CHAPTER SIX
It took me forever to fall asleep. Random adrenaline surges kept me tossing and turning. Going over the day in excruciating detail time and time again didn't help either. I could only thank some kindness of fate that I hadn't been the one to find Penny's body. I would probably never sleep again in that circumstance. I went over the few details I knew a million times. I spent hours considering how all of this could have happened. The clock read three AM before I finally succumbed to fitful sleep, yet I woke up in a cold sweat two hours later.
I sat up in the dark and looked at the pink clock on the bedside table. 5:20. I could hear something banging around in the hall. With a twist of plain and simple cowardice, I slipped out of bed, considering hiding in the closet. However, my thirst for information outweighed my paranoia in this single instance, and I tiptoed to the door and put my ear to it. Footsteps and knocking.
Holding my breath, I opened the door a crack and peeked out of it. I couldn't see anything in the darkened hallway, but a few voices drifted up from downstairs. Aodhagan and someone else, a woman. Panic receded. Whatever this was, it wasn't a threat. Was I interrupting something? A tryst they wanted to keep quiet? I crept to the head of the stairs and peeked down.
I could see both Aodhagan and a young woman standing in the doorway. The door was still open, and a cold morning breeze tickled at my toes. I couldn't see her very well. She was shrouded in the shadows from the night, but it wasn't hard to see her massively protruding belly. She was all kinds of pregnant. Aodhagan, on the other hand, was completely visible in the light of the foyer. He stood, without embarrassment, in nothing but his underwear, gray, ribbed boxer-briefs.
With the lack of modesty, maybe the baby was his. However, he didn't act like it. There was no touching, no overt warmth. Just a drowsy, and slightly irritated-looking, Aodhagan, rubbing his fingers through his crazy bedhead and talking to a random woman at his door in the middle of the night.
His voice suddenly rose. "I'm not kidding, Mary Jo, this could be a serious problem. I want you to bypass Doc Holiday altogether, and within the next two hours, I want you at Tallatahola General. This is not open for discussion. You understand?"
She seemed slightly cowed by the change in his demeanor and shrunk slightly into herself. As far as she could, considering she was nineteen months pregnant. "Okay Aodhagan, if you say so," she agreed, but she didn't sound convinced.
"I do say so. Go home, get Jimmy, and go." She didn't move. "Go!" She scrambled out the door at an amazing rate of speed for someone who was carrying such a heavy load. I could hear her car take off from the driveway with a spray of pebbles against the house.
I scurried back into the room and shut the door almost all the way. When he was at the top of the stairs, I opened the door enough to look out, trying for drowsy and confused. I probably came through with confused, anyway. "What's going on?"
He didn't seem to be embarrassed about presenting me with the majority of his birthday suit either. Actually, he was in amazing shape. Lean muscle mass corded his body, and I wasn't sure there was an ounce of fat anywhere on him. If I looked so good in the buff, I'd probably forget to be self-conscious too.
He waived a hand. "It was just a neighbor. She's been having some headaches. I'm afraid she has preeclampsia."
"Why's she asking you about it?"
He smiled slightly, that same lazy smirk. "People ask me about all sorts of things. I've been to college see, so I'm the expert on all things non-farming. You'd better get back to bed. Dwight will be here at seven sharp." He walked on and disappeared into his room.
So, he'd been to college. Gone and come back or moved here after? I had to believe it was gone and come back. I couldn't imagine Birdwell embracing a stranger in such a way, but a golden child returned home from college…that I could see. I got back into bed and settled in for a long battle back into dreamland. I never succeeded. At 6:30, I gave up and got out of bed.
It was 7:30 in Manhattan, and I would have been up anyway, ready to tackle the line at Espresso Expressions and set off on whatever was on my docket that day. I was between books right now, looking for another topic to write about. My editor was pushing me to pick something less than fifty years old this time, but I wouldn't do it. I probably would have hit the library, looking for something that sparked my interest. I liked to handle real newspapers from the time period. I liked to feel history under my fingertips.
I considered my current plans for the day. Have another run-in with the sheriff, pirate forty-seven-year-old newspaper microfiches, try to solve my aunt's brutal and seemingly pointless murder, spend another day in Birdwell, Texas… It was all too much to bear. I stumbled out of bed in nothing but my tank top and boxer shorts and stole outside. I figured if Aodhagan ran around in his underwear that had probably been nominated as the town's official uniform, I might as well do it too.
I snatched a cigarette from my new box, lighting it from an abandoned matchbook in Aodhagan's kitchen, and I stood out by Aodhagan's vegetable garden. Look at me, smoking out behind the house in my underwear like some kind of school kid. Then again, I was slightly more disgusted by the thought of another run-in with Aodhagan about my occasional smoking problem.
I got the impression he didn't actually believe that I had quit smoking long ago and took it up only in moments where it was the prime substitute for something else, like throwing myself off a cliff. I wasn't sure why I had to explain myself to anyone in the first place, but Aodhagan just seemed to bring out that response in me. It was probably his rampant good citizenship that made me feel guilty about all of my less than sterling choices. Something about him made me want to confess like a teenage girl sitting with her priest after prom night.
I could hear the sounds of running tractors far away, but all around me was devoid of human life. Birds in Aodhagan's trees chirped happily. A squirrel scurried across the yard and bolted up a tree trunk. I glanced around, consumed with the sudden feeling that I was being watched. Thelma Sue's words about watching my back returned with a vengeance. Here I was, stupidly standing alone outside just to smoke, when I was better off not doing it anyway. I was not about to die over a bad habit.
I headed for the door at something a little less than a run, and I had almost reached it when someone grabbed my arm from behind. I'm sure whoever was sleeping in the entire town was awakened by my bloodcurdling scream. I jerked around ready to fight, to see it was only Sheriff Dooley, looking as startled as I was. Half a second later, the door flung open, and Aodhagan came flying out.
He skidded to a stop, spatula in hand, and stared at the pair of us. Me, flushed face, a mostly burned cigarette hanging limply from my fingers, clad only in the barest essentials, and Sheriff Dooley looking alarmed and blustering stupidly, still holding on to my arm.
"Sorry," I murmured sheepishly. "He grabbed my arm and surprised me."
As abruptly as he had grabbed it, Dooley flung down my arm. "She was trying to escape," he whined.
Aodhagan looked me up and down from the tip of my mussed blonde hair to the silver toe ring on my right foot. He stopped somewhere in the middle, and I wasn't sure if he was admiring my scanty pj's, the very thought of which made my face flame up and other parts get a little tingly, or making note of my mostly burned cigarette. He gave me an uncomfortably smoldering look, which attested to the first option and made me squirm, but he reached out and snatched the cigarette from my hand and tossed it onto the ground, grinding it down under his brown crocodile wing tip.
"She wasn't trying to escape, Dwight. She was just outside smoking." He gestured toward the door, and we both followed him in sheepishly.
In the kitchen, he appeared to be making pancakes and sausage, and Dwight obeyed his request and sat at his breakfast nook. "Um, I'm just going to…change."
I made quick work of it and came back down to the nook. Aodhagan served up my breakfast, and as soon as he had dished up all the plates and took a seat, next to Dooley and kitty-corner to me, Dool
ey got down to business.
"We looked around the whole house last night, and we didn't see any significant evidence there. In the shed, we discovered your aunt and what we believe was the murder weapon." Dooley directed his gruff attention to his sausage before finally looking up at me. "The coroner thinks it was probably done by a man, which lets a little of the pressure off you as the prime suspect."
"The coroner also should have been able to give you a time of death," I pointed out. "That would clear me, too. I wasn't here until the afternoon. If you don't believe me, you can ask the pug. I mean, the man I saw in front of the restaurant. My GPS doesn't work here. I had to ask for directions."
I offered that tidbit hopefully and had a moment of soaring enthusiasm where I truly believed that I might get to get up from this kitchen table, get in my car, smoke a cigarette in peace, and hightail it out of Texas. But my curiosity. I needed answers.
"The only problem with that, little missy, is I'm not sure I believe that. You could have had an accomplice. Or come later and talked to someone just to establish an alibi. ." There was nothing I could counter that with. It was true. I could have done that. Of course, I hadn't. But I could have. "In an hour or two I'm goin' on down to Jamie's, and I'm gonna look at your auntie's will. And if I don't like what it says, I'm going to be back down here to see you again. You got that?"
I had no idea who Jamie was, but I nodded very slightly, because sticking my tongue out at him probably wasn't really an option. Dwight Dooley and Aodhagan headed into the foyer, and I stayed where I was, straining my ears for even a few words of information.
"You know she didn't do it, Dwight. She's just a girl who showed up in the wrong place at the wrong time." Aodhagan spoke up for me one more time.
"Don't you think that's a little too convenient, son? She shows up on just the day Penny was killed."
I could hear Aodhagan's sigh all the way from the hallway. "Sometimes things just happen, Dwight. You know, they just do. Sometimes they're just a coincidence."
There was silence while Dwight either pondered Aodhagan's words or stuffed his cheeks with chaw. I was figuring on the latter. "You sweet on her, son? Cause if you are, I might have to arrest you for obstruction of justice."
"Shut up, Dwight."
The screen door slammed when the men left the house. I followed out to the foyer and heard just a hint of their conversation, which included mostly talk about the autopsy. Penny had advanced emphysema. She would have died soon anyway, even if someone hadn't killed her.
Stunned, I climbed the stairs back to my room. If we were to discover, an hour from now, that Penny had been indeed attempting to solve a forty-seven-year-old mystery, could her illness be the reason?
Tying up the very last loose end would be a strong desire a few months before death. What if she had known, or suspected she knew, what had happened all those years ago and never acted on it? That would surely make her feel like her mission on earth was not done. The same way that I would feel if I walked away from Penny's murder. Would I live to be seventy or eighty, trapped away in the memories of what I could have done?
It was an hour before Aodhagan appeared at my door, ready to head for the library where Marian Depew might right now be holding the answers to not just one but now two murders. Only, of course, if my hypothesis was correct. Now I had to consider the problem of how to express my suspicions to Aodhagan without admitting to my spell of eavesdropping, which would no doubt be abhorrent to his morals-loving soul.
I followed him out to his car and took a moment to wonder where a small-town mayor/sheriff/answer man had gotten the hundred thousand or so dollars to buy this SUV, with its sumptuous leather seats and an all-around speaker system. Was he into something illegal? I dismissed this thought as soon as it came. He was much too much a moralist, and had much too clean a house, to get himself involved in the world of crime.
The car started with a contented purr. He didn't speak to me, just connected his phone to the Bluetooth with practiced swipes of his long fingers, and scanned quickly through songs before choosing one. I expected him to make some comment on my antics from the morning or even to be annoyed that we were headed to the library when he'd probably already had plans before I'd come along. But he said nothing.
I expected him to move, but instead, he spent a few seconds with his eyes closed listening to the music, with the tiniest hint of a smile on his Jude Law mouth. "Birth of the Cool. This was some of the most revolutionary music ever."
"Birth of the Cool. I think I've heard of this song."
He opened his eyes and stared at me. For a few seconds he was seemingly struck dumb. "Birth of the Cool isn't the name of this song. It's the name of the entire album. It was a culmination of some of the greatest jazz musicians of their day. Miles Davis on the trumpet, Kai Winding, J. J. Johnson, and Mike Zwerin on the trombone, Gerry Mulligan on the baritone sax…"
He let his voice trail off like he expected me to fill in the rest. I shook my head. "I don't really…do the music thing…much."
"You don't like music?" He clearly put this admission on par with me saying I didn't like him or anyone he cared for.
"I do." I said earnestly, honestly afraid I was hurting his feelings. "I do like music. I just don't…like it as much as you. That's all." I listened to whatever came on the radio, and that was that.
Suddenly, he seemed embarrassed, his cheeks flushing slightly. Different from the hot slashes of angry red I'd seen the day before. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I get carried away."
His level of abrupt awkwardness seemed disproportionate to the conversation we'd had. He fell silent, his mouth tight. After a few short blocks in silence, it occurred to me where I'd seen this kind of behavior. In myself, when I felt guilty or awkward about something my mother or father had tried to teach me a million times without success. Sometime in the past, someone had drilled into a young Aodhagan that one didn't carry on about music. Or maybe about topics for which the other party didn't share your enthusiasm. Whatever it was, this was a lesson he'd spent a long time learning.
It was a short, and completely silent, drive to the Birdwell Public Library. I castigated myself the whole time, a part of me glad I'd ended any personal conversation so efficiently, part of me wishing that I'd reacted in a different way, that I'd studied music even for a moment in my years. Because there was something about Aodhagan's boyish enthusiasm for music, and his subsequent embarrassment, that left me in a twist. I liked his sparkly blue eyes. I liked his dimples. I liked his enthusiasm. And I liked myself a lot less for liking them.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Birdwell Public Library was nestled between the Tuff Shed western-wear store and a rickety old white house that I could now see was a museum of some sort. I was unenlightened as we pulled up next to it, since the rickety white sign read only Museum. Honestly, Birdwell really needed to work on its marketing strategies.
"What kind of museum is that?" I asked Aodhagan cautiously. I didn't want to embarrass him any more. I thought about telling him that rambling on about nothing was one of the things I did best. But I didn't know how he'd take it, so I refrained.
From the look he gave me, I was afraid he was going to tell me it was a jazz history museum. "It's a saddle museum."
I laughed, my first real moment of amusement in I couldn't remember how long, but cut it off abruptly when I realized he was serious. It was as though nature had designed me specifically to insult Aodhagan MacFarley with my very presence. "I didn't know there were that many different types of saddles," I muttered contritely.
He parked the car in front of the library. "I don't think there are. There are only five saddles in the whole place."
I truly, truly tried not to laugh, but a strangled snort sort of sound still forced its way out of me. Thankfully, he flashed a smile out the window before opening his door. I'd only seen it in reflection. He was amused, but he didn't want me to know it. I was left again with the feeling I'd had last night that sometimes w
hen he was harassing me, it was only for his own amusement.
A few seconds after we knocked on the door, it was answered by Marion the librarian. She ushered us in like she didn't want anyone seeing our arrival. The Birdwell Public Library wasn't particularly impressive. The entirety was contained in one room. Each genre had a small section the size of a couple of suburban bookcases. In one corner, up against one of the white chipboard walls, there was a frayed yellow beanbag and a small section of children's books for all the children Aodhagan told me didn't exist in this town. Maybe they were all for Loula, Willis, and Bubba Dick.
"Follow me," Marian's childish voice called out behind her, leading us to a door in the back wall. Behind it, I almost expected to find the refrigerator section of a convenience store. It looked exactly like one. Smelled like one too. It was only a small room with walls painted a dark purple. Nothing could fit in the room except for a single microfiche machine in all its dusty glory, a coat rack, and a printer the size of the ancient Plymouth my ex-boyfriend Tony drove.
"Here they are." She turned her huge, glassy blue eyes on me. Her skin was perfectly white. Completely unmarred. Seriously, she was the creepiest looking thing I'd ever seen.
Junior held a box of plastic spools. As far as I could tell, he had on the exact same outfit he'd had the day before, with the exception of his mammoth belt buckle, which today was brandishing an enormous outline of the Lone Star State.
Marian, Junior, and Aodhagan engaged in a conversation while I unrolled the first spool and fed it into the machine. These things were ancient history, but I knew just how to work them from years of historical research. It was indeed a paper from November 1st, 1969, The Tallatahola County Star. I scrolled back in the direction of the front page and was greeted with the headline, "Local Girl Dies in Tragic Accident." It was sort of what I had expected, but then again, it wasn't. I read it quickly.
Digging Up Bones (Birdwell, Texas Mysteries Book 1) Page 6