Sunburn: A Novel Read online

  “Refill?”

  Pauline Hansen looms over her with an iced tea pitcher.

  “Sure,” Sue says. The woman has an almost literal scent on her, but it’s not perfume. She smells like June itself, on its best day, warm and wild and promising. She reminds Sue of the tiny strawberries she used to find on that hill near her house, the ones she could never decide if they were safe to eat.

  Sue didn’t grow up dreaming of being a private detective, but that was only because she didn’t realize girls could be PIs. Sure, she read Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden, but did anyone notice that those girls never got paid? Sue wanted to be Mannix or Barnaby Jones or Paul Drake, the investigator that Perry Mason used. Instead, she started out as a middle-school English teacher. But she was scared to have any kind of social life as long as she was teaching, even a secret one. She decided she had to find another gig. Around this time, her cousin, who had a small insurance agency, asked her to follow a guy claiming a back injury. Just that easy, Sue found her new vocation. She started in another PI’s office, apprenticing until she could get her own license. She loves her work. It is the perfect job for people who are curious enough, but not randomly, promiscuously curious. An incurious person—this target’s husband, for example—could never do it. But a supercurious person would also fail. You have to be willing to leave some doors closed, to focus on the task at hand. Some people are like rabbit holes and you can fall a long, long way down if you go too far.

  Sue has asked herself repeatedly whether the husband is ill-intentioned. Sue doesn’t want to deliver up a woman to a vengeful man. Had he hurt her? Is that why she ran? Would Pauline, who changed her name legally to Pauline Smith, then hid Pauline Smith inside Pauline Hansen, make that mistake again? Of course, to hear others tell it, she hadn’t made that mistake the first time, that had been a lie she used as a cover. Still, Sue thinks she was telling the truth. Word on the street is that her first husband was dirty, maybe even a killer.

  Ugh. Gristle on the ham. But, if she’s fair—and Sue is always fair—the salad is outstanding in every other way, the proportions graceful, with lots of the things most places skimp on, turkey and bacon and chopped egg. And although a classic chef’s salad is served with the ingredients set in decorative rows along the top, someone has taken the time to chop it, the way they do at Marconi’s back in Baltimore, so each bite is perfectly dressed, with a little bit of everything, Sue’s favorite kind of salad.

  The cook keeps coming to the door and sneaking looks at her. Homophobe or xenophobe? Sue can’t read him, but something is amiss. Is he jealous? Does he feel protective of Pauline? There’s definitely a vibe there.

  Sue pays her tab and leaves, feeling her hackles rise. When she drives away, the cook is standing outside, pretending to smoke, studying her car. If he were to run the plate—but why would he run the plate?

  Her job is done. Almost too quickly. She thought she’d get a few more billable hours out of this one. If she were sleazy, she’d play both sides, ask Pauline Hansen how much it’s worth to her not to be found, if her ex knows she used to be Pauline Ditmars and all that entails. But that would be wrong and, besides, Pauline Hansen clearly has no money. Sue shakes her head at her own foolishness, decides to go to a bar she knows, a discreet one in Little Italy where the locals pretend not to notice the women with good haircuts and well-tailored clothes. She needs to hold someone tonight. A dance or two would be enough, but maybe someone will want to come home with her. That would be nice.

  Once in the bar, vodka in hand, she finds herself looking for redheads, trying to find someone with that same sweet, wild strawberry scent of June.

  11

  Gregg walks into the High-Ho three days after the visit from that salad-munching PI. Polly probably doesn’t make the connection, but Adam does. And you don’t have to be a private detective to know that the man who slams the door open at 4:30 p.m., standing there backlit for a moment, all shadow in the afternoon sun, has a claim on Polly. Even Max and Ernest pick up on it.

  Yet Polly couldn’t be calmer. “What can I get for you?” she asks, drawing drafts for Max and Ernest.

  “You can get your butt in the car and come home to your daughter.”

  “Our daughter. And I wager she’s all I’m coming home to. You’ve got one foot out the door, Gregg. Can’t blame me because I got both feet out before you did. Saves you the postage on the child support, the way I see it.”

  “Dammit, Pauline. I can’t take care of a kid and work. She’s your job.”

  “Yeah, well, I quit. Sorry I didn’t give you two weeks’ notice.”

  Unnatural, Adam’s client had told him. He still doesn’t believe it. She seems the opposite to him, almost too natural. The weirdest image pops into his head. Botswana, three years ago. He always travels after a big job, but when he got an unexpected bonus, he went really big, did the safari thing at a high level. Lodges with air-conditioning, great food, all the South African wine you could drink, and South African wine turned out to be darn good. But he was there to see wildlife, didn’t miss a chance to go out with the guides. One night at dusk, riding back to the lodge in the setting sun, they saw some odd weasel-like animals darting across the road, mama and a brood. She was pushing and herding most of her children, but she was indifferent to the smallest one, resigned to its slim odds for survival. He could see Polly doing that, giving up on a lost cause.

  Or maybe the kid’s actually her stepchild? He never thought to ask about that. Yeah, probably a stepchild, like the other one.

  Other than Max and Ernest, no one else is in the bar and Gregg probably doesn’t register Adam, a headless patch of white T-shirt in the rectangle of the pass-through. If things get rough, Adam will step out, but he has a hunch Polly can take care of herself.

  Sure enough, when Gregg grabs her arm, she doesn’t shake it off. She levels her eyes on him in a way that demands: You sure you want to do this here? Is she counting on Adam to come to her rescue? Or simply assuming her husband won’t get rough in front of witnesses? Max and Ernest are watching the couple with the same rapt attention they usually reserve for the television. This scene has much more of a plot than anything on CNN.

  He drops her arm.

  “I’m sorry, Gregg, but you can’t make me come home. If you’re not cheating on me already, it’s not for lack of trying. You’ll be dating someone soon as we have the ‘talk.’ Right? A weekend at the beach, one last family fling, then we were going to go home and you were going to sit me down and tell me what’s what. Probably have someone picked out. Well, good news. You’re in a better position to take care of our kid, at least for the time being. You’ve got the job. The house is in both our names, but I’ll waive my equity in it.”

  “We don’t have any equity.”

  “The economy’s not my fault.”

  “Isn’t it? Isn’t everything your fault? You’re the one who wanted the kid.”

  This last seems to get her in a way that his presence, the physical aggression, didn’t. She turns away, out of arm’s reach now, and busies herself behind the bar.

  “Dammit, Pauline.”

  Max and Ernest don’t notice the slight variation in her name. Adam does. But then, he has known her real name all along.

  Her voice gets harder, although not louder. “Get out, Gregg. Get out or I can’t be held responsible for what happens next.”

  And he does. Wuss. How did such a pansy ever land a woman like her? But Adam knows that she landed him. She just let him think he was in charge all these years. Cast, hook, reel.

  The question remains why she wanted him in the first place.

  Because the kitchen closes before the bar does, Adam and Polly leave about the same time. He’s still in the motel across the road, while she has to walk about six blocks into town. Hard to imagine a safer place than Belleville. In the early days, he asked to walk her home and she always said no. Since he started sleeping with Cath he’s pretty sure Polly wants him to ask again. He doesn’t.r />
  But Cath’s not there tonight. Had to go see her sister up in Dover.

  “You sure he’s gone?”

  “No,” she says. “But he doesn’t scare me.”

  “I don’t think you should walk home alone.”

  “He’s a coward, don’t worry.”

  “That’s why I do worry. No one’s more dangerous than a coward.”

  They walk single file along the macadam that borders the old highway, then turn onto the main street. Called Main Street. Not much imagination in Belleville.

  She must be thinking the same thing. “Always Main Street. Never Primary Street, for example.”

  “Central Avenue sometimes. And in the UK, they call it the High Street.”

  “You’ve traveled a lot.” Statement, not a question.

  “Yeah.”

  “I’ve hardly been anywhere.”

  “Most people’s lives don’t allow them the time to travel, really travel. If you’re going to go places and get to know them, you need to take three, four weeks. Maybe six. I’m lucky to be able to do it that way.”

  “Because your work is seasonal.”

  Had he told her that? Maybe the day they went to the auction? Why does she make it sound as if she doesn’t quite believe him?

  “It can be.”

  “You make enough to travel, being a line cook?”

  She knows he’s not telling her the full story. But all he says is, “You’d be surprised.”

  “I bet I would.” Sultry, suggestive, four ordinary words taut with meaning. Maybe tonight—

  Gregg steps out of the shadows ahead. He has a gun. The stupid fucker.

  “Maybe I can make you do what I say, Pauline.”

  “Dude—” That’s Adam. He’s more scared than he wants to be, but a guy this stupid, he’s likely to fire the gun by accident. It’s bizarre the image that comes to him, Polly in his arms, eyes unfocused, her face vacant with shock.

  “Stay out of this. It’s not your business. Even if you’re fucking her, it’s not your business.”

  She sighs, calmer than both men.

  “Oh, Gregg. You can’t keep a gun on me 24/7. I’ll be gone again the first minute I can. And this time, I’ll do a better job hiding.”

  Adam does wonder how the private detective, the woman, found her. Polly’s getting paid cash by the bar, doesn’t have credit cards or a phone. Utilities on her apartment are probably paid by the landlord.

  “Why, Pauline? Why?” Gregg’s voice is whiny.

  “I’m done, Gregg. Sorry, but I’m done. Let it go, let bygones be bygones. You’ve got your mom. You’ll be okay. Jani will be okay, too. Eventually.”

  He takes a step forward and Adam instinctively shoves him, knocking him back over a bramble bush. Gregg still doesn’t drop the gun, though, not until Adam stomps on his hand. Gregg screams, but not many people live along the old Main Street, so the scream attracts no attention. Polly picks up the gun, but Adam doesn’t stop stomping on the guy’s hand until he hears the crunch of bone. Probably would have happened sooner if he wasn’t wearing the rubber clogs he prefers for kitchen work.

  “You didn’t need to do that,” Polly says, but her eyes are feverish. She loves it.

  Adam takes the gun from her and tosses it into the sewer, and they listen to it clattering down, making its way toward the bay, then on to the ocean.

  “What about the money, Polly?” Gregg asks, getting to his feet, left hand cradling the damaged right one. If he has a stick shift, he’ll have a hard time driving home. But a guy like this doesn’t drive a stick shift. Probably doesn’t know how.

  “What money?”

  “I know what you did with the insurance check.”

  This pricks Adam’s interest.

  “Nothing illegal.”

  “Forgery’s illegal.”

  “I didn’t forge it. Not my fault you’ll sign anything I put in front of you during a football game.”

  “That check was made out to both of us.”

  “And it was deposited in our joint account. Then withdrawn—by me. All legal. I left you half the money, even though it was my car and you wrecked it. I’m fair.”

  Oh, a car, penny-ante stuff. Still, she does know her way around an insurance check, doesn’t she?

  “I got you another car.”

  “That broken-down Toyota. There are holes in the floorboard.”

  “You’re not right.”

  It’s unclear to Adam if Gregg is contesting the issue at hand or something larger, making a pronouncement about her general character. At any rate, Gregg gives up, stalks away holding his damaged hand.

  Adam sees her to her door. He doesn’t offer to walk her to the top of the stairs, though. This stairway is an afterthought, small, the carpet smelling faintly of mildew.

  Polly lingers in the little vestibule. “You want to come in? See that bed you helped me get?”

  No. Yes. No. Yes.

  “Sure.”

  He convinces himself that it’s weird not to go up, that she will suspect him if he doesn’t. In cartoons, devils and angels argue it out on a guy’s shoulder, but he’s long past a fight between right and wrong. There’s nothing to be done.

  The walk up the stairs is the longest walk he’s ever taken. He goes in, stands in the doorway to her bedroom while she lingers behind him in the large room that serves as kitchen and living room. Amazing how cozy she’s made the place with just a few possessions. Lucky she likes old things—the stove and fridge look to be at least forty years old.

  “Yep, that’s a bed,” he says, looking into her bedroom. It’s staged as if she knew he would be here tonight—a bedside lamp draped with a pink scarf, a silk robe tossed over the rails at the foot of the bed. There’s a vase of wildflowers on the bureau. They didn’t buy a bureau that day at the auction. Was it already here? Or did she get some other guy to take her to another auction? It makes him crazy jealous, thinking about her at another auction with another man.

  When he turns around, she doesn’t have a stitch on.

  “I asked if you wanted to see the bed. You want to get in it, you’re going to have to earn it.”

  She goes over to the little metal table from the auction, hoists herself up on it, never taking her eyes from his. She’s excited and he knows why. It’s the violence, the sound of her husband’s hand under his foot, his whimpers. Well, Adam’s not going to let her call the shots. He picks her up and carries her to the bed. She fights him, bites and scratches. It’s shaming how much he likes this. They haven’t even kissed yet, and she’s drawn blood on him.

  “We do it my way first,” he says. “Maybe later I’ll let you call the shots.”

  She smiles and he realizes she’s still in charge, that everything is happening as she wants it to. He tells himself that he wants it this way, too, and then he shuts down the voice in his head, the one worrying about the job and ethics and where he goes from here. He convinces himself that this is the only way to do the job. Follow her. Get close to her. Those were his instructions.

  He can’t get much closer than he is now.

  12

  Polly’s first test for Adam is to make him break up with Cath. Of course he’s going to stop seeing her, that’s a given. But that’s not good enough. Polly needs him to break up with Cath in a way that will be at once humiliating and baffling. Only he has to think it’s his idea.

  It helps that he brings it up first.

  “So,” he says. “I was seeing Cath. I guess that will have to stop.”

  It is ten hours later, and they have been on what can only be called a bender, one of those sex hazes where one stops for a little food, a little sleep, maybe a shower. Taken together, of course. Her shower is the one mean, dark room in the apartment, a rigged-up thing with one of those cheap detachable hoses. It’s hard enough for one person to get under the spray from the cracked, handheld showerhead. But they are in that mode where nothing matters as long as they can touch each other.

  How
long will this last? she thinks.

  How long does she want it to last?

  How long does she need it to last?

  He brings up Cath after they step out of the shower, towel each other playfully. She is ashamed of her towels, although they are new. Thin, cheap, inadequate. All she has ever wanted is a home, a place with things that bring comfort. Thick towels, deep chairs, soft rugs. That doesn’t necessarily mean having money, but it means having more money than she’s ever had. So far.

  “You can’t stop seeing her. She works there every day. What are you going to do, shut your eyes?”

  “Very funny,” he says, kissing her neck. For a while, everything she says will be funny, wonderful, profound. For a while.

  “I don’t like fake words. Seeing. Yeah, I see her, too. But I don’t have sex with her. Don’t use a word to make something sound nicer than it is.”

  “Euphemism.”

  “I guess you went to college, huh?”

  “So did you.”

  Her impulse is to snap her head around, stare him down, but she fights it. Looks in the mirror, runs her fingers through her damp hair. The shower has a knack for getting nothing wet except the things you want to keep dry. “I never said that.”

  “I just assumed—I meant—sorry. You’re clearly smart as a whip.”

  “That’s a weird phrase. Whips aren’t smart. They smart.” She raises one eyebrow, hoping this gives the impression that she has firsthand knowledge.

  He laughs. “See what I mean? That’s pretty good wordplay. Cath couldn’t do that. Cath couldn’t find her way out of a room with no walls.”

  She decides to risk a little cattiness, knowing it will read as jealousy and he’ll be flattered. “But even she can find her ass with both hands. She’s got quite the caboose. If you could move that thing to her hip, she’d look like she had a sidecar.”