Winter Tides (31 page)

The breeze died, the fog hung still in the air around them, and Dave was aware suddenly of a change in the atmosphere. The temperature seemed to decline at the moment that the breeze fell, and he could hear his own heart beating with remarkable clarity. Their own footfalls seemed to echo off the high wooden wall of the warehouse, and from somewhere out in the night, from some indefinable direction,
there was the sound of someone else walking, matching them step for step, like an echo.

Anne’s hand tightened over his, and she drew him to a sudden stop. The slow, scraping tread continued, and Dave could smell burning on the night air now, very faint, as if it came to them from miles and miles away.

“Do you hear it?” Anne said.

“The footsteps?”

“Yes.” She looked around nervously. “Listen how they’re not from any single direction. They’re all around us.”

“Maybe that’s just a trick of the fog.”

“It’s
not
the fog,” she said. “It’s something else.”

“
What
else?” he asked. “You’re starting to spook the hell out of me.”

“I don’t know what else…. Look.” She stopped again.

The lights from Collier’s front porch glowed to their left. The front door of the bungalow was open. Jenny stood on the porch dressed in a nightgown that dragged on the ground. She wore a feathered boa around her neck, and she stood staring out into the fog, toward the corner of the warehouse, near where the truck fire had broken out.

“Do you see her?” Anne whispered. She squeezed Dave’s hand again, as if to compel his attention.

He
did
see her now—a red figure in the fog, standing still along the wall of the warehouse, her back turned toward them. It seemed to Dave, impossibly, that he could see the clapboards
through
her. He knew at once who, or what, he was looking at, knew that Anne was right about the odd sound of the footfalls. The figure wavered in the moving fog, now a nearly transparent red shadow, then something more solid, as if focused by the mist. Her hand moved across the gray clapboard, strobing in the light from the porch lamp, and there was a soft knocking and scraping, as if she were running her nails across the chalky old paint. Then she vanished, leaving a ghostly white patch of fog that faded into the gray of the surrounding night.

“That’s her,” Jenny said behind them, and Dave lurched in surprise at the sound of her voice. She had come down off the porch and stood behind them now.

“That’s
who
?” Anne asked her softly.

Dave could see that there were marks on the wall—charcoal streaks, not in any pattern or picture, but feeble smears, utterly meaningless. A piece of charred wood lay on the ground, reminding Dave of the story that Anne had told him about her visit to Scotland.

“That’s the
one
,” Jenny said emphatically. “The one I said.”

“Your imaginary friend?” Anne asked.

She shook her head hard.

“She’s the one who started the fire,” Dave said.

Jenny nodded, hugging herself now, as if she suddenly realized she was cold.

“What’s her name?” Anne asked. “Do you know her name?”

“Elinor,” Jenny said.

M
ORE TROUBLE
… T
HAT WAS
R
AY
M
IFFLIN’S CONSTANT
complaint, and Edmund was tired of it. Edmund hated being tired of anything. Clearly it was time to do a little bit of housecleaning—throw some refuse into the trash bin. He turned left off the Highway, up Main Street into downtown Seal Beach. His rented Ford was charged to Ray Mifflin’s Mastercard. Cheapskate Rent-a-car had an inventory of about eight cars and operated out of a building that was a remodeled gas station in Long Beach, on a bad block of Cherry Avenue. Hosing the kid at the counter had been easy—a false mustache, a bunch of mousse to slick his hair back, a suit and tie. Thank God he didn’t look a
hell
of a lot like Ray Mifflin, just enough to rent a car with the man’s I.D. He had even gotten the signature right.

Stealing Mifflin’s Mastercard and driver’s license had been even easier. Mifflin was in the habit of leaving his wallet on the desktop, because it was too incredibly fat to sit on. Slipping the credit card and license out of it had been the work of a moment, and Edmund was betting that Mifflin wouldn’t look for either one of them tonight. After a long day’s work, Mifflin would be heading home to an easy chair and a bottle of vin ordinaire; he wouldn’t be out throwing the plastic around. And unless he was pulled over by a cop, the license wouldn’t be an issue either. If he did discover them missing, he’d think he left them somewhere, and even if he reported the Mastercard missing or stolen now, so what? Tomorrow or the next day Edmund could shove it through the mail slot in the front door of Right Now Notary, and Mifflin would find it. Probably it would confuse the hell out of him.

It was past ten, and the shops in downtown Seal Beach were closed, although there were still a couple of bars open and a few scattered pedestrians on the sidewalks. The evening was foggy again, and Edmund switched on the wipers, watching the red glow of the traffic light at Central appear out of the mist. He had always hated fog, but it was just what the doctor ordered tonight. Just to be safe, on his way north he had pulled over in a parking lot in Sunset Beach and disconnected his license plate lamp, although he couldn’t fix his mind on any real reason for having done so. Like so many other things, it fell into the category of inspiration.

Mifflin had been right, in his tiresome way. Mayhew was turning into a loose cannon, and it was time that Edmund defused him. Hiring him in the first place had been a mistake. He was apparently totally venal, no honor at all. Edmund turned left at Ocean Boulevard and slowed down, immediately spotting the old man standing near the foot of the pier. His clothes were disheveled and his hair was a frizzled mass in the wet air. Edmund lowered the passenger window, leaned across the seat, and whistled. Mayhew looked up as if he had been startled out of sleep, and then hurried across the fifteen feet of sidewalk, opened the car door, and climbed in.

A pair of foot travelers loomed out of the fog, heading across Ocean toward the pier, and Edmund accelerated slowly away from the curb, even before Mayhew’s door was shut, in order to keep the rental car out of focus to them.
Just a ghost
, he thought, and the idea of it sent a thrill through him. He turned up 10th Street, through the neighborhood east of Main, where the streets were empty, the houses obscured by the fog, the car’s wipers swishing back and forth at five second intervals. A cat darted out into the street from beneath a parked car, and Edmund swerved toward it, veering off at the last moment when he realized he couldn’t hit it without running into an ivy-covered palm tree at the curb. The cat bounded up a driveway and disappeared.

“What the hell was that all about?” Mayhew asked him. The old man had an incredulous look on his face.

Edmund didn’t say anything. He had a nearly overwhelming urge to spit on the old man, but he mastered it, and he swallowed heavily, sucking his mouth dry of saliva. He had spit on a woman in a supermarket parking lot yesterday when she had failed to move her shopping cart out of the way of his car. The act had turned her instantly into a screaming psychotic, and he had waited for her to see that he was laughing before driving calmly away. She had thrown a box of something at him, which had fallen pitifully short, and that had made the whole thing even funnier, and it was all he could do not to circle the parking lot and spit on her again, maybe run her down right there on the spot.

He realized that Mayhew was still staring at him. After a moment the old man looked away, watching the shadowy houses slip past. At the Highway, Edmund turned right, heading back down through Surfside toward Sunset Beach again. He wasn’t sure what their destination was yet. He would play this one entirely by ear, wait for the inspiration that he knew would come. The night would supply something if only he opened his mind to it. The presence of the old man in the car congested him, though, interfered with his natural artistic impulses, him and his goddamn accusatory staring.

Maybe he would play cat-and-mouse with old Mayhew—force him out of the car at gunpoint. Kick him in the knees and then make him crawl around a deserted parking lot while Edmund buzzed him in the rental car, closer and closer. He pictured the panic in the old man’s eyes, the sound of the car glancing off a hip, bumping over a foot, old Mayhew limping along ahead of the bumper, the air wheezing out of his lungs. He’d
know
what the hell it was all about then. He wouldn’t have to ask. Edmund would have to kill him finally, of course, but that would rid the world of one more piece of human trash….

He fought to control his temper. If there was one thing that murdered artistic impulses, it was temper.

“What’s the deal this time?” Mayhew asked him finally. He sounded tired out, the poor old thing.

“How are you feeling?” Edmund asked him, filling his voice with concern. “Have you eaten today? Have you had a chance to bathe?”

“What’s the goddamn deal?”

“Which goddamn deal was that?”

The old man was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I shagged a ride up to the Glider Inn with a man I know, but I had to walk from there. The whole thing took me three hours, and then I stood there at the pier for two more. That’s five hours I’ve got in this transaction so far.”

“I honestly appreciate that.”

“Well, that’s good. Because you didn’t appreciate it worth a damn last time. I keep wearing out shoe leather while you get fat. That’s
got
to stop.”

“I couldn’t agree with you more, Mr. Mayhew.” They cruised past Bolsa Chica Beach, along the dark Highway. So far the night was moonless, and the fog obscured any starlight. They might have been traveling in the middle of a desert.

“As an independent contractor,” Mayhew said, “I’ve got to look out after myself.”

“That’s an attitude I can sympathize with. You’re a man of business. You’re an independent contractor. God, that sounds just right, doesn’t it? A contractor.” Edmund considered the possibility of pulling over right here and cutting
Mayhew’s tongue out as he had promised to do, but there was nowhere to park except on the Highway itself. It was past the beach curfew, and a lone parked car would draw too much attention to itself, rental or no rental. And besides that, he didn’t have any quarters for the meter. He laughed out loud at the very idea of it. How many quarters would it take, at fifteen minutes a pop, to buy enough time to murder a man? One would do it.

Abruptly he made the decision to head farther south, to draw this out, whatever it was, while he waited for true inspiration. So far he was just jazzing around here. He couldn’t see a clear structure yet, artistically speaking. He had loaded the trunk of the car with his tools, just as would any artist. But until you found your true subject, how did you know if you wanted oils or pastels, marble or wood or plaster of Paris? Something told him that this one would be a bigger undertaking than anything else so far, that he had been warming up to this, learning his craft. It was no time to be hasty.

“If we’re heading back into Huntington anyway,” Mayhew said, “then I can’t see why the hell I killed the last five hours hauling myself up to Seal.”

“You can’t
see.”

“That’s right. I could have stayed in town. All this folderol of yours is pure crap, if you ask me.”

“You’ll be compensated for your time, Mr. Mayhew.”

“In what way? That’s all I’m trying to find out here.”

“What did you have in mind?” Edmund looked sharply at him. “If you’re an independent contractor, make me a bid.”

“Ten dollars an hour for the five hours I’ve already got in this, another fifty for my services, and ten an hour to get me back home again. And I don’t mean to the Seal Beach Pier, either. I mean home. I don’t mind a cab, but you pay for the cab, tip and all. I don’t stiff a cab driver on a tip.”

“Well … I don’t think that’s out of line at all.”

“Good. Because if you
do
, you can let me off right up ahead, right here at Seventh Street, and I’ll walk to my place.”

Edmund drove through the green light at 7th, and then made the light at Main, accelerating up the Highway toward Newport Beach. “That won’t be necessary. I’m happy to pay you a fair price. Your services are invaluable to me.”

“Your idea of a fair price and my idea are two different things. I hope you don’t mind my saying that.”

“I don’t mind at all. But it seems to me that we’ve already exhausted the wage talk, Mr. Mayhew. We’ve got a ways to go, and I want to think something through. You wouldn’t mind if I put on a little music?”

“Suit yourself.”

“Thank you.” Edmund pushed a cassette into the player and turned up the sound—a randomly chosen volume of “Melodies of the Masters.” It was perfect mood music, all the great melodies, just the good parts, not drawn out so far that you got bored by them. He kept his eyes on the road, listening to the music and trying to put the old man out of his mind, which would have been more possible if he didn’t stink so badly. He glanced at him again, but Mayhew was looking out of the window, and in that moment, with the highway lights glowing through the windshield, he was a dead ringer for the Earl. It wasn’t just the way he looked, either, it was his whole attitude. It was a bum attitude. A lazy, shiftless, ignorant, lily-of-the-field attitude, and it made Edmund sick. The Earl had made some money by dumb luck, and then when his wife died—Edmund’s mother—he just quit. It was as simple as that. He had given up, and had decided to act happy, and had surrounded himself with forty tons of weird juju crap.

Casey was the same way, of course, except he was a drunk. Their mother had died giving birth to Casey, which was the first and last piece of evidence Edmund needed that the world wasn’t fair, that it didn’t matter a damned bit who lived and who died. Casey was bound for a life in the streets, just like Mayhew, begging for money, lying, drunk without even trying to hide it. The worst part about that attitude was how damned
superior
they were about it despite the damage they did. They had the world all worked out. They wore their crappy rags like a coat of many colors, like any self-respecting man wore his three-piece suit, and they would tell you to your face that it was
your
suit that
was the problem, that it was
you
. Then they’d ask you for ten dollars an hour, which they’d spend on bourbon and canned pudding.