Old Chaos (9781564747136) (17 page)

When Kayla sniffed and sat up, Meg patted her shoulder and handed her a tissue. “There’s bad news, I’m afraid.”

Kayla blew her nose. “Better tell me.”

“Mack died yesterday afternoon.”

“Oh, poor Beth! She’s not—”

“Apart from a broken leg, she’s okay. The governor just appointed her sheriff.”

“What!” Kayla gave a choke of startled laughter. “I love it. Sheriff Beth. Fred will have kittens.”

“Uh, there’s worse.” Meg’s throat closed. “It’s about Fred Drink-water, Kayla. Uh, he’s dead.”

“But he didn’t live anywhere near the slide.”

“They think he was murdered.”

“They? Who?” Her voice rose.

“Jeff Fong. Rob. The police.” Meg turned to Charlie who had composed himself. “Explain.”

So Charlie did. Halfway through his concise account, to which Kayla listened with her mouth open, the aide bustled back accompanied by the duty nurse and a technician with an IV trolley. With a cluck of disapproval, the aide picked up the flowers and shooed Meg and Charlie out.

They promised Kayla they wouldn’t leave. She sounded bewildered, as well she might, but not grieving, not even angry, except perhaps with Drinkwater.

When they returned, she had dressed in a buttercup yellow batiste nightgown and brushed her hair. The IV fed into a vein on her left arm, and she looked tired but alert, interested, no longer so focused on herself. That was good. Meg had decided to question Kayla after all.

Meg waited while Charlie finished his narrative.

“Let’s see if I’ve got this straight. I lost my eye, and my patient lost his life, because Fred suppressed a landslide warning.”

Charlie was fair-minded. “The slide would have happened anyway.”

Kayla scowled. “Still, we should have been warned. The corporation that built Beaver Creek Retirement Village should have been notified, and the people in those houses near Prune Hill should have known the hill could slide.”

“When was the nursing home built?” Meg interjected.

“Good question,” Charlie said.

Kayla brooded. “About five years ago.
They
should have had a survey done, the bastards.”

“I’m sure they did,” Charlie said. “Rob will look into it.”

“Rob will be looking into everything.” Meg began to see ramifications. For one thing, Rob would have to double-check every geological survey issued to the county in the last ten years. She drew a breath. “He’s going to want to talk to you, Kayla. He told me so.”

“What about? Good God!” She chortled. “He can’t imagine Fred and I chatted about landslide hazards.”

Charlie flushed and looked at the floor. He was propped against the room’s other bed, which was unoccupied.

Meg leapt into the breach. “What
did
Fred talk about? I got the impression his mind was mostly on business.”

“True. Johnny One-Note. He was pretty boring.” Kayla gave a harsh laugh. “Dull and Deadly, our Fred.”

“Then why did you go out with him?”

“A good question.” Kayla leaned back and closed her eye. “I’m thinking about it.”

Meg said, “Do you know anything about his family or his business associates?”

“I met a couple of his investors. Also dull.”

“Names?”

“I don’t recall. California money. Fred was divorced. I don’t mess with married men.”

“Where does his ex-wife live?”

“Portland. She’s married to a dentist now. Two kids, teenaged girls. They go to a private school. Fred was always complaining about their tuition. I don’t think he was very interested in them, but he wasn’t a deadbeat dad. I don’t mess with scum like that either.”

Meg let that ride. She wondered about Kayla’s father. “Was Fred seeing other women?”

“Of course.” She shot a glance at Charlie. He was still looking at the floor. “He liked being seen at all the watering holes. He liked to dance and party, liked good food. He was dull, but he was normal, for God’s sake. What does this have to do with anything? Shouldn’t Rob be looking for developers and bankers?”

“They don’t know why Drinkwater was killed,” Charlie offered. “Maybe a girlfriend got jealous.”

“Wouldn’t it be just a teensy coincidence if Darla Auclare shot him right after the landslide?”

“He wasn’t shot. Uh, the commissioner’s wife?”

“Daughter. Hank’s wife has to be sixty. Fred liked younger women.”

“A lot younger?”

“Not children,” Kayla said flatly. “Younger like Darla and me. She’s thirty-five. Divorced.”

“The one who runs the supply shop for wind surfers?”

“Right. Tiffany—my former roommate—worked for her. I like Darla. We get together once in a while.”

“Who else?”

“Who else what?”

“His girlfriends.”

“You’re barking up the wrong tree. Look, Fred’s women were decoration. We knew we were.”

“And didn’t care?” Charlie’s voice came out harsh.

Kayla gave him a wide, white-toothed grin. “Arm candy. Some men, especially businessmen, like to be seen in public places with expensive women hanging on their arms. It’s a role I enjoy playing once in a while. I figure Fred wrote me off on his taxes. He was a bottom-line kind of guy.” The devilment went out of her expression. “Rob should be looking into the good old bottom line. Fred thought that way. It simplified reality for him and made him boring.”

“And dangerous,” Meg murmured.

Kayla leaned back again, exhausted. “And very, very dangerous. The stupid shit.”

They left shortly after that, both of them depressed, though for different reasons. Meg was aware that she had done a bad job of questioning Kayla. She hoped Charlie wasn’t too disillusioned, but he wasn’t a child. If he was going to be in love with Kayla, he ought to be in love with the real Kayla, not some Florence Nightingale caricature.

When she had negotiated the tangle of downtown traffic and headed the Accord east on I-84, she said, “You’re brooding, Charlie. What’s on your mind?”

“I wish I could afford arm candy.”

Meg laughed. “No, you don’t. She
said
it was a role. Are you in love with her?”

“Maybe. In lust, you bet.”

“Then you ought to think about the missing eye.”

“She’s a beautiful woman, with or without two eyes, and I didn’t fall for her face.”

“That’s noble. The disfigurement will change her.”

“You don’t believe me?”

Meg zipped around a slow semi and a Winnebago. “Kayla’s physical perfection has been part of her personality her whole life. From what she said, I suspect her mother fed into it. The surgeons will sculpt a new cheekbone for her—”

“And pop a prosthetic eye into place.”

“Exactly. And she’ll look much as she always has. Beautiful. But she’ll know she’s no longer perfect. How she deals with that will tell you a lot more about her than you know now. I have confidence in her, but it’s going to change her.” Silence followed.

“Hey, you just drove past the I-205 exit.”

“I always wanted to cross the Bridge of the Gods.” Traffic began to thin out.

Meg glanced at the scenery. There was an outlet mall on the right. To the north, the towers of the old Troutdale aluminum plant rose with the river in the background. For once, it was not raining. The afternoon overcast was pleasant—no glare. She passed three semis of the sort that need half a block to turn on city streets. On the freeway they were no problem.

“Tell me about my cousin,” Charlie said abruptly.

“I’m a biased witness.”

“Okay, counselor, I’ll be more specific. I was in town a year and a half ago, as you know, so I sent Robert an e-mail, just to say hello. I thought I was being polite. He didn’t reply.”

“The ultimate contemporary insult.” A pickup on mega-wheels roared up behind Meg and passed. “Rob’s attitude toward your family is not positive. He likes to pretend they don’t exist.”

“Why?”

“You really don’t know? I guess that’s possible. Ancient history.”

“Jurassic? Pre-Cambrian? I am a geologist.” Charlie sighed. “If my grandfather did something unspeakable—”

“Well, I think he did.”

“Robert’s father, my Uncle Charlie, was killed.”

“Yes. Rob was eight. He idolized his father, who sounds like a nice man. Rob’s mother died in a car wreck within the year.”

Charlie whistled. “I didn’t know that. That’s tough.”

“Yes. Fortunately, Rob was staying with his grandparents, his Guthrie grandparents, and they were able to comfort him a little, in spite of their own loss. He was starting to adjust when your grandfather sued for custody. Rob had never met him.”

“The old bastard.” Charlie relapsed into silence.

Meg drove past Rooster Rock and Multnomah Falls. They were now well into the Gorge Scenic Area. “I think Mr. O’Neill reckoned without the strength of community opinion. Robert Guthrie ran the local drug store, complete with soda fountain. Hazel Guthrie, well, she had my job and she was one of the great librarians.” Meg wasn’t kidding. Hazel Guthrie had developed a system remarkable for a rural county in that era and had gone on to institute policies that set a national model. “The Guthries won the court case easily, but to a child the suspense must have been appalling.”

“I’m surprised Robert didn’t toss me out into the ice storm.”

Meg laughed. “He’s not an idiot. He likes you well enough, just don’t expect him to embrace your family.”

“Except for Grandpa, they’re good people, and the old man is safely dead.”

They had reached Cascade Locks. Conversation languished while Meg found the narrow, very high bridge and drove across it. The view might be spectacular, but she wasn’t about to take her eyes off the center line.

When they reached the other side and turned upriver, Charlie let out his breath in a long relieved
whoosh
.

Meg smiled. “Escaped with your life?”

“When I’m on a bridge like that I think about earthquakes.” He returned to the subject at hand. “So Robert stayed in Klalo with his mother’s people, and thirty-five years later, he’s still there. Did he even leave to go to college?”

Meg bristled. “He got a TRS-80 Model I computer for Christmas when he was ten. When he graduated from high school, he ran off to California, found work in the computer industry, and made good money.”

Charlie whistled.

“You could do that without a degree in those days. Rob married and they had a daughter, divorced when the girl was six or seven. When his grandfather died, Rob came home and found his grandmother suffering from congestive heart failure. He sold out and came back for good. Sheriff McCormick hired him as a deputy, because Mack wanted to computerize the department. Rob decided he liked the job, so he’s still here, though his grandmother died several years ago. As for college, he has a degree from Cal Poly, but I think he stumbled into it taking night classes.”

“Hmm. What’s his degree in?”

Meg glanced at him sideways. “Graphic design.”

Charlie sat bolt upright. “As in comic books?”

“He was into website design. That was way back, remember. He came up with routines that are still used. He holds the rights.”

“No kidding. Why in hell is he working as a cop?”

“Well, Charlie, why in hell am I a librarian? Why is Kayla a nurse?” She overtook a log truck that was laboring upward in the slow lane. “Why does Beth McCormick teach dyslexic teenagers to read? Do
you
plan on joining Halliburton in Dubai when you finish your doctorate?” He had told her he was studying hydrology because he thought finding potable water was going to be a major problem worldwide in the coming decades. Finding clean water was a lot less lucrative than finding oil.

“I get the point.”

Meg wondered if he did. His generation was the first to grow up in the era of corporate triumphalism. Still, as a veteran of the first Gulf War, he must have an angle on profiteering, and by indirection, on Fred Drinkwater, whose beginning—and end—had to be profit.

R
OB TAPPED THE spreadsheet Jeff had printed for him. “I have the feeling it’s all here, lost in a maze of phony corporate names.” He was lying flat again and let the sheet fall on his stomach. “I need to talk to Beth.”

Jeff nodded. “Funeral’s tomorrow.”

Rob shut his eyes. It was Sunday. He wasn’t ready for Mack’s funeral, and would be no more ready tomorrow. Beth had asked him to serve as an honorary pall bearer. At least there was no heavy lifting in prospect. Mack’s body had been cremated. “Where is she?”

“They released her from the hospital. I think she’s at your house. You’re not going to walk there, are you?”

Rob levered himself up to a sitting position, swung his legs over the side of the hide-a-bed, and stood in one sharp jab of pain. The spreadsheet slid to the floor.

He had stopped taking the hydrocodone entirely after another bout of hideous dreams. Mack had figured in his nightmares, and the Gautiers, of course. As nightmares went, they were mundane recollection, but that didn’t stop them being hideous.

Rob showed the sergeant out and made his way upstairs, a grim process. His legs felt weak. He took a long shower, shaved, and was struggling into jeans and a sweatshirt when Meg returned from the grocery store. She bawled him out while she pulled his socks on and tied his sneakers.