Tom tipped his head. “I can't assign you anything else; you know that. I bent the rules as far as they would go just asking you to read files for me. I appreciate your bringing the information about Pet Mercer around, and I'll see that it gets to where it needs to go without your having to make a trip down to the cop shop to give evidence. And of course, if you hear anything more, I'm your man. But things are heating up, Em, which is precisely the time for you to lay low, right?”
“Right,” I said, thinking,
You dirty dog, Sidney Smeeth was a stranger, at best a distant colleague, but Pet Mercer was on her way toward becoming a friend of mine. Not twenty hours ago, we were peeking out of clock towers together and comparing notes like comrades in arms. We ate together, Tom. And even if I hadn't come to care about her you've just told me that whoever killed her went through her files. Her notes, Tom! She had notes from her conversations with me! And my phone number andâand now you're telling me to stay out of it. Get real!
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As IF THE morning's events weren't enough to tie me into emotional knots, I had my dinner date with Ray to prepare for. I passed a long, tense afternoon trying to read about earthquakes,
even though I had other schoolwork to do for the classes I was taking. As you may have surmised, I didn't have a temp job that week, so I should have been concentrating on catching up with some advanced math and a second semester of both undergraduate chemistry and physics, which I did not take in college but needed if I ever hoped to get a master's. My undergraduate degree was a B.A., not a B.S., so those two courses hadn't been required. I skipped them, figuring I'd just be going back to the ranch anyway, where math and chemistry didn't get much past counting cows and laying out a little mineral cake. This had been a bad plan, considering that my dad had died and I had been unable to work things out well enough with my mother to return to the ranch, but I valued the fact that I had instead taken philosophy and creative writing, which had helped me think more broadly and communicate those thoughts.
But now I had to bite the bullet and strengthen my credentials. The few geology jobs that came open were going to people with advanced degrees. I had researched the idea of training as a forensic geologist, which was what I had begun to call myself, but aside from a course by that title at certain schools that happened to have a forensic geologist on the faculty, there didn't seem to be an established curriculum. The specialty appeared to be staffed by geologists who loved puzzles and had advanced degrees, with concentrations in geochemistry and sedimentology, and minors in law enforcement. So I had a way to go, if I could stick it out. As I lumbered along trying to beef up my grade point average and correct those chemistry and physics math, I wished I was ten years younger and still on the family payroll, because those temp jobs were getting in the way of studying.
And now I had reason to believe I was on the list of a cold-blooded killer who had murdered two women in as many days.
And my love life, which had brought me to Utah, was getting painful enough to make me want to leave. I was beyond the point of anxiety with Ray. In fact, I was now all the way past worry
to full-fledged panic. When he called at the last minute to change the restaurant, I was somehow not soothed, even though he had upgraded from a pizza joint to upscale bistro. The restaurant on the ground floor of the grand and lavishly old-fashioned Inn at Temple Square to be precise. It was newly renovated for the Olympics, all hip and “Euro,” but it was still a deeply Mormon establishmentânot a Budweiser in the place.
When dinnertime finally arrived, I put on that damned pink sweater and combed my hair, then headed downtown. I found Ray parked just down West Temple, sitting in his squad car, talking on his cell phone. Which meant it was a private call. He was smiling. When he saw me, he ended the call abruptly and his smile turned into an abstracted version of the Mona Lisa's.
At least he's not scowling at me,
I decided, trying to think positively.
Well, up in the saddle and nose into the wind, cowgirl. It's time for the roundup.
Unfortunately, another part of my consciousness went over the same evidence and decided I was a fool.
Right,
it sassed me.
What do you think you're doing here, Em? It's over. You've been bucked off this horse. You lost your grip on the saddle and landed on your butt, and you ran from his mother's house like your boots were on fire. You were right the first time. You should have kept on running.
This man has asked me to be his wife,
I answered myself self-righteously.
That's got to mean something.
Oh, sure, it means something, but what? Remember, he's a Mormon. His own grandfather probably had more than one wife. He's a widower, but he still wears his first wife's ring. That little tête-à -tête you witnessed in the kitchen was probably an audition for wife number three. Or two, if you keep playing hard to get.
The door to the squad car opened. Ray stepped out and strolled toward me, elegant even in his standard-issue uniform, his snug hips rolling that incredible way they did when he wanted to say hello without words. He moved up close to me, touched
my cheek, smiled pensively. “Hello, love,” he said. He seemed distant and sad, almost dreamy, but the words rang in my heart.
And I felt a tugging in those parts of me that are most female. More than a year of pent-up longing seemed to burst from my seams. All reason instantly vanished as I saw again what it was about this man that had drawn me to move clear across the Rockies to be with him. If he'd asked me to jump in the backseat with him then and there, I would have unbuttoned my blue jeans on the way.
But he didn't. He didn't even kiss me hello, being out in public and all that. Instead, he took me by the elbow and ushered me down the sidewalk, around the corner, through the lobby of the hotel, and into the restaurant. I immediately rued wearing the pink sweater, even if Ray had given it to me. What had I been thinking? I tugged at the hem of my down jacket, wishing I were dressed as cleverly as the other women in the place.
A young woman with a spine like a dancer's showed us to a seat by the windows that looked out over Temple Square. I began to worry even more.
We sat down and ordered dinner. Being gently raised at least as far as restaurant dinners went, I followed his lead and asked for soup and salad. It was clear that he was trying to keep the costs down. Which added to my confusion. I wondered,
Why has he brought me to such a swanky place? I'm not the flowers and chocolates kind of girl when it comes to accepting apologies; a simple “Sorry” does fine. And doesn't he know it blows the effect if he brings me somewhere expensive and then orders down? Or is this the big farewell, carefully orchestrated in a venue where I'll feel constrained against pitching a fit?
I had rehearsed a whole speech. It went something like this:
Ray, we've been spending a lot of time apart lately, and I am concerned. Yesterday evening, when I went to your mother's house, I saw you behaving affectionately with another woman, so naturally my concern increased, and I ask you to explain what was actually going
on there. I am here in this town to build a middle ground with you, and I reaffirm that intention. Right now, I'd like to know if that's still your intention, as well.
So much for practicing in front of the mirror. Try reciting an overblown bunch of syllables like that when you're so scared that it feels like there's a hand closing around your throat. Instead, I said nothing.
We waited for our salads, not making eye contact, the concussively loud music crashing around us like rocket fire. I was torn between getting up and running away and simply digging a hole through the floor and crawling into it. And all the while, Ray kept glancing at the entrance to the restaurant. It was perhaps three minutes before I cracked and started trying to make small talk over the noise. “Nice place. I've never been here. The menu looked good.”
“I chose it because my brother-in-law's supposed to be here,” Ray said.
Well, that remark sure pushed me back over the edge between intimidation and anger. I am pleased to report that I found my dignity before I put my mouth in gear, so instead of yelling,
You bastard!
I said almost calmly, “Ray, that hurt.”
He quit watching the entrance and looked at me for the first time since the sidewalk, said, “Oh. Sorry.”
I was not going to be ignored now. “You seem more than a little distracted. Mind letting me in on things?”
He drummed the table lightly with his fingertips. “Fight between Katie and Enos.”
“What?”
Tom seemed startled by my anger. He said, “He's not getting home enough.”
Sounds writhed in my throat like snakes. I wanted to tell him about what pet Mercer had said about Katie, say,
See, I'm not the only one who thinks she's making trouble,
but, ironically, the only words that made their way out were, “I know how Katie feels.”
Ray gave me a withering look.
I removed the napkin from my lap and began to refold it. “I don't deserve this,” I said, almost shouting to be heard over the music and laughter that boomed all around us.
“What?” He looked mystified.
My hands froze in the middle of the job with the linen as my brain now tripped me up with the half baked social etiquette of the half-reconstructed soul.
Right, I have to spell it out or I'm just being passive-aggressive. I have to use an “I” message: When you do X, I feel Y, and I wish you'd do Z. But I can't think of a thing, except, When you put your arm around another woman, I feel like shit, and I wish you'd suck eggs.
Wobbling on the edge of a meltdown, I took a deep breath, found my voice, and said, “Ray. Something's upâor should I say down?âbetween us, and I think we ought to talk about it. I moved to this city to be with you, and ⦠that's not turning out to be easy. Your rules say I don't go to your house and you don't come to mine. At your mother's house, we have no privacy. I have to come to a public place to have a very private conversation with you, not that you're a talker anyway, and hey, I'm a private person, too, okay? So listen: I'm not an idiot. I am an observant person. Something's wrong. Let's get it out where it doesn't fester.”
Ray stared at me. He looked scared, or tired, or some combination of the two. “You're right. I'm sorry. I've had a lot ⦠going on.”
“Like what?”
But Ray had forgotten me again. His eyes had darted again to the entrance of the restaurant and locked, his neck stiff as a hunting dog's.
I turned and looked, too.
Katie's husband, Enos Harkness, was just walking in. I personally wouldn't have noticed him, even though I had met him many times; Enos was a straight-arrow sort of guy, an engineer for some big firm. And when we were together, he had always
said even less than Ray, and with about one-tenth the effect. But on this occasion, with Pet's confidences freshly in mind, I saw him as if for the first time, and the thing that went through my head was,
Pet thought this guy was a party boy?
Enos had caught the hostess's attention and was on his way to the long counter where singles were served when Ray jumped up and cut him off in the middle of an aisle between tables. Ray cut a shoulder between Enos and the hostess and stepped in close to talk to him, his neck ramrod-straight. Enos avoided eye contact with Ray. He stood uncannily still and stiff, his buttocks tightened up to the size of apples. Words flew back and forth between their emotionally masked faces, a real guy thing. It was like watching a couple of cigar store Indians trade insults about whose cigars were bigger, except that I was well enough acquainted with both of them to know that Ray was blistering mad and Enos was nothing short of terrified.
The young female who was trying to seat Enos stood by, looking blank.
Mormon,
I decided.
Not that they'd employ anyone else here. But I have no doubt. She is pretty in a made-up, conformist, self-deprecating sort of way, and I want to SCREAM!
Enos suddenly turned and broke for the door. Ray did not follow. He stood with his hands on his hips, burning a hole in his brother-in-law's back with his eyes.
Remind me to never truly piss this man off,
I told myself.
He'd reduce me to ash.
It was only as Ray moved back toward our table that I realized that he had gotten up so fast that he had not even put down his napkin. Now he arranged himself in his chair again, spending an extraordinary amount of time flattening the napkin back into place. “Excuse me,” he said. “What were you saying?”
My heart sank down through the floor. He had not invited me here to visit, much less to sort out our differences.
He brought me here to trail along while he looks after family business!
Now fully deflated, I leaned back in my chair for half a minute,
studying the faces of the people at the tables around us, their clean, close-shaven Mormon faces, their feeling of belonging, their air of separateness from any world I knew or understood. Wheels were turning within wheels, and I was not even part of the machine. I wanted to say,
Who was she?
but knew that I had to trust Ray unswervingly or not at all, and if there was no trust, it was simply time to pack it up and go home, wherever that was.