Fear the Darkness: A Thriller Page 5

  “I have to hand it to you, it’s hard to walk into a group where you don’t know anyone,” Carlo said. “Shopping?”

  The man looked blank.

  “For a church,” Carlo said.

  He took down the blazing grin and let one corner of his mouth go up in a more self-deprecating smile. “Yeah, I guess you could say I am. Haven’t done this for a long time. I just moved here.”

  “Where from?” I asked.

  “Florida.”

  “Me, too. Broward County area.”

  “Oh, well, they say when you’re south of Orlando you’re in the North again. More diverse. I’m Alachua County,” he said. “An actual cracker.”

  “That’s up near Gainesville,” I told Carlo.

  “I had a restaurant there for years.” His eyes filmed over and he blinked some sadness away, nearly. “I’m sorry, I lost my wife seven and a half months ago, and she was in charge of the manners in the family. Adrian Franklin.”

  Carlo’s pastoral instinct switched on and he shared his own widowerhood. I already knew about that part, so I left him to it, my glance first lighting on Mallory, who lifted her eyebrows appreciatively. I’d introduce her later if she hadn’t already moved in on him, but for now I slipped what they call “the fellowshipping,” cut the line for the coffee, and looked around for Gemma-Kate.

  The parish hall had tall windows along one wall where you could look out onto the property. From there you saw a labyrinth made out of rocks carefully laid in circles leading to a cross in the center, and further away, to the right, part of another adobe structure, just walls without a roof. I had never gone out there.

  The labyrinth was where I saw her. With the bustle and chatter behind me I stood at the window, sipping my coffee and watching Gemma-Kate walk the labyrinth. She seemed out of place out there, and alone. In a church setting, alone always seems sad.

  “I sent my son out,” said a voice that reminded me of a squirrel, fast and perky.

  I turned to see a woman, on the short side like me, but much younger. “Hi, I’m Ruth. That’s my son, Peter.”

  I turned back to the window and watched Peter Salazar walk out to the labyrinth.

  “I met him. He took Gemma-Kate for a night hike.” I felt a little smug, knowing something she didn’t about the kids. Is that how parents are?

  For her part, Ruth covered up her surprise by changing the subject. “We’ve been coming to the church about three years,” she said. “They have a youth group. I thought Peter should be with more Christian children. There’s the Manwaring boy, over there, Ken.” I turned to look out of politeness and spotted a lumpish and sullen boy who would be the right age and same body type as Elias. Ruth hadn’t taken a breath, “There aren’t too many children, though. They need to bring in more youth. Nice to have a girl here. We have more boys than girls.”

  “I think—”

  “There you go. See, he’s walking the labyrinth with your daughter. I knew she must be your daughter because of the way you watch her. A late-in-life child. Those can be the best. We’ve had some trouble with Peter. But not too bad, considering. The things kids get into these days, I mean.”

  I noted that Ruth did not appear to need me to participate in a conversation, so while she chattered on about the church and Peter and herself and her husband who didn’t attend and wasn’t that too bad but with God’s grace you never knew, I watched Gemma-Kate and Peter walk the labyrinth. Not together; the way the path was laid out had them passing close and then drawing away from each other, passing and drawing away, not looking at one another, like a meditative pas de deux. At this distance I couldn’t even see them speaking.

  “You religious?” Peter asked.

  “No, just bored,” Gemma-Kate answered. “What’s this thing for?”

  “It’s called a labyrinth. It’s stupid. There’s only one way in and out. What’s the good of it?”

  “Maybe it doesn’t want you to have to make choices. Maybe it doesn’t want you to think. There, I got to the center.” She pointed to a white adobe wall across the yard. “What’s that?”

  “I’ll show you. Come on.”

  Mallory came up to say she had to get home to Owen, and spotted Gemma-Kate and Peter. “Isn’t that cute,” she said as Ruth and I turned to her. “No, don’t bother to thank me. Carlo said to tell you he’s ready to go, too.”

  Ruth fastened on to Mallory while my friend tried to disengage from her in the social form of unpeeling Saran Wrap. I helped by asking her to let Carlo know we’d be staying just a little longer. Then, in the hopes that Ruth would stop talking, I pretended to watch the kids out the window, though they had walked away from the labyrinth in the direction of the small white adobe structure and I couldn’t see them anymore.

  Peter said, “This is called a columbarium. See all the marble squares? There’s a person under each one. Ashes, I mean.”

  “I went to the cemetery when they buried my mother, but she was Catholic so Dad didn’t cremate her,” Gemma-Kate said. “I think I’d rather be cremated. Did you know any of the people here?”

  “This one over here. See, Joseph Neilsen. I was here when they put his ashes under that tile. They were in a little metal thing that looked like my dad’s martini shaker.”

  Gemma-Kate did the math. “Fourteen years old. How did he die?”

  “He drowned.”

  “That’s a weird way to go here. You don’t even have any water in the rivers.”

  “He had a pool.”

  “Did he, like, hit his head or something?”

  Peter shrugged but didn’t answer. “Nobody really liked him. He was sort of a jerk. We talked about it a lot at first, but it happened a while ago.”

  “Now I remember,” Gemma-Kate said. “I heard my aunt’s friend talking about it at the house.”

  “What did she say?”

  Gemma-Kate turned at the sound of her name. Her aunt was coming up the path but hadn’t reached the wall yet, was waving to her. She waved back and told Peter she had to go.

  On the drive home Gemma-Kate sat in the backseat, texting.

  “Who you on with, GK? Peter already?”

  “It’s Dad.”

  “Tell him I said hi. I’ll call him.”

  Nine

  Early that week Carlo took Gemma-Kate for a tour of the University of Arizona, where he introduced her to the head of the Biology Department and they toured the labs. This was heady stuff for Gemma-Kate, who had only had access to what she could learn from books and the Internet. On return they walked in through the garage door singing Gilbert and Sullivan, but knowing I’m uncomfortable with music, Carlo shushed Gemma-Kate before the door closed.

  Over lunch Gemma-Kate told me about the day while Carlo watched her, beaming with the delight a teacher has in discovering the one student who gets it.

  “I saw a fly wing under an electron microscope. And I listened to Uncle Father talk with the Biology Department chair, Dr. Brogdon. They’re going to give a series of joint lectures on science and religion. Did you know that ancient philosophy began with questions about the physical world instead of the spiritual world, Aunt Brigid? The word ‘atom’ was originally coined by pre-Socratic philosophers.”

  I nodded as if everybody knew that, more distracted by how Gemma-Kate might have ended up with “Uncle Father.” It sounded vaguely like something from South Park.

  * * *

  In the late afternoon that same day, Carlo and I got dressed up and gave Gemma-Kate directions for the Pugs, which amounted to just letting them out in the backyard if they asked. She asked if Peter could come over and looked sullen when I said I wasn’t comfortable with that just yet, but she didn’t argue. Then we drove the relatively short distance down Oracle to the Hilton El Conquistador for Puttin’ On the Dog, benefiting the Arizona Humane Society.

  My impression for the first couple of years I’d lived here was that Tucson was where strip malls came to die. Mallory set me straight on that. “It’s not Manhattan,�
�� she would say, “but it’s not Green Acres, either.”

  Now, my career put me often enough in the path of the rich that I could appreciate the taste of Montrachet, the texture of Thai raw silk, the kick of superior cocaine, and the value of a de Kooning, but I don’t envy rich people. I’m just glad I’m alive.

  I mean that literally. When you’ve been shot at, gotten stabbed in the spleen with a nail file, fallen off a horse, gotten rabies vaccine after being bitten by a rabid Rottweiler, and offered yourself as bait to a sexual serial killer, that’s not an idle cliché. I really am glad I’m still alive.

  I paused at the entrance to the gathering, just past an arching trellis covered with fake ivy. Staying alive had always been a matter of staying aware. Aware even now, I thought about how the only wire I was wearing was an underwire, and I was not carrying. I looked around to see if I could figure out who was. It wasn’t like I was expecting a bloodbath or anything. It’s just that public gatherings like this make me a little tense. They’re so uncontrolled, so many strangers, so many unknowns. And I was all too aware of what could happen. So I scoped out the place, did a quick threat assessment.

  Among the older guests, some beaded tops, some silk, maybe a dozen tuxedos, none with bulges in either of the places a man hides something. Among the younger, a preponderance of black linen, dress shirts, no ties. I felt just right in a sleeveless navy blue maxi dress and lime green drape, which would provide a little warmth when the late afternoon sun lost its heat.

  Most people stood holding champagne flutes and small plates, while the round tables covered with white cloths that puddled on the ground were largely left alone. The rule at one of these things is, if you sit down you’re a loser, the opposite of musical chairs. Local restaurants had tents, and the smells of garlic, sweet and sour sauce, and curry competed for attention. A small combo played cool jazz, which is to say the kind without a tune that you couldn’t hum if you tried. A waiter wearing a tux and a papier-mâché hound’s head passed perilously close with a silver tray holding champagne goblets. You could tell he couldn’t see very well.

  “They don’t even know how to be pretentious,” I said to Carlo.

  “Don’t be a snob,” he said. “You have to allow Tucson its pretensions. It doesn’t have that many.”

  I estimated three hundred people, three fifty tops, not counting the animals, which were mostly dogs except for a miniature pink pig on a leash of the same color.

  That man over there, khaki shorts and sandals at a formal affair. Is it because this is Tucson and anything goes, or does he clearly not belong? He’s standing alone, looking isolated. Is he nervous?

  I felt unexpected fingers around the back of my neck, a little tug. The nerve sparked, and I jumped a little, my muscles galvanized for action.

  “Sorry to startle you,” Carlo said, “but stop working, O’Hari.”

  Carlos knows me almost better than anyone ever has. Sometimes it feels like he knows things about me I don’t even know, as if I’ve unzipped my skin. It’s not a totally unpleasing sensation.

  Partly because of this, and partly because I had been slowly sharing more and more about my past lately, he knew that I had been instinctively doing a threat assessment at the entryway to a fund-raiser. And him calling me O’Hari, an Irish version of Mata Hari, always stopped me from taking myself too seriously.

  I spotted Mallory, who hadn’t spotted us. Her sights were on the man we had met at St. Martin’s, the one with the ponytail, which was now at interesting odds with his smart blazer and dress slacks. She laughed at something he said, and even from a distance I could almost see her blush. Then she stumbled on the uneven ground and he gripped her arm to steady her, bringing her closer. Good tactic, I thought. Mallory was in rare form tonight. I dropped my guard.

  Mallory saw me next, said something I assumed was dismissive to the man, and met Carlo and me halfway. She moved confidently in a prairie skirt, white blouse unbuttoned to there and no further, and a low-slung southwestern belt that hid her lack of waist. I marveled that an outfit like that could still look like it came from Ralph Lauren.

  I nodded in the direction of Ponytail Man and said, “I take it you’ve met Adrian Franklin.”

  “Just now. He said he remembered seeing me at church,” she said, with a Mae West roll of her eyes. But she had more critical things on her mind than her casual flirting. She put one arm around me and one around Carlo, kissing the cheek on either side of hers. But she didn’t draw away immediately, and I thought I knew her well enough to see when she was upset and putting on a show. I didn’t have to wait long for the reason.

  “I’m so relieved you’re here,” she whispered before finishing the hug and pulling back, her voice breathy with tension. “I’ve made a horrid mistake, and I need you to save me from myself.” She cocked her head back at the table behind her. “Don’t stare, but you see the couple sitting with the Manwarings? Those are the Neilsens.” Feeling like I was operating undercover again, I gave the table a quick glance.

  On one side slumped Father Manwaring, looking defeated, and the woman Mallory had indicated was his wife. Lulu was in white linen, very upright yet fading into the background beside her husband, who wasn’t even trying. I had seen her around the church but had not connected her to Elias.

  Across the table and leaning back, which was as far away as they could get from the Manwarings without falling off their chairs, was an extremely uncomfortable-looking couple Mallory identified as the Neilsens. “I thought it would be a good thing to get us together in neutral territory, make peace,” Mallory said, smiling while only her voice wrung its hands.

  “How was I supposed to know she’s still stark raving?” Anyone else would hear the usual low social chatter. Only I could hear her shouting. “I can’t tell you everything right now because they’ll know we’re talking about them. Come.”

  “I can’t wait,” I said, but let Mallory take my hand, link her other arm through Carlo’s, and guide us to what early indications promised to be a damn bad evening.

  We were introduced around the table. Darlings this is Carlo and Brigid DiForenza you know Father Elias but I don’t know if you’ve met Lulu yet and Tim Neilsen, Dr. Neilsen, and Jacquie.

  While Mallory did the intros, I took a look at the Neilsens. Tim was slight but muscular with a receding hairline that didn’t look so obvious because he was blond and pale, his scalp and hair blending together so you couldn’t be sure which was which. I wondered if his angry mouth looked that way all the time or just when he was trapped with people he didn’t like.

  Jacquie told me more. The sight of her flashed me back to the abused women’s shelter. Her dress drooped to reveal the top edge of her bra, something that a woman usually cares enough to avoid. Her teeth looked a little filmy as if she hadn’t bothered to brush them for the evening, or maybe since the day before. Her hair was dyed blue-black. Odd that someone so uncaring about looks and personal hygiene would touch up her roots.

  My heart went out to her, and then I put it back as I had with the lost woman at the shelter. I had known too many people who had lost loved ones, including myself, and I didn’t think I could take any more of someone else’s pain. Just not right this minute.

  Mallory fled on the pretext of getting us wine, and Carlo and I were left to take seats pinning us between the quiet Manwarings and the wary Neilsens.

  Carlo and I tried the usual prepackaged topics, which were met with a few murmurs before silence resumed. I was making plans to later bitch-slap Mallory for abandoning us to this group when Carlo opened with the usual How Long Have You Lived in Tucson gambit.

  This worked a little better by enabling Carlo to speak to the Neilsens apart from the Manwarings without appearing rude. Tim talked about how Jacquie had grown up here but that he had moved to Tucson to join a medical practice, where he met his future bride. Here he picked up her hand and kissed it. I noticed her hand did not respond to the kiss, but she did murmur little agreeing sounds, ah and m
m, that played behind his words like backup in a singing group.

  Carlo mentioned we had our niece staying with us and that she might be interested in medical school. That was a lie of sorts, and I admired it. Tim said he knew some people and gave Carlo his card. I glanced and saw the “Internal Medicine” under his name. Then I remembered Mallory had said something about him being her husband’s physician.

  “What do you do?” Tim asked, the only other standard question that hadn’t been asked.

  “I’m retired from the U of A, philosophy,” Carlo said. “Brigid here, she’s the one with the interesting profession.”

  I hate when he does that. “It’s only interesting to Carlo. I used to be in federal law enforcement. Copyright infringement investigations.”

  They would have nodded blandly and moved on, but Carlo wouldn’t drop it. “Brigid is being modest. She was a special agent for the FBI. She foiled evildoers.” That widened eyes around the table. “Now she does private investigations.”

  “Private…” was the first word Jacquie had uttered since we sat down. She fixed me with one of those stares, eyes all out on you while mind all inward. As if she wasn’t aware of our attention to her, Jacquie picked up her evening bag from her lap, took out a pen, and wrote something on the back of Tim’s business card that lay on the table between us. Tim scowled as he watched her but apparently could not object.

  Then she stood up and leaned over the table, bracing herself on her hands. Her hands were flat on the table. Tim put one of his over hers but she didn’t relax them, didn’t invite his fingers to curl around hers. She smiled a too-wide smile. “How are your children, Lulu?” Jacquie asked, the lack of a conversational segue apparent to us all, which, if her voice hadn’t been so strident and her grin so wide, would still have made her sound a little crazy.

  Lulu murmured that her children were doing well, thank you. The “well” came out as whispered regret.

  “Amanda still in school?” Jacquie said it with a glare, as if she was accusing Amanda of torturing small animals.