1 - 11-5
1948 Words
An hour later, her route swung past the flyspeck village of Edwards where Grandma had lived. It abutted the border of the Umatilla Indian Reservation.
Edwards had been her home from age five, when her divorced mother fell in love with a long-haul trucker. Patty-Jean Dockson had dumped her daughter with her ex-mother-in-law, climbed into her lover’s Kenworth, and disappeared for ten years.
Idyllic years for a growing girl, basking in her grandmother’s unconditional love and riding her changing string of convalescing horses.
The memory made her vow to spend no more time obsessing over Freemantle. This afternoon, tomorrow and Christmas Day belonged to Grandma. Making her grandmother queen for the holiday would be her only goal.
When she opened the door to Room 210 at Roundup Assisted Living Community, she inhaled the aroma of flour browned in beef fat and saw Grandma expertly flip a slab of chicken-fried steak. No mean feat for a woman sitting in a wheelchair, eye level with the two-burner cooktop.
She dropped her bag beside the bathroom door and leaned down to kiss her grandmother’s papery cheek. She caught the familiar scent of baby powder.
“I thought we were eating in the dining room tonight with your pals. Why are you cooking?”
“Changed the main course to liver and onions. Not your favorite dish, I recall.”
Grandma twisted her head to grin at her. Plastic tubing snaked from her nostrils to the floor and across it to the oxygen tank in the corner of the room. The smile faded to a frown.
“You look like you been rode hard and put up wet,” she added in the raspy voice of a lifelong smoker.
“I’m a little short of sleep. I plan to catch up on it while living your lazy lifestyle.”
Nora carefully maneuvered the wheelchair away from the cooktop and parked her grandmother at a small table. It shared the space adjacent to the so-called “tea kitchen” with one dining chair, a couch as long as her granddaughter was tall, and a flat screen television.
Beyond, a hospital bed and table littered with pill bottles filled the sleeping nook. Not spacious, but room enough for one eighty-four-year-old woman who spent more time gallivanting from friend to friend in the facility than she did in front of her TV.
Nora turned down the heat under the steaks and moved the golden hash browns to join them. She poured vegetable oil into the skillet, turned up the heat, and cracked two eggs into the hot oil. As both fried to perfection, she plated the potatoes and meat. She slid an egg atop each steak and set a plate before her grandmother.
“The perfect brunch. Pure genius on your part.”
Grandma waved her fork. “Somebody has to take care of you, since you won’t.”
“You’re doing the same great job you always have.”
“Worked good on you,” Grandma rasped. “Not quite the same effect on your dad.”
“His fault. You always said he was born contrary.”
Opal Dockson had left school after ninth grade to marry her sweetheart. She was pregnant when he was killed in a car crash. She’d worked at the only grocery store in Edwards for the next fifty-four years, caring first for her son Ben and later for his daughter.
Nora added, “If my dad was smart as you say, you think he’d have done better.”
“Smart at school,” Grandma said around a mouthful of potato. “First kid in his class to learn to read. But he was making foolish choices before he was six years old.”
Her mouth full, she nodded. Family legend had it that when her father saw his first “Walk” traffic signal for pedestrians change to “Don’t Walk,” he ran into the crossing to exploit the loophole he’d discovered. Spent the rest of his life bucking the rules.
Grandma continued, “Only got worse when he discovered booze.”
“Love of his life,” Nora agreed.
Her father had been on one bender after another while she was growing up. When he collapsed and was hospitalized for kidney failure at age sixty, his doctor warned him that his wrecked body could no longer metabolize alcohol. Drinking would kill him. Two years ago, his final binge had done that.
“He was never happier than when he was sitting in a tavern,” she said, “getting a buzz on. There was nothing you could do.”
Grandma lifted a shoulder, let it drop. “I’m a mother. We blame ourselves when our kids screw up.”
“You’re not talking about my mother.”
Grandma’s guffaw turned into a coughing spell.
When she recovered, she said, “Patty-Jean hasn’t got a motherly bone in her body. You be sure to ask me about her before you leave. I want to get started celebrating Christmas. We have an eggnog party to go to. Got a piano player we can sing along with.”
“Before I do any singing,” Nora retorted, “I need a cigarette.”
Outside, she stood at the edge of the parking lot, smoking and thinking of her mother. She’d been fifteen when Patty-Jean returned to Pendleton. Her mother had insisted she live with her. Patty-Jean needed the monthly check her newly sober ex-husband sent from Phoenix as child support.
Her mother’s string of boyfriends seemed to think screwing the daughter was included in the package.
When she reported the first crude pass, Patty-Jean insisted it was a lie.
In her last months of high school, Patty-Jean caught Virgil, her current boyfriend, with his hand under her daughter’s T-shirt. Ignoring him, she called Nora a w***e and punched her in the stomach.
That June, Patty-Jean found a new guy and told Virgil to leave. Surly, he refused. She called the cops to get him out of the apartment. To keep him away, she sought a restraining order, weaving lurid stories of his abuse of her daughter into the application.
She’d begged Patty-Jean to delete the accounts. She hadn’t wanted her classmates snickering over the nasty stories at graduation. Her mother had called her a selfish pig and slapped her face, giving her a black eye to wear with her cap and gown.
First chance she’d gotten, she’d run away.
She stubbed out the first cigarette and lit another. She hadn’t seen Patty-Jean again until long after her release from prison.
But, every month her grandmother had driven to the other side of the state to visit her. Grandma had been there to collect her the day she got out. She’d given her a place to live. Convinced her to start community college. Urged her to transfer to the state university. Insisted she go to law school.
Nora quickly finished her smoke.
If her grandmother lived forever, she still wouldn’t be able to repay the debt she owed her.
Grandma wanted to celebrate? Then celebrate they would.
Nora didn’t think of her mother again until Tuesday evening. She and her grandmother had finished their turkey dinner in the community dining room and were back in the apartment.
Grandma brought up Patty-Jean. “You heard anything from her?”
“Not a word since she married that old coot.”
“Old coot?” Grandma tried to look offended. “I hear Mr. Thomas is my age.”
She snorted. “Makes him twenty years older than Patty-Jean Dockson Thomas. She can’t have married him for love.”
Grandma chuckled. “Well, it sure wasn’t for money. I talked to your aunt Judy last week.”
Judy Olson was her mother’s born-again stepsister.
Grandma added, “She told me Patty-Jean’s in some county lockup near Seattle. Busted for passing stolen checks.”
“Not bad news.” She sighed. “Should get her six months inside. My life’s easier when she’s not on the loose.”
“The bad news is that Patty-Jean thinks she can make a deal. According to Judy, some cop told your mom she has a chance to get probation. If she’s forthcoming with regard to her daughter. Nora Dockson.” Grandma eyed her. “What’s going on?”
“There’s a lady lawyer working for Washington’s attorney general who’s real interested in me.”
She told her grandmother what she’d learned from Winnie.
“Marianne Freemantle is collecting information about me,” she concluded.
“Patty-Jean’ll tell any story that she thinks will make her life easier,” Grandma warned.
“The juicier they are, the happier Freemantle will be. Truth, justice, and the American way mean nothing to her. Where’s Superman when I need him?”
Joking to hide how hard the news hit her. She didn’t want to upset her grandmother.
Later, lying on the couch in the dark, listening to the steady rumble of Grandma’s breathing and the hiss of the oxygen tank, Nora couldn’t fall asleep. Slipping into her clothes, she grabbed her cigarettes and headed outside.
Above her, the night sky was cloudless, dotted with stars. Moonlight flooded the parking lot, creating shadows that hid the dents in her Buick and the seediness of the three sand-filled pots topped by cigarette butts. Their stale scent lingered, reminding her of the link between Grandma’s habit and her advanced emphysema.
She lit up anyway. The taste of tobacco was her only comfort on this frozen Christmas night.
The number and range of Freemantle’s probes into her background were greater than she’d supposed. The realization sent a shiver through her.
Kent Harper, Zane Carter, and another unnamed cop—how many minions did Freemantle have doing her dirty work? And what was she planning to do with the information she was gathering?
She should have answered that last question before filing her motion.
She’d lost her temper and her head.
Quinn needed to hear what Freemantle was up to. He’d want to start damage control to protect the Center.
She also had to speed up her work on Jared Nelson’s case. She should check out Jared’s ex-wife as soon as possible. She’d go to Holly Nelson in Idaho tomorrow afternoon, right after she finished meeting Jared at the prison.
She wouldn’t stop in Spokane en route. Quinn would have more questions than she had time to answer. Dealing with him by phone would take as long.
She’d have to dump another tough job on her best friend. Call Channing first thing in the morning and ask her to tell Quinn the story of her arrest and incarceration.
She’d track down Kent Harper. Maybe she could squeeze some clue from him that’d tell her what Freemantle was planning.
Stubbing her cigarette in the sand, she glanced at the sky.
Empty of action, Santa’s sleigh back to the barn for another year. But it was only ten o’clock. Still Christmas.
She barked out a harsh laugh and added the formula words.
“God. Bless. Us. Everyone.”
Her staccato delivery made the phrase ring like a curse.
4 Kent HarperWashington State Trooper Sergeant Kent Harper spent Wednesday morning in Cheney.
He had an early meeting with a forensic scientist at the regional crime lab. Later, he sat down with the chair of the criminal justice program at Eastern Washington University to go over the outline for the short course he’d been drafted to teach winter quarter.
He kept his phone turned off.
He didn’t discover he was a wanted man until the Washington State Patrol communications officer welcomed him back to District Four headquarters.
“Day after Christmas and three women are after you,” white-haired Ursula Endreason caroled as he neared the curved reception podium. She held up a fistful of pink phone message slips. “What’ve you been up to?”
He shrugged. “Doing my job, same as you. Not our fault God made us both irresistible to the opposite sex.”
Endreason cast her gaze heavenward, as though appealing for divine intervention. She insisted she did not appreciate his “mindless knee-jerk flirting.”
Not credible to him. All women enjoyed male admiration. Though some felt they should pretend not to.
Endreason added, “Could be these ladies are more interested in kicking your ass than kissing it.”
“Cruel words, Teddy.”
When he’d learned Ursula meant “little bear,” he coined the nickname. It fit. From a distance, the sixty-year-old woman had the silhouette of a stuffed animal, short and wide. The leather belt dividing her long-sleeved white shirt from her black pants made no dent at her waistline. Even in official trooper attire, she looked huggable. He reached for his messages.
- Writer
