“I only wish we could have prevented that,” I said.
“Thank you. I know it’s distressing to everyone at Trinity.”
“Though not nearly as distressing as to the families whose loved ones were disturbed. We’ll be working with the chief to see if there’s anything we can do to improve security—without making it even harder for families to visit, of course.”
“Good.”
“And I won’t take up any more of your time,” I said. “Just let me know if you have any questions about what’s happening with Mr. Washington’s ashes.” I scribbled my cell phone number on a sheet of paper and handed it to her.
She took it, nodded, and set it in lone splendor on the otherwise empty coffee table. Then she saw me to the door and said good-bye with just a hint more warmth than she’d shown on my arrival.
Not exactly a people person, Mrs. Washington, I thought, as I returned to my car. And I still felt a certain nagging curiosity about her. Why? I paused for a moment to analyze the question. I didn’t exactly see her as a prime candidate for coshing elderly but tallish men over the head and using a crowbar to pry open niches. Of course, I could think of nothing to prove she hadn’t hidden the ring and the other jewels in her husband’s niche in the first place. But if they’d had the jewels all those years, they wouldn’t have needed the jobs that Randall and his father had provided. And she sounded genuinely grateful about that.
And I got the sense that if she knew who had the jewels, she’d almost certainly have told me—or the chief—in the hopes that it would provide posthumous vindication for her husband.
My nagging curiosity was probably just that. Curiosity. In fact, nosiness. I could think of no good reason to pry any further into poor Mrs. Washington’s sad, lonely life.
Especially since Mother could probably tell me everything I could possibly want to know if I later decided my curiosity had any useful purpose.
My stomach growled as if to remind me that my next stop was Robyn’s—where with any luck I could feast on the town’s bounty while calming down Robyn.
I was more optimistic about the feasting than the calming.
Chapter 14
Robyn and her husband, Matt, didn’t live that far from Mrs. Washington, but the neighborhood was entirely different. Large houses on large lots—at least by town standards. Robyn and Matt’s two-story Victorian house was typical. Although not as inconveniently large as the house Michael and I had bought, Robyn and Matt’s would have plenty of room for their new baby, and a few siblings—even a nanny or au pair if they decided to go that route. But they wouldn’t have so much room that visiting family members felt free to drop by to stay for a few months—although so far we’d managed to keep the permanent residents down to my brother, Rob, and my cousin Rose Noire.
Robyn and Matt had even done a great job of preparing the yard for the baby’s eventual enjoyment. Matt and Dad and several of the more practical members of the garden club had repaired the fence and then scoured the yard, digging up any plants that were poisonous or could cause contact dermatitis and transplanting them to the yards of people without small children.
Now if we could only convince Robyn that it was time to make a similar childproofing effort inside the house. I knew Mother was going to try. As I rang the doorbell, I found myself hoping that she’d tackled the idea today, perhaps as a way of distracting Robyn.
But my hopes were dashed when the door swung open, revealing Robyn and Matt’s foyer in all its warm, welcoming, vibrant, artistic, cluttered glory.
“Good to see you.” I realized Robyn’s current doorkeeper was Viola Wilson, wife of Reverend Wilson of the New Life Baptist Church. I’d never figured out if Mrs. Wilson was significantly younger than her husband—who was in his eighties—or if she’d hit a genetic jackpot and just didn’t look anywhere near her age. Her medium-brown skin was only lightly wrinkled, and she moved less like a senior citizen than someone in middle age. Vigorous middle age. Like maybe a dedicated marathoner.
“How is she?” I asked, as I stepped inside.
“Restless,” Mrs. Wilson said. “Can’t blame her. All this foolishness happening over in her church, and her not able to do anything about it. Angus would be climbing the walls by now. And this on top of all the stress she had already. I’m hoping you can ease her mind a bit.”
“I can always try,” I said.
Mrs. Wilson led the way down the hall. As I followed her, I was mentally cataloging all the things Robyn and Matt seemed to love that would make childproofing their house so problematic. Their furniture, most of it Victorian, seemed chosen to maximize the number of sharp corners and protruding bits. At least half of the pieces were heavy enough that if they fell over they could easily flatten a small child, while the rest were so spindly and rickety that they quivered whenever anyone walked by. And every horizontal surface was covered with the pottery and glassware that Robyn collected—everything from delicate cut glass and fragile bits of porcelain to bold, modern abstract glass pieces and brightly painted dishes from all over the world—tiny Japanese tea cups, Moroccan tagines, New Mexican black vases, African tribal pots. And mixed in with the glass and pottery, of course, were a large number of crosses, inspirational and devotional plaques, and statues of saints—not more than you’d expect for the home of an Episcopal priest, but certainly a more diverse collection than any I would have imagined. Nearly all of these things were beautiful or interesting, and the few that didn’t seem to fit into either category were probably beloved, heartwarming presents from friends or parishioners. Or perhaps souvenirs of Robyn’s own enthusiastic dabbling in arts and crafts. I’d have been hard-pressed to pick out many items that struck me as hideous, out of place, or unworthy of their inclusion in her life. Still the overall effect wasn’t beautiful but cluttered. Or was I only seeing it that way because I was imagining what would happen if you turned a crawling baby loose in it?
Matt’s enthusiasms revealed themselves in the paintings, drawings, and prints—his own work and those of artists he knew or admired—that covered every available bit of wall space, from right above the chair rails to just below the crown moldings of the soaring twelve-foot ceilings. Intermingled of course, with the crosses, crucifixes, and plaques. Stacks of paintings also leaned against the wall here and there below the chair rail. I liked his paintings, especially when I saw them in a gallery or in someone else’s home. Here the sheer number of them made me unable to enjoy any of them as much as they deserved.
Then there were the half-finished do-it-yourself projects—every room had its share. Patches of new plaster waiting to be painted. Areas where he was slowly replacing dry-rotted woodwork with new. Partially dismantled lamps. Bits of furniture in need of—or possibly in the middle of—regluing, reupholstering, re-just-about-anything. Though at least Matt got points for trying. When Michael and I had figured out how many little projects our house needed, we’d thrown up our hands and paid various Shiffleys to fix everything.
And everywhere there were books. Tall bookshelves on at least one wall of every room, along with stacks of books that wouldn’t fit on the shelves. Paperbacks lying facedown on chairs or sofas, so that they’d forever after fall open at the point where the reader had been interrupted. Hardbound books sporting an unusually varied range of makeshift bookmarks—paint samples, feathers, programs from services, pledge cards, scraps of fabric, grocery store receipts—even a two-dollar bill. The range of their library was fascinating—books on theology and religious history rubbed shoulders with Ray Bradbury and Agatha Christie. Practical manuals on plumbing and woodworking shared shelf space with tomes about yoga and mind/body studies. C. S. Lewis held pride of place, but so did Elizabeth Peters and Sue Grafton. I’d been raised to believe that there was no such thing as having too many books, only having too few shelves. Robyn and Matt were so woefully short of shelves, considering the size of their book collection, that even my dad, when he saw it, might gently suggest that a little thinning of the herd was i
n order.
Mrs. Wilson noticed my expression and guessed exactly what I was thinking.
“Yes, a great deal to be done here,” she said. “And it won’t be a picnic doing it. Every stick of furniture has a story—though it’s usually some variation on how they bought it for pennies in a flea market and lovingly restored it. And I think at least half the knickknacks were presents from relatives and parishioners who, Robyn is sure, will be devastated if they hear that their kind gifts were sold.”
“Maybe we could talk her into having a yard sale for some good cause,” I said. “Whatever’s her current favorite. How could anyone be insulted if, after much soul-searching and prayer and in loving celebration of the new life to come, Robyn and Matt made the difficult and self-sacrificing decision to donate a nontrivial portion of their worldly goods to those less fortunate.”
“You’re good,” Mrs. Wilson said. “Your mother and I can use you when we start working on Robyn again.”
“As long as you wait till I’ve finished chasing down the relatives of all the people whose ashes were disturbed,” I said.
“There’s time. You do what you need to do. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.”
And with that cheery thought she swung open the door to the master bedroom.
“Meg’s here!” she announced, in the upbeat tone one uses with a fractious child.
The room still showed signs of its hasty conversion from a shared home office. Books and papers were stacked waist high all around the perimeter. Along one wall, a vintage drop-front desk was piled with cosmetics and toiletries and stacks of Robyn’s clothing. Along another wall, a rolltop desk held Matt’s gear. The queen-sized bed in the middle of the room left very little floor space, and it was so covered with books, files, notebooks, magazines, newspapers, cards, letters, papers, knitting projects, dishes of food, board games, bed jackets, tubes of anti–stretch mark cream, and—well, everything else Robyn had been using all day—that you saw almost nothing of the pale green sheets beneath.
“This does not look like bed rest,” I said. “This looks like trying to work just as hard as ever with the added handicap of doing so in a makeshift work space.”
From the doorway I could hear Mrs. Wilson’s snort of laughter.
“I know, I know.” Robyn cringed slightly, almost like a child being scolded for something she knew she shouldn’t have been doing. “But I’ve been so worried! What’s happening at the church? Has the chief found out who attacked poor Mr. Hagley? Is there much damage to the columbarium? Have you seen the families? How are they taking it? Can you—”
“Time out!” I said. “The answers are ‘I don’t know, no, I don’t know, some of them, and pretty well so far.’ If you calm down, I’ll tell you the details.”
I sat down in a rocking chair by the side of the bed and took a few slow, calming breaths. Not that I needed calming all that much, but I was hoping it would rub off on Robyn. And I started telling her about everything that had happened last night and this morning. I lingered over anything amusing or heartwarming. I didn’t leave out the one really bad part—finding Mr. Hagley’s body—but I kept my description of it as short and calm and non-sensational as possible.
Mrs. Wilson helped by delivering, first, cups of hot tea in handmade gray mugs with cobalt-blue stripes, and then matching plates loaded with small portions of a dozen or so of the different dishes people had dropped off. We nibbled country ham, roast chicken, string beans, butter beans, broccoli, tomato aspic, tossed salad, ham biscuits, apple pie, chocolate cake, and Beacon Hill cookies—one of Mother’s specialties. Which didn’t mean that she’d cooked them, of course, only that she’d found someone she trusted enough that she could rely on them to bake the gold standard of Hollingsworth family desserts for Robyn.
And to my relief, Robyn gradually calmed. When I’d first walked in, she’d been trembling like a Chihuahua in a snowstorm. Between the food and my resolutely upbeat account of recent events, she was starting to look less frazzled.
“So what are you doing next?” she asked, while nibbling a bit of pie crust.
“Next?” I pointed to a nearby clock. “Unless that thing is completely wrong, next I pick up Josh and Jamie at school, take them home for a quick dinner, and then watch their Summerball team play its game.”
“But what about the rest of the next of kin? And we don’t know what the chief has found out and—”
“Chief Burke’s youngest grandson is on the same team as the boys,” I reminded her. “So I will have a whole six innings to find a suitably low-key way to pick his brains.”
“Good,” she said. “Because we need to find out when we can get the columbarium back.”
“Oh, do we have a burial coming up?”
“Well, Mr. Hagley, I assume. Unless all this upsets his son so badly that he decides to take his parents’ ashes elsewhere.”
“I doubt if the younger Hagley will blame us if the funeral has to be delayed until the chief releases the columbarium,” I said. “After all, it’s his father’s murder the chief is investigating. And remember, Mother is also taking a keen interest in getting everything at Trinity back to normal.”
“That’s good.”
I made a sudden snap decision. Now was the time.
“And then after the baseball game, Mother and I are going to come over for a little while to help you with your next project.”
“My next project?”
“Getting this house ready for the baby,” I said. “Starting with this room.”
“But the baby won’t come for a few more months, and he or she won’t start crawling right off, and—”
“Oh, and once the baby comes, you’re going to have so much time—is that it?”
She opened her mouth to protest again and then laughed instead.
“And of course I know what you’re much too polite to say,” she said. “I’m the one who nagged the entire congregation into cleaning out Trinity from attic to basement. Why can’t I do the same for my own house?”
“You had the necessary detachment for cleaning out Trinity,” I said. “You don’t here. But Mother and I do—so we’ll come over and help. Starting tonight. With you in the room, approving every little thing we do. And Randall Shiffley’s been asking what he could do to help you out, and we should take him up on it. He’s got plenty of workmen—one of them can finish some of the repairs that Matt won’t have time to get to. Send over a couple of strong backs to help us rearrange things so they’re more convenient.”
“Well…” Robin looked around and frowned as if suddenly seeing her study turned bedroom for the first time. “I hate to impose. But yes, the mess is driving me crazy. I would be eternally grateful.”
“We’re on, then.” I stood up. “After the ball game. And only for an hour or two. And while we work I can fill you in on anything else I learn about what the chief is up to.”
“It’s a deal.”
In the doorway, out of Robyn’s line of sight, I saw Mrs. Wilson grinning and giving me a thumbs-up with both hands.
“Off to collect the boys, then.” I stood up and turned to leave. And then paused while Robyn said a short prayer asking God for his blessing on my endeavors. I wondered if the Eagles upcoming game counted as one of my endeavors.
Out in the hallway, Mrs. Wilson pressed a large brown paper grocery bag into my hands.
“So you don’t have to cook anything,” she said. “Because Lord knows, you have enough on your plate. But bless you for talking her into letting us get this place in shape.”
I was about to make the obligatory protest that she shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble and that there were others who needed the food more than we did, but then I thought better of it. If I was going to spend long hours here helping Robyn get the house shaped up …
“Thanks,” I said. “Dare I hope you put in some of that country ham?”
Chapter 15
I got to the school a few minutes early and pulled into the
pickup lane. Josh and Jamie could have ridden the bus, of course, but its roundabout route through our rural part of the county made for a long ride. So especially on baseball game or practice days, I liked to pick them up.
While I waited, I called Randall.
“I have a project for you,” I said. “If you’re willing to take it on.”
“Fill me in.”
“Have you seen Matt and Robyn’s house?”
“I was there a week ago, taking over a casserole from my mom.”
“Then you probably noticed the place isn’t child-friendly.”
“It’s not even sane-adult-friendly. That man needs an intervention—makes no sense whatsoever to keep disassembling parts of your house if you haven’t got the time or the skills to reassemble them. And with all due deference to the fact that you ladies like your trinkets and knickknacks, the reverend needs to corral hers with some shelves or cabinets or something. I think the damned things are breeding behind her back.”
“You get the mind-reading award for the week,” I said. “So can you spare a few workmen to finish the unfinished do-it-yourself projects? And maybe even to build those shelves or cabinets? Just let me know how much you think it will cost, and I’ll get Mother to organize a collection.”
“Heck, I’ll donate the materials, and if you just feed my men when they’re over there, with some of that food people keep dropping by, I’ll throw in the labor to boot.”
“Deal. Gotta run; school’s out.”
I could already see Josh and one of the boys’ good friends, Mason, dashing down the sidewalk toward my car. Jamie and Adam Burke had made a beeline for Minerva Burke’s car. Jan, Mason’s mom, seeing where her son was headed, strolled over to join me.
All four boys were pleading for a sleepover together, pointing out that, after all, it was Friday! From their tone you’d have thought Friday was a rare and unpredictable occurrence whose mere existence required a celebration.
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