Essentially, Selma Newquist had hired me to reconstruct the last four to six weeks of her late husband’s life on the theory that whatever had troubled him probably took place within that time frame. I don’t generally favor spouses spying on one another-especially when one of the parties is dead-but she seemed convinced the answers would give her closure. I had my doubts.
Maybe Tom Newquist was simply worried about finances, or brooding about how to occupy his time during his retirement.
I’d agreed to give her a verbal report every two to three days, supplemented by a written account. Selma had demurred at first, saying verbal reports would be perfectly adequate, but I told her I preferred the written, in part to detail whatever information I collected. Productive or not, I wanted her to see what ground I was covering. It was just as important for her to be aware of the information I couldn’t verify as it was for her to have a record of the facts I picked up along the way. With verbal reports, much of the data gets lost in translation. Most people aren’t trained to listen. Given the complexity of our mental processes, the recipient tunes Out, blocks, forgets, or misinterprets eighty percent of what’s been said. Take any fifteen minutes’ worth of conversation and try to reconstruct it later and you’ll see what I mean. If the communication has any emotional content whatever, the quality of the information retained degrades even further. A written report was for my benefit, too. Let a week pass and I can hardly remember the difference between Monday and Tuesday, let alone what stops I made and in what order I made them. I’ve noticed that clients are confident about your abilities until payment comes due and then, suddenly, the total seems outrageous and they stand there wondering exactly what you’ve done to earn it. It’s better to submit an invoice with a chronology attached. I like to cite chapter and verse with all the proper punctuation laid in. If nothing else, it’s a demonstration of both your IQ and your writing skills. How can you trust someone who doesn’t bother to spell correctly and/ or can’t manage to lay out a simple declarative sentence?
The other issue we’d discussed was the nature of my fees. As a lone operator, I really didn’t have any hard-and-fast rules about billing, particularly in a case like this where I was working out of town. Sometimes I charge a flat fee that includes all my expenses. Some times I charge an hourly rate and add expenses on top of that. Selma had assured me she had money to burn, but frankly, I felt guilty about eating into Tom’s estate. On the other hand, she’d survived him and I thought she had a point. Why should she live the rest of her life wondering if her husband was hiding something from her? Grief is enough of an affront without additional regrets about unfinished business. Selma was already struggling to come to terms with Tom’s death. She needed to know the truth and wanted me to supply it.Fair enough. I hoped I could provide her with an answer that would satisfy.
Until I got a sense of how long the job would take, we’d agreed on four hundred bucks a day. From Dietz, I’d borrowed a boilerplate contract. I’d penned in the date and details of what I’d been hired to do and she’d written me a check for fifteen hundred dollars. I’d runthat by the bank to make sure it cleared before I got down to business. I’m sorry to confess that while I sympathize with all the widows, orphans, and under-dogs in the world, I think it’s wise to make sure sufficient funds are in place before you rush to some one’s rescue.
I closed the cabin and locked it, hiked back to my rental car, and drove the six miles into town. The highway was sparsley strung with assorted businesses: tractor sales, a car lot, trailer park, country store, and a service station.The fields in between were gold with dried grass and tufted with weeds. The wide sweep of sky had turned from strong blue to grey, a thick haze of white obscuring the mountain tops. Away to the west, a torn pattern of clouds lay without motion. All the near hills were a scruffy red brown, polka-dotted with white. Wind rattled in the trees. I adjusted the heater in the car, flipping on the fan until tropical breezes blew against my legs.
For my stay in Carson City, I’d packed my tweed blazer for dress up and a blue denim jacket for casual wear. Both were too light and insubstantial for this area. I cruised the streets downtown until I spotted a thrift store. I nosed the rental car into a diagonal parking space out front. The window was crowded with kitchenware and minor items of furniture: a bookcase, a footstool, stacks of mismatched dishes, five lamps, a tricycle, a meat grinder, an old Philco radio, and some red Burma-Shave signs bound together with wire. The top one in the pile read DOES YOUR HUSBAND. What, I thought. Does your husband what? Burma-Shave signs had first appeared in the 1920s and many persisted even into my childhood, always with variations of that tricky, bumping lilt. Does your husband. . . have a beard? … Is be really very weird? … If he’s living in a cave … Offer him some … Burma-Shave. Or words to that effect.
The interior of the store smelled like discarded shoes. I made my way down aisles densely crowded with hanging clothes. I could see rack after rack of items that must have been purchased with an eye to function and festivity. Prom gowns, cocktail dresses, women’s suits, acrylic sweaters, blouses, and Hawaiian shirts. The woolens seemed dispirited and the cottons were tired, the colors subdued from too many rounds in the wash. Toward the rear, there was a rod sagging under the burden of winter jackets and coats.
I shrugged into a bulky brown leather bomber jacket. The weight of it felt like one of those lead aprons the technician places across your body while taking dental Xrays from the safety of another room. The jacket lining was fleece, minimally matted, and the pockets sported diagonal zippers, one of which was broken. I checked the inside of the collar. The size was a medium, big enough to accommodate a heavy sweater if I needed one. The price tag was pinned to the brown knit ribbing on the cuff. Forty bucks. What a deal. Does your husband belch and rut? Does be scratch his hairy butt? If you want to see him bathe … tame the beast with Burma-Sbave. I tucked the jacket over my arm while I moved up and down the aisles. I found a faded blue flannel shirt and a pair of hiking boots. On my way out, I stopped and untwisted the wire connecting the Burma-Shavc signs, reading them one by one.
DOES YOUR HUSBAND
MISBEHAVE?
GRUNT AND GRUMBLE
RANT AND RAVE?
SHOOT THE BRUTE SOME
BURMA-SHAVE
I smiled to myself. I wasn’t half-bad at that stuff. I went out to the street again with my purchases in hand. Let’s hear it for the good old days. Lately, Americans have been losing their sense of humor.
I spotted an office supply store across the street. I crossed, stocked up on paper supplies, including a couple of packs of blank index cards. Two doors down, I found a branch of Selma’s bank and came out with a wad of twenties in my shoulder bag. I retrieved my car and pulled out, circling the block until I was headed in the right direction. The town already felt familiar, neatly laid out and clean. Main Street was four lanes wide. The buildings on either side were generally one to two stories high, sharing no particular style. The atmosphere was vaguely Western. At each intersection, I caught sight of a wedge of mountains, the snow-capped peaks forming a scrim that ran the length of the town. Traffic was light and I noticed most of the vehicles were practical: pickups and utility vans with ski racks across the tops.
When I arrived back at Selma’s, the garage door was open. The parking space on the left was empty. On the right, I spotted a late-model blue pickup truck. As I got out of my car, I noticed a uniformed deputy emerging from a house two doors down. He crossed the two lawns between us, walking in my direction. I waited, assuming this was Tom’s younger brother, Macon. At first glance, I couldn’t tell how much younger he was. I placed him in his late forties, but his age might have been deceptive. He had dark hair, dark brows, and a pleasant, unremarkable face. He was close to six feet tall, compactly built. He wore a heavy jacket, cropped at the waist to allow ready access to the heavy leather holster on his right hip. The wide belt and the weapon gave him a look of heft and bulk that I’m not sure would have been evident if he’d been stripped of his gear.