by Joan Opyr
A few minutes later, I joined her in the living room. She was reading the newspaper clippings.
“Do me a favor,” I said, “and take a closer look at that picture of Frank. Do you notice anything strange about it?”
She contemplated it for a minute or two and then shook her head. “What am I looking for?”
“It’s the same size as your father’s yearbook photo, but it’s cropped from another picture. When I was on the high school yearbook staff, we cropped pictures for people who didn’t show up for their annual photo. I think that’s what they’ve done with Frank.”
“Okay.” She sipped her coffee.
“I’m wondering where that photo came from. I don’t think it’s a sports shot—his hair isn’t messed up, and he’s not wearing a uniform. I’m guessing it’s taken from some dramatic production or another. As you well know, the Cowslip College drama department and the Cowslip Community Theatre are separated in name only. I want to find the original of that photo. I’ve asked Sarah to get me copies of the Cowslipper for the years Frank was in college.”
“What will that tell us?”
“I don’t know. It might give us an idea of how long he’d been using his alias. If he was Charlie Gibb before he left Cowslip, then perhaps he had some help with his embezzling. That would mean your mother wasn’t the only blackmail possibility.”
“Clever,” she observed. “You should be a detective when you grow up.”
She leaned against me, and we sat together in companionable silence. Then she sat up.
“Well, what are we going to do until we get Sarah’s report on the activities of the late Frank Frost? If I was eavesdropping correctly, you’ve asked her to run a more complete search for any reference to either him or my father.”
“Right. She’s checking LexisNexis and the New York Times Index for any reference to either of them. Charlie Gibb might not have been Frank’s only alias. Maybe he used one closer to home, like his best friend’s name. You’d need to pick aliases that were easy to remember. I suppose we need to think of a way to flush out Frank’s killer. If we can do that, then maybe the sheriff’s department won’t care that your mother misidentified the body. We might even be able to convince them that it was an honest mistake.”
Sylvie stared at me. “Then you don’t think my mother killed Frank?”
“No, I don’t. It doesn’t make sense. When did that money start moving into Gibb’s account?”
She thought for a moment. “Four or five months ago.”
“Right. If Kate was being blackmailed, then why? As far as we know, she only has one secret to hide. How would Frank have known? Even if the rumor that he was believed to have run off with your father reached him, why would he assume that meant that your father was dead?”
“Much less that my mother had killed him,” she agreed.
“And another thing—those transfers to Gibb came out of your mother’s joint account with Agnes. Frank might have been blackmailing her or Fairfax. I think either of them is a more likely prospect than your mother.”
“I’ve been so fixated on my mother and her part in this that I haven’t seen any of the other possibilities. What could Frank have had on Agnes?”
“Who knows? Maybe it’s a sex thing. Our poisoner could even have been dear cousin Helen.” I described my afternoon on the hillside next to her mother’s kitchen and told her about the shadowy figure on the hillside.
“Yesterday, I found my dad’s binoculars on the wall of the ruined house. Helen’s too young to have been mixed up with Frank, but she might know if one of her parents were in trouble. And there was that strange conversation at the cast party when your mother asked Fairfax if the police had questioned him.”
“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “Helen’s been pretty weird lately.” Seeing the look on my face, she laughed and amended that to “weirder than usual.” “That night I met you at Traveler’s Rest, for example. Do you remember?”
I thought back. “You were really angry, I remember that.”
She blushed and nodded. “That’s because Helen took me aside to warn me about you. She said you were a notorious slut and that you’d lead me to rack and ruin. She’s known I’m a lesbian for years, though I’ve always refused to discuss it with her. I wasn’t surprised that she brought you up—she’d seen us together—but, well, she named names.”
“A. J.?”
“And others.”
“There weren’t that many, for God’s sake. Two . . .”
“Three, total. Not including me. I don’t care,” she added, “just so long as it stops with three.”
“You mean four. You’ve now joined my harem.”
She laughed. “I don’t know how she finds these things out, but she always knows. It’s like she’s doing research or something.”
“She’s an amateur Reginald Brown.” We looked at one another. “I don’t know about you, Sylvie, but that gives me the creeps.”
“Helen has that effect on people.”
“She’s been snooping around. I wonder what she knows.”
Sylvie shivered, and I pulled her closer. I tried to picture Helen Merwin as a blackmailer, gathering rumors and gossip from all of her old lady friends. She seemed more like the poison-pen type, but perhaps she had a mercenary streak.
“About my mother, Bil—do you think she’s better off just confessing and taking the consequences? I can testify that it was justifiable homicide.”
I shook my head. “Maybe as a last resort. I don’t see how it would help her with the Frost case, though. I think it would just add fuel to the fire.”
I didn’t add that after hiding the body for sixteen years, Kate might have a hard time proving justifiable homicide, even with Sylvie’s testimony. I also didn’t know how to keep my mother’s part in the whole affair from coming out during a trial, and it seemed better to me to let sleeping dogs lie if it were at all possible.
“I think we should go talk to your aunt,” I said.
“Agnes? What for?”
“You heard what Brown said—rumor has it that she and Frank were having an affair. Let’s go over this afternoon. We could go now, but sooner or later, I’ve got to go back to class.”
She laughed. “I don’t think I’ve ever been this close to flunking out, but I don’t care. Do you think they’d give me a medical drop?”
“You’re not sick.”
“I’m exhausted.”
“That’s your own fault,” I smiled.
“No,” she objected, “it’s yours, not that I’m complaining. What time is your first class?”
“Ten. How about you?”
“Ten as well.” She glanced at the clock. “It’s only eight-thirty now.”
I considered this a proposition. “Shall I exhaust you again?”
“Not if I exhaust you first.”
It was three o’clock when we knocked on the Merwins’ front door. There was only one car in the driveway, a silver Volvo, which Sylvie identified as belonging to Agnes. I hoped she was home alone. Helen was supposed to be at the library with Sarah, and Fairfax should have been at the bank. I didn’t fancy trying to quiz Agnes in front of either of them. We knocked a couple of times and were nearly ready to give up when Agnes suddenly appeared in the doorway. She looked a little the worse for wear, like she had slept neither well nor long enough. She was mightily hung over, and her eyes were bloodshot.
“Sylvie?” She sounded more surprised than annoyed. Then she saw me. “And Bil Hardy. My goodness. Is anything the matter? Is Kate all right?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Sylvie assured her. “We just wanted to ask you about some things. Could we come in? Just for a minute,” she added, when Agnes seemed to hesitate.
“Sure, that’s fine.” She led us into the living room. “Can I get you anything to drink?”
I shook my head, and Sylvie said no.
“Well, I’m going to get one, and a couple of aspirin as well. I’ve had a long night. Pleas
e make yourselves comfortable.”
Sylvie and I sat down on the love seat, a mission oak style affair with brown leather cushions. The whole room was tastefully and expensively decorated. The floor was hardwood, with a large oriental rug covering the area in front of the sofa. It looked like an antique. No tacky chartreuse recliners graced the Merwin parlor, and the central feature of the Hardy living room, the television set, was nowhere in sight. Two wing chairs covered in tapestry fabric with matching ottomans sat on either side of a large stone fireplace. The mantel was wooden and beautifully carved. It was also well polished, but I guessed Agnes was not responsible for that. She didn’t look like the dusting type.
Agnes came back with a huge glass of soda that gave off strong whiffs of gin. She sat down carefully on the sofa across from us and sipped her drink.
“You know the police have taken my mother in for questioning about Burt’s death,” Sylvie said suddenly.
Agnes paused before speaking. “I didn’t know that, but it doesn’t surprise me. They’ve been questioning everyone.”
“You as well?”
“Me as well. And Fairfax, Millicent, Fred, and,” gesturing at me, “Bil’s poor grandmother.”
“So who do you think poisoned him?”
She looked at me and smiled. “Someone who wanted him dead, of course. That could be almost anyone. Sylvie, here, for example. I don’t think she liked him very much.”
Sylvie’s body went tense beside me. I resisted the urge to get up and slap the drink out of Agnes’ hand. “This isn’t public knowledge yet,” I said, “but it wasn’t Burt Wood who was killed. It was your old friend, Frank Frost.”
For a brief moment, the mask dropped and I saw that she was startled, maybe even frightened. It didn’t last long. She schooled her features into a perfect picture of calm indifference.
“I don’t know what makes you say that. My sister identified the body.”
“The dead man had three kidneys. Burt Wood only had one.”
“How unpleasant,” she replied, gazing at me with hooded green eyes. “I suppose you’ve seen the autopsy report. How did you manage that?”
“A little bird told me. This does seem to change the playing field, doesn’t it?”
“After all this time,” Agnes said, almost to herself. “Imagine.” She took another sip of her drink.
“Who would want to kill Frank?” Sylvie asked.
“I don’t know. Just about anyone, I suppose. He wore out his welcome here long before he disappeared. People like that usually do.”
“Like what?”
She laughed. “Good-looking but worthless. Frank was small-minded; he might even have been stupid. I don’t mean that he was mentally deficient, but he was one of those people with perfectly average intellects who are convinced they’re geniuses.”
“You seem to know a lot about it.”
Agnes smiled at me. “Sweetheart, I live with two others just like him.” She held up her glass in mock salute. “Here’s to Einstein and Madame Curie. Are you sure you won’t change your mind and have a drink?”
“No thanks.”
“Suit yourself.”
“Aunt Agnes,” Sylvie said, leaning forward on the love seat, “what do you remember about my father? Do you think he and Frank ever . . . do you think they were having an affair?”
Agnes seemed to think carefully before she answered.
“Is that what this visit’s really about?”
Sylvie shrugged. “I’m trying to make sense of it, I guess. I really can’t ask my mother.”
“I can see why.” The look Agnes gave her was almost kind. “I hated your father, Sylvie. I thought Kate was crazy to marry him, and once she had, I don’t know why she didn’t divorce him. But then, divorces in our family are rather rare. There would have been hell to pay, especially as far as our mother was concerned. Catholics, you know,” she said, nodding to me. “It nearly killed Mother when Kate and I married Episcopalians. When I was five, I overheard my parents arguing one night about whether or not my father was going to wear a condom. He didn’t want to risk having another baby, but my mother insisted on the rhythm method.”
“Who won?”
She looked at me as if I were an idiot. “She did, obviously. Nine months later, I had a sister named Kate.”
I noticed a movement then, just a shadow, out of the corner of my eye. A large, black cat walked through the doorway and jumped up on Agnes’ lap. The shadow had seemed too big for a cat, but there was no further movement.
“As to Frank and your father,” Agnes said, “I don’t think so. I think your father was doggedly heterosexual. And his motto was the more, the merrier. He liked power and control. The first time your mother ever brought him home to meet our parents, he made a pass at me out in the barn. He did that a lot. He was always switched on, and he didn’t know how to take no for an answer.”
I’ll bet you didn’t say no, I thought, but I said nothing. Sylvie gave an involuntary shudder, and I put my arm around her. She leaned against me. Agnes watched us carefully. I didn’t care what she thought.
“Frank was another thing entirely,” she continued smoothly. “You’ve probably heard that he was bisexual. I don’t have any evidence to back it up, but I think that’s true. He and Fred Maguire got into an argument one night when we were rehearsing Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Fred hurled some ugly accusations at Frank, and Frank punched him in the face. Fairfax had to pull Frank off of him. Later that night, someone trashed our new car.”
“Frank?”
“No, it was Fred. He thought Fairfax was having an affair with Frank.”
“Was he?”
She laughed. “I have no idea. I never bothered to ask. And now, ladies, if you don’t mind, I’m going upstairs to lie down. My head is throbbing.”
I shifted into reverse and backed slowly out of the driveway. The Merwins lived in a gentrified bungalow on Exmoor Street, not far from the house where A. J. and the Lesbian Avengers were staying. They had a “Vernon Young for Sheriff” sign in the middle of their front lawn. I gave myself a dog-like shake.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting rid of Merwin cooties. That was so weird.”
“I know. Agnes has always been strange.”
“Must be where Helen gets it. It’s unnerving to experience your aunt in her natural habitat.”
“You’ve never been to her house?”
“No, that was my maiden voyage. By the way, did you get the feeling that we might have had an eavesdropper? Something moved past the living-room doorway. I don’t know if it was the cat or a trick of the light.”
“I must not have been paying attention. When did you notice it?”
“Agnes was talking about her parents playing Vatican roulette, and the cat came in and hopped on her lap. He’s a big bastard, isn’t he? He must weigh about twenty pounds.”
“The cat actually belongs to Fairfax. His name is Ford Madox Ford, if you can imagine that. I was more focused on that huge glass of gin and tonic.” She frowned. “Do you think she’s an alcoholic?”
“She sure as hell isn’t a teetotaler. That wasn’t a glass, it was an aquarium.”
At the corner of Exmoor and Broad, I turned the wrong way ontoA. J.’s street without realizing it. There was nowhere else to turn around, so I drove all the way to the end, stopping at the fence separating the houses from Lilac Trailer Court. The yards up and down the street were badly overgrown, and the strip of ground next to the fence was especially wild. Clumps of crabgrass fought a losing battle with Scotch thistle and other noxious weeds. I had put the truck into reverse for a three-point turn before I realized what I was looking at.
“Wait here,” I said, hopping out of the truck.
It only took a moment. I picked a weed next to the fence and handed it to her.
“You’re the botanist,” I said. “You tell me what that is.”
“Jimsonweed,” she replied. “I recognize it from the picture your sis
ter gave us.”
“Frank was seen around here, and my brother practically lives just over there in trailer number eight. It’s also convenient to a few other people.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “Fred doesn’t live too far from here. Within walking distance, anyway.”
It began to rain as soon as we turned onto Main Street. Safeway, the scene of Sam’s failed shoplifting spree, stood on the corner. It wasn’t until I actually saw the billboard that I remembered what Sarah had said about his recent arrest. There, painted in runny red letters over an advertisement encouraging literacy, were the words “Francie Stokes is a b-i-c-h.”
Chapter 26
Reluctantly, Sylvie and I agreed to part company for the time being. I needed to let Emma know that I was alive and well, and Sylvie needed to check in with her mother. I dropped her off at Kate’s farm, promising to pick her up again in time for dinner with Sarah. Then, I girded my loins and drove home to face the wrath.
Emma was sitting in her accustomed place on the sofa, reading the Herald-Examiner. She looked over the top of it as I came in.
“Could it be . . . yes, it’s Amelia Earhardt. How was the Pacific? Run out of gas?”
“Very funny.”
“It’s not funny at all,” she replied. “I suppose I can call the sheriff now and tell him to stop dragging the Elk River. I don’t know what gets into you kids. First, you disappear. Then, your brother checks himself out of the hospital and takes off God knows where. He reappeared last night via a collect call from the jail. Now, you come strolling in looking like the dog’s dinner.”
I sat down in Archie Bunker and folded my arms across my chest. “I’m a grown woman, Emma.”
“You’re an inconsiderate snot. You might have called to let me know that you were all right. ‘Officer, I last saw my youngest daughter at the House of Pancakes.’ That would have made a nice epitaph, don’t you think?”
I pointed at the cordless phone sitting on the coffee table next to her. “I’ve spoken to both Sarah and Naomi. They knew where I was. I thought one of them would have called you.”
“It wasn’t their responsibility.”