Homicide My Own - Anne Argula [43]
“What if God was one of us…just a slob like one of us…just a stranger on the bus…tryin’ to make his way home…”
I pushed my chair back and hurried outside to the porch. I hoped not to go crazy again. I hoped not to run into the sea. I hoped not to do that ever again. I went to the end of the overhang and cried into my hands like a lost little girl. Odd came out and stood next to me. He put his arm around my jerky shoulders and gave me a hard squeeze. He was a big Swede, six-two, three.
“I miss the tough little broad I used to be,” I said.
“Oh, you were never all that tough,” he said.
“Tougher ‘n this.”
“That song always makes me cry too.”
I managed a chuckle. He was a funny kid, that Swede.
“You shouldn’t have left those two alone,” I said. “She’ll be on her knees under the table.”
“Her mother’s watching her.”
“Yeah, well, she’s been doing a great job so far.”
“I still have to go to Jeannie’s house,” he said.
I nodded. “I have to go with you.”
“You don’t, really. You can stay with the prisoner.”
“Hell, let’s just bring him along.”
“What about the other two?”
“Not our problem. They can eat shit and die.”
“Ah, you’re back.”
Gwen, as it turned out, was content to sit in the cottage but Stacey put up a fight, insisting that she could help with this. She petitioned us up to the car door, where we locked Houser in back and shut her out. She hopped gingerly on bare feet on the gravel as Odd backed the car around, still trying to worm her way along. We left her there.
We passed The Cedar Farm, where they sold siding and decking and other stuff made out of cedar. We saw three, four beater cars parked with For Sale signs on them. We took a left on Early Dawn Street, a right on Pullorbedamned Road, and another left on Sunset Boulevard. Odd seemed to know where he was going, God knows I didn’t. We passed a place that sold top soil and a place that sold gravel, and every place like that we passed was making me homesick. Not for Spokane, for Shenandoah, where they also struggled to survive on dirt and stone, and where I knew the lingo and everyone settled for just one life and the reward that was promised to follow.
Out of nowhere, Odd said, “The house is white,” in a flat voice. ”There is a screened-in porch. With an iron glider and a thick pad on it. On really hot summer nights you could sleep on that. In the back there’s a deck where you can watch the deer. She always planted a little patch for them.”
“Who?”
“The woman who lives there. It was a deal she made with them, with the deer. Eat out of your own patch and leave our garden alone. It seemed to work.”
Da frick.
“She’ll offer us cocoa,” he said.
“Cocoa? Who drinks cocoa?”
“She’ll be embarrassed that the house isn’t cleaner.”
“I know I always am. Where will the secret notebook be?”
“In Jeannie’s room?”
“You asking me?”
“Unless she burned it.”
“She wouldn’’t do that,” said Houser, who had kept quiet up ‘til then.
“No, I don’t think so either,” I said.
We entered a cedar-lined street of old wood-framed houses, and Odd pulled into a driveway without hesitation. The house was white, as he said it would be. There was a screened-in porch. Odd got out of the car like a sleepwalker. I locked the doors and ordered Houser to sit tight.
Inside the house, the lights were on. We opened the screen door to the porch. An iron glider was at the far end, as Odd said it would be. He was taking everything in. I rapped smartly on the door. A small dog barked. In a minute a woman cautiously opened the door a crack. Her hair was a rich natural white.
We held out our ID’s and I told her who we were and where we had come from. Her eyes knitted up in confusion. Odd was in some sort of rapture. “Do you think we might talk to you for a little while?” I asked.
“What is it about?” she asked.
“About what happened long ago.”
“About Jeannie? Why would the Spokane police…?
“They wouldn’t,” I said. “It’s us. Odd here, really. Could we come inside? It’s complicated.”
She looked at Odd, and I thought