Tickled to Death

by Joan Hess

  “I doubt it. He’s obsessed with my guilt, and convinced that eventually he’ll find proof or I’ll break down and confess. He’s probably building a gallows in his backyard in anticipation of the happy day.”

  “It’s too bad that you and Becca had an argument the previous night, and in front of witnesses. I heard she nailed you with a piece of quiche.”

  “Quiche Lorraine, to be precise.”

  I gave him a chance to elaborate (not on the recipe, but on the gist of the argument), but he looked out at the lake with a faint frown. Luanne returned with a stack of plates and utensils, and I abandoned the rail to help her set the table.

  We ate lunch and managed to talk about Farberville politics and the omnipresence of the weather. After Dick excused himself to watch a baseball game on television, Luanne and I carried plates and bowls into the kitchen.

  “Well?” she said as she began to load a dishwasher imposing enough to be found in a busy restaurant.

  I put the remains of the salad in a vast refrigerator, noting the plethora of fancy cheeses and champagne bottles competing for space with low-fat yogurt cartons and six-packs of designer water. No doubt the cases of caviar were kept in the pantry.

  “Well, what?” I said. “The first accident happened three years ago, and the second three months ago. Even if I were inclined to nose around, I wouldn’t find a smoking gun. The police have already scooped up whatever clues there were. The coroner has pronounced the deaths to be accidental. I’m sorry that Dick is being dogged by this Gannet, but there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  To my horror, she began to sniffle. Seconds later she was sniveling and wiping her nose on a linen napkin. “I know I’m acting like a teenager, but what I feel is more than a goofy crush. I’m in love with Dick. I swore off marriage a long time ago, but now I lie awake at night trying to decide what to wear at the wedding and whether to ask Jillian to be the attendant. Should we honeymoon in Hawaii or Montreal? Will I ever learn how to operate his microwave? Can I feign pleasure in televised sports?”

  “You’ve known him for all of three weeks, Luanne—and you’re not acting like a teenager. Caron and Inez would find your behavior hopelessly infantile.” I crossed my arms and glared at her like a proper British nanny in the doorway of the nursery. “Just let this relationship progress at a reasonable pace. He seems to be a nice man, and at some point the investigation will fizzle and his performance in the sack will meet your expectations again.”

  “You’re about as romantic as this dirty glass,” she said as she held up the offending object.

  “Peter would be the first to agree. His latest ruse was an invitation for a Caribbean cruise. He gave me some altruistic nonsense about going to chaperon his mother, but I could see through his pathetic ploy.”

  “The man’s a monster,” Luanne said as she finished loading the dishwasher and inspected the countertops for an errant crumb that, she admitted ruefully, might offend Jillian. We returned to the deck, but neither of us was in the mood to talk. I finally asked her to draw me a map, thanked her for lunch, and went to my car. As I braked at the top of the driveway to prop my map on the dashboard, I heard another gunshot. It was followed by an enraged bellow that included the phrase “you hairy bastard” and a rather picturesque string of expletives. It was not difficult to deduce the groundhog was alive and well—fed, that is.

  I made it back to Farberville without incident and parked in the gravel lot next to the Book Depot. College students rolled by on bicycles and in cars with blaring radios, all apparently content to enjoy the sunny afternoon without the intrusion of literature. A beer bottle sailed over the fence of the beer garden and shattered on the railroad tracks. The only birds in sight were scruffy pigeons outside the health food café.

  Caron and Inez were playing cards by the cash register, which was preferable to shrieking tidbits of prurient prose. I continued to a rack in a dim corner and found a bird book.

  “Eagles winter in this area from December through March,” I announced to the girls as I scanned the pertinent entry, “then return to Alaska and areas of northern and eastern Canada to breed. They were selected as a national symbol by Congress in 1782, but were hunted to near extinction in 1940 by Western ranchers, who thought they posed a threat to livestock, and by fishermen in the Northwest, who worried about salmon. Their population has been seriously depleted in the last few decades because they eat dead fish, which has caused them to absorb large amounts of pesticides. This interferes with their calcium metabolism and results in thin-shelled and often infertile eggs.”

  Caron snapped down a card. “How utterly fascinating, Mother. I can only pray that an eagle will not mistake my pale skin for that of a bloated perch and swoop down to rip out my eyeballs with its talons. It’s your play, Inez. Stop dithering and do something.”

  “I’m thinking.” Inez took a card from her hand, wrinkled her nose, and replaced it. As she reached for another, her martyred opponent sighed.

  I turned the page. “The red-tailed hawk, commonly but erroneously called a chicken hawk, is a much-maligned species. It rarely eats poultry, but instead prefers rodents. Its cry is similar to yours.”

  “Gin,” Inez said guardedly.

  Caron threw down her cards and gestured imperiously for Inez to put them away. “What’s that supposed to mean, Mother?”

  “It produces a high-pitched descending scream with a hoarse quality,” I said, squinting at the print. I’d vowed not to succumb to reading glasses until I turned forty. Said birthday loomed within a matter of months, as did Caron’s sixteenth. I’d been treated to quite a few high-pitched descending screams involving her desire to drive a shiny red convertible to school on the first day—and my inability to buy her so much as a vintage Volkswagen. This reminded me of another source of friction. “Did you find out about driver’s ed?” I asked her. “The insurance agent says it’ll save ten percent a year on the premium.”

  “My mother called the school last week,” Inez said as she put the deck of cards in a drawer and closed it silently. Caron, when motivated to close a drawer, invariably slams it. “My parents are going to make me take it, too. They probably won’t let me drive until I’m eighteen, but they want me to start practicing now.”

  “I think it’s a waste of time,” Caron said, “but if you want to pay one hundred and seventy-eight dollars so that I can drive around in a Chevrolet with a bunch of nerds, it’s fine with me.”

  I shut the bird book and sat down on the stool behind the counter. “It costs money?”

  “One hundred and seventy-eight dollars,” Inez repeated for her best friend’s witless mother. “My mother was pretty mad about it, but Coach Scoter explained that driver’s ed isn’t a mandatory part of the curriculum and the school board thinks—”

  “As if the school board ever thinks,” Caron said as she shoved Inez toward the door. “Let’s go watch the last half of the college baseball game. We’ll have to walk All The Way to the stadium, but we can sit behind the dugout and ogle the players.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said in my steeliest maternal voice. “I can’t afford to pay for this, especially while business is so bad.”

  “Suit yourself. I never expressed any desire to drive around in a Chevrolet with a bunch of nerds. Rhonda Maguire wasn’t forced to take driver’s ed, and right after she passed the test, her mother just gave her the car key and some money for gas.”

  “Rhonda Maguire’s mother has nothing to do with this,” I said while I hunted in the drawer for a bottle of aspirin. “You have to take this course, and you’ll have to find the money yourself. How much is in your savings account?”

  “You’re making me pay to be humiliated?” She was going to elaborate, but Inez whispered something to her and her incipient outrage was replaced with calculation. “Look, I’ll do this Chevrolet thing if you insist, but I have less than twenty dollars in my savings account. I’m baby-sitting tonight for the Verdins, but I’ll be lucky if they pay me more tha
n ten dollars. They’re more miserly than you are.”

  “I am not miserly, dear. I simply don’t have a place in the budget for an unexpected one hundred and…whatever it is.”

  “Seventy-eight dollars,” Inez contributed.

  “Seventy-eight dollars,” I said with a groan. “Business is always slack in the summer, and I’m behind with several publishers already. One of them has threatened me with a collection agency. You’d better find yourself a job to earn the money.”

  “I’m supposed to earn the money?” gasped Caron. The idea was enough to send her staggering into Inez, who yelped but held her ground. “The baseball team already has a batboy, so I guess that’s out. Shall I try to get on a road crew and spread hot tar in the blazing sun?”

  “I hear the pay’s quite good,” I said. “Having a job won’t ruin the remainder of your life. I’m sure you can find something less laborious than spreading hot tar if you develop a positive attitude.”

  Her lower lip shot out. “Okay, this positively sucks.”

  I retreated to my office. Shortly thereafter, the bell above the front door jangled, and I was left alone to ponder this newest financial tribulation while I pawed through drawers and boxes of junk in search of an aspirin. I wondered what it would be like to be able to volunteer my time to a charitable organization rather than work twelve hours a day to pay the rent. Agatha Anne had no need to reimburse herself for expenses, and I was certain she had a gold pillbox filled with aspirin. She would know exactly where it was, too.

  Peter was off at a training session, and Luanne was on the deck at Turnstone Lake, so I spent the rest of the weekend peddling books and listening to Caron whine about my revolutionary (read: revolting) suggestion that she earn money rather than spend it. Child labor laws, the Emancipation Proclamation, Ebenezer Scrooge, and Rhonda Maguire’s mother dominated the diatribes.

  On Monday morning she announced that she was going to the unemployment office in order to find a squalid and demeaning job, although I suspected she had hopes that she might qualify in some obscurely logical way for unemployment benefits. Inez followed dutifully, and I was reading a guide to money management and wishing I had some to manage when they burst into the store an hour later.

  “I have a fabulous job!” Caron announced as she swaggered past me and into the office, where I occasionally stash cans of soda. “I’ll make plenty of money to pay for that stupid course,” she yelled as things rattled and banged, “and have enough left over to buy a new bathing suit. There’s a neat string bikini on sale at the mall.”

  I frowned at Inez, who was hovering by the mystery section. “Why did Caron change her mind about driver’s ed?”

  “Louis has to take it this summer,” she said so softly I could barely hear her. “His sister told me he’s signed up for the second semester.”

  “And Rhonda won’t be sitting in the backseat between us,” Caron said as she appeared in the doorway, her empty hands indicative of the futility of her mission. This in no way diminished her ebullient mood. “We have to endure a bunch of films about seat belts and drunken drivers, then Coach Scoter has everybody pile in the car and we take turns driving around town. Wouldn’t it be a hoot if we saw Rhonda at a stoplight and waved at her? It’ll be worth a hundred and seventy-eight dollars to see her choke.”

  “And how are you earning this?” I asked, worried that I was to hear about her “fabulous job” as a stripper.

  Caron paused to savor the drama of the moment, then said, “I’ve been hired as a facilitator.”

  “A facilitator? What are you going to facilitate?”

  “Oh, things,” she said as she disappeared behind the science fiction rack. “Where are the bird books?”

  “In the corner by the how-to’s,” I said, although we both knew she was as familiar with the layout as I. I was going to grill Inez, but she’d wandered out of sight. I waited impatiently until Caron reappeared with a book and an insufferably smug expression. “I didn’t realize you had a secret ambition to become a bird fancier, dear. It’s a wonderful hobby, but expensive. You need binoculars, along with bug repellent and heavy shoes in case you step on a snake. The pith helmet is optional.”

  “I’m going to be an official facilitator for some organization that frets about its feathered friends. On weekends, they used to do these programs where people pay money to goggle at birds, but this year they weren’t going to hire anybody. They changed their minds yesterday, because they saw an adult eagle in a ‘feeding posture,’ whatever that is, way at the end of one of the creeks. It’s the first successful nesting attempt on Turnstone Lake in modern times, so it’s a big deal. Some guy paddled down there and saw the aerie, which is supposedly the size of our bathroom. Now they’ve blocked access to the creek, and the only way to look at the eagles and eaglets is to go on a tour with an official facilitator. Luanne isn’t sure about my duties, but it’s likely that I’ll drive a barge and give lectures to the passengers. Therefore, I don’t have to worry about bugs or snakes—just boring old farts in polyester shorts.”

  Inez peered around a rack. “I’m going to be one, too, Mrs. Malloy. Mrs. Bradshaw says we’ll make ten dollars an hour once we’ve been trained.”

  I was not amused. “Just how did this happen? Was Luanne standing at the curb passing out applications to everybody who came by, or did the unemployment agency sign you up?”

  “We were walking by her store on the way to the unemployment office,” Caron said as she studied a menacing photograph of an eagle. “I went in to ask her if she needed a clerk, and she mentioned this facilitator thing. She acted like you knew all about it. We have to stay at some lodge this weekend so a lady named Agatha Christie can do this two-day training session. You’re supposed to come, too, but Luanne says you can stay at her friend’s house if you want. We start getting paid the very next weekend. Eight hours a day for two days and we can quit right then, but we may do another weekend so I won’t have to wear rags when I’m driving around with Louis.” She flipped to a page with an equally menacing photograph of a great horned owl. “Yikes!”

  To think I’d sipped beer and shared nachos with such a treacherous woman. I had no doubt Luanne and her new friend Agatha Anne had cooked up the scheme over a bottle of champagne and dollops of caviar on trimmed triangles of toast. “I fear I must decline Luanne’s hospitality,” I said. “I promised myself to update the inventory list this weekend. Inez, why don’t you see if one of your parents can drive you to the lake?”

  “They’re going to a library conference in Santa Fe,” she said. “Caron was supposed to ask you if I can stay with her this weekend.”

  “It’s only Monday,” Caron said without looking up. “I hope we’re not going to have to get personal with the birds. It’s one thing to talk about them, but I’d just as soon eat mouse guts as touch one.”

  Inez ventured to the counter. “My aunt had a parakeet once. It was kind of cute and liked to perch on the mantel and watch everybody. One afternoon the cat ate it. My aunt almost fainted when she came home and found little blue feathers all over the room.”

  “Big deal,” Caron said crossly, turning the page. “Peregrine falcons can plunge at an estimated rate of one hundred and eighty miles an hour to snatch a duck out of the air. They could probably get your aunt’s cat if they wanted to.”

  “She accidentally backed over it in the garage.”

  Caron flipped to another page. “Then she should have set it out for the turkey vultures. They locate carrion by smell. Black vultures, on the other hand, rely on their vision. Did it smell worse than it looked?”

  I went to the office, slammed the door, and dialed the number of Secondhand Rose. “That was underhanded,” I said when Luanne answered. “I refuse to be manipulated like this. You can be the transportation facilitator and drive the girls to the lake for the weekend. I’m staying right here in a bird-free environment.”

  “Captain Gannet showed up again Saturday, this time while we were having dinner w
ith Agatha Anne and Sid. Dick had to go to the sheriff’s office for an hour, but no one felt like eating when he got back. He barely said a word yesterday, and just dropped me off on the sidewalk when we got back to Farberville.”

  “A little petulant on his part.”

  “It’s not petulance, Claire. It’s been three months since Dick’s felt as if he could finish a meal or sleep through the night without Gannet pounding on the door. Won’t you please come this weekend and just talk to people? Someone may remember a scrap of information that’ll prove the explosion was an accident. Then you can sail away in triumph and I can resume a serious study of the microwave manual.”

  I hung up but remained in the office, not sure if the dietary habits of vultures were an improvement over petunias of passion and lilies of lust. A vision of a moonlit deck drifted into my mind. A starry sky, the distant sound of music, the salty breeze, the tinkle of silver and crystal. And Peter Rosen doing his best to convince me to choose a date to book a justice of the peace. His nose is a bit beakish, and his gaze can be as piercing as that of an eagle or a hawk. His hands are manicured but as strong as talons.

  I realized I was beginning to feel like the heroine in Hitchcock’s The Birds.

  4

  I remained steadfast for the ensuing forty-eight hours, during which Luanne called approximately forty-eight times to beseech me to change my mind. She solemnly swore that the Dunling Foundation hired high school and college students every summer to serve as facilitators, and although this year they’d intended to cut back on staff, the discovery of the aerie would bring in bird-watchers from across the state. Agatha Anne was desperate.

  It was no champagne-and-caviar conspiracy, Luanne insisted. She made blunt remarks about the high cost of driver’s ed and the moral irresponsibility of allowing an unschooled driver onto the streets. Friendship and fidelity were topics explored more than once. More appeals were made than the Supreme Court receives in a term.