“I can’t tell you,” she said. “I won’t tell.”
He tried to think of a different approach.
“What do you know about Simon?” he asked. “Was he a friend of Edna Pratt’s?”
She blew her nose loudly.
“He was a friend of Edna’s grandfather,” she said. “They were buddies when they were young.”
“Edna’s grandfather?” Danny said. “But Simon is only in his fifties or sixties.”
She closed her eyes and spoke softly.
“He is older than you’d think,” she said. “Much, much older.”
Danny thought of the photos, of all of the doctored pictures that featured Simon at different, recognizable points in time. Was it possible he had convinced these women that he had actually been around when each of those photos was taken? Danny quickly did the math in his head. If the oldest photo had been taken in the mid 1800s, and the guy had been in his sixties at the time, that meant he was now over 200 years old! More than that, throw in the painting, and he’d be closer to 300!
Danny tried not to gasp, realizing that the reason for the photos and the painting was to convince these women that he was that old. He had probably been peddling some sort of pills or antiaging cream or something, telling them that if they used it, they could keep from growing old, as he had. Why else would he want them to think he had lived for centuries?
“How do you know he was a friend of Edna’s grandfather?” Danny asked, hoping to start simple and move on from there.
“Edna had a photo of herself as a little girl, with him standing behind her and next to her grandfather.”
“Did she remember him from when she was a child?”
“Yes. Of course.”
Danny thought about that. Edna remembered this man from when she was a child? That meant one of two things: Either she was mistaken, or she was lying.
“Was the photo she had a family scene, on a front stoop, like from the fifties?”
“Yes,” she gasped. “That’s the one.”
She opened her mouth as if to say more, but suddenly the door swung open and Mrs. Louise Parker appeared in the doorway. According to Danny’s mother, Mrs. Parker was one of those who had walked out of the meeting when she saw Simon’s picture.
“Iris!” she said. “What are you doing?”
Danny was devastated to see Mrs. Chutney pull back into herself and close her mouth. He knew this conversation was over.
“I was asking her about a man named Simon Foster,” Danny said bravely. “Do you know him?”
If she did, she wasn’t showing it in her face. She simply shook her head, reached out for Mrs. Chutney’s hand, and pulled her up from the chair.
“I’m sorry, but Iris and I have to go.”
Just like that, the two women were gone. Danny and his mother looked at each other, eyes wide.
“Don’t ask, Mom,” he said, shaking his head. “It’s just too complicated to explain.”
Simon couldn’t stop pacing. Wiggles had gone out drinking, so he had the house to himself—a rare luxury. As good as his word, Simon had done all the dishes and taken out the trash. After that, he’d dug around in Wiggles’ rusty old tool cabinet, coming out with a hack saw and half a can of spray paint. Then he retrieved the stolen bicycle from the the field nearby, sawed off the lock, and spray painted it a completely different color. Now all that remained was to kill time until the morning, when he could call the bank and see if the checks had cleared and the money was available for withdrawal.
Last night’s misery—and today’s resulting stiffness and pain—had convinced him that this was a risk worth taking. He was going for broke. If the money in the bank was free and clear by tomorrow, he was going to do what he needed to do to claim it. Someway, somehow, Edna had changed her mind and hadn’t gone to the police. He just knew it, deep in his gut.
Though it was too early to go to bed, Simon was bone tired. He changed into pajamas, brushed his teeth, and laid the sheets out on the couch. He slid his suitcase from under the easy chair, reached into one of the hidden pockets, and pulled out his favorite picture, one of him and Edna as children. He held it tenderly, wondering if she could still remember that day as vividly as he could.
It was a Wednesday in June 1954, and their father had been released from prison the day before. The three years their dad had spent in the joint had made him thinner and more short-tempered—but it had also made him more extravagant. When he came home, he told everyone, relatives and kids included, to get dressed up because they were heading out for a steak dinner, a true luxury in those days. To this day, Simon wondered how he had paid for it.
Their mother had seemed beside herself, thrilled to have her husband home again, optimistic that everything was going to be easier for her, now that she didn’t have to be a mother and the breadwinner at the same time. It had been a happy family day, filled with laughter and celebration. Their neighbor snapped the photo of the whole group out on their own front stoop, and in the picture Simon and Edna stood side by side, brother and sister, friends for life.
A month later, their mother went upstairs and hung herself by the sash from her bathrobe.
In the suicide note, she said simply that life was “too much.” Simon and Edna never knew what that meant, exactly. How much is too much? Would they also someday have “too much” too?
After that, they held on to each other even more tightly. Their father was an okay guy, a little short on parenting skills but he did the best he could. Saddled with two children, he could have taken the easy route and unloaded them onto someone else. Instead, he decided to pull them into the grift. Within months, the three of them were traveling carnies, working the cat rack or the milk bottles, using every trick they knew to separate the customers from their cash.
Their dad had learned a lot in the joint, and he worked hard to pass the knowledge along to his children. Edna was the perfect shill, enthusiastically winning the games as an example for the customers, then quietly returning her “prizes” at the end of the night. Simon’s role was a little less defined, but from one night to the next it might include running some three-card monte in the back, playing the shell game, or even doing a little pickpocketing.
They stayed with the carnival until Edna was seventeen and she fell in love with a mark. She ran off with him and reinvented herself, in one quick civil ceremony, leaving behind forever Edna Kurtz, carnie tramp, and becoming Edna Evans, housewife and mother. She distanced herself from her family and her past, and Simon didn’t blame her. Given the chance, he might have done the same thing too. Now she was Edna Pratt, twice widowed and no one even the wiser to the truths about her past.
Simon hadn’t stuck around the carnival for very long once Edna was gone. He was tired of busting his hump for small change, tired of seeing his father drink away what little money they did manage to bring in. When his dad finally died from liver failure, Simon took off for bigger and better things. Soon, he was working cons his father never dreamed of, big-time stuff, cons that took brains and planning and teamwork.
Simon and Edna stayed in touch. When Sally was born, Simon was allowed to come around, as long as he promised never to breathe a word about Edna’s carny past. There was something about having a baby in the family that made Simon feel hopeful, as though something there could still be redeemed. Conning was the only way he knew to make a living, but his hope was that this family legacy would end with his generation.
When Sally was a toddler, Simon entered into his biggest con game yet—only to find that one member of the drag team was actually an undercover cop. Simon got fifteen years and served seven in a cell with Wiggles, who was in for grand theft auto. Simon’s life since then had been a series of other cons—some successful, some not so successful—until the biggest one he ever thought up, the one he came to Mulberry Glen to pull off.
If only Edna hadn’t messed everything up.
Jo peeked out of the back window, hoping to see Danny walking acro
ss the dark lawn from his house to hers. It was taking him so much longer to get home than she expected—and she really wanted to talk to him! She dropped the curtain and returned to the papers she had spread on the table. She couldn’t wait to show him what she’d found.
The evening had been an interesting one, to say the least. Marie was thrilled to get the listing, especially because she had already listed another home on the block just a few doors down. So, while she thoroughly examined, inside and out, the home she would be putting up for sale, Jo went through Edna’s papers.
Jo was determined to remember where she had seen the name Kurtz—and when she found it, everything came rushing back. Kurtz was the name on Edna’s birth certificate—her maiden name—which meant that Simon Kurtz was, most likely, a relative, probably Edna’s brother or a very close cousin. There was a boy with Edna in many of her childhood pictures, a boy who could easily have grown up to look like the man they knew from photographs as Simon.
Jo recalled her conversation with Sally after the funeral, when she asked Sally if her mother had known anyone by the name of Simon.
“I used to have a relative named Simon,” Sally had said, “but he died when I was a child.”
Died? Unless there were two Simons in the family, that was more than likely not true. The question now was whether Sally was lying—or if she had been lied to by others.
Jo wanted to call Sally and ask her more about the relative named Simon, but she didn’t want to push things too far. Sally had already made it clear she didn’t think her mother had been murdered—and that such reasoning, if pursued, could mess up her chances in the upcoming election. Jo was afraid that if Sally knew she was still pursing this notion, then she might fire her from the job of settling Edna’s affairs—thus ending Jo’s access to Edna’s home and possessions.
Tomorrow Marie would be bringing over the real estate contract for the house, so Jo decided to wait until then, using that as an excuse to call Sally for her fax number, and slip in a few of her questions as nonchalantly as possible. It seemed like a plan, anyway.
“Jo, you home?” a familiar voice called, and Jo realized Danny had come in through the front door.
“In the kitchen,” she called.
“Why was your door unlocked?” he scolded as he entered. His eyes were sparkling, and for a moment Jo was captivated by the intensity of his expression. Danny always did have beautiful eyes.
“Why did you come in through the front?” she countered.
“I was running so late, I just parked here instead of at my house. But you really should lock your door.”
“Well, sorry,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking. At least I kept the doors locked at Edna’s house—and I left there when Marie did, just to be safe.”
“Good,” he said, going to the fridge and helping himself to one of the cold sodas she kept on hand just for him. “Boy, do I have some developments for you.”
“I’ve got some for you too.”
She went through hers first, showing him the photos and papers on the table, talking about her ideas and theories. Her most interesting “find” of the evening was a photograph, the smaller version of one of the photos they had discovered in the hiding place under the tub. It was the picture that showed a family all dressed up and sitting on a front stoop. In the small version of the photo, however, there was no silver-haired mustached gentleman standing in the back row—just an empty wooden wall. Jo had brought the original photo back to her house, along with the doctored enlargement of the same thing, and Danny set them on the table, side by side, looking from one to the other.
“Kind of creepy, isn’t it, to add yourself as an adult to a picture you’re already in as a child?”
“But it works,” Jo said. “If you didn’t realize that man and that boy were the same person, you’d just think they were similar-looking relatives.”
“That’s true.”
Jo had also gone online to the Florida database of prisoners and printed out a whole bunch of information about Simon Kurtz. Sure enough, the police chief had been right: The records were simply there for the finding. This man’s crimes were on display for all the world to see.
All of Simon’s convictions were for crimes that fell along the lines of fraud, theft, and deception. There wasn’t a violent offense on the list, though, which gave her an odd feeling. If Simon hadn’t killed Edna, then who had? Suddenly, Jo felt an urgency to get to know the women this man had somehow fleeced. Could one of them have been angry enough to kill? If so, then why was it that Edna was dead and not Simon?
When she and Danny had gone through everything she found, it was his turn to share about his conversation at the church with Mrs. Chutney—and the odd behavior of Mrs. Parker.
“I think we need to pay a visit to Mrs. Parker,” Jo said. “Ask her straight out what she’s trying to hide. Maybe we’ll talk to both women and show them these two photos, side by side.”
“I’ve got more,” Danny added, “other originals I found online before Simon had himself inserted into them. They make pretty convincing evidence when you look at them this way.”
“Let’s do it tomorrow,” she said. “Soon as you get back from Moore City.”
Danny studied her beautiful face for a moment and then smiled.
“You like to stir the pot, don’t you, Jo?”
She grinned.
“Oh, Danny. Stirring the pot is what I do best.”
20
The next morning Jo awoke with an odd heaviness on her heart, a vague feeling of disquiet that lingered over from sleep. She opened her eyes and sat up in bed and then it hit her: Today was Wednesday, the day she would have returned back from her honeymoon.
Today was the day her life as a married woman was supposed to have begun in earnest.
She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat there for a while, wondering if Bradford had kept the same return time for his flight from Bermuda. If so, then he’d be arriving at the Moore City airport around ten or eleven this morning. She wondered if he would drive to Mulberry Glen to seek her out to talk—or if he’d head the other direction, to his apartment in New York, and continue to pretend there was nothing to talk about.
“I don’t get it, God,” Jo said, looking up at the ceiling. “How does a man walk out on a wedding and then not even explain himself to the bride?”
Part of her hoped he would show up today so that at the very least she could have some closure. Another part of her felt that she’d be happier if she never saw him again for the rest of her life. What was there to talk about, anyway? That he didn’t really love her? That he’d saved them both from a huge mistake? She didn’t want to hear it, not any of it.
Then again, once she was dressed in her cleaning clothes and ready to head to Edna’s, she scribbled out a note and taped it to her front door, just in case. It said, “If you’re looking for Jo Tulip, go to 387 Weeping Willow Way.”
At least that way, if he did come looking for her, he’d be able to find her.
She got a very early start on Edna’s bedroom and bathroom. Going through all of the stuff was really quite distracting—fun, even—and she added a box for small collectables and things that she thought might bring a better price on eBay than at the yard sale.
The appraiser showed up promptly at nine, and Jo went slowly through the house with her, taking notes as the woman talked. There were only a few pieces of furniture of any value, and even those weren’t that extraordinary. After the woman left, Jo scheduled a pickup from a consignment shop for those pieces, and then she returned to the busy work of slowly packing up Edna’s possessions. She was making very good time.
She had just finished with the master bedroom and bathroom when Marie came by with the real estate contract. Jo looked it over, saying she would fax it to Edna’s daughter when she ran home for lunch.
“Thanks again for this opportunity,” Marie said, picking up her briefcase and reaching for the doorknob. “I really appreciate it.”
Jo went outside with Marie as she pointed out where the For Sale sign would eventually go in the yard, and then she walked with her to the other house Marie was representing on the same street. It was across the street and down three, a modest ranch home like Edna’s, but with faded cedar shingles and a much older roof.
“This looks like a real fixer-upper,” Jo said, taking in the sight of the run-down house and its weedy yard. “I bet Edna’s house sells first.”
“Yeah, I’ve been trying to talk the owners into making some minor improvements, but they have already moved halfway across the country. They just want to get it sold, even if they have to take a loss.”
Jo knelt down to examine a giant brown splotch in front of her.
“These stains really mess up the look of the whole driveway.”
“I know.”
“You’ve got a couple of choices for getting rid of them, if you want.”
Marie smiled.
“Ah, Jo, I should have known better than to bring you over here. Don’t go inside, or you’ll end up giving me enough household hints to keep me busy for a week!”
Jo laughed.
“I think it would make a big difference,” she said, waving again toward the splotches. “You want to take notes here or not?”
“Fine,” Marie said, putting down her briefcase and taking out a pen and notepad. “Go ahead.”
“Step one,” Jo said. “Wet down the stains with a hose and then, believe it or not, sprinkle them with lemon Kool-Aid. Cover them with plastic, let them soak for about fifteen minutes, and then scrub with a brush and rinse. The stains should be gone.”
“And if they’re not?”
“Then you try step two. Get some oven cleaner, spray it on kind of heavily, let it sit for fifteen, and then rinse.”
“You think if I do that, the driveway will look better?”
“I think if you do that, the driveway will look like new.”
“Well, thanks, Jo. If my showing this morning doesn’t pan out, maybe I will give it a try. Not exactly in the job description, but then again, I’m getting desperate.”
The Trouble With Tulip Page 18