Blood Orange Read online

  Could they be more dreadful than her own? Not unless Marsha Filmore was sitting before a mirror, seeing herself as she truly was for the first time.

  Lexy had held the mirror up to Dana.

  Fog; blanketed the streets and homes of Mission Hills, ghostly vines of it twisting through the trees in the park and drawing scarves of gray across the faces of the houses along Miranda Street and Arboles and Felicita. Near the corner of Arboles and Descanso she ran past a house with all the windows alight, a man in the driveway loading suitcases into a minivan. He turned his head as Dana ran by and lifted his arm in a friendly gesture. She did the same. A normal family, going on a trip.

  All her life she had wanted the safety and assurance of a normal life. How could she have guessed there was a corner of her that did not want these things at all, that craved risk and sensation.

  In her thoughts the fog parted, and she glimpsed her future. If David never learned about Micah, and if Dana could forget Micah and Florence, and if Bailey talked again, and if she never spoke the name of the man who had kidnapped her daughter … Dana had tried to create a safe and predictable life for herself, but now here she was, the days and weeks ahead littered with contingencies, the hours held in place by “ifs.”

  Turning down Ramona, she cut up through an alley toward the lights of Fort Stockton. The footing was insecure there, a mixture of gravel and broken pavement, and she slowed her pace. Then a dog barked suddenly and loudly from behind a redwood fence, jolting her nerves. Before she recovered from the surprise, something leapt out from behind a pile of garbage cans, startling her afresh. There was a screech and a cackle, and a female face loomed so close she could see the lined, leathery skin, the pale, watery eyes, and smell the reek of urine and sour wine.

  Jumping back, she tripped and fell. As she scrambled to her feet, the woman hung over her, snorting and laughing from the black cave of her mouth. Dana thrashed out with her arms, touched the woman’s filthy clothes, and recoiled. Gaining her feet, she sprinted toward the lights of the boulevard.

  She needed light; she needed people. At that hour the only place open in the neighborhood was the Jack in the Box on Washington Street. Speeding up, she moved out into the broad street and ran from streetlight to streetlight, counting her breaths and flexing her hands to dispel the tension in her arms.

  One word had flashed through her mind when the woman jumped out at her. Mother. Her mother might have ended up like that derelict. She had certainly been on her way to that destiny the night she left Dana shivering on Imogene’s porch.

  Dana welcomed the sterile fluorescence of the Jack in the Box. She ordered a cup of coffee and a sweet roll from the sleepy-looking Hispanic girl whose fate it was to be taking orders in the middle of the night, paid with the five-dollar bill she kept in her shoe, and took her order to a corner table facing the wide street. Like bizarre golden-eyed fish, the headlights of the predawn traffic emerged from the fog and vanished in flashes of piercing crimson. At the stoplight a sedan screeched to a halt. The woman driving banged the heel of her hand on the steering wheel.

  Any angry woman anywhere might be Dana’s mother.

  What did Lexy know, finally, of what it meant to be Dana? Tell David, she had said. But Lexy had not been abandoned like a stray dog, just another consequence of her mother’s mistakes. Lexy had not spent her life waiting to be found again, and she would never understand that it was this that bound her to David. He had found her. Tell David, Lexy had said with the certainty of one who has read the rules but never played the game.

  Dana got home just before five. She showered in the downstairs bathroom so as not to wake David. Afterward, she returned to their bed, clean and warm, smelling of flower fields. David turned over and put his arms around her, nuzzling her neck where the hair was still damp. She kissed his ear, his neck, and the hollow of his throat where his pulse leapt. He was her quarterback and hero. It was he who had found her, and if God would only let her escape disaster one more time, she would never hurt him, never give him reason to wonder why, or if, he loved her.

  He drew her to him, and they made love with their eyes closed, wrapped in the musky warmth of half-sleep. Vision seemed an inferior sense to smell and touch. With her hands she explored the familiar territory of his body, the landmarks: a break in his collarbone that had healed poorly, the long, powerful thigh muscles, and the ridge of an appendix scar on his flat belly. She drew him deep inside her, wanting nothing more than to dissolve the boundaries between them and merge into one indissoluble being.

  After they made love they lay in each other’s arms, talking sleepily.

  David ran his palm along the curve of her hip. “I was thinking about what you said the other day about not taking any more cases like this one.” Although David had other clients, they both knew he meant the Filmore case.

  “You shouldn’t listen to a crazy woman.”

  “Not so crazy. It’s a head thing. This kind of case, it’s different than a regular murder, because it’s a kid. And the repercussions …” He stroked her hair back from her forehead. “I can’t stand that Bailey got taken because of me. It doesn’t matter if it all works out and she’s okay. I’ll never forgive myself for putting her in harm’s way.

  Dana put her fingertips on his mouth. He kissed them, and she changed the subject.

  “We need a vacation. We need to put all this behind us.”

  “How’s Hawaii sound?”

  “I was talking to this woman at church, Nova Harris? She lives in that big house on Paloma?” Dana propped herself on one elbow. “She and her husband went to Fiji, and she said it was fabulous. No huge crowds, great service, and gorgeous beaches.”

  “Isn’t that where they have cannibals?”

  “Idiot. You’re thinking of Papua, New Guinea, and there aren’t even cannibals there anymore. Fiji’s on the way to Australia.”

  David closed his eyes, smiling. “What about Alaska? We could fly into one of those fishing camps-“

  She punched his shoulder. “Grizzlies, with fangs!”

  He chuckled and nuzzled her neck. “But think of the fish and the firelight.”

  “Think of me cooking the fish.” Laughing, she got out of bed and in one swing pulled the covers off the bed.

  Later, when they were sharing the electric toothbrush and the vanity mirror, Dana caught the scent of cigarette smoke and stepped to the bedroom window. She pulled the blinds back, letting in the morning sun.

  “She’s out there, on the steps, with a blanket around her.”

  David stood behind Dana, his arms wrapped around her waist. Already the warmth and intimacy had begun to dissipate. Reality was back, making a space between them.

  “I told her I’d get her mink coat out of storage.”

  “She’s one peculiar female. I just can’t get a read on her.”

  “Oh, I can,” Dana said, sighing. “She’s hiding something.”

  Trust me. I have a sixth sense for deceit.

  orothy Wilkerson looked tiny and peaceful in her high, oldfashioned bed. Pretty. In a room downstairs Lexy had seen a picture of her on her wedding day; and now, as she slept, and the lines and wrinkles relaxed, the girl emerged from the face of the old woman. Lexy thought of the dreams and ambitions and disappointments of Dorothy Wilkerson’s long life; and when occasionally a pulse jumped in her eyelid and she groaned or murmured something too softly for Lexy to make out the words, she wondered what thoughts and memories streamed through her sleeping mind. One hundred and two years was a long time to live.

  Someone had brought in branches of lavender and arranged them in a tall glass vase. Set before the window, which was open just a crack, their fragrance filled the room. From the other side of the door the radio played softly. Lexy recognized Mahler’s transcendent Planet Suite.

  She wanted to know Micah’s thoughts in the moments before he shot himself. Had it even occurred to him to write her a note of good-bye, she who loved him most, his Irish twin? She snuffed the
uncomfortable feeling of anger toward him. He had been too sick at heart to serve her needs. Lexy hoped he regretted stealing Bailey and had prayed to be forgiven. Maybe he was just glad he’d made Dana suffer.

  There was meanness in him, too.

  Lexy held her prayer book on her lap unopened, though the need to offer up her anger and pain was a raw second skin burning beneath the surface.

  For many years prayer had been a joy and a continuing conversation Lexy could pick up at any time. In the car, and while she cooked or cleaned, she talked aloud to God. She lost herself to God in meditation. At night she knelt beside her bed like a child and offered pup the wins and losses of her day. Some seminarians had spoken of doubt and being blocked in prayer, but it had never happened to Lexy until now.

  Estranged from God and Dana, she had never felt lonelier. Not only could she not pray, she now had no one to talk to. No more coffee-saturated conversations with Dana at Bella Luna. No more midnight phone calls and trips to Nordstrom for shoes with threeinch heels. Where would she go after church on Super Bowl Sunday? Who would make her a Christmas stocking and leave it on the front seat of her car to find after Midnight Mass?

  Mass.

  We confess that we have sinned against You in thought, word and deed, by what we have done and by what we have left undone. We have not loved You with our whole heart; we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves; we are heartily sorry and humbly repent….

  Loving God meant loving Dana, and Lexy could not do that. We are heartily sorry and humbly repent….

  She did not repent. Not a word, not a thought.

  Dorothy Wilkerson stirred and moaned. Lexy wondered if she dreamed of visitors in plumed hats. Or was she thinking of her daughter, chewing over the old argument that had divided them.

  Maybe I’ll regret all this when I’m old. God, standing at the gate of Heaven, might turn Lexy away because she had not loved Dana as she loved herself, as her ministry called her to love all the fallen and broken of the world.

  I should forgive her.

  Never.

  I should atone for the pleasure I took in being cruel.

  Dorothy moaned and muttered in her sleep.

  We are heartily sorry for these our misdoings. The burden of them is intolerable.

  Lexy remembered the day of her ordination, the end of a long and difficult journey of self-examination and questioning by others as she sought to understand her call.

  The bishop had asked her, Will you endeavor so to minister the Word of God and the sacraments of the New Covenant, that the reconciling love of Christ may be known and received? … Will you undertake to be a faithful pastor to all whom you are called to serve? …

  She had answered yes to these questions and more. Yes without qualification. Yes with enthusiastic confidence. She should have said, “Yes, I will keep my vows until my best friend kills my brother by loving him.” Then she would turn her back on her promises and love herself and her rage first, God and His Son second, Dana last.

  She bent forward and laid her head on her knees, borne down by the weight of what she knew now that she had not known when she entered Dorothy Wilkerson’s bedroom. She still believed in God; it would be easier to lose her faith in oxygen than in God. But she could not follow God’s law.

  I can’t be a priest anymore.

  s soon as David left for work on Saturday morning, Guadalupe arrived from Tijuana.

  Dana could not spend another day cooped up with just her guilt and Bailey for company. She stopped first at the Filmores’ storage unit, to which Marsha had given her the key the day before. As she opened the door, a wave of warm air smelling of stale cigarettes engulfed her and a dim interior light switched on automatically, revealing a long, narrow space filled from floor to ceiling with plastic storage bins, cardboard boxes, and dark, oppressive-looking Victorian furniture. Standing at a right angle to the door was an armoire almost eight feet tall made of some dark red wood like mahogany and embellished all over with carved fruit and vegetables and the heads of birds and fish. The mirrors on the doors were etched with pastoral shepherding scenes. Dana could not decide if the piece was very beautiful and unusual or a nineteenth-century monstrosity. She opened one of its doors and inhaled a whoosh of tobacco and perspiration smell so strong she turned her head aside and took a step back, almost stumbling on a stack of books. Then she reached in and slipped the sable-colored, full-length mink coat off a wooden hanger.

  Without thinking, she put her arms into it, and pulled the shawlcollar up around her neck and laid her cheek against the lush, silky fur. In the pocket her hand touched a piece of paper. She pulled it out and looked at it. It was a receipt, and Dana recognized the date immediately.

  two hours later David knocked on Marsha Filmore’s door. She - opened it wearing jeans, a black T-shirt, her fur coat, and no shoes. “Come on in, Counselor.”

  The bed was unmade, and the overheated air smelled of cooked coffee, tobacco smoke, and microwaved meals. A black bra hung on the knob of the bathroom door.

  David eyed a half-full glass of wine sitting in a moist ring on the table.

  “Care to join me?”

  “We have to talk, Marsha.”

  “Sit down, then. Talk.”

  Her skin was the color of oatmeal, with raspberries of pink on the cheeks, and her thin, straight hair lay flat and uncombed against her head. David remembered one of Filmore’s offhand remarks during an early interview, something about his wife being plain but serviceable.

  Without preamble David told her about Dana’s discovery of the garage receipt. Listening, she sat still, her head cocked slightly to one side.

  “And?”

  “Marsha, don’t pretend you don’t get it. The receipt says you got a loaner car from the garage on the day Lolly Calhoun disappeared. A two-thousand Honda Accord. Have you told anyone you took the car to the garage?”

  “Of course not.”

  The window by the table looked over the side yard and deck and right into David and Dana’s kitchen. It was not a stretch to imagine Marsha Filmore sitting at her table night after night, drinking and smoking and watching his family. With the windows open she could probably hear them talking. His jaw began to ache.

  “Let’s start at the beginning. How did you pay to have your car fixed?”

  “Cash, of course. We always pay in cash because we don’t want anyone poking around in our business. They can find out all sorts of things about you if you use cards to pay.”

  Moby sauntered out his pet door and across the deck. He still limped a little from where he’d been hit by the white van. He walked to the edge of the deck and thoughtfully looked down at the grass. Like a swimmer testing the water, he gingerly lowered one paw and then another, his hind end following after.

  “If the jury finds out about Shawna-“

  “She has nothing to do with this. You should just forget about her.”

  “I can try to keep her off the record, but Peluso’s going to do what he can to make sure it gets out. I wouldn’t be surprised if the press gets wind of it about the time impanelling starts.”

  “But she’s … irrelevant.”

  “Really?” David said. “Are you sure of that?”

  Marsha stared out the window.

  “Tell me what happened.”

  She pulled a handful of lank hair around in front of her face and looked at it. “It was a long time ago. I’m not sure I remember exactly.”

  “Try. Tell me about Shawna.”

  Marsha dropped her hair and stared at the butcher-block tabletop. “She was never right. From the beginning she didn’t smile and gurgle like other babies, and when she got older she never could just ask for something, she made this mealy little baby sound. She was almost four years old, but she just stood there with her arms out and whining to be picked up or carried or given something. Frank didn’t believe in holding her; he said it’d spoil her, but sometimes I did when he wasn’t there.” She looked at David. “I mean, what wa
s I supposed to do? If I picked her up, she got quiet, but then I didn’t have enough time for Frank, and that upset him, so we got this maid named Tina, and she was okay, I thought, only Frank didn’t like her because she spoiled Shawna, and she was nosy, too, always poking around in our business, so we had to fire her. Shawna cried for days. Even when Frank spanked her she wouldn’t be quiet.”

  David rubbed his jaw, just below the earlobe.

  “And then one day … she was gone, and I got frantic, so did Frank, and after two or three days the police found her in that well and she was dead… .” Marsha stared into the bottom of her wineglass. “Afterwards he told me what he did, and he helped me understand why it was … not so bad. Better for Shawna, actually.”

  If she knew what she said was monstrous, it did not show on her face. David loosened his tie and undid the top button of his shirt.

  Marsha said, “Have you ever studied population management? Frank has, and he says the world just doesn’t have room for children who aren’t strong. Tough. There’s a finite amount of resources to go around.” She lit a cigarette, shaking out the match with a flick of her wrist. “In the beginning, before he explained it to me, I was upset and said I’d go to the police. He said the police in Rosarito were no good, and if he told them I did it, they’d believe him.”

  “You’re afraid of Frank.”

  He watched her throat move when she swallowed.

  “Has he threatened you, Marsha?”

  “We’re going to Idaho to live. Get a fresh start.”

  David remembered his first impression that Marsha Filmore was like two women in one body: the competent bookkeeper who could run the office of a major drugstore chain, and a woman in thrall to a husband who’d driven the gumption out of her. A bully bearing mink and diamonds could buy a lot of acquiescence.