by Susan Breen
“Spent many a night sleeping under here, me and the squirrels. They love the nuts, you know?”
“I didn’t actually know this kind of tree had nuts.”
“Beechnuts,” he said. “I could live under here.”
“I think I like a roof myself. But I take your point.”
He patted the tree’s trunk. “Poor girl’s sensitive. Didn’t like the storm last night.”
“How can you tell?”
“She told me. Her little leaves whisper in my ears.” A slight breeze fell and a few of the leaves floated to the ground. She wondered if Tim knew about LSD and ergot. She wondered where Domino got it from. Would you ask your old lover to provide you with hallucinogenics? She suspected Domino would.
“Tim, you know how Domino died, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” he said. “Broomsticks.”
“Ergot,” she said. “Have you ever used that?”
He tilted his head as he looked at her. His eyes were milky as an old dog’s. “Tried to make it once. Had a recipe for it, but I couldn’t do it. Highly toxic. Not for the amateur.”
“So she wouldn’t grow it herself.”
“No. You have to buy it from someone. You’d have to be a Ph.D. at MIT to do it on your own.”
“Where could you buy it?” she asked, though even as she asked, the answer clicked into her head. From a doctor, of course. “Grant Winfrey.”
“Yeah.”
“You know him.”
“Used to. Before he became a big success. We went to school together. We were like the Three Musketeers.”
“And you and Domino went out?”
“We went out, yeah. For a while. She had powers, you know? She could stand on a street corner and say, there, and you’d go ring the doorbell, and you’d find the party.”
“Were you serious about her?”
He nodded. “I gave her a ring. Family heirloom.” Maggie remembered the delicate antique ring on Domino’s hand. She’d thought at the time that it didn’t look like a ring Domino would wear. She seemed a black onyx sort of person, but now she understood. It was a trophy.
“My mother went to talk to Leonard Stern about it. “
“About what?”
“Getting the ring back. She told him that ring was the only valuable thing my family had left, but he said that if it was important to us, I shouldn’t have given it to Domino. He told my mother that that’s why we were poor. Because we gave our money away. And that’s why they were rich. Because they hung on to theirs. She’d gone to California by then.” He shook his head.
“And that was the end of it?”
“No, I went to California to ask her for the ring back. Then I wound up in jail.”
“Why?”
He slumped against the tree. “I tried to kill Domino. With a knife. I was crazy back then.”
The scar on her arm.
He looked tired, she thought. One of those people who flamed out in their youth and never reached that peak again. Profligate people. She thought of Peter Nelson, another one who didn’t take care, though she got a second chance, and so did he.
“My brother died here,” he said. “Under this tree. Bruce. Spruce.”
He seemed to pull himself together then, and he spoke directly to Maggie. “I hate this house. I wish they would have burned it down. I couldn’t wait to leave here when I was a kid. Used to hear voices in my room. Had to sleep here, to get away from them. The day my father sold this house to Leonard Stern was the happiest day of my life, and look what happened. The curse went on to them.”
“You think that’s why Domino died. Because she was cursed.”
“She called me. She wanted me to come over and talk about old times.”
“Did you?”
“No.”
“But you did come to the Halloween party?”
“I knew she was going to die,” he said.
“How did you know?”
He smiled softly. “The tree told me.”
He stood up then and put out his hand. “Come on, Miss Maggie Dove, let me help you back to town.”
A man without irony, she thought. Also a man without much sense. But a kind man. A man overwhelmed by the twists his life had taken, and she could relate to that.
She knew she should probably stop by the office, but she also felt she should visit with Kosi. Cruel as he was to her, he seemed to like it when she paid attention to him. In that respect, he was like Madame Simone, she thought. A diva. She figured she could write up her notes at home, and it wound up taking much longer to do than she anticipated, so it was not until the next morning that she got to the office and saw the craziness that had erupted there.
Chapter 35
First of all, there were track and field medals all over the walls, even more of them than the bowling trophies. Maggie glared at Agnes, who was whispering into the phone, but then she noticed Helen cackling and realized Agnes wasn’t the culprit.
“I was a track star in my day,” Helen said. “I figured, why should Agnes have all the glory?”
“This is starting to look like a Modell’s,” Maggie said.
She loved Helen, but there were times she did wish she took things more seriously. She didn’t want the agency to be a joke. The line between pitiful and loveable was a narrow one; she’d crossed it herself. And the more she got involved with this agency, the more strongly she felt she wanted to be respected. She didn’t want anyone laughing at her.
“Too much?” Helen asked.
“I think you could take them down.”
“And the bowling ones too?” she asked.
It was the same with Sunday School, Maggie thought. You always had to be careful not to favor one child over another. Sometimes she thought she’d only had one child because she didn’t want to deal with sibling rivalry. Sometimes she regretted that awfully. So many times. But then she thought of how perfect her relationship with Juliet had been. She did it the way she wanted to.
“I’ll talk to Agnes,” Maggie said. “But who is she talking to?”
“The Lady Cherrelle,” Helen said. “She’s been doing this for half an hour.”
“I love you more,” Agnes murmured into the phone. She giggled and pressed the phone against her lips. “No, no, no. I love you more.”
A pounding sound came from the dentist’s office. Maggie hoped he wasn’t murdering one of his patients. She hoped he wasn’t having sex against a wall. Somehow she could never be with Agnes without thinking of sex in all its possibilities, and what did that mean? Walter was safety and Agnes was sex and she was a very confused Sunday School teacher.
Agnes giggled again. She was wearing a red silk blouse and cream pants. She looked like she’d bolted right out of the 1980s.
“No, me first. Me first.” She swiveled her chair and bounced a bit. When she noticed Maggie she frowned.
“Gotta go, babe. Gotta go.”
But then she began giggling again and meanwhile Archie the postal worker had shown up at their office. He carried a huge package that read Agnes Jorgenson on it.
“There we go,” Agnes said, finally ending her conversation. “Guess what Cherrelle told me.”
“Would you sign for the box?” Archie asked. He was a very timid man. He didn’t like talking to people, which was not the ideal personality for a postal worker, Maggie thought, given that he spent his day going from person to person. But he was very polite, and when she gave him a Christmas bonus, he always wrote the most lovely thank-you notes.
“What’s this box?” Maggie asked. There was no return address.
“Supplies,” Agnes said.
“Are you thinking there will be an apocalypse?”
“Just wait and see,” Agnes said, zipping it open with an X-Acto knife. There was no hesitation to her. Having slit the box open, she began pulling out one item after another. Infrared goggles. A long tube that allowed you to see around corners. Invisible ink. And on it went.
She began piling up her
things, stacking them on the bookshelves. She arranged everything alphabetically. So different than Trudi, Maggie thought, who seemed to let intuition guide her. Agnes always liked a system.
“So do you want to know what Cherrelle told me about the autopsy?” Agnes asked, as she tucked a decoder onto one of the shelves.
“Is that what you were talking about?” Helen asked.
“Yes, and guess what, they’re saying it’s accidental death. No sign of foul play. No unexpected bruises. Looks like she slipped on the steps, put out her hands but couldn’t stop herself.”
Maggie thought of that girl at the hairdresser and how excited she’d been. “That’s what Walter was saying when I was at Stern Manor. He said that it looked like an accident to him, but he had to be sure.”
“Oh, Walter, is it?”
Maggie ignored her. Sometimes if you ignored things they actually did go away.
“So what happens now?” Helen asked.
“Nothing,” Agnes said. “Parents are on their way up. They’ll bury her and that’s the end of Passion.”
“I think I read a novel with that title,” Helen said. “Though that one ended on a boat. Or was it a ship?”
“Are you all right?” Maggie asked.
“Great.”
“The thing is,” Maggie went on, keeping an eye on Helen, who definitely did not look great, who had dark purple smudges under her eyes, “we still have the job from Racine. This doesn’t change that. Our priority has to be to figure out what happened with Domino. I’m going to try to get Grant Winfrey to talk, and, Agnes, you should go up to Cranston and look through her yearbooks and see what other contacts she might have. Helen, I’m thinking we should also look into her financial history.”
“Well, look at you, Maggie Dove,” Agnes said. “You’re a regular Humphrey Bogart.”
“I’m simply saying that just because Passion died, sad as that is, it doesn’t mean our original mission has changed.”
“Dove with a mission,” Helen murmured.
Just then Archie the postal worker knocked on the door. “Come on in,” Agnes yelled. “It’s a public office. You don’t need to knock.”
“I forgot to give you this,” he whispered, and handed a certified letter to Maggie. “Would you sign for it, Mrs. Dove?”
“Of course,” she said.
She hoped this wasn’t about her parking in the handicapped spot, which she shouldn’t have done. But when Maggie opened the envelope, a check fell out. Agnes swooped on it. Maggie’d never seen her move so fast. Perhaps it was all the track and field medals.
“Five thousand dollars,” Agnes said. “It’s from Racine.”
Maggie read the letter that came with the check. “ ‘I am officially informing you that I would like to terminate your private detective services,’ ” Maggie read aloud. “ ‘Thank you.’ ”
“Oh well,” Agnes said. “She can terminate away if she’s going to give us $5,000.”
“I think that’s the third time she’s fired us,” Helen pointed out.
“This can’t be right,” Maggie said.
“Don’t feel guilty,” Agnes said. “It wasn’t anything you did.”
“I wasn’t feeling guilty. I just can’t believe she’s firing us.” Maggie thought of how Racine had looked last night. So worried and frightened. Why would she be jettisoning the one group of people who were on her side?
“There’s still so much to discover,” Maggie said. “I have so many questions.”
“I’m going to the bank,” Agnes said.
“I’ve got to stop by the school,” Helen said. “Edgar’s teacher wants to talk to me again.”
“What happened?” Maggie asked.
“Nothing serious,” Helen said. “Just an issue involving a hamster. He wouldn’t share it, though he did offer to cut it in half. Not that he did, of course.”
“Want me to come?”
“No,” Helen said. “I’ve got this one covered.”
Agnes looked in the mirror and fluffed up her hair. Then she smiled at herself, a wide-open smile to check her teeth.
“Don’t worry, Maggie,” she said. “We’ve got some marital investigation work coming up. It’s going to be nasty.”
And with that they were both gone, leaving Maggie alone in the office. She felt aggravated. She wanted to talk to Racine, but knew she should stay put for a bit. This was not a situation that required a hysterical response. She began looking over all her notes, trying to figure out who she needed to talk to and what questions she should pursue. She wondered if Madame Simone had asked Racine to fire them. She’d been so querulous last night. Maybe she didn’t want to share Racine’s attention with anyone. What could she say to Racine to get her to hire her again?
She noticed then that the light on the VCR was flashing. She kept forgetting to look at those tapes. Maggie got the remote and clicked start. The transmitter was voice-activated, so the tape went in fits and starts, showing Racine getting into bed. Not moving. Then Racine getting up in the morning. Maggie skimmed past all that. She felt uncomfortable watching Racine, particularly having seen her without her beret. She zoomed through the last week of October, but then on the first of November she noticed something strange. Racine went to bed, but a few hours later, in the dark, someone was walking around her room. The picture quality wasn’t good, and the sound wasn’t good, so all she really had was a ghostly image of a woman walking around in the dark. Of course, it could just be Racine, sleepless. But Maggie thought she could see the outline of Racine in her bed. It occurred to her that if you’re going to buy a teddy bear cam, you should spend more than $40.
The next few nights nothing happened, but then on November 6, the figure reappeared. It looked like she was going through the drawers, looking for something. For a horrible moment, Maggie wondered if this phantom figure was a ghost, one of the murdered slaves who’d come back to haunt Racine. But then she looked more closely at the color of her hair and realized it was Passion. The young woman was sneaking around Racine’s room in the dark, but why?
Could she be sleepwalking? Maggie had an aunt once who sleepwalked, and they used to find her in all sorts of strange locations. Passion had been walking around the night that she fell and died. Was it possible? Then a more sinister possibility suggested itself. Could she have seen something in her sleepwalking, some fact that registered, and did that put her in harm’s way? If ever there was someone with the characteristics of a blackmailer, Maggie would have said it was Passion. She was self-absorbed. She liked money and secrets and she did not have a rigid sense of morals.
Maggie was reflecting on that when she noticed a couple walking down Main Street. She’d never seen them before. The woman was heavyset and wore a black dress and black coat. Her bright blond hair was carefully blow-dried. Her husband walked slowly alongside her. He was a tall man and Maggie could see the glint of his wedding band even from a block away. It had gotten chillier. November was starting to settle in, but Maggie knew the chill in their expressions had nothing to do with the weather. Here were Passion’s parents, come to retrieve their daughter. Maggie went out to greet them.
Chapter 36
Maggie realized as she walked up to the couple that she had no idea what Passion’s last name was. Someone must have spoken it at the crime scene, but she didn’t hear it. So all she could do, when she reached them, was say, “You must be here about your daughter.”
“Yes,” Passion’s mother said, looking at her hopefully. “Did you know her?”
“Yes,” Maggie said, glad she could answer honestly.
Darby rush hour swirled around them. Buses were going down Main Street, picking up children to take them to school. Commuters were creeping up behind the buses, trying to get to their train on time. The garbage trucks were out, picking up recycling, and then there were the high school students with their new licenses, veering off and doing erratic things, which added another level of tension to the encounter.
“My
office is right over here,” Maggie said. “Would you like to come in and have a cup of tea?”
“I’d love that,” Passion’s mother said. “We’ve been on the road since we got the news, and we met with that tall policeman. But we have to wait for a bit for them to release her. I’m sorry, does that make sense? I can’t quite hear what I’m saying.”
“You’re doing fine,” Maggie said, touching her arm for a moment, knowing that there was nothing to say. Nothing to do except try to remind her that she was still part of the human race. It was horrible that as much time as she’d spent grieving herself, she couldn’t think of anything better to say, but really there was nothing. There were no magic words to make someone feel better. What could she say but that you’re going to feel horrible for the rest of your life? One thing she knew was that she would not say, “It’s God’s will.” She thought she would smack the next person who said that to her.
“Come with me. My name is Maggie Dove.”
“I’m Lila Cooper and this is my husband, Douglas. How did you know Passion?”
“We went to the same hairdresser,” Maggie said.
“Oh, she loved that about New York. How skilled the hairdressers were. She sent me a picture of that last styling.” Lila pulled out her phone and began running her finger over it. She had long orange nails, and she pulled up a picture of Passion at the hair salon.
“She always sent me a picture whenever she changed her hairstyle. She knew I’d like to see it.”
“We didn’t want to stay at that Stern Manor,” Douglas said. “Wanted to get some air.”
“Of course,” Maggie said sympathetically, and brought them into her office. “Here we are.”
They gazed around, taking in the large slab of the table, the chairs and all the medals. “You must be very successful,” Lila said. “You’re a detective?”
“Yes,” Maggie said. She was going to qualify it, but then realized she didn’t have to. She actually was a detective.