The Queen of Everything (29 page)

I went inside. Even from there, I could hear
Mrs. Beene giving Mr. Beene a whispered lecture over the winding smoke of the
grill. I disappeared into the shell bathroom with the shell soaps and towels
that no one was supposed to use. I wished Jackson was home. I wished I could be
in his room with the box of bagpipe pieces and the funny soccer statues. I
wished I could be in his truck with him, riding to somewhere else. Jackson, with
his strange eyes and streaked hair and way of knowing things; just driving
anywhere with one arm out the window like the owner of that truck, Slim Wilkins,
with that dashboard compass spinning as he rounded a corner.

I came out of the bathroom and looked up the
stairs. I considered going up. Being in his room for a second, well, it sounded
right then like oxygen.

"He's not home," Melissa said. She'd come
inside. She leaned against the hall wall.

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"I know he's not," I said.

"It's okay," she said, but I wasn't exactly
sure what she meant. I wasn't sure what exactly was okay.

I picked up Boog, who was lying in the hall,
and plunked him in front of the refrigerator for a little cooling off. Melissa
and I went back on the deck where a chastised Mr. Beene was keeping his mouth
shut. Mrs. Beene set the outdoor table for dinner, and we ate under this big
flowered umbrella. Everyone kept sneaking looks at me. It was as if they were
afraid I was going to escape or suddenly burst into flames.

"Damn bees," Mr. Beene said.

"Don't swat at them or you'll only make them
mad," Mrs. Beene said.

"I heard this story of this guy who got stung
like a thousand times," Melissa said. "Actually Matt Bennetson? It was him. They
said his throat puffed up so big he had to go to the emergency room."

The phone rang inside. Mrs. Beene pushed her
chair out so quickly, the Coke in all of our glasses made big surfer
waves.

She stuck her head around the screen door.
"Jordan?" she said. Her forehead was crinkled with worry. Her hand was over the
mouthpiece of the phone as she handed it to me. You could never accuse Mrs.
Beene of forgetting her manners.

I wiped my fingers on my napkin and
came

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to the phone. "Your mom," Mrs. Beene said. She
went back out the screen door and sat back down. I could see all three faces
looking at me anxiously through the mesh. I turned my back on them. I picked up
that pitiful dog Boog and held him in my arms. He felt good, hard and solid with
his fat chest breathing against my hand.

"Mom?" I said.

"Jordan, honey, I'm coming to get you. No, I
don't want to hear it, this time it's a have-to. Your grandma just called. Just
stay where you are and I'll be there in ten minutes."

"What happened?" I said.

"Honey, I don't want to do this on the
phone."

"I want to know what happened. Tell me what
happened."

She sighed. I waited. Just feeling Boog's heavy
breathing, in and out, under his tight skin.

"I will not hang up until you tell me," I
said.

"He confessed, Jordan.... He--"

"Oh no. No."

"Please just stay there. There might be
police--"

"At our house? Why? Why at our house? They know
where that man is, don't they? They know where he is. I know it. I can feel
it."

"Jordan--"

"Tell me. I want you to tell me right
now."

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"Ten minutes. I'll be there in ten
minutes."

"You tell me now," I said. "You tell me or I
won't be here when you get here."

"Oh God, honey, don't do this."

"I'll leave," I said. My mother sighed. She
didn't say anything for a long time. "I mean it, I'll leave."

"Daddy confessed." She hadn't called him
Daddy
since I was a small child. "He told them everything. The body ...
it's in the trunk. Of the Triumph. Okay? You see why I didn't... I need to get
you out of there--"

I hung up the phone. I didn't want to hear her
voice anymore. Frankly, I was tired of everyone's voices.

I popped my head out the screen door. "I'm just
going to run home a minute," I said. I smiled for them, even. To let them know
everything was A-okay.

"Your mom said she was coming to get you," Mrs.
Beene said. She looked unsure.

"She wanted me to get a few things," I said.
"At the house. I might, you know, be gone a while." I laughed. I felt a little
crazy.

Mrs. Beene said, "Melissa can go with you." She
glanced over at Melissa. Melissa looked like she'd been given a lesson in
smiling but hadn't quite been listening to all the directions.

"No, really. I'll be fast. I'll be right back.
I've got to be fast. Mom will be here any minute," I said.

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"Okay, honey," Mrs. Beene said. Everyone was
calling me
honey.
Maybe that's what people did when your father killed
someone. "We'll be right here. You need a suitcase or anything?"

"No, no. You know, just underwear and stuff," I
said. Mr. Beene looked down at the table. I still had Boog in my arms. I set him
down. I patted his big round rump.

"Just a sec," I said, and pointed a finger in
the air to let them know just how long I meant. I left out the front door. I ran
past the Triumph, not looking at it, not successful either in blocking any image
of what was inside. All I could think of was Melissa knocking on the hood.
What do they think, he hid him in here? What do they think, he hid him in
here?
Melissa's voice sang in my head. Well,
wasn't it a good thing he
kept that car running,
I thought.
You never know when you've got to jaunt
back to the scene of a crime and pick up a dead body.

I ran upstairs.
What do they think, he hid
him in here?
Melissa sang and sang again. I shoved stuff in my backpack.
Clothes, I'm not sure what. A wad of money from my work at True You, I remember
that. Put some change in my pocket. A small photo album, I remember that too.
Down the steps and through the living room and back again. I stopped at the
coffee table. I grabbed one of my father's books. I don't know why I did it. The
smallest on the

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stack:
Florentine Architecture of the
Renaissance.
I shoved it in my pack.

I took my bike out of the garage. I was almost
afraid to touch it at first. Was it some kind of evidence? Was there blood on
it? Where exactly had Wes D'Angelo been killed? Lucky for Dad, I guess, that
Crow Valley was rambling and full of hidden areas. I shuddered. The details were
more than I wanted to know. All of it was more than I wanted to know. I looked
down the street and made sure Mrs. Beene wasn't standing on the lawn or
something, waiting for me.

And then I pushed off. Pushed off hard and
pedaled hard. Even standing up on the pedals to go faster, the way I did when I
was a kid. Warm wind hit my face. My face, whatever that meant at that moment,
me, mine, my, I didn't really know. Where I was going, I didn't know that
either.

I rode. I ended up at Point Perpetua. I stopped
pedaling, let my bike coast. I stopped, straddled my bike. I looked out over the
strait. Stood by the rock where Clyde Belle shot himself several years ago. I
wondered why he didn't just jump. It would have been a whole lot less messy to
destroy yourself that way.

Strange thing was, I actually started looking
around for him. Not Clyde Belle and the pieces of his splattered body, but
Jackson. Jackson

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Beene. I expected him to be there. I expected
to hear his truck. I listened for the sweet, mournful sound of bagpipes but
heard only crows. The cawing of those nasty black crows in the tree branches
overhead. I looked toward the lighthouse. That's where he'd be. I wondered if I
waited if he might come. But I had told him to quit rescuing me. I had told him
and he had done what I asked. And I didn't have time to wait.

I rode toward the ferry dock. I expected to see
my mother pulling up behind me at any moment, so I rode hard. I realized I was
an easy target, just a girl on her bike riding on the main roads. I realized I
would not get very far very fast. I pulled into Eugene's Gas and Garage. The
sign, abare's , still spun slowly on its pole, but the store's lights were
dimmed and the parking lot empty. I pulled out some change from my pocket and
stepped into the telephone booth at the corner of the lot.

The coin rattled down the machine and the
numbers beeped their song as I punched them. I was praying again. I hoped
Laylani and Buddy Waddell's God wasn't the one listening.
Please be there.
Please, please be there.

"Yeah," he said.

"Kale?" I said.

"Yeah?"

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"It's me. Jordan."

"Shit, you aren't kidding your dad's some
murderer."

"Hey, I'm real sorry about the other night at
the boat," I said.

"Jeez, you probably had a lot on your mind. I
told you, you could have talked to me."

"Well, you know, I know that now. I just called
because, well, I need you. Kale. I'm, uh, in some trouble. I want to get the
hell away from here. With you."

He thought for a minute.

"Okay," he said.

"I need you to come and get me. In your
car."

"Where are you?" he asked. "My grandpa's gas
station. You know that new one, Abare's? By the ferry dock?"

"I saw you there that time," he said. "Oh,
yeah."

"I'll be right there," he said. "Hey, cool.
Road trip."

I dumped my bike behind the gas station. I
stood by the phone booth and waited. I figured I was already in enough trouble,
so what the hell. I picked up rocks and tried to hit the spinning Abare's sign.
Most of the rocks were too small, making only a sad ping before bouncing off.
The big ones were too heavy too throw that far.

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I heard the rumble of Kale's car. He rolled
down his window. "You trying to hit that sign?" He chuckled. "I saw you trying
to hit that sign."

"I hate that thing," I said.

"Hand me that." He motioned to a big rock on
the ground.

I did. Kale got out of the car, stepped back,
and hurled the rock into the air. It sailed and struck the sign with a huge
clatter of cracking plastic, leaving a large jagged hole. You'd be surprised how
thin those things actually are. He bent and picked up another and threw it,
hitting the bottom of the B.

"Come on," I said. "We'd better
hurry."

But Kale wasn't done yet. When Kale set his
mind on destroying things, he did a thorough job.

"Kale, come on. That's great. We've got to
hurry and catch the ferry."

A few more rocks. More clatter. I was getting
nervous. I was afraid someone might hear.

"There," he said.

Kale was finally satisfied. The sign, still
spinning oh so slowly, now said only aha.

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Chapter Fourteen

"So. are you like a fugitive from justice?"
Kale asked.

"Jeez, Kale.
I
didn't hurt anyone," I
said.

"This is cool, Bonnie and Clyde," he said. Kale
liked this idea. He beeped his horn twice. The car was parked in the bottom deck
of the moving ferry, and the horn reverberated loudly against the ferry's old
iron sides. Some guy two cars ahead of us rolled his window down and stuck his
middle finger out at us.

"I ought to blow you to pieces," Kale
said.

"Kale, don't get carried away," I
said.

"Goddamn tourists," he said.

We had gotten in the line of cars being
shuffled onto the ferry by Joe and Jim Nevins in their orange vests. I ducked my
head down into a

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magazine as we drove by.
Hot Rod,
which
I found on the floor with an empty bag of Chee-tos and a crumpled pack of
cigarettes and a few paper napkins with orange mouth-swipes on them. We were
lucky it was a weekday; on a weekend the wait for a ferry was sometimes three
boats long. I didn't know where the nuns were. They usually worked the weekdays
unless there was a special nun event. In just a few weeks, Parrish would have
the annual Thank-God-They're-Gone festival. The ferry traffic would be cut so
drastically that most of the time you'd see Joe and Jim Nevins just sitting on
the pilings, eating pastrami sandwiches and drinking Orange Crush out of
cans.

"We can probably get out of the car," I said.
"I doubt we have to sit in here the whole ride."

"Someone might see you," Kale said. He reached
around the floor for that pack of cigarettes. Okay, it's bad enough sitting in
the car on the bottom deck of the ferry, that loud whoosh in your ears, cars
cramped together like toes in a pair of too-tight shoes and only a small
rectangle where you can see the water of the Strait of Juan de Fuca rushing
past. But having to sit there for nearly two hours getting lung cancer was
another thing.