Doug Allyn: v108 n03-04_1996-09-10

After a minute or two she stirred and said in a hostess voice, “I’m forgetting my manners. Let me pour you a glass of wine.”

“Water or a soda would be fine,” he said.

“Come on,” she said. “You’re off duty now. I heard you can drink the whole town under the table.”

“I don’t do that anymore.”

“Oh,” she said. “You got religion. How trendy. How middle-aged.” She shuffled into the kitchen in her floppy slippers, came back with ice water.

“Ginny’s out back,” she said. “Roy rigged up a tree house for her and Kyle. Would you like to see it?”

“Some other time.”

“I told them Roy had to go out of town. I didn’t think I ought to — you know. Yet.”

He had put it off as long as he could. “I’m not much good in the tact department, Anita. I hope you’ll take this right. I need to know, has Roy been talking about suicide? Did he have any problems that were getting him down? Sleepless nights, signs of depression? Secrets?”

Anita said, “I’ve been sitting here all day, thinking about his car on the bridge. I suppose that’s what Roy’s done, committed suicide. I thought you came here to tell me you found his body.”

“Did he give you any indication—” Anita cocked her head, raised her eyebrows, smiled brightly.

“Indication? No, he was actually quite specific. How he didn’t love me anymore. How he hated this stupid town and all you rednecks riding around in your pickups. How if he never saw another tree it would be fine with him. He applied for a transfer, but the company’s cutting back, and he was lucky to have this job. So he smiled and schmoozed all day and lay awake at night staring up toward the ceiling.”

Her voice trailed off, having dumped its emotion.

“Funny. I thought he liked it here,” Tim said.

“He was bored,” Anita said. “Bored with me and the kids. Roy never wanted to sell insurance. He wanted to be sailing a yacht in the Aegean, with a white cap and his arm around a teenager’s waist. Then Ginny came. And Kyle the next year. How interesting. We’re both talking about him in the past tense. He’s probably going to come walking through the front door any minute, pissing and moaning about his dinner being late.”

“Was he a good swimmer?”

“What do you mean by that? He was trying to kill himself, so he wouldn’t be swimming hard to save himself. Would he? And the water’s freezing, how could he survive? He’s dead, Mr. Deputy. Go find him.”

“Keep your spirits up,” Tim said.

“Actually, I’m drinking ’em down,” Anita said, waving the wine bottle. She stopped herself after a second, and set the bottle carefully back on the table. “Whether he comes back or not, Timothy Breen, I don’t want you telling anybody what I just said. About my marriage. About how Roy felt. I talked too much. Under the circumstances.” She straightened up in the chair, put her hand out to her hair. “Who knows. If he does turn up, mustn’t hurt his business. Insurance agent, you know, he’s like a preacher or funeral director. You know, stable, good marr — marriage... Elks.”

“If he’s dead, that won’t matter, Anita.”

“It matters to me.”

“I can’t promise, Anita. But I sure won’t hurt you unnecessarily.”

She smiled humorlessly, put her elbows on the table and her head in her hands. “All you care about is your stinkin’ self,” she said. “Gonna use my weakness against me.”

He let it pass. She was talking to Roy, he knew that.

Just before six, back in town, he stopped into Gibraltar Insurance and talked to Roy’s secretary, Kelly Durtz, the daughter of the mayor. Though she was eighteen, she looked about fourteen years old and had the brains of a pigeon. Roy wouldn’t have confided in her.

She let him go through Roy’s desk. Everything was in order, some files on the desk, a pen set from his wife, certificates and family photos on the walls. No note, no private desperate musings stuck away in a corner of a drawer. Kelly locked up and left with him, walked toward home two blocks away.

Tim locked up, too, leaving his home number on the answer-phone in case of emergency. Timberlake was too small to justify a 911 service. People were leaving, not arriving. Soon enough they’d have to close the sheriff’s substation there, and he’d have to move somewhere or take up a new trade.

He drove home, five minutes away, off the highway and down two hundred feet of gravel road, startling a buck and doe browsing in the brush at the turnoff. He really should get a dog.

He turned on the lamp in the main room of his cabin, went into the kitchen, and microwaved three burritos. After setting them on his kitchen table, breathing in their beany aroma, he got the big bottle of strawberry Gatorade out of the fridge, not bothering with a glass.

He ate, watched TV, had a shower, got into bed with the old Ross Macdonald he was reading, keeping half an ear open for the sound of the phone or tires crunching in the driveway, but nothing happened. Nothing much ever did happen.

Right before he turned out the light, he thought to himself, I thought he liked it here. He hadn’t really known Roy. No one had really known Roy, and no one really knew Tim either.

And then he thought, no body turned up, you have to wonder, what if Roy faked it? He lay there on the lumpy bed that gave him backaches and chewed on that thought for a long time.

As usual, he slept badly. Outside, the crickets built their wall of sound, and the moths mated in a flutter of wings around his porchlight, and a bullfrog raised his nightly ruckus down by the river, but Tim pulled the covers over his head because he didn’t want to hear it. The forest made him crazy, he didn’t know why.

The next morning when Angel Ramirez opened up at the bank, Tim was there, and he got Angel to look up Roy’s accounts without a warrant. Angel, now, had that bad habit of driving to neighboring towns late at night and peeking into windows when the urge got too strong. Tim had helped him into a diversion program the year before, and Angel still saw Doc Ashland every week. If he was still peeping, he had gotten too discreet for Tim to hear a whisper of it.

“He has the individual checking account, in his name only, a joint checking account with his wife’s name on it too, a business account, and a trust account,” Angel said. “Here’re the last month’s statements on each of the four.”

Inflow, outflow, some bounced checks on the individual accounts. Like everybody, Roy and Anita spent more than they took in.

The trust account showed a big check being cashed for a client ten days before. “I’d like to see this one,” he told Angel.

Made out to Roy Ballantine, as a Gibraltar agent, and Peter Bayle, jointly, the check was for two hundred fifty thousand dollars. Gibraltar Insurance had already cleared it.

“Settlement check,” Angel explained.

“Why put Roy’s name on it?”

“The company always puts both names on it so the agent can make sure he’s got a signed release before the client can cash it. There’ll be a release-of-liability form back at Roy’s office.”

“They both have to sign?” Tim said. He looked at the back. Two signatures all right, Royal F. Ballantine, as agent, and Pete Bayle. Different handwriting, the Bayle signature small and crabbed, like old man Bayle himself. “Who brought it in? I assume you cashed out a check this size yourself.”

“Roy brought it in. Pete was holed up at home, nursing the broke jaw that got him all this big money,” Angel said. “Broke jaw, bruised ribs, lost his spleen.”

“He didn’t have a lawyer?”

“Let some shyster take one-third of it? Pete’s not that stupid. Roy took care of it,” Angel said. “He made Pete a good, fair settlement offer. Gibraltar’s insured was at fault. There wasn’t any issue around it. Pete’s got TMJ syndrome, has to have an operation on his jaw, and he’s still gonna look a little sideways from head-on, even after the operation.”