The Past Never Ends, page 15
"The only employee old man Harrison would have fired would have been the one who came up with the idea of calling anyone 'non-essential.' Unless he had absolutely no other choice. You knew what to tell her?"
"If we could hire everyone who needed a job..."
Morgan nodded, and Marylin left the room. He glanced at the photograph of Cassie, his lost wife, but he didn't think of her. He took up the contract he had been reviewing, but his thoughts weren't there.
Later, Chester Morgan walked past Shawn's desk to leave the office for a four o'clock appointment. He opened the door to the hallway and...
"Hey, Chest," Shawn said, "why don't you buy me a membership to my spa?"
Morgan turned and looked at the young, strong woman. He liked her. She said what she thought, and she had no fear. He hoped age never took that from her. "Hasn't the university dropped more dollars than sense on a work-out facility for the students?"
"Yeah, but everyone goes there."
Morgan shook his head.
"You could write it off."
"I'll get you a visitor's pass at the Y anytime you want," Chester said. Shawn frowned. "I have a job for you, Shawn. There's a retired Vivia policeman named Jack Middlebrooks. Find out where he is. Everything you can about him."
"That's easy enough," she said, reaching for the phone. "I'll call Jeff McNally. He thinks I'm cute."
"Don't challenge him to Indian wrestle. You'd probably beat him."
"Could you."
"I'm smart enough not to take you up on the challenge. And, if you call McNally, don't tell him you want to know about Middlebrooks for work or for me."
Shawn's face brightened and her eyes shined. "He'll never even know he told me. I promise."
"And," Morgan said, "don't ever tell me what you did to find out. I don't want to know."
As Morgan left the office and walked down towards the elevator, he wondered, as he often had before, what wisdom the ancient DeSoto Building could teach if he could hear all the stories of the lives lived there. When he pressed the bell to call the elevator, though, he thought he might throw away all experience for youth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
The phone rang. Marylin picked it up.
"I need my hammer!" The voice screamed as much as talked.
"I'm sorry, Murle. I meant..."
"Sorry doesn't get me my hammer!"
"I'll bring it over."
"I'll get it."
"No, stay," Marylin said. "I'll be there."
Silence.
"OK."
The phone clicked. Marylin looked around the kitchen and then remembered she put it in the utility room. Marilyn remembered it was her hammer, not Murle's. Whatever. She picked the hammer up and went to her landlord's house.
Murle Mueller met her at the front door. "I've been calling you all day!"
"I've been at work."
"Ought to get a goddamned answering machine."
"You don't need to yell at me." Marylin bit her lip.
"Oh." Mueller blinked a couple of times. "Just get off work?"
Marylin nodded.
"Come drink some tea."
Murle reached out and placed her hand on Marylin's shoulder. An awkward push-pull brought Marylin over the door jam and into her landlord's home. "I'll make some tea," Mueller said.
The house smelled of furniture oil and detergent. An overstuffed leather couch and a matching maple-shaded recliner sat in front of a large, new black-framed television set: the living room, spacious and empty. Through an archway, a delicate table stood, surrounded by delicate chairs that looked hand-carved. Although Marylin recognized the beauty of the table, she said nothing. Murle clomped through the dining room and Marylin followed silently.
Mueller pulled a white chair away from the kitchen table, and although the large woman did not speak, Marylin knew it was an invitation to sit. Mueller lit a gas flame beneath a kettle and took two china cups from a cabinet. "They got a ceremony for this in Japan."
"That's what I understand."
"Green tea," Murle said. "Cures everything."
Marylin said nothing.
"Except getting old." Murle turned for a response. There was none. "Don't let me get you. I don't mean..."
"It's all right. I'm just a little...Oh, never mind," Marylin said. Her words echoed as if to taunt her. Then, "It's kind of comforting to be here."
"Hmph." Murle pulled out a canister and put bright green tea leaves in the cups. "Y'aren't acting like you."
Marylin did not reply. The kitchen remained silent until the teakettle whistled.
"Murle, I think someone followed me home from work."
The landlord dropped the teakettle back on the stove with a loud bang. "Scumbags and perverts!" Murle Mueller stomped into the dining room and peeked through a lace-curtained front window. "Nobody out there."
But a half block away, an old pick-up truck waited, half-hidden by a tall hedge.
Murle Mueller came back into the kitchen. "They mess with you, they mess with me. What they'd look like?"
"I didn't really see any one."
"What kind of car they driving?"
"I didn't see one. You know, I just felt like someone was following me and--"
"I know! I know! Every time I go to the market. Push that cart down the aisle and somebody's behind me. But turn around and nobody there! Little son of a bitch is gone!"
Marylin grinned.
"Scumbags and perverts!" The landlord poured steaming water into the cups and put the teakettle back on the stove. She picked up the cups, stopped, and placed them back on the counter. She opened a cabinet door and took down two saucers. She stared at the top one, then rubbed her finger across the top. She wiped the saucer across her hip and placed one of the teacups on it. Her eyes shifted back and forth towards Marylin. She picked up a towel to dust the other. "Don't worry," she said as she brought the tea to the table, "they haven't caught me yet. They won't catch you either." Murle's chair made a loud noise against the linoleum floor as she sat. "'Gotta let it soak for a while," she said, pointing at the tea cups.
Marylin started to say steep, but didn't. She smiled. "Thanks."
Murle Mueller made an indecipherable sound and nodded.
Marylin picked up her cup and looked at the tea leaves floating at the bottom. "Did your friend Miss Mary play the guitar?"
"Nope! Why did you ask that!"
Marylin looked out the kitchen window towards her home. "The house was empty, completely empty, when I moved in, but I found some guitar strings. I was curious. The envelope was a little dusty, but the strings had never been used."
"Oh. Little girl before you played the guitar. Wanted to go to Nashville. Be a big star."
"Could she have been?" Marylin asked.
Murle shrugged. "Like that kind of music, I suppose. Pretty voice. Yeah, pretty voice." Mueller picked up her teacup. It looked awkward in her big hand. "Too young," she mumbled as she twirled the cup, jarring and stirring the tea leaves until they resettled. "She's passed, you know."
Marylin raised her eyebrows.
"Oh, not there in the house or anything," the landlord said. "Don't worry!"
"If you say not, I won't," Marylin said. "What was she like?"
"Tanya -- that was her name, Tanya. A mess. That's what she was. Never at home at night. Slept all day."
"Sounds like my brother."
"Never paid her rent on time. First of the month, always had to remind her. She'd say 'Have to talk with Billie.' Then she'd show up with six one hundred dollar bills. Had a little boyfriend named Billie, I guess. Think he paid for her."
"Billie?"
The landlord nodded. "Never met him. Never came around. Nobody did. She was good about that. Always real quiet." Murle stopped. "I'd hear her sing sometimes." The large woman looked away.
Marylin sipped on her tea. Its warmth calmed her; its taste puzzled. "You liked her music."
Murle nodded. "Suppose I did," she said, her voice quiet. "Thought I might meet him. At the service or here. Afterwards. Never came around. Not even for the deposit."
Marylin touched the hard, but fragile, edge of her teacup and the large woman across the table sat straight, solid, but her voice betrayed. "A mess," she said quietly. "A real mess."
The refrigerator's motor kicked on. Its hum murmured through the house as if to fill silent corners and empty lives. Marylin waited and wondered how life alone here boded.
Murle Mueller jerked back and set down her cup, took a quick, deep breath, and roared: "'Still need a goddamned answering machine!" She pushed her chair back, stood, and walked in one motion. "Come along."
Marylin followed her landlord out a side door and up a concrete driveway to a door at the side of a white detached garage. Mueller reached her hand into her pocket and mumbled, "Think I'm wacko." Then, she shrugged and pulled out a ring of keys. She turned to Marylin.
"Little girl's mother didn't want her stuff. Took what she could sell quick, what she needed. Left the rest. I ought to do something with it but..." Murle's voice trailed off. Marylin followed her into the one-room garage apartment.
A makeshift clothes rack stood at one side of the door. Shiny sheer negligees and diaphanous gowns and strange lingerie hung next to pretty but common dresses, blouses, jackets Stacks of boxes sat scattered around the room. A beaten-up vanity with an oval mirror leaned against a wall and a burnt orange rocker with ripped upholstery looked like it would collapse. The garage apartment smelled like a perfumed love letter too long left in a dusty alcove.
"Little girl didn't even get a good service!" The voice screamed as much as talked. "Some street preacher. Started out crying, 'I'm sorry! I'm sorry!' Talked a bunch of gooblygook and then smiled and said 'It's all fulfilled in my lifetime.'" The big woman shook her head. "Little girl deserved better."
Murle Mueller tore into a stack of boxes, opening and looking, and closing again.
"Who was it?" Marylin asked.
"Some goofy son of a bitch!" Murle kept looking through boxes. She kept digging. "Here it is. Doesn't exactly work right. She said the tape sticks and sometimes doesn't erase. Guess that's why the mother didn't take it, too. Or forgot."
Murle Mueller handed the legal secretary an answering machine, scuffed, heavy, and old.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The answering machine sat on Chester Morgan's desk.
"Watch this," Marylin said. She pressed the rewind button and the tiny cassette spun its tape. It stopped. She pressed the play button.
Silence.
The tape wound at regular speed.
Silence.
"I see, but..." Morgan said. He knew she must have a reason.
"Remember when we thought we lost the Echohawk brief you dictated, but we really hadn't?" she asked. "I've had to make machines work for me my entire career." She pressed the rewind button and allowed the tape to spin back. She took it out of the machine, played with the recording head, and placed the tape back in the small black box. "Listen," she said as she jiggled the play button and pressed it down.
"Tanya. Hope this will be a peaceful day for you. Call me when you are able," the male voice said. Then, the talking recorder: "Thursday. September Third. Ten twenty-three a.m."
Beeeeeeeeep.
"Tanya. I know you're there." The same deep voice in embarrassing sing-song. "Please call me." Click. "Thursday. September Third. Eleven forty-six a.m."
Beeeeeeeeep.
"Babe, pick up the receiver and talk to me. I just want to chat with you. Just want to hear your voice. It wouldn't hurt to talk for a minute, would it? You know what the number is." Same voice, pleading, resigned. Click. "Thursday. September Third. Twelve o-four p.m."
Beeeeeeeeep.
"I have to talk with you. I really have to talk with you! Come on! I I really do!" Again the voice, this time panicked, desperate. "Pick up the phone............Call me then or come see me. You know where I am, where I always am. We have to talk -- both of us." Click "Thursday. September Third. Two-thirteen p.m."
Beeeeeeeeep.
"Stop playing games! Be an adult and pick up the phone. I said pick it up." The bass voice squeaked to tenor in anger. "This is childish! Work your dumb little blond broad charade on your sleazy dumb tricks but not me. That's due me! You're a woman. Have some character, or are you afraid? I'll make you have talk to me!" Click. "Thursday. September Third. Two-fifty-two p.m."
Beeeeeeeeep.
"TANYA! STAR! TANYA! I don't want to do this. I don't! Tanya, I was the pestle that put life into your vessel, made you more than the shell you were before. It all came together in you, for you. Should I kiss your cheek? And you -- you -- you --" Click. "Thursday. September Third. Three-o-one p.m."
Beeeeeeeeep.
"You little slut." A female voice, raspy with too much cigarette smoke and nightclub air. "Make sure your fat little cheeks are at the Lodge tonight. Ten-thirty. You got business there tonight. Important business." Click. "Thursday. September Third. Three-o-six p.m."
Beeeeeeeeep.
Marylin pushed the stop button. "Nothing else for that day except a couple of hang-ups. By the next, Tanya was dead."
Morgan stared at his framed diplomas and certificates on the wall, but he wasn't looking at black-and-white words.
"Chester, you always say a good trial attorney should be able to get kicked hard and never have it show by the look on his face," Marylin said. "What's wrong?"
"That was the preacher, Don Hubbard," Chester Morgan said. "And the woman, Tanya's mother."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
The six-lane expressway cut through Vivia flat and straight, with mown rights-of-way, solid shoulders, and concrete barriers. Saturday morning: a chance to drive, a chance to think. The car's engine hummed, and Morgan felt the steering wheel vibrate beneath the palms of his hands.
The expressway, built to Federal spec and regulation, led away. Morgan drove the concrete expressway straight, level, and even. No reason to turn the steering wheel more than a fraction nor to accelerate suddenly nor to brake. A chance to think: The straight, the facts, the logical constructs that make the law engineering with words.
The expressway led away from phones that always rang, from tempestuous judges, from clients who demanded. Alan Kinman had not demanded -- not yet. He had an earnest request: Learn the truth. Kinman had no case -- not yet, and Morgan had more hours invested than rationality would suggest prudent, all to require by law that the police answer for the absence of the record of Tanya Everly's demise. And, more than one witness had suggested his client's devotion stemmed from irrational obsession. Irrational enough to brutalize the object of that same obsession? Morgan drove.
The expressway led away from crowded streets and scared people frightened of scared people. Morgan heard the refrain "I don't ask questions," the landlady's door slamming in his face, and Jeff McNally's ominous warning to "just stay away." Morgan saw the dancer with European-model looks leave his table abruptly, and he heard imagined whispers with the nightclub's manager. Morgan drove.
The expressway led away from dull-eyed clerks in orange smocks selling mass-merchandise in mass-merchandised malls and box stores. Morgan saw the well-dressed people in the fashionably furnished reception space of Martin Bollant's law office. He remembered the young uniformed cop in police records intimidated into false statement by a uniformed superior. He remembered the come-on of the lonely medical examiner and the whiskey-drinking motel clerk just doing business then showing him the scene of a young woman's final degradation, the sight of her mother's perverse vantage, and locked doors that opened. Morgan shuddered and drove.
The expressway led away from skyscrapers and old money. The image returned: the lifeless body floating in the YMCA swimming pool at dawn. Other images, too. The odd probate hearing, the two improbable witnesses to an improbable signing of an improbable lost will, the young YMCA attendant attempting to be a hero forced out of a job he wanted and did well.
The image shimmered, then burned, and would not fade.
Morgan drove and drove.
The road led away from straight-lined houses and straight-lined streets. Morgan heard the answering machine tape play again, the voices Marylin had discovered. The casual friend turning to despondent lover then to monster murderer? He remembered Don Hubbard's peaceful voice, the right words said the right way, the odd tone when he discussed a two thousand year old method of execution and women. Battered wives in divorces learn that the ogre who blackens the eye or splits the lip, or worse, often knows the right words and how to say them. The clue was to listen for that tone, that off-key coda that told you something was wrong. But had Hubbard's odd timbre been that or strange inspiration or divine madness?
The suburbs surrounded Chester Morgan, the houses all straight cut. No sidewalks, no front porches. Isolated developers' dreams in indistinct subdivisions with Disneyesque names. Morgan drove and wanted to escape.
Miles clicked over on the odometer and golden fields, yet to be touched by bulldozer and surveyor pins, replaced tract homes. Traffic lightened. The expressway curved abruptly and then narrowed to two lanes. Tobusky, and what was left of home, ahead.
The road led away from Vivia and from neon lights and naked skin in a place just called "across the river." Morgan drove.
The road turned rough. Ancient post oaks and cottonwoods threw heavy shadows over the faded macadam. A gray clapboard filling station sat in a gravel parking lot as it had since before the Depression. The ride took course, up and over, down and up, slower and faster, a certain sign of passage into the heart of the old Indian nations.
Morgan organized facts and theories. Would it not be probable...? If X happened, then Y must have... A sudden curve jarred him. A large hill loomed to the side of the road. Morgan traveled. He preferred these small two-lane highways that would finally take him home. The ones with narrow lanes, sudden curves and inclines, the low shoulders, the rapid drop offs. He liked their danger, their intimacy, their peculiar beauty.
