P. Parrish - An Unquiet Grave

A light went on inside the house. From the corner of his eye, Louis could see Frances in the dining room, setting the table for dinner.

“What did you do?” Louis asked.

Phillip was silent.

“Phillip? What did you do?”

“I tried to forget her. And I did. I met Frances. And for a long time, I didn’t think about Claudia. Then, a week before Frances and I were going to be married, I drove to Hidden Lake. I wasn’t even sure she was still there. But she was. A nurse took pity on me and let me in to see her.”

Louis glanced toward the dining room. Frances had disappeared. He hoped she wouldn’t come out before Phillip finished.

“It was cold but sunny,” Phillip said. “She was sitting on a sunporch. She was just sitting there, holding this blanket around herself, and she looked up at me. She looked up at me and she didn’t see me.”

Phillip turned and Louis could see his face clearly in the light spilling out from inside. Phillip’s eyes glistened.

“I was scared,” he whispered. “I was never so scared in my life.”

“Phil-”

Phillip ran a hand over his face.

“I gave up,” he said.

“What?”

“I gave up, Louis. I couldn’t face it, any of it. Why she was there, what was happening to her, and that look on her face, like she had been erased. I couldn’t face any of it.” Phillip shook his head slowly and looked away. “I ran away. It wasn’t my finest moment.”

“But you went back,” Louis said.

“Oh yeah, I went back in 1972,” Phillip said. “It was my fortieth birthday. I went back to the hospital and they told me she had died there a year before.”

“That’s when you started tending her grave,” Louis said.

“Not until the summer after,” Phillip said.

“Phil, you were a very young man when all that happened.”

“I ran,” Phillip said. “Don’t you see? I just left her in that goddamn place and ran.” He turned quickly, taking a step away.

Louis looked at Phillip’s back. He let out a long, slow breath. “Phil, you need to tell Frances.”

“I know,” Phillip said without turning.

Louis looked toward the patio doors. He could see Frances standing there, looking out at them. “We need to go in,” he said.

Phillip was looking out over the yard. “What’s next?” he asked.

“What?”

“The next step to finding her remains. What’s next?” Louis thought for a moment. “I can’t go back to the hospital until Monday. Maybe I could try her family.”

“We’ll go tomorrow,” Phillip said.

“No, I’ll go alone. It’s better that way. You’re going to have to trust me on this.”

Phillip gave him a nod and went inside. Louis sank into a lawn chair. The metal was cold on the back of his legs, and he felt a shiver move through his shoulders. But he didn’t want to go inside.

It wasn’t my finest moment .

He could see her face now. Her dark skin streaked with rain. Her eyes frightened.

I’m pregnant, Louis .

Louis stared out into the dark yard. He could barely make out the shape of an old rusted swing set.

I ran away. From Claudia, Frances, everything. It wasn’t my finest moment.

Louis pushed up from the chair and went back inside.

Nine miles. That’s all it was. Louis had clocked it on the odometer as he drove north from the broken buildings of downtown Detroit to the manicured mansions of Grosse Pointe. Nine short miles from hell to heaven with a quick trip through the purgatory of Phillip’s Cabbage Patch.

It was strange how little he really knew about his foster father. He had been thinking about it almost constantly since his talk with Phillip out on the patio. This was a man who had always seemed so grounded but at the same time so emotionally transparent. Yet now, Louis felt like he barely knew him.

Louis turned the Impala onto Jefferson, cutting down toward the Detroit River, as Phillip had directed him. He had never been to Grosse Pointe before-or the Pointes as some rich snot back at the University of Michigan had once told him it was called. The Pointes-a refuge of privilege and money rimming Lake St. Clair, the place where Detroit’s auto magnates staked their claims and built their castles, where their sons and grand-sons still held sway over their rust-belt kingdoms. The new money had long ago fled to the far suburbs. But in the Pointes, just nine miles from Detroit’s decaying core, the old ways still lingered like the last moments of a fading dream.

His thoughts went back to Phillip. He knew that his family didn’t have much money, that Phillip had worked hard to put himself through college but had never graduated. He guessed that meeting Claudia had interrupted that. Maybe that was why Phillip had been so insistent that Louis graduate from U of M, despite the fact that the Lawrences had made big sacrifices to keep him there.

Louis was on Lakeshore Drive now. He had expected the DeFoes to live in one of the mansions facing Lake St. Clair, but Phillip’s directions were taking him away from the water to some place called Provencal Road. It turned out to be a winding private lane shaded by towering old trees. Louis slowed as he passed a sign with a picture of a person on horseback. He saw another discreet sign for the Country Club of Detroit but didn’t see an entrance. There was a guard shack ahead, but when Louis saw no one inside, he continued on without stopping.

He had seen the homes of the rich before, the gleaming modern manses of the lawyers on Sanibel, the Spanish-style villas lining the Caloosachatchee River back in Fort Myers. But none of it compared to this.

Rambling old Cape Cods sprawling over acres of land. Hulking Tudors hiding behind towering walls of hedges. Aging art deco palaces peering out from behind iron gates. Then, suddenly, there it was, 41 Provencal Road.

It was an old red brick monstrosity with a steep-pitched slate roof and two double chimneys thrusting into the gray sky. Compared to the other homes, it had a gothic aura about it, the bare trees fronting windows of all shapes and sizes, from attic slits to a set of bay windows that stared out like dark eyes inspecting anyone who dared approach.

He pulled up in the half-circle drive and killed the engine. He was miles from the lake now, but a cold wind coming from the west made him pull up the collar of his jacket. At the massive carved wood door, he ignored the small plate that said SERVICE IN REAR and rang the bell.

There was an intercom near the bell and he waited, expecting to hear some servant’s voice. Nothing. He rang again and waited. He was about to give up and leave when the door opened.

It was a man in a yellow sweater and gray slacks. He was tall and reed thin, in his midfifties, with straight thinning gray hair hanging over a dour face reddened by too much sun or too much time in the shower. Or maybe the bar, Louis thought, seeing the crystal tumbler in the man’s hand.

“Yes?” the man asked. His unfocused eyes were a diluted pale brown, like the liquid in the tumbler. In the man’s subtle raise of his chin, Louis could read the question: What is this black man doing at my door?

“I’m looking for Eloise DeFoe,” Louis said.

The man leaned against the door frame, dangling the glass in his long fingers. “That would be my mother,” he said. “If you’re from Chavat’s, you can just leave the flowers out here.”

He started to shut the door, but Louis thrust out a hand. “My name is Louis Kincaid. I’m an investigator. I need to speak with Mrs. DeFoe, please.”

The man’s eyes took Louis in with one sweeping glance, lingered on his shoes, and came back to his face. “What are you investigating?”