Tickled to Death

by Joan Hess

  Jillian came through the door and set down a tray. She poured herself a glass of soda water, sat down near me, and made a moderately successful attempt to smile. “Luanne said you own a bookstore.”

  Grateful for a safe topic, I rattled on about the history of the Book Depot and its current financial woes. She appeared to be listening, but her eyes were so small and recessed that it was difficult to gauge her reaction. I finally ran out of the smallest minutia, cast about for another safe topic, and said, “I understand you graduated last year.”

  “I should have graduated earlier, but I left school when Mother died. I stayed in counseling for two years afterward, trying to deal with my guilt. I wish Father had done the same, but he simply turned inward and refused to face reality. My grief made me stronger; his left him vulnerable.”

  “Vulnerable to what?”

  “The kindness of strangers,” she said darkly. “He was drunk the night of Mother’s death. If he hadn’t been, he would have dissuaded her from going for a swim, or at least accompanied her. She was all alone when she drowned. What a sad way to die….”

  “Agatha Anne said you’d taken an antihistamine that knocked you out,” I murmured.

  “I’d come down with a cold and was desperate to sleep. I certainly wouldn’t have taken anything if I’d known Mother would get one of her crazy urges for a midnight swim on a night when Father was snoring out his brains.” She went to the rail and pointed at the strip of rocky beach below the deck. “That’s where her clothes were. It’s not twenty feet from where I’m standing. She may have cried out when she realized she was in trouble, but no one was in any condition to hear her. She was all alone.”

  It was the second time she’d used the phrase, and I wondered if there was something more to it. When she failed to continue, I gently said, “As was Becca when the boat exploded. Your father has had terrible luck, hasn’t he?”

  “I hoped that she would help him with his grief. She was young and vibrant, always laughing, teasing him to take a vacation or go to concerts and the theater, dropping by with steaks to grill or some gourmet delight she’d found in town. It was obvious to the rest of us that she was madly in love with him. One day he finally realized that she was there, and they were married within a week.”

  “Did you object?”

  “Oh, no. I did all I could to take care of Father, but he’s an adult and entitled to find happiness where he can. Becca was devoted to him.” She stood up and started for the living room. “Becca was perfect,” she said as she closed the door.

  “Was she?” I said under my breath, then plastered on a smile as I heard voices from the side of the house. I recognized Agatha Anne’s chirps, but neither the male nor the female speaker was familiar. Nor should they have been, I realized as she came onto the deck with a pudgy man and a woman with a frizzy cloud of light brown hair.

  “Claire, this is Georgiana Strix and my husband, Sid,” Agatha Anne said. “I’ve already told them all about you.”

  Sid was so impressed that he nodded before veering to the bar. He had a thick back, thinning hair, and a sunburned neck. When he turned around, I had a view of soft jowls and a fussy, effeminate mouth. The overall effect would have been comical, had it not been for his sharply appraising eyes. In contrast with Agatha Anne’s impeccably coordinated blouse and shorts, he wore striped shorts and a garish shirt more suitable to the back nine of a Hawaiian golf course. On his feet were black socks and sandals. “How ya doing?” he said as he went into the house.

  Georgiana was watching me with suspicion, as if Agatha Anne had related stories about my predilection for spontaneous violence. Almost lost in the mass of frizziness, her face was that of a puzzled ingenue—unnaturally colorless skin, wide eyes, puffy lips, and a tiny wrinkle above her upturned nose.

  Agatha Anne clearly abhorred a verbal vacuum. “Georgiana is on the board of the Dunling Foundation and handles all the accounts. I’ll bet you never would have guessed that she majored in business administration and single-handedly ran a great big medical clinic in Houston after she graduated. Her lake house is next to ours, and we just borrow from each other day and night, don’t we?”

  “No, we don’t,” Georgiana said in a high voice. “Sometimes I forget to pick up things at the store in town, but most of the time I just make do. Barry used to do the shopping; now I have to do it. I try to keep a list.” Abruptly her eyes filled with tears and her voice soared even higher. “My support group says that forgetting things like lemons and margarine is symptomatic of my refusal to forget Barry. That’s not right. I’d do anything to forget that son of a bitch!”

  Agatha Anne swooped in with a tissue and dabbed Georgiana’s cheeks. “Now, honey, don’t start on this. There’s no reason for you to waste the time it takes to say his name. Would you like to lie down in the guest room for a minute?” Without waiting for a response, she led the trembling woman inside.

  It may have been getting crowded inside the house (it seemed to be a popular destination), but it was peaceful on the deck. I was again searching for bats when Sid came back with a bowl of peanuts.

  “I hear you’re a private investigator,” he said as he put cheese on a cracker and deftly conveyed it to his mouth. He flicked crumbs off his fingertips, then added almost incuriously, “You carry a gun?”

  “In my back pocket.”

  He turned his attention to the peanuts. “What happened to Agatha Anne? You shoot her and stick the body under the deck?” He held up a hand that, like Dick’s, had probed the mouths of countless children. I failed to spot any fresh teeth marks, but there were some suspicious scars. “I won’t turn you in or anything. In fact, I’ll take you out to dinner to express my gratitude. I know a great little country inn with fireplaces in the bedrooms.”

  “Georgiana became upset. Agatha Anne thought she should lie down in the guest room.”

  “That girl’s gonna end up with bedsores. Dick has held up better than she has, and he was arranging funerals. She’s just getting a divorce.” Ever loyal, he returned to the cheese and crackers, although he was managing to drink steadily throughout the assault on the hors d’oeuvres. “From the way Georgie’s carrying on, you’d think she was diagnosed with inoperable cancer. Sure, Barry’s a nice guy, but she’s attractive and there are other suckers out there. You’re a widow, right? I’ll bet you haven’t spent too many nights alone in bed.”

  “I’m a widow with a gun,” I said coldly.

  He gave me a guileless, if somewhat cheesy, smile. “At least you know where your husband is. Georgie’s problem is that she knew Barry was having another affair, but she couldn’t figure out who the bimbo was or where they were getting it on. She kept us up till dawn for weeks while she agonized over hiring someone in your profession to get the evidence. Agatha Anne convinced her that it would cost a bundle and she’d still want a divorce in the end. My wife’s what you call a pragmatist.”

  I ignored his jibe about my purported profession. “Divorce can be stressful.”

  “Barry seems to be holding up damn well. He took his share of the assets and bought a houseboat. Now he lives down in Key West, drinking rum and ogling college girls in bikinis. He was an investment broker, so I always thought he had an account on the side that Georgie never knew about. Helluva retirement, considering he’s in his mid-forties. Surf, sun, and lots of sleek nubile skin.”

  While his ex-wife has a nervous breakdown, I thought but did not say. I made myself a drink, then went down the steps to the yard. There was a faint path through the high grass to the edge of the lake. I carefully made my way to the narrow swath of rocks where Dick’s first wife had taken her swan swim in the moonlight.

  From here I could see only the top story and roof of Dunling Lodge. Even if Wharton and Livia had been awake, they would have had to go beyond their patio and partway down the hill in order to see anything. And supposedly there’d been nothing to see except a woman slipping out of her clothes, finishing off a decanter of brandy, and easing
out into the inky water. With that quantity of alcohol in her blood, she might have splashed about, but the sound would have been lost in the darkness.

  I heard a footstep behind me. Hoping it was not the loathsome Sid, I looked over my shoulder. Dick regarded me for a moment, then said, “Investigating the scene of the crime?”

  “Escaping from Sid, actually,” I said as I picked up a rock and tossed it into the water. It sank with a tiny plop. Ripples formed, but within seconds the surface was as imperturbable as Dick’s expression.

  5

  “But you have to go to the marina,” Luanne whimpered as we struggled over my overnight bag like spoiled nursery-school children. We were in front of Dick’s house, where our undignified dance was being observed only by a mockingbird perched on the chimney. It was not yet eight o’clock in the morning, but I wanted to go by my apartment and pick up the newspaper before I went to the Book Depot. A day without international crises—and a crossword puzzle—is like a day without sunshine.

  I finally prevailed and tossed the bag in the backseat of my car. “No, I don’t have to go to the marina. I don’t have to do anything except go back to Farberville and open the store. Yesterday my horoscope said to anticipate an abundance of tangible assets today. I can’t risk offending the planets.”

  “Captain Gannet ordered Bubo not to talk to any of us. You can pretend to be a reporter or even just a tourist who heard about the accident, then listen to his story. How long can it take?”

  I consulted my watch. “Too long. Look, Luanne, I came here as promised and politely listened to Agatha Anne carry on about eagles and Georgiana about her ex-husband. I did not stick a fork in Sid’s hand when he pinched my derrière, nor did I scream when I was hunting for a blanket and Jillian loomed behind me in the hallway like some character out of a bad movie. I was a model houseguest. Now I’m going to concentrate on being a model bookseller.”

  “Agatha Anne and I think there must be some wrinkle in Bubo’s story that Gannet finds odd. I’ve tried several times to bring up the subject, but Bubo won’t say a word about the day of the accident. Someone with your deviousness could get it out in no time flat.”

  “Deviousness? Is that to imply you regard me as a contemporary Ms. Machiavelli?”

  Before she could offer an acceptable apology, Dick came to the door with the cordless telephone. “Claire, you have a call from your daughter. She sounds agitated….”

  I did not leap over the begonias, but instead reluctantly went around them to accept the telephone. “Hello, dear,” I said.

  “You have to come get us Right This Minute!” Caron whispered. “Otherwise, I may throw myself off the roof and splatter the parking lot with blood and guts and shards of splintered bone.”

  “Why would you do something potentially nauseating like that—and why are you whispering?”

  “So She won’t overhear me.”

  The line went dead, although I doubted Caron was likely to do the same anytime soon. I managed a wan smile for Luanne and Dick, who were watching me with understandable perplexity. “Caron’s feeling a little low this morning,” I said. “I suppose I’ll stop by Dunling Lodge on my way back to town.”

  “And by the marina?” Luanne said brightly.

  Ignoring her, I thanked Dick for his hospitality and drove to Dunling Lodge. The parking lot was unsullied. I parked near the Jaguar, patted my gallant little car on its slightly dented hood, and was about to step onto the porch when Caron and Inez darted from around the corner of the house, panting like escapees from a chain gang.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, startled.

  Caron yanked me behind a trellis. “These people are deranged. Do you know what time we were forced to have breakfast? Do you?”

  “At dawn,” Inez volunteered.

  “It’s not like we were going to get any more sleep,” continued Caron, who does not care to be interrupted in the midst of sinister recitations. “As soon as the sun came up, hordes of jabbery birds descended on the feeders like little Mongols. I put my pillow over my head, but then Mrs. Dunling came in and started jabbering, too. When they do an autopsy on her, they’re going to discover she really does have a bird brain.”

  Inez leaned closer and said, “When I saw her in the hall this morning, she was flapping her arms. She said she was exercising, but I’m not so sure. When the moon is full, she probably sits in a tree and hoots with the owls.”

  Caron nudged her aside. “So we got up and went to the patio for breakfast, where she about had a coronary because she spotted a great spangled fritillary hovering in the vetch.”

  I sensed from her dramatic pause that a response was expected of me. “No kidding?” I said.

  “She carried on like she’d seen the Secretary of the Treasury, but all I saw was a stupid butterfly. At least Mr. Dunling already had eaten and was down at the edge of the lake. He tests the water every morning for pesticides. If you ask me, he should be testing their tap water. I was expecting a bowl of worm flakes, but we had yummy bran turds instead. And tomato juice. You know how much I Absolutely Loathe tomato juice.”

  It was well past my designated time of departure. “I realize you’re being brutalized, girls, but I need to go. Consider this as an opportunity to improve your survival skills. Luanne will bring you home tomorrow afternoon.”

  Caron sensed her chances for a timely rescue were dwindling and began to sniffle. “There was a whippoorwill under our bedroom window, Mother. Every five minutes from midnight until four o’clock, it made this ear-shattering sound. I seriously considered asking Mr. Dunling to loan me his shotgun so I could facilitate it straight to its celestial nest.”

  Inez shook her head. “Actually, it was a chuck-will’s-widow. It makes this funny little chuckle at the beginning of its song.” She pursed her mouth to demonstrate.

  “Spare us an audition for the Audubon Society,” Caron growled at her, then returned to the task at hand—eliciting pity. “Agatha Anne’s in the office on the telephone, but she said when she’s done, we’re going on a hike to look for birds. I looked at pictures of birds last night until I thought my eyeballs were going to pop out of their sockets. Why would I want to see live ones? Do you know what birds are? They’re reptiles with feathers! I’m supposed to go on a hike to look for flying lizards?”

  “And there are something like eight thousand species of birds,” Inez said. “Agatha Anne acts like we’re supposed to be able to list them one by one, starting with accipiter.” She flinched as Caron glared at her. “I just happened to notice it was first. It’s a hawk.”

  “Everybody knows that,” I said pretentiously, seizing the chance for a maternal power play. “Now, if you’ll unhand me, you can go find out what’s at the end of the list and I can go back to town. Make the best of it.”

  Caron’s fingers dug in more tightly. “Okay, we will make one last attempt to cooperate with that tyrant—if you agree to stay here until we get back from the hike. If you don’t, we’re going to pack our bags and walk back to the highway, where we can hitch a ride with some jerk with extravagant body hair and dirty fingernails. If he doesn’t rape and kill us, we should be home in time for lunch.”

  Inez gulped. “We should?”

  Caron released my arm in order to cross hers and stare at me. Her jaw may have trembled, but her voice did not as she said, “That’s right.”

  For a brief moment, I tried to see her as a defenseless pink infant in a bassinet rather than a cold-hearted miscreant who could be recruited with equal fervor by the Mafia and the CIA. “No, that’s blackmail. Besides, it must be five miles to the highway. You’ll never make it, considering the amount of luggage you brought. You have a verbal contract with the Dunling Foundation and the obligation to hold up your end of it.”

  “Come on, Inez. I want to write my will before we pack. I think I’ll leave everything to some organization that fights child abuse and neglect.” Her lower lip shot out far enough to catch tears, had she been able to manufacture the
m. It was obvious she was trying.

  I wished I had the nerve to get in my car and drive away without so much as a glance in the rearview mirror, but she sounded obstinate enough to follow through with her idiotic threat. It might take them two hours or more to arrive at the highway (if they could find it), at which time they would be so exhausted and desperate that they might accept a ride in a truck with a gun rack and a cooler of beer. Images of what could happen flashed through my mind. They were less attractive than craven capitulation, I concluded grimly.

  “All right, I’ll stay until noon,” I said. “You will display interest and enthusiasm, you will take notes, and you will search the branches for birds rather than the ground for snakes. If you are able to change your attitude and complete the training session, I’ll overlook this. Then again, if you come back and insist I take you home, you won’t need to worry about any unfriendly elements of nature until school starts in the fall because you will be grounded. Got that?”

  “What about the one hundred and seventy-eight dollars for driver’s ed?” she retorted with the polish of a practiced plea bargainer.

  “I don’t see how you can earn much money in your bedroom, but perhaps you can follow up on one of those magazine ads that promises hundreds of dollars a week for stuffing envelopes with unspecified material. Let’s hope it’s not pornography. In any case, it’s irrelevant because you won’t be able to take driver’s ed, which means you won’t be allowed to drive until after you take it next summer.”

  “Next summer? All the ninth-graders will be driving by then.”

  “I’ll be here at noon,” I said, then went to my car and drove up the driveway before the argument could escalate. As I paused at the top of the hill, I saw Dick and Luanne come out of his house and climb into the Rover like a suburban couple off to the hardware store. I had no desire to continue a conversation with Jillian, if she was still there. Nor did I have a desire to return to Dunling Lodge, where the idea of addressing envelopes was as repugnant as being mistaken for a groundhog. I took Luanne’s map from the glove compartment, located the marina, and turned left.