by Sofie Kelly
“Good night, Kathleen,” he said. “Stay safe.”
I stood there watching him drive away, hugging myself. Then I went back to get Owen out of the truck, shaking my head to chase away the last of the discombobulated feeling. I had not been going to trace the curve of Marcus’s unbelievably manly, chiseled, stubbled jawline with one finger. And I had most certainly not been thinking about kissing him. No I had not.
I scooped Owen off the seat along with my purse and my sweatshirt. Then I unlocked the back door and carried him all the way to the kitchen before I set him on the floor.
His fur was still sticking out in every direction. He walked around the room making grumbling noises, clearly in a major bad mood.
I washed my hands, put bread in the toaster and milk to warm in the microwave. Hercules appeared from somewhere. He watched Owen walking around and grumbling for a moment, then walked over to me and gave me a quizzical look, head cocked to one side.
“Long story,” I said. “Just wait until I get the toast made and I’ll fill you in.” He sat down.
Once the hot chocolate and toast with peanut butter were made I pulled out a chair and gave Hercules the Cliff’s Notes version of the evening, while Owen worked on a little pile of kitty treats and added a grumbling comment from time to time.
I didn’t tell the cats about the little “moment” between Marcus and me in the driveway. It was an adrenaline comedown. It was tiredness. And it hadn’t meant anything.
It hadn’t.
I had a bath, spending a long time soaking in the hot, lavender scented water. Then I did an inventory of my bruises to see what colors they were now. They went from greenish yellow, through various shades of red to deep purple. I put a layer of Rebecca’s salve on my ankle and used the last of the cotton strips to wrap it.
I was too wired to sleep. So, apparently, was Owen. He wandered in and out of the bedroom, too restless to stay for more than a minute. Hercules, on the other hand, jumped up onto my lap the minute I sat down in the big chair by the window.
“There’s nothing I can do to help Maggie,” I told him, stroking his fur. “I’m going to have to leave things in Peter’s hands for now. But maybe I can do something to help Roma. She needs answers and I think I know where to get them.”
I leaned my head against the back of the chair and closed my eyes for a moment. “I’m going to have breakfast with Burtis Chapman.”
When I opened them again, Herc’s furry black-and-white face was just inches from mine. His way, I was guessing, of asking, “Have you lost your mind?”
29
At quarter to six I was in the truck on the way over to Fern’s Diner. I didn’t know if it was a good idea or a bad idea, mostly because I knew if I thought about it too long I might just talk myself out of going.
The diner wasn’t somewhere I went very often, although I had been a couple of times with Roma for meatloaf Tuesday. According to Roma, Fern’s had been restored about five or six years ago back to its 1950s glory, or as she liked to put it, “Just like the good old days only better.” The building was low and long, with windows on three sides, aglow with neon after dark. Inside there was the requisite jukebox, booths with red vinyl seats and a counter with gleaming chrome stools.
Burtis’s black truck was in the back parking lot and he was perched on a corner stool inside, elbows on the counter, head bent over a heavy, white china coffee mug. He was wearing a green plaid shirt and his Twins hat. His hands were massive, I noticed, big enough that he could probably squeeze my head between his thumb and index finger and make my brains come out my ears, but I tried not to think about that as I took the stool beside him.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Morning, Kathleen.” If he was surprised to see me, it didn’t show.
The waitress slid a mug in front of me and held up the coffeepot with an inquiring look on her face. At the same time she put a huge, oval dish in front of Burtis that could best be described as a heart attack on a plate.
I nodded and she poured my coffee. “What can I get you hon?” she asked. She was wearing red pedal pushers, a short-sleeved white shirt with—I kid you not—PEGGY SUE stitched over the left breast pocket and red-framed glasses. Her hair was in a gravity defying, bouffant updo. I eyed it, wondering if there was any way Rebecca could get my hair to do that.
My stomach rumbled, reminding me that not only had I not had any coffee yet, I hadn’t had any food, either. I dipped my head toward Burtis’s plate. “I’ll have what he’s having,” I said.
The waitress nodded and went through the swinging door into the kitchen.
I put cream and sugar in my mug and took a long sip. The coffee was strong and hot, just the way I liked it. I gave a small smile of pleasure and wrapped my hands around the cup. I could feel Burtis’s eyes on me and I turned my head to smile at him.
“What brings you out here so early?” he asked. “I thought you favored that little place by the water.”
“I came to talk to you,” I said.
That got me a smile. “Oh did you now?” he said. He speared a half a sausage and it disappeared into his mouth. “I’m kinda tied up with my breakfast at the moment.”
“Take your time,” I said, picking up my coffee again.
I’d finished about half my coffee when the waitress came back with my plate, as loaded as the one she’d brought for Burtis. There were scrambled eggs, sausage and bacon, fried potatoes with onions and tomato, and raisin toast. She topped up my coffee and headed down the counter to three men who had just walked in.
Burtis was watching me out of the corner of his eye. I picked up my fork and started eating. The eggs were fluffy, the bacon was crisp and I found myself wondering where they had gotten tomatoes that actually tasted like tomatoes at this time of year.
I was mopping up the last bits of potato and onion from my plate with a corner of bread when Burtis said, “What did you want to talk about?”
“Idris Blackthorne,” I said. “Harrison Taylor told me you were the one to ask what Idris was like back in the day.”
“Oh did he now?”
“He said you might be able to tell me about the way Idris did business.”
“Seems to me you’re friends with old Blackie’s granddaughter,” he said, staring down into his cup. “Why don’t you ask her?”
“Seems to me it would be bad manners to ask someone if her grandfather whacked a man over the head and buried his body out at Wisteria Hill,” I said, taking a long drink from my mug.
The words seemed to hang there for a moment and then Burtis laughed. “I guess it would at that,” he said.
I shifted sideways on my stool so I could look at him a little easier, leaning one elbow on the counter.
“Roma Davidson is my friend,” I said. “Tom Karlsson was her father and she wants to know how he ended up out in that field.”
“So you thought you’d poke your nose in and ask a few questions.”
“Pretty much.”
He gave another snort of laughter. “You’re honest girl, I’ll give you that.” Burtis wasn’t nearly as intimidating when he laughed.
The waitress came back and topped up our cups again. I added another packet of sugar to mine. “Burtis, I know Idris was…an entrepreneur. I know Tom worked for him and then suddenly he didn’t. What I don’t know is—”
“—whether Idris did have him whacked over the head and buried out behind the Henderson place,” he finished.
“Did he?”
He shook his head. “No. You see Idris had a reputation. It wasn’t what he did, it was what people thought he did that kept ’em in line, if you get my drift.”
I did. I poured a little cream into my coffee and stirred it. “I hear there used to be a fairly regular poker game happening out in those woods back then,” I said.
“There may have been.”
“I hear Tom Karlsson was a cheat.”
Burtis picked up his mug and drained it. “I don’t care for c
heaters myself,” he said, putting his cup on the counter and sliding off the stool. “But I’ve heard that story. I also heard Tom broke a couple of fingers and had to give up playing cards.” He shrugged. “Those things happen sometimes.”
He pulled his keys out of his pocket. “One more thing. Back then, there was a road of sorts, rough but passable, that cut through those woods up there behind the Henderson place. If someone wanted to get back there they didn’t necessarily have to go past the house.” He tipped his hat to me and smiled. “You have a nice day, Kathleen. Come back and have breakfast again, sometime.”
He headed toward the cash register and I picked up my coffee. So if I believed Burtis, neither Idris Blackthorne nor the poker players had anything to do with Tom Karlsson’s death. And there had been a way to get Tom or his body up onto that ridge without anyone in the main house seeing anything.
Was Burtis telling the truth?
Was there any reason for him not to?
I slipped off my stool and walked over to the cash register. “Mr. Chapman took care of it,” the waitress said with a smile.
I walked back to the counter and left a generous tip. Then I went out to the truck. Assuming Burtis hadn’t been stringing me a line, I was back at square one.
So now what?
There was no sign of either cat when I got home. I headed upstairs to make the bed. Hercules came out of the closet as I was pulling up the spread.
“What do you do in there?” I asked. He looked at me blankly.
I dropped into the chair by the window and pulled the carton with Rebecca’s mother’s things closer. With all the turmoil of the previous few days I hadn’t done any more planning for the library centennial celebration. I hadn’t even asked Maggie for her ideas on what to do with Ellen’s drawings.
Hercules jumped into my lap, ducking his head under my arm so he could look too. I reached into the box, pulled out one of the journals and opened it. Hercules shifted so he could see the pages. Maybe he was reading too for all I knew.
Now that I understood what The Ladies Knitting Circle had actually been doing, Ellen’s oblique comments about the women made more sense. After reading a few pages I put the diary back and looked for the journal that spanned the time period when Tom Karlsson had probably been killed. It would have been easier if Hercules hadn’t decided to help. He kept moving around on my lap, trying to poke his black-and-white head inside the box.
“Just sit still for a second,” I said in frustration. “And I’ll get it.”
He made a huffy noise, but he pulled his head back and I was able to find the book I wanted. It started about six months before Pearl and little Roma had ended up at Wisteria Hill. A couple of times Ellen even wrote about seeing Pearl with Roma, and I wondered if she was the one who’d told Pearl about The Ladies Knitting Circle. And she mentioned Sam several times. It was clear she’d liked him and that she hadn’t thought much of Sam’s father. The day Tom disappeared there were several pages carefully cut out of the diary. The entries picked up more than a week later. Hercules put a paw on the seam.
“I see it, too,” I said. I looked down at the little tuxedo cat. “Do you think it was just a coincidence that Tom’s body was buried at Wisteria Hill—that it had nothing to do with what Anna and her friends were up to?”
He covered his face with a paw.
“Yeah,” I said. “Me neither.”
30
I put the journal away, curled my feet up under me, and settled Hercules a little more comfortably on my legs. I thought about the few memories of her father that Roma had shared, like that game of hide and seek with Tom tossing a blanket over her head and telling her to be quiet and then “pretending” to look for her.
Owen wandered back in, stretched out on the floor in front of my chair and started washing his tail. He was acting just a little spacey, which meant he’d been into his stash of catnip chicken parts. He seemed to have gotten over our near accident the night before. I was pretty sure he was most annoyed about having my old sweatshirt tossed on top of him.
My shirt thrown over Owen to hide him.
A blanket thrown over Roma. Part of a game or an attempt to hide her?
Maybe Tom hadn’t been playing a game with Roma. Maybe he’d been going to take Roma away from Pearl. Maybe that’s what had caused Pearl to pick that particular day to run. Was I wrong about Roma’s mother?
“Could Pearl have killed Tom to protect Roma?” I asked Hercules. What else had Roma said about Tom? “He sat me on his lap and let me drive,” she’d said. “I can close my eyes and see the car. It had turquoise and white bucket seats.”
Could those memories be from the same night? The night Tom disappeared?
I stroked the top of Hercules’s head. There was a connection I couldn’t quite make. I glanced at the box of Ellen’s things beside me on the table and suddenly tab A dropped into slot B.
“I have to put you down for a second,” I said to Hercules. I set him on the floor and hurried downstairs to the living room where I’d left my briefcase. I took it back up to the bedroom with me, sat down on the rug with the cats and pulled out the old yearbook and the envelope of photographs.
I started with the pictures. Hercules put both paws on my leg and poked his head in to check out each photo. Owen was content to watch and crane his neck for a better look from time to time.
It took a while, but I eventually found what I was looking for, not in the photos but in the yearbook under the heading TRAVELIN’ MAN.
“That’s piece number one,” I told Hercules. “Cross your paws that I can get piece number two.”
He held out his paw and looked at it.
I pulled the phone down and thought for a moment. “She should be home,” I said to the boys. I dialed Mary’s number and crossed my own fingers that she was home and would have the answer. I was hoping the fact that she was a bit of a pack rat would work in my favor.
It did.
I hung up, set the telephone on the floor, and leaned back against the side of the bed. Hercules climbed up onto my legs and put his paws on my chest.
“I think I know what happened to Tom,” I said. “It’s a bit of a stretch—okay a lot of a stretch—but I think I know who killed him.
“And why.”
31
The phone rang and I almost jumped out of my skin. It was Pearl.
“I need a favor from you, Kathleen, if you have time,” she said.
“What do you need?” I asked.
“I want to go out to Wisteria Hill before we go talk to Detective Gordon. Roma’s going to drive out there with me, but Neil has an appointment. Is there any chance you could join us?” She hesitated for a moment. “I think it would help Roma to have a friend.”
“Of course,” I said. There were things I needed to ask Pearl, and Wisteria Hill seemed like a good place to have that conversation. It was where everything had started and ended in many ways. We agreed to meet at the old estate in half an hour.
“Wish me luck,” I said to Owen and Hercules.
I tucked the truck in next to a muddy, nondescript SUV out at Wisteria Hill and Roma pulled in right beside me. I thought she looked tired. The past few days had been pretty horrible for her and I was impressed by how well she’d handled everything.
Pearl got out of the passenger side of the car. “Hello, Kathleen,” she said. “Thank you for coming.”
“You’re welcome,” I said.
Her attention was already being drawn to the carriage house and the field behind it. “I’m just going to look around a little,” Pearl said. “It’s been a long time since I was out here.”
I nodded and walked over to Roma.
“Thanks for coming out here,” she said. “She wouldn’t exactly take no for an answer.” She stood with her arms tightly wrapped around her body and for a moment I wondered if I should just keep what I suspected to myself. “I think she just wanted to see where…he was, all these years.”
I put a hand
on her arm. “Why don’t you go check on Lucy and the others? I’ll walk around a bit with your mom. I don’t mind.”
She exhaled slowly. “I uh, thank you. I think I will.”
“Take your time,” I said.
Pearl was standing by the side steps to the old house. I walked over to her.
“It makes me sad,” she said without turning around. “This house used to be full of life and now it’s just…lonely.” We stood there in silence for a minute. “Show me where he was,” she said.
I hesitated.
“Please, Kathleen,” she said, softly.
I nodded. “All right.”
We made our way along the edge of the field. I could see that Dr. Abbott and her team had measured out a grid that covered most of the back end of the grassy area.
“There?” Pearl asked.
“Yes,” I said, pointing at the slope. “I was standing at the edge of the trees. The earth gave way. It was just so wet.” I remembered the feeling of the ground falling out from under me. I sucked in a breath and closed my eyes for a moment.
When I looked at Pearl again her eyes were fixed on some distant spot across the grass. I glanced back over my shoulder for any sign of Roma. Sam Ingstrom and a man I recognized from Everett Henderson’s office were getting out of a town truck that had pulled up by the old house.
“Why don’t we go find Roma?” I said to Pearl.
She had a look in her eyes that I couldn’t decipher and all the color seemed to have drained out of her face.
“What is it?” I asked.
“All these years he was out here and I didn’t know. I walked around in those woods and Tom was …un-derneath my feet.”
My heart started to pound. “Let’s go sit down,” I said. I led Pearl over to the steps at the side of the old house. We both sat down. She folded her hands in her lap and I covered them with my own. “It’s not your fault,” I said.
She’d been staring past me, focused on nothing really, maybe the past, but she looked at me then. “He didn’t deserve that.” She gestured toward the embankment. “He wasn’t a bad person.”