18 Deader Homes and Gardens

by Joan Hess

  “Rowena says she saw Zeppo on the phone a while back. He jabbered for five minutes, then took off.”

  “On a motorcycle?” I asked.

  “He’s got a banged-up standard chopper with a sissy bar. He claims it can hit a double ton, but he’s an idiot.”

  “Okay,” I said, mystified by the jargon but fairly certain that he’d referred to a motorcycle. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Any time you’re out this way, stop by and ask for Jimmie John. You and me can get to know each other better. I got the—” Babeldom drowned out any elaboration of the invitation, which was for the best.

  “I’ll keep it in mind.” I turned off the cell phone. I hadn’t bought Pandora’s pretense earlier, and it was gratifying to know that my intuition was as flawless as always. I hadn’t cast her in the role of a drug dealer, though. Nattie wasn’t aware of Pandora’s double life. If Charles and Felicia Finnelly had known, they would have demanded an old-fashioned Salem witch trial. Ethan surely wouldn’t have tolerated her jaunts to the Devil’s Roost, no matter how profitable they were.

  I turned out the light in the library and went to my car. I was too tired to try to even remember everything that had happened during the previous twelve hours, and it took all of my energy to drive safely. When I arrived home, I said good night to Caron and Inez and went directly to bed. I did not pass Go or attempt to collect two hundred house keys.

  * * *

  I was nursing a cup of coffee when Inez and Caron joined me in the living room. They watched me like a pair of hyenas, waiting for me to expire on the sofa. I ignored them as long as I could, then said, “You’re wasting your time. We won’t get the house, no matter what happens. Go outside and play in the sandbox. I’ll bring you cookies and juice in an hour or two.”

  “We don’t have a yard, Mother,” Caron said. “I suppose we could go play in the Dumpster behind the sorority house next door. Maybe we can find some food.”

  “Like rotten vegetables,” Inez added.

  I very carefully put down the cup. “There’s no point in getting angry at me. I want the house more than you do. You’ll go away to college in a year. I had dreams of living out my golden years in a meadow, reading Emily Dickinson to the larks and the bluebirds. I was going to learn how to cook gourmet dishes sprinkled with fresh herbs from my garden. All my favorite books would be on the highest shelf in the library so I’d have to use the ladder. It’s not going to happen. On Monday I guess Peter and I will start looking for a lot and an architect. We should be able to move into our new house by Christmas, if there aren’t any glitches.”

  Caron sighed. “Can’t you Do Something? What if everybody in that weird family is a coconspirator in Terry’s death, and when they all go to jail, you can buy the house from them so they can buy gum at the prison canteen?”

  “It doesn’t work that way,” I said wearily.

  “How about this, Ms. Malloy?” Inez said suggested. “You find out that they’re guilty and blackmail them?”

  “I don’t think that we’d be comfortable knowing that all of our neighbors have a reason to murder us in our beds.” I gazed at their identical woebegone faces, wondering how long they’d practiced in the mirror the previous evening. “Give it up, girls. Why don’t you clean out Caron’s closet? Maybe you’ll come across Barbie’s Dream House. You can play make-believe all day long.”

  “I torched it when I was in fifth grade, remember? I wrote a report on arson,” Caron said, then frowned at me. “Are you really going to let those people get away with it, Mother?”

  I thought about it for a long while. “I don’t want to let anyone get away with anything,” I said at last. “The whole thing is so incredibly confusing. There should be a logical way to connect the dots, but I can’t even figure out where to start.”

  “Start at the beginning,” Inez murmured.

  It was better than brooding for the next six months, I told myself. I looked at Inez and said, “Get a notebook and a pen. This may take a while.”

  * * *

  It took over two hours, as it turned out. Inez carefully noted names, relationships, estimated dates, presumptions, facts, and fanciful hypotheses based on nothing whatsoever. We took breaks for food (chips and crackers), beverages (coffee and sodas), and trips to the bathroom (best unspecified). They turned off their cell phones. When Inez’s hand cramped, Caron took over the secretarial duties. By the time we gave up, we had a dozen pages of scribbles, arrows, stars, and deletions. The margins looked as if spiders had dipped their legs in blue ink and danced with abandonment.

  The three of us were reduced to numb despair. I went out to the balcony, as frustrated as I’d ever been, and waited for a lightning bolt to energize me. Caron came out and leaned her head on my shoulder. I knew it was a ploy, but I appreciated the gesture all the same. “Damn it,” I said, “I am not going to let the guilty party get away with it. Maybe it’s true that revenge is best served cold, but it’s not going to be served freeze-dried on a tarnished platter.”

  “Go for it,” my darling daughter said. “You can do it.”

  I drew away to smile at her. “Now you’re my number-one fan? My ratings must have shot sky-high to warrant this pretense of loyalty.”

  “So I want the house—okay?” She pursed her lips to emphasize her displeasure at my lack of gullibility. I longed for the days when she’d merely stuck out her lower lip and rolled her eyes.

  I found myself mimicking her expression. It was as if I’d been whacked on the head by a sense of déjà vu, but I couldn’t put my finger on the déjà or the vu. Caron gave me a perplexed look as I struggled to snatch a vague memory from my mind. “Loretta,” I said slowly. “It has to do with Loretta. Why does it have to do with Loretta?”

  “Hold that thought,” Caron said. She went back into the living room to consult with Inez.

  I couldn’t hold a thought I didn’t have, but I remained on the balcony, oblivious to whoever might be walking across the campus lawn. I finally decided that my only hope was a jolt of caffeine and went inside.

  Inez cleared her throat. “Loretta is the woman that made the mushroom quiche for Terry the night before he died. You said that it didn’t have anything to do with his death. Her housemate’s name is Nicole. You rode with—”

  I cut her off. “I’m going to have another cup of coffee and then pay her a visit. I don’t know why, but I’ll come up with something.” The phone rang before I could do anything. I picked it up with reluctance. “Hello?”

  “I love you, Claire Malloy,” Peter said. “You are the most alluring woman since Helen of Troy, and she pales in your charm.”

  I let him continue for a minute and then inquired in my most sultry voice about the purpose of the call.

  “I’m in Atlanta. My flight to Nashville is delayed, so I may miss my connection. The next flight will get me there at midnight. I’ll take a cab from the airport, but you’d better be waiting up for me. I’m going to arouse you with the details of every meeting, then overwhelm you with the latest policies concerning the regulation of gun show sales. You’ll melt when I outline the procedures for coordination between the feds and regional law enforcement officers. I will write the outlines in whipped cream on your writhing body and slowly lick them—”

  “I get the idea,” I said, “and I’ll pick up a carton of cream. I’ll see you at the midnight hour.” A moment later my goofy grin was replaced with a steely stare. Peter’s call was more catalytic than a random bolt of lightning. I had approximately twelve hours to assist the police before Sherlock shut me down.

  I decided to forgo the coffee, gave Caron enough money for bagels, and went to my car. I was energized, but I was still baffled. I had no clue why I was determined to talk to Loretta, which meant I had no clue what to say to her. I was driving on automatic and operating on raw instinct. It was just as well there were no pedestrians strolling across the street, cell phones glued to their ears.

  Loretta opened the door. Her eyes we
re red, and she clutched a damp tissue in her hand. “You again. Am I going to be arrested for misidentification of local fungi? You’d better read me my rights before you slap on the handcuffs.”

  “I came to apologize,” I said with a rueful smile. “I have a bad habit of thinking out loud under stress. Have you heard about Terry?”

  Her face slackened, and she gestured for me to come inside. “Yes, and I feel like crap. I cried half the night. I have one of Winston’s paintings in the bedroom. As soon as I looked at it this morning, I lost it. Winston and Terry were so dear to me. I can’t believe what happened. Please tell me that I didn’t…”

  “Terry’s death had nothing to do with mushrooms,” I said. “The police think it was caused by food poisoning.”

  “Let’s go to the kitchen,” she said, her voice unsteady. “I baked oatmeal bread this morning, and we have organic honey. Tea or coffee?”

  I opted for coffee and did not protest when she set down a plate of bread slices, butter, and honey. “I don’t quite know how to say this, but there’s something about you that puzzles me. It has nothing to do with your reaction Friday night. That was understandable, and I apologize again. Can you help me, Loretta?”

  “You don’t suspect me of anything?”

  I slathered butter on a slice of bread, took a bite, and studied her face as I ate. “Why would I? You don’t have any connections to the Hollow family. You liked Winston and Terry, so you wouldn’t have a motive to hurt either of them.” The twenty-watt bulb in my head finally clicked on, but the illumination was poor. “Do you have any connections to the Hollow family, Loretta?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “Now I see it. You and your mother have the same mouth. When she’s annoyed, she puckers her lips just like you did the other afternoon. You have the same chin, too.”

  “None of the mousiness, though. Yes, I used to be a simpering, pathetic little wimp who was too afraid to make eye contact with normal people. I’m over it.”

  “When you ran away from home, you didn’t go very far.”

  “Yes I did.” She stirred a spoonful of honey into her tea. “After Winston was shipped off, he wrote me letters. He sent them to a friend of his, who passed them to me at school. When I got fed up with my father’s abuse and my mother’s timidity, I took a bus to New York City and stayed in a shelter until Winston had an opportunity to come get me. He arranged for me to live with a family until he started college. His parents thought they were paying for him to live in a dorm, but he used the money for an apartment. After he graduated, we moved to the city and lived in crappy apartments until he started making big bucks as a set designer. At first, I thought we could live happily ever after, but I got tired of the traffic and the incessant noise and the frantic pace. I knew my parents didn’t care where I was as long as I didn’t disrupt their facade of respectability. I make a point not to shop on the other side of town, or get plowed and stagger into their holier-than-thou church. I’ve been back nearly eight years.”

  “I thought that you were dead, and they’d buried you in their backyard,” I admitted. “I was going to demand that the police take cadaver dogs and scour the entire valley until they found your decomposed body. It’s comforting to learn that I was misguided.”

  Loretta shivered. “My father’s not that evil. I’d throw boiling water on him if he showed up here, of course, but I don’t sit around all day trying to find a way to make his life as miserable as he made mine. When he was a child, he probably planned to be a senator or a governor. Instead, he squeaked through college with borderline grades and ended up working in the family business. Some people crave respect like junkies crave crack. The only two places he could get any were at home and at that awful church. My father had the most expensive car and the loudest voice, so he got to be on the board. He used to strut around the house on Sunday afternoon, condemning members of the congregation for their lapses. If I defended anyone, he’d slap me or grip my arms until I cried.” She looked out the window for a long moment. “Maybe I should be thinking up ways to make him miserable. Any suggestions?”

  “I didn’t come here to stir up latent anger,” I said. “Let’s talk about Winston. Why did he go back to Hollow Valley? Surely he wasn’t nostalgic for the good old days.”

  “He told me that he needed to come to grips with his childhood, that his psychiatrist had urged him to face his family and show them that he was no longer a victim. He wanted to make them understand that they’d never had the right to demean him. On another level, I think he wanted to piss them off. The best way to accomplish that was to establish his legitimacy in Hollow Valley by building a house and living there in flagrante delicto.”

  “Was this aimed at your parents in particular?”

  She snickered. “My father was the commander of the gulag, but the rest of them mindlessly obeyed his orders. He encouraged the other boys to harass Winston. They did ghastly things to him whenever they caught him alone in the woods. Aunt Margaret Louise, Nattie, my mother, Aunt Joanne and Uncle Sheldon, Aunt Misty and Uncle Syd sat in silence while my father vented his outrage at family meetings. Nobody said a word in Winston’s defense, not even his parents.” She noticed my confused expression. “Aunt Joanne and Uncle Sheldon are Jordan’s parents. They moved to Pennsylvania when she was a toddler. Aunt Misty and Uncle Syd were Ethan’s parents.”

  I made no effort to add their names to my list of suspects, since they no longer resided in the “gulag.” “Was it worth it to Winston? From what Terry told me, they had a great life in Manhattan. Couldn’t he have confronted them for a long weekend?”

  Loretta refilled my coffee cup and sat back down. “He wanted them to know that he had a right to live in Hollow Valley as a direct descendant of the old fart. They didn’t intend to live in the house for more than a year, but Winston discovered that he had a talent for landscapes. His paintings were a contemporary version of French impressionism. He wanted to put a lily pond out in back and cover the meadow with sunflowers. Terry flew to his poker tournaments. They had a lot of close friends. The last time I talked to Winston was the weekend before his death. He wanted me to take samba lessons with him. I said no.”

  “And when you heard about his purported accident…?”

  “I cried all night.”

  “Then moped for a month,” said a woman in the doorway. She was tall and lean, dressed in sweats. “I’m Nicole. Loretta, we promised Samuel that we’d go to Joplin with him in an hour. I need to jump in the shower. Have you fixed food for the picnic basket yet? He’s counting on chicken salad, crudités, marinated mushrooms, Camembert and tomato sandwiches, and blueberry tarts. Billy bought the champagne yesterday.”

  Loretta shrugged at me. “I guess I’d better get to work, Claire. For reasons known only to himself, Samuel demands a well-equipped entourage when he makes a dash across the border to buy cheap cigarettes. Because of the grueling one-hour drive, we have to spend the entire afternoon singing show tunes in the van and picnicking at a particular rest stop that has a splendid view of cows. Winston used to bring his pastels and do wicked caricatures of us.” Her lips were pursed, but her eyes were filled with tears. “Can you come back tomorrow? There is one thing he said that may mean something.”

  “What?”

  “I’m not sure. Let me think about it. The tarts need forty minutes in the oven, and I have to get started on the pastry right now. Samuel throws a fit when everything’s not exactly as he commands. I ought to make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches one of these days.” She stood up and turned on the oven and then opened the refrigerator. “Tomorrow, okay?”

  “Thanks for talking to me,” I said. “I’ll be back in the morning.” I gave her a brief hug and went out to my car. I’d solved one crime, or noncrime, anyway. In a perverse way, I was a little disappointed that I couldn’t point my finger at Charles Finnelly and accuse him of murder most foul. Maritodespotism was not a crime in the eagle eyes of the law, and the statute of limitations for child
abuse had long since expired. I made a note to myself to ask Caron to come up with tips for Loretta to punish him someday in the future.

  When I reached the bottom of the hill, I pulled into the stadium parking lot to think. One motive could be dismissed. Charles had not killed Winston because of a shallow grave in the woods, and it was hard to imagine that he had killed him because of his own religious fanaticism. Winston had not communicated a grisly secret to Terry. Therefore, Charles had no motive to kill Terry.

  I moved on to the revelation of Pandora Butterfly’s secret life as a drug dealer (and other things). There was not one leaf of proof that she was selling marijuana grown in a greenhouse in Hollow Valley. I’d been dragged over every damn inch of the place, and I knew what marijuana plants looked like. I wouldn’t have missed acres of poppies or a coca plantation surrounded by tropical trees. Still if Jimmie John had been truthful, she was selling something illegal. It was Sunday, and the bar was closed. I felt Peter’s breath on my neck. I had less than twelve hours, and the clock was ticking. What I didn’t have was a clear-cut course of action. The idea of going back to Hollow Valley made me queasy. There was no reason to drive all the way to Maxwell County to talk to the sheriff. Angela’s car had been found there; Angela hadn’t. The sheriff would not take kindly to being interrupted during Sunday dinner, and I couldn’t so much as hint that his deputies were incompetent or I’d find myself in jail for impudence.

  A skateboarder swooped by my car and cut a wide circle in the bottom of the lot. Seconds later, a veritable horde of them were skimming by my car so closely that I could see their acned faces and orthodontia. Their message was easy to comprehend. I was an invader and would be targeted until I removed myself from their sacred ground. I waved as I exited the lot and drove toward the campus—and toward Hollow Valley. I’d intended to search the desk in the library, but Pandora’s presence had distracted me. I doubted that I’d find anything to justify my effort, but I was down to ten hours and fifty-two minutes.