Love Nest (16 page)

“Was Melody that way? No, Sonny, but she was kind, good to Nat, who adored her. Sometimes they cuddled. Like children, not lovers.”

He took his coffee black, not his custom, and burned his lips.

“The pajamas you saw Natalie in. Mel bought them for her. A birthday gift. Birthdays were precious to Mel. In the foster homes they usually forgot hers. In some she couldn’t open the refrigerator without permission.”

He looked away, through the fronds. His skin felt dry.

“They did a job on her,” she said, and he looked back at her. “Wasn’t unusal for her to go to school bleary-eyed because someone had been at her during the night. But that’s ancient history now, isn’t it?”

He rattled the cup in the saucer, his hands restless, his shoulders stiff.

“Nat and I can’t stop thinking about her. You can understand that, can’t you?”

There was laughter from a table of three, spontaneous and carefree. He envied their gaiety, their youth, their future.

“I don’t usually read the
Herald
, but Nat gets it for the contests. She always thinks she’s going to win something. She saw the story about the boy in Andover hanging himself.”

“He was my suspect.”

“We wondered.”

“I may have been wrong.”

“Ah,” she said with an air of abstraction. “We were afraid of that when you didn’t call.”

The trio was leaving, a youth with a dark jaw and two young women in long, open coats and shiny boots. The faces of the women were incurably pretty, as if their tender ages were permanent, their sweet places in life fixed. The lighting gave gold to the hair of one, enriched the redness in the hair of the other, and made a princess of each.

He said, “The boy made anonymous calls too, like your pal.”

“Too bad Nat didn’t know him. They might’ve got along.”

“Do you want me to tell you about him?”

“No,” she said. “Not if he wasn’t the one.” Her eyes passed over him. “You look tired. Too much in your head?”

“You could say that.”

“And you seem scared.”

“I want to be right.” He felt fatigue wedged into his muscles, along with an unshakable fear. He shifted his feet, and a bone creaked in his leg.

“I’m patient, but I don’t know about Nat,” she said.

“What’s that mean?”

“Nothing, Sonny.” She spoke with gentle mockery, her eyes focused now on every part of his face at once. Then she reached across the small table and touched him. “You have nice hands. I wouldn’t mind having one on the back of my neck.”

From another of the tables came a pop of bubble gum. His ear built it into an explosion. “Yes, I am tired.”

She said, “Then I’d better take you home.”

• • •

Ed Fellows struggled into his pinstripes while Paige Gately watched with a cold eye, her rage tightly reined. The silver in her perfect hair glinted, and her fine aquiline nose lifted, as if a smell in the room offended her. She spoke low. “You push to the limits, don’t you?”

He grappled with buttons, his look sheepish, his smile guilty, and she wondered whether any man had a place on earth, a purpose in life, a right to the deep space he filled.

“Are you jealous?” he whispered, wanting her to be, foolishness on his wide face.

Under other circumstances she might have laughed at him, a high-pitched laugh like a whinny. Instead, with a sense of irony, she thought of her husband Biff, juvenile like his name, quick with a smile but slow in the head and rancid in the liver, simian in habits despite the finest schools, and dead long before his time despite the best doctors, who had bled her dry.

“Maybe just a little?” Fellows persisted.

“You’re stupid,” she replied quietly.

“Don’t say that.”

“What should I say?”

He gnawed a knuckle, then tied a shoe. “You know my needs.”

She looked through him and wondered how much of a man was reducible to flyspeck.

Now both shoes were tied. They were of fine English leather, with perforations and fancy stitching, the same expensive sort, pair after pair, Biff had worn in slush and rain and ruined.

He said, “It was Chick who told you. He phoned you, didn’t he? That old bastard!”

“Fix your tie.”

“You were always cold. Damn it, always. Always.”

She handed him his coat. “Get the hell out of here, Ed.”

He shot a glance at the bathroom door. “What about her?”

“Wait for her in your car.” She pulled down the collar of his coat, pushed him, and guided him to the door, which she opened quickly and was ready to close on him. He gazed back at her as if he were stepping out of a dream in which she was staying.

“I’m not saying I don’t appreciate the other afternoon, but — ”

“You’re such a fool,” she said.

All at once he was contrite, somewhat ashamed. On impulse he grasped her hand, raised it, and kissed the palm. “I owe you so much, don’t I?”

Her eyebrows lifted. “Don’t ever forget it.”

She shut the door solidly behind him and stepped back into the room. Several seconds passed before Fran Lovell emerged from the bathroom, dressed, pale but composed despite the faint tremor of her eyelids. They did not know each other well, only from dealings at the bank, a customer-employee relationship, though through the years each had surmised much about the other, most of it on the mark. Now for the first time their lives touched at a sharp point. With a prim look of censure, Paige Gately spoke first.

“I thought you were smarter.”

Fran Lovell lit a cigarette and spoke through the hot haze of smoke. “You don’t scare me, Mrs. Gately. You never have.”

“It would be better for you if I did. Does your husband know he has horns?”

“I don’t need that. Not from you.”

“I see. Are you tougher than you look? That would be in your favor.”

The younger woman pulled deeply on the cigarette, the effort squinching her face. “What do you want from me, Mrs. Gately?”

They scrutinized each other.

“You were beautiful once, Fran. A shame you let yourself go.”

Memories flamed from the ashes. “We come from the same town, Mrs. Gately, but different worlds.”

“That’s an excuse, and not a very good one.” A small smile was shaped. “You know, Fran, I remember the piggy bank I had as a child. I remember the clink the coin made when it went in. Actually I had many such banks, but I never filled one of them. That was not a priority. Now it is.”

“Am I supposed to gather something from that?”

“I certainly hope so, for our priorities are not that different.” The smile was placid, poised. “Do you like your job, dear? Do you want to keep it? Don’t ever pull a stunt like this again, not in
this
motel.”

Fran Lovell smashed her cigarette out in an ashtray and slipped on her coat. “You have quite a hold on him, don’t you?”

“Yes, dear, and you have a slight one. Don’t lose it.”

“I get the message.”

“I was sure you would.”

Fran Lovell made for the door, her posture straight but her steps slow and unnatural. Shoving her hair to one side, she looked back. “We both know what he is, don’t we?”

“Yes, dear. He’s a pig.”

• • •

“Sonny’s going to stay the night. You don’t mind, do you, Nat?”

Natalie was in her bedroom, sitting crosslegged on the bed, eating off a tray, watching television, childlike in the pink pajamas. Her brown eyes went small inside her round spectacles. “Where’s he going to sleep?”

“There’s only Mel’s room, isn’t there? Unless we want to stick him on the sofa where he’ll be in the way. We don’t want that, do we?”

Natalie made a subtle face, and Sue stepped aside in the doorway so that Sergeant Dawson could be glimpsed. Dawson, in earshot, stared their way.

“Look at him, Nat. The poor guy’s dead on his feet. I’ll be with you in a minute, Sonny.”

“Don’t pity him,” Natalie said.

“He has much on his mind, kitten. Maybe more than you. Do you want me to shut your door?”

“Half.”

Stepping back with a smile, Sue closed it a little more than half and returned to Dawson. She pointed with a finger, thumb cocked. “There’s the bathroom. Plenty of towels, but don’t use the flowery ones. They’re Nat’s, she’s fussy. Feel free to use the fridge.”

“I don’t want to be a bother.”

“We’re putting you in Mel’s room. That won’t make you feel weird, will it?”

He sighed. “I’m some cop. I’ve never looked through her things.”

“You couldn’t bring yourself to, and I didn’t want you to. Besides, there’s nothing of you in there, nothing of me, only things she needed to live day to day. Why don’t you go into the bathroom now, get it over with.”

“Yes,” he said.

“Take a hot bath if you like. If Natalie wasn’t here I’d soak with you, but she’d get upset. We have rules. No monkey business here with boyfriends. But you’re not a boyfriend, are you? Not mine, not Natalie’s.” She drifted closer, touched his jaw. “Do you like me? I think you could.”

In the bathroom he splashed his face with water, cleaned his teeth with a finger smeared with toothpaste, and slicked his hair back with wet hands. After a rummage in the medicine cabinet, he sprinkled three aspirin onto his palm and licked them into his mouth. Sue smiled when he came out and led him into the room that had been Melody’s.

“Everything is more or less as she left it. In the closet are a couple of nice dresses, and in that bureau are a lot of shirts and jeans, which is what she wore the most. She never looked like a hooker, did she? More like the girl next door.”

He stared at a small bookcase overstuffed with paperbacks.

“She read a lot. Did she mention it?”

“She didn’t have to,” he said and glanced at a travel poster on the wall, a panoramic view of a Mediterranean beach bejeweled by a scarlet sun.

“Poster’s mine, Sonny. Trip to Greece, paid for by my daddy. Mel never went anywhere like that, didn’t have the desire. All she desired was a home.”

“She had one. Here.”

“No, a real one. Normal.”

“This wasn’t normal?”

“Traditional is what I meant to say. House with a husband in it. Your house was ready-made. She loved Nat and me, but she’d have loved you more.” She moved to the bed, drew down the ruffled spread, plumped the lacy pillow, and turned back the covers. “I’m afraid the sheets haven’t been changed, but you won’t mind, will you? Only Mel was in them.”

He stared down at the bed.

“Get undressed, Sonny. Do you sleep in your shorts or in nothing?” She half turned away from him. “Don’t be embarrassed. I won’t look.”

He unhooked his revolver, unloaded it, and pocketed the slugs. Then he undressed quickly, piling his clothes on a chair, arranging his shoes beneath. She watched in a mirror.

“Mel said you had super legs. She was right.”

He killed the light. In bed, his head hit the pillow hard, and for a second or so he felt inexpressibly peaceful.

“Settled in? Good.” She slipped forward in the semidark, her features a mix of glimmer and shadow. She sat on the bed’s edge and propped an arm over him. “Why did you take the bullets out of your gun?” she asked. He felt the patter of the words against his face.

“I wouldn’t want an accident.”

“You’re not afraid of us, are you?”

“Only of accidents.”

Her smile had a cutting edge. “I know you don’t trust yourself, but do you trust anybody?”

“I trust my chief. I trust Billy Lord. He’s the officer who gave you the ride back. You didn’t appreciate the cigar.”

“It’s an ugly thing to smoke, but it makes a man feel bigger than he is. Who else do you trust?”

“Most of the guys in the department, I guess. The ones who’ve been around awhile.”

“What you mean is, you just trust your own. That’s safe. Good thinking.” Her smile hovered, still with the edge. Idly she tossed the covers away from his shoulders. “Do you have hair on your chest? Yes, you do.” Her free hand traced over it, and with force her fingers raised a strand or two. “Hurt?”

It did.

“My little sister and I did that to my father,” she said. “He always said
ouch
and pretended to cry.”

“I didn’t know you had a sister.”

“I didn’t. She was imaginary.” Cool on his skin, casual in its touch, her hand forged deeper down and found the ridge of an appendectomy scar. “Feels old, so you must’ve been young.”

“Twelve,” he said as her hand moved on.

“Some men can’t stand to have their navels touched.”

He gave a start. “I’m one of them.” His eyes shot into hers. “Why are you doing this?”

“I’m interested.” Her hand forged over his shorts and arrowed into the opening. “Good growth of hair here. Sort of wiry, like Nat’s.” Her voice was hollow, stark. For an instant he imagined a knife at this throat, the razor edge beginning to cut the skin. Lightly, clinically, she gripped him. “And a lot of this, isn’t there? Are you proud? Most men are.”

“Is this what you did with your father?”

“No, Sonny, my sister did. I knew it was wrong.”

“Do you still have that sister?”

“Lost her when I was eight or nine. Then she came back in Melody. You’re in her bed, Sonny. How does it feel?”

“It’s a bed, nothing more,” he said, his voice hollow like hers, just as stark. She retracted her hand and returned the covers to his shoulders.

“If anybody could have saved her, it would have been you, not I. I had hope in you, much hope.” She rose slowly, as if her disappointments were many, and stood erect. “Go to sleep.”

“Do you think I can?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t think I want to.”

“But you will.”

He closed his eyes and heard her leave. At a point between sleep and waking, where dreams seem absolutely real, he found himself cheek by jowl in a court corridor with accused murderers, molesters, rapists, the trembling Bauer boy among them, snot on his nose, tears of innocence in his eyes, a noose around his neck though his case had not yet been called. He tried to elbow a path to the boy, but others pushed at him and a rough hand, no one’s in particular, shoved him in a different direction.

He woke as if pricked by a needle, his arms and one leg out of the covers, which trailed off him in ghostly fashion. He raised his wrist for a reading on his watch but could not come up with one. The room was darker now, though not so dark that he failed to see the plump figure framed in the doorway, a flare of pink, which did not altogether surprise him, nor the voice that floated in, enough like Melody’s to make his skin crawl.