A Day for Bones, page 12
“Maybe that’s not the kind of help he needs.”
Montufar leaned into Dumas. He wrapped his arm about her shoulders. “What’ve you got in mind, a blind date?”
“Not blind per se. Someone safe. Properly vetted and briefed.”
“Vetted and briefed?” She laughed. “How romantic.”
“I just mean—”
“I know what you mean.” Montufar picked up her backpack. Unzipping the main compartment, she began extracting wedding planning materials and placing them on the coffee table: magazines, catalogues, brochures, web printouts. “He won’t talk to a woman until he’s ready. He barely talks to me.”
“But that’s the problem, Corina. It could be months or years before he’s ready. And if we leave before he’s gotten through this …” He couldn’t finish. In spite of the aggravation Ozzie had caused Dumas during the time they’d been neighbors, they’d become honorary brothers. Dumas couldn’t abandon him.
“So I’ll move in with you,” Montufar said reasonably, “and we’ll have a built-in problem child to raise.” She spread her hands. “Just like you always wanted.”
“Whoa, we haven’t even discussed children yet.”
“So we’d better.”
Foul treachery, turning the discussion that direction. “All right. What number do you have in mind? Ten? Fifteen?”
Montufar’s eyes widened. “Look, Sergeant, just because I’m Catholic doesn’t mean I intend to breed like a rabbit.”
Dumas wiped non-existent perspiration from his brow. “Thank God for that. Ozzie will be a handful all by his lonesome. So what’s your ideal family size?”
“I haven’t given it much thought. I think I’d like to be surprised. Within reason, anyway. How about you?”
He didn’t have a number in mind, either. Not a real number. “You know my experience of family. My gut instinct is to not go there.” He watched Montufar’s reaction, expecting anger, sadness, something, but she didn’t blink. Because she did know. His disappearing parents, his drug dealing cousin, his uncle who took him in only to throw him out. He’d told her everything. “Your experience trumps mine,” he decided. “I trust your judgment.”
She caressed his cheek. “We’ll change your experience,” she promised. “And if you need a number, let’s say one for starters and see what happens after that. I’m sure we’ll run out of energy before we reach eight.”
Dumas smirked. “I would hope so. Does that settle the question of issue?”
“So …” Montufar rummaged through the printouts. “There is one other bit.”
“That being?”
“Religion.”
They had danced around that subject for some time without much discussing it. Montufar was Catholic and Dumas a semi-lapsed Protestant. She, too, had lapsed while struggling to prove herself in her chosen career. As a woman and an immigrant, she’d had an uphill battle in law enforcement. But recent events—the loss of her father not the least of them—had drawn her back into the fold. “Specifically?” he asked.
“I’m obligated to do what I can to raise our children Catholic.”
“Ah.” Dumas preferred a more free-ranging approach. His religious views had never been structured, and he was still uncertain where he would land. To his mind, that had its advantages. He‘d sampled a variety of faiths and found something in all of them. He would naturally encourage his children to do the same. Still, being raised in one faith didn’t preclude learning about others, and in the end, children grew into autonomous adults. No point in making a big deal of it. “I don’t see a problem with that,” he said.
Montufar stopped messing with the papers. “One hurdle cleared,” she said with a relieved smile.
“Are there more?”
“Hundreds. The date, the guest list, food, clothing, flowers, the honeymoon, getting out of my lease, and on and on and on. Oh, and one more weird religious thing.”
“Every religious thing is weird. So is life itself, for that matter. God has a bizarre sense of humor if you ask me. What is it?”
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I have to inform you that I have an obligation to make sure my faith isn’t undermined.”
Dumas laughed. “Oh, I am so going to pressure you to convert to Rastafarianism.”
Montufar gave him a twisted smile. “I’m surprised you even know the word.”
“I glommed onto it in case you confiscated my word-a-day calendar. Come on, Corina, I don’t force my beliefs on anyone. You know that. I barely know what they are myself.”
“I didn’t say you would. I only said I have to inform you.”
“Wonderful, I’ve been informed. Now how about we talk about something normal, like food?”
With a long-suffering sigh, Montufar rummaged through her pile of stuff one more time and found the caterers’ brochures. “Typical male. Here, have a look at these and tell me what makes your mouth water.”
“You,” he said, taking the materials without looking at them.
“Down, boy.”
“Fine. Plan now, play later.”
Montufar opened her planner and settled it on her lap, pen in hand.
Peller rolled out the lawn mower immediately after breakfast Saturday morning and spent forty-five minutes pushing it around his yard. The breeze was cool and the sun warm, a fine morning for yard work. As he passed by the rose bushes along the front of the house, he noted weeds popping up among them. The roses weren’t yet in bloom, but in his mind he saw them in their summer colors: a deep red at the corner of the house, a pale yellow beside it, then a stunning black, then a pure white. Sandra had picked them out, and they had planted them together shortly after moving to Ellicott City from Lockport, New York twenty-six years before. Five years had passed since her death, and he still maintained them for her. He maintained everything exactly as she wanted it.
For the first time in all those years, he wondered if he wasn’t a bit obsessed.
Obsessed? he heard Sandra say. You?
More than usual, I mean, he replied.
After the mowing was done and the machine stowed in the garage, he donned a pair of gardening gloves, got a trowel, and dug the weeds.
That finished, he stood and stretched. His spine wasn’t happy with so much activity. He pressed a fist into the small of his back before noticing Jerry Souter standing on his porch, watching, shaking his head.
“We can’t all be as young as you,” Peller called.
“Ain’t that the truth,” Souter replied. He slowly descended and joined Peller in front of the roses. “I guess I’ll have to give you my lawn service’s number.”
“I’m a public servant. I can’t afford your lawn service.” Peller nodded toward the garage. The duo sauntered toward it.
“You could afford that steak dinner last night.”
Peller stashed his gloves and trowel. “That was my one wild indulgence for the year. But it was a friend’s birthday, so what the hell.”
Souter gave Peller a lopsided smile. “You should have spent it on Joan.”
“Don’t start. I have four women in my life right now, each one trouble in her own way.”
“Sounds about right.”
They left the garage. Peller closed up and Souter suggested they sit a while on his porch. Once they were comfortably settled in a pair of rocking chairs, he picked up the thread. “I only count two, Joan and that genius lady detective you work with. What’s she done lately?”
“Not that I can comment on ongoing investigations, but she’s encouraging her almost-brother-in-law to meddle in police business.”
“Ah, nepotism. Gotta love it. And the two mystery ladies?”
“Sandra isn‘t a mystery. Not in that sense, anyway.”
Souter eyed the homes across the street as though calculating the cost of repainting them. “What’s she done lately? Haunted the house?”
“Just my head.”
“That’s normal, if you ask me.”
“Amanda does the same for you?”
“Not as much these days as the first eight years, but yeah, on and off.”
It probably wasn’t the same. Peller’s experience of Sandra was terribly immediate. Sometimes he swore she was standing right behind him while they talked. But it was too intimate to discuss even with Souter, so he changed the subject.
“The other’s a young woman I encountered in the course of an investigation a few months back. There wasn’t much left of her. I try to help, but…” He shook his head.
“Drugs.” It wasn’t a question.
“Among other things.”
“And you’re all she’s got now.”
Peller nodded. He watched a blue pickup zip by, going twenty over the speed limit.
“No, you’re not,” Souter said.
“Everyone who was ever important to her is dead.”
“People, maybe. But rumors to the contrary, the Almighty still lives.”
Peller didn’t think Shania North was much into religion.
Displaying his uncanny ability to read minds, Souter said, “You don’t have to bind and gag her and haul her into church slung over your shoulder, son. Just pray for her and keep on doing what you’re doing.”
“What am I doing? It’s just talk.”
“You’re being a friend.”
“An uncle, she suggested.”
Souter nodded. “There you go, then. She still has family.”
Irritated without knowing why, Peller rocked a bit harder.
Souter smiled a crooked smile and matched his pace.
Only hours later, as afternoon slipped into evening and Peller was broiling a t-bone for himself did it occur to him that Shania did have one tenuous religious connection. While working as a stripper before her slide into drugs and near death, she became involved with a young man named Jayvon Fletcher. On a spiritual quest, Fletcher had been learning about the Bahá’í Faith when he crossed paths with Shania and tried to rescue her from her lifestyle. It was a classic case of white knight syndrome, but his friendship had touched Shania and might have done her some good had Jayvon not been murdered.
The young man was gone, but his contacts in the Columbia Bahá’í community remembered him. Should he put Shania in touch with them? Not that she’d be interested in the religion, but maybe through them she could reconnect with Jayvon in some way. That might give her strength to keep fighting.
Peller let the idea swirl through his mind as he ate, and by the time dinner and cleanup was done, he knew he had to try. He looked up his contact in the Bahá’í community—Winston Marley—and placed the call. Marley answered just before voicemail kicked in.
“Lieutenant Peller! How’ve you been? I didn’t expect to hear from you again.” His voice projected the same curious mix of friendliness and authority that Peller remembered from before.
“I didn’t expect to be calling. I need a favor.”
“Something to do with Jayvon?”
“Peripherally. You recall he had a girlfriend he was concerned about.”
Marley started to laugh, then coughed in a feeble effort to cover it up. “Yeah, I remember.”
Peller didn’t blame him. One of Jayvon’s friends called Shania “possessed.” Peller never did learn if the suggestion was serious or facetious, but Jayvon had taken it seriously and grilled Marley on the subject. “Well,” he said, “she’s in a bit of trouble. She could use some help.”
“What sort of trouble?”
“Opioid addiction. She’s bouncing in and out of rehab and is pretty low right now.”
The dead air suggested Marley wasn’t thrilled about jumping into that mess, but eventually he asked the logical question. “What can I do for her? Rehab isn’t my specialty.”
Marley didn’t even know Shania’s name, only that she existed. This would be a lot for him to digest. “When Jayvon disappeared, she had no idea what became of him. She thought he’d abandoned her. After that, she fell in with a bad crowd, the very people mixed up in his death. You were one of the last people to know Jayvon. I think she might respond to that. It might help her keep going.”
“That sounds like more than a bit of trouble.”
Peller didn’t bother agreeing with the obvious.
“I can talk to her, I guess, but I’m neither a doctor nor a therapist.”
“You don’t have to be. A connection to Jayvon and a sympathetic ear could be enough at this point.”
Marley gave it a moment before asking, “What’s her name?”
“Shania North.”
“She have any family?”
“She doesn’t have anyone but me at the moment, and that’s not much.”
“What’s your connection, aside from the fact that you caught Jayvon’s killer?”
“Nothing at all, Winston. I just don’t want her to end up dead, too.”
One final moment of silence later, Marley capitulated. “Then I can hardly refuse. How do we do this?”
Peller hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I’ll talk to Shania, see if she’s interested in meeting you. If so, we can get together somewhere of her choosing. I’ll let you know when and where.”
“All right, then. I’ll wait for your call.”
“Thank you, Winston. This means a lot to me.”
“I guess it must. No problem.”
After he hung up, Peller wondered what was going through Marley’s head now. That must have been the strangest request he’d ever received. Peller hoped the deal wouldn’t blow up in his face. Shania might be angry with him for telling Marley about her. Or their meeting might make matters worse. Not for the first time, he wondered why he was meddling in Shania’s life.
But how could he not when she needed help and he alone could give it?
Peller could tell he wasn’t going to sleep well that night.
When on Sunday afternoon the deal did blow up in his face, the explosion erupted in an unexpected quarter. It began when Joan Churchill called for a favor.
“I bought a new dresser,” she explained. “I didn’t realize until I got home that I can’t get it into the apartment alone. It’s one of those assembly required units packed in three heavy boxes.”
“It could stay in your SUV,” Peller quipped. “Might come in handy there.”
She laughed. “Oh, stop. Could you come over this afternoon?”
“Yeah, I can schlep heavy stuff. What time?”
“Whenever you’re free. I’ll be here.”
He told her three o’clock and got there with two minutes to spare. He parked next to her vehicle and called her. She came down, and they jointly hauled the first box into the building, rode the elevator up, and wrestled the load through her door. He detected without identifying or even quite noticing it the smells of something good simmering on the stove. A short trip down a narrow hall followed, then a left turn into her bedroom. She had already removed whatever the new dresser was meant to replace, and her clothes were stacked in neat piles on the double bed. Peller didn’t mean to snoop, but his detective’s eye took the garments in with a glance. His key takeaway, embarrassingly enough, was that she wore utilitarian underwear.
Two more trips, and the delivery was complete, but then she needed help assembling the unit, so Peller assisted with that, and by the time they were done it was after four o’clock. Churchill suggested he might as well stay for dinner. “I’m trying out a Bolognese recipe I got online. I made plenty.”
So that’s what smelled so good. A trap nicely sprung. Peller consented to stay, grudgingly on the inside and with a smile on the outside. He comforted himself with the knowledge that she was a good cook. “I have to make a phone call, though,” he told her.
“Don’t tell me you’re working on Sunday again.”
“Not exactly. It’s a volunteer activity.”
“You’re just trying to get out of helping me. Never mind, I’m just going to cut up a few veggies for a salad.” She set to work, pulling a chef’s knife from a block on the counter and a red onion, a green pepper, and a tomato from plastic bags nearby.
Matters were getting a bit too domestic for Peller’s taste, but he didn’t comment. He placed the call. When he said, “Hi, Shania,” Joan’s mouth twitched.
“Hi, Rick. Didn’t think you’d be checking on me again so soon.”
“I think I found some help for you.”
Shania didn’t answer at once. She’d probably had her fill of people trying to help. “What kind?”
“Call it emotional support. There’s someone I’d like you to meet. He knew Jayvon. He was one of the last people to see him.”
More silence, then she whispered, “Jay.”
Peller waited. Joan sliced with a bit more force.
“What’s his name?” Shania asked.
“Winston Marley.”
“Was he Jay’s friend?”
“More of an acquaintance.” Peller didn’t think it would help to mention the religious nature of the connection.
“Why?”
“I just think you should talk to him. It might help you work through some things.”
“He’s not a counsellor, is he?”
“No. Just—” Peller wasn’t sure how to put it. He wasn’t even sure it made sense, now that he’d asked her. “Jayvon had questions. Winston tried to help him find answers. I think he could help you, too.”
Shania drew a long breath. “I don’t know what good it will do.”
“I don’t, either, Shania, but maybe it’s worth a shot.”
“Okay.”
The trust implicit in the single word rattled Peller. He almost wanted to tell her to forget it, but he couldn’t betray her faith. “When and where is up to you. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”
“I’ll be here for another week. You can bring him when you visit Wednesday, if you want.”
