Wit's End (25 page)

She'd found five other mentions of Bim, which she sorted into Real Bim and Fictional Bim.

“Had a Christmas card from Bim,” Constance wrote one January. “You probably already know he's a daddy. So nice of him to remember me when we haven't seen each other in so long.” (This was Rima's father. Real Bim.)

On March 17, 1978—“We're as old as the hills here and creak when we walk. Hasn't been a fresh young face around since the days that Bim used to drop by. Donkey's years. Father Riker wasn't thinking of the long term when he decided we were none of us to do the necessary to have children.” (Real Bim.)

On September 14, 1983—“Will never be persuaded of Bim's guilt. There are other ways to get out of a marriage.” (Fictional Bim.)

On February 7, 1984—“I'm afraid the matter of Bim still lies between us, Mr. Lane. Have remembered something pertinent. Bim was extremely allergic to cats. Could never have held one for the time required to paint its claws without suffering hives and severe shortness of breath. Very much doubt that his wife would have even owned one. Unless she was maybe trying to kill
him!
In which case she deserved it.” (Some combination of Real and Fictional.)

And on September 30, 1988, the final reference—“Ghastly dream last night about poor old Bogan. He was fixing Father Riker's roof and I climbed up to tell him to be careful. He came at me with his hammer and his eyes black and dusty like a toad's. I pushed him away and he went cartwheeling off the roof. And I thought that I could go look, see if I'd killed him. Or I could wake up, which is what I did. Upset me the whole day.

“You had it wrong about Bim, you know. He liked Bogan and Bogan liked him back.” (Real Bim.)

Constance had gone on to complain that her arthritis was so bad her fingers were curled like claws. She could hardly dress herself, she said. She doubted she would ever hold a pen again. No one should feel sorry for her, though. She had so many pen pals. She would learn to type with her nose! But this was the last date Rima could find.

Rima's period had been irregular since her father's death. Now she realized it had arrived. No wonder she'd been so tired the day before, so reluctant to get up this morning. She peeled back the covers. Her nightgown hem was smeared with blood, and also the sheets. In short, everything that Tilda had just washed would have to be washed again today. Possibly there was a lesson in that. Rima bypassed the lesson in favor of the observation that when it came to removing incriminating stains women had every advantage over men. One of those secret-women's-wisdom things. Meant to be used for good instead of evil, of course.

She stripped the bed, showered, dressed, and carried the whole mess downstairs, because there was no way she was letting Tilda do any of this. But Tilda had beaten her to the laundry room and was already loading the machine with sheets for the bed Martin would be using. Tilda took the bloody pile from Rima, adding them to the load. “I have a great tea for that,” Tilda said. “Raspberry leaves and catnip.”

Rima had never been dosed with catnip before. It sounded dangerously frisky.

She followed Tilda to the kitchen and waited for the water to boil. There was a new fan letter stuck to the refrigerator:

“Dear Mrs. Early,” it read. “I bought a used copy of
Hospital Beds
at our Friends of the Library sale. I like books that contain recipes, so I was pleased that you'd included one for the Butter Tarts, but when I came across ‘one and a half sticks of butter,' I was quite surprised that you wouldn't provide a more accurate measurement. We don't all buy our butter in sticks. What is a butter stick?

“Unfortunately this lack of consideration tainted my enthusiasm for the book. I don't plan to finish it until some explanation of the measurement is provided.” It was signed by Candace Adams of Paterson, New Jersey.

Natalie Merchant came on the radio, asking the motherland to cradle her. Rain spattered the walkway, pocked the pool of the birdbath. Rima took her tea to the breakfast nook, where Tilda's cup was still on the table, along with her plate, the tea ball leaking into her toast crumbs. Rima wondered idly what tea would be just the thing for your-estranged-son-is-coming-to-dinner-but-not-really-to-see-you-so-much-as-some-girl-you-don't-approve-of.

Next to Tilda's plate was the
Sentinel,
a little damp around the edges and folded so that a photo of Addison was on the top. The caption under the picture identified her as “A. B. Early: The Grande Dame of Murder.” By some trick of the light or the angle, her teeth seemed as big as a horse's.

Rima realized that she was looking at the breakfast nook as if it were something to be figured out—the informational content of the plate, the cup, the paper. How exhausting it would be to go through the world seeing everything that way. How hard it was, once started, to stop.

Despite her late-night revelation, despite her early-morning letter-reading, Rima was sticking to her decision to give up the detecting game. She was pretty sure she was giving it up. She gathered some clues and put them in the dishwasher. Then she went back to the table to read the article about Addison.

Although its ostensible point was to advertise Addison's upcoming library speech: “The Edge of Imagination,” the bulk of the article was biography. It stressed Addison's lifetime ties to Santa Cruz, her fisherman father who, as every local knew, had turned out to be her uncle, her stint at this very paper. The only paragraph of the article in which Addison was quoted directly appeared shoehorned in. She had said that 9/11 was a test that our system of government had failed. One more such attack would wipe away all remaining traces of democracy in this country. And if people didn't think the men currently in power were capable of producing this attack if their power was threatened, then where had they been for the last six years?

“Does Maxwell Lane share your politics?” the
Sentinel
reporter had asked.

“Like any good patriot, he misses his inalienable rights,” Addison had answered.

The sound of the gate brought the dogs down the stairs, a tangle of bark and snarl. Rima looked up to see who was being warned off this way. Kenny Sullivan was coming through in his mailman poncho and pushing his mailman bag. He saw Rima looking at him, gestured her to the door, but by the time she got there, Tilda had already let him in. He was shaking the rain off, the dogs bouncing happily at his feet, and handing Tilda the mail.

On the top was an unstamped wet envelope with no address and no name. “It was in the mailbox,” Kenny said. Rima picked it up.

Something bulkier than mere paper was inside. Rima ran the envelope between her fingers: there was definitely something bumpy there.

“Cup of tea?” Tilda asked Kenny.

“Won't say no. Terrible cold and wet out.” He chose the blueberry tea, removing his wet poncho and joining the women at the table. “Terrible picture of Addison,” he said. Rima had returned the newspaper to its original folded state.

“Martin is coming,” Tilda told him. “For dinner and to spend the night.”

Kenny appeared to understand the significance of this. “What will you serve?”

“Mac and cheese. He used to love that horrible instant stuff with the orange powder. I thought I'd make the real deal. Maybe throw in some crabmeat. Crusty bread. Big salad. Homey, but with crabmeat.”

“Perfect,” Kenny said. “Only maybe save the crabmeat for a breakfast omelet. With avocado. Maybe a salad with jícama and blood oranges.”

Meanwhile Rima had opened the envelope. It was wet enough to unpeel the flap without tearing it. Inside was a folded piece of paper, and inside that was an odd scrap of material—a small black grosgrain ribbon, tapered at the ends where it had maybe once been knotted. Printed in block letters on the paper were these words: I KNOW WHO YOU ARE. Nothing else.

Tilda reached over and picked up the ribbon. Kenny took the envelope and the piece of paper.

“At least it's not anthrax,” he said. “That's the first thing a postman thinks of, letter like that.”

Anthrax was not the first thing Rima had thought of. If it had been and Kenny had been the one opening the letter, she probably would have mentioned it before he did so.

“Good lord,” Tilda said. “It's a cummerbund. It's Thomas Grand's cummerbund.”

“At least it's not his ear.” Rima noticed how Kenny the postman didn't even have to be reminded who Thomas Grand was. Of course, Rima had been there when Addison told him about the break-in. She knew he knew who Thomas Grand was. It just seemed odd that he'd remember the name all these days later with no prompting.

This was what it was like to be Maxwell Lane—suspicious of everyone and everything! Always on the lookout! As far as Rima was concerned, Kenny Sullivan was a perfectly ordinary postman with a somewhat cavalier attitude toward schedules and anthrax.

Kenny blew across his cup of tea, took a sip. “How freaky would that be,” he asked, “to get a letter with a little plastic ear in it?”

As if getting a letter with a little grosgrain ribbon in it weren't freaky enough.

When Addison came into the kitchen around lunchtime, she was more startled by her newspaper picture than by the cummerbund. “Jeebus,” she said, flipping the folded
Sentinel
over so that the text was on the top, “it's hard to capture my beauty these days.” She was shown the note. I KNOW WHO YOU ARE.

“That's what Pamela Price said to me,” Rima told her. “Those exact words.”

“Never engage with a stalker,” Addison said again. “She tries to talk to you, you just walk on like you don't even hear. She offers you something, you don't want it.” She was shown the cummerbund. “See?” she said cheerfully. “We'll get him back yet. One little piece at a time. The trick is to not want him back. Wanting him back gives all the power to her. Not wanting him back gives all the power to us.”

Tilda had embarked on a take-no-prisoners round of house-cleaning. She was even washing the dogs, a periodic cataclysm in their lives that made them sulk under the sofas, asking themselves what kind of a god would allow such things, until their fur dried and they forgot it had ever happened. Addison offered to take Rima out for pizza, and Rima could see it would be best to leave before Tilda dusted her.

So Addison took Rima to a small place in Seabright where she knew the owners. There were wood tables and silver chairs, and on the wall huge pictures of trucks and also the Roman Colosseum. The menu was on five blackboards over the bar. Beer on tap, and a lot of pizzas with feta cheese. And cashews. Apparently they put nuts on the pizzas in Santa Cruz.

Rima followed Addison past the ovens and the bar to a side room barely large enough for the Ping-Pong table it held. Addison chose a seat by the windows.

A woman with her hair in a buzz cut came over to say hello. She and Addison agreed that they'd not seen each other since the very beautiful Night-Light peace event on West Cliff Drive back in September. Rima was introduced as Addison's goddaughter from Cleveland.

“You must be loving our weather,” the woman said. Perhaps she hadn't been outdoors yet today. Rima was damp and she was freezing. The cuffs of her sweater had stuck out from her raincoat, and now they were glued to her wrists. She kept her thoughts to herself and joined Addison in ordering a Fat Tire ale.

The table next to them was occupied by an older man and a younger woman who might have been his date or might have been his daughter. Rima was guessing daughter, because her hair was in pigtails and his tone was patronizing. “You need to make a plan and stick to it,” he was saying. “There's no value in making a plan you don't stick to.” Not only did Rima dislike his tone, she doubted his position. In her experience the making of the plan was always the best part, and often its own reward.

The day before, with the vision of that sad Bim box lodged in her mind, Rima had made a plan not to press Addison again on anything concerning her father. Now, with Addison all to herself, an ale foaming in front of her and a pizza on its way, she was asking, “Did you and my father ever go back to Holy City? After that first night?” This was not detective work, which she had given up. This was just an idle question. The main difference was that no notes would ever be taken.

“Why?”

“Constance seems to have known my dad. Not just met him once. Met him several times. Had Christmas cards from him.”

Addison was looking at her own hands, which allowed Rima to look at Addison's face. There were elegant hollows below her cheekbones and thin blue shadows below her eyes. She was lucky to have good bones, since they were all so prominent. Instead of softening and blurring the way some faces did as they aged,

Addison's had grown more dramatic. She should have been easy to photograph. There was really no excuse for the big teeth in the paper.

“I told your father the night of the Fill Your Hole event that Constance knew who the arsonist was. She seemed pretty susceptible to the charms of a nice young man. I know he went back a few times,” Addison said. “I didn't know about the Christmas cards. I expect she wrote him and he was too polite not to write back. That woman wrote everyone. Once there was a mystery convention in San Diego with a whole panel devoted to her and her letters.” Of course, Addison had already told Rima that last part, only it hadn't occurred to Rima that everyone might include her father.

E
ver since her talk with Rima around Election Day, Addison had been remembering things. Once she'd started, she couldn't seem to stop. She hadn't thought about the night of the Fill Your Hole dinner in years, but there was a time when she'd thought of it so often that now she found the memories waiting for her, like snapshots in an album. She'd already told Rima how Riker had gotten so drunk he'd passed out in the redwood grove. How Constance had gotten so drunk she'd fallen off the porch. Now she remembered in considerable detail that she and Bim had helped Constance to her bed and then wandered a bit about the property, talking about their lives and their ambitions. Their stroll had taken them past the petting zoo, where the nocturnal animals made such a racket, they woke the diurnal ones—the whole zoo up and excited. They'd stopped at the telescope to look at the moon, clear and pocked instead of vague and pearly, and had an argument over which was the more beautiful, Bim preferring distant and blurred, Addison liking the pocks and surprising herself with how deeply she felt this was the right position. By then they were off the road and into the trees.