County Line (13 page)

“Mister Kadash, how much do you know about Ruby’s life?”

“Pretty much nothing. She never talked about her past. Until a couple of days ago, I thought she was from Kentucky.”

“Did you ever wonder why?”

“Under normal circumstances, I don’t like to pry.” A reaction, perhaps, to a career spent prying.

“But now you think you’ve discovered less than normal circumstances.”

“Honestly, I don’t know. She left suddenly without telling anyone where she was going, or why. For all I know, I’m just a presumptuous ass sticking his nose in where it’s not wanted.”

“Yet you came anyway.”

“Like I said, I’m worried about her. And … things have happened.”

“Things which led you to believe you needed to stick your nose in, wanted or not.”

“Something like that.”

“I won’t betray her trust.”

“I’m not asking you to.”

“What then?”

“Whatever you’re willing to tell me. Hell, if you tell me you know she’s safe and I should go home and stop worrying, I might even listen.”

“Really. And why is that?”

I nod toward the print. “That’s one of Ruby Jane’s favorite paintings. She’s got the same print in her apartment.”

She sets her cup on its own coaster and folds her hands in her lap. Her eyes move to the print. I wonder what she’s thinking.

“It’s just a painting.”

“I suppose. But it tells me something about who you are to her.”

“You trust me because of an old print.”

“Why not?”

She reaches for her coffee, then settles back in her chair again without it. When she looks up, she’s made a decision. “Mister Kadash, Ruby wasn’t close with many people after her father disappeared, and as far as it goes, she didn’t stick around here herself. She graduated from Dixie High School.”

“Where is that?”

“New Lebanon. Up the road a few miles.”

“Why did she move?”

“I don’t see anything to be gained bringing up old memories like this.”

“Please. I’m looking for a line on where to find her. Anything.”

“How long has she been gone?”

“A couple of weeks. No one knows where she went.”

“I don’t even know if I remember much after all this time.”

“What was that about her father?”

She closed her eyes and sighed. “It’s a long, sad story, but an all too common one. He ran off. Fathers do, even in this day and age.”

“Ran off where? With another woman, or …”

“No one knows. He vanished one day and that was that. As far as I know, no one ever heard from him again.”

“How did Ruby Jane feel about it?”

“I was her English teacher, not her confessor.”

“What was she like?”

“You’re not going to let up, are you?”

“It’s not my style, no.”

“I suppose I should tell you to go, and leave it at that.”

“I’d rather you didn’t.”

Her eyes go back to the painting, then jump to the mantle clock, almost as if she’s looking for help.

“She was a good student. Not a great student, but good. Most of her focus was on sports.”

“She was an athlete?”

“Basketball. Quite good too. College scouts were interested.”

“She has a hoop in her apartment, makes baskets from anywhere in the room.” Her field goal percentage is otherworldly. “But she never mentioned playing. I remember her saying she went to a small college.”

“She left Valley View before her senior year. To my knowledge she never played again.”

“Why? If she was that good?”

“It’s complicated. Her father, … he left ruin in his wake. Her mother went so far as to suggest Ruby had something to do with his disappearance. Can you believe that? A mother accusing her own child?”

I was a cop long enough that nothing surprises me.

“Then there was James.”

“I’ve met him.” I don’t mention he’s lying in a drawer in the San Francisco medical examiner’s office.

“When James left for college, her mother went off the deep end. There was a police investigation, which came to nothing of course. Men run off.”

“That must have been hard on Ruby Jane.”

“She coped through sports, I think. She played hard, but to her credit she worked in class too. She never tried to use her status as an athlete to curry favors from her teachers.”

“Why did she quit?”

“There was another girl—Mister Kadash, you have to understand that even on the same team, athletes are very competitive. And girls have their own issues as well. This other girl, she wanted to be the team’s focus. She didn’t like the attention Ruby drew. It all came to a head one day in the wake of a tragedy which was particularly hard on Ruby. She hit the other girl and broke her nose.”

I think of Clarice Moody, her nose pointing over the horizon.

“Naturally, discipline was swift and sure. Ruby was suspended for a week from school and for seven games the subsequent basketball season. A lot of people argued for leniency, including me. She’d never been in that kind of trouble before. I was worried about her scholarship prospects if she missed so many games, but Ruby said the punishment was fair. She withdrew into herself, spent a lot of time in the school library or out running. She did a lot of writing for me too. Thoughtful material, though impersonal. Then, at the end of the year she transferred to Dixie.”

“And that’s when you lost track of her.”

Her hands are a tangle in her lap. “Her mother moved away after she graduated, but she didn’t stay at home her senior year.”

“Where did she live?”

“As I recall, her mother sold the house when she left. I don’t even know who lives there now.”

Not what I asked. I’m getting close to matters she doesn’t want to share, and I wonder if Ruby Jane stayed here her senior year. Mrs. Parmelee looks at the clock again. “Am I keeping you from something?”

“No, of course not.”

I finish my coffee. My hand has a slight tremble when I set the cup on the coaster. “How long ago did she leave?” My voice is almost a whisper.

“She left when Chief Nash called.”

“Does he know she’s here?”

“No one does, to my knowledge.”

“Where’d she go?”

She sighs. “She won’t be happy I told you, but we didn’t know it was you the chief was sending over. She thought someone from the old days recognized her on the road or something. I was supposed to brush them off. But it turned out to be you. Skin Kadash.”

Her lips press together as she glances at my neck, as if for the first time, then she lets out a breath. After all these years, I’m used to the reaction, my neck cuing up a standard response in connection with my name. But just once it might be nice if someone shrugged it off.

“You can call me Thomas if it makes you more comfortable. Or Mister Kadash is fine.”

“No. I’m sorry. I’m feeling a little caught off guard, and let’s face it. I’m an old retired teacher. I’m not used to subterfuge.” She flashes a quick smile.

“Why did she come back here?”

“I don’t know exactly. She showed up, asked if she could stay for a little while. She’s told me a lot, but only of matters far away. All about her coffee shops, and her life in Portland.” When she smiles again, it’s more at ease. “She told me about you.”

My face feels hot.

“She goes out every day alone. Running, she claims, but I think it’s something more.”

“Running?”

“Along her old routes. In high school, I was more likely to see her running than sitting still.”

“And today?”

“Her medium run. Eleven miles.”

“Yes, but where—”

“It is you. Right?”

“Me.”

“Skin.”

I don’t know what she means, but I know what I hope she means. “I need to find her, Mrs. Parmelee. Please, tell me where.”

She nods, still smiling. “I’ll give you directions. She’ll be on Preble County Line Road by now.”

- 12 -

Preble County Line Road

Pete is waiting outside. As I climb into the car, Ruby Jane’s phone rings. According to caller ID, the number is restricted. I feel a strange certainty it’s her. But when I answer, all I hear is a ticking quiet.

“Is someone there?”

“I know you.” The voice whispers. I can guess who it is.

“Congratulations.” I’m not feeling patient. “What’s your next trick? Remembering your own name?”

“I won’t let you interfere.”

“Good for you.”

“I’m not fucking around here.”

I pull the phone away from my ear long enough to confirm the incoming number is restricted.

“I don’t take orders from Captain Ambiguous.”

The call ends.

I drop the phone in the center console. Peter looks at me sideways from behind the wheel. I can’t read his expression, a circumstance I’m growing used to. “What was that about?”

“No idea.” My tone has an edge. I press my lips together and face the windshield. The sunlight is bright and harsh, rimming the hickory leaves in front of Linda Parmelee’s house with a lucid halo. The breeze carries the scent of mown grass through the windows. A kid drags a backpack down the sidewalk across the street. The scritch of the bag on concrete and the call of a bird I don’t recognize are the only sounds.

“Where are we going?”

I don’t answer.

“Skin—”

“Head north out of town.”

“Any particular route?”

“Look around. How many routes do you think there are?”

“Fine.”

There’s no reason to let my apprehension boil over onto Pete, but it’s not like he’s been so easy on me the last few days. I suck in heavy air, let it out as he pulls a fast U-ey. He heads back through town, turns left and accelerates. Bucolic small town gives way to fields interrupted by narrow stands of trees almost immediately. We pass ranch houses set back from the road, big front yards with those oversized brick baskets. I don’t see a single cow or horse. After half a mile or so we pass a biker in spandex who might have been teleported right off a Portland street.

“What am I looking for, Skin?”

“Turn left when you come to Chicken Bristle Road.”

“Chicken Bristle?”

“Didn’t you grow up out here? You should be used to this.”

“Hell knows there isn’t a single farm or stretch of open road in all of Oregon.”

After a minute or so, he points two-fingered without taking his hands off the wheel. “Chicken Bristle.” The new road is narrower and rougher, but straight as a rod. To the left are a couple of older houses on multi-acre lots, to the right, a broad field with row after row of young sprouts. Corn, soy beans, I haven’t got a clue.

“What are we looking for, Skin?”

“Ruby Jane.”

“Damn it, I know that—”

“Surely she told you all about her high school athletic activities back when you were actually getting to know each other.”

His jawline goes rigid.

I sigh and rub my eyes, then describe Ruby Jane’s medium run: out Farmersville-West Alexandria Road to Chicken Bristle, west to Preble County Line, then north and beyond. Eleven mile loop, modest hills, quiet roads. Good air in the spring and fall, if oppressive in summer and bone-chilling in winter. Fields, scrub woods, hundred-year-old farm houses, twenty-year-old McMansions.

Ask her about that night on Preble County Line Road
. Neither one of us has to mention Jimmie’s words in the bar minutes before he died.

What happened out here, RJ?

“She used to run this route in high school.”

“And she’s out here now?”

“She left shortly before you dropped me off.”