Indian Summer

by Ed Ifkovic

  “She didn’t linger, you say?”

  “No’m. Like she was looking for something.” He paused. “Or somebody.”

  “And Martha wasn’t around?” Stas asked.

  “Told you, sir. I didn’t see her since noon or so.”

  Stas looked at me, and I at him, both impassive glances. I stood up, restless, and started to walk about the room, with both men’s eyes following me closely. At one point I lingered by the entrance to the kitchen, the door wide open, and suddenly I gasped. “Lord,” I exclaimed, then thought better of my outburst, turning back and trying to compose myself. In that instant, gazing into the kitchen with its counters of unwashed dishes and pans and pots, with its lopsided curtains hanging off a bent rod, with its torn calendar nailed to a cabinet, with the ungainly cast-iron pot with its burnt contents simmering on a chipped metal counter—I saw on the kitchen table, a rough-hewn farmer’s table that held apple peels, cored apples, yellowing and browning pulp, bowls of cinnamon and sugar, a large and menacing cleaver—I saw three plucky hens, ruffled but obviously content, strutting among the apple debris, sniffing and pecking and swallowing, three barnyard birds moving over the table with the assurance of a household cat.

  “What?” Stas asked.

  I closed my eyes, breathed in. “Nothing,” I babbled. “Nothing.”

  Eben was looking at me with narrowed eyes. “Ain’t had time to clean up for your royal visit.”

  I wanted to ask if he kept a rooster in some special room, but resisted. Now I simply wanted to leave this hovel. Chickens, mind you, chickens. Doubtless named and petted, members of the household. Talked to, intimate confidants. I sat back down and stared at the yellow mongrel dog sleeping in the corner, paying us no mind.

  Silence in the room.

  “So you think it was Carlotta you saw?” Stas asked, taking his eyes off me.

  Eben was looking over our shoulders, lost in a trance. He cleared his throat. Suddenly his voice was loud and tremulous. “I seen something,” he blurted out, dramatically. “I seen something. I just recollected it, I swear.” He closed his eyes.

  We waited.

  “When I was in my yard, some time real late in the afternoon. Must have been later than I thought. I was looking out over the yard and the corner of my eye caught a shadow at the edge of Hemlock Ridge, back from Miss Millicent’s land, almost to the River Road.”

  “A shadow?” I asked.

  Now he spoke softly, all the rancor gone. “A moving shadow. A spilt second, at the most, as I say, in the corner of my eye. But I thought then—I don’t know why—someone was walking in the woods, just inside a grove of thick hemlocks. You know, I paid it no mind until talking to you just now, trying to recollect that afternoon.”

  “Why now? This could be important,” Stas commented, his voice curt.

  Eben shrugged his shoulders. “The thing is, you see people along there all the time, especially this time of year. City folk coming to see the foliage, hiking out of the state forest, headed along the Ridge, aiming for River Road, maybe to catch the town bus. Sometimes they park their motorcars along River Road, walk over. Snapping pictures with their box Kodaks, you know. Real pain in the ass types, pardon my language. Tourists, hikers. City folk ain’t never seen a colored leaf before. So I didn’t warrant it was anything unusual until, well, now, talking to you.”

  “A man or a woman?”

  “Don’t know. A fleeting shadow.”

  “Moving in what direction? Back to River Road? Or to the lane by the state forest?” From Stas.

  “Don’t know. A shadow.”

  “But a person?” I asked.

  Eben sighed. “Yep, a person.”

  “At what time?”

  “Can’t say for certain. Daylight, it was, I’d have to say. But within the hour it would be twilight. Days getting shorter fast now. Winter coming.” Eben’s words were spaced out now, the tone static. A growing panic, nervousness, his eyes dark and cloudy. He sat there, stunned, the bravado dissipated now, the bitter resentment gone. A slow awareness of something horrible creeping into his features.

  Stas put it into words. “Mr. Travers, you may have seen the murderer.”

  Eben blanched. He closed his eyes.

  Stas stood up. “We’ll talk again, sir. In the meantime, if you remember anything, I’ll be around. Or Miss Ferber here. Talk to us. Only to us.” I noticed he neglected to mention Constable Johnny Marks.

  But Eben Travers was staring into his lap, and suddenly he looked like a sad old man.

  Walking back to the Inn, the pathway now shadowy with failing light, we stopped, midway, the two of us, and stared through the creeping darkness at the Inn, Lupinski’s home, and the Wright house, all silhouetted against a charcoal-blue sky. Both of us knew this was the hour, more or less, of the murder. The houses now lay before us, Millicent’s silent and hulking, with a scant light emanating from a front room. Lupinski’s in total darkness—almost not there. In contrast, the Inn had lights on in the kitchen, in the front rooms, and in one of the upstairs rooms. Eerie almost, sinister, the houses lay under a dark opaque sky, with feathery pale blue clouds shielding every so often the orange harvest moon, hanging high in the sky like a disemboweled pumpkin.

  “Well,” Stas said, “that was something else, Ferb.”

  “Fascinating to watch a man pass through so many emotional states in so short a time—blistering anger to numbing fear.”

  “Yep, that last revelation sort of tells me that he isn’t the murderer,” he added. “The look on his face, the fear . . .”

  I interrupted. “Or,” I protested, “maybe something different. That panic when he realized he’d seen someone walking alongside Millicent’s yard might mean something entirely different.”

  “And that is?”

  “That he is, in fact, the murderer, and suddenly realized that there might be a witness out there who has yet to come forward. Someone passing by who saw him lingering by Millicent’s back door at the time Martha was killed.”

  Stas shook his head. “Ferb, not bad. So we still have no answers except for one thing. Carlotta Small probably returned to the Inn by herself. If that was her in the window. Most likely. That she left you in town and headed back home. Which means she lied to me and she lied to you. And if she lied about that, I’d say there’s a possibility we might have to look at her as a murderer.”

  I could barely distinguish his strong face in the darkness. But his words, coming at me now, stunned me. No! I thought, irrationally. No! Not possible! Not Carlotta Small, my friend. My God, we attended the opening of Marsden Jasoni’s The Rainbow Sisters just last spring. How we enjoyed that evening! The laughter, the chatter. The . . . No!

  We resumed walking, but I stumbled in the darkness on a pebble. Instinctively, he reached out, his long arm steadying me. His muscular arm—I sensed the pull of toned farm-boy sinew and exacting grip—should have comforted me, but it had its opposite effect: in my mind there flashed the sudden and horrific image of Trooper Wolniak handcuffing a sobbing and guilty Carlotta Small.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Late that night I sat upstairs, staring out at the darkened landscape. Nothing moved in the still night. I could see Eben’s tenant house in the distance, a light burning in the parlor. I saw the lights of a passing motorcar out on River Road, and my eyes followed the shifting patterns of illumination against the towering trees until it faded away. It depressed me, somehow, that solitary beam of faint light, shadowy and slow, moving into view and then out. The long passing of a car. I tried to focus on the yellowing pamphlets Miss Dangerfield let me borrow from the library. But they failed to excite my interest. Nothing did, I realized. Not now, and definitely not these parochial, country-press printed recollections by average townsfolk who’d felt compelled, back in time, to share quaint anecdotes of Congregational sewing bees, Ladies Guild quilting bees, church hall lectures by itinerant preachers, African missionaries passing through. One of booklets was a poorly penned and splotchy-pr
inted history of the Danbury Polish-American Sobieski Society, with its monotonous listing of fraternal membership. Imbedded in the prose I hoped to locate a rich gem, some shiny, glistening tidbit of character or foible or local idiosyncrasy, something I could easily translate into my own fiction.

  I leafed through the pages. Nothing moved within me.

  I slid the fragile pamphlets back into the envelope. Not tonight when the thought of Carlotta possibly lying to me—of Carlotta as murderer—kept swimming back to me.

  Downstairs in the kitchen Carlotta was assembling the supper Julia had prepared before leaving, Carlotta banging about in a room she never liked. “I hate going into my kitchen,” she once announced at one of my dinner parties. “It’s so—unimportant, that room, to an actress.” Everyone had chuckled at that, I remembered. The line, soon transmogrified into a catchy “I never will be seen in my kitchen” was soon bandied about the New York theatrical world. It even made it into FPA’s “Conning Tower” in The Tribune, with a satiric intro that was lost on Carlotta. And Dottie Parker, alluding to Carlotta’s notorious drinking, finally and famously quipped, “That’s because she gets lost en route.” So now I heard Carlotta slamming cupboards, clinking glasses, and fiddling with the oven. I realized that these simple domestic tasks—my God! reheating dinner, no less!—had been the responsibility of Martha. I considered going downstairs to assist, but I was not a kitchen person myself, though I liked to be served exquisite food (and even, regrettably, only passable food) so long as the preparations for the ritual of dining were left to the hired help. Sometimes, I’d found, it was sufficiently exhausting having to eat a meal with tiresome company.

  Then, perhaps a half hour later, I heard voices from downstairs in the parlor: companionable voices, to be sure, almost cheerful. Listening more closely, I made out the unctuous blather of Roger Emerson, my least favorite journalist after Marvin Forman, columnist for that throwaway rag The New York Examiner, who doggedly (and gleefully, it seemed) panned any novel or play I handed to the world. What had he called Show Boat? “Vapid vaudeville salad, in need of vinegar.”

  Indeed, the lout.

  I hurried downstairs, entered the parlor where Roger was talking to Carlotta, who looked ill at ease. Whatever he was saying was making her laugh, but it was a stage laugh, humorless, somewhat panicked, the kind of laugh a person executes when she wishes the person would stop talking and go away. Carlotta caught my eye and I understood Carlotta’s nervousness, her fear of this insipid little man who used his printing press as a hatchet.

  “Look who’s here, Edna,” Carlotta began. “Roger stopped in to see if there’s any news. It seems Trooper Wolniak and Johnny Marks are tight lipped and . . .”

  I said, acidly, “I’m sure when Trooper Wolniak has credible information he will share it with the public, gladly . . .”

  Emerson scoffed, kept his eye on Carlotta. “I’m afraid I’ve alienated the police establishment, Carlotta. They don’t like my viewpoint of their corruption, malaise, delays, you name it. I’m the last person to learn anything, and, frankly, I should be the first. An informed press is crucial to democracy.”

  I dismissed him. “‘Informed’ is the crucial word here.” I crossed the room and sat opposite him, facing him. My most stony look of utter contempt. Usually it worked on the rabble I sometimes encountered.

  Not so Emerson, who laughed, a hearty no-nonsense guffaw. “I just can’t get used to the clever chatter of you New Yorkers. It’s a liability me being a boondocks reporter. Some things just pass me by, unawares.”

  “And why are you here this evening, Mr. Emerson?” I asked.

  “Well,” he grunted, lighting a cigarette and exhaling the smoke into my direction, actually blowing a circle that, for a moment, wreathed his head like a frame. I squinted at him. “Well, I hear tell you’ve convinced the law in town that they need your help in investigating the tragedy. A little unorthodox, some say. And unnecessary, others say.”

  “Is that so, Edna?” Carlotta asked.

  I was bothered by Carlotta’s tone—curt, baffled. “Yes, it’s true, Carlotta, which shouldn’t surprise you, given your insistence that I be party to your own interview with the state police.”

  Carlotta grimaced. “That’s because you’re my friend, Edna. I certainly didn’t expect you to trail after every police officer in town.”

  “Well, hardly.”

  “Think about how it looks, Edna.”

  I got angry. “Would you like to catch your sister’s killer, Carlotta?” I stopped, purposely letting the word killer hang in the air, suspended there like a toxic fume, threatening.

  “Well, of course.”

  “Thank you,” I got ready to leave the room. But when I heard Emerson’s next line to Carlotta, I paused. “There’s talk that you’re to be taken into custody for the crime,” he said, his voice oily.

  For the crime. I watched Carlotta’s face dissolve, then instantly recoup its signature composure.

  “I don’t think Carlotta should be responding to innuendo and rumor,” I jumped in. “Especially to the press.” I stressed the last word as though identifying an outbreak of rash or pestilence.

  Emerson smiled. “Can we let Carlotta answer her own questions?”

  I raised my voice. “I think your being here at the moment is inappropriate. Carlotta is grieving over Martha’s untimely death . . .”

  He was peeved. “Look, they’re gonna take her in for murder.”

  Carlotta actually gasped, held her hands to her face. “You . . .”

  My hand shot up into his face. “Mr. Emerson, perhaps you should leave. Do you really believe your readership welcomes information garnered through intimidation and ungracious and unfeeling visits?” I stood and pointed to the door.

  “I don’t care what my readership thinks.”

  “Clearly.” I took Carlotta’s elbow. “Goodbye, Mr. Emerson. The door is over there. The one that opens out. With the knob.” I pushed Carlotta into the kitchen and waited in the doorway, watching him. Me, the tiny martinet with crossed arms and menacing buffalo head, waiting until Roger Emerson, realizing his stay was no longer useful, put on his fedora—I noted the feather was bent and the rim frayed—smirked, and left by the door I’d coolly pointed out to him. I watched his retreating back, and a chill swept me. This man, so funny looking, was very dangerous, indeed. He was not a mere yellow journalist, groveling for a scoop. Rather, he was a malcontent whose soul was dark as coal tar.

  I looked at the crestfallen woman sitting at the table, “Carlotta, how could you let that vile creature in here?”

  “I know, I know,” Carlotta whispered, helplessly. “He talked his way in, babbling about condolence and concern and sympathy. He tricked me. I’m afraid of him, Edna. Once in, I couldn’t deal with him.”

  “From upstairs I thought the two of you were having a party.”

  “He said he was just trying to cheer me up.” She ground her teeth. “God, how I despise that man.”

  “It’s not his job to cheer you up. Nor, perhaps, anyone’s. It’s time for you to grieve for your sister.”

  “And I am, Edna. I am. I know—well, I vacillate. I seem resigned, I seem casual, I seem in control. And I am all those things. I have to play that role—for myself. But alone at night, in my room, I cry. I cry and cry. Martha and I were never close. There were times we hated each other, but we lived together. She was my sister, my touchstone to our childhood.”

  Stuff and nonsense, I thought. “Carlotta, let me ask you something.” Forceful, declarative.

  “Yes, Edna?”

  “Did you return to the Inn after you left me in town? You said you were going to see your ex-husband—ah, Brosnan—in Greenfield. You told Officer Wolniak you returned only late that night, with me, after Westport. Tell me, Carlotta, did you come back here?”

  Eyes wide, but no alarm. “Edna, I told you already.”

  “I’d like to hear it again.” I sat down opposite her.

  Carlott
a looked away, then back, her face set. “You’re taking this interrogation business rather seriously, Edna. I don’t see a badge pinned to your expensive lapel like a debutante’s corsage.”

  I smiled. “Imagine me as part of the posse, Carlotta. Just one of Wild Bill’s backup in some yellow-backed dime novel.” I kept smiling, but it hurt my jaw muscles. “Carlotta, you’re my good friend. You have to believe that I’m on your side here. I’m trying to resolve this sad story for you. I don’t want you hurt.”

  Carlotta crumbled. “Edna, do you believe I’m innocent?”

  It was an awful question, hurled out like that, so raw and stark, and I knew I had only one answer. “Of course, I do, Carlotta. Of course. I know you.” But the words, though glib, were difficult, yet I saw immediate relief in Carlotta’s eyes.

  “Thank you, Edna.”

  “But I have to ask, Carlotta—again—did you return to the Inn? If you did, then you’ve lied to Trooper Wolniak and to me, and I’m not sure how he’ll deal with that. He won’t like it, to be sure, but I also know that people lie for many reasons. And just because you lied doesn’t mean you’re a murderer.” I reached across the table and placed my hand reassuringly over hers. Her hand felt cold to the touch.

  “But people will believe that. Trooper Wolniak. He will.”

  “No, not Trooper Wolniak. I have a good sense of that man and I can tell you that he’s fine mettle, topnotch. He’s young and green, but I think he knows enough about human frailty to understand its twists and unfortunate turns.”

  I waited. Carlotta looked away, then sighed. “I’m not liking any of this.” Fatigue in her voice.

  “Murder is to no one’s liking.”

  “But I hate revealing a side of me that’s weak.”

  “Carlotta, what are we talking about here?” I leaned back in my chair, crossed my arms. Waited.

  Carlotta stood slowly and began to busy herself with the evening meal. I just let her be, sitting there, watching the woman’s mechanical actions, laying out china plates and silverware in the adjacent dining room, removing a roast from the oven, carrying covered plates of vegetables from a warming oven on a sideboard. Trancelike, rhythmic, a silent movie without the jerky movement, without the pianoforte accompaniment, without the melodramatic printed scenario: “A Sad Carlotta Serves Supper. Alas, In Her Mind She is Wondering What to Do.” Horrible caption, I thought. I could never have written for the silents. Everything had to be capitalized, even in the newish talkies. So I let her move from kitchen to dining room, back and forth, until the meal was in place, water goblets filled, carving knife resting next to the roast. With me still in the kitchen, Carlotta sat at the huge mahogany table and leaned in to light two candles.