Shallow Graves

asked.
    He’d told her. In the clinic. Maybe the question was for Keith’s benefit, to show that she hadn’t known. It meant a bit of intimacy existed between them. Pellam’s eyes swept over her dress. The pin above her breast. She looked a lot younger today. The makeup was better. Maybe she had to wear realtor camouflage when she was selling houses.
    He realized he was staring at her and still hadn’t answered the question.
    “Nope,” he said. “Was divorced a few years ago.”
    “That’s right. You’d mentioned that.”
    Oh. A bad memory. That’s all.
    “There’s a girl I’ve been dating off and on. Nothing too serious. Her name’s Trudie.” (Damn! He’d forgotten to call. He would tomorrow. Definitely.)
    A timer bonged in the kitchen. As Meg rose Pellam glanced at the pin on her dress again. Thought of Janine’s pin. And her breasts. She’d had a moon. Meg was wearing a sun.
    “Dessert,” Meg said, walking back in from the kitchen with a tray.
    Keith said, “Meg’s a whiz with desserts.”
    She set the tray down.
    “Brownies,” Pellam said.
    “You like brownies?” she asked.
    “Can’t get enough.”
    THE BEIGE CAR pulled off the highway and into an asphalt parking lot, which was slowly turning into black gravel.
    Sleepy Hollow Motor Lodge.
    “Here we be,” Billy said.
    The twins got out of the car and Bobby snagged a big bag from the backseat. “Heinekens,” he said, proud he’d bought imports in Genny Ale country.
    They inhaled deeply and Bobby said, “Fall. I love it.”
    Billy looked at his watch. “Late.”
    Bobby walked past him and opened the door. Inside was an ugly square room, too hot, too brightly lit.
    Billy followed him in.
    “Toasty,” Billy said. He opened a window.
    “Fucking hot. Heh.”
    Neither of them really liked the hotel that much. Cheap, plastic, tacky. It reminded them of Brooklyn, where they’d been born, or Yonkers, where they’d lived until their junior years in high school, when their father had been laid off from the Stella D’Oro bakery and had moved the family up to Dutchess County. He’d bought what he said was an antiques business, but which turned out to be—to the young twins’ delight—a junkyard.
    They’d finished high school. Bobby, just barely, though he was captain of the rifle team. Billy, with a B average. When their father died they inherited the family’s lime-green split-level and the junkyard, which they renamed after themselves, Robert & William. They’d promised each other that they’d only marry another set of twins—which didn’t make room for a lot of matrimonial material in Dutchess County—so their social life was pretty limited.
    They had a few other business dealings that took them to New York every couple of weeks and theywere always glad to hightail it back to their house, which happened to be in the first tract of land that Wex Ambler had ever developed in Cleary. It was a nice house. Big and filled with the things they loved—dark still-life paintings of dead birds and rabbits, prints of leaping fish, carved wooden statues of horses and bears, a Franklin Mint model car collection. The twin leather recliners, Sears Best, were aimed right at a huge stereo TV. Within arm’s reach of Billy’s chair was a Better microwave, which was perfect for heating nachos and chili during Jeopardy or The Tonight Show.
    A perfect home for two boys on their own.
    Exactly what this dingy hotel was not.
    Billy expressed this sentiment, as he stepped on a silverfish in the bathroom.
    His brother shrugged. “We don’t have much choice. Can’t do this at home.”
    “Don’t mean I have to like it here.”
    Bobby shrugged in reluctant agreement. Then sat down on the bed and opened two beers. The twins drained them. Billy turned the TV on, grumbling that the remote was broken.
    In five minutes there was a knock on the door.
    Billy opened it. Ned, the boy from the pancake breakfast, stood there, in jeans, a T-shirt and a varsity football jacket.
    “Ned, hey, how you doing? Come on in.”
    “Hey, guys, what’s up?”
    “Nothing yet,” Bobby laughed, beating Billy to the punch by a millisecond.
    Ned frowned, not getting what seemed to be a joke. “Kinda hot in here,” he said.
    “Yeah, a little. Funny weather.”
    “Hey, totally fine place here. Totally.” Ned looked around.
    The twins exchanged wry glances as Ned studied the brown and orange shag, the laminated brown furniture, the prints of flowers bolted to the