I park on the curb alongside a cobbled pathway guiding me up to a porch where light from a bronze wall sconce glows warm beside a door that opens before I can make use of the rustic knocker.
Ruby is wearing a green day dress. Although the style predates her running garb by decades, the classic make of the dress is far more stylish than I imagined Ruby in her everyday life. I am flattered she touched herself up with a light application of rouge, as I assume she troubled herself on my account.
She welcomes me into her living room and what I see makes me dizzy. It’s like I stepped into a time portal and emerged into a drawing room from another era. Running along the walls of the spacious room is a banquet of antique furniture, hand-carved in lacquered woods and fitted out in soft fabrics that, through the greatest of care, do not appear to have aged.
Past the window on the outer wall and covering almost every inch of the far wall are painted portraits and old photographs. I know a thing or two about picture frames from working summers in an art gallery during my college years, and I can see all the frames on display are Edwardian and Art Deco. One oval frame is a Tiffany Sterling Silver that would pay my rent for a year. Whatever Ruby Maplethorpe is, she’s not destitute.
Ruby notices me ogling her wares and blushes, muttering ‘Oh, I never throw anything out’ as an explanation for her paradise of old world charm. She offers me a seat and disappears around the corner, emerging a moment later with a silver tea tray.
“Thank you,” I say, “but I can’t take caffeine after two or I’ll be up all night.”
An exaggerated look of pity comes across my hostess’s face as she turns to set down the tray.
“Yes, dear, I suppose you are a mite skittish, aren’t you?”
What does that mean?
“As it would happen,” she continues, “this is a sweet rose tea from India. It’s for relaxation. Perfect for you. No caffeine at all.”
Perfect for me?
She pours the golden liquid into two china cups embossed with pink roses. I accept mine as she rushes to the side of my chair to place an embroidered cozy on the small side table, next to a lead lamp with a stained-glass shade. Poised under the lamp is a fading color photograph of two women in a small, modest prop-up frame. I think I recognize one of the women. I am certain I recognize the other.
“Is that you, Ruby?”
“Yes, it is.”
“And is that…”
Ruby takes a seat on the divan. “Agatha Christie? Yes, dear, it is she.”
I am shocked. How ancient is this woman?
“But didn’t she die like a long, long time ago?”
Ruby laughed. It was pleasant, like a song.
“She passed, I believe, in 1976. If I’m not mistaken about your age, you would have shared the earth with her for quite some years.”
Five, to be exact.
“The photograph was taken in 1968,” recalls Ruby. “I was in London and had been invited to visit the Detection Club. As an American I could not become a member, you see, but they were splendidly cordial. To be invited for even a visit was such an honor.”
“I’m familiar with the Detection Club. Wasn’t that a group for authors?”
“Yes, mystery writers.”
“Wait…so you’re a mystery writer?”
“Have you ever heard of the Inspector Butterwell books?”
“Yes, I think I’ve read them all. Pearl Oakley, right? What about them?”
Ruby leans back into the divan and takes another sip of tea. I can see her blue eyes twinkle over the lip of the cup. Could it be?
“Are you saying you’re Pearl Oakley?”
She lowers her cup to reveal the grin I imagined her wearing. “Ruby. Pearl. A simple swap of precious stones. Oh, and trees. Maple to oak. Seems rather silly now but I thought myself immensely clever at the time.”
I am flabbergasted by the revelation. As a young woman I discovered my love of mystery fiction. The challenge by author to reader to solve the puzzle before the fictional sleuth reveals all at the end. At least, that’s how they used to write them. After I read Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers I went looking for other authors and discovered Pearl Oakley’s charming tales of intrigue set in the fictional English village of Holms St. Courtenay. The bumbling but preternaturally wise Inspector Edmund Butterwell reminded me of my late grandfather, so there will always be Oakley books on my shelf, though the last of the series was published more than twenty years ago.
Now, here I am, sitting in Pearl Oakley’s living room. Only her name is Ruby Maplethorpe and she’s a retired walker in old shorts.
I shamelessly go fangirl on Ruby and start asking questions. She pretends to be put off by it but gives in so quickly I conclude she is flattered that someone of a younger generation is a fan of her work.
She explains her late husband Edwyn was in a line of business that provided more than enough money to support the two of them. However, not being one to sit idle, she took up the pen and gave voice to her inner sleuth. Her first book became a modest bestseller and for the next twenty-five years she published her mysteries. When Edwyn passed away, twenty-two years ago now, she lost her ability to find any charm in death and hasn’t written a word since.
The light in the room hasn’t changed or shifted since we sat down, but I see a shadow fall over Ruby as she speaks of Edwyn’s loss. She smiles and the shadow runs away.
“But I didn’t ask you over to bore you with tales of past glory.”
I assure her I find her anything but boring. But I am curious about the real reason I am here.
“You mentioned you thought you could fix my problem?”
She sets her teacup aside and stands, brushing out the folds in her dress.
“I don’t ‘think’, dear, I know. Something is set up for you in the spare room. Would you care to come this way?”
I follow Ruby down a dim hall, past three doors, to a fourth room. After the wonders I witnessed in her living room I let my imagination run wild with what might lay beyond this door. Treasures from the Orient? A sarcophagus from Egypt? The Ark of the Covenant?
When the door opens and the light comes on I see an empty room. Empty except for a white massage table set up in the center of the room.
Ruby extends a hand to usher me in. “Having your bum rubbed by an old woman you just met wouldn’t cause you any discomfiture, would it?”
My imagination never prepared me for this moment. “No more than any other person,” I reply, which is the politest way I can think of to indicate that yes, it most certainly would cause me ‘discomfiture.’
“Wonderful, then plant yourself face down and we’ll get started.”
“Are you serious?”
“My dear, I see how you walk sometimes, the way you reach your hand down to massage yourself. You’re probably not aware you’re doing it any more. It’s Piriformis Syndrome and it’s quite curable.”
I confess I feel a bit violated. Not because she wants to rub my bum, but because she knows things about me a stranger should not be expected to know. “I do stretches,” is my feeble reply.
“Stretches only relieve the problem temporarily. To loosen the muscles permanently requires a specific type of deep tissue massage. Now, lay down and I’ll show you something I learned in Shanghai. I can’t promise it won’t hurt a bit. But, as the saying goes, you’ll thank me in the morning.”
I feel as helpless as a baby under her will. This woman oozes confidence. Not arrogance or anything palpable, but a quiet confidence that she has seen things you haven’t and knows things you don’t. So, I lay down on the table.
“In the 1970s I was quite an avid jogger,” she says as she starts in on me. “It was thought of as a fad at the time, but it was quite popular. Oh, I’m aware ‘jogger’ is a dirty word nowadays. Everyone’s a ‘runner’ now. But that’s what we called it back then.”
Ruby explains that with the exception of writing and Edwyn, she’s never been able to stay too long with
any one pursuit. Too much out there to see and try, she thought. So, in the early eighties, she packed away her running gear, but never threw it out. Subconsciously, she believed, she would return to it one day. I now understand the significance of her retro running clothes and feel a pang of guilt for the silent judgment I passed on her. Maybe I deserve the torture she is now inflicting.
“All right, Lacy, I believe we’re done. Sometimes it takes more than one treatment, but it shouldn’t be any more than three. Let’s make a date for Monday evening, shall we? And remember, this is a fix, but it’s not a vaccine. If you don’t want to contract another case I suggest you begin running like an adult and not an angry first grader.”
Where does this stuff come from?
I stand from the table, happy my leg doesn’t collapse under me. But my left butt cheek hurts like the dickens. I hope it won’t affect me too much on the hill tomorrow. But hey, I figure I became something like friends with Pearl Oakley tonight. That alone is worth a kick in the keister.
The night is running long and we both need to rise early, so Ruby escorts me to the porch and makes me promise I’ll let her know if the pain doesn’t dissipate. Truth be told, I would pass the night in her living room if she asked me to. But Meatball will be waiting for his mommy on the blanket by the door, so I say good night and turn to walk away.
I feel a little tug at my elbow.
“I did have one quick question for you, if you don’t mind. About this morning, with Marlene—”
“I’m so sorry you had to witness that. For some reason Marlene dislikes me and—”
“No, dear, I don’t wish to know about your personal drama. I may be an old woman but I still have a life to live and such petty squabbles only steal away from it.”
Ouch.
“What I wanted to ask about, dear Lacy, is the curious pair of scissors protruding from Marlene’s tire. Those were barber scissors, were they not?”
“Yes, I believe so.”
Ruby nods as though she already knew as much. So why ask?
“Do you know why barber scissors would hold significance to Marlene? If the many photos of her around town are to be believed, she works as a travel agent.”
I recall what Gretchen told me and fight the urge to spill the beans to Ruby. As curious as I am to learn what Ruby would make of it all, I am not about to betray a confidence.
“Yes, she’s a travel agent,” I reply. “As for the scissors, I have no clue.”
Do I look as unconvincing as I feel? Ruby’s face gives nothing away.
“Hmmm, well, all right then. My memory isn’t what it used to be, but it’s not altogether gone, and as a writer of crime you tend to pay notice to wrongdoings when they have that special thing which sets them apart from others. When I saw those scissors, I recalled a murder as yet unsolved that occurred not far from here some fifteen or more years ago. It involved a pair of scissors and I’m certain a woman named Marlene was mentioned in it. Does any of this ring a bell with you?”
“No, I’m afraid it doesn’t. But I only moved here a year ago.”
Ruby nods, her mind elsewhere, perhaps in a hair salon more than a decade ago. “If I’m correct and there’s a connection between what happened then and what’s happening to Marlene now, I think it’s likely something terrible might be on the horizon.”
“Really? But fifteen years is a long time.”
Ruby grins and touches my wrist. I feel a chill. Not from Ruby, but from the realization that there might be a dangerous person in our midst.
“The past is a funny thing,” she says with the lightheartedness that comes from personal assurance. “We might leave it behind, but that doesn’t mean it’s finished with us. The past is often to be found just over the hill or around the corner.”
SIX
I arrive at Chicken Hill a little earlier than necessary. This because I found myself crawling out of bed thirty minutes before my alarm would say I needed to. I slept a full eight hours, but if the condition of my sheets is to be believed, I spent at least a portion of the night tossing and turning. I don’t recall any dreams but I can’t escape the sense there had been scissors—long and shiny and sharp.
It is my ritual to enjoy LIT, a vitamin-enriched powdered caffeine drink, before each morning run, but this is the first time I can recall needing the caffeine just to make it to the run. But it does its job and by the time I park my car in the half-filled lot I feel mostly human. I head past the visitor’s center and join the gaggle of runners milling around near the start line.
Run For It sponsors small to medium-sized runs in Cedar Mill and surrounding towns, and if history is any guide, I won’t be able to get a moment alone with Marti until the run is completed.
I learned from watching Marti that sponsoring a run is no easy thing. To start with, the location must make sense and be practical. Often this means coordinating with the local police to help block off streets and provide protection to the runners. Then comes course design, which requires certification. You can’t have a twenty-five-mile course and call it a marathon, which is twenty-six-point-two miles.
Let’s not forget the numbered bibs with tracking mechanisms, and the all-important ‘bling’, which is the award one receives for completing the run. Additional medals are awarded those who finish first in their given category—something I need not concern myself with as, at least so far, I am strictly a middle-of-the-pack runner. Marti sees to these details as well as the various odds and ends that I, as a mere participant, would have no clue about.
Chase is good for a few phone calls and a meeting here and there, but Marti is the oil in their engine. Chase isn’t lazy; his strengths simply lay in different directions, such as the store side and contacting other local business owners to contribute sponsorship in exchange for advertising in the packets handed out to participants. He is also a great idea man. But Marti is the muscle and it’s fair to say she will clock more steps today than all the rest of us even though she will not herself be participating in the run.
I want to talk to Marti to gauge what if any fallout there might be following the embarrassing episode at her store the day before. But that isn’t going to happen anytime soon, so I decide Chase will be my best bet.
I don’t need to look far to find him. He is standing away from the rest of the pack, sipping on a Gatorade in the shade, but he’s not by himself. There is Marlene, all white teeth and batting eyelids, laughing at whatever he is saying. Instead of speaking to Chase I try hard to make myself invisible and slip by them. It doesn’t work and he calls out a hello to me and wishes me a good run. I smile and say ‘Thanks’ and hurry on by. Marlene lets her blue eyes wander anywhere but on me during the brief exchange.
If nothing else, I’m relieved to see Marlene alive and in one piece. I wasn’t aware until now that I was in fear for her safety, but I suspect it’s been in the back of my mind since Ruby’s haunting premonition the night before.
If any trouble is going to befall Marlene it will have to wait, for today the sun is shining and the people are out.
Seeing that Marlene is okay hit a button in me, and whatever baggage I carried fell right off my shoulders. I am ready to run! I draw closer to the start line and spot Carly and Gretchen near the front. Being two of the fastest runners outside of a handful of near professionals from Tulsa, the front of the line is where you expect to find them.
Carly wears a visor that reads ‘RUN HAPPY’, though her brown waves are no less lustrous from being pulled back into a pony tail and tucked under it. She pretends not to see me. I find her visor ironic because I can’t recall ever having seen the woman happy. I’ve seen her smirk a number of times while whispering under her breath, but that’s a very different thing.
I catch Gretchen’s eye and flash her a smile. She returns it with a friendly wave and that makes me feel good.
There are many other familiar faces on display, some without names and only familiar from having seen them at other runs. But I am pleased
to see many people from the Run For It running groups, such as Amy, who is also Meatball’s groomer; and Sue, whose little shop off a hidden turn along Main Street makes the best sushi I ever tasted.
“Hey, Newbie!” shouts a voice every bit as loud and obnoxious as friendly. Stax is standing under a leafy tree, feeling no rush to take her position in line.
As per usual, the faster runners take to the front of the line, the walkers are in the back, and the normal everyday runners make up the larger chunk in the middle. You’ll find me there. Stax always starts the run at my side but finishes well ahead. It’s fine with me because when you run it’s just you and your two legs. And that’s the cake. The bling, the social circle, the parties, are all just icing.
In a normal run, Ruby would be too far back in the crowd for me to see her, but the numbers today are smaller and I can spot her with other walkers from her group. She appears to be enjoying herself. I plan to stick around after I finish to cheer her on through the finish line. That’s the best way to let a runner know you like them. Stick around and cheer for them. Stax did that for me at my first 5k with the store and I’ve made a point of paying it forward ever since.
The whistle sounds. Slowly, the people in front of me start stepping forward, and I follow suit. We move forward a little faster, a little faster, then a lot faster. As soon as my foot hits the white line, I’m off.
The run is every bit as grueling as I expected. The first couple of miles are more of a climb than a run as we trek over jagged, rock-strewn cliffs that level out for a while, then tease you with a downhill stroll before sucking you into another exhausting incline. A few miles in, my calves are screaming and my toes are buckling. When I hit my next walk interval I employ a trick I learned when I first started 10k training. I eat a pickle. Or, in this case, I drink pickle juice. It works. The high salt content of the juice replenishes lost sodium, iron, and potassium. I can stop cursing Marti’s name now, at least for a few minutes.
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