Grave Promise Read online

  A little before dawn Ruby began to relax and spread out a little. Crockett slipped out of bed, eased into his leg, went home, smoked two Shermans, used the john, brushed his teeth, and made coffee. He left the carafe on her kitchen counter, padded back up to the bedroom, sat on the edge of the bed, and watched her make faces while she softly snored. After watching for a while, Crockett knew exactly what Ruby looked like when she was in 6th grade.

  When she began to stir in earnest, Crockett slid back between the covers, lay on his side facing away from her, and feigned sleep. He felt her give a small start when she woke up and realized she was not alone. Ruby lay quietly on her back for a moment, as if figuring out what to do, then sighed and scooted over next to him, pressing her butt into his. Crockett stretched, reached behind him, and rubbed her bottom. Ruby was wearing those underwear that are designed install a wedgie. Crockett couldn’t grasp how women could stand to wear those things, but, as with most men, he liked them.

  Crockett was waiting for a comment or reaction to their situation, when he realized Ruby had gone back to sleep. Marveling at the fact that the same creature who cannot be confined in an automobile for more than two hours without having to make a pit stop, can sleep all night, wake up, and go back to sleep without taking a whiz, he rolled over, spooned her, and drifted off.

  He was awakened by a violent bouncing of the bed, the melodious sound of Ruby shouting “Shit!” and covers being ripped away. Blearily, Crockett watched her lurch into the bathroom trailing the sheet and slam the door. He stayed in bed until he heard the toilet flush and the shower start, put his leg back on, slipped into Ruby’s oversized black velour robe, and went down to the kitchen. Sixty seconds later he walked into her steamy bathroom and placed a mug next to the sink.

  “Good morning, Darling,” he trilled. “Coffee with cream on the counter.”

  He could see Ruby’s general shape through the frosted door. She appeared to be wearing a light blue shower cap.

  “It’s after eight-thirty!” Ruby said.

  “Eight-thirty-six to be exact.”

  “I have a nine!” she yelled. “Shit, shit, shit!”

  Water sprayed out over the top of the stall as Ruby flailed amid the soap and steam.

  Crockett grinned. “Anything I can do to help, Pumpkin?” he said.

  “Yeah! Go home. Stay out of my way. Lemme alone!”

  “As you wish.”

  He picked up the carafe on his way through her kitchen, took it to his kitchen, poured a cup, added cream, and sat. Nudge levitated to the tabletop, bumped Crockett’s chin with his forehead hard enough to make Crockett’s teeth clack together, began to rumble, and took a sip of the coffee. He licked his chops, touched Crockett’s cheek lightly with his claws, then backed up and squinted as Crockett lit another Sherman.

  “Nudge, old boy,” Crockett said, “the best laid plans of mice and men…”

  Very carefully and with great precision, Nudge dipped his paw in the cup.

  A little after nine Crockett eased Ruby’s closet door open and peeked. The coast was clear. He replaced her robe on the hook in her bedroom, made the bed, wiped down the bath, and opened the drapes. Downstairs, he cleared the dishes in the dining room, assembled all the candles in one common collage on top of her sideboard, added water to the roses, and placed them in the center of the table. In the kitchen he scraped the plates, filled the dishwasher, and wiped down the counter tops. Crockett was sitting in his shower, when he saw Ruby’s shape darken the bathroom door.

  “Melinda? Is that you, Honey?”

  “No,” Ruby growled.

  “Shelia? Tiffany? Caitlyn? Heather? Monique? Laticia?”

  “None of the above,” Ruby said. Crockett could hear the hint of a threat in her reply.

  “Edward, you scamp! I didn’t know you had a key!”

  “Crockett, you are such an asshole.”

  “Oh, it’s only you. Hi, Ruby.”

  “You straightened everything up.”

  Crockett stood to rinse. “An unexplainable seizure of domesticity,” he said. “Besides, you were busy.”

  “That was my only morning appointment. Breakfast is on me.”

  Crockett shut off the water. “Suits,” he said. “Hand me a towel, will ya?”

  The shower door opened and Ruby stood there holding the towel just out of reach.

  “LaCost!”

  Ruby gave him the towel and a leer. “Just checking on the waterfowl,” she said. “Hurry up. All of a sudden, I have an appetite.”

  The Corner Restaurant in Kansas City’s Westport district considers itself to be somewhat Avant Garde. At breakfast time on weekends, the wait to be seated can sometimes be as long as an hour. Bankers sit next to the braindead, attorneys next to agnostics, housewives next to homosexuals, and preachers next to perverts. It is an eclectic mix of business, buffoonery, New York dark, San Francisco silly, punk, skunk, deadheads, dopers, mopers, and third generation flower children. During the week, after the breakfast rush, the place is usually less than a third full. Because it is relatively close to Kansas City’s artist colony and the art museum, and because it caters to the elitism that bubbles up through the egotistical mire so common in that type of environment, The Corner routinely displays the work of local geniuses on its cracked and slightly greasy walls. Most of what Crockett had seen there could be called art only by those too lazy to get a job, or so incompetent that even Ronald McDonald would refuse them access to a deep fryer. He liked the joint.

  As they walked through the dining space to be seated, he noticed the walls were graced with numerous three-dimensional large shapes in dark colors, but paid them little attention. A delicate lad with around thirty facial piercings led him and Ruby to the upper seating area and abandoned them at a table. They were the only people in the room. Looking around the walls after they sat, Crockett realized that the massive deep blue, dirty red, and Hershey brown shapes festooning the walls were nude torsos. Cast nude torsos. Realistic down to the tiniest wrinkle in every way except color.

  The one beside and slightly above Ruby, dark blue and speckled with black, was that of a significantly overweight woman. Pendulous and perilous it hung from the wall like a meaty and threatening cloud. As if viewing an impending train wreck, Crockett looked at it in spite of himself. Ruby gave it a brief sideways glance, but carefully studied the one hanging eighteen inches to Crockett’s right. She had her lower lip firmly in her teeth. Her eyes danced.

  “It takes a brave man to sit where you’re sitting, Davey,” she said.

  In Crockett’s peripheral vision loomed an ominous reddish brown shape. After viewing the sagging exhibition above Ruby, he did not want to look at what might be next to him, but he had to. Another train wreck. Slowly, Crockett turned his head and glanced upward, straight into the thankfully closed eye of a dangling penis.

  “Whatdaya think, Crockett?” Ruby said. “Bratwurst for brunch?”

  He went south.

  It took them a few moments to settle down. By the time the silver encrusted waiter returned, Crockett had decided on ham and eggs. Ruby, declining his suggestion of fresh melons and haggis, ordered a Belgian waffle. He took a sip of coffee, leaned back, and grinned at her.

  “So,” Ruby said, “learn anything on your trip?”

  He told her about Marcel, the first evening with Ellie, and his visit to see Marcia Bennett.

  “Christ,” Ruby said. “That poor woman.”

  “It was very strange, Ruby. She’s almost a cartoon. A pathetic, x-rated, elderly, desperate, cartoon.”

  “In that environment, her type is probably a lot more common than we might think. Ellie may be the exception.”

  “And now,” he said, shifting the subject, “we have another lost child thrown into the mix. Vonda Gold’s daughter is out there somewhere, and we have no idea who or where she is. Vonda Gold’s granddaughter is out there, and we know even less about her. Jesus Christ, what a convoluted mess!”

  “Our lives a
re based on patterns, Crockett,” Ruby said. “Programming that is sometimes very difficult to delete. That’s by far the largest portion of my job. Simply attempting to get people to realize the negative patterns and programming in their lives and work to make changes. Patterns are what make us who we are. That’s why accomplishing real change is so hard. We have to give up a portion of our identity, tear down part of who we believe we are, and reconstruct ourselves into what we need to be. You, me, damn near everybody. It’s the toughest thing any of us will ever have to do.”

  She waived her fork in the air.

  “Unlike many of my peers, I believe this pattern reinforcement syndrome does not work only within a given individual. I believe that it can, and does, manifest itself across generational gaps. That tendencies toward certain behaviors are passed on from parent to child, independent of environment. Whether it happens from a cellular standpoint, a spiritual standpoint, a karmic standpoint, or something else entirely, is anybody’s guess. I haven’t the faintest idea. But I am convinced that it does happen. I have seen too much evidence of sons repeating the behaviors of their fathers, even when they had never met. The same is true for mothers and daughters. The sins of the parents are often visited upon their children.”

  “So what you’re saying is–”

  “What I’m saying is, LaVonne got into show business, became involved with a bad guy, and had a daughter that she, willingly or not, abandoned. That daughter, Leona, got into the movies, became involved with a bad guy, and had a daughter that she abandoned. Based on the history of her mother and grandmother, what type of conduct might we expect from little miss ‘X’?”

  “A young woman who is probably twenty to twenty-five years old by this time,” Crockett said.

  “Just the right age to start the whole thing all over again,” Ruby said. “Just the right age that, if something isn’t done soon to break the pattern, it could be too late.”

  “Which is why Marta started the nightmares when she did.”

  “And why we were pulled in.”

  “And why the Amazing Disappearing Woman showed up in my living room in Kaycee.”

  They looked at each other.

  “Could be,” Ruby said. “Anyway, it’s all we got. We may as well suspend disbelief and go with it.”

  Crockett grunted and pushed back from the table.

  “Oh, hell,” he said. “This is all just too strange.”

  Ruby eyed the torso next to him and grinned.

  “Not any stranger than where you’re sitting,” she said.

  Crockett stood up and dropped a twenty beside his plate.

  “Let’s get outa here.”

  Ruby walked to his side of the table and picked up the mustard dispenser.

  “Just a minute,” she said, and traced a thin line of French’s yellow down the center of the semi-erect member that had been dangling over Crockett’s head for the past hour.

  Ruby grinned. “Pal,” she said, “there are just some things that need to be done.”

  As they walked out the door onto the sidewalk, Crockett caught the faintest whiff of To A Wild Rose. He glanced at Ruby.

  “Me, too,” she said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Cletus creepus

  That afternoon, while Ruby was tied up with clients, Crockett called Cletus and related most of the events of the California trip.

  “Jesus!” Clete said. “We got another one out there? A third generation?”

  “Looks like it.”

  “And nothing to go on.”

  “Nothing concrete,” Crockett said. “But Ruby has a theory.”

  “Oh, good. I love theories.”

  “She thinks that we need to follow the progression of the women in this mess.”

  “Huh?”

  “Grandma went for showbiz and got screwed up, mama went for showbiz and got screwed up, maybe number three has done the same thing.”

  “What? Gone after showbiz or got screwed up?”

  “Yes.”

  Clete was silent for a moment.

  “Hell, Crockett, that’s pretty damn thin.”

  “It’s anorexic, but it’s all we got, and Ruby thinks it’s the best shot we have.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Clete said. “I don’t discount anything that Ruby has to say. That’s one sharp lady, but we don’t have a name, we don’t have an age, we don’t have a personal history other than hearsay from a drunk about a kid she’s never even seen, we don’t have a description, we ain’t got shit, Crockett! If this ain’t a dry hole, the best we’re probably gonna git is deep salt.”

  “What?”

  “Sorry. My granddaddy was a oilman.”

  Crockett smiled. “Are you trying to tell me that this is beyond your capabilities, Cletus?”

  “Naw. I just don’t want ya to get your hopes up. I want to keep you discouraged,” Clete said. “That way, when I do find this girl, you’ll think I’m God.”

  “Hell, you’re already a Texican.”

  “Ain’t but one step higher.”

  “So what are you gonna do?”

  “The last we think we know about this kid, she was in California, right?”

  “Right.”

  “And Ruby thinks she’ll try for showbiz?”

  “She believes that’s the only possibility available to us.”

  “Well, guess I’ll take a shot at Hollywood.”

  “Don’t quit your day job, Clete,” Crockett said.

  “Figure I’ll send an Email with a picture of Leona, sorry, Cindi, to every talent agent I can find in the area, and make up some story about why the Justice Department needs to talk with her. If her mama and grandma looked so much alike, maybe she does, too. Hell, this whole thing is so weird anyway, she’ll probably look like a fuckin’ triplet. Christ, Crockett. This sonofabitch gives me the creeps!”

  “And you don’t have some woman that’s been dead for or sixty years or so standing on the sidewalk in front of your house.”

  “See? Now that’s just the kinda shit I’m talking about! Haints running around all over the place, the same story repeatin’ itself from mother to daughter, psychics and nightmares and strange smells and a cat goin’ bugfuck over somethin’ nobody else can see. I’d be peeking under the bed before I took a Sunday afternoon nap!”

  “Take it easy, Clete. At your age you could have a stroke!”

  “Well, I’m glad it’s you and not me in the middle of all this shit, Crockett. I’ll get to goin’ on them E-mails and stuff. Let ya know as soon as I hear anything, okay?”

  “Thanks, Texican. I appreciate you.”

  “Yeah. Well, if you find out you gotta do any ghostbustin’, I don’t give a shit who you call, as long as it ain’t me.”

  Over the next week Ruby was fairly busy making up cancellations from her sojourns to Chicago. Crockett didn’t have enough to do.

  Usually, not having enough to do was right up Crockett’s alley, but, for some reason, he was uncharacteristically restless. He got a call from the TV station Rachael worked for at the time of her death and spent an afternoon there recording liners and bumpers. He screwed around in Ruby’s garden until the place begged for mercy. He washed his kitchen walls and launched into a seizure of cabinet arranging and appliance cleaning that took an entire day. He watched the tube, but couldn’t keep it in focus. He read, but even Archy McNally couldn’t hold his interest. He charged out to one of the chain pet stores and bought Nudge a six-foot cat tree that the feline ignored completely. In desperation, Crockett even lifted the massive cat to the top platform, assuring him that he was about to have kitty fun. Nudge hissed at Crockett, took a casual swipe at his forearm, clambered down from the thing like a bear cub, and stomped off next door.

  Crockett was sitting on the couch, doing absolutely nothing, when Ruby walked in.

  “It’s six-thirty,” she said. “Do you know where your ass is?”

  “Huh?”

  “Crawl out of your limbo and into m
y car, Crockett. Sushi beckons.”

  They went to the Japanese joint on Westport Road whose name Crockett could never remember. Ruby had a California roll, some raw slimy stuff, some uncooked seaweedy things, a couple of nasty spidery-looking entities that had part of a claw or leg or something sticking up out the middle, three flasks of sake, and enough green horseradish and ginger to give a buffalo heartburn. Crockett had teriyaki chicken and green tea.

  Midway through the meal, right after their little porcelain waitress had brought Ruby another golf ball-sized wad of wasabi, she waved a chopstick in Crockett’s general direction and spoke.

  “You are passively obsessed, Crockett.”

  “What?”

  Ruby raised an eyebrow slightly and looked down her nose. “You are passively obsessed,” she repeated.

  Crockett grimaced. “Oh boy,” he said. “All aboard.”

  “You are a man to whom leisure is nearly a full time job, and yet you are now frustrated at the lack of activity in your life. You are passively obsessed.”

  “Here we go,” Crockett said. “The doctor is in.”

  A piece of chicken escaped Crockett’s inept chopsticks and fell in his lap. Ruby looked at him as if he’d just crawled out from under the shed.

  “Back to the fact that you are passively obsessed,” she said. “Why do you think this is?”