Under the Beetle's Cellar (11 page)

She shook her head. “Now it’s your turn.”

He studied her, narrowing his eyes. “Okay. Here’s what I want to know. When you see how this freak Mordecai gets off on publicity, don’t you feel a little … sick at your stomach writing about him, giving him more of what he wants, like maybe you’re encouraging him?”

It was a question that had haunted Molly throughout her long crime-writing career.

“Let me back up a little,” she said. “Two years ago, after Waco, I wrote a piece on other apocalyptic cults in Texas. Samuel Mordecai was one of the cult leaders I interviewed. I chose to write about that because I’ve always been interested in obsession and I wanted to know what leads a person to believe something so extreme that he’s willing to live and die for it. Anyway, once I got into it, I hated it. I hated him, Samuel Mordecai, and the whole crazy thing he believes in. And, beyond that, I got this crawly, unclean feeling about what was going on there in Jezreel. So in answer to your question, yes, I do worry about giving him the publicity he craves.”

“So why are you writing about it again if you hated it the first time?”

“Well,
I
haven’t taken a vow of obscurity. My boss thinks this will be a big story for me, so I’m doing it. Also, I am obsessed by … obsession, I guess. I don’t know why.”

He made a low sound of comprehension in his throat. “That sounds like an honest answer. Let me cheat here and ask a follow-up: Since you’ve met this guy Mordecai, you must have a feel for what’s going to happen. What do you think about their chances—Walter and the kids?”

Molly felt her throat constrict; she hated to give voice to the fears that had been simmering below the surface. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Jake, but I’m scared. Samuel Mordecai is this … well, he’s the sort of man who if he predicts the world is going to end on April fourteenth, he’s not going to just sit around and watch the day pass by uneventfully and say, ‘Oops, I was wrong, sorry.’
That
is just not going to happen.”

Jake nodded. “But he can’t make the world end, now can he?”

She shrugged.

“Oh, my. That crazy man made one hell of an impression on you, lady.”

“Molly,” she said.

“Molly. That crazy man made one hell of an impression on you, Molly.”

“Yes. He did. He scared the shit out of me.”

Jake finished his beer with a long swig, then looked down at the cooler.

“How about a beer?” she said.

“Don’t mind if I do.”

Molly took his empty can from his hand and replaced it with a cold one from the cooler.

“Thanks. I’ve been short on groceries,” he said. “What do you know about Walter?”

She tossed the empty can into the cooler and closed it. “Nothing. I know what he looks like, in a newspaper photo anyway. I know he’s a Vietnam veteran, he grew up in Beaumont, played football, went to Rice for two years, drives a school bus now, does some gardening. That’s it.” She took a long sip of her drink. “Tell me about him.”

Jake looked down at his beer can for several seconds. “It’s much harder to tell what someone’s like when you know them real well than when you just know them a little. Ever notice that?”

“Yes. I think it’s because you know all the exceptions and complexities, so it’s hard to summarize. Would it help if I asked questions?”

“Well, ask a few easy ones to get me going, and we’ll see.”

“How did he feel about the Vietnam War?”

Jake laughed. “If that’s an easy one, I’m scared about when we get to the hard stuff. How did he feel about the war? Well, Walter got to Vietnam snorting and pawing the ground. You should have seen him—this beefy, loud high school jock—a real John Wayne, the American warrior. You know. The kind that had a crew cut even before the army did it to him. Couldn’t wait to show his stuff, be a real hero.”

He let his eyes wander off into the dappled shade. When he brought them back into focus, he said, “Eleven months later, well, my Lord, he looked like the ghost of that warrior, and I looked like this.” He glanced down at where his legs should have been. “And I believe the change in him was more dramatic than the change in me. But to answer your question, Walter started out thinking the war was necessary to teach the Commies a lesson, keep them in their place. But he ended up being the one who learned the lesson.”

“What was the lesson?”

“Well, Molly, it isn’t always easy to summarize these things, is it?”

“No, it certainly isn’t.”

“I’ll try. At the Milwaukee Zoo—I’m from Milwaukee, did you know that?”

“No.”

“Well, at the Milwaukee Zoo, where I used to hang out when I was a kid, in the primate house, there’s a sign on a cage that says: ‘the most dangerous animal in the world.’ When you go over to look in, there’s a mirror in the cage and you see yourself reflected.”

Molly nodded. “Amen,” she said.

He finished off his beer with a very long swig. “Yeah. And a twenty-year-old Texas boy may be the prime example of that species.”

“And that’s the lesson Walter Demming learned in Vietnam?”

“One of them.”

“What happened to teach him that lesson?”

He held the beer can up in his right hand and with a single squeeze crumpled it into a ball as easily as if it were a piece of paper. “
That
I’m not going to talk about,” he said in a quiet voice. “So don’t bother asking again.”

Molly found herself making a mental note, in boldface, to do just that—ask again. When people said they absolutely would not talk about a certain subject, they usually came around to talking about it at great length. “All right,” she said. “Something I was wondering about—Walter went to Rice for two years, so he must have been a good student. How come he ended up driving a bus?”

“That question disappoints me, Molly,” Jake said. “It suggests a conventional turn of mind that defines a person by what he does to make a living. Anyway, he hasn’t ‘ended up’ yet—not unless as we speak he’s dead.”

Molly studied the man sitting next to her with renewed respect. “I agree. It is a disappointing question. I could defend myself by saying I write for an audience made up of a bunch of yuppies and they will be wondering about that. Of course I would never use that as an excuse.” She smiled at him. “But I wish you’d answer the question even though it is obnoxious.”

“Okay. You might say by way of explanation that after Vietnam, Walter dropped out.”

“He dropped out?”

“Yeah. And in Walter’s case dropping out was major, a crash, like falling from the sky and landing splat on your head. Yeah, he dropped out with a vengeance. Driving a bus is what he does to make money. It’s not what he does.”

“What’s the real thing he does?”

“Well”—he looked at her for a moment as if he were considering something—“I could show you. I think you’d find it interesting. But we’d have to drive out to his house.”

Molly found her pulse quickening. “I’d like to.” She kept her voice even.

“I have a key. I need to check on things anyway. Miss Shea is keeping an eye on the house, but I’d like to check.”

“When would you like to go?”

“How about now?”

Molly checked her watch. “Oh. I can’t. I have a date with my daughter in a half hour, and a telephone interview scheduled after that. Could we do it tomorrow?”

“Sure.” He sounded disappointed and Molly was tempted to change her plans, but Jo Beth would be on her way already, and the phone interview with Dr. Asquith was important.

“I’m planning to drive to Elgin in the morning,” she said. “How about late afternoon? I could pick you up around four.”

“I’ll be here,” he said.

She dropped the two empty beer cans back in the cooler and closed it. “You haven’t told me the other vows that Walter took.”

“Let’s save them for tomorrow.”

“Okay.” She picked up the cooler and was about to turn away when she added, “You said you were short on groceries, Jake. Tomorrow’s my shopping day. Are there some things I could pick up for you?”

He looked up at her with interest. “That’s a nice offer, but could we stop at a store on the way home from Walter’s? Then I could do my own shopping.”

She wondered how the logistics of his getting around would work. “Sure.”

“And don’t worry. I can get in and out on my own. I’ll just need you to help with the chair.”

“Okay. See you tomorrow.” She turned and walked toward the truck.

“Oh, Molly,” he called out, “maybe you could leave that cooler with me till tomorrow.”

She took the cooler back to him, wondering if your tolerance for alcohol was lower if you had no legs.

“Set it down there on the chair, please, so I can reach it,” Jake told her. “Like you said, it sure is one fine evening to sit out here in the shade and drink a beer or two.”

The music seemed louder than usual and the pace faster. “Down and up,” Michelle bellowed from the platform in front as she demonstrated proper squat form with her hands on her narrow hips. “Squeeze it all the way up. Imagine you’re picking bluebonnets with your glutes. Down, grab
it with your behind, and pull it up by the roots. Don’t let your knees get past your toes. Lower it, squeeze it up. Again.
Again.
”

“Picking bluebonnets with your glutes!” Molly Cates said to her daughter. “It’s illegal to pick bluebonnets—with any part of your anatomy.”

“Gross,” said Jo Beth Traynor, “but I wonder if it could be done. We could try. You know how people go out and take photographs of their children in the bluebonnets? Maybe—”

“Okay, feet parallel now,” Michelle yelled over the thrum of the music. Glutes back and down, way down, and squeeze it up. Pick those bluebonnets!”

Molly watched herself in the mirrored wall. It was the one time you could stare at yourself in a mirror for an hour and not feel like a total narcissist. You were supposed to use the mirror to keep checking out your form on the exercises. Over the two years she and Jo Beth had been doing this class, Molly had been watching with pleasure as her upper arms took on shape and firmness. Push-ups paying off. It wasn’t hard to see why people enjoyed bodybuilding.

“Okay,” Michelle yelled, “now add a pelvic thrust to it. Squat down, thrust forward, and pull-l-l up.”

Molly smiled at herself in the mirror; it sure did look ridiculous. Was the fight against gravity worth this indignity?

She looked at Michelle’s perfect, tanned, and muscled forty-seven-year-old legs in the orange Day-Glow very-short shorts and decided it was. Surely human vanity was one of the strongest forces in the world.

“So, Mom,” Jo Beth said, “are you going to go out there to Jezreel and hang out with the barbarian hordes of reporters?”

“Definitely not. I can see it better on television.”

“Dad seems really down about it. Frustrated like I’ve never seen him.”

“Yeah, he does.” Molly thought about the last time she’d seen Grady Traynor, her ex-husband and current lover. Five days ago, when he’d had a rare day off. Grady’d been stressed, angry, and exhausted. A homicide lieutenant with the Austin police, for the past six weeks he’d been on a team consulting with the FBI agents who were camped out in Jezreel trying to negotiate the release of Walter Demming and the eleven children. As the longtime head of APD’s hostage-negotiating team, Grady Traynor was considered skilled and experienced in the field, but nothing had prepared him for Samuel Mordecai. In the long weeks of negotiations, they had gotten zero concessions.

“And, Mom,” Jo Beth said over the throbbing music, “he’s worried
about leaving Copper alone so much while he’s still just getting adjusted.”

“Oh, God. That dog.”

“Mom, he’s a retired public servant.” Jo Beth’s eyes shone with mirth.

“He’s a vicious cur, a drooling, crazed sociopath. I don’t understand this. Your father has never showed the slightest interest in dogs and now in mid-life he takes on this demented beast.”

“Mom, he was a hero, and they were going to kill him.”

“I know, honey, but—”

“Yeah, he’s developed some bad habits. So he deserves a bullet in the brain? Well, I think it’s wonderful of Dad to rescue Copper and I’d really like to help, but Java and Luna have major problems with him.”

“Of course they do. They’re sane dogs, basically. A bit rambunctious, but—”

Michelle yelled, “Get down into those legs now,
lower!
Quads parallel to the floor.”

Jo Beth bent her legs lower. “Dad was really hoping you might help out since you have that nice safe side yard and you’re at home working and you could—”

“No. Jo Beth, this is unfair. I do not want a dog, any dog, but I particularly do not want
that
dog. And I really don’t understand why your father committed to this.”

Jo Beth smiled an indulgent smile. “Well, Mom, consider this theory of mine: Maybe Dad’s trying to build a family unit and he thinks this might help knit you together.”

“Whaaat?” Molly was stunned—on several levels. She didn’t know where to start in refuting this wild theory. “Jo Beth, that’s crazy. First of all, he doesn’t want anything of the sort. Second, if he did want that, the last thing that would work is to bring a vicious attack dog into the equation. And third, he knows that, after three failed attempts at matrimony and domesticity, I’ve renounced both. He knows that. I will never set up housekeeping again. Not with a man. And not with a dog. Never.”

“Never? If I’m remembering correctly, that’s what you said last week about writing about Jezreel.”

“That’s different. I have to earn a living. My boss gave me an assignment and helped me to see that it makes sense for me to do it. And now that I am, I find myself getting into it. It’s going to be okay.”

“Well, I think the same thing would happen with Copper. He’d be fine with a little—”

“No!”

From the front of the room, Michelle was shouting out, “All right, let’s go to the floor! Push-up time!”

Molly and Jo Beth both arranged towels on the floor and got down on their hands and knees.

“Knees apart, abs in tight, backs straight. Let’s do thirty for starters,” the instructor yelled over the pounding beat of salsa played in an aerobic tempo.