Idaho Code

  Idaho Code

  Joan Opyr

  Bywater Books

  For Benjamin D. Huskey, 1970-1996

  You probably think this book is about you.

  “Everything turns from sugar to shit.”

  —CHARLES RANDOLPH WATKINS

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Chapter 1

  What’s more shocking than a phone ringing in the middle of a funeral? The corpse sitting up in the coffin and taking a look around, but not much else.

  When the phone rang, the sound was so close that I nearly fell off the pew. When it rang a second time, I knew why. The sound was coming from my mother’s handbag. Now, I know my mother, and I know her faults. She’s a typical Idaho woman, a cross between Ma Ingalls and Norman Schwarzkopf. If she were caught in a bear trap, she’d chew her own leg off, drag the bloody stump home, and reattach it with a staple gun. In many ways, I admire that, though it doesn’t make her easy to live with. For a brief moment, I dared to hope that she would reach into her purse and switch it off. Instead, she pulled it out and hesitated. With my mother, hesitation is fatal. It’s always in those moments between right and wrong that Emma Hardy hears the call of the wild.

  “Don’t answer that,” I whispered sternly.

  We both knew who was on the other end of the line. The only person who ever calls my mother on her cell phone is my criminal wretch of a brother, Sam. Who but Sam would have the bad luck, bad timing, and bad karma to call in the middle of a funeral?

  I hate funerals. Maybe it’s because they’re so heavy with arcane ritual—particularly funerals at St. George’s Episcopal Church, which are all robes, candles, and incense—but once the organ starts playing, you might as well be in the sixteenth century as the twentieth.

  Then again, it could just be that funerals are creepy. They creep me out, anyway, like séances. I don’t want to talk to the dead, and I don’t want the dead to talk to me. In this, I differ very strongly from my mother, who likes to think that once she’s passed through the misty veil, she’ll still be able to reach back and slap the living. We were sitting in the front third of the church, only three rows behind the mourning family. The phone rang a third time, louder now, as it was in Emma’s hand. Several people looked over their shoulders at us, including Sylvie Wood, only daughter of the deceased.

  I caught Sylvie’s eye and tried to look like a hostage. She looked away. I cast a pleading glance at my mother, but it was too late—she’d already turned the phone on and put it to her ear. Please God, I thought, don’t let her get into one of those hissed conversations about Sam’s pot-smoking. Or his larceny. Or his tramp of an under-aged girlfriend. From the pulpit, the minister cast a damning eye upon us but continued his sermon.

  “Not a good time,” Emma murmured. “I’ll call you back.”

  “Let us pray,” said the minister.

  I prayed for a small black hole to open up beneath my mother.

  “What?” Emma spoke sharply, her whisper rising. “What do you mean they’ve arrested you?”

  Someone cleared her throat loudly, and I noticed that Helen Merwin was sitting on my mother’s right. In fact, there was the whole Merwin family—Helen, her balding father, Fairfax, and his oversexed wife, Agnes. I was surprised they weren’t sitting with Sylvie and her mother, Kate. Agnes was Kate’s sister. She had a right to the family pew, and it wasn’t like the Merwins to hang back when there was a chance to be in the spotlight. Helen in particular was a notorious drama queen—as my mother says, the bride at every wedding and the corpse at every funeral. The deceased was an uncle she hadn’t seen for nearly two decades, and yet there she sat in a black crepe dress, just like a Mafia widow. When it became clear that my mother was going to ignore her, Helen cleared her throat again, this time adding a sanctimonious little cough. Subtlety, alas, gets you nowhere with Emma. She twisted in the pew, leaving Helen free to cough on her back but not in her ear.

  The church was packed to overflowing, and at least half the congregation was now staring at us. Emma continued to mutter into the phone. I closed my eyes, practiced deep breathing, and silently chanted my mantra: I am not responsible for my mother.

  “Fuck,” said Emma, clearly audible.

  I opened my eyes and pinched her thigh. Hard.

  My mother looked up, her features glazed with fury. I cringed like a dog. Resting the phone on her heaving bosom, she leaned over so that her lips were right next to my ear and said, “Where are we?”

  “The Episcopal Church. Are you having a stroke or something?”

  Emma rolled her eyes and tried again, this time louder. “I mean, where are we in the service, you idiot!”

  “Nearly to the benediction,” I said, in as low a voice as I could muster. “For Christ’s sake, would you at least try to whisper?” Sylvie was looking over her shoulder at us again. I smiled weakly and, not for the first time, considered the potential benefits of sewing a poison pill into my shirt cuff.

  “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Emma snapped into the phone. “Just keep your hair on.”

  The organist played the opening chords of “Blessed Be the Tie that Binds.” My mother stuffed the cell phone back into her purse, seized a hymnal, and dragged me to my feet.

  “I wish I were dead.”

  “Just sing,” she replied, coming in with zest on the line, “Our hearts in Christian love.”

  I saw that Kate had wrapped an arm around her daughter’s shoulders. They weren’t singing. I wasn’t surprised. Either they’d had nothing to do with the choice of hymn, or someone had a black sense of humor.

  It wasn’t a tie that bound Burt Wood to his family; it was a slipknot. Until he’d turned up a week ago, a prisoner in the county jail, he’d been missing since July 4th, 1978, when he’d walked out on his wife and child and, for all intents and purposes, vanished from the face of the earth. For sixteen years, Burt Wood was out of sight and out of mind, all but forgotten except as a cautionary tale, a warning to the wise against mixing with bad company and abandoning your responsibilities. Though it had been quite the scandal way back when, I was sketchy on the details. I’d been six years old at the time and more interested in singing along with the soundtrack to Grease than in the how, why, and where of Burt Wood’s disappearance. I knew that he’d skipped town with a chronic ne’er-do-well named Frank Frost. I also knew that some money had gone missing from the Lewis County Assessor’s Office where Wood and Frost worked.

  So far, newspaper reports on the present-day investigation had been sparse. The body had been identified, the autopsy performed, and the funeral arranged. The town was buzzing. Who or what killed him? Who identified the body? Why did he come back? No one knew where he’d been. No one knew who he really was until he had the misfortune to drop dead in police custody. It seemed he’d given the arresting officer a false name. Nothing this exciting had happened to Cowslip, Idaho since
the music minister at the Rock of Ages Fellowship had murdered his wife with a claw hammer.

  I looked around me. The church was standing room only. It was also hot and stuffy. Two rows of chairs had been set up behind the last pews, and still people were leaning against the columns and walls, fanning themselves with the funeral program. The assembled congregation was a veritable who’s who of Cowslip. Fred Maguire, the king of community theater, sat on the pew directly in front of me. The new mayor and her husband sat across the aisle. The Rotary Club, the Cowslip Elks, the Chamber of Commerce, and the City Council were all well represented. The Junior League had turned out in force, hats perched jauntily on their blue-gray heads. One thing was clear—we weren’t all there because we were grief-stricken. No matter how many hymns we sang or pieties we murmured, any mourning was playing second fiddle to speculation and intelligence gathering. I felt sorry for Kate and Sylvie, and even a little sad for the deceased. St. George’s was packed to bursting with beady-eyed, big-eared, open-mouthed ghouls.

  I tugged at the collar of my shirt, feeling the heat rise to my own big ears. I wasn’t exactly a ghoul, but I wasn’t a mourner, either. Chalk it up to the curse of small-town coincidence, but my brother was with Burt Wood when he died. They were sharing a jail cell. Wood was picked up on a charge of vagrancy and public drunkenness. Sam was in for trying to liberate a six-pack from the Safeway. As shoplifting was one of my brother’s hobbies, not one of his talents, he’d stuffed the Budweiser under his T-shirt and tried to shuffle unnoticed out the front door. My mother and I had watched the security tape of this performance in the public defender’s office. There he was, tall, black, and skinny with a beer-inflated midriff—I couldn’t decide if he looked more like the Hunch-Front of Notre Dame or a pregnant stork. The sheriff’s deputies had him before he’d made it halfway across the parking lot.

  About an hour after Sam’s arrest, they put Wood, who was already complaining of stomach pain, into the cell with him. Sam didn’t pay much attention—too busy reclining on his bunk, watching TV and, I suspected, coming down from a good high. It wasn’t until Wood collapsed on the floor and stopped breathing that Sam sat up and took notice. He yelled for the guards, but it was too late. Wood was pronounced dead on arrival at Cowslip Memorial. Not that anyone knew he was Wood at the time—that bombshell wasn’t dropped until several days later.

  In the days since his release, Sam had made himself scarce, hiding from my mother and probably from justice. I’d seen him in passing once or twice, but I’d been too busy to ask him a lot of questions about his late cellmate. It was the first week of fall classes, and I was determined that this semester, unlike the previous four, I’d get off to a good start. I’d go to class every day. I’d pay attention. I’d take notes and even study. There’d be no distractions, no hangovers, and, most importantly, no romantic entanglements. I was through with all that. I was going to be serious.

  Of course, I didn’t tell my mother any of this. I preferred that she remain in the dark about my real reasons for transferring from the University of Washington to tiny Cowslip College. She thought I was just tired of Seattle and wanted to be closer to home, and since that was at least partially true, I didn’t think it would be hard to maintain the fiction.

  I’ve been wrong before. I stared at the back of Sylvie’s head. Her hair was blond, and the ends of it just brushed the tops of her shoulders, accentuating the golden curve of her neck. A wave of guilt washed over me. If small-town nosiness accounted for the record attendance, my own reason for being at Burt Wood’s funeral was even sleazier. In elementary school, I’d secretly worshipped the water Sylvie Wood walked on. She was pretty and smart, and I was tall and awkward. One day, when we were in the first grade, she reached out on the playground and ruffled my hair and lo, a baby dyke was born. It’s not that I believe in the eternal love of six-year-olds, but how many of us get the chance as adults to encounter the original object of our polymorphous perversity? I’d heard through the grapevine she was back in town, and I was pathetic enough to think of her father’s funeral as a chance to reintroduce myself.

  When I formed this plan, it didn’t seem quite so bad. Burt Wood had been a brutal and unpleasant man, nasty to his wife and mean to his daughter. I had a few hazy memories of him. He was tall and muscular with heavy eyebrows and a black mustache. He always scared me because he yelled a lot. My mother actively hated him. According to Emma, disappearing was the best thing Burt Wood ever did. She and Kate were old friends, college roommates, and though, as far as I knew, they hadn’t had much to do with one another for several years, my mother always spoke fondly of her.

  Sylvie turned her head, and I admired her profile. Smooth, tan skin. Regular, even features. She seemed to glow from within. Oh, hell, what was I doing? If we did speak, what would I say to her? The last time we’d met was at high school graduation, two—no, three years ago. My excuses for attending her father’s funeral were visibly thin. The bizarre coincidence of Burt and Sam sharing the same cell. An old playground crush. What if she thought I was just another busy-body? What if she thought I was a stalker?

  Back in the present, Emma shifted her weight from foot to foot and huffed impatiently. The minister was saying something about the Lord’s countenance shining upon us. The service was nearly over. If I was going to talk to Sylvie, I needed a good opening line. I’m sorry about your dad. I’m sorry Sam didn’t give him CPR. Sam doesn’t know CPR. Exhaling has never been his strong suit.

  I had no idea if Sylvie was a lesbian or not. Of course, there were rumors, but that meant nothing. I’d heard a rumor that my mother smoked dope and mowed the grass naked. Not unlikely, but also not true. Still, just assuming that she was gay, what then? Maybe I could invite her out for coffee and start dropping subtle hints, work the conversation around to the collected works of Gertrude Stein or hum a k.d. lang tune. I could invite her over to watch some lesbian movie like Desert Hearts. Yeah. And then my mother, my father, Sam, and my three older sisters could sit on the sofa with us, eating popcorn and swilling beer while Helen Shaver and Patricia Charbonneau get naked.

  Jesus. What kind of soulless monster cruises a funeral? It was a no-hope situation from the get-go, even without my mother and her damned cell phone. Another case of sordid thoughts meet zero potential.

  The organist began to play something uplifting, and though I failed to recognize the tune, I knew it was the recessional because no one was singing. The congregation stood up. I made a last-ditch effort to send Sylvie a psychic message. Bil Hardy is not a stalker. She’s a very nice woman. Really. Unfortunately, my signal was interrupted by the maniac next to me.

  “No dawdling,” Emma said, gripping my elbow. “We’ve got to get out of here before all these old bags start clogging the exits.”

  “But we have to offer our condolences,” I protested. Sylvie and Kate were making their way to the narthex, where the Altar Guild had set up coffee, tea, and cookies.

  “We’ll call,” my mother replied, shoving me out of the pew and down the aisle.

  “Oh for God’s sake,” I began before finding myself impaled on the end of a pointy umbrella. “Ouch!” I rubbed my wound and glared down at the perpetrator, a rotund midget in a large and fruity hat. “Hello, Granny. Are you trying to kill me?”

  My grandmother turned around. In a voice that sounded like a cross between Katharine Hepburn and a malfunctioning jackhammer, she said, “Wilhelmina! What’s the matter with you? Why are you rubbing your stomach? Where’s your mother? Could you give me a ride home? I walked here. It’s eight blocks, you know. My bunions are playing merry hell.”

  In one of those moments of perfect mother-daughter understanding, I knew that Emma, who’s a foot shorter than I am, was crouching down behind me, hidden from view. There was no way my grandmother, who’s even smaller, could possibly see her. I also knew that it was my filial duty to lie through my teeth, to say that I’d come to the funeral alone, and that I couldn’t possibly give Granny a ride home beca
use I’d hitchhiked, or come in on a Harley hog, or some other such mother-saving bullshit.

  I smiled. “Emma’s right behind me, Granny. I think she’s crouching down.”

  In retrospect, it was well worth the kick. Granny shoved herself under my arm and seized upon my mother, who was trying simultaneously to do me an injury and blend in with the carpet.

  “There you are!” Granny shrieked. “I wish I’d known you were coming. We could have sat together. Did you hear that telephone ringing and that woman talking? In the middle of a funeral! I couldn’t see who it was because that enormous Millicent Rutherford was sitting right in front of me.”

  As that enormous Millicent Rutherford was now standing right in front of me, I whispered, “Granny, keep your voice down.”

  “I’m glad to see you here, Emma,” she continued, unchecked. “You too, Wilhelmina. I’m sure it means a lot to the family, what’s left of it anyway. It’s just Kate and her daughter now. His mother died fifteen years ago, just after your daddy, Emma. She never knew what happened to her son, whether he was dead or alive. He never called her. He never wrote. And now they say he was poisoned!”

  All over the church, heads snapped around to look at us. Millicent Rutherford stopped dead in her tracks and pretended to fish something out of her purse. I scarcely had time to stop myself from plowing into the broad expanse of her back.

  “Mother,” Emma muttered, “you are not addressing Congress.”

  My grandmother flowed over this as if it were a rock in the rapids.

  “I made cookies,” she said. “The Altar Guild provided all the refreshments. I always make cookies when anyone dies. Oatmeal lace. Your favorite, Wilhelmina. You always used to like them, anyway. Poisoned! Hannah at the Safeway told me. She heard it from Inez who cleans for the coroner’s wife. I wonder who did it?”

  We’d reached the narthex now. I spied Sylvie and her mother by the coffeepots, accepting cookies and condolences from a steady stream of wrinkled worthies. It was now or never. I had to ditch Granny and my mother.