by Jen Carter
Livy looked extremely uncomfortable when the girls were explaining to their moms what had happened. After all, the girls had sought Livy—not their mothers. But neither Athena nor Jada seemed upset with Livy. There were more-pressing issues to be upset about.
As surreal as the whole night was, I did latch onto one fact: the person behind the wall was in fact the drama teacher, Marcus Fleming, and he had not been dead long.
It was after one o’clock when Nico and I finally got home and fell into bed. When my alarm went off at five forty-five, I couldn’t believe the night had already slipped away. In my morning stupor, only one thing was clear. I wasn’t going running with my friends as we would have done under normal circumstances. I turned off my alarm, tapped out an apology text to my running partners, Livy and Jules, and fell back asleep.
I didn’t hear Nico get up, shower, let Uni out, or leave for work. Just after seven, I did hear Uni wrestling with a squeaky toy just outside the bedroom door. Those squeaky toys are much louder and more obnoxious at home than they are on the store shelves. I tried to sleep through the high-pitched squawking but was unsuccessful.
I rolled out of bed and found Uni doing exactly what I expected: playing a game of Pounce-on-Mister-Raccoon. I greeted her with a scratch on the head, and she pranced after me toward the kitchen. I loved having a puppy, but having one was a lot more work than I remembered. As I made myself a cup of coffee, I thought about Harley, my family’s dog when I was in elementary school. I didn’t have any memories of house breaking or behavior training. And yet Harley was a great dog, so my parents must have done something. Sure, my parents didn’t try to teach Harley how to be a soccer goalie as Nico was doing with Uni, but how did Harley learn to sit on command? I couldn’t remember even that.
It had been nearly seven years since my parents died in a boating accident, and I still had the urge to pick up the phone and call them with questions about my childhood from time to time. I sat at the kitchen table and sipped my coffee, waiting for the wave of sadness to pass.
Maybe my grandfather Aldo would remember what it was like training Harley. We spent nearly every weekend with him in Otto Viti—and I did remember Harley having free reign over the vineyard. He loved being at Aldo’s side, just like I loved it.
“Ready to get started today?” I asked Uni, bending down and rubbing her back. “I’ll just take a shower and then we’ll head over to OV where all your favorite people are.”
Uni looked at me like I was her idol, her tail wagging furiously. I stood and headed toward the back of the house with Uni right at my heels.
One day I wanted kids, but no time soon. Babies were cute, but they cried. And by the time they stopped crying about everything, they developed opinions. I wasn’t ready for that. But a dog who followed me around like I ruled the world was perfect right about now.
***
Just behind Otto Viti was my grandfather’s vineyard—a long, sweeping hillside covered with beautiful vines. And just beyond the vineyard at the top of the hill was Aldo’s house. As I pulled into Aldo’s driveway, my phone buzzed. Without looking at it, I was almost certain the text message was from either Livy or Nico. Normally Nico would be the safe bet before eight o’clock in the morning, but given the circumstances of last night, Livy was a pretty good possibility this time, too. I turned off the car and checked the text message. It was from Livy.
Everyone in OV seems to know what happened last night. When will you be here today? Maybe we should meet at the coffee shop with the friends to dispel rumors.
I opened the car door and stepped out. After letting Uni out of the back, I typed a response.
I just got to Aldo’s. I’ll wake up Holly and meet you down at the coffee shop in twenty.
Uni and I walked up the driveway. As I unlocked the front door, my phone buzzed again.
Holly’s already here, Livy responded. Just come on down. We’ll grab the others.
Holly was already down there? I read the message twice. My youngest sister had lived with Aldo since our parents died, and she was a champion sleeper. She-who-could-sleep-fifteen-hours-a-day was up already? Huh. I responded to Livy with a thumbs-up emoji and walked into the house. Uni made a beeline for her favorite room: the playroom. When my older sister Stella had her sons, Aldo converted the brightest and airiest room into a playroom for them, and that room was quickly becoming Uni’s playroom as well. She loved those little boys, but she also loved their superhero toys and building blocks.
“Hello?” I called. “Anyone home?”
I knew Holly was already gone, but there was a slight chance Aldo could be around. When no one answered, I figured he was probably having coffee or playing chess with his buddies.
My original plan for the morning had been to park at Aldo’s and then walk down with Uni to Entonces where Nico worked. But now that plan was out the window.
Walking into the family room, I called, “Uni, kennel.” A couple moments later, Uni emerged from the back of the house, pranced into the puppy kennel next to the couch, and lay down. I covered it with a blanket. “Good girl,” I said. “I’ll be back in just a bit.” I always felt a little badly about putting her in the kennel, but she seemed to like it in there. She never fought it. Plus, I definitely wasn’t letting her roam free in Aldo’s house where her puppy curiosity could make trouble.
Back outside, I trotted down the driveway toward the path carved through the vineyard. Now that we were officially in spring, bud break was beginning on the grapevines. I loved that, and normally I’d stop to check it out. I loved watching the buds, the shoots, the leaves, the grapes. And before we knew it, harvest would be here again. But this morning, as I strode through the vineyard, thoughts of grapevines and winemaking were periphery and fleeting. What happened last night was taking most of my brainpower.
At the bottom of the vineyard path, I made the executive decision to walk behind the OV buildings toward Amy’s coffee shop. Occasionally OV visitors who had imbibed a wee bit too much found their way behind the buildings, but aside from that, normally the area was deserted—and that pretty much guaranteed none of OV’s nosy shopkeepers would stop me and ask what happened last night. I did, after all, want to get right to Amy’s.
Inside the coffee shop, I spotted my sisters and friends crowded around a high-top table in the back corner. I had expected to see Holly and Livy after reading Livy’s texts. And of course I expected Amy since we were in her shop. But I wasn’t sure exactly who else Livy meant when she had said we’ll grab the others. Now I knew that meant my older sister, Stella, and our resident baker, Jules. It also meant our resident drama queen, Elita. I wasn’t thrilled to see her. We didn’t need any of her drama. I was willing to bet that Livy didn’t ask Elita to come. She was probably already at the coffee shop when everyone showed up.
As I squeezed between Stella and Elita, Amy pushed a to-go coffee cup toward me.
“Thank you,” I said, grabbing it and taking a sip.
Thank goodness for Amy. That first cup of coffee at home hadn’t packed the punch I had hoped for, and I needed a second cup.
I looked around the table at everyone, my eyes finally landing on Livy. “So what have you told them?”
“Pretty much everything that I could remember,” Livy said. “We were going to wait for you, but—”
I waved off her explanation. Of course no one wanted to wait for me. I was even a little relieved that I didn’t have to be part of another rehashing. “So it’s just Q-and-A time, right?”
“How did the police know that the guy hadn’t been dead very long?” Holly asked. Her bushy hair was pulled into a sloppy bun on top of her head, which normally made her look playful and easygoing, but today she looked a little frazzled. Maybe even a little stressed. “He’s been missing for weeks now, hasn’t he?” she added.
I glanced at Livy, trying to recall what the first responders had said the night before and wondering if I’d get it right. “The body hadn’t had time to decompose,” I sai
d slowly. Livy nodded, confirming my memory. “So it could only have been a couple hours.”
“The girls kept saying that it didn’t really look like him,” Livy said. “At least from what they saw through the wall after they realized a brick was loose and they pushed it through. They said he was so skinny. But they knew it was him by the tasseled shoes he always wore.”
“So maybe he starved to death?” Amy asked.
I looked at Livy again, wondering what she’d say to Amy’s question. She shuddered. “That’s horrifying,” she said. “It’s all horrifying. The Old Everly Place itself is horrifying. So creepy.”
Creepy, yes.
Her words reminded me about the pictures I had taken in the underground cellar. I reached for my phone in my back pocket.
“I went there once in high school,” Jules said. “Lots of kids would go there to freak themselves out, but I don’t think any of them knew there was a cellar below.”
I scrolled through the pictures on my phone and glanced in Jules’ direction. “I think that’s why the girls and that Victor guy were there last night—they were scaring themselves.” I put the phone on the table and slid it toward the middle. “I took pictures of the passageway. They’re not great, but you can still get the idea.”
Elita grabbed the phone and held it out enough for Holly and Jules to see alongside her. All three of their faces were like stone as Elita scrolled through the pictures. I looked out the coffee shop’s front window, waiting for them to finish, and just happened to catch a glimpse of my grandfather and his buddies power walking by.
Power walking? That seemed strange, but my eyes weren’t deceiving me. All four of them were wearing old t-shirts, ill-fitting sweatpants, and sweatbands on their wrists. All four of them were pumping their arms with each step as though on a mission.
I pointed to the window and nudged Stella. “What’s that about?”
Her gazed turned from the girls viewing pictures on my phone to the window. Her eyebrows rose. “I don’t know,” she said. “Are they exercising now as part of their morning routine? Adding that to the coffee and the chess playing?”
Elita set my phone on the table and slid it toward Stella and Amy. “Very disturbing,” she said. Jules and Holly nodded in agreement.
As Amy and Stella scrolled through the pictures, Jules said, “Who was exercising just now?”
“The Council of Elders,” I said, using the nickname I gave to Aldo and his buddies: Eduardo, who happened to be Elita’s dad; Artie, who happened to be my landlord; and Morrie, who happened to be, well, just Morrie.
“Oh,” Jules said, nodding. “Eduardo’s doctor put him on a diet, and the others decided to go on the diet with him for moral support. They must have added exercise to their new health regime.”
Elita turned to Jules and made a face. “How do you know that?” she asked. “I didn’t know my dad’s doctor put him on a diet.”
Jules looked slightly uncomfortable and shrugged. Before she could defend her right to have heard OV gossip before it reached Elita’s ears, Amy looked up from the pictures and tapped her fingernails on the table—a sign she was thinking about something but hadn’t quite found the words to express herself. We all turned to her, probably knowing before she did that an idea was germinating.
“This is all very ‘The Cask of Amontillado’,” she finally said.
“The Edgar Allan Poe story?” I asked, my eyebrows furrowing. “The Cask of Amontillado” was pretty much required reading for all ninth graders in my school district, and though I wasn’t teaching English 9 this year, it was a story I’d never forget. On a creepiness scale of one to ten, it was a solid twelve.
“Yeah,” Amy said slowly, thoughtfully looking out the window. “Maybe I’m just thinking that because the story crossed my desk recently.” We waited for her to continue. After a long moment, she did—but not with a comment about the Edgar Allan Poe story. Eyes still on the window, she said, “Isn’t that woman out there the reporter we don’t like?”
All our heads shifted to the window. Sure enough, Lucy Argyle, a local reporter harboring a huge grudge against OV was right outside. And even worse, she was talking to the principal at my school in Carlsbad. Like me, Dr. Stevens lived in Temecula and commuted down to the Northern San Diego coast for work. But unlike me, he was rarely in OV—and that was how I liked it. I wasn’t a fan of his “test scores first” leadership philosophy, and it seemed like I couldn’t do anything right when he was around.
Why was he here now of all times? And why was he talking to Lucy Argyle?
I fought the impulse to hide under the table until my two least-favorite people in the world moved away from the coffee shop window. Luckily I didn’t have to fight the impulse long. A moment after Amy pointed them out, they finished their conversation, and Stevens continued on his way without looking inside the shop.
That was good.
But then came the bad.
Lucy walked into the coffee shop, an evil grin spreading across her pale face as she spotted us at the back table.
FIVE
“Ah, the clucking hens have assembled,” Lucy said as she approached us. Her blonde hair was pulled into a tight, low ponytail and tied with a little violet ribbon, which seemed strangely immature when contrasted with her white high heels and knee-length violet pencil skirt. “You all sharing the latest gossip, are you?” She smiled her million-dollar smile.
None of us responded. We just stared.
“Oh, I’m kidding,” she laughed, waving away her rude comments as though they hadn’t been the worst way to approach us. The smile on her face suddenly dropped, replaced by a look that might have seemed sympathetic on anyone else. She tilted her head and blinked pseudo-earnestly. “It is so tragic, isn’t it? What happened to poor Marcus Fleming? No one deserves what happened to him, do they?”
Without a word, Stella slid off her chair and made for the door. Jules and Livy were right behind her. I wanted to leave as well, but I also wanted to stay and hear Amy’s thoughts on the Edgar Allan Poe story. This was just another reason to hate Lucy. Not only did she write terrible articles about OV in the newspaper, but she also interrupted important conversations.
“I bet Amy needs to get back to work,” Holly said. She hopped off her chair and tugged on Elita’s arm. Then she turned her eyes to me. “Jill, you coming?”
I looked at Amy. “I really want to hear what you were about to say. I’ll call you later,” I said. I grabbed my coffee cup and followed my sister and Elita toward the front door.
“Oh, Jill?” Lucy called after me. “You know a man by the name of Dr. Stevens, don’t you? I was just talking to him outside. He gave me some information that you might want to know, since you are one of his teachers and all.”
I stopped and turned back to Lucy. Her evil grin had returned. Amy still stood near our table, a couple feet away from Lucy, shooting daggers with her eyes at the meddling reporter.
“Go ahead without me,” I said to Holly.
“Why?” Holly said. “That woman doesn’t have anything important to tell you. She’s just baiting you.”
Holly was probably right. But I was going to take the bait—on the off chance that she did have some information I needed to know about Dr. Stevens. He was always throwing me for a loop, and just once I wanted to be prepared.
“I’ll see you at the winery in a bit,” I said to Holly.
My sister gave me a you-are-a-complete-idiot look and then left with Elita.
I took three brisk strides back to the table and slammed my coffee cup down. Lucy sat in a chair, but I remained standing and crossed my arms.
“Need a refill?” Amy asked. Her eyes flicked to the coffee on the table.
“No, thanks,” I said. “But I still want to talk to you later about the point you were making.”
Amy nodded and walked away.
Lucy tilted her head and went with another one of her pseudo-earnest looks. “Did you know that Dr. Stevens knew Marcus Flemi
ng personally?”
The question felt like a trap. Maybe it was her condescending tone. “Dr. Stevens is a principal, and he lives in Temecula,” I said. “And Marcus Fleming was a teacher in Temecula. I’m not surprised that their paths crossed.”
“Oh?” Lucy broke into a smile. “Did you know that Dr. Stevens was Fleming’s boss at Temecula Hills and tried to get Fleming fired a couple years ago?”
Her sudden smile threw me off. Why was Dr. Stevens trying to fire Fleming something to smile about?
“I don’t have time to play games with you,” I said. “What are you implying? That Stevens hated Fleming and could have a motive to kill him?”
A tiny part of me wondered if she was implying that Stevens liked to fired teachers so I should watch out for my own job. After all, she kept me from walking out of the coffee shop door by saying she had information that I, one of Stevens’ teachers, might want to know. But it couldn’t have been that. Lucy was always after a headline, and a lowly English teacher getting fired wasn’t a headline. A vengeful principal killing an ex-employee was a headline.
Lucy feigned surprise, like what I just said was far more scandalous than anything she could have imagined. “Oh no, not at all—”
I cut her off. “Then get to the point.”
“I will. But first, I just wanted to express my condolences. I mean, what you went through last night must have been terrible.”
This felt like another trap. So I just nodded.
Lucy leaned toward me and dropped her voice. “You never really get used to it, do you? I mean, I’ve been reporting for years now, and I never get used to it. I have nightmares about what I’ve seen at crime scenes and what I’ve read in police reports. Do you ever have nightmares about what you’ve been through? First the drowning at your winery, then the fire at Chocolat, and now this. All of that would keep me up at night.”