David Dean - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 125, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 763 & 764, March/April 2005

The deer seemed to be waiting: standing in his lane as he rounded the curve and gazing calmly at his oncoming vehicle. For Rueben, everything slowed down inside his head: He watched as his hands seized the wheel and incredibly, wrongly, wrenched it hard to the right. It was instinct to avoid something in the road, but it was such a mistake in this case, he thought with remarkable calm. His foot had barely touched the brake when he rammed the elm. Worse, his old car had no airbags, and he had neglected to fasten his seat belt as the young officer directed.

The deer vanished even before Rueben completed his high-speed exit through the windshield.

Copyright ©; 2005 by David Dean.

Patricia McFall’s new story for EQMM reintroduces Lane Terry, the twenty-five-year-old failed performance artist turned private eye who was first seen in the short mystery “The Just Missed Blonde,” published in the 2001 Private Eye Writers of America’s anthology Mystery Street . Ms. McFall is also the author of the well-reviewed novel Night Butterfly (Worldwide Library 1992/Pocket Books 1994).

Daniel Mason dumped me the summer after I graduated from high school, and I hadn’t heard from him since. But one cloudy Monday afternoon in January eight years later, his brother Sean phoned.

The unfamiliar voice asked, “This Lane?”

“Why not?” I said. “Lane Terry, licensed investigator, at your service. Who’s this?”

“Baby Dude,” he said, using as instant identification my old nickname for him. At the time, he’d been a squeaky-throated little blond surfer, but with a lot of urban swagger superimposed to copy his big brother. I smiled at the memory and waited to hear what he wanted. He sounded nervous. After claiming how great it was to be back in touch with me and how much he’d always liked me, and how bad he’d felt when Danny and I broke up, he added, “Um, Lane, like, he willed his body to medical research...”

What would someone Daniel’s age need with a will? He was only three years older than me, so he’d be how old now — twenty-seven? — no, twenty-eight.

A heartbeat later, I realized what Sean was telling me.

Southern Californians can sometimes deliver bad news in this inappropriately upbeat, even cheerful manner. It’s a protective flat surface to cover up life’s darkness, if not its depths. We natives shimmer like the Pacific off Dana Point on a cloudless day, never mind any storm gathering just be-yond the lifeguards’ range. So even as I registered the message of Daniel’s death, I couldn’t help judging his little brother as being a bit detached — and Laguna Beach standards aren’t high.

But what he said next changed my mind: “See, he OD’ed last year on New Year’s Day, and my family just got the ashes back from the med school, so we’re planning to have a burial at sea and, Lane, I’d really appreciate it if you’d be there.”

Okay, so enough time had passed for him not to still feel the shock wave, but as for me, I sank down into the spavined old rattan chair in my living room cradling my forehead in my left hand. I tried to listen to what else Sean was saying. Apparently, he had rented a yacht to take his parents out past Newport Bay to scatter Danny’s ashes that Friday morning. I was a good sailor and an old friend, and they wanted me to go. I agreed to join them. It took me a few false starts to find a pen and paper and write down the information in a madwoman’s scrawl.

“You still there, Lane?”

“Yeah. I’m just — I can’t talk.”

“Well, look, we can talk later, but I...”

“No, go on. It’s okay.”

“I just want to thank you for helping.”

“No problem. I have to go now, Sean. See you Friday on the dock.”

Only after I’d hung up and cried and blown my nose and calmed down did it occur to me to wonder why nobody had told me a year earlier. And Sean’s lack of curiosity about my occupation would have made me think if I hadn’t been so raw with the news. Most old friends — especially those who’d known me as a performance artist and actress — had been astonished.

My mind was in and out of focus as I tried to process the hard fact of Daniel’s death. He was only three years older than me. How could he be dead? Sure, I’ve worked several homicide cases as a licensed investigator, so I have probably seen more of death than most people have by twenty-five — Americans, anyway. Up until this point, though, it had only been strangers and my great-uncle Frank, who had smoked since he was fourteen and eaten red meat since the first day he could chew. Besides, he was eighty-four. What did he expect?

I put on a warm jacket and light hikers and followed Pacific Coast Highway downtown just to get away from being alone with my thoughts, but it was no good. As I looked beyond the boardwalk and the volleyball court at the January-gray convergence of sky and sea, I tried to believe Daniel Mason was dead. I realized that his self-inflicted habits had killed him, too, but much stronger and swifter bad habits than Uncle Frank’s: cocaine and heroin instead of tobacco, and either fast food or self-starvation instead of comfort sludge. I turned inland at Ocean and plowed along the virtually empty sidewalk almost angry, scuffing a trail through fallen leaves. It really bothered me that Sean had waited until now to contact me, because we’d once been pretty close. Even though I knew the family had moved to Lake Elsinore soon after our breakup, Daniel had been my first boyfriend, from my fifteenth to my eighteenth summer. Worse, I’d recently ended another relationship that at this point seemed even less mature, ending in mutual loathing and amazement that we’d ever wanted to be in the same time zone as one another, let alone make love.

As I passed the playhouse, feeling a light sprinkle that had apparently begun while I wasn’t paying attention, smelling the earth-spice of wet eucalyptus leaves, I looked across the street and remembered. Daniel and I had bought each other nose rings ($20 each, installed) from a vendor at the Sawdust Festival, an outdoor arts and crafts fair Laguna has in the summer. My mother had completely lost it over the nose ring, even though she’d always claimed to be a mellow ’sixties person, and overlooked the childish commitment implied by the occasion. I didn’t care. I was in love for the first time, with someone I knew was my spiritual twin. Of course, six weeks later, Daniel and I were all over. Don’t get me wrong; showing me to the off ramp was the greatest possible graduation present, since he was headed for a spectacular pileup and saw me as — how did he put it? — “sanctimonial.” Daniel might have been hip, but not overly well read outside of the Beat poets and some of Public Enemy’s more insolent lyrics. I admit that his opinion of me was more on the mark than his vocabulary, but I’m not going to apologize for being straight-edge. I lived healthy. I didn’t do drugs, smoke, eat meat, or sleep with strangers. Things haven’t changed. I drink alcohol only when it’s necessary on a case. Other than the one on my right ankle, I don’t even have any tattoos that show. Maybe that makes me a bore, but at least I’d survived.

And Daniel hadn’t. Looking through the veil of raindrops, I stood across the street from the abandoned fairgrounds and imagined his voice, my name carried on a cold gust of the oncoming storm.

The rain finally let up on Thursday, but Friday was still a great day for a funeral. Cold, damp, the wind moaning over the sea as insistent as a soul in distress. We got underway without discussion. I helped Sean cast off and made his mom comfortable, the box of ashes in her lap.