Idyll Threats

by Stephanie Gayle

  “What’ll you have?” the young girl with the Dunkin’ cap asked me.

  “Coffee, black, small.” I turned to Renee. “Large hazelnut iced coffee,” she said. “And a plain bagel, toasted with butter.” She told me, “I forgot to eat this morning.”

  We took our drinks and her bagel to the corner table farthest from the fighting couple. We sat facing each other. Renee’s eyes darted on and around me. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. A gold hoop hung from it.

  “You had more questions?” she asked. Finnegan had interviewed her, weeks ago. I hoped to get more from her. She sipped her drink. Renee looked more like Cecilia’s cousin, her family resemblance diluted. Renee was taller, blonder, and had more oomph—as the boys liked to say. Rick used to say that when we were out, driving. “Would you look at that? That girl got some oomph!”

  “It seems that your sister planned to meet someone the night she died.” I kept my voice low. I didn’t need the town gossip wagon hitching a ride. “Did she mention anything to you?”

  “No. I didn’t talk to her that day. I saw her the weekend before.” She took another sip of her drink, set it down, and said, “Who was she meeting?”

  “I don’t know. I was hoping you might have an idea.”

  “Her friends would have mentioned it if they’d met her that night.” She gripped her drink. “You don’t think—” Her face gave it away. She thought I might consider one of Cecilia’s friends to be the killer.

  “No. I don’t.”

  “Then who?”

  “We’re looking into it. If Cecilia had been going to meet someone and she wanted to keep the meeting private, where would she go?”

  Renee broke off pieces of bagel, but she didn’t eat them. “Depends. If it was a guy, maybe the woods, or Sutter’s cabin. She used to meet her boyfriend, Rob, there when she was a sophomore in high school. I told her about it. It’s pretty private.” She bit her lip. “Rob was a good guy. I wouldn’t have let her go out with someone…”

  “It’s okay. The cabin. That’s a good idea.” Finally, someone had mentioned the cabin in connection with Cecilia. Now I could share it with the men as a tip from the deceased’s sister. We didn’t have any news about the soda cans I’d submitted from there to the techs. The men still regarded the cabin as low on the list of places she might have gone before she was killed.

  “Do you know if she was seeing someone?”

  She assessed me. “She’d broken up with her boyfriend.”

  “But?” I said.

  She leaned in. “I thought in July that maybe she had started seeing someone.”

  “Why’s that?”

  “She kept singing. She couldn’t carry a tune if it had a handle, but she loved to sing. And she always got more singy when she was interested in a guy.”

  “And she was like that in July?”

  “Yes, but when I asked her about it, she laughed and told me I was reading too much into it. Said she was just in a good mood. And she stopped doing it so much after that. So I thought maybe I’d guessed wrong. She never mentioned any guys.” Her eyes darted toward my hand. Checking for a ring. I suspected I was getting more information not because I was a better interviewer than Finnegan but because I was better looking.

  “I see. What did she sing?”

  She put her hand to her forehead. “Oh, God. Songs from musicals and pop ballads. She really did have the worst voice.” She squished her bagel bits into one messy ball. Butter leaked out. She wiped her hands on her jeans.

  “Is it possible she was seeing a co-worker?”

  Renee shook her cup. The ice rattled. “Maybe.”

  “Would your sister have dated someone who was married?”

  Her laughter wasn’t the happy sort. “Yes, sad to say. Cecilia was very trusting, and she had terrible taste in people. Really. She always assumed people were telling her the truth.” She tapped her fingers. “I can see her falling for a guy with an ‘unhappy marriage’ no problem.”

  Gary Clark. Had he fed her a line about his troubled marriage? Sure, he had an alibi, but he’d also spent a lot of time in her office. Too much time.

  She set her hands on her thighs. “Cecilia was sweet. But not super bright. God, that sounds bitchy. Sorry. But—” She shrugged. “We all knew it, Cecilia most of all. Poor thing. When she got to school, all her teachers were like, ‘You’re Renee’s sister’ and then, because I’d done so well, they expected the same of her. Wasn’t fair, really. And my parents, they sometimes expected more of her too. They kept talking about her job like it was a stepping-stone, but I’m not sure it was. Cecilia didn’t have any job passions, expect maybe for animals.”

  I felt a kinship to my murder victim. Her childhood sounded a bit like my own, only in reverse. John’s teachers were surprised and delighted to discover that Thomas Lynch’s brother did his homework without complaint and never got into fistfights.

  “But she’d never have become a vet,” Renee said. She rolled her straw wrapper into a tight sphere. “Veterinary school’s tougher to get into than med school, and she didn’t have the grades.”

  “Right.” I was done hearing about Cecilia’s academic failures. “About her job. Any trouble there?”

  “Not much. I think it was kind of boring. And her boss seemed like a bitch.”

  “One last thing. Do you remember if Cecilia was sick this summer?”

  “Sick? I doubt it. Cecilia never got sick. I’m the one who catches every cold.”

  “She called in sick to her job on July thirty-first.”

  Renee finished her iced coffee with a loud slurp. “You could ask my parents. I wasn’t home all summer, just weekends mostly. I should go back to my apartment soon, but…I feel like as soon as I go, that will be it. It will mean she’s really gone. Which is stupid, I know. She is really gone. But as soon as I leave, the next time I come back…” She lifted her head and stared at me. Her eyes were damp. She forced a smile. “I’ll have to go back soon. Or the food will start leaving the apartment,” she paused, “on its own feet.”

  “Thanks for your help,” I said.

  “Do you think you’ll catch whoever killed her?” she asked. “I mean, do you? You don’t have to say you will because I’m her sister or anything.”

  “Yes. I’ll catch the killer.”

  “Good.”

  “Do me a favor?” I sweetened my words with a smile. “Please don’t mention what we talked about to anyone, not even your parents.”

  “Sure. If they get too pushy, I’ll lie. I’m pretty good at it, if I have time to prepare.” She thought for a moment. “Cecilia was the same way.”

  I walked her to the parking lot, where she waved me off. Then she got in her car and sat, staring at nothing again.

  When I shared my new intel, the reaction was underwhelming.

  “Why’d you talk to the sister?” Finnegan asked. He tugged his tie. Annoyed.

  “I wanted to see if she recalled Cecilia being sick this summer. Also, see if Cecilia told Renee about any summertime romance, if she’d had one.”

  “I asked her that,” he said. He kicked the bottom of his desk. It had a dent from years of such abuse.

  “I know. But not about her being sick. And we didn’t know much about Gary Clark then.”

  “His alibi’s still waterproof.” He pointed at the board.

  “Yeah,” Wright said. “Anyone else you interviewing?”

  “Why?”

  Revere, silent until now, chimed in. “It helps to know whom you’re planning to interview as part of the ongoing investigation, sir.”

  They all stared at me.

  “It’s kind of hard, not knowing what you’re up to,” Finnegan said. “One day you’re at the autopsy—”

  “I didn’t see any other volunteers,” I said. These fuckers. Piling on me for doing my job.

  “And the next you and Billy are out bagging evidence. No word to any of us,” Finnegan said. “It feels like we’re competing, not cooperatin
g.”

  He had a good point.

  “Plus you dismiss any theories other than your own,” Wright said.

  “Like your harebrained scheme about Anthony Fergus?” I said.

  Revere formed a “t” with his hands. Time out. “Chief, maybe if you just kept us abreast of your inquiries…” He let it hang there.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’ll stop by and inform you of my movements every morning.”

  They weren’t sure how to take this. Wright made the mistake of accepting it at face value. “Great.”

  “When hell freezes over,” I said. “If we’re going to complain, how about starting with the fact that my detectives disappear for hours and can’t be raised, when major tips come to light? Wright you didn’t answer when called about Mrs. Ashworth. That’s why I ended up taking her statement. And Revere, while you’re grabbing info from your statie pals, Billy’s left to try to match gun-theft reports on his own. Something you were supposed to supervise.”

  “Hold on,” Revere said.

  “No. You hold on. You’re a guest at this station. I didn’t request your assistance. Now if you’d like to second-guess my work, go ahead. But do it silently.”

  Wright said, “My kid broke his ankle. I had to take him to the ER that day.”

  “You should’ve called in,” I said. I took a few steps. Paused. Turned. “And he sprained his ankle. He didn’t break it. Don’t lie to me, again.”

  I left them to curse me. Lord knows I’d done it to my supers over the years. But I’d trusted and respected them. I had no such illusions that these men felt that way about me. They thought I was dirty. My mind walked through the woods to the Sutter cabin. The place I’d pretended never to have visited. Where I’d never seen Cecilia North the night she died. They were right. I was dirty.

  Elmore Fenworth’s home didn’t look as though it belonged to a crazy person. It was a large, gray Victorian boasting a blue plaque that informed me it was on the register of historic places. A colorful garden surrounded his wraparound porch. His lawn would’ve made my neighbor, Mr. Sands, envious. Elmore sat in a rocker on the porch. I’d expected wild hair, thick glasses, and shabby clothing. He had a close beard and gray eyes. He wore khakis and a white dress shirt. “Good afternoon, Chief Lynch.” He rose from his rocker. “How are you?”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Fenworth.” I extended my hand. He paused before he grasped it. His hand was dirty. No, not dirty. Stained with newsprint. Newspapers were stacked beside his rocker, a foot-tall pile of them.

  “You have a nice home.” Potted flowers were arranged by the front door.

  “Thank you. You live up near Hilltop Avenue, don’t you?”

  “Yes.” I wondered how, and why, he knew that.

  “You should get a water filter.” He held the front door open for me.

  “Why’s that?” Inside, the temperature fell twenty degrees. The hall was lined with photos. There was one of John Paul II and one of John F. Kennedy. So Elmore was a good, old-school Catholic. And then I recalled Nate’s warning. Don’t ask him about JFK.

  “Used to be a printing press a few miles north of your place, back in the sixties. They dumped toxic stuff up there. People think it’s all gone now, and that their well water’s unaffected.” He rotated a finger near his ear. Universal symbol for crazy. “People believe what suits them.”

  “What sort of toxic stuff?”

  “Toluene, methyl ethyl ketone, tetrachloroethylene, and some others. Buy a filter. Put it on your kitchen tap. Bathroom tap too.”

  We’d arrived at the parlor. Built-in bookshelves occupied two of the four walls. Historic landscapes and framed maps hung on the others. The room wouldn’t have looked out of place in a furniture catalog. Did Elmore write us letters as a joke? Surely the man who lived here didn’t believe in aliens.

  “Would you like some iced tea?” he asked.

  “Yes, please.”

  He left to fetch it, and I began to snoop. I started with the books. Not one on aliens or UFOs or even space travel. Then I looked at the framed photographs. They were of a family, presumably his. There was nothing odd about them.

  “Here we are.” He sat and poured a stream of amber liquid into a tall glass filled with crushed ice. “I make my own. It’s strong. You can add sugar if you like.”

  “Thanks.” I sipped from the cold glass. Strong was not the word. Lethal was. I reached for the sugar spoon and kept reaching until there was a quarter inch of sugar silt at the bottom of my glass.

  “I’m guessing this isn’t a social call.” He drank his iced tea straight.

  “No. I heard you might be able to help me, with an investigation.” I’d debated coming here. Sure, he might know things about Idyll’s gay scene. But was he reliable? And could he be trusted to keep his mouth shut?

  “What sort of investigation?” he asked. He picked up a pen and pad of paper.

  I breathed in and out. “I have information that two homosexual males—”

  He guffawed. “You mean gays? No need for polite cop-speak here, Chief.”

  I rotated my shoulders down and back. “They might have witnessed something pertinent. But I’m not familiar with the area’s gay scene.”

  He said, “Gays ’round here keep to themselves. Idyll’s not exactly queer-friendly. People like to talk liberal, but talk’s easy. Cheap too.” He finished half of his tea. “That cop of yours, Wright. He ever tell you what happened when he started to work here? The station got calls every day for weeks that a black man had stolen a police cruiser. They had to run a front-page story about him in the Register so people would know he was a cop.”

  Christ. No wonder Wright had a chip on his shoulder.

  “About my problem,” I said. “I don’t know where to begin looking.” I held up my hand. “I don’t intend to persecute anyone.”

  “Of course not. You hardly would, now would you?” What did that mean? He set his glass down and stood. “Just a moment.”

  He returned with an oversized, leather-bound album. He handed it to me. Heavy. And old. The leather flaked in patches. He said, “Turn to the middle bit.” I turned pages until I’d reached roughly the middle. Found an illustration of a spacecraft. Turned the page. A list of alien-abduction reports, beginning in 1912. Turned the page. In flowery script was a list of names. At the top it read: “Idyll Defense Troops.” I scanned the list.

  “This list says ‘Idyll Defense Troops,’” I said.

  He chaffed his hands. “So it is! You see, homosexuals will be the first line of defense against an alien attack. Gay men are immune to their pheromone-based persuasion.”

  “‘Pheromone-based persuasion’?” I asked.

  “You know, chemicals given off to indicate sexual availability and genotype information. That’s what they’ll use to subdue people. Gay men aren’t susceptible to them in the same way as heterosexuals. They’ve done studies, in Sweden.”

  He was crazy as a shit-house rat. “So this is a list of all of the gay people in Idyll?” Maybe he’d made some lucky guesses. But half of the list was probably useless.

  “Able-bodied gay men in the local area,” he said. “Quite frankly, gentlemen of Major Allen’s age won’t be much help to us.”

  Major Allen? The tottering WWI vet they’d paraded down Main Street on Memorial Day? Why did Elmore think he was gay? “How do you know—?”

  “That he’s gay? Well, he had a longtime friend with whom he used to go birding and fishing every month for nearly thirty years. He never brought back a fish and couldn’t tell the difference between a house sparrow and a Carolina wren. Honestly. Plus, he used to order gentlemen’s magazines from Europe. They were always marked as academic journals. Lucky goose never got caught. Good thing, too. He’s too kind a soul to have survived it.”

  “How do you know about the journals?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Wilton, who runs the post office, is a close friend.” Wonderful. The postmistress was feeding the local nutter private in
formation.

  I said, “This list is of able-bodied men. So, young?”

  “Under sixty-five and physically fit. Though Bert Lawrence is on there and he’s seventy-two. He makes Jack LaLanne look like a wimp.”

  Mrs. Ashworth hadn’t guessed the golf-course men’s ages. But able-bodied and under sixty-five was a good place to start. I’d exclude Bert Lawrence. Fit or no, I doubted he was up to midnight golf-course exploits.

  I scanned the list. Mr. Gallagher and Mr. Evans, the owners of the local candy store. Anyone could’ve guessed their sexual preference. More names. Some I recognized. Officer Klein was on here. Some I didn’t. All these people. A charge ran through me. So many names. It couldn’t be right. Elmore was crazy. But if it was…I felt a low hum of delight. I wasn’t alone in Idyll. Not by a long shot.

  Dr. Saunders was near the bottom of the page. His name had an asterisk after it. A footnote explained that Dr. Saunders wasn’t “local.”

  “Dr. Saunders?” I said.

  “As a medical examiner, he’ll be invaluable. He can do alien autopsies.”

  I scanned the room again. This time for weapons. Always best to know whether the lunatic across from you might be armed. No guns in sight and no fire pokers, either.

  I flipped the page. The list ran to two sheets. My heart stopped when I reached the bottom of the second one. My name. Thomas Lynch.

  “This list,” I said. “Where do you keep it?” Visions of his house being burgled, of this book made public, made my heart race. My printed name grew bolder and darker on the page. Jesus. The damage this list could do.

  “In a safe, hidden. It would do me as much harm as you if this got out.”

  “How so?”

  “People would be angry, and it would utterly ruin my defense plans.”

  My chest tightened. Was this what a heart attack felt like? “Why am I on this list?”

  He smiled. “You’re gay.” He templed his fingers.

  “What makes you think that?”

  He held up his index finger. “You’re forty-four years old. Never been engaged or married. No serious girlfriends, aside from Helen what’s-her-name in high school.”

  How the hell did he know about Helen Mayes?