Scot on the Rocks Read online

  ‘Just because Bran didn’t insist on you going home when he found out you were here,’ I began.

  ‘Didn’t insist?’ said Blaike. ‘He couldn’t have cared less. So. Can I stay?’

  ‘Tidy up the living room and I’ll see what I think in the morning,’ I said. Then I ran away because it was late and I was tired and I needed a shower and – OK, yes – a tiny little bit because I had a text from Doug about dinner.

  ‘Bloody hell, Lexy,’ I said to myself as I was stripping off my gritty clothes and trying not to worry about what all these little tiny rocks would do to my vintage hardwood flooring. I sat down on the toilet, which is where I do all my most important texting.

  I eat dinner every night, was what Doug had texted back to me, so it should be easy.

  That, I reckoned, was a great text. Funny, eager, and no exclamation marks.

  How about tomorrow? I sent. Too soon?

  Then I left the phone balanced on the windowsill, which is the only bit of my titchy bathroom that doesn’t get wet when the shower turns on, and refused to look at it until I was scrubbed, rinsed, shaved here and there (sue me; it had been a long time since I’d been this close to an actual encounter), dried and moisturized. I worked vanilla body salve into my elephant-hide elbows and kneecaps – my heels were beyond redemption and I didn’t want to slip, so I left them, planning an emergency pedicure in the morning.

  When I was clean and soft, wrapped in a towel and turban, I picked up the phone again.

  Dinner tomorrow is not too soon, Doug had texted me. Lunch would be even better. Breakfast looks pushy.

  Dinner at six, I texted back. Japanese? Like Dorodango. I’ve been studying! Gah, I hated myself for that exclamation mark.

  LOVE Japanese food. It’s so starchy. Interested you studied. What think organic doro? Still OK?

  Organic anything was OK, I thought. This was California.

  Of course, I texted.

  Thrilled you didn’t freak, he sent me.

  I read that seven times and was still wondering what to say back when the three dots started up.

  Some people do not understand org doro.

  Or opera, I texted. Or ballet. Imagine what Damien Hirst got before he was famous.

  Phew! he sent me. Oh well, we were even. Glad think not cultural approximation. He must mean appropriation. I was now officially out of my depth. With the owner/manager of a toilet-rental company.

  LOVE DAMIEN HIRST, he shouted at me for some reason, probably because our texts had crossed. The three dots started their dance again. Andres Serrano. I couldn’t google artists and type text messages at the same time. I waited. Gilbert and George.

  Them I had heard of vaguely, and not because their calendars would do for your granny. So I clicked away from my phone and looked up Serrano.

  Then I clicked back and called Doug.

  ‘Hi!’ he said, answering after a ring. I heard the exclamation mark, plain as day. ‘I was enjoying our exchange but this is even better.’

  ‘Andres Serrano made a crucifix out of his own wee, right?’ I said. ‘So, organic dorodango would be …?’

  ‘Where are you?’ he said. ‘Did you fall down a well?’

  He was still funny. I wasn’t ready to write him off and walk away. A lot rested on his answer. ‘I’m in my bathroom,’ I said. ‘Sitting on the loo.’

  ‘You’re … on the toilet?’ he said, his voice thick with something I really hoped was disgust.

  ‘Sitting on the closed lid, I mean,’ I said. ‘When you say, “organic dorodango”—’

  ‘I wouldn’t have minded,’ he said. ‘How is your sewage processed on a boat anyway?’

  OK, OK, I told myself. Professional interest, inevitable. ‘Chemical digester,’ I said.

  ‘Aw,’ he said. ‘What a waste.’

  OK, I told myself, but only once. Professional in-joke. Don’t overanalyse it.

  ‘Organic dorodango …?’ I tried again.

  ‘You are a goddess,’ he said. ‘I can’t believe we’ve found each other. But please stop saying it to me or I will swoon.’

  ‘Organic dorodango isn’t dirt balls, is it?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘It’s—’

  ‘DON’T TELL ME!’ Wow, it was loud when you shouted in here. I had never done it before. ‘Doug,’ I went on at a more normal volume, ‘you’re a creep. You’re not an artist. And it is cultural appropriation and, if the waiter in the Japanese restaurant found out, he would spit in your soup, but maybe you’d like that too. I don’t want to see you again and I don’t want you to text me. Now, are you too big a creep to accept that?’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not even surprised. My last girlfriend broke up with me over a skid mark.’

  ‘Stop telling me things!’ I said. Then my conscience kicked in. ‘Although that’s pretty hypocritical. Women leave skiddies in their underpants too.’

  ‘It wasn’t in my und—’ he began, but I managed to hang up the call, leave the bathroom, sliding around a bit on escaped salve, but finding some purchase on tiny Oregon rocks too, march through the living room, ignoring Blaike’s response to my towel and turban, disembark, stamp round to the front of the Last Ditch and up the stairs to Roger and Todd’s room to bang on the door.

  ‘Never, ever, ever set me up on a date ever, ever again,’ I said to Todd, when he answered. ‘Capiche?’

  ‘Capiche!’ said Roger from the bed. ‘Sounds serious.’

  ‘I am now celibate,’ I said. ‘Because I just shaved my legs etc. for a guy who … I can’t even tell you. But it’s over. I’m done. I’ll adopt Blaike, if Brandeee ever turns up and lets me. I’ll get a cat. I’ll open a donkey sanctuary. I’ll join a convent, if there’s a Unitarian Universalist one with decent healthcare. But I am never going on a date again. And it’s all your fault.’

  ‘You shouldn’t shave your etc.,’ Todd said. ‘You’ll get a rash. Let me see if I can find you some tea tree oil. Give her a hug, honey,’ he said to Roger as he disappeared into their bathroom, but it was more than I could bear to accept a condolence hug from a gorgeous, half-naked doctor, who didn’t even look surprised at the state of utter degradation I was in. I reached into their room and pulled the door shut with a satisfying bang.

  Which is when the door of the next room down the balcony opened, and a man put his head round it.

  ‘Don’t you start!’ I said.

  ‘Lexy?’ I took a closer look at him. He did seem familiar, although quite a lot of his face was obscured by an enormous white moustache and a matching thicket of white hair, but I could still see a pair of ice-blue eyes that stirred a recognition. ‘You just said Blaike and Brandee,’ he went on. ‘I heard you.’

  ‘Yeah? So?’

  ‘I’m in town looking for them. And someone said Brandee’s latest husband’s ex was a Scot called Lexy.’

  ‘Someone did, did they?’ I said, running through the many people it might be.

  ‘And here you are. I check in to get some shut-eye on a budget, to start the search in the morning, and here you are.’

  ‘Here I am,’ I said, acutely aware that I was wrapped in a towel. It was one of Todd and Roger’s cast-offs, so it wasn’t skimpy, but it wasn’t clothes. Say what you like about Scotland, but at least it’s too cold to let you cut about in the scud for most of the year. It’s a great saviour of dignity. ‘So, who are you working for? Burt? White Pines? Is Bran spreading his bets?’

  ‘I’m not working for anyone,’ the man said. ‘I just want to find my boy.’

  ‘Your “boy”?’ I said. ‘Who are you?’

  He stepped forward and held out his hand to shake. ‘I’m Len Kowalski.’

  TWENTY-TWO

  In retrospect, I could have picked a different thing to say to Todd and Roger, but I wasn’t in a speech-writing frame of mind. Once I’d pounded on their door and been let back in, I blurted out, ‘I’ve just met a man,’ and then had to wait while they stopped laughing.r />
  ‘That didn’t last long,’ Todd said. ‘Want the tea tree oil?’

  ‘Oh, Lexy,’ said Roger. ‘You do brighten the day.’

  ‘Shut up, both of you,’ I said. ‘I just met a man in the next-door room to this—’

  ‘Handy,’ said Todd.

  ‘Shut it. Who overheard what I said to you, before—’

  ‘So, he knows you’re single,’ said Roger.

  ‘And silky smooth,’ added Todd.

  ‘Will you shut your holes de pie,’ I said, ‘and let me tell you what’s just happened? I met a man – don’t! – next door, who overheard me saying “Blaike” and “Brandeee” and came out to introduce himself. Guess who he is you’ll never guess so I’ll tell you. Lenny Kowalski.’

  And they finally shut up.

  ‘Lenny Kowalski who doesn’t exist, Lenny Kowalski?’ Roger said.

  ‘Which leaves me wondering,’ I said, ‘whether I can make Blaike’s day by taking his miracle dad round to the boat and reuniting them. Or if maybe another ex-husband coming out of the woodwork when Brandeee has disappeared means that we’ve got a prime suspect for her abduction and I should call Mike. And I truly don’t know which.’

  ‘It would be kinda reckless to hang around town after you’d got away with killing or even just kidnapping someone, wouldn’t it?’ Roger said. ‘If you’re on the “non-existent” tariff, that’s not something to give up easily.’

  ‘He’s looking for his son,’ I said. ‘He told me straight out, in as many words. What will I do?’

  At the knock on the door, all three of us jumped.

  ‘Quick, open it!’ I said. ‘It might be Blaike. We shouldn’t let that guy see him.’

  ‘It’s not Blaike,’ came Lenny Kowalski’s voice through the door. ‘I thought I should join the conversation.’

  Todd opened up.

  ‘These walls are not thick,’ Kowalski said. ‘And I have a stethoscope. Sorry.’

  ‘You do?’ said Roger, while slipping discreetly out from under the covers and putting a robe on. ‘You a doctor?’

  ‘Oncologist,’ said Kowalski. ‘You?’

  ‘Paediatrician,’ said Roger.

  ‘First equal. Put your antlers way,’ said Todd. ‘Doctors are the pits.’

  ‘He’s an anaesthetist,’ I said. ‘I’m a marriage and family therapist.’

  ‘By day,’ said Todd. ‘But, by night – oh, by night, Dr Kowalski! – we run an investigation agency along with a third partner, and one of our current cases is to find your ex-wife, Brandee Lancer, who has gone missing.’

  ‘So I believe,’ said Kowalski. ‘As has my son. Or, at least, I thought so.’ He gave me a hard stare.

  I gave him one right back. ‘As had you too,’ I said. ‘For years and years and years. What the hell happened for … how long has it been?’

  ‘Sixteen years,’ said Kowalski.

  ‘So what the hell happened?’ I said again.

  ‘I just told you,’ said Kowalski. ‘Sixteen years. In Folsom.’

  ‘What for?’ said Roger. He had squared up, just ever so slightly, and tightened the belt of his robe.

  ‘Kidnap,’ said Kowalski.

  Todd and Roger both gasped.

  ‘That’s one hell of a dry sense of humour you’ve got there,’ I said.

  Kowalski let go the laugh he’d been holding in. ‘No flies on you,’ he said. ‘Nah, I’ve been in Hawaii. Brandee persuaded me a clean break was the best idea. She already had the new guy lined up, and he loved kids, and what can I tell you …? There goes Dad of the Year award.’

  ‘Brandeee persuaded you to walk away from your kid and never see him again?’

  ‘She’s very persuasive,’ said Kowalski. ‘Her nickname at college was Svengalice.’ He drew a hefty sigh. I was sure I saw the ends of his big white moustache rippling in the draught from it. ‘I thought that was hilarious when she told me.’

  ‘And what brings you back?’ Roger said. ‘Now, after all these years.’

  ‘I had half a mind,’ Lenny said, ‘when they sent him up to that school. Oh yeah, I kept tabs. But then when he ran away from it and disappeared and I couldn’t get a hold of Brandee, well, I just hopped on the next plane east.’

  I looked at Roger and he looked at Todd and we all looked at Lenny. It wasn’t exactly hard criminological data, but we all agreed: he seemed like a nice guy. He wasn’t even freaked by the three of us staring at him like charmed snakes while we pondered everything.

  ‘What’s going on?’ he said at last, but still pretty easy.

  ‘That is a tough question to answer,’ I told him. ‘But we can start with this: Blaike is here. He’s round the back, on my houseboat. We found him sleeping rough – well, up a tree – and brought him home to take care of him, till we can find out what else is going on. Because—’

  But Lenny had stopped listening. ‘He’s here? He’s right here? Well, what are we waiting for?’

  He was off before I could explain that what we were waiting for was inspiration about how to introduce two people when one had been told the other one didn’t exist and the one that did exist after all didn’t know that. Man, he was fast. And I was barefoot in a bath towel. I managed to keep up with him, but not actually catch up, grab his arm and explain. Roger and Todd could both have overtaken me, but the path round the motel through the bushes is narrow and they couldn’t get through. Thankfully, though far from Dad of the Year, he was still a father, and he stopped at the bottom of the porch steps, composed himself and ascended at a measured pace, before throwing my living-room door open and saying, ‘Son, it’s your dad. I’m here to take you away from this bullshit. Shoulda done it years ago.’

  I got to the doorway in time to see Blaike sit up straight and put his feet on the floor – which is pretty much the teenage equivalent of a star-jump-and-fist-pump combo – and say, ‘How did she get hold of you again?’

  ‘What?’ said Len, but he was bursting with a decade and a half of thwarted paternal instinct and he couldn’t wait for the answer. ‘Look at you! Look at the size of you! And you’re the dead spit of my old pops in his army photos! C’mere, son, and let me hug you.’

  ‘How much is she paying you for this?’ Blaike said. ‘Are you a model? Are you an actor?’

  Todd and Roger edged round me. I couldn’t seem to get beyond the door, literally paralysed by the impossibility of unravelling any of this.

  ‘Brandee told him you didn’t exist,’ said Roger, which got the job done.

  Lenny dropped into a chair, wearing an expression that was the pictorial-dictionary definition of gobsmacked. ‘She told you I didn’t exist?’

  ‘Not at first,’ said Blaike. ‘For the first fifteen years, she told me you died in an elk hunt and left me a trust fund. Then, when she had spent all the money she was going to say was in the trust fund and she didn’t have time to re … What’s the word?’

  ‘Amass,’ said Roger.

  ‘Right. She didn’t have time to re-amass it, so she came clean. Well, obviously not. She changed the story and told me you were a sperm donor. Well, not you. Some guy. No trust fund.’

  ‘So what did she spend all the money on?’ said Lenny.

  ‘All what money?’ I chipped in.

  ‘All my money!’ Lenny said. ‘The money I’ve been paying into the fund since the day I left, to kick in on your eighteenth birthday. Why the hell do you think an oncologist came to stay in a shithole like the Last Ditch?’ He blinked and turned to Roger and Todd. ‘Hey, why do you two …?’

  ‘Long story,’ Todd said.

  ‘It would fill a book,’ said Roger. ‘Maybe two.’

  ‘So what did she do with the money?’ said Lenny. ‘And where is she?’

  ‘Right,’ I said. ‘OK. Well, Blaike, I’m glad you’ve got someone here to support you while we tell you this. But, actually, I’m going to leave it to Todd, because I really need to go and get dressed.’

  ‘We’ll wait,’ Todd said. ‘It won’t take you long
, Lexy. I’ve seen your look. Why don’t I make Blaike some cocoa and everyone else a margarita? Unless …?’ He looked at Lenny, who looked at Blaike.

  ‘How about it, kid? Can you handle a margarita, without throwing up on this nice lady’s hardwood floor?’

  ‘I meant, would you rather have cocoa too, Len?’ Todd said.

  I went off to my bedroom, stifling giggles. I’ll never get used to the twenty-one-year-old drinking age or the wide streak of wholesomeness running through America, even California, even my pals.

  It was cocoa all round when I got back to the living room. I had made a bit of an effort, stung by the disdain, choosing a pair of palazzo pants and a draped tunic, with long earrings and a messy bun.

  ‘What took you?’ Todd said, giving me a glance as he handed me a mug. There was no point getting offended though; he didn’t mean it. He just couldn’t look at me and see anything noteworthy. Secretly, I enjoyed knowing that about him without him knowing I knew, because he prided himself on his camp credentials and it would have killed him to know he was such a bad girlfriend, such a guy. Then, I would catch myself enjoying that and shrink a little, wondering if the whole of my life was going to feel like a school trip, with seats to choose on the bus and someone crying.

  I sat down, took a slug of cocoa for courage, looked Blaike straight in the eye and said, ‘We think your mum might have been kidnapped by Nazis.’

  I was ready for anything. I wasn’t ready for nothing.

  ‘And the money went in ransom payments?’ Lenny said, dead calm.

  ‘No, the money went before Mom took off,’ said Blaike, also doing a great impersonation of a millpond. ‘Or … was taken. Seriously? Who gets kidnapped? In real life, I mean.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell us what you know,’ said Lenny. ‘Talk us through it.’

  So I talked them through it. Brandeee telling Blaike his dad didn’t exist, the fire under the eucalyptus tree and the packing off to White Pines. I told them about the 3,000 dollars to PPPerfection for spa days, and Roger found the website and showed them. I told them about the lack of Christmas gifts, and I even remembered the weird Valentine’s Day gifts, even though I had no idea what Elsie—