Page 52 of The Witch's Orchard
“Okay,” he says, closing the file. “Look, let’s take a break. Talk about something else.”
I snort, “Like what?”
“Tell me about yourself.”
“Not a lot to tell.”
He gives me a sly smile.
“Now we both know that’s not true.”
“Not sure where to start.”
I take a drink, set the glass down, look into the pure white opacity of the milk’s surface.
“What are your folks like?” he asks after a moment.
“They were… my folks. I guess. They’ve never got along.”
“Like oil and water?”
“More like a lit match and kerosene.”
His eyebrows raise in a mix of humor and pity I’ve seen before. It’s a look I hate, so I just start explaining my way through it. It’s an old story. Common enough.
“My dad could never hold down a job and he drank too much,” I say. “My mom worked third shift cleaning a nursing home. Neither of them were doing what they wanted to do in life and their favorite hobby was fighting over whose fault it was. An activity that usually turned violent, almost always ending with my mom on the losing end, in the hospital if they could afford it, which they never could.”
I pause, then add, “But they stayed together, so I mostly stayed with relatives. Usually my granny. Sometimes my great-uncle, Jovial.”
“How’d you end up in law enforcement?”
I laugh. “My granny said I should pick up an extracurricular activity so I wasn’t underfoot all the time. My uncle had been a SEAL in Vietnam—”
I put a hand, unconsciously, to my wrist and then remember that the watch Jovial had given me—the Rolex Submariner he bought on the cheap during his service—was sitting in a pawnshop back in Louisville. I’d gotten behind on my bills and the watch was the only thing of value that wasn’t an absolute necessity in my day-to-day life. I remember that it was one more reason I took this case. Spend a week on a lost cause, turn up nothing, get paid, get my watch back. But now I look at my nakedwrist and think I never should have come. That my being here has only made things worse.
“A Navy SEAL?” AJ asks, snapping me back. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” I say. “But you’d never know it. He hates talking about it. You’d think I’d have learned some kind of lesson from that, but no. I joined JROTC, tested high on the ASVAB—then went straight into the Air Force. I was in the service for six years. When I got out, I spent three years in college getting art history and English degrees, just for fun. Before I graduated, I got my PI license and started my business.”
“Why a private eye?”
“I just sort of knew how to do this. Look for things, find stuff out. I did enough in the Air Force to know I liked it.”
I don’t tell AJ that I was a special investigator. That I was recruited by Leo. That, even when I was in the Air Force, I couldn’t talk about my position or my rank or any of the cases that I worked. That I spent a lot of time being hated by my fellow airmen and that having virtually no social life was all right with me because I just wanted more time to read books.
“Why not a cop?” AJ asks.
I shrug. “I’ve had more than my fill of the command structure,” I say. “Now, I report to myself. That’s enough for me.”
“And the car?” he asks, grinning.
“What about the car?”
“It’s a weird car,” AJ says, pointing toward the front of the house where Honey is parked, oblivious to his rudeness. “I mean, it’s cool, but it’s weird. I had to google what the hell it was.”
“Honey was my aunt Tina’s,” I say. “Well, she’s not really my aunt. She was on her way out of the Air Force when I was going in. We were from the same general part of Kentucky, and she sort of took me under her wing. When she left, we stayed in touch, and she was always there for me. She understood, better than most, how hard being away from home can be. And how necessary. When I left the Air Force, I moved to Louisville, where she’d opened her own garage. She was fixing up Honey at the time, as a side project, and I helped her out. It was good for me. Pouring alot of my frustration into an engine block. When we were done, she gave Honey to me.”
I finish my milk, rinse out the glass, put it in the sink, realize I’d rather talk about a murdered girl than my own past.
