“Bring it on, son,” he said, returning to his seat across from me at the table. (The epithet did not slip by me unnoticed.)
“I want to put your investigative skills to the test. I need you to locate a woman named Althea Coulter for me. All I know is she used to live in Frostburg and she’s most likely licensed as a grade school teacher.” I thought about how Nancy had referred to the woman, then added, “There’s a good chance she might already be dead, though.”
“Can I ask who this Althea Coulter is?”
“For a brief time, Elijah Dentman was home-schooled when he lived in my house. According to the Steins, Althea Coulter was his teacher. I want to talk to her.”
“Alive or dead,” Earl promised, “I’ll find her.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Honest writing, much like honest people, comes without wanting anything in return. I found myself on an exploration of characters—characters that begot story; story that begot emotion—traversing through Edenic pastures and Elysian fields where dead boys frolicked in barefooted bliss on the dew-showered plains, and terminal skies reflected the roiling slate seas instead of the other way around.
I was out back chopping firewood when Adam came over. I heard his boots crunching through the crust of snow before I actually saw him emerge from the trees.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.” I went on chopping. The goddamn furnace was still uncooperative, so Jodie and I were going through several logs a day in the fireplace. It hadn’t snowed for days, but it was still deathly cold.
“Haven’t seen you in a couple days. I popped in yesterday, but Jodie said you’d gone out somewhere. Some book research or something.”
“Yeah.”
“You ever take any of that stuff to Veronica Dentman? I never heard how it went.”
“I did,” I said, splitting another log.
“And . . . ?”
I rested the axe head in the snow and leaned on the handle. I was out of breath and sweating despite the cold. “I brought her a box. She was . . . standoffish.”
“Understandable. You probably gave her one hell of a shock showing up like that.”
“Then David came home, and he gave me one hell of a shock. He thought I was a cop.”
Adam chewed his lower lip. “Nothing happened, did it?”
“What would happen?”
“Never mind.”
“Did you guys know he has a criminal record?”
Adam looked away from me. His nose was red and one nostril glistened. “Don’t tell me that just came up in conversation with him.”
“No. I found that out on my own.”
“How?”
“That’s not important,” I said, not wanting to get Earl and his elusive sources mixed up in all this. “Did you know?”
“About David’s past? If you’re questioning the PD’s investigative techniques, that’s really none of your business.”
“It’s just a simple question.”
“Of course we knew. We ran a background on him. What do you think, we’re a bunch of Barney Fifes out here, tripping over our shoelaces and shooting ourselves in the foot?”
“Okay,” I said. “That’s all I wanted to know.”
“To know for what?”
“Forget it.” I hefted the axe over my shoulder.
“I happened to talk with Ira Stein yesterday. It’s the reason I came over yesterday looking for you.”
Fuck, I thought, dropping the axe in the snow. I glared at him. “What are you doing, trying to set me up or something? Catch me in a lie? Yeah, I spoke with Ira.”
“He said you’re writing a book about what happened to the Dentmans.”
“That’s not what I told him. He was drunk by the time I left and he’d misunderstood.”
“He said you asked a lot of questions about them. You upset his wife at one point, too.”
“Jesus Christ, she got upset when her husband started talking about her dead dog. I told them I was interested in the history of Westlake. We got sidetracked and started talking about the Dentmans. It was completely incidental.”
“So then it’s not true? You’re not writing a book about the Dentmans?”
I stared at him and counted my heartbeats. When I spoke, I surprised myself with how even and steady my voice sounded. “I don’t have to answer any of your questions. We’re not in one of your fucking interrogation rooms.”
“Fine. You don’t have to answer shit. But let me give you a little brotherly advice. This is a small town and gossip travels fast. You want to keep yourself out of trouble, you’ll stop poking around.”
“Fucking unbelievable,” I howled. “Now you’re threatening me—”
“I’m not threatening you, asshole. I’m warning you. You’ve got a nice setup out here, and your wife deserves it. Don’t muck it up for her and embarrass her by acting like a fool.”
I blurted out, “I think David Dentman killed his nephew.”
“Is that so?”
“The pieces don’t fit. Things don’t make sense.”
“Really? And what evidence do you have? Aside from some assault charges for which he’d never been prosecuted?”
What was my evidence? The overall weirdness of the whole thing? The fact that David had looked like he wanted to punch me in the throat when he’d come and found me in his home with his mentally disturbed sister? I knew what my gut was telling me, but those gut feelings didn’t translate well into actual facts.
My silence at this point was condemning.
“We deal in facts,” said my brother. “Murderers have motives, innocent people have alibis, and you can’t lock someone up behind bars because pieces don’t fit. Sometimes in real life, things don’t fit. This is real life, not one of your books.”
But what if it is? I thought.
“There was no body,” Adam said. “Those people never got any closure. Leave them alone.”
Still fuming, I kicked my boots off on the front porch and tossed my jacket over the sofa as I entered the house. On the coffee table in front of the sofa, Elijah’s colorful wooden blocks were stacked into a pyramid.
Upstairs, I stood in the doorway to the office. Jodie was hunched over her desk before a display of psychology textbooks and reams of photocopied journal articles. She had one finger looped through the handle of a steaming mug of what smelled like chamomile tea.
“Working hard?” I said.
“Thy feelest the crunch upon thee.”
“Did you set up those blocks on the coffee table downstairs?”
“What blocks?” Her nose was buried in one of her books; she didn’t turn around to look at me.
I chortled. “Come on. The blocks on the coffee table.”
She turned around in her chair. Her face looked plain without makeup, almost puritanical. “I’m trying to work here. What are you getting at?”
“Someone stacked a bunch of toy blocks on the coffee table downstairs.”
“You look different,” Jodie said, her gaze lingering on me a bit too long. She was reading me. I felt nude standing there in the hallway. “Are you okay?”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. You haven’t seemed like yourself for the past few days.”
“Who have I seemed like?” I said, and I couldn’t help but recall the night Jodie had said she’d gone into the bathroom in the middle of the night and it was my reflection staring back at her from the mirror. I was you.
“You know what I mean,” she insisted. “No, I don’t. Tell me.”
Jodie sighed. “Why don’t you go shower and shave, clean yourself up a little bit? You’ll feel better.”