ALICE
It’s really not a stretch to say that, for elephants, mating is a song and dance.
As in all communication for those animals, vocalizations are paired with gestures. On an ordinary day, for example, a matriarch might make a “let’s go” rumble, but at the same time she will position her body in the direction she wants to take the herd.
The sounds of mating are more complicated, however. In the wild we hear the pulsing, guttural musth rumbles of males—deep and low, puttering, what you might imagine if you drew a bow made of hormones against an instrument of anger. Males might produce a musth rumble when they are challenged by another male, when they’re surprised by an approaching vehicle, when they are searching for mates. The sounds differ from elephant to elephant and are accompanied by ear waves and frequent urine dribbling.
When a musth male is vocalizing, the whole herd of females will start to chorus. Those sounds attract not just the male who started the conversation but all the eligible bachelors, so that the females in estrus now have the chance to choose the most attractive mate—and by this I don’t mean the one with the best comb-over but rather the male who is most likely to survive—a healthy, older elephant. A female that doesn’t like a particular male might run away from him, even if he has already mounted her, to find someone better. But, of course, that presumes there’s someone better to be found.
For this reason, several days before she comes into estrus, a female gives an estrus roar—a powerful call that brings even more boys to the yard, and thus a greater range of mates from which to select. Finally, when she allows herself to be mated, she sings an estrus song. Unlike the musth rumbles of males, these songs are lyrical and repetitive, throaty purrs that rise quickly and then trail off. The female flaps her ears loudly and secretes from her temporal glands. After the mating, the other females in her family join in, a symphony of roars and rumbles and trumpets like those they’d make at any other socially exciting moment—a birth, or a reunion.
We know that when male whales sing, those who have the most complex songs are the ones who get the females. On the contrary, in the elephant world, a musth male will mate with anyone he can; it’s the female who sings, and it’s out of biological necessity. A female elephant is in estrus for only six days, and the only available males may be miles away. Pheromones don’t work at those distances, so she has to do something else to attract potential mates.
It has been proven that whale songs are passed down from generation to generation, that they exist in all the oceans of the world. I have always wondered if the same holds true for elephants. If the calves of elephants learn the estrus song from their older female relatives during mating season, so that when it’s their own turn, they know how to sing to attract the strongest, fiercest males. If, by doing this, the daughters learn from their mothers’ mistakes.
SERENITY
Here’s what I haven’t told you: Once before, in my heyday as a psychic, I lost the ability to communicate with spirits.
I was doing a reading for a young college girl who wanted me to reach out to her deceased dad. She brought along her mother, and they had their own tape recorders, so that each could replay whatever happened at our session. For an hour and a half, I put his name out there; I struggled to connect. And the only thought that came into my head was that this man had killed himself with a gun.
Other than that: silence.
Exactly like what I get now, when I try to connect with the dead. Anyway, I felt horrible. I was charging these women for ninety minutes of nothing. And although I didn’t offer a money-back guarantee, I had never in my life as a psychic come up so dry before. So I apologized.
Upset about the outcome, the girl burst into tears and asked to use the restroom. As soon as she left, her mother—who had been largely silent during this entire experience—told me about her husband, and the secret she had not confided to her daughter.
He had indeed committed suicide, using a shotgun. He’d been a very well-known college basketball coach in North Carolina who’d had an affair with one of the boys on his team. When his wife discovered this, she told him she wanted a divorce, and that she would ruin his professional career unless he paid her to keep quiet. He refused and said he truly cared about the boy. So she told her husband he could have his new paramour, but she would sue him for every cent he had, and would still go public with what he’d done to her. That was the cost of love, she said.
He walked downstairs into their basement and blew his brains out.
At his funeral, as she was saying her last good-bye in private, she said, You son of a bitch. Don’t think I’ll forgive you now that you’re dead. Good riddance.
Two days later the daughter called me to say that the strangest thing had happened. The recording she had made was completely blank. Although there had been dialogue between us during the session, all you could hear on the playback was a hissing sound. And even stranger: The same thing was true of the recording that had been made by her mother.
It was clear to me that the dead husband had heard his wife loud and clear at the funeral, and had taken her at her word. She didn’t want anything to do with him, and so he stayed away from us all. Permanently.
Talking to spirits is a dialogue. It takes two. If you’re trying hard and coming up empty, it’s either because of a spirit who won’t communicate or because of a medium who can’t.
“It does not work like a faucet,” I snap, trying to put some distance between myself and Virgil. “I can’t turn it on and off.”
We are in the parking lot outside of Gordon’s Wholesale, processing the information we just received about Grace Cartwright’s suicide. I have to admit, it wasn’t what I was expecting to hear, but Virgil is convinced that this is an integral piece of the puzzle. “Let me get this straight,” he says soberly. “I’m saying to you that I’m willing to actually admit that psychic powers aren’t a load of bullshit. I’m saying to you that I’m willing to give your … talent … a chance. And you won’t even try?”
“Fine,” I say, frustrated. I lean against the front bumper of my car, shaking out my shoulders and arms the way a swimmer does at the starting block. Then I close my eyes.
“You can do it here?” Virgil interrupts.
I crack open my left eye. “Isn’t that what you had in mind?”
His face reddens. “I guess I thought you’d need … I don’t know. A tent or something.”
“I can manage without my crystal ball and tea leaves, too,” I say drily.
I haven’t admitted to either Jenna or Virgil that I can no longer communicate with spirits. I’ve let them believe that the acts of stumbling over Alice’s wallet and necklace on the grounds of the old elephant sanctuary were not flukes but actual psychic moments.
I may have even convinced myself of that. So I close my eyes and think, Grace. Grace, come talk to me.
That’s how I used to do it.
But I’m getting nothing. It’s as empty and static as the time I tried to contact that North Carolina basketball coach who’d killed himself.
I glance at Virgil. “You get anything?” I ask. He’s typing away on his phone, searching for Gideon Cartwright in Tennessee.
“Nope,” he admits. “But if I were him I’d be using an alias.”
“Well, I’m not getting anything, either,” I tell Virgil, and this is, for once, the truth.
“Maybe you should do it … louder.”
I put my hand on my hip. “Do I tell you how to do your job?” I say. “It’s sometimes like this, for suicides.”
“Like what?”
“Like they’re embarrassed by what they’ve done.” Suicides, almost by definition, are all ghosts—stuck earthbound because they are desperate to apologize to their loved ones or because they are so ashamed of themselves.
It gets me thinking about Alice Metcalf again. Maybe the reason I haven’t been able to communicate with her is that, like Grace, she killed herself.
Immediately I push that thought away. I’ve let Virgil’s expectations go to my head; the reason I haven’t been able to contact Alice—or any other potential spirit, for that matter—has a hell of a lot more to do with me than it does with them.
“I’ll try again later,” I lie. “What is it you want from Grace, anyway?”
“I want to know what made her kill herself,” he says. “Why would a happily married woman with a steady job and a family, put stones in her pockets, and walk into a pond?”
“Because she wasn’t a happily married woman,” I reply.
“And we have a winner,” Virgil says. “You find out your husband is sleeping with someone else. What do you do?”
“Take a blessed moment and glory in the fact that at least I walked down the aisle at some point?”
Virgil sighs. “No. You confront him, or you run away.”
I unravel that thought. “What if Gideon wanted a divorce and Grace said no? What if he killed her and tried to make it look like a suicide?”
“The medical examiner would have figured out right away during the autopsy if it was a homicide rather than a suicide.”
“Really? Because I was under the impression that law enforcement doesn’t always make the most legitimate rulings when it comes to cause of death.”
Virgil ignores my jab. “What if Gideon was planning to run away with Alice and Thomas found out about it?”
“You had Thomas signed into the psychiatric ward before Alice disappeared from the hospital.”
“But he very well could have been fighting with her earlier that night, so that she ran into the enclosures. Maybe Nevvie Ruehl was in the wrong place at the wrong time. She tried to stop Thomas, and instead, he stopped her. Meanwhile Alice ran, knocked her head into a branch, and passed out a mile away from them. Gideon met her at the hospital and they worked out a plan—one that took her far away from her angry husband. We know that Gideon accompanied the elephants to their new home. Maybe Alice slipped away and met him there.”
I fold my arms, impressed. “That’s brilliant.”
“Unless,” Virgil muses, “it went down another way. Say Gideon told Grace he wanted a divorce so he could run off with Alice. Grace, devastated, committed suicide. The guilt over Grace’s death made Alice rethink their plan—but Gideon wasn’t willing to let her desert him. Not alive, anyway.”
I think about that for a moment. Gideon could have come to the hospital and convinced Alice that her baby was in trouble—or told her any lie that would have made her leave abruptly with him. I’m not stupid—I watch Law & Order. So many murders happen because the victim trusts the guy who comes to the door, or asks for help, or offers a ride. “Then how did Nevvie die?”
“Gideon killed her, too.”
“Why would he kill his own mother-in-law?” I ask.
“You’re kidding, right?” Virgil says. “Isn’t that every guy’s fantasy? If Nevvie heard that Gideon and Alice were sleeping together, she probably was the one who started the fight.”
“Or maybe she never touched Gideon. Maybe she went after Alice in the enclosure. And Alice ran away to save herself, and passed out.” I glance at him. “Which is what Jenna has been saying all along.”
“Don’t look at me like that,” Virgil says and scowls.
“You should call her. She might remember something about Gideon and her mother.”
“We don’t need Jenna’s help. We just have to get to Nashville …”
“She doesn’t deserve to be left behind.”
For a moment Virgil looks like he’s going to argue. Then he reaches for his phone and stares down at it. “Do you have her number?”
I called her once, but it was from home, not my cell. I don’t have her number with me. Unlike Virgil, however, I know where to look for it.
We drive to my apartment. He glances with longing at the bar that we have to walk past to access the staircase. “How do you resist?” he murmurs. “It’s like living above a Chinese restaurant.”
Virgil stands in the doorway as I rummage through the stack of mail on my dining room table to find the ledger that I make my clients sign. Jenna, of course, was the most recent acquisition. “You can come in, you know,” I say.
It takes me another moment to locate the phone, which is hiding underneath a kitchen towel on the counter. I pick it up and punch Jenna’s number in, but the phone doesn’t seem to have a dial tone.
Virgil is looking at the photograph on my mantel—me sandwiched between George and Barbara Bush. “Nice of you to go slumming with the likes of Jenna and me,” he says.
“I was a different person back then,” I reply. “Besides, celebrity isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. You can’t see it in the photo, but the president’s hand is on my ass.”
“Could’ve been worse,” Virgil murmurs. “Could’ve been Barbara’s.”
I try Jenna’s number again, but nothing happens. “Weird. There’s something wrong with my line,” I tell Virgil, who pulls his cell phone from his pocket.
“Let me try,” he suggests.
“Forget it. I can’t get cell service here unless I’m wearing tinfoil on my head and hanging from the fire escape. The joys of country living.”
“We could use the phone at the bar,” Virgil offers.
“The hell with that,” I say, imagining myself trying to pry him away from a whiskey. “You used to be a beat cop before you were a detective, right?”
“Yeah.”
I stuff the ledger into my purse. “Then you can direct us to Greenleaf Street.”
The neighborhood where Jenna lives is like a hundred other neighborhoods: lawns trimmed neatly in patchwork squares, houses dressed in red and black shutters, dogs yapping behind invisible fences. Little kids ride their bikes up and down the sidewalk as I pull the car to the curb.
Virgil glances at Jenna’s front yard. “You can tell a lot about a person from their house,” he muses.
“Like what?”
“Oh, you know. A flag often means they’re conservative. If they drive a Prius, they’re going to be more liberal. Half the time it’s bullshit, but it’s an interesting science.”
“Sounds a lot like a cold reading. And I’m pretty sure it’s about as accurate.”
“Well, for what it’s worth—I guess I didn’t expect Jenna to grow up so … white bread. If you know what I mean.”
I do. The cul-de-sac, the meticulous houses, the recycling bins stacked at the curb, the 2.4 children in each yard—it feels so Stepford. There’s something unsettled about Jenna, something ragged at the edges, that does not belong here.
“What’s her grandmother’s name?” I ask Virgil.
“How the fuck would I know?” he says. “But it doesn’t matter; she works during the day.”
“Then you should stay here,” I suggest to Virgil.
“Why?”
“Because I have less of a chance of Jenna slamming the door in my face if you’re not with me,” I say.
Virgil may be a pain in the butt, but he isn’t stupid. He slouches in the passenger seat. “Whatever.”
So I walk solo up the cobblestone pathway to the front door. It’s mauve, and there’s a little wooden heart nailed to the front of it, painted with the words WELCOME FRIENDS. I ring the doorbell, and a moment later it swings open by itself.
At least that’s what I think, until I realize that there’s a tiny kid standing in front of me, sucking his thumb. He’s maybe three, and I am not all that good with small humans. They make me think of rodents, chewing your good leather shoes and leaving crumbs and droppings behind. I’m so stunned by the thought that Jenna has a sibling—one that was apparently born after she moved in with her grandmother—that I can’t even find the words to say hello.
The kid’s thumb comes out of his mouth, like the plug from a dike, and not surprisingly, the waterworks start.
Immediately a young woman comes running and scoops him into her arms. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t hear the doorbell. Can I help you?”
She is screaming this, of course, because the kid is wailing even louder. And she’s already glaring at me, as if I actually did physical harm to her kid. Meanwhile, I’m trying to figure out who this woman is and what she is doing in Jenna’s home.
I offer my prettiest television smile. “I guess I came at a bad time,” I say. Loudly. “I’m looking for Jenna?”
“Jenna?”
“Metcalf?” I say.
The woman jostles her kid on her hip. “I think you have the wrong address.”
She starts to close the door, but I wedge my foot inside it, digging in my purse for that ledger. It opens easily to the back page, where Jenna has written, in her loopy teenager handwriting, 145 Greenleaf Street, Boone.
“One forty-five Greenleaf Street?” I ask.
“You’ve got the right place,” she answers, “but there’s no one here by that name.”
She shuts the door in my face, and I stare down at the ledger in my hand. Stunned, I walk back to the car and slip inside, toss the ledger at Virgil. “She played me,” I tell him. “She gave me a fake address.”
“Why would she do that?”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t want me to send junk mail.”
“Or maybe she didn’t trust you,” Virgil suggested. “She doesn’t trust either of us. And you know what that means.” He waits until I glance up at him. “She’s a step ahead of us.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s smart enough to have figured out why her dad reacted the way he did. She must already know about her mother and Gideon; and she’s doing exactly what we should have done an hour ago.” He reaches over and turns the key in the ignition. “We’re going to Tennessee,” Virgil says, “because a hundred bucks says Jenna’s already there.”