Scot on the Rocks Page 5

  ‘She would,’ I said. If she had skipped out on him, she most definitely wouldn’t want the business to lose value before they split it.

  I was still thinking that over as I waited for my first actual client of the day. I hadn’t tried to get much of a settlement out of Bran, here in our sunny community-property state. It didn’t seem fair, since we had only been married ten minutes and I should have known better. But Brandeee, from the few times I had met her, struck me as a very different kind of gal. She had bored me rigid talking about swapping credit cards to get interest-free months and changing insurers to screw out better deals. No way she’d walk away from her own half of a business and her share of Bran’s horrible house. Unless she was the one with the serious wedge. Lord, these were going to be ticklish things to ask. Thank God Todd and Kathi were coming with me.

  And thank God for my morning clients too. At ten o’clock, I had the third hour with a straight-up unemployed loner trying not to sink into depression while he was on a job search. All I had to do was listen to him weigh up the challenge of abandoning his dream career – tree surgeon – against the challenge of another month eating instant noodles and mending his shoes with gaffer tape. At least that’s what I thought, but then he switched it on me.

  ‘What would you do?’ And he didn’t want to hear about positive thinking or affirmative self-talk either. He wanted me to tell him what to do. A lot of people want someone to tell them what to do. And since this guy’s parent-provided mental-health insurance was just about to run out on his twenty-sixth birthday, he wanted me to tell him today.

  ‘I’d do two things,’ I said. ‘Put together a forty-hour week on whatever you can get – Starbucks, Walmart, call centre – while volunteering at the arboretum for another five hours and doing all your job applying in your down time. Red Bull, if you need to keep awake. Tell the people you’re applying to that you’re self-supporting and you’re proud of it. And take the first job you get offered, no matter where it is. Even Alaska.’

  ‘How will I get there?’

  ‘Ask them for relocation expenses. Or hitchhike. You’re twenty-five. Soon enough you’ll be needing new knees and wondering why you never see your grandkids.’

  ‘Are you sure you’re a therapist?’ he said.

  ‘Yes, and my ambition is to go out of business because everyone’s OK.’

  ‘Have you ever been depressed yourself?’

  ‘Not yet, thank God and all His angels. It’s scary stuff. So that was all the first thing. I also think you should go and see your doctor and get a ninety-day prescription of something good and strong before your insurance goes pfft. Then hang on to it in case you need it. You can Google dosage and all that. Unless you’ve ever felt suicidal. In which case please don’t get a hundred and eighty pills and hoard them. Have you?’

  ‘Of course I have. Haven’t you?’

  ‘Hasn’t everyone? But you know what I mean.’

  ‘Are you a therapist?’

  I thought about getting insulted but managed to convince myself it was a compliment. He looked a bit chirpier as he left anyway.

  ‘Keep in touch,’ I said. ‘Send me a postcard from Anchorage.’

  My eleven o’clock was a woman in her forties, on her third marriage, who thought she was a crap mother and a lazy friend, and wished she could talk to her parents about how she was feeling before it was too late.

  ‘What would you say?’ I asked her.

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What would you say if you did know?’ I asked her.

  ‘I’d say, “Why did you never tell me I was special or clever or pretty or welcome or precious?” Why did they never tell me they loved me? Or tell me I was safe? Or that they’d always be there? Or that I could tell them anything and they’d believe me?’

  ‘What did you want to tell them?’ I asked her. ‘That they wouldn’t believe?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What would you have told them if you did know?’ I asked her.

  She stared at the floor for a bit. Then she raised her eyes and stared at me.

  ‘Those fuckers!’ I said.

  I didn’t nudge the box of aloe-impregnated tissues towards her when she finally started to cry. Sometimes it’s important to feel the tears run and drop. Sometimes nothing else will do but ropes of snot hanging from your chin.

  She didn’t say much more that hour. She mostly listened to me swearing. But she did promise out loud that she would go to the matinee of Frozen II with a box of cashew brittle before she went home to make the dinner. I told her I was holding her to it, on her honour.

  ‘Your children can eat toast and jam for one night,’ I said.

  ‘I’m supposed to be baking an eggplant,’ she said. ‘I can’t make them suffer for my problems.’

  ‘If your kids would rather eat baked eggplant than toast and jam, they’ve got bigger problems than you anyway,’ I said. And I managed to get a laugh out of her. Not that I compete against myself on that index and keep a tally in their files or anything.

  I hugged her goodbye. ‘You’re great,’ I said. ‘You’re a bloody marvel. I know that doesn’t help. I know you being a marvel means everyone else got lucky. I know you’d rather they were marvellous and you just soaked it up like a lucky sod. But think about how much worse life might feel if you were shit. Eh?’

  She sort of half-laughed again. ‘Sometimes it’s hard to believe you’re a trained clinician.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I told her. ‘Remember that next time, when I start digging. Now go. Cashew brittle! Frozen II!’

  So I was feeling pretty in tune with the universe – OK, smug – as I headed up to La Cucaracha for lunch. I reckoned I’d earned myself some refried beans and cheese. Or a vat of hot soup with hominy and bones floating in it.

  Maybe I was going native at last. I tried to imagine whether I’d call today chilly and be thinking about soup in Dundee, or whether I’d be in a T-shirt and sandals, thinking spring had sprung. I certainly wouldn’t be muffled up in a lined hat, furry gloves and Uggs, like half the Cuento-ites I was passing. I’d definitely swum in the North Sea on colder days when I was a nipper.

  ‘I’ve just worked something out,’ I said to Todd and Kathi as I slid into the booth they had snagged at the restaurant. They were always early everywhere, to check for bugs and dirt without anyone tutting and rolling their eyes. ‘You lot run for the wellies and balaclavas as soon as the weather dips below blistering, just like we’re all in our spaghetti straps as soon as the frost clears. I thought you were wimps but it’s not that at all, is it? It’s just so you can make sure and wear it, since you’ve bought it. In Dundee, if you don’t wear a sundress one day in May when it stops raining, the next dry day might be Christmas Eve, ten below zero.’

  ‘What’s a balaclava?’ said Kathi.

  ‘Would I suit one?’ said Todd.

  ‘It covers your face,’ I told him.

  ‘Oh well no,’ he said. ‘That wouldn’t be fair on everyone else.’

  I reached for the menu, but Todd told me he already ordered, which meant I was going to be lunching on salad. Again. He had inadvertently seen me naked just after New Year – what a shocker, that bursting into a woman’s bedroom might find her déshabillé – and decreed that I had seven pounds to lose before he could face any friend he set me up on a date with.

  Kathi had a jumbo burrito with everything and two baskets of tortilla chips. Woman doesn’t have an ounce of spare flesh on her anywhere. Todd had ceviche and pickled carrot. He’d be necking the Pepto by teatime.

  ‘So,’ I said, when we had been served, ‘as well as the case of the nine-toed bronze giant that we seem to have decided to horn in on, I’ve got some interesting news for you. We have just landed an actual paid investigative gig. Waddaya thinka that?’

  ‘What is it?’ Kathi said.

  ‘A missing person, but what I really meant was, how amazing is that? The last couple of times were accidental, or inadvertent, anyway,
but this is a job. A case. I’ve quoted an hourly rate and a retainer, negotiated expenses. Pretty incredible, eh?’

  Kathi took a gargantuan bite. She was into the middle bit of the burrito now, where you’ve really got to commit to proper mouthfuls if it’s not all going to fall apart. Todd bent low over his plate of ceviche and picked away with his fork like an archeologist brushing dust from the face of a pharaoh.

  ‘What don’t I know?’ I said. ‘What did I miss?’

  ‘No idea,’ said Todd. ‘You’re in charge of how up to date you choose to stay. Not Kathi and me.’

  I ate a couple of bites of salad. It was the really annoying kind where the bits are too big to scoop up on your fork and too thin to be speared. It was more like Whac-A-Mole than eating. ‘So … I’ve not been keeping up to date,’ I said, hoping if I spoke in a threatening voice one of them would crack, ‘and Bran managed to suss out that we might be up for finding a missing person. And you two look as guilty as … I haven’t seen anyone look as shifty as you two today, since … Oh my God!’ I whipped my phone out and punched the shortcut for the Trinity Solutions website. I knew when I’d seen them looking like that before. When they unilaterally upped and joined my counselling practice to their obsessions, they’d looked exactly that way: like butter would sizzle to black in a second in their mouths.

  Trinity for Life, I read off my phone. Trinity for Home. Trinity for You. At least they had eventually put me first, after a lot of bickering. But I was right. There was a new one: Trinity for Trouble: whether it’s a stray cat or a long-lost loved one, Trinity offers affordable, dependable investigations. Try Trinity for Rapid Results!

  ‘Wh—?’ I managed to get out, before the enormity of it winded me.

  ‘After the press we got, it seemed like a no-brainer,’ said Kathi.

  ‘Oh it’s a no-brainer!’ I said. ‘It’s a no licence, no training, no experience no-brainer!’

  The server was instantly at our table, smiling and frowning simultaneously. ‘Everything OK here?’

  I hadn’t realized I was shouting.

  ‘Fine,’ said Todd. ‘This ceviche is like velvet. Tell the chef.’ He turned to me as she walked away. ‘Do you know how you get a licence? Same deal as your state board of shrinks thing. You rack up hours. So, we start counting today.’

  ‘I don’t want to rack up hours as an investigator,’ I said. ‘All my hours are going on the rack I’m already racking them on, Todd. And you’re a doctor! You can’t give up on the idea of going back one of these days. You can’t distract yourself this much.’

  ‘He’s not,’ said Kathi. ‘I am. Unless you think I shouldn’t aspire to get out of the laundromat and do something more with my life?’

  ‘You love that launderette,’ I said. ‘What do you mean, “something more”?’

  Kathi looked at me with a pained expression on her face. ‘Where did you get the idea that I love the laundromat?’ she said. ‘I prefer it to scuzzy bedrooms full of strangers’ toe jam. And I do believe the phthalates in the softener keep my sinuses clear. But “love”?’

  That stopped me dead. Had I been ignoring my friend dying of boredom in a dead-end service job, just because she was stoic and never complained about it? Just because she was such a marked contrast to Noleen, who moaned all day long about everything to do with the motel business, from the city taxes falling due in December to the guest cars with oil leaks messing up her car park.

  ‘I need something new, Lexy,’ Kathi said. ‘Now more than ever. Noleen won’t even consider a family and I need a way to fill the void in my life where a baby will never be.’

  ‘Ohhhhh!’ I said. ‘Riiiiighhht! It’s a wind-up. Well, fuck you for giving me heart failure, you evil bastard.’

  ‘Admit it,’ said Kathi. ‘I got you!’ She took another mammoth bite and grinned through it at me.

  ‘For one second, you got me. Half a second more like. So what’s the real story?’

  ‘If you’re not expanding, you’re falling behind,’ Todd said. ‘First rule of business. I was looking at the city and county business records.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘To monitor closures of counselling, clutter and clothing concerns,’ said Todd. ‘To see if we’re beginning to have a monopolizing effect on our competitors. I’d like to see every other counsellor in Cuento shut up shop and leave town with a duffel bag.’

  ‘Lovely,’ I said. ‘Heart-warming. And are they?’

  ‘No,’ said Todd putting his fork down. ‘It really is just raw sour fish, when you get right down to it, ceviche.’ He pulled Kathi’s second basket of tortilla chips closer and scooped up a blob of cheese that had plopped out of her burrito despite her expert handling.

  ‘Hey!’ she said.

  ‘No sniffles, no stomach troubles, no cold sores, no need to worry,’ he said. ‘Can you squirt some more out? I’m starving.’

  ‘Todd,’ I said. ‘Not to be a fusspot or anything, but what you’ve just said in no way explains why I am now a private detective.’

  ‘It does,’ he said. ‘Because it’s the fastest-growing business category in Beteo County for companies smaller than ten employees, and I didn’t want to miss out when we’ve got such a head start in name recognition and goodwill.’

  I whacked another seven calories’ worth of limp lettuce up on to my fork tines and went wild with it. ‘I’m just glad it wasn’t septic services,’ I said. ‘Or pool cleaning.’

  ‘Or martial-arts centres,’ said Todd. ‘Those doboks look like cotton, but a lot of them are a polyester blend. Can you imagine how sweaty they get?’

  ‘I don’t have to,’ said Kathi. ‘You think those people wash their own? I see them and smell them every day.’

  ‘But,’ I said, just checking, ‘you don’t hate the launderette. You were only messing with me.’

  ‘I love the laundromat,’ Kathi said. ‘It kept us afloat when the motel was struggling. However, when I’m Beteo County’s only master launderess and licensed private dick, I’ll be even happier than I am now.’

  ‘Absolutely no way,’ Todd said. ‘Ten-dollar penalty. Agreed, Lexy?’

  ‘Agreed.’

  ‘Master launderess and licensed gumshoe,’ Kathi said, after a moment’s thought. ‘So … this missing person, Lexy?’

  Todd was still crunching his way through the tortilla chips and he choked himself a little, while gasping. ‘Hang on!’ he said, spluttering and turning streaming eyes on me. ‘Rewind. Did you say “Bran”? Does that mean who I think it means?’

  ‘I’ve said we’ll go there this afternoon and take the details,’ I told them. ‘You two and me, on a trip down memory lane.’

  SIX

  I hadn’t lived in Bran’s Beige Barn for very long, but going back kicked up a complicated storm of emotions all the same. After all, it was the backdrop to the toughest day of my life, when I’d admitted to myself I had turned my entire existence upside down for a man who wasn’t worth a second date and I was now penniless, friendless and thousands of miles from home. On the other hand, it was the first American house I had ever been inside and I could remember with affection how it felt to be that close to one of those cavernous fridges like in the movies, and a garbage disposal in the sink ready to take me off at the elbow, a ceiling fan straight from Tennessee Williams, a top-loader washing machine the size of a Mini Cooper. I had been happy here. More than once.

  ‘Jesus,’ said Todd when we were parked outside. ‘You never told me it was a McMansion.’

  ‘I probably didn’t know the word when I moved out,’ I said. ‘And, after that, it wasn’t relevant. I always called it the Beige Barn. It’s the most ferociously open-plan house that’s ever passed a building inspection – hence “barn”. And everything inside it? If it comes in beige, it’s beige.’

  ‘I believe you,’ Todd said. ‘Are those beige flowers up the sides of the walkway?’

  ‘Probably,’ I said. ‘But have you really never seen it? Have you never idly driven up here to have
a neb at where I used to live? I’m hurt.’

  ‘Why the hell would I do that?’

  ‘Huh,’ I said. ‘You really are a guy. Sometimes – what with you being gayer than a G.I. Joe salt shaker – I forget.’

  ‘Offensive,’ said Todd. ‘But inventive. Back me up here, Kathi. It’s nothing to do with gender.’

  Kathi shrugged. ‘Noleen and I might have done a drive-by to see what you were giving up, Lex,’ she said. ‘We ate fish tacos and put the wrappers in his shrubbery for you.’

  ‘I’ll never understand women,’ Todd said, climbing out of the car. ‘Between this and that midwife show. Space aliens.’

  ‘I love me some nun on a Sunday night,’ said Kathi, following him.

  So I was left alone to steel myself. It’s only a house, I repeated. It’s here every day when you get up and go to bed again. It has no power over you. It’s not magic. But still, as I walked up the path between the billows of flowers that – Todd was right – weren’t quite pink or yellow, but something in between, I couldn’t help remembering floating in a pool of clean blue water instead of in a boat on a slough full of algae, driving my air-conditioned car to my rented office instead of hoping my clients couldn’t smell last night’s curry while they were baring their souls. And I couldn’t forget the moment when Bran said, ‘I need you, Lexy,’ and I had wavered, so briefly and so invisibly, but so undeniably too.

  The door was opening. I stiffened my spine and resolve, ready to show off to my friends with a barrage of subtle trolling and put-downs. But what was this? Bran lurched out on to the doorstep, pure white and shaking. He had a letter in his hand and his other fist was clutched tightly around something too small to see.

  ‘Oh God,’ he said. ‘Oh God. She’s been kidnapped! Someone’s taken her! Look, look!’

  The way he was shaking the piece of paper in our faces was far too familiar for my liking. I shared a panicked glance with Todd and then stepped forward.

  ‘“Agree to our demands or you will never see her again”,’ I read out loud. A look pinged around Todd, Kathi and me.