Chapter Seven

by Lori Robertson

The thought of making the long drive back to Scottsdale was only slightly less appealing than spending the night at my father’s.  I assumed Caroline’s earlier excesses would have ushered her into oblivion by the time I returned to the cabin, and it was that likelihood alone that kept me from pulling in to one of motels along the canyon road after I left the diner. I gripped the steering wheel and berated myself for responding to this ridiculous distress call. I’d blown an entire day that should have been spent reviewing depositions, and with each passing mile I felt the weight of those neglected case files. 

By the time I turned off the highway and onto the private road that led to the cabin I had one clear goal in mind, a decent night’s sleep and an early start home in the morning.  A nightcap would be a bonus. God knows it was only at Dad’s that I ever tasted three-hundred-dollar bourbon, but Caroline had polished off a bottle of Hirsch that afternoon. At least she wasn’t mixing it with Diet Coke anymore.

I slowed down and hit the high beams so I could find the entrance to the driveway, a quarter-mile stretch of gravel through dense forest.  Dad’s twelve-acre lot felt spookily remote in the dark, but his disappearing act no longer struck me as sinister. Now that I’d had time to think about it, it was no great revelation that he saw fit to take off without explanation.  He’d first left me wondering what became of him when I was twelve years old.  It’s true that Caroline has the discerning powers of a garden slug, but really, after sixteen years with the man you’d think she would have figured out that this crisis was nothing more than another insensitive indulgence by a man who’d always considered himself entitled to them.

Only a few lights shone weakly through the pines as I approached the cabin. I parked the car, hurried up the steps to the sprawling front porch, and let myself in.  I tiptoed through the living room where a lingering scent of cigarettes and booze still hung heavy in the air, then headed down the hallway to Dad’s office, the sanctuary where he kept a Venetian liquor cabinet and Baccarat crystal decanter, one of which, I hoped, still held a splash of bourbon. A dim light showed beneath the door and made me pause, but hearing no movement in the room, I pushed the door open.

My breath caught in my throat and I took a quick step back. In the dim light, it took me a minute to recognize Leo, Caroline’s son.  It’d been a few years since I’d last seen him. That encounter had been during a particularly excruciating Christmas visit when he cornered me in the kitchen and suggested that, since we weren’t blood siblings, there was nothing to prevent us “getting it on.”  I’d handed him a jar of olives and sent him on his way. It wasn’t that Leo wasn’t attractive; in fact, he was quite good looking in a lanky, shaggy-haired, Keith Urban kind of way. It was just that he had all the mental prowess of his mother and none of her charm.

He sat at Dad’s desk, casually reading the back of a John Coltrane album. He looked up and smiled. “Wondered if you’d be back,” he said. “Heard you were out looking for the old man.” He tossed the album into a cardboard box at his feet. “Your father just loves this old stuff,” he said. “Can’t stand it myself, but it sells.” He picked up a glass and raised it as if to toast. “Join me in a drink, Zeldanna?”

I resisted the urge to slap the glass from his hand. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Leo? You’ve got no right—”

“Whoa, take it easy there, sweetheart. I’m here at my mother’s bidding, and as the deserted spouse, she’s got every right to call the shots.” He took a slow sip and then slid the glass across the polished desktop. I caught it before it sailed over the edge and sniffed at the amber liquid swirling in the bottom of the glass. Hirsh. The bastard.

“Your mother’s got no idea what’s going on here so she can hardly call herself a deserted spouse. And even if the party’s over, Leo,” I pointed to the cardboard box where he’d stacked a few dozen albums, “those are my father’s, so lay off.”

He smiled. “Such a devoted daughter. How touching.” 

I reached for the box but Leo grabbed my wrist, hard. We held the pose and glared at one another before I wrenched my hand away. I took a step back and saw for the first time that the box we were sparring over was not the only one in the room. He’d cleaned out the glass-fronted cabinet that held Dad’s rare book collection, the stereo system was missing from the shelf above, and god knows what else had already been packed away. My heart pounded but my voice held steady. “This is larceny, jackass.  And I’m a pretty reliable witness.”

He laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back in a luxuriant stretch. “That so, Zel?” He looked up at me and winked. “Maybe you’ll want to check with the old man before you going calling in the cops.”

 

Chapter Six

by Lala Corriere

Harlow Breck took stock of his reflection in the broken mirror that hung above his mother’s antique sewing table. His salt and pepper hair made him look older than his years, as did the wire-rimmed glasses he wore but didn’t need.

                Hal. Good Old Hal. That’s how the town knew him. They didn’t know he was Harlow the Horrible. That very thought caused a smirk to smear across his face. He caught it in time, like always. With one final glance in the mirror,  he replaced the smirk with a gentle smile. A Good Old Hal smile.

                The Horrible left his mother’s house and crossed toward the shed at a calculated pace. Although the remote twenty acres had razor-wire fencing, he took no chances. The only thing he trusted was that no one could see the rapid beat of his heart. The Horrible was happy.

                Unlocking the shed, he quickly prepared for company. The Trio of Evil. Delicious. Beyond the workbench and the pegboard of hand tools, The Horrible cleared away the stacked boxes that concealed the second locked door. He punched in the code on the security keypad, touching each of the buttons as if there were delicate pink tea rose petals.

                Deep inside the womb of the shed, he was now free to let go his racing and raging urges. He grabbed the three director’s chairs and set them up to form a perfect tight circle. He counted the black trash bags. Ten of them. All sealed and bound with silver duct tape. No fingerprints. Sheriff Harvey liked it that way.

                The Horrible slowed down long enough to measure out the perfect amount of coffee. He and the sheriff would take it black, and strong. David, who would run the meeting, required his favorite bourbon, and poured in the Baccarat cut crystal glass. Spoiled little ass, The Horrible thought as he took in a deep breath.

                Five minutes and the men would be there. Their meeting would commence on time. And they had an agenda, like any civil corporate assembly. The Horrible wanted to burn things. The men would respect his desires. It had been way too long since he had enjoyed a good bonfire.

                With a gift of time, for he was always early for these special sessions, The Horrible opened the third door and walked into the rear of the shed. It had once housed his mother’s John Deere tractor. Now it housed her bones. He liked it that way, even though the Sheriff and David argued their cases to get rid of them. He liked having Mommy nearby.

Chapter Five

by Lori Robertson

Mrs. Li pushed her bowl of soggy bread aside and calmly reached for her cup of tea. 

“Okay… wait just a minute,” I said. “You told me it was an ‘evil environment’ at my father’s house. What did you mean?”

“I mean bad energy. All the time he goes away. She all the time drinks too much, makes a mess, and cries, cries, cries all day. No good.”

“He goes away all the time? You mean he’s done this before?”

“Many times.”

“But he always comes back.”

“Yes.”

I let my fist drop to the table with more force than I’d intended. “Then why would Caroline make such a fuss this time?” 

Mrs. Li only shrugged and took another sip of her tea. Frustration shot through my body like a jolt of electricity, but I suppressed the urge to unleash it on the serene woman sitting across from me. I sat back, took a deep breath, and spoke slowly: “So…every now and then… my father goes off on a fishing trip. And while he’s gone, Caroline drinks herself into a pathetic, sniveling, lazy-ass state of paranoia. Is that what you’re telling me?”

Mrs. Li set her cup down and said nothing for a minute. Finally she looked at me and shook her head. “No, no fishing.”

“How do you know? And don’t tell me it’s in the bread. Have you ever asked him where he’s been?”

She nodded.

“And?”

“He say fishing.”

“Well then?”

“He never bring home a fish.”

“So he’s a lousy fisherman. Maybe he just wants to get away.  God knows, I would—”

“No fish. No fish smell. No fish pole.”  She sipped again at her tea and met my eyes over the rim of the cup. “Your father keeps secrets,” she said.  She lowered her cup slowly to the table and glanced at her watch. “I have to go now, I have work to do.”

I reached for her hand. “Wait, Mrs. Li. What kind of secrets? What do you think is going on here?”

She pulled her hand away and slid out of the booth. “I don’t know what is the truth  here. I only know what is not the truth.” She hiked her purse onto her tiny shoulder. “He is your father, Zeldanna. You know him best.” 

I shook my head. “You’re wrong about that. He’s my father, but I barely know the man.”

“Whatever you need to know,” she tapped two fingers firmly against her chest, “in your heart, you will know.”

I sniffed. “What, is that written in the bread, too?”

The barest hint of a smile played at the corner of her mouth. She nodded toward her soup bowl. “Nothing written in the bread. Americans love a psychic message. You go home now, Zeldanna. Nothing more you can do here.” 

I sat stock still until the diner door closed behind her with a jarring clang of bells. Then, resting my elbows on the cool Formica tabletop, I let my head drop into my hands. What I needed to know was in my heart? More phony mysticism, or something she’d read in a fortune cookie, no doubt. I closed my eyes and conjured up my father’s face, his voice. A staccato montage of images played through my mind and settled gently on a memory infused with the scent of soap and shaving cream. We’re in his car, he’s driving me to school, we’re laughing at something on the radio. He tries to sing along and mangles the words. I tell him, “no, no, you’re saying it all wrong!” and he sings louder, makes up his own absurd lyrics, and I think he’s hilarious, I think he’s the best, I think—

“Can I get you some more coffee there, Hon?”

It’s Darla, her coffee pot poised above the table and ready to pour.  “Sure, “ I said, and slid my cup toward her. “Tell me something, Darla, you happen to know Sheriff Harvey?”

“Sheriff Harvey? Sure, he comes in here now and then.” She eased the steaming cup in front of me and eyed me warily. “You got some kind of trouble going on?”

I shook my head. “I’m just wondering what people think of him. I mean, is he a pretty straight-up kind of guy?”

Darla’s eyes widened and she took a step back from the table. “Well I don’t know him that well.  I mean, I don’t know anything about his personal life. He’s married, though, I’m pretty sure.”

We stared at one another for the few seconds it took for her meaning to sink in. “No," I said. "What I mean is, do people think of him as a straight-talker, an honest Joe. Is he well liked?”

She shrugged. “I guess so. It’s pretty quiet around here, we got no big crime rings or nothing. Seems like he mostly hands out speeding tickets to out of towners in too big a hurry to get to Sedona.” She scooped up the credit card I’d placed on the table and gave it a quick glance. “I’ll just ring this up for you,” she said, and squeaked away.

I breathed in the scent of badly roasted coffee and considered what I’d learned so far. My father might or might not be off on a fishing trip. Half-wit and fully soused Caroline was convinced there was mayhem, but refused to call the cops. Mrs. Li knows nothing except that what’s been said is untrue, and that the small town cop who spends his days writing traffic tickets would affirm the phony fish tale.  I swallowed the dregs in my cup and considered the stack of case files I still needed to get to. Go home, Zeldanna. Nothing more you can do here. Maybe Mrs. Li was right.

  

Chapter Four

by Lala Corriere

I’ve travelled the world and I’ve seen some weird dining customs. I know you never eat with your left hand in the Middle East, and you use only your fingers, sans utensils, in many African villages. I know to sit on pillows in Morocco and to expect a salad after the main course throughout much of Europe.

This does not excuse how my eyes must have protruded from their sockets after our minestrone arrived and I observed Mrs. Li’s bizarre behavior.

She removed her bowl from the serving plate and began lifting out the various chunks of ingredients. She then spooned them onto the plate, leaving only a weak broth in the bowl. She then hovered her fingers above the basket of bread, selected one slice, tore it into pieces, and stuffed those pieces into the bowl.

Putting the now swelling mixture of bread and minestrone broth aside, Mrs. Li then picked at a few of the items on her plate. She ate one chickpea at a time. One carrot piece at a time. One shred of spinach at a time.

I tried to dismiss the image. “Mrs. Li, my father seems to have disappeared. No one knows where he is. Do you have any idea where he might have gone?”

“No. Your father is a private man. I respect that.”

“You’ve been with Daddy for a long time. Why did you quit?”

“Some say I’m a stubborn woman. I prefer to think that I am stoic. With scruples. I will not work in an evil environment.”

Evil? The cabin was filthy, but that must have occurred only in Mrs. Li’s absence. What about Clueless Caroline? What had she said to me?

“Mrs. Li, did my father and Caroline quarrel?” I asked.

She shrugged her shoulders in confusion. Mrs. Li spoke excellent English. After all, she had just used the words stoic and scruples. I decided to rephrase my question.

“Did they argue? Did they fight?” I asked.

While Mrs. Li responded, she kept an even eye on the bowl of soaked bread. “No. They rarely spoke to one another. No words.”

We sat together in an awkward silence. I finally told her that I had had enough. I needed to go to the local authorities and report my father as missing. Mrs. Li put her plate aside and brought the bowl in front of her, near the edge of the table. A frown seized her face. Her eyebrows knitted above the frames of old horn-rimmed glasses.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I read tea leaves, you know.”

“Yes.”

“Diner too cheap. Tea bags. Disgraceful.”

I smiled. Mrs. Li owned a piece of my heart. Irascible, yes. But pure.

Mrs. Li glanced up at me, then focused her stare back to her bowl.

I grew impatient, signaling for the check from the waitress.

“Thank you for meeting me, Mrs. Li. I must leave. I need to go to the sheriff’s office and report my dad as missing.”

“It’s too late,” Mrs. Li sighed. As harsh as her words resounded, her resignation is what surprised me.

“Why would you say that?”

“No tea leaves. But it’s in the bread. It is written.”

Now I’d heard everything. The woman was reading swollen pieces of sourdough bread?

She continued. “I am able to see it through how long it takes each morsel of bread to absorb the nutrients of the broth. Which pieces sink to the bottom. Which pieces rise to the top. And where.”

“Forgive me, but...”

“...forgive me, Zeldana” Mrs. Li interrupted. “Sheriff Harvey will now tell you that your father is off fishing. The sheriff will say that your father told him so. A long trip. Sheriff Harvey will tell you there is nothing wrong. He will tell you to go back home and not worry.”

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.

Chapter Two

By Lala Corriere

On gut instinct I immediately called Clueless Caroline back, which is unusual for me. Unless it was business related, even my best of friends knew that a delayed response to phone messages was my modus operandi.

Caroline’s words were simple. Flat. Laconic. “I need you to drive up here.”

     “What is it? What’s wrong?” I demanded.

“I’ll tell you when you get here,” she said.

I asked her to put my dad on the phone. She hung up.

Contrary to some notions, lawyers don’t work through Friday. It was Saturday, and I had a two-foot high stack of depositions to go over before my next case went to trial the following week.

     Caroline was asking me to drop everything and make the two hour drive from Scottsdale, Arizona, up to Oak Creek, a slice of mountain paradise near Sedona that was reminiscent of my childhood days in both the Blue Ridge Mountains and Colorado. Dad seemed to pack up and move with each new bride.

     I tossed the top half of my file folders into the back seat of my SUV. I assumed I’d be bored to a degree of mania within ten minutes and could at least peruse some of my paperwork while I was there.

     The drive is a pleasant one. I reasoned it couldn’t hurt to check on my dad and make the road trip as a gift of time, taking in the fresh air more than my dad’s blissful marriage. Still, knowing Caroline, and I really didn’t, I felt the anger pulsing in my temples. She probably needed help figuring out how to use email. Or how to use her convection oven. Damn. She might have broken one of her false fingernails and wondered why Elmer’s glue wasn’t working.

     Walking through the large cabin’s front door, always unlocked, the living room was blurred by the dense haze of cigarette smoke. Caroline was sitting in Dad’s leather recliner, snubbing out another butt in an already overflowing ashtray. The glass of bourbon next to it was nearly empty. The bottle next to the glass was nearly empty. She looked up at me, and with a slight flip of her hand, waved me inside.

     “Zel,” she mumbled.

Sheesh. Now the woman couldn’t even abbreviate my name to Zelda. Dumb. Or drunk.

     “Where’s Dad?” I asked.

     “I don’t know,” she replied. Were the tears from a weak woman? A scared woman? Fake and forced?

     “You don’t know where he is? He’s missing?”

     She nodded, her long blonde strands of hair falling down her ample cleavage.

     I tossed my briefcase down to the hardwood floor. “How long?”

     “Three nights”, she said, reaching for another cigarette.

     “What did the police say when you reported him missing?”

     “I didn’t call them.”

     “Caroline, we have to call them. Now.” I reached to my waist where my cradled cell phone stood constant guard.

     She shook her head. Not too much. The blonde tresses remained stuck between her breasts.

     “No,” she whispered. “Absolutely not.”

Splitting Heirs

by Lori Robertson

Stepmothers are supposed to be evil, right? That’s what I thought when I acquired one sixteen years ago, when I was just a kid. Back then I expected to spend my weekends at Dad’s scrubbing floors and sniffing meals for traces of poison. Like I’d actually have known what poison smells like, for chrissakes. But Caroline was not evil, no. Evil takes some smarts, and Caroline’s as dense as a block of concrete.

I’m pretty sure it wasn’t long evenings of stimulating conversation that my father envisioned when he married her.  She had other stimulating attributes that enticed him away from my mother, who was the third of his wives to be dismissed for a younger mate. I was twelve years old when Caroline took over as the balm of youth to my father’s middle-aged soul, and I couldn’t say which one of them I hated more.

My mother cut the old man some slack long before I did.  She confided, during one of my adolescent, rage-filled demands for solidarity against him, that the divorce relieved her of guilt for having broken up his second marriage. “It was only a matter of time before it was my turn, Zeldanna,” she said, blandly accepting my father’s abandonment as a refreshing balance of the karmic scales.  But years later, over a bottle of wine, she let slip that in their divorce settlement she’d been named permanent beneficiary on his life insurance policy, and that she occasionally indulged in wishful fantasies about his untimely death.  

“Oh my god,” I’d said. “Seriously?”

She smiled, and she was beautiful. “I know. You thought I was a saint.”

I took a long sip of my wine and studied her face. “So,” I’d said, casually setting my glass down, “how much is he worth? Dead, I mean.”

“How very gauche of you, darling,” she’d said. “We mustn’t speak so cavalierly.”

Now, there’s a perfect example of the difference between my mother and Caroline. One can use four-syllable words in perfect context. The other spends forty-five minutes a day scrutinizing her face for stray eyebrow hairs.  Clearly, my father’s taste in women runs toward decreasing numbers in both chronological age and IQ. Another reason, if I do say so myself, why we just couldn’t abide one another. 

Not that I saw him much anymore; mainly just in stilted and obligatory visits on Christmas and birthdays. Invites to dinner dwindled after I announced I was a vegan. Caroline couldn’t figure out what that meant and took offense when I used words like “putrefaction” to describe the contents of her refrigerator.  She’d pulled my father aside and whispered, “What is that, David, some kind of cult she’s got herself tangled up in?” He patted her on the ass, gave her an indulgent smile, and said, “Just some phase she’s going through.” In that instant I added spite to the reasons why I won’t eat meat.

And now, out of the blue, she calls me. It’s nowhere near my birthday, no holiday on the horizon, so what does she want? I didn’t answer the call, of course, and her message was vague.

“Zelda? It’s me, Hon. I need to talk to you. Can you just give me a call back? Right away?”

Zelda. Only Caroline calls me Zelda. We've sparred over this since I was twelve years old. Too many syllables in Zeldanna, apparently. I listened to the message again, heard the usual cloying sweetness in her voice, along with something else. Along with just a touch of urgency.