“No, I want to knit,” said Cynthia. “These gals know everything about me anyway.”
I found myself thinking of Sydelle Pulaski, a character in The Westing Game who, in working out the mystery of that book, incorrectly thinks the solution involves someone having a twin. As such, she spends much of the book trying to work twins into conversation, such as the Bobbsey Twins or the Minnesota Twins or Twin Jets. I thought of her then, because I suddenly identified with Sydelle’s plight. I certainly wanted to know if, by any chance, Cynthia had an identical twin, but this was a weird question to come out and pose. At least initially, anyway.
I started with:
“Why did Vanetta Jones fire you?”
“It was more of a mutual parting,” said Cynthia.
Anytime anyone tells you that it was a “mutual parting,” you should be skeptical. The term gets thrown around very loosely. (“I didn’t burn down my house; we mutually parted.”) But I decided not to grill Cynthia on this probably precarious point. Flattery would get me farther.
“That’s surprising,” I said. “From what I hear of it, everyone around there loved you to pieces.”
“Oh, not everyone,” said Cynthia.
“Quintrell King adores you, Gary spoke well of you, Tyler thought you were interesting and complicated.”
“Well, well, well,” said Margery, dispelling the fleeting dream that this interview wasn’t going to be interrupted, “interesting and complicated.”
“I’m with you on complicated,” said Linda jovially, “but interesting?”
“That doesn’t sound like something Tyler would say. And he barely knows me.”
“That’s probably why he thought you were interesting,” said Linda.
“Hush, you. No, Vanetta fired me because I was trying to mother her, and she didn’t want a mother. I”—Cynthia was quiet for a moment—“I crossed a line with her that I shouldn’t have crossed. That place was so screwed up, you start to treat the people there like broken dolls—you just want to fix everyone—and I shouldn’t have tried to do that with her.”
“Is this about the pregnancy test?” I asked.
“What?” said Cynthia, quite shocked. “How did you hear about that?”
“I told her,” said Linda.
“What?”
“I tried to stop her,” said Joanne.
“I like having dirt,” said Linda. “Sue me.”
“We both tried to stop her,” said Margery.
“It’s fine,” said Linda.
Cynthia looked rattled for a moment, but then quickly composed herself. “You’re right, it’s probably fine. I just—well—yes, Vanetta was pregnant, is pregnant, I suppose, and I involved myself a little more than I should have.”
“Did Vanetta tell you this?” I asked. “After you found the pregnancy test in her trash?”
“What?” said Cynthia. “I didn’t go through her trash. Who told you that?”
“I told her that,” said Linda.
“That’s not what happened!”
“Maybe not,” said Linda. “But my version of the story is more colorful.”
“So what really happened?” I asked.
“Vanetta took the pregnancy test there at work—”
“Why would you take a pregnancy test at work?” asked Joanne.
“Well, this is Cahaba. No one goes home. They all just live there, and Vanetta especially.”
“Right,” said Margery.
“Yes, and so she apparently took the test in the bathroom, and when she came out she started crying. Now, I wasn’t born yesterday, and when a woman goes into the bathroom and then comes out crying, I can put two and two together.”
“I cry in the bathroom all the time,” said Linda.
“And you are an exceptional person,” said Cynthia. “I had just gotten that vibe from her before. I could tell that she was worried about something, anyway—personal, because I had learned how Vanetta compartmentalizes her emotions.”
“Which is how?”
“Carefully.”
“And this wasn’t that?”
“No,” said Cynthia. “She was mopey and strange. I asked her if she was pregnant, and then she ran into her office, crying harder.”
“That’s very impertinent of you,” said Joanne disapprovingly.
“Yes, I know,” said Cynthia. “I’m not proud. So then, of course, I couldn’t leave well enough alone, so at lunch I went out and got her a cake, and then I came and asked her all about it.”
“The father is Archie?” I asked.
“I believe so.”
“And she fired you because you found this out?”
“She fired me because I told Archie about it.”
“Oh, Cynthia,” said Joanne, her voice dripping with disappointment.
“I know,” said Cynthia. “Don’t give me that look. You see why I needed this spa day.”
“You didn’t tell us this part,” said Linda.
“That’s because it makes me look bad,” Cynthia said. “Vanetta didn’t want to tell Archie about it until the project was done.”
“Wait, is she keeping the baby?” asked Margery.
“She hadn’t gotten to that. She was going to wait another month and see if it ‘sticks,’ and then maybe tell Archie about it. But that didn’t sit right with me.”
“Archie’s the roguish one, right?” asked Linda.
“I think Archie would be a splendid boyfriend, and an excellent father,” said Cynthia, quite approvingly. But then a cloud of doubt formed on her face. “Although I’m not sure that he’d work out as a husband.”
“Let’s set up him up with Dorothy’s daughter,” said Linda, then added, to me, “We hate Dorothy.”
Everyone else ignored this remark, although Joanne’s knitting needles were doing Wolverine SNIKTs.
“Anyway,” said Cynthia. “I told him, and it was sort of awful, and then he told her, and then Vanetta brought me into her office and told me that I should probably be fired for this. And I agreed with her, and so I quit. I made a huge mess of things. I don’t even think they’re talking to each other now.”
“Oh, they’re talking,” I said, remembering Archie shirtless in her office.
“Are they? That’s good,” said Cynthia.
“All this meddling reminds me of the movie The Parent Trap. Wasn’t that a great flick? Hey, speaking of The Parent Trap, does anyone have a twin?”
CHAPTER TWELVE
I did not get an answer to my twin question because Masako and Tyler came down the stairwell. The first question, if the least salient at this point, was: Had I seemed as drunk as these two? Because they looked drunk. Masako, in fairness, might have passed for sober were it not for the presence of Tyler, who scaled the basement stairwell with the grace and focus of a gelatinous ooze. That is to say, he was not using the steps as such, but was making more of a full body experience out of them with the handrails and walls.
Drunk.
“Masako,” I said. “Why are you here? I thought you said you were going to stay outside.”
“There are police sirens outside,” said Masako.
“We thought we would take sanctuary in here,” said Tyler, drunk, who then slowly appeared to notice Cynthia grinning at him.
“It’s a ghost!” said Tyler.
“It’s Tyler,” said Cynthia. “I heard you thought I was complicated and interesting.”
“Is this the dead woman?” asked Masako, who truly took everything in stride.
“No,” I said.
“It’s the dead woman,” said Tyler. “This woman is dead.”
“Fascinating,” said Masako.
“What’s this about a dead woman?” asked Margery.
I felt, in that moment, as though I had gone down an unwise path that I was now powerless to leave. It was like being on a roller coaster as you come close to cresting the hill. You were moving slowly, it was quiet but for the clunk-a-clunk-a of gears slowly moving you forward—but you cou
ld tell, quite perfectly, that in about three seconds you were going to be in free fall. And there was nothing to be done about it.
“Cynthia is dead,” said Tyler. “You’re dead! This woman is dead!”
“I’m not dead,” said Cynthia. “What an idea. Did Vanetta tell everyone I was dead?”
“It’s a ghost!” said Tyler. “Ghost Cynthia!”
“I don’t think it’s a ghost,” said Masako. To the knitters, she asked: “What are you guys making?”
“I’m making gloves,” said Linda. “Although something has gone very wrong with them.”
“I can’t believe Vanetta told you I was dead,” said Cynthia. “What a coward. You know, she fired me!”
So much for mutual parting.
“You’re dead,” said Tyler.
“Have you been drinking?” asked Joanne.
“Yes!” said Tyler. “We were mourning Cynthia!”
“Oh, that’s very sweet,” said Cynthia. “Wrong, but sweet.”
“It’s terribly irresponsible,” said Joanne. “I hope you didn’t drive here.”
“But I’m quite alive, as you can see,” said Cynthia.
I don’t know if Masako actually delights in conveying information I wish to keep secret, but she can give that impression. She said, very unhelpfully, “Dahlia found your corpse this morning.”
“It’s been an incredibly stressful day,” said Tyler. “I can drink if I want. I worked eight hours today with police just lingering outside my office. Also we took an Uber.”
“It wasn’t my corpse,” said Cynthia. “Must have been someone else’s.”
“I don’t mean to change the subject,” said Linda, “but what is an Uber? I hear people talk about them, but I can’t figure it out. Is it another rap thing?”
“Yes,” said Margery, winking at me so I didn’t give away the game. “Uber is a rapper. There’s two of them, Uber and Ice Uber. And they don’t get along.”
“They found a corpse, and they didn’t send you home early,” asked Joanne, mostly rhetorically. “That’s monstrous.”
“Or maybe there never was a corpse. I’m not dead,” said Cynthia. “I’m not a ghost. Look,” she said, holding up a hideous green-and-orange knitted sweater. “Could a ghost make this?”
The sweater stopped Tyler from talking, although whether it was due to its unfortunate styling or to its irrefutable proof that Cynthia walked the earth with us was not clear. No one spoke for a moment, and Masako decided to sit down.
“Dahlia found your corpse in our supply closet,” said Tyler. “The police came and took it away. Did you come back to life?”
“How much have you had to drink?” asked Cynthia amiably.
“Why were you in the supply closet at Cahaba?” asked Joanne.
And then the police came downstairs.
Detective Tedin was remarkably calm about the incongruous elements presented before him in this church basement, which included:
1. a dead woman, knitting
2. a woman who claimed to not be a detective, clearly detectiving with said dead woman
3. a suspect, drunk
4. a non-suspect, also drunk
5. scowling knitters, sober
6. Linda, who, as far as I could tell, was giving Tedin what I would describe as “hubba hubba” eyes.
When you put it together, it seems like a lot, and that’s not even considering Cynthia’s sweater. But Detective Tedin seemed unsurprised by these elements, as though they were things that he encountered regularly. Why wouldn’t he? This was a man with three rings on his finger and multiple wives.
“Detective Tedin,” I said. “I didn’t know you knitted.”
“Who is this strapping gentleman?” asked Linda.
“Dahlia Moss,” said Tedin. “What a remarkable coincidence to find you here.”
“You’ll never guess who I ran into,” I said. “Guess who this is?” This question was meant to be posed to Detective Tedin, and the answer was meant to be Cynthia Shaffer. However, it was intercepted.
“Is this the sex cop?” asked Tyler, in what I suppose he imagined was a whisper but was quite audible to everyone. “Masako said that you were seeing a sex cop on the side. But why is he so old?”
“This is not the sex cop,” I said. “There is no sex cop. There never was a sex cop.”
“He looks very youthful to me,” said Linda. “What can we do for you?”
I was grateful for Linda in that moment, who was definitely throwing Tedin off his game.
“Are you investigating this case?” asked Tedin.
“Who, me?”
“How did you find yourself here?” asked Tedin.
This was a difficult question to answer honestly without also implicating myself, but I tried it.
“Well, I saw a notice for a knitting group at Cynthia’s desk while I was at work this morning, and I’ve always wanted to learn to knit. I’ve been saying that for ages, haven’t I, Masako?”
I could tell from Masako’s face that she planned on saying something like: “Dahlia hates knitting and came here for illegal purposes,” but Tyler, whom I like more each successive chapter, stepped in and said:
“She was just saying that. We were talking this morning about how trendy knitting was getting these days.”
“Right!” I said. “And he should know, because he lived in Austin!”
Tedin was only barely listening to us. “Cynthia Shaffer?”
Cynthia seemed less charmed by the introduction of police into the situation. She seemed downright thorny about it.
“Why is it that you’re here?” she asked.
“Cynthia has done nothing wrong,” said Joanne, touching Cynthia’s hand in a rather protective way. I had the feeling that Joanne would have gone to blows for any of her fellow knitters. Even Linda.
“I got a phone call saying that you were here,” said Tedin.
Damn Anson Shuler! He sold me out.
“Ms. Shaffer,” said Tedin gently. “Can you come downtown with me?”
“What’s this about?”
“I’m afraid I’m going to need you to identify a body. I’m afraid something has happened to your sister.”
A lot of yarn was spilled at that point, but I’m going to spare you the bitter aftermath. Cynthia, for her part, was somber, if strangely unsurprised. Joanne was apoplectic; Margery was concerned; Linda was entertained. And I didn’t know what to make of Tyler and Masako, whose faces were completely unreadable. Mostly they looked tired and drunk.
Tedin did not lay into me any further, but perhaps it was simply that he was occupied and he was saving further interrogation for later. He took Cynthia away in his cop car. Masako and Tyler and I piled into another Uber and headed home.
When I got back to our apartment, my roommate, Charice, and her fiancé, Daniel, were building houses out of cards. Literal card houses. I did not make any inquiries into this action, nor did I ask why they were so improbably and nicely dressed. Charice was wearing a little black dress with her hair slicked back, and Daniel was in a full suit and tie. But not every mystery is worth solving, and so I just ignored the fancy dress, ignored the cards, and collapsed on the sofa.
“Careful, Dahlia,” said Charice. “We’ve been building now for almost ten minutes.”
I had been reasonably careful, I thought, although perhaps this is the kind of sentence that a drunk person is inclined to believe. It also struck me that ten minutes was not a lot of work to lose, but I kept these thoughts to myself.
“How was your first day of work?” Daniel asked.
“Oh, that’s right,” said Charice. “You’re a temp and an industrial spy.”
“Let’s see. I found a dead body,” I told her.
“Classic Dahlia,” she said.
“It didn’t seem like a murder, initially, just an old dead person.”
“Less classic, more sad,” observed Charice.
“On the plus side, it turned into a half day, because everyo
ne was sent home early on account of the corpse.”
“If it was a half day, why are you only coming home now?”
“I went out drinking with some coworkers, and while we were out, one of my drinking buddies got arrested for murder.”
“That sounds about right,” said Charice.
“Then I went to a knitting circle.”
“Are you just making things up?” asked Daniel.
“The dead woman had an appointment for knitting in her desk calendar, and so I thought I would show up.”
“Did you learn anything?”
“Not about knitting, but I did run into the murdered woman there.”
“I want this story to end,” said Daniel.
“That’s what I said. So, yes, I called Anson Shuler, and then the police showed up and took away the not-dead dead lady. Then I came here. How was your evening?”
“I got a job recording an audiobook,” said Daniel. This was said in a tone that meant we were done discussing my murder problems and were now moving on to the far more salient and exciting discussion of audiobook narration.
“Is that good?” I asked.
“Yes,” said Daniel. “It’s very good.”
“He’s reading a book called The Tomes of Magic.”
“Epic fantasy?” I asked.
“Not in the slightest,” said Daniel. “It’s a history of stage magicians.”
Hence the cards, I assumed. And the clothes—they were out celebrating. “Congratulations,” I said. Daniel then reached into my ear and pulled out a quarter.
“Look what we have here,” he said, quite pleased with himself.
“Please don’t do that,” I said.
He did it again and pulled out a half-dollar.
“Maybe this is a clue,” he said.
“Daniel, don’t pull any more coins out of my ear,” I told him.
“What’s that?” he said. “I can’t hear you,” he added, reaching into his own ear. “My hearing is a bit stopped up because of this SOUTH AFRICAN KRUGERAND!”
“He’s pretty good, right?” said Charice.
He was. Despite the coin-in-the-ear shtick being one of the lamest tricks in the world, I couldn’t precisely work out how he was doing it. Although, everything is magic when you’re drunk. How did I get up the stairs? Where are my pants? When did the carpet in front of the toilet become so luxurious?
The Questionable Behavior of Dahlia Moss Page 10