“If she drove, it would be different,” Jenny said as she saw a car leaving just ahead. She sped up to grab the spot but a car next to her cut over and pulled in.
She gave the rude driver the finger as she drove slowly past, liking the power of that finger and finding she felt more at home now. Kind of like being back in Chicago: rude drivers, crowds, circles of talking people blocking sidewalks. Who would have thought she’d miss Chicago? She’d already started planning a trip back there in her head. Maybe Zoe would go with her. They’d shop and see a show and go to a restaurant where meatloaf wasn’t the height of cuisine. She was smiling broadly when a car ahead pulled from the curb directly across from the Brew. With their lunch place decided for them, she couldn’t help but think this had to be her lucky day.
It wasn’t.
Zoe saw him first. Tony Ralenti was sitting in the window of the Brew. His dark curly head leaned toward the woman next to him as if to catch what she was saying. The woman smiled and reached up to put a hand on his cheek as she spoke.
Zoe swore under her breath and hurried around the car to stop Jenny, who was coming back from putting money into the meter.
“I was thinking,” Zoe said hurriedly. “Maybe we should get over to Althea’s house before she leaves . . . or . . .”
Jenny looked down at her watch: twelve thirty. Zoe could be right. The restaurant might be packed. She squinted toward the front windows. Usually if all those seats were taken, there was no hope of finding a table inside.
She squinted again and saw Tony. She put her hand up to wave, then stopped herself, feeling Zoe’s hand on her arm.
“Let’s go somewhere else,” Zoe said, her small, pretty face deadly serious. “Plenty of other places.”
The woman beside Tony turned to him, talking. Her head was low. Her face was close to his. Jenny didn’t recognize her. Certainly not from Bear Falls, not with that angular haircut and made-up face. More New York than Traverse City.
Zoe pulled at her arm. “Probably an old friend.”
Jenny swallowed hard and said nothing.
“Maybe she’s a relative. I wouldn’t worry about it.”
Tony got up to leave. The woman reached out, stopped him, and pulled him close. Jenny wasn’t sure if he kissed her or just said something near her ear.
She wasn’t able to turn away. Didn’t believe what she was seeing.
He came out through the door to stand in the middle of the sidewalk. He glanced over at her and then looked up and down street. He squinted, looking across the street again, this time narrowing his eyes to see better. She thought he was going to wave but didn’t stop to find out. Getting back in the car, she slammed the door then waited for Zoe to hop in the other side. She couldn’t help but look in her rearview mirror as she pulled from the curb, driving off as fast as traffic would allow.
Tony was still standing near the curb, one hand up over his eyes, watching her go.
While Jenny drove, Zoe scratched her nose repeatedly. They were on the way to Slabtown, where Althea Sutton lived. Zoe kept her head turned, obviously not wanting Jenny to notice and know the nose was at it again. Only too late this time. The damage was done. Terrible, about Tony—they were thinking the same thing—oldest crummy trick a man could play on a woman. Zoe’s estimation of him fell to zero. “Creep,” she muttered to herself, though Jenny heard.
Jenny looked once at Zoe, daring her to say another word out loud. She wanted no pity and no Wonderland philosophy. She wanted to drive and nothing else. Just keep driving the few blocks over to Slabtown to speak to the woman, get whatever assurances Zoe wanted from her, and then head home where, just maybe, she was ready to pack a bag and head off to a new life.
Places she might go streamed through her mind.
Chicago. Maybe.
Montana. A sister had to take a sister in when the sister was mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.
Or maybe turn the car around, find him, then drive along beside him shouting insults. She liked impossible scenarios like that. There was always a little satisfaction in pretense.
As she drove, she let red lights and stop signs and even Do Not Park signs take all her attention. Better than the picture in her head: Tony leaning close to kiss that woman good-bye. The thought that he’d rather be there with that flamboyant, skinny, phony . . .
What man wouldn’t? She gave herself credit for all the wonderful, authentic qualities she was sure she possessed, then blew the thought right out of her head. What man wanted authentic when he could have sexy and showy? Crummy bastard was the best she came up with, but it suited her mood.
“We don’t have to go there if you don’t feel like it,” Zoe said, hunkered down in her seat, getting nothing back from Jenny.
They drove in silence, except for Zoe’s rumbling stomach, which hadn’t been fed as it expected.
* * *
Althea Sutton’s house, a small white bungalow, was set back between older, two-story houses, each with a large, imposing porch. The house had an attached garage on the left side, two small squares of neatly cut grass in front, and untended flowerbeds running along a small concrete porch with a white-and-green aluminum awning above it.
Zoe rang the bell. There was an echo deep inside the house but nothing else. She pushed the bell again.
No one answered.
“She must be out.” Zoe turned away from the door, her small face drawn up in a puzzled look.
“Or maybe she’s on vacation.” Jenny toed the doormat. “People still take them, you know.”
Zoe looked around at the other houses. Next door, in front of a large square-brick house with green trim, an elderly woman stood watering her lawn, hose in hand.
“Why don’t you go ask that lady if Althea still lives here?” Zoe nodded toward the woman in a straw sun hat.
“This is your baby. You go.”
Zoe shook her head. “People sometimes don’t keep their mind on what I’m saying. They’re too busy looking me over.”
Jenny had been with her enough now to know that Zoe always got attention, just not always the right kind.
Jenny headed toward the lady next door.
The elderly woman looked up from under her wide gardening hat and greeted Jenny with an inquisitive smile. She turned off the hose and dropped it to the ground, then stripped off her pristine gardening gloves. “Yes?” she asked pleasantly.
“We were wondering about your neighbor, Althea Sutton.”
The woman’s eyes wrinkled with curiosity. “Yes? What about her?”
“Do you know where she is?”
“I’m sorry.” The woman’s lined face showed confusion and then irritation. “I don’t understand what you mean. Or what business it is of yours?”
“It’s about her cousin. She lives in Bear Falls.”
The woman nodded. “The cousin Althea takes care of? Or at least helps out?”
“That’s the problem. She’s stopped coming and her cousin is wondering what happened to her.” The lie was a little one.
The woman looked up and down the street and thought a while. “I thought she must have gone away, but she usually tells me where she’s going: a church outing or even bird watching from time to time. Just so I can keep an eye on things, but . . . well . . . this time she didn’t say a word. I was beginning to wonder if there could be something wrong. The woman’s in her late sixties and lives alone. Always good to look out for each other.”
“Why did you think there might be something wrong?” Jenny asked.
“Well, you see, Althea has a man who does her grass, but look at those flowerbeds. Filled with weeds. Nobody’s done anything there for at least a couple of weeks.” She leaned around Jenny and pointed toward where Zoe stood.
Zoe waved.
“For goodness sakes, who’s that?” The woman turned quickly back to Jenny.
“A friend.”
She waved back to Zoe.
“Has anyone else been around looking for Althea?”
Jenny asked.
“Young lady, I don’t spy on my neighbors.” The woman was getting suspicious and a little testy at being pressed.
“I didn’t mean . . . we’re just concerned about her.”
“This cousin you’re talking about. That wouldn’t be the famous poet Althea’s always bragging about, would it?”
Jenny nodded.
“In that case. Yes. I’ve seen a car in the driveway from time to time. Mostly in the evening. I’ve never seen anyone going in nor out, though I have watched. Purely for Althea’s sake, you understand. Maybe that was the cousin in the car.”
“You saw the driver? It was a woman?”
The woman thought again, then shook her head. “I didn’t see the actual person.”
“What about the car?”
“Do you really think I take down the license numbers of everyone who visits a neighbor?”
“But maybe the kind of car.”
“I don’t know one from the other.”
“The year?”
“Please! Do you know the year every car on the road was built?”
Jenny thanked the woman and headed back to Zoe.
“What’d she say?” Zoe was impatient. “Where’s Althea Sutton?”
Jenny shook her head. “Doesn’t know. She’s seen a car in the drive from time to time, but that’s all.”
“So where’d Althea go? And why would she drop Emily flat?” Zoe frowned. “Unless Emily got to be more than she could take. I can understand that well enough.”
“Maybe it’s like tough love. Get your own food or starve to death. You’ve got a pair of legs—use ’em.” Jenny wasn’t feeling particularly charitable at the moment, unable to shake the face of the woman in the Brew. Then unable to shake Tony, standing on the sidewalk.
People could be such . . . crap.
She stepped back to look again at the front, curtain-covered windows of Althea’s house. Nothing moved behind them. Nobody was peeking out and deciding not to answer the door. The woman was obviously not at home.
They gave each other a “What now?” shrug.
“I’ll check the garage,” Zoe said. “If she moved away, she would at least take her car.”
“And put the house up for sale.”
“True.”
The windows on the overhead garage door where way above Zoe’s head. Jenny leaned across her and cupped her hands against the glass. At first her eyes had to adjust to the darkness inside. When they did, the car inside was obvious, taking up most of the small space surrounded with what looked like rakes and shovels and a potting table.
“There’s a car in there.” She turned to look down at Zoe, face and voice puzzled.
“Shouldn’t be.” Zoe started around the side where she found an unlocked door and opened it as, behind her, Jenny whispered, “I hope that neighbor’s not watching. She’ll call the police for sure.”
She put her hands on Zoe’s shoulders as they stepped inside the garage, then fell back. Coughing. The air inside was thick and hot and smelled overwhelmingly of decay.
“Wha . . . ?” Jenny gagged, tasting the thick odor in her mouth and throat.
“Let’s get out of here,” she said, pulling her cell from her pocket as she stumbled back through the door.
Zoe waved off Jenny’s hand and shook her head. “We don’t know anything for sure. You know animals get inside garages and die.” She went in and walked around the elderly Chevy, her hand over her mouth and nose.
“Don’t, Zoe.” Jenny took another step back out the door.
Zoe moved up the far side of the car, swatting flies away from her face. Jenny watched as Zoe stood on her tiptoes, hands resting on the car door. She could see Zoe’s face through the car window, which was buzzing with more flies. Zoe’s eyes got huge. She put her hand to her mouth, then looked over at Jenny.
“Call the police,” she yelled. “It’s got to be Althea Sutton. She’s dead, Jenny.”
Chapter 10
Zoe Zola bent over in a weedy flowerbed, sick to her stomach among the straggly daisies. She wiped at her mouth with the Kleenex Jenny handed her, then bent again.
The dead woman in the car was flashing in and out of Zoe’s head. The smell came back—a terrible sensory memory—mixed in with the sound of a thousand black flies buzzing at once.
The thought bent her back over the flowerbed but there wasn’t much left to bring up. She was thankful there’d been no time for lunch.
Jenny stood beside Zoe in the front of Althea Sutton’s garage. She looked this way and that, avoiding the next-door neighbor who’d stopped all pretense of watering and watched them closely.
She hoped the police would get there fast and wished she were anywhere else but here, with a dead woman in the garage, Zoe heaving in the bushes, and the now quiet neighborhood around them soon to be torn apart by death.
Jenny had no intention of taking a closer look at the body. Zoe’s condition was enough to tell her whatever she’d seen was as bad as a thing could get.
“Terrible,” Zoe finally choked out, getting a hold of herself. “She’s sitting behind the wheel of the car. But dead.” She made a face up at Jenny. “Oh, so dead. And . . . things . . .”
“I get the picture,” Jenny said, grateful for the sound of a siren and then for the police car skidding to a stop at the curb behind her car.
Jenny waved the cops toward the garage. She tried to warn them, only to be told, gruffly, to wait outside—as if she had planned to do anything else. When the men came out, their faces weren’t any better than Zoe’s had been. One of the cops made his own bend-over in the bushes. The cops had only a few questions before directing them to wait in Jenny’s car. Other squad cars and plain sedans arrived, and a large bald man ambled over, leaning in the open window to introduce himself as Detective Minty, then to say, kindly enough, that he’d be back to talk to them as soon as he could.
“Why do I feel like I’ve got a noose around my neck?” Zoe grumbled as she settled back against the hot leather seat.
“Same reason I hear bars clanking shut around me.”
Jenny scowled at the wheel. All she could think was how this had become the worst day of her life—well, second worst. Her dad’s death trumped everything.
“Can’t get my head around this,” Zoe said after a while. “Emily didn’t know what happened to her, and here she is dead. Looks like for quite a long time, too.”
“Maybe she committed suicide.”
Zoe shook her head. “That’s no suicide, Jenny. You’d have to see her to get what I mean.”
Jenny put up a hand. “Don’t tell me. Let’s just sit quietly and see what the detective wants from us. I need to go home so bad.” Her voice broke. Then a thought hit: What if Mom heard about this on the radio?
Couldn’t happen. Too soon. They had time. She prayed there wouldn’t be any reporters rushing over to get interviews from them while they were still white faced—maybe a little vomit running down the front of Zoe’s blouse.
Zoe looked over, her small, pretty face sad. “What a rotten day this turned out to be.”
“You think?” Jenny said and closed her eyes.
Neighbors gathered as men scurried in and out of the house and garage. Men in hazmat suits went in the garage and stayed. It was almost an hour before Detective Minty came back, ambling over as if he had all the time in the world, then leaning in the window, apologizing, shaking his shiny head, and asking if they’d been inside the house at all. He went on to say that the house had been ransacked. “Thinking a burglary,” he said.
“What about the woman? That is Althea, isn’t it?” Zoe asked, meeting with his quizzical look.
“Dead more than a couple of weeks, the coroner said.”
“Not suicide, was it?” Jenny leaned up to ask.
Zoe scoffed. “If you mean the lady didn’t beat herself over the head while sitting in her car. Yes, I’d say that’s a safe assumption.” She turned to the detective. “Murder, right?”
/>
“We’re not giving out any information yet, but it’s safe to say you’re right. Miss Sutton was murdered.”
Zoe narrowed her eyes at him. “We’ll be happy to tell you why we were here. It wasn’t to do her harm.”
“In a little while. Back at the station. I’ll take your statements then and send you on your way home. Awful thing to find.” He stepped away, and then back. “Why were you here again? I forgot what you said.”
“Because she hadn’t shown up to take care of her cousin for a while,” Zoe spoke up loudly.
“That’s right.” He nodded. “You’re from Bear Falls, right? Something about a woman who lives alone and needs help. Is that it? You two must’ve been mad at this lady, eh?” He motioned toward the house.
Jenny eyed him. “Officer. She’s been dead for a while you said. We just got here today. I’d say that pretty much lets us out as your suspects.”
“You know, ma’am,” he smiled coolly in the window, arm resting on the car, “you’d be amazed what murderers do and how they think. For instance, with this incident now. If I killed a lady and never saw anything more about it in the papers or on the TV, maybe I’d start to wonder what was going on. Maybe I’d even go back to look at the body, make sure it was still there.”
“And would you call the police?”
He looked away then leaned farther in the window. He chuckled. “Got me there. Pretty dumb killer, to do a thing like that. And you ladies don’t look dumb to me at all.”
He gave them a probing look then pulled back and straightened, tugging at the belt around his waist.
“You don’t have to stay here. I’ve got your names. Why don’t you go on over to the police station. I’ll be there as soon as I can to take your statements.”
* * *
“Hungry?” Jenny asked as she drove up Eighth Street. “We missed lunch.”
She Stopped for Death Page 8