Page 11 of The Children of Eve (Charlie Parker #22)

CHAPTER XI

Howie’s Pub stood almost in the shadow of Tukey’s Bridge, a structure connecting Portland’s East End—which, confusingly for people from away, seemed at least as much north as east—with the south part of East Deering via Back Cove. Tukey’s Bridge was named after an eighteenth-century Portland toll collector and tavern owner named Lemuel Tukey, who’d continued to levy tolls even after they’d officially been abolished, an act unlikely to have endeared him to many of his fellow citizens. His name endured, though, which said much about Mainers’ capacity either to forget a grudge or to nurture one.

Howie’s wasn’t fancy. It was a dive bar, and proud of it, but served better pizza than a stranger had any right to expect and fresh whoopie pies for those who, having settled on a steady diet of pizza and beer, felt that abstemiousness in any further form was pretty much pointless. But Zetta Nadeau was not of that stripe. She might have enjoyed the ambience of Howie’s, but if she’d ever ingested any of its food, or much food at all, she’d done so only thanks to the particulate nature of smells. Without flowing fabric to conceal her angularity, she was so thin that, had I gripped her waist in my hands, my fingers would have come close to touching. Mind you, I would have been lying on my back by then, wondering what had hit me. Zetta might not have had much meat on her, but what was strapped to her bones was all muscle. A lot of it was currently on display thanks to a seasonally unwise black crop top and a pair of denim shorts that, if discarded and found later, might have been mistaken for an adolescent’s. Except for her neck and face, her visible skin was covered in tattoos. Given her paucity of flesh, I could only guess how much getting them done had hurt.

Because Zetta was so thin, and had endured the upbringing of nightmares, she looked older than thirty. After being transferred from foster home to foster home for much of her early childhood, and enduring occasional disastrous reunions with her birth parents, she had finally come under the care of a late-middle-aged couple named the Scovells, who were capable of offering her the patience and kindness she required. Zetta remained with them until she was almost nineteen, by which point she had won a full tuition scholarship to the Maine College of Art if so, it was long before I knew her and was true no more. As for Ammon, he had always struck me as a craven entity, a crooked, stunted tree eclipsed by his wife, their poisons transferring back and forth between them and their union thriving on the resulting infusions.

But we have to be wary of the judgments we pass on others. Much of my knowledge of Zetta’s parents was gleaned from what she had shared with me in passing over the years, combined with the mentions of Ammon and Jerusha in local arrest reports and whatever gossip filtered through from my dealings with law enforcement. What I learned might have colored my view of them. I wouldn’t have been human otherwise.

Yet on the night of the launch of Zetta’s first solo exhibition in Portland, at the now vanished June Fitzpatrick Gallery, I was driving along Congress shortly before midnight when I noticed a figure peering into the well-lit space. It was Ammon Nadeau, trying to glimpse as much of his daughter’s work as he could. I can remember pulling over on the opposite side to watch him. I thought he might be tempted to hurl a brick through the glass, but no, his curiosity about Zetta’s art—and, I believe, his pride in it—was genuine. He remained there for a while before drifting into the shadows, head low, lost in reflection.

In theory, Ammon could have visited the exhibition during the day and nobody would have commented on his presence, unless Zetta had posted pictures of her parents with an exhortation to have them escorted from the premises should they show their faces. In practice, I doubted Ammon had ever set foot in an art gallery and probably feared being ejected based on his demeanor alone. But I suspect he also feared meeting his daughter on her territory, and the awkwardness and hostility that might result from the encounter. It was interesting, too, that he had gone to the gallery alone. Of his wife there was no sign. I sometimes considered sharing with Zetta what I had seen that night, but always decided against it in the end. If her father had wanted her to know, he’d have told her, and the breach between them would not be healed by my account of a troubled man mired in regret.

Now here was Zetta, perched like a stork on her barstool, a gin and tonic by her right hand, a bandage on her left, the latter the result of a disagreement with a steel edge in her studio, or so she claimed. I didn’t question the story. For the moment, I was here to listen, because just ten days after the opening of Zetta’s show at the Triton Gallery, Wyatt Riggins had dropped off the map.

“You hadn’t been seeing him for long, if I remember right,” I said.

“Two months, give or take,” she replied, “but I was as happy as I’d ever been in a relationship. I thought Wyatt felt the same way. It was good, or so I believed. I still believe it, or I wouldn’t be talking to you now.”

Before our meeting, she had sent me a series of pictures of her and Riggins together, selfies for the most part. As at the gallery, I thought they complemented each other, in appearance if nothing else.

“I checked him out, obviously,” said Zetta, “before we got too serious.”

“You mean you googled him?”

“Yeah. I didn’t hire someone to investigate him. I’m wary, but I’m not paranoid.”

“And what did you find?”

“Not a lot.”

“Meaning?”

“Less than I might have expected. Wyatt didn’t leave many footprints.”

“That didn’t worry you?”

“I asked him about it. He said it was to do with his time in the military.”

“And you accepted his explanation?”

I didn’t manage to keep the skepticism from my voice and immediately apologized.

“I think,” said Zetta, “that his service might have involved more than riding a desk.”

“Did he elaborate?”

“No, and I didn’t press him. I had no reason to.”

“But now you are trying to hire someone to investigate him.”

“If you’ll accept the job. I just want to know that he’s okay.”

“Have you reason to fear he might not be?”

She sipped her drink, buying herself time to consider how she might respond. I was nursing an alcohol-free beer for appearances’ sake. I preferred to keep a clear head when meeting clients. If someone insisted I order something stronger, I would, but I’d allow it to remain untouched before declining whatever job was being proposed. People who insist that you drink with them are best avoided.

“Is it usual for a person to abandon a place he shares with a woman without retrieving his possessions?” she asked.

I thought of Jack Nicholson in Five Easy Pieces , leaving Karen Black to get coffee as he goes to a gas station restroom, only for him to hitch a ride alone on the first truck heading out. Occasionally, people didn’t want to put themselves through a painful conversation, or not one that wasn’t about to alter the finale. It was a coward’s way to end a relationship, but it happened.

“When you say he left his possessions, what are we talking about?”

“Clothes, books, some money,” said Zetta.

“How much money?”

“Seventy-three dollars, ninety-two cents.”

“That’s not a lot.”

“There was a time when I’d have fought a bum for a tenth as much.”

“But not now.”

“No, not now.”

“What about Riggins? Is he the kind of man who’d feel the loss?”

“He refers to C-notes as ‘Texas pennies,’ so I guess not.”

I watched as a man named Gibson Ouelette stepped into Howie’s, walked to the bar, and ordered the cheapest beer on offer, which he’d do his best to make last. Gibson acknowledged me, and I nodded back. He’d just emerged from Bolduc Correctional Facility, to which he’d been transferred from Maine State Prison for the final three years of a nine-year stretch. Bolduc was a minimum-security facility that resembled a farm, but only from a distance or if one wasn’t looking hard enough. Gibson, who’d seen the inside of enough cells to count as an expert, once told me something interesting. He said that the worst part of getting busted, worse even than being caught in the first place, was the period between capture and conviction. He told me that it was like being trapped in limbo, but as soon as the judge passed sentence, he felt a sense of relief, because a decision had been made and he could now set about figuring out how to accommodate himself to it. There was nothing worse than not knowing, he said, which might have explained why Zetta Nadeau was willing to spend money establishing the whereabouts of a man who could simply have run out on her because it was easier than discussing why he no longer wanted to be with her.

But I used the word might advisedly, because I’d spent enough time listening to people tell me stories to be able to spot gaps in a narrative. I knew Zetta was holding back, and in whatever was being concealed lay the pitfalls: for her, for her boyfriend, and for me, if I agreed to help her—which I wouldn’t unless she came clean. That was another lesson hard learned: the risk lay in what was hidden. With risk came hurt, and I’d had enough of that. I ached more than any man in his fifties ought to, not unless he’d been through a war. I was in pain from the time I woke to the time I went to sleep, and I slept less than I would have liked because of it, which exacerbated the situation. I’d been prescribed medication for the toughest nights, but I didn’t like using it because it left me foggy for too much of the following day. It also caused me to sleep too soundly, which meant that I was less likely to wake if something happened. I suppose one could call it caution on my part, but that wouldn’t have been entirely accurate, so call it what it was. Call it fear.

“What did he do for a living while he was here?” I asked.

“Wyatt worked at BrightBlown, but mainly for the discount.”

BrightBlown was one of the many dispensaries that had proliferated since Maine legalized the recreational use and sale of cannabis. They weren’t all going to survive, but for now, Portland resembled the Wild West in cannabis terms—or the Laid-back West, if you preferred. The down-and-outs who would previously have argued over bottles of Flash Point or Fireball were now to be seen negotiating the use of medical marijuana cards, while storefronts that might once have housed the kind of businesses that lent variety to a city had been taken over by weed distributors. Rents were being pushed up, restaurants and bars were struggling to retain staff because selling weed paid better, and, as was inevitable, the money to be made had attracted criminals of various stripes, from thieves targeting cannabis-growing operations to organized crime gangs engaging in illegal cultivation and mass distribution.

But apart from that, my experience of pot smokers was that some of them were the dullest people you could meet, because what they were most interested in was weed—where they were going to get it, when they were going to smoke it, and how they were going to feel when they did it—which made them poor company for anyone with all their synapses firing.

Zetta smirked.

“You’re wearing the same look of disapproval I saw on Ammon’s face the first time he caught me smoking a joint,” she said.

“Lord, I hope not,” I said. I didn’t want to think that my features might resemble Ammon Nadeau’s. Otherwise, I’d have to start covering up the mirrors in my house and walking the streets only after dark. “But weed isn’t my bag.”

“Wyatt only smokes on weekends. He’s an organized guy.”

An organized guy who worked at a weed store and was content to abandon all his possessions, including cash and a girlfriend, seemingly on a whim.

“Could he have been involved in anything illegal?” I asked.

“At BrightBlown?” Zetta snorted. “Jesus, they’re about to open a yoga studio.”

But Zetta kept her face turned away from me as she spoke.

“What about involvement in anything outside of BrightBlown?”

She didn’t answer.

“Zetta, you asked me to meet you because you’re anxious about Wyatt. If you were sufficiently upset, you’d have gone to the police. Instead, you’re here at Howie’s, where the only cops are off-duty and minding their own business.”

“This is new territory for me,” she said. “I’ve never had cause to deal with a private investigator before, or not professionally.”

“At least you admit that you might have cause,” I replied. “Look at you, making progress on talking about your feelings.”

“You have an interesting line in sarcasm. Does anyone ever hire you twice?”

“You’re in trouble if you have to hire me once. Hiring me twice means you may have a taste for it, which would make me disinclined to become involved again.”

Zetta fished around in her tote bag and seemed to locate what she was looking for, but didn’t immediately display it.

“Is everything I tell you confidential?”

“Largely, unless you tell me that you’re planning to kill someone, in which case I might feel obligated to inform the authorities. Are you planning on killing someone?”

“Not yet, but the night is young.”

“Then you’re probably in the clear. But there’s a difference between my legal and moral obligations. The latter I take more seriously than the former.”

“That’s what I was told.”

She removed her hand from the bag. She was holding a red flip phone in a Ziploc, either an old Nokia or a new one designed to look old. She placed it on the bar.

“This is Wyatt’s phone,” she said, “or one of them.”

“How many does he have?”

“Just two. This one and an Android. The Android is for daily use.”

“Where is it now?”

“With Wyatt, I suppose, but it goes straight to voicemail when I call the number. If he’s picking up his messages, he’s not replying.”

“And the Nokia?”

I held the bag up to the light. The phone, I thought, was probably the same one I’d watched Riggins opening and closing at Zetta’s show.

“It was found at Tandem Coffee Roasters on Congress five days ago. One of the staff recognized it as Wyatt’s. She recalled him using it before he left and was holding on to it until he returned, because Wyatt likes Tandem a lot. When he didn’t show, she gave it to me.”

“Are you a regular at Tandem too?”

“With Wyatt, though I don’t really drink coffee. I stopped by after he went missing, in case someone had noticed anything odd last time he was in.”

“And had they?”

“Just his lost phone.”

So her boyfriend had dropped one phone, wasn’t answering another, and had fallen from sight, leaving behind what appeared to be all his worldly goods. But once again, it was me to whom Zetta was speaking and not the police.

“I’m waiting,” I said.

“For what?”

“For the punch line. I know it’s coming.”

She played with her drink again, giving her something else to do with her hands while she debated what to reveal and what to conceal.

“I noted the passcodes for both his phones.”

Wow. I was no analyst, but I thought Zetta might have trust issues.

“And why did you do that?”

“Because I’ve been stung before by guys who cheated on me or lied about who they were, where they went, what they were doing when they got there, and with whom.”

“It sounds like you need to be more selective about your boyfriends.”

“I blame my upbringing. I’d hoped Wyatt might be different, so I took his word about the military thing. The passcodes were just a precaution.”

“And was he different?”

“I could only read opened messages and emails, but he seemed to be. All I found on the Android was stuff relating to BrightBlown.”

“Anything on the Nokia?”

“A short series of contacts in the address book, but only as letters, not names, and no calls were listed as either made or received. Those contacts had been deleted when the phone was found. One text message was left in the inbox, which Wyatt hadn’t deleted.”

She took the Nokia from the bag, entered the code, and showed me the message. It consisted of a single word: RUN .