Dead Giveaway

by Joanne Fluke

  One day over coffee in the teachers’ lounge, Rob had mentioned that he didn’t like to see women in slacks. Ellen had never worn them to school again. And when he’d said that his favorite color was aqua blue, she’d gone right out and bought an aqua-blue sweater even though she hated the color. She’d carried flowers to his mother when Mrs. Applegate had gone into the hospital for gallbladder surgery, the card signed by the whole staff so it wouldn’t look obvious. And she’d roused herself out of bed to drive to the Lutheran Church every Sunday because his brother was the minister. She’d even volunteered to teach a Sunday school class, although the last thing she wanted was to face more children on the weekends. Not that any of it mattered, now.

  On her long-anticipated date with Rob, they’d gone to see a movie at the only theater in Thief River Falls, a Saturday matinee. Ellen had thought it was rather good, a shoot-out between two rival gangs on the streets of New York, but Rob hadn’t liked it at all. On the drive to a steak house out on the highway, he’d complained about its gratuitous violence, another example of the movie industry’s lack of commitment to the younger generation.

  Despite the fact that Rob drove slowly, obeying every traffic law and speed limit sign, they’d arrived at the restaurant early. The hostess had seated them in the bar and asked if they wanted a drink. Ellen said a glass of white wine would be nice, but Rob had ordered plain 7UP. Then he’d warned her that it wouldn’t do for anyone in the community to see her drinking. She was a teacher, after all, and she should take her responsibility for molding young minds more seriously. She shouldn’t get the idea that he disapproved, but he only drank at home, where no prying eyes could see him.

  Though Ellen had kept her glass out of sight and there was no one else in the bar, Rob seemed to be terribly nervous. When the waitress had come to take them to their table, a lovely spot looking out over a snow-covered garden, Rob had insisted they move to a place in the center of the room. Windows could be drafty, he pointed out, and he didn’t want to take any chances of catching a cold and having to miss work. Even though he always left detailed lesson plans, a substitute couldn’t begin to teach his class as well as he could. They’d ordered a steak for her and chicken for him. Red meat was bad for the digestion and a man over thirty had to watch his cholesterol. No garlic bread either; he didn’t believe in strong spices. Decaffeinated coffee, of course, since it was past six.

  Ellen still wasn’t willing to give up on the only bachelor she knew. As they ate, she attempted to make conversation. Had he seen the special on public television about ancient Rome? Rob didn’t own a television set. He was firmly convinced that television had done more to corrupt the morals of the young than any other technological advance in their lifetime. Ellen scratched television off her list of possible topics and asked about his hobbies. There she struck pay dirt. It seemed Rob was an amateur photographer, specializing in local birds. Did she know that there were over seventeen varieties of finch in the three-mile area surrounding Thief River Falls? He’d recently acquired a very excellent telephoto lens, four hundred millimeters. And the first day he’d gone out with his motor-driven Nikon, he’d managed to capture the mating ritual of the North American crested grosbeak. He’d be delighted to show her his photographs after dinner.

  Accepting, Ellen had spent the rest of the meal wondering whether being invited to a man’s apartment to see his photos of North American crested grosbeaks was the same as being asked to view someone’s etchings. She hadn’t asked out loud. Rob had left a straight 15 percent tip and then they’d driven back to his apartment.

  That was when the trouble had started. He’d asked her to duck down in the seat three blocks before they’d reached his mother’s house. It didn’t look good for a bachelor to bring a woman home at night; people might talk. Ellen had complied, what else could she do? He’d driven into the garage, shut the door behind them, and whispered for her to be quiet so his mother wouldn’t find out she was there. And after they’d tiptoed up the stairs, he’d headed straight for the bottle of brandy hidden behind the sugar canister in his cupboard.

  She’d seen his pictures, all of them, and learned much more than she’d ever wanted to know about birds. By then he’d finished the bottle of brandy. For a man who didn’t drink in public, he certainly made up for it at home. The moment the bottle was empty, he’d grabbed her and kissed her. And then he’d passed out on the couch.

  Furious, Ellen had grabbed her coat and walked the ten blocks to her own apartment, practically freezing in the skirt she’d worn to please him. Rob Applegate was a terrible stick-in-the-mud and a hypocrite to boot. He’d even had the nerve to come up to her after church the next morning to ask whether she’d had a good time.

  As she headed down the hallway, Ellen caught sight of her reflection in the mirrored door of the multipurpose room. Wearing a new red pantsuit she’d ordered from the Penney’s extra-tall catalog, she thought she looked much better than usual. Skirts always hung awkwardly on her boyish hips, and if she tucked her blouses in, only a padded brassiere gave her any bustline at all. This pantsuit’s tunic masked her figure and her legs felt warm for the first time this winter.

  Heading on down the corridor, Ellen frowned at the grimy handprints on the walls. They could do with a good scrubbing or even better, a bright, cheerful paint job. Everything outside was black-and-white, glaring white sheets of snow dotted with the bare black skeletons of trees. Children needed color in their lives and the school was decorated in dirty beige and anemic green. Red and blue stripes would be nice, or even a bright cheerful yellow. Billy Zabinski might be less of a problem if school offered a nice bright environment.

  A bad draft whistled under the big glass doors that led to the playground, and Ellen shivered. The snow was blowing so hard she could barely see the pine trees at the far edge of the playground. If visibility grew severely limited, as predicted in the weather report, the buses might come early to take the children home. And if the wind kept on blowing through the night, they might just have a school closure in the morning. It would be nice to have a snow day, but in Minnesota the plows hit the roads the moment the snow started to fall and stayed out until it stopped. The whole system was very efficient. They’d had years to perfect it.

  Ellen sighed. Three and a half hours to go. Tomorrow would be more of the same, and next week, and next month. This was her fourth year at Garfield Elementary and it already seemed like a lifetime.

  Ellen loved the first two months of winter with its sparkling blanket of white snow. But when the mercury consistently dipped down below zero and every day tested her survival skills, she began to long for the spring that was still at least another four months away. By the end of January, she was sick to death of climbing into a parka and boots and heavy mittens just to empty the garbage, and of remembering to plug in the headbolt heater on her car every night so it would start in the morning.

  Her first October in Minnesota, Ellen had taken the advice of her coworkers and gathered all the necessary survival gear. In addition to the ice scraper and snow brush she carried next to her on the passenger seat, there was a twenty-pound sack of kitty litter in her trunk to add ballast so she wouldn’t get stuck in a snowdrift. There was also an empty three-pound coffee can containing a candle and a book of matches to provide life-sustaining heat and light in case her car broke down. And she’d put together a cache of candy bars and bottled water that lay frozen in a shopping bag in her trunk. An extra gallon of gasoline sloshed in its plastic container, along with a can of Instant Flat-Fix that probably wouldn’t even work in subzero temperatures. Ready for the long Minnesota winter, she hated every moment of it.

  Ellen stared out at the slide, a snow-covered hump that rose like a prehistoric beast out of a field of unbroken white, and wondered what would happen if she just pushed open the doors, ran across the playground, climbed into her car, and drove west to California or Nevada or Arizona, or anyplace warm and sunny and green.

  “There you are!” Alma Jac
obson ran down the hallway to intercept her, the sleeves on her gray sweater flapping. “Mr. Eicht’s looking all over for you. You’ve got a long-distance call in the office and he said it was an emergency.”

  “Long distance?” Ellen frowned. “Did he say from where?”

  “Las Vegas, Nevada. A Mr. Marc Davies. I’ll take care of your class if they finish lunch before you’re through.”

  “Thank you, Alma.” Ellen realized that Alma was shifting from foot to foot, barely concealing her curiosity. “Marc Davies is my Uncle Lyle’s partner.”

  “I hope there’s nothing wrong.” Alma looked genuinely concerned. “Take your time, Ellen. I’ll herd them all into the multipurpose room and we’ll sing “Froggie Went A’Courting.” That should be good for at least ten minutes.”

  Ellen’s heart was pounding as she hurried to the office. Why would Marc Davies call her? Uncle Lyle and Aunt Charlotte were her closest living relatives, but she hadn’t seen them since her mother’s funeral, ten years ago. Naturally, they exchanged Christmas cards and letters, but they’d never been close. She rounded the corner quickly and pushed open the office door. Mrs. Timmons, the school secretary, motioned her toward the principal’s office. “Use Mr. Eicht’s desk, Ellen. He said it’s all right. Your call’s on line two.”

  Ellen was surprised to find her hands were trembling as she picked up the receiver. They were trembling even more as she put it down, five minutes later. Mrs. Timmons took one look at her pale face when she emerged, and rushed her to a chair.

  “Just sit right here, Ellen.” Mrs. Timmons hurried off for a glass of water and watched anxiously as Ellen sipped. “Bad news, then?”

  Ellen nodded. “I just found out that my aunt and uncle are dead.”

  An angular woman in her mid-fifties who was not given to any overt signs of affection, Mrs. Timmons patted Ellen’s shoulder awkwardly. “Oh, dear! I’m so sorry, Ellen. Was it a car accident?”

  “No.” Ellen’s voice was shaking slightly. “They went to Mardi Gras for their anniversary and they were attacked in a hotel elevator. The police think it was a mugging that got out of hand.”

  “I don’t know what this world’s coming to!” Mrs. Timmons sighed deeply. “It’s gotten to the point where decent people can’t even step out of their houses without taking their lives in their hands. Ellen, dear . . . you still look white as a sheet. Shall I call Mrs. Percy to come in and sub? I know she’s home today.”

  Ellen was about to say that she could stick it out when she remembered that Mrs. Percy needed the work. A teacher’s pension wasn’t much to live on. “Good idea, Mrs. Timmons. Tell her my lesson plans are in the middle desk drawer, but she doesn’t have to follow them if she’d rather do something else. Alma took my class down to the multipurpose room to sing.”

  “That’s fine, dear. You just get your coat and run along. Alma can watch them until Mrs. Percy gets here.”

  In the teachers’ lounge Ellen slipped into her coat, put her shoes into a carrying bag, and pulled on her moon boots for the walk to the parking lot. When she got to the car, she’d have to take off her moon boots, too bulky to drive in, and put her shoes back on.

  The lounge was deserted. All the teachers were back in their classrooms and Ellen felt almost as if she were doing something illegal by leaving before the final bell had rung. She should be starting her reading class about now, printing new vocabulary words on the board for the Larks. Ellen had three reading groups, and despite their euphemistic names, everyone in her class knew that the Bluebirds were the fast group, the Robins were average, and the Larks were slow. She was thinking about Billy Zabinski as she let herself out the front door and walked to her car. Mrs. Percy wouldn’t have a speck of trouble with him. She was his grandmother.

  It was strange turning onto the highway at twelve-thirty on a weekday. Ellen inched out carefully to pass a Northern States Power truck and glanced in her rearview mirror to make sure there was plenty of room before she cut back into her own lane again. This would be a very bad time to have an auto accident. She was still a little dazed by the news.

  Exactly seven minutes later, Ellen pulled into the carport at the Elmwood Apartments and got out to plug her car into the socket on the post next to her parking place. Without her electrical engine heater, the oil would thicken and the water in her radiator would freeze in the subzero temperature. The first time Ellen had used it, she’d forgotten to pull the plug in the morning and had trailed the extension cord down the highway, to the amusement of everyone else on the road. By now the whole process was part of her daily winter ritual, but she still double-checked.

  Ellen trudged up the stairs to her second-floor apartment and unlocked the door. Her familiar apartment seemed suddenly strange to her, the wall hangings and furniture and plants she’d chosen so carefully now alien, as if she were viewing them through the eyes of a stranger. There was a name for that phenomenon, the opposite of déjà vu. She’d memorized it once for a psychology class, but she couldn’t remember it now.

  In an effort to clear her head, Ellen walked down the hallway to the guest room. She’d rented a two-bedroom apartment so she’d have a place to work on her dolls, and the room was filled with her life-size creations. The hobby had taken hold when she was still in high school, something to keep her occupied while the prettier girls were going out on dates.

  Her very first doll was propped up in a chair. She’d sewn nylon stockings together and stuffed them to make a doll big enough to wear one of her mother’s old dresses. It wasn’t a very professional job, but Ellen had kept it for sentimental reasons. Over the years, she’d made dolls out of any material she could find. One from an old patchwork quilt found in a thrift store reminded her of the illustration on the cover of her favorite children’s book, L. Frank Baum’s Patchwork Girl of Oz. Scattered all around her guest room were dolls made of velvet and silk and chintz. There was even one made of durable canvas that she’d propped up in the passenger seat as company on her long drive to Minnesota.

  Ellen reached out to straighten a hat on her very best doll. Designed in a college art class at the University of Virginia, its molded plastic arms and legs could be locked into any position, much like department store mannequins. Its features were perfectly neutral, an inspiration prompted by studying her roommate’s teddy bear. Teddy bears could look happy or sad, comical or serious, depending entirely on the viewer’s perception.

  She’d run out of flesh-tone dye one Saturday night, and rather than risk being late with her final project, Ellen had attempted to mix the dye herself from what was available on the workroom shelves. Mixing a flesh tone from basic colors was difficult, and she’d added a drop of this and a drop of that until she’d finally achieved a color that looked acceptable, despite the fact that it didn’t exactly match the premixed color. She hadn’t realized the result was anything out of the ordinary until she’d taken her project back to the dorm.

  Her roommate, Ming Toi Lee, had gazed at it in awe. How had she ever achieved that lovely skin tone? She’d never seen a Chinese mannequin before and it was about time someone appealed to the Asian consumer. Jolette Washington, from the room next-door, had stuck her head in to see what all the fuss was about. Ellen had designed a black mannequin? How wonderful! Jolette’s roommate, Toyo-San Kasawi, had turned to give Jolette a confused look. Ellen’s mannequin was clearly Japanese.

  Ellen’s roommate had run out to get Mary Long-branch, a full-blooded Sioux, who’d sworn that it was American Indian. So they’d lugged it down to the lobby and invited in everyone they could think of to offer an opinion. Vietnamese, Russian, Hawaiian, African, plain old Caucasian, the list was endless. Everyone appropriated Ellen’s doll for their own ethnic group.

  Later that night, they’d discussed the possibilities. Everyone thought that Ellen should either sell her idea or go into business to manufacture it herself. Department stores everywhere would jump at the universal mannequin. Five years had passed, during which Ellen had been living
as frugally as she could. She was still years short of enough capital to open a business, but that was her long-range goal.

  The sense of unreality was still with her. Perhaps a drink would help. Ellen wandered into the kitchen and retrieved the half-full bottle of white wine she’d put in the refrigerator two weeks ago. Someone had told her that cheap wine didn’t go bad as fast as the expensive kind, and less than five dollars for a bottle of Chablis was certainly cheap.

  The wine tasted a little like vinegar, and Ellen poured it down the sink. Marc Davies had said the reading of the will would be held tomorrow. It wasn’t critical that she be there in person even though the lawyer, Mr. Clayton Roberts, had said she was a beneficiary. Aunt Charlotte had always promised her the family china, which had belonged to her grandmother. The silverware, too, but how could she possibly afford to ship it out here? She really had no use for it, since she seldom entertained.

  Ellen sighed as she peered at the field of blowing white snow outside her kitchenette window. Warm and sunny, Las Vegas offered palm trees and flowers and swimming pools. The prospect of flying out of this interminable winter was very enticing. It would be insane to even consider it, a total waste of money for a trip that wasn’t the slightest bit necessary. Still, she had thirteen days’ leave accumulated and this qualified as a family emergency. She had half a notion to take a week off work and go get her china in person.

  “Well, Ellen. How does it feel to be a millionaire?”