“I never cried, not even when you and two other guys tackled me and gave me a concussion—”
“If I never hear about that fucking concussion again, it’ll be too soon. Now get out and let me get back to work.”
Far too angry to get behind the wheel, I stomped a couple of blocks to the market and bought raspberry iced tea. I drank the whole thing on the way back to the car.
According to Gene, someone I knew, someone from the play, had smashed Andre’s head. No. Someone could have sneaked in. Victor had brought a piano in through the outside door near the janitor’s closet. Would he have locked that door after him? Would Gene have asked about the side door?
I drove to our house just in case the right Cabriolet was sitting in the driveway. It wasn’t. I kept on rolling.
Kirk, mowing the lawn in front of the rectory, looked up and yelled, “Liz!” He dropped the handle of the old mower he was using and jogged over to the car. He’d changed once again, now wearing cut-offs and a blue T-shirt designed by one of the kids in our youth group. It featured a white dove and bold red lettering that said: LET THE HOLY SPIRIT SWOOP DOWN ON YOU. His shirt revealed strong, square shoulders, muscular chest and arms, a little layer of fat around his waist.
I’d always thought of Kirk as a chubby, harmless creature, maybe because of his round, boyish face. Now I remembered how easily he’d pulled me to my feet last night. Good grief! I couldn’t suspect a priest, could I?
I rolled down the passenger side window.
Kirk crouched on the sidewalk, and looked in at me. “Found Meg yet?” he asked.
“No. Why are you so interested in finding her—and don’t tell me it’s for Patricia’s sake.”
He looked down the street toward our house, then back at me. “I really can’t go into it with you—just, if you see her, please call me.” Effortlessly, he rose from his crouch and went back to his mower.
I watched for a moment, the scent of newly cut grass dizzying, the whir of the blades matching the whir of the gears in my head.
Meg had never shown interest in church since Sunday school when she liked to go because she got to wear frilly dresses and Mary Janes. Now she played the organ on Sundays only because of Mother. What on earth could Kirk want with her?
I turned past the church and went west on Main Street. Two blocks down I passed Sheila’s In and pulled into the curb. I glanced at my watch—nearly 3 o’clock. She was closed now, but she might still be in the kitchen. I ran across the street, opened the gate and followed the old, cracked walk that led away from the front door and around the cottage to the back.
Through the screen door I heard her oldies station offering Elvis crooning “Are You Lonesome Tonight.” I stepped over the white Persian on the stoop and opened the screen door, walking into the eye-watering miasma of chopped onions. Sheila stood sideways to me at the butcher block in the middle of the kitchen working with a huge, gleaming knife.
At the counter near her, Gene, wearing a clean white apron over his uniform, stood kneading bread dough. His rolled-up sleeves revealed brawny, floury arms. A leather jacket with a Warfield police patch on the shoulder hung over a ladderback chair at the pine table.
I’d only caught one word, “Meg,” before silence fell.
Sheila’s knife didn’t stop as she glanced at me and said, “Hi, hon, what’s up?”
“I wanted to pay you back for this morning.”
Gene stared intently at the dough he continued to knead.
“No hurry, Liz.” Sheila stopped chopping onions.
I dug my wallet out of my purse and took out a ten. The muffled whomp of Gene’s fist punching dough was the only sound in the sunny kitchen.
I turned away, took a step, turned back, catching the guilty look on Gene’s face. His floury hands rested on the counter.
“Why were you talking about Meg?” I asked, my voice scarcely audible.
Gene said, “You shouldn’t eavesdrop.”
“Don’t,” I said. “Please.” I rubbed my forehead. The headache had returned with reinforcements. “I want to know what you’re saying about Meg.”
Sheila said, “It wasn’t nothing, honey. Andre’s housekeeper says—”
“Sheila! I told you that in confidence,” Gene protested.
“Hon, it’s gonna to be all over town by church time Sunday, and you know it. Anyways, she says Meg’s been at Andre’s a lot, so we was just wondering—”
I glared at Gene. “Why is it you can tell Sheila, but when I asked you—”
“I shouldn’t have told her, either, but—”
I shoved the screen door so hard it crashed against the side of the cottage. I stumbled on the uneven cement step, stopped to catch my balance.
The door crashed open again, and Gene said, “Are you all right?”
Shivering uncontrollably, I stared down at the deeply notched leaves of a dandelion, and for a moment all I could think of was a Mickey Mouse record I’d had when I was little where a dandelion turned into a real lion and chased him. George and I used to—
Gene’s hand touched my shoulder.
“No!” I said.
His hand stayed. “Liz, come on.”
I looked at them, Sheila standing now behind Gene. The white cottage behind them reflected dizzying spears of light into my eyes.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Why are you out to get Meg?”
“Hon, he’s not. We were trying to come up with a good reason why a kid Meg’s age—” she looked toward Gene.
“I asked you about her relationship with Andre—”
“I told you what I knew!” I said.
He sighed.
“Tell her about the wringer thing-ma-jigger,” Sheila prompted.
“Sheila!”
“Oh, go on.”
“Apparently the murder weapon was the wringer mechanism off one of those janitorial buckets—”
“I thought they were all one piece.”
“You can get ‘em apart. They’re real heavy.”
“It must have been a man, then,” I said, “because he’d have to be tall—”
“There was a stool in there, someone could have stood on it and the wringer’s heavy, but not unmanageable. I’m not out to get Meg, but she’s a climber, she’s got good upper-body strength, so how can I help wondering—”
I ran along Sheila’s cracked cement walk and out her gate.
CHAPTER TWELVE
I drove west on Main Street, to the parking lot of The Bird.
When James and Fran moved to Warfield and bought the paper nine years ago, the previous owners of The Warfield Warbler made it a condition of sale that the name of the paper remain unchanged.
The sign the Egans then erected, was, in Warfield’s view, their revenge. On a narrow strip of ground holding white azaleas, they set a sign three feet high and six feet wide that read, in elaborate script, The Warfield Warbler. On top of that perched an enormous wooden bird that looked more like a tubercular roadrunner than a self-respecting warbler. As one old-timer said, the Egans gave us the bird, and the nickname stuck.
Usually the sign made me smile. I drove to the end of the warehouse-sized building and parked in front of Fran’s apartment. Her Mustang was not among the cars in the lot.
I used the key Fran had given me. As soon as I stepped through the door, I knew from the faint odor of lemon oil and the lack of clutter that Fran’s cleaning lady had recently concluded her weekly visit.
Originally, there’d been three rental offices on the south side of the building. After James died, Fran sold their luxurious house and converted the offices into one large, comfortable apartment, sawed a door through into the newspaper offices so she never got wet on her way to work, and settled in. For a while rumors flew that the city council would kick her out because of zoning, but she got around that somehow.
Her front door opened into the living room/bedroom done in soothing cream and pale aqua with touches of peach. I grabbed a half-empty decanter f
rom the sleek desk in the corner and poured Chivas into a crystal tumbler. I found one of my Canadian Brass CD’s tucked in the back of her music collection and cranked it up till the brilliant notes threatened to soar through the ceiling.
I went into the bathroom, kicking off my flats as I went, the tiles cold against my feet. I put my glass on the low mosaic shelf that surrounded the sunken hot tub, uncovered the tub, and turned the jets on.
When I shrugged out of my jacket, little white blobs of drying bread dough fell to the floor. I folded my clothes and placed them on a Romanesque chair. I took a quick shower and hurried into the tub, sucking in my breath as its scalding waters closed around my calves.
I got all the way in up to my chin and reached for my drink. I took a sip, letting it rest on my tongue, leaned back and closed my eyes, pushing all thoughts way, way to the back.
In the midst of “Amazing Grace,” cold air from the opening bathroom door roused me. It took a bit of effort to focus on Fran.
“I’ve been looking all over town for you, and you were here in my tub?” Fran said, looking down at me, arms wrapped around a limp, wrinkled grocery bag.
“I’ve been looking for you!” I said. My tongue felt uncooperative, my diction not as crisp as one might wish. “I’m sorry I got mad.”
“Don’t worry.” She waved dismissively. “I shouldn’t have left, but I got hungry, and when I got back, you were gone.”
She turned and drew a multitude of jars, tubes, and bottles out of the bag and placed them on her dressing table.
“Did you leave any beauty potions for the rest of us?” I asked.
“Nope. You are all condemned to ugliness and age.” She tapped the white plastic caps of two small bottles, one red, one green, she’d placed side-by-side. “Magic guaranteed to stop aging.”
“It’s a good thing you’re rich and can afford your neurosis.”
“Just you wait, crone, one of these days your soap-and-water routine will catch up with you and you’ll stop looking ten years younger than you really are.”
“So you claim to be looking for me, but in reality you were out feeding your vanity,” I said.
“You’re such a witch. I was looking for you, but I was going places you hadn’t been yet, and then places you had.” She stood a pink tube on its cap.
She stripped off her navy slacks and sweater, then her undies, leaving them in a heap on the floor, pinning her braid into a coil on top of her head and stepping into the shower.
“Fran, I’m really sorry for the way I acted,” I said as soon as the water stopped running.
“It’s okay.” Water glistened on her skin and fell unheeded to the floor as she left the room.
The Canadian Brass suddenly fell silent, replaced by Clint Black. She returned with two bottles of spring water. She crouched next to me, tugged the Chivas out of my fingers and handed me a cold bottle. She put my glass on her dressing table amidst her potions and then plopped into the tub on the opposite side with a satisfied “Ahh.”
Hot water smacked me in the face. “Hey!”
“I might let you buy your way back into my good graces with an indecently expensive dinner,” she said.
“Name the place. I really am sorry.”
“I understand how much Meg means to you. I shouldn’t have pressed you when I’d just given you such bad news. Say no more, although it is comforting that you’re as hard on yourself as you are on everyone else.”
“What do you mean?”
“Your standards are so high, Lizzie, how do you expect us ordinary mortals to please you?”
I sent a wave of water into her face, she retaliated, and soon water was everywhere. In self defense I pulled myself out of the water to sit on the edge of the tub.
“Chicken!” Fran said.
“That’s what Gene said, that I dished it out but couldn’t take it.”
“So your interview’s out of the way? That’s good.”
“Have you done yours?”
“Yeah. He wanted me to tell him your pen name.”
“You didn’t, did you?”
“Of course not.”
I exhaled with relief, then asked, “Did you get everything cleared up with Gene?”
“Look, I know I didn’t kill Andre, and I don’t know who did, and anything else is none of his business.”
“He’d give you more of a break than anyone.”
She laughed. “You are such an innocent!”
“Oh, yeah, what about all those pheromones buzzing around the kitchen last night?”
Her mouth turned down a bit before she took another sip of water. “They were all mine except maybe a couple of strays.”
I felt my eyebrows jump in surprise.
“It was never serious between us. He wouldn’t let it be.”
“His wives get in the way?”
“Why are you so bitter?”
I shrugged.
“Maybe some of those pheromones last night were yours,” she said.
“Give me a break!” I said, kicking water. “But speaking of pheromones, guess who I saw together?”
“Who?”
“Laurel and Victor!” I told her about following Laurel.
Fran studied her polished nails. “No romance left between those two,” she said, twisting her silver bracelet on her wrist.
“You sound definite.” I looked at her more closely. “Fran! Victor’s got three little boys.”
“He didn’t want ‘em.”
“Well, he’s got them.”
“Don’t get crazy,” she mumbled, “nothing’s happened yet.”
I rubbed my forehead.
We were quiet for awhile, the rushing water the only sound as the CD changed tracks.
“Gene’s a really nice guy, Liz.”
“If he’s so nice, why do you think he won’t give you any slack?”
She smiled. “Because he’s seen through me. He would expect the worst.”
“I thought you said I always expected the worst.”
“No, it’s that you’re so badly hurt when the worst is revealed. You always expect the best from those you love.”
“Oh, God, Fran!” Suddenly the steamy room was too cold. I slipped back into the water.
“What? Are you all right?”
“No.” I told her what had happened at Sheila’s.
Fran drained the last of her bottled water. “I don’t think that means anything. They’d probably already considered me because I’m tall, you because of your affair, Alisz and Jared because they climb, too, Kirk because he’s strong, Laurel because she’s familiar with the high school—they were just speculating.”
I felt dizzy. “That darn Gene, all this time collecting rumors and gloating—”
“No, Liz, it’s probably been eating away at him like the fox in the Spartan kid’s tunic. Poor guy.”
“Are you still going to feel sorry for him when he drags Meg off to jail?” I wrapped my arms around myself. “I can’t figure where she’s disappeared to or why.”
Fran played with the links on her bracelet. “Remember she called us liars last night?”
“No. It was ‘secrets,’” I said. “Anyway, she doesn’t have any money, she can’t run far.”
“Unless Claire gave her some?”
I shrugged. “I doubt it, but then with Mother, one never knows. What’s the penalty for matricide in Washington, anyway?”
Her slender fingers, tipped with shell-pink nails, kept playing with her bracelet. “If you got the right combination of people from Warfield on the jury, they’d let you off Scot free.”
I thought she was kidding until she glanced up, embarrassed. “I like Claire, but lots of people resent her.”
“What could anyone else have against her? She hardly ever leaves the house.”
Fran took a deep breath. Releasing it, she sank lower in the water. “Liz, you really should get away from your computer more often.”
“Come on, tell me. I don’t get it.�
��
“First of all, you guys live in the nicest old house in town.”
“It’s just a place my grandfather built as a getaway from the pressures in Portland.”
“But that’s just it! It’s a great house that was someone’s weekend cottage. That implies there was a genuine mansion in the background.”
“But we never owned that—my uncle got it. Good grief, we were nearly homeless after my father’s investment scheme went bad. How could anyone begrudge us our home?”
“Because your mother chose to keep the house and a lot of property rather than keep the store going. People lost their jobs over that.”
“But her arthritis—”
“Your mother can do what she wants to do and has a great excuse for everything else. Her arthritis wasn’t crippling when the store was at issue. She could have saved it.”
“Why do you think that?” I demanded. “You weren’t here then.”
Her smile had a grim edge. “You wouldn’t believe how much information comes my way.”
“Well, what if she could have saved the store? Surely it was her choice.”
“Yes, as owner, she could do what she wanted, but the people who worked for her couldn’t. This was a small, isolated town with few jobs.”
“But the store didn’t have that many employees. How can there be many people who don’t like my mother?”
“There’s the way she holds court.”
“People come to visit because she can’t go out,” I protested. “She has a lot of friends—she’s lived here most of her adult life.”
Fran shook her head. “Lizzie, do you pay attention to anything that’s not on your computer screen? The people who come to see your mother mostly aren’t friends, but people who need something.”
“But she hasn’t got anything.”
“She has enormous influence, Liz. She’s more the mayor than the mayor is.”
She concentrated even harder on her bracelet as she said, “James got curious about her and looked over property records—she owns a lot. Your mother is a very big cheese.” She looked at me, eyebrows raised. “I’ve never understood how you couldn’t know that.”
“I never paid attention.” I sighed. “There are lots of things you just don’t talk about to Mother.” I sat up on the rim of the tub.
Paula K. Perrin - Small Town Deadly Page 9