She Stopped for Death

by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

  “You haven’t given her a chance,” Dora said.

  Jenny was tired of the whole subject. “I’ll help,” she said. “As long as I have the time.”

  “You’ve got nothing but time.”

  “Thanks.” Jenny stared straight at her.

  “Sorry.” Zoe looked away. “It’s just that the woman’s weird. Runs like a cat one night then comes back wanting help. Gets me to do the grocery shopping for her but forgets to leave a list and gives me about a half the money it takes, then doesn’t even ask if it’s enough.”

  “Abigail Cane heard about Emily and her new poems.” Dora slipped the news in while she could. “She said she could hire somebody to do the shopping for Emily if you didn’t want to.”

  “It’s not that I don’t want to help her out. I just don’t like the way this is starting. Nothing smells right to me. And you know how good my nose is for trouble. I’ve been thinking. We better go into Traverse and see what happened to Althea. If she feels the way I do already, she’s probably just hiding out.”

  “Abigail Cane wants to meet Emily. She wondered if you could set it up.”

  “Me!” Zoe gave Dora a startled look. “I’m not Emily’s social secretary. Tell her to go over there herself.”

  “Don’t be so angry, dear.” Dora gave Zoe one of her bad-little-girl frowns. “All Abigail wants is an introduction. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.”

  Zoe put a finger to her nose and slid down in her seat. “Too much. Too little. Maybe just enough. Emily was snotty to me. I don’t like being treated that way. She looks down on me like I’m the hired help.”

  “She has to look down on you,” Jenny popped in. “You’re short.”

  “And you’re crabby,” Zoe shot back as the chicken potpies arrived.

  * * *

  “Myrtle’s on her way out.” Delaware leaned over the table, removing plates and whisking crumbs to the floor. The restaurant was empty except for Dora, Zoe, and Jenny.

  The women sat up straight. Myrtle coming out of her kitchen was big news. The thing about Myrtle Lambert was that though she’d won the family restaurant from her brothers in a court case, she didn’t have the personality of a business owner. She didn’t much like people. Didn’t much like talking to people. And she was rarely seen except on her way to and from work, her floppy green hat the only thing that marked her.

  The hat was plopped on top of Myrtle’s head when she came through the swinging kitchen doors. Apron wrapped around her middle, she stopped to check the front door, making sure nobody was coming in, then scuttled to the table and slid in beside Zoe.

  “I don’t think we’ve met,” Zoe said. She put out a small, limp hand but Myrtle ignored her.

  Myrtle thumped a fist on the tabletop and turned to get in Dora’s face.

  “I heard Minnie Moon talking in here today.”

  Jenny thought this visit was too unusual not to savor. Myrtle was known as one of the odd people in town. But she did her business. Shopped for supplies. Cooked her food. Nobody questioned her right to stay in her kitchen if she wanted to. There were a lot of people in Bear Falls who weren’t exactly sociable and kept to themselves. Odd people everywhere.

  Jenny looked at the wrinkled woman in her green hat and tried not to smile. “What was she saying?” Jenny played dumb, while the other two only stared.

  “That Emily Sutton’s come out of her house. Put some of her poems in your library box.” She nodded to Dora. “You people all see her?” She glared from one to the other.

  “Sure did,” Zoe answered for them all.

  “Talk to her?”

  They all agreed.

  “She say anything about her sister, Lorna?”

  Jenny looked at Zoe, who watched Myrtle carefully. “She said her sister was gone. Packed a suitcase and left.”

  Myrtle nodded fast at all of them. “That explains it, I guess. Emily could be hard to get along with.”

  Jenny and Zoe waited.

  “Okay,” Myrtle said, putting her hands flat on the table and beginning to rise.

  “Explains what?” Jenny asked.

  “Nothing.” Myrtle shook her head. “Just . . . always figured she’d end up alone.”

  “Alone?” Jenny asked. “Why?”

  Myrtle put her head down, got up, and scurried back to the kitchen as the bell rang and a customer came through the door.

  “What the heck was that all about?” Jenny watched the woman disappear, kitchen doors swinging behind her.

  “The two of them, coming out within just a couple of days of each other,” Zoe said. “I told you I smelled something strange in the air.”

  Chapter 8

  It rained during the night; the unpaved parking lot of Draper’s Superette was pocked with water-filled holes. It was never easy, even at the best of times, for Zoe to push a cart all the way across the lot to the store door. She had hit potholes before, sometimes sending her ass over teacups, with people running to help the little person flat on her face in the gravel and brush at her as if she wasn’t a full-grown woman.

  All that over a grocery-cart failure.

  She maneuvered around the holes that morning. Maybe they’d be dried out by the time she finished with Emily’s list. Or maybe she’d slip a stock boy a five to push the cart back out.

  Most days she didn’t think about her height, or lack of it, nor her strength or lack of it because she’d been that way for thirty-three years, and what was, was. Once in a while she thought about being tall and willowy and gorgeous and looked at for the right reasons as she walked down the street. But not often. There were usually more important things on her mind.

  She pushed her cart past the coffee shop and tried to get by the checkout stands, but there was Cassandra Hatch, one of the cashiers, calling and waving.

  “How ya doin’, Miss Zola?” Cassandra pushed items over the scanner as fast as she could push. “Heard you’ve had some excitement at the Westons’.”

  Zoe smiled and shrugged as if she had no idea what Cassandra was talking about.

  “Heard about that poet, Emily Sutton. She was over to Dora Weston’s house. If you ever see her there, say ‘Hi’ for me. We’re all so thrilled to have her out again. Can’t wait to hear her read some of those new poems I’m hearing about. Minnie Moon says Abigail Cane’s planning a big affair for Emily. A reading. A meet and greet. Something like that. I’m hoping to volunteer, as long as it doesn’t interfere with my job here.”

  Zoe pushed her cart out of the reach of Cassandra’s eyes and tongue. She stopped behind a cooler to read over Emily’s list again and make a map in her head: produce, meat, household goods, dairy, checkout. With luck, Cassandra’s line would be too long, and she could go to the quiet girl who kept her head down.

  Zoe crossed off every item as she put it in the basket, noting the price of each and adding it up in her head. With her cart full, she went to the checkout, happy that Cassandra had six people waiting in her line.

  Zoe watched the total on the register mount, then counted the bills in the envelope again. Fifteen ones. The bill was thirty-seven dollars and seventy-one cents. She groaned. Should she tell Emily Sutton she owed her or keep quiet? Would everybody else say, “Poor woman. Doesn’t have a clue what things cost”?

  She counted out the ones and then dug the rest from her purse.

  On the way to her car the cart got snagged in every single pothole. Too much on her mind to remember to ask one of the stock boys for help, so she pushed and grunted and finally reached her car.

  By the time she got the bags in the back, she was worn out and talking to herself about how Emily Sutton wasn’t going to take her for a fool again.

  Driving around toward the Sutton house, she was thinking about being poor and what poverty did to a person, especially a creative person like Emily. She thought about chalking the extra money up to charity, then thought of how she didn’t like to be taken for a fool and didn’t have that much herself. But what would she sa
y to a poor soul who’d been virtually locked away for so many years? Cough it up?

  Zoe quashed that silly side of her brain and told herself she would present the woman with the bill. Then she decided to wait and see how she felt about the whole business when she got there. Let fate decide, she told herself.

  “Fiddle-Dee-Dee, Fiddle-Dee-Dee. We’ll see. We’ll just see,” she sang one of her happy songs as she drove. “We’ll just see.”

  * * *

  Mist from the swamp lay around the Sutton house as Zoe parked at the curb in front. The mist moved slightly with every breath of air. First shifting in one direction, then swirling back in the other. She got out of her car reluctantly, thinking how lucky she was not to have to live in such a place, happy all over again for the little house her grandmother left her.

  She pulled the two bags from the back and made straight through the gate and up the steps. She set the bags down in the exact spot Emily had pointed to then thought of that plastic wrapped chicken. The sun was high, middle of the afternoon. It was warm. The porch felt like a desert, the slanted, old boards with peeling paint giving off heat.

  Be stupid to leave a fresh chicken out in the sun.

  Dumb, really.

  She set the bags down and knocked at the door. Only common sense, despite what Emily ordered.

  She waited, then knocked again, making this one into a rat-a-tat-tat that shook the door and rattled the window.

  No answer.

  Now what was she supposed to do? She looked around to see if Emily might be out in the yard. The chicken would be garbage if it sat outside too long.

  She was torn one way and then the other. Maybe Emily knew she owed her money and wouldn’t answer until she left. If so, the chicken wasn’t her problem.

  She got as far as the top step and stopped, going back to knock at the door again.

  She decided she would stand there forever, if that’s what it took. Nobody pulled tricks on her. She might be small, but her brain wasn’t. She could outfox the best of them. And that included Emily Sutton, who was really annoying her at this point.

  She knocked again, shaking the glass in the door.

  When nothing happened, she turned the knob and pushed the unlocked door open far enough to stick her head in and call out. “Emily!”

  She listened. A radio voice came from somewhere at the back of the house. Maybe Emily was in the kitchen.

  She stepped into a crowded entryway with a coat rack on one side. An ancient, dusty coat hung on each hook. On the other side of the small area, an ornate, tarnished, gold-framed mirror hung—cracked and blackened. Beneath it was a bench filled with old boots. What she could see of the room beyond was just as overstuffed with things of all sorts: boxes, bags, antique furniture, shadeless lamps. There were piles of books and magazines. The walls of the room hadn’t been painted in years. The color was a faded shade of blue with steaks of white, as if someone had begun to paint at some point in the past and lost interest.

  The smell of the house made Zoe want to cover her nose. Dust. Garbage. Years of both of those. She called to Emily again.

  Maybe the hall, directly across from where she was standing, led back to the kitchen. At least she could put the chicken in the fridge, then get the heck out of there.

  There was a noise from overhead. A footstep or maybe just a creaking board. She went slowly over to the staircase on the far wall of the living room and called out Emily’s name, looking up the stairs for the woman to come down.

  “You have a great deal of nerve, haven’t you?” A voice came from behind her, making her jump and grab at her chest.

  When she turned, she bounced into Emily Sutton, standing with a bunch of goldenrod in her hands, her small face bunched into a heavy scowl.

  “I thought you’d leave everything outside, the way I asked,” Emily said without a “Hello” or a “Thank you” or a “What the devil are you doing in my house?”

  “I was afraid to. Not with the chicken,” Zoe found herself apologizing.

  “I’m never far away.” Emily’s oval-shaped face was flushed. Her eyes looked as if they might fly out of her head. “I wish you wouldn’t impose this way . . .”

  “Impose!” Zoe straightened her shoulders. She’d done nothing more than any normal person would do.

  “Well, well, well . . . I see you’re upset. Then I’m sorry. I should be grateful, shouldn’t I? It’s just that, I don’t have company—ever. You frightened me.”

  “I frightened you!” Zoe rolled her eyes and pointed at the street. “My car’s right out front. You might have guessed who was here.”

  “Yes.” Emily thought a while. “I might have guessed. I sensed you were the inquisitive sort.”

  “Inquisitive!” Zoe felt herself blowing up like a rooster.

  “I mean,” Emily went on, a sad smile on her face, “a writer, after all. Aren’t we an inquisitive bunch though?”

  “I did your shopping and brought your groceries . . .”

  “I said I was grateful.” Emily smiled, which did nothing to soften her face or her distress. “Was the money correct?”

  Zoe couldn’t open her mouth for fearing of exploding.

  She shook her head, meaning “no.”

  “Then thank you.” Emily motioned toward the front door as she headed to the kitchen, grocery bags in her arms. She turned in the archway. “If you hear anything about that reading people in town want me to have, tell them I will be honored. I’m getting a book of new poems together. In fact, I heard you are a writer. I was wondering if you’d speak to your editor about me. I’ll bet anything he’d be thrilled to hear another Emily Sutton book of poetry was in the works.”

  The plain face split in half, taking pleasure in her own words. Her head tipped to the side as she waited for Zoe to express her elation at the news.

  Zoe didn’t dare open her mouth. She took one step and then another, heading toward the door.

  “Oh, and maybe in a few days, I’ll need a few more things. I have your phone number. I’ll call and let you know when to drop by for the list.”

  Zoe held herself tight as she crossed the living room, then the vestibule—stepping on an ancient boot—then out the doorway to the porch.

  As she drove off, she made a mental note of how much Emily Sutton owed her. Next time, she promised herself, she would get the money and then tell the imperious queen to go get her own groceries.

  Or better yet, she’d find Althea.

  Chapter 9

  “I called her again,” Zoe said from a chair in her living room. “Still no answer.”

  “You mean her cousin?” Jenny brought herself into Zoe’s Lilliputian living room, where the furniture legs had been cut down as far as they could be cut and where one chair was reserved for Fida, who growled at anyone daring to walk too close, her little white face knotting into a terrifying smile.

  “Hmmm . . .” was all Jenny could come up with. “If you’re still so upset, why don’t we take turns shopping for her? As you said, I don’t have much to do. Time on my hands.”

  Zoe turned her head. “Whew! You’re a Pitiful Pete. ‘I’m nobody! Who are you? / Are you nobody, too? / Then there’s a pair of us—don’t tell! / They’d banish us, you know.’”

  “Royal pain,” Jenny snapped back to her.

  “You’re a royal pain. That was Emily Dickinson. I’m doing research. She might be the subject of my next book.”

  “I knew it was Dickinson. I’m not completely illiterate, you know.”

  “And not without talents of your own, which you no doubt had before the worm divorced you. And probably still have.”

  “Many talents. I can look up legal precedents. I can track case law. I’m a woman of extraordinary gifts.”

  “Then start using them, Jenny Weston, before you bore the hell out of everybody.”

  “Well, if that’s all the skill you have for friendship . . .” Jenny started to get out of the chair to go back home but had trouble pushing hersel
f up. She fell ungracefully backward then laughed until she was crying.

  “You Jabberwock!” She slit her wet eyes at Zoe, who’d rushed over to help. “‘The jaws that bite, / the claws that catch.’”

  “Ah ha! You know some important things after all.”

  “Like a Jabberwock?” Jenny was surprised at how much lighter she began to feel.

  “Of course. The Jabberwock. The Mock Turtle. So many instructive characters in the Wonderland stories.”

  “So now, how long will I have to hear about death and eternity in Emily Dickinson? Talk about boring.”

  Zoe narrowed her eyes. “Infidel! You wait and see. I’ll teach you how to think yet.”

  They agreed to split a beer and speak of other things.

  “Like this Althea Sutton. Do you want to go with me to see her tomorrow?” Zoe asked.

  Thinking she didn’t have much else to do but not daring to admit it, Jenny took a while to nod that yes, she’d go into Traverse City with Zoe, and then to say that she hoped they would find a cousin who might lay claim to Emily Sutton and all her troubles.

  * * *

  It was lunchtime when they got to Traverse. Jenny was driving because Zoe made her nervous with all her controls and handbrakes, especially since she did a lot of talking with her hands.

  “You want to get some lunch before we go to Althea’s house?” Jenny asked as they drove by the big bear welcoming them to town, then down Munson to Front Street, where the downtown area began.

  “Brew okay?” Jenny asked as she stopped for crowded crosswalks.

  “Downstairs at Horizon,” Zoe suggested.

  “Or the Green House Café. Love their soup.”

  “Wherever there’s a parking place.” Zoe checked out the crowded sidewalks where tourists walked five across and the stores did the kind of business they never did in the winter months.

  Jenny spotted a woman getting in her car just down the block. She put her signal on and waited until the woman got back out of her car and toddled off to do more shopping.

  “I’m hoping Althea Sutton still lives here.” Zoe sat forward, on the edge of her seat, taking the search for a parking place seriously. “First thing I’ll do after we talk to her is tell Emily. The second thing I’ll do is tell Emily I can’t fetch her vittles anymore and that she’d better apologize to her cousin for whatever she did to her if she wants to go on eating.”