“Will someone take me to my room soon?” Zoe turned to Emily, who stood nearby, arms pressed over her breasts, watching. “Jenny’s got to go, and I’m tired.”
“Certainly. In a few minutes. Bella’s finishing with the upstairs rooms. Give her a minute. You’re going to find we don’t run around like chickens with our heads cut off up here at Netherworld. All have our place, and we keep to it. Have a seat.” She wiggled a finger toward the loveseat before the fire. “She’ll be back to get you.”
“Not Bella Webb?” Zoe couldn’t help smiling. Another character out of Christie’s work: The Pale Horse.
Emily nodded. “A friend from our church. She’s doing the cooking for the week. Doing most of the cleaning. Don’t know what we’d do without her.”
“And you’re … what? Director? Leader?”
“Well, you could say that. Director, I guess. Me and Mary, together. We’ve got others who’ll lead the sessions and help you all: what to do and when. Schedule of the duration of the event right over there beside the desk.” She pointed to a plainly made desk off to the side of the room, with a board beside it where papers were thumbtacked.
“So, you’re Emily Brent, and we have a Bella Webb. I didn’t get the notice we were supposed to come as a character from one of the novels.”
“What do you mean?” Emily Brent’s face was wrinkled, her lips shut and pushed out.
“I mean that Emily Brent and Bella Webb are in Christie books.”
Her mouth dropped open. “You said that before but it can’t be true. I’ll have to find a copy of those books. It would be just too strange.”
She gave her version of a smile.
* * *
Jenny slipped down into the sofa beside Zoe when Emily left the room. “She’s something. You think she’s one of your relatives?”
“Emily Brent.” Zoe jumped as hot coals fell among the burning embers. “I don’t look like her, do I? Hope not.”
“Maybe around the eyes.”
“Mine are blue. Hers are lumps of dirt.”
“Then it’s the body shape.”
“Okay. Maybe a little. Do I talk the way she talks?
Jenny shook her head. “Your nose isn’t lumpy like hers. You don’t talk the way she talks. And she’s a lot taller than you.”
“Oh, that’s funny. What kind of help are you?”
“None. So, I’m going to go.” Jenny got up and headed toward the door. “I’ll call you in the morning. See what time you want us to come over.”
Zoe wiggled her phone in the air. “No service.”
“Oh, then we’ll be here later in the day.”
Zoe shrugged. “I don’t know anything that’s planned for us. I don’t know what they do about meals. Awful …”
“Later. Seems right.”
“If they tell you I left, don’t believe them. I’ll be dead and buried out in the woods, and the whole bunch of them will be dancing on my grave.”
“That’s what I’ll look for then. A bunch of academics dancing on a very small grave.”
Emily was back before Jenny could get away. She stood in front of Jenny, eyebrows pulled together, hands clasped, toes pointed out. A woman with something in mind.
“I hope you didn’t come to stay.” She was blunt. “We’re filled, you know. Not a room left.”
“According to who?” Zoe demanded, determined to question every word this person said.
The woman clucked. “Don’t you mean ‘whom’? There’s going to be people here who really watch their p’s and q’s, you know. Me? I’m tolerant of everybody, but I just wanted to warn you. I imagine the competition’s going to be stiff for top dog.”
“Don’t you mean ‘there are’ going to be people?” Zoe’s voice was cool.
Jenny put a hand over her mouth.
“No. People is a collective noun. I’m right.”
“People is a plural noun, not collective.”
“Pish tosh. Plural. Collective. I know I’m right. You’ve heard, I suppose, that the purest mind is the most untroubled. Now, can I get you two anything? I mean, before your friend here leaves.”
““Really? Hospitality?” Jenny couldn’t help herself and thought of a glass of Pinot Grigio.
The woman rocked back on her heels. “I can make you a sandwich, if you want it. You hungry?”
Jenny shook her head.
“We ate in Calumet.” Zoe’s words came out like little bits of haughty dialog.
“So, where’s everybody?” Zoe looked around the empty room. “My letter said to be here before two o’clock.”
“You know you can’t depend on people these days. So many without a secure sense of responsibility. To say nothing of morality. What can we do, Miz Zola, except sound the warning bell? Though people in our group keep telling me I should keep my mouth shut this week. I mean, no pointing out to the women that they’ll soon have to take a number to get into hell, unless they go back to the old ways of being.”
Jenny put a fist to her mouth and turned away, afraid to look directly at Zoe.
“You are something, Emily Brent,” Zoe said, her eyes wide and disbelieving. “And good, I think, at what you’re doing. Looks like this might be fun after all. This Agatha Christie event that doesn’t seem to be much about Agatha Christie. But while you’re watching out for other people’s souls, Agatha’s Emily Brent was the fifth to die in And Then There Were None. Stung to death. Must’ve been bees. If I were you, I’d be damned careful serving honey.”
Emily made a face. “We frown on vulgarity here at Netherworld Lodge.”
Zoe and Jenny looked at each other and, unable to help themselves, began to laugh.
“I’m the one you come to if you want anything during the week.” Emily took Jenny’s arm, pulled her up from the sofa, and led her toward the door while talking over her shoulder to Zoe. “You can sign up for the bus to town if you really need to go anywhere. Or you might like to come to church with Bella and me while you’re here. We’re inclined that way, so we’ll be glad to take you.”
“There’s a university involved in all of this, isn’t there?” Zoe followed the two of them to the door.
“College of Forestry.” Emily nodded.
“Forestry? What’s that got to do with literature?” Zoe couldn’t help her tone of voice.
“Well, you know.” Emily Brent stretched her neck out. Her eyes slowly moved back to Zoe. “They like to give their students a well-rounded education, you see.”
“Nobody said there would be students.”
“No real students. Just this webinar thing. The students are helping us ’cause we don’t know what we’re doing when it comes to high tech. They’ve got the ads covered. I told you, lots of people signing up. A hundred dollars, and they get to ask questions at the end. An hour and a half a day. Never heard of such a thing myself, but I guess it’s the way they’re doing things now. Our Christie Society will get a lot of exposure. And you too—you can push your books if you want to.”
“Didn’t bring any. I’m not much of a peddler.”
Emily shrugged off Zoe’s indifference. “Webinar’s going to do you a lot of good anyway. People hear about it, and learn you’re here, they associate your name with Agatha Christie. Your book will do better. Could make you an important writer, you know.
“And money’s been coming for our cause from something called a Patron site. So many excited about what we’re doing up here and that’s all we’re after, giving the hard work of our members some exposure. And, of course, all of you—our experts.” She turned away for a minute, then back.
“I’m told that a webinar is the modern way to promote your cause.”
“And just what is the ‘cause’ here?”
“You could say promoting the woman we think is the best mystery writer who ever lived.”
Zoe made a puckered face. “Really? And you’ve never read And Then There Were None?”
Emily Brent shrugged. “Guess I missed it. I’m a
busy woman.” She nodded again as she took Jenny by the arm and steered her toward the door.
“Have a good trip home.” She ushered Jenny out without giving her time to give more than a wave back at Zoe.
* * *
With Jenny gone, Zoe stood in the open doorway, the sound of rain still loud. She wondered if she’d done the right thing, staying behind with Emily Brent and whoever else might be there.
Bella Webb …
“Now.” Emily, behind her, wiped her hands down the sides of her dress. “I’ll go find Bella before you get yourself worked up into a big snit over all these things worrying you.”
Emily walked away, stopping to turn in the middle of the floor. The smile she gave wasn’t pretty. “Probably a case of the jitters. I know I’m nervous. We’re all in uncharted territory here—webinars, a bunch of experts, this historic place.” She tried a different smile. No better. “I’ll bet we end by being the best of friends. The two of us. I just bet we will.”
Zoe looked at the poor woman and couldn’t help herself. She lied. “You know you were right about that collective noun.”
“Why did you argue with me?”
Zoe shrugged. “I don’t know. Feeling mean, I think. By the way is Brent your married name?”
She nodded. “My husband, bless his soul, is departed.”
“Not part of the Jokela family, are you?”
“Heard of them. Don’t know any myself.”
Emily Brent left the room. Zoe heard her heavy footsteps on a staircase off the hall and could have sworn she heard the word bitch trail after her.
She began again to wonder if they were related.
Chapter 15
Jenny started her car and backed around to head out the two-track and hope to find a main road again.
She looked over her shoulder at the lodge—only lights on in the reception room; the rest of the building dark, as if there was—in all that space—only one stage for players. As if only one story was about to happen, and maybe they weren’t all evil people, the way Zoe thought. Or maybe Zoe was wrong, and evil was everywhere.
Back to the highway, heading north.
The directions to Lisa’s trailer had as many twists and turns as Lisa’s brain. A mile up one two-track, a mile back on another.
A left into the woods before Copper Harbor. A left? There were four roads to pick from. She chose the first and kept her fingers crossed. Then about twenty miles up one two-track and down another. Twenty-seven miles before she came to the green arrow she was supposed to look for.
Nothing in the directions about going straight down a slippery hill until she could get her brakes to catch. And nothing about a place where the road forked in two directions, and one ended at a deserted rock quarry, so she had to turn around and take the other, at times crashing straight through bushes that grew close to the road.
Eight miles, and then a long, bumpy ride on a dirt ‘drive’ with the name “Martine” on a corner sign. How was she supposed to know the difference between an overgrown two-track and a drive? Eight miles more, exactly, and she ended at a long swamp on one side of the road and an open field of burned stumps—a long-ago forest fire—on the other.
Knowing that Lisa had a tendency to underestimate, she drove on until she found it: fourteen miles down some pretty rough road. Two hump-backed trailers in a small clearing of wet weeds and dripping trees. There was a dim light in one. Then a skinny woman threw the door of a trailer open and jumped out in front of Jenny’s car, waving her arms.
They hugged and laughed. Jenny bawled her out for her crappy directions, with Lisa, dark hair rolled into a knot on top of her head, pretty face drawn up in a smile she couldn’t stop, scolding her sister for being late.
They hugged again and talked all the usual talk on the way to the little trailer: Mom okay? How’ve you been? How long you staying?
Jenny carried her suitcase into Lisa’s small trailer and dropped it in what was either the living room or the dining room: a small round table, a couple of folding chairs, a card table with papers spread across it about four inches deep.
Two floor lamps stood at the edges of the work area. No sofa. Not a single comfortable-looking chair.
There was a tiny kitchen—big enough for half a person to cook in—a hot plate that could take one frying pan and maybe a coffeepot.
Lisa pointed out the highlights, laughing when she said the bathroom was so small you had to sit sideways on the toilet.
“Is there a bed?”
Lisa grinned. “Mine.” She pulled down a closed trap door beyond the bathroom and pointed to blankets folded up inside.
“That’s it? How do I fit in here?” Jenny poked at the blankets.
“Climb up. Won’t be bad. We’ll be sleeping together the way we used to.”
Lisa grinned at her.
“I’ll wake up black and blue—the way I used to.”
“That’s a lie, and you know it.” Lisa swept her arm around the little place with pride, pointing to piles of scripts, her computer, equipment Jenny didn’t recognize.
“Nobody can accuse you of not suffering for your art.”
“This isn’t suffering. Suffering will be if you still snore the way you used to.”
“And I hope you grew out of farting. I hear one and I’ll throw you right out of this trailer.”
“My trailer. Throw yourself out.”
“Well.” Jenny looked around again. “I suppose it’s not so bad. Hope you don’t invite crowds very often. What do you do when you have people over? Entertain in the bathroom?”
“Toilet’s my third chair.”
“Where were you going to put Mom if she came with me?”
“A motel in Copper Harbor. She’d like that better, don’t you think?”
Jenny nodded.
“Hey, if this is too … er … primitive for you, you can go to that motel.”
“Not on your life. I’m staying wherever you stay. Sorry. I’m tired. Been worrying about Zoe all the way up here.” She looked around, hoping there was a place to unpack but didn’t dare ask now that she’d pissed off Lisa.
Lisa looked at her and sniffed, “I called Mom from town a little while ago. She said something about that Tony you’re engaged to. Some big blow-up between you? Screw that up, did you?”
“Mind your own business.”
“And what about Zoe?”
“She’s at that event here. Supposed to be all about Agatha Christie and her work. But she thinks it’s about her and her cruel family she doesn’t even know. She thinks they invited her to kill her. Sounds reasonable to me. I’d jump at the chance to go somewhere people are plotting to kill me too.”
“Sounds crazy to me. But who am I to talk? Back here in the woods.”
“Guess we’re all crazy in some way. But”—she reached out to hug Lisa again—“what I came for was to see my sister. Mom’s trying to tell me how to live my life. Zoe’s mostly mad at me. Tony acts like he got me on some marriage market. Thought this would be far enough to get away from all of it. Guess I was wrong.”
Lisa took Jenny’s flailing hands in hers. “Sorry. No more. I won’t ask another question about anybody. We’re going to have fun. My Finnish women have invited us to their Saturday dinner. They’re so excited. Just remember to make a fuss over every dish they serve you. All the same—you hear? No one dish too much. No one dish too little—if you have to cram it in. They take their cooking seriously, and each one has a special recipe she won’t share with anyone. Just be sweet and kind—the way you always are—and you’ll be a hit.”
“When are we going?”
“Seven thirty.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever known any real Finns before. Should I be nervous?”
“Don’t be. Nobody bites. They’ll be looking you over. There’ll be some whispering behind your back. But they’ll get over it. So, just smile. Keep smiling. And keep filling your mouth.”
Lisa laughed. “They’re Finnish descendants.
When the mines closed, they stayed on. They’re from the original families. Well, most of ’em. Some ‘marryin’ in,’ as they call it. They blend with the rest.”
For the hour and a half they had before they were to leave, Lisa introduced her sister to the world of making documentaries— photos hung on a clothesline; scripts filled with ideas that were crossed out and rewritten—over and over. A mess.
“And out of all of this you get a film?”
“Not just a film, Jen. Sometimes I get a story like this one—women holding on to a rough life no one should be living, to a world they love, and people they love. More than anything else, they’re loyal to their own. Fierce, these women. Now that I know them, I believe they’d kill to avenge their own.”
Chapter 16
Ten minutes more of standing, waiting expectantly for someone to greet her, and Zoe slouched down into the bumpy floral cushion of one of the chairs, wondering for just a minute if the whole thing was an illusion as she rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. Maybe like her rocking chair dream—only not nearly as good.
Ego. All of it. Nothing to do with her and her mother. No cruel relatives and a score to settle. She liked being asked. She’d liked being called an ‘expert.’ She’d liked that she would be a featured expert.
Over her head, from a wooden beam, a cobweb swayed. More cobwebs in the corners and one hanging from a light. So much for Bella Webb’s skills. And dust on the end table beside her. What would her room be like? Under the bed? The sheets?
A sign she should have gone with Jenny. Settled. She’d be out of there tomorrow—that was a promise to herself. One spider in her room, and she’d be out in the drive directly. Easy enough to come up with a killer disease or a blinding headache. She’d say she’d had them since childhood. Or she’d tell Emily Brent something more important had come up.
Almost a tiny satisfaction, thinking of facing down Emily.
There was a noise from out on the porch, something dropping and then a loud “Damn it to hell!” and the front door burst open. A middle-aged man in a mesh cowboy hat stepped into the room and dropped his suitcase to the floor, a raincoat on top of the suitcase. He looked around, hands on his hips.
And Then They Were Doomed Page 6