Act of God

that.”
    “Why?”
    “I didn’t understand what happened, I wanted to see if I could patch things up or at least leave them on a better basis than the restaurant thing.”
    “What did Darbra say?”
    “Not much. Just that I’d already embarrassed her enough with her job, like I was the one who threw the wine.”
    “With her job?”
    “Yeah, turns out somebody from work was there that night.”
    “In the restaurant?”
    “Right.”
    “Do you know who?”
    “No. I mean, I didn’t know anybody from the store by sight, and she sure didn’t introduce anybody to me over dinner.”
    “Do you remember her exact words?”
    “I don’t get you.”
    “When Darbra told you about somebody from work seeing the fight.”
    “Oh. Let’s see... Just, ‘And this woman from work had to be there, too.’ ”
    “That’s all?”
    “I think so.”
    “Any indication of which woman it was?”
    Houle shook his head. “No, but I wasn’t paying a lot of attention to that part of the conversation, and she hung up on me right after she said it.”
    “And you didn’t have any further contact?”
    “No.” Houle let his gaze move to the covered urn. “No. In fact, after that, I took the scene in the restaurant as kind of an omen.”
    “Omen?”
    “Yeah. I mean, the whole time I was seeing Darbra, Caroline never found out. I paid all the bills, so she never even knew about the telephone calls, you know? I figured that maybe the fight was an omen, that it was time to break up with Darbra anyway before she broke up my marriage. But then...”
    “Mr. Houle—”
    “You know, they won’t even let me spread the ashes here.”
    I stopped.
    He looked from the urn back to me. “When I... after they finished with... Caroline, I... they cremated her at this place down in Washington , and I carried her back with me. But they told me it’s against the law to scatter her ashes on a garden in a ‘residential area.’ ”
    Houle’s hand rubbed at his eyes again. “She lost her brother to a war, and her life to a plane crash, and she can’t even become part of the one thing... this garden here.”
    I said, “Mr. Houle?”
    Without looking up, he said, “Yeah?”
    “Did you know about any of the other men in Darbra’s life?”
    The head snapped toward me. “The what?”
    “The other men Darbra was seeing?”
    “What are you talking about?”
    He seemed genuinely confused. I said, “I’m told she has a boyfriend, a musician named Rush Teagle.”
    “No.”
    Houle’s response seemed more like “No, she doesn’t have a boyfriend,” rather than “No, I don’t know him.”
    I tried to be softer about Abraham Rivkind. “Did Darbra talk with you at ail about the other people at her job?”
    “No.”
    “Not even about her boss?”
    “I think she has a couple of bosses, the two men who own the store.”
    “Yes, but she didn’t talk to you about the one who’d been killed?”
    Houle nearly came out of his lounge. “Killed? What’re you saying?”
    “One of her bosses, Abraham Rivkind, was killed.”
    “What...? How?”
    “He was working in his office, and the police think a robber hit him over the head with a poker from his fireplace.”
    “Jesus Christ. When... when did all this happen?”
    I told him.
    “That would have been... That would have been when I was in Denver . For my company. After the fight in the restaurant, I thought it’d be a good…”
    Now it made sense. “I’m sorry. You never would have talked with Darbra after the killing.”
    Houle rubbed his face. “Jesus, maybe the fight was an omen.”
    I had only one other question to ask him. “Can you think of any place Darbra might go, might take off for without letting anybody know?”
    “No.” He seemed to be struggling with something. “No, I can’t.. — think right now.”
    I rose. “Mr. Houle, I’m really sorry to have to put you through this.”
    He started to get up. “No, no really. It was almost... good for me, actually. Got my mind on something else.” We shook hands. “Take care.”
    Houle sank back down. “You know, it’s true what they say, though.”
    “What’s that?”
    “When God decides to shit on you, it’s like he took an Ex-Lax.”
    I left Roger Houle in his chair, staring past the urn at his wife’s garden.

10

    I stopped at a pay phone in a strip mall just before Route 128 and tried to reach William Proft, partly to report in but mostly to ask about how Darbra and him not being “particularly