The Good House Read online

  A raven landed on one of the fence-posts with a squawk, its shiny eyes watching her. Angela used to feed ravens and crows when she was younger, mesmerized by their shiny jet feathers, but she’d lost her fondness the first time she’d seen a raven eating a dead squirrel. The feeling was back now, in force. The bird’s stare made her uneasy.

  “Look at this,” Myles said. She hadn’t noticed that he was out of her sight until he came behind her carrying an open straw basket.

  Angela didn’t recognize the basket, nor the tools inside. “Not mine. Do you think Gramma Marie left it out here?”

  “No, it’s too new. I’d swear Rick Leahy had a basket just like this.”

  “He used to ride here,” Angela said, inspecting the basket more closely. It was woven with what looked like a Native American or African pattern, not something to discard lightly. Work gloves, a knife, and some other kind of tool were inside, atop dried plants that had lost all but a shadow of their greenness. Dead plants and a dead man’s things.

  “Could you take it to his kids and see if it’s his?” Angela said. Her earlier visit to the house had been awkward enough. She didn’t want to go back.

  “Yeah,” Myles sighed, closing the basket. He tied the basket’s thin leather string to clasp it.

  “I almost gave up drinking, but now I’m glad I didn’t,” Angela said. “I want a glass of wine tonight. A nice cold one. Maybe five or six. Does this town sell liquor on Sundays?”

  “No, but I have some hard cider I can bring you later.”

  “Bring enough for Naomi. If she’s still here tonight, I’m sure she could use some, too.”

  Liza and Art Brunell were leaving the house as Angela and Myles returned. Just wanted a progress report, they said, but Angela knew they were there to make sure she was all right. Liza had let her run off Missing flyers without charge at the store and then volunteered to hang them around town for her. Angela knew she must have looked pretty distraught when Liza saw her.

  “Our black lab Miko’s the apple of our eye, so we understand,” Art said, squeezing both of Angela’s elbows hard in lieu of a hug. Art flirted up a storm when Liza wasn’t with him, all in good fun, but in his wife’s presence he was downright priestly. Liza Kerr was still the homecoming queen in her husband’s eyes. Art had shed both a little hair and a few pounds since the last time she’d seen him. He still had his trademark double-chin, but he looked good. Liza, too, looked suntanned and healthy with her hair cut in a pageboy style that was cute on her, not as severe as such a blunt haircut looked sometimes. Life had not been good to Angela lately, but it had obviously been good to the Brunells, and she was glad.

  “Did I hear a rumor that you won the election, Art?” Angela said.

  “That’s why I’m here,” Art said, winking. “Missing dogs are part of the mayoral duties.”

  “Call us if you need us, sweet pea,” Liza said, as they headed for the stone steps.

  “How’s Glenn?” Angela called after them, remembering her manners.

  Art was the one who answered. “Doing great! Just turned eight. We’re goin’ fishing today.”

  Inside the house, Naomi was as much a wreck as Angela had expected her to be. She’d already called the airline to postpone her flight, and she asked Angela to do her best to reach her director, a kid on the rise from music videos named Vincent D’Angelo. Naomi wanted to put off her first day on set, maybe until Thursday. Angela knew what the answer would be. D’Angelo was on his studio’s schedule and wouldn’t have any room in his budget for delays. All delays cost money.

  While Angela waited for a return call, she wrestled with her ethics.You need to treat people as if you’re staring into a mirror, Gramma Marie had said, and Angela was a big believer in the Golden Rule, too. If she were in Naomi’s place, she would want to know about Myles’s discovery. She wouldn’t want false hope. And if Angela were acting solely as a friend, no matter how painful, she would tell Naomi about the remains outside for the sake of honesty.

  But as Naomi’s agent, Angela wasn’t so sure.

  This is why you don’t befriend your clients,Angela reminded herself through gritted teeth, consulting her Palm Pilot to try to find a number for anyone else on the production staff. Five years ago, Naomi had dropped out of a project because of mood swings and fatigue from a weight-loss drug. Angela’s law firm had settled the producer’s suit, but the damage was done—Naomi had been labeled a flake, and it hurt her career. Some producers still asked Angela about Naomi’s stability, and she didn’t blame them. She couldn’t let Naomi jeopardize another job, not over a dog.

  The world’s longest day was getting longer.

  From where she stood at the kitchen telephone, Angela could see Myles and Naomi sitting outside at the deck table, where they had quietly excused themselves. Naomi’s hands were clasped in front of her with her elbows resting on the table, and Myles’s hands were draped over hers. Their heads were very close. It was a hard sight for Angela. Myles has always been a rescuer, she thought sarcastically, and was mad at herself for the thought. How could she begrudge her best friend any comfort she could get? Yet, here she was, feeling petty.

  She felt more petty than ever when they came back into the house, closing the door gently behind them, and she overheard Naomi say, “Thank you for the prayer, Myles. I needed that.”

  “My pleasure. Just trust in God, sister. You’ll be all right.”

  Trust in God. That was something Angela hadn’t been able to do since her mother died, when she’d decided religion was wishful thinking in a world filled with examples of how God was asleep on the job, or else a sadist outright. Corey’s death hadn’t changed her opinion, but she envied Myles and Naomi for their belief. Good for them, she thought.

  It was a quiet night. Myles went home and called later, begging off on his promise to bring over the hard cider. Ma Fisher had had a difficult day, he said, and he wanted to stay with her.

  Every half hour, Angela went outside to walk around the house, calling for Onyx. Naomi stopped going with her, having fallen silent the rest of the day. They both ended up on the living room sofa, hardly listening to the music on the stereo. Naomi’s listless behavior reminded Angela of the way she had felt after Corey’s death, nearly catatonic. Grief looks the same, she realized. The degrees might change, but grief was grief.

  At eight o’clock, when both of them were so tired of mind and body that they were already talking seriously about going to bed, the telephone rang.

  “Maybe someone found Onyx!” Naomi said.

  “No, sorry. It’s long distance,” Angela said, noting from Caller I.D. that the call was from Vancouver, British Columbia. Someone from the production getting back to her, finally. She took the portable phone into the kitchen so she could answer out of Naomi’s earshot.

  It was Vincent D’Angelo, deeply wired, about to start shooting his first feature film with twenty million dollars of someone else’s money. “A dog? You’re kidding, right?” he said in a flat voice. He sounded relieved it was something so easy to say no to.

  “He can’t do it,” Angela reported to Naomi, and she nodded, resigned. Angela had never seen Naomi’s eyes so red. Jesus, she was going to look a mess if she didn’t snap out of this, Angela thought. “He says he’s expecting you at the hotel for a read-through tomorrow night. You’re really going to have to leave as early as you can tomorrow.”

  Naomi nodded again, silent. She was hugging one of the sofa’s decorative Oriental-style pillows to her chest, a mother craving her lost child.

  Angela really didn’t want to feel angry—she could think of no good reason to feel anything but empathy for her friend—yet she was growing angrier all the time.You think this is bad? Losing a dog? Try losing your son, Naomi. Try having him shoot himself in his goddamned head in your own house, splattering pink and gray brain matter on the floor. Try knowing you were kneeling over the exact spot it happened just this morning. The blood is gone, but I can still smell it,Naomi.

&nbs
p; “So, how do you want to play this?” Angela said. “I think I should go with you to Vancouver. Either me or Suzanne.” Suzanne Ross was Naomi’s personal assistant, a part-timer with brains. She was good at handling Naomi, and she’d be glad for the work.

  “Yeah, call Suzanne for me. I want you to stay here, Angela. He might come back.” Naomi sounded as if her throat were stuffed with straw. “Do you think he will?”

  At that instant, the part of Angela that was Naomi’s friend won out over the part that was her agent. “I don’t know, sweetie,” she said. “I wish I could reassure you, but I can’t do that. To be honest, I’m getting discouraged.”

  Naomi seemed to half-smile, as if she were glad to hear the truth. But it was far from a smile; her face looked like she had just witnessed a horror. “Can I sleep in your bed with you tonight? I don’t want to be alone in my room,” Naomi said.

  “Sure. Of course you can. Whatever you want. My bed has plenty of room.”

  Naomi finally met Angela’s eyes. Ringed by smudged mascara, Naomi’s eyes looked Asiatic, haunted. Her nose was a dark cherry red. “Angela, you know how I told you I have intuition?”

  “Yes.”

  Naomi lowered her voice. “Sell this house, Angela. Just stay here a few days, to see if Onyx will come back. Truth is, I feel bad asking you to stay that long. I think you should just leave.”

  The same thought had been gnawing to the surface of Angela’s mind, especially after that morning’s episode with the cellar. The discovery of Rick Leahy’s abandoned basket by the herb garden bothered her, too. It was probably nothing, but she was beginning to feel like bad things were drawn to this house’s doorstep.

  “What does your intuition tell you about Onyx?” Angela said, hoping Naomi knew.

  Naomi stood up wearily, dropping the pillow to the floor. “He’s gone. Something’s wrong. I don’t sleepwalk, Angela. And even if I did, why would I go to sleep in the cellar where your son died? What would make me do that? You know that’s not right. That’s no damn coincidence. And then Onyx just happens to disappear?Bullshit.” Naomi lowered her eyebrows, her face suddenly fierce. “There’s something about this house. That guy who came here before—the mayor and his wife—he said people here call this the Good House. Well, I don’t know why. Girl, believe me…it’s not a good house. I don’t know what it is, but it isn’t that.”

  Onyx was still missing by morning. After her last, sleepless night in Angela’s bed, Naomi left without her dog to catch a 10A.M. flight to Los Angeles so she could pack for Vancouver. She and Angela shared a hug at the airport’s curbside, then Naomi vanished into the crowd of travelers who had their own schedules, their own sorrows. Watching her friend leave, Angela was ready to fly to L.A., too. Instead, she pulled her Explorer into the airport’s traffic, then drove north.

  Toward Sacajawea.

  Eight

  JUNE10, 2001

  Two years earlier

  I’M A REBEL,don’t misspell, an’ I don’t takeshit …Got the rhymes, ain’t done time, and my beats don’tquit …Ya’ll niggaz lemmeschool ya, or watch me while Irule ya…”

  Corey Toussaint Hill’s head bobbed as he recited his favorite rap under his breath, a rhyme called “Rebelution” he’d written before summer break. He didn’t rap as well as his friend T.—T.’s gravelly voice was a dead ringer for DMX’s, especially when you closed your eyes—but Corey liked the way the rhyme flowed, one line bridging smoothly to the next.You got it, man, T. had said when he heard it, whipping his arm around to catch Corey’s palm in a slap and shake.You got it, Corey . This would be the title cut on the CD they were planning to make in the fall, with T. dropping the beats and laying the rap tracks while Corey wrote the rhymes. T.’s brother had a mixer, and they would do it themselves and sell it at school and at parties, just like the Sugar Hill Gang and Puff Daddy used to do when they first started out. That was how a lot of rappers started.

  Standing outside of Downtown Foods with one Air Jordan propped against the brick wall, Corey stared out at the sunlight gleaming on the river and imagined he was back at home at his dad’s place, kicking it in his room. Playing BET videos, eating barbecue potato chips with grape soda to chase them down, maybe sharing a roach from the ashtray of T.’s brother’s car. Corey had tried smoking weed the first time T. brought him a roach, and he hadn’t felt anything except his burned fingertip when he tried to light it, but T. said he had to learn how to hold the smoke in his lungs right. T. had promised Corey he would steal one of his brother’s big-ass blunts so they could smoke it all up themselves. If not, they’d just turn the music up real loud and get high on that, T. had said.

  Corey knew what he meant. He was high on the music in his head now. He needed to be high on something around here.

  Corey knew he could find prettiness around him if he wanted to look for it, but he wasn’t in the mood to see pretty. The river, the boats, the trees, it was all right for seeing in movies, or maybe a long weekend. But after a week in Sacajawea, Corey was ready to hitchhike his way back to Oakland. Just when things had started getting good at home, he had to leave and come to this sorry town. Just when his phone had started ringing every night, when T. had introduced him to his friends,This here’s Corey Hill, his dad works for the Raiders, he’s got brains, and he writes mad rhymes, when all of a sudden he’d had the keys to the kingdom.

  He almost thought he’d made a mistake after he moved to Oakland in the seventh grade, not knowing anybody, kids making fun of his clothes and the way he talked, saying he sounded like a white boy, calling him Urkel after that goofy boy on the TV sitcom. At Hollywood Academy, he’d always been different just because he was black, and the other black kids he knew from school, or his mom’s friends’ kids, didn’t mess with him. But in Oak-Town, he was an alien in public school, at least until T. came along. If you were in with T., you werein . Girls who used to pass Corey in the hallway like he was somebody’s old gum mashed on the wall had started noticing him, he started getting invited places, and everyone asked the same question: What you doing this summer?

  Summer meant concerts, cookouts, the dopest movies, and sleeping late. No homework, no projects, no essays, no equations. T. had said Corey might get laid this summer, for real, because Vonetta thought he was cute, and she was sixteen and knew what she was doing. She’d date a younger boy if he was mature enough, T. said. Corey wasn’t sure if he thought Vonetta was cute because her nails and hair were too fake, but he did like the idea of her lips kissing him, her fingers taking charge, undoing his clothes. She gave him looks in the hallway like she had plans in her eyes. She was a cheerleader and took honors English with him, so she had a body and a brain going for her, too, not just those lips. But some days, Corey thought her lips might be enough. They were big and full and soft, the kind of lips he thought about in the shower and when he couldn’t sleep at night.

  None of the girls in Sacajawea had lips like that. First of all, you could hardlyfind any girls in Sacajawea—there were only six hundred people in this whole town, a quarter of the people in his high school, maybe not even as many as his senior class. And even when he did see a couple of girls walking around town, these white girls looked at him like,Wow, imagine that, a real Negro. Sometimes they gave him shy smiles, but he didn’t see that look in their eyes like he saw in Vonetta’s. All they gave him was curiosity. Corey had never gotten any play in Sacajawea before, and he could already tell it wasn’t about to start now just because he’d grown three inches since last summer and would get a car in the fall when he turned sixteen, a promise from Dad, their secret.

  Corey looked at his watch and sighed. Only noon. Days dragged on in this town like they were getting paid by the minute. He’d still be chilling in bed if Mom hadn’t made him come shopping with her to help her load grocery bags into the car. He’d hoped she was going to one of the big supermarkets in Longview, because at least they had bodybuilding and PlayStation 2 magazines, which were better than nothing. Instead, Mom had come down the
street to this tiny little store with hardly any food, never mind the stuff you could find in areal grocery store, a store with some sense. A store in the twenty-first century.

  After a few minutes, Corey had told Mom he had to wait outside. He couldn’t stand the music in that store another minute. The music wasn’t just antique shit, it wasbad antique shit, the kind of music that made Corey wonder who would pay to record it. He could imagine the singers in front of those big, old-fashioned microphones with their suits and ties, crew cuts and silly-ass grins, singing about the Blue Moon or Venus or being a Teenager in Love and Walking in the Rain. Just corny. It wasn’t like Corey thought all the music from the 1950s and 1960s was bad—he liked Chuck Berry and James Brown and even some Elvis Presley, because after all Elvis hadn’t done anything except reheat some old blues songs, even if he didn’t give any of the bluesmen their props. But the radio station playing in the shops in this town seemed to be on a mission to put people to sleep. Sometimes Corey thought the deejay was going out of his way to personally piss him off.