The Skeleton Box

TWENTY-FOUR

I didn’t want to believe Breck.

Whistler didn’t answer when I called him from my truck. I left a message, trying to sound nonchalant, hoping he was with Tawny Jane.

He was not.

Tawny Jane was finishing a stand-up in front of the sheriff’s department when I rolled up. Other reporters milled around in the shadows outside the vestibule, deciding where to go for beers after calling in their stories. Dingus was gone. D’Alessio, who apparently had been released, stood off to one side, waiting for someone to interview him.

I didn’t see Whistler or his Toronado. He had said he would be going to the cop shop, and I couldn’t imagine he’d miss a briefing on this story. But maybe he’d thought I would babysit that. Maybe he was already at the Pilot, posting something online.

The wind kept blowing Tawny Jane’s hair across her face, and she kept pulling it away with the hand that wasn’t holding the microphone. I eased my window down to hear.

“… will be arraigned tomorrow morning, a major turn of events in the spicy drama here in Starvation Lake, a quaint little town, which has seen its share of drama in the past. Channel Eight will be broadcasting live tomorrow from the Pine County Courthouse as Wylie Ezra Breck is arraigned before Judge Horace Gallagher…”

Not Wylie, I thought. And quaint? Not for a long time.

I threw my truck into park and got out and walked over to Tawny Jane. She gave me a look that said she wasn’t interested and turned to her cameraman, Butch. “Good enough?” she said. “We can smooth it out back at the station.”

“Yup,” Butch said. “Couple of shots, your hair makes you look like Cousin Itt.”

“Big news, eh, T.J.?” I said.

She tossed her hair back and pulled on a white wool hat. “A little late, aren’t you?”

“Whistler was here, wasn’t he?”

She pulled on mittens that matched her hat. “You’ll have to watch me at eleven.”

“Whistler was not here?”

“I didn’t see him.”

“You wouldn’t happen to know why he didn’t show?”

“I don’t know a thing about that man.”

She climbed into the van and it spun away in a whirl of snow.

The streetlights on Main glimmered through the frosted kitchen window in Darlene’s second-floor apartment. We sat at her table with cups of tea. She had undone the top two buttons on her brown-and-mustard deputy’s shirt and shaken the hatband imprint out of her hair.

I didn’t wait for her to ask; she deserved to know. I told her everything Breck had told me, told her about the lockbox, my trip to Detroit, my meeting with Father Reilly, about Nilus’s womanizing and my theory about the map and Mom’s two best friends. Darlene listened without interrupting. If anything surprised her, I couldn’t tell. Maybe she was so weary of the drama swirling around her mother’s death that she could not register surprise anymore.

I reached across the table to take her hand. She let me.

“We haven’t even made funeral arrangements yet,” she said.

“Mom told me she was going to do it, then she said you were doing it.”

Darlene shook her head. “She’s mistaken.”

No, I thought, Mom wasn’t mistaken. “I can go with you tomorrow, after the arraignment.”

“The arraignment,” she said. There was scorn in her voice.

“What?” I said. She was staring at our entwined hands. “You don’t really think Breck was there that night, do you?”

“I don’t know what to think,” she said. “I’ve never seen Dingus like this. You’re right. He’s off his rocker. Hauling in all those people. Even arresting D’Alessio. Come on.”

“He’s feeling the pressure. Do you have any hard evidence at all on Breck?”

“Just because we’re here now doesn’t mean I’m obliged to be unprofessional.”

“I-”

“This is my mother.”

She was fighting not to cry again.

“I understand. I can’t believe you’re still on the case. You’re-”

“Don’t. Don’t say a word about courage or any of that bullshit. I’m just doing what I do, just like Sunday night with Mrs. Morcone and that damn raccoon.”

“It’s all right, Darlene.”

“No, it’s not, goddammit.” She pulled her hand away. “Look-this is off off off the record. We have, essentially, nothing. No fingerprints. No witnesses. Nothing. Dingus is praying the DNA guys find something. We just keep filling up the jail with people who didn’t do it.”

“But you’re going into court tomorrow.”

“He couldn’t let D’Alessio get away with rallying the people like that.”

“Judge Gallagher’s going to bite Dingus’s head off.”

“Well. We can certainly connect Breck to Nilus and make a case that he had motive to be in the house looking for something.”

“Like a map. Or part of one.”

“How would he know it’s there?”

“No idea, unless…” I thought of the woman who had approached Soupy’s mother. “I don’t know.”

“And why would my mother just blurt out ‘Nilus’?”

“They were talking about it that morning,” I said. “At least I think they were. I asked and they changed the subject.”

“Do you think they suspected this burglar wasn’t taking anything because he hadn’t found what he was looking for?”

“Yeah. Reminds me. Someone broke into Soupy’s parents’ house.”

“He didn’t report it.”

“What a shock.”

“Probably just some drunk kids.”

“Maybe.” I told her about the microfilm photograph I had seen at the clerk’s office, how all but one of the seven spelling-bee girls beaming with Sister Cordelia would, years later, have their homes broken into on bingo night.

“My mother’s house didn’t get broken into,” Darlene said.

“Maybe she was next.”

On the wall behind her head hung a framed aerial photograph of Starvation Lake. The water was indigo in the middle of the lake, shimmering to pale green along the shoreline. Pelly’s Point jutted into the water, evergreens leaning out from the bluff. Darlene’s father had ordered the photo for her from a shop in Suttons Bay. She had kept it because it came from him, although she said she didn’t know why she needed a picture of the place she had lived in all of her life, since it never changed anyway. I looked for our houses. There they were, next to each other, the big yard where I’d once tried to kiss Darlene lying between.

“Tell me,” I said. “Did your mother ever hear from someone supposedly doing a history of St. Val’s?”

Darlene thought about it. “When would this have been?” she said.

“Couple of years ago maybe.”

“If she did, she didn’t say anything to me.”

“Your mom wouldn’t have.” I told her about the woman who had called Soupy’s mom. Money had been offered, I said.

“God,” she said. “All these strangers.”

“What’s going to happen to you, Darl?”

“What do you mean?”

“If Dingus doesn’t keep his job.”

“I don’t know. With Mom gone… I don’t know.”

“I hope you stay.”

Darlene picked up our mugs and put them in the sink. Then she came and stood next to me. “My aunt Millie called,” she said. “She said Bea was acting like she’s getting ready to die or something.”

“What?”

“They spent yesterday afternoon basically getting her affairs in order. Went to see a lawyer about her will and took a bunch of money out of the bank.”

So it wasn’t even shopping and cribbage. Same old Mom. I could see Millie going along with it, standing by Mom’s side, then going home and rushing to the phone.

“She’s safe for now,” I said.

Darlene sat against the table facing me. “If I had just picked up my mom’s call, maybe we’d all be OK now,” she said.

“No, Darlene,” I said. “This is not your fault, or mine.”

Her eyes were filling with tears.

“What’s wrong?”

“The rug. It’s ruined.”

“What rug?”

“Me Sweet Ho.”

“Who cares?”

“I care.”

“OK.” I stood, put my hands on her shoulders. She looked up at me.

“I never told you,” she said. “Your mom was going to give me the rug.”

“When?”

“A long time ago. Before you went to Detroit.”

“Why?”

“Because… I loved it. Because I loved teasing you about it. Because it reminded me of all the fun we had together as kids, in your house and my house, out on the lake, up in the tree house. They were sweet places.”

“They were.”

“Bea wanted me to have it so I could”-Darlene put a hand to her mouth, swallowed a sob-“so I could have it fixed. So it would say Home Sweet Home. So I could, we could…”

“So you and I could have it in our house.”

She nodded.

“I’m sorry,” I said.

“No. No. Everything-there’s a reason.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“I do.”

She reached down and grabbed me by the belt and pulled me up against her. I wasn’t sure I wanted this yet, wasn’t sure I wanted to believe in this again. But I didn’t stop her when she rose on her toes and kissed me, while she undid my belt and unbuttoned my plaid flannel, while she pulled my T-shirt out of my jeans and shoved it up on my chest. “Wait,” I said, but she bent and flicked the tip of her tongue along the edge of my rib cage.

I woke up on my back, the living room carpet scratchy on my shoulder blades. Darlene was awake, looking at me from where her head lay on my chest.

“Gus,” she said. “What do you believe?”

“I don’t like the guy, but I don’t think Breck-”

“Not that. I mean believe. Like faith. My mother, she believed in God, the church.”

“Did you know your mom had a rosary at the office? Kind of like the one in my mom’s lockbox. She’d set it next to her sometimes when she was writing obits.”

Darlene closed her eyes. “What about you?”

“I don’t have a rosary,” I said.

“Please don’t.”

I looked around the room. My gaze fell again on the aerial shot of the lake.

“I don’t know.” I said. “I guess I believe in doing my best, trying to be a good guy, be nice to my mom, take care of the people I love. Is that good enough?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well,” I said, “I hope it is. It has to be.”

“Why? Why does it have to be?”

I knew the answer. I’d known it for a while, but I hadn’t had the guts to say it.

“Because I’m here, Darlene,” I said. “I’m here because you’re here. You’re why I came back after screwing up in Detroit. OK? Is that good enough?”

She picked her head up from my chest. I looked at her.

“Really?” she said.

“Yeah.”

She leaned up and kissed my neck, then let her head fall back on my breast. My eyes drifted back to the picture of the lake. I thought of how we used to lie on our backs on the raft in summer, our eyes closed, our fingertips touching. I thought of Mrs. B, fingering her rosary beads, silently praying, then setting the rosary down and typing. I thought of my mother’s rosary, hidden away in a metal box.

I nudged Darlene.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hm?”

“Why didn’t that body wash up on Torch Lake?”

She slid a hand down my belly and let it rest on the inside of one leg. “God, I’m tired. What are you talking about?”

“Sister Cordelia. You know. The sheriff who got re-elected way back when? Who solved the nun’s murder? Breck’s grandpa supposedly dumped her in Torch Lake. But the body never washed up.”

“I don’t know,” she said. “Sometimes boats go down and don’t wash up. The tunnels.”

“Nobody’s ever found one of those tunnels,” I said. “It’s like Bigfoot.”

“You never really believe anything, do you.”

“I guess not.”

“Why does it matter whether the body washed up?” Darlene said.

I thought of my mother, lying in her cell, her hands crossed on her breast. I remembered her at my house, scrutinizing her fingers and nails, insisting they were filthy when they were not.

“Gus?”

“Mom knows,” I said.

“Mom knows what?”

“Mom knows where that nun is.” I sat up, dislodging Darlene. “We have to get her.”

“She’s in jail.”

“No. We have to get her and get going. Now.” Mom’s words came back to me. “Before someone else gets there first.”