by Mira Gibson
Maude King hadn’t killed herself.
But no one in a position to say as much—not the cops, not the medical examiner, not the family—had uttered one word of skepticism when the ten year old girl’s death had been ruled a suicide.
Hesitantly, he placed his fingers on the chunky keys and in response, the IBM, a boxy relic he refused to retire—too many good thesis’ had come out of it during college, too many articles for which he’d almost garnished awards—began humming, fans blowing noisily as if to nudge him, get on with it.
He couldn’t turn in the article he wanted, but he might be able to get away with writing about gun control, not that the Daily Sun’s subscribers would appreciate it. He’d get flack no question. The county, and the state for that matter, held their second amendment rights in high regard.
A 1989 Glamour magazine resting to the left of his keyboard stole his attention. Zhana King was gleaming at him from its glossy cover. She couldn't have been a day over twenty-three when the photo had been taken. Her emerald green eyes, unreal in their color and clarity, her impossibly high cheekbones, the clever arch in her eyebrows, and a certain indescribable levity in her overall expression—grand smile, chin up, sandy blonde hair big and bold and blowing from an off camera fan, watch out world, I’m ready!—had him falling into a daze.
Not even the gaudy, pastel palette of her makeup, or the horrendous yellow scarf around her neck could distract the viewer from her undeniable beauty.
She'd been a burgeoning star.
In the A&P, when Jake had asked her for a photo, explaining he was in the throes of drafting another article—After the tragic news and the article we printed, the Laconia Daily Sun would like to do a follow up, give the town hope, show the readers you and your family are carrying on, and Zhana, eyes brightening as she’d lifted them from the gallon of milk in her hand, How thoughtful—Zhana had looked alive, radiant in fact.
Just as radiant as she appeared on the magazine cover.
But the decades in-between the two events, the long years she’d spent tucked away out of the public eye, she hadn’t been alive, not in Jake’s observation.
It seemed Maude’s death had somehow freed her. She’d proudly handed him the magazine—You’re a lucky man, Mr. Livingston. I don’t give these away, you know. I only have five copies left.
Not a recent family photo of the surviving members. Not an Instagram snap of her with Roberta or even a Christmas picture featuring the four of them prior to her daughter’s death. In response to his request, in full knowledge that the photo would be distributed to the entire town, she’d given him a piece of her former life, an image of who she'd been before marriage, before kids, before New Hampshire, before Charlie had stolen her away.
It didn’t sit right with him, not by a long shot.
The rising morning sun was piercing through the window, magnifying the dust in the air, so he opened the window to get a cross breeze going. Near his desk and resting atop a stack of achieved articles was a wooden post, which he used to prop the window up, wedging it between the tarnished sill and the metal lip of the pane. As soon as he did, he noticed Roberta King creeping into his back yard.
She was barefoot. Her hands and forearms appeared dirty, and as she squatted in front of the flower bushes lining his house, he wondered why in the hell she was dressed like that even before he questioned what she was doing.
Quick to pull on his boots when he reached the foyer, after padding down the stairs and nearly tripping into a coat rack where his winter-garb hung like a weeping willow, Jake didn't bother lacing them up. He rushed through the darkened house, passing bookshelves and boxes, weaving around the side of a cracked-leather couch, until he stepped out the backdoor where the rising heat had burned off the morning-mist, leaving the air muggy.
When he turned towards the planters and caught Roberta digging, he had an impulse to shout Go home, but what worked on old man Hadley’s Doberman might not be as effective on a seventeen-year-old girl.
So he went with, “Can I help you?”
“No,” she said without looking at him.
As he rounded behind her, he realized she had a copy of this morning’s paper rolled in her fist, while she used her left hand to plow a hole between two shrubs.
“I’m going to have to ask you to stop doing that.”
Her movements were almost frantic as though burying the newspaper was a matter of life and death, and Jake’s presence hadn’t deterred her in any way.
Keeping his tone friendly, but firm—dealing with Roberta was akin to scaring off a mountain lion, if threatened, she’d likely attack—he suggested, “Can’t you do that at your house?”
Again, a simple, “No,” was her answer, and before he could ask why not, she added, “I think it’s killing the plants.”
Having succeeded, the newspaper now under a small mound of soil meant to mark its location, he presumed, she plopped on her butt, glancing up at him, while he struggled to comprehend her.
“I thought you’d be at work,” she said as though it was her version of an apology.
Leaning back on her hands, she stretched her legs out and wiggled the dirt from between her toes.
“I’ve been burying things at my house,” she began explaining easily. “I’m pretty sure it’s doing something to the bushes.”
“Well, you know plants need water. You can’t clog up their root system with objects and expect them to survive.”
She considered his point, but didn’t seem convinced then sprang to her feet, startling him, though only deep down—his pulse rate quickening, throat tightening uncomfortably.
“I’ll be back to check on it,” she asserted like a doctor who’d used unorthodox methods to stabilize a patient.
Dusting her hands off and shaking her hair out of her face, she turned to leave.
“Hang on.”
When she paused, meeting his gaze from the corner of her eye, he wondered if he’d regret what he was about to do, but reasoned that avoiding her at all costs, as he’d done, had been to the detriment of the article he most wanted to publish.
No one volunteered to be alone with Roberta, no one in their right mind anyway, not since her pattern had developed where rumors mixing with truth shattered the lives of decent men. When he’d heard about Tom Jefferson’s arrest, the details leading up to it and the correlating gossip—Why did he bring her to that billiard hall? And, What was he thinking going for a night swim with a thirteen-year-old girl? And, I heard he threatened to drown her if she didn’t keep quiet—it didn’t matter that Jake had known Tom since grade school. Like the rest of the town, he’d chosen to believe Tom was a predator.
But soon Tom wasn't the only one. By the third and fourth arrests—Mike Waters then Jimmy Dalton—a dark, sinking feeling had come over Jake. He didn’t at all think the five men who’d gravely miscalculated Roberta’s advances, were guilty, quite the opposite in fact. She was a spider, spinning men up into her web, which bound them to an inescapable fate.
He’d talked to Jimmy Dalton before the man got shipped off to county, and Mike Waters as well. Their experiences with her had been identical—flirting, but no sex, out all night, but no crime committed. And a day later, Charlie had ambushed each of them, his badge in his hand as good as a death warrant.
But despite all that, Jake held her liquid gaze, praying like hell the wrath of Khan wouldn’t come down on him and quavering in the thrill of being so close to writing the story of the century, and said, “Are you hungry?”
It might have been the light changing. Maybe a cloud had cleared the sun overhead, but Jake thought he caught a glint forming in her eyes, one that suggested he’d peaked her interest in the wrong way.
As she responded with, “I am,” enhancing the melody in her soft voice, Roberta tipped her head ever so slightly sideways and smirked coyly. It reminded him of the first time Jake had invited a girl to a school dance. It was unnerving.
“Come on in then.”
; Leading her inside, he closed the door and turned on every light—a green-glass bankers lamp oddly placed on the end table beside the couch, another that looked like a vase wearing a canvas hat, which had been his mother’s, and last but not least the overheads since they were the brightest—making his gradual way to the kitchen, Roberta following behind too closely.
“What do you feel like?” he asked, facing her.
She was staring at him from where she was perched between a hanging fruit basket filled with spotted bananas and the stove, the burners of which were topped with clean pots since he had nowhere to hang them and couldn't tuck them away inside the cabinets. They were packed to the gills with archived files.
He began rattling off the options, while in the back of his mind he felt preoccupied by the bizarreness of her being in his home in the first place. “I have bagels and bread and stuff like that, or I could make a sandwich, but I don’t have any lettuce or tomatoes. I think I have popcorn somewhere around here, not that it’s a meal.”
As he worked his way around the kitchen, more or less proving he had each item as a means to avoid looking at her, Roberta edged towards him, sliding her bare feet over the linoleum. She reached him at the toaster, but he stepped back.
“Any of this sounding appetizing?”
“I’ll have a bagel.”
Pulling two options from the breadbox, he asked, “Everything or poppy seed?”
“Everything.”
He felt her watching, as he cut the bagel and placed it in the toaster oven.
“Butter’s fine,” she added so he grabbed a stick from the refrigerator, maneuvering around her.
He rarely had company and when he did, his kitchen seemed comically small.
Busying himself, he pulled a plate from the dish rack, cleared some room on the table, and tried not to sound invasive. “How’re you spending your summer?”
She grinned darkly, but he couldn’t figure out why until she mentioned, “You sound like my case worker.”
The toaster oven was clicking, making his pause all the more apparent.
“Gertrude Inman?”
Holding his gaze was her version of confirming, he assumed.
That explained her being out this way as well as her having the King's photo. He should’ve put it together sooner, but he’d been somewhat thrown that she had no recollection they’d met before. It had been brief, and the farmer’s market had been noisy. Unfortunately, he’d asked her out since their three seconds of weather related chitchat had seemed to go smoothly. He should've known better. She’d turned him down, and when she skirted off to find her sister who was raising hell at a vendor for using pesticides when they'd claimed to be selling organic, Jake had kicked himself for succumbing to an impulse he knew wouldn’t pan out.
The toaster clicked off and he buttered her bagel, remembering how strangely he’d felt writing about the car accident that had killed Gertrude's sister, an article he’d volunteered for, because he felt a strange closeness with the woman who'd rejected him.
“Do you like her?” he asked when they got situated on the bar stools at either side of the table.
Looking like a flamingo perched on her stool, Roberta shrugged and watched excess butter drip from her bagel to the plate. “She only came once.”
“What were some of the things you buried at your house?”
The bagel had expelled whatever prior flirtation she’d attempted. She looked almost childlike, inspecting her teeth marks in the bread and savoring each bite. Once she’d swallowed, she said, “Underwear.”
He was sorry he’d asked and the wiser side of him begged the investigator that generally dominated everything he did to change the subject, but after a carefully measured breath, he asked, “Why?”
“Safe keeping. Evidence, I guess.”
“Evidence?” He reminded himself she was very skilled at spinning webs, but Tom and Mike and Jimmy and the others who would be locked up for the next six years were at the forefront of his fast working mind. “Your underwear?”
She chewed then swallowed the last bite. With the bagel gone, the glint in her eyes returned and a darkly clever smirk lifted one corner of her mouth, cloying at him from across the table.
“You want to talk about my underwear?”
“Actually, I’d rather talk about your dad. I haven’t seen him around since your sister passed away.”
“Is that what people are saying?”
“That he’s holed up in your house? I haven’t heard that. It’s only my observation.”
“No, that she passed away?” She was nearly laughing, but it was clearly a sign of her disgust—long, airy exhales between her parted teeth.
“What happened exactly?”
Planting her elbows on the table after pushing her plate aside, she coolly stated, “It bothers me that you’re asking that.”
“Why?”
“Your name was on the article written up about us. You claimed to know.”
He leveled his gaze on her. Under a cocky exterior, she was wavering, hurt, once again childlike, so he kept his tone smooth. “It was an assignment. Only facts were printed. I’m not sure if you read it, but there weren’t that many facts.”
“Yeah, I read it.” Warming to him again, she agreed, “It only said she died from a bullet to the head, and it implied she killed herself.”
“Isn't that what happened?” He was being too forceful. It would backfire, but he kept going. “Everyone was home that night?”
Her tone was eerily neutral when she countered with, “You think my parents killed my sister?”
Hearing her say it out loud made him realize how outlandish he must sound, if not for his hunch, then because he was endeavoring to get Roberta—the daughter of the people he suspected, a girl who could very well be scared witless in that house—to admit it.
“I don’t know,” he said finally. “All I know is that I haven’t seen Charlie around and I used to see him all over town before this happened.”
It wasn’t a question so she didn’t respond.
“Where is he?”
Her brows drifted up and she settled into a repose that struck him as honest. “I don’t know.”
“So he’s not at the house?” He got a bit lost down the annals of his bending mind, struggling to do the math on the possibility, but no matter how clearly it added up—that Charlie fled because he’d either killed Maude or knew who had—he knew that until someone who could confirm his hunch came forward and said as much, he wouldn’t be able to do a damn thing. “He left after Maude’s death? Immediately after?”
Almost imperceptibly, she nodded. But though she had, he found her expression as challenging to read as ancient Sanskrit. Her trepidation commingling with a bold sense of daring was hidden under a thin veil of innocence. And because of it, he sensed this might be a game to her—luring him in as if she were twitching a string across the floor for him, the cat, who would pounce on any broad stroke, blind to her manipulation because he was enjoying himself too much.
“What does your mother think of that? Has she contacted him?”
“I don’t know.”
“Isn’t she worried? Or furious at least?” Hoping to rile her up, he added, “How can he take off like that after a tragedy?”
From out of left field, which in Roberta’s case was her mode of operation, she stood, peeling off her dress straps. Red fabric fluttered down her slender body, exposing her nudity.
Utterly stunned, Jake gaped, suffering from a bout of stupidity induced indecision, and then tripped his way off his stool to distance himself as if it were a more logical step than insisting she cover up.
It took longer than he would’ve liked to jump start his brain, but when he did, having stammered some nonsense to clear the cobwebs, he ordered her to put her clothes on and get out.
Stubbornly, she took her slow time lifting her dress and returning the straps over her shoulders, as if milking each second in case he changed his mind.
But driving her out felt like a counterfeit miracle.
The devil would return.
Chapter Seven
Though it was August, Gertrude wore a pair of worn-out jeans and a long sleeved sweater when she returned to the King’s house. Ever since the accident, she’d been living with a chill in her bones as though the memory of the lake were tendrils cloying at her. Adding layers was all she could do to keep sane. The beret Wendy had given her had become an appendage over the course of the past few days. As ridiculous as it felt to wear, she hadn’t taken it off, not even to sleep.
The King family photo was tucked under the top-sheet of her notepad where she also kept a handwritten list of questions for Roberta. She hadn’t covered nearly enough ground with the girl during her last visit and winging it again wouldn’t do.
As she neared the house, padding over dying grass once she’d cleared the gravelly driveway, she noticed the curvy silhouette of a woman standing on the other side of the screen door. With her back turned, the woman thrust her rear into the screen, pushing it open, and appeared to be dragging a heavy object onto the porch. Gertrude saw it was a giant bag of Miracle Grow, when the woman, who she presumed was Zhana King, stepped aside and straightened up to catch her breath.
In a word, she was stately. As she ran her arm across her brow to wipe away sweat, her blonde hair, which was carefully styled in a bouffant coif and shellacked with hair spray, didn’t so much toss as shift like a helmet. And her Capri pants and tailored blouse seemed equally stiff. But her face—the cheekbones, wide mouth, and dramatic arch of her eyebrows—had an almost feline fluidity, as she assessed the gardening materials that were laid out on the porch—a trowel, pruning sheers, a coiled rubber hose, foam kneeling pads, and gardening gloves. If she sensed Gertrude watching her, she didn’t acknowledge it.