Rides a Stranger (3 page)

I thought it would take longer to deal with the police and a murder investigation. I stood in the cold with the uniformed officers for about five minutes. They took basic information from me and looked at my driver’s license while I shivered, and then a detective showed up. He was a middle-aged man who wore a shirt and tie but no jacket of any kind. His hair was thick and gray, and when the wind blew it flopped around on his head. He never reached up to straighten it. His handshake felt like a vice.

“I’m Phil Hyland,” he said. “Why don’t you tell me what happened here?”

So I did. He didn’t take notes. He listened to everything I said, a look of concentration on his face. I told him about Lou Caledonia showing up at my dad’s funeral and then insisting I come down to the bookstore to talk to him as soon as possible.

“The door was open, and I found him dead back there,” I said.

“You say your father just died?”

“A few days ago.”

“What were the circumstances of his death?” Hyland asked.

“Natural causes,” I said. “He had a neurological disorder.”

“I’m sorry to hear that,” Hyland said. “So you’d never met this Caledonia fellow before?”

“Never.”

“And what did he want with your father?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I assume was something to do with books. My father owned a lot of books. But Mr. Caledonia acted offended when I suggested that’s why he was at the funeral home.” I tried to remember his exact words. “He told me that he had tried to talk to my father before but had always been rebuffed. That’s the word he used. ‘Rebuffed.’ I guess I came here to see what he knew about my dad. If anything.”

“Dads can be a tricky business,” Hyland said. “I never knew mine that well.”

“Exactly,” I said. “Do any of us really know our fathers?”

I thought I was on the brink of a connection with Hyland, but just as quickly, the moment seemed to pass.

He asked, “Did the officers take your information?”

“Yes.”

“We’ll be in touch if we need anything more,” he said. “We’re probably looking at a robbery here. The neighborhood isn’t what it used to be.”

He started toward the door of Lou Caledonia’s shop but, before he went in, he turned back to me.

“Are you sure there isn’t anything else, Mr. Kurtwood?” he asked. “Anything else you saw in there?”

I could feel the clipping in my pants’ pocket. It itched and scraped against my thigh. I knew I should give it back. But … I didn’t want to give up that scrap. I knew it made no sense, but I guess I saw it as an artifact from my dad.

“Nothing,” I said.

Hyland went inside, and I went back to my parents’ house.

The morning paper carried no news of Lou Caledonia’s death. Either it happened too late to make the cut, or it was deemed too insignificant to mention. As we dressed in the morning, Mom didn’t even ask me about my trip to the bookstore the night before. Either she was too distracted by the funeral service, or it had slipped her mind. And I wasn’t going to bring it up. She had enough to worry about and I didn’t want to add to her stress.

We both maintained our composure during the service. Neither of us was big on emotional displays, and the Catholic Church provided enough rigidity and structure in the service that there was little room for genuine feeling. I sat in the front pew of the church next to Mom and recited the responses and hymns by memory, even though I hadn’t been inside a church in about fifteen years.

When my mind wandered, it wasn’t to bad memories. I thought of my childhood and the things my dad and I did together. He took me to the library a lot. He let me wander wherever I liked and was willing to let me read whatever books I happened to find. I first read
On the Road
that way, as well as
Lord of the Flies
and
The Great Gatsby.
Dad always found something from the bestseller list, but he never commented on what I read. Except once. When I was about fourteen, I picked up a copy of
Crime and Punishment
, and he said, offhandedly, “Yeah. I read that a long time ago.”

“You read this?” I asked. “For school?”

“Not for school. Because I wanted to.” He looked at me over the top of his glasses. “Do you think you have the market cornered on reading the great books?”

I hadn’t thought of that in a long time. But sitting there in the church, I remembered that the old man could surprise me, that I shouldn’t assume I understood him—or anyone else—easily. He
was
a stranger to me in many ways, and perhaps to my mother, too. But what did that have to do with a murdered bookstore owner? I wondered if I’d ever know.

A small group travelled to the graveside service. The day started to turn cool, gray clouds building in from the west along with a stiff breeze. The priest didn’t waste any time getting through his prayers and rituals. I started to think about the food spread waiting for us back in the church basement. Hot chicken salad, coffee, peach cobbler. Except for a pasty communion wafer, I hadn’t eaten all day. When the service concluded and we turned toward our cars, I saw a woman standing at a distance. She wore oversized sunglasses despite the day’s gloom, and a barn coat and work boots. I couldn’t tell how old she was, but she seemed to move with an easy grace as she turned and climbed into the cab of a pickup truck and drove off before we reached our cars.

“Do you know who that was?” I asked Mom.

But she didn’t even answer. She was talking to one of my aunts, and then the pickup was gone.

“Did you say something something, honey?” Mom asked.

“I saw someone and I was wondering if you knew who they were.”

“I’m so tired,” she said. “I don’t even know who I am anymore. Family and friends are a great support, but they wear me out.”

I hadn’t slept much the night before, so I said, “I understand.”

“But if you’re up for it later, I’d like your help with some of Dad’s things. He has old boxes in the attic I can’t carry down. You don’t have to sort through them, but just bring them down so I can.”

“There’s no hurry, Mom,” I said.

“I know,” she said. “But it’s therapeutic. I did the same thing when my mother died, Grandma Nancy. I went through all of her clothes and pictures. It helped me cope.”

“Mom?” I asked. “You know I went to that bookstore last night.”

“That’s right. I must have been sound asleep; I didn’t hear you come in. What happened with that man? What did he want?”

“Well, it’s a long story. But he had a copy of Dad’s obituary on his desk.” I paused. “I took it.”

“Why?”

“It seemed like a keepsake of some kind,” I said. “I guess it seems silly. But the bookstore owner wrote the word ‘stranger’ on it. Does that mean anything to you?”

“Does that mean anything to me?” she asked. “That sums your father up perfectly. Do you know we dated for two years before I even knew his middle name? Two years. At first I thought he didn’t have one because he always used the initial H. Then one day I saw his birth certificate. I saw that his middle name was Henry. Now why hadn’t he ever told me that?”

“Did you ask?”

“I shouldn’t have to ask,” she said, sniffing. “Husbands are supposed to tell their wives these things. But not your father. Maybe he wanted to maintain some mystery in our marriage.”

“Maybe.”

“Let’s face it,” she said. “I loved the man dearly. Dearly. But I didn’t know him. And now I never will.”

I hauled six cardboard boxes down from the attic that afternoon. They were heavy as iron bars, and when I was finished carrying them, I slumped into a living room chair, my back screaming. Dad’s prophecy about me had come true—I was too bookish and didn’t spend enough time playing sports. I decided forty was too old to change and asked Mom where she kept the ibuprofen.

That evening, we ate food that a neighbor had dropped off. Chicken casserole followed by a peanut butter pie. I hated the fact that we all died, that people I loved—like my father—could be taken away so cruelly. But the food was amazing. Comfort food in the truest sense of the term.

Mom seemed distracted while we ate. I finally asked her what was on her mind.

“Are you just feeling sad about Dad?” I asked.

“Not exactly,” she said. “I’m just thinking about the fact that you’re going to leave and go back to your life. And I want you to do that. But the house is going to feel awfully lonely.”

“I understand,” I said. “But you have a lot of friends. You’ve always been good at keeping busy.”

“Sure.” She forced a smile. “Maybe I need to sell the house.”

“You can think about that at some point.” I gestured toward the living room. “What do you figure he has in all those boxes?”

“Knowing your dad, more books. Hell, who knows? They could be the collected love letters of some ex-girlfriend.”

“Dad?”

Mom waved her hand in the air, dismissing me. “Maybe I’ll self-publish them and create the next
Fifty Shades of Gray
. Except it would really be gray because of how old we are.”

Like most children, I didn’t like to think of my parents’ sex lives. And I certainly didn’t think of them as sexual creatures who had relationships before they met and married each other. But, of course, they probably did. I knew Mom and Dad married when they were in their late twenties, and Mom had me within a year of their marriage. They met through mutual friends. Mom worked as a secretary in a law office, and Dad was a casual acquaintance of the lawyer. They sometimes golfed together. So they both must have dated others during high school and college and those first few years out in the real world.

My mind flashed to the woman at the cemetery. Had she really been there to see Dad’s funeral? People spent time in cemeteries for any number of reasons. Why would I assume she was there because of Dad?

“Let’s open up one of the boxes and take a look,” I said.

“Be my guest. It’s all yours anyway. You’re the heir to this great fortune.”

Mom cleared the plates while I went out to the living room. I took out my key to slit the tape on the box, but before I could do anything, the doorbell rang.

“If that’s Mrs. Himmel from up the street, tell her I’m lying down,” Mom said.

I went to the front window and slid the curtain aside.

“It’s not Mrs. Himmel,” I said.

“Who is it?”

I opened the door to Detective Hyland.

“Who is it, honey?” Mom said, coming into the room. “Oh, hello.”

“Mom, this is Detective Hyland from the police department. It’s kind of a long story.”

Mom listened while I explained the events of the previous night and the death of Lou Caledonia. Mom’s face remained composed, and she didn’t display much shock or dismay. She reserved her comments for the end of my story when she looked at me as only my mother could and said, “Why on earth didn’t you tell me this last night?”

“I didn’t want to wake you up or worry you,” I said.

“Sit down, Detective,” Mom said. “How can we help you with this?”

Hyland came into the room. He eyed the boxes in the middle of the floor but deftly stepped around them without comment. He wore a different shirt and tie than the night before and still no jacket. His hair looked less windblown as he sat on the couch and crossed his legs, ankle on knee.

“I’m sorry to intrude on you at such a difficult time,” he said. He really didn’t seem that bothered by his interruption and showed no sign that he might get up and leave. He looked settled in on the couch.

Mom and I took the hint, and we each sat in matching chairs that were arranged on either side of a small table. The boxes filled the floor space between all of us.

“Last night you told me that you didn’t know Mr. Caledonia,” Hyland said.

“That’s right.”

“And you don’t know the nature of their friendship?”

“That’s what I was going to the store to find out,” I said. “Lou said they weren’t really friends. He said something like he wanted to know Dad, but Dad didn’t want to know him.”

“Your father always was a bit of a loner,” Mom said.

“Mr. Caledonia wrote a number of letters to your father. At least ten. They were in his office at the bookstore. All of them were returned unopened.”

“My husband was bedridden for the last six months,” Mom said. “He wouldn’t have been able to open an envelope.”

“But you would have seen the letters,” Hyland said. “Or opened them?”

“I don’t remember any letters like that.”

Hyland’s eyes narrowed. I thought he was going to press Mom further, but he didn’t.

“These letters were all written over the past five years,” Hyland said. “They stopped about a year ago. I’m not sure why. Maybe Caledonia got tired of being rejected.”

“What were the letters about?” I asked. “What could this man possibly want with Dad that he would keep writing him for so long – without a single response?”

Hyland took his time answering. He seemed to be considering me. The clipping from Lou Caledonia’s desk, the one with Dad’s name and the word Stranger written on it, sat on my nightstand upstairs. My heart started to beat irrationally. If the detective decided to snoop around the house, he would find it. And he’d know I lied to him at the scene of the crime when I said there was nothing else to know.