Crossroad Read online

“Mel, you don’t know that—”

  “I checked out the Barlow Con team website. It’s a love letter to Landry MacElroy. Now tell me again no one put the squeeze on Paulette.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “That you lost my fucking number.”

  I’m rescued, if you can call it that, by the arrival of Sheriff Hayward Turnbull and his chief deputy, Omar Duniway. In attitude, they’re two of a shit-kicking kind, though Duniway is a head taller and rail thin next to the burly Turnbull. They park on the shoulder, then mosey into the light bubble. All my instincts tell me to walk the other way, but I force myself toward them, Jeremy following in my wake.

  Duniway notices me first. “Well, if it isn’t Melisende Dulac.” He edges too near and grins. “You sure know how to stir up trouble at the crossroad.”

  I ignore him and face the sheriff. “The injured man said he saw someone out here, a woman maybe. It’s possible I saw her too, though it’s hard to …” My voice trails off when he starts grinning.

  “Was she dressed all in white, Mellie?”

  The hackles rise on my neck. Jeremy is a thermal presence at my side. He looks embarrassed—on my behalf, I suppose. “I’m just saying it might be worth a look around.”

  “For what? A ghost?” The sheriff’s grin widens. Beside him, Duniway chuckles, the sound sharp as breaking glass.

  Through my teeth, I say, “Fine. Then could you have someone move that truck? I’ve got to get going.”

  Hayward Turnbull is the kind of man I worried about on the long train ride from Massachusetts to Oregon—loud, florid, full of brash affability tempered by condescension for mere peasants like myself. That, and he looks like a man suffering a perpetual attack of the meat sweats.

  Fortunately, I rarely have to deal with him. Most of my department contact is with the half-dozen deputies at Jeremy’s level. But Turnbull must see a three-car crack-up at the crossroad as worthy of his supervision.

  “You in a hurry, Mellie?” His voice makes my teeth hurt.

  “I have a removal at Crestview.”

  He looks past me toward the Stiff. “How many cots you got?”

  “Sheriff—”

  “Because I’ve got three dead bodies and only two ambulances, and one of those is leaving any second with our survivor. I’m not leaving the others out here while you’re off after some fellow who died in his bed. Call Crestview and tell ’em it’ll be a while.”

  “I’m already late.”

  “You can be later. This is your job, Mellie. Bouton’s job. Unless you want me to call your aunt and tell her why the county is switching to Swarthmore for contract removals. Makes no difference to me who mops up the road kill.”

  Much as I’d love to hear Aunt Elodie rip Turnbull stem to gudgeon if he tried to cancel our contract, she’d tell me the old blowhard is right. County jobs come first.

  Lips pressed together, I tick off a backward ten count in my head. “Can you at least tell me how long it’s going to be so I can inform Crestview?”

  “A while.”

  I catch Jeremy looking my way, his expression dripping with sympathy. That pisses me off, so I stomp into the desert. Once past the ring of emergency vehicles, the stars return, faint and indifferent. Off to my right, a voice tries to soothe the horse. I veer left toward the distant tree line, thinking about the figure I saw. Had to be all in my head, hopped up on adrenalin and tweaked by a local’s overwrought imagination.

  Cold and seething, I put distance between the crash and myself. Focus on what you can control, Melisende. I pull out my phone and scroll through my contacts to the Crestview entry.

  No bars.

  Jeremy could get a message to the facility over the radio, but damned if I’m going to ask him for help. I’d sooner trek all the way to Crestview on foot and haul Mrs. Crandall back over my shoulder. That won’t be necessary though. A short walk to higher ground should get me a signal. Might work off a little irritation too.

  But I make it only a few dozen paces through the desert grass before I nearly kick the baby.

  FOUR

  Née Dulac

  I accepted this life. Fifteen months earlier, when my cell phone rang and a stranger offered me a job and a place to stay, I’d said yes.

  Without hesitation.

  “Impulsive,” Fitz murmured, his voice a tickle in the back of my head.

  Desperate was more like it. When I got the call, I was on the street in Boston—ninety miles from Amherst, where I’d been living, and fifty miles from Lowell, where I’d grown up. Not that it mat I’d lost my apartment, had no friends. Another day and my cell phone would have been disconnected. My husband, Geoffrey, was gone; my grandmother had been dead four years; and my parents had changed the locks at their house while I was in psych hold.

  “My name is Elodie Bouton,” the woman said. “I’m Geoffrey’s aunt, which makes me your aunt too. We may not be blood, but we’re still kin.”

  My husband wasn’t her blood either—he was her nephew by marriage. But that didn’t matter. I had no one else. Even Helene wouldn’t take my calls.

  “I’ll buy you a train ticket to Oregon,” Elodie went on. “Flying is quicker, but the train will give you time to settle in to the idea of the work.”

  “What will I be doing?” Not that I cared.

  “Officially, you’ll be an apprentice funeral service practitioner, but we don’t stand on ceremony. Around the shop, we’re all just undertakers.”

  I tried to picture myself in a long black suit. “I don’t have anything to wear.”

  Elodie laughed. “We’ll work it out. How soon can you leave?”

  “Today. I can leave today.”

  Despite my lack of options, I second-guessed myself the whole three-day journey. In Chicago, where I had to change trains, I almost stayed behind. The only thing that kept me on board afterward was the unfathomable emptiness of the western landscape. During the long miles and oppressive vistas, I heard Fitz nattering on about how we were following a modern-day version of the Oregon Trail, or oohing and aahing about cows or prairie dogs or some shit out the window. Not even my attempts to lose myself in the books I snagged from the lounge car library could silence him.

  When I got off the train at Portland’s Union Station, the man who approached could have been anyone. Tall and slender, he wore a white Oxford shirt and tan chinos. He parted his gray hair on the left. If he’d handed me a religious pamphlet or offered me twenty for a blow job, I wouldn’t have been surprised. Either one.

  Instead he said, “I’m Rémy Bouton, Geoffrey’s uncle.” His voice was quiet, with a faint Western twang. “You must be …” He paused, then sounded out my name. “… Mell-ee-sond. Is that correct?”

  He didn’t try to touch me, not even to shake my hand. He just stood and waited to hear what I had to say. His expression was warm, but cautious.

  “Melisende, yes,” I said, repeating his pronunciation. Most people don’t get it so quickly.

  “I’m happy to meet you.”

  A flood of voices swept past us. The funk of bodies pouring off the train, the skrrr-ing of luggage wheels on the hard floor—it all made me a little dizzy. I felt as old and worn as the station’s sandstone walls.

  At last Rémy said, “What would you like to do?”

  The moment of truth. “I don’t know.”

  A shadow passed over his face. Had he turned around and left me there, I’m not sure I’d have been upset or surprised. His wife, Elodie, a faceless woman on the other end of a long-distance phone call, had paid for me to travel three thousand miles. But that didn’t mean she or her husband were eager for me to come the last hundred and fifty. If I turned back now, would they feel anything but relief? Would anyone?

  “Don’t be stupid, little sister.” Fitz’s voice was so loud in my head I half-believed even Rémy might hear. I winced, but he didn’t seem to notice.

  “Are you hungry?” he said. “All I’ve had this morning is coffee.”


  My ticket had included meals in the dining car, but as the train neared Oregon, I’d been too anxious to eat. The night before, somewhere in Montana, I’d poked at my dinner plate but couldn’t bring myself to even attempt breakfast after a long, sleepless night.

  “There’s a nice place close by,” he added. “Great pancakes.”

  I had nowhere else to go. If he turned out to be a deranged killer who left my violated corpse in a ditch, at least my troubles would be over.

  At the promised “nice place,” we sat across from each other in a booth. I could see a shaky resemblance to Geoffrey in Rémy’s gray eyes and sharp cheekbones. He didn’t try to make small talk. When the waitress came, I found myself ordering eggs, bacon, hash browns, pancakes, orange juice, and coffee.

  “Train grub wasn’t so great, I’m guessing.”

  I felt myself flush. “It was fine. I just …” I didn’t want to tell this man who’d driven so far to get me I wasn’t sure I’d made the right choice.

  Rémy set down his coffee cup as I finally sopped up the last of my eggs with a crust of toast. “You’re anxious, and I can’t say as I blame you. Did Geoffrey tell you anything about us?”

  One of the few things Geoffrey and I’d had in common was a disinterest in our personal histories. But I’d learned a few things from his sister Helene. “Your family is from Oregon going way back, but your brother left to attend Harvard and never returned.” Rémy was a few years older than Verdell, Geoffrey and Helene’s urbane, well-kept father.

  “Not even to see our parents.” Rémy nodded sadly. “Though Geoffrey and Helene would visit summers. You know Helene, yes?”

  I nodded. Just hearing her name made me want to cry.

  “Verdell opposed the visits, as did his wife. But our folks wanted to see their grandkids. After Mama passed and Papa slipped into his memories, Verdell again tried to stop the children from coming to visit. But by then they were old enough to make a fuss.”

  “When did you last see Geoffrey?” I asked him. Part of me hoped he’d say, “Oh, last night for supper.” Another part of me feared precisely that.

  “Eight years ago—the summer after his first year of college. Too long, not that I fault him. He was pulled in so many directions. I know he wanted to bring you to meet us.”

  That was news to me. Until Elodie called, I didn’t even know if the Oregon Boutons were alive or dead. They were hazy figures from a soft focus past rarely mentioned.

  Rémy finished his coffee and held his hand over the cup when the waitress came around with the pot. “There’s no rush to get going,” he said. “Would you like to see a little of Portland before we hit the road? It’s a long drive. Stretching our legs first is a good idea.”

  For three long days, my only exercise had been to walk from one end of the train to the other. Now, I found trudging half a step behind Rémy oddly soothing. The pavement was firm beneath my feet, the city sounds comfortably anonymous and ordinary. Rémy pointed out Portland landmarks—a statue of a man holding an umbrella, a fountain that once flowed with beer. At one point, he nodded toward a dozen or so teens sitting together in the grass near the river, sharing cigarettes. One of them wore a blue plastic tarp like a poncho.

  “Homeless,” he said. “Seems like there’s more every year.”

  I wondered if he thought I belonged with them.

  “Mr. Bouton,” I said after we’d visited a bookstore the size of a city block, then found ourselves in a narrow park, “you don’t want me to come with you, do you?” I was ready for him to say no—half-hoped he would say no.

  “It’s not that at all.” He sat on a bench facing a small playground. The morning was cool, the air cleaner than I had known back east. He patted the bench, and after a brief hesitation, I joined him. Neither of us spoke. I watched the shrieking children climb colorful play structures and argue about turns on the swings. They were alien creatures, a life form I’d never known. My own childhood ended when I was eight years old.

  “I admit, at first I wasn’t sure Elodie should call you.” Rémy said at last. “And once she had, I thought it would be just as well if you chose not to come.” He studied my face as if waiting for a reaction.

  “Do you blame him?”

  One of the many questions troubling me on the long train ride was why she’d called at all. Another time, in other circumstances, I wouldn’t have answered a number I didn’t recognize. But she’d caught me at just the right moment, and now here I was. Pressure grew in my throat.

  “I didn’t know what else to do.”

  He nodded. “Desperation is forebear to many an unconsidered decision.”

  “Are you saying I shouldn’t have come?”

  His lips formed a tight smile. “I can’t speak for you.”

  “Mr. Bouton, how did your wife even know to call me?”

  He took a long time considering his response. “You should talk to her about that. Elodie is closer to Geoffrey than I am. Don’t get me wrong: I love that boy, but those two always had something special.”

  “Do you know where he is? Does she?”

  He shook his head. “No more than you.”

  In the first days after my husband’s disappearance, I’d cycled through worry and fear to bitterness and rage—with myself as much as Geoffrey. But the psych hold had worn my raw edges down to a muddy uncertainty. At least Rémy and Elodie shared my ignorance.

  “Okay,” I said. “So why are we here?”

  He drew a breath, then reached into his shirt pocket for a folded piece of paper. “This is my idea, not Elodie’s, just so you know.”

  It was a cashier’s check for ten thousand dollars. Made out to me.

  “I know you’re in a bad place. Elodie reached out because she believes it was the right thing to do, but you don’t know us, and you don’t know where I may be taking you.”

  “Mr. Bouton, I can’t accept this.”

  “You most certainly can. Your husband abandoned you with nothing. Only he can say why.” His hands clenched and unclenched in his lap. “It’s not much, but it’s something. And it gives you options. It’s money to live on while you get back on your feet. You can return to Boston or go somewhere new. Whatever you like. It means your only choice isn’t limited to getting in my car and riding into a life you didn’t ask for.”

  “Take the money,” I murmured, half to myself, “or go with you.”

  “The money is yours either way. But at least if you have it, you can come with me because you want to, not because you have no other choice.”

  I held the check in my hands. Pay to the order of Melisende Bouton née Dulac, ten thousand dollars and no cents, drawn on the Rolling Sage Bank, Samuelton, Oregon. I think the née Dulac settled it, that and the careful way he’d pronounced my name. This man—this stranger—had made an effort to learn something about who I was. It was a small thing, maybe, but showed a degree of consideration I’d received from no one except perhaps Helene since my grandmother died.

  I took a breath. “I’d like to come with you, sir.”

  He stood and for the first time offered me his hand. “Please,” he said. “Call me Uncle Rémy.”

  FIVE

  Undertaker’s Apprentice

  Somehow I manage to drag myself through the long, weary day after the crash. Only Tuesday and already I want this week to be over. I’ve been running on adrenaline and Red Bull ever since sunrise.

  Paperwork soaks up most of my time, along with two trips to the hospital to retrieve bodies. I’m pretty much on my own. Carrie Dell—our embalmer—is on vacation, not due back for ten days. Aunt Elodie is in Bend with Uncle Rémy for his hip replacement, too busy or distracted to answer when I call with a status report. Wanda Iniguez, Bouton’s funeral planning specialist and unofficial den mother, is expert at sitting with weeping families and discussing funeral arrangements or acting as hostess for services, but she won’t get near the remains until they’re fully prepared and in a casket. Quince Kinsrow, the old scarecrow wh
o had my job before transitioning to semi-retirement, sticks his nose in just long enough to see there’s work to be done, then bolts.

  I eat my lunch in the hospital morgue with the deputy medical examiner, Aaron Varney, while he examines the bodies and agrees they’re dead. “Cumulative trauma to multiple body regions consistent with high-speed vehicle collision,” he tells me in a bored tone. When he finishes, he rests his butt against the metal counter. “I heard about the baby.”

  The baby remains the biggest mystery of the crossroad. A girl no more than a day old, lying on the ground, wrapped in a hooded sweatshirt. “Not a half-bad swaddle,” one of the EMTs said. No one knows where she came from or whom she belongs to. Almost certainly not to the rancher, Zach Urban, who was on his way back from the Sweet Home Rodeo.

  It’s anyone’s guess. There was no diaper bag, no baby seat in the wreckage.

  The sheriff hoped Zachariah Urban would explain everything, but by midday, the old rancher had been air-transported to Portland, intubated and under sedation. No telling when—or if—he would be well enough to answer questions.

  I don’t know what to say about the baby. Aaron raises one well-groomed eyebrow. “I take it you don’t like kids?”

  “I thought it was a rattlesnake.”

  That nets me a laugh, followed by an absent wave toward the two autopsy tables. “We’ve got IDs on all the bodies now.” I’m glad he lets the subject of the baby go so readily. “Headless is Uriah Skeevis and the other man is Tucker Gill, per their driver’s licenses and confirmed by fingerprints. The boy is one Trae Fowler, age sixteen. All from the Portland area. The kid’s parents had no idea he drove out here. They thought he was spending the night at a friend’s. Long way to come just to crack up at the end.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Not curious what he was up to?” There’s a twinkle in his eye. Teasing or flirting—maybe both. But I’m too tired, even if I had any interest to begin with.

  Carrie thinks I should play nice with Aaron Varney, whom she deems a good catch. In his mid-thirties, he has ensemble TV character good looks and a career arc on the rise. In Oregon, many DMEs are cops or criminalists with specialist training, but Dr. Varney is also a physician at the county health clinic and has a growing private practice. Pillar of the community and all that. I could do worse, Carrie insists. Well, I did do worse, but I keep that thought to myself.