Too Much Blood

by Jane Bennett Munro

  Jodi knitted her brow for a moment, and then said, “You’ve been in my shop, haven’t you?”

  Jodi owns and operates a beauty spa called First Resort, which features such things as yoga, aromatherapy, tanning booths, and acupuncture in addition to the usual amenities. Most of the doctors’ wives, and even some of the doctors, patronized it. Me, for instance.

  Jodi stuck out her hand. “Jodi Maynard,” she said.

  The dark-haired woman shook it. “Kathleen Burke,” she replied.

  I stuck my hand out too. “Toni Shapiro,” I said. “We brought you some food.”

  “Oh, thank you,” Kathleen said. Her mahogany-colored hair fell in ringlets to her shoulders, and she had liquid, dark-brown eyes with thick black eyebrows and eyelashes like mine. “Would you like to come in? Oh, what am I saying—of course you would, it’s so cold out. I’ll bet you’ve been in this house lots of times, haven’t you?”

  “Actually, no,” I said.

  “Me either,” Jodi said. “But my husband, Elliott, has. He drew up Mrs. Merriweather’s will.”

  And found her body, but I didn’t think Kathleen needed to know that. Some people get squeamish about houses someone has died in, particularly when the bed they died in was still there. Kathleen had apparently bought the place furnished.

  With an inward shudder, I hoped someone had at least taken the sheets off Mrs. Merriweather’s bed.

  “Oh, your husband is a lawyer, then,” Kathleen said, and she didn’t sound too happy about that. A small dark-haired girl tugged at her pant leg and whined, “Mommy, I’m hungry.”

  Kathleen picked up the child, who wound her small arms around Kathleen’s neck and looked at us with huge chocolate eyes that were just like her mother’s.

  “This is Angela,” Kathleen said. “She’s six. Honey, these are our new neighbors, Jodi and Toni.”

  “Hi, Angela,” I said. “Do you like your new house?”

  Suddenly shy, Angela hid her face against her mother’s shoulder.

  “Do you have children, Toni?” Kathleen asked.

  “No, but Jodi has five.”

  “That’s probably why Toni doesn’t have any,” Jodi laughed. “Mine are always at her house.”

  “They like to play with our dogs,” I said.

  “You know very well that’s not it,” Jodi scolded. “Toni always says she’s not good with kids, but somehow she’s the one who ends up with them climbing all over her. Like now.” She pointed to a tiny golden-haired girl who had appeared from nowhere and was hugging my leg.

  “That’s Emily,” Kathleen said. “She’s three. She’s Tiffany’s little girl.”

  “Tiffany?” Jodi inquired.

  “Did somebody call me?” A slender twenty-something blonde came out onto the porch, and the screen door slammed shut behind her. “Emily, come here and leave the lady alone. Kathleen, the kids are all hungry. Shall I take them to McDonald’s or something?”

  “I brought a tuna casserole,” Jodi said. “It’s still hot.”

  “Oh, yum,” Kathleen said. “I love tuna casserole. I was going to fix peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for the kids, but this is so much better. Please, come and eat with us.”

  So we followed her into the kitchen, where she introduced us to the rest of her children: Bryan, thirteen, Bobby, ten, and Megan, eight. The gray-haired lady was Kathleen’s mother, Mary Reilly, who lived in Boise. All of the children had inherited Kathleen’s dark hair and eyes, but only Megan was stocky like her mother.

  “Look, everybody,” Kathleen said. “Jodi and Toni brought us a tuna casserole for our lunch,” whereupon Bobby and Megan made throwing-up noises, and Angela said, “Eeeuuww.”

  “That was rude,” Kathleen snapped. “You guys can fix your own lunch. Here.” She pulled a jar of peanut butter and a jar of strawberry jam out of one of several boxes that stood open on the kitchen floor and handed them to Bobby, who said, “Aw, Mom!”

  Kathleen was, apparently, wise to the ways of movers, who tend to run on schedules that don’t exactly conform to the needs of their clients.

  When Hal and I had moved up here from Long Beach, our movers decided to first take a little vacation in Las Vegas that lasted a week—without telling us. We had our houseplants with us but no food or bedding. Jodi and Elliott had rescued us, and we’d been best friends ever since.

  Unlike us, Kathleen had packed the kitchen essentials herself and brought them over in her car. Tiffany busied herself dishing up tuna casserole onto paper plates for everybody else. The kitchen table only seated four, so Kathleen sent the children into the living room to eat.

  At this point, I heard the front door open and a voice call, “Yoo-hoo! Anybody home?”

  “In here!” Kathleen called back.

  A round, bubbly blonde about my age bustled into the kitchen with a large baking dish covered with foil. She put it on the kitchen counter and whipped off the foil. Instantly, the enticing aroma of Italian sausage and tomato sauce filled the air.

  Kathleen sniffed deeply. “Oh, Ruthie, that smells heavenly!” As the newcomer stared inquiringly at me, Kathleen hastily introduced us. “Ruthie, this is Toni Shapiro, who lives across the street, and of course you know Jodi. Toni, this is Ruthie Brooks, Jay’s partner’s wife.”

  Kathleen dished up portions of Ruthie’s lasagna, and we all dug in. It was without doubt the best lasagna I had ever tasted, but having already eaten tuna casserole and a brownie, I didn’t eat much of it, and neither did Jodi. Ruthie didn’t stay; she said she had absolutely tons of things to do and she’d see us at the party, and she bustled away.

  As I ate, I looked around the large kitchen with its 1950s vintage appliances. The dingy, brownish linoleum had been worn completely through in front of the stove and sink. A round-shouldered Frigidaire wheezed on the opposite wall. Windows over the sink and in the dining alcove, hazy with their decades-old coating of grime, inside and out, failed to provide much light.

  At first I blamed the dinginess on the gloomy weather outside, until I noticed the color scheme; the dark wood cabinetry, the dark-red countertops, and the ceiling that had been painted dark red to match. The wallpaper, once cream with a colorful pattern of vegetables and fruits, had been turned a dark yellowish-brown by time and cooking fumes. The overhead fixture held only one fluorescent bulb where there should have been two.

  “Would you like to see the rest of the house?” Kathleen inquired as we cleaned off the table and disposed of our plates into a garbage sack on the floor.

  The downstairs looked fairly clean and well-kept. Off the living room, a smaller room served as a study. It housed a massive black roll-top desk at least a hundred years old, in addition to Mrs. Merriweather’s bedroom furniture. This must be where she died, I thought. The rumpled bedclothes were still on the bed and visibly soiled. I wrinkled my nose in distaste.

  “Yuck,” commented Bryan from behind me. “They could have at least changed the bed.” But Kathleen appeared unperturbed, and I wondered if anyone had told her that Mrs. Merriweather had died in there. I glanced at Jodi, and she shrugged.

  Dust lay thick everywhere upstairs. The wallpaper was faded, and the baseboards were crumbling. Lace curtains, once white but now discolored and disintegrating, hung at windows with sills blistered from the sun. Cobwebs festooned every corner, possibly with resident spiders.

  I wondered if Kathleen actually planned to sleep there tonight and shivered at the thought. She’d need a respirator, with all that dust, unless she wanted a lung transplant in her future.

  The children ran ahead down the hall. “This is gonna be our room,” shouted Bobby, pointing out a smaller bedroom in which bunk beds had been shoved up against one wall and a dresser crowded a single bed against the opposite wall. “Me an’ Bryan. It really sucks, huh?”

  “Bobby!” admonis
hed Kathleen. “Don’t talk like that!” But privately I had to agree. The room looked no better than the master bedroom. The tall trees shading the equally filmy and cobwebby west-facing windows made it look dark and gloomy. Bryan, behind me, said, “Well, he’s right, Mom. This whole house sucks. I bet it’s a hundred years old. I bet it’s haunted.”

  At this, Angela began to cry and clung to Megan, who said confidently, “Don’t listen to Bryan, he’s full of shit.”

  “Megan!” snapped Kathleen, almost automatically. Megan’s eyes met mine and quickly slid away before I could read the expression in them, but I got the feeling that Megan, despite her bravado, wasn’t too sure the house wasn’t haunted; and I had to admit, neither was I. I kept thinking I saw movement out of the corner of my eye, but when I turned to look, nothing was there. Goose bumps rose on my arms, and I shivered.

  Tiffany picked up Emily, who had also begun to show signs of distress, and said, “Let’s show them our room, okay?” Emily nodded and looked happier, but their bedroom, and also the one to be shared by Megan and Angela, looked as bad as Brian’s and Bobby’s.

  The bathrooms looked even worse, with rust-streaked sinks and blackened toilet bowls. As I noted the water stains on the ceilings, I wondered what condition the roof was in.

  I suspected Mrs. Merriweather hadn’t cleaned or changed or repaired anything up here since her husband died and her children moved away. She probably hadn’t been able to climb stairs for years, since she’d been using the study off the living room as a bedroom.

  “You guys have really got your work cut out for you,” Jodi said.

  “I know,” Kathleen said. “Thank heavens I’ve got lots of helpers.”

  “Whatever possessed you to buy this house?” I asked. “Surely there are nicer houses you could have bought.”

  Kathleen took her time answering. I wondered if I’d been tactless. But if you don’t ask, you don’t find out.

  Finally she spoke. “Jay declared bankruptcy, you know.” She sighed. “Everybody knows. All the same, I’d rather not discuss my finances with someone I’ve just met. We’re entitled to our privacy, just like everybody else. Now if you don’t mind, we have a lot of work to do.”

  I felt as if I’d been spanked. Now I had to apologize, since we still had to be neighbors and be civil to each other. “I’m sorry, Kathleen, that was thoughtless of me.”

  “Oh, it’s okay,” she said. “I’m just irritable. This has all been so hard.” Her voice quavered, and I put an arm around her and squeezed. She returned the gesture, and we all went back downstairs.

  “She may not have had much choice of places she could afford,” Elliott pointed out later. “Jay declared bankruptcy. That means she and her children have to suffer the consequences.”

  “But don’t her debts get paid automatically?” I asked.

  “No, not really. What the bankruptcy court does is inventory the assets, make her sell whatever she doesn’t absolutely need, and consolidate the debts.

  “But surely they don’t take your house!” I exclaimed.

  “No, and they don’t take your furniture, or your clothes, or your car. But if the house is too large and luxurious, or there are nonessential articles, they make you sell them, or they sell them for you and add the proceeds to the funds that the trustee manages.”

  “So,” said Hal, “the bankruptcy court made her sell all her nice furniture and buy this house furnished?”

  “What happens when the money runs out?” asked Jodi.

  Elliott shrugged. “She’ll either have to get a job or go on welfare.”

  “Has she ever worked?” Hal wanted to know.

  “She’s a legal secretary,” I said, suddenly remembering. “Rebecca Sorensen said she used to be Jay’s secretary before the kids were born.”

  “Is that so,” said Elliott with interest.

  “Don’t you have someone who’s about to go on maternity leave?” asked Jodi.

  “That’s what I was just thinking.”

  That’s what it’s like in a small town like ours. Neighbors and coworkers get involved in each other’s lives and try to help out when problems arise.

  And the Burkes had more problems than most.

  Chapter 9

  You can observe a lot by watching.

  —Yogi Berra

  That weekend was a busy one for Christmas parties.

  Hal and I went home to get our Saturday chores done and get bathed and changed for the one at Jodi and Elliott’s house. And then, since we felt guilty about having taken up so much of their preparation time, we went back over there to help them get ready.

  People started arriving at about seven, the men in slacks and Christmas-themed sweaters and their wives dressed in a similar fashion but with lots more bling.

  At these parties I was usually the only physician in a sea of lawyers. Hal, as a teacher, was neutral territory, rather like Switzerland.

  There were Fritz Baumgartner, the district attorney, and his wife, Amy, and Elliott’s partners: Stanley Snow and his wife, Cherie, and Russ Stevenson and his wife, Trish. Jay and Kathleen Burke had originally been invited as well, but I didn’t expect to see Kathleen here under the circumstances.

  However, Ruthie Brooks was here with her husband, Lance, Jay’s partner. Elliott introduced us. Lance, a tall, thin stick of a man with a grayish, unsmiling, American Gothic face, gave me a limp handshake and barely acknowledged me before turning away; but Ruthie was another story. She glommed on to me and got right down to business; and it became obvious with the first words out of her mouth why she couldn’t have done so at Kathleen’s house earlier.

  “Oooh, wasn’t it awful about poor Jay!” she began. “He’s going to be missed by so many people.”

  Like who? I wondered. All his clients who owed their souls to the Internal Revenue Service? But Ruthie answered that question before I had a chance to verbalize it.

  “I don’t know if you’re aware of this, dear, but he was quite the stepper, you know,” she continued, sotto voce, as she drew me away from the crowd into a corner of the living room where she could monopolize me uninterrupted. “Of course, one can’t really blame the man, because dear Kathleen has rather let herself go in the last few years, you know. I don’t think they’ve actually had sex since Angela was born, and the poor man had to get it somewhere; I mean, really, I know men have their needs, but one would think he could have used a condom or something and not gotten them all pregnant.

  “Anyway, I can’t help wondering what’s going to happen to the children—I mean the other children, not Kathleen’s, because of course he provided for Kathleen and their children; I’m not talking about them. I mean all his other children, you know, the ones he fathered out of wedlock, because there’s no provision for any of them in his will, you know.”

  What about all those trusts, I wondered. “Are you sure?”

  “Well, of course I’m sure,” Ruthie asserted. “I should know what’s in his will; after all, Lance drew it up, and Bill and I witnessed it, and there’s nothing in it for anyone but Kathleen and their children. I mean, many of those women’s marriages have broken up, at least those who had a child by him, except for Jodi, of course. Elliott still must not know, but really, how can he not know, when Cody’s the only one who doesn’t look like him, and one can’t really expect them to pay child support for children that aren’t theirs, can one?”

  “Wait a minute. Jodi? I don’t believe it,” I objected. “Jodi wouldn’t do that.” That little accusation took my mind right off the fact that both Elliott and Lance had drawn up wills for Jay, almost before it had a chance to register.

  Ruthie glanced around conspiratorially before she went on. “Well, it was a long time ago, but yes, Jodi too. And, you know, it’s a funny thing. None of the children look anything like Jay. They all look like the
ir mothers.”

  That made sense. Kathleen’s children all looked like her. And Cody was the only one of Jodi’s children that didn’t look like Elliott. He was stocky and red-haired like Jodi, not slender and dark-haired like Elliott. But he had dark brown eyes. He didn’t get those from Jay or Jodi; he had to have gotten them from Elliott.

  I decided I would take whatever Ruthie said with an entire can of Morton’s iodized salt. The giant economy size, from Costco.

  Maybe a whole case. Ruthie beckoned me even closer. “You do know Lloyd Armstrong, of course? He’s a very wealthy dairyman and has served on the State Legislature. I’m sure you’ve seen his picture in the paper, haven’t you?”

  It sounded vaguely familiar. The image of a tall, ruggedly handsome man in a western-cut jacket and Stetson hat, his deep-set eyes shaded by thick black eyebrows, came to mind. It was definitely a distinctive face.

  I nodded, but Ruthie sailed on before I could open my mouth.

  “Well, my dear, he’s quite the stepper too. One is always running into young people that are the spittin’ image of him. I even saw one of them in Boise last time we were there. You can’t mistake them. But poor Jay … why, one would think the poor man had no genes to pass on! It’s almost as though he was on a quest to create someone in his own image; I mean, if you didn’t know who the mothers were, you’d never suspect that the children were—”

  I interrupted her. “So do you know who all the mothers are?”

  Ruthie clasped her hands together and sighed ecstatically. “Well, I really shouldn’t, you know, confidentiality and all that, I mean, Lance is always telling me I talk too much and might get him disbarred someday, but I can tell you because you’re a doctor.”

  It seemed to me that Lance was as good as disbarred already, but I figured that I probably wasn’t the first person Ruthie had told this to. I felt no qualms about encouraging her in the process. She cooperated beautifully. I couldn’t wait to get away from her, run into Elliott’s den for a pencil and paper, and write all the names down. I only hoped I could remember them long enough.