Ultraviolet (4 page)

3:30 p.m.—Emmett discovers Roland’s body. There are items scattered around, wedding presents dropped in the front yard. Suspicion grows that the Wedding Bandits were interrupted by Roland and killed him. Violet’s prints are the only ones on the tray.

My timeline didn’t offer much more than a listing of the events as they occurred. I’d grilled Violet about her own timeline for that morning, and Violet was forthcoming about the fact that she and Roland had gotten in an argument and she’d hit him with the silver tray. But that information was documented fact from the police report, something she couldn’t deny. Obviously, there was a hell of a lot left unsaid. She’d been pretty cagey about her relationship with her third ex, acting as if they were just reunited friends, but we’re talking about Violet here. She’s not known for platonic relationships with men.

At the time of his death, Roland was still married to Melinda McCrae Hatchmere, though they were living apart. I believe Violet reconnected with Roland and they started a steamy affair. Let’s face it: some pretty powerful feelings caused Violet to hit him with the tray. Maybe the relationship had started to sour. Maybe he decided to stick with Melinda. Maybe Gigi got in the way of her father’s new romance. Whatever the case, I’d taken to calling him Rol-Ex, which I think is screamingly hilarious but other people seem to find lame. Violet sure does.

Sometimes I think I’m the last person left on the planet with a real sense of humor.

So, whether she cops to it or not, I believe Violet and Rol-Ex were hitting the sheets together. It’s almost a given. There’s just something ripe, luscious and ready to pick about Violet that can’t be missed. And she’s not the type of woman to spend time mourning the death of a previous relationship, such as the one she was working on with Dwayne. Nope. More likely, Violet would simply zero in on the next opportunity and head that direction. I admire her ability to get over bad stuff. She says there’s no time to dwell, regret, rue or wallow. She’s supercharged in a sultry, throbbing way that reminds me of Mae West or Marilyn Monroe.

And she’s nobody’s fool.

I come by my paranoia over Violet’s chances with Dwayne for good reason. I don’t care that she’s ten to fifteen years older. It didn’t stop Demi Moore, and it would never stop Violet.

And I’ve grown pretty sick of her evasions, to tell the truth. No “amethyst” gown is going to change my feelings. After I talk with Sean I plan to have a serious tête-à-tête with my client and hopefully an exchange of information. I’ll offer up what I learn from Sean, and she’d better come completely clean with a full account of what went on between her and Rol-Ex before she hit him with the platter.

I got ready for the evening early, more out of boredom than an urge to be ahead of the game. I opted for a pair of expensive brown pants—something my friend Cynthia had made me buy in a weak moment—a white, silky shell and a black leather jacket. The weather was unpredictable. Hail one minute, followed by surprisingly warm wintry sun the next, followed further by gale winds that shook the windows and rattled the branches. Whatever the case, Oregon nights in November require layering. It was going to be cold, cold, cold once that sun went down.

I threw a longing glance toward my sneakers; I like to be ready to move, if need be. The Binkster was curled up in her little bed in the corner of my bedroom watching me as I pulled items from the closet, tried them on, discarded them, then put them back. When I was finally dressed to my satisfaction I turned around and looked at her, splaying my palms up to ask for her opinion. Her little tail whipped into a curl, the only movement I could discern apart from her eyes. I’ve come to recognize this as “Hi, there.”

“So, what do you think?” Her tail jerked into a speedy wag. “I have to go out tonight, so you need to head outside and take care of business.” I moved to the kitchen door of my cottage, which leads to a back deck. Stairs descend to the backyard and a body of water known as West Bay. At the eastern end of the bay is a bridge, and once beneath the bridge you enter Lake Chinook itself.

Binks’s toenails clicked against my hardwood floor. I opened the back door, then followed her down the steps, waiting patiently while she nosed around the yard. She can let herself out through her doggy-door cut into the wall, but I wanted to get the job done and lock her inside for the rest of the night. She looked up at me once, her wrinkly black face comically quizzical. I motioned for her to get at it and she got right down to business. I cleaned up after her as I can’t stand dog doo-doo littering my yard and flushed the remains down the toilet.

Binkster looked at me expectantly. She seems to think everything she does requires a reward. Have I created this expectation? Undoubtedly. Do I regret it? Well, yeah, some. Did anyone tell me how to train a dog that was dumped on me unceremoniously? Hell no. I figure Binks is lucky to be alive, at this point.

I reached over and grabbed her face and leaned down and let her half jump up to lick my lips. These kisses used to gross me out. The idea of dog germs is a very real thing. But now I don’t know…I just sort of go with it, which is surprising because I have real Seinfeld-ish problems with that kind of thing.

My cell phone started singing. I dug in my purse for it. Why are those things so damn hard to find? When I finally corralled it and looked down at its brightly lit LCD and recognized the name and number, my brows lifted in surprise. It was my landlord, Mr. Ogilvy. This is not a man who calls me up. Our communication is by mail. I write him a rent check and send it to him. He responds by cashing the check.

“Hi,” I answered.

“Jane?”

“Yes.”

He didn’t waste time. “I’ve decided to sell the place. I’m putting a sign up tomorrow.”

My legs sagged beneath me and I had to sit down. Selling? My cottage? I’d been renting from Ogilvy for over four years. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. I can afford the rent. The house is on the water. There’s nothing like it anywhere in my price range. I don’t want to leave. Ever. “Selling?” I repeated faintly.

“You don’t have to move till it’s in escrow,” he said magnanimously.

Well, la-di-da. My mind immediately searched for a way to buy the property myself, but it wasn’t possible. It was too much money. The property’s value had to be in the stratosphere by virtue of the lakefront land beneath the cottage. The one-bedroom building itself wasn’t much, but it was my home. I was horrified.

“You’re going to have to take your stuff out of the garage,” I said in a voice I barely recognized as my own. I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I’d never been able to use the garage because of all of Ogilvy’s junk that was padlocked inside. I guess I hoped this might deter him, but apart from an unhappy grunt of acknowledgment, he didn’t react.

I left the cottage with that bad feeling that comes from unresolved issues, the kind that stays in your head, never quite put aside, remembered with a jarring lurch and a pit in your gut. I couldn’t think about moving. I couldn’t. I was pissed off at Ogilvy for even suggesting I should.

In a funk, I drove to my friend Cynthia’s art gallery, the Black Swan, located in Portland’s chichi Pearl District, and hung around until she closed at nine, and then even later, sharing a glass of red wine with her in her office. She looked sharp in a short forest-green skirt, a matching double-breasted jacket and a pair of silver heels. I asked her to go with me to the Crock.

“Can’t,” she declined. “Got to get to bed early. Much to do tomorrow. And I’m short-staffed, as ever, since Ernst left, which isn’t a bad thing because the last thing I needed was to look at his ugly face every day.”

Ernst was an ex-lover and ex-employee.

I walked her to her car, then climbed back in mine, heading east toward the Willamette River which feeds into the Columbia River, the dividing line between Oregon and Washington. The Willamette bisects Portland whose city center lies on the west side. The Crock, short for Crocodile, is located on the east side, not far from Twin Peaks, the two bluish glass towers that are perched atop the Convention Center. I crossed the Morrison Bridge and began a kind of haphazard journey down narrow streets in search of the bar. I’d never been to the Crock and I wasn’t all that familiar with this area. It’s a part of Portland that was once, and is largely still, industrial, this close to the river, but there are cubbyholes of trendy restaurants and nightclubs tucked here and there. In a few years it will probably be blocks of urban hot spots. I’d been to several of the clubs around town to see up-and-coming bands at a number of these joints: they were, to a one, dark, bare, crammed with young people and loud noises.

It had been a number of months since Megan Adair left Binkster in my care. She’d made noise that she might actually give the dog a home since Aunt Eugenie, Binky’s original owner and a friend of my mother’s, had departed this world, leaving her beloved pet in my mother’s care. The fact was, Aunt Eugenie was not my aunt. She was, however, Megan Adair’s. In our one meeting, when Megan dropped off the dog, I’d learned that Megan worked at the Crock and that she was in between places to live. I’d hoped she would come back for the pug soon, but now I felt completely different. If anybody were to try to take Binkster from me, they were in for a fight. It was like a bad love affair, really; the dog belonged to me and only me, and by God, I’d go to any means to keep her.

So it was with a slight chip on my shoulder that I entered the bar. If I saw Megan I was going to make it clear straight up that the dog would not be leaving my care. Which was just another reason why I couldn’t be ousted from my cottage. My heart karumphed hard, hurting. I had to have a place that would take me and my dog. Had to.

“Five dollars,” the bouncer manning the door said on a bored yawn. He was broad, shiny bald and wore all black.

“Five dollars? Really.”

“Five dollars.” He gazed at me hard, his left hand knotted into a fist that he lightly pounded atop a narrow podium.

“The cover’s for…music?”

He just stared at me. Normally this kind of thing totally intimidates me, but I hate parting with money, especially when I can’t see any discernible value to a potential purchase.

“I’m meeting Sean Hatchmere here? He’s a musician?”

He mouthed, “Five dollars.” The way he did it sent a shiver down my spine. I forked over a Lincoln and he stood aside. I could feel my heart beating inside my rib cage like it was trying to escape. Sheesh. Sometimes it feels like the whole world’s in a really bad mood.

I was too early for the bands, even though they were already charging a cover, so I headed around a corner—I swear the wall was simply a sheaf of black cardboard—and turned into a room with a circular bar in the center. It was all corrugated metal and chain link and spotlights that sent silver cones of illumination down upon a motley assortment of patrons.

I saw Megan immediately, her short, spiky blond hair taking on a bluish tint. She wore a tight T-shirt in some gray tone, if the lighting could be trusted, and a pair of darker cargo pants. She was rattling up drinks in a silver shaker, straining a dark red liquid into two martini glasses that looked to be made of molten silver. Everything had that urban, hard, cold feel to it, which I guess was the point. I could think of a million different names more suitable than The Crocodile, but no one asked for my opinion.

A barmaid in black pants and a gray top studded with rivets swooped down on me as I pulled out a metal stool and settled myself at the bar. I ordered a Mercury, and hoped I wouldn’t be poisoned.

I watched as Megan assembled my drink. Something cool and grape-colored disappeared into the shaker with some sugar solution and premium vodka. I sweated the cost. Sometimes they’ll charge you damn near ten dollars for a martini. I’d been so intent on slipping inside without Megan seeing me that I hadn’t registered the price. Or maybe I just didn’t want another fight like with the bouncer. I am kind of a chicken.

I worried that I’d obsess over the cost. Then I worried that I would worry about obsessing over the cost.

Life’s hellish when you’re cheap.

The silver martini glass was pushed toward the barmaid, who in turn carefully put it on her tray, and carefully brought it to me. “Three dollars,” she said, much to my grateful surprise. To my look, she said quickly, “You paid the cover, right?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Then you’re okay till midnight. Price goes up then.”

“Really.”

“We get a lot of good musicians here. A lot of ’em. Nothing gets going till late, though.”

I sipped away. The drink tasted more pomegranate than grape and it was good. I slurped it down so fast I pretended to keep drinking long after the last drop was absorbed. Thank God for opaque glasses. But then I remembered I could probably put this on an expense account, so I ordered another, and this time Megan herself brought it to me as my barmaid was busy elsewhere.

We locked eyes. I could tell she registered that she knew me from somewhere, but she was having a hard time placing it. I said, “Hello, Megan. I’m Jane Kelly. You brought me the pug this summer. Your aunt Eugenie’s?”

“Oh, Binky!” Her eyes widened. “Is everything all right with the dog? Can’t you keep her any longer?”

“Oh no, she’s fine. I’m…well, I’ve grown attached to her. Honestly, I’d have a hard time giving her back now.”

“Oh, good. I’m just struggling with my apartment, y’know? Good roommates are like hen’s teeth.” She smiled. “One of Aunt Eugenie’s favorite sayings.”

“Good old Aunt Eugenie.”

“I’ve got a guy living with me now who tried to tell me he doesn’t spank the monkey. This after he ate a bag of Cheetos. Your Honor, I saw evidence to the contrary.”

In my mind’s eye, I witnessed what she’d seen in all its orange glory.

“I don’t care what he does. Masturbation’s supposed to be healthy. It’s the lying I can’t stand. You know what I mean?”

I nodded. I hate being lied to. Lying to others, however, is what I live for. An unfair dichotomy that rarely bothers me.

“Gotta get him out and someone else in.” She eyed me some more. “You looking to move? It’s a nice place. Not far off Hawthorne.”