The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady - Elizabeth Stuckey-French [129]
Trevor burst out laughing, a startling bray. “Marylou Ahearn? Kill someone? That figures.”
“No way!” said Katya.
“Way,” Otis said. “She told us herself, after she’d changed her mind and decided not to do it.”
“At least, we hope she really changed her mind. That’s why we’re a little worried.”
“So how did you know they came here?”
They told Trevor and Katya that Marylou had called them from the road and left a message, explaining that she’d taken Wilson to visit Memphis and not to worry, she’d bring him back soon, etc. Since it was just Suzi and Otis at home with Caroline—Vic and Ava being down at Alligator Point—the three of them decided to go ahead and follow Marylou to Memphis, just to make sure everything was okay.
They knew Marylou had a house in Memphis, so they stopped at Marylou’s Tallahassee house—Suzi knew where there was a hidden key—and looked through some of her bills and letters and papers, hoping to find the address. They found the address, but they also discovered that Nancy Archer wasn’t her real name.
“That’s far out,” Katya said. “Nancy Archer.”
“Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman,” Trevor said. “Worst movie ever made.”
“Oh, Trev,” Katya said. “You would know that.”
There was a lull in the conversation. Caroline knew she should try to call Vic again. She’d left messages for him, telling him what had happened and that she and Suzi and Otis were leaving for Memphis, telling him Marylou’s real name and her address, but as time went on and he didn’t answer or return her calls, she got angry and turned her phone off. Otis never had his on, and Suzi’s battery was dead. She decided she’d check her messages and if he’d called she’d call him back when she was good and ready.
“You’re welcome to stay here and wait for them,” Katya said, unfolding herself from the floor. “Back to work, Trev.”
Caroline felt herself relax a little. Whenever she closed her eyes she saw green interstate signs. So far, it seemed, Wilson and Marylou were okay. And, although she hadn’t let herself acknowledge it yet, she was happy to be back in Memphis. The rain seemed to have stopped. “How about if I go get everyone some barbecue?” Caroline suggested.
“I don’t eat meat,” said Trev, pushing his glasses up on his nose.
“Since when?” Katya asked him, and he shrugged.
“Maybe Suzi and Otis can help you pack your things up,” Caroline suggested.
Trevor’s mouth lifted into a sort-of smile.
* * *
Last December, when she and Ava visited Memphis, she’d gone with Ava to Graceland one afternoon. While Ava pored over the exhibits in the house, Caroline zipped through and settled outside on a concrete bench in the Meditation Gardens, where the tour ended, to wait for Ava.
It was warm for December and flies buzzed here and there. Beside the Presley family graves were garish but touching arrangements of silk flowers and trinkets and teddy bears and cards and pictures of Elvis on easels. The fountain, between Caroline and the gravestones, sparkled and spattered. All the benches in the garden were painted black. There was a black iron fence around the fountain and another one around the semicircle of grave markers. An airplane droned overhead.
Caroline found herself watching the other visitors filing through. A late fortyish woman with bangs and chin-length hair, carrying a purse with a picture of Elvis on it, kept sniffling and patting the grave markers like someone who’d just lost her entire family. A younger blond woman wearing jeans and a jean jacket sat in front of Elvis’s grave and read a pamphlet which looked, from the illustrations, to be religious in nature. A British couple—a man with dyed hair and a toupee to match—were walking around talking, too loudly, about the thrill of finding their names, which they’d scrawled in pen, still visible on the wall in front of Graceland after all these years. A tall, thin, Asian man appeared, took pictures, and left. Two smiling short,