County Line Page 7

  Pete poured himself coffee and opened the vertical blinds over the sliding glass door. Watery light filtered in across his balcony. “What’s the plan?

  “I think I need to go to Ohio.”

  “Okay. I’ll arrange some time off work.”

  “You’re not coming with me.”

  “Try and stop me.” He turned on his heel and left me alone in his living room before I could argue the point. I heard the shower start, and took the opportunity to slip out. When I returned an hour later with underwear and toiletries, jeans and a couple of t-shirts, all in a black nylon pack, he informed me he’d booked us on a red-eye out of Oakland with a change in Denver. We’d get into Cincinnati about seven the next morning.

  “Pete, I don’t need a goddamn sidekick.”

  “You’re not the only one who cares about Ruby Jane.”

  “Moving to fucking Walnut Creek is an odd way of showing it.”

  “What are you complaining about? I’m out of your way, aren’t I?

  “That’s not the point.”

  “I don’t have to justify myself to you. And I don’t need your permission to go to Ohio.”

  I wanted to argue further, but what was the point? Were our positions reversed, I’d insist on coming.

  Pete spent the day on his computer, making his print-outs and offering up obscure data points about Farmersville. Elevation: 879 feet. Population: 937, down by four percent since the 2000 census. Seat of Jackson Township in Montgomery County. Local high school: Valley View—home of the Spartans—halfway between Farmersville and nearby Germantown. One web site revealed there have been five documented ghost sightings in town.

  Around midday, I called Susan. Her tone was that of a disappointed grandmother learning her little cherub has been skipping school. Eldridge and Deffeyes had said little, except they were getting nowhere on Biddy Denlinger; didn’t even know if Biddy was male or female. I could tell she’d joined them in the Skin is out of his mind camp, but she admitted the growing body count raised a question or two. She even admitted to visiting Uncommon Cups for a chat with Marcy. When I told her we were going to Ohio she paused for a long, pregnant moment before suggesting we try to stay out of jail.

  — + —

  We leave I-75 at Franklin, make our way north and west. Urban gives way to rural, though small towns materialize every few miles. Trees alongside the road struggle to stand upright in the heavy air. I stare out the window, mystified by large brick planters shaped like baskets in the broad front yards we pass. The world feels compressed and sleepy to me, from the sluggish Miami River to the clapboard houses and eroding concrete silos along Carlisle Pike. I find myself wondering who lives in a place like this, and I guess I say so out loud without realizing it.

  “The world doesn’t fucking end east of Eighty-Second and south of Powell.”

  “Just saying.”

  “You act like you’ve never seen a barn. Christ, you’re worse than a New Yorker.”

  Maybe it’s me.

  Beyond Germantown, the road dips and climbs through scrubby woodland and open fields, with occasional big houses on giant lots. “Look, Pete. A barn.” We pass the high school and I’m tempted to stop. It’s been on the order of twenty years, I estimate, but someone might remember Ruby Jane, or know if she still has family in the area. But I decide to continue on to Farmersville. A couple of miles later we climb a gentle rise and we’re there.

  “Now what, Detective? Gonna roust us some rubes?”

  Good grief. “How many Whittakers do you have left to call?”

  “About a hundred.”

  “There were only seventy-five to begin with.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So what do we do?”

  “We get some lunch.”

  “It’s not even ten o’clock.”

  “Breakfast then.”

  “That’s your plan? We fly three thousand miles and your big idea is breakfast.”

  “Sooner or later, someone who knows RJ is bound to go out to eat.”

  “If anyone around here even remembers her.”

  “You could have stayed in California.”

  Farmersville is a rubber stamp pastoral village slipping into senescence. Saltbox houses on small lots mix with two-story brick or lap-sided commercial. The sunlight is sharp and metallic, the air earthy. I criss-cross the village at a crawl; the core is roughly six blocks by four, a quiet grid with minimal activity. A couple of guys chat outside U.S. Bank, kids play during recess at the elementary school. Trucks kick up fermented dust as they leave the grain elevators on the west side of town. I find what I’m looking for on Center Street: a bakery and café dripping with folksy charm. If we’re lucky, it’s full of Chatty Cathys with long memories.

  The café is cozy, a little overwarm. There are a few tables, and a glass case filled with baked goods. At one table, a man stirs a corner of toast in a puddle of egg yolk on his plate. At another table, a couple talks over muffins and coffee. In addition to breakfast, the bakery offers wedding cakes, catering, and baking workshops. Pete and I wait at the hostess podium until a young waitress with egg-shaped eyes and a big smile asks us if we’d like a table for two. I turn my head to hide my neck and let Pete confirm. She leads us to a spot in the front window, hands us menus, and offers us coffee while we’re deciding.

  I say yes to coffee and then add, “We’re in town for the day looking for an old friend.”

  “A friend?” Her teeth are like sugar cubes.

  “Do you know a Ruby Jane Whittaker?”

  “No.”

  “How about any Whittakers in the area?”

  The corners of her mouth turn down a little, but she doesn’t hide her teeth. “None that I can think of.”

  “Okay. Thanks.” I turn to my menu.

  “Where you from?”

  “We drove up from Cincinnati.” Nothing to be gained from mentioning the redeye from California.

  “You drove up from Cincinnati?”

  I eye Pete across the table. He deflects by ordering scrambled eggs, bacon, and whole wheat toast. I ask for two eggs over medium and a blueberry muffin from the case. The waitress leaves us to sit in weary silence and contemplate the view out the window.

  A few minutes later, another woman approaches with coffee. “Missy said you’re looking for someone.”

  “Looking for breakfast first.”

  “You came to the right place.”

  She’s tall, six feet and some, with straight hair the color of India ink pulled behind her ears by a stretchy hair band. Her face is shaped like a spear tip, her cheeks sharp, her lips thin. The end of her nose aims east into low earth orbit. I put her in her mid-thirties, which would make her about Ruby Jane’s age.

  “Maybe you can help us out. My name’s Thomas Kadash. This is Pete.” I stick my hand out.

  A crease appears between her plucked eyebrows. “If I can.” She switches the coffee pot to her left hand and shakes. Her fingers are long, her skin cold and dry. She doesn’t offer her name.

  “Do you remember a Ruby Jane Whittaker?”

  Her thin lips tighten for a second. “Doesn’t ring a bell, no.”

  “You sure? It’s been a while. She went to high school here.”

  “When did she graduate?”

  I don’t know, but Pete does. “1990.” Chock full of secret knowledge.

  “That’s when I graduated, but I don’t remember anyone by that name. Why are you looking for her?”

  “It’s a family matter.”

  “Nothing serious, I hope.” She waits, as if she expects me to elaborate. I smile and thank her.

  When she’s gone, Pete catches my eye. “She was lying.”

  “You think?”

  “She knew who we’re looking before she came over. Missy must have told her.”

  “You’re assuming that toothsome dingbat could remember RJ’s name all the way back to the kitchen.”

  “She was probably
flustered by being interrogated by the Elephant Man.”

  “Now you’ve hurt my feelings.”

  “My point is that woman knew what we wanted, but played it cagey. Why?”

  Maybe he’s right. Or maybe it’s guarded, small town curiosity. The Elephant Man and his brooding partner appear out of nowhere to ask questions, it’s bound to raise an eyebrow. As far as I’m concerned, if we get people talking, maybe sooner or later word will get to someone who knows something. In a town of 937, odds are we’ll stumble across them sooner or later.

  - 10 -

  Cold Shoulder

  After we eat, Pete follows me onto the street where I stand for a moment, gasping for air. A woman in a pickup drives by, waves to us as if she knows us. We’re a long way from home, and I feel out of my element in ways I never have before, not even as an MP in Vietnam. Pete is right about me. I do think the world ends at the edge of my usual stomping grounds, Powell to Alberta, Eighty-Second to the river. Even crossing the Willamette into downtown Portland feels like an adventure now. I’ve become a smug homer.

  “Now what, Skin? Is there a plan?”

  Our options are limited. We ought to be working our way through the remaining Whittakers. A long shot, but more likely to yield fruit than asking random strangers if they happen to remember a girl who lived here twenty years ago. Back when I was a cop, I spent countless hours on such cold calls. The prospect now fills me with dread.

  “Skin—?”

  I can feel the tension radiating off Peter like heat off blacktop. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  I don’t answer, head east. Pete hesitates, as if he doesn’t think I’m serious, then trots after me. I’m not moving quickly. Not sure I can move quickly in the heat and dead air, but I’m half a step faster than Pete. We pass a barber shop which also offers tanning, a nondescript white clapboard building on the next corner.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  “Look.” I point to a restaurant across the street. The sign features an odd little drawing of a wizard coyly tilting his head. “We can have pizza for lunch. Do you think it’s any good?”

  “How the hell should I know?”

  “You’re the one who gave me shit about being an elitist urban prick.”

  “So that means I have psychic knowledge of the quality at Village Inn Pizza.”

  “Hard to guess what you haven’t bothered to share with me.”

  “Christ.”

  The next block has Foreman Hardware, a hair and nail salon, the post office. I wonder what gets sold off around here often enough to support the auction company across from the hardware store. As I recall from Pete’s research into the minutiae of southwest Ohio demographics, per capita income is nothing to bust a nut over.

  “Where are we going, Skin?”

  “How did you know Jimmie wasn’t doing well financially?”

  “What?”

  “Ruby Jane never said anything about it. She always talked like he was richer than God.”

  “What’s this about?”

  “It’s time for you to stop holding out on me. So what’s the story with Jimmie?”

  “I don’t know what to tell you.”

  “You hung out with him enough to know where he did his drinking.”

  “So?”

  “So Ruby Jane vanishes, no word to anyone. In her absence, a stranger dies in her apartment. A day later, her brother is killed by a hit-and-run driver. What we know is Jimmie and RJ are tied together financially, but you say he’s on the skids.”

  “You think Jimmie’s death is connected to RJ’s disappearance?”

  “All I know is Jimmie was dodgy with us.” We cross the street, turn left. More brassy sunlight, more bucolic village byway. I can still taste my blueberry muffin on the back of my tongue. “Who’s Biddy Denlinger?”

  “The first time I heard of Biddy Denlinger was when you did.”

  “Tell me about Jimmie.”

  It takes him a moment, but after some huffing and puffing, he spills. “We started getting together after RJ and I broke up. Just shooting the shit over beers and gin-and-tonics. He got laid off around the first of the year, something to do with real estate going sour. He had a little money of his own, but mostly what he had was his interest in Uncommon Cup.”

  “What else did you two talk about?”

  He looks like he’s chewing on the inside of his cheek.

  “You met him. He’s good at talking without saying anything.”

  Jimmie’s not the only one. I continue along, pulling long deep breaths through my nose. A flock of starlings drops out of a maple tree and into the yard we’re passing. They peck at the grass and shit on an accumulation of kids toys in the lawn. A woman steps out onto her porch and bangs on the bottom of a sauce pan with a spoon until the birds scatter.

  “Remember the day Ruby Jane got shot?”

  Pete doesn’t say anything. Of course he remembers.

  “Caught us all by surprise.” I met Peter the first time at the crack of dawn, day after Christmas, when he reported a dead woman in the playground at Irving Park. Susan and I got the call-out. The next day, we followed up on an anonymous tip and found a coat soaked with a second victim’s blood in Peter’s garbage can. Ruby Jane was with him when we brought him in for questioning. Took us another day to realize Pete was being set up by a fucked-all-to-hell psycho who somehow resented him for discovering the dead body in the first place. We weren’t quick enough on the uptake though, because the guy went after Ruby Jane. Almost killed her.

  I got to break the news of her shooting to Pete. Leg and stomach. Nasty. She almost didn’t make it. They’d met the morning before, but somehow the chemical reaction caught, exothermic from the start. Pete blamed himself even though, as I explained at the time, only one person was responsible. The bastard who pulled the trigger.

  We stop outside a small brick and columns building in the middle of a trimmed lawn, a Masonic Temple. Back in Portland, the Masonic Temple on Hawthorne houses a pub and an annual holiday fair.

  “I get it, Skin. You took me to the hospital that day. You covered for me when that piece of shit died in my house—”

  “That’s not—”

  “No. Fuck this. He almost killed Ruby Jane, he almost killed me. But whatever. I appreciate you looking out for me. I always have. But just because you did me a favor a few years ago doesn’t mean I have to put up with your mind games now.”

  “I’m not the one who ran away, Pete.”

  The starlings return, tumbling off the roof of the Masonic Temple in waves. I feel their high-pitched chittering in my teeth. Up the street, the woman with the sauce pan reappears. The birds fly toward her, but as she raises her pan they swoop en masse toward us. I lower my head, flinch as something strikes my shoulder. For a moment I think it’s one of the birds, but then I see Peter’s fingers poking the damp fabric of my t-shirt.

  “Is there a point to this?”

  I sigh. “There was a time a few years ago when you were a hair’s breadth from jail time. A day later, you and I both walked out of Ruby Jane’s shop minutes before that freak walked in and shot her. We both looked at him, for chrissakes. The point is you don’t always see what’s right in front of you.”

  The exasperation plays across his face. “I can’t believe this.” He turns away from me and starts down the street.

  “Pete, where are you going?”

  He doesn’t turn around, but I can hear him anyway. “I’m going to look for Ruby Jane. You can do what you want.”

  I let him go. He won’t get far on foot.

  Neither will I, but I still have the car keys. I retrace our steps to the rental car. Missy is looking at me through a window of the café, the spear-faced woman taking an order. I don’t know how long it will take Pete to cool off, but I figure I have a little while. I decide to visit the school. If nothing else, I might be able to confirm if Ruby Jane ever attended.

  I
don’t need Pete’s Google Maps. Valley View High School is a mile or so back the way we came this morning. The school is a long, two-story brick structure all but without windows. I park in a visitor spot, then run my fingers through my hair. In the rear view mirror, I see a guy who looks like he spent the night on a plane and the day in an atmosphere designed to enlarge every capillary. A few students are coming and going in cars from the student lot at the far end of the building, but no one is nearby. I pull off my sweaty t-shirt and put on a fresh one from my pack. There’s not much I can do about my hair; I didn’t think to buy a comb when I was shopping for clothes.

  In the office, the woman behind the desk manages to smile despite my unkempt appearance. I tell her my name and give her my spiel. She considers for a moment before reaching for her phone.

  “You’ll have to speak with Mister Halstead.”

  Halstead turns out to be the vice principal. Ten years younger than me, mid-forties, but with less hair. His white dress shirt and tie are crisp, his face recently-shaved. My precise opposite.

  “What is this about?”

  I tell him the same thing I told the woman out front, but in addition to my name I add I’m a retired police detective. Halstead strikes me as the kind of guy who’ll respond to a cop.

  He frowns and nods. “And how can I help you?”

  “There’s been a death in the family.”

  “Sorry to hear that.”

  “My problem is I haven’t been able to find Ruby Jane. My hope was I might track down family in the area.”

  “I’m not sure she has family in the area anymore.”

  “You remember her then.”

  “A bit, yes.” He holds up a finger, then turns in his chair. He takes a tall, slender volume from the bottom shelf of the bookcase behind him. A yearbook. He leafs through the pages until he finds what he’s looking for, then offers the book to me.

  The image is small and grainy, but Ruby Jane’s dimples stand out. I think of the snapshot I found in Chase Fairweather’s backpack, reflect on the arc of Ruby Jane over the years. “That’s her.”