The Grave Soul (17 page)

“You've been doing this a while,” said Hannah, almost, but not quite, impressed.

“Cheese popcorn?”

Her face puckered with distaste. “I know it's my mother's recipe, but it's vile stuff. So, where are you from?”

“I've lived all over the country.”

“No place to call home?”

“Nothing stands out.”

Hannah pulled her drink closer, settling in for a conversation.

“What do you do for a living?” asked Jane.

“I'm a doctor. My practice is in Eau Claire.”

“What kind of doctor?”

“Gastroenterologist.”

“You like it?”

With that one question, Hannah was off to the races. As she continued on to her second even stronger Rob Roy, she rambled through her childhood, her college days, talked about her extreme need for privacy and solitude. She hated the politics at her hospital, the petty jealousies. Doctors could be
so
spiteful, especially when it came to turf wars. HR was staffed by imbeciles with morbid power needs. People—especially her mother—were always pressing her about when she would get married. She was never getting married. She believed in monogamy, the serial kind that didn't come with legalities and which left her with an easy exit clause. Did that make her a three-headed monster? A freak of nature? She liked sex as much as the next person, but as for living with one man for the rest of her life—it was a ludicrous idea. At the moment, she was between relationships and that was fine with her. She kept coming back to her mother, how deeply her mom misunderstood her.

“I'm not a bad person,” she said, pointing to a filled basket of her mother's popcorn behind the bar. When Jane set it in front of her, she began to pick at it. “But there's no way I can make my mother happy. Nothing I do is ever enough.”

“That's hard,” said Jane.

Into her third Rob Roy, Hannah admitted she'd been fighting a low-grade depression for years. Her past was riddled with bad decisions. One in particular wouldn't leave her alone. Was she being selfish, she asked, her eyes beginning to tear. She'd never be happy if she couldn't live life on her own terms. She seemed to sincerely need Jane's validation. The fact that she had no real idea who Jane was didn't seem to matter.

“You know,” said Jane, “since you brought up the subject, I met your mother this morning. Kevin asked me to help him load some food into his van.”

Hannah raised the drink to her lips, studied Jane over the rim. “And what did you think of the old farmstead?”

“Seemed comfortable. Unpretentious. A lot like your mom.”

Hannah sipped her drink and didn't respond.

“She asked Kevin to take a look at her car. Something wasn't running right. While they were outside, I had a chance to look at all the family photos in the living room. I was curious about Kevin's wife, the one who died in that accident. He told me about her at breakfast.”

“Delia? She's generally the last person he wants to talk about. Curious about what?”

Jane gave a noncommittal shrug. “Kevin's a good-looking man. I wondered what Delia looked like.”

“You won't find any photos of Delia at my mom's house. No love lost between those two.”

“Sorry to hear it.”

“Delia was spunky, I'll give her that. My mother doesn't deal well with spunky women—I'm living proof. But none of us liked Delia or her scummy friends.”

“Did she have a lot of friends in town?”

“A few. Her best friend, Macy Hendrickson, OD'd a few years back. Can't recall what her drug of choice was. Macy and Delia waitressed together. They liked working the evening shift at Big D's Steakhouse so they could go out afterward and get ripped. Her other good friend, Riley Garrow, runs the beauty parlor—the Cut & Curl—now. She graduated from high school the same year as Kevin and my sister-in-law, Laurie. She was a slut then, and as I understand it, still is.”

“Small towns are small worlds.”

“You got that right.”

Jane made a mental note of the names. It wasn't smart to hit the subject of Delia too hard because it might set off warning bells. Shifting gears, she said, “I met Kevin's daughter. Can't remember her name.”

“Kira.”

A man wearing a blue FedEx uniform stepped up to the counter and ordered another pitcher of beer for his table. Jane pulled it for him and slid it across the counter top with a fresh basket of popcorn. She added the pitcher to his tab, then returned to Hannah, who, amazingly, had finished her third drink. “Another?”

“Why not?”

While Jane worked, Hannah said, “You say you had breakfast this morning with my brother?”

“We ran into each other at Millie's Kitchen.”

“That right. He offer to let you stay upstairs?”

“As a matter of fact, he did. I thought it was very generous.”

“Uh-huh.”

“Are you saying he's planning to hit on me?”

“He's not like that. On the other hand, it doesn't mean you aren't planning to hit on him. Happens a lot. In case you didn't know, that sort of thing goes on in bars.”

“You're kidding.”

“Nope. God's honest truth.”

“Well, not to worry. I won't be hitting on your brother.”

“No? Just an FYI: He's at a very vulnerable point in his life. For many reasons. This wouldn't be a good time for him to get involved.”

“I'm gay.”

Hannah raised an eyebrow, studying Jane with new interest. “You say that so easily. Does my brother know?”

“Never came up. Is it a problem?”

“Not for Kevin. Just don't announce it to the customers.”

Jane set the fourth Rob Roy in front of Hannah. She wasn't drunk, but she was moving steadily in that direction, thanks to Jane's heavy hand with the Johnny Walker. Jane figured this was her chance to ask a few leading questions. “I like your brother. He's easy to talk to. But boy, he's had a lot of loss in his life. Those three deaths right in a row. Your father, his wife, and then his little girl. What was her name?”

Hannah folded her hands around her drink. “Grace. Gracie.”

“You expect your parents will go before you. Maybe even your spouse. But a child? That's brutal.”

“It was a terrible time.”

“How did it happen?” It was a nosey, intrusive question. Then again, it was a bar, and bar conversations, stirred together with alcohol, often tended to cross normal lines of discourse.

Taking a couple of delicate sips, Hannah eased a little closer to the counter. “Can't imagine why you'd want to hear about this.”

“I'm interested,” said Jane.

“You mean you're bored.”

“That too.”

Hannah twisted the glass around, thought about it for a few seconds, then plunged in. “After Delia died, Kevin and I got to talking. The kids were so down, so sad, that we thought we should take them somewhere to get their minds off … what had just happened. You know, a little trip. Mom thought it was a good idea, too. We decided on Disney World in Orlando. I called and set up the flight and the hotel, and Kevin took care of the various park tickets. He'd been there once before so he knew more about that than I did.”

“And? How did it go?”

“The girls were on a real high. The last afternoon we were there, Kevin and Kira said they were beat. They wanted to go back to the resort, take a swim, and then maybe catch a nap before dinner. Gracie, as always, wanted to keep going. She was like that. A real buzz saw of energy. Since we only had one car, we had to drive Kira and Kevin back. Then Gracie and I headed to a mall, where we could do some shopping, maybe get an ice cream. On the way there, as I was going through an intersection on a green light, a guy broadsided our rental with his truck.”

“The passenger's side?” asked Jane.

Hannah nodded. “I was pulled from the vehicle by paramedics and taken to a local hospital. I was in shock, had a badly bruised shoulder and hip. I walked away from it, but Gracie didn't. She died instantly.”

“God, I'm really sorry.”

“I never saw that truck coming. We were just sailing along.” She jerked her eyes to Jane. “It was my fault. We were talking, laughing. I wasn't paying attention the way I should have been.”

Jane wondered if this was the bad decision Hannah had referred to, the one that still haunted her. “I'd say it was the truck driver's fault.”

“Kevin was devastated. The whole family was. I felt like crawling in a hole and never coming out.” She drained the last half of her drink. “I don't want to talk about it anymore.”

“Of course,” said Jane. She folded a cloth and began wiping down the counter.

“Another,” said Hannah, pushing the empty glass away. While she waited, she began to shred the cocktail napkin. “I just can't win. On Christmas, my mother called me self-centered and disloyal.”

“Why would she say that?”

“Because I am. I made a promise and now I want to break it.”

Beneath the self-loathing, Jane was beginning to glimpse a hard crust of anger. “Maybe you're neither of those things.”

She fingered the pearls at her throat. “Yeah, maybe.”

Kevin finally returned to the bar shortly after eleven, found his sister hammered, and helped her off the stool, saying he wouldn't let her drive and that she should come upstairs and spend the night in Kira's old bedroom. He was very kind to her, never showing any annoyance at her condition. From the way he handled her, Jane got the impression that it had happened before.

Kevin gave Jane an apologetic look as he scooped up Hannah's gloves and purse. “I'll be back down in a few minutes.”

“Take your time,” said Jane.

He tossed Hannah's coat over his shoulder, then gently placed his arm around her waist and guided her through the swinging door into the kitchen.

Jane resumed her stool, impressed and a little touched by the concern Kevin had shown his sister. She recalled Nolan's comment—that in the case of a murdered wife, the husband would be the number-one suspect. She had a hard time picturing Kevin that way, not that people weren't a crazy mixture of good and bad. The truth, as someone once said, was rarely pure—and never simple. She wondered at the cracks that could develop inside a human life, how deep they could run, and in the end, how devastating the consequences of those fault lines could be.

 

25

After tossing and turning for two solid hours, unable to stop obsessing about Kira and what might be happening in New Dresden, Guthrie threw off the covers, yanked on his robe, and went into the living room to dismantle the tree. Christmas had been a disaster. He didn't need anything around to remind him of it.

As he reached for the angel at the top of the tree, his cell phone rang. He rushed back to the bedroom and grabbed it off the nightstand. “Hello?”

“Hi, Guthrie.”

“Kira. God, I'm so glad you called.” He glanced at the alarm clock next to an empty bottle of Corona Extra. The blue numbers read 2:09
AM
. “I'm sorry about Christmas Eve. I know I'm pushing too hard. But it's because I love you and I miss you.”

“Guthrie?”

“Yes?”

“About those photos you said you have? You really think they're real?”

“I'm sorry, sweetheart, but I do. I had a private investigator look at them. They're not official police photos. Technically, what I have is proof that your mother was murdered, but no indication who did it.”

“But you could see marks on her neck?”

“You have to use an enlarging loupe, but when you do, yes, you can clearly see them. It's not just a shadow or a trick of the light.”

“But … my grandmother told me the chief of police was at our house that day. So was my great-uncle Brian, and my uncle Doug. They all saw her and said the death was accidental.”

“They covered it up. All of them. There's no other explanation. Why would they do that unless they were protecting someone they loved?”

Kira was silent for almost a minute.

“Are you still there?” asked Guthrie.

“Yeah.”

“Honey, I'm not trying to hurt you. I'd give anything to make this go away.” He waited a few seconds then said, “What are you thinking?”

“If what you say is true, I'm angry.
Really
angry. And I'm confused.”

“It's just, when you combine the photos, the note—”

“What note?”

He'd forgotten that he hadn't had time to tell her about it on Christmas Eve. “The photos were sent directly to me—the postmark was Henderson, Wisconsin.”

“That's not far from here.”

“I know. The packet included a note. It said, ‘Proof Delia Adler was murdered. Stay out of it or the same thing will happen to you.'”

“Oh my God. Are you kidding me? Someone threatened you?”

“This is serious. It's why I'm frightened for you, why I want you to come back.”

“I can't, Guthrie. Not yet.”

“Then you've got to promise me you won't say anything to your family until we've had more time to talk, to figure out what to do.”

“Why?”

“Just to be on the safe side.”

“They'd never hurt me, if that's what you're suggesting.”

He had to tread carefully. If it seemed as if he was criticizing them, she'd be forced to their defense. What she refused to see was that, when survival was at stake, when people felt pushed to the wall and saw no good way out, normal behavior went into the garbage with the rest of the trash. “No, of course not. I'm just saying that, since we don't know all the facts, it might be best to wait, not to talk about it until we do.”

“And how would we find out those facts?”

“I'm working on it.”

“Meaning what?”

“I've hired someone.”