Twillyweed

by Mary Anne Kelly

  “Yes,” I murmured thoughtfully, “that was terrible what she did, to keep the baby’s father from knowing he was alive.”

  “So now you know why everyone dislikes her. And there are other reasons. She tried to kill Noola’s cat, by the way. Just ask Teddy. He was there. He saw her. Look, Daniel might be off kilter but he would never purposely hurt someone. He’s one of us.”

  I leaned back in my seat. “Poor Daniel. Just how … uh … unstable is he? Does he have moments of clarity or is he always sort of out there?”

  She shook her head. “Sometimes even I don’t know. It’s hard to determine where emotional disturbance leads off and physical brain damage begins. You know—scar tissue. Let’s just put it this way: He’s a dimwit. On the other hand, he can do things no one else can. Noola had him tinkering with watches before he was ten. He can still take them apart and put them back together flawlessly.”

  “He told me something unnerving when we were on the beach. He said someone gave Noola bad tea,” I confided.

  “That’s ridiculous. He’s just parroting something he heard.”

  “And really, Paige, I’m just wondering if there could have been any truth to Mrs. Dellaverna trying to hurt a cat. I’ve seen her with my little kitten and I can’t imagine—”

  “Claire,” she said, giving me a crippling look, “you don’t have to make it all right. You are the most naive person I’ve ever met!” She turned and looked me full in the face with this seething expression and for a moment I thought she knew everything I felt and was going to hit me. But she wasn’t angry; she was upset. She went on, “Look, there’s so much you don’t know.”

  “All right, so please tell me.”

  “My family never received an insurance settlement when Daniel was hit by the For Sail. His skull was shattered. Well, Noola couldn’t do enough for us, for his rehab—she paid for everything. And believe me, it went on for years! It was very different in those days. You didn’t sue your friends. It just wasn’t done. At least our sort wouldn’t. And back then there was plenty of money.”

  The significance of what she was saying hit me. I was beginning to understand Morgan’s inherited sense of contrition. This certainly explained it.

  “Oliver was so young when that happened. So was I. We were just kids.” She switched the radio off and sighed. “It’s just … difficult right now since Noola died and Annabel took off.” She held her neck. “Daniel was very close to both of them and seemed to be coming along. He’s sort of lost, at the moment. And now with Patsy Mooney—” She turned to me. “Don’t think for one moment that Daniel killed Patsy, all right? Don’t even think it!”

  “I didn’t!” I lied. Actually, I’d hoped he had so it wouldn’t have been anyone else. We rode in silence. So she, too, suspected someone other than the husband had killed Patsy Mooney. Why, I wondered, was that? Was she just protecting Daniel? So far that she’d let someone else go to jail for what he’d done? I wanted to keep her talking about him. I said, “Doesn’t anyone take Daniel out for therapy? You know, like out to sail?”

  She gave a scornful laugh. “Who would take him? Oliver? Oliver can’t bear to be around him. Daniel’s afraid of Morgan—and me. It’s all I can do to put his house to a modicum of order! He never lets me take him to a barber. He leaves the tub filthy—”

  I said, “I went to see Teddy, yesterday, and—”

  “Why?” She shot me another murderous look. “Why are you so interested in— What business is it of yours if—”

  “Well, for one thing”—antagonized, now, I finished for her—“my niece is living in a house where murder was committed, okay? For me, that’s reason enough. I thought Teddy had no reason to be covering up for anyone and would give me some straight answers. As it happened, Glinty popped up. That’s how I found out—”

  “Ah! I suppose he told you all our gory financial details. I do everything I can to keep that little monster pacified and he turns around and sells us out at every turn.”

  Silently, I agreed.

  “And Teddy chimed in and backed him up, I suppose!” she continued. “After I did everything I could to make him self-sufficient, to put him on the right track, the little brat does nothing but blame me. Tell the truth. He does, doesn’t he?”

  “No,” I said, touched by her moment of vulnerability, “he didn’t blame you at all.” I remembered Glinty’s peevishness. “It’s Glinty who lets loose on everyone, I’d say.”

  “Yes, of course. Teddy never blames the men. It’s always us women who get the brunt of it with Teddy.” She turned to me and now I saw the resemblance clearly, wondering how I’d ever missed it. Oliver, Paige, Daniel, and Teddy. They all had those dazzling light-blue eyes.

  “I’ll bet Teddy didn’t mention how he grew up at Guardian Angel House,” she spat. “I’ll bet he didn’t tell you how they would punish him for wetting the bed and I’d have to go and get him, hide him in my closet so Oliver wouldn’t drag him back there! And I was young myself!”

  “Oh, that’s horrible!” We lurched to a halt at a red light.

  “Yes, it’s horrible. His whole life was horrible. His good times were when he was allowed home for holidays to live with his half-wit father. My brother should have died back then when he was smashed in the head. He was meant to. We all would have been better off. Teddy would have gone into foster care and been better off. I know it sounds heathen but it’s true!” Hot tears sprang from her eyes and she wiped them away with an angry back of the hand. Then she backed off. “I don’t mean it! I don’t really wish he’d died!”

  “Of course not. It was just all inside and had to come out,” I soothed.

  The light turned green. She put her foot down on the gas and took off at such an inappropriate speed that for a moment I wondered if she, too, was unhinged. I held my breath. We were coming into Roslyn now, passing the Americana Mall. Neither of us spoke until we got to St. Francis. I was glad to get out of that car. As we walked through the lobby and past the double doors, Paige calmed down. She knew just what to do, where to go. Her college friend, a woman who was a kind of thicker version of herself—the same single strand of pearls and chic, nubby jacket (I was in just such a go-to-get-a-job-jacket of my sister’s)—met us at the elevator and walked us right through to the lab. I was put into a chair to fill out a lot of insurance forms and then a comforting, heavyset black lady in mahogany lipstick bumped in transporting a whole collection of blood in glass vials on a trolley. She sat down across from me and, rolling up my sleeve, clucked away my nervousness. It was over before I could break into a sweat. As we walked back to the parking lot, I got the feeling Paige was upset again. “What’s up?” I asked her.

  She got in the car and pulled her seat belt across. “I mentioned Doctor Varanasi to the tech while you were in the ladies’ room—the doctor Annabel ran away with?”

  “Yeah?”

  “She said he never even stayed down in Virginia. He didn’t like it. He came right back.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Uh-huh. He never gave up his job here.”

  “Could it be that Annabel didn’t actually leave town with him? Could she have left with someone else?”

  “Don’t be silly! Annabel wrote to Oliver and told him all about it.”

  “Where were the letters from?”

  Paige thought a moment. I could tell she was rattled. “First Jersey. No, first that hotel in the city. Then Toms River. Then Virginia. They were settling there. That’s what she wrote.”

  “Wouldn’t you want to call him up and check this out with him?”

  “Oh, sure. Let the whole world know she deserted Oliver!” She eased the car onto Port Washington Boulevard.

  I said, “I’m beginning to think Annabel never left Sea Cliff at all. I think there might have been foul play.”

  “What do you mean?” Her fingers trembled as she lit a cigar
ette.

  “I have a strong hunch Annabel might be dead.”

  “Stop it. You’re just paranoid because of Patsy. It’s possible they broke up and went their separate ways, but I doubt it. I read her letters, Claire. They’re in her handwriting. She’s very clearly alive. And”—Paige snorted—“having fun, in the biblical sense.”

  I sensed that she was holding something back. “Someone could have forged those letters.”

  She avoided my eyes. “You mean Glinty?”

  That stopped me. I hadn’t been thinking of him at all.

  Paige went on, “Why, because he knows how to forge? Oh, I saw how you noticed the paintings were copies. You were shrewd, not saying a word.”

  Paintings? Forgeries? This was getting better and better.

  “But no,” she persisted, “I know her handwriting. She has that affected tiny script with all the curlicues. A forger wouldn’t have known to mimic them. I might not be good at relationships but I notice things. Small things. Like, she’d put a little sort of squiggle under combinations of vowels. I before E. Maybe she had trouble spelling and it was a sort of trick to remember. A forger wouldn’t know about that.”

  I wondered how she could be so certain? If someone can forge paintings, he can certainly forge letters. Can’t he? Then a thought chilled me. Could she have had something to do with Annabel’s disappearance? I said, “About the paintings …”

  “All right, it’s true. Oliver hired Glinty to make copies of them. Morgan knew he did it. He looked the other way because he didn’t want Oliver to get in trouble with the insurance company.”

  “Don’t we turn here, Paige? Where are you going?”

  “I’m sorry. I was distracted. I’ll drive around and back. Oh, never mind, I’ll just take Northern Boulevard. It’s probably faster now anyway with the traffic.”

  We drove along, both of us longingly eyeing Anthropologie, neither of us able to afford their peppery, stylish clothes.

  “There’s going to be a town yard sale this afternoon.” She looked at the time. “It’s still early enough so we can have our pick of the stuff.”

  “Do you think we should go after all that’s happened?”

  “Of course. It’s for charity.”

  “Everything’s for charity in Sea Cliff,” I grumbled. Then I saw her face. “Oh, I’m just cranky because I haven’t much money to spend.”

  She gave me a piercing look. “This is not about you, Claire.”

  “I’m sorry. You’re right. And I am grateful to you for arranging my blood test.”

  “Good. Let’s just hope it works out all right. Come on, we’ll go. It’ll be good for us to be away from the house.” She relaxed, arranging her pearl strands in the mirror. “We wouldn’t want people to think we felt guilty, after all. And it’s a nice walk, the yard sale. Take our minds off … things. You’ll enjoy it. And Morgan will be there. You like him, don’t you?”

  “Sure,” I answered, overbright. She knew I did. Why would she ask me that? Hadn’t she warned me off him at the club? He was hers, after all. Was she trying to rub it in?

  “He always comes,” she went on, suddenly in a good mood, “and he has a good eye, always finds something valuable for nothing. He has the knack. I could just kill him.”

  “Coals to Newcastle,” I said without thinking.

  “Yes,” she agreed bitterly.

  “Soon enough what’s his will be yours,” I reminded her unhappily.

  She sighed heavily and said, “Nothing’s ever that easy, though, is it?”

  “Why, what do you mean? Because Patsy’s dead?”

  She reached across and grabbed my hand. “You will come, won’t you? You promise? Things are always smoother when you’re around. I don’t know why.”

  “I said I would.” I released my hand and settled back into my seat, flattered and insulted in one gulp. I was glad to be going to see Morgan, but disappointed because his fiancée was adamant about having me there. If she wasn’t the least bit jealous of me—she who by her own admission was born jealous—where did that leave me?

  Jenny Rose

  Wendell was taking his time at the sink. She’d had him brush his teeth to distract him while she waited by the bed with a storybook, hoping she could get him to take a short nap before lunch. It was to be a full afternoon. He wouldn’t take off his cap. He was overwrought. It was no wonder. “Come on, Wendell, shake a leg.”

  He pushed his shoes off and climbed onto the bed and looked out the window. He wouldn’t look at her.

  “Well,” Jenny Rose said, annoyed now. “What is it?”

  “You don’t believe me.”

  She heaved a sigh. “All right, tell me.”

  “I saw him. I saw Teddy. He put the cat in the box and he put a big stone on top. I was up there at Noola’s house. I was in the portyhole cabin, looking out the blue window. I wasn’t never supposed to go in unless I told Noola but I had to go for a little attention.” Beads of sweat came to his lip and, hot now, he swiped off his cap and threw it to the floor. “I thought Teddy was playing a game. And he … he got in his car and started to back up over the box. But Mrs. Dellaverna, she come running out waving a big towel and the hacker and chasing him with the hacker and she kicked the box open and the cat ran off. Weedy. That was Weedy.”

  Jenny Rose kept her eyes steadily on his. It was the hacker that made it seem true. She’d seen that hacker when they went to the cottage. “He can’t have meant—”

  Wendell shook his head vehemently yes. “Oh, yes, yes, he did too mean to do it. He put the box down right there in the driveway! But Weedy never come back. Never did. And now everybody’s mad at Mrs. Dellaverna.”

  Jenny Rose stared at Wendell. “Are you sure, lad? Because—”

  “I wouldn’t fib to you, Jenny Rose.” He crossed his heart sincerely and continued heatedly, right where he’d left off, the scenario still unwinding before him. “Mrs. Dellaverna and Teddy had a big fight. Right there in the road. And Teddy pretended like it wasn’t his fault; he said that Mrs. Dellaverna put the box on the road and she was crazy. But it wasn’t that way. And everybody came out and got yelling at Mrs. Dellaverna but I say it wasn’t her fault. And when Mama comes back she’ll say so, too.”

  “Oh, Wendell!” She reached over and took him in her arms. There was no settling him. “Oh, dear one!” She hugged him tightly.

  But he wasn’t finished. He kept on, nodding and blubbering, “I told Mama everything and she told me not to say another word. Because ‘We’re going to trap Teddy,’ Mama said, ‘Just like he trapped the poor cat. …’ But Mama put her finger here like this”—he pressed his pointer finger on his mouth—“and she said, ‘Don’t say another word, Wendell. Promise me now!’ and she went out and I never did, not until you came and me and you got to be friends.” He picked wretchedly at a scab on his leg.

  “What do you mean? Is that why you never spoke? She told you that before she went away?”

  One large tear fought its way down Wendell’s heated cheek. “Yes.”

  Downstairs, the telephone rang. Mr. Piet was down in the cellar hunting for the rice bin.

  Teddy picked up. “Twillyweed,” he said.

  “It’s Glinty, here. May I speak to the fair Miss Jenny Rose Cashin?”

  “I’m sorry,” Teddy said in his most limpid voice, “she doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  “To me?” Glinty, over the sound of the boats in the background, seemed puzzled.

  “I guess not,” Teddy said. “Maybe because of something you said.”

  “I said nary an off word.” Glinty searched his mind.

  “Or something you promised? I’ll bet you must have,” Teddy suggested, sounding concerned. He took out a cigarette and lit it with his gold lighter, then slipped the glamorous Dunhill away in his pocket. “I’ll bet you used that sharp tongue of
yours. So sharp you might just cut yourself. …”

  “I wouldn’t bet too soon, if I were you, Teddy,” Glinty shot back, insulted. “What you gain on the horses you lose on the roundabouts.” He hung up the phone.

  Claire

  We pulled into a backup of traffic. There was a line of cars blocking Carpenter Avenue where the series of yard sales began. “Tourists! Already!” Paige fumed then suggested, “We might as well park and walk the rest of the way. Mr. Piet can come and get the car later.”

  Before I could answer her, Jenny Rose must have spotted us, for she came rocketing over.

  “They caught Donald Woods fishing off the pier on Island Park Bridge!” she gasped.

  “That’s wonderful,” Paige exclaimed. “Where’s Wendell?”

  “Guardian Angel’s got it all set up for the kids. Oliver’s taken him on the swings.” She lowered her voice. “He’s dead upset, you know.”

  “Well, aren’t we all,” said Paige.

  We got out of the car and walked across someone’s yard, trampling soft blue pansies and pink lady’s slipper. To get out of the way, we segued onto an open lane of card tables filled with beguiling sale items. A lamp made from limestone. Dominoes. Christmas cards from the 1950s. An antique comb and brush set inlaid with ivory. Jenny Rose and Paige hung together and convivially lit their cigarettes. That’s the thing about smokers, they get all chummy and you feel like you’re not in on something. “This Donald Woods must have protested violently,” Jenny Rose was saying. “He swore he had nothing at all to do with Patsy Mooney’s death. Made a big scene!”

  Paige shook her match out. “Well, of course he would, wouldn’t he?”

  “Yeah. He swore he hadn’t seen Patsy in more than three years and has a new girlfriend now, who owns a gourmet truck down in Long Beach and they’re planning to get married. But Oliver found out at the police station that Donald was definitely seen in Sea Cliff the day before Patsy Mooney was murdered. He was seen in the deli. They have surveillance video of him. Positively identified.”