I try to bring him back. “Tell me what Colt High was like back then.”
Stone’s hands clap in recognition as if everything has realigned. “Poor Millicent Dibble! I felt terrible for her during the investigation.” His voice fades. “If it weren’t for her rheumatism, she’d have never found herself in the center of that messy murder.”
“Dibble was principal when Mia Delaney died?”
“Yes, indeed. She had been a music teacher and was promoted when Principal Wheeler retired. It was more charity than promotion. Her fingers were no longer nimble enough to play her music very well.”
The revelation that Dibble was principal at the time of Mia’s murder is only overshadowed by the news that she was once a music teacher.
“What instruments did she play?” I ask, spilling the remaining contents of his water cup on the floor.
Irving sways, remembering some absent tune. “She played keyboard and a mean axe. It was sad, what happened to her.”
Del rubs his bad leg from standing still for so long. I’m being insensitive with this digression but I can’t help it. “Could she sing? Did she write music? Did she have her own band? Was she any good?”
Irving slips down on his pillow, flustered by my barrage of questions. He needs help to sit up again, to remain alert. But I’m afraid to grip his arm. Red marks remain on his skin from the last time I helped him. I worry his nurse might accuse me of abuse.
Del grabs him and hoists him up, refocusing the questioning. “What did the janitor’s closet look like when you first found Mia’s body?”
Irving re-settles himself. “That’s the foolish part. I was determined to be the perfect worker when they brought me back at the end of August, so they could never lay me off again. I headed back to that school, ready to make it shine. I was focused on that one goal.” Stone makes a weak fist. “That’s why, when I saw the graffiti all over my closet walls, I attacked it with a vengeance. I couldn’t believe somebody had broken into my office and made such a mess. I assumed the vandal was the same person who took my keys.”
“Graffiti? What did it say?” Del hulks over the man’s bed. I’m leaning in, exactly the same way.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid me!” Irving beats the bed. “I hate myself for what I did next. I’m so sorry, so very sorry.” Stone grows visibly weaker. A full deathbed confession appears to be cresting on the crusty edges of his purple lips. Del kneads his fists while Stone slobbers drool down his neck. “You’ll hate me when I tell you what happened.”
Del’s fists clench so tight his entire body quakes. I reach out and hold his hands with all my strength.
Stone’s face loses all tension as if he’s letting go of something painful. “You see, I began washing the walls without bothering to read what was on them. I was nearly done cleaning before I spotted that skeleton face peeking out from what I thought was a pile of rags on the floor. I might not have noticed it at all if that face hadn’t been wriggling with maggots.”
This image makes me weak. I’ve always pictured Mia as perfect, even in death, a fairy tale princess in a glass coffin. The vision of Mia reduced to a rotting corpse sickens me.
“What was written on those walls?” asks Del, still firm.
“That’s just it. I don’t know. I went into shock when I saw the body. It wiped my mind clean. That information has never come back to me, not since I saw Mia. My buddy the police chief said if I told anyone I washed the walls I’d be fired from my job. He kept that information out of the police record.”
My hand falls over my nose. “Didn’t you smell the decomposing body as soon as you entered the room?”
“No ma’am,” shrugs Irv. “I got no sense of smell. I lost it in an accident back in the army. I figured it was a blessing when I started scrubbing toilets and mopping up kids’ puke for a living, after I came home from Iraq.”
Del rips into the conversation. “Can’t you remember even one word of what was written on that wall?” His words are frostbitten and demanding.
“No sir, not a thing, except that it was written in reddish-brown, like dried blood.” Irving turns to the side of his bed and vomits into a bag. He gags and has trouble catching his breath. I instinctively reach for the nurse’s emergency button. Before I touch it, he comes back to us, sitting up on his own, revived.
“Oh my God!” He pokes a finger toward the ceiling. “I remember something. For the first time since that day, I remember. One of the words on that wall had something to do with a bug.”
“A bug?” My mind races to fill in the blanks. “Like an ant, or a bumblebee, or a beetle or…a cricket?”
Irving slaps his head with the sheet, clearly relieved. “Yes, that’s it! A cricket! After all these years I remember. Bless you, youngsters!” He waves us in for a hug.
But Del can’t move. His eyes are pogoing around the room, putting it all together. “Mr. Stone,” he asks, “who claimed to have seen Mia leave with Will?”
“I don’t recall,” says Stone.
Del pulls out Mealy’s card and phones him. “Hey Mealy, it’s Del Pyne. What was the name of the student who claimed to see Mia leave with Will?
There is a silent pause while he listens.
“So it was Cricket Dill.” Del’s face inflames. “Thanks, Mealy. I think I’m onto something. We’ll talk soon.”
“We’re going to the Dill house.” He turns to Stone, “Good-bye and thank you, sir. You may have just solved the Mia Delaney case.”
“I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to go there, Del.”
“Probably not. But I already know where the Dill home is located. The address for Beetle’s house was linked to your Bonepile website by some stalker fan. It’s your choice whether or not you want to join me.”
“Can you at least explain why we are going there?”
“I want to confront Cricket before she has time to lawyer up, to see the look on her face and hear what she has to say, for myself. I want to catch her off guard.”
***
We carry our guitars to the front door of the green glass house with steel trim. Our cover story is that Del’s just another musician friend, stopping by to jam with Beetle. Del strangles Angel’s neck while we wait on the Dills’ doorstep.
Mrs. Dill cracks open her money-green glass door and begins her strange adolescent ritual of putting a stray blond hair behind her ear and fiddling with her hemline before saying a word. It’s as though I possess super invisibility powers that work on her for a good ten seconds every time we meet. Now that I know she is responsible for Mia Delaney’s death, her ritual appears sinister.
After my ten seconds of oblivion is up, she speaks as though interrupted in the middle of an important task. “My goodness, Mona. It’s you. I thought you were still up in the boondocks of New Hampshire. Beetle was expecting Rasima to come by today, not you.” Mrs. Dill drops her eyelids in the direction of Del’s guitar. “Are you another musician?”
“Yes, Beetle invited him to our band practice,” I reply, resolved not to respond emotionally to anything she says. The stakes are too high.
Del can’t hold it in any longer. “I’ve heard a lot about you, Mrs. Dill.”
She raises her finely penciled eyebrow, “From whom, may I ask?”
“Irving Stone, the old janitor at Colt High. He says your name was written on the walls of the janitor’s closet where Mia Delaney died.”
Cricket mimes the words, “My name?” She flattens an imperceptible wrinkle on her blouse and nearly loses her balance as she reaches for her hem.
“Mom, who’s at the door?” shouts Beetle from behind. He appears, dressed in an ice-blue polo. As soon as he sees us, his deep licorice eyes turn to sludge. “Mona, I recognize this guy from the Winnipesaukee Powwow.” He turns to Del. “You’re Del Pyne, the guy who stole Mona away from me at the Farewell Dance.”
Beetle’s licorice eyes plead with me to explain my cruelty.
Cricket grabs her golden hair and pulls it, exactly like Beetle. “Your name is Del? As in Delaney?” She pulls two hundred dollar bills out of a nearby drawer. “If this is some kind of paternity blackmail scheme against Worthy, I’ll pay. He never needs to know about you. But if he’s your father, you deserve compensation.”
I have to hand it to Cricket for making the name connection between Del and Delaney so quickly. I couldn’t do it. But the fact that she thinks he is Worthy’s kid shows her paranoia about the nature of Mia’s relationship with her husband.
Del raises his palms, “Keep your money, Mrs. Dill. I’m not claiming to be your husband’s son. I only want to know why your name was written on the wall of the room where my mother died.”
Cricket steps outside, gasping for air, mouthing the words, “My name? Mia is your mother?”
Beetle supports his mother’s arm. “Forget it, Mom. Even if what he says is true, it means nothing except that Mia was jealous of you because she had a thing for Dad.”
“Beetle, that’s a lie,” I say. “You heard your dad say Mia rejected him!”
Cricket tugs harder at her hair, turning her scalp pink. “No! Mia loved Worthy. I know she did.”
“No, Mrs. Dill. Mia never cared for Worthy,” I interject.
She groans and yanks her hair with all her might. “This can’t be true! No one would reject my Worthy! I had to fight for him. It was the only way! I needed to keep Mia away from him.” Her scalp and cheeks flush crimson.
“So you admit to telling my dad Mia was cheating on him with Worthy, so he wouldn’t look for her.”
Both of Beetle’s arms now support his mom to keep her from collapsing. “Don’t answer that, Mom. I don’t want to hear another word.”
Cricket’s face reddens to the point where I’m afraid she’ll collapse. She spits words and water, as though she might drown if she doesn’t expel them both rapidly. “I never meant to hurt a soul!” She pulls away from Beetle to grab the collar of Del’s shirt and shake him. “Locking Mia up was a prank.”
“How did you do it?” I ask.
“I stole the principal’s key from her desk. I couldn’t believe it when I heard nobody found Mia all summer, that she died in that closet. It was an accident. The janitor always came in on Mondays. I was sure he’d find her. How was I to know the school board would lay him off?” She slips down onto her knees on the neatly cropped grass in her front yard. “I’m no murderer. I can’t even set a mousetrap, or fly paper. I could not kill anything on purpose.”
Invisible fingertips pat my arm, supportively, but I see no one.
Beetle punches the green glass of the front door until it cracks. “That’s enough, Mom. Shut up!”
Cricket ignores her son and focuses on Del and me. “I thought if I locked Mia up, I could get my chance with Worthy. You see? That’s all. I was sure somebody would find her.”
Beetle slaps a hand over her mouth and shouts, “I’m calling a lawyer.”
Cricket’s eyes deepen like an ocean trench. She pushes him away. “This young man has grown up motherless because of me! I need to make it right!”
Beetle shakes her. “So what happens now, Mom? He gets to take my mother away from me? What’s the point?”
Beetle’s bangs are disheveled and sweaty and his licorice eyes lay vacant. His smirk is nowhere to be found. “You can’t bring your mother back. What happened to her was an accident. You heard what my mom said. Nobody meant to kill anybody. She locked up a girl, to keep her from going out with some guy she liked. It was a stupid high school prank gone wrong. We all do stupid stuff.”
Del lunges for Beetle’s throat. “Your mom’s stupid prank ruined my dad’s life!”
I insert myself between them. “Del’s right, Beetle. This is serious.” I lower my voice because several neighbors have stepped out onto their lawns with their cell phones raised. I hope at least one of them has already called the police.
Worthy appears and rushes to his wife, still kneeling on the grass. “Cricket, what’s all this commotion? Dear God, sweetheart, what has happened to you?”
“It’s nothing,” she says, patting her cheeks as he lifts her to her feet. “I need to freshen up a little, is all. Everything will be fine.”
Worthy speaks in his most fatherly voice. “It’s obvious Mrs. Dill is unwell. I’m taking her to the doctor.” He glances at Del’s heaving chest. “Young man, did you provoke this incident?”
Del stands as tall as he is able. “Yes, sir, I did. I am Mia Delaney’s son. My name is Delaney Pyne. Your wife killed my mother.”
Worthy shoots me a hangman’s glare. “Dear God, what kind of game are you playing, Mona? You told me the culprit was Will Pyne.” He waves his finger between Del and me. “After what I saw you two doing at the Farewell Dance, why should I trust either of you?””
Beetle thunders forward. “After you saw them doing what at the dance, Dad?”
“Your girlfriend was kissing this boy.”
“What! Mona, is this true?” Beetle grabs me.
“Yes, I admit it. But do you really want us to get into what either of us did that night?”
Beetle silently pulls his bangs, confirming my worst suspicions about him and Rasima.
Worthy shakes his cell phone at Del and me. “I’m phoning the police. This is some sort of blackmail game, cooked up by you two young lovers. I’ve had enough. Cricket had nothing to do with Mia’s death. How could little Cricket have forced Mia Delaney into the school basement? She has always been delicate.”
Mrs. Dill bobs her head up. “I convinced her that her father was on his way to school because he found out about her secret baby. I guessed she’d been pregnant, junior year, because I’d seen her vomiting in the bathroom. My theory was a long shot. But the panicked reaction I saw in her eyes confirmed my suspicions. I told her she’d be safe in the janitor’s closet and she believed me. Once she was inside, I locked her in. I was certain the janitor would find her on Monday. By then Worthy and I would be away together on Lake Winnipesaukee.” She turns to Del, “Please phone the police. I need to tell them I am responsible for the death of your mother. It’s the least I can do.”
Del lurches at her violently. Worthy and I both grab him. Worthy Dill agrees to phone the police. I listen to him disclose everything. His honest action makes me feel worse about the fact that he caught Del and me making out at the dance. Del appears frozen in shock. I bring him around the side of the house, away from the Dills. I hold him in my arms while we wait for this thing to be over. Instead of fire ants, I absorb his burning rage, something more intimate than any lovemaking. I feel his devotion to his mother, his fury at Cricket, and his shock over discovering the ugly truth. He has no one else to console him but me. His mother is long gone. His surrogate parents—Bilki and Grumps—they’re gone, too. His loser dad is five hours away. His stoner best friend is a pin brain. His fiancé is who-knows-where. I’m all he’s got. Del wants to see this thing through to closure. He fears the Dills will bolt. But none of them budge.
The police show up in two minutes. Cricket waives her right to a lawyer and delivers a full confession on the spot. Neither Worthy nor Beetle objects. Del and I offer the police a quick summary of how we pieced things together. The last thing I hear Worthy do is call his office to ask his administrative assistant to reserve Beetle a one-way ticket to Stadt.
Del phones Will to tell him what’s happened. I phone Mom and she offers to pass the information on to Celine. There is some gasping and sobbing, along with a stream of thank yous.
“What now?” Del asks, beaming at me like I’m his shining star.
I won’t take advantage of his vulnerability. I kiss him warmly on the cheek, with all the love and friendship in my heart. He pulls me to him, kissing my mouth so fully I’m not sure I can ever sing
another blues song. This is the kind of powerful kiss that could ruin me for anyone else. But I perform a reality check. I remind myself that this isn’t a romantic kiss; it’s a kiss born of an impossible goal achieved through teamwork, like a kiss after an underdog team wins a state playoff game or a group of doctors and nurses saves a hopeless life on the operating table. Together, Del and I have solved an infamous Hartford murder case that involved his Mom. What he’s feeling is the rush of having avenged her and maybe saved his dad’s life. I can’t take advantage of that.
I pull away from him, overwhelmed, wanting more but afraid to make his wedding more painful for both of us than it already is. Still, there is much to celebrate. Mia Delaney’s killer is in custody. The Hartford Police let Mealy perform the arrest honors, as senior officer. After he handcuffs Cricket, he tells me he’s giving his two weeks’ notice. I imagine Mom dumping her depression medication and Will tossing his whiskey bottles over the news. I see Celine blowing out Mia’s memorial candle because her sister finally knows justice. As for me, there remains one more thing I need to do with Del Pyne, before he heads north and walks his bride down the aisle, into forever.
Nineteen
A Tale of Yellow Roses
The gold metallic words “Madame Celine, Astrologer” gleam in the fall sun. Del examines the zodiac mobile spinning in the window and points warily at the scorpion, the lion, and the crab, questioning the sociability of a person who displays such creatures. He scowls, like Bilki might, at the uneven brushstrokes of green, gold, and black paint on the Jamaican flag on her door. So Del is an art critic. It’s clear he was more of a grandchild to my painter grandmother than I was.
“Your aunt Celine lives here,” I explain.
The door flies open, bells tinkling. Out bursts Celine, like a tossed bridal bouquet in a dress covered with fuchsia hibiscus flowers. “Welcome, Nephew! I knew you would stop by. After all you’ve been through, you need to be with family.” She kisses Del’s head. “Seeing you is a dream come true.”
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