I sometimes forget that my aunt was christened Teresa. When she started her realty business in the late eighties, she decided to have her name legally changed. Her personality, she’d claimed, didn’t fit her original saintly appellation.
Personally, I think she just liked the name Tressa.
“Remember when the Beatles came on the Ed Sullivan Show for the first time?” Aunt Tressa said, her face taking on a dreamy expression.
“I don’t, but—”
“It was my Nana who watched it with me. My folks had fled upstairs, leaving the two of us alone with our old black-andwhite TV. I sat on the floor, as close to the TV as I could get, while Nana sat behind me on the sofa. The music was so fantastic that I was jumping all over the place, practically tearing out my teased hair. When I turned around, Nana was smiling and clapping to the beat of ‘She Loves You.’ Like it was the best song she ever heard, you know?” Her eyes glistened with unshed tears.
“That’s a beautiful memory, Aunt Tress.”
And while the stories about my great-grandmother made me smile, I felt a dull ache grip me inside. I barely remembered my own mother, let alone Aunt Tressa’s mom, who died when I was ten.
I twirled the remaining port in my glass. “Aunt Tress, did … Sharon ever cook for me?”
Aunt Tressa stiffened. Then she turned and looked at me thoughtfully, a wistful smile on her lips. “Your mother? Sure she did, all the time. She was actually a fairly decent cook, when she put her mind to it. And in those days, you weren’t easy to please. Back then, you were as fussy as they come.”
“Moi?”
“Yes, you.”
“But I like everything!”
She shut off the burner and dumped the ziti into the colander, sending waves of warm steam spiraling toward the ceiling. “Not then, you didn’t. You were a royal pain in the petunia, as your grandfather would say.”
“So what did she cook?”
“Oh, the usual stuff kids like. Hot dogs in a blanket. Mac and cheese—homemade, not from a box. And since you weren’t so hot on fruits and veggies in those days, she used to find ways to sneak them into your food.”
I grinned. “Really? How?”
“Well for one thing, she’d slip paper-thin slices of banana into those peanut butter and marshmallow sandwiches you loved so much.”
“Did I notice?”
“If you did, you didn’t complain. Oh, and the mac and cheese? She’d chop broccoli into miniscule pieces and mix it in. When you asked her what the green spots were, she’d tell you, with a completely straight face, that they were the flavor buds that made the macaroni taste so delicious.”
What are those green dots, Mommy?
Those are just flavor buds, sweetie. They make the macaroni taste extra special!
A sudden lump clogged my throat. In a memory as clear as glass, I could see Sharon standing at the kitchen counter wearing pink shorts and a skimpy halter top, her caramel-colored hair pulled into a loose braid, a wooden spoon waving from her hand as her sandaled feet boogied to a tune on the radio.
I’d forgotten how pretty she was. The photos I had of her had been unceremoniously ripped from their frames and shoved into a box that was now stored in the attic—a punishment for her long-ago abandonment.
“You haven’t talked about her in a long time,” Aunt Tressa said, layering the cheese and marinara sauce into the ziti.
“Once in a while I think about her, wonder where she is. For all we know she could be living a block away.” I opened the fridge and stuck in my head. “I mean, after all this time would you even recognize her?”
“That’s a tough question, App.” My aunt shrugged. “Who’s to know how much she’s changed in twenty-seven years.”
I pulled a tub of whipped butter out of the fridge and closed the door. “Tell me honestly, Aunt Tress, how hard did Dad really try to find her?”
Aunt Tressa’s hand paused mid-stir. The question clearly bothered her.
“Here’s the thing, App. Your mom, well … she left your father a note.”
“A note?” I stared at my aunt, whose complexion was now verging on tomato red. “She left a note and no one ever told me?”
“You were six, Apple.”
“Am I six now?”
When she didn’t answer, I gritted my teeth. “What did the note say?”
“It’s ancient hist—”
“What. Did. It. Say.”
Aunt Tressa squinted at the tangerine-painted wall above my stove, as if she could see those long-ago words scrawled there like faded graffiti. “I don’t recall precisely, but essentially she told him she was leaving for a while to take care of something very important. Something extremely personal that only she could handle. She would be back as soon as she could.”
“That’s it?” I said.
“Pretty much. I’ll admit it was cryptic. It didn’t seem like something Sharon would do, but the note was definitely in her handwriting. Even the police didn’t find any reason to believe she didn’t leave of her own accord.”
“How did Dad react?”
She set her wooden spoon on the counter. “At first he was frantic. He couldn’t imagine what could be so personal that she couldn’t tell him about it. All sorts of terrible things went through his mind.”
“I can imagine.”
“He tried getting in touch with her family in Maine, but it took him two days just to track down her folks’ phone number. It wasn’t like it is today, where everything’s on the Internet. Anyway, when he finally reached her mother, she said they hadn’t seen Sharon since before she got married.”
“Why was my … why was Sharon estranged from her family?”
“No one ever knew. She refused to talk about it.” She opened my oven and slid the casserole dish inside. “Every so often I’d catch this look on her face, like she was remembering something—something terribly sad. But don’t ever think she didn’t love you, Apple. You were everything to her. She told me that more than once.”
My throat felt taut. “But she left me anyway.”
“I can’t explain that. I only know that whatever dire circumstance made her leave that day, it wasn’t something she chose willingly. I think she always intended to come back, but for some reason she couldn’t.”
I nodded dully. If I dwelled on it long enough I’d start to get maudlin, and right now that was the last thing I needed. “Shall we skip the salad tonight and go straight for the carbs and the fat?”
Aunt Tressa gave me a relieved smile. “I’d say that sounds like a plan.”
I defrosted some crusty rolls, warmed them on a cookie sheet, and set them in a basket on the table. Twenty minutes later, we were devouring the oven-baked kooky macaroni as if we hadn’t seen food in a week. I was rubbing my stomach, lamenting about having overindulged, when a crash from the living room snapped me out of my fat-induced funk. I jumped up and dashed to the scene of what I was sure was a minor disaster.
A sigh of relief escaped me when I saw what actually happened. Aunt Tressa had apparently left her designer bag balanced on the arm of the sofa. It now lay on the floor in a disemboweled jumble. While Elliot chewed happily on an aquamarine eye pencil, Cinnie munched to her heart’s content on a miniature Three Musketeers bar, paper and all.
I couldn’t help myself—I burst into giggles.
When I finally got myself under control, I noticed that Aunt Tressa was just standing there, gawking at the mess. Then she slapped the side of her head so hard I was afraid she’d given herself a concussion.
“App, I almost forgot! That letter, or card, or whatever it was Lou gave me, is still in my bag!”
CHAPTER NINE
I sit here now at my writing desk, emptying my soul onto paper. It is very late, past midnight. Could it be but a mere half day ago that I first saw my love? Is it possible that my heart was so irrevocably captured in that tiny space of time?
My aunt stooped and gently tugged her massive handbag away from the cats. Aft
er excavating through its remaining contents, she managed to unearth a worn yellowed envelope. It was rectangular, about five-by-seven, and clearly decades old.
Aunt Tressa flipped it over. “There’s no stamp or postmark, so it was obviously never mailed.” She read the faded ink on the back of the envelope. “To my love, it says.”
“Okay, now I’m intrigued.”
We sat on the sofa. I turned on another lamp.
The envelope had already been opened, its top edge bearing an even slit. One corner was slightly torn. With her thumb and forefinger, Aunt Tressa extracted a faded card. “Hey, look, it’s a valentine. See the picture?”
On the front of the card, two sweethearts in old-fashioned garb gazed adoringly into each other’s eyes. A crimson heart was superimposed behind them like a bloated red halo. In the upper right corner, a chubby, winged cupid with a mischievous smile aimed its arrow directly at the couple.
Aunt Tressa opened the card.
The printed message on the right-hand side, in elaborate red lettering, was a simple HappyValentine’s Day. But the homespun poem on the left, handwritten in a precise script, was far more curious.
You’ve dwelt within my heart, dear love
From that first and shining day
Your eyes of blue and locks of gold
Within my dreams did reign
And so, dear sweet, to you I pledge
My essence and my soul
Now we shall dwell within this home
Which shall be yours to hold
I gave out a low whistle. “Wow. Someone had it bad for someone.”
“I’ll say. That’s the worst poem I’ve ever read.”
“Is there a date on the card?”
Aunt Tressa flipped it over, then tipped it closer to the light. “It’s hard to read, but I think it says one-nine-five-one. Nineteen fifty-one.”
“Let’s see, Edgar Dwardene was seventy-nine when he died. In nineteen fifty-one he would have been”—I subtracted in my head—“seventeen or eighteen.”
“Hard to believe a seventeen-year-old would write this.”
“I know,” I agreed. “It sounds more like someone wrote it in eighteen fifty-one, not nineteen fifty-one.”
“I wonder whatever came of their love affair,” Aunt Tressa mused dreamily. “If it was a love affair. I mean, why did Edgar still have this? Why didn’t he ever give this valentine to the object of his affections?”
“Maybe he did and she threw it back at him. Maybe that’s why he never married. Or maybe Edgar didn’t even write it. But Aunt Tressa, more important: why did Lou give it to you in the first place? Tell me exactly what he said.”
She blew out a breath. “Let me think. It was something like, ‘Give this to Apple for me, will you?’ I’m pretty sure that was it.”
“But why me?”
She shook her head. “I’m as clueless as you are. The look on his face was weird, though. Almost like … I don’t know. It’s hard to explain.”
“Did he know I collect antique postcards?” Buying old postcards had been a hobby of mine for the past few years. One of these days I planned to mount them all into a giant collage and have it framed.
“I might have told him that. I suppose he thought you could add this to your collection. It is pretty unique.”
I picked up the envelope and flipped it over. On the front, near the edge where the envelope had once been sealed, eight numbers had been scribbled with a felt-tip pen. If I was interpreting the hasty penmanship correctly, the numbers were 1199-0540. “I wonder what these numbers mean.”
Aunt Tressa peered at them. “That sort of looks like Lou’s writing, but I’m not sure.” She shrugged. “Eight numbers. So it can’t be a phone number.”
“No. Even if you left off the last zero, phone numbers never start with a one.”
Then something else caught my eye. A faint brown line, slightly darker than the paper, skirted the borders of the envelope.
“Something else was in here,” I said. “See? It left a mark.” I showed her the darkened lines that suggested another card or paper had been inside the envelope.
“Hmm,” was all she replied.
Hmm, indeed.
Whatever had been inside the envelope had been there long enough to make those dark lines. Had Lou Marshall been the one to remove it?
If so, was it important enough to have gotten him killed?
CHAPTER TEN
On the wall above me, the oil painting of Sapphire Lake that I completed this past spring beams down at me. I struggled for months getting the hues just right, but I am pleased with the results. Gazing at it now, I realize what is missing—two lovers strolling along the shore, their arms wrapped leisurely around each other’s waists. Dora and me …
I jerked awake in the middle of a goofy dream. I’d been slicing a tomato for a salad when my small kitchen knife suddenly morphed into an enormous black dagger. Over a foot long, it seemed to weigh as much as my car. I kept trying to slice the tomato with it, but it was like lifting an anchor. Then something crawled down my back … a tarantula—and fortunately I woke up.
Sheesh, what a nutty dream. I turned over and screwed my fuzzy gaze in the direction of the only window that faced the street. It was too early for any daylight to be seeping through the mini-blind, but since it was Monday, staying in bed was not an option.
Elliot jumped onto my shoulder, while Cinnie sidled contentedly onto my pillow and began chewing a strand of my hair. “Is that a hint?” I said groggily. I shot a glance at my clock—it was six eighteen. Shivering, I tossed aside the covers, cast a baleful glance at my treadmill, then threw on my robe and slippers and trekked downstairs.
Cinnie and Elliot pranced along in front of me, beating a path directly to their food bowls. First order of the day: turn up the thermostat.
In the kitchen, I replenished the cats’ food and gave them fresh water, then made a fast breakfast for myself. My reliable coffeemaker, which operates on a timer, was dutifully giving off aromatic waves of a scrumptious French roast blend.
By the time I’d showered and changed, Aunt Tressa was already in the driveway, warming up her car and scraping the frost from her windshield. The moment I opened my front door she waggled her scraper at me, then pointed at her watch.
“Coming, Saint Punctual,” I muttered to myself.
The plan this morning was for me to follow her to the dealership where she was having her Caddy serviced and inspected, then give her a lift back to her realty office on Aubrey Road in Hazleton—just three streets away from the law firm where I worked.
Aunt Tressa is overly attached to her Caddy, since it belonged to the man she’d loved more than a never-ending live Beatles concert—Marty Krichner. When he died of an aneurysm seven years ago, she spiraled into a gripping depression. During those months, I worried about her constantly. She could barely haul herself to the office every day, let alone muster any enthusiasm for selling homes. Nothing seemed to snap her out of it.
Then, one afternoon on her way home from work, a car whipped out in front of her, forcing her to slam on her brakes. She started to curse at the driver when the license plate suddenly snagged her attention. It had exactly three letters— Marty’s initials. To her it was a sign that he was watching over her, a loving, caring angel.
He was also giving her a mild kick in the tailpipe, she’d decided. By the next morning she was her old self again. Within a week she’d landed two new listings.
The sun was beaming from a gorgeous blue sky, glinting off the stretches of snow that lined Route 121 as I drove toward the dealership where my aunt got her car serviced. By the time I pulled up in front of the service entrance, Aunt Tressa—hard to miss in her faux mink coat and an orange scarf that could easily substitute as a runway beacon—was waiting for me.
“We have to pick it up no later than five-thirty,” she said, hopping into my front seat.
“Won’t it feel good to finally have that sticker?” I said.
“Yeah.” She snickered. “But I’ll miss tormenting Paul Fenton by reminding him I’m still in the grace period. The man is obsessed with inspections.”
Right now he’s more concerned about murder, I thought, choosing not to voice that particular sentiment.
“You know, last night I got thinking,” Aunt Tressa said, sticking the end of her seat belt into the slot, “about that Darby guy.”
Uh-oh. The sly glimmer in her eye made me nervous. I hoped she wasn’t hatching some devious plan.
“And I came up with a plan.”
Here we go.
“He made it pretty clear on Saturday that he was smitten with me.”
“Smitten?”
“Yes, smitten,” she said defensively. “So what I have to do is use that to our advantage.”
“And you do that how?”
“By luring him to my apartment on a pretext, so I can do a little interrogating of my own. Paul Fenton isn’t the only one in this town who can ask questions. I can do it, too—with a little more flare and a lot more subtlety.”
“Subtlety? Like the time you told Jodie Breenlow her crass was showing?”
My aunt sniffed. “That was different. She’d put that obnoxious anti-gay bumper sticker on her car only days before her sister was marrying her life partner. Her crass was showing. I was simply pointing it out.”
“You’re missing the point,” I said. “What if Darby is actually dangerous? What if he’s the one who—” I stopped myself from hurtling over the edge of that one. “Okay, let me ask you this. What are you planning to use as a so-called pretext?”
“Hah! That’s easy—my dishwasher. I told you it was leaking. And he told us he does plumbing repairs, remember? No job too small!” she mimed in a perky tone.
I heaved a useless sigh. It was obvious she already had her mind made up. “So what are you planning to do, get him to fix your dishwasher, then cozy up to him and then make him spill his guts?”
“Whatever it takes. Look, App, I know it’s too late to help Lou, but what if that man did something to Lillian? Right now, Paul Fenton won’t even entertain the idea that something’s happened to her. Who’s going to help her if we don’t?”
Some Enchanted Murder Page 6