Authors: Anne Argula
I took it all in, in just a second, and focused on Odd’s face, looking for the flash of recognition. I believe Janet Olson was doing the same thing. We were both waiting for him to say something.
“It’s small,” he said. The remark was anticlimatic. But I remembered the first time I went back home to Pennsylvania after many years on the west coast and went into my old room. My reaction was exactly the same. It seemed so much smaller than I remembered it.
Odd began looking closer, especially at the things in the bookcase, and he said, “There was a blue spiral notebook that she always kept with her, with stick-on’s, all kinds of little goofy things the girls were sticking on their notebooks…the peace symbol, the Beatles, psychedelic flowers…. Do you know where that is?”
“The police came in and took all of that stuff,” she said. “After a time, when no one was arrested, they returned it all, but I don’t remember any blue notebook like that.”
“It would have been here,” he insisted. “Her name was on the cover…Jeannie…written in silver ink with great flourishes. And at the bottom, in black letters: PRIVATE PROPERTY.”
“Then you must have seen this notebook,” she said. “Where?”
“That’s the hard part,” I said. “That might require more than cocoa.”
Odd heard neither one of us. He was concentrating on that notebook, trying to reproduce it in his mind. He shut his eyes. “It was half diary, half junk heap,” he said, “a doodle pad, a safe place for all her lists, all the things she wanted, all the things she wanted to do, to become, all the places she wanted to go, all her likes and dislikes, all her fears and dreams, everything. It would have been here. She took it to school with her every day and she brought it home after.”
“Go to the last pages of the notebook,” I whispered. “What is written there?”
The old woman backed away from us, into the doorway, ready to make what escape she could. She was trembling now, holding onto the door frame.
“In big letters…” said Odd. He lowered his head and searched through closed eyes.
I tried to help him along. “Yes, in big letters,” I said. “Are they printed or cursive?”
“Both…big and small…printed and hand written. A name…”
“Yes,” I said, “what is the name?”
He moved his head slowly, side to side, taking in the name he could now read in his mind.
“Ron,” he said. “The name is Ron…and later…now it’s James….pages of Ron, then pages of James…”
“Was there a boy named Ron in Jeannie’s class?” I asked the old woman.
“Ron? No, none that I remember. None in the school, that I know of, and I knew all the kids.”
“Where is the notebook?” I asked Odd.
“In my
hands
!”
“No, where now?”
He opened his eyes, turned to me and to Janet. “I don’t know,” he said.
“Are you a psychic?” she asked.
“I wish,” said I.
Janet, still trembling, continued to hold onto the door frame. She was breathing heavily. “I remember now who it was,” she said. “The twelve-year-old boy who was so infatuated with Jeannie.”
15.
The old woman had a ritual of making herself a martini at sunset, but only when there was a sunset to be seen, which kept her from having a daily drink, although it is strange how many times, she told us, how at the end of a dark gray day the horizon will open up and the sun will come out just long enough to set, providing spectacular contrasts, dark sky above, dying sun below, and then the green-blue water.
She mixed up a pitcher of martinis, Kettle One vodka. It was ten o’clock, and if there had been a sunset that evening, this far north, we would have been only minutes behind it.
I’ve seen black tar addicts start cooking with less anticipation than Janet prepping her martinis.
“You kept up the ritual,” said Odd.
The long spoon in her hand stirred faster and faster.
“You and Daddy and your martinis at sunset,” he said.
At last. There went the spoon, into the pitcher, and the woman looked liked she might dive in after. Odd went to her and took her into his arms. and she whimpered, “Oh, my God…oh, my God…”
“A mother knows,” said Odd. “Doesn’t she?”
The old woman nodded against his chest, then said hoarsely, “Yes, a mother knows.”
He comforted her in his arms for a long moment. I salivated at the martini pitcher, worried that the ice would melt. I took it upon myself to pour.
“I have so many questions,” she said.
“Me too,” he said, “and very few answers.”
“Yeah, well, I got a question of my own,” I said, handing them each a martini. Screw the olives. “Who’s the lovesick kid?”
“First a toast,” said Odd. “You can’t drink a martini without a toast. To the three of us.”
I thought he meant the three of us standing there together, fine, but she started weeping again, and I knew he had echoed the toast her husband always made at sunset, to the three of them, father, mother, and daughter, the family.
“Wherever he may be,” Odd added, “because he lives, somewhere.”
It gave her strength, enough to hoist the glass, anyway. Color rushed back to her face, fueled by the powerful mixture of alcohol and essence of wormwood.
“It was Seth Shining Pony,” she said, “the little boy who followed Jeannie around, the lovesick little boy.”
“It was!” said Odd, smiling. “How could I not remember? He was an adorable little pest. If I smiled at him, or talked to him, he’d run away. Next day, he’d be back, following me.”
Was it the drink or my hormone starved body? Did it matter? I was sweating like a Fourth of July parade. It was Odd, good old Odd, the big Swede, macho man, solid as a stone, his own deep voice but speaking with the cadence of a teen-aged girl.
The memory he was reliving may have been flattering, it may have been amusing, but I were still a cop, and if I were going to be sucked into this, I would have to start thinking like one again. Who’s the perp?
We found our way to the soft chairs for the second martini. On top of the beers I had earlier, I had a viable buzz stacking.
“Is a twelve-year-old capable of blasting two people with a shotgun?” I asked, a rhetorical question these days. There is hard evidence that the contemporary twelve-year old can pull it off and go home to his PlayStation. But in 1967 American children had not yet turned that dark corner. Even in their fantasies, back in ‘67, they were still more suicidal than homicidal, Then something changed, who knows what?
“Seth is widely respected on the island,” said Janet. “He’s known to be a decent fair man.”
“But what kind of kid was he?”
“I never heard anything bad about him.”
“Okay. So he’s rehabilitated,” I said. “Most murderers are rehabilitated as soon as they’re caught…or right after they’ve done the deed, meaning, they’ll never do it again.”
Odd was nursing his drink, thinking about it.
“He could have stolen that notebook,” I said. “A twelve-year-old shadow, he would have had the opportunity. Odd?”
“I don’t know. I can’t remember.”
“A great change came over the chief right after we talked to James’ parents. He didn’t like it. That’s when he wanted us off the island.”
“Then why did he cooperate with me originally? He took me to the crime scene, he didn’t hide anything.”
“Why should he? Look at us. Sherlock Holmes we ain’t. He didn’t have any reason to fear either one of us, until we went to the Coyotes and the old guy started spreading it around that you…used to live here, in another body. Then it was, don’t be late for the ferry.”
“I don’t know,” said Odd. “Maybe he was so disgusted with Houser he just wanted him out of his house and off his island. We had nothing to do with it.”
Houser! I’d forgotten all about him.
“Jeez Louise,” I said, “Houser. Do you think he’s still in the car?”
“I don’t much care,” said Odd.
But to me, the thought was sobering, messing up my nice buzz. I had visions of Stacey finding him, stealing our car, making a getaway, us losing our jobs. My paranoia cut short what could have been an all-nighter. Mrs. Olson didn’t want Odd to go. He was, after all, the spirit of her daughter. And Odd would have been happy to stay. I finally convinced him it would be a good idea to drop in on the chief again, before it got too late.
“Yes, I would like to see the chief again,” he said.
“But you’ll come back, won’t you?” she asked.
“Yes, I will.”
“And stay for a while…I know you have a life in Spokane, but if you could spend some time here…”
“I would like that,” he said, “if it’s not too upsetting.”
“Oh, I’ll take that risk.”
Enough had gone on in that house to spook a normal cop, but once outside my immediate concern was, I don’t see Houser. Like when you leave your dog in the parking lot while you pop into K-Mart and you come back out and you don’t see the mutt until you’re right at the window, and he’s hunkered down on the floor, sleeping, and you were already working out in your head how you would explain it to your husband that you lost the family pet. It was like that. Houser was curled up in the back seat, fast asleep. I let Odd drive.
“Did you find the notebook?” Houser asked.
“Shaddup,” said I.
“C’mon, what happened?”
We ignored the perv.
We pulled up to the tribal police double-wide and went inside, this time dragging Houser along with us. Like when, after the K-Mart thing you still have to stop at the bank but this time you bring Fido in with you because you’re afraid of the way you thought you lost him, and at least here they’ll give him a biscuit.
Robert was on duty, the first Robert. Though he looked a lot like the second Robert, I could tell the difference.
“Good evening, Robert,” I said, best of friends. I was a little drunk. “The chief here?”
“Nope.” He looked over Houser, trying to figure that one out.
“Hey, Robert,” said Odd. “Where’s your evidence locker?”
“Our what?”
“Your evidence locker,” he said. “Where you keep evidence of crimes?”
“Why’d you want to see that?”
“Just a thought,” said Odd.
“Hold on a second,” the kid said, and he went into the back room.
“It’s after eleven,” I said. “What made us think the chief would be here?”
“He’ll be here,” said Odd.
“You think the notebook might be in the evidence locker?”
“Most likely not.”
I was holding Houser by the back of his belt. He had nothing to say.
Robert came back out carrying a cardboard box with a lid on it, the kind of box made for storing files. He put it on the counter and took off the lid. It was their evidence locker.