She Stopped for Death

by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

  She looked into his face and couldn’t read anything there except that he was wary.

  “I’m returning your calls—for the last time.” She looked up, her body stiff. Rain ran down her face and into her mouth. “I came to tell you that I won’t put up with another liar. I can’t. Who are you, anyway? Are you my friend or some jerk out to use me? Are you this person I was beginning to trust or a cheater? Are you married or not married? Do you still love her . . . damn.” She balled her hands together at her sides. If she let go, she would hit him. The unstoppered rage inside her was running red hot.

  “Come on in, you’re shaking,” he begged, his arm going around her. “I’m so damned sorry and mad at myself and sick to my stomach that I let it go that far.”

  She pulled her arm away. “You mean, letting me trust you . . .”

  Water ran from his face to hers as he bent close. “I never meant . . . I didn’t think . . . I mean, I didn’t know this was going to happen. All of a sudden you were there and something was going on and I . . .”

  She tried to pull away from him; too many words wanted to spill out and they weren’t the words she’d come to say. She wanted to stay mad. She wanted to be irrational and scream and kick and do anything else it took to wake him up.

  “The past is over, Jenny.” He put his face close to hers. “I meant what I said before. I filed for divorce. Won’t be contested. It’ll be quick. I promise you, Jenny.”

  She wanted to believe him. Wanted it so bad.

  She stood in the middle of the road with Tony’s arms around her, with her hands on his chest, with new rain soaking them, and wondered how two people who loved each other could be so stupid.

  “Come in the house,” he whispered next to her ear. “Please,” he begged when she hesitated. “We need to talk. I promise I will never hurt you like this again. Not ever, Jenny. Words aren’t easy for me but . . . I love you. I want us to be together forever. Me and you. Us.”

  When she kissed him, it was like melting straight into another human being. Not a make-up kiss. Not a sex kiss. More than any kiss she’d shared before—his lips hard on hers, her fingers twisted in his dark hair.

  “I love you,” she whispered back to Tony, as if it were the first time she’d ever said it.

  * * *

  He made coffee in the morning. She got two cups from one of the tall double cupboards he’d built when he redid his kitchen. Double cupboards. Pullout cupboards. Shelves for tall boxes and shelves for can goods. There was a pullout drop drawer for the long kitchen utensils that there was never a place for in ordinary kitchen drawers.

  “This is a cook’s heaven.” She opened drawer after door and drawer after door, marveling at the utility of the space. Not a large kitchen, but one designed for the cook. Cupboards for large pots. Slots for the lids. Dora would swoon, Jenny thought as she toured the room while he cooked.

  “I didn’t know you could cook.” Jenny put a hand on his arm and looked into his face.

  He looked up from the restaurant-style stove where he carefully basted eggs for both of them. “I know,” he said. “One of my hidden talents.”

  She smiled. “I think I know another one.”

  He reddened, then motioned for her to watch the basted eggs as he went to find his cell, which was ringing faintly off in another room.

  The ringing phone made Jenny come back to the world beyond the walls of Tony’s house. Mom! I never called her. Dora didn’t know where Jenny was. There would be only the empty bed this morning when she went in Jenny’s room. With so much going on all around them, maybe Mom had already called Ed Warner and reported her missing, or figured she was hiding in a Traverse City hotel room again.

  Thinking hard about what she was going to say, she found her purse on a chair, where she’d left it last night, but her iPhone was dead. She’d have to borrow Tony’s when he got off.

  Maybe she would even tell Mom the truth about where she’d been all night. Or not worry about telling her because it would be Tony’s phone number she’d be calling from, and Mom would know immediately.

  Tony walked into the kitchen, still talking into his phone until he held it out to her.

  “For you,” he said. “Zoe.”

  She made a face at him, mouthing, “How she’d know . . . ?”

  He shrugged.

  “Hello.” She ran excuses through her head. She was at Tony’s because he’d called this morning. There was a carpentry emergency. Or he’d called early because he’d lost a set of plans for a Little Library and needed her to come look for them. Or—

  “Emily called me,” Zoe said, asking nothing. She sounded perturbed. “I’m shopping for her, and she asked if you and Alex would come over there with me this afternoon.”

  “Why?” Jenny resented being dragged back to that world so fast. She wanted to sit and have breakfast with Tony while she watched him eat. She wanted to smile at him from across the table, watch him smile back.

  “Don’t ask me. You know Emily. It will be about any idea that struck her during the night.”

  “Zoe. Will you call my mom and tell her where I am?”

  “Huh! Oh, yeah, that’s right. You’re at Tony’s house. Have fun. I’ll tell her.”

  She hung up without the remarks and snickering Jenny had expected.

  “What’ll your mom say when she finds out you’re over here?” Tony asked.

  Jenny smiled up at him and thought only a minute. “I hope she’ll be happy for us.”

  “Was Zoe? Happy about us?”

  “You know Zoe. Distracted. She’s got another Emily Sutton emergency. Emily wants me and Alex over there this afternoon.”

  “What for?” He leaned down and kissed her.

  “Probably to see what we thought of her performance yesterday.”

  “Are you going to tell her the truth?”

  “I’m going to lie through my teeth.”

  “What time?”

  “Not until three o’clock.”

  “That gives us lots of time.” He took her hand and led her to the table where she sat next to him, not thinking about what she was eating, only about the next smile she wanted to give him.

  They never got to the fruit salad. They didn’t clear the table.

  The next couple of hours were just theirs. Jenny didn’t think of Dora, nor Zoe, nor Alex, nor anybody but her and this odd man who seemed to love her.

  Chapter 17

  When Jenny walked in the house at noon, Dora looked up from her newspaper and frowned.

  “Next time have the courtesy to call me directly if you’re going to stay at Tony’s all night” was all she said before asking if she wanted lunch. “Alex is out with a friend who came up from U of M to see her. She’ll be back in time to go to Emily’s.” She paused. “Oh, and that detective from Traverse City called. He was supposed to be here yesterday, I think. He asked that you call him back.”

  Jenny did, immediately.

  “I’ve been looking into Emily Sutton’s background. Seems there are a lot of empty years where I can’t find anything out about her. Can you, or anybody else there in town, fill in those blank years?” he asked.

  “There’s not much to fill in, Detective. She was back at home before we even moved here. There was a sister. Her name was Lorna. She was here until a couple of years ago when she left. Emily claims she doesn’t know where Lorna went.”

  Another long silence. “Okay. That’s a place to start. I’ll see what I can find out about her. Lorna, you say? Lorna Sutton?”

  “I guess so. Unless she got married.”

  “Anything else.”

  “There was a fire. I think it was around the time Emily came home.”

  “I know about that. The mother died in the fire. I talked to your chief about it. He says it was suspicious, but they didn’t have arson investigators to look into it then.”

  “That’s all I know.”

  “Personally,” he went on, “what do you think of Emily Sutton?”

/>   “You want gossip?”

  “Half of our investigations rely on gossip, Jenny.”

  “Okay. I think she’s very, very odd. She’s one kind of person one minute, another the next.”

  “How do you mean?”

  Jenny thought, wanting to be fair. “Emily can be shy and artistic—you know, otherworldly—one minute. The next minute she’s ordering people around and acting as if somebody made her queen of the British Empire.”

  “I’m coming back out there to talk to her. I called, but she didn’t answer, so I’ll just show up again. If you’ve got a couple of minutes, I’d like to talk to you and Zoe Zola.”

  “Actually, I’m going to Emily’s this afternoon.”

  “Why?”

  “She asked for me and Alex Shipley to come over.”

  She told him she’d let Zoe know he was coming.

  “And who knows?” the detective said. “Maybe I’ll see you at Miss Sutton’s house later.”

  * * *

  They set the bags of groceries on Emily’s porch at exactly three o’clock, as instructed. The door opened before Zoe could knock. Emily didn’t invite them into the house, but took the bags of groceries in—one by one—and shut the door, saying she would be back in a minute.

  There were no chairs on the sagging porch to sit on, so Zoe, Jenny, and an excited Alex sat on the steps, taking turns looking at each other, then away. As one, they stood when Emily came out and closed the door behind her. She waved them back to their places on the steps then stood above them, looking down. She had on navy pants that ballooned to the tops of old sneakers with knotted laces, and her white, lacy blouse was long-sleeved, elastic at the wrists. Her hair had been swept up into a fire-engine pouf at the very top of her head. A blue ribbon was wrapped many times around the pouf, then tied into a bow at the back. Her smile was pleasant, almost smug. Her shoulders were drawn up to her ears. She clasped her hands tightly in front of her.

  “Well?” She looked from face to face. “Do you think the world is ready for my new poetry?”

  Zoe and Jenny looked at each other. Alex, who wasn’t at the meeting, looked out toward the swamp that was quickly changing to a coat of many colors.

  “Oh, dear.” Emily searched their faces, her bulging eyes bulging even more. “I hope I haven’t misjudged the intellect of the audience.”

  Zoe was the first to shake her head. “You fascinated them.”

  Jenny knew Zoe was pleased with her own answer. “Fascinated,” Jenny echoed.

  “Tell me what they said after I’d left.” Emily settled her shoulders back and waited. “I want to hear every word.”

  Alex, who’d heard about the meeting, watched as Zoe and Jenny squirmed.

  “Most didn’t have words to describe what they felt,” Zoe said then looked to Jenny for support.

  “You heard the applause,” Jenny put in.

  “Yes.” Emily’s eyes wandered to the sky, as if the scene of her triumph was permanently written somewhere up there for her to visit again and again. “It was a magical event. Then we will move on to the night at the opera house. All the tickets are sold!” She clapped her hands. “Since that is the case, I can’t possibly disappoint my public, can I?”

  Everyone agreed, loudly, in ardent, dishonest voices.

  Satisfied, she nodded, and Zoe got up from her cramped space on the steps.

  “Well, I suppose we’ll get going . . .”

  “Oh, no. That wasn’t all I asked you here for. Please.” She motioned Zoe back to her seat, then sat down on the very top step where she could look down at the women while making them keep their necks turned. She quickly got to the real reason for inviting them to her house.

  “I have things I must tell you. And only you three.” She looked from one to the other.

  Alex bent toward Emily. Her face was avid, as if hoping she’d learn where Walter Shipley had gone.

  “First,” Emily smiled down at her, “I’m sorry for calling the police when you were here.”

  Alex shrugged off the apology.

  “I’m so much alone. You understand. There is a certain fear that lingers when a house reverberates with echoes, you see.”

  Alex gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  “This is what happens when the world has turned its back. I’m trying so hard, Alex.” She put a trembling hand out to the girl, who took it and held on. “Do you understand? Can you understand what it is for a poet, a woman who’s lived inside her head for so many years? Do you have any idea what that kind of confinement entails?”

  Jenny and Zoe watched as Alex, as if hypnotized, nodded again and again, agreeing that she understood.

  Emily bent down closer, her voice hardening. “Then you know why I can’t have people breaking the frail circumference of my life. I’m often locked in different houses as I try to work.” She abruptly dropped Alex’s hand. “Your intrusion was a jolt. No telling what I would have written that day, if not for you flitting across my backyard.”

  Jenny was incensed for Alex. “She knocked,” she spoke up. “You didn’t answer.” If this is why she wanted them there, Jenny figured it was time to go.

  “Oh, don’t misunderstand. I don’t mean to be cruel. I just want the girl to know the mechanics of my life.”

  “I do,” Alex said, her normally self-assured voice made small.

  Emily bent toward Alex again, a drop of white spit in the corner of her mouth. “You do see then, I hope, why I can’t be disturbed the way you disturbed me.”

  “Was he here?” Alex found her voice, speaking up as if shaking off a trance. “That’s all I wanted to know. Is that his car out in your shed?”

  Emily’s eyes flew as open as they could get. “A car? In my shed?”

  She turned toward the swamp and said nothing. After long minutes, she turned back to Alex.

  “How I wish it were, dear, but that car is an old one that belonged to my mother. Lorna used it from time to time. She drove. I didn’t. Walter’s car is gone.”

  Zoe, cramped from the hard steps, started to get up but Alex put a hand up, stopping her.

  “Before he came,” Emily continued, “I warned him about Lorna.”

  She drew a long breath.

  “His first letter was nothing more than praise for my poetry. He asked why I’d gone silent for so many years. I wrote back to tell him how his poetry blessed my life—his wonderfully microcosmic poems: ‘An ant on cosmic shores . . .’ How do I answer his question: ‘Where are your poems, Emily Sutton?’ How do I say that I had no choice?”

  She put a hand out for Alex to take again. “You have the letters. You saw for yourself what grew between us, didn’t you?”

  She waited for Alex’s nod.

  “I thought he felt the same. Our minds fit so perfectly together.” The emotion on her long face slowly drained away. “One day Lorna came to me and said she was in love with Walter. Lorna often fell in love. I didn’t think much of it. I didn’t warn him about her. I should have.” She glanced at Alex, tears in her eyes.

  “How could I tell a man like your uncle that my sister couldn’t be trusted? How could I say I’d come home to stay because of her? How do you tell a man that you can’t go away with him? That you are tied to your sister and this house forever?”

  Her listeners could have been statues.

  Alex whispered, “What happened?”

  “On the morning that I was going to tell him he had to leave, I got out of bed and heard the silence. Silence everywhere, as if the universe had gone deaf. I looked out my window. Walter’s red car wasn’t at the curb. Red became a blankness, even a blackness out my window. There was no need to go downstairs. No need to move from my room. No use, my waiting for them to come back. They were gone. Together.”

  Jenny asked, “But why would he stop calling his family, Emily? The man liked to be alone but he wasn’t a hermit.”

  Alex nodded and watched Emily’s face move from emotion to emotion.

  “I know,”
she whispered, leaning toward Alex. “But who knows what power Lorna had over him? There’s more.” Emily bent in half, as close as she could get to Alex.

  “Lorna started the fire that killed my mother. My mother asked me to come home to protect her.” Emily nodded, looking from face to watching face. “I found the hidden gas cans later. When I asked her, all she said was that our mother wasn’t necessary anymore. Can you imagine? Our mother ‘wasn’t necessary anymore.’” She stiffened her shoulders. “When the police chief asked too many questions, I had Lorna committed to an institution. She came home when the hospital closed.”

  Her lids dropped halfway over her eyes. When she opened them completely, it was to look from face to horrified face.

  “These are my phantoms,” she said. “No one must know or I will die. I promise. These things cannot be told to anyone else or I will die.”

  Chapter 18

  Given the late hour, since most diners came for the five o’clock specials and were gone, Myrtle’s was almost empty when Zoe walked in. She was alone. The last thing she wanted right then was any more talk about Emily Sutton. All the way home they’d talked about nothing else. Then they swore Dora to silence the way they’d been sworn to keep Emily’s secrets, and that started the talk all over again.

  Alex was relived, she said, to finally know what happened, even if it didn’t bring her any closer to knowing where her uncle had gone.

  She told them she planned on going back to school in the morning since she’d found what she’d come to find—that Uncle Walter’d gone off with a woman he loved.

  Zoe had been happy to leave the Westons’ house and go off by herself. She felt as if her head would burst wide open if she heard Emily’s name mentioned even one more time that night.

  Delaware, over at the register checking the last couple out, raised a hand and called a loud “Hi,” which Zoe returned with a grudging wave as she slid into a booth in the farthest corner of the big room.

  When Delaware came to take her order—which was easy since Zoe asked for the daily special: meatloaf and mashed potatoes with green beans and applesauce—Delaware hesitated next to the table, looking down, with half-closed eyes, at Zoe.