Old Chaos (9781564747136) (31 page)

“I’m sorry, Rob.”

“Me, too. Christ, Jake, watch the fucking road.”

“Did she commit suicide?”

There was a crackling pause. Rob’s voice came through stronger when he finally spoke. “You know I can’t say what caused her death at this point. We don’t even know for sure that she died from drowning.” He drew an audible breath and added, wearily, “The body was battered. Lots of rocks in the Choteau. We found a piece of paper in one of the zip pockets of her track suit. It’s probably illegible. May be a suicide note.”

“Karl is terribly upset that somebody is saying she committed suicide.”

Another pause. Rob cleared his throat. “If you think Karl is upset, you should see Larry. We had to get the medics to sedate him. I’m on my way home. Shall I stop in and brief you?”

“If it’s not too much trouble,” Beth said. “Thank you, Rob. I’m sorry you had to break the news.”

“Me, too.”

R
OB SHOWED UP less than half an hour later. Dany brought him in to Beth and left them to their talk. He didn’t sit.

“You’re in pain,” Beth said sharply.

“I went off without a supply of pills this morning, and it’s been a long day.” He took up his post behind the high-backed chair, leaning on his good arm. “Don’t concern yourself, Beth. I stopped off and took a Vicodin before I came here. It’ll knock me out in the next half hour, so let’s get this over with.”

“All right. I’m listening.”

“We found Inger’s body about six-thirty.” He fiddled with the blue sling, avoiding her eyes.
“Jack
found her—washed up in an eddy on the far shore—after we’d searched every inch of the west bank.”

“I see. Karl said—”

“Prentiss is convinced that she killed herself sooner than face arrest. He had already asked Judge Rosen for a warrant. Now he’s trying to decipher the note we found in her track suit.”

“A warrant for murder?”

Rob shook his head. “Prentiss isn’t investigating murder. He meant to charge Inger with suppressing the hazard warning. She may have done that. I don’t know. I’m pretty sure she didn’t kill Drinkwater, or jump in the river and drown. I’m gambling that the postmortem will show she was dead, or at least doped, when she went into the water.”

“And?”

“Who killed her? I can’t give you the name.” He shut his eyes, forced them open. “I don’t have a shred of proof. I should be getting some early next week. Lab results, financial records.” He drew a ragged breath. “Goddamn, I hate weekends. I hate—”

“I’m sorry.”

He stared at her. Tears glazed his eyes.

“You are not to blame yourself for failing to make an arrest before she disappeared, whatever foolishness Larry and Karl may be saying in their grief.”

“But—”

“Listen to me.”

He buried his head in his sleeve. She could see his hand cramp on the back of the chair.

“Listen,” she repeated. “You don’t know what was going on in Inger’s life, what chances she was taking, who she trusted and should not have. She was a remarkable woman, in some ways, and perfectly ordinary in others.”

He didn’t reply, but she thought he was listening.

“I never taught her,” Beth mused. “She had finished high school before I started teaching, but even then she was visible, a personality. And beautiful, of course. If you think she was good-looking at forty, as a teenager she was a goddess.”

He raised his head, his face pale but composed. “I’m five years older. I was out of high school, and out of town, before she appeared on the radar.”

Beth nodded. “The boys swarmed. In spite of that, she always had female friends.”

“And she married Larry Swets.” Rob frowned. His hand still gripped the chair as if he might fall over.

“Inger’s father was protective and conventional. Utterly conventional.” Rather like Mack, she thought.

He straightened up and stared at her.

“I’ve no idea whether Inger was a lesbian,” she said mildly. “I doubt it. I wouldn’t be surprised if she was bisexual, but I don’t know if she ever acted on it. With Larry on the river, she was alone a lot of the time. I’m just saying that she was not necessarily as conventional as Karl wanted her to be.”

“She was scornful when I asked if she’d had an affair with Fred.”

“What did she say?”

“That the voters wouldn’t forgive her if she played around.” Both of them had a good idea what the voters would say to a lesbian relationship, let alone a simple extramarital affair with a man.

After a moment, Rob went on, “Darla told me Inger had a ‘fling’ with Fred last summer. I took that to mean a dirty weekend at most.”

“‘The voters wouldn’t forgive her,’” Beth repeated. “I don’t know about the voters. Her father wouldn’t. Well, he would, but he’d agonize. It’s hard to be adored.”

Rob mouth relaxed in a faint smile. “I wouldn’t know.”

“I wish we’d get over our sexual pruderies. Including Karl and the pope.”

Rob’s mouth quirked.

“It’s hard on gay kids here. They feel like they have to leave town, move to Portland or San Francisco. That’s not entirely true, though it is for anyone who aspires to public office.”

“Inger didn’t leave town.”

“Maybe I’m wrong. I probably am. My point would be, whatever her sexual preferences, Inger had to deal with her father and this community, not to mention Larry. She kept herself to herself.” A wave of exhaustion swept over Beth. “We’re not getting anywhere. What was it you thought I had to deal with tonight? Oh God, the press.”

“Yes. You ought to hold a press conference.”

“I can’t,” she wailed. “I’ve got the whole family here. Why don’t
you
do it?”

“You promised me you’d deal with the media, Beth.”

“Okay, you rat. Tell me what I have to say.”

“Monday will be soon enough for the conference, but you’ll need to talk to the prosecutor first and probably to Prentiss. Shall I set up a meeting here tomorrow afternoon?”

Beth nodded, numb with weariness.

When Rob came home for good, Meg kissed him, fed him, and sent him up to bed as soon as he’d made the inevitable phone calls. Then she sat at her computer and worked on staff appointments. She didn’t want to have to look at Marybeth anymore, much less talk to her. She dreamed up complex and meaningless projects to which a rogue librarian could be assigned as penance. “Microfiche in the Digital Age” was a favorite, with “Virtual Readers for Virtual Books” a close second.

A tap at the kitchen door brought her out of her sadistic reverie. It was Charlie. He looked as much like the cat that ate the canary as was possible for a man of his coloring and lanky height.

She put out the cookies, which were evaporating, and poured two shots of scotch, which finished the bottle. Time to replenish supplies. “How goes the courtship?”

His smug look intensified. He sat and took a cookie, looked at it, and said, “I may be able to cram this in. I just ate dinner at the Columbia Gorge Hotel with Kayla and her mother.” He rolled his eyes.

Meg smiled. “I know whereof you speak. But what is this? I thought Kayla couldn’t chew. And I thought they weren’t going to let her out of the hospital.”

So Charlie regaled her with an account of his afternoon. He had driven Kayla to Hood River in the Civic and deposited her with her mother. “She was tired by then and in dire need of pain medication.”

Meg shuddered, but she had to respect Kayla’s urge to escape from the hospital, any hospital.

“Dede asked me to have dinner with them.” Charlie grinned. “I didn’t say no.” With a couple of hours to kill, he’d gone to the Hood River public library with its spectacular view of the Columbia and spent the time reviewing for his licensing exam. When he returned to the hotel, he found Kayla’s mother insisting that they eat in the dining room instead of her suite.

He didn’t think that was a good idea. Kayla was used to being stared at. “But not because she looks like something out of a horror flick.”

“Charlie!” Meg gasped.

“Half her face is bandaged or bruised, and her hair’s all uneven. You saw her, Meg. She’s going to adjust eventually, but you can’t blame her for wanting to hide.”

When he got back, Kayla was still sulking. She had dressed in one of her mother’s outfits. Kayla was not a clinger, but she clung to his arm on what must have been an interminable walk through the dining room to their table. At that point Dede summoned the chef.

Meg could only gasp again. “What in the world did she say to him?”

Charlie chuckled. Dede had given the man a brief but colorful account of Kayla’s heroism, explained her difficulty chewing, and assured him she trusted him to come up with a splendid menu for her wonderful daughter.

“It was a challenge,” Charlie added, “and I’m bound to say he rose to it. I had the prime rib myself, but Kayla let me sample the goodies. I never tasted anything like the dinner soufflé.”

“Truffles?”

“Probably. And some exotic cheese. Even the vegetables-squash swirled with parsnips and sour cream. My mother’s squash never tasted like that.”

“Nutmeg,” Meg murmured. “Cardamom, maybe. I hope the chef didn’t serve her mousse for dessert.”

“Kayla’s dessert was a real production. The Jell-O folks never made anything like it. It came in a parfait glass with this ruby syrup, pomegranate, Kayla said, and mint leaves. There was a wafer with it, and I thought oops, but she said she didn’t have to chew it. It melted on her tongue.” He eyes twinkled. “The chef came out to take a bow when we were ready to go. I never thought I’d see that little ritual.”

Meg smiled.

Charlie sobered. “They quarrel, you know, Kayla and her mother, but Dede’s cool. By the time we went up to the suite again, Kayla had forgotten about people staring at her.”

Too busy quarreling with Mom, Meg thought cynically. She was glad Charlie liked his putative mother-in-law, but she wondered whether he had a chance with Kayla and, if he did, whether she would be good for him. They inhabited different planets, or maybe universes.

When he took his leave, he gestured toward the upstairs. “A heavy day?”

“You could say that.”

“I heard about the county clerk’s death. He’ll take it hard. I feel bad about the whole mess myself, since I started the ball rolling.”

“You didn’t cause the mudslide, Charlie.”

“No, but if I hadn’t raised questions about the hazard warning, nobody would have noticed it was missing. I stirred something up.”

“Fred Drinkwater was killed before the public heard of the missing notice.”

“True.”

“And I suspect the state or the insurance investigators would have discovered the discrepancy eventually.”

“Maybe.” He smiled at her. “I wouldn’t have your job for the world.”

“The library?”

“Your job here. Picking up the pieces.” He gave her a kiss on the cheek and went off, whistling.

Meg rubbed her cheek. No doubt Charlie meant well but she was not a nanny. She went to her computer, backed out of the frivolous game she had been playing with Marybeth’s career, and logged onto the Internet.

She called up the county website. Rob had designed it shortly after he returned from California to oversee his grandmother’s care. He had been working as a computer consultant then. The job as deputy had not come open until some months later. He had never explained to her satisfaction why he’d taken it. It wasn’t clear why Inger Swets had been attracted to the county clerk’s position either.

She had had some legal training, though she wasn’t a lawyer, and her academic degrees (both from Washington State) were in business. She was a CPA. According to the sparse little bio taken from the last voters’ pamphlet, Inger had been elected to the position three times.

The post carried considerable responsibility and was well compensated relative to what Meg was making. In the state of Washington, the county clerk keeps all records of the Superior Court and has ultimate responsibility for police records as well. Inger also collected court fees and fines. She oversaw the county budget and the investment of trust funds for the court. Among her administrative duties, she was charged with ensuring that the Board of Commissioners hewed to official policies and guidelines. She had three deputy clerks to assist her, and a well-trained staff.