by Mary Daheim
“It was not letters,” Kate said through clenched teeth. “It was a wheelbarrow.” She made as if to grab Judith by the arm, apparently thought better of it, and pressed her hands against the folds of her skirt. “Where did you hear this stupid rumor?”
Judith looked vague. “At Toot Sweet? Or Moonbeam’s? Or was it the paperboy?”
Kate was crimson. “That Dooley!” She glanced around, taking in an old woman with a three-pronged cane, a young mother with a sleeping baby in a backpack, and the produce manager, who was busily sorting green and red peppers further down the aisle. “Ever since Dooley joined up with that ridiculous police auxiliary, he’s been a dreadful little snoop. I wouldn’t put it past him if he did it just to become a common window peeper!”
Thinking that Gertrude would probably agree, but feeling the need to defend Dooley since she had implicated him, Judith scooped up two more tomatoes and shook her head. “Now, Kate, Dooley’s a terrific kid. He’s got an inquiring mind, that’s all. He even reads books. Anyway, I’m not sure where I heard the story about Mark looking for something other than the wheelbarrow. You know how rumors run amok on the Hill.”
Kate’s rage had dwindled into a severe pout. “I certainly do. It’s outrageous.” Her eyes flashed at Judith. “I swear to you on the Holy Bible that Mark wasn’t looking for any scribblings.”
Judith inclined her head. “I believe you,” she said. But she wondered what in fact Mark had been looking for. The reaction she’d wheedled out of Kate certainly indicated that it was not a wheelbarrow.
THIRTEEN
HAVING LOST KATE in dairy products, and missed Norma at the checkout stand, Judith headed for Holiday’s Drugstore to get Gertrude some corn plasters and Tums. It was ten o’clock, and the store was just opening. Judith crossed the threshold in front of Carl Rankers and behind the Episcopal rector of St. Alban’s.
“You’re getting a late start for work,” Judith commented to Carl as they both headed for medicinal aids. “Is somebody sick?”
Carl’s blue eyes twinkled in his tanned, craggy face. “Arlene has tennis elbow. She hit me with Kevin’s racquet.”
Judith grinned, not knowing whether to take Carl seriously. “I thought she was making oatmeal crispies this morning.”
Carl perused the liniment section. “She is. She’s one of those rare women who can bake hurt.” He moved a step closer to Judith and lowered his voice. “Actually, I’ve got a touch of bursitis. But that’s not why I’m running late.” The twinkle had faded, and his expression had turned uncharacteristically serious. “I stopped by SOTS to see how Father Tim was doing and if he needed any help with the liturgy. He’s much better, but he can’t locate Eddie La Plante.”
Judith stared across the bunion display. “Eddie? Maybe he just wandered off. He’s kind of strange.”
“Oh, sure,” Carl agreed, picking up a small box that contained a tube of rubbing ointment, “but reliable. He was supposed to be up at church by eight o’clock when a load of bedding plants were to be delivered from Nottingham’s. He never showed.”
A vague alarm was going off in Judith’s head. “Did Father Tim call him?”
“Eddie doesn’t have a phone,” replied Carl. “I drove down to his place on Quince Street at the bottom of the Hill, and there was no sign of him.”
“Has anybody seen him?” Judith asked.
Carl shook his head. “I nosed around a bit, but could only find an old lady who said she’d seen him coming home late yesterday afternoon. I figured her for the type who sits by the window and passes the time watching the neighbors.”
“Maybe he had a stroke or a heart attack,” Judith said. “Do you think we should call 911?”
“I suggested that to Tim, but he said to wait. I have a feeling he thinks Eddie may have gone off on a bender. Somebody said he used to be quite a boozer.”
Judith’s unseeing gaze roamed over the shelves filled with vitamins, headache remedies, stomach medications, and dental hygiene products. “I’ve heard that myself,” she murmured, but her mind was already racing ahead.
Carl tapped her shoulder in a friendly manner. “I’ve got to run. We’re doing a big presentation this afternoon for WestBank. I’m going to show how our leading-edge agency can bring them new investment business by giving away gerbils.”
“How about cats?” Judith retorted, but Carl, with the twinkle back in his eyes, was already moving down the aisle.
Spurred by the news about Eddie, Judith quickly made her purchases and headed home. She ignored Gertrude’s grumblings over the wrong kind of corn plasters and went straight to the phone. Eve Kramer was not at the antiques shop yet, but on the second call, Judith caught her at home.
“What do you mean that old fool is missing?” snapped Eve. “Oh, damn! If he’s gone off the wagon again, I’ll kill him!” Apparently she considered her words in the context of recent events, and simmered down to a mere rolling boil. “I’ll swing by his place on my way to the shop,” Eve said. “I’ve got a key. Thanks, Judith. And thank Carl for me, too.” She hung up without further ado.
Reassuring herself that there was nothing more to be done in the matter of the missing Eddie La Plante, Judith poured herself a cup of coffee and sat down to pay some bills. It occurred to Judith, not for the first time in the past five days, that she was being foolish to think she could help solve Sandy Frizzell’s murder. She’d let Renie talk her into getting involved. Ever since they were kids, Renie had been able to con Judith into all sorts of mischief and adventures. But this was real life, and she had no resources, other than her knack for getting people to open up. She had no reason to become involved except that the crime had taken place in her own church. And that Joe Flynn happened to be the homicide detective assigned to the case. Judith glanced down at the last check she’d written, to Scooter’s Delivery Service. She’d signed it “Judith G. Flynn.” Annoyed with herself, she tore it into bits and wrote out a replacement.
Phyliss passed through the kitchen with the dirty linen from breakfast and a grievance about her sinus drainage, or the lack of it. A call came through from Manitoba, asking for a reservation in late June. Sweetums appeared on the outside windowsill above the sink, preened a bit, and dove into the rhododendron bushes. Apparently he’d given and received all the affection he could stand for a while.
Shortly after eleven, the phone rang again. It was Eve Kramer, sounding less angry and more disturbed. “There’s no trace of him,” she said, the usual bite in her voice replaced by anxiety. “His dinner dishes were still in the sink, but there’s no sign that he had breakfast. I can’t tell if he slept in his bed or not, because he never makes it.” She paused, and Judith heard her suck in her breath. “Do you think I should notify the police?”
Judith considered. She realized that it was possible Eddie was sleeping off a mighty drunk in a back alley at the bottom of the Hill. Such a revelation would cost Eve dearly. Judith also knew that Eve must be pretty desperate to confide in her. But then Judith was one of the few people who knew that Eddie La Plante was Eve’s father.
“I would,” Judith said at last. “Has he ever suffered from amnesia?”
“Amnesia or Alzheimer’s?” Eve’s tone had resumed its cutting edge. “Actually, neither. He just gets fogged in sometimes from all those years of drinking. But to my knowledge,” she added on a softer note, “he hasn’t touched a drop since he came up here from California.”
“Has he ever gone off like this before?” Judith asked as Phyliss trudged through the kitchen again, this time armed with a cedar mop and a dust pan.
“I saw the Lord in your basement,” she announced, and kept right on walking.
“Good, Phyliss,” said Judith in an aside, accustomed to her cleaning woman’s frequent visitations from On High. “Excuse me, Eve, I didn’t quite catch that.”
“I said, he hasn’t gone off like this since he moved here.” It was Eve’s turn to speak away from the phone, apparently to a customer. Judith gathered she was n
ow calling from the shop. “I’ve got to run, Judith,” said Eve in a hushed voice. “Someone’s here to interview for John’s job.”
Judith hung up and wrote out the last of the checks for her current bills, noting that her balance was teetering on the edge. At least she had begun to accumulate a bit of savings for the first time since before she’d gotten married. She was about to make a transfer via phone when Renie banged on the front door.
“I was out running errands and thought I’d bring back the plastic containers I borrowed Sunday for the leftovers,” she said, breezing in through the entry hall in a disreputable-looking Stanford University sweatshirt and baggy pants that were worn out at one knee. Judith recognized that Renie had only two kinds of clothes: haute couture and really crummy. Judith had never quite understood her cousin’s extremist approach to dressing, but Renie herself probably didn’t, either.
“Thanks,” said Judith, taking the items from Renie and putting them into a kitchen drawer. “Have you heard about Eddie La Plante?”
Renie hadn’t. She sat at Judith’s dinette table and listened to the brief account. “Do you think there’s any connection between Eddie and the murder?” Renie asked, removing the lid from Judith’s cookie jar.
“Not that I know of,” replied Judith. “Unless Eddie saw something Saturday.”
“Maybe he did.” Renie gave Judith a disappointed look over the rim of the cookie jar. “This sucker’s empty.”
“I know,” said Judith. “Arlene is bringing over oatmeal crispies.”
“When?” asked Renie in a sunken voice.
“Soon, coz, soon. Relax.”
Renie did, or at least appeared to, though Judith noted her cousin’s eyes darting in the direction of the Rankers’s house. “Maybe Eddie is just out doing some errands,” Renie suggested.
“It’s possible,” agreed Judith, tensing as she heard Gertrude thumping around somewhere on the second floor. “We may be alarming ourselves for nothing.”
“I never guessed Eddie was Eve’s father until you told me on the phone last night,” said Renie, pulling a frayed thread off the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “I remember when she and Kurt moved here. It wasn’t long after we did, and the Rankers gave a party to welcome all of us. The Duffys, too. Gosh, that was twenty years ago!” Her brown eyes widened at the thought of so much time passing so swiftly.
“Mike got toilet-trained just about then. Finally,” remarked Judith with a little grimace. “You and Bill had just moved back from Port Diablo.”
“Right,” said Renie, half rising out of her chair. “Here comes Arlene. Does she know Eddie is Eve’s dad?”
“I don’t know.” Judith got up to open the back door. “She would if anyone did. I’ll try pumping her.”
“Get the crispies first,” Renie called.
Arlene settled in at the table while Judith put on her fourth pot of coffee of the morning. Renie was already smacking her lips over the oatmeal crispies while Arlene regaled the cousins about the missing Eddie La Plante.
“I suspected foul play as soon as Carl told me,” she said with a dark look. “Once these things start, they don’t stop. Any one of us could be next.”
“True,” said Renie, gobbling up another crispie. “Hey, coz, I could use some milk. You got enough?”
Judith did. Renie poured it herself while Judith tried to think of a discreet opening to find out how much Arlene knew about Eve and Eddie. As it turned out, Arlene volunteered the information.
“Poor old darling,” she lamented, “with no relatives around and probably not a lot of friends. I always wondered why he moved to the Hill. I think he came here from Florida.”
“California, actually,” corrected Judith, figuring she wasn’t giving much away with the revelation. “Eve Kramer thought we should call the police.”
Arlene looked only mildly interested. “Did she? So did Carl, but Tim wanted to wait awhile.”
Taking her cue from Judith, Renie posed an indirect question: “I think it’s nice of Eve to be concerned. Sometimes she strikes me as a bit self-absorbed.”
“That’s armor for Eve,” Arlene replied as Judith poured coffee into three unmatched mugs. “It defends her from Kurt’s verbal abuse. Not,” she went on, holding up a hand, “that Eve can’t dish it out, too. But Kurt can be a real grouch. If Carl criticized me the way Kurt does Eve, he’d have been wearing his ears around his elbows years ago.”
Neither cousin doubted Arlene’s word for an instant. Judith presented sugar for Renie and cream for Arlene, then sat back down at the table. “Maybe Eve came from a family where there was a lot of, uh, bickering. She might have been used to it.”
The theory cut no ice with Arlene. “Eve was an only child. Her parents were divorced. She used to visit her mother in…let me think…San Rafael, as I recall, but she died a few years ago. Eve never talked about her father.”
“She looks French,” said Judith. “What was her maiden name?”
Arlene still seemed oblivious to the cousins’ probing. She sipped her coffee and furrowed her brow. “I don’t know,” she said in some surprise. “I guess I never asked.” Arlene set the mug down on the table and rested her chin on her hand. “She does look French, but somehow I don’t think she is. All I do know is that her family name began with an ‘F.’ A long time ago, she embroidered her initials on an evening bag. They were ‘EFK.’ It was lovely, all in tiny seed pearls.”
“Sounds elegant,” remarked Judith with a sharp, swift kick under the table for Renie.
“Sure does,” agreed Renie, wincing. “Remember that party you gave for us and the Kramers and the Duffys?”
Arlene put on her most nostalgic expression. “Of course I do, sweetie. You were all so cute. The Kramers had only been married a year or two, and the rest of you still had that newlywed glow.”
“We did?” Renie was obviously trying to dig back through the sands of time to her dewy status as a near-bride. “As I remember, I wasn’t speaking to Bill because he objected to my magenta tights with the chartreuse miniskirt and purple vinyl boots.”
“You were adorable,” Arlene assured Renie. “And Kate wore the dearest frock, all eyelet and sweet peas. She’d bought it in Los Angeles before she and Mark moved up here.”
“The Duffys came from L.A.?” Judith asked.
Arlene nodded once. “That’s right. Well, not really. Mark’s from Wisconsin and Kate’s from the Dakotas. But they met in Los Angeles.”
Renie was frowning in puzzlement. “Los Angeles? Or Chicago? I thought Mark went to Northwestern.”
“He did.” Arlene had turned a trifle vague. “Let me think…No, it was definitely L.A. Mark had some notion about being a moviemaker, or whatever they call them in Hollywood. Kate was…” Arlene suddenly went blank. “You know, I’m not sure what she was doing down there. Going to college, maybe. Or working in Disneyland.”
Visions of Kate Duffy sitting in on a seminar with Goofy and Pluto flitted through Judith’s mind. But Arlene was finishing off her coffee and getting up from the table.
“I must run. I’m going to meet Quinn McCaffrey and his family at the airport.” Arlene retrieved the dish she’d used to transport the oatmeal cookies. “They’ve been in Denver, visiting her parents.”
Renie stopped eating crispies long enough to make a face. “Quinn! The man’s an ass! With any luck, some Mormon terrorists will take him hostage, and the school will be spared his ineptitude.”
Arlene raised her eyebrows. “I like Quinn. I think he’s doing a good job as principal. You sound like your husband. Bill’s too much of an intellectual,” she huffed, heading for the back door. “He doesn’t think much of anybody who doesn’t have an I.Q. over 3.0.”
“That’s so,” said Renie in a baffled tone as Arlene departed the house. She turned a puzzled face to Judith. “What did she mean?”
“Never mind.” Judith poured them each more coffee. “The word for the day is ‘flummoxed.’ Coz, what do you suppose that ‘F’ stood for
in Eve’s initials?”
“For flummoxed?”
Judith gave Renie a baleful glance. “Don’t be dim. I wonder how much background work Joe is putting into this investigation?”
“What kind?” asked Renie as Gertrude’s walker banged down the backstairs. It was approaching noon, and Gertrude was approaching the kitchen.
“Like digging around into these people’s pasts. Now I know it’s possible that Eve took a stepfather’s name, assuming she had one, but it’s more likely that La Plante isn’t really Eddie’s last name. In fact, it’s sort of a joke—you know, because he’s a gardener.”
Renie wrinkled her small nose. “That’s a joke?”
“The only joke around here is you two jokers,” said Gertrude from the little hallway that led into the kitchen. “Get off your butts and put some lunch on the table. It’s two minutes to twelve.”
Renie got up to greet her aunt, bestowing a large, noisy kiss on the older woman’s wrinkled cheek. “Hi, goat-breath, where’s your broom?”
Gertrude surveyed her niece with blatant disapproval. “Look at you, a middle-aged matron, running around in college clothes like some lamebrained coed! Why don’t you grow up and get yourself a decent housedress, Serena?”
“Like yours?” Renie gestured at Gertrude’s red-yellow-and-green-striped coffee coat. “Not me, I don’t want to look like a stoplight. Come to think of it, most of your clothes would stop traffic, you old coot.”
Judith ignored the banter between her mother and her cousin and proceeded to start lunch. “You staying?” she called to Renie.
But Renie declined. She had to meet a photographer in less than an hour. “I’ve got to go home and change into my ripped-up jeans and skimpy halter top,” she said with a leer for Gertrude and a wink at Judith. “See you.”
Judith watched the clock while her mother filled up on an egg salad sandwich, potato chips, a dish of stewed prunes, and four of Arlene’s oatmeal crispies. It seemed to take Gertrude forever to eat lunch. Judith could have used the upstairs phone to call Joe, but didn’t want to leave the main floor in case Phyliss needed her.