Chiggers had feasted on her legs, while she'd hacked and sawed a butter knife through gobs of what she'd thought were wildflowers. A vase being as impossible to find in the trailer as a sterling tea set, Hannah had pawed through the trash heap underneath it. To a six-year-old kid, a bunch of flowers crammed in a rusty coffee can with wrinkled bits of aluminum foil glued to its sides was absolutely beautiful.
By the time Caroline Garvey had come home from the bar where she worked, Hannah had scratched her chigger bites bloody and her bouquet had wilted to a droopy "mess of goddamn weeds dirtying up the table."
Her mother had later apologized for yelling and said it was the thought that counted. The bleach water she'd dabbed on Hannah's legs had stung, but not as much as the sight of the beautiful vase and flowers strewn outside in the dirt, where her mother had thrown them.
"I still think they're pretty," Hannah told the dashboard. Particularly the tufts brushing the mailbox beside the lane to David's one-bedroom farmhouse. His temporary home was barely large enough for a bachelor sheriff, but many a memory had been made there.
The new house was gorgeous, but she'd miss hearing the rain drum on the farmhouse's sheet-metal roof, cuddling with David on the porch watching fireflies wink in the meadow, the deer grazing in the false dawn.
All that would change was the perspective. They would soon have a bluff-top vantage point, instead of being close enough to see horseflies pester a doe's flank and smell the vaporous ground fog that fell and rose with the moon's wax and wane.
Silver and gold, Hannah thought, humming the Girl Scout song about old and new friends. Her tenure in a troop had lasted maybe two meetings, but those tunes, "Kumbya" and "Gopher Guts" were ingrained in her brain.
Farther on, the narrow trestle bridge at the bottom of a hill that Ruby had warned was "too far" was now a landmark crossed before the turn into the A-frame's driveway.
Hannah lowered the window glass and breathed in the creek's loamy scent. The wet-weather springs that fed it were already slowing to trickles. In a day or so, the delicate minirainbows shimmering above eddies and near the banks would vanish and a toy boat would founder on the rocky bed.
Like the lane to the farmhouse, the new entrance was merely a break in the treeline bordering the unmown verge. Low-hanging branches snapped by bulldozers, well-drilling augers, cranes and concrete mixers would gradually reform a leafy arbor you'd have to be looking for to notice.
"Sort of like the Batcave." Hannah frowned and tried again, in a perkier tone of voice. "Sort of like the Batcave!"
Had Malcolm been along for the ride, he'd have rolled his eyes, too. Practice, she thought. That's all it takes. And a different frame of reference couldn't hurt.
Thinking of the places her personal superhero took her last night sent shivers tingling through every nerve ending. David never needed a map, or directions, to find them. Just as well, since most were gloriously uncharted territory.
From the first time they'd made love, the man had been like Magellan, constantly discovering, exploring and conquering worlds she hadn't known existed. Waking to a half-empty bed always dimmed the lingering afterglow, yet she knew a note beside the coffeepot would begin, "Good mornin', sugar" and close with "Love, David." Reading it was almost as sweet as hearing it spoken in that deep baritone drawl.
The A-frame appeared before her, its steep-pitched roof clad in shingles the color of tree bark. By day, rows of skylights resembled elongated blue mirrors, and after sunset, became a star-spangled observatory. A wraparound deck widened at the rear where a fieldstone barbecue shared its chimney with the interior fireplace. At the front, a prowlike wall of glass seemed to stretch the view to the edge of the world.
The temporary parking lot that would become the side yard ordinarily looked like McDonald's during the lunch-hour rush. Since carpooling to a construction site hadn't caught on with the local carpenters', plumbers', drywallers', electricians' and cabinetmakers' unions, Hannah had seen as many as twenty vehicles crowd the flat, once-grassy area.
Either today was a holiday she wasn't aware of, or the spirit hadn't yet moved the crew. If nobody showed before she left, she'd call David and tattle. In the meantime, she was happy to have the place to herself for once.
Acclimation was the intent. Taking and making the leap from David's house to our house to home. Feeling it, not just thinking it and saying it.
Rambo emerged from the trees, his delight at seeing her again so soon masked by a steady amber stare.
"I come in peace," Hannah told him, loudly enough to be heard by any potential wild bears renowned for shitting in the woods. Or mountain lions, who'd pretended to be extinct in this area for decades.
To Rambo, she added, "If you ever tell David, I'll swear you're lying, but it's kind of nice having you around."
Sedge grass and joe-pye weed brushed her calves as she strode to the back door. Tucking her pant legs inside her boots repelled ticks and chiggers.
Nature was a great thing. There was just so much of it here, all at once. Everywhere you lookednature, nature, nature. Trailer-park kids and condo-dwellers didn't know from nature. Was it her fault, she preferred hers neater? Channeling her inner Laura Ingalls Wilder, Hannah ducked kamikaze June bugs and keyed the back door.
The A-frame's interior was light, airy and blessedly enclosed. Despite tarps, ladders, scaffolds and dangling electrical wires, its bones were the Ponderosa meets Ikea, with a dash of industrial chic.
Exposed beams and posts supported and traversed the cathedral ceiling. Above the hearth area, open galley kitchen and guest bedroom was the master suite loft. When needed, shoji-style screens would allow privacy, without blocking the light from the window wall.
David had asked her opinion on everything from the unsuited guest room's fixtures to the hardware for the kitchen cabinets. "This is our house, not just mine," he'd said, about eight gajillion times, which approximated the number of decisions attached to building a house from the foundation up.
Strangeor maybe notthat only once had Hannah's preferences deviated from his. That's why the bathroom basins were rectangular, rather than the traditional oval. Life, in her unspoken opinion, was already too complicated to obsess over switch-plate covers, doorknobs and the relative merits of Colonial Sage wall paint over Spanish Moss Sage.
"Besides," she said, moving to answer Rambo's request to patrol the front deck, "the man made stained plywood look like parquet, already."
Retrofitting a Brazilian cherry floor was negotiable, she decided. There'd be a fight for sure, if David ever tried to rip out the concrete countertops.
Compared to the interior coolness, Mother Nature was stoking up the sauna outside. The view from the deck truly was spectacular, though. It was kind of like being in a skyscraper, Hannah thought. With a view of treetops and a glade, instead of clustered billboards, neighboring rooftops and a six-lane freeway.
"A skyscraper," she repeated. Word associations tumbled, then clicked. Her tentative smile widened to an openmouthed grin.
The Friedlich brothers had started their agency in a rented, two-room walk-up. Back then, Hannah's former employers had less advertising experience between them than she now did, by herself. Friedlich & Friedlich still managed the Clancy Construction and Development account, but it was hers for the taking. If Jack balked at the idea, she'd tell his mother.
A mental cheerleading squad yelled, Go for it. The stern voice of reason demanded research, a feasibility study and a prospectus. It also reminded Hannah of a Mod Squad assignment to complete, and the grocery list in her purse.
However, Reason assured, stupid as you've been not to have thought of going into business for yourself before now, maybe, just maybe, you can leave Valhalla Springs, physically, and still stay connected. From right here, at the corner of East Jesus and plowed ground. In David'shertheir dream house.
10
Delbert and Leo knelt beside the equipment bag they'd dragged into Chlorine Moody's backyard. Delbe
rt handed his operative a face mask, plastic goggles with duct tape over the ventilation holes, and a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves. He then parceled out heavy-duty plastic scoops, prelabeled zip-top bags and his pičce de resistance, a folded grid map of the targeted terrain.
Numbered squares corresponded to those on the bags' labels. That way, each soil sample they took could be matched to a location and voilŕan X, or more likely, several of them would mark Royal Moody's grave.
If, Delbert thought, he was right about Chlorine's modus operandi. And if being right didn't kill them before they could prove it.
He struggled to contain the jump-out-of-his-skin feeling he'd had ever since they'd breached the hedge. Before that, really. He'd nigh wet himself when that nosy kid on the bicycle had appeared in the alley out of nowhere. Then those bona fide public works department yahoos had scared his liver up behind his left ear.
"Quick, accurate and careful," he told Leo. "No shortcuts. No shillyshallying. Agreed?"
"Yes. What we are doing and why we are doing it, I don't get."
"Simple. Core out a plug of grass with the scoop. Dig down about six inches, then dump a good scoop of dirt in the bag and seal it. Fill in the hole, best you can. Cork it with the grass plug. Move to the next square and start over."
Leo's chins buckled. He looked from the goggles to the mask to the gloves. "Now tell me what it is, you are not telling me."
"Damn it, Schnur. We don't have time to"
Leo sat back on his butt and crossed his arms. He glared at Delbert like a nearsighted Teutonic Buddha in muddy coveralls and a cap. When Schnur's stubborn side took over, a dynamite enema wouldn't move him.
"Promise you'll cooperate, if I tell you?"
Suspicion narrowed Leo's eyes. He shook his head.
Well, hell. On second thought, the truth would get him off the hook for feeling guilty about endangering his best friend. Mostly off the hook. If Leo got sick, even of his own free will, Delbert would never forgive himself.
He whipped off his cap to yank the goggles' elastic band over his head. "Gotta have these, the gloves and the mask for protection. Gotta have protection, because I'm betting Chlorine poisoned Royal with arsenic."
Pulling on a glove, he ignored a sound from Leo's position similar to air sputtering out of a birthday balloon. "If she did," Delbert went on, "arsenic doesn't degrade. Ever. What's leeched into the dirt may have stunted the roses on this side of the fence, too, but we can't prove diddly without soil samples to back it up."
"The poison," Leo squeaked, "it is in the dirt?" He scrambled to his feet. "And you want we should dig it up and for to put it in bags?"
"We don't have to," Delbert shot back.
"Thank God, for"
"We could just cut to the goddamn chase and dig up Royal, instead."
Leo staggered backward, spouting gibberish and waving a frantic negatory.
"You're right about that," Delbert said, in a congratulatory tone. "If his corpse is loaded with arsenic, he's about ten times more toxic than the dirt ever thought of being."
And probably looked close to the same as he did when Chlorine buried hima fact Leo didn't need to be apprised of, but that sent gooseflesh crawling up Delbert's arms.
From the CivilWar to the early twentieth century, arsenic mixed with water was used as an embalming fluid. Delbert didn't know who discovered that the poison had an equally fatal effect on microorganisms that caused decomposition as it did on a spouse you wanted to shed. The embalming practice wasn't banned until somebody noticed that undertakers were expiring regularly due to repeated exposure to that deadly preservative.
"That's why I said we gotta be quick, accurate and careful. When we're done, every stitch we got on goes straight into the trash bags I brought, then into the biohazard bin at the hospital."
Leo aimed a mournful look at his wingtips. Delbert said, "Sorry, bub. Dig or don't, those are history. Till the lab tests are run, we don't know where the arsenic is, nor how high it's concentrated."
"If it is here."
Delbert put a fist on his hip. "Go ahead. Say it. You think I'm loco in the cabana, don't ya?"
Leo bent to retrieve his protective gear. "The bushes I have lopped and now the poison dirt, I will dig, so who of us is crazy, eh?" With that, he consulted the dot on the map and set to carving out a grass clump.
Delbert covered his mouth and nose with his face mask. It must be pitching those lace-up clodhoppers that had Leo all riled up. No problemo. On the way home, he'd treat Leo to a pair of Hush Puppies, like he'd been telling him to buy for months.
Delbert's excavation began at the spot designated Number One on the grid. Ground zero, in Delbert's estimation, which was why he'd assigned it to himself. If he were Chlorine Moody, he'd have plunked a corpse in the yard's least visible corner. Since the garage was on the south and the next-door neighbor's house was a two-story, Leo's half of the yard was less likely to be a one-salesman cemetery.
Residual irritation was expended on the hole he was digging. The sun had baked the moisture from the soil faster than he'd anticipated. A plastic scoop wasn't a shovel, either. He'd reckoned metal trowels were forbidden for sample collecting, since arsenic had some metallic properties. That, or the sons of bitches who wrote the rules had stock in a plastic scoop factory.
Progressing from Number Two to Number Three, Delbert gritted his dentures against the aches rippling from his neck to his knees. After the shoe store, he and Leo were hitting Wal-Mart for a case of Bengay. And a fifth of bourbon, for later.
The scoop's handle bent double, throwing him off balance. Wouldn't you know, a soft, sandy spot he thought he'd lucked onto had a rock smack in the middle of it.
He pecked and scraped at it to gauge its size. About to shift position a mite, he noticed reddish, flaky shards clinging to the tip of the blade.
His stomach lurched, then do-si-doed. He stared at the scoop in horror, swallowing down the bile rising in his throat. Shallow grave shallow grave beat like a dirge in time with his pulse.
Get ahold of yourself, you old fool. That hole's not but an inch or two deep. And bad as these goggles are steamed up, you couldn't tell a splotch of clay mud from well, from this gunk that ain't what you think it is.
Delbert had nearly convinced himself when his mind registered the significance of a droning sound. Sunlight glinted off the roof of the white sedan rolling up the driveway. He dropped the scoop and cupped his hands around his mouth. "Schnur! Hit the dirt! She's back!"
A clack, then the roar of an air conditioner's compressor revving the engine was as sweet as a lullaby. Chlorine wouldn't run the air with the windows down. With them up, she couldn't have heard him mayday Leo.
As the garage door rumbled open on its track, Delbert tamped the grass plug in place and grabbed the bagged soil samples and the scoop. On the opposite side of the yard, Leo lay as still as a beached whale. Chlorine likely couldn't see him for the side fence. Safer, though, to wait for her car to pull in past the driver's side window.
On five, Delbert mouthed to Leo. He pointed at the duffel bag, then at Leo, then at their tunnel. A gloved finger, then another ticked off the signal. At four, Leo panicked and scuttled for the equipment bag. By five, the duffel had popped out the far side of the fence. Had Delbert counted to six, it would have marked when Leo got stuck in the brambles.
"Go, man, go," he whispered.
Leo rocked forward and backward. Branches rustled. Rose petals fluttered down like a scarlet blizzard. "I can't, I can't."
The dull thump of a car door's slam almost stopped Delbert's heart. If Chlorine didn't see them, she'd see half the blessed hedge shaking like a palm tree in a hurricane. Then she'd see them. Meaning him. The old bat would have to run around the block and up the alley to put a face to the big, fat ass wedged between her gate and the gatepost.
Lowering his head, Delbert rammed Leo square in the rump and bounced backward a good three feet. Digging in his heels, he rammed him again, pushing fo
r all he was worth.
One second, Schnur hadn't budged an inch; the next, they were both sprawled on their bellies in the alley. Delbert glanced back at the tunnel, expecting to see Chlorine's kisser where Leo's butt had been. He had to blink a few times to believe it wasn't.
With his voice muffled by the mask still covering his mouth, Leo panted, "Thank you."
"Don't mention it," Delbert groaned. "To anybody."
It wasn't until they were transferring the soil samples and scoops from their coveralls' pockets into the duffel bag, that Delbert realized his cap was missing.
* * *
A morning that started with the ten-feet-off-the-ground feeling David always had after making love with Hannah was skidding downhill faster than a hog on ice skates.
The sense that Rocco Jarek was involved in the Beauford homicide was stuck in neutral. "The dirtbag's guilty of something" was Marlin's typical assessment pending direct evidence or a confession. Absent was the excitement, the growing anticipation of a hunt nearing a satisfying conclusion.
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