Elisha's Bones - Don Hoesel [89]
“Do you believe in them, Jack?”
I sigh, my eyes searching the sky. Finally I say, “Hardy’s dead, Gordon.”
“I know that.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
Any answer he might give is forestalled by a coughing fit.
It’s a bad episode; I can hear the man gasping for breath. I am unmoved. We’re all dying. A full minute, maybe two, goes by before he can talk. When he does, he says the only thing that can shake me.
“She’s nine, you know. My granddaughter. Her name’s Sophie.”
I say nothing.
“She’ll be dead soon. Unless—”
“I would have given them to you, Gordon. But then you tried to have me killed.”
I end the call there, not moving for a long time. At some point I hear someone come to the screen door, but whoever it is leaves without saying anything.
Jim leans back in his seat, his hand resting on his belly as if he would undo his belt.
“I don’t eat that well unless there’s company,” he says.
“Then I’m glad I could help.”
“Don’t believe him, Jack,” Meredith laughs. “A waistline like Jim’s doesn’t happen based on the few people who come to visit us.”
Meredith Winfield is a woman with whom I will always be partially in love, and I don’t feel at all guilty about it. Even now, when gray has claimed most of her hair color, when wrinkles have found purchase beneath her eyes and along her forehead, she is one of the most striking women I’ve ever met. She has the type of beauty that’s independent of age—a conglomeration of perfect attributes. She holds doctorates in both philosophy and political science, has a razor-sharp wit, infinite patience, and a pair of eyes that tunnel into infinity. Like Homer’s Helen, Meredith’s eyes could launch a fleet of vessels helmed by desperate men.
Jim scowls at his wife, who smiles back at him as she begins removing the dirty plates from the table. Espy rises to help. Reaching for his pipe with a mottled hand, Jim locates the matches in his shirt pocket with the other and relights its contents. I think about doing the same with my half-spent cigar but let the inclination pass.
“What are you going to do?” Jim asks.
“I’m not sure.” I shrug. “Allow entropy to run its course?”
He doesn’t reply but instead puffs away at the pipe until a haze forms above him and spreads through the dining room. There’s no eye contact. His are focused on some point between here and God, and mine are on the grease spots that stain the tan tablecloth. Without a word, he rights his chair and stands and, with the look of the professor—the look that used to send his students scurrying—he beckons me to follow.
Cutting through the living room, we enter Jim’s office, or rather library, where he heads for his computer. He takes hold of the mouse, moves and clicks, and a search engine pops up. He steps back and gestures toward the machine.
“Know your enemy,” he says.
It takes a while before I realize what he’s talking about, but when understanding strikes, it all makes perfect sense. Jim knows I’m going to keep pursuing this, that there will be another meeting with Victor Manheim. So it makes sense that I learn all I can about the man.
Grinning, I take a seat and get to work. I begin by searching through a large volume of query results using a wide array of keywords. Before I know it, an hour has passed. At some point Espy joins me. Together we go from site to site, document to document, looking for anything that would explain Manheim’s involvement. Birth and death records, newspaper articles, press releases, business acquisitions—his is an impressive, influential family. What I’m not finding, though, is anything I can use against him.
When my eyes start to hurt, I take a break, and Esperanza slides into the driver’s seat. It’s as I start to walk away to peruse Jim’s library, to relax a little, that Espy switches to an image search rather than the standard text. The first page that pops up features a bevy of people I’ve seen when digging through other sites. Victor has many entries; his mug has far too much presence in the cyber world. But he’s in politics, so that is no surprise. Espy clicks to the next