Red House Blues Read online

  A week later he went to San Francisco on business. She must understand, he told her, he had many business interests. He would return before she was to return to Chicago. She thought he was secretly planning to surprise her with a ring from San Francisco.

  How could she bear a separation from Jamison? Her body and soul ached for him. Now her misery and longing entered her, resonating through her songs, lending her performances more depth of emotion than she had thought possible. Seattleites thronged to the theater to hear her. But without Jamison there at her side her success was joyless.

  It was more than two weeks before he returned, every minute an agony. By the time he returned she knew she was with child. He would be so happy. They would marry immediately. He would insist. She could hardly contain her joy until they arrived at his penthouse, eager to tell him the wonderful news, yet wanting to wait for the perfect moment when they were alone. And then they were alone. And he was pouring her a glass of champagne. She thought that any moment he would bring the small box containing her ring from his pocket. He would place it on her finger and kiss her.

  He spoke of his business in San Francisco, about renovations to the theater there. He asked about her future plans when she returned to Chicago. She replied, coyly, that she hadn’t decided, expecting that at any moment he would ask her to stay with him and never go back to Chicago, that her future was with him. But he said no such thing. Finally, she told him her happy news.

  “You are not to worry, Tess, my dear,” he said. “You may depend on me to help you in any way I can. I’ll arrange with Doctor Ash. Doc is skilled in such matters. He will help you out of your difficulty in no time at all. He’s done procedures of this nature many times before.”

  It was as if he had stabbed her through the heart.

  “You can’t mean this, Jamison! You can’t mean what I think you are saying. We love each other. We can be together. Marry. People will just assume an early baby.” It is the shock of it, she thought. He is taken by surprise.

  “Tess, you are a sweet and charming girl and I enjoy your company more than I can say,” he said. “I would not hurt you for the world, you know that. Still, I think you have misunderstood our situation. I cannot marry you, even if I thought that were wise. I already have a wife in San Francisco, and two children I love very much. So you see, my dear, we must address your situation another way. The only possible way, as I see it.”

  He was sorry. It was regrettable. He would take care of the arrangements. Words. All words that reverberated in her head as she made her way from the penthouse, down in the elevator to the street, hired a cab to take her back to Fir Street.

  The next morning after the other boarders left for work Doctor Ash came up the broad steps to the porch carrying a large carpetbag. Mrs. Jacobs met him at the door. Her face was grim, already knowing the occasion for the call. She was to assist. Doc led the way up the stairs to Miss Jones’ room off the upper landing.

  His manner with Tess was agreeable and confident. He had performed this procedure numerous times. It was his stock in trade on the Seattle waterfront. The girls that worked there all knew they could count on him to do what needed doing and with complete confidentiality. Tess wasn’t to worry about that. And Mr. Broadrick was paying for everything. Nothing to fret about.

  Tess spoke not one word as the doctor spread his instruments out on the bedside table. He didn’t think anything of that. The girls are embarrassed and frightened sometimes. Mrs. Jacobs brought in an armload of newspapers and clean rags. The girl didn’t acknowledge either of them but she got up on the bed and drank the brandy Doc offered her. He explained about the opium. She wouldn’t feel a thing.

  All went exceptionally well at the outset. Doc thought of the tidy bonus Broadrick had tucked into his pocket after their meeting the night before. All he had to do was this simple thing, then make sure Miss Jones caught the eastbound train in the next few days. When she was able. No use rushing it. Poor young thing was upset. Understandable. These things happen, though. “We’re men of the world, Doc. These things happen,” was what Mr. Broadrick had said. “I’m depending on your discretion. Here’s some traveling money for the young lady, and a little bonus for yourself.”

  The doctor was putting his instruments back in his bag while Mrs. Jacobs tidied up the unconscious girl.

  “Doc, there’s something wrong!”

  He rushed back to the bed where Mrs. Jacobs was trying to staunch the flow of blood. Too much blood and too fast. Together they tried to stop it. The rags and papers were saturated, and then the sheets. It only took a few moments before they both knew their efforts had failed.

  “Oh dear lord, what are we going to do?” said Mrs. Jacobs. “What are we going to tell Mr. Broadrick?”

  “Nothing. We can’t tell him anything, Mrs. Jacobs. If this got out, if the newspapers found out, it would ruin him,” he said. “Think of the scandal right after he opened the new theater. Broadrick would make sure we suffered for messing this up. You can be sure of that. He would take the high road and blame it all on us. We’d go to jail. Or worse. No, we can’t say anything about this. Not to anyone.”

  “Then, what about ...”

  “How much time do we have before your boarders return from work?” he said.

  Mrs. Jacobs went out to the garden shed for a shovel and an old pick ax. Together she and Doc carried the body downstairs, through the kitchen and from there down a dark flight of wooden steps to the cellar. They spelled each other off digging a hole the shape of a well in the earthen floor. It took them most of the afternoon to dig it deep enough to contain the body and bloodied rags, papers, and sheets - any sign of what had happened. Mrs. Jacobs was weeping the whole time but as long as she kept digging Doc left her to it. When it was deep enough they stuffed the body in the bottom and threw everything else in on top of it, then filled the hole. No one was likely to go into the cellar except Mrs. Jacobs but to be on the safe side they slid some wooden apple boxes and canning supplies over the scar in the floor.

  Six months later a Pinkerton detective arrived in Seattle looking for Tess Jones. Her mother had Mr. Broadrick’s letter assuring her Tess had left for home after her singing engagement. Broadrick proclaimed ignorance of why Tess had not arrived there. Still, Mrs. Jones knew enough about the world not to trust the word of a fast-talking, slick gent like him. The detective was her last, best hope of discovering the truth of what happened to her daughter. The detective was thorough. He interviewed Broadrick and the landlady of the boarding house where the Jones girl had been staying. Their stories seemed convincing enough, that Tess had packed her things and left in a cab, they assumed to Union Station. He checked with the stationmaster. There was no record of her there. So he checked the steamship companies along the waterfront.

  On the third try he found a booking for Miss Jones on the steamship Priscilla bound for San Francisco departing three days after Jones’ last performance. She had boarded, as verified by two of the crew who remembered her. Yes, they agreed, she was wearing a veiled hat and long coat, which matched the description Mrs. Jones gave him of her daughter’s traveling costume. The woman they saw was weeping and holding a handkerchief to her face through the entire boarding process. But no one remembered her at the San Francisco end. No sign of Tess Jones was ever unearthed in San Francisco or anywhere else.

  Chapter 6

  Claire had ordered her to bed, handing her a couple of pain pills and a glass of water.

  “Stop fussing, Claire. All I did was hurt my hand. You’re acting like I’ve had open heart surgery,” said Suzan.

  “You hand is not all that hurts, sweetie, and well you know it. So get some rest. I’ll call you tomorrow.”

  Long after she heard Claire let herself out, she stared at the ceiling, listening to the intimate sounds of the building. Mrs. Bloomquist’s muffled footsteps on the floor above her. A rose cane clawing the bedroom window. Wind shifting the bones of the house. The cotton sheets were slime slithering over he
r body.

  How will I ever sleep again? Did Claire remember to lock up? Maybe I should have checked my voice mail. Dad might have called about Wayne and Gail’s new baby. So many things I should be doing. I should be finishing that paper. Oh God, how am I ever going to finish that damned paper?

  The pills, I think, this feeling of drifting. It comes from outside myself, insinuating as a draft coming in around the door jam. It feels good. I close my eyes, my pulse thrumming in my ears. The bed folds itself closer around me, conforming to the shape of my aching body. I turn over on my side. I am falling off the edge of the bed, falling slowly toward the floor. Why don’t I hit the floor? Then, the floor is there, a membrane, and I am passing through it like a leaf settling on the surface of a pond then sinking, floating just below the surface tension, suspended halfway between the invisible depths and the invisible sky. What’s happening to me? Why don’t I drown? It doesn’t matter. I am settling to the bottom of the pond, into the silt and disintegrating leaves. So warm as sediment closes over me, as I sink deeper into the nestling sludge. Something welcoming. Fingers caressing my body, tendrils twining, hands clasping. Tightening. Fingernails on bare ankles, bone biting into my wrists, grasping, pulling me down, into the dark ooze of the bottom, closing over me.

  Suzan awoke sweaty and gasping, sprawled over the side of the bed, her damaged hand crushed under her ribs, pain worming its way from palm up through wrist bones and into her elbow. She reached for the bedside lamp. The alarm clock showed two-thirty. She had been out for six hours. Time for a few more pain meds, she thought. Never get back to sleep without them. But did she want to? What had she been dreaming? It faded so fast. Was it swimming? The lingering taste of it didn’t feel right. Suzan got up, walked to the bathroom, shook out a pair of pills and swallowed them with a couple of handfuls of water.

  Not enough pain pills left in the world for what ails me, she thought. Those infernal notebooks. Notes from the dead haunting her, taunting her. Where were they? What painful truths did they contain?

  She didn’t remember going back to sleep, but when she next opened her eyes a watery morning light was seeping in through the bedroom curtains. She was muzzy-headed and exhausted, curled into a fetal knot under a pile of rumpled wool blankets. A complete disaster. But sometime during the night she had arrived at a decision that surprised her. She would go to Seattle and face whatever awaited her there.

  * * *

  No matter where you are in America a train station speaks of failure. The fact that you are waiting for a train says you can’t afford a car, or your license was revoked, or you are afraid of flying, or you are too young or old or feeble or disabled or poor to travel long distances any other way. And because you are at the bottom of the social pecking order you sit in an uncomfortable plastic bucket chair, and sip machine-made coffee, uncomplaining while you wait hours for a train that is, according to the reader board, already delayed by thirty minutes.

  Suzan crumpled her empty coffee cup and wedged it into an overflowing trashcan. Was there time to lean back on the daypack and close her eyes for a few minutes? With her recent brand of luck she thought it likely she’d fall asleep and miss the only train for Seattle that day. She struggled to get as comfortable as possible and shuffled through the magazines on the sticky table. The only one not over six months old was Golf Digest.

  What time was it? She had no watch. Hated the things. It was like having a pulsing sentient beast strapped to your wrist counting out your allotted life span. Clocks and watches dominate, control. Of course she realized where her aversion was born. Her dad, being military, ran their household on an egg timer, a clock in every room. Suzan had never been late for anything in her life, even without a watch. It was a magical trick of time-space, the tyranny of time undoubtedly bred into her, inescapable as eye color or weak ankles.

  She glanced at the round aluminum timepiece above the ticket counter. Its hands seemed fixed in place.

  The train had better hurry, she thought, before I change my mind about going. What in the world could I hope to accomplish anyway? I’d show up at Seattle P.D. sweaty and clueless and they would tell me what I already knew. Then what? Off to the address on Sean’s belongings to annoy a group of total strangers. What was she thinking? If she did get someone to talk to her about Sean she would come off as pathetic. The stereotypical “grief stricken widow” the news media was so fond of parading in front of every camera, all red eyed and haggard, with that deer-in-the-headlights expression.

  Outside, the gentle mist that was falling as she arrived at the station had transformed into steady downpour. Suzan regretted not tucking an umbrella into her pack. Rain was sheeting over the waiting room windows, obscuring any view of the track. She noticed near the vending machines a group of guys with too many scruffy duffle bags and duct taped back packs were giving some poor kid a hard time about his hangover. The waiting room was packed with college types who had obviously started the Spring break party the night before and would undoubtedly continue to escalate it all the way into Seattle.

  One of the kids gave another one a good-natured shove into the Coke machine. Kids. That’s how she thought of them, though they weren’t much younger than she was. When had she started to think of herself as so old? It seemed just the other day she and Sean, Tony and Claire had set off on Spring break together with just as much wild joy as the vending machine group.

  Just as she was about to give up on the southbound train, it pulled into Fairhaven Station. Hefting her pack and purse, she joined the flow of travelers toward the boarding gate. It was going to be a very long, uncomfortable morning.

  Her assigned car was half way down the train and she was soaked to the skin by the time she found the right number. To her relief, the Coke machine crowd had peeled off at an earlier car. Suzan lodged her soppy pack and jacket in the overhead and took a place by the window, glad no one seemed to have booked the adjacent seat. She couldn’t bear to make idle chitchat with anybody this morning.

  The train lurched into motion. Pulling out of Fairhaven the train was a submarine diving into unfathomed depths, the rain a horizontal sheet of black water, turning the windows to mirrors fast fogging over. So much for enjoying the scenery. All she could see was her own hazy face. Maybe on the way back from Seattle she could sightsee. It wasn’t going to happen today.

  She hadn’t thought to bring anything to read, being a little afraid she would get motion sick. Perhaps, she considered, it would help to have something in eat. The elderly couple across the aisle were sharing sandwiches they had had the forethought to bring, probably remembering with regret the days when train travel was genteel and sophisticated transportation. Before jet liners, before Amtrak was the last resort for the broke and abandoned.

  Their peanut butter smelled wonderful. She decided to find the snack car for a sandwich. Breakfast, such as it was, seemed like a lifetime ago. She made her way up the aisle toward the front of the train, tossed and jostled with every sideways lurch, almost landing in the lap of one of the vending machine students as she passed through their car who, lucky for Suzan, was sound asleep.

  She returned to her seat without incident juggling an egg salad sandwich and a cup of coffee. The snack bar offered no peanut butter and jelly. The only other choices were soggy tuna salad, and ham with what looked like some kind of rubbery cheese.

  Swirling swatches of red and yellow beyond the windows suggested the train was passing through the Skagit Valley bulb farms. There were going to be some very unhappy flower farmers once the late spring storm blew over leaving all their daffodils and tulips smashed flat in the muddy fields. The rain was relentless, ice crystals scratching the glass. Suzan closed her eyes but the train seemed to be stumbling over every tie, a rhythm of thumps and bumps that any minute threatened to derail the train.

  The train plunged into a tunnel. She tried to think why that struck her as odd. Were there mountains between Bellingham and Seattle? She felt the train sliding out from under her, pee
ling itself away, leaving her standing on a forest trail surrounded by towering black fir trees.

  The rain has stopped but it is so dark under the thick branches she could only see a few feet of the path until it disappears into shadowy mist. She had to catch up with Sean. He’s run on ahead down the trail. Why did he do that? I can’t hear him anymore. My footsteps are silent on the thick mat of fallen needles. Overhead the sepia trees tangle into one another, blotting out the clouded sky. I have to hurry but I’m afraid I’ll stumble over the roots that snake over the trail. Where did he say he was going? I walk faster, worried when night falls I will be lost in the forest. I must catch up to Sean. Why didn’t he wait for me? The trail is narrowing, waist high sword ferns closing over the path until I can’t see how I can push my way through. There is no sign of Sean. Did he come this way? Should I turn around and go back? I fight through a thicket and I am in a clearing.

  A whisper draws my attention to the center of the clearing. A whisper, but I can’t hear any words. Perhaps it was a breeze in the far away treetops, or the wings of unseen birds. I walk toward the center of the clearing, seeing for the first time a deep green pool of water, its surface mirroring the looming firs. Drifts of moss carpet the pool edge. Something stirs a ripple in the water. I kneel on the edge, searching the depths for the cause. Something is in the water, drifting. It shimmers, like the side of a fish. Like a knife. I lean closer to the placid surface. There it is. Larger than I first thought. A glimpse of something white, rolling over. A face, the pale hair fanning out around the head, the green eyes open, unseeing, in the water, the mouth wide in surprise, and I am screaming, screaming as his body floats toward me.