“Where would I have heard about Curt Fahler’s cash money?”
He sipped tea, nonplussed. “So what’s happened between you two?”
She came back with a question of her own. “Cash money?” Tried to give it an incidental, just-passing-the-time kind of vibe. A literary agent, she had a nose for a story. For a compelling question with complications. “Curt Fahler’s, what, Pete Fahler’s son?”
Abe was a gossip to the bone. Knew he shouldn’t, but: “After Pete disappeared, these envelopes full of cash started showing up in the mailbox.” A fake regret at the absurdity of it. “First they went to Curt’s mother, then after Curt got married, they went to him and his wife. Hundred here, three or four hundred there. Whole county knew about it. We all figured, hell, Pete’s shacked up with some chippy somewheres. Feels guilty, wants to make amends. This went on for years.”
“And now it turns out that, what, Pete was buried on Singer’s ranch? All this time, right?”
“Right. So who’s been sending Curt the cash? That’s the thousand-dollar question. What everybody’s been chewing over.”
“Singer says he doesn’t know anything about it?”
“And I believe him. I do. Thirty years, never told a lie.”
Chloe thought: Bullshit. But was kind enough to let it go unsaid. Let the old man keep his illusions. “Thank you for the tea.”
“You don’t have to run off so soon?”
“Singer will be wondering where I got to.”
“He couldn’t talk about nothing else before you got here. You should know that. Two solid weeks, it was Chloe this, Chloe that. He’d ask me, you think she’d like to go for a ride? You think she’d like steaks for dinner? Pain in the ass about it, you want the truth.”
“Well.” Don’t be touched, Chloe. Don’t be swayed. “Anyway. I should get back.”
She already knew his rituals. Lying in bed, she listened to a brief spray of dishwater into the sink, the mechanical turn of a key into the grandfather clock. He brushed his teeth, spat. When she heard the toilet flush for the last time, she slipped into her robe.
She walked past the dogs asleep on the couch. His bedroom door was cracked. She pressed it open with her palm. “Singer?” He lay in the dark, facing away. In the wedge of light allowed by the door, here was his bare back, salted with a handful of flesh-colored moles. He twisted around, one arm raised against the new light. Such a white torso. She said, “I can’t sleep.”
After a long moment—she breathed, then breathed again, then sighed through her nose—he raised a corner of his bedcover, opening it for her.
They carried breakfast plates around each other with slow, coordinated courtesy. He said, “Excuse me, love.” Love, he’d said.
The sex? Decent, but not exceptional. Twelve, fifteen minutes. And he brought nothing new to the postgame. She wasn’t disappointed, not exactly. It was just . . .
They talked tattoos. Not that she wasn’t proud of her ink (expensive, Smith Street), but she wasn’t used to giving it more than a few minutes. She had Vonnegut around her ankle (“So it Goes”) and Rilke down her back. Roethke inside her thigh (“The greatest assassin of life is haste”) and Valérie on her calf. Singer traced Roethke with a fingertip. “He was Hugo’s mentor. You knew that, right?”
“What about you, Singer?”
“Me? I got no tattoos. Scars, no tattoos.” He fell back into his pillow.
“What about you and Curt Fahler.” Entitled by sex, she felt she could risk it.
He opened an eye. “Where’d you hear about Curt Fahler?”
“Around.”
“You shouldn’t listen to every goddamn rumor comes down the pike.”
“Methinks he doth protest too much.” And she did. A guy gets pissed ten minutes after he gets laid? Either he’s ashamed and hiding it, or embarrassed and dodging a bullet. If she’d been a guard dog, one lip would be curling up.
Maybe if she’d had a month in Montana, even another week, they might have had time to let this—whatever this was—settle into some kind of understandable shape and form. Was it a prelude to something larger? Or was it just a polite diversion. But they didn’t have a week. And so she found herself dwelling less on the possibilities and more on the potential catastrophes. The complications. What was the backstory?
The day before she was due to fly home, the Garfield County Sheriff came by for an interview. Singer led him into the kitchen. “Grady? This here’s Chloe. Chloe’s visiting from back east.”
When the sheriff lifted his square-crowned hat, a slab of carefully manufactured combover rose with it. He couldn’t have been more than thirty-five or so. Bummer to be going bald so young. A thick, reddish-gray mustache hid his lips. “Ma’am,” he said, and seemed reluctant to shake her hand. The way he tucked his khaki uniform blouse into his jeans said amateur, but then your eye went to the badge, the pistol. He looked around the kitchen with bland, sleepy-eyed curiosity. So many books. He nodded in her general direction. Said to Singer, “So I was hoping you and me and Abe could talk private. Apologies, ma’am.”
“That’s fine,” Chloe stood. “Excuse me, I have manuscripts to read.”
She retreated to the porch. A redwood chair splintering on the legs and arms. Drawn to the sound of the screen door, the dogs loped around the side of the house, pushed their heavy heads under her hand, eased down with theatrical sighs. The kitchen windows were open behind her. Had she planned it this way? Maybe, maybe. In any case, without trying particularly hard, she was able to catch most of the conversation, the high points, everything but words lowered out of inadvertent propriety.
Grady’s tone was slow, reasonable. He was careful of his phrasing. Laying out a case. “So yeah, Eli. You can see why folks would think Buddy’s some kind of a suspect. Only suspect, really. A body shows up on your place, and given Pete’s history with this family, with Buddy . . . I mean, you can understand it, yeah?”
“I understand it. Doesn’t mean I agree with it.”
“Plus, I mean, you see how this all reflects on you. Much as I hate to say it, who’s been sending money to Curt all these years? Has to be Eli Singer. Which means you’ve had to have known about it, been in on it. You’re complicit. I’m being honest with you now. But that’s the skinny around Jordan.”
“You got it all wrong, see I . . .”
Abe interrupted. “So is this what the taxpayers of our county are paying you for, Grady?” Abe let his voice rise. “Come out here and harass hard-working citizens? I remember when you were poaching elk in August for velvet. You didn’t think I knew about that, did you? Well I did, and so did a lot of other people. I know everything goes on in this county, and I’m telling you you’re wasting your goddamn time out here.”
“All right then, Abe. Goddamnit yourself. You tell me who I should be interviewing. I’ll go pay them a visit.”
“How about Pete’s widow over in Glasgow. If there was anybody ever had a reason to put a bullet into that lying sonofabitch, it was that poor woman.”
“So then she started sending cash to herself, then her own kid? Think about that for a second.”
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