She Stopped for Death

by Elizabeth Kane Buzzelli

  How long had she been in here already? Three days?

  “Emily?” she bent down, trying to get one eye to the hole. Dark on the other side, too. But she could make out outlines of things. A pair of feet in slippers stood close to the wall.

  “Yes.” The word was whispered from the other side.

  “I was wondering when you were going to let me out of here. I’ve got a lot of things to do in my garden.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that,” the wispy voice came back.

  “Can you tell me?”

  “I wish I could . . .”

  There was the sound of footsteps, and the slippers were gone.

  “Emily?” Zoe called with her mouth directly at the hole. “Emily?”

  She moved to the opposite wall and sat down to be very still, as if in stillness there were thoughts enough to get her out of there, some magic she hadn’t come on yet. If she thought and thought, she’d think of something. There had to be a line of Alice’s that would work. Maybe a poem in her head from Emily Dickinson. Didn’t she, after all, close herself up in the family home for years, too?

  She searched and searched, trying line after line, then crawled back to the wall and whispered, in case she might be in there, “Emily? Emily? Did you know a lot of your poetry approaches what Emily Dickinson wrote about?”

  There was shuffling on the other side and then the quiet voice said, “Not any more. I wouldn’t dare.”

  * * *

  Neither Jenny nor Tony said a word as they drove toward Thimbleberry Street.

  Once Tony asked, “Ed check the hospitals?”

  “First thing,” she said.

  “Accidents?”

  “His deputy checked.”

  “How about relatives?”

  “None that she would visit.”

  He pulled to the curb in front of Emily’s house and shut off the motor. They sat looking at the dark house for a minute.

  He helped Jenny out of the truck. She was exhausted, mostly from worry. She held his arm as they went through the gate and up the steps.

  Tony knocked but no one answered.

  He knocked again and again, harder each time, hoping to anger Emily into opening the door, threatening to call the police. Anything was better than leaving with the hole Zoe’d dropped into still yawning around them.

  They went back down the steps and around one side of the house. They rapped at the windows, then went around to the back of the house, where there were no windows and the door—leading to nowhere—was boarded over.

  “You hear music?” Jenny asked, her head tipped.

  He nodded. “She’s got the radio on.”

  “She’s in there,” Jenny said, looking around the yard at an abandoned chicken coop, two dilapidated sheds, and one old garage. “She’s ignoring us.”

  “Could be she’s just not home.”

  “I don’t believe it,” Jenny said. “This gets worse and worse.” She moaned. “Another one gone missing.”

  They headed out to Tony’s truck.

  “She’d better answer in the morning.” Jenny gritted her teeth as she climbed in beside Tony.

  “She will. Ed’ll get her to open that door.”

  Jenny shivered and rubbed her arms. She looked over her shoulder at the house and shivered again.

  * * *

  After the terrible knocking stopped, there was the squeak of furniture being dragged across the floor. Zoe held still, analyzing the sound as she did every sound that came from the other room.

  Emily was dragging something. She wondered what the sound could mean. Zoe listened hard. It was a sound she couldn’t place. She felt like a blind person must feel, she thought, then listened again. This time for a sound that meant the rat hole was being closed and she’d be left to starve.

  “Emily?” She put one eye down to the hole, trying to see what was going on in there. There was yellow light, as if from a lamp. She put her lips closer to the hole to call softly, not wanting to frighten Emily away. “Are you there?”

  “Yes.” The whispering voice came back at her.

  Zoe saw the outline of a slipper.

  “What are you doing? I heard something.”

  “I’m moving my table closer to the window. The days have been so dark.”

  “What are you writing?”

  “Poems, of course. I need three more for the reading.

  “I’m sorry you’re in that little room,” she went on. “It’s very small. My mother used to keep canning jars and crocks in there.”

  “It’s dark, too. And I have no place left to go to the bathroom.”

  “Terrible. I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Could I go home? I’m assisting at the reading. Remember?”

  “I . . . I don’t know . . . I’m so sorry. It seems such a terrible way to treat the woman who brought me that wonderful poetry. Poems in code. I’ve read it again and again.”

  “Yes, that was me. You remember! Good.”

  There was a noise, a low grunt, and Emily was gone.

  * * *

  Jenny drove the curving streets leading to the state hospital.

  Cars were parked everywhere. It was Saturday; people gathered for the farmer’s market and the shops. They hurried in and out of the buildings. Cars moved slowly ahead and behind her.

  The building where Nurse Constance said to meet her had not been renovated. It sat in a field of cut grass. The walls were blank and peeling. There were broken windows. A squat turret sat at the top—not a pretty building. More utilitarian. Ugly.

  Jenny was early, hers the only car parked in front of the unused building. She got out and walked up on the porch and looked through the window. An empty room. Fallen plaster littered the floor. There were scribbles on the walls that she couldn’t read from where she stood, but could imagine. The room was painted to match the outside of the building, a pale shade of cream, paint peeling in long streamers from the walls.

  There was no color anywhere but the institutional cream. The room she looked in on might have been antiseptic if it had been clean. Pipes ran up the walls. Rust drew lines from an open transom above the door.

  She ran her hands up and down her arms, imagining being confined in such a place. Confined the way Myrtle was, her brothers scheming to get the restaurant by having her committed. A few lies to a doctor. A bonus to a friendly lawyer.

  But not Emily. Myrtle had to be wrong.

  “Miss Weston?” She jumped at the voice behind her.

  She turned to a very tall woman, flat chested, square bodied, in brown slacks and a brown blouse. Her short brown hair showed gray at the temples. She stood with her hands in front of her, closed over the handle of a square brown purse. Her feet were spread to hold her steady in the damp grass. She wore low-heeled pumps. The fact that the shoes were brown instead of white did nothing to diminish her authority and power: The nurse to whom all requests were made, all messages passed. The nurse with the quieting medications if a person was in too much misery.

  Jenny nodded.

  “Nurse Proust,” the woman said. She didn’t hold her hand out. It was a statement. “I wanted to get a look at you before we talked.”

  “Did I pass?”

  “Evidently,” Constance said. “I’m here.”

  The woman flustered Jenny. Jenny went through the ritual of offering to buy coffee, suggesting they go to Java Joe’s so they could sit and talk.

  “We’ll talk right here.” Constance indicated the place where they stood. “Myrtle said to tell you everything I know about the woman.” She paused. “Stole my car, you know.” She nodded. Her hair didn’t move. “I had to go myself to find her and bring her back.”

  “Are we talking about the same person?”

  “Emily. Yes. A troubled woman.” She narrowed her eyes and nodded. “Always one scheme or the other. And she liked the men, if I remember right. Had to keep her locked in her room at night or she’d wander the halls.” The nurse cleared her throat. “May I ask
what this is about? Was Emily a relative of yours?”

  Jenny shook her head. “A poet.”

  Constance threw her head back and laughed. “Not our Emily. So what else can I help you with?”

  “There’ve been some problems lately.”

  “Nothing to do with the poor soul found murdered here in Traverse City, I hope. A friend told me about it.”

  “I’m not sure if there’s a connection.”

  “Then?” Constance Proust began to look annoyed. “You said it was important.”

  “I know. I appreciate your meeting me. I need to know more about Emily. I’m not sure she’s the one . . . I don’t want to cause trouble over nothing.” Jenny took a deep breath. “Did she have red hair?”

  “No. Brown. Plain brown.”

  Jenny nodded, feeling at least she’d come up with this much.

  “But you realize, Miss Weston, I haven’t seen her in twenty-seven years.”

  Jenny reached into her pocket and brought out a copy of Zoe’s folded picture, one she’d copied from the state hospital book. She handed it to Constance.

  She looked at the blurred photo, frowned, then smiled and handed it back. “That’s Myrtle and Emily.”

  “Emily Sutton?”

  “I don’t remember last names. You realize we had many patients.”

  “You know Myrtle’s.”

  She made a face. “Myrtle and I are friends. We stay in touch. Sorry. I have to go now.” Constance stepped away. “I hope I’ve told you enough to help.”

  Jenny thanked her for her time and walked back to her car while Constance Proust headed off in the other direction. Myrtle was wrong. She hadn’t been in this place with one of the Suttons at all. Emily with brown hair. It was an Emily distinctly different from Emily Sutton. That part of the mystery could be cut out. Myrtle’s Emily Sutton was back to being strange, but probably harmless.

  Jenny got in her car and rolled down the windows. She was about to leave when she heard her name called, and Constance Proust hurried back across the lawn toward her.

  When she got to Jenny’s open car window, she put a hand to her chest, fighting to catch her breath. “You got me thinking about the Emily in the hospital. Maybe this will help. I remembered something—maybe why that Emily was so hard to deal with. This should clinch it for you. She wasn’t an ‘Emily’ at all. Not even on her charts. The odd thing was, you see, she wouldn’t answer to anything but Emily. Even the doctors called her that—they wrote ‘Emily’ on her charts so we’d know who they meant. Call that one anything else and she would go straight into hysterics.”

  “Then she definitely wasn’t Emily Sutton?”

  The nurse thought hard “Oh, the Sutton part could have been right. I don’t remember what her real name was. It’s been years. All I know is, that person was only Emily in her own head. She stayed determined about that until the day she left.” She smiled. “There, you’ve got your answer.”

  * * *

  As if she’d done something right, a sandwich and a cookie were passed through the rat hole to Zoe that evening.

  She nibbled at the chocolate chip cookie, making every bite last.

  During the previous night—or what she imagined was night—the door had been unlocked and opened.

  An empty jar was pushed through, as she’d asked, and the old jar pulled out. Zoe scurried on her hands and knees, reaching for the door, grabbing at the edge. She was too slow, or Emily was too fast. The door came within an inch of slamming shut on her fingers. She moved back and heard the lock turn.

  Zoe closed her eyes. If yesterday had been Sunday, that meant today was Monday, and tonight was Emily’s big night. No wonder she’d been writing as fast as she could in that other room, preparing work for her comeback. Zoe thought of the awful poem she’d read at Abigail’s and prayed all of them would be that bad. She prayed that Emily would be exposed as a fraud. No talent. Maybe that was what brought her back to this house to begin with. Maybe she’d realized the spark she’d treasured was gone. Then it took twenty-five years for her to convince herself that she’d been wrong and begin to write again.

  Zoe couldn’t imagine why she’d been brought to this room. For finding the tarp-covered car? No, no, no . . . there had been bones. There’d been a shrine.

  She would never leave this place. The secret in Pewee Swamp was too deep and terrible to come out. The car in the garage. That was probably Walter Shipley’s car.

  “My uncle loved that red car . . .”

  The red car in Althea’s driveway.

  “He wouldn’t go anywhere without that car.”

  Zoe let the random pieces in her brain fly, then form the only pattern the pieces could possibly form.

  The bone she’d brought out of the water came back in another huge flash—a hand hanging above her head. She’d fallen into a grave, an important grave, marked with a circle of flowers and a wooden cross. She’d fallen into something so sacred, she had to die for knowing about it.

  Now that she knew where Walter Shipley, and probably Lorna, were, she would never leave this place.

  “Zoe?” Her name was called through the wall. And then again. “Zoe? May I read something to you?”

  She lay still, exhausted from thinking.

  She was going to die here and the woman wanted her to critique her work!

  She crawled to lie down on her stomach and look through the rat hole. “Is it a poem? I’m not in the mood.”

  “Just tell me if it’s bad enough. Could you do that for me? Sometimes I’m not the best judge of my own work. And it must be bad. Very, very bad.”

  Emily was serious. Something new was going on. Zoe closed her eyes and said a prayer. Maybe, in this new-sounding Emily, there would be an emotion she could plead with.

  Emily cleared her throat. “I caught a toady in the grass. / It jumped and jumped at me. / I thought I’d squish him with my foot, / but pained by death, I set him free.”

  It was quiet in the other room. Then Emily asked, “Well, what do you think?”

  “It’s fine,” Zoe said when she could spit the lie out of her mouth.

  “Dear me. It shouldn’t be fine. Listen to this next one: This house has rooms at the very top, / Rooms that lock with keys. / When I am closed inside a room, / I’m a specter no one sees.”

  Zoe could almost hear Emily waiting for a reaction.

  “Well? What do you think?” The voice was stern, demanding an answer. “Wait, here’s another one: Jealousy snares me in its claws. / Soon the one is two. / Together with my cloistered friend, / I await a taste of dew.”

  “Fine. Just fine,” Zoe said, trying to recapture the words she’d barely listened to. Cloistered friend! Is she writing about me? Zoe asked herself.

  “Do you think anyone will understand?”

  “Oh, I’m certain of it. They are fine. Truly fine. Are you talking about me? Am I your friend? That’s very nice.”

  “Fine! Fine! You have no taste at all, Zoe Zola. No taste at all.”

  Zoe had done the thing she feared the most. She’d given Emily Sutton a wrong answer. And like giving the wrong answer to the Queen of Hearts, there was only one possible outcome:

  Off with her head.

  Chapter 30

  “I’m beginning to think she disappeared to spite me.” Abigail stood in Dora’s kitchen, talking to Jenny. “She knew I needed her help. Here we are, the event is tonight.”

  Abigail was beyond exasperation. There were dark circles under her eyes, as if she hadn’t slept. Her clothes were wrinkled. She might have pulled them from the back of a chair and put them on. Her hair stood on end.

  Jenny hurried to reassure her that she would handle Emily herself. That she’d get over there in the afternoon and see to Emily’s dress and ask to take a look at what she planned to read.

  “It begins at seven. I would get to her house at least by three o’clock. Elizabeth will pick her up and have her to the opera house by six-thirty. Is your friend, the Italian man, abl
e to help? We have things to transport. Emily’s come up with props she’d like on the stage.” Abigail sighed. “I’m sorry, Jenny. I sound as if Zoe isn’t the most important person we should be considering. I wish I’d never started with that woman. Emily Sutton doesn’t deserve our concern. I pray she doesn’t read what she calls her new poetry. I pray time will pass fast and all of this will be over. Most of all, that Zoe will be home safe and sound.” Abigail closed her eyes and held on to the back of a chair. “In a few weeks, they’re pulling my father’s statue down. I promised a party for the town. I won’t go back on that promise no matter what happens tonight.”

  “I understand.” Jenny did understand how much Abigail wanted the whole thing over with. “I’ll ask Tony if he can help,” she said as Abigail got up to leave. “He’s been out looking for Zoe these last few days, along with everybody else.”

  Abigail turned, her face drawn even more. “Then don’t bother him. Please. Let’s keep our minds on the important things. Emily Sutton and Joshua Cane aren’t among them.”

  Dora, her arms filled with bags, walked past Abigail, who reached out to take her arm, stopping her in place. “Don’t let me ever do a thing like this again, Dora. I’m worn to a frazzle. I’m nothing if not a glutton for punishment. First we have to get this Emily thing over with, and then I have to plan a party.”

  Dora wasn’t happy. “If we don’t find Zoe, Abigail, I don’t think anyone will have the stomach for a party.”

  “Don’t even say that. I have perfect faith she’ll be home soon.” She blew worry away with a flick of her hand. “She needed a few days to herself, no doubt. I completely understand the feeling.”

  And then she was in motion, turning to hurry through the house and out the front door.

  * * *

  Jenny would have been on time to pick up Emily but for Tony.

  It was early in the afternoon when he came pounding up the front walk.

  “Freddy from Freddy’s Bait Shop just called Ed Warner. Ed called me. Freddy found Zoe’s car not a hundred yards from his store, he said. Driven nose down into the swamp, hidden by underbrush, and half submerged in the water. I just came from there.” Tony hit his chest to catch his breath.