“Marla was upset. And then Billy got upset, too. Real upset. Turned red in the face. People care about all of you Queen Bees.”
“It’s an uneasy time, Jesse,” Po said. “And how are you doing with all of this?”
Jesse looked away, as if collecting his thoughts, not knowing how much he wanted to say. Finally he looked back at Po and Leah and spoke softly. “I loved Laurel. A sweet person immerged from beneath all that anger that defined her.
I know how awful she could be. I know she hurt Picasso and hated some people in this town, but it was almost as if there were two people inside her.” His eyes filled as he talked about her. “I don’t know how I loved her, if you know what I mean. That’s confusing to me. But I know she was a part of my soul. And the thought that someone could have murdered that special flower blooming inside her is hard to come to grips with.”
Po listened and felt an unexpected rush of compassion for him. Whether Laurel’s affection for him had been real or fabricated didn’t even matter. It had been real to him. “Jesse, I know this must be difficult for you. But I have a question for you. I’m surprised that Laurel hated people in Crest-wood. That’s such a strong word—hate—and I didn’t think she even knew that many people. Who did she know well enough to hate?”
“Laurel didn’t need to know people well to hate them, Po. If they crossed her—like Ambrose did—or did anything that offended her, she would cross them off her list. It was just the way she was. But there were people here that she reserved a real strong distaste for. I never understood why. She’d only say that her life would be different if they hadn’t messed with it.”
“Who was she talking about?” Leah asked.
Jesse shrugged. “Don’t really know. She said I didn’t need to know. It only mattered that her life had been ruined by people who lived here. It didn’t make sense at all because she never told me she had lived here when she was younger. I guess that sheds new light on everything. But I still don’t know why she hated people or why she would have come back here.” He drained his coffee cup and sat back in the chair. “She’d been really hurt. But she’d never be hurt again, she said. Now she’d be the one doing the hurting. When she talked like that, her eyes turned black and she looked like another person. Almost witch-like,” Jesse said, his voice nearly a whisper, as if he could see her standing there in front of him. “It’d be as if she were alone, and she’d mutter to herself. ‘No more hatchet jobs,’ she’d say.”
CHAPTER 24
“What a sad story,” Kate said, after Po repeated her conversation with Jesse. It was late, much later than Sunday suppers usually lasted, and most of their friends had left. Po, Kate, and Maggie were alone in the kitchen, finishing up the last dishes. “It almost makes me wish I had known Laurel better. Maybe been able to help her.”
“Leah said the same thing. Laurel came close to talking to her a couple times, and now she wished she’d encouraged it. Given her an outlet. Poor Jesse seemed to be one of the few people she confided in.” Po wiped her hands on a dishtowel and walked over to the table.
“And Jason Sands,” Maggie said.
“But that was different. That wasn’t friendship. Picasso said there’d been others like Jason. Some women have a knack for picking abusive, awful men.” Po sat down and watched Maggie and Kate finish the last few pots in the sink. Beneath the counter, a full dishwasher whirred comfortingly.
“They were like her father,” Kate added. “Some women do that. Abused once, they seem to look for the same kind of men.” She wiped a giant platter that had held a whole salmon hours earlier.
Po sipped her cup of tea, then set it down on the table. “Picasso certainly didn’t fit that mold, but I think Laurel picked him for other reasons.”
“He gave her security,” Kate offered.
“And he gave her what she needed to return to Crestwood on her own terms. He’d have done anything she asked.”
“The comment Jesse made, what was it, ‘something about a hatchet.’ That’s a strange thing to say,” Kate said.
Po and Maggie agreed. They sat in silence for a few minutes, pondering the day and evening events. Picasso had come to supper—a welcome surprise. He had lost some weight, but in the company of several of the Queen Bees, Gus and Rita Schuette, and P.J., he’d relaxed and even had seconds on the sesame-marinaded salmon that P.J. had prepared on the grill.
At dinner, everyone assiduously avoided the events filling the papers and rumor mill, and conversation had turned to lighter things, including Meredith Mellon’s gala event coming up the next Saturday night.
“You will all come, please?” Picasso had asked, and without missing a heartbeat, they’d all agreed wholeheartedly to attend an event that none of the supper guests rated high on their ‘must do’ lists. But for Picasso, they’d go.
Now, in the comfort of Po’s kitchen with defenses down, Kate questioned their universal response. “I’d rather scrub my grill,” she said, slipping into her jacket and looking around the kitchen for her purse. “I will happily donate to SafeHome. It’s a great idea—and Janna and Billy are being generous in their help—but dressing up and being gracious and upbeat right now is maybe more than I can handle.”
“Well, it’s four hours out of your week, Kate. We can do this for Picasso. Giving that quilt to be auctioned is quite a gesture—it’s the one meaningful thing of Laurel’s that he owns. He told me that the quilt was her whole life. It won’t be easy for him.”
Kate nodded. “I know, I know. And Phoebe’s thrilled she won’t be there by herself.”
“Let’s just hope by next Saturday we can enjoy ourselves and not be looking over our shoulders to see if there’s someone lurking in the shadows or spraying bleach on our clothes,” Maggie said, grabbing the keys to her truck off the counter and heading for the back door. “That would be worthy of a celebration, even at Mrs. Mellon’s country club.”
***
Kate taught at Crestwood High most of the next week. Sandy Kindred, a teacher who’d taught Kate when she was a student and still taught the same honors English class, always requested her former student to substitute when she couldn’t be there. And Kate, in turn, liked the regularity of teaching the same class every day. “Who knows,” she had joked to another teacher, “maybe next year I’ll be around permanently.”
Kate spent the week caught up in an eerie whirl of reminiscences. Although she’d been around the school for over a year now, subbing and teaching her photography enrichment class, this week was different. And she knew it was because of Ann Woods. Another student who had sat in the same chairs and taken tests on the same desks.
The halls were still familiar, but she felt herself walking them today, not as Kate Simpson, teacher—but as Kate, the freshman, determined not to let any upperclassman get the better of her, determined to be her own person.
She paused in front of the giant bulletin board outside the gym, crammed with graduation notices, “Win with Jane Flynn for STUCO pres” signs, and posters urging the soccer team on to the state finals. “Go Hatchets!” they screamed in giant neon letters—and Kate wondered how many times she had passed Ann Woods in this very spot and never nodded or even said hi.
As the week went on, Kate attacked the shadows of her memory at every change of class, every student announcement, trying to pull back the past. Some events slowly surfaced, but they were always cloudy, thin memories of things like senior boys knocking into Ann, teasing her, flirting with her with macho arrogance, then laughing behind her back. Touching her inappropriately. They’d be sued for sexual harassment today, Kate thought.
On Friday, Kate walked into the teacher’s lounge during her free period. She was exhausted for no earthly reason, and was ready for the week to end. Betsy Carroll sat on the old sofa at the far end of the teacher’s lounge, reading a book. Betsy had been a counselor and Kate’s mentor at Crestwood High when Kate was a student—and she was still doing the same these years later. Kate loved the friendship that had d
eveloped in recent months as they got to know one another again, this time as peers.
Betsy looked up as Kate walked over. She smiled and dropped her book on her lap, patting the cushion next to her.
“Flop before you drop, Kate.”
Kate grabbed a bottle of water from the small refrigerator and sat down next to Betsy.
“What’s up,” Betsy asked, sliding her glasses to the top of her head. “You’ve been distracted all week.”
Kate shrugged. She wasn’t sure herself what was going on inside her head. It was an uncomfortable nagging, the pea beneath the princess’s mattress. “I think it’s this whole Ann Woods thing, Betsy. Being back here like this, knowing she and I walked these halls together, maybe sat through old Mrs. Aldrich’s algebra class or Goldie Harrison’s gym class—and I don’t remember it. Don’t remember her, except for the awful things. Guys teasing her in the cafeteria, girls making fun of her homemade clothes, all that bad stuff. And I keep thinking that if I could remember more, maybe I could put it to rest. Somehow.”
“No one knew Ann Woods very well, Kate.”
“Do you remember her?”
Betsy nodded. “She was one of my students, just like you were.”
“So you counseled her.”
“I tried to. Ann didn’t talk much, but she started to open up a little at the end.” Betsy frowned and looked out the window. Students drifted out onto the sprawling lawn in front of the school, an art class out to sketch the giant elms that shaded the circle drive. It was all so peaceful. Nothing like Ann Woods’ time at Crestwood had been. She turned back toward Kate. “You knew that Ann never finished her freshman year.”
Kate nodded. “She went to New York State and lived with an aunt.”
“I tried to talk her parents out of that. I thought they were doing it just because Ann was having a hard time, being teased and such. I thought if I could just talk to the parents and get her some help, teach her some social skills, help her to dress nicely and fit in a little better, that maybe things would be better for her. I think she wanted to fit in, though she hated the teasing. She was starting to be interested in things around here. She even had a crush on one of the boys on the football team. So I thought maybe we could work it all out.”
“But the parents wouldn’t listen?”
“They wouldn’t even talk to me. Never answered my calls. One day Ann was here, looking sickly and sad. And the next day she was gone.”
“And you never saw her again?”
“Once—the day after she dropped out of school. I was coming back from a meeting that night and stopped in at Wally’s drugstore down near the river. Ann was on the payphone outside, yelling at someone on the other end of the phone. She was sobbing and yelling, all at the same time. It was frightening.”
“Who was she talking to?”
“It was a guy. I heard her tell him she hated him. Her life was ruined, she said. And she told the person that she thought he loved her. And then she dropped the phone and folded up on the floor of the phone booth like a little girl, sobbing as if she were going to die. My heart nearly broke at the sight of her.”
“Did she see you?”
Betsy nodded. “She looked up at me, and Kate, I’ve never seen such sadness. But it was mixed with an anger that I could feel in her thin arms as I helped her to her feet.”
“And that was it?”
“Almost. A car pulled up then, nearly running onto the sidewalk. It was that drunken father of hers. He leaned out the car window and yelled for her to get in the car. And then he cursed at her, called her a whore, and mumbled things that didn’t make any sense.”
“What did he say?”
“He told her that at least this time her ‘shacking up,’ as he so delicately put it, would be worth his while. He’d make a pretty penny off her getting knocked up, and he’d get rid of her as part of the bargain. His words were slurred, but his message was clear.”
CHAPTER 25
“Ann Woods was pregnant?” Kate sat frozen on the couch. For all the bad thoughts she’d had about Laurel St. Pierre, she felt herself drowning in emotion for a fifteen-year-old girl who’d found herself pregnant, alone, and was then disowned and sold down the river by a drunken father.
“Yes, she was. I suspected it about a week before all that happened. She wasn’t feeling very good, and she came to me to be excused from gym. The nurse was overloaded so sometimes counselors filled in with those sorts of permissions back then. She didn’t tell me she was pregnant, but for the first time since I’d known her, she seemed oddly happy. As if something good was happening in her. Thinking she might have the flu, I suggested she go home. She insisted she was fine, though she was making steady trips to the bathroom in my office. The walls are thin—I knew she was sick.”
Kate tried to get her arms around this news about Ann. Pregnant. But what could have happened to the child? She’d be twelve now. Did Picasso know?
“I watched her that week, coming to school each day, with a certain glow about her. But each day she seemed a little less sure of herself, more cautious. And then, like I said before, she came in one morning looking like her life was about to end, and the next day she was gone.”
“So she was sent away because she was pregnant, not because her mother was trying to get her away from her father, which was what we all thought.”
Betsy nodded. “The poor girl didn’t have much of a chance. Her mother loved her, but she was no match for Al Woods.”
“Meeting Picasso was the best thing that every happened to Laurel,” Kate said. “That was a chance.”
Betsy agreed, but added wisely, “A lot had happened to Ann before she met Picasso. And those things surely shaped the woman she had become. So what she brought to their relationship, why she married him, all of those things were affected by what happened to her right here at Crestwood High.”
Kate got up and put her bottle in the recycling bin.
“Betsy,” she said, slowly turning back to her mentor-turned-friend. “Do you know who the father was?”
Betsy put her book into her purse and rose from the couch. “No, I never knew. There was talk in the teachers’ lounge and around school after she left, some rumblings about the crushes she had on older boys. And how they’d lead her on. But Laurel wasn’t the kind of girl the kids cared about much—you probably don’t even remember when she disappeared from your class.”
Kate nodded slowly. That was absolutely right. She didn’t notice her absence, except for maybe a fleeting awareness. And she hadn’t noticed her presence much, either. Carrie, as the older kids called her, the girl with the weird hair and clothes, was all that rang in her head, and the thought made Kate immeasurably sad.
***
Since the Bees had met during the week and most of them would be going to the party that night at the country club, the Saturday quilting session at Selma’s was cancelled for the day. Kate jogged over to Po’s and the two sat together at the kitchen table, drinking cups of strong coffee. They sat in silence, absorbing the sadness that was Ann Woods’ life, and feeling like they needed to grieve for Laurel St. Pierre a second time.
“Po, it’s beginning to make a frightening kind of sense,”
Kate said, her eyes following a robin as it lighted on a branch, then flew off to its nest.
After leaving school the day before, Kate bought an apple pie at Marla’s and took it over to the Hallorans. Ella Halloran’s memory was a peculiar thing—some days she barely knew who Kate was, but could tell her what she ate for dinner on her and Danny’s wedding day fifty years earlier. Friday was one of those days. She remembered Esther Woods as clear as a Kansas sky.
In starts and stops, Ella told Kate about Ann Woods leaving town. She remembered it, because Esther and that no-good husband of hers up and moved to a bigger house right after the girl left. Seemed so odd, Ella said, that they’d wait until there were only two of them, then move to a big, fancy house. And shortly after that, right after Esther fi
nished sewing a pink brocade suit for Ella to wear to the garden club’s spring luncheon, Esther stopped sewing. Didn’t need the money, Ella supposed. And not a month or so after that was that car wreck.
“I’m almost sure Picasso never knew about the baby,” Po said softly. Kate’s news had jarred her. She had built up many scenarios in her mind, but this hadn’t been one of them. She knew Laurel had been hurt, she knew she wanted revenge. But the thought of a baby in the middle of it had not occurred to her. “Picasso told me once that Laurel couldn’t have children. It was one of the great sadnesses of their life, he said.”
“What do you think happened to the baby? I wonder if the father raised it?”
Though she had no reason to conjecture, Po didn’t think that was the case. More likely the boy who got her pregnant was the one on the phone that night, telling Ann to get lost, get out of his life. They were just kids. The pieces were slowly coming together and Po almost wished she could stop it. It was a giant ball rolling down the hill, and Po was afraid of what would happen when it crashed at the bottom and all the secrets fell out. “Kate,” she asked suddenly, lifting her head as an idea made its way into her head, “did Ella Halloran ever mention where Al Woods worked?”
“She mentioned that he did construction work. It irritated Ella terribly—as if it were any of her business. But she said he’d come into the house while she was there for fittings and he wouldn’t have showered. He tracked mud all over the small house and smelled awful, she said. And then he’d sit at the kitchen table and drink beer in his soiled t-shirt. Made her sick, she said.”
Po stood and walked over to a small mirror in the kitchen. She ran a brush through her hair, then slid a light lipstick across her lips and swept blush across her cheekbones, avoiding the woman looking back at her from the mirror, that wise part of her soul who would have told her to mind her own business.
A Murder of Taste: A Queen Bees Quilt Mystery Page 14