fit you,” she said. “You’re only a little bit bigger than me.”

“You know what I think?” I said.

“What?”

“It’s not going to happen,” I said. “There’s not enough wine in the world, let alone my van, let alone this bottle—”

“Come on,” she said. “For the look on Dave’s face.”

I laughed. “For the look on his face,” I said, “while he’s booting me out of the family all over again.”

“Not this time,” she said. “I won’t let it happen. I’m the family now. We’re family, you know. You can wear what you want.”

I sat down on the edge of their bed. I didn’t want to wear wedding dresses. I didn’t know what I wanted. “Was it a big wedding?” I said.

“Pretty big.” She took the wine from me and took a slug, then held it in her hand at her side, turning this way and that, checking herself out in the mirror.

“Do you have any pictures?” I said.

“Yes.”

“Where?”

“I’ll show you in a minute,” she said. “Hold on.” She struck a pose. “Here you have the real thing.” She smiled into the mirror at me. Even with the bottle dangling from her hand, she looked heavenly.

I smiled back. “Was everyone there?” I said.

“Pretty much,” she said. “Except for you.”

“But the rest of my family? Yours? Friends? The whole nine yards?”

“Yeah, we did it up.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “Live band?”

She came to the bed and offered me the bottle, then her hand. “Would you like to dance?” she said.

“I’d love to, but I feel I’m on thin ice with my brother as it is. Something’s telling me you ought to get out of that get-up before he comes home.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know. It might look like we were trying to get at him, to make some sort of a point or something. And that’s the last thing in the world I want to do is make any points. After ten years.”

“I don’t get it,” she said, sitting on the bed next to me.

“It might make him feel bad,” I said. “There’s nothing to get, really. I don’t get it either. I just have a bad feeling about it.”

She dropped back onto her back, behind me. The dress rustled. “Tell me what you did,” she said.

“What?”

“To deserve this,” she said. “Why did they disown you?”

“Get out of the dress,” I said. “We’ll go back in the kitchen and talk about it.”

“Too late.” She sat up, calmly, and put her hand on my knee. Outside, a car door slammed. “He’s here.”

I didn’t say anything. I just stood up, wavered for one second, and went without her into the kitchen.

He was just then coming in the back door.

“Dave,” I said, stepping from around the corner.

We stood staring at each other. He was a bald giant in a three-piece suit and a fat tie with goldfish on it. He had wet, puffy lips, tiny eyes, and an overall end-of-the-day redness to his skin, as if he walked through fire for a living.

“Who the fuck are you?” he said.

“Honey?” Ellen called from the bedroom. “Dave?”

I was in the wrong house.

“Honey?” Ellen said, rustling down the hall.

A light came into Dave’s eyes then and he lunged for me. Next thing I knew, I was flying through the picture window. Next thing I knew, I was outside in the grass, the cat on top of me, pawing into my chest.

I pushed it off, stood up, and looked in through the broken glass. The man in the suit had Ellen, still in her wedding dress, by the throat, both hands. He had her up against the far kitchen wall, off her toes.

Between her sputters and gasps and his unbroken string of spit-shouted curses and the sound of her still-veiled head tapping against the wall, I had no trouble sneaking back in and cracking his head with the rolling pin. Somewhere, somehow, all three of us had taken some mighty wrong turns.

Ellen, unconscious, folded over on top of her husband. I dragged her off and away from him before checking her pulse. She was still alive, but not exactly breathing. I wasn’t sure if I knew CPR or not, but I figured if a cat could do it, I had better well have it in me. I pushed into her ribcage a few times and plugged her nose and blew into her mouth.

She breathed. She didn’t open her eyes. She squeezed them shut tighter and shook her head from side to side, as if trying to lose something.

“Don’t worry, sweetie,” I said. “You’re going to be just fine. It’s all over now.” And I picked her up in my arms and carried her outside to the van. Both Dave and I had bled onto her wedding dress, but I reckoned one of mine would fit her well enough.

“The wine,” she said.

“Don’t you worry,” I said. “My brother lives around here somewhere.”