Down Don't Bother Me (9780062362209) (4 page)

“Put that picture down, please.”

She was about my age, early forties, though I had to look at her hands to tell it. She was good-looking, too. Good-looking is putting it mildly, maybe. I looked around vaguely for a priest to strangle. She was tall and lean, with the kind of green eyes a lazy novelist would describe as “piercing.” Her copper hair was pulled back from her face with a strip of brown cloth. I imagined that its more honest self was touched here and there with gray, but that was just a guess. The rest of her was dressed like a pioneer fashion model in a deerskin jacket with turquoise beads sewn on the pockets, a powder blue roll-neck sweater, faded jeans, and buskins made of the same stuff as the jacket.

I put down the picture. She looked at me and it and frowned the kind of desperate, exhausted frown that turns the room upside down and shakes the sympathy from its pockets.

“You're Slim?”

It was Luster's daughter, all right. You could see him in her, the way she moved and spoke. She held herself like the native she was—rock-shouldered, fighting shyness, full of Midwestern grit—but she held herself like a native who'd spent time and sweat and money to unlearn it all. Mostly money, probably. She didn't want to shake hands.

“You found us,” she said. She didn't sound any too thrilled about it. “I guess I should offer you a drink. You people like to drink, don't you?”

“Ma'am?”

“Coal miners.”

I'm a big boy who knows when he's being picked on, so I didn't take offense. I said, “I'll take coffee if you have it and it's not too much trouble.”

She frowned some more in that beautiful way of hers, but nodded. She summoned someone named Susan, and the wrinkle-eyed woman came back. Temple asked her to put on a pot. Susan looked at me like something she wanted to sweep into the street and walked quickly out.

I said, “I'm just going to say it. I don't think she likes me.”

“She doesn't. But don't take it personally. She doesn't like anyone.”

“Even you?”

“Sometimes. Sometimes I'm not sure. Frankly, she's had a hard life. In some ways, terrible. But she's been a great help to me, and I'm willing to put up with her moods, even when she goes a little sour on me.”

“So she takes care of you, you take care of her?”

Temple sat down on the sofa. It was one of these things swallows you like a biblical whale. She crossed her legs at the knee and pointed one of the buskins into space. She gestured for me to sit, and I spread my towel on a leather chair across from her and settled into it. The white leather on the armrests smelled like wealth and comfort.

Temple said, “A bit crude, but that's basically it. Isn't there anyone you take care of?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“A kid?”

“Daughter. She just turned twelve yesterday. Or thirty. It's hard to tell sometimes.”

I glanced around the big room. Rather subtly, I thought.

She shook her head and grinned meanly at me and flipped her hair. She had a sexy, toothy look about her that reminded me a little of Gene Tierney. I wanted to put on
my finest JCPenney's suit and comb my hair and solve her mystery for her.

She said, “You can just ask me, you know?”

I felt myself blushing. I looked at her and smiled and shrugged.

“No young ones of your own, I guess?”

“No.”

“Sorry. This really isn't my thing. Private-detecting, I mean.”

“I guess not.”

“I tried to convince your dad.”

Temple said, “That's not always so easy. Believe me, I know. My father tends to get what he wants.”

“Well, I think what he wanted was a detective of some kind. Instead, he got me.”

She waved her hand at me. She wore a ring fixed with a chunk of black stone big enough to choke an elephant. “I think what he probably wanted was you,” she said. “And here you sit. Big as life and wet as the lake. At least he seems to like you.”

“More than he likes your husband?”

“Why do you ask that?”

“I don't know. The way you said it, I guess. Your voice. It didn't sound like you were talking about yourself. Top of that, your husband's a reporter, and I have a sense that Mr. Luster has a fairly low opinion of the fourth estate. I think maybe he thinks Guy is out to get him.”

“He said that to you?”

“Not in so many words, but yeah. This story he and Dwayne Mays were working on, for example.”

“I don't think . . .”

The coffee must have already been on because just then Susan came back in with a tray of it. In front of Temple she set a cup made of paper-thin bone china. Me, she gave a thick porcelain mug that might have lived in a garage for a few years, or maybe the crawlspace under the house. Susan dipped her head facetiously at Temple and went out again.

Temple watched her go. She looked at the door for a while after it shut, then turned back to me with hard eyes and said slowly, “I want be honest with you.”

“Okay.”

“It's no offense, okay, but I don't need you here. I don't need you and I don't want you. Let's be up front about that.”

“Seems reasonable, really.”

She ignored that. “You're my father's idiotic idea. Not mine. I tried talking him out of this, but he wouldn't listen. He never listens. And here you are, without the faintest idea what you're doing or where you're going or what to do, and none of the experience even to know that you don't know it. You don't, do you?”

“Not really.”

“I'm worried that you're a danger to my husband, Slim. I'm worried that you're going to get in the way of the police investigation. If that happens, you could get Guy killed.”

They were good points, all of them. I sipped some of my coffee and set the mug on the table. The coffee was hot and strong but didn't taste like poison. Maybe Susan liked me after all. Maybe we were dating now.

I said, “Fair enough. Truth is, I don't want to be here. Just between you, me, and Susan—who I assume has her ear pressed to the door right now—I don't think much of your old man's scheme, either. Your appraisal of my skills
is sound, and I won't argue with it. On the other hand, I don't plan on getting in anyone's way, especially the police. I've got no reason to think they're doing anything but a bang-up job, and as far as I'm concerned they can keep doing it. Frankly, I just want to be able to report something to Mr. Luster and get my pension.”

She gave me a look.

“Your . . . pension?”

“Yup.”

“That's what he promised you?”

“All wrapped up like a newborn baby and stashed away somewhere warm and safe.”

“Well, isn't that a little . . .”

“What?”

She blew out a breath and said, “I don't know. Desperate?”

“Ouch.”

For the first time, she smiled a little. She seemed embarrassed.

“I'm sorry,” she said. “I really don't know how to act right now.”

“No harm,” I said. “As for desperation, I guess it depends what your aspirations are. Mine's college for my daughter and an occasional haircut for myself.”

Temple sighed quietly, then stood and paced behind the sofa. “Fine,” she said finally. “Let's get it over with then. Ask your questions.”

“Thanks,” I said sincerely. “Let's start with what you think might have happened.”

“I think Dwayne was murdered. I think my husband's disappeared. More than that . . .”

“I'll need to know about your marriage. What it's been like. Whether you've been happy with Guy.”

She laughed at that. Kind of bitterly, too. But even her bitterness was like art. Her head went back and her ponytail poured over her shoulder like a vein of molten copper and curled up at the full swell of her breast. She was good-looking, all right. Peggy would turn me inside out with a butter knife to hear me say it, but there was something otherworldly about Temple Beckett, something that had to do with more than money.

I said, “Mrs. Beckett . . .”

“Temple,” she said, interrupting. “I want to be called Temple. And none of this is about my husband and our marriage or our happiness.”

“Well, wait a minute now. Why aren't you happy with Guy?”

“I didn't say I wasn't.”

“You didn't, but your face did.”

“My face?”

“Your expression. Your mouth, mostly. The way the corners flex when you talk about him. Not a happy look, Mrs. Beckett.”

“
Temple
.”

“There's that, too.”

She gave me a Susan look. Not gladsome. She came back around the couch and flopped down, as though exhausted.

“You're married?”

“Not anymore.”

“But you were.”

“A long time ago.”

She said, “Then you know that no marriage is perfect.”
But I got the sense that hers was less perfect even than that. “And I'm telling you, you're on the wrong path. You're thinking I was unhappy with Guy, for one reason or another. Deeply unhappy. Maybe you think he was having affairs. Maybe you think I was. Or both of us. Maybe he drank or knocked me around or just called me a cunt once too often or whatever. Anyway, you're thinking that maybe I had an affair with Dwayne and that Guy found out about it and killed him.”

I said, “I admit the possibility crossed my mind. But my guess is that's usually how these things turn out. The simplest solution is usually the right one.”

“I honestly don't know,” she said. “I'm not interested in murder.”

“I'm not, either. Tell me about Dwayne Mays.”

She nodded her head. “I wondered when you'd get to that, but frankly there's not much to say. He and Guy came up together and went to school together. State school, nothing fancy. Neither of them could ever afford fancy. Dwayne's parents had a farm out near Union City, I think, and Guy's family never had two nickels to rub together. I went away to better schools but came back in time to be a kid with them. They were thick as thieves, but rivals, too, in that way men have. I learned to dislike Dwayne over time, the way he was always getting Guy into trouble, but Guy never saw it. Or wouldn't. Later, they worked together. Dwayne was rambunctious, egotistical, eternally horny, fanatically dedicated to his work, and principled to a fault.”

“You've had time to think about this.”

“I've thought about it,” she said.

“Let's talk some more about the eternally horny thing.”

“For . . . for men. Dwayne was gay.”

“And your husband . . .”

“Wasn't,” she said. “Not even half.” She breathed out a sigh and looked at the watch on her perfect wrist. You could take a picture of that wrist and hang it in a museum and folks would come from all around to see it. “Now, if you don't mind, I think I've been more than fair with my time. I've got a hard afternoon ahead. I've got to talk to my father . . .”

“About me.”

“About you. And then I'm meeting with the detectives in an hour. The
real
detectives.”

“Sheriff Wince.”

“You've met him?”

“No, but I've met some who have. My understanding is he's chewing on a theory that your husband and Mays ran into danger working their latest story.”

She nodded. She said, “The meth story.”

Well, that took me aback. Before I could stop myself, I said, “Meth story? Not the Knight Hawk's safety practices?”

It took her an instant. Then she glared, but there was fear behind it. The piercing eyes pierced deeper. “You sonofabitch. You have no idea how dangerous what you're saying is. To me. To my husband.”

“Mrs. Beckett, do you have any idea who they might have been looking at? Chances are, if they're at the Knight Hawk, I know them.”

“Get out. Now.”

“Temple . . .”

“I said
now
.”

She raised her voice enough that the door swung open immediately and Susan reappeared. I was right; she'd been
there the whole time. I guess you couldn't fault her loyalty. I sighed and stood up to go, folding my towel.

“I hope everything works out,” I said.

She didn't answer. Either it would or it wouldn't. She turned her back to me and faced the bank of windows along the western wall, down toward the waters of Crab Orchard Lake.

I followed Susan back through the house and the runway-hallway beneath the skylight. I had hoped the weather would be slowing some, but it was raining even harder now, and the glass was dark and loud with it. I'd have to find an overpass to park beneath until it let off.

Susan opened the door. She indicated the folded towel. I was still holding it.

“I don't guess you were planning to walk off with that,” she said.

I handed it to her. “It is awfully fluffy,” I said. “The ones we have at home are like sandpaper.”

“Everybody's got a problem.”

“Just one? That sounds so nice. Hey, one thing . . .”

“Don't bother.”

I ignored her. “Dwayne Mays. I ran out of questions before I could get his address.”

“I don't care,” she said. “Besides, you can get the address anywhere.”

She was right about that. But I waited, looking at her. Truth was, I was starting to like her. I know that sounds weird, but it was true. She was the kind of person, when you met them, all you wanted to do was drown them in the nearest body of water, but then six weeks later you were BFFs. She wasn't bad looking, either, in a hard-bitten kind
of way. She reminded me a bit of a dispatcher I'd had a fling with once, a tough bird who could drink just about any man under the table and who was so good with a knife she could shave the hairs off a flea's nuts without waking the dog.

At last, Susan sighed. Her wrinkled eyes flooded with the day's dark light. She said, “Crainville. North of town. He rented a place there.” She gave me the address. “But if you go, beware.”