THREE
I walked up the shoveled path and the front door opened, storm window swinging back against the wood railing with a crash as Anna wheeled herself onto the porch to greet me. Anubis never strayed from her side, gazing over the yard like he was lord of the manor.
Once again I was taken by how much they occasionally acted as parts of the same being, the Rottweiler's muscle and ferocity tied in an odd fashion to my grandmother's cool depth of intelligence and character. Six years together had taught them to move as one, the dog's paws never getting caught beneath the tires of her wheelchair, and Anna rarely having to move her hand more than a few inches to pat Anubis' head. Even the similarity of their names seemed a symbiosis of some kind.
At sixty-eight, Anna Kendrick was as lovely as any woman twenty years her junior. She had that handsome, womanly quality that lasts long after nubile waifs have lost their giggly, lip-nibbling charm. In the three decades since her husband had died, my grandmother had been offered more marriage proposals than the entire ladies' auxiliary rotary club.
As an adolescent, her hair had been the sharply yellow color of whey, and then in her teenage years it had changed to a premature, full and beautiful silver. Since that time, it had never turned white or gray. My grandmother showed few signs of age; her face was nearly free of wrinkles, except for the deepened crow's feet tracks about her eyes and those thicker parentheses around the mouth. Her lips were the true definition of pert, though if I ever said that out loud she'd probably deck me. Despite the wheelchair, there was nothing feeble about her. Strength radiated. Her vision remained twenty-twenty, and biceps bulged beneath her wool sweaters. People mistakenly assumed she'd crocheted the sweaters, but knitting had actually been my mother's love. Anna had been bestowed boxes of cardigans and pullovers.
"Jonathan," she said. "You're looking well. Thank you for coming on such short notice."
She made it sound like we were meeting for a sales committee. I was dumbstruck for a moment, the conversation with Lowell weighing in my thoughts. "Are you all right, Anna?"
"Of course, dear, why do you ask?"
Anubis trotted down the ramp beside the porch stairs and gave my hand a couple of swipes of his broad tongue—that action alone made him about four hundred times more friendly to me than he would ever be with anybody else besides my grandmother—before he turned and stalked away.
"You must be famished," Anna said. "I've been preparing much of the morning. Let's have a late breakfast." She glanced at the icy ground. "Please be careful of the ramp. The boys who shoveled didn't put down as much salt as they should have."
Once inside she kissed my cheek, and I took her hand and pushed the chair to the head of the dining room table. Settings and dishes had been laid out, and I could see she'd spent all morning on one of her usual extravagant feasts. She liked to cook and always went overboard. More food was in view than four people could eat, unless maybe Lowell was invited for brunch. I dropped my bags, took off my coat and draped it on the old-fashioned rack in the corner.
There are times you must return home to a place that is no longer home, and you might startle yourself with how easily the movements become familiar again. How quickly you fall back into the same routines, and how at ease you feel coming back to them.
I stepped into the kitchen and brought out what she'd made, dish by dish, though we'd never eat it all. I tried not to ruminate while she fixed me a heaping plate: eggs Benedict, French toast, buttered bagels, hash browns, and enough bacon to harden my arteries just by staring at it. She always cooked as if we had a large family left.
"I can only assume that Deputy Tully picked you up at the airport for a specific reason?"
"Not really," I said.
She smiled. "He knew I'd call you immediately, and realized you'd take the first flight in. He's a bright and caring man, even if a bit standoffish. He deserves to be in charge of our police force more so than Sheriff Broghin." Her lips curled when she said his name, and I wondered for the nth time if it was true that they'd been lovers five decades ago. I'd never gotten up the guts to ask her, though I knew she'd tell me the truth. I didn't want to think about how narrowly I'd avoided being related to Broghin. "I'm obligated to ask ... have they discovered anything new since last night?"
This was going to be some meal, all right.
"Lowell didn't say much."
"Eat, dear, eat."
I tried to eat, answer, and not talk with my mouth full all at the same time and nearly choked to death. "Swallow, dear, swallow."
"He told me that Wallace's report would be ready"— I glanced at the kitchen clock—"right about now."
"Good. We'll phone when we've finished eating."
"Don't get pushy, Anna. It took us a while to mend a few neighborly fences after your last couple of encounters with Broghin and Wallace."
"I would not call them, in effect, my encounters. If two men in such a professional capacity as they are inclined to let ego and petty rivalries get in the way of serving the common good, then it only proves my point that we must, on occasion, circumvent these by-the-book police investigations."
I glanced over at her bookstand and saw that she'd been reading too much goddamn Miss Marple again.
"Easy for you to say, Anna; it wasn't you who spent time in a cell with a drunk who cried all night long about spiders crawling out of his eyes."
"I can't argue that."
"At last."
"But are you willing to allow that the police can overlook the more . . . imaginative crimes, due to their formal training?"
"I'd rather have spiders crawl out of my eyes than answer that." How could I deny it, considering she and I had helped Broghin out six times in as many years, tracking down two blackmailers, a child-napper, and three murderers, including the filth who had killed my parents?
But my grandmother hadn't spent time in a county jail cell for contempt of court or resisting arrest, and I had. And while a cell in Felicity Grove was vastly different than one on Rikers Island, it was still no picnic waking up for nearly three months with bars surrounding you.
She also hadn't been slashed across the chest with a Bowie knife, shot a half inch above her kidneys, or had her left clavicle broken twice. And as rotten as jail was, a hospital bed was even uglier, with tubes jammed in your nostrils and mouth and sticking out of your forearms, blood and sugar dripping the entire sleepless night like the Chinese water torture, with catheters shoved up my personally favorite organ, one which should definitely not have things shoved up it.
"This is different," I told her. This had a personal touch to it, with a corpse left right out front like a calling card or a private message, or worse, a dare. That frightened the hell out of me.
"Perhaps."
"It's called obstructing justice, Anna."
"It's justice, period," she said with finality. Anubis noticed the edge in her voice and lifted his head beside her. We were and weren't arguing about the same thing; I wanted answers too, and I had no compunction with going around Broghin or anybody else if I felt it was necessary. Six years ago it had been, and I'd sidestepped the overweight, tobacco-chewing, walking-short sheriff and the rest of his department, and I'd do it again if I had to.
I ate without much appetite. Talking about murder over eggs just wasn't an appealing combination so far as I was concerned. Distracted, I felt my attention continually being tugged away from what I was saying. Something about the house was different, I thought, but I couldn't be sure, and the harder I glanced about the room the stronger the feeling became.
"What is it?" she asked.
The photographs on the living room wall had been changed: frames held new pictures. My parents smiled out from behind clinked champagne glasses; me as a kid on a tricycle had been replaced by me as a kid scribbling with crayons; plenty of people I didn't know grinned and laughed and shmoozed for the camera: four young women in uncomfortable-looking swimwear sat by a pool laughing, and my grandfather sat posing in a recliner
with a copy of Steinbeck's The Wayward Bus opened on his lap.
"You've noticed," Anna said.
"I know that I'm getting way too maudlin, but you too?"
"Sentimental perhaps, but that's not entirely the reason why. Last week I was cleaning out that junk closet and found a great many old letters. Thoughts of one friend turned to another and another, like dominoes of memory, and soon I was digging in other closets as well, looking through photo albums that haven't been opened for years."
"I like the change."
"At first, I wasn't sure if I would, having grown so accustomed to the way things were. But I enjoy the shift in the scenery, if you will."
I went to the wall and studied the age-cracked photographs. There was a picture of my mother, taken when she was maybe ten, sitting on the curb just outside with a skirtful of tulips, playing with a black kitten while a sprinkler shot a high arc of water behind them. Seeing the front of the house from that angle dredged up a question I'd been meaning to ask. "Who discovered the body here at midnight, Anna? This morning you said, ‘His body was found in my garbage can...'"
The smile stayed stapled to her face but the warmth fled. "I should have clarified the point. Jim Witherton was returning home from his night security job. In the blizzard he noticed something odd on the lawn as he drove by but couldn't be certain as to what. Apparently it stuck with him and a few minutes later he walked back down the block and discovered Richie Harraday in his unenviable position. Jim woke me then and I telephoned the police immediately."
"He stayed with you?"
"Yes, until the sheriff and Deputy Tully arrived. He's now employed with Syntech computer labs over in Norwood County. Are you familiar with it?”
“Yes." They had their own private security force at Syntech, and I'd heard that the training program was as difficult as the police academy; good, that made me feel a little better, knowing that a rent-a-cop was only up the block. "How long did it take for Broghin to arrive?"
She paused and considered. "No more than ten or fifteen minutes.”
“Did you inspect the area before he got here?”
“No," was the flat answer she gave—chin held high, gathering a haughty air about her like a sweater—but she said a lot more with her eyes. I know my grandmother in ways that parents can never know their children, to a point that most siblings will never arrive. I remembered how Anubis had whined, picking up the vibes of his mistress. I knew she had been terrified last night. Did she see more than she was telling? Was Anna hiding something?
"Will you call Wallace or shall I?" she asked.
"You can do it.”
“Fine. Afterwards, I think we will begin with—”
“No," I said. "Before anything else, I want to visit the cemetery."
This house was full of ghosts, those of my parents and those of our making. Blood followed blood. The dead could stuff your lungs if you let them. "I should go, too. I haven't been quite as conscientious in the past weeks as I should have been, but the weather often makes it difficult for me.”
“I wasn't chastising you, Anna."
I wondered if Richie Harraday's brother, Maurice, would visit him a lot. Anna kept an eye on the photographs, on herself and the unsaved. "I would accompany you but I realize you'd rather go alone.”
“That's true," I said, "but right now I'm going to buy some flowers."
~ * ~
Gouts of snow and slush spattered the windshield. I drove Anna's van downtown; learning to use the hand controls had been hellish in the beginning, and I was thankful I remained adept.
Even with the cold I kept the window down. The air felt good in my face—I must've looked like Anubis when he came for a ride, his snout turned into the breeze—with room to move and air to breathe and no steel monoliths or crackheads hogging the view. In a couple of days I'd be bored out of my socks with the town, but for the moment I enjoyed the change in atmosphere.
I'd been wondering what had happened to Margaret Gallagher's flower shop after her death, whether it had been closed or put under new management. I would miss Margaret's chattiness and empathy, and all the flowers and kind words she'd given me since the death of my parents.
I made a left onto Fairlawn and passed the shop. There was a WE'RE OPEN sign on the door, so I parked at the curb and walked in. Chimes that had never been there before tinkled as I entered.
On rare occasions life unfolds like a series of scenes from a good movie.
You step into, say, a flower shop, and there is a girl with her back towards you. It is an extremely sexy back, and you don't even try to make an effort to understand how a back can be sexy. You take what you can get. She turns slowly in your direction, this owner of the back, and you see, inch by inch as she completes her turn, that the front is as beautiful as the back. Her face is a compendium of all the lovely features you want to be there; the dark hair falls in thick curls that frame her face in such a way as to highlight each quality; animate green eyes like a fortune in jade, a smile both luscious and yet unintimidating. Most people would say the freckles across her nose had been "splashed" there, but you disagree. Each seems painstakingly placed to perfectly underscore those eyes, smooth skin, the dimples and sleek jaw line, and you learn something of her life by each soft etching of furrow in her forehead.
You hope she is not as crazy as your ex-wife.
Of course, by this point she is asking, "Can I help you?" for the third time and you are staring like an idiot.
I snapped out of it and smiled, trying my best not to fawn too blatantly, and failing. "Uhm, ah, I'd like to buy some flowers," was my stimulating response. I could feel my IQ plummet to below sea level.
She proved to be kind, though, and didn't make an issue out of my obvious stupidity. "Well, you've come to the right place then." She laughed gently and Cupid nailed me in the chest with another batch of arrows. I promised God not to be so chintzy this time if only this girl would marry me before sunset.
She had one of those crooked grins that clamp down at the ends, adding a round friendliness to her face. It was then I noticed she looked familiar. "Were you looking for anything in particular, or just a bouquet?"
"Tulips," I answered.
She led me to the refrigerated area in the back where the fresh flowers were stored. She went through the racks, shoving various bins aside, opening other doors and pulling out different types of flora, but no tulips. "I'm sorry, but we're out. I'm new at this and having a heck of a time getting the proper ordering forms in to the right people."
It was the break I needed to ask her her name. "I was sorry to hear about Margaret," I said. It sounded flat and insincere because it was the kind of statement that can't be prettied up. I tried thinking of something else to say but it all sounded equally lackluster.
"Thank you," she said warmly, with a note of appreciation.
I knew Margaret had never had any children, but I played the hand out. "Were you her. . . ?”
“Niece. Her great-niece actually, her sister's grand-daughter, but I always called her my aunt. Anything else would have sounded distant, and we weren't. It's been a while since I've visited Felicity Grove, but we always kept in touch. My family's originally from San Diego." She seemed very much the child in that moment, and a needle jabbed at a memory at the bottom of my mental junk drawer. "Wait a second," I said. A tenuous, hazy image came into slightly more focus. "Is your name… Kathy?”
“Katie, yes.”
“Did you used to play with… uhm, like a little oven thingie that baked real cupcakes?”
“How do you know that!" she exclaimed, jade eyes beaming as brightly as her smile.
"I ate two or three of them."
Anna used to stop by to chat with Margaret on summer days when I was a boy. On a few visits Margaret had a shy girl sitting in the front of the store with an orchid in her hair, playing with tea sets and Barbie mobile homes and ersatz ovens. That's really all the recollections I could get a hold on, except for the fact that I
had eaten a couple of the inedible cakes.
Katie grabbed my forearm and laughed. "That's right, I used to like visiting Aunt Margaret because there were so many kids to play with." She stared intently at me and motioned with her fingers as if she were slicing years off my face. "I think I remember you now."
She didn't, but it was a nice thing to say. "They tasted like foam.”
“Ugh, the worst, but I must've made a hundred of them.”
“How many did you eat?”
“None, of course. What, you think I've got a death wish?"
I enjoyed her mannerisms; personality shined through in her body language, and I liked the way it talked. She leaned back and crossed her arms, giving me the once over, then ran her forefinger along her bottom lip, which brought my attention even more fully to her mouth.
"I don't know your name," she said.
"Jonathan Kendrick."
"Pleased to meet you again, Jonathan."
"It's been…"
I spotted him through the window.
He was waving his arms wildly at me and skip-walking across the street, his raggedy overcoat flopping out behind him in the breeze. A truck horn blared and epithets were shouted, but he just happily waved to the driver.
I wasn't sure if Katie had ever met him before, but if she hadn't, I knew what she was going to think when he bounded in. Most people were immediately frightened, and you couldn't blame them.
I said, "Cripes," but didn't have time to tell Katie anything before the door burst open in a flurry of black motion, the bells jangling madly.
"Hello . . . ?" she asked, wheeling.
"I am Crummler!" he shouted, rushing her like he was blitzing a quarterback. "I am here!"
Katie virtually leaped into my chest with a muffled shriek, arms tightly hugging around my neck. I enjoyed this mannerism of hers even more than the others, though the choke-hold could easily crush my windpipe. She winced and looked over her shoulder at him, staring at the wild man standing three feet away.
"We've talked about personal space before, Crummler," I said.
Zebediah Crummler could have been the poster boy for the word "wiry." His body and his hair were wiry, and his mind was like a red-hot copper wire with too much juice going through it. He was always in motion and I couldn't imagine him in any state of repose. Impossible to imagine him not wound up tighter than a clock about to blow a few coils. He bounced and shivered and shuddered; yet for all that, most of the running current was internal, and you could see how it flowed through his veins. No one who knew him was afraid of him, but he made strangers leap onto kitchen counters or into the chests of the hopelessly romantic. Being in such proximity of sheer exuberance, when there is nothing visible to be exuberant about, can be a terrifying situation.
The Dead Past Page 2