I caught the day’s last plane out of St. Pete.
Florida was dead.
Twenty-seven
The sky looked like it was about to throw down serious snow when I drove over to Leo’s at ten thirty the next morning. The radio weatherman, undoubtedly medicated, was chirping that it was going to be a fine day nonetheless when the quick release terminals gave way and the radio clattered to the floor of the Jeep, silencing the fool. I took that as a good omen and whistled the rest of the way.
Now, below the hem of the red terrycloth robe, behind the storm door, I could see pajama legs that had World War I biplanes on them.
“I’m here to complain that you didn’t put a lock on my door.” I smiled, striving for the same cheer as the medicated weatherman.
“I worked until four in the morning.” Leo rubbed his eyes. “You’re supposed to be in Florida.”
The glass on the door was starting to cloud up from the heat inside, and the biplanes were disappearing into the mist.
“I need coffee and remembrances,” I said.
He pushed the door open. “Jeez,” he said, yawning.
I followed him through the living room. Several folding chairs and little tray tables holding almost empty bowls of pretzels, nuts, and bridge mix were grouped to face the big-screen television.
He turned to put his finger to his lips. “Ma’s still sleeping.”
“Porn again?” I mouthed, gesturing at the semicircle of chairs.
He nodded. “All the ladies have premium cable,” he whispered as we passed his mother’s bedroom door. “Each is supposed to take a turn hosting, but Ma’s got the biggest screen, and with their eyes, at their ages…”
“They’re all widows, right?” I asked in the kitchen.
“All except Mrs. Roshiska. Her husband’s still kicking, but he’s almost ninety. God help that poor bastard when she comes home after watching television here. I have nightmares of her charging him in her walker.” He reached into a cabinet for a can of generic coffee and set it on the counter. “Make java,” he said, heading for the hall.
I measured out four scoops of coffee, added ten cups of water, and switched on the machine.
Ten minutes later, as the coffeemaker belched a last puff, Leo reappeared, this time in jeans and a purple Sesame Street sweatshirt. Both Bert and Ernie, embroidered on the sweatshirt, were wearing tuxedos. There was a message there, but I was too tired to figure it out.
I poured coffee into two of Ma’s scratched porcelain mugs, and we sat at the kitchen table, its top dulled almost opaque from Ma’s relentless scrubbings with wire pads and kitchen cleanser. It had been colorless even back in the day when Leo and I had built model airplanes at that table.
“What did you find out in Florida?” Leo took a sip of the coffee and grimaced. I make weak coffee, especially for the morning, but compensate by drinking too much of it.
“Maris was a shadow down there. She lived in an attic apartment, acquired nothing but a car and a passing friendship with her boss at the restaurant where she waitressed. She moved from her apartment to the restaurant and back to her apartment.”
“Completely safe. Completely anonymous.”
“Somebody followed her down there, somebody who looked like Reynolds. He traced her to the restaurant where she worked. The hostess there thinks it’s why she took off.”
Leo pushed his one hundred and forty pounds out of his chair as if he weighed ten times that and went to the counter. He dumped the pot of coffee I’d just made into the sink.
“You’re sure it was her?” he asked without turning around.
“There were marks on the kitchen table. I made a tracing, checked them against the little rubber feet on the Underwood. They match.”
“Shit.”
“Yes. Did you call Aggert?”
He shook out the grounds basket, put in a new filter, added many scoops, and filled the water reservoir. “He gave me his e-mail address, asked me whether I knew if you found her lockbox. I told him you’d call, and I forwarded the driver’s license photo up to him.”
Leo turned to look out the window, the coffee forgotten.
“OK.”
“Did you call Iowa?” he asked, still looking out the window. There was nothing out there except a wall of bricks. And maybe Maris.
“Today. I’ll tell Patterson I think Reynolds is one of the Kovacs brothers and that he followed Maris down to Florida. He’ll send me photos of the Kovacs brothers. I’ll I.D. the one posing as Reynolds.”
“Progress.”
“Absolutely.”
He flicked on the coffeemaker and came back to sit at the table. For a few minutes he told me about the ancient urns he was authenticating for Sotheby’s. Neither of us was listening, but it passed the time until the new pot of coffee was done.
“What do you remember about… about that August after we graduated?” I asked, after he reached for the pot and filled our cups. Even after all the years, I couldn’t use the right words.
Leo took a sip, studying me over the rim of the mug. “You mean about Maris’s disappearance?”
I nodded.
“Her first disappearance?” he amended.
“Her first disappearance.” I didn’t want to ever say she was dead, either.
“Jeez, Dek, you were there, closer to everything than me.”
“Nobody talked to me. They asked questions, made accusations. Nobody talked to me.”
Leo set down his mug. “There was fear, mostly: ‘Killer Stalks Rivertown.’ I remember my parents talking low, hush-hush, when they thought I couldn’t hear. Rivertown was rough then, sure-hookers, gambling, like now-but there were no murders. Obviously that changed when Maris’s father was killed and she was thought abducted and presumed killed. Ma made me quit McDonald’s the moment she heard, no notice, no nothing. She hustled me downstate to a motel near the college two whole weeks before freshman orientation.”
“And forbade you to talk to me,” I said.
“There was a lot of whispering, Dek. You were seen arguing with Maris the day before she vanished.”
Remembering that still wanted to suck the air out of my lungs. People I didn’t even know suddenly gave me a wide berth on the sidewalks. Even my two aunts wouldn’t look at me directly.
“Besides,” Leo went on, a sly smile lighting his face, “I called you plenty from that motel pay phone. Used up my Playboy money, as I remember.”
“I can’t believe it.”
“That I used up ray Playboy money to talk to you? Me neither.” He put on a frown, still trying for light.
I looked at him across the scuffed old table. “That she never called to tell me she was all right.”
“You’re pissed now, along with being worried.” Since we were kids, there’d been no fooling Leo about much of anything.
I shrugged, the best I could offer up.
“Maybe she really was abducted, Dek, like everybody thought. She could have been kept as a slave or something, and only broke away later. That kind of fear would make anybody want to hide for the rest of their lives.”
I shook my head. “She ran scared from Rivertown, too.”
“I’m not a virgin, Vlodek,” Maris said.
We were sitting on the bank of the Willahock River, in front of my grandfather’s turret. We went there a lot, because it was choked with weeds and thorny bushes and nobody else went there.
Although almost three months had passed, that was the first time she’d spoken of the afternoon in May. Certainly, I’d never brought it up. In the days immediately afterward, I’d come to dread the last bell of the school day. Walking home, I couldn’t even reach for her hand and had begun inventing lies about having to be at the laundry an hour early. I’d been a beast.