Generous Death

by Nancy Pickard

  “So did you learn anything?” I asked Geof, and nodded my head at his magazine. “From the article?”

  “What article?” he said and smiled. He ran a hand along his chin and the side of his face. “I need a shave.”

  “Yes,” I said sweetly, “I’d appreciate that.”

  He had to turn away quickly so Simon couldn’t read the amused and intimate message in his eyes.

  Chapter 18

  The snow was decoratively banked up to the bottom of the stained glass windows of the chapel, so the little church on the hill above the ocean looked like a New England picture postcard. Its steeple pointed out the right direction to heaven-bound Episcopalians. Its back yard was a rocky cliff which descended steeply and picturesquely to the de rigueur pounding waves below.

  Minnie viewed with favor the Chamber-of-Commerce, tourist-approved quaint scene. But it was the immaculately cleared sidewalks and steps that were, to her elderly perspective, far more beautiful. She preferred her traction under foot rather than in a hospital bed. As she walked safely up to the double doors, she offered a silent prayer of gratitude—not so much to God as to James Turner for his conscientious labor on the snow plow.

  The doors pushed open easily to her gloved hands. My heavens, it was cold inside, much too chilly to remove her mink coat or lavender knit hat. Then she remembered it was, of course, Tuesday, the one day of the week when no activities were scheduled in the church and the thermostat was turned down to save a few pennies on fuel.

  She and James would have the place to themselves. Good. Fewer interruptions meant greater efficiency.

  It was so still inside the chapel that she could hear the snow shift on the roof, She peered up into the darkness at the suspect ceiling, listening for creaks and looking for cracks. Well, she didn’t hear or see any signs of impending disaster, but James would show her. And then she’d show that well-meaning young whippersnapper of a priest.

  She’d get some action, she would, or her name wasn’t…

  “Mrs. Mimbs.”

  Her old heart jumped violently as the figure walked out of the shadows at the front of the chapel. She laughed a little in surprise and relief when she saw who it was.

  “Glory! You startled me,” she said and sank into the hard seat of a walnut pew. “I didn’t expect anyone but James Turner.”

  “I’m waiting for him, too.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake. I can’t imagine why James would bother you about our roof. I must say, it’s nice of you to come over in this weather, at this time of night.”

  “No bother. But it’s freezing in here, don’t you think? I’ve brought a thermos of coffee—here, I’ll pour some for you.”

  “I never drink coffee after six P.M.,” she said regretfully. “Oh, he careful, you’ve spilled some! You didn’t burn yourself?”

  “No. Just got a little on the floor, I’m afraid. Actually, it’s decaffeinated, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

  “Oh, well in that case, I don’t mind if I do.” She reached out grateful hands for the steaming plastic cup. “If it’s decaffeinated, I don’t think I’ll have any trouble sleeping tonight, do you?”

  “No, you’ll sleep just fine.”

  Minnie sipped. Goodness, the coffee tasted awfully sweet, but the warmth was wonderful. Where was that James Turner?

  “You make wonderful coffee.”

  I looked over at Geof who was seated on a stool at the counter of my mother’s kitchen. He smiled at me over the rim of his steaming mug.

  “And you look like a commercial for Maxwell House,” I laughed. “I feel as if I ought to know if you take cream or sugar, but I don’t. Do you?”

  “No.” He set the mug down and reached for the telephone. “I should have called Mrs. Mimbs from New York, or at least from the airport. For some reason, I can’t seem to keep my mind on my job.”

  “Do you know, I’ve been assuming you aren’t married,” I said in what was mot entirely a nonsequitur. “You don’t act married; you never mention a wife or girl friend. So?”

  “Divorced,” he said. “Twice.”

  “Oh.” That gave me pause and he could see it. Well, I wasn’t going to marry him after all, so what was I worried about?

  “Better you should know,” he said, some of the light edge gone from his voice. “And better now than later.”

  “Yes.” So he was counting on a later, was he? I said.

  “Thanks for being honest,” and meant it. I told him I had never married.

  “I know,” he said gently. “It would be hard to bring someone into your family, wouldn’t it?”

  His quick perception unnerved me. Here was a man who was capable of surprising and maybe even understanding me. Watch out, I warned myself, watch out.

  “Your phone call,” I reminded him.

  While he dialed Minnie’s house, I ambled into the den and switched on the answering machine to find out who’d called while I was gone.

  Michael. Four times.

  “Hi, Swede,” he said the first time. “This is the bad loser calling. I want to apologize for last night. I’m sorry. Love, Michael.”

  “Me again,” he said the second time. “Will you be home tonight? I’d like to see you, okay? Maybe I’ll just drop by when I leave the office. More love, Michael.”

  “Surprise,” said the third message. There was laughter in his voice. “I just called to tell you I’m crazy about you and I’m tired of being your friend. What this world needs is fewer friends and more lovers, that’s what I say. And what do you say to that, my pretty?”

  By the last call, he’d switched from teasing back to glum. “Dear Ann Landers,” he said, “My father is taking over my business and running it and me into the ground. I have an opportunity to chuck everything and run away to fame and fortune in Colorado. Only my best girl won’t go. What should I do? Signed, Morose.”

  Dear Morose, I thought, your best girl doesn’t love you in the way you want her to. Pack up and leave the ungrateful wench before she breaks your noble heart.

  I curled up in the green leather chair and wondered why two people so rarely fall in love with each other with the same intensity, in the same way, at the same time.

  “Jennifer.” Geof appeared at the doorway, filling the frame of it. He looked pale and urgent. “Jennifer, get your car keys and come with me. Now.”

  As we threw on our coats and hats and scarves and ran to my car, he told me why we were rushing. He slid into the passenger’s side, I slid into the driver’s side. And then three things happened at once.

  I turned the key in the ignition to find my car would not start.

  He found the poem propped up on my dashboard.

  Michael pulled up behind us in the driveway.

  Chapter 19

  It was like Friday night at the theater, only this time there were three of us in the Jaguar and the flock of police cars was congregated at the church. As soon as Geof had learned that Minnie had been summoned to the chapel, he had phoned police headquarters to request assistance, pronto.

  I introduced Geof and Michael on the way over, it was obvious from the expressions on their faces that the introduction raised more questions than it answered for them. Hunched in the vestigial back seat of the Jag, I felt tense and frightened; I wondered what had happened to the firm control I’d had over my life only a week ago. The rhyme still lay on the dashboard; there hadn’t been time to read it. The thought of it there did not settle my nerves.

  “I don’t know what we’re doing,” Michael said when we commandeered him and his car, “but when a cop gives me permission to speed, I’m not going to miss my chance.”

  He took full advantage of that opportunity, skidding around icy corners and sliding past slower cars as if someone’s life depended on it. As, of course, it might.

  “Stay here, both of you.” Geof unfolded himself from the sports car. Then he was gone, racing up the front walk to the church before we could protest.

  “I’m
getting out,” I said, and did.

  “So am I,” Michael said. “What the hell’s going on?”

  We hustled up the walk and I told him as much as I thought I should. Geof saw us approach and threw us an irritated look, We heard a uniformed policeman say, “We found a back door open, but there’s nobody inside. No body, either.”

  “Positive?” Geof looked as if he didn’t believe it.

  “Yeah. This church is so small, it only took us a minute to search it.”

  I should have felt relieved. Instead, tension continued to build inside me until I thought I’d burst with the gassy uncomfortableness of it. Geof’s next question didn’t help.

  “Jennifer,” he said sharply, all business. “What is it in particular that Mrs. Mimbs loves about this church? Any special room or activity?”

  “I don’t know …” I tried fiercely to recall things she had said in the past about her affection for the place.

  “Think, Jenny!” Michael’s eyebrows shot up at the peremptory, familiar tone in Geof’s voice.

  I stared at the house of God as if He might suddenly step out the front door and provide the answer. Failing that, perhaps the solution might appear on the bulletin board, that announced next Sunday’s sermon. Port Frederick ministers cannot resist seafaring metaphors of the Bible and evidently the young Episcopal priest was no exception. According to the bulletin board, next Sunday he would command his flock to be “Fishers of Men.”

  My eyes lingered on the announcement.

  “That’s it,” I said. “The sea. She loves this church because of its setting by the sea. She says she loves the sound of the waves on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff.”

  I don’t think Geof heard any more than my first four words. They were no sooner out of my mouth than he and the other policemen were gone, racing again, this time for the edge of the cliff.

  “But we already looked down there!” I heard a woman cop shout.

  “Look again!” was Geof’s reply.

  It took them ten minutes—in the dark, stumbling down to the rocks—to reach the bottom. And that’s where she was, terribly battered and bruised from her tumble down the rocks, and lying in the only soft patch of weeds and sand.

  She was alive.

  “But just barely,” a panting Geof told us after he’d climbed back up the cliff face. “Her breath is shallow and her pulse is about as weak as it can be without quitting altogether.”

  They put her in a body sling and used ropes and strong backs to push and pull her to the top. Paramedics took over from there. The last I saw of Minnie that night was a glimpse of her face—pale and slack—on a stretcher. She might not have been dead, but she looked it.

  “So what now?” Michael said. I was too stunned to speak.

  “You go home,” Geof said, “and I stay here for a long night.” His eyes told me he was sorry he wasn’t going to be spending it in another place, in another way. He turned to Michael and held out a hand.

  “Thanks for the ride. You couldn’t have come along at a better time.”

  “Glad to help.” Michael shook the hand. “Nice to meet you, Detective. When this thing’s over, maybe Jenny and I can take you and your wife to dinner some night.”

  “I’m not married.”

  “Well, your lady friend, then.” Michael’s expression was all innocence. He smiled a little too charmingly, placed a possessive hand under my elbow and began to steer me back toward his car.

  I, angry at his presumption, shook off his hand and turned around to look at Geof.

  “Call me,” I said, “if you want me.”

  The message could not have been more clear if I had posted it on the church bulletin board.

  “A cop, Jenny?” Michael slammed the door on the driver’s side and twisted his mouth in scorn. “Come on!”

  “You’re a snob, Michael.”

  “Oh? I thought I was a saint. Long-suffering, ever-loving Michael, the celibate saint.”

  “Your halo has slipped down around your ego.”

  “How long have you known him? Five days?”

  “About fifteen years.” I let him stew over that one and I didn’t explain. I felt mean and defensive.

  “I’ve never heard of him,” Michael said accusingly. “You’ve never mentioned him.”

  “Well, now you’ve heard of him.”

  “Is he why you won’t go to Colorado with me?”

  “Oh Christ, Michael! No! He is irrelevant to that issue. The fact that I won’t go with you has nothing to do with him or any man. It has to do with me. Just me!”

  “And the goddamn Foundation.”

  “And my life and my choices about it.”

  “And the fact that you don’t love me.”

  “Yes,” I said, but softly. I slumped back in the hard leather seat. “That, too.”

  We rode in silence until we reached my parents’ house.

  “Michael…” I turned toward him.

  “Jenny, sweet Jenny.” He reached over awkwardly to hug me and we clung together in the front seat that was never constructed for such activities. “Don’t cry, Jenny, don’t cry.”

  “I’m not crying, I’m sobbing.”

  When we finally looked at each other, there were tears on both faces. I said, “I’m sorry, Michael, I’m sorry for everything.”

  “I know. You can’t help it that you don’t love me.”

  “No.”

  “You need to wipe your nose.”

  “I was mean. I’m sorry.”

  “You were mean. It hurt.”

  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. Oh God, I’m starting to cry again. It’s not just you, Michael, or us. It’s everything—Moshe, Minnie …”

  “I know. Everything stinks.”

  “It’s horrible, and we’ve been so petty—having a stupid fight when the world is falling apart.”

  “I don’t care about the rest of the world. I love you.”

  “I know. Good night, Michael.”

  I didn’t kiss him goodbye.

  It was only after he drove off and I turned to face my parents’ dark house that I realized how very much I didn’t want to be alone. I wished Michael had thought to wait to see me safely inside the house.

  But first, before I could unlock the front door and turn on the comfort and security of lots of lights, I had to get that poem out of my car.

  Chapter 20

  I slogged through the snow to the car and opened the door with cold, fumbling fingers. I felt like a child who’s afraid of a bogeyman under the bed. I checked the back seat—no one was hiding there—and jerked my head around every few seconds to reassure myself that I was truly alone.

  I had a feeling there was no need to worry about fingerprints on the note, but if there were any, my gloves would protect them. I carried the note, unread, up to the front door.

  Inside, the phone was ringing.

  The keys that always slid so smoothly into the locks, didn’t for several, frustrating moments. The door which never creaked, did. The hall light switch which was always at my fingertip, wasn’t. Every familiar, comforting thing seemed to have moved—perversely, ifuriatingly, frighteningly—an agonizing quarter inch out of my reach.

  I didn’t close and lock the door—my route of escape—until I had raced around the first floor and turned on every light in sight. I even locked the basement door in the kitchen. Then I answered the phone which was still determinedly ringing.

  “Hello?” What if it was an anonymous caller to match the anonymous note? My voice sounded breathless and high pitched.

  “What’s wrong, Jenny? Are you all right?”

  “Geof.” I sank onto the stool beside the phone. “I’m fine, yes, I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  He laughed, but only a little and that little had a tense sound to it.

  “Who are you trying to convince?” he said. “Did you just get in?”

  “Yes. I did. Yes.”

  I laughed, too, a shade hysterically.

  “
Oh Geof, this is crazy. Do you know, I’m just scared to death? When Michael dropped me off, I got spooked. I feel like a kid who’s afraid of ghosts.”

  “He should have gone in the house with you.” I heard anger.

  “Don’t be mad at him,” I said. “He was distracted.”

  Silence at the other end of the phone.

  “We had an argument,” I said quickly. “I guess that’s none of my business,” he said carefully.

  “I think it is. I’ll tell you about it sometime.”

  “Thank you,” he said simply. The stiff, hard edge of his voice softened and relaxed. He said, “You don’t have much to thank me for though. Hell of a cop I am, letting you go home alone. I’m sending somebody over to take you someplace else for the night.”

  “Okay.” I was just scared enough to be meek. “Okay?” His laugh was deeper, and unbelieving.

  “Did you say okay? Just like that? No argument?”

  “Where should I go?”

  “You have a sister, right?”

  “Not there.”

  “A good friend?”

  “They’d ask too many questions,” I said. “How about your house?”

  “Now that would sure as hell raise questions,” he laughed. I waited for him to consider it. “But if you don’t mind what it does to your reputation, I certainly don’t mind what it does to mine.”

  “Tell them I slept on the couch,” I suggested.

  “I’m not a good liar,” he said softly. “Uh, Jenny? Give the rhyme to the officer, please, when he comes to pick you up.”

  “It’s out of sync, isn’t it?” I said. “I mean it doesn’t fit the previous pattern of leaving a note with the body. What do you think it means?”

  “Uh,” he said and hesitated. “Jenny, maybe it’s not the rhyme that’s out of sync.”

  “What do you…” I said, and then when his meaning came through to me, “Oh God, you mean maybe there was supposed to be a body to go with the verse, don’t you? Maybe I’m supposed to be dead.”

  “Well, you’re not,” he pointed out. “But do not eat or drink anything until you get to my place, got that?”