by Nick Poff
“How would you like to join my garden club, Josh?” Norma asked.
Josh appeared nonplused. “I already belong to 4-H.”
“We know,” Ed said. “As I recall, I’m the one who encouraged you to join. 4-H is great, but let’s face it; all you win are ribbons and bragging rights with gardening and wildlife projects. How would you like some cold hard cash?”
“4-H is about making the best better,” Josh said self-righteously, “not about money.”
Judy groaned. “If you get any more idealistic,” she told him, “you’re gonna end up living in a tent somewhere.”
Josh shrugged.
“Well, the reason we want you to join is kind of idealistic. Have you ever heard any of us talk about Harriet Drinkwater?” Ed asked.
“You mean that idiot woman at the historical society?” Josh made a face. “She thought a display of nineteenth century flora and fauna wasn’t an important part of the history of Stratton County.”
“That figures,” Norma muttered. “It wasn’t her idea.”
“What does she have to do with garden clubs?” Josh wanted to know.
Between them, Ed and Norma explained the current predicament of the Porterfield Posies. “It really wouldn’t be fair for her to win the prizes in the contest,” Norma concluded. “She doesn’t care about the club or how hard anyone has worked. She just wants the glory.”
“But how can I help?”
“Well, thanks to your hard work, wouldn’t you say the grounds at Penfield Manor truly are the most beautiful in town?” Ed demanded.
“Oh, I don’t know,” Josh looked down.
Judy smacked him on the arm. “Stop being so modest. Uncle Ed is right. No one in this town, even the paid professionals, has worked as hard as you have.”
“You have to be a member of a garden club to enter the contest,” Ed said. “Mom can nominate you for membership. If the group votes to accept you, you’re in. Then, since each club in the county can only enter one yard, the club can nominate you for your work at Penfield Manor.”
“The first prize is five hundred dollars,” Norma cajoled.
“And Mr. Fry is thinking about giving a gardening advice column to the winner,” Ed wheedled.
“And just think,” Norma said enthusiastically. “You’d be a hero to everyone in the club, shoot, the whole town, for putting that Drinkwater woman in her place.”
“I’d do it for that reason alone,” Judy said.
Josh still looked undecided, so Ed decided to play his ace-in-hole. “Turns out they’ve added a grand prize. They’re going to put all the county winners together and draw one name out of all of them for the grand prize.” Ed smiled smugly. Do you want to know what the grand prize is?”
“Sure.” Josh shrugged.
“Is Victory Garden still one of your favorite TV shows?”
“Yes.”
“Well, the seed company is going to send the grand prize winner, all expenses paid, to Boston to see a taping of Victory Garden.”
Josh looked at Ed in amazement. “I’ll do it!” he shouted.
###
With the garden club drama on hold until Tuesday afternoon’s meeting, Ed turned his attention to digging up information on Evie Fountain. Norma had been no help at all. “Just because that real estate tycoon you live with thinks I know everything about every person and every house in this town doesn’t mean I actually do,” she had indignantly told him.
So Ed set out for his Monday appointments determined to learn something. His first stop of the day was at Pat Abbott’s house. Mr. Abbott, the long-time Porterfield mayor who was followed by the ineffectual Grant Latham upon his retirement, had asked Ed to clear away some of his grandchildren’s castoff toys and hobby paraphernalia from his garage. Sweat pouring off of him, Ed busily made his way through everything from paint-by-number sets to old guinea pig cages. He had no doubt Mr. Abbott’s grandchildren would fill the shelves he was clearing with more stuff, as Mr. Abbott encouraged all of their interests. Ed didn’t mind. Their hobbies eventually turned into billable hours for him.
Mr. Abbott, leaning heavily on his cane, slowly made his way from his back door to the garage. With a shaking hand he gave Ed a cold bottle of Pepsi, which Ed accepted gratefully. “You should have just hollered,” Ed told him. Mr. Abbott suffered from a neurological disorder, and Ed was used to doing whatever he could to assist him.
“It’s okay,” Mr. Abbott assured him. “I needed a change of scenery.” He removed a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped at the back of his neck. “Another scorcher, huh?”
“You can say that again,” Ed sighed, rolling the pop bottle across his own perspiring forehead. “You know, Rick and I bought Evie Fountain’s old house. I think I’ve sweated through every t shirt and every pair of shorts I own cleaning that place out.”
Mr. Abbott nodded. “I’ve heard she was what my grandkids call a dumpster diver. I reckon you’re finding all sorts of things.”
Ed nodded. “Did you ever have any contact with Evie?”
“No,” Mr. Abbott said. “Well, every now and again someone would call the mayor’s office and ask me to do something about her. She was perfectly harmless, as far as I knew, so I just told people to leave her alone with the voices in her head.”
“You think she was schizophrenic?”
“I don’t really know, Ed. If there was ever a diagnosis of her problems I wasn’t privy to it. She probably belonged in a hospital, but she lived in an era in which the states began to stop the practice of warehousing the mentally ill. To my knowledge she had no family, no one to intervene for her. It’s too bad, really.”
Ed thought of Rick’s theory that someone in town was secretly taking care of her. “So you don’t know anyone in town who might have taken an interest in her?”
Mr. Abbott shook his head. “Not to my knowledge.”
Rats, Ed thought. “Do you know anything about her background?”
“Can’t say that I do. Seems to me there wasn’t any reason to know until she began her wandering around town, and by then, since she wasn’t talking, it was probably too late.”
Strike three, Ed thought. “I just can’t understand why she seems to be such a mystery.”
Mr. Abbott chuckled. “There are all sorts of little mysteries in a small town, Ed. Most of them get buried away for one reason or another. Let me know if you have any luck with yours.”
###
Ed hoped he might do better with his afternoon client, elderly Mrs. McCracken. Most of Ed’s older clients had a deathly fear of falling; Mrs. McCracken was no exception. Terrified to do it herself, she had had Ed remove all of the drapes in her sprawling house on West Walnut Street. Ed had taken them to the dry cleaners, and now was reporting to her house to rehang them. It might have appeared to some people to be a rather odd chore for a handyman, but Ed had learned to expect anything and everything from his old folks. Besides, after a sweaty morning in the Abbott garage an afternoon in Mrs. McCracken’s dim, cool home was appealing indeed.
Once he had himself established on her step stool by the first window he glanced down at her. “Did you know my partner and I bought Evie Fountain’s house?”
Mrs. McCracken, plump and invariably cheerful, clucked her tongue. “Oh, that poor soul,” she said. “My heart would break every time I saw her.”
“Did you know her?”
“No, but I knew her mother. We went to school together.”
“Really?” Finally, Ed thought. “What was her name?”
“Cora, Cora Bledsoe. Her family lived near mine on Selby Street. We walked to school together for years. She married Howard Denison right out of high school, and they had two children, Evie and Daniel.”
“I didn’t know Evie had a brother.”
“Oh yes. Smart, he was, or at least that’s how I remember him. Carl and I were busy raising our own family, but I’d run into Cora every now and again. Even then Evie was a little different.”
“Ho
w so?”
“Well, it’s kind of hard to say.” Mrs. McCracken frowned. “She was…well, you know how seem people don’t seem to feel comfortable in their own skin? That’s what Evie put me in mind of.”
Ed, finished with one drape, waited for her to hand him the next one. “So what happened to her?”
“Oh my, I wish I knew. Carl’s company transferred him to Illinois, and we didn’t come back here until he retired in 1977. By then Evie was the way she was, poor thing.”
Well, at least I learned something, Ed thought. “Didn’t you hear any stories after you moved back?”
“Oh, stories. Well, of course I heard stories, but most of them seemed like so much mean-spirited gossip to me. You know how people are, especially when someone’s down on their luck like Evie. The only thing I heard that maybe was the truth was that she married a violent man who beat her, and that’s why she lost her mind. Of course, some folks would tell you that she killed him, but I don’t believe that.”
“So she was married to someone named Fountain. We didn’t even know that,” Ed mumbled, more to himself than Mrs. McCracken. “Do you know his name?”
“No. I don’t think he was from around here. In fact, I think she moved away to marry him, and only came back here when the marriage ended. Her parents were gone by then. They’d died in a bad car wreck out on Jarrett Road.”
“But what about her brother?”
“I don’t know. I just assumed he was gone, too.”
Ed sighed in frustration. He felt as though Mrs. McCracken had opened one of Evie’s boxes but slammed it shut before he saw all of its contents.
Mrs. McCracken changed the subject. “I hear it’s supposed to storm tonight. Do you think it will break this heat?”
“Hope so,” Ed replied absently, thinking the mystery was still a mystery, but at least he had something to share with Rick, and maybe together they could put the information to good use.
###
Late the next afternoon Ed was sprawled on the floor by the hi fi, listening to his record cache from Evie’s house. There were quite a few, in his opinion, that probably should have remained in the garbage. However, his ears pricked up on several. These he put aside for a second listen. Arnie was with him as usual, half-asleep in the record carton.
He heard the phone ring, but rather than get up he waited for Effie Maude to pick up in the kitchen. A few moments later she pushed open the swinging door between the kitchen and the dining room and stood with her hands on her hips. Arnie looked over the edge of the box at her and seeing the scowl on her face quickly crouched down out of sight.
“Phone,” she barked at Ed.
Wow, who pissed in her porridge, he wondered as he went to pick up the phone on the hall table.
“Hello?”
“Ed Stephens,” Harriet Drinkwater all but shrieked over the wire. “Did Eunice Ames put you up to this?”
“Hello? Harriet? Is this Harriet Drinkwater?”
“You know perfectly well who this is. I’ll ask you again. Is Eunice Ames involved in this …this stunt?”
“To my knowledge Eunice is spending the summer in North Webster.”
“There is such a thing as long distance!”
“Yes, I’ve heard of it. However, Eunice hasn’t used it to call me.”
“Well then, it must be you behind this skullduggery. You must have talked your mother into making a fool out of the Porterfield Posies!”
“Harriet,” he said, “you certainly don’t know my mother very well, do you? I’ve never talked her into anything in my life. In fact, my guess is you’re not very well acquainted with any of the other Posies either. They’ve been together for years, and you’re a pretty green newcomer.”
“Just what does that have to do with anything?” She huffed.
“Well, there are some, no names mentioned, who might find that to be rather bad sportsmanship in regards to the garden contest.”
“The contest! So that’s it! Shame on you, Ed Stephens.”
“Shame on me for what? I haven’t done anything.”
“You can prevaricate all you want, you Eunice Ames disciple,” Harriet sneered. “Oh, you learned all sorts of things at her knee, you and that…that person you live with. Well, let me tell you something, Ed Stephens. That Romanowski boy will never be admitted into the club. I have an entire week to make sure he will not receive enough votes to be admitted.”
Despite his joy in Harriet Drinkwater’s consternation Ed was growing weary of her shouting into his ear. “And the majority will have time to make sure he’s invited to join.”
“Mark my words, Ed Stephens,” she growled. “You haven’t heard the last of this!” Ed jumped as the crash of a slammed receiver resounded in his ears.
“My,” Ed said mildly to Arnie, who had followed him into the hall. “I think she’s a little upset.”
Effie Maude appeared. “Just who was that snooty woman?”
Ed giggled. “Oh, just a wilted Porterfield Posy.”
###
There was another phone call for Ed the next morning. He was half expecting it to be Harriet Drinkwater with another tirade, but to his surprise the caller was their friend Dr. Paul Klarn.
“Paul! What’s up? Seems like ages since we’re talked.”
“Well,” Paul ruefully chuckled. “Between the hospital and my office, not to mention trying to get that AIDS group together in Fort Wayne, I’ve been a little busy. I hear you and Rick have been busy as well.”
“Yeah, we weren’t planning on it, but you know what happens when you make plans.”
“Ed, no one knows that better than a doctor on call. Actually, I’m calling as both a friend and a doctor to see if you can help me out with something.”
“After everything you’ve done for us?” Ed asked rhetorically. “Name it.”
Paul sighed. I was in Emergency last night when a young man staggered in. At first I assumed he had been robbed, but when I examined him, I realized he had been queer-bashed.”
Ed felt his stomach drop. “Shit,” he said quietly. “How do you know that’s what happened?”
A sigh that seemed to come from the depths of Paul’s soul came through the phone. “One of his attackers used a knife point and wrote “FAG” on his chest.”
“Aw man,” Ed moaned.
“Exactly. The thing is, he isn’t talking. It’s my duty to report this to the police, even though I doubt they’ll do anything about it. Still, I need to get something out of him, even if it’s only his name.”
“You think I would have better luck than you?”
“I’m not sure, but I have to try something. I’d rather not get too involved, for obvious reasons.” Keeping his sexual orientation under wraps at Porterfield General allowed Paul to both hear and learn a lot of things that he might not otherwise. And these days, every bit of information was important for the still relatively few doctors in the area concerned about AIDS.
“I get it.” Ed glanced at the hall clock. “If I come out right now I can fit it in before my first appointment.”
“Thank you,” Paul said with obvious gratitude. “I’m stuck with office hours, but I’ll call over and let Mildred Corbett know you’re coming. I really don’t have much of a reason to keep him, so the sooner we pry some information out of him the better.”
“You got it. I’ll do my best.”
“I really appreciate this, Ed.”
“Hey, no sweat. I feel as though I owe you a few favors.”
Ed hung up the phone and took a deep breath. He knew he had to do this right now, or he’d overthink it and get nervous. He checked his pocket for his keys and took off.
Ten minutes later he was walking off the elevator onto the third floor of Porterfield General Hospital. Nurse Mildred Corbett looked up from her place behind the nurse’s station and nodded.
“Mr. Stephens,” she said. “It’s good to see you as a visitor and not a patient.” She was known to many as “Mean Mildred”, but she
and Ed had a special understanding.
“Yes,” he said, hands on the counter. “I’m making what seems to be my annual visit here. Dr. Klarn asked me to come.”
“Yes.” Mildred looked down and carefully folded her hands. “Dr. Klarn called me. I hope you might be able to help us with this young man. What happened to him was…horrible.”
Ed nodded. “May I see him?”
A trace of a smile passed across Mildred’s face. “Well, it’s not exactly visiting hours, but I think we can make an exception. He’s in 311.”
Ed walked down the hall and came to a halt in front of room 311. “Don’t let me screw this up,” he muttered and knocked on the door.
There was no answer, so Ed pushed tentatively at the door and crept inside. He looked at the boy on the bed, whose handsome face was battered and bruised, his bright green eyes almost swollen shut.
“Well, well, well,” Ed said quietly.
The boy was Rex Kennedy.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Good morning, Rex,” Ed said.
The swollen eyes opened as far as they could. “Do I know you?”
“Well, we haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Ed Stephens.” Ed paused. “I’m a good friend of Neal Soames.”
There was no apparent reaction from the boy on the bed. Ed indicated the chair nearby. “May I?”
Rex nodded.
Ed sat down. “Do you want to tell me about it?” He asked.
The boy stared at the ceiling. “Why not? My life is over anyway.”
“Well, we’ll decide that later. Who did this to you?”
“My friends. My so-called, fucking friends.”
“Why?”
Rex grabbed at his hospital gown, and with some grunting and muttered cursing he untied the knot at his right shoulder and pulled the gown down, exposing his chest. Ed looked at the large letters. They were crooked with trailing lines; Ed suspected Rex had been struggling while the writer was at work.