Wuthering Kites

by Clover Tate

  “No. We all adore her and were sad to see her move on. She’s a lot younger than Uncle Gus, though. It’s not completely unpredictable they’d separate.”

  We’d arrived at the house. Jack walked me to the house’s rear so I could take the outside steps to my apartment. “Thanks, Jack. Let me know how the funeral goes.”

  “I’ll come up with you. Make sure you’re safe.”

  Jack absently jangled his keys.

  “Jack,” I said and put my hand over his and flipped it over. “Your keychain.” Ever since I’d known him, he’d had on his keychain a sculpture no bigger than a thumbnail of a diamond kite at flight. I always noticed it, since kites were something we shared. The kite wasn’t there now.

  “Huh. My kite charm is gone. It must have fallen off.” He met my eyes. “Grandpa Sullivan gave it to me.”

  “I’m sorry. Is it in your coat pocket?”

  He felt both pockets. “No. Nothing.”

  “Maybe you’ll find it at home in your jeans.”

  We climbed the wooden stairs to my apartment. I unlocked the door, but after a nod from me, Jack went in first, flipping on light switches as he traveled through the rooms. “Let me make sure the door to the shop is bolted, too.”

  While I hung up my coat, he descended the stairs. I heard the bolt wiggle. “Locked,” he said. In a minute, he was next to me, holding both my hands.

  “Thank you for introducing me to your family tonight,” I said. “It means a lot to me. I’m just sorry it had to be under these circumstances.”

  “I was glad you were there tonight. If we do Thanksgiving at the farm, will you come?”

  I smiled drunkenly, even though my last sip of wine had been hours earlier. “I think my parents will let me off the hook this year.”

  He pulled me in and we kissed until I was dizzy. He stepped back—reluctantly, I was happy to note. “I’ll call when I get home. Maybe our next visit can be longer.”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “Next time.”

  chapter six

  The next morning I lay in bed, trying to convince myself to get up. I wasn’t planning to open the shop yet, but a few kite orders were coming due, and I needed to finish them.

  But it was much nicer to stay under the warm covers and think about Jack. He’d be getting ready to leave for the valley anytime now. Maybe his sister was showering while he made coffee in his grandparents’ old kitchen. They had enough room for Dustin, too, if he didn’t stay at the yacht.

  I might be part of that family someday. I yanked my eyes open. No. None of that. I’d known Jack barely six months now. I didn’t need to start naming our children. Still, that kiss last night had taken things to a whole new level. . . .

  As I was remembering a few of the embrace’s finer details, a pounding on my back door jerked me upright in bed. I clutched the blankets and waited. Maybe whoever it was would go away.

  After a few seconds, the pounding resumed, this time accompanied by my mother’s voice. “Emmy? Answer me! If you aren’t at the door by the count of three, I’m calling the police. One, two—”

  I jumped up and answered the door, still tying on my bathrobe. “Hi, Mom.”

  She dropped a large tote bag on the landing and squeezed me tightly in a hug. “Thank goodness. I came down as soon as I heard the news. ‘Tom,’ I said. ‘That can’t be Emmy’s store they mentioned on the radio just now, could it?’ They said, ‘The body was found in a Rock Point kite shop.’ Your father pointed out that Sullivan’s is closed during the week this time of year. Oh, Emmy.” She squeezed me again, this time even harder, if that was possible. “I tried calling, but you didn’t answer.”

  “Come in, Mom.” I tried to sound irritated, but I was already relaxing into her take-charge presence. “I went to dinner last night and turned off the ringer.” After seeing Jack out, I was too much in a daze to think of checking my phone.

  Mom whisked in. “It’s looking nice in here, but you could use some furniture. What happened to that chair?” She pointed at the chair’s remains piled in the corner.

  “Minor accident.” My robe hid the bruises purpling on my shins.

  “Hmm.” She wandered to the French doors looking over the ocean and drew back the curtains, staring for a moment at the cold, gray ocean melting under the drizzle. She dug through her tote bag and pulled out a faceted crystal on a string. “I’ll just hang this here to keep out bad energy.”

  “Fine.” I busied myself making coffee while she went about her form of mothering, which, as usual, included herbal remedies, lectures on the benefits of fiber, and updates on astrological conditions. I almost missed the eucalyptus whiff of a tisane she’d be simmering at home and the fusty scent of soaking millet.

  When I was able to squeeze in a word, I asked, “Where’s Dad?”

  “It’s the neighborhood composting festival today, so he’s at the Pattersons’ handing out worms. He sends his love.” She put her hands on her hips and looked around once again. “He asked to see if your apartment might be a good San Clemente, but there’s not enough room for the grand jury.”

  “They’d have to bring their own furniture, too.” Dad played President Nixon in a Watergate reenactment group. It didn’t surprise me that he’d be on the lookout for a convenient western White House, as Nixon had dubbed his home on the California coast.

  My thoughts flashed to Jack. His family seemed pretty conventional—they were engineers and farmers, regular folks with regular outlooks. I was raised in a nest of hippies. What would he think of a Christmas dinner of heritage groats and kale soufflé?

  “Now.” Mom perched on the coffee table and pulled her legs up under her poncho, made from recycled Indian kanthas. “Tell me what happened.”

  I didn’t need to ask “About what?” Answering my mother’s frequent questions, I recounted the entire story, practically reenacted it in real time. I was getting used to it now. The knot of anxiety and horror I’d been carrying with me slowly dissolved under my mother’s concern. We talked through my cup of coffee and bowl of oatmeal, talked while I showered—Mom yelling above the water—and talked through the bedroom door as I dressed.

  When I opened the door, Mom stood stone-faced. “We’re going to have to do it,” she said. “Fortunately, I’m prepared.”

  “Do what?” I asked, but knowledge was dawning. Stella had been right.

  “A cleansing. Don’t you worry, you’re not alone. Your mother is right here with you. Are you ready?”

  * * *

  • • •

  Mom behind me, I walked down the inside stairs connecting my apartment with Strings Attached. At the landing, I glanced back. “You okay?” I asked.

  “I feel the energy thickening,” she said. Her tote bag bumped my legs.

  I unlatched the bolt, and we stepped into the studio. Mom stepped ahead of me and set her tote on the small kitchen table I used for sketching and grabbing a bite to eat when the shop was open.

  “I always did like this room,” Mom said. She pulled aside the curtains and raised the blinds on the window at the back door. “It’s so homey.”

  “What about the bad energy?”

  “A place can be homey and still have bad energy. But don’t you worry. We’ll take care of that.”

  We both stared at the connecting door to the shop. Neither of us wanted to open it. “You don’t have to do this, you know,” I said finally.

  That seemed to spark her to action. “And what are you going to do? Never open the shop? Give up your life’s dream because of some accident?” She raised her eyebrows. We both knew the reporter’s death wasn’t an accident. “Here I go,” Mom said. “I’m going right in.” She didn’t move.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “I’m going to cleanse the place right up.”

  “Got it.”

  “Because there’s nothing in there
that can hurt us now.”

  “Except for bad energy,” I reminded her. Despite my flippant tone, I was nervous, too.

  “Here I go.” This time she really did move. She took three deliberate steps toward the door and pushed it open. A clunk told me she’d collided with the counter.

  I rushed to see what had happened. “Open your eyes, Mom.”

  We were both in the shop now. After all our hesitation, it was the same old Strings Attached I’d always known. The wooden floor was strangely cleaner, and the kites were bunched up here and there on their racks, but otherwise you’d never have known that just twenty-four hours earlier a strangled woman had lain there.

  My mother grabbed my hand. Slowly, my heart rate returned to normal. “You okay?” I asked.

  She nodded and released my hand. “Let’s get started.”

  Now calm, I crossed the room and switched on the lights, then hugged my mother. “Thanks, Mom. I’ll be in the studio cutting out some wind socks.”

  As the noise of my mother pacing and chanting filtered from the shop, I went to the worktable pushed against the old kitchen’s wall and spread my latest design over its surface. Wind socks were part of my plan to make it through the cold months, when kite enthusiasts tended to stay indoors. Even people who couldn’t be bothered to take a kite to the beach loved to hang wind socks from their porches. With Halloween a few days away, I’d already sold out of pumpkins, ghosts, and bats and needed to build up my stock of general autumn wind socks. A simple tube with flutters of orange, red, and yellow leaves was picking up sales. The odd sheer or gold leaf punched up the design.

  Compared to designing kites, creating a wind sock was a cinch. It didn’t need to climb in the wind or dive or bear the mishandling of ten-year-olds. It simply had to catch the breeze and be pretty to look at. Today, I wanted something meditative to do, something that didn’t require a lot of brainpower, so I decided to cut leaves out of ripstop nylon.

  I placed my favorite Japanese shears near me and hoisted a bolt of red nylon to the table. For the next hour, I filled a box with a fluff of leaves that mimicked a week’s harvest from a turning maple.

  The smell of something burning reached my nose. I rose and stretched my back and stuck my head into the shop. It was full of acrid smoke. “Mom?”

  “Over here,” came her voice. “I’m smudging. This thing is burning a lot faster than usual.”

  “Don’t set off the smoke detector. Where are you, anyway?”

  “Near the fireplace.”

  I opened the shop’s front door to clear the air. I didn’t want a passing pedestrian to take it as an invitation to come in—lookie-loos were inevitable—but I couldn’t see a danged thing. “Mom?”

  The haze began to clear. My mother was still near the fireplace, and she was crouched at its hearth. “Is this yours? It seems to be a charm of some kind, but I can’t tell without my glasses.” She turned it over in her palm. “Do you think it’s a clue to the murderer?”

  The police had been thorough, but they weren’t Mom. By now, she must have chanted over every square millimeter of Strings Attached’s front room, and she wasn’t even finished.

  She handed me the charm. I didn’t need to examine it, because I already knew it well. It was a sterling silver kite with its tail broken off. It belonged to Jack.

  chapter seven

  “What’s wrong?” Mom said. “You’ve found a lot worse things here than part of a broken necklace. You should clean out your fireplace once in a while.”

  “It isn’t a necklace.”

  “Then what is it?” The bundle of sage Mom held burned perilously close to her fingers. “Ouch,” she said and dropped the sage onto a saucer.

  “It’s from a keychain,” I said under my breath. Jack’s keychain. The charm he’d said was missing.

  Cradling it in my palm, I took the kite charm to the studio and set it on the table. Its tarnish stood out against the ivory linoleum surface. He’d been in the shop the night before last, but I couldn’t recall him taking out his keys. I squeezed my eyes shut and tried to remember when Jack had been here before that. Was it the week before? He’d come to pick me up for a hike near Perkins Lake, but he’d come up the back stairs, not through Strings Attached.

  He’d helped me move. That had been more than two weeks ago. Perhaps he’d come through the shop then. I couldn’t swear to it, but it had to be. Last night Jack had said he’d thought he’d just lost the charm. Maybe he simply hadn’t noticed and it had been missing for a while. There’d been a lot going on during the move: doors opening, boxes coming in, furniture being wedged through doorways. It wouldn’t have surprised me a bit if something had snapped off his key ring during the commotion. Of course, why he might have had his key ring out, I had no idea.

  But I was sure it had nothing to do with the reporter’s death. The thing was, would the sheriff be so sure? If he found out I had the charm and didn’t tell him, it would look like I was covering up for my boyfriend. For a second, I thought about calling Jack and asking him what he thought I should do. But he was at a funeral. No, I’d take care of this myself.

  “Mom?” I yelled.

  She pushed the door to the studio open, letting in a fog of sage smoke. “What?”

  “I have to run an errand. I’ll be back soon.”

  She stepped inside, letting the door shut behind her. “What? You’re not leaving me here alone?”

  “Call Sunny. I bet she’d be glad to see you.”

  She looked at me suspiciously. “Maybe I will. All the same, hurry up and get back.”

  The sheriff’s office was in a storefront on Main Street next to Martino’s pizza place. The streams of tourists that signified summer had thinned to a young couple here and a bundled-up family there. A few of the shops had political signs in their windows. “Marcus for City Council, Rock Point’s Renaissance” was in the bookstore and the antiques mall’s windows. Councilman Tibbetts commanded the remaining signs. I liked Tibbetts—who didn’t? But Rock Point was growing, and without a proactive hand at its wheel, the town could turn into another sprawling mass of cheap motels and extended spring break parties. Marcus Salek was thoughtful about Rock Point’s growth. He loved its history as a fishing village, but he was thinking ahead to practical matters, like what to do about the traffic that now clogged Main Street. The city council hadn’t had a fresh member for decades. The two candidates’ debate this week was sure to be packed to the rafters.

  The sheriff’s office smelled faintly of pizza sauce. I was relieved that Deputy Goff wasn’t at the front counter. We’d had an altercation or two over the past months that I’m afraid might have soured her opinion of me. I rang the bell.

  My heart sank as the deputy emerged from the rear. Her smile melted when she saw it was me.

  “Can I help you, Ms. Adler?” She starched the smile back on.

  “Yes, I, um . . .”

  “Yes?” The smile didn’t budge, but neither did it look any more natural.

  “I found something at Strings Attached. I’m sure it has nothing to do with the body we found at my shop, but I thought I’d give it to Sheriff Koppen, just in case.”

  Just as Deputy Goff opened her mouth to reply, the door behind me burst open, and Stella and Ace flanked me at the counter.

  “I’ve had enough of this!” Stella said. “It has to stop.”

  I turned to her, then to Ace, then back again to Stella. “Are you okay?”

  “You’ve had enough?” Ace asked. “What about me? I can’t do anything without you getting all bent out of shape. ‘You listen to the wrong music; you leave your car where I see it; your yard’s a mess,’” he mimicked Stella in an exaggeratedly high voice.

  “What is up with you two?” I said. Stella was normally so calm. Her career as a schoolteacher had given her the smarts to deal with just about any situation. I’d seen her sweet
-talk a highway patrol officer out of giving her a ticket, mourn the loss of a son, and heal from a serious car accident—all with enviable grace. I’d never seen her lose her cool like this.

  And Ace. Talk about easygoing. The most agitated I’d ever seen him was sleepily reaching behind him to crack open another beer can. “No worries” was his motto. A Rock Point resident might call in a panic because their toilet had exploded and was draining into the baby’s room. “No worries,” Ace would say. “It’s all good.”

  This was not all good.

  For once, Deputy Goff and I apparently agreed. “Stella. Ace. What’s the problem?” she said in a nonplussed voice.

  “Isn’t there some kind of Rock Point ordinance about visual and auditory pollution?” Stella asked. “I can’t even enjoy a cup of coffee without Steppenwolf blasting through the windows. I barely slept last night thanks to his stupid music.”

  “And I can’t even enjoy a bit of music without Miss High-and-Mighty looking down her nose at me.”

  “I’ll have to check with the sheriff. About noise ordinances, I mean,” Goff said.

  Stella folded her arms over her chest. “When Marcus is elected, he’ll take care of cleaning up the riffraff.”

  “Rock Point is fine the way it is. Has been for years—way before you got here,” Ace said. “And Marcus won’t get elected to dogcatcher, if I have my say.”

  “What has got into you two?” I said. “Honestly, this isn’t like either of you. You’re both good-hearted, reasonable people. Can’t you sit down for a cup of coffee and work it out?” I said.

  The door behind me opened once again. This time it was Sheriff Koppen. “What’s going on?”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Deputy Goff got there first. “Neighbor dispute. And Emmy Adler has something for you that might relate to the homicide investigation.”

  “Come back to my office,” the sheriff said and pushed the waist-high swing gate separating the reception area from the rest of the office.