by A. J. Aalto
Barb’s eyebrows went up. “Hear that, Bobs? Maybe you should try Gillian’s remedy. Bobby gets the worst migraines,” she confided. “It’s terrible. Nothing works. They can last for days and days. We used to think it was eye strain because they happened a lot when she didn’t wear her glasses, but the glasses haven’t helped. Right Bobby?”
Bobby left the room without answering, and Gillian heard noises from the direction of the kitchen at the end of the hall, what sounded like cardboard boxes falling. She dreaded seeing that room, and wouldn’t be touching a single edible thing that came out of it.
Gillian asked, “So, um, when did all this start? You seemed healthy the last time I saw you. Granted, it’s been years…”
“Three months or so,” Barb said, and squeezed her eyes shut as though that might clear fog from her mind. “Sometimes, it seems like yesterday that I was out at the museum, or shopping, or at the bar.” Barb had been a bartender at the local Irish pub, The Nimble Fiddler, for as long as Gillian had known her. “I know it’ll get better, but it just feels like it’s been forever.”
“Maybe being in this sick room isn’t the best idea,” Gillian suggested. “Would you like me to take you out somewhere? I could help you to the Jeep and take you to the library, maybe? Stock you up on a few dozen books and then you can read and recuperate?”
Barb smiled widely and her eyes glistened. “I’m not sure I’m well enough today, but please offer again. God, that sounds great.”
“We should plan it before the snow starts,” Gillian agreed, reaching for Barb’s hand, dismayed to find it shaky and skeletal. She swallowed hard. “Is there anything else I could bring you? I notice you don’t have a TV in here. Did you want me to help Bobby move one into the room? Get you some DVD seasons of a favorite sitcom or some stand-up comedy?”
“Oh, Gillian,” Barb said, tearing up. “You really are too much.” Then she looked over Gillian’s shoulder. “Hear that? She’s going to help you move my TV in. Now, you’ve got no excuse to complain about it.”
Bobby stood there with a mug of coffee in each hand, and a blank look on her face, her lashes fluttering rapidly behind her glasses. “Oh, good. That’s great. We can do that, sure.” She moved to shove one mug on the raised, rolling bedside table among the dirty dishes, which Gillian moved to take. “Sure you don’t want some coffee? It’s maple dark roast, a really good new kind.”
“Maybe next time,” she said, stacking filthy plates one atop the other, loading cutlery on tip. “If they have a decaf version.”
“Just put those anywhere,” Bobby told her.
Gillian fought to keep the grimace off her face and said smoothly, “I’ll just put them in the kitchen sink, and these,” as she picked up a bunch of other food-encrusted dishes from around the room.
“Oh, Gillian, you don’t have to clean up after me,” Barb objected. “Bobby was going to hire someone to come in, but we’re low on funds since I’m off work.”
And Bobby can’t clean? “Don’t be silly,” Gillian said. “I’m just moving them from one spot to another, no big deal. Be right back.”
Gillian picked her way down the hall without making it look like she was trying to avoid the piles of garbage and mess, ignoring it politely like it was the most normal thing in the world. The smell in the kitchen was astounding, sour milk and spoiled food and human waste, even with a cold breeze slithering through a small window cracked open over the sink. She deposited her load of dishes nearby, though there was no way they’d fit in the sink with all the moldy ones.
She wasn’t sure why the small yellowish ring of liquid caught her eye on the countertop among everything else that was unclean in the room. Perhaps because it seemed fresh. She bent over a little and sniffed at it. It smelled like maple syrup, though it didn’t look like it. Much too watery. (“Maple dark roast, a really good new kind.”) She glanced around for the coffee maker and dented tin of Maxwell House sitting open beside it. Ground coffee. Unable to help herself, she peeked into the coffee machine and stared in horror at the mold clinging to the edges of an old, overused coffee filter and a mound of wet coffee grounds. The recent percolation had rinsed most of it away, into the coffee pot below. She could see a film of floating bits on top, complete with foam. She sniffed at the filter basket. It did not smell like maple, the way the coffee had in Barb’s sick room.
“Thought you didn’t want any,” Bobby said, directly over her right shoulder.
Gillian started, and laughed guiltily. “It smelled so good,” she lied quickly. “I changed my mind. Is it okay if I help myself?”
Bobby’s eyes had taken on a cold, lizard-like quality that Gillian found deeply alarming, but her words were light, and if you didn’t look directly at her, they sounded comforting. “Of course, no problem,” Bobby said with a wry chuckle. “I wanted you to have some. My home is your home, such as it is. Here, let me make it. I do it up real good.”
Gillian nodded gratefully and watched as Bobby took down a fresh cup, poured the coffee, dug in the front pocket of her jeans for yellow sweetener packets, and slapped two before ripping the paper and pouring the crystals in. Then she leaned into a small bar fridge beside the counter to get a carton of cream. Noting Gillian’s’ glance toward the big fridge nearby, Bobby explained, “Barb had trouble after mum passed. She couldn’t get rid of any of mum’s things, see. All mum’s medications are in the big fridge. I tried to take them away, but Barb wouldn’t allow it. Then I tried to clean out mum’s closet. I made a special trip back here in June to do it, remember?”
Gillian hadn’t known that Bobby was back in town in June, but she thought it would upset Bobby to know that, and Bobby wasn’t someone you wanted to upset, in Gillian’s opinion. So she nodded, as though perhaps Frankie had known and mentioned.
“You came to help clean out your mom’s place,” Gillian repeated, nodding. “Barb has had trouble letting go of things?”
“Look at this place,” Bobby whispered. “It’s a fucking dump. She went from not being able to throw out mum’s stuff, to not being able to get rid of anything. Seriously. I’m not allowed to put out garbage at the curb. Sometimes, I sneak things out. Like her broken TV, by the way. Thing hasn’t worked in over a year. She won’t let me spend money on a new one, and now she wants us to move the old one into her room? Seriously?”
“I’m sorry, Bobby,” Gillian said.
“You can’t take her out,” Bobby said scornfully. “The library, what a fucking joke. She’s having seizures, she shits her pants. She can’t leave that room, never mind the house.” She shoved the coffee cup at Gillian’s waiting hands, and Gillian took it, regretting not only her polite request but her assumptions about Bobby.
“I’m sorry,” Gillian repeated sincerely. “This must be so hard for you to deal with. I had no idea. How can I help, Bobby?”
“Well, first of all, you can stop telling Frankie not to see me,” Bobby snapped. “Don’t pretend you didn’t.”
“Frankie is headstrong,” Gillian replied immediately. “I’ve never been able to tell her not to do something. Honestly, Bobby, she’s a free bird.”
“She’s been dodging me since I returned to town.”
Gillian raised her mug to her mouth and pretended to test the temperature. It did not smell like maple, which surprised her at first. She paused in the act of mock-sipping to ask, “When was that, Bobby? When did you know Barb was sick?”
“June,” she said frankly, “when I got a look at this place and what’s become of it. I told her I’d hired someone to come give it a good clean-out, you know, maybe those people who help hoarders. She told me to leave. She didn’t need me, she said. Well,” Bobby smirked, and it was oddly smug as she cast a look around the room. “Who needs who now, eh? Yeah, suuuuuure she doesn’t need me. Nooooobody needs me.” She rolled her eyes dramatically, and her hands flew in the air. “Nobody needs Bobby until they do, and then look at all the fucking messes Bobby has to clean up.”
Gillian felt g
ooseflesh crawl up the back of her scalp at that, recognizing the reminder and feeling threatened. Her reply was carefully crafted. “Barb’s sure lucky to have you right now,” she said, and the words felt like poison on her tongue.
There was a retching noise from the other room, and Bobby sighed. “Gee, ya think?” She opened the cabinet under the sink and grabbed a pair of rubber gloves and a roll of paper towels.
Gillian got a glimpse of a square yellow bottle before the doors slapped shut, and put her coffee mug down on the countertop, untouched. “I’d better get out of your hair,” she said to Bobby’s retreating form. As soon as Bobby disappeared into the sick room, she grabbed the under-sink cabinet door and yanked it open to make sure she’d seen what she thought she’d seen.
Antifreeze. In the kitchen. Casting a nervous glance over her shoulder to make sure Bobby was still busy in Barb’s room, she grabbed the bottle and spun the top off as quickly as possible, her heart suddenly racing. She brought it to her nose.
Syrup. Sickly sweet maple syrup. For a split second, she felt faint, and tiny stars danced across her vision. Fainting right now would be very bad, she thought, followed quickly by, Is Bobby poisoning her sister’s fucking coffee? Is that actually fucking happening?
She replaced the bottle exactly where it was, noting the ring on the countertop one more time. What do I do now? Gillian wondered frantically. Do I confront her? Is there antifreeze in Barb’s coffee right this second? What if I accuse her and I’m wrong? What if she blows up and tells everyone what happened after Mike… Gillian’s tongue was glued to the roof of her mouth, and as she walked down the hall toward the front door, she felt numb, like a zombie shuffling through debris. I can’t let Barb die because I’m afraid to face my own demons. She looked into the sickroom to say a quiet goodbye, and promised to return soon.
How much of what Bobby had said about the hoarding had been true? How much of anything that Bobby said was true? She had to assume most of it was bullshit, and trust only what she saw with her own two eyes.
Once out in the fading sunshine and the freedom outside the McIntyre house, her sanity roared back to life and she only barely resisted the urge to stand right there on the front porch and call 911. She went to the Jeep, keys shaking in her nervous, clumsy hands, feeling dazed with shock and sick to her stomach. Once buckled into the driver’s seat, she did some deep breathing before driving to the nearest public parking lot, blocking her phone number, and dialing the police with an anonymous tip. She told the dispatcher as much information as she could, and while she was talking, heard herself put together their mother’s odd illness and death, too.
And hadn’t Frankie been violently ill the other night, Gillian wondered? After confessing everything she suspected about Bobby McIntyre to the police, she hung up, opened the car door, threw up on the asphalt, and closed the door again. Why, why, why would she do this? She sat there shaking for a long time, collecting herself. She thought about how Bobby had fixated on being needed, pretending to be burdened but seeming oddly smug about it. Wasn’t she always eager to jump into Frankie’s life at the worst moments, too? A martyr, preferring people around her to be broken down enough to cling to the help she conveniently offered just at the right moment. How much of that suffering had she caused, just so she could be the hero? Gillian sat breathing slowly through her nostrils, hoping that she’d caught it in time, worried about Frankie, before turning on the Jeep and heading home.
She never did ask Bobby about the missing diaries.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Friday, October 31. 4:10 P.M.
Constable Dean Jagger strolled through Pleasant Pines cemetery, his six-foot-six frame not easy to miss, his broad shadow sweeping the old graves at the far north side of the graveyard, sticking to the pathway. He’d never been entirely comfortable in cemeteries, having a superstitious streak a mile wide, and he couldn’t imagine why anyone would choose to work in one, spending day after day with the dead. Isn’t that what you’re doing now? the gloomy side of his brain teased. Spending day after day with the ghost of a mother-beating drug dealer, looking for justice for him? What a joke.
He didn’t like it. He was honest enough with himself to admit that he’d be much happier when he passed this particular torch to a new officer; cold case files made his already grim life even more so. He envied Ray Sauffs his retirement. Hell, lately he envied Paul Langerbeins his injury and his new job; though that was morbid, it was in total keeping with the deepest, truest part of Dean’s personality, the part he kept carefully hidden from girlfriends and lovers. No one needed to know just how dark his morose streak ran.
The asphalt was well maintained in the back corner, something that struck him as incongruous; surely, the relatives of soldiers from the War of 1812 weren’t swinging by to visit their ancestors nearly as often as those in the more recent graves, and he’d seen some terrible potholes on those pathways. This one had been patched. He paused to admire the stand of pines and oak and maple rising up from the gully just beyond a war memorial fountain. The deciduous trees had lost most of their leaves to a cold, October wind, but the pines stood sentinel over a deep ditch full of vines and fallen trees and boulders and secrets.
Secrets? Dean smirked at his own funny mood. Is that all it is, a mood? A flurry of nervous activity raced through his belly, always a sign that his intuition had struck something. Probably the same thing that brought him back to Pleasant Pines for the third time that week. There was something here, but it was just out of reach. The body of Mike Deacon? No. If the Hearth sisters had anything to do with the disappearance of Mike Deacon, Gillian would know better than to try and dispose of a body here, where she was known to work. TV and movie murderers buried the bodies of their victims in open graves; real people didn’t get away with that without a conspiracy of multiple helpers, diggers and movers and people willing to look the other way. Not impossible, but very unlikely. Not nearly as easy as a crematorium two-bodies-one-box deal, and still requiring helpers. Loose lips. Jagger didn’t think that Gillian Hearth would tolerate loose lips.
Gillian. Why was he focused on that one? Again, his gut shuddered. Despite there being no evidence to support this feeling, he had begun to suspect … No. He chuckled softly at his own thoughts. Just… How would she? Why would she?
What had the private investigator said on the tail end of a chuckle? (“The idea of that woman being able to make a full grown man disappear?”) Even Langerbeins, who knew the woman, thought it was unlikely.
She’s got access to light earth-moving equipment, he thought. Maybe she knew how to drive the CAT. Definitely the ATV. She could transport. But lift a man like Mike Deacon, dead weight, who went about 5’11, two hundred thirty pounds? A cop’s widow, Dean reminded himself, shaking his head. At the time of Mike Deacon’s disappearance, Greg Ellis had been alive. A cop’s wife. You think a cop’s wife is a murderer? Really grasping at straws, there, Jagger, he chided.
But when he turned away, his belly trembled once more. There were answers here of some sort. He altered his path to stroll across the rows, something he had never done and which made fingers of discomfort creep up his spine. He mentally apologized to the dead for walking on their sacred plots, painfully aware of their presence under the green-falling-to-brown grass. He only barely resisted the urge to tiptoe or dodge where he thought their feet might reach. Goose flesh crawled across his scalp, and he hurried to make his journey shorter.
He arrived at the next paved pathway and approached a memorial bench beside the fountain. The plantings here had been trimmed for winter, the roses cut right back and the bushes wrapped in burlap to protect them from the sometimes brutal lake-effect snows they received in that part of the peninsula. The soil had been heavily mulched. He wondered if the crew had planted spring bulbs, tulips and hyacinths and daffodils. The little bronze name plate on the bench read “Ellis,” with no other information.
He felt his eyebrows shoot up and he looked around for any headstones that
read Ellis, but didn’t see any. Had Gillian paid for this bench in memory of her husband? If so, why put it here, and not closer to his grave? Was he even buried here? Maybe this was the only available place for it. The fountain, according to a plaque, was created in memory of the firemen who died fighting a warehouse blaze in the late nineties. Overnight frosts warned that winter was inbound, and the fountain’s water had been shut off for the season.
The gully behind the bench was protected not by a fence but by several dead trees piled up and some brush piles that no one had gotten around to mulching yet. He walked closer to the edge and peered into what occurred to Dean Jagger to be a rather promising darkness. For a good acre or so in all directions, the ditch was piled high with rocks and vines, uneven crevices that disappeared below, deadfall tangled with secondary growth, a veritable maze of impassable vegetation and drop-offs. From somewhere below, he could hear the trickle of water. Someone had tossed a pair of old tires and half a broken bathroom sink, which had made a nice home for a green coating of algae. One tire was almost completely wrapped in vigorous evergreen ivy, which also had a stranglehold on a dozen nearby trees.
Dean dug into his jacket pockets and found a handful of receipts, an elastic band, his pocket knife, and an individually wrapped zinc lozenge still lingering from his last sore throat. Searching the ground around him, he came upon a goodish sized stick with fair girth. He wrapped a receipt around the stick with the elastic band, eased a bit closer to the edge of the chasm, testing his footing before he settled his not inconsiderable weight there fully, and dropped the stick.
It tumbled end over end, bounced off a boulder, and came to rest against a flat, metal object with a clang. He squinted, jogging his head into the shade to remove the late sun’s glare from his eyes, to see better, but he couldn’t tell what the metal thing was. It had a sharply defined edge where the stick was propped, but was too covered by shadow and foliage for him to make out what it was.