Hear No Evil (7 page)

“And the matching slippers and robe,” Jessie added. “If I have to be in the hospital, I might as well do it in style. Maybe that’s why I bought that nightgown. I knew something like this was going to happen. I had a presentiment. Damn, my heart is hammering like hell’s best carpenter.”

“Lean back again,” Eden told her. “Please—”

Jessie leaned back, but her eyes were rebellious. “You do as I say. You need any help, ask Owen. He lives at t’other house. He’s remodeling it.”

“Who is this man?” Eden asked. “Why are you so chummy?”

“And don’t handle my crystal ball,” Jessie instructed. “It’s highly charged right now. You never could use it right. That gift wasn’t given to you.”

Exasperated, Eden wanted to say, “Jessie—none of
this will work. I can’t take care of Peyton. I don’t know how. I’ll hire someone to take care of her. And I can’t stay here and work your phone because of some wild hunch about Mimi. I’ve got my own work in California.”

But she thought of Jessie’s blood pressure. She said nothing.
Tomorrow
, she thought.
I’ll tell her tomorrow when we’re both calmer. We have more important things to do than bicker
.

By the time Owen drove the Storey woman back toward Jessie’s, the rain had stopped. The sky turned from gray to vibrant, autumnal blue. Sunlight gleamed on the yellowing leaves of the walnut trees, the muted orange of the oaks.

None of this sunniness touched Owen’s heart. He frowned to himself. He and Shannon would officially introduce Eden to her goblin of a niece, then Shannon was free to go home to Hot Springs. He envied her, wanting to escape himself.

He wanted to go to the river to bow-hunt deer. He was troubled, and he needed the silence and sounds of the deep woods: the splash and rush of the river as it surged over ancient stones, the lonely moan of the wind in the trees.

The crossbow, in its sling, was already in the back of the Blazer. He’d been ready to take off yesterday, just spend a few days by himself. He’d meant to lose himself in the pure, intricate ceremonies of hunting. But, instead, Jessie had fallen down the stairs.

Now he was thinking of losing himself otherwise, in other ceremonies not so pure. He had the urge to go to Tulsa, where a man could have a degree of anonymity. He knew a place called Cosette’s where the girls were clean
and careful, and where he could keep relationships simple and impersonal.

Too often lately, a dark hunger gnawed at him, all lust, no love. He had no love left, wanted none. His body didn’t need love, only release. He did not like these sexual transactions in Tulsa, but he needed them. His body was like a horse that needed to be run from time to time, so that it wouldn’t grow wilder or meaner than it already was.

Against his wish or will, Eden Storey brought out the meaness, the wildness, and the old, dark hunger in him. He didn’t like it, he resented it, and he intended to keep his distance from her.

“I’ll get you settled with the kid,” he said, not looking at her. “Then I’ll leave you alone. I’ll be at the other house if you need me. I might go hunting a few days.”

“Fine,” she said. There was fatigue in her voice, as if her visit with Jessie had exhausted her in ways he didn’t understand. Now he was going to throw her to Peyton, the wolf-child. It couldn’t be helped.

“Jessie’s got a Ford Escort. She doesn’t drive it much anymore, but it still runs. The keys are on a nail beside the back door. If you have any trouble with it, let me know.”

She held her head high and stared moodily out the side window, watching the dappled light dance on the colored leaves. “Thank you,” she said. “You’ve been very kind.”

Resolutely he tried to keep his attention on the road. He wasn’t being kind, and he knew it. Still, he was obliged to provide for her to some extent; she and the kid were, after all, concerns of Jessie’s, and he owed Jessie.

“If you need anything else,” he said, “money, whatever, just tell me.”

“I don’t need money,” she said, almost sharply. “I’ve been taking care of myself just fine for years.”

You certainly have
, he thought, studying the elegance of her profile. He looked away from her and made his voice harsh. “Mimi’s probably guilty of abandonment. But it doesn’t become a criminal matter unless you or Jessie press charges. You can keep the problem in the family.”

Eden put her hand to her forehead and sighed tiredly. “Family,” she said, as if it were the name of a particularly cruel curse.

He kept his eyes on the highway. “What about Jessie’s feeling that Mimi’s in trouble? And this caller she thinks knows her, this Constance?”

Eden rubbed her forehead, then let her hand fall back to her lap. “Mimi’s always in trouble,” she said, staring at the trees again. “And Jessie always sees omens and portents in everything.”

“You don’t believe her?”

“Do you?”

“A lot of people do,” he said evasively. “She’s done all right for herself by them.”

She raised her chin higher. “She
has
done all right. She kept telling me she had. I thought she was exaggerating. We used to scrape by on so little. And after I left here, she’d never accept money from me. Never. If I sent it to her, she sent it right back, insulted.”

“She’s independent.”

“There’s such a thing as being too independent.”

“She’s got a lot of pride, that’s all.”

“There’s such a thing as too much pride.”

He said nothing. A silence fell between them, and he was content to let it grow.

But he felt Eden’s eyes on him, studying him as if he
had answers she wanted. She said, “Just exactly how has she done so well? That little house—it’s very nice.”

“Psychics got more popular in the last ten or twelve years. The phone business has been good to her. She’s built up a clientele.”

Eden cocked her head and crossed her arms. “I hope it’s saner than the ‘clientele’ she used to have.”

He gave her a brief, dubious look.

“For instance,” she said, “the man who traveled around with space aliens. The other crazies. The drunks. The poor people looking for a miracle and hoping she’s it.”

He shrugged. “She provides a service.”

“She also takes their money.”

He heard the bitterness in her voice, and it irked him. “You don’t sound like you have much respect for her.”

“But you, on the other hand, do,” she said. “Why?”

He thought a moment. The truth was too complicated to go in to, and too personal. He said, “I think she’s an extraordinary woman. That’s all.”

Eden’s smile was small and sardonic. “Extraordinary’s one way to put it. What did she do? Read your stars and tell you how to break the bank at Monte Carlo?”

“Let’s skip it.” He rounded a curve edged with cedars and Jessie’s house and his own came into view. He was glad. He wanted to rid himself of this woman who both excited and irritated him.

“Your loving niece is probably up by now,” he said. “Waiting to meet you.”

Eden’s little smirk died into nothingness, which gave him a petty pleasure. Then an almost haunted look came into her eyes, and his pleasure vanished.

•  •  •

Peyton was awake, but still had a sleepy, sullen expression. She lay on the floor in the living room, her left thumb firmly in her mouth, drawing crayon pictures in a Big Chief tablet.

The television blared before her, tuned to a cartoon show. Beside her lay a mangy-looking toy bear whose stitched mouth had unraveled almost into nothingness.

Owen smiled down at the child, but his smile seemed forced. With unnatural heartiness, he said, “Peyton, this is your aunt, Eden Storey. Aunt Eden.”

Peyton turned her face, giving Eden a dark, unreadable glance. “I know,” she said. “I got in her bed. She thought I was a cat.”

Eden, too, smiled, and her own smile felt stiff and false on her lips. “Hello, Peyton,” she said. “It’s nice to meet you in the daytime.”

Peyton refused to look up. “I’m not a cat. I’m a person.”

Helplessly, Eden looked at Owen. He gazed down at the child with his expression so controlled that she knew it concealed dislike.

Shannon came into the room from the hall. She looked a good deal like her brother, tall and lean with piercing blue eyes, but her thick hair was still brown.

She took Eden’s hand in hers and squeezed it warmly. “How’s your grandmother?”

Eden was grateful for the simple human contact. This woman was far different from her chilly-blooded brother. “My grandmother’s—feisty.”

Shannon nodded sympathetically and put her other hand on Owen’s shoulder. “Owen, I’m packed, and I’m going. If I leave now, I can stop by the home and see
Mama one more time. I can be on the road and back to Hot Springs before dark.”

Owen gave his sister the hint of a sardonic smile. “Anxious to leave?”

“Eager to see my own kids, that’s all.” She gripped his shoulder more tightly. “And, Owen, help take care of this little girl. I have the feeling she’s been through a lot.”

Eden’s heart contracted at the words. Owen frowned. “Did she say anything?”

Shannon shook her head worriedly. “Not really. She talks so strangely. And the pictures she draws—I found these in her room, under her bed.”

She released Eden’s hand and reached for another tablet beside a lamp on an end table. “Here,” she said, handing the tablet to Owen. “Look at this.”

Owen held the tablet so that Eden, too, could see. He lifted the cover. A child’s crude drawing filled the page.

A woman’s stick figure wore a skirt and had long, frazzled hair—like Mimi’s. Mimi had always worn her curly hair long and in a flyaway style. The woman held a stick child by the hand, and the child’s scribbled hair was black, like Peyton’s.

Both woman and child seemed to be fleeing from a large house with a fierce red door and no windows.

As primitive as the drawing was, Eden sensed a palpable aura of unhappiness about it. Black clouds of smoke poured from the chimney. No sun shone in the sky. No tree graced the flat landscape. No grass or flowers grew.

“There are more,” Shannon said.

Owen turned the page. The same stark horizon. The same sunless sky. The same windowless house with the scarlet door and the same chimney pouring darkness into the air. This time the child stood alone beside the house.

Owen turned another page. Eden saw the familiar eyeless, boxy house with its door as red as a wound. This time the smoke rose not straight up, but in sharp zigs and zags that blackened the whole sky.

Three men with magenta hair stood in the barren yard. They held what seemed to be guns. A chill clutched Eden. “Who are these men?” she asked. “Did you ask her?”

“I tried,” Shannon said. “She won’t give me a straight answer.”

“What do you mean?” Owen frowned.

“She says they’re the mean soldiers,” Shannon said. “And that she can’t talk about them.”

Eden stared at the drawing of the three men with their violently colored hair.

Mean soldiers
, she thought apprehensively. She raised her eyes to meet Shannon’s.

Shannon said, “Maybe she’ll talk to you. She seems to like you. She was upset when she woke up, and you weren’t there.”

Eden looked dubiously at the child lying before the television. She was engrossed in drawing another stick figure.

“I think that’s you,” Shannon said with a nod toward the picture.

A shock of recognition ran through Eden. As crude as the drawing was, Peyton had somehow captured her, the triangular face, the way her bangs fell over her forehead. In the sky beamed a yellow sun.

“I’ve got to go,” Shannon said. “I’ll stay in touch—through Owen.”

Eden nodded numbly but didn’t want the woman to leave; she suddenly felt helpless, abandoned. Shannon
gave her hand a last squeeze, then released it. “Good luck to you,” she said. “And to your family.”

“I’ll get your suitcase,” Owen said. His voice was gruff, and Eden thought he, too, seemed reluctant for his sister to leave.

Shannon knelt on the floor beside Peyton and told her good-bye and to be a good girl. Peyton yawned and did not look up. She flinched slightly when Shannon tried to kiss her on the cheek.

But she let the woman’s lips graze her face, just barely. Shannon only smiled and touched her fingertips to Peyton’s cheek. The child ignored her and gripped her crayon more tightly. She had drawn a black-haired child beside the Eden-figure.

Over their heads, she drew a floating man. Meticulously, she colored his hair turquoise-blue.

When Owen returned from walking Shannon to her car, Eden’s skin prickled with uneasiness.

Even though Peyton lay on the floor between them, humming and coloring, Eden felt peculiarly alone with him. It was as if Shannon’s leaving removed some protective wall from between them.

“I should pack up those things Jessie wants,” she said.

“Yeah,” he said, sounding bored. “I could drop them off now. I’m going back into town. I’ve got things to attend.”

“Which is Jessie’s room?”

“The first on the left, down the hall.”

She excused herself and practically ransacked Jessie’s drawers and closets, looking for the nightgown, robe, slippers, batteries. She packed everything haphazardly in
a grocery bag, knowing Jessie would be displeased by the untidiness. Eden didn’t care. Instinctively she wanted Owen gone from the house, the sooner the better.

But as she stuffed the slippers into the bag, she paused, staring in surprise at the top of Jessie’s bureau. Ranged there, in inexpensive frames, were at least a dozen snapshots of herself and Mimi.

There was Mimi, little and grinning, all curly hair and with a gap in her smile, her front teeth claimed by the tooth fairy. There Eden was herself, a leggy twelve-year-old, looking proud and almost haughty in the cheap party dress she’d worn at her first singing recital. There were she and Mimi sitting in front of the trailer, their heads together, laughing at some now long-forgotten joke.

A pang stabbed her, heart-deep. Jessie still displayed their pictures? Kept them where she would see them the first thing in the morning and the last at night? After the pain they had both inflicted on her?

This skinny girl with the manic grin had really been Mimi, with her wild, pretty voice and her dreams of Nashville? And had this other girl, tall and seemingly so self-possessed, really been herself, hiding her fear from the world?