The Lillian Byrd Crime Series Page 4

  I’m not the kind of person who falls for animals. The only pet I’d ever owned was in childhood, a sorry little turtle that lived beneath a tiny plastic palm tree on a tiny plastic island in the middle of a tiny water-filled plastic dish. When I lost interest in it, it disappeared, and I was given to understand that it had run away. I didn’t question.

  The rabbit ignored me. I put my face down to his and gave him a once-over. “What’s his name?”

  “We just call him dubba-you thirty-six.” I could picture the missus and the kids and grandkids all sitting on the porch listening to the radio back home in Fowlerville or someplace. I scooped up W-36 from the rear; that’s when he turned and bit me.

  The rabbit needed a name; he needed me. The old man tore a strip of cloth from the exhibit table skirt and handed it to me. I wrapped up my finger and left with Todd in a box.

  Over the months, I learned a lot about rabbits, most of which should bore you unless you’re a pet person. In a nutshell, Todd liked to chew, and he liked his back to be stroked. He liked to eat in moderation, and he liked to thump his hindquarters forcefully, for urgent reasons known only to him, down on the floor now and then. I don’t know why I named him Todd. It seemed like a good idea at the time.

  As I said, I’d always say hi to him when I got home (he’d hop right over to me) and do a visual baseboard sweep. He’d gotten pretty good about not chewing wood and electrical cords. Of course, I kept most of the cords blocked off by furniture. He settled into our new flat nicely. He had the run of the place and the good sense not to blow it.

  A drink was in order. Straight off, I should tell you that I am the daughter of tavern-keepers. My father and mother ran a bar in our neighborhood on Detroit’s south side for years and years. I grew up toddling around barstools and pool cues; the regulars called me—affectionately, I like to think—”the little bitch.” Perhaps you’ve noticed my demure vocabulary. Nature or nurture? The question lingers.

  My friends find it disconcerting, but I’m far more comfortable walking into a dim little shot-and-a-beer joint with old guys sitting around coughing than one of those cute places with frothy names. And somehow the old-timers in such dim places seem comfortable with me too. I guess it’s something in your blood.

  Even though I appreciate good mixology, my home liquor supply consists of only one bottle, and it’s Scotch. I switch brands every few years or so. That year it was Dewar’s. One part cool spring water and three parts whisky, and you’ve got yourself a fine drink. A lemon twist if you want to be fancy. I took the drink outside to my little balcony over the street and flopped into my yellow plastic lounge chair. The light was softening and slanting through the trees, the air starting to lose its hot slap.

  “Here’s to you, Bucky, you bastard,” I said, and toasted him. “And here’s to you, Iris, rest in peace. Whatever the hell happened to you?” I tipped my head back and closed my eyes, thinking of Iris and the police station and the Snapdragon. My arms became heavy. I set my glass down and dozed for a while.

  I woke to one of Todd’s thumps, which reverberated along the floor like the single beat of a Kodo drum. It jarred me even on the balcony. I came to thinking of Iris, rolled up in a carpet and lying all night next to Lester Patchell’s barn.

  The sky was purple and the air cooler and clearer. My neck was stiff. I went inside and found the Polaroid in my notebook. I looked at it for a while, then put it back. Not a good way to remember somebody. The terrible dignity of death. I pulled myself together and drove over to the Snapdragon.

  _____

  “Lovely evening,” Emerald greeted me. He was sitting on a parking bumper eating something out of a box.

  “Wow, is that sushi?” I asked as I came up to him.

  “Um, yeah,” he said in his measured way. “I like it. It’s different.”

  “It’s also expensive. Where do you get it?”

  “That place right up on, you know, Fourteen Mile?” He gestured northeasterly. “It’s not so very costly. I only get it once in a while. Want one?”

  “No, thanks, you enjoy it.”

  He popped a jewel-like disc into his mouth and waved as I stepped into the vestibule.

  It was early, maybe only nine o’clock, so not much was going on yet. Plus it was a weeknight. Sandra was at her usual post near the door. “Hi, dear, how ya doing?” she said.

  “Thanks,” I said absently. My eyes immediately went to the DJ booth. It was dark. The atmosphere seemed palpably different—something in the air. Tension? Relief? My imagination? I took a seat at the bar, next to a half-finished drink and a smoldering cigarette.

  I scanned the room casually, dreading making eye contact with Lou. Fortunately, she wasn’t there. My answering machine had recorded three hang-ups the prior week, and I had the sinking certainty they were her.

  The Snapdragon was large and busy enough to support a DJ every night, though evidently there would be no substitute this evening. The bartender was a twenty-something-ish woman I’d never seen before. She came over, smiling tentatively. “Dewar’s, right?”

  “Huh, how’d you know?”

  “I remember you from a couple weeks ago.” She had a pixie face.

  “But I didn’t sit at the bar.”

  “No, you sat over there, and Kevin served you. I remember the drink: Dewar’s and a splash, up, short glass.”

  “You remember everybody’s drink like that?”

  “No.” She fixed me with a steady eye. I gave a short, stupid chuckle.

  “Actually,” I said, “tonight I’ll just have a ginger ale.”

  A huge blast of music made me leap in my seat. I spun around, half expecting to see Iris in the blazing booth, the dance floor seething with bodies—but no. It was the jukebox, blaring like mad, and Bonnie rising from a squat behind it where the volume control was.

  She started across the empty dance floor, her face flashing purple for an instant, reflecting the jukebox lights. Up until recently my main mental image of her was a dim, crabby figure crouched perpetually on a barstool. As she moved across the floor to the bar, I looked her over more carefully. Her body was solid but seemed quite flexible. She moved fluidly, almost elegantly across the floor. I saw how, under the right circumstances, she could be appealing.

  Her outfit, however, an orange smock-like top over a pair of black Lycra tights, plus her frizzed-out orange hair, made her look off-kilter: ridiculous, the Great Pumpkin. She came over to the bar and sat down in front of the drink and cigarette.

  I met her eye and nodded. She nodded back and kept her eye on me. It struck me that she seriously lacked imagination in her self-presentation. She wore a faux-Native-American amulet on a thong around her neck. It was a shield-like disc of wood, inset with bits of seashell. I imagined she had a dreamcatcher hanging over her bed.

  “Hi,” I said brightly.

  “How ya doin’,” she said in a low voice. Her lips curled into a little smile, and she turned her head away as if to keep me from seeing it.

  Even before I’d gotten home that day, I started speculating about Bonnie: How much did she know about Iris? Was she the last to see her alive?

  Her eyes began to wander distractedly, back and forth among the bottles facing us. I watched her in the mirror. Her complexion was smooth but not firm, her frizzy hair cut in sort of an old-style pageboy that looked to be growing out unevenly. She peered from beneath fluffy bangs. The bangs did something for her, actually, as her features were crowded together at the bottom of her face.

  Still looking at the bottles, she said, “I’ve been thinking about you.”

  “Oh?”

  “You’re very dorky.”

  “Oh, yes, I know.”

  “I like that.” She met my eyes in the mirror.

  My stomach flipped when I saw her expression: It was intense, like the other night, unblinking, almost hard, but overlaid with a certain sweet dreaminess, like a starving kitten thinking about a saucer of milk.

  I wanted to nip this s
hit in the bud. “So!” I exclaimed, upbeat, “No DJ tonight!” I heard her take in her breath. “Got the jukebox instead, huh?”

  “Yeah.” She took a drag off her cigarette, rescuing it, as it were, from slow death in the ashtray. I glanced at the pack next to the ashtray: Carltons. I always say, if you’re going to smoke, smoke something you can taste, like Camel filters or Marlboros. She probably drank diet pop too, I guessed.

  “So how come?” I pattered on, trying to make my tone still more airy and innocent until I realized it must be verging on idiotic. “How come no DJ tonight?”

  Bonnie turned her stool square to me. Suddenly her eyes were hot and narrow. Big long pause. “She quit.”

  “Oh, no kidding!” I said in elaborate disappointment. “I liked her. Huh. Didn’t she only work here for a few weeks? Huh?”

  The owner of the glass I was drinking ginger ale from picked up her drink and cigarettes and eased off her barstool. I put my hand out. “Didn’t she only work here for a few weeks? When did she quit?”

  Bonnie turned back to me with acid impatience. “Today.”

  “Today? Today?” I felt my body temperature drop about ten degrees. Bonnie jerked as if someone had punched her between the shoulder blades. She closed her eyes and ducked her head just for an instant, then came back up, flat and cool. I can’t say what my face must have told her, except I know I had that oh, shit expression for at least the length of time she had her eyes closed. Shit.

  “After closing last night,” she said finally.

  “That would be today,” I agreed. “Her name was Jean, wasn’t it?” I asked. All of a sudden I realized both Bonnie and I were too scared to keep talking.

  She replied only, “Yeah.”

  Were her hands trembling? My courage returned somewhat.

  “Jean what?” I pressed. “Do you know where I might get ahold of her? Jean what?”

  “You’ll have to ask her.”

  “Yeah, but how will I get ahold of her? If she’s gone?” My heart was pounding like bongos.

  Bonnie’s eyes appeared to go completely bloodshot in one second. She leaned close to me and parted her lips, and I thought she was about to whisper something, when she seized the back of my neck. Instinctively, I jerked away, but she gripped me tight with both hands. I felt her thumbs pressing vertically into the sides of my throat. I smelled her: an odd mixture of something sweet—English lavender, I supposed it was—and something off, a gluey sort of smell. Her face was inches from mine. I saw an eyelash that had fallen onto her right cheek.

  Then she planted her mouth over mine in a forceful kiss.

  It was like being slapped, hard.

  She flung her hands apart just as my arms were driving upward to break her hold, grabbed her cigarettes, and walked off, leaving her drink. She moved deliberately across the empty dance floor and disappeared down the back hall. The bartender, having backed away and busied herself washing glasses, didn’t look up as I left.

  6

  I drove up Livernois to Eight Mile on autopilot, my mind in suspension, then suddenly realized I wasn’t heading home. Damn it to hell.

  Me: You’re headed for Judy’s, aren’t you?

  Me: Ah. Well.

  Me: You’re headed for Judy’s because you’re weak. You’re weak because you’re scared. You’ve had a hell of a day and you should just go home to bed.

  Me: But Judy’d be glad to see me. It’d be nice for her.

  Me: That’s a cop-out.

  Me: Well, she would.

  Me: I didn’t say it was a lie—I said it was a cop-out.

  Eight Mile Road is a major east-west channel along the northern boundary of Detroit. Here you find entrepreneurial America in its purest form: The commercial property that borders it is cheap, thus there’s a dazzling array of business ventures from the brilliant to the dim, from the honest to the rotten.

  Mixed among the fast-food outlets and small manufacturing shops are party stores, check-cashing places, used-furniture shops, bakery outlets, heavily fortified bank branches, radiator shops, pawn shops, more go-go joints than you can count, as well as a host of ventures that defy categorization.

  What do you make of Mike’s Demolition Studio, House of Scarves, Crazy Nancy’s Nails ’n’ Knees, and Touch Me There? (Well, we can guess on that one.)

  Vacant, decaying storefronts become raw material for the dreams of future tycoons. Virtually all the architecture is shed-like, with heavy emphasis on signage. Speeding along at night in a car, you’re a space traveler, the clusters of lighted signs swooping past you like meteor showers.

  Some do-gooders label this corridor blighted and whine for it to be redeveloped, replanned, prettied up. All I know is, I’m proud to live in a country where if someone wakes up on fire with a business vision combining vitamins, work shoes, and a karate school all under one roof, there’s a place for it to happen.

  I returned to my argument, rubbing my lips yet again, trying to erase the feeling of Bonnie’s wet sucking mouth.

  Me: So I’m going in the direction of Judy’s, so what? I’m not there yet. It doesn’t mean I’m going to turn down her street.

  Me: If you went over there, it’d give her false hope, and she’d wind up hurt.

  Me: Hey, she’s a big girl, and it’s a free country. I know I’m trying to make this breakup permanent. But God, I’d just like to see her, talk with her...hold her.

  Me: That’s what I’m talking about.

  Me: Hey, I’m human too!

  Me: Do not go over to Judy’s.

  All the while, I’m driving along Eight Mile toward the apartment we used to share and in which she now lived alone.

  I felt like Mrs. Tannin, in the next apartment, who had a snack dependency problem. I’d run into her sometimes at the 7-Eleven on Nine Mile, where I’d observe her knobby shoulders stooped inside her old fuzzy coat, her arms laden with Hostess cakes, Klondike bars, and Mystic Mints, her face ravaged by some sad inner strife. It was obvious she fought with herself every time.

  Even as I was ringing the bell, I felt I still had an out: Judy might not be home. But she was home, and my heart leaped. As soon as I saw her, I knew I was done for the night. “Come on in, sweetheart,” she said, taking my arm and pulling gently.

  She stood in her long nightgown in the soft light from a rose-shaded lamp, a fair-haired plump angel ready to enfold me with her wings. She’d been sitting next to the lamp rereading The Mists of Avalon. The dog-eared paperback was splayed facedown on the coffee table.

  A trace of concern crossed her face, but it was concern for me, not herself, as would have been wiser. Her face shone with complete trust, total faith in the rightness of this surprise. For all I could tell, she’d been expecting me all evening.

  “What is it?” she said, snuggling down next to me on the couch.

  I told her about stabbing Bucky and about the body being discovered and having seen the woman at the Snapdragon, leaving out my feelings of attraction. I told her about my conversation with Bonnie at the bar, including the kiss.

  A little V formed between her eyebrows. “I don’t want anybody kissing on you but me.”

  “Well, it wasn’t that kind of kiss.”

  “Be that as it may.” There was a silence. Then she said, “What can I get you? Food? Something to drink? I have some Dewar’s.”

  “It’s all right,” I said. “I’m all right with it. Yeah, I’ll have a drink.” She fixed one for each of us. She kept a jug of spring water in the icebox. I rubbed my lips with the liquor to disinfect them.

  “Are you going to tell Ciesla about this? I mean, my God.” She stroked my hair, my shoulders. Her hands were in continuous motion, gesturing, touching, roving.

  Suddenly I was very thirsty. I drained my drink. She fixed me another, then rejoined me on the couch. Her hands smoothed my aura, so to speak, while her gentle voice soothed my soul: She knew me so well. I sank my head into her shoulder.

  “I miss you,” she said softly.

&n
bsp; “I miss you too,” I admitted. “But...”

  “But what?”

  “It’s hell.”

  She nodded, her chin moving up and down on top of my head. “It’s hell when we’re apart. Thank the Goddess you’re here now.”

  What I meant was, going through with a breakup is hell, but I found myself unable to articulate it. However, I forced myself to say, “I’m not coming back.” I could feel her tearing inside—she gave a little moan. She held me tighter.

  “You’re here now,” she repeated.

  “Yes.” I had no explanation. She began kissing the top of my head, hard firm kisses I could feel through my skull. I twisted in her arms like a porpoise and turned up my face. The same kisses pelted my lips like hailstones. In unison we stopped for air, and I kissed her in return.

  There was something new about her, something in this forcefulness, something hard. Strength? Yes, strength, but beyond that. Anger? Ah. Before tonight I hadn’t known anger had aphrodisiacal properties. After unresolved fights, our anger would spoil any attempt at lovemaking. When we made up, everything was fine again.

  But this anger seemed to come from a different place. It was new to Judy too; I saw in her eyes a kind of fierce bafflement. I rejoiced, for without being able to put my finger on it, I’d known something was wrong all along with her reaction to my leaving. There’d been plenty of sadness, confusion, even self-pity. But anger and the power that comes with it had been missing.

  Moments later we were horizontal on the couch. Judy transformed herself from a nurturing angel to a fiery one. We wrestled for position. Her hands careened over me, as if to find their way through clothes and skin and flesh to bone.

  We moved to the bedroom without further words, where she continued to excavate new nuggets of emotion, using our bodies as pick and shovel. I believe I more or less ceased to exist for her; this night she made love to herself. It was as though she needed to tell herself something.