A Summer with the Dead Page 26

  The dashboard was smooth blue metal with louvered vents for heat and defrosting. The clock, the speedometer, the temperature and fuel gauges, were all intact, their round glass faces framed in chrome. The seats were tufted white leather except for where blood had pooled and dried. Those spots were black. Black dots and streaks decorated the windshield and dashboard. The open ashtray full of butts, had soaked up a cupful of blood and then dried into a cracked cake. Blood had dripped from the ashtray to the white carpet. Blood had splashed across the bench seat toward the passenger side. Where Elly sat.

  Elly’s clothes caught those sprays of blood.

  Maya closed the door and strode around the massive chrome grill to the driver’s side. She opened the door and saw where Elly had dragged Angel’s body from the car, back when it sat in the driveway. Blood had stained the side of the driver’s white leather seat, the narrow strip of carpet below and had filled the grooves of the chrome step.

  “It’s been here a long time,” Coty said. “I’d say thirty-five, maybe forty years.”

  “Fifty,” Maya said.

  “How do you know that?”

  “It’s part of Elly’s story.”

  “Has she said anything about Danny yet?”

  “All she said was that, if I see him again, to tell him she’s sorry.”

  “Sorry for what?”

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Coty sighed. “I’m required to report murder scenes like this, to the authorities.”

  “How soon?” Maya asked.

  “The minute I find Danny.”

  “I’ll try to get Elly to talk more. She really doesn’t want to discuss Danny though. She feels guilty about him. I just don’t know why yet.”

  Coty lifted his shoes, one after the other, and checked their soles. He raked them against the edge of a piece of plywood. The plywood was free of dust. It had been there but a short time.

  After Coty stepped off the board, Maya lifted it with the toe of her boot. Beneath, the soil appeared loose as if roughened by a shovel and then smoothed again by the weight of the board. There were no decayed wood chips or sawdust beneath the board like everywhere else in the barn.

  When the time comes, the authorities should dig there, too. Maya stepped over the plywood.

  Coty seemed anxious to leave, but he covered the old Cadillac with the tarp again. As they walked away, he glanced over his shoulder several times before they reached the door.

  “No gray man this time?” Maya asked.

  “Maybe he’s not around between ten and eleven o’clock in the morning.”

  “Is that offer of coffee still good?”

  Coty latched the outer door and then wrapped his arm around Maya’s shoulders.

  “It’s going to be a scorcher today, but right now, hot coffee sounds like just the thing, especially with you there.”

  “Tell me about the gray man,” Maya said.

  “He’s about my height, slender, parts his hair on the left side. He has deep-set eyes and a gentle face. He looks sad, like he’s looking for something, or someone. He looks between forty and fifty years old. I get the feeling, he’s a tragic victim here. I get a terribly sad feeling when I see him.”

  “What time of day is it when you see him?”

  “The first time it was sun-up. February, so that’s around eight o’clock in the morning.”

  “Maybe we should go back again sometime, around eight o’clock. Maybe this gray man has something to tell us.”

  “Maybe.”

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-THREE

  WHILE ELLY NAPPED UPSTAIRS, Maya finished wiping down the shelves in the closet beneath the main staircase. She pulled on rubber gloves and used hot bleach water and an old towel. She scrubbed away decades of dust and grit from the shelves, ceiling and walls. She was undecided what to do about the old carpet remnant on the closet floor. It was almost worn through.

  Before the garage sale, this closet had been jammed with old magazines, books, a moth-eaten green afghan, and stacks of 33.3 and 45 rpm records from the forties and fifties. The records had been among the first things to sell. Several old wool jackets had hung on hooks to the right of the angle-topped door along with a rubber raincoat that fell apart when Maya lifted it down from a peg.

  The closet was empty now. It took less than an hour to scrub down the interior of the six-by-eight closet. On her knees, Maya wiped the lowest corner in the back, under the stairs. The carpet remnant was short there, exposing an inch of oak hardwood beneath. She pulled back the carpet and found a small trap door, about two feet square with tarnished brass hinges and a slot large enough to insert three fingers. She inserted her gloved fingers and lifted. Three photo albums rested in the recess, wrapped in clear plastic. Maya sat down on the floor of the closet, her back against the wall and the albums in her lap. She peeled off the rubber gloves and opened the first album. A yellowed label at the top read, Chicago 1943. The first black and white photo was of Elly behind the wheel of a truck. The driver’s door was wide open and she sat with both hands on the steering wheel, a smile on her young face. She wore her light hair short and wavy. Behind the truck were shelves filled with five-gallon plastic containers. The containers were filled in varying levels of liquids and hoses dangled from overhead pipes. It looked like the place Elly had described, where she and the other warehouse drivers cleaned their trucks, removing any trace of where they had been or what they had delivered.

  A man sat further back, on the corner of the counter. In the photo, he looked straight at Elly, not at the camera. He was muscular and blond, very handsome in a harsh way. A cigarette drooped from his smiling lips.

  “Angel,” Maya whispered, and a chill ran the length of her body.

  There were three more photos on that first page, all of the warehouse and of the street lined with other warehouses. Several men wore hats, as was common in the forties and fifties. Their trousers were cuffed. They wore ties and button-front jackets, most of them loose and baggy.

  Maya thumbed through the album to the end, spotting several more photos that included Elly, one where she stood beside a tall, thin man in the door of an office. A sign over the office door read MANAGER. It had to be Elly’s Uncle Felix. Behind Felix stood another man, younger and shorter, but with a strong family resemblance. Elly’s father, Maya decided. Not long before he died.

  She continued turning the heavy felt pages until she had seen every photo in all three albums. She saw no one who resembled Harlan until the very last page in the last album. Maya halted there, not quite daring to touch the photo. Harlan wore the same clothing as in the photo Elly had shown her before, where he sat on the hood of a truck, his face shadowed by his hat. In this photo, he was one of six men standing side by side along the front of the loading dock. Harlan stood at the end on the left. He was the shortest. It must have been autumn when the photo was taken because their coats and jackets looked windblown. Two of the men were balding, their thinning strands of hair trailing off to one side like loose yarn. Harlan held his cap in his hands and Maya leaned closer and squinted at his face.

  “Aww rats,” Maya said. His features were too small, too distant for her to see him well.

  Maya jumped at the sound of footsteps overhead. Elly was awake. Maya closed the albums, wrapped the plastic back around them and lowered them into the cubbyhole. She closed the trap door and smoothed the carpet back over it, pressing it down into the corner. Then she stood, picked up the scrub bucket and rubber gloves and stepped out of the closet just as Elly reached the bottom step.

  “Perfect timing,” Maya said. “I was going to get some lemonade. Want some?”

  “What have you been doing in there?”

  “Got it all scrubbed out. Dust and grit are gone. What do you want to do about that old carpet, though? Should we shampoo it or replace it with something new?”

  “I don’t know,” Elly said. “It’s just a closet.”

  “I saw carpet remnants at Ace Hardware,” M
aya said. “Under ten dollars each.”

  “Do you think you can find something exactly four-by-eight?”

  “If not, I’ll get something larger and cut it to fit.”

  “That old carpeting never did fit exactly right,” Elly said. “And that always irritated me.”

  “I’ll make it fit,” Maya said.

  “Lemonade sounds good, baby girl.”

  Maya headed toward the kitchen, leaving Elly standing beside the open closet door. She saw Elly bending down, eyeing the back corner, as if checking to see if the carpet looked disturbed.

  What would Elly do if she knew I found her cache of photo albums? The thought gave Maya a fearful ache in her stomach. She needs to trust me, long enough to tell me about Danny. Elly says she loves me. Blood kin, she says. I hope she does. I hope Elly loves me.

  CHAPTER

  FORTY-FOUR

  “SHERIFF WIMPLE PHONED WHILE you and Coty were out walking,” Elly said. She stood on the threshold of the basement door, a loaded laundry basket in her arms. She kicked the basement door shut behind her. “You were right about the those Mexican workers—those workers who dug our tunnel all those years ago? Their DNA indicates they’re from an ancient southwestern tribe. Aztec, the sheriff said. He said forensics decided one of them died of a gunshot wound to the head and the other one, they think he probably died of dehydration. That’s just their guess, though the sheriff said, since the only damage to the other skeleton was a broken heel bone. Poor sap just laid there at the bottom of the well and died a slow miserable death.”

  “Aunt Elly, why are you limping?”

  Elly set the laundry basket on the kitchen table and rubbed her left hip. “My back is acting up again. Sharp pains in my lower spine. I remember Dr. Framish saying I have a slight herniated disk. He said it’s common in women my age, bless his heart. Stairs are getting to be a challenge though.”

  “I’ll take care of the laundry from now on,” Maya said, before remembering it meant going down into the basement.

  “I’ll be fine tomorrow. It comes and goes,” Elly said. “Don’t worry about it, baby girl.”

  “I brought some muscle relaxant with me,” Maya said. “Taking one might help.”

  “Nah, I’ll just take a hot bath. I don’t want to take drugs. Harlan might find out.”

  “Harlan is … gone, Elly.”

  “Yes, but somehow he still finds out about things. I’ll go upstairs right now and fill the tub. Will you bring the laundry basket up for me?”

  Maya lifted the basket and followed, noting how Elly leaned against the handrail most of the way and then stumbled on the top step. Maya caught Elly before she toppled backward. The laundry basket tumbled to the landing below, the clean towels and sheets spilling out.

  “Let me help you into the bathroom, then I’ll come back for the laundry.”

  “I’m okay, baby girl. I can make it the rest of the way now that I’ve reached the top. It’s just stairs that give me problems.” Elly limped into the bathroom and closed the door. Maya heard the tub faucet turn on and pictured the steam rising and filling the long, narrow room.

  Maya gathered up the sheets and towels and shook each one before tossing them back into the basket. She carried everything up the stairs and into Elly’s room, and stood at the foot of Elly’s bed refolding the items and stacking them in neat rows. Finished, she parted the window curtain and gazed out across the fields to the upper barn. From there she had a clear view of the barn’s bleached face, its open loft, the double carriage doors and the side door she and Coty and entered. She turned her gaze toward the stream at the bottom of the hill. The dark water glistened as it slid under the bridge.

  Maya’s attention was drawn to a shadow in Elly’s dresser mirror. Her breath caught in her throat—someone sat in the rocking chair in the corner. Maya felt paralyzed with an icy dread. The shadowy figure was thin and small and wore a plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows. She felt Harlan glaring at her.

  Elly was wrong. Harlan doesn’t like me. He hates me.

  Maya turned to face him. The chair rocked back and forth ever so slightly, but it was empty. She drew a shaky breath and checked the mirror for his image again. Harlan was gone. Maya rushed from the room. She leaned against the wall beside the morning glory window, its lavender panes of glass casting a hazy, blue glow in the afternoon light. She stood in the exact spot where she had seen her father’s shimmering image a month ago. She had seen him only that one time. He had tried to tell her something. He mouthed the words, “Leave here. Get away … today!”.

  “Daddy?” Maya whispered. No answer. She crossed the hall. “Aunt Elly? You okay in there?” Maya tapped on the bathroom door.

  “Yes and no,” Elly answered. “I climbed into the tub just fine, but I can’t seem to get back out.”

  “I’m coming in.” Maya opened the bathroom door. Thick, white steam rolled like storm clouds, so dense the window and the full-length mirror at the far end were obscured. A few feet away Elly sat in the draining and gurgling oversized tub, her lower lip quivering, her pale, bony hand gripping the side.

  “Oh, sweety,” Maya said. “Let me help you up.”

  With Maya’s help, Elly stood and Maya wrapped a thick, white towel around her.

  “Getting old isn’t at all what I expected,” Elly said. “I just thought I’d get bony, wrinkled, and stooped, but this pain in my back has been coming on for some time now, and I can’t seem to do much of anything anymore, not even give myself a decent bath. It’s embarrassing.”

  “It’s what I came to do, Elly. To help you, remember?”

  “Yes, but a bath? I just never expected to be this way.”

  “When you’re in the retirement place where Judith lives, there will be showers built for people with physical limitations. You won’t have to step over anything, or climb in. You just stand behind a curtain and sit on a little stool, and you can use a hand-held spray attachment. You won’t even have to get your hair wet if you don’t want to.”

  “That’s good because I want to take care of myself. Don’t want some stranger helping me.”

  “How did you get this scar, Elly?”

  The scar was speckled, like a patch of rough freckles. Between the freckles it was snowy white, and cutting straight through the scar were stringy twists of pink tissue.

  “What scar?”

  “On your shoulder here.”

  “Oh that. My mother spilled scalding coffee on me when I was small.” Elly glanced at her shoulder with a frown. “It used to be red but as I’ve gotten older, it’s faded.”

  Maya soon had Elly dressed in a clean nightgown, slippers and robe.

  “Did the bath make your back feel better?” Maya asked.

  “Good enough to go down and have a bowl of that vegetable soup I made earlier, sweety.”

  Maya heated the soup in a saucepan and ladled it into two bowls. She opened a tube of saltine crackers and they sat down at the table facing the bay window.

  “What did Dad do, when he came to visit the farm?”

  “Do?”

  “Mom told me you asked Dad to come help you with something. I’m just wondering what that was.”

  “Hmm,” Elly ate two more crackers. “That was a long time ago. Stephen and your mother had been married about ten years and they thought they’d never have children. Stephen said they’d been trying, You were a bit of a surprise, Maya.”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Well,” Elly took a spoonful of soup and savored it for a long time before finally swallowing. Maya suspected Elly was purposely delaying her reply. Thinking up a story. “That was when Harlan was gone to Seattle, making a delivery down in Boise. He transferred a truckload of cigarettes.” Elly chuckled. “Transferred means hijacked.”

  “Uh huh.” Maya wanted Elly to keep talking. This was no time to interrupt.

  “Anyway, right after Harlan left, Uncle Felix phoned and said he was sending someone over to stay in o
ur attic. I wouldn’t’ve dared tell Uncle Felix no, but I didn’t want to receive any strangers here by myself. So, I phoned and asked Stephen to come over and help me.”

  “Dad knew about you and Harlan hiding people from the law?”

  “No, not until he got here and saw them for himself.”

  “Mother told me that Dad never had emotional problems until after that visit.”

  Elly grimaced. Her face turned red. “Your mother is a liar. Stephen had problems ever since … well, since Harlan handled that situation with Grady. You remember what I told you about Grady, don’t you?”

  Maya swallowed the last of her soup. “Grady, the school bully.”

  “Yes, and it was after your father found Grady in that pool of blood that he started having a hard time dealing with stressful situations. He’d have long good spells and then sudden bad spells, and as he got older the bad spells lasted longer. I know I’m responsible for some of that, but then, who knows? Stephen might have gone kookoo anyway. Life is like that.”

  “Kookoo?” Maya felt a white-hot, angry heat ignite deep in her chest. She took of sip of her ice water before saying, “After all the things you’ve seen and after all the things you’ve done, I’m surprised you haven’t been …” Maya focused on the double doors of the big barn on top the hill. She swallowed again, holding back the words, trying hard to not blurt them out.

  “Surprised I haven’t been what, baby girl?”

  Maya spotted a patch of freshly turned dirt, where carrots, onions, and beets had been growing just yesterday, was now a rectangle of churned dirt, three feet wide by six feet long. For a few seconds she feared her soup and crackers would come back up.

  “You’re surprised I’m not what, Maya?” Elly repeated a wary gleam in her eyes.

  Maya had almost said, locked up in Western State Hospital, but she didn’t dare say that, not now, not after all the things Elly had revealed about her past.

  “I’m surprised you’re not emotionally scarred,” she finally said. “I mean, Grady, Angel, the Franks, the people buried in the basement. Those would have wounded me emotionally. Haven’t they wounded you at all?”