She Stopped for Death

by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

  “Heard you were over to Abigail’s house for that meeting.”

  Zoe squinted as if staring into a bright sun. She nodded.

  “Heard there was quite a show.”

  Zoe frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “Come on, Zoe. Heard that poet came to Abigail’s half naked.”

  “Really?” Zoe looked puzzled. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “Never mind.” Delaware made a face. “Is it true?”

  Zoe shrugged and shook her head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Delaware. Emily Sutton was there. She read a new poem but she had clothes on. At least as far as I could see.”

  “That’s not what Minnie Moon told me.” Delaware bit her lip at letting the name of her source slip.

  Zoe made a noise and shook her head. “I thought Emily’s dress was pretty. Sky blue. Perfect for a poet.”

  “Minnie said one of her boobs was hanging out.”

  “You mean bulbs. Breasts are more like flower bulbs—filled with life. Someday I may be calling on them to give life to some wee little baby. I’d never call them my boobs.” She looked up at Delaware, one eyed. “Boobs are screwballs. They’re kooks. They’re dolts and fools. I would never call a treasured part of my body a thing like that.”

  “Guys would.”

  “Then maybe we should come up with silly names for their parts, too.”

  Delaware waved a hand at her. “You’re nuts.”

  “Yes, well.” Zoe shrugged her shoulders and stared down at her hands to hide the laughter in her eyes.

  “Anyway, that’s what Minnie Moon said. Half hanging out of whatever she was wearing, with a hand over it as if pledging allegiance to a flag.”

  “Minnie’s a prude.”

  “You think Minnie’s a prude? Never thought of her like that.”

  “Well, look what she wears, nothing but muumuus that hide everything. Must have—what do they call it? Body issues.”

  “Minnie?” Delaware brought her thin, plucked brows together. “I know she’s religious but I never thought of her as having . . . what’d you call it? Body issues?” She thought awhile. “Her kids don’t have issues like that.”

  “That’s true. Minnie probably went out of her way to set her daughters free—considering what they wear in public.”

  “You can say that again. I’ve seen more of those girls’ behinds then I’ve seen of my own.”

  Delaware stood on one foot, then the other. She looked out the window as the neon lights along Oak Street went off. She turned back to Zoe, liking the company and the chance to talk a little bit now that she wasn’t rushed with customers.

  “Everybody’s going to the opera house to hear Emily. Hope nothing goes wrong there. I got tickets for my mom and me. Biggest thing that’s happened to Bear Falls, Mom says, since the winter of 1978 when it snowed so hard that Chief Arnow declared Bear Falls officially closed. No electricity. Big excitement over that. Even more talk now, about the poet. Woman’s been spotted, kind of flitting around in her yard and sneaking off places.”

  Delaware smiled a tight smile and went off to turn Zoe’s order in to Myrtle, who was out in the kitchen, unseen as usual.

  Zoe got her iced tea and, along with it, more of Delaware.

  “How are Jenny and Tony getting along?” Delaware asked. “Haven’t seen them in here together in a couple of days.”

  Zoe gave Delaware a narrow-eyed look.

  “What?” Delaware said. “I’m just asking. Hope there’s no trouble. I like the two of them together.”

  “Trust me,” Zoe said. “They’re fine.”

  “Glad to hear it. That makes me happy. My Larry and me have been together for ten years now. I think that’s a pretty good record, though Mom wants us to get married.”

  She walked off, looking to retrieve the dish of meatloaf pushed through the opening to the kitchen.

  Just behind the dish of meatloaf came Myrtle herself, scurrying from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her spotted apron. She pushed into the booth across from Zoe.

  “Everything okay?” Myrtle looked hard at Zoe. “Heard you been having trouble.”

  Zoe swallowed a chunk of meatloaf. “What do you mean by ‘trouble’?”

  Myrtle’s eyes disappeared into a cluster of wrinkles.

  “Didn’t you find that body?”

  Zoe nodded.

  “What’s the body got to do with Emily Sutton? I heard about that.”

  “Emily and Lorna’s cousin, Althea.”

  Myrtle threw her head back and stared at the ceiling, watching a big fan circling. Then she looked hard at Zoe. “If I was you, I’d keep my eye on Emily Sutton. She’s not what she pretends to be.”

  Zoe felt her patience slip. She’d had enough of slightly cracked people for one day. Enough of hearing about Emily Sutton. Enough of just about everybody in Bear Falls. She cut her meatloaf into tiny pieces and stuck the pieces, one after another, into her mouth, chewing very slow so the process absorbed her.

  Myrtle ducked her head between her shoulders and watched Zoe eat. “Heard about Emily’s sister being gone. Emily didn’t like her sister much. Never wanted to see her.”

  Zoe leaned back and eyed Myrtle. “What’s that mean, ‘never wanted to see her’? They lived together for years.”

  Myrtle glanced around the empty restaurant. Her eyes, behind thick glasses, were magnified and wary. She leaned across the table. “I was in the hospital with her.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Myrtle made a face. “No choice. Like me. She was there. Long time after I got there. At first she acted like she wanted to be friends. Then she turned, like one of those snakes that rears back and strikes you. I just stepped out of her way, watched, and learned better than to trust her.”

  “When was this, Myrtle? When were you in the hospital together?”

  She shrugged and kept her eye on the door. When people walked up or got out of their car at the curb, she would hunker down and set both hands on the table, as if preparing to get up and run. When the people walked on by, she visibly relaxed.

  Myrtle shook her head. “Knew her, that’s all. Played so sweet, but I remember once she got into big trouble. Ran away. Our nurse was so mad at her over stealing her car, she went out and brought her back herself. Nurse Proust. I liked Nurse Proust.”

  “Ran away?” Zoe looked doubtful.

  Myrtle nodded. “Got out. Found her in town.”

  “What kind of hospital are you talking about?” Zoe narrowed her eyes as Myrtle felt in her pocket, pulled something out, and set it on the table just as the front door opened and a giggling group of teenaged girls walked in.

  “Look at that.” Myrtle nodded to the paper rocking slightly on the table between them, then got up and scurried back to the kitchen.

  Zoe set her hand on top of the folded paper and transferred it to the pocket of her jacket.

  “Do you know what hospital Myrtle’s talking about?” Zoe asked Delaware when she was back, hovering over her.

  “Huh? Myrtle’s not sick.”

  Zoe shook her head. “She was saying she’d been in the hospital with . . . eh . . . somebody.”

  Delaware shrugged and glanced over at the table of teenagers poking each other and laughing.

  “Myrtle was down in a mental hospital for a while. That’s what Mom told me, but we don’t talk about it. Sad story. Her brothers put her there ’cause their dad left this restaurant to her. The boys got mad about that. Can you imagine! Got some quack to sign off on her and she was there for . . . oh my God! Years and years.”

  “People can’t do a thing like that.” Zoe was appalled.

  Delaware rolled her eyes. “That’s what you think. Back then they could.”

  “Which hospital?”

  “The state hospital at Traverse. Closed a while back. That’s the only way Myrtle got out, you know. ’Cause it closed. She went after her brothers and got the restaurant from them. Myrtle’s never going to l
eave this place. Even hates to go back to her house when we close at night. I’m sure glad my mom never had any boys.”

  The front door opened again, and a couple walked in. Delaware’s head snapped around, her lips set and angry. “Geez, wouldn’t you know it. Me and Larry wanted to go to the last show tonight, now I’ll never get out of here.”

  She leaned back and gave the intruders the evilest eye she could come up with.

  “Of all nights!” she muttered toward Zoe, then put on a big smile and told the newcomers to take any table they liked.

  Before she left the restaurant, Zoe took the folded paper from her pocket and spread it free of wrinkles on the tabletop. It was an old photograph—more like a photo cut from a book or magazine. In the picture were two women standing in front of a brick-walled building. The women stood apart, arms behind their backs. One’s head was down, her foot toeing the ground to the side of her. The other stared straight into the camera. She thought the staring girl was a much younger Myrtle Lambert, only with her hair cut very short and the clothes she wore more like a uniform.

  The other woman’s face wasn’t clear enough to make out. Her hair was short, too, as if wherever they were staying had only one barber. Maybe only one haircut.

  There was no knowing if Myrtle was telling the truth about being in the hospital with Lorna or not. Zoe couldn’t be sure who the woman in the photo with Myrtle was—not by body size. This one was small and thin, a little like Emily, or maybe Emily’s sister. But half the women in the world were small and thin. She folded the paper into a square and stuck it back in her pocket.

  Chapter 19

  Zoe wrapped her old sweater around her and walked out to her flowerbeds, kicking at the dying grass, then bending from time to time to remove a leaf from her shoe, until eventually she was on her knees, talking to small people about life and death and how sometimes she just wanted to pop a person in the nose for no reason whatsoever besides maybe making her keep secrets she didn’t want to keep.

  Soon the fairies would be moved to the potting shed, all of them: young and old, male and female, naughty and nice. Winter took too great a toll on pebble and wooden houses. The tiny theater’s marquee could collapse under the weight of snow.

  She would tuck everything away in the shed, the fairies facing each other in boxes so they could talk and complain and come up with petitions they would present to her in the spring.

  Red car, she was thinking, because something else was bothering her, needing to come out of the shadows in her brain.

  Alex had gone back to school, promising to return if they learned anything more about Lorna and her uncle. Zoe wasn’t as easily convinced that Emily’s secrets were the end of things. She still wanted to get a look at that car in Emily’s shed. And she wanted to find out which hospital the Sutton girl had been sent to.

  There were things that didn’t smell right to her. And that thing in her head still nagged.

  Not just the red car, but something else.

  Thousands of red cars in Michigan, but still she thought about it. Only a fractured piece of nothing that fit nowhere, and how could she find out anything now that the three of them had promised to keep Emily’s secret?

  She was already missing Alex. Losing people made her sad. The girl was off to her own life. No reason to look back at Bear Falls, but still Zoe wished she could see her from time to time.

  A word whispered through her head. Something she should remember, or think about.

  She moved to the next fairy in line and found peace in conversation with this little bit of herself.

  Here in her fairy garden, she was in charge of everything, and everything made sense. Here she was the constable, the magistrate, and psychiatrist. One fairy might be bored and need a change of scenery. Another could be claustrophobic. Another needed bigger quarters. Or one might be old and wanted to be near a child. One needed to be close to a friend. And on and on. Every excuse for moving around that real human beings came up with, fairies had them, too. Especially as winter neared, and they knew quarters would be tight inside the potting shed. Each of them flexed their elbows and demanded attention.

  Dain, a tiny, shivering man standing behind the mill, asked to be moved inside for the winter sooner rather than later. He mentioned his rheumatism and said he was already having chills.

  She promised.

  Orin said the wind whipped through his house from end to end.

  Marigold whispered that there wasn’t enough light left for her to paint.

  Little Nissa worried because her garden had died.

  Eltri said that Zoe had put him too close to a goldenrod that made him sneeze.

  Rodella, the peacemaker, said she would get them all together that evening at her house to air their grievances, draw up a petition, and formally present it to Zoe when they found the time.

  Zoe laughed at her own imagination, then settled herself, put on a formal face, and said she would consider the petition as soon as her schedule permitted. But when Cosette, the ballerina, en pointe, said something that sounded mean in terse, clipped French—something about needing leg warmers—Zoe fixed the little fairy with an angry glare and whispered, under her breath, “Get them yourself, you little phony.”

  “Red” jumped into her head again as she sat back to survey her kingdom. Red. Red. Red. Red. Red.

  She moved along the path, upright and too proud to kneel and be berated by people a hundred times smaller than she was. Until she got to Lilliana, when she heard a low rumble of thunder out over Lake Michigan. She swore Lilliana looked up and smiled a sympathetic smile.

  Lilliana, who never disappointed, lived in the lovely ceramic house near the potting shed. She was the first of Zoe’s fairies and still her favorite. Lilliana: the lily. Beautiful and stalwart. A friend, Lilliana was newly restored after having been broken when she’d been used as a weapon of death a few months before. Now she was back, in her magic crown and blue sculpted dress. A wand towered above her, held in her hand.

  “How can people make such messes of their lives?” Zoe whispered toward the slim fairy princess.

  Zoe thought the word she heard in return was pride, though Lilliana’s painted face didn’t change.

  Zoe muttered to herself, not sure that was the right word or if she’d misheard. Something she would have to think about later.

  She knew someone was behind her when a long shadow fell across the ground. She bounced to the next fairy, talking earnestly about the mill and why the wheel no longer turned, which was something to think about next spring. As she mumbled to herself, her hand went to her pocket. The photo Myrtle gave her was still in there. She’d looked at it many times. She could identify Myrtle, she was sure of that. It was the other woman, standing just apart from Myrtle, arms at her side, looking off to the side—Zoe didn’t know who it really was. The picture was black and white so she couldn’t tell the color of the hair. The face—oval. The eyes—were they as big Emily’s? Could be a family resemblance.

  At the sound of a throat clearing behind her, she turned her head then slowly looked way up to the colossus in a brown sweater and beige pants behind her.

  Detective Minty smiled down. “Communing with Nature?” he asked and chuckled, which made Zoe’s skin ripple as she stood, pushing herself up with both hands, ever so slowly. “Thought I’d come out to look into some things for myself.”

  “About the fire at the Suttons’?”

  She didn’t have the patience for games.

  To cover his unease, he took a swipe at the cuffs of his pants, then straightened to look down at her. “Maybe we can go inside?” He indicated her house.

  Zoe nodded and led him up the steps. Fida put on one of her impressive displays of snarling and barking but was waved away and shushed by Zoe.

  The detective sat down at the table, not turning his back on the little dog with her one bright eye fixed on him.

  Zoe offered tea, but he refused and pulled a notebook from his back pocket.


  “I wanted to see Emily Sutton. After Ed called, I figured I’d better have a longer talk with her. Couldn’t get here any sooner. Anyway, the medical examiner said no one’s made any arrangements for the burial of Althea Sutton. I told him I’d see what I could find out while I was out here.”

  Zoe watched as he talked and talked.

  He nodded a few times to fill in the blanks between sentences. “What I really wanted to tell her was that the body won’t be released for another week or so. The ME has ordered more tests. Can’t issue a death certificate until they’re all in, so no funeral yet, but they’d like to know who to call when the time comes.”

  Zoe still said nothing.

  “She didn’t come to her door again.”

  “Won’t answer her phone either, I’ll bet.”

  “I’ve got to talk to her.”

  Zoe shrugged and spread her hands. “Nothing I can do about that.”

  “I left a note on her door. I asked her to call me. Think she will?”

  Zoe had nothing to tell him. Who knew what Emily would do from day to day or minute to minute?

  “I’ve been asking around town here about your poet.”

  “Not mine.” Zoe threw her hands in the air. “Trust me. Not my poet.”

  He licked his lips and thought a minute. “I’m getting different stories about that fire.”

  “I didn’t live here then.”

  “And I understand there’s a sister. Do you know where she is? Think I could talk to her?”

  Zoe shook her head. “What did Ed Warner tell you?”

  “He didn’t have a clue, but he called the man who’d been chief here before him. Seems the man saved the file on the fire.”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Possible arson.”

  Zoe took her time to shake her head. She had no right to break a semipromise to Emily. That was such an old, old story now. Nothing to do with Althea Sutton’s murder.

  He wrote in his notebook, then looked at her again, eyes half opened. “Is she an invalid, this poet? Didn’t seem like one to me but I understand the cousin used to do her shopping for her, and now you’re doing it. I figured if that’s true, you’re the best one to get me in there. Otherwise . . .” His face was deadly serious.