The Stars Shine Bright Page 18

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  When I walked into the Quarterchute, the old guys were gathered around the tables, looking like withered cavemen nourishing a dying fire. Birdie and her husband worked behind the counter, preparing for the lunch rush, and she’d clearly ignored Eleanor’s order to cut me off. My BnE sandwiches sat under the heat lamp, waiting there so long the foil was almost too hot to touch. I filled a jumbo cup with ice water, guzzled it on the spot, and refilled with Coca-Cola. Since nobody was at the cash register, I laid my money on the keys and stepped outside.

  The Saturday crowd was packing the grandstands. I stayed by the white rail, eating and watching the light board tick through its greedy numbers. In my five years as an FBI agent, I’d probably had more adrenaline rushes than a cliff jumper, but horse racing had just as much exhilaration. When the gates blew open for the first race, no horse faltered. They pounded the turf for the first turn and a thrill ran down my arms, raising goose bumps. The sheer majestic paradox: animals weighing fifteen hundred pounds, running so fast they seemed to float. They passed the rail where I stood, and the sound of their thundering hooves shook the air, tapping against my chest. They were so close I could see the jockeys, perched on a half-inch bar of metal, their leg muscles straining beneath the white jodhpurs. I leaned forward to watch the final stretch. KichaKoo was chasing Loosey Goosey, her beautiful brown neck stretched so far forward she looked like she was biting the air. But a third horse suddenly pulled ahead. It was copper-colored and despite a lopsided gait, it caught the leaders in the last twenty lengths. Loosey Goosey’s jockey turned his head twice, surprised. I glanced at the light board.

  Mr. Tea. Another long shot.

  My wager for Loosey Goosey was gone. I lifted my hand, shielding the sun to watch the horses loping down the backstretch, cooling down. Loosey Goosey’s jockey patted her neck, consoling her, and I wondered if he was one of Tony’s jockeys. Was that why Claire Manchester was in the van? Did the jockey agree to hold back the horse? But the animal’s stride did look thick, almost leaden. I searched for KichaKoo. She was yanking her head over her shoulder, as if giving the jockey a piece of her mind. Her fade in the final stretch might’ve been from simple fatigue, with the mud’s selenium affecting her system. Or because this jockey was another of Tony’s crew, holding her back as well.

  I crumpled the foil from my sandwich. An ebullient Mr. Tea was prancing his way to the winner’s circle, throwing back his head and shaking his golden mane. The jockey tipped forward in his saddle and spoke into the horse’s pricked ears.

  Walking down the backstretch, I passed Birdie’s handwritten sign on the birch tree. Today’s translation was La Ayuda = Help. A convoy of horse trailers was parked outside the third barn. Men were leading Sal Gag’s horses into the containers. The horse’s hooves knocked on the metal ramps, hollow and somber, while the mobster-bookie watched with a grim expression. His dark eyes kept shifting toward Ashley. She was once again trying to control Cuppa Joe.

  “C’mon, baby,” she pleaded.

  His black coat glistened over flank muscles coiled with fear. The whites of his eyes were visible, like Solo’s the night of the fire. An animal verging on panic. But Ashley stepped in front and pulled on his bridle, trying to lead him up the ramp. The horse balked and pulled back, dragging her down. She scrambled to her feet.

  Sal Gagliardo watched them. His dark eyebrows had quirked upward in a questioning expression that also looked sad. I chalked it up to the scared animal. That kind of fear could pierce even the meanest heart. When the mobster glanced at me, running his eyes from my head to my new shoes, I smiled. Ever-helpful Raleigh David.

  “Anything I can do?”

  “You got your own problems,” he said.

  I waited a moment, trying to hold the smile. “Pardon?”

  “I heard something’s wrong with your mud.”

  Way to go, Eleanor. She wasn’t one for the subtle approach. But I tried to sound surprised. “What about our mud?”

  “Yuck just confiscated it. Came over, asked if we used any of it.”

  “Really?”

  “Hey, Ashley.” He waved the unlit cigar. “Be careful, would ya?”

  Cuppa Joe had lowered his head, like a ram about to charge, but Ashley refused to get out of his way. Whispering under her breath, she parried his thrusts like a fencer. A violent dance, hypnotic to watch.

  She said, “I won’t let them hurt you. You know I won’t.”

  Sal Gag sighed. “Strunze.”

  He shoved the cigar in his mouth and walked toward Ashley, stopping short of the horse. Cuppa Joe raised his head and gazed down his nose at his owner.

  Ashley said, “There are too many trailers. He doesn’t want to leave.”

  “Really. You coulda fooled me.”

  “He told me he doesn’t like trailers.”

  “He told you? What’re you, the Psychic Hotline?”

  She grabbed the sleeve of his dark suit. “Please don’t make him get in there. He’s not ready. Please, please?”

  I’d never seen lard melt, but it probably looked a lot like this. Sal Gag’s beefy shoulders slumped and the big head fell forward until his chin nearly touched his black shirt with its silver tie. “Ashley, honey.”

  I heard no sarcasm. No edge in his gravelly voice.

  He spoke tenderly, as if talking to a weak child. “The horse don’t got a choice. Yuck closed us down. He’s got to go.”

  “One more day.” Her fingers squeezed into his arm. “Just one more day, two at the most. Let him calm down. He knows something we don’t.”

  “He knows you’re gonna treat him like a baby!”

  He said it with disgust. She stared at him, blue eyes watering, chin quivering.

  “Aw, no.” He made a low guttural sound. “Don’t do that to me.”

  Her first sob came as a gasp.

  “Ashley, don’t cry.” He was pleading now. “You know I can’t take it when you cry.”

  But she cried. She cried like a little girl lost at the mall.

  He threw his hands into the air. “All right! We’ll try tomorrow. Satisfied?”

  She hugged the horse first, grabbing his black neck. Cuppa Joe looked like he knew he’d won the standoff. He blew air into her pale hair, no longer balking. Then Ashley turned to the mobster, throwing her arms around his neck too.

  “Cuppa Joe says thank you.”

  Sal Gag patted her back, awkwardly, with the cigar braced between his fingers. “Nothing else, you can call the Psychic Hotline, ask ’em for a job.”

  She pulled back. Her eyes were wet but she was smiling. A perfect smile, teeth as straight as a Colgate commercial.

  “I love you, Uncle Sal.”

  He waved the cigar. “Get outta here.”

  And my one thought was: Uncle Sal?

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  But there wasn’t time to figure out the family bond between Ashley and Sal Gag: I had a plane to meet.

  Heading south on I-5, I pulled into Sea-Tac Airport’s “cell phone parking lot.” It was a concrete pad that faced some freight terminals, and I found a spot between a silver BMW convertible and a dark green Suburban. In the SUV, children were jumping on the backseat while a pretty blond woman behind the wheel talked on her phone. The solitary man in the Beemer stared straight ahead, stiff as a crash-test dummy.

  Turning off the engine, I leaned into my rearview mirror and pretended to put on lip gloss, while making sure there was no black Cadillac following me. But suddenly my mother stared back at me, the memory of how she always checked her lipstick in a compact mirror when we picked up my dad. She wanted to look perfect. The first time she did it was in the Richmond airport. I was seven years old, and until then my idea of long-distance travel had revolved around the Greyhound bus station. Each December we boarded a musty motor coach in Richmond and rode for hours to a remote part of North Carolina to visit my grandmother. The trips always felt long and sad, partly because my grandmother wasn’t a kind
person, and partly because of the bus itself. The cloth seats smelled like other people’s beds, and when we arrived at the North Carolina station, nobody was ever there to greet us. On the trip my mother kept her Bible open while my sister, Helen, sketched pictures. I stared out the filmed window, taking in the winter’s bleak and deciduous landscape.

  But when my mom married David Harmon, our lives changed completely. For one thing, we never rode the bus again. Instead, we went to the airport. And my mom started checking her makeup. The first time he left it was for some kind of judges’ meeting in Boston. He was gone three days, and I remember thinking that his time was spent walking around Boston in his black robe, carrying his gavel. On the fourth day, my mother drove us to Byrd Airport. We stood with a crowd of strangers, everyone staring at a door marked with one letter and one number.

  When the door finally opened, the crowd pressed forward. The plane’s passengers streamed out single file, most of them looking slightly lost. They searched the crowd for familiar faces, until somebody would rush forward, calling out their name. Then hugs. Back slaps. Tears of joy.

  My dad was among the last passengers out of the plane. When my mother saw him, she ran forward as though pulled by magnets, and he dropped his briefcase, right there, catching her in his arms and planting a luxurious kiss on her painted lips. When I came up beside them, I heard him humming. A husband harmonizing with his wife. Tuning in to her particular melody.

  It was nothing like the Greyhound station.

  My sister, Helen, said waiting at the airport gate was “tedious”—a pretentious word for a ten-year-old, foreshadowing of the woman to come—but I leaped at every chance to go. I couldn’t have articulated it then, but there was something about standing with all those people. Everyone breathless with anticipation. So very eager to see someone they loved come through that door. And then the person arriving from long distance, through the narrow gate, and hearing their name called out. Coming home. Tears of joy. Celebration.

  Only later did I realize what it was: a hint of heaven.

  But nobody waited at the gate these days. Not since nineteen Muslims followed Muhammad’s dictates to the letter and murdered more than three thousand “infidels,” flying our own airplanes into our own skyscrapers. The religious fascists robbed families of spouses, parents, grandparents, children, generations to come. And they turned our airports into charmless bus stations.

  No more heaven, and too much earth.

  But that was always part of evil’s strategy. Take away the reminders. Help us forget. Remove every indication that a homecoming waited on the other side, that people were pressing forward and we should be straining to hear the ultimate prize—our name called out upon arrival. Homecoming. Tears of joy. Celebration.

  Evil wanted us to forget that.

  And so I waited in the drearily named “cell phone parking lot” and tried to decide how DeMott could call me when he didn’t carry a cell phone. He’d have to find a pay phone after landing, and the complication sent a niggling annoyance into my neck. To avoid thinking about how much his arcane lifestyle bothered me, I applied another coat of lip gloss. And when my phone rang, I was still holding the gloss and my index finger was sticky, so I slid my pinkie across the screen.

  I said, “Your timing is perfect.”

  “That’s because I’m perfect.”

  I cringed. Jack.

  He asked, “How was the lie detector test?”

  I glanced over at the Beemer. The driver held a cell phone to his ear, his elbow bent like a mannequin. Over on the right, the Suburban’s kids were pounding on the windows and the woman behind the steering wheel had laid her face in her hands.

  “Hang on a sec.” I climbed out of the Ghost and walked across the lot, to where it overlooked the air freight terminals. A dozen brown UPS trucks lined up outside a corrugated steel building while cargo planes painted the same brown color waited on the other side, ready for takeoff. I turned a slow circle, scanning the parking lot. No black Caddy.

  “Harmon?”

  “The polygraph was ruled inconclusive.”

  “Thank me later.”

  “For what?”

  “Those exciting thoughts. I know that’s what did it.”

  I hated lying. I really hated it. But no way this side of heaven would Jack Stephanson hear that he crossed my mind while I stared at that sunset-in-the-mountains poster. Especially when my fiancé was arriving in—I glanced at my watch—six minutes. My heart valves seemed to clutch at each other. I took a deep breath, trying to relax.

  “The test came back Deception Indicated. The arson investigator is now convinced I had something to do with that fire. You want me to thank you for that?”

  “Speaking of deception,” he said, “Dr. Freud called. He says you tried to skip today’s appointment. He wanted OPR to know.”

  A jet came roaring down the runway. I covered my open ear and watched the thing lift off the tarmac. The tail wing had an Eskimo on it, Alaska Airlines.

  “Harmon?”

  I could barely hear him over the noise. “What?”

  “Where are you?”

  I watched the small wheels folding into the plane’s underbelly, while another plane came in for a landing on the next strip. The reverse thrust roar rattled the air, raising the hair on my arms.

  “Harmon.” He paused. “Are you at the airport?”

  Technically, no.

  Technically, I was in the cell phone parking lot next to the airport. And the truly pathetic thing was that my life had become so twisted that I kept finding new ways to justify every lie. This time I decided to shut up, hoping sins of omission weren’t as serious as sins of commission.

  “Are you all right?” Jack asked.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You sound stressed.”

  I wondered whether I should tell him about the black Cadillac. But what good would that do? It would only add to the things OPR could use against me; they would probably allege it was my fault somebody was tailing the Ghost. “Really. I’m fine.”

  “No, you’re not,” he said. “But I can cheer you up.”

  I closed my eyes. The irony was, I liked Jerk Jack better. It took more effort to dislike Genuine Jack, the guy who kept peeking from behind the Stephanson facade, pretending to care. That Jack showed up on the cruise ship, a lot. But I wasn’t about to get suckered. It was like making friends with a scorpion. Eventually it was going to sting you.

  “I had a little chat with McLeod yesterday,” he was saying. “Seems his wife hauled him to a wine-tasting event. Right there, it’s funny. McLeod, surrounded by Seattle wine snobs. But it gets better. He told me he liked one of the wines. A chardonnay. Because it had a flagrant bouquet.”

  I bit my lip, refusing to give him the satisfaction of laughing. “I need you to call the state lab. See if O’Brien has any updates on the forensics.”

  “Done,” he said. “McLeod also told me the wine expert was a huge suppository of information.”

  I bit down harder. “Ask if they found any clay inside that tube.”

  “Got it. And you will be going to your appointment.”

  “With Freud?”

  “Harmon, you already missed one. The hospital stay was a legitimate excuse. But he says you wouldn’t give a reason why you were canceling tonight. I told him you’d be there.”

  I sighed. He was right. Skipping another appointment would heap more misery on me. “Fine. I’ll go. But not tonight. Tell him three o’clock.”

  “Okay. Good. But don’t let him see you this stressed out.”

  He hung up.

  Much as I hated to admit it, McLeod’s malaprops had cheered me up. It reminded me that the suits in charge of my life were human. But after watching airplanes come and go for another fifteen minutes, the good vibe did its own takeoff. Finally, I called Delta and learned that DeMott’s flight from Atlanta was delayed, dropping my mood even further because he had suggested that I check for delays before driving to th
e airport. And I didn’t. And I knew if he were here right now, we would start arguing about it.

  I closed my eyes and sent up prayers that wove between the jets’ sonic roar. Desperate for help. Vulnerable. I confessed everything, honestly. And when my cell phone rang again, my fingertips felt tingly, numb, falling asleep from the tight clasp of my hands.

  “Hello?”

  “I’m here,” DeMott said.

  Chapter Thirty

  DeMott stood at the curb, looking like he’d landed on Mars. His white oxford shirt was buttoned high and his seersucker jacket was flung over his right shoulder, a finger hooked into the rippled collar. He watched the Seattle types sweeping past in ripped jeans, grungy shirts, and hair that looked liked it hadn’t been combed in years.

  I stopped at the curb, slid the gearshift into neutral, and pulled the emergency brake. When I ran around the long white bonnet, he opened his arms, caught me when I jumped, and spun me around. The memories soared through my mind, running at the speed of smell. This scent of DeMott. Clean laundry, warm skin. Southern sun. And his laughter, it always rumbled inside his chest before coming out to play.

  “Oh, Raleigh, I’ve missed you so much.” He set me down and stepped back. “But you sure look . . . different.”

  I lifted a finger to my lips. “We can talk later.”

  A familiar expression washed over his face, but I was already kneeling on the ground. Inside the plastic dog crate, Madame’s wagging tail pounded at the sides, beating with the rhythm of my heart.

  “Hello, you perfect dog!” I pinched the metal handle and opened the door. The small black dog fired like a cannonball into my arms. I buried my face in her soft fur, but when my hand felt the washboard ribs, my eyes stung. Burning with love and sadness and another memory flashing through my mind. A recent memory. That girl groom, Ashley Trenner, as she nuzzled Cuppa Joe. She loved that horse the way I loved this dog. Lifting my face to DeMott, I saw him smiling. The blue eyes sparkled, that birefringent blue that split light and made fire. Gemstone eyes. Some kind of knife scored across my chest.