“It’s your go, Helen!” yelled her partner, Evelyn. “Pay attention!”
Clemmie looked down at the cards lying on the table and the cards in her hand and could draw no conclusions. “I’m having a senior moment,” she said, which was completely true because until Evelyn had shouted her name, she had lost track of whether she was Clemmie or Helen right now. “What game are we playing anyhow?”
Everybody was giggling. Senior moments were a constant, and the only way to deal with them was to laugh it off, or you’d be awake all night wondering if it was time to take anti-Alzheimer’s medication. Aricept, the usual drug, not only gave you insomnia, lethargy, and a tendency to stumble, but its only promise was that it might slow the rate of memory loss. And you wouldn’t even know whether it worked; somebody else would have to tell you. “Hand and foot canasta! You and Evelyn need another pure.”
The game hurtled on.
Clemmie thought, The only decor in that villa is a stolen marijuana rig. When a stolen object is found, the police are called. My fingerprints are on two doorknobs. No, they’re on four. Each side of two doors. No, six. Each side of three doors! Dom’s garage, the illegal door, and the Coglands’ inside door.
She had spent decades protecting herself. In one stupid, self-indulgent moment of curiosity, had she become the agent of her own destruction?
By now Dom would be home. Clemmie couldn’t get through his garage again.
When the police come, I could play the senility card, she thought. Say that Dom asked me to watch out for him and I sensibly checked every door.
She might be able to pull that off. God knew there were enough examples of senility around here.
But what would happen when they identified the fingerprints?
Three
Several texts later, Harper McKeithen phoned Bentley, which the brother and sister rarely did, preferring communications more easily ignored or postponed. “This Borobasq?” she said. “I’ve read a bunch of his Instagram posts. He never reported that theft to the police. He just ranted.”
“He probably doesn’t live in a state where it’s legal to sell marijuana, so he has to be careful. It’s probably not safe for him to involve cops.” Bentley was attracted to this concept: a man who had to be careful of cops. Bentley himself was careful of carbs.
“You go back enough posts,” said Harper, “it gives the name of his studio, Boro Basking, and it’s in Colorado, where marijuana is legal. I think the name is from borosilicate, the glass they use to make rigs and pipes. Whatever. People are wondering how come the thief took just one rig. Apparently, the studio is packed with fabulous stuff that costs unbelievable amounts of money—two thousand dollars here and eight thousand dollars there, and one for twenty-five thousand! Glass, Bent! People are paying that much for glass! But the posts say if you’re in a position to steal one great piece of glass, why aren’t you in a position to steal several?”
“Carrying them, maybe,” said Bentley. “Glass breaks. You can’t just throw it in a pillowcase and run down the street.”
“True. They use gun cases to carry expensive glass pipes. Pelican brand.”
“How come you know this and I don’t?”
“You’re very middle class, Bentley. What did our parents expect, giving you a name like that?”
“Speaking of names, Harp, I’m looking in my contacts, and I don’t have Aunt Clemmie’s street address. She uses a Charlotte PO box for mail, not that I’ve ever written to her, but for some reason I have that PO box number. I people-searched to get her address, and guess what? Not only is there no Sun City in Charlotte, North Carolina, but no Clementine Lakefield shows up.”
“Doesn’t show up where?”
“In the United States.”
Harper giggled. “Maybe she calls herself by her middle name now, so she’s Eleanor, instead of Clementine. Maybe she secretly married. Maybe you misspelled it. You probably have to use the kind of search where you pay for it. Why do you care?”
Bentley chose not to admit to Harp that he had had both text and phone exchanges with Borobasq. Bentley had launched a pleasing career. He wore expensive suits, had a collection of silk ties, ate at trendy restaurants, and drank trendy drinks. And now without thinking, he had put himself within range of a drug dealer.
Lampworker, he told himself firmly. The guy sells glass, not drugs.
He couldn’t get over that steady, solid, boring old Aunt Clemmie lived next door to a stoner and a thief in a retirement village. Bentley himself had never tried weed because he had asthma and feared anything with smoke. Borobasq had said he wanted to go to Aunt Clemmie’s and pick up his rig next door. And how would that work, exactly? Would Borobasq knock, crying, “Hand over your stolen goods”?
“I think originally those searches were built around landlines,” said Harp. “So if you don’t have one, and you don’t have a mortgage or you’re renting and somebody else pays the utility bills, I don’t know how readily you appear. Okay, now I’m Googling ‘Sun City,’ and there’s not one in Charlotte, but there is one a few miles away in South Carolina in a town called Fort Mill, which is silly, you shouldn’t be both a fort and a mill. You should be one or the other. Anyway, I bet Aunt Clemmie was just rounding up when she told us Charlotte. Geographically up. I feel a little sad that we don’t actually know where she lives. We see her at Thanksgiving or Christmas, and I never really think about her between times.”
His phone let Bentley know that Borobasq was calling again. He had a trapped sensation, as if he were caught in an elevator with the guy. For a tiny moment he thought of telling his sister what their great-aunt had texted back when he texted to ask for her address. It’s bad enough you gave out my phone number. I’m certainly not entrusting you with a house number. Call that man back and get me out of this.
But his sister had changed the subject. “Listen, are you going to the wedding or not?”
“Not.”
“Mom is getting all depressed that you and I aren’t going to be there,” said Harp.
“Nothing would get Mom depressed.”
“There’s that,” agreed Harper. “And another thing, did you submit to ancestry.com yet?” This had been her birthday present to her brother because tracing families had gotten so trendy that Bent wanted to be on board.
“Done,” he said. “Waiting for saliva results.” Mom, he thought, would definitely know where Aunt Clemmie lived.
* * *
Bentley McKeithen liked his mother, who was a riot and had more going on in her life than anybody. She was about to marry her fourth husband, but Bentley had been to her last two weddings and that was enough for him.