Hummingbird Salamander(69)
The houseboat lay on the bank of a river a hundred miles north of the King Range. With the trees smothering everything, and islands of gray-green moss and lichen smothering the trees. Even in the cold. Remote, in how the overload of texture muffles sound and changes where it comes from. How even the trickling tease and sometimes surge of the river feels like a dream or memory of sound.
Lashed to the sunken, moss-covered riverbank, the houseboat lay in mud next to an eddy away from the main force of the river, which gathered momentum farther south. Just beyond, it bifurcated and, after some slick rocks, took parallel paths to the same destination. Beaver dam just around the bend of one.
Out the window, I could see my landlord’s “houseboat,”—more of a jacked-up mobile home—jammed against the opposite bank and up on rocks. A perilous pontoon bridge between me and him. I’d measured it. Only thirty feet, the river narrowing here, shallow and full of sediment. You might not drown, but you could get trapped in the mud. I didn’t trust him to get me out.
Silvina’s houseboat deserved only unglamorous descriptions, unlike my vision in advance. Derelict, prefab. Down to the wooden frame and the small windows with the off-white, frilly curtains. A galley kitchen. A living room and separate bedroom area, but not much else except a closet or two. I had to ignore the dull mold smell, which I knew would be like an alarm bell in the summer. The walkways looked out over the silt-choked river, and maybe someone else would’ve needed to sit in the broken-down chair outside to avoid going stir-crazy. But I liked dark, quiet places.
I’d “rented” it from an angry white guy with a mud-spattered pickup truck he drove somewhere late at night. He lived in the almost mirror image across the bridge. I don’t think he owned Silvina’s houseboat, but why argue since the money he was asking for was so paltry. Didn’t know if he was a militia member or made illegal drugs or was just escaping something. “Are you Jewish?” “What the fuck do you care?” “All right, then.” The wary side-eye of aliens from different solar systems. Bound by mistrust.
Mostly, though, I thought he was the standard bullshit libertarian, and once, while he was out, I’d made sure to put a little surprise under his pathetic stub of river deck. Just as insurance. Also made sure he got a good look at the arsenal I took out of the trunk of my car when I moved in.
I dressed like usual: overlarge plaid shirt, jeans. My only other choices were my hiking pants and shirt or a white blouse and dress slacks. I liked to look more local than that, saved the blouse for going into banks or places more urban. It looked like a sail on me. Usually, I wore a black baseball cap. Which I guess was like putting a baseball cap on a bear.
Seven miles through a maze of dirt roads to the houseboat. No one could follow me without being seen. Still, I doubled back, I took precautions. I often left the car a mile from the houseboat, hidden under branches in deep undergrowth, and walked the rest of the way.
That morning, after coffee, I went to meet my client at a breakfast joint. What would Silvina think if she could see me now? An unanswerable question.
But this was my life. For a little while, at least.
[73]
Nora lived three towns over, which was the kind of distance I had learned to prefer. A forty-year-old office manager, a redhead with faded freckles who worried her husband was cheating on her. This was my sixth case, sixth different town. Five had been about infidelity, the last about an intruder that turned out to be a raccoon. I didn’t charge for that one. But I should’ve.
I never took any serious cases, advertised my services in the local penny-pincher classifieds, whichever area I’d decided to focus on for a while. I had a fake name, fake driver’s license, and a sharp-looking business card with a laid-back handle: “Plain Jane Investigations.” But my rates were so low, people didn’t even care about my ID. I didn’t list the name of my business in the ads. I was cautious; even Shovel Pig rarely left the houseboat. But, then, Shovel Pig contained the sum total of my old life. Practically a holy reliquary.
“He’s always late to everything. Couple times, he’s been at the office overnight. Won’t answer his phone.”
She was wearing a more thread-worn version of the blouse I’d left in the houseboat. Or the curtains in the houseboat. She smelled of bandages, blood, and vinegar. Or I did.
“Anywhere you want me to start?” I asked. It was better if I didn’t have to do a lot of work.
But Nora was somewhere else.
“We’ve got two small children,” she said, like she had to convince me to take the case. Or like that would help me solve the case. Two small children had never solved a case. The two small children would almost certainly like to be left the fuck out of this.
“I’m sure it’s nothing.” Something I said a lot. “But best to be certain, in my experience.” Which wasn’t much. “Because otherwise this can seriously affect your life … Does he have an assistant?”
That broke the spell.
“Yes. Someone he’s training at the car dealership. A man. Jim.”
Which clearly ruled out the assistant, to her way of thinking. I made a note to check out Jim. If I had to. If it got that far.
“Is he a regular at any bars or restaurants?”
She gave me a short list, which also gave me a list of places locals went. Useful because I didn’t know this town, and Silvina had been here long ago.