Possession (14 page)

He looked at her, seized as always with pleasure at her genuine prettiness, and wondering at the same time what in hell they would have found to discuss without Danny in the room to share the banter.

"And that would have been my good fortune," he lied. "I have heard everything the kid here has to say too many times already. And he didn't know that much to start with."

He accepted the beer can that Danny held out to him, raised it in a mock salute to click with Danny's can, and began to relax. Even solid marriages were given to argument;

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he had simply blundered into the middle of one. And yet, he couldn't shake the memory of his own failed marriages. Gloria had put it bluntly,

"Bad marriages need spectators, Sam. It helps you pretend for a while longer that everything's all right. I'm acting and you're acting, but if we can convince somebody else that we like each other, maybe we'll believe it ourselves."

He watched them—Danny standing close to Joanne, his big hand dwarfing her waist, holding her tight against his hip, giving her sips of beer while she struggled halfheartedly to get free.

"Let that woman go, man," Sam laughed. "Can't you see she's panting to cook, and I'm starving?"

Danny released her, and then pulled her back and gave her a resounding kiss. "So cook, woman." He turned to Sam. "You may be sorry. She's into zucchini; it's a kind of fetish. We've got zucchini bread, zucchini pickles, zucchini stuffed, fried, baked, and fricasseed, and—except for you— we'd be eating zucchini ice cream. Everything's full of little green specks."

"Don't believe him, Sam. We don't have baked zucchini. I didn't want to overdo it. Sit down before you faint from hunger."

He sat at the table, feeling good again, with the small rush of beer in his system, part of this little family who were now easy with each other. The table was covered with bowls of corn on the cob, sliced tomatoes, green beans, boiled potatoes, and Jell-O. Danny forked the steaks onto each plate with a grandiose flourish. Fried steak. Nobody in Natchitat broiled steak. He shut his eyes for a moment and the aroma brought back his mother's harvest meals.

"Joanne, if I could find a woman who cooked like you do, I'd marry her in a minute."

"Liar." She looked at him accusingly. "Every woman in Natchitat County can cook like I do—and better—and I haven't seen you racing to the altar with any of them. I suppose it's my fault. If I quit feeding you, maybe they'd have a chance."

"Ahh—there you have me. It's not your cooking at all.

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It's your sensuous beauty that keeps me coming back. Lord knows, I've tried to fight it. .. ."

She giggled. "I can't hear you with your mouth full." Danny sat at the head of the table, watching them with a look of pride on his face. It was a good time, with the first streams of cool evening air blown off the river stirring the ruffled window curtains, the muted lavender dusk throwing the corners of the room into shadow. Sam knew his limits with the small woman across the table. She belonged to his partner, and yet he knew Danny took some delight in watching Sam flirt with her. He felt a surge of affection for each of them, willing them to be happier.

Joanne bent over the table, slicing the brown spicy-smelling loaf with a serrated blade. A slice fell away and Sam laughed, seeing the bright green flecks in it.

"See," Danny said. "I told you. Zucchini. She spent all day grinding it up. I understand it's an aphrodisiac. Three slices of that and you'll be a frothing maniac."

Sam looked at her delicate hands on the knife, seeing the dusky blue veins that glowed beneath the skin of her wrists and pulsed in the soft places in the crooks of her arms. He could not imagine Joanne running five miles. He could not even picture her running one. She seemed to him to be the softest woman he'd ever seen—not fatty soft, but somehow crushable. Nina had been fragile on the surface, but with a resiliency that he could not find in Joanne.

"Sam? .. . Sam . . . ?" He looked up, pulled out of his reverie. Danny dangled another chunk of steak over his plate and he nodded, pushing beans and Jell-O aside to make room.

"So then, Joanne," he began. "What did you do all day while we were sleeping? Besides cooking and grinding up zucchini?" She drew a breath, and the flowered material over her breasts expanded. She traced a line in the tablecloth with her fingernail.

"Well... I ran this morning, before it got so hot. Along the river road and up over the cut behind Mason's ware-houre." She darted a glance at Danny who continued to cut

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his meat, staring down at his plate. "I guess that's about six miles going out and coming back."

"Six miles!" Sam forced a heartiness into his voice that sounded patronizing, even to him, but Joanne didn't seem to pick up on it. "Honey, you're going to have calves like Babe Zaharias!"

"Who?" She looked mischievous. "Is that one of the waitresses at the hotel? The one who's so crazy about you?"

Danny choked on a laugh and turned away from the table, coughing into his napkin.

"No. That's not a waitress at the hotel. It's—oh, forget it. I keep forgetting that we're from different generations."

"You've got it wrong," Danny cut in. "The waitress at the Chief has little skinny legs, and it's Sam who's crazy about her, but she won't give him the time of day. She likes younger men."

Sam had to work to keep the conversation light, aware that it veered dangerously close to sensitive areas, and he felt his gut begin to tighten again. Joanne was talking to him, and Danny was talking to him, but neither of them was speaking to the other. As long as he kept them all together with inane humor, they might just make it through the meal without a slipping back into words that could not be easily forgiven.

He took a deep breath. "So you ran your little fanny off— and then what?"

"Then what? Not much, Sammie. There's not much for me to do around here. I washed dishes and a load of laundry. Then I folded the laundry, and then I read another book, and then I babysat for Sonia while she took the older kids in to get vaccinated, and then I came home and cooked supper."

"Sounds like a full day to me," Sam said weakly, willing Danny to open his stubborn mouth and join the party. "I mean—all Danny and I did was sleep all day."

Joanne stood up, and began scraping her plate. Her movements were brisk, tight little sweeps of her knife across the flowered crockery.

God. How many women had he seen angry like this?

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He gave it up, and joined Danny. The two of them ate silently, working through the pile of food on their plates, and he tried to pretend he didn't notice that Joanne was pissed with both of them. Danny looked at his watch and pushed his chair back. The meal was over, thank God, and Sam yearned for the freedom that beckoned beyond the screen door. The shrilling cadence of the phone broke whatever awkwardness remained. Danny picked it up on the third ring, and bellowed, "Halloo—we're on our way in, Fletch. Get off our backs, would you—" He held the phone away from his ear, shook it, said "Hello" again, and then hung it back on the hook.

"Who was that?" Joanne asked.

"Nobody. Wrong number probably. Or our lousy phone system." Danny hugged Joanne, kissed her averted cheek, and they were out of it, into the darkened yard with its lone circle of yellow light from the porch bulb.

Sam backed his truck out without speaking, hoping that Danny wouldn't speak either. He fumbled in his shirtpocket for a cigarette, remembered that he had none, and reached for the sun-baked pack on the dash. There was one bent white cylinder left, and he lit it without much hope; it tasted worse than he'd expected. He concentrated on the road, and Danny stared ahead too without talking.

Fletcher was pointing at the clock and grinning when they walked in.

"Fifteen minutes late, kids."

"Don't nag, Fletchie," Sam laughed.

"Wanda Moses is being a real bad girl, Sam. She threw her supper back at Nadine, and she's screaming for ciggies."

Sam bent over the cigarette machine and fed quarters into it. He pulled the knob below the Marlboro slot and waited.

"Damn it, Fletch. Is this thing fucked up again?"

"Romance it a little."

Sam whacked the machine with the flat of his hand and three packs of Marlboros let go. He slid one into his

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shirtpocket, one into his back pantspocket and handed the third to Fletch.

"Here, take this back to Wanda, and mind your face. She scratches. Mind your cojones too—she kicks."

"She ain't gonna be that grateful."

Sam swung the little deputy by the armpits and put him on the counter and chucked him under the chin. He was the only guy in the department who could do that and leave Fletch laughing.

"You better quit giving Wanda presents," Danny warned. "I think she's single."

"Ain't they all, pard? Ain't they all?"

Duane let the receiver slip softly back into its cradle, neither frustrated nor particularly annoyed that his call had failed, again, to connect. The few failures in his life were failures of patience, and he had learned from them. He was curious about the sound of her voice. He expected that it would be breathy and delicate, but he could not be sure until he actually caught her fast at the end of the phone's wire. He had got the man on the first call. Say it. Her husband. He looked at the summary in his notebook: "7:51 P.M.—male answered. 8:15—busy signal." He added "9:20—no answer."

"Hey Ace," a muted voice intruded on his thoughts. "You gonna stay in there and pick your nose or what?"

He turned to see the broad, blurred face under the cheap cowboy hat with its band trailing fake feathers. The man was half-drunk, showing off for the skinny woman who clung to his arm. Neither of them would remember him, the time of day, or their own names. He hit the fold in the door and pushed past them, catching a blast of beery breath.

"It's all yours, champ," he muttered. "Sorry about that."

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"No problem. No problem. Didn't mean to hassle you." He weaved his way through the cluster of tables that surrounded the ridiculously small dance floor, and sat at the far end of the padded red bar. The bartender wore western garb too, his belly pushing at the mother-of-pearl buttons on his red plaid shirt. Everybody wanted to be a cowboy.

"Beer?"

"No."

"So, what?"

"A Dirty Mother."

The bartender looked offended. "What the hell is that?"

"Kahlua and cream."

"You mean a White Russian."

"No. I mean a Dirty Mother. Vodka makes me vomit, and you've got such a class act crowd in here, I'd hate to disgrace myself." He was talking too much. He looked directly at the bartender and flashed his most ingenuous smile. "No offense, friend. I've just got a bitch of a stomach problem."

The man measured him, took in his size, and gave the smile back. "Tell me about it. Stress. Makes your gut bleed if you don't let it roll off your back. Kahlua and cream. Gotcha."

"Great. I appreciate it."

"Work around here?"

"Naw. Passing through. Gotta make Spokane by tomorrow noon." Somebody bellowed for beer from the other end of the bar, and he was left alone to observe. The Red Chieftain Hotel management had obviously redecorated in the recent past. Walls carpeted halfway up with red and orange patterned in black cattlebrands, and above that, festooned with steer skulls and horseshoes. The pretzels on the bar were offered in dried and salted bull scrotums. Nice touch.

Tacky as it was, the Totem Room was the best of all places to get a look at Danny Boy. Cops never showed up at the Trail's End Tavern unless they were summoned, but here there was always a patrol unit or two parked out in front.

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The pigs wandered in all day to sip free coffee and jaw with the waitresses. Short of parking across from the sheriff's office, Duane couldn't find a better vantage point. Once he had a look at the husband in the flesh, made sure he was really on duty, he had all night to check out the house.

He sipped his D.M. and watched the coffee shop door, while he made a mental inventory of his cash situation. Once he had her, they would have to hole up for a while and that would take a thou, maybe two. Credit card slips—yeah. The marks guarded their little plastic rectangles like they were gold, but they threw away the receipts with all the magic numbers. Waste baskets were full of them, and he could get into any bank machine for all he'd need. By the time the bills came in, he and Joanne would be long gone.

He smiled, thinking of it, and the dumb barkeep smiled back, sure he was going to get a big tip.

Fat chance, turkey.

It was after ten when Joanne left Sonia's and Walt's place and headed out the blacktop for home. She dreaded driving home after dark, but she'd dreaded more the long evening alone on the empty farm.

On the last dirt road even the moon disappeared behind the trees. She would not let the dark frighten her; it was the same road she jogged along in the daylight, the trees were the same trees, grotesque and lowering only because they clawed out into the headlight cones, gnarled and crippled by shadows. If she didn't have the guts to drive home alone at night, she'd be dooming herself to isolation. Still, her heart beat too fast, responding to her thoughts. To work around it, she escaped. She was not herself; she became someone else, someone who drove along an unfamiliar road with no particular destination, safe in the Celica-cocoon.

It got her up the lane and safely into the shed. Twenty steps to the back door, with the night noises rustling behind her. Then her key found the lock and slipped in, connecting just as the darkness crept closer and shrunk the yellow sphere of the porch light.

The phone began to ring before the door was fully open,

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and she hurried toward it across the black kitchen. Two rmgs—two more. It was their line. She didn't see the chair in her path and it caught her hipbone with its oak-knobbed back, sending thrills of pain through her belly, more intense because of the cramps. It paralyzed her through three more double rings. When she finally picked up the receiver, she heard only silence and the blank buzz of nobody there. The back door was still open, and she felt the cool draft, started back to close it, and felt something slide across her thigh, pressing insistently. Her throat closed and the back of her neck shrunk with horror. Something behind her fluttered and clicked.