Loonies

by Gregory Bastianelli

  He remembered the gray-haired woman standing by herself. He zoomed in on her, though the picture’s clarity weakened as the picture got closer. Her eyes looked wide and round, her lips clamped tight. It wasn’t quite the look of amazement that the other onlookers had, it was more…what? Shock? Fright?

  His attention returned to the crowd as something caught his eye—a woman near the back. He hadn’t noticed her before because she was mostly obscured by other bystanders. But he noticed her now and recognized her: Wymbs’ housekeeper. He hadn’t seen her at the scene, but there she was, watching with the others. Brian remembered her getting off duty earlier that night. He also remembered how he wished he had gotten her name. If only he had noticed her at the fire.

  Brian looked through the glass window of his office at Beverly, at her desk in the reception area, typing press releases.

  “Bev,” he called, looking back at the picture on the computer screen. “Come here.”

  The diminutive round woman pushed herself out of her chair and strolled to the open door.

  “Yes,” she said, removing her cat’s-eye glasses and letting them hang from the chain around her neck.

  “You know everyone in town,” he said, looking at her—she was so short it really was like looking at eye level. “Look at this picture.”

  She waddled around his desk to peer over his shoulder, raising her glasses and setting them on the end of her nose. Brian pointed at the screen at the housekeeper.

  “Do you know this woman?”

  Beverly bent forward and then immediately straightened. “Don’t recognize her.”

  “Damn,” he said. “It’s Dr. Wymbs’ housekeeper, but I didn’t get her name when I went up there earlier in the day. I’d love to be able to talk to her.” He leaned back in his chair, dejected.

  “Oh, my gosh!” Bev squealed.

  Brian bolted upright in his seat. “What?”

  “That’s her!” She pointed to the edge of the picture, to the gray-haired woman off to the side.

  “Who?” He was confused.

  “The woman you were looking for. Ruth Snethen. The one who owned your house.”

  Brian looked at her in amazement. “Really?” He couldn’t believe it, and excitement rose in his chest again. “That’s Ruth Snethen?”

  “I’d recognize her anywhere.”

  He looked back at the screen. “Wow.” She was there, at the scene of her former place of employment where her former employer met his death. What was she doing there? Concern? Or something more?

  “The State Police haven’t found her yet?” Beverly asked.

  “No,” Brian said, laughing at the thought she was right there under their noses and Steem and Wickwire hadn’t even known it. They must not know what she looks like, or they were so preoccupied with the blaze that they didn’t pay attention. He wanted to call Noah and was reaching for his phone as Beverly was heading out of his office. She stopped at the doorway and turned to face him.

  “How long are you going to be here?”

  “Why?”

  “Aren’t you supposed to be somewhere?” Her expression told him she knew something he didn’t. She often did.

  He put the phone down and racked his brain. Nothing came to mind. He looked at her and shrugged.

  “Today’s the Women’s Garden Club tour. Remember.” It was as if she were scolding him.

  “Oh shit,” he said, banging his fist on the table. He looked at the clock on his desk, and then at the picture on his computer.

  “You’re not going to blow this off again are you?”

  He thought about it for a second, then rose from his chair, looking through the papers on his desk for the tour schedule. “No,” he said. “Dammit.” He ruffled more of the papers but couldn’t come up with anything.

  “Would you like this?” Beverly asked, fanning herself with a small flier that she seemed to pull out of thin air like a magician, which he was learning pretty quickly she practically was.

  Brian grabbed his camera and notepad and plucked the schedule out of her hand as he whisked by. He would call Noah from the road to tell him about Ruth Snethen. But first he had to get in the good graces of Mrs. Picklesmeir.

  He stepped out of the news office into the warm afternoon sun, the Garden Club flier in his hand. He wore khaki pants and a jersey on an early summer day that could call for shorts, but Brian felt those were less than professional. No one takes a reporter seriously who’s wearing shorts. He was about to head to his car when he glanced across Main Street. Wibbels Real Estate and Fruit Market caught his eye and a thought popped into his head. He glanced at the flier in his hand and thought, in a few minutes, one stop first.

  He shoved the flier into his back pocket with his notepad and secured his cameral strap over his shoulder before darting across Main Street. Not much traffic on a Saturday afternoon, of course. Once on the other side he looked up at the marquee for the abandoned cinema. The movie theater was closed when he and Darcie moved to Smokey Hollow, and he wasn’t sure how long it had been since it last operated. He remembered Rolfe Krimmer telling him his last job was as a projectionist for the cinema, and he told him he was in his eighties when he worked there. There were still two letters up on the marquee, a “Y” and a “C,” the remains of the last movie the theater had shown. The “Y” was loose and dangled at an odd angle. It wouldn’t be long before it would break free of the marquee, like some autumn leaf clinging to the branch of a tree, and drift down to the sidewalk.

  Past the cinema Brian walked by the taxidermist shop, whose front window boasted a menagerie of stuffed wildlife: a fox, beaver, raccoon, several deer heads, and even a bear up on its hind legs, arms raised in a menacing gesture. In the center of the window display, a wooden tiered rack contained several rows of glass eyes in a variety of sizes and colors.

  Brian glanced back as he passed the shop and the eyes seemed to be watching him walk by. He looked away with a shiver.

  After passing an empty storefront, its windows soaped over, Brian went by Wigland. Its window display contained multiple mannequin heads adorned with long flowing locks of women’s tresses: blondes, brunettes, redheads. If the plastic heads had the eyes from the taxidermist shop, it really would have freaked him out.

  The bell over the door tinkled as Brian pushed his way into Wibbels. A citrus odor engulfed him, and goose bumps erupted on his bare arms in the cool interior of the shop. Bins of fruits formed two rows in the center of the market. A big wooden pickle barrel was planted near the front, exuding a vinegary odor through its round cover. The priest and the nun from the local church were picking through bins of fruit. Behind the counter on the right, an older man in an apron smiled at him. He was short, with a thinning dome and thick black glasses. There was something familiar about him.

  “Mr. Wibbels around?” Brian asked.

  “Out back,” the clerk said.

  Through a doorway at the back of the market was Leo Wibbels’ real estate office. Brian and Darcie had sat in there not long ago, pouring through listings of homes. He thought about how deciding on Ruth Snethen’s home on Ash Street had set in motion the odd series of events that followed. What if they had picked some other house? Would the steamer trunk be still locked in the attic, keeping its grisly secret?

  “Good afternoon,” Leo Wibbels said, rising from the chair behind his desk and extending his hand. Leo had a pinched, bulldog face topped with silver peach-fuzz hair and squinting eyes.

  Brian shook his hand.

  “What can I do for you?” the real estate agent/fruit seller asked.

  Brian dropped into the chair in front of the desk as Wibbels sat.

  “I was wondering if you knew where Ruth Snethen lives now.”

  Wibbels shook his head. “Those State Police guys asked me that too, but I wasn’t able to help them either.”

  “She didn’t buy another property after selling her house?”

  The man shrugged. “If she did, she didn’t use me as her agent.
” He leaned back in his chair and scratched his head. “I thought she made some comment about moving into a retirement home, over near Keene somewhere.”

  Brian didn’t really hope for much here but figured it was worth a shot.

  “That’s pretty crazy about that trunk in your house,” Wibbels said.

  “Yeah,” Brian said. “And it’s not surprising that she didn’t take it with her.”

  “I don’t know why she didn’t throw the damn thing in the dump.” Wibbels leaned forward and lowered his voice. “I mean, why hold on to something like that? Especially knowing what was in it. How could she even sleep at night, with that box of horrors right above her in the attic?”

  “I know,” Brian said, thinking how he and Darcie had spent several months with it above their bedroom. Of course, they didn’t know it was up there and what was in it.

  He thought about something Wibbels had said. “Did Ruth know what was in it?”

  “Huh?” Wibbels grunted.

  Brian hadn’t realized he had spoken out loud.

  “Nothing,” he said, rising from his seat. “Thanks, anyway.” He extended his hand and Wibbels slapped an apple in it.

  “Here, on the house,” he said with a grin.

  “Thanks,” Brian said and left the office, waving to the clerk on his way out the door and still thinking he had seen the man somewhere.

  On the sidewalk he bit into the fruit. It was soft. He fumbled the Garden Club flier out of his back pocket. A map on the interior showed the locations of the homes in the tour. The closest was just around the corner, on the street behind the library. He could walk to it. He headed up Main Street, tossing the disappointing fruit in a garbage can chained to a lamppost.

  A paved walkway between the library and the elementary school on Main Street led to the homes on Cricket Lane. When Brian got there, a few women were milling about in the front yard gardens of a small Cape-style home. A white picket fence enclosed the front yard. Several rose bushes grew along the fence, sporting red flowers.

  Once inside the front yard, he removed the camera from his bag and started taking pictures of the spectators admiring the bushes lining the picket fence and the front of the house. He approached a couple of the women, introducing himself, and asked what they thought of the tour. He scribbled their comments and then asked if they minded him taking their photograph looking at the flowers. They were thrilled, of course, and he snapped a couple of pictures.

  He thanked them, turned to look for other shots, and came face to face with Mrs. Picklesmeir.

  The large woman startled him.

  “Hello,” he said, with a big smile.

  “Mr. Keays,” she said. “I wouldn’t have believed it if I weren’t seeing it with my own eyes.”

  Brian faked a laugh. “I told you I would be here.”

  “And how many homes have you visited?”

  He hesitated, almost afraid to answer. Boy, he thought, Steem and Wickwire should enlist her for their side.

  “This is the first.”

  “Humph.” Her eyes bore into him, and sweat seeped down the back of his neck. He could not hold her gaze and looked away.

  “Very beautiful,” was the only thing he could think of saying while looking as some unknown flower. “What is that?”

  “Delphinium.” She offered no more.

  “I like it.” He turned to face her but she had already walked off and was now chatting with the two elderly women he had just photographed.

  A wooden bench stood beside a stone bird bath, and Brian sat to jot some notes in his pad. He was wondering how to describe some of the plants when he heard whistling and looked up, spotting someone on the roof of the house across the street. It was the chimney sweep he had spied across from his house the other day. The man, grimy and black, was pushing a wire brush attached to a long handle into the mouth of the chimney. The man wore the same outfit—black coat with tails, dark shirt, and top hat. Brian wondered how comfortable it could be wearing a costume like that on a roof on a hot summer day. It might have made for a good publicity gimmick, but didn’t seem very practical.

  “Brian?”

  He looked up, drawn out of his daze, to see his wife.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  She looked disappointed in him. “I told you before you left this morning that I was going to take in the garden tour. Remember?”

  “Oh, sure.” He didn’t. “Having a good time?”

  She sat down on the bench beside him. “Yes, very much so.” She was smiling. “It’s given me so many wonderful ideas for our own yard. I can’t wait to get started.”

  “Great,” he said, and he really meant it. It would give her something to do and take her mind off the awful thing she had found in their home and the ongoing story that was unfolding because of it.

  “I hope you’ll be able to help me with it.”

  He feigned enthusiasm but really didn’t offer any kind of answer, just nodded politely.

  “I was also thinking,” she said, “that I’d like us to go to church Sunday.”

  “Church?” And he knew from her expression that he had used an inappropriate tone. They had not been in a church since their wedding day.

  “Yes.”

  “What’s brought that on?”

  “I heard that there’s going to be a Mass in special remembrance for the children.”

  He was confused. “Whose children?”

  Her face flushed red, and he immediately regretted asking the question.

  “The children found in our home.” He felt her distaste in the enunciation of her words.

  “Oh.” How stupid could he be?

  “You do realize they were human beings, don’t you. They weren’t just bones in a box.”

  “Of course,” he said, patting her knee. “I didn’t mean it to sound that way. I’ve just got so much stuff rumbling around in my head from these past couple days.”

  She stood. “You know, you’re not the only one.”

  He looked up at her and felt like a child.

  “I’m sorry, dear. Of course, we can go to the Mass.”

  “Thank you,” she said. “Now I think I will go take a look at some of these beautiful flowers. I’ll see you back at home later.”

  “Yes,” he said, and then added, “I’m not sure when.”

  “Of course,” she said, and walked away.

  Brian left the garden tour knowing that he wasn’t going to stop at any of the other houses. Mrs. Picklesmeir be damned. There were more important things to spend his time on. He walked back to Main Street, stopping at the convenience store for a small purchase that he shoved in his camera bag. His next stop was the police, and Wanda greeted him when he walked in.

  “Noah in?” he asked, though he could see the chief through the glass window of his office. Noah looked up and waved him in.

  Brian dropped into the chair in front of the chief’s desk, noticing the ashen appearance of Noah’s face and assuming that something was wrong.

  “I know it was arson,” Brian said, taking a guess. “I already talked to Fire Chief Shives.”

  Noah looked up, with an expression that said he wasn’t paying attention to Brian. Then he nodded. “Yeah, well, there wasn’t much doubt about that. They found a couple gas cans at the scene.”

  “Then what’s the look for?”

  Noah met his gaze. “Just got off the phone with Capt. Steem. He heard from the county medical examiner.”

  “And?” Brian leaned forward.

  “Dr. Wymbs didn’t die in the fire.” The chief paused for reaction. Brian had none. “The doctor was already dead. It’s been ruled a homicide. Steem’s in charge of the investigation, of course.” Noah ran his hand through his sandy hair and blew out a deep breath.

  “Murdered,” was all Brian could come up with. “Did he say how?”

  “Strangled,” Noah said. “With his own bow tie.”

  “Wow,” Brian said. “The fire must have been s
et to cover it up.”

  Noah stood and paced behind his desk, pausing to look out his window to the street beyond. “There hasn’t been a murder in Smokey Hollow since.…” He didn’t finish, just shook his head.

  Brian finished it for him. “Since someone stuffed five little babies into a steamer trunk?”

  Noah’s head turned sharply toward him. “We don’t know what that was yet.”

  Brian stood as well. “How else did they end up there?” He took his camera out of his case. “Let me show you something.” He scrolled through his pictures, past the shots of people admiring the flowers on the house on Cricket Lane, till he got to the one of the crowd of onlookers at the fire scene. He showed it to the chief. “See that woman there?” he said, pointing to the woman standing off to the side. “Do you know her?”

  Noah examined it for a moment, and then shook his head. “Doesn’t look familiar.”

  “That’s Ruth Snethen.”

  Noah’s eyes widened. “She was at the fire?”

  “Yes, watching the place burn to the ground. And none of us knew she was there.”

  The chief sat down. “Steem has had no luck trying to find her.”

  “All he had to do was turn around.”

  “Why was she there?”

  “Very good question,” Brian said. “Watching her former place of employment burn to the ground and her former boss with it?”

  “What are you suggesting?”

  Brian didn’t want to sit. He was too excited. “I’m not suggesting anything. Just look at what’s happened. I find a steamer trunk of baby skeletons in the house that I bought from Ruth Snethen, who just happens to be a retired nurse who used to work at the Wymbs Institute, which burns to the ground the very next night, and the only thing inside is the strangled body of the doctor who ran the place.”

  “Coincidence?” The chief’s brow furrowed.

  Brian looked down at him in frustration. “That’s not the feeling I get in my gut.”

  “Steem’s going to want to look at that picture of yours.”