by Molly Macrae
I lugged my suitcase up the steep, narrow stairs to the half story where the bedroom and bathroom were squeezed under the eaves. I made up the bed with Ruth’s linens, spreading Granny’s coverlet on top. Then I wrinkled my nose and opened the windows at the gable ends to let the breeze slip in and out, taking the stale, closed-up air with it.
It was so tempting to fall into bed then and there. Granny’s coverlet called to me the way her lap had to any cat within earshot. I didn’t, though. I stroked the coverlet one more time, went back downstairs, and took her letter from my purse. Find some time when you can be alone this evening, it said on the envelope. Fix yourself a cup of cocoa. I was alone, true, but the cupboards were bare. Luckily, the Quickie Mart was just an evening stroll away. I tucked the letter in my purse once again and plucked a sprig of lavender on my way out the front door.
The Homeplace encompassed several dozen acres of fields and forest on the western edge of Blue Plum. Although housing tracts and roads surrounded the site, the woods bordering the property let me pretend I was alone in the mountains. I stretched my arms, breathing in the deep green scent of moss and pines, felt their peace seep into me. A mockingbird sang from the top of a tall tree and another answered.
The air inside the Quickie Mart was permeated with old doughnut grease and steamed hot dogs, but the store surprised me by carrying more than mundane instant cocoa. I picked up a quart of milk and opted for a packet of Dark Chocolate Amaretto Amoré from the pseudo-gourmet selection. I remembered Granny’s recommendation for adding a nip to the cocoa, but after the surreal day I’d had, imitation amaretto was probably all the nip I needed.
Speaking of nip, the sun had disappeared faster than I’d expected, taking light and warmth with it. I shivered on the half mile walk back to the cottage, picking up the pace, eager to be inside with my hands around a steaming mug. If I’d remembered how quickly night came in the mountains, I might have worn a jacket or left a light on.
Or maybe I had left one on. Stress of the day, no doubt, forgetting to douse the kitchen light after I’d explored my new digs. Its glow spilled from the window, welcoming me, looking safe and homey. Glad to see I’d at least remembered to lock the front door, I let myself in and tried to find the wall switch for the light in the parlor. I couldn’t find it, gave up, started for the kitchen, and heard a noise. I froze.
Silence.
I was imagining things. Stress of the day. Old house, odd sounds.
And yet…
I took another step and the board under my foot creaked. Immediately there was a corresponding creak in the kitchen followed by a sound softer than a thump, a thump that almost wasn’t there. A door pulled carefully to?
There were three doors in the kitchen of the quaint, now slightly creepy, cottage—the interior doorway I was approaching, which was only a frame and lacked an actual door, an exterior door leading to the side yard, which I hadn’t opened or unlocked as yet, and the cattywampus pantry door with its hook and eye. I dared another few steps and peeked around the corner to the left and then the right. Side door closed, chain slotted. Pantry door closed, hook not in eye. That was not possible. According to my experiments, without the hook in the eye, the door would have swung open and banged into the counter and cupboard.
Another slow creak. Definitely from the pantry. Could someone be inside, holding the door shut? By now I was sure I heard someone in there holding his breath.
Leave immediately and call 911; I knew that was what I should do. But the person in the pantry already knew I was there, and running out into a dark, unfamiliar yard, not knowing who else might be waiting out there, was nuts. What I did do was probably equally nuts.
I gauged the distance from my current position to the pantry. Quietly, quickly, I put the milk, cocoa, and my purse on the floor. Took my phone out of my purse. Took three deep breaths. Pressed 9-1-1, and rocketed across the kitchen to latch the pantry door.
“Hah!”
“Hey!” came the startled cry from inside the pantry.
“Save it, bud,” I shouted, and shoved the kitchen table against the door for insurance. Then I realized I’d dropped the phone. Oops. I scrambled after it. It had skittered into the corner and was still alive, but it was also still searching for a signal. Stupid thing.
Pantry Guy threw himself at the door.
“Don’t you dare!” I shouted. “I’ve got a gun!” I don’t lie well, but he gave me the benefit of it.
“Hey, hey, hey, now. There’s no need for that. No need for guns. Let’s be reasonable. Look, I’ll even tell you my name. How about I do that, okay? I’m Joe. You can call me Joe.” He had a nice voice, but he also sounded like a good bet for The World’s Dumbest Criminals. “Now, I don’t know who you are,” he continued, slow and friendly, “or what you’re doing here.”
“I’ll tell you who I am,” I interrupted. “I’m the one standing out here who just got through to 911.”
“Shit.”
Help arrived at my door in the guise of Deputy Cole Dunbar. I felt like echoing Pantry Guy’s expletive.
“Ms. Rutledge, isn’t it?” Dunbar greeted me. “Well, now, ma’am, I don’t know what you’re doing here.” Oddly enough, he was parroting Pantry Guy, too. “According to the dispatcher, you’ve reported an intruder?”
Funny how easily he made me feel like I was the one intruding. I attempted to explain the situation without sounding defensive and as subjectively as I could. I might have gloated some, though, when I told him that Pantry Guy had identified himself as “Joe.” I knew a useful clue when I heard one. Dunbar’s starched face hadn’t relaxed any since our traffic-stop introduction, but with a minor shift near the left side of his mouth and a tightening around the eyes he managed to convey that he was more annoyed than impressed with that piece of information.
“And you say you have him locked in the pantry?” He eyed the pantry door and my kitchen table barricade and said “Mm-hmm,” which I interpreted as mumble code for “Pfft! Women.”
He moved the table aside and unhooked the door. I stood behind the table, ready to run if things got rough. The door swung open and…nothing. The pantry was empty. In the wall opposite the door an open window let in the cool night air.
“Mm-hmm.”
I thanked Dunbar for coming out, feeling as though I should also apologize for not memorizing window placements in my new abode. I didn’t apologize, though. His “mm-hmms” didn’t deserve it.
“So, um, do I need to do anything to follow up?” I asked. “Sign a statement or something? I probably ought to call Ruth Wood, anyway, and let her know.”
“I wouldn’t bother,” Dunbar said.
“What? Why not?”
He rocked on his heels and considered that, then came to an irritating conclusion.
“Well, nothing much happened, did it? A guy got in, but nothing’s broken or missing. You weren’t assaulted.” He stopped rocking and looked at me. “You weren’t assaulted, were you?”
“No.”
“And can you describe ‘Joe’?”
“No.”
He shrugged.
“Are you saying I made this up? That I invented Joe?”
“No, I’m not. I’m just saying, I looked around the rest of the farm before coming over here and I didn’t see anything unusual. But I think you should make sure your doors and windows are securely locked after I leave.”
“I will. Wait a second. You checked the rest of the site before you came here?”
“Well, you did tell the dispatcher that you had the intruder secured in the pantry, Ms. Rutledge.”
“Yeah, I did. I was doing your job for you. Locking up the bad guy.”
“And look how well that worked out.”
I stared at Deputy Officer Clod Dunbar. This was my second less-than-satisfactory police experience with him. In one day. One very stressful day. He owed me. I breathed in, out, in, centered myself as I imagined someone who meditates might. I put on my professional demeanor.
>
“Deputy Dunbar, can you explain to me your remark of earlier today? The remark I refer to is the one in which you said my grandmother’s death was convenient for her. ‘As in good timing,’ I believe you added. Would you care to elaborate on that incredibly insensitive statement?”
“Oh, well, please excuse me, then, Ms. Rutledge.” The starch melted into raised eyebrows and a sarcastic smile and he held a hand out as though presenting the kitchen, the cottage, to me as proof of something.
“What?”
“I mean, excuse me for offending your sensitive nature.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
For answer, he walked into the other room and jabbed his thumb toward the stairs. “I’m just saying.”
“You’re just saying what?”
“I’m saying it takes a certain lack of a sensitive nature, and some kind of nerve, to sleep in the bed where a man was found murdered.”
Chapter 4
“Mur-mur-mur-mur—” I snapped my mouth shut to keep the rest of my shock contained.
“Yeah,” Dunbar said, “you heard me right.” He overenunciated the next word in case I was still having trouble with the concept. “Murdered. Old Em was murdered up there in his bed.” He jabbed his index finger toward the ceiling, then stared at me.
Never having looked at myself in a mirror immediately after hearing I was in a murdered man’s house and planning to sleep in his deathbed, I could only guess at the expression he saw on my face.
“You don’t have the slightest idea what I’m talking about, do you?” he said. “Well, hell.” He took off his Smokey the Bear hat, ran his hand over the memory of hair, and continued spitting soft expletives, shaking his head as each one popped out. He looked and sounded genuinely upset, and I briefly thought he was commiserating with me over my own day and its slide downhill from rancid to rotten. But then he screwed his mouth sideways so that he looked like a dyspeptic Elvis, except without the hair, and I realized he wasn’t feeling sorry, he was being pissy.
He stalked over to a recliner in the corner of the room and dumped himself in it, dislodging a poof of air and one last guttural curse from the back of his throat before muttering “I am so freakin’ tired” and subsiding. His eyelids slid to half-mast.
To give him his due, he did look exhausted, as though the knife pleats in his uniform had been the only thing keeping him upright. Maybe he’d been up since way before dawn saving the world from speedy women. But I’d been up just as long and was way over my quota of lousy for any single day and he’d just taken the only comfortable-looking chair in the room. Sure, there was a halfway decent–looking sofa and I could dump myself just as dramatically as he did, but it was the principle of the thing. Instead I waited for him to fill me in on this latest jarring turn of events. He gave me one last squint and closed his eyes.
“Deputy Dunbar?” I tried to sound respectful, empathetic even.
Nothing.
“Deputy Dunbar, would you please tell me what’s going on?”
Nothing.
“Some elaboration? An explanation, please?”
Silence.
“Hey, Dunbar, do you have a badge number I can report?”
If at that point he’d started snoring, I would have kicked him in the shin. But either my words or something in my tone got him back on his feet, even if I pretty obviously hadn’t endeared myself to him any further. I drew myself up as tall as five-three in low-heeled boots allows and planted myself in front of him.
“Deputy, you are right. I don’t have the slightest idea what you’re talking about. So fill me in. It’s been a long, trying, emotional day, and now I want answers so I can decide what to do.” Granny would have tut-tutted because I didn’t say “please” that time, but by then I didn’t care.
“Well, it’s like this, little Miss Kath—”
“Oh, no, no, no. Wait. It’s not like that at all, Deputy Dunbar. I am not “little Miss” anything.” I gave him a look I’ve used with good effect on junior curators who mishandle fragile textiles.
Dunbar only rolled his eyes. “Beg pardon, Ms. Rutledge. The facts are these. Emmett Cobb, caretaker here at the Holston Homeplace Living History Farm and resident of this house, was found dead two weeks ago. Upstairs. In his bed. Poisoned.”
I suddenly felt like coughing, maybe even gagging as I imagined toxic, noxious vapors swirling in eddies around us. “Wow. Okay, that’s awful.” I cleared my throat, swallowed. “Um, what kind of poison was it?”
“I forget the name. It was in something he drank, though. Not a real quick exit.”
“That’s horrible.”
“Yeah, very messy. High retch factor involved, if you know what I mean. Can’t imagine anybody wanting to sleep up there after what I saw.”
We looked at each other, noses wrinkled, then tilted our heads back and looked at the ceiling, he now frowning and grim, me trying not to picture what he’d seen up there. Out of the corner of my eye I saw a shiver run through him. For an absurd second I was tempted to reach around his back and tap his shoulder and yell “Boo.” But that was a gun in his holster.
“But you caught the, the…”
“Bad guy? No, we did not. Bad guy, one. Cops, zip. Old Em, zipped up and six feet under.” He grinned nastily at my reaction to his scorecard.
And, me being me, I reacted again. “Deputy Dunbar, what do you call it when a policeman talks to a civilian? Is there a term for that?”
“Huh?”
“You know, with a doctor it’s called bedside manner. Is there an equivalent term for cops talking to regular people? Roadside manner, maybe? Or how about badgeside manner?”
“I don’t get it. What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about whatever it is you don’t have. Whatever it’s called, you need to sign up for a refresher course in it, maybe see if you can get some kind of continuing education credit for brushing up. I’ve only met you twice and the first time we probably didn’t even exchange a hundred words. Yet each time we’ve met, you’ve managed to be insensitive, sneering, and downright rude. Why? Is this how you always are? Or is it a problem you have with women? Or is it just a problem you have with me? And if that’s the case, then what is that problem? You don’t even know me. You know what? I’m like you; I don’t get it.” My voice might have risen a tad toward shrill.
Deputy Clod clapped his hat back on his head. “I’ll tell you a story, Ms. Rutledge. A couple of weeks ago, I sat out there in the kitchen with Emmett Cobb. We played a little friendly poker. I had a beer and Em had his usual glass of sweet tea because he wasn’t much of a drinker. In fact, Em wasn’t much of anything but an old guy. And then, next thing I know, not two days later, Em winds up dead. Dead in a way I wouldn’t wish on a dog or that dog’s worst enemy. And now here you are moving into Em’s house. Well, excuse me if I’m a little worked up. You asked if we’ve caught the murderer. You asked if I knew your grandmother. You can draw whatever lines or conclusions you like between those two statements. I’ll be happy to wait while you do that, and in the meantime I’ll call a motel for you.”
The phrase “well, shut my mouth” shot through my mind, ricocheting back and forth along that line he expected me to draw. But why was he being so coy about it?
“This line you want me to draw, Deputy, is it the official line?” I demanded. I’ve always thought “shut my mouth” was a silly phrase, anyway. “You think my grandmother poisoned that old guy, don’t you? But is she anyone else’s suspect, or is she just your suspect? You decided that sweet, innocent old lady, who never had an evil thought in her life, who only ever charmed and helped everyone she ever met, you decided she was guilty. And I’ll bet you badgered her, too, didn’t you? What possible reason would she have to kill that man? If I find out you were giving my eighty-year-old grandmother the third degree and caused her blood pressure to spike so she had a heart attack—”
A curious change came over Deputy Clod while I waxed hysterical. A line
of sweat beads broke out on his forehead. He wiped away several of them as they slid down his nose. His feet shifted, as though they itched to be somewhere else, and his eyes, though they kept returning to my face, spent more time darting glances into the corners of the room.
“It’s entirely possible you’re right, Ms. Rutledge,” he said, managing to sound stiff as a prig and uneasy as a long-tailed cat at the same time, “and I do apologize. But if you’ll gather your belongings now, I’ll be happy to call that motel for you and we can both get out of here.” He pulled a handkerchief from a back pocket and wiped sweat from his eyes.
I couldn’t help staring at him. He must have sensed my lack of hop-to-it from behind the mopping handkerchief, though, because he made hurry-up motions at me with his other hand. And that got all over my perversity buttons.
“There’s no need to call a motel.” I walked over to the recliner and sat down, crossing my legs and casually swinging my foot. The chair was every bit as comfortable as it looked. I fit right into Em’s accustomed hollow. The whole room was warm and homey from that perspective.
“You can’t think you’re going to stay here,” he said.
“Because of the retch factor?”
“Hell, yes, that and—”
“And nothing. Deputy Dunbar, the director of this site invited me to stay as long as I need to. Indeed, as long as I like. And frankly, I wouldn’t leave now if the place was haunted.”
Chapter 5
The first thing I did after Oafficer Dunbar left was call Ruth Wood to let her know about the intruder and to ask why she hadn’t mentioned the reason this charming cottage was available for unaware out-of-town guests. I was relieved, though, when her voice mail kicked in. Ruth had done me a favor, albeit a tainted one, and I didn’t want to risk derailing again and end up yelling at her. My rant at Clod Dunbar to the contrary, confrontations weren’t ordinarily my thing. It was time for me and my rancid, rotten day to wind down. I disconnected without leaving a message.