by Peg Herring
Scarlet almost smiled at the puzzled look that comment brought to Bud’s face. He turned to her, but she concentrated on neatly the stacking dishes left on various surfaces.
Seamus had sensed all afternoon that Scarlet avoided speaking to Bud. Worse, she avoided thinking about Bud, which meant he got no take at all from her on his likeliest suspect. If Dunbar’s death was murder, he reminded himself. Scarlet had opinions on the others in the household. Arlis she considered spoiled and more than moderately irritating. Arnold was treated with cold politeness, and Seamus suspected she had warded off more than one pass. Shelley, the cook/housekeeper, was a force to be reckoned with, but Scarlet seemed to respect her and did not mind pitching in when possible to make her work a little lighter.
“It’s a shame Leland couldn’t be here,” Arlis said with a sigh. “I called him, of course, but he’s still in Nepal. Something to do with orphans. He sends his love to all.”
“Hmm.” Bud again tried to catch Scarlet’s eye. She wiped a coffee stain up with a napkin, taking longer with the task than was strictly necessary.
“Did you see the outfit Carol Olds was wearing?” Arlis asked. No one answered, but a one-sided conversation never stopped Arlis. “It was ghastly. She’s much too old for florals.”
“Scarlet, have you seen Brodie?” Bud asked.
“And that perm! She looks like she belongs under the Big Top.”
“I think she went for a walk.”
“Why a person doesn’t know enough to grow old gracefully, I will never know.” This from a woman who had tottered through the afternoon on heels too high for eighty-year-old ankles.
“Did you see which direction?”
“I think...” Scarlet indicated the road up to the bluff with her eyes.
Arlis gave Bud a coy smile. “Buddy, you’ll tell me if I start dressing like a silly old woman, won’t you?”
“Of course, Aunt Arlis. Now, I have some things to do.” With an apologetic smile at Scarlet, he left the room. Whether he was sorry for leaving her with the clean-up or for leaving her with Arlis, Seamus didn’t know. A few seconds later, the back door clicked softly closed. Scarlet seemed determined not to notice Bud’s departure at all.
AFTER LISTENING TO THE BIRDS and the breeze for a while, Brodie climbed the fence again and tested its strength. Holding on with one hand, she peered down at the treetops directly below. Again the thought struck her that she might be able to find Gramps if she followed him. If she thought it was true—
“Brodie?” The call made her jump. Bud was coming, apparently on foot this time, for she’d heard no sound. Deputy Reiner’s hinted accusation returned to her mind, giving her a funny feeling. She had told the stranger Gramps’ death was an accident. Did she believe that? Or was the criminal returning to the scene of his crime?
“Here.” She scrambled over to the proper side of the fence just before Bud appeared.
“Scarlet said you might be up here. I—” He paused, and she had another eerie thought. Had Bud been watching, hoping she would jump so he had one less problem to deal with? He did not seem disappointed to see her alive. “I thought maybe you could use some company,” he finished.
You own the place now, she thought. I don’t suppose I have any say. She shrugged, the universal teenage signal of rebellious resignation.
Bud stayed where he was, well back from the fence. “I don’t much care for funerals, but I thought it was a nice one.”
If anyone else had said that, Brodie would have whooped in derision. What was nice about saying goodbye to a loved one and setting his body into a dark, damp hole? Somehow, though, she sensed that Bud meant it. Looking at it a different way, she supposed the service had been worthwhile. A tribute to Gramps, the last thing those who loved the old man could offer him.
“Yeah.”
Brodie looked at Bud—really looked at him—for the first time in years. Gramps had been his Gramps for real, and Bud had the look of him: the twinkly eyes, the complexion that would redden but not tan, the thin lips that smiled easily and often. Bud did not smell like Gramps, who never gave up his Aqua Velva, even when he could afford something better. He did not have Gramps’ white hair, of course, nor his wrinkles. Those would come later.
Bud had been up here when Gramps fell. If he hadn’t done it, did he feel guilty about bringing him? She could have told him not to. The yacht race was the high point of the year for him, and Gramps would have come by himself if he’d had to. Was Bud sad that Gramps was dead? It seemed so, but Brodie’s experience taught that what a person seemed to be in public was different when they didn’t think anyone who mattered was looking.
Bud was rich, in control of a large company he could sell now. If he and Gramps had argued about whether to sell the business, she sided with Gramps, not because she knew anything, but because he was Gramps and therefore always right.
Bud pointed vaguely back the way he’d come. “Did you eat anything at all?”
Brodie glanced at the Judas fence that had not done its job. “Not hungry.”
“You want to talk about, uh, anything?”
It was the chance she had been wanting, to hear his version of what had happened, but now she felt shy. Bud was everything she was not: mature, handsome, self-confident, sane. He was also Gramps’ real grandchild. Gathering her courage, Brodie asked, “Do you?”
Bud ran a hand through his hair, worn longer than his grandfather’s but the same shade she’d seen in pictures from Gramps’ youth. “I told the police a half dozen times. But I don’t mind talking if you want to hear it.”
In answer, she slid her back down the fencepost, taking a seat on the ground. Bud stood, looking out over the lake, eyes focused on nothing. “We got up here, no problem. I set a chair out for him and handed him his binoculars. Then I heard a noise over there.” Bud pointed into the trees on his right. “Like an animal in pain.”
Brodie waited expectantly, but it was a while before he went on.
“When I got back, he was gone.” The last word sounded choked, and she looked down for a few seconds to give him a chance to pull himself together.
She knew what had happened after that. Bud had run into the house like a madman. “He fell!” he screamed at Arlis, Arnold, and Shelley, who came at his call. Scarlet had been in town. Brodie had been in her room with her ear buds in. Shelley told the story in the kitchen later, as she prepared a dinner few of them would eat. In the way people have of repeating a story until they accept that it is true, she told it more than once, wiping away tears, at times stopping to blow her nose on a tissue.
Bud had been frantic, Shelley said. “Arnold called the police. Briggs and Bud took the golf cart down the shoreline to the—the spot where he landed. He was dead, like Bud figured.” She stopped to gulp back tears. “The sheriff’s men got here pretty fast. Then a lady came, a detective with the State Police. They took Mr. Dunbar away to do one of them authopies or whatever.”
Brodie shivered at the thought of it, having seen Ducky do lots of them on NCIS. “It’s an autopsy.”
No one had come upstairs to tell her what was happening. Either they thought she was too young or she did not matter. She’d heard doors and cars but had no idea Gramps was lying dead among the pines down the beach.
“Authopsy. That’s what I said.” Shelley washed her hands yet again, having disposed of another tissue, and went back to rolling Swedish meatballs. “Anyway, Mr. Dunbar was gone, and Buddy was in a state, I tell you. ’Course we were all in a state, but he felt like it was his fault, ’cause he left him alone.”
“Did you find the animal?” Brodie asked Bud now. It was more words at once than she’d said to him in the last five years.
It took him a minute to re-focus, to drag himself away, she guessed, from the mental image of what he’d seen when he leaned over the railing. “Uh, no. The cries stopped after a few minutes, and I never found what made them.”
She nodded, scanning the trees around them as if the critter mig
ht show itself now. She’d seen lots of them in her travels through the woods: raccoons, possum, skunks, deer, and even a coyote once. She thought about asking Bud what the cry sounded like, but she didn’t think he wanted to talk about it anymore.
There was a silence, and Brodie knew there was more he had come to say. Bud picked up a pine cone and examined it as if he’d never seen one before. “I—um—I wanted to tell you there won’t be any, um, changes in your life here,” he finally said. “Unless you want them, I mean.”
“Can Scarlet stay?”
He probably hadn’t thought about it at all. Why would he? He had a zillion other things to think about. Brodie guessed she was far down his list of important items to be dealt with, and Scarlet’s job was even farther down. With only a second’s consideration, however, he nodded. “Sure. As long as you need her.”
Need her? Brodie conceded that she did need Scarlet. She had no friends, no family except the guy who stood before her, uncomfortable in her presence. If he was willing to pay Scarlet to be her friend, Brodie would take it.
Bud seemed relieved to have finished the onerous duty of talking to her. “Let’s go back to the house.” He moved toward Brodie, and for a horrible moment she thought he was going to hug her or take her hand. Either she was wrong about that or he came to his senses, for he simply gestured for her to precede him down the pathway. She did, without looking back.
“I wondered—” Bud said when they were away from the bluff and headed down the hill, “I wonder if you might like to go out on the sailboat tomorrow.”
Brodie’s heart leapt. Sailing was her passion, one that had been denied her in the last few years as Gramps became unsteady on his feet. Because he could not go, she had pretended it didn’t matter, but the truth was, she missed it tremendously. There was nothing as free as the feeling she got on a sailboat. Everything the poets said was true about blown spume and wind in your face and the keel slicing the water.
Then the distrustful side of her brain kicked in. She’d heard Gramps say once that Bud lost his enthusiasm for boats when he discovered women. Although he’d come home more often than usual this past year, he had never before offered to take her sailing. What if Bud planned to shove her overboard so he could have all the money?
Stop it, dork! You’re being dumb.
Bud apparently sensed her doubt. “Look, Brodie. We don’t know each other very well, but we’re practically all we’ve got.” A glint of humor shone in his eyes as he added, “Except for Arlis and Saint Leland of the Long Beard and the Homemade Sandals, of course.”
Brodie almost smiled. He seemed to be admitting that Arlis was a pain, which was satisfying.
“I’m not the sailor Gramps was, for sure. But I know how to handle the Catalina, and I thought you might like something to take your mind off...all this.” He paused before adding casually, “If you want, you can ask Scarlet to come along.”
Brodie considered all aspects of the proposal. She would get to go sailing. Scarlet could serve as insurance that Bud wasn’t going to drown her. And maybe Scarlet would talk to Bud, so she wouldn’t have to. It could work.
THAT NIGHT, when Scarlet and Brodie were asleep, Mildred told Seamus about Brodie’s day. Her account included more detail and more teenage angst than Seamus would have liked: Brodie’s fears, insecurities, and thoughts that the world might go better if she were gone from it. She finished with, “The child is really quite sweet, once you get past all the nerves and self-doubt.”
Sweet, my eye, Seamus thought. He’d picked up Scarlet’s concerns with her charge’s behavior. Apparently, things she had done in the past to people she didn’t like were legend in the household. Scarlet hoped the girl would not regress now that Dunbar’s influence was removed.
While Scarlet and Shelley cleaned up after the reception, Shelley had wandered down memory lane, as people often do on the occasion of a funeral. Many of her stories had been about Brodie.
“We didn’t know what Mr. D was thinkin’ when he brought that child into this house. You shoulda seen her! All she had on was a pair of filthy underpants and an adult-sized T-shirt from some rock concert. Had skulls all over it! Here it was, dead of winter. She’s got no shoes or coat, jus’ wrapped up in a old blanket that smelled like pee.” Shelley paused to wipe a wisp of graying hair back into place. “Mr. D was still mad, and he’d brought her all the way up from Muskegon like that. He says to me, ‘Give this child a bath while I go to town and get her some clothes.’ Well, I did it,” Shelley said with a grim smile, “but it wasn’t easy. I think the poor little thing thought I was gonna drown her.” Shelley shook her head at the memory. “When he come home with her new stuff, I said to him, ‘I can’t handle that one, Mr. D. Bud was easy to have around, but that little girl? She needs a lotta help.’”
“So he hired someone?” Scarlet had asked.
Shelley lowered her voice. “At first, Arlis said she would handle things. That didn’t last long, I can tell you! About the second time she got called a whore, Arlis gave up. Mr. D hired—uh—I think the first one’s name was Cecilia. After that, they came so fast we didn’t bother to learn their names. We just called ’em all Miss.”
“Were they horrible to her?”
“Oh, no, Honey! Mr. Dunbar tried real hard to find the right kind of woman, and some of them was nice.” Shelley’s smile beamed on Scarlet. “But you’re the one she needed.”
Scarlet was modest. “Brodie’s growing up, that’s all. It’s a natural process.”
“Maybe so. But she’s been happier this past year.” Shelley wiped the sink dry and spread the wet towel on a rack. “She turned into a pretty good kid, and you’re helping her get better at being around people.” Her expression turned serious as she echoed Scarlet’s fear. “Let’s hope Mr. Dunbar bein’ gone don’t set her back too far.”
They left it at that, neither knowing how much Brodie’s behavior would be affected by the loss of her grandfather. Scarlet was concerned, but Seamus sensed determination to help the girl through her trouble. If I am allowed to stay, Scarlet thought.
Seamus told Mildred what he’d learned about Scarlet and Bud Dunbar’s past relationship. “I’m not sure what they meant to each other, but she is determined to forget it now,” he concluded.
“That’s it! Scarlet hates Bud, so she pushed the old man over the cliff hoping he will get the blame for it.”
“That doesn’t make any sense, Millie.”
“Of course it does! If Bud went to prison for murder, Brodie would be the principal heir. Since she’s under age, chances are the court would appoint Scarlet as trustee.”
“I think Arlis would have something to say about that. And Arlis is at least as likely as Scarlet to have murdered the guy.”
Mildred was dismissive. “She’d have poisoned his tea or something. I think we have to look closely at Scarlet.”
“If she wanted to frame Bud for murder, she did a lousy job of it. The police are calling Dunbar’s death an accident, and that may be what it was, despite his recollection.”
“Might, Seamus. May is used to give permission, might indicates possibility. And you said that deputy thinks Dunbar was pushed.”
Seamus ignored the grammar lesson. “That guy has his own agenda. He’s so jealous of Young Dunbar he can hardly stand to look at him.”
“So?”
“So he’s looking for something suspicious.”
“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”
Frustration got the best of him. “I guess he’s like a lot of people who are never wrong—in their own minds, anyway.”
There was a miffed silence, which Seamus savored briefly before going on. “I want you to try to get to the cook in the morning. She seems to have been around a long time and might have insights on the family that will help us.”
There was a pause, and he guessed Mildred was trying to decide how to argue her point that Brodie needed her. “What are you going to do?”
“I’m going
to try to make my way to Bud.”
“That shouldn’t be hard. He’s taking Brodie sailing.”
“On a boat?”
Mildred snickered. “I assume it will be on a boat.” At the growling noise he made, she asked, “What is it?”
“I don’t do boats.”
“Don’t be silly. It won’t kill you to—” She stopped and began again. “Seamus, what possible threat could a boat pose to a dead man?”
He didn’t answer because he couldn’t explain it. That was the problem with keeping your memories: they came back to bite you at the worst times.
After a few seconds, Mildred said, “All right. I want to stay with Brodie anyway, so I’ll go on the sailboat. You stick around the house and learn what you can from the staff. We can talk again tomorrow night.”
Unwilling as he was to let Mildred have her way, Seamus was relieved to be able to skip the sailing expedition. Sometimes a partner might be useful after all.
Chapter Nine
BRODIE LOOKED OUT her bedroom window to make sure the weatherman had not been mistaken. He was right: another gorgeous day, a cool morning heating to the mid-eighties by afternoon, and just enough wind. She could already feel the pull of it in her imagination.
Breakfast, at least Brodie’s breakfast, was done by 6:30. She waited impatiently for Bud to appear. They wouldn’t start much before 9:00, when the air had warmed. Scarlet was funny when Brodie asked her to accompany them, but in the end, she’d agreed, perhaps understanding that Brodie needed something that might bring her a little happiness.
As Shelley packed a cooler for them, Arlis wandered in and, learning of the outing, began a list of catastrophes they should avoid. “Now don’t be silly out there, Brodie. Make sure you put on lots of sun-block.”
Shelley intervened to make the order less offensive. “You’ll come back smelling like a coconut, but at least your nose won’t be all red and peeling.”