Chapter 3

by Lori Robertson

I sat down and took a closer look around the room. The place was missing its usual, ostentatiously contrived, “rustic” charm.  A pile of dirty laundry spilled from an overturned basket beside the couch.  Coffee mugs, meal remnants, wads of Kleenex, and a collection of empty wine bottles littered every horizontal surface throughout the room. Dusty cobwebs trailed in long tendrils from a heavy wooden beam above our heads, and a greasy film clung to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows, muting a stunning red-rock view. And in the center of it all, Caroline, looking like Past-Her-Prime-Barbie on Quaaludes.

“What the hell is going on here?” I demanded.

Caroline dropped her head back and stared at the ceiling. In a gesture that struck me as staged, she sighed loudly and let one arm fall in a slow-motion arc over the side of her chair. Cigarette ash fluttered to the floor. “That’s what I need you to help me figure out,” she said.

God, she was irritating. “Look,” I said, “Is there reason to think my father is in danger? Is he in some kind of trouble? Or is this just some domestic squabble?”

She laughed. “We don’t have domestic squabbles. We might fight, but we do not squabble.”

“Fine. You’re a couple of pit bulls. What does this have to do with me?”

“You’re the only one who might know where to find him.”

Now I laughed. “Really? Why on earth would you think that?”

“Because you’re his flesh and blood. Because you’re smart, Zelda. And because he’d answer if you called him.”

“Yeah, well, I reluctantly acknowledge your first point and humbly accept the second, but I beg to differ on the third. Have Mrs. Li call him, she’s always had a way of commanding his attention.” Mrs. Li was the housekeeper; a tiny but irascible woman whose way of bullying my father had amused me for years.

“Mrs. Li quit,” Caroline said.

This explained the dingy condition of the cabin. It had obviously been some time since Mrs. Li had been there. “Why?”

“I don’t know why. She just stopped coming.” Caroline sat upright and seemed to be trying to focus. “That’s another strange thing,” she said, as if this had only now occurred to her.

“Have you called her?”

“No.” She slouched back in the chair again. “I don’t need her bossing me around.”

“Right. Best to avoid her even if she does have some clue about what’s going on here,” I said, fairly certain the sarcasm would sail over Caroline’s head. It did.

“I don’t care if Mrs. Li never shows up here again. It’s your father I need to find.”

“All right,” I said, resigned to dig for evidence like the prosecutor I was. “What happened the last time you saw him?”

She turned glassy eyes on me. “He wouldn’t hardly speak to me.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know why.”

“Well think. Had there been some disagreement? Was he angry about something?”

She stared into space as though trying to remember, but then seemed on the brink of nodding off.

I stood up and reached for my briefcase. “I don’t see how I can help you, Caroline. If you’re worried about him, call the cops.”

Her head snapped up. “I’m not worried about him. I’m worried about what happens next,” she said.

“What do you mean, what happens next?”

She stubbed out her cigarette and lurched to her feet. “Well now, Miss high and mighty, I think maybe we’ll just wait and see. I think maybe that’s something you ought to be worried about, too.” She took a couple steps forward and began listing starboard. “I think,” she said, steadying herself on the arm of Dad’s chair, “maybe I’m going to be sick.”

                                                                                

                                                       ****

Mrs. Li reluctantly agreed to meet me at a truck stop diner near her home on the outskirts of town. I found her already seated and staring intently at a menu when I arrived. I slipped into the booth across from her and accepted a menu from a stout young woman whose peach-hued uniform matched the blush on her cheeks. Her nametag read “Darla.”

“Can I get you all something to drink?” Darla asked.

“This food no good,” Mrs. Li replied.

Darla’s smile faded. “How’s that?

“No good. No good! She splayed her fingers and waved them over the menu. “No vegetable here.”

“Oh, sure, we’ve got vegetables.” Darla moved in and tapped her pen on the laminated page. “Let’s see now, we have a nice side salad, and the chicken fried steak comes with mashed potatoes and corn, and—”

“Potato mush no vegetable!” Mrs. Li sat back abruptly and folded her arms across her tiny chest. “No good, this food.”

Darla looked helplessly at me. “Um, can I get you something?”

“Bring us each a bowl of minestrone and some sourdough,” I said.

Darla gave an approving nod as she wrote this down.  “How about something to drink with that?”

“Coffee, black.” I slapped the menu closed and cut a glance at Mrs. Li, who was still clutching her arms over her chest as if warding off evil. “And she’ll have hot tea,” I said. Darla wrote this down and gave her pad a smart tap with the tip of her pen. Then she collected the menus, gave me a brilliant smile, and headed for the kitchen. Her thick-soled shoes squeaked, gymnasium-style, as she moved away.

“No good, the food here. Make you fat,” Mrs. Li announced loudly. She stabbed a finger in the direction of Darla’s retreating figure by way of illustration.

I suppressed a smile, grateful for the fact that the woman could always be counted on to speak her mind. “I need to ask you some questions about my father,” I said.

Her expression darkened. “No working there.”

“Yes, I heard that today, from Caroline. Can you tell me why?”

She held my gaze, her eyes as bright and unflinching as a starling's. “No good,” she said.