County Line (42 page)

Not a half bad idea, if based on the notion Ruby Jane drove straight through from Ohio, twenty-five hundred miles, without sleeping. “I got us a room at the hotel.”

“I’ll see you when I see you.”

He returns after dark. The last ferry of the day isn’t due for another hour, and I suggest we get some supper while we wait.

“I’m going to bed.”

He walks away from me.

“What if she comes?”

I have to call him back to give him the key.

He’s asleep when I get to the room after the last, fruitless ferry. He’s fully dressed except for his shoes, lying on top of the quilt on one side of the bed. I kick off my own shoes and slip under the quilt next to him, convinced I won’t be able to sleep. The night sounds of the hotel—creaks and occasional footsteps, the distant quiet murmur of a television or radio—resound in my ears, unnaturally magnified. When I close my eyes, I see Ruby Jane looking back at me from behind the wheel of her car. Questions swirl through in my mind, questions and doubts. It’s only a guess Ruby Jane will come here.

I awake to rain, the drops striking the roof like coins falling from a torn pocket. Somewhere far to the east the sun may be rising, but outside the Orcas Hotel, the sky is the color of slate.

Pete is asleep beside me, curled up like a disobedient child waiting for his father to come home. I prod his shoulder as the ferry horn sounds across the water.

“Fuck off.”

“Come on, Pete. She could be on this one.”

“She could be on a beach in Tahiti singing to turtles.”

“Pete—?”

I poke him again, and this time he sits up. He twists toward me, but the room is dark and I’m not sure if he sees me. “I was dreaming.”

“About turtles and Tahiti?”

“How’d you know?”

I stand up, knees popping. “Come on. The ferry’s almost here.”

“I need coffee.”

“It’s down on the beach with the turtles.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

I don’t answer. While Pete ties his shoes, I wash my face and comb my hair. Downstairs, the cafe is open, and we both get cups to go. Pete tarts his up with soy milk and vanilla powder. The ferry is coming to rest against the dock bumpers as we cross Killebrew Lake Road. The falling rain chatters against my rain coat, but Pete’s cotton jacket drinks it in like a towel. We take up a post next to the terminal building under a sign advertising sea kayak and bicycle rentals. He hunches his shoulders, one hand in his pocket, the other holding his coffee cup under his chin.

“Turtles, Pete? Tahiti?”

A voice sounds over a loudspeaker on the ferry, but I can’t make out the words. Pete drinks coffee and frowns. “Just ready for a different life.”

“Aren’t we all.”

“Mmmm.”

Cars move off the ferry. I steal a glance at Pete, who looks pensive. He breathes into his cup as the first vehicles roll past us and turn up the road toward Eastsound.

“It’s slipping away.” His voice is quiet, as if he’s sharing an afterthought. “It’s all just slipping away.”

“What, Pete?”

He shakes his head, likes he’s still waking up. “Huh?”

“What’s slipping away?”

He looks at the coffee cup in his hands, as if recognizing it for the first time. His exposed skin offers a roadmap of damage suffered on Preble County Line Road, his haunted eyes even more so. He smiles weakly. “The dream. The dream is slipping away.”

When the last car passes, we return to the hotel. I wait in the cafe while Pete goes upstairs to change into dry clothes. Out on the patio, the rain tapers off to a drizzle. The ferry is loading a few people going to Friday Harbor. I snag a couple of scones, a banana and another coffee. Complimentary with the room. Pete returns, but says he isn’t hungry. He refills his coffee and joins me at a table near the window. All we can do is wait.

“I almost spoke up out there.”

I look at him over the rim of my coffee cup.

“I still love her. I almost said so when she asked. But I couldn’t.”

Grey mist filters out of a colorless sky.

“I know I’m the one who ruined everything. I know we’ll never get back together. She’s moved on. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to help her.”

“You don’t owe me any explanations.” I doubt Pete believes a word he said. I’m sure he hopes by coming so far he’ll prove himself to Ruby Jane. It’s a belief I understand, since I share it.
You left me in that hospital but I followed you anyway
. Pete and I may be two fools playing at being the hero. “I’m here to rescue you.” The one thing we haven’t considered is maybe Ruby Jane neither needs nor wants rescuing.

“I’m going back out.”

He doesn’t have my capacity for waiting. “Be careful, Pete.”

“Yeah. Sure.” The day has hardly started, but he already sounds defeated.

The clouds break as he drives away. I return to the porch, fresh coffee in hand. Time passes like sap melting. Ferries come, ferries go. I doze from time to time, awake with a start when cars bring noise and exhaust. At one point, one of the walk-on passengers, a woman in multi-colored Lycra leading a pack-laden bike, pauses at pier’s edge in order to puke into the water. A similarly bedecked fellow puts his hand on her back. She slaps him. I look away, and spy an eagle perched on top of a Douglas fir on the headland beyond the landing. Every so often, a gull dives screaming toward it, pulls up short and flies off over the water. The eagle is a lesson in stillness. I watch him until the next ferry draws my attention. When the last of the debarking cars passes I look back at the fir tree. The eagle is gone.

My cell phone rings, a 937 area code. Familiar, but I can’t place it. Ruby Jane could have picked up a pre-paid cell anywhere.

“Yes?”

“Is this Mister Kadash?”

Nash. I deflate. “What can I do for you, Chief?”

“I don’t suppose you’ve found Ruby yet, have you?”

“Working on it.”

“Your lieutenant told me she thought you went to see Bella.”

Susan could always see two steps ahead of me. “You’re working late, Chief.” It’s after eight where he is.

“I’ve learned a few things and I figured you want to hear.” A pair of gulls lights near the eagle’s perch. “You know how everyone always thought Ruby went up to Dixie to finish school after she left Valley View? Turns out she never attended Dixie. She got a GED instead.”

“Okay.”

“She could have finished anywhere. GED is an odd choice.”

“Maybe she was sick of high school.”

“Not like she didn’t have cause.”

“But that’s not it, is it?”

He hesitates, long enough for me to wonder if I lost the call.

“She had a baby.”

I open my mouth, but my voice fails me. The cries of the gulls are muted, as though my ears are stuffed with cotton balls.

“A boy, born at Good Sam in January 1990. According to the birth certificate, his name is Bidwell Denlinger Whittaker.”

A leaden shock plunges through me. “Holy fuck.”

“Holy something.”

“Biddy Denlinger is Ruby Jane’s son.”

“There’s more.”

“Christ. It gets worse?”

“I don’t know about that. He was adopted three weeks after he was born. The adoption file is sealed, but I’m working on that. Be nice to find out where the boy ended up.”

In the two-and-a-half years I’ve known her, Ruby Jane has never even hinted about a baby.

“Mister Kadash?”

“You’re sure about all this, Chief?”

“They’re the facts as I far as I can determine.”

Facts can hide a lot. I look for the eagle, but all I see are the damned gulls. Out on the water, a flight of ducks crosses, wing tips skimming the waves.
Biddy Denlinger Whittaker
. He’d be eighteen or nineteen now—my mind can’t quite work out the math. Is that old enough to cross the country committing assault and murder?

“You okay, Mister Kadash?”

“Not sure.”

“I know what you mean.” He whistles lightly. “I’ve informed the SFPD, just so you know, along with your lieutenant.”

I thank him, my voice flat, and disconnect the call.

With a will of their own, my feet carry me through the village. Searching. I don’t know for what. Nothing. A coffee … a bourbon. I glance through shop windows, weave among children chasing each other as their ice cream cones melt over their hands. I find myself on the boardwalk, uncertain about how I came there. The ferry horn sounds. Cars start. I inhale exhaust, listen to the engines. My head starts to ache and I look toward the hotel. The Starboard Harbor View room might offer a moment’s respite from the noise and dizzying air and anxious worry. Or come to feel like a prison.

I leave the boardwalk and screaming children behind. The cars have begun to move, slowly enough I can weave between them without incident. Across the ferry holding area, I find a narrow, empty road which rises gently through the trees. I climb, huffing and gasping, until the road levels out and curves past a dirt lot next to an electrical sub-station. The sun drops behind a cloud and a sudden chill descends, followed by a splash of misty rain. A moment later, the clouds clear again. I continue up the road. My injured arm is heavy at my side. My feet feel like stones. I keep moving.

Behind the sub-station I see a boxy, older sedan in familiar faded blue. A heaviness collects behind my heart. Ruby Jane’s beater Corolla is from the last model year before they went bubbly and round in the early 90s. Water gathers in my eyes as I draw nearer, but I force myself forward.

It’s empty.

- 49 -

No One Home

The car is much as I remember it, wearing its years in dings and scrapes. A walk-around reveals nothing. I find the spare key in the magnetic box hidden in the left rear wheel well. I’ve opened a few trunks over the years, and I know they’re empty far more often than not, the evidence of film and TV notwithstanding. A breeze carries the scent of sea and evergreen, but odds and clean air do nothing to calm the tremor in my hand as I pop the trunk.

Inside, I find relief—and more questions.

There’s a green holdall with some of Ruby Jane’s clothes, and a cardboard carton with packs of dried fruit, Sun Chips, half-empty boxes of crackers. A small cooler holds a couple of bottles of Jones cola floating in dirty water. Cane sugar and caffeine for the long drive west—no way to know how often she could get a decent cup of coffee.

I can’t tell if Ruby Jane parked the car and walked away, or if it was dumped by someone else. The spot is out of the way, unlikely to be noticed quickly, but close enough to the village landing that whoever left it could easily have made their way elsewhere, on island or off. After San Francisco and Preble County Line Road, I’ll assume it was dumped until I prove otherwise.

I dial Pete on my cell phone. No answer. Fuck him. I don’t bother to leave a message, dial 911 instead.

The dispatcher doesn’t see the emergency. In her shoes, I’d have been skeptical too. I ask about Inspector Eldridge’s request for an interview of Bella Denlinger, but there’s no reason she’d know about that. At last, I get her to have a deputy meet me at Isabella Farm.

As I trot back to the village, I give Pete another try. Still brooding. The interior of the Gremlin feels like a sauna under the slanting sun. A ferry has begun to unload as I pull out, and I have to wait for a long line of cars to climb past to Orcas Road. My impatience vibrates through me on the drive north, the traffic ahead uncharacteristically committed to the speed limit. After a mile or two, a few vehicles turn west toward Deer Harbor, but the main parade continues north. Yet once I reach the turn off to Bella’s, I go a little faster. The Gremlin strains to climb to the top of the ridge. In those rare moments when the road levels out, sharp curves slow me. I make better time after I get over the top, and all but coast the last mile or so to Isabella Farm.

A deputy named Rolf meets me at the end of the driveway.