Read Online Carcass Trade by Noreen Ayres - Free Book Online

sound mad now, but I’m not. I’m not a saint either. I just hold with the double standard.”
    It was the second time he showed a sense of humor about himself, and in that one moment I gained an insight into him I hadn’t had, and forgave him half a dozen things in our past.
    â€œI hate to say this, but maybe she had a sudden attack of conscience. After all, this is the second time she’s fooled around in a marriage.”
    â€œI’m telling you she wouldn’t. Not the way it’s been with us. I had someone call her house, one of the girls in my office. That shows you how loose my screws are. A maid answered the phone. She said, ‘Mrs. Robertson’s on vacation in Europe.’”
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œWhat?” he echoed.
    â€œHer last name.”
    â€œRobertson.”
    The name rang through. Miranda Robertson: the name on the canyon car registration.
    Nathan was still talking. “Miranda isn’t out of the country. She just returned from Italy last month. Why would she go back right away? I know she would’ve told me if she was going back.”
    â€œThat was her new name? Robertson?”
    He nodded, and crossed the sidewalk to a snack stand to get another Coke.
    The birth date on the registration, what was it? Something, something fifty-three? Ray Vega had made a joke of it. Or was it sixty-three? Didn’t the doctor say the body was in her forties? Thirty-five or forty. That’s what he said. Miranda was, as I remembered, not yet thirty. The corpse had breast implants. Miranda wouldn’t have had breast implants. She already had a good figure. Miranda was pregnant. The woman from the canyon burn wasn’t pregnant. I saw the uterus put in the scale. Would I know a mildly pregnant uterus if I saw it? No. But the doctor didn’t say. . . .
    I realized I hadn’t asked my brother where Miranda lived. Maybe because I knew what he’d say. Maybe because in my heart I knew the pretty girl with the auburn braid and the golden skin was gone.
    When he came back, I said, “Nathan, I’ve got to ask you a question you may not like or may not know the answer to, but try to keep it in perspective, okay?”
    We stared out over the gently rippled water to the pitch of Balboa Pavilion, the grand 1905 building that when lit with stringers of lights at night takes on an aura of nostalgic innocence.
    â€œLet’s have it,” he said.
    â€œDo you know if Miranda ever had breast surgery?”
    â€œWhy would you ask such a thing?”
    â€œNathan, did Miranda . . . does Miranda live in Beverly Hills?”
    His eyes searched my face, fear and anger at war with each other.
    â€œDoes she?”
    â€œYes.” His breath was corning hard. The embroidered alligator on his shirt rose and fell.
    â€œWhat is it?” he asked. “What do you know?”
    â€œThere was a car found Thursday. A woman was in it. The name on the registration . . . but I didn’t connect—”
    â€œYou knew! You knew all along something happened and you didn’t tell me.” He let go of the can, which rolled against the wall, and a moan came out from somewhere in the deep bend of his body. I went to him and tried to hold him, but he wouldn’t let me.
    â€œNathan, no positive ID has been made. How would I put it together? I didn’t know Miranda’s last name. The address on the registration said L.A. We’re down here. It’s almost like two different worlds. Who would put it together?”
    He walked between an opening in the seawall onto the sand, his face fiery, his body a board.
    I looked around for help, but what kind of help I didn’t know.

7
    I put Nathan back on the road an hour after the walk around the island. He had clammed up. No matter how I talked to him, or about what, he was a million miles away. In my apartment, he washed his face and called a friend he was going to play tennis