CUTTER'S GROVE Read online

  When we arrive, Deborah greets us at the door. For the first time since I’ve known her she’s wearing an attractive knee-length dress with matching pumps, her hair has been fashioned in a new style that becomes her greatly, and she’s applied a tasteful bit of makeup. In short, I can hardly believe she’s the same woman who frumped her way into my life a while back.

  “Wow,” I can’t help but saying.

  She stands aside proudly and motions me in. Victor trails along behind me, unheralded, unnoticed, and, apparently, unloved.

  Deborah leads the way to the dining room. More surprises. The table has been set with enough finery to impress a nobleman. China tableware, silver cutlery and candle holders. The lighting has been dimmed. There are settings for two. Uh oh.

  “Where’s Harold?” I ask, not very successfully masking my nervousness.

  “He’s next door,” she says. “He’s spends much of his time with the old couple who live there and they often invite him to stay for dinner.”

  “Oh.”

  “Lucas,” she says, “you look absolutely panic-stricken. Whatever is the matter?”

  “Nothing, Deborah. Nothing at all.”

  “Would you like a drink before dinner?”

  “I’ll pass, thanks. I think I had enough yesterday to last me a decade or so.”

  “All right. Have a seat. I’ll serve dinner.” She leaves while I grapple with the wine bottle and wrestle with my scruples.

  Deborah is soon back with a roast that smells magnificent. It’s accompanied by roasted potatoes with crusty edges just the way I like them, crisp asparagus tips, and a thick, dark gravy. There are even homemade buns. If I’m being wooed - and I think I am - I’m proving to be infinitely more wooable than my status allows.

  Beth’s face abruptly leaps to mind.

  I’m reminded that the fastest way to a man’s heart is not, as the old adage would have you believe, through his stomach - it is directly through his chest with a finely-honed nail file.

  17

  Over the next few days, everyone who owns a vehicle in Kern County decides it’s time for a tune-up or an oil change. I’m so busy I’ve actually had to work evenings to keep the waiting list down to a manageable level.

  Sonny literally glistens with pleasure.

  “What the hell is going on here, Sonny,” I grouse. “You didn’t warn me there’d be times like this.”

  “Make hay while the sun shines, Lucas,” he exclaims joyfully.

  Easy for him to say. He’s become so lazy since my arrival in Cutter’s Grove he now leaves messages on the gas pump telling his customers where he is - usually Herb’s diner - and that they can drop off the money they owe him there.

  “Thanks for that truly inspiring bit of advice there, Sonny.”

  He chortles and heads for the diner as I slide under another pickup, bearing in on the oil pan plug.

  I’m still up to my elbows in engine grease at six o’clock when Beth stops by. From my horizontal position on the gurney I recognize her boots tapping impatiently, awaiting my emergence from under yet another pickup. There’s not a doubt in my mind that she’s pissed off. You can just tell when toe tapping isn't associated with keeping time to music. In this case maybe I'm wrong; it could be a death march.

  “That you, Beth?” I call out.

  Her response is not entirely clear but I’m reasonably certain it has something to do with my head and my ass, and how I might fit the former into the latter.

  When I slide out she’s leaning against the pickup with her arms folded across her chest, glaring at me.

  “Something wrong, babe?” I say, the tone and timbre of my voice the absolute embodiment of innocence and integrity.

  “Don’t give me that ‘something wrong babe’ shit,” she seethes.

  “Uh oh.” Perhaps the tone of innocence and integrity I was striving for was a tad misplaced.

  “Yeah, uh oh is right.”

  “I’m sure whatever it is you think I did, I didn’t,” I assure her as I come to a vertical position.

  “Oh, is that a fact?” she responds. “So I suppose it isn’t you who’s been having dinner with Deborah Miller? Or picking her up at noon hour and going for cozy drives in the desert?”

  This is serious. I can see immediately that there’s little sense in denying what she so obviously already knows. “Listen, Beth,” I say in a plaintive tone, “I did all those things but there was nothing---”

  “Fuck you,” she says with more bitterness than I would have thought her capable. She gives me a piercing, glacial stare and then stomps out of the shop.

  I sigh as I watch her disappear. This is what I get for ignoring my conscience. I was afraid something like this might happen. It’s clear that she’s too mad right now to reason with. I decide I’ll call her later.

  “Trouble in paradise?” Sonny calls from his office.

  “Fuck you,” I shout back.

  ****

  In my limited experience there are few things in life more difficult to deal with than a woman who believes she’s been cheated on. The problem is only exacerbated if the other woman is not the equal, in terms of appearance, of the cheated-on woman. Most women, I believe - although they might not care to admit it - would be inclined to forgive a man for cheating with an exquisitely beautiful woman. After all, they would reason, he’s only a man; and she was terribly attractive; and she did lead him on relentlessly - that kind of thing. But when a man cheats with a woman who is perhaps on the plain side, what does that say about the woman who’s been cheated on? How can she possibly reconcile that a plain woman could offer her man something she couldn’t? Such a woman is not inclined to forgive the aforementioned man. Even if the aforementioned cheating never really took place.

  Such is the dilemma I now face.

  I have phoned Beth three times since the incident at the garage. Three times I’ve suffered through a vivid collection of verbal assaults, each of which were followed by a suggestion that I engage in sex with myself, an ear-piercing farewell, and the sudden hum of static. This is the fourth call and, although I still haven’t gotten a proper hearing, she hasn’t yet hung up on me at least. “Please, Beth, just hear me out, okay?” I say. “I know you’re mad at me and you believe you have good reason to be, but you don’t.”

  “I don’t what?” she says, dripping venom.

  “You don’t have any reason to be mad. If you’ll let me explain what Deborah and I were doing, you’ll see that there’s no reason for you to be upset.”

  A chilling silence ensues.

  “Beth?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “It would be much better if I explained this in person. Can I come over?”

  “No.” This is delivered rather emphatically.

  “Please.”

  More silence. Then, “Get over here. And you better have a damn good explanation, cowboy.” The receiver is now slammed in my ear for the fourth time.

  That's okay. I'm making progress.

  Now that I’ve talked my way into a hearing, however, what do I tell her? I hadn’t thought of that. Now I have to actually come up with an explanation. Shit.

  I consider telling her the truth. Beth, darling, I’ve seen a ghost. Twice, actually. I was too embarrassed to tell you about it so I hooked up with Deborah and we are now chasing down the murderer of said ghost.

  Yeah, that’ll do it. She’ll beg me to forgive her earlier hostility and fall immediately into my arms.

  When she opens the door to her basement suite I get an immediate appreciation for how door-to-door salesmen must feel when a potential client first spots the demonstrator vacuum cleaner or the encyclopedia volumes.

  “May I come in?” I say when she doesn’t step aside or say anything.

  For an instant it looks as though she’s decided not to give me the hearing I begged for after all. But, alas, she allows me entry.

  There is, however, no offer to sit. No ‘would you like a coffee?’ Just that ston
y glare.

  “Can we sit down?” I ask.

  She goes to the couch and sits. When I attempt to sit beside her, she gets up and moves to the chair. This is not going well, I decide.

  I tried to rehearse what I would say to her on the way over here, but nothing worthwhile came to me. Eventually I decided just to play it by ear. Now I’m wishing I had given that brilliant ploy a little more thought.

  Here goes nothing. “Beth, what I’m going to tell you is the absolute truth. You’ll undoubtedly think I’m crazy before I’m through, but all I ask is that you hear me out.”

  “Go ahead,” she says. She displays all the warmth of Marcia Clark listening to O.J. proclaim his innocence.

  “We’ve never really talked about how I ended up in Cutter’s Grove. You knew I had car trouble during that sandstorm and Sonny picked me up. But something really strange happened before Sonny rescued me.” I take a deep breath. Beth continues to glare at me, eyebrows raised in that ‘hurry up and get this over with’ expression that we all know and love so well. “Believe it or not,” I persevere, “just before I ran out of gas I saw the face of a young girl out in front of the Jeep. Just a glimpse, through all the sand and shit that was swirling around. At first I thought I’d just imagined it. Then I saw her again, this time right outside my driver’s side window. As clear as I’m seeing you right now. To put it mildly, she was scary looking. Like something out of a horror movie. Then, in the blink of an eye, she disappeared. I was stunned. I spent the rest of the night sitting out there in the desert, scared witless.”

  At this point I notice Beth’s face has softened a little. I figure it’s best if I forge ahead while the forging is good. I tell her about seeing Anne Marie Alvarro’s picture and realizing it was the girl I’d seen in the desert. Then I tell her about meeting Deborah and how she reacted to seeing my ‘aura.’ Then about our meeting with Thelma Paige and the visions she’d had during the police investigation of Anne Marie’s disappearance, and how that led to my conclusion that one of the poker gang had to be the killer. I then commence the wrap up portion of my account by explaining the justification for our strategy meetings in the desert, and the dinners. By the time I’m finally finished Beth is leaning forward with her elbows on her knees, anxiously absorbing every word spewing from my mouth. If I’ve done nothing else I’ve certainly captured her attention.

  I sit back on the couch, nervously awaiting her reaction to the heartfelt disclosures I’ve laid on her.

  She stands and slowly walks over to me, then plunks herself down in my lap, puts her arms around my neck, and leans her head against my chest. “Why didn’t you tell me all this right from the beginning?” she says in a whispery kind of pouty voice.

  “I didn't want you to think I was crazy,” I mumble.

  “God, I already knew you were crazy,” she says quietly. There are tears in her eyes when she lifts her face. She kisses me with such tenderness I’d sign over my prized picnic ware to her if she so much as hinted she had designs on it.

  18

  “So, you actually think you saw a ghost?” she says, after we’ve cuddled and kissed some more. She doesn’t say it in a malicious way; she is genuinely awed at the prospect.

  “I think I did, yeah.”

  She looks at me funny. “So, even after everything that’s happened, you’re not sure?” she asks.

  “Hell, babe, I’m not really sure of anything anymore. I took a pretty good shot to the old hat rack when the Jeep veered off the road. Maybe I was seeing things.”

  “But you don’t really believe that, do you?”

  I sigh. “Not really, no. But ghosts? Shit, who actually believes there are such things as ghosts?”

  “I’ve always wondered about stuff like that,” she says. “You hear about people all the time who claim to have run ins with them.”

  “Yeah, in the National Enquirer.”

  “I try to keep an open mind about things if I can. Who knows what’s possible?" Suddenly she jumps to her feet. “Maybe you're loopy and maybe you're not. Either way we've got to find out, don't we. If there is a killer out there I want to help you find him,” she says.

  This presents a problem I can't verbalize for Beth. The truth is, of course, that I'm aware of the romantic vibes Deborah has been giving off and I don't want to inflame Beth's ire by letting her get wind of it, even though I have absolutely no intention of reciprocating Deborah's feelings. And the fact is I don't want to lose Deborah as a cohort and sounding board either. Whether I like it or not we have something unexplainable in common here. I feel like I need her if I'm ever going to get to the bottom of all this.

  “How?” I ask, trying not to let my lack of fervour show.

  “I hear all kinds of stuff in that shitty job of mine," she says. "You'd be amazed at the things I've learned while pouring coffee. It's like people think, because you're just a waitress, you haven't yet mastered the language. They'll talk about the most incredibly private things while you're standing right there at their table or at the counter. After a while it's just noise. You tune it out. But, if I made a point of paying more attention from now on, who knows what might come of it?”

  Well, I had after all been thinking that might be a good idea, hadn’t I? “Yeah, I guess,” I say.

  “What’s wrong?” Beth asks, tuning in to my less than passionate enthusiasm over her offer.

  “Nothing. It’s just …”

  “Just what?”

  “Well, I think it might be better if I .... kind of work this out myself.”

  She looks at me like I've just puked on her new fuzzy slippers. “You mean with Deborah.”

  “No … well---”

  “Is it that you think I’m too stupid to help you? Is that it?”

  “Of course not. That’s not what I meant at all.”

  “What did you mean then?”

  I'm obviously digging a big hole for myself here. A cavernous hole. “I meant … oh, hell. I don’t know what I meant. Can we just forget the whole thing?”

  “No,” she says quite reasonably, “we can’t. I’d like to know how you really feel about me.”

  Damn, why can't I just tell the truth? This is getting too complicated. “Look, Beth, I think you already know how I feel about you. You’re a wonderful, kind, affectionate woman and I wouldn’t change anything about you if I could.”

  She puts her finger to her chin and looks upward in an overly exaggerated gesture of thoughtfulness. “So let me see if I’ve got this right,” she says. “ I’m a wonderful, kind, and affectionate woman but just not a woman you want to share what's happening in your life with. Is that pretty well it?”

  “Oh, God. No, Beth, that’s not it at all. Okay, look, that’s a great idea about keeping your eyes and ears open at the diner. I’m just worried about you getting involved in this, that’s all.” Weak, I know, but it's all I can come up with.

  She’s looking at me like she could go either way, but she decides to buy it. "Oh, Lucas, you don't have to worry about me."

  "I know," I say. "I just can't help it." Phony bastard.

  All of a sudden she’s Nancy Drew. “We can start accumulating clues. We’ll gather as much information as we can about each of the suspects and---”

  “Okay, okay, hold on there. Don’t you think the police have already done that?”

  “But they didn’t have any suspects. We do.”

  “You’re going to go along with this, even though we’re talking some pretty crazy shit?”

  “I want to help you. I ... I care about you, Lucas. "

  I can’t argue with Beth’s logic about the fact that we’ve at least got some suspects to consider because it pretty much parallels Deborah’s and my own thinking. And her unselfish declaration about how she feels about me isn't lost on me either.

  “Come here, sweet thing,” I say, holding open my arms.

  She comes to me quicker than a Randy Johnson fastball makes it to home plate. I kiss her lovingly, then sweep her up
in my arms. I carry her into the bedroom and lay her down on the bed, pausing just long enough to kick off my boots before stretching out beside her. She wraps her arms around my neck and pulls me close to her.

  I hope that nosy old geezer upstairs has a strong heart.

  My return home takes place much later than I had anticipated when I left. I crawl into bed, bone-tired but very content, after dislodging Victor. When I scoot him to the floor he sits beside the bed, watching me and panting in my face. I roll over, but he remains in place. I can hear him. Waiting, and hoping. “All right,” I finally relent. “Come on.”

  He leaps back up on the bed, circles twice, and settles in up next to me. I’m thinking, There’s something wrong with this picture, as I drift into oblivion.

  ****

  Cutter’s Grove is feast or famine in the mechanic business. After a spate of turbulent activity, there’s not a single prospect awaiting me the next morning. Sonny mopes in to the shop as I’m sweeping the floor. “Things have dried up a bit,” he says. There’s a profound note of melancholy in his pronouncement.

  He looks so sad I feel like doing something to perk him up. “We could always use the lull to get in some fishing,” I suggest.

  His face lights up like Victor’s at the mention of Cocoa Puffs. “Hell, yeah,” he says. Before the words have left his mouth he’s off to fetch his gear. When he returns he’s got two poles, a small tackle box, two folding chairs, and three cases of beer in his arms.

  “Think you’ve got enough beer there, Sonny?”

  He looks at me anxiously. “Think I should grab another case?” he asks.

  Sadly, he’s serious.

  “Uh, no. I think that’ll do us,” I say.

  Sonny explains that the lake is twenty-eight miles from town, out a narrow, dusty road that has not a single bend in its back. “We’ll take the pickup,” he offers.