The Suspect List--Chapter Three
Dinner, cheap beer, Truman Capote, sexy vampires, and the couple who fostered Abigail
I’m counting on Zane offering to pay for dinner so I don’t have to use the credit card I save for emergencies. Payday is still a week away and I’m already living off peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Not the kind made with good bakery bread either. The cheap kind.
We meet on the sidewalk in front of the Main Street Grill and walk inside together. It’s one of those restaurants that are so dark inside it always feels like midnight. The booths are tall enough that you can’t see the diners in front or behind you. Instead of overhead lights at each booth, they have fake candles on the tables, like they’re going for romantic or classy.
It’s neither, but it’s a decent enough place.
The hostess, an older woman who has been here forever leads us to a booth in the back. We both order beer, but I get the cheap, light kind and Zane chooses an IPA. When I ask how he can drink that stuff he tells me he actually likes the taste, and that’s the only reason he drinks alcohol.
“You don’t drink to catch a buzz?”
“No. I’ve never liked feeling out of control.”
“I don’t drink much either. Not anymore.” He does not need to know that it was only a couple months ago, after using the mens room by mistake at a bar in Durango, that I started cutting back on my drinking.
There’s a pause in the conversation. The awkward kind that lasts too long. I say the first thing that comes to mind. “So what made you want to be a journalist?”
“Truman Capote.”
“Who?”
“You’ve never heard of him?”
“Nope.”
“In Cold Blood?”
“Nada.”
“It’s a famous book. I read it in high school.”
“Ah. Well, I might as well tell you right now, when I was in high school I didn’t read anything that didn’t have wizards, or vampires in it.”
“Not vampires. Please tell me you didn’t read that series.”
“I was fifteen.” The first time I read it, anyway. But not the second or third time.
Zane proceeds to tell me about Truman Capote who became famous long before I was born for writing about a murder case and turning it into a nonfiction novel, which is of course, a contradiction in terms since novels are always fiction, and it’s a bit controversial to have used a real story that way but he did win an Edgar for it, but not The Pulitzer…yada, yada yada.
“Is that what you want to do? Get rich off fiction that comes from other people’s real life tragedies?”
His mouth opens, then closes. At the look on his face I hear my mother’s words in her raspy smoker’s voice.
Your mouth runs faster than your mind.
While Zane appears to be struggling to come up with a response I feel the odds of a second date with him dropping dramatically.
“If people don’t write about the bad stuff that’s like pretending it didn’t happen. We can’t just pretend the world is all rainbows and wildflowers.”
“But don’t you worry that writing about violence incites more violence?”
“No.” Zane is confident. “I don’t believe it works that way.”
Before I can argue, the server arrives with our burgers and we both dig right in.
“So who is Blake? The first name on your list?”
Zane hesitates, but only for a second. “Blake Jarvis was Abigail’s foster father.”
“Oh, she was a foster kid.”
“Why did you say it like that?”
“Like what?”
“Like it explains something about her. As if a foster girl is more likely to have run away or have had something terrible happen to her.”
This seems obvious to me but since Zane is a bit sensitive about Abigail I change the subject.
“Tell me about Blake. What’s he like?”
“Women think he’s good-looking.”
“Women do? Don’t tell me you’re one of those men who pretends he can’t tell if another dude is attractive or not.”
Zane rolls his eyes. “Would it be better if I said that Blake was totally hot?”
“If it’s true, then yes.”
Zane takes a deep pull from his beer and doesn’t respond.
“I’m assuming Blake was married.”
“Yes. And he was young, mid-twenties. Most people consider him a nice guy but there were rumors going around after Abigail disappeared, suggestions that Blake had something going on with her.”
“As in something immoral and illegal.”
“Yes.”
“Hm. So what was Blake’s wife like?”
“Jolene taught history at Mannon high school. I had her junior year.”
“Was she hot too?”
“Kind of average actually. She was an okay teacher most of the time, but she had these crazy mood swings.”
“Interesting. Did she have a temper? Fly into rages?”
“No, nothing like that. Some days she’d be bursting with enthusiasm and other days she’d give us an assignment and leave the room for as long as twenty minutes, or she’d sit behind her desk just staring off into space. I saw her with tears in her eyes more than once.”
“Did this moodiness follow a monthly schedule?”
His eyebrows lift, and he smiles. “I never thought of that.”
“I bet that was it, PMS. Or marital troubles. Or both.”
“Maybe. She definitely had serious mental health issues. She died of a drug overdose, but that was long after Abigail disappeared.”
“Huh. That’s interesting. Maybe her husband killed Abigail and she knew it, but she was afraid of him, so she kept Blake’s dark secret all these years and it drove her into a deep depression. That’s why she got into drugs. To ease her pain. Or she killed Abigail in a jealous rage and then took drugs to ease her guilt.”
“All possibilities,” Zane says. “That’s why her name is on the list.”
I remember the third name on the list. “Who is Rev?”
Zane’s eyes widen slightly, he sticks his head out of the booth, and takes a quick look around. “We shouldn’t be talking about this here.”
“You’re right. Small towns have big ears, and even bigger mouths. At least that’s what my mom always says.”
“Smart woman,” Zane says.
“She’s a waitress.” I regret the words as soon as they’re out.
“That doesn’t mean she’s not smart.”
“No, of course it doesn’t. I don’t know why I said that. My mom is good with people. Understanding and, um, wise, that’s the word I was looking for.”
“She has emotional intelligence.”
“Yes, exactly. You get it.”
Zane nods and I see in his intense blue eyes, that he’s not just talking, he really does get it.
“Tell me about your family,” He says. “Do they live around here? Do you have siblings?”
“I have an older sister. She’s in Florida now, don’t ask me why. We lived in Boulder until I was seven, that’s when my parents got divorced. My mom moved us to Clover, because she had a friend who let us move into her basement for free. I think we lived there for about a year. Then we moved around in this area for a few more years, Clover to Mannon, and back to Clover in whatever dump we could afford. My dad refused to pay child support, and my mom didn’t earn much waitressing.”
“Sounds rough. Where’s your mom now?”
“Clover. She’s worked at the same restaurant for years, and loves it there. She and my stepdad have been together for eight years, and they actually seem happy.”
“You say that like it’s hard to believe.”
“If you met Hal, you’d get it. He got injured years ago on the job—not his fault or anything— but he’s on disability and he spends all his time smoking weed and playing video games. He’s obsessed with them. It’s about all he does, that and cook.”
“He cooks?”
“It’s part of the deal. Mom works so he makes dinner and scrambles around cleaning up before she gets home. He tells her how wonderful she is and how much he appreciates her every day.” I see no reason to mention their money struggles— that they live in a forty- year-old single- wide in a trailer park.
“It sounds like it works for them, that’s what matters.”
“Exactly. She likes him, and he treats her well.”
“Respect is so important,” Zane says.
I resist the urge to clear the wax from my ears with my pinky finger, to be sure I’ve heard him correctly, because that might just be the sexiest thing I’ve ever heard from a dude on a date. It makes Zane seem too good to be for real so naturally I start doubting whether this even is a date.
Is he hoping I’ll be an easy hook up? It’s the nose piercing, my mother would say, it gives the wrong impression.
We keep talking until we can no longer milk our beers or put off paying the bill. I take out my card, slowly slide it to the edge of the table, hoping…
“I’ll buy, as a thank you for putting up with my grandpa and everything.”
“I get paid for that, but since you offered so politely, I’ll allow you to pay.” I slip my card back into my wallet before he can change his mind.
We walk outside, stand on Main Street talking. It’s still light out, but it’s gotten cold. I should have worn my down coat. It’s way warmer than my denim jacket. I went for cute over practical. The denim looks good with my favorite jeans, the ones with holes in the knees that got there the natural way—I’ve been wearing them since senior year of high school.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Zane says.
“Do what?”
“Take care of people when they’re like Jabez.”
“It’s different when they’re not your own relatives. Easier. Emotionally I mean.”
“I guess I can see that. But the stuff you have to do— the actual, physical part of it, sounds awful.”
“Like helping people on and off the toilet, cleaning them up, getting them in and out of bed, that sort of thing?”
“Yeah, that.”
“I feel good about being able to do things for people who are too sick to do it themselves. It’s certainly better than working retail which I did for two miserable years. I’d rather deal with real crap than the shit the public gives to people they think are beneath them.”
“Retail does suck. Still, most people can't do what you do.”
“Sure they can. People do what needs to be done. Before the days when we started putting old people in homes, it’s what everyone did. Families took care of the elderly—even bathing them and helping them in the bathroom. It’s just what you did.”
“Would you believe my mom actually feels guilty for not being able to take care of her dad herself?”
“I’ve gotten that feeling from Sherry. She’s so dedicated to him, and appreciative of us caregivers.”
“She really is.”
I’m trying not to shiver, not wanting that to be the reason the evening ends.
“Can I give you a ride home?” Zane asks.
It’s three blocks. It would be as fast to walk as to drive. “Sure. That’d be nice.”
The Goodenough Apartments are in a two- story building with six apartments on each floor and one in the basement. There’s a second story deck that overlooks the neighbor’s yard. The parking area on the side of the building is always full. Zane parks on the street half a block away.
“Would you like a tour of my humble abode?”
“Do I get to meet your roommates?”
“Probably not, they’re a bit shy. But if you do meet them, don’t shake their hands. They might be carrying the plague.”
“Good advice.”
I’m glad I spent a few minutes cleaning up before I walked to the restaurant. I even turned my futon from bed back to sofa. Now I imagine turning it back into a bed, stretching out on it with Zane…
No.
I have to be good, take things slow. Is it even ethical to date a family member of a patient? Probably not. But considering how small the dating pool is around here, I’m not going to let a little thing like that stop me.
(I hope you’re enjoying the story! If so please consider sharing.)
I’m loving the conversations between these two! The characters feel so real!