The First Time I Fell

by Joanne Macgregor

  “Tell me what you know about the people in the estate,” I said, not averse to hearing his gossip.

  “That guard at the gate now, big fella” — he held his hand away from his sides like a gorilla — “with a thick neck.”

  “I know the one you mean.”

  “Name of …” Hugo peered at me from under beetling white eyebrows.

  “Doug.”

  “That’s the one. Dirty Doug. He’s got an eye for the ladies.”

  “I noticed.”

  “And he’s been at playing nug-a-nug with Mrs. Murphy.”

  “Nug-a-nug?”

  “Shaking the sheets, doing the dirty, getting the old hanky-panky!” He cackled. “Catch my meaning?”

  “Loud and clear.”

  “Works his way through the ladies, he does.” He eyed me keenly.

  “Not with me, no way!” I said.

  Looking disappointed, he bent over to examine another shelf, which I could see at a glance contained no mousetraps.

  “Got any gossip on my neighbor, Ned Lipton?” I asked.

  Hugo straightened, stroking his beard. “Lipton, Lipton … Fussy sort of fellow? Wears bowties?”

  “That’s the one.”

  “He’s an architect, designs houses. And he’s on the lookout for flying saucers, did ya know that?”

  “Aliens?”

  “You betcha. He had me order a telescope a while back. Said his binoculars weren’t strong enough. What’s he looking for if not UFOs?”

  “Maybe stars or asteroids or meteor showers?”

  “Ha!” Hugo barked, clearly skeptical.

  “Any news on Mrs. Beaumont?”

  Hugo shook his head sadly. “She’s been at Martha’s Vineyard for the last coupla months. Since that poor lass of hers passed.”

  He sighed and, limping back to the front of the store, retrieved two mousetraps from under the counter.

  “There you go. But they won’t work, you mark my words. Rats and mice are clever critters. They ain’t going to fall for these traps.”

  “Then why do you sell them?”

  “Because people buy them!” He wheezed another delighted cackle. “The greeny beanies in this town don’t want poison.”

  He showed me how to set the trap, pulling back the spring-loaded lever and hooking it onto the trigger plate. I jumped when he released the retaining bar and the lever snapped down.

  “Will it kill them instantly?” I asked.

  “Depends on how big they are. This trap will break a little mouse’s neck immediately, but if it’s a big, tough old rat you’ve got up there” — he held his hand apart to indicate the length of a large cat — “then this might only keep him in place, wriggling and squeaking, until you finish the job yourself.” He demonstrated wringing the rodent’s neck, complete with a squelchy sound effect. “And don’t let him bite ya! You can get rabies or rat-bite fever from rodents.”

  The poison was looking more attractive by the minute.

  “Okay, then, do you have a bigger trap — one that would work on a rat?”

  He beamed at me. “What you want is the Verminator!” Retrieving a trap that looked big and strong enough to snap the paw off a grizzly, he said, “Course, a little mouse won’t be heavy enough to trip this one.”

  Hugo glanced from one device to the other, then looked expectantly at me.

  “Fine, I’ll take one of each.”

  “Now, don’t you be baiting them with cheese. The only rodents that like cheese are the ones in the Loony Tunes. What you want is a pea-sized blob of peanut butter, or a soft candy like a gumdrop. These’ll do you nicely.” He grabbed a packet of gummy bears from a stand on the counter and added it to my growing pile. “Line the traps up along the bottoms of the walls, but at right angles, and be careful when you set these things. That big contraption will take your finger off as quick as a guillotine.”

  “Right.”

  “And don’t touch the bait with your fingers, leaving your scent all over it to warn the rats — use rubber gloves. You’ll be a size medium.” He plonked a pair on the counter and slowly began ringing up the pile of items on an ancient cash register.

  “So, what can you tell me about Laini Carter?” I asked, trying to sound casual.

  “I heard tell you’re investigating her death.”

  “Where’d you hear that?”

  Hugo tapped a finger to the side of his nose.

  “What do you know about her?” I asked.

  “What do you know?” he replied.

  “Quid pro quo, huh? Alright, Laini Carter came from circus folk. Did you know that?”

  His thick white eyebrows rose. “Is that so?” I could almost see him filing the juicy tidbit away in his store of gossip.

  “Your turn,” I said, handing over my credit card.

  “Pretty as a princess, she was.”

  “I knew that already.”

  “And full of life. Always ready with a smile.” He processed the payment. “Her boss, now, surname of Ford.”

  “Bethany.”

  “That’s the one. Pretty, too, but sharp and hard. Efficient.” He said the last word like it was an insult.

  “Really?” This didn’t gel with my impression of her the day before. She’d seemed lost and confused. Then again, grief did that to a person, as I well knew.

  “She’s never been in here but one time. Always buys from the superstore near Randolph, instead of supporting locals,” he grumbled bitterly. “Wouldn’t put it past her to kill Laini because she was prettier.” He packed the Verminator and the mousetrap into a sturdy brown bag. “Laini, now, she had a good heart. She used to buy birdseed from me for the wild birds and salt licks for the deer. I worried about her.”

  “You did? Why?”

  Hugo hooked his thumbs under his suspenders. “It’s a funny thing about beauty, but people always want to catch it and keep it. And sometimes … sometimes they like to break it. Like those vandals always smashing statues and throwing paint on monuments. I saw a fella on the TV, an artist, put his own painting through a shredder! Can ya believe that?”

  “Did someone want to break Laini?”

  He dropped the rest of my purchases into the paper sack and rolled the top closed.

  “One time, she was in here buying this and that, and when she left, she took a flyer off my counter. A fella had left a pile of them here, see? Advertisements.”

  “For what?” I asked.

  Hugo sighed and handed me the bag. “For self-defense classes.”

  – 18 –

  Lunch with Jessica Armstrong was a brisk one-hour affair in the dining room at the Frost Inn, where the walls were decorated with a variety of portraits of Robert Frost and the poetically-themed menu offered items such as the Road Less Traveled Salad (Parmesan, pomegranate and brussels sprouts) and Fire and Ice Dessert (deep-fried ice cream).

  I ordered a Lovely, Dark and Deep Steak (aged rib eye with red wine sauce) and a beer. Jessica ordered a Nature’s First Green Caesar salad and sparkling water.

  “Wait,” she said as the waiter was about to leave with our orders, “is there raw egg in the Caesar dressing?”

  “Yes, ma’am, it’s made the traditional way,” he replied.

  “Then I’ll have the chicken salad instead. No mayo.”

  Once we had our drinks, I asked, “How are you doing, Jess?”

  “Okay. Good, I guess.”

  I wondered how she was handling the still-recent loss of her father but didn’t know how to ask, so instead I said, “How’s your mother?”

  “Fighting fit.” Jessica gave me a wry smile. “She positively loathes you. Says you’ve brought scandal and heartbreak to this town, and irreparably damaged the local economy.”

  Jessica’s mother, Michelle Armstrong, was the town clerk and treasurer, which pretty much made her the closest thing to a mayor Pitchford had. She was on a mission to turn the town into the heart of New England tourism, and anything that got in the way of that — even
justice for a decade-old murder — was taboo.

  “And here I was expecting the key to Pitchford for my efforts.”

  “Yeah, don’t hold your breath.”

  The waiter brought our drinks, and I took a long swallow of beer. “And Blunt? How’s he doing?”

  Jessica’s brother was a long-time drug addict, one of the victims of Vermont’s plague of heroin addiction, and quite possibly even more of a thorn in Mrs. Armstrong’s side than I was.

  Her face hardened, and instead of answering my question, she said, “How are your parents?”

  “Fine, a little older and frailer. My father’s still a gem, and my mother’s still a kook.”

  I felt a bit bad saying this, because I figured I was more-or-less a kook now, too. Also, to my chagrin, I was discovering that my mother wasn’t always wrong, as I’d assumed for most of my life. In fact, one of the most upsetting aspects of this whole psychic thing was how often my mother was being proved right. Not in everything, of course — I still believed most of her far-out theories and bizarre practices were ludicrous and without any basis in reality — but enough to trouble me and make me question my once-certain view of the universe.

  The waiter arrived with our food, and I dug in. Jessica pushed pieces of lettuce and shavings of Parmesan around on her plate as I told her about my studies, and she caught me up on news about her family and life. Her twin sons were wonderful, Jessica said, they’d just turned four, and judging by their finger-painting creations, they were all set to become artistic prodigies just like their father. Jessica’s husband was a temperamental artist who, on the only occasion I’d ever met him, I’d found to be arrogant and demanding. She seemed to still be in love with him — or at least, I thought, as she raved about how he was currently taking the art world by storm with his recent mixed-media series on Disconnected Identity in the Connected World, she was still smitten by his talent.

  “He’s been booked for an exhibition in New York, at the end of May,” Jessica said.

  “Wow, that’s great.” I swallowed the last of my beer and looked around for the waiter to order another. “And he must be so pleased about the baby.”

  “What baby?” she asked, startled.

  I gestured at her midriff. “You’re expecting, aren’t you? A little girl?”

  She glanced down at her still-flat stomach. “How did you know that?”

  Good question. I tried to think. “Didn’t you mention it earlier? Or maybe in the store the other day?”

  “No. I haven’t told anyone yet, not even Nico. I just confirmed it at the doctor this morning. And I don’t know the sex yet.”

  “Oh.”

  “So how did you know?” she demanded.

  My mother would no doubt have some theories, but I merely said, “Lucky guess? Or maybe because you’re not drinking, and you were worried about eating raw egg?”

  She seemed mollified by my explanation. “Look, please don’t tell anyone yet. I haven’t decided– Just keep it under your hat, okay?”

  I kept my expression neutral as I mimed zipping my lips and tossing away the key, but inside my mind was racing. Had Jessica been about to say, “I haven’t decided whether to keep it,” or only something like, “I haven’t decided when I’ll break the news”?

  She wasn’t showing yet, but I had an idea that pregnant bellies didn’t become obvious until around the fourth or fifth month. It was early March now, and I’d interrupted her and her lover getting it on in the back room of her gallery just before Christmas, so it was entirely possible that the baby wasn’t even her husband’s.

  While we ate, we chatted about safer topics — my life in Boston, the closing down of the local high school due to lack of students, a local project to encourage the nesting of peregrine falcons — before she dropped her fork and called for the check.

  “Sorry, I need to get back to the gallery.”

  “No problem, I need to get moving, too. I’m meeting Ryan Jackson this afternoon.”

  Jessica gave me a knowing look. “Oh, yes?”

  “Not like that,” I said hurriedly. “It’s about the Laini Carter investigation. You know I found the body?”

  “I read that in The Bugle.”

  “Did you know Laini Carter?”

  “A little. Enough to know she was brilliant at her job. That syrup business had been chugging along for ages, but it was only when she joined in the last couple of years that it started to fly. She dragged it into the twenty-first century in terms of marketing — set up a fantastic presence on social media and apparently grew a huge email database. She raised the bottom line significantly. I don’t know how they’re going to cope without her.”

  I waved aside her attempt to pay for the bill and handed the waiter my credit card.

  “I tried to poach her, more than once.”

  “You tried to do what?” I asked.

  “I tried to get her to do marketing for the gallery, but she wasn’t interested, not even in doing a few hours on the side. And my mother tried to persuade her into doing some publicity and promotion work for the town, but she declined that, too,” Jessica said.

  “Did she say why?”

  “Initially I thought it must be because she wanted to give her all to Sweet and Smoky, or maybe that her employment contract didn’t permit her to do work for other organizations. But when I asked her about it, she said she didn’t need more stakes in the ground, or something like that. I didn’t understand what she meant but didn’t want to pry.”

  “Do you know her boyfriend, Carl Mendez?”

  “Not really. He and Laini occasionally visited the gallery, and once he bought one of Nico’s paintings, an oil, I think. But I do recall this one time when they came in together and he wanted to commission Nico to do a portrait of Laini. Well, that was a no from the get-go. Nico creates art when inspiration strikes; he captures what the muse sends him. He’s not in the business of painting pretty ladies.” Jessica gave a little laugh and bit her lip. “I mean, I don’t want to sound patronizing. Laini wasn’t pretty — she was … extraordinary. So beautiful, you couldn’t even be jealous, you know? It’s like she was the work of art.”

  I signed the credit card slip, nodding.

  “Anyway, before I could turn them down, Laini herself told Carl no. And then she insisted on buying him a painting for his bedroom wall. I remember that she said it like that, ‘A painting for your bedroom wall,’ and not ‘our bedroom wall.’ It struck me as odd, because they were a couple, and everyone knew they were living together at his place.” Jessica picked up her handbag. “Maybe she didn’t feel completely at home there.”

  Or maybe Laini hadn’t been quite as committed to the relationship as Carl had.

  – 19 –

  Back at the Andersens’ house, I was greeted with a fury of hysterical delight by Lizzie and Darcy. Really, everyone ought to have a dog just to be on the receiving end of that kind of welcome. As I tickled their tummies and smoothed their silky ears, I detected the hint of mint on the air again. My mother would say it was a ghostly presence. If so, it smelled like the house was being haunted by the ghost of Pepsodent past.

  I put on the rubber gloves Hugo had sold me, grabbed the mousetraps, gummy bear bait, a flashlight and a broom — in case I needed to defend myself against any rodent attacks — and headed upstairs. The dogs sniffed excitedly at the ladder when I pulled down the trap door to the attic and watched with interest as I climbed up. Once my head and shoulders were in the dark space above, I paused and whacked the broom head on the wooden boards a couple of times to scare away any rats that might have plans to bite my face or bats who wanted to take up occupation in my hair.

  “I’m coming in!” I yelled, feeling both stupid and nervous.

  I shone the flashlight around the interior, lighting up storage boxes stacked against walls, a pile of magazines, a crate of empty beer and soda bottles, an old mattress and an antique wooden rocking horse which cast crazy shadows as the beam of light hit it. I cli
mbed up another step and turned around to cast the beam on the back of the attic, then yelped and slipped down two rungs as the light caught the unmistakable reflection of an eye. Heart hammering and hands suddenly slippery with sweat, I forced myself to climb back up, pick the flashlight up from where I’d dropped it, and shine it back to where I’d caught the gleam.

  A doll. It was just a vintage porcelain doll sitting on a dressing table. But my sigh of relief hitched in my throat as I climbed up another step and took in the full scene. The doll was large — big enough to ride the rocking horse, for crying out loud — and missing both legs. One round glass eye peered directly at me, while the other was closed in a grotesque wink. Teeth — too many and too pointed for an infant — showed in the baby’s smile, which was smudged from some long-ago application of lipstick. The doll’s naked torso was propped up against the mirror of a child-sized dressing table with a cracked, spotted mirror that reflected my horrified face back at me. On top of the dressing table lay a pink brush and comb set, still tangled with a fuzz of long blond hair.

  “What the hell?” I whispered, my eyes watering as they always did when I was scared.

  The doll leered back at me, silent and still as the grave. Cursing the creepy contents of the house, I retrieved the rodent traps and baited them as quickly and carefully as I could. Using the broom to shove the traps deeper into the attic space, I tried to align them with the walls as Hugo had advised, irrationally aware of the single glass eye watching me from the darkness behind my head. Then I scrambled down the ladder and shoved the trapdoor closed, returning the spooky doll to the full darkness of its tomb and returning myself to the creepy house where such things were kept in the attic.

  I was beginning to have some serious doubts about the Andersens.

  I knew the doll and dressing table in the attic were most likely just the old toys of a kid who’d once lived here, but still, I had a bad case of the heebie-jeebies. It was getting increasingly difficult to distinguish between what was real, what was crazy-but-maybe-real, and what was just plain crazy.

  What had happened at lunch with Jess was a case in point. I’d told her I’d just guessed she was pregnant, and my justifying explanations made sense. The only problem was, they weren’t true. Because I hadn’t guessed, I’d known. Just like I knew her fetus was female. And how could I know something without knowing how I knew it?