All the Ugly and Wonderful Things (27 page)

The whipped cream on Mom's shit sundae was that Wavy tricked her.

As we drove through Powell on our way to the farm, Wavy leaned forward and pointed for a turn.

“That's not the way to the house, is it?” Mom said.

Wavy pointed for the turn again. Mom took it and drove down the street until Wavy said, “Here.”

“Cutcheon's Small Engine? What's that?”

“That's where Kellen works.” Donal started to open his door, but Wavy stopped him.

“Now, look,” Mom said. “I'm dropping both of you off at home. I'm not leaving you here.”

Wavy slid her hand down my arm and was out of the car before Mom could drive off.

“Wavy!” Mom shouted as the door slammed. She scowled as Wavy walked toward the garage, but what could she do? Run after Wavy and force her into the car? After a minute, she drove off.

The cherry on Mom's shit sundae was that when we got to the farmhouse, nobody was there. The back door was unlocked and dirty dishes were piled in the sink. Beer bottles and a full ashtray sat on the coffee table in the living room, next to a bunch of burned pieces of tin foil.

“It's okay,” Donal said, when he saw the look on Mom's face. “You can take me down to the ranch. That's where I sleep anyway.”

“You don't sleep up here?”

Donal gave Wavy's it-is-what-it-is shrug.

The ranch looked like an armed compound you might see on the news. White supremacists or a religious cult. Past the gate stood two metal garages, and off in the trees a big metal barn. Clustered up by the road were four trailers, one with a deck on the front. Sitting on the deck, smoking, was a life-sized Barbie doll.

Donal jumped out of the car and ran to hug her. Then he took off toward the garages. The Barbie doll came down the porch, cigarette in her hand and said, “Hey, are you Donal's auntie? And his cousins? I'm Sandy.”

We waited for an explanation of who Sandy was but she didn't offer one.

“Do you want to come in for a drink or something?”

“Do you know where Valerie is?” Mom said.

Sandy was the prettiest sad woman I'd ever seen, and for a second, she frowned, more sad than pretty. “No, but she'll be back later if you want to wait.”

“It's okay to leave Donal here, with you?”

“Sure, hon. I'll get him a snack here in a while. Did Wavy come back with you?”

Mom didn't answer, so I said, “She's at Kellen's.”

Sandy was pretty again, smiling.

“Oh, he'll be glad to see her. They're so sweet to each other. Yesterday he took a big cooler full of ice and drove over to Garringer. They have a Baskin Robbins there, and he bought her a scoop of every flavor of ice cream they have. You know, for her birthday. Isn't that the sweetest thing? Sure you don't wanna stop for a drink? Donal could show you his little motorbike. He's so cute on it.”

“No,” Mom said. She didn't even wait to say good-bye to Donal.

An hour into the drive home Mom turned down the radio we'd turned up to avoid talking, and said, “How do you think Wavy seemed?”

My sister glared. Like the girl who stole her lifeguard, that's how she seemed to Leslie.

“Happy,” I said.

“She didn't seem hostile to you?”

“Only because you wanted her to stay for her birthday.”

“Oh, good grief. Would it be so terrible to spend her birthday with us?”

“She wanted to spend her birthday with Kellen. He bought her a lot of ice cream.” I laughed at the thought of her eating thirty-one scoops of ice cream, but nobody else did.

“I thought she'd outgrow having a crush on him. Some big, dumb motorcycle hooligan. And that filthy tattoo on his arm. I mean, do you girls think he's cute?”

“Gag me with a spoon,” Leslie said.

I did a Wavy shrug, because I didn't even think Leslie's lifeguard was cute. I hadn't yet seen a boy I thought was worth having a crush on.

“Well, she's always been different,” Mom said.

“I bet she's pregnant by the end of the school year,” Leslie said.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

I wanted to say, “It means Leslie is a bitch,” but I kept my mouth shut.

“You know she's having sex with Kellen,” Leslie said.

“I most certainly do not know that.” Mom tapped the brakes and looked at Leslie, who stared straight ahead.

“Well, she
is
having sex with him. Now you know.”

“You don't know that,” I said. I still thought it was one of Wavy's weird games.

“She said she went all the way with him,” Leslie said.

“Yeah, but—”

Mom braked hard and pulled over to the shoulder.

“What do you mean she said she went all the way with him?”

Leslie sighed like she was bored. “We asked her about her wedding ring, and Jana said, ‘Do you go all the way with him?' and Wavy said, ‘Yes.'”

“What wedding ring?” Mom's hands shook as she put the car in park.

“That ring she was wearing with the diamond.” Leslie smirked.

“Oh my God.” Mom said it about ten times and then she said, “I can't believe you two have been keeping this a secret. Shame on you. Shame on you both. Tell me everything. Right now.”

We told her everything. No, not everything. Neither of us was brave enough to say, “Hot. Hard. Desperate.”

Mom put the car in drive and turned around. We were going back.

I felt like a traitor and I was glad the lifeguard had ditched Leslie. She deserved to lose her boyfriend for ratting Wavy out like that.

On the drive, Mom talked to herself, saying, “Oh, God, Val, how could you let this happen? You let this guy come around and you didn't ever think there was something funny going on? It didn't seem right to me. The way he touched her.”

I didn't say it to my mother, but that was what struck me: Wavy let Kellen touch her.

*   *   *

Mom didn't go back to the garage. Either she didn't remember how to get there or she wasn't ready to confront Wavy. At the farmhouse, there was a car in the driveway.

“Thank God, she's home,” Mom said. She parked and opened her door, but Leslie and I stayed put. “Come on, you two. You're involved in this.”

“Mom!” Leslie's desire for revenge had gone to cold fear. Mom was going to make us tell Aunt Val everything.

I trudged up the stairs behind Leslie and Mom, my stomach in knots. The door stood open a couple inches. Mom knocked on the frame and called, “Val? Val? It's Brenda.”

Nobody answered, so Mom pushed the door all the way open.

Beyond a certain amount of blood, your brain freezes up, like there's a limit to how much blood it can understand. There was more than that in the kitchen. Past Mom's shoulder, I saw a body lying in the doorway to the hall. A man in jeans and cowboy boots lay facedown in a puddle of blood. More blood was splattered on the wall and bathroom door.

Leslie bent over and vomited on her own shoes. That's when I saw the woman crumpled on her side on the kitchen floor, with a chair toppled next to her. I knew Aunt Val from her long, brown hair soaked in blood.

I don't know what other people would have done in that situation, but my mother walked around the table, picked up the phone and dialed 911. While she was waiting to be connected, she said, “Get your sister a cold, wet washcloth.”

That was Mom's solution when someone vomited. I was supposed to step over my aunt's body, go into the bathroom, stepping over another dead body on the way, and get Leslie a cold, wet washcloth. It wasn't going to happen. Mom, she was on autopilot, trying to follow some inner guidelines for What to Do in a Crisis.

“Yes, my name is Brenda Newling and I need to report an emergency. My sister's been—I think she's been shot.” Mom started off all business, but by the end her voice was shaky.

While the 911 operator talked, Mom picked up a dish towel and turned on the kitchen faucet.

“It's off County Road 7. Near Powell. I don't know. I don't know the name of the road.”

All we had were a series of landmarks and turns written on the back of an envelope. Maybe the road didn't even have a name. Mom frowned, her lip trembling, as she wrung out the towel. She held it out to me, but I was paralyzed.

“God, I don't know! It's Valerie and Liam Quinn's house. You turn off the highway after the tractor dealership and take the left. There's a silo there with a tree growing in it. I think it's four miles and—coming from Powell. What do you mean is it Belton side or Powell side? I don't know what county it's in! Amy, please.”

She was waiting for me to take the towel. I made myself move, following the same route she had taken, around the table on the opposite side of Aunt Val. The towel felt good in my hand. Fresh. Cool. Not hot and sticky like the blood that was attracting flies.

A few drops of water dripped off the towel, and Mom and I watched them fall to the floor. That's why we saw it at the same time: a footprint in blood. A small one, and then another, a trail of them going toward the back door.

“Oh God, Donal.”

Mom laid the phone on the counter and followed the footprints out the door. In the dirt at the foot of the porch steps, there were no more prints. The blood had dried or soaked into the ground. Mom looked toward the road, the barn, the meadow.

“Wavy,” I said, because at that moment, I realized her mother was dead.

“Get in the car,” Mom said.

Leslie and I stared at her.

“Now! We have to tell someone who can help. Someone who can tell the police where this is.”

Mom drove down to the ranch without making us put on our seat belts. As we pulled up in front of the trailer, Sandy came down the steps. Her tanned legs seemed a mile long below her white shorts. She smiled at us. Beautiful. Something to look at that wasn't blood.

“Hey, girls.”

“Where's Donal?” Mom opened the car door and got out.

“Oh, he went up the hill to see Val. She's up there now, if you want to see her.”

 

2

BUTCH

I don't know why, but Liam had a taste for crazy women and dumb women. My ex-wife wasn't a beauty queen, but at least she had half a brain in her head. Not Sandy. She came into the lab at full tilt, running in high heels with her tits bouncing, never even looked to see if it was safe.

“It's Val. There's a problem,” she said.

That wasn't news. All Val did was cause problems.

“You're going to have to take care of it, Sandy. We're busy down here. Where's Liam?”

“He took the bike out. It's serious, Butch. You have to come.”

I left Vic and Scott to cook, and followed Sandy out.

When I got to Sandy's trailer, there was a woman on the porch. An older, straightlaced version of Val with housewife hair and a pink sundress showing off her chubby arms. Val's sister, Brenda. She looked shaky and the two girls sitting in the car looked freaked out.

I figured it was some bullshit problem, because people like Brenda get upset easy. Maybe they'd gone up to the house and caught Val and Liam in one of their fighting and fucking moods. Maybe Val was high. Maybe Liam had given her a taste of the back of his hand. If she'd been my wife, I would've done it more often.

“Hey, Brenda. We met once before. I'm Butch.” I held out my hand but Brenda just stared at it.

“Val and Liam are dead. I think they've been murdered.”

I pulled my hand back, I was that shocked. Sandy started screaming.

“Liam! You didn't say Liam! You didn't say! Oh my god! Liam!”

“Shut up, Sandy. Calm down and let me think.” I wasn't some wet-behind-the-ears idiot, and the first thing I thought about was the lab.

“What happened?” I said.

“I don't know. I think they've been shot. And Donal's missing. I didn't know the address to tell Nine-One-One.”

I could see if I didn't play things right, I was going to have a bunch of ruined product and the cops sniffing around. What I needed was help. Kellen could say he didn't have the stomach for dirty work, but you could've fooled me. We once went to take care of some former business associates of Liam's who backstabbed him. Kellen wouldn't pull the trigger, but he didn't blink when I did. That's what the situation called for. Somebody who wouldn't blink.

I left Brenda and Sandy on the porch and went into the trailer. I called the shop and let it ring a dozen times. Nobody answered at Kellen's house, either, and when I tried the shop again, I got a busy signal.

Brenda came in and said, “Did you give them the address?” She thought I'd called the cops.

“Yeah, they're on their way. Look, we're gonna take care of this, okay. Your girls are pretty upset, I bet.”

She nodded and the first tear snuck out.

“I know, Brenda. I'm sorry. This has got to be so hard for you. Here's what we're gonna do. Sandy, get in here.”

Looking like a raccoon with her makeup running all over the place, Sandy hiccupped and said, “Butch—he—he didn't even—”

“Sandy, you have to pull yourself together. We've got things to do. I'm gonna take Val's sister and her girls into town. You go down to the barn, and tell Scott to wrap things up down there. Do you understand? And tell Lance to go up to the farmhouse. To meet the cops.”

“What about Donal?” Brenda said.

“Don't worry. I haven't forgotten about him. Sandy, you and Dee go up in the meadow. When you find him, bring him into town to Kellen's.”

“I should go with them,” Brenda said.

“No. I don't want you getting lost up there and you've got your girls to take care of. So you come into town with me.” Last thing I needed was her wandering around out there, while I tried to get the lab cleaned up. Wherever Donal was, he knew how to get home.