by Joan Hess
“I don’t know anything,” she said, rubbing her temples. “He fell, he jumped. I didn’t like him or Terry. They were always polite, but I knew they were laughing at me. I wouldn’t have sold them a friggin’ aspirin.”
“What did Ethan say about it?”
“He said it was suicide and not to worry about it. To be honest, I wasn’t paying much attention. It’s not like I’m a member of the family. To them, respectability is like the Nobel Peace Prize. When a journalist comes here to do a piece for a magazine, the kids and I aren’t allowed to leave the house because we don’t fit into the image of a wholesome, family-owned business. I tried to leave once, but Charles and Ethan came after me like drooling bloodhounds. They’d put computer chips under everyone’s skin if a veterinarian would do it. Esther’s the only one who escaped for real.”
“You know Esther?” I asked, trying not to sound as perplexed as I felt.
“I know about her,” she said. “Charles gets on his pulpit and carries on about her treachery and sinfulness at least once a year. He intersperses that rant with ones about homosexuals, promiscuous teenagers, drunks, dopers, disobedient wives, unruly children, and whatever other bug he has up his butt. We all sit there with our hands in our laps and nod on cue. What a jolly time to be had at Hollow Valley!”
“They can’t force you to stay here.”
Pandora looked in the direction of the nursery. “I know that. This is my final year to tiptoe through the tulips. I’m out of here on January first, with or without Ethan and the kids, and I’m cleaning out the bank accounts before I go. You know what this place needs? A flash flood that carries everybody downstream all the way to whichever ocean is handier. Maybe they’ll end up on an island where they can grow coconut trees and sell them to the cannibals.”
I’d gotten more information from Moses than I had from her. I scratched a red bump on my ankle, then got up. “Does the nursery really make that much money?” I asked bluntly.
“There’s half a million dollars in Ethan’s savings account,” she said as she started for the house.
“Your children ate one of Jordan’s books,” I called to her back.
“Let’s hope it wasn’t a cookbook. They get diarrhea if they eat anything with meat in it.” The front door closed.
I deftly inferred that she no longer desired to talk to me. Instead of wading through the woods to my car, I walked down the driveway to the blacktop and turned in the direction of the Old Tavern. As I ambled, my mind was racing. Two of the dots on the scribbled notes found a possible connection. Jordan and Pandora Butterfly made an odd couple, but I was willing to bet they had one thing in common.
Jordan had climbed the statue of Colonel Moses Ambrose Hollow and was sitting on his shoulders. She waved her arms at me. “Mrs. Malloy!”
I felt like a ship coming to the rescue of a dehydrated traveler adrift in a lifeboat. “Yes, Jordan,” I said with minimum enthusiasm. “You can come down now.”
She slithered down his back. “You can’t see anything from up there, except at night. Then I can watch Nattie put on pajamas and putter around her bedroom. If she was having a mad, passionate affair with one of the workmen, that’d be worth the bird poop on my butt. Mostly she reads. Aunt Margaret Louise left five minutes ago. When you talk to Nattie, don’t tell her about what I said or anything, okay?”
It seemed as though potential blackmail victims were flinging themselves in my path. Pandora had Zeppo, and Jordan had a nocturnal affinity for the Colonel. “I won’t bring up the subject, but I never lie.” I could almost hear Peter’s brays of laughter. “Unless it’s in the best interests of the community, and it usually falls into the category of omission, not commission.”
“Whatever you say, Mrs. Malloy.”
I knocked on the heavy door. Nattie opened it and tried to hide her dismay. “Claire … do come in. Moses and I have finished eating, but you’re welcome to a piece of chocolate cake.” Her mouth fell open as she spotted Jordan. “Oh, my goodness, what have you done with Jordan? Did you replace her with a real child?”
“I’m fourteen years old,” Jordan said sullenly.
Nattie shook her head. “You’re attractive. Who would have thought it? Let me have a closer look at you, Jordan. Are those your real eyelashes?”
I let Jordan squirm while Nattie fussed over her, then poked her. “Go ahead and ask her, dear.”
She stammered out a convoluted but mostly coherent request that covered Aunt Margaret Louise’s absence, Caron and Inez’s maturity, and her solemn promise to behave impeccably the remainder of the summer and pick gallons of blackberries or raspberries or blueberries or whatever Nattie wanted. She finally ran down. “Can I, Nattie?”
I expected Nattie to smile and send her off with me, so I was a bit mystified when she said, “I don’t know, Jordan. Aunt Margaret Louise is the one who should make that decision. Discuss it with her tonight, and maybe you can spend the night at Claire’s house later in the week. I hope you understand, Claire. Jordan’s parents made the arrangement with Margaret Louise.”
When Jordan turned around, her face looked almost as contorted as it had with the garish makeup. She swept past me, cut across the mill’s lawn, and disappeared into the woods.
“That didn’t go well,” Nattie said. “I have no idea how you convinced her to wash her hair and remove those rings and studs, but I thank you from the bottom of my heart.”
“Let me give you my home telephone number so that Margaret Louise can let me know what she decides. Jordan deserves a treat, and we’ll take good care of her.”
Nattie found a notepad and a pencil. I wrote down my number, said good-bye, and drove toward the highway. I’d instinctively put on my blinker when I stomped on the brake. I’d been so befuddled by Nattie’s refusal that I’d forgotten about the missing link. I managed to back up far enough to turn down the driveway to the house that should have been my house. I purposefully slammed the car door loudly enough to startle a flock of blackbirds into an amorphous black cloud. I went around to the terrace and made myself comfortable in a chaise lounge. Within five minutes, Jordan plopped down on a nearby chair and said, “You should have let me go with you, no matter what Nattie said. It’s not like she’s my nanny. Aunt Margaret Louise would have been thrilled to get rid of me for a night. She hates me, just like everybody else in this miserable place does.”
“They don’t hate you, Jordan. They’re tired of putting up with your attitude and posturing. Show Aunt Margaret Louise a smidgen of respect when you plead your case, and she’ll grant you a furlough.”
“It would be so cool if you lived here, Ms. Malloy. At least there’d be someone to hang out with. Caron, I mean, and Inez. Adults are all about money and their precious gym memberships and golf tournaments and crap like that.” She paused as she realized what she’d said. “I didn’t mean you. I was talking about Uncle Charles and—”
“I’d rather talk about pot, and I don’t mean the kind that hold potting soil and plants. Where’s your patch? If you won’t show it to me, I’ll drag Inez out here and make her lead me to it. Your lack of cooperation will be noted.”
She bristled at my implied threat. “It’s not my patch. I’ve only been here a month, remember? I found it by accident. If you want to see, I’ll take you there. Just don’t blame me if you step on a snake. I’ve seen three copperheads on the path in the last week.”
“Snakes don’t scare me,” I said truthfully. They didn’t scare me; they terrified me. It was unfortunate that Winston and Terry had not been fishermen. Otherwise, they might have waist-high waders in a closet somewhere. My civic duty to solve Terry’s death overcame my reluctance to play hopscotch with writing reptiles.
Jordan led me across the meadow and along the stream until we came to a tree trunk that made a very dubious bridge. She bounded across it and then waited while I sidled inch by inch. The minnows resembled baby piranhas, and the dragonflies came at me like kamikaze pilots. When I arrived at the far bank
, I was breathless. I closed my eyes until the panic faded. “How much farther?” I asked.
Jordan fought to maintain a passive expression, but her voice cracked as she said, “Not far. Would you like to rest? You look kind of pale.”
“I’m fine,” I said grimly.
By the time we arrived at a clearing in the woods, I was quite sure we’d hiked for several miles. If this was a pot patch, it was a great deal less productive than Hollow Valley Nursery. The soil had been churned and trampled. Dead leaves, branches, and rocks constituted the entire crop. “This is it?” I asked her.
“Now it is. A month ago I pulled up some old plants and hung them to dry, and planted their seeds in such straight rows that Ethan would have been proud. I should have had a nice little crop by the end of the summer, but no. I came here this morning and found this mess! Pandora must have done it. She stole the dried plants and then did one of her goofy dances to trample the seedlings. I can see her, totally stoned, flinging leaves in the air while she pretended she was a nymph. I can’t even start another crop.”
“Am I supposed to offer my condolences on the loss of your illegal industry?” I asked as I tossed a branch into the woods. “All you have to do is clean this up, and then you can make a hut out of twigs and straw. If you’re patient, maybe Hansel and Gretel will come play with you.”
“Is that supposed to be funny? It took me hours and hours to turn over the soil with a trowel. I had a big blister on the palm of my hand and cuts all over my knees.”
I smiled as I envisioned Pandora’s amazement when she found her patch primed for a new crop. Once she’d eliminated Demeter and fairies, it couldn’t have taken much thought to realize that Jordan had done the dirty work. Why would she have destroyed it? Neither of them would rat on the other.
“When were you here last?” I asked.
Jordan frowned. “This morning, when I discovered what she’d done. It’s so unfair. If I accuse her, then all she has to say is that she didn’t know anything about the patch until she found it. She had no choice but to destroy it, naturally. My name will come up, and I’ll be in big trouble.”
One of Moses’s garbled remarks came to mind. “You were here yesterday morning, weren’t you? You and Inez, that is. You had to show her how clever you are. Was she impressed?”
“She was talking to me like I was a kid. She wouldn’t last five minutes in my neighborhood. My friends don’t care about reading books or doing homework. They care about surviving. Too bad there’s not a field guide to avoiding crack houses and spotting cops.”
I studied her for a minute. “I didn’t realize that you live in a ghetto. It’s no wonder your parents sent you here to romp in the sunshine and be safe from drive-by shootings. You poor baby.”
“So I don’t live in a ghetto. I get so fed up with all the preppie snobs who worry about which Ivy League schools will accept them in four years. They have tutors and private coaches so they can excel at the proper sports, use the right forks, and work on their résumés. I hang out with real people.”
“Drug dealers and pimps? Good for you, Jordan. If and when you grow up, you can savor the joys of soup kitchens, shelters, grime, rats, and jail.” I cut short what was going to be a lengthy lecture and knelt in the dirt. I brushed aside leaves and twigs to pick up an expensive pen. I knew it was expensive because Peter had pitched a fit when Caron borrowed his. Angela had mentioned that hers was a Montblanc, a mere trinket that she’d bought herself to sign the divorce decree. It was too clean to have been buried, or even exposed to the elements. “Is the trowel here?” I asked, my voice shaking.
Jordan knelt beside me. “What’s that? I’ve never seen it before.”
“Is the trowel here?”
“I took it back before Ethan noticed that it wasn’t in its proper place. He’s a royal pain about his precious tools. Do you want me to go get it?”
“Yes,” I said, although I was reluctant to be alone. Jordan had claimed to be tough, but she didn’t need to be with me when I began to dig. I waited until she was gone and then found a flat rock to serve as a shovel. I scraped the dirt, repeatedly telling myself that I was wrong. I threw rocks and twigs over my back, yanked out stands of roots, and scooped loose dirt out of the deepening hole. Sweat dripped down my face and pooled in my armpits.
I was ready to give up and concede that my only error was thinking that I’d made one. My final scrape uncovered a few inches of a black plastic sheet. I’d inadvertently made a slit that exposed part of a hand. I scrambled backward until my back thumped against a tree. This was not a forgotten family burial plot, and I hadn’t discovered the remains of anybody’s ancestors.
Jordan had crossed the log and was trotting toward the clearing as I met her. I grabbed her wrist. “Wrong way,” I said. “Did anyone see you?”
“Forgive me for saying this, but you’re weird, Ms. Malloy. What about the pen? Do you know whose it is?”
“I have a pretty good guess,” I said as I dragged her behind me. I was so distraught that I failed to have a second panic attack while I teetered back across the log. The meadow sloped up to the house. By the time we reached the terrace, I wanted nothing more than to sit down and put my head between my knees. I gestured at Jordan to hand me my purse. My cell battery was low, but there was hope. I didn’t want to get into an extended conversation with the nine-one-one dispatcher, so I called Jorgeson.
“Ms. Malloy,” he said with a mournful sigh, “how can I help you this fine afternoon?”
11
Jordan and I sat on the terrace, waiting for the invasion. I’d made coffee, and she’d found a can of soda in the refrigerator. I was angry at whoever murdered Angela and buried her body in a plastic tarp, and I was angry at myself for all the uncharitable thoughts that I’d had about her. She’d had a legitimate reason for not calling me with a blither of apologies. It’s hard to dial when you’re dead.
“Who is it?” Jordan asked timidly.
“Until the investigators extricate the body, we can’t be certain. I’m assuming that it’s Angela Delmond, the real estate agent who showed me this house on Tuesday. She stranded me, and Nattie agreed to let me use her phone to call for a ride. That was when we saw you pulling that childish stunt. Death isn’t funny. You might remember that next time you get the urge to stir up some excitement.”
“Yeah, I know. Who killed her?”
I shrugged. “That was the last time I saw her. I don’t know where she went or what she did after she drove away—or when she died. The medical examiner will order an autopsy to estimate the time of death.” I did not elaborate on the intricacies of decomposition and the analysis of insect eggs and maggots. “Does anyone besides Pandora know about the pot patch?”
“I doubt it,” she said with a grin. “Otherwise, I’d be wearing an ankle monitor and working eighteen hours a day at the nursery. That’s if Uncle Charles didn’t dump me in the nearest jail cell. He’d be sputtering like a constipated camel.”
“As if you know what a constipated camel looks like.”
“Sure I do. It looks like Uncle Charles.”
I couldn’t hold back a giggle, despite the solemnity of the situation. “What about Aunt Felicia?”
Jordan gave the question serious consideration. “A white lab rat, waiting to be injected with a lethal virus or be dissected. If you watch her carefully, you’ll see that she’s got an eye on the lookout for the nearest exit, and she’ll trample anybody who gets in her way.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Aunt Felicia strikes me as a mushy sponge without an original idea left in her mind after all those years with Charles.” I recalled the glare she’d shot at his back. “Maybe I’d already made up my mind. I’d like to talk to her without Charles looming.”
“You can try when he’s at the nursery.”
“I have a feeling I won’t be out here anymore—except to pick you up, of course. The police have archaic rules about civilian participation in their investigations.”
&nb
sp; Car doors began to slam in the front of the house, and male voices barked. I made a face, then settled back for the ordeal that was to come. I recognized some of the members of the CSI team from past encounters, and one of the detectives. The same paramedics appeared with a gurney and equipment bags. Jorgeson was the last to arrive, and he was rather grumpy. Everyone else stepped aside to give him a clear path that ended at the chaise lounge.
“I informed the deputy chief about your call,” he said. “He’d like you to call him at your first opportunity. In the meantime, Ms. Malloy, why don’t you tell me what this is about. Your stories never fail to impress me. You and the young lady found a body that you think is Angela Delmond?”
It was tricky to decide where to start, so I limited myself to the basics. Jordan had told me about the vandalized pot patch, and I’d asked her to show it to me. I had not suspected anything of significance until I found the pen. I showed him my dirty fingernails and described what I’d unearthed. Jorgeson and I eyed each other for a minute.
“We can continue this later,” he said at last. “We need to go to the crime scene.”
I graciously allowed Jordan to lead the party. No one looked delighted when we arrived at the fallen log. Jorgeson sent an officer to look for a more suitable place to cross the stream. After grumbles, muttered discussions, and debate, we trekked downstream and waded through ankle-deep water. Our shoes squished over hill and dale until we arrived at the clearing. Jordan and I watched mutely as the investigators took photos, examined the ground, and carefully began to extricate the body. An officer pulled back a corner of the plastic tarp, and I identified Angela. When Jordan whispered that she was going to be sick, I asked Jorgeson’s permission for us to wait at the house.
As soon as we were back, we took off our shoes on the terrace. Jordan headed for a bathroom. I scrubbed my hands at the kitchen sink and then set out crackers, cheese, and a jar of jam. We sat at the island to eat, neither of us inclined to talk. Jordan offered to clean up and put away the remaining food. I took my cell phone out to the front porch to call Peter. With luck, he was in an airplane somewhere between Atlanta and Farberville. I was preparing to record a bright message when luck failed me.