by Michael Smth
Monday had always been Eva’s baking day, and the yeasty aroma of rising bread dough filled the kitchen when Jess arrived. “I was just in the neighborhood,” he said. “Thought I’d drop by to see how things are goin’.”
Eva glanced suspiciously at him. “Cup of coffee, Jess?”
“’Preciate it.” He took a seat at the corner of the kitchen table that wasn’t stacked with bowls and canisters or dusted with stray flour.
Eva poured the coffee and went back to brushing melted butter on the four domes of dough bulging out of their bread pans. “A sheriff’s surprise visit makes me worry there’s been some cattle rustling and I’m suspect number one.” She noted Jess’ nervous smile. “If you’ve come to arrest me, at least make yourself useful. Open the oven door so I can get this bread in.”
Jess opened the door. “Careful, don’t burn yourself,” he said as Eva put the first loaf in.
“I’m OK. While I get the next one, use my oven stick to push the loaf all the way to the back.” She handed Jess a yard stick-sized piece of maple. “Hurry before all my heat escapes.”
Jess pushed the loaf to the back of the oven, then he bolted upright. “Hot doggies, Eva, that’s it!” he yelled, hugging her. “That’s how ya tell heads from tails.”
Eva blushed and stepped back. “Such a celebration over putting bread in an oven? I’m afraid to think what happens when I take it out.” She set another loaf into the oven. “Now push this one to the back. A bit more calmly, or you’ll make it fall.”
Jess shoved the loaf deep into the oven and handed Eva the stick. He called over his shoulder as he ran out, “You can do the rest, can’t ya? I got a coin to flip.”
Jess roared back into town with his siren blaring. He screeched to a halt outside his office and threw open the patrol car trunk. The piece of wooden molding he’d found at Crickette’s crime scene was there where he’d left it two weeks before. He snatched it and stormed into the office. He locked the door and went right to the evidence cabinet. Jess took Max’s snake gun out and checked to be sure it was unloaded. He cocked the gun, and with his left hand he grasped the muzzle, holding it at arm’s length. The shotgun’s business end was about two feet from his chest. Looking down the double barrel, he gripped one end of the wood molding in his right hand and rested the other end on the trigger. Jess took a deep breath and pushed.
Click.
Off the Hook
On a steamy August Sunday afternoon, Eva, Stan, Jess and Carrie sat on the Chandlers’ front porch. The women swept slowly back and forth on the glider swing, serenaded by the suspending chains’ chirping chorus. Eva pressed her glass of iced lemonade to her cheek. “Warm as it is, I think a cool drink is the only thing we’ve got over the chicken simmering on my stove.”
“That’s pretty near right, ma’am.” Jess took a swig of cold beer. “Still, could be worse.” He was thinking back to the previous February, the day he figured out how Crickette could have killed herself without an accomplice. After that, he’d quietly misplaced the piece of wood molding he’d found at the crime scene, the scrap of pink paper from Crickette’s hand, and the pages mentioning Eva in Crickette’s notebook. He’d never told Eva about suspecting she’d been involved in a murder. Or how Crickette had apparently tried to make it look like she had. No point in that. For Max’s sake, he hadn’t pursued the suicide angle either. Though he didn’t exactly lie, Jess never discouraged folks who figured he was hot on Harry Scurfman’s trail and that some day he’d trip the varmint up. Harry’s heart attack and death in April made everything easy. “Darn snake slithered out of it,” is what Lem Hickok said, and Hooker County folks agreed, reckoning the story of Crickette Conroy’s murder died with him. Jess hadn’t fought that notion. It allowed Max some peace when he moved back to Chicago in May. And gave everyone else closure, too. Since none of that squared with a good lawman’s code, Jess announced in June that he wouldn’t stand for reelection. “It’s a younger man’s job,” was all he’d said.
Stan worried that the color in Eva’s cheeks was more the heat than the fact that she was four months into her pregnancy. “You doin’ OK, hon?” He fanned her face with a newspaper.
Eva beamed. “Not just OK—I’m Okey-dokey.”
Carrie took Eva’s hand. “You surely are that.” She stopped the swing to peer into her eyes like there might be secrets hidden deep inside them. “Eva, I’ve never seen you look better. Happier.” Carrie looked away and sighed. “1957. Such a year—starting off with a murder and set to end with new life.”
Stan tapped his beer bottle to Jess’. “To new life. It’s something, all right.”
Just then Françie ran from the house with Cat in hot pursuit. She slipped behind the porch swing and threw her arms around her mother’s shoulders.
“You better not,” Cat growled at her sister.
Eva turned to look Françie in the eyes. “Better not what?”
“Tell,” Françie whispered in Eva’s ear.
“Tell what, kiddo?” Eva said.
“Squealer!” Cat yelled and crossed her arms.
Eva froze Cat with a glare. She stood and took Françie’s hand. “Come, Bijou. We’ll walk with your sister and see what’s up.” She took the sunglasses from Stan’s pocket and put them on.
Eva walked between the girls, holding each one’s hand. They went to the teeter-totter Stan had built in the shade of the towering elm behind the house. With the girls at each end of the board, Eva tended the fulcrum to keep the seesawing slow.
“I did promise not to tell.” Françie looked defiantly at Cat. “Not to tell Daddy.” She stuck out her tongue and turned back to Eva. “Last night we were playing with that arrowhead Daddy got you for Christmas in Belgium. So he sees us and says, ‘Put that away. You’ll lose it.’” She winced. “Well, we didn’t, and this morning it’s gone. We looked all over. He’s gonna kill us.”
“You didn’t mind your father,” Eva said. “I’d say he has a right to be upset.”
“But not to paddle us real hard,” Cat pleaded, “That’s why we can’t tell him, Françie.”
Eva smiled. “Your father has never paddled you too hard, much less killed you.” She sighed. “Besides, knowing you did something wrong and carrying it as a dark secret can be much worse than getting it over and done with. That’s something even mothers have to learn.”
“You lose stuff, too, Mama?” Françie asked.
“I used to say I lost my childhood. But in wartime, I suppose that’s true for many other children as well. What’s worse is to grow up hiding from something you’ve done. Then what’s lost is you.” Eva held the seesaw steady and gazed for a moment into the distance. “I don’t want that for you, Mon Bijoux. Come, sit with me on the grass.” She pointed to the base of the tree.
Eva sat between her two girls. She took a deep breath. “I’ve told you about Franka, the goose so tiny she looked like a wren. You remember don’t you?” The girls nodded yes. “As I said before, Franka secretly helped the geese for a time when they took over the forest. Doing that, she betrayed the other animals there. It was bad. Though it took her a while, when she saw the geese were evil, she did turn against them and worked to throw them out. But after the geese were gone and even when she had a family of her own, Franka couldn’t forget what she’d done. The black secret of her past followed her wherever she went. Whatever she did. And she feared it more than death.” Eva was glad for Stan’s sunglasses—the girls didn’t see her tears. “Then one day everything changed. Franka told her husband what she’d done, and he held her and kissed her and said, ‘Honey, you’re off the hook.’ And off the hook is how she felt—as if the darkness in her past had vanished in a magician’s puff of smoke. It was the first day of her new life.”
After a moment of silence, Eva said, “I’d never say losing something like an arrowhead is anything like what Franka did, helping the geese. I just don’t want either of you to have to learn it the hard way—that hiding what you’ve done, however big o
r small, can’t make it go away. I think that’s what Franka would want you to know.”
Cat looked at Françie and bit her lip. “Guess we better go face the music. Mama, you’ll come with us, won’t you? Just in case.”
The girls walked slowly to the front porch. With their mother right behind, they stood before Stan, silent for a moment, holding hands. Finally, after a nudge from her sister, Cat said, “Daddy, we did something really bad, but we’re really sorry, and we really want to confess so it won’t follow us around forever.”
Eva walked around the girls to Stan’s side and put a hand on his shoulder.
“Know Mama’s Pawnee arrowhead? The one we were playing with last night?” Cat cringed. “And you told us to put it up?”
Stan took Eva’s hand and leaned forward. “You mean the one I gave your mother so many years ago? The one so special she keeps it in that box on the mantle? That the one you mean?”
“Yes, sir, that one.” Cat swallowed hard. “I think Françie might have lost it…or maybe it was me. Anyway, we’re really, really sorry, and we know you’ll probably want to paddle us good, ’cuz we didn’t put it up when you told us and Mama liked it so much. But we just thought maybe if we were honest….”
Stan sighed. “Even if I wanted to go easy on ya, losin’ a valuable Indian artifact—that’s a big deal. May have to turn the matter over to the authorities. Folks get jail time for stuff like that.” His look brightened. “Still, you did come clean.” He turned to Jess. “Correct me if I’m wrong, sheriff, but when culprits confess, they sometimes get off light, don’t they?”
“Sure we take it into account,” Jess said, “’specially when we’re partial to the owlhoots that done the lawbreakin’.” He winked at the girls.
Eva squeezed Stan’s hand and said, “Didn’t you tell me once that owning up to your past can sometimes make it disappear?”
Stan sighed theatrically. “Come here you two.” He gathered a girl in each arm and held them close to his chest. “It’s nice that both your mama and the law’s willin’ to cut you some slack. But there’s still the matter of an empty box and a missin’ arrowhead.” Stan slipped two fingers into the breast pocket of his shirt and steathfully pulled the flint point out. Grinning, he flashed it for Eva to see. Palming the arrowhead, he pushed a lock of Françie’s hair aside and fumbled behind her ear. “Well looky what I found hiding back here in this pommes de terre garden.” With a voilà! he brandished the arrowhead like it was the Hope diamond.
Cat and Françie squealed and hugged their father’s neck.
“Why don’t you two run and get its box from the mantle,” Eva said to the girls. When they’d raced inside the house, she put her arms around Stan’s neck and kissed him. “So, when did you find it, Monsieur Voilà?”
“Last night—figured I’d hang on to it till they knew it was missin’.” He grinned. “Let ’em sweat a little.”
When the girls ran back, Cat was holding the box. She took the arrowhead and placed it gently inside. After ceremoniously closing the lid, she bowed and presented the box to Eva.
Françie took Stan’s hand in both of hers. “So Daddy, do you still have to paddle us?”
Stan stroked his chin. “Why don’t we see how good a job you two do, settin’ the table for dinner now and cleanin’ up after? Do that fine, and I reckon, as they say, you’re off the hook.”