A House by the Side of the Road (25 page)

Eighteen

Most of Mrs. Ehrlich's garden was behind the house, so Meg didn't see it until she'd walked around to the back. Mike was sitting on the ground under a flowering crab reading the Sunday paper.

“Gosh, there's a lot of stuff back here,” she said. “Is it all perennials?”

He put down the paper, placing a rock on top of it. Evidently, he kept a rock nearby for just such a purpose. “Until I settle a major personal-injury lawsuit or two and can afford a gardener,” he said. “Aunt Hannah would have started a few hundred seeds indoors by now and be getting ready to harden them off, but not me.”

Here and there along a stretch of border and in a cluster at one end, spiky foliage grew in thick, circular patterns around tall stems. “The lilies are going to be wonderful,” said Meg. “Some of them are already two feet tall.”

Mike patted the ground next to him, and she lowered herself and leaned back on her elbows.

“Did you invite yourself over to talk about flowers?” he asked. “Or do you want to cry on my shoulder about having a burglar? It's a manly shoulder. Perfectly suited.”

“I keep forgetting,” she replied, “what a small town this is.”

“You hid in a
tree?
”

“What would you have done? Tiptoed down the hall, tapped him on the shoulder, and walloped him?”

He shrugged. “Probably. But, see, there's a manly fist attached to a manly arm attached to the aforementioned manly shoulder. I can see why you'd take a different tack.”

She looked at him, at the breadth of his shoulders and the muscles revealed by his short-sleeved shirt. The manly part was true. “You'd have hidden in a tree, too,” she said. “But you'd probably have fallen out of it.”

Mike lay back on the grass, folding his arms under his head. “Yup,” he said. “Why don't you go stay at Christine's awhile?”

“Why? What good would awhile do? I figure I can move back to Chicago, or I can get over it. Those are my choices. And I can't move back to Chicago because I just authorized a car repair that used up every last nickel of credit I have.”

They both looked up at the sky for a few moments in silence. Mike turned on his side, squinting in the sunlight. “I didn't hear your car,” he said. “You walk over?”

“Yeah. Somebody told me pedestrian traffic was legal around here. Thought I'd try it.” She pulled a handful of clover and dropped it on his head. “Had to try it, actually.” She told him about the thrown rod.

“See that quaint little detached garage?” he asked. “Aunt Hannah's quaint little car is in there. She didn't will it to anybody, so I got it, along with all other unmentioneds. It runs fine. She'd have me drive her into town in it, to keep it from freezing up. She herself hadn't driven in years. Take it.”

“Oh, that's all right. I'll get mine back at the end of the week. Thanks, but—”

“But what? It's not like it would put me out, in which case you can bet I wouldn't have offered. I can't drive two.”

Well, that was true. He was probably being nice because his team had won its game by the slaughter rule. Or so she'd heard. She nodded. “Thanks.” She looked at the narcissus nodding their heads in the garden. “You say you got the unmentioneds. Does that mean you got all your aunt's furniture?”

“Everything except the piano,” he said. “She left the piano to my sister, Laura, and it had been moved out. I got most of the stuff, though.”

Meg looked at him. “Who'd she leave her silver to?”

“All the little boxes and bowls and trays and candlesticks and napkin rings … all that stuff went to Laura. And her dishes and crystal. But aren't you the nosy one.”

“Oh, come on! What's more fascinating than inheritances? So Laura got her other set of silverware; I mean, the set she didn't leave to Jane.”

“There wasn't another set. She left Jane her silverware—a set of sterling. It's nice. The other flatware was stainless, what she used every day. She didn't mention it, so it just went with the house.”

No, thought Meg. If the sterling came from Mr. Ehrlich's grandmother, it was late-nineteenth-century at the latest, and more than nice.

“Could I see your house?” she asked.

“Of course,” he said, getting up and reaching for her hand to pull her up beside him. “I
think
I raked the living room recently.”

He went into the house, holding the back door open behind him. They were in the kitchen, which was cool and dim. Meg's eye fell on a toaster on the countertop. Its cover made it look like a little house. “Jane made this for your aunt,” she said, lifting it by the small loop on top.

“It's nice,” said Mike. “I should give it back to her … but she'd probably think that meant I didn't see any value in it.”

“That was Aunt Hannah's room,” he said, indicating a room to the right of the hallway. “That's the bathroom on the left, though you probably could have guessed as much, seeing as how there's a tub in it. My room is this one.” He pointed to the right, then turned and gave her an amused look. “Oh, I get it. You're pretending to be interested in the house so you can get invited into my bedroom. You know, when you want something, you should just ask for it.”

“Shut up,” said Meg.

“When I was a little boy,” said Mike, “my mother used to stand me in the corner when I said ‘Shut up.' I've come to believe yours was remiss in her duties.”

“Ha!” said Meg. “All you had to do was stand in the corner? Sounds exceedingly mild to me.” She put out an arm to move past him. “Besides, you're the only person I say it to.”

“So it's actually a term of endearment?”

Meg snorted. “Oh, for sure. And here's the dining room. Gosh, it's big.”

The huge, round, dining room table was covered with stacks of books and papers. “I tend to work in here and eat in the kitchen,” he said.

The living room had a fireplace and lace-covered windows and was large enough to seem spacious despite an abundance of overstuffed chairs. The walls were covered with framed prints and photographs. “It's very Aunt Hannah in here,” said Mike. “I haven't changed anything yet, except for the piano. Can you believe there used to be a piano in here, too?”

“I like it,” said Meg.

“I haven't changed anything in her room either. Someday, I'll make it into a study, but it still seems too soon.”

There was something Meg wanted to do. “Can I see it?” she asked. “It looked like a pretty room, what I glimpsed of it.”

Mike shrugged. “Sure.”

The bed was mahogany and high, with a lovely candlewick spread. Meg perched on the edge and looked around the room. There was a small bedside table next to her left knee. She reached down and pulled the top drawer open. “Do you mind?” she asked Mike, turning to look blandly at him.

“Go right ahead,” he said. “Let me see if I can guess what's in there. A handkerchief. And a Bible. And a copy of
Portals of Prayer.
We Lutherans are heavily into
Portals of Prayer.
”

Besides what Mike had accurately predicted would be in the drawer, there was a lovely, rose-gold lady's watch with a black face, a small box of note cards, a ballpoint pen, and a silver spoon in a detailed floral pattern.

“Look at this pretty thing,” said Meg, taking out the watch and handing it to Mike. “Do you suppose it still runs?” While he wound it, she turned over the spoon inside the drawer. On the back, it said “Tiffany.”

*   *   *

“You paged me?” asked Lyle Halversen. From the sound of his voice, Meg guessed he was calling from his car.

“I just wondered something … about the fire I had. Is this a good time to ask?”

“Sure. Nobody on the road but me. What is it?”

“Could it have been set?”

Road noise sounded in Meg's ear. “Did you hear me?”

“Yeah,” he said. “I'm just thinking.” More road noise. “There wasn't any sign of an accelerant. I'm not a fireman, but I would have noticed that. It was exactly the kind of fire that would result from what I described.”

“But you said the wires were loose, like would happen over time. Somebody could loosen them, right? And then put some real old, crackly-dry bits of newspaper nearby? And there wouldn't be any way to tell.”

Meg could picture the look on Lyle's boyish, good-natured face. “Hypothetically,” she said.

“Well, sure. That
could
have happened.” He sounded reluctant.

“But you didn't find any old, melted cigarette lighters up there next to the junction box, I take it.” Her voice was amused.

Lyle laughed, relieved. “Just a few, and I figured those were yours.”

*   *   *

Meg pressed a bean seed into the ground and covered it with dirt, tapping it down gently. She would put in the poles later, when she'd thinned the sprouts. The early-morning sun lay across her shoulders, and if she knelt long in one spot, felt as if it were burning her calves. When she stood and stretched, though, the coolness of the air reasserted itself.

Of course, she thought, that doesn't mean the fire
was
set. Just that it could have been. She stared fixedly at the old house, unable to abandon what had begun as a queasy uneasiness and grown into near conviction. It would have been so easy.

Meg felt the same way she had when she was a child, lying in a dark room, staring at the bedroom closet door, wondering if there'd really been a noise from in there. Even nine-year-olds knew there was only one way to stop the heart-thumping, and that was to get up, turn on the light, and look in the closet.

She would look in the closet, if she could. But she couldn't find it.

Jane might just have got things confused. Mrs. Ehrlich may not have actually said that the medicine spoon was part of a set. It may simply have been a spoon she had not stored in the attic. Why she would, then, have shown it to Jane and brought up the subject of inheritances, Meg could not guess. But children did often misunderstand what they were told …

She rested her hands on her hips and looked around. Leaf shadows moved against the walls of the house, a honeybee lit on a violet at the edge of the turned earth, the meadow stretched away to the woods that held the creek. Many times in the past weeks, she had thought of her great-aunt with awed gratitude.

“How did you know,” she asked out loud, “that I needed so much for something to be mine?”

She knelt again to finish the planting. How could anyone ignore this dark, beautiful soil? How had Angie resisted planting rows and rows of growing things? It was mysterious but not one of the questions Meg would ask her when she found her. She wasn't however, going to find her very quickly if Detective Stanley didn't keep her promise.

After waiting all the previous day for a call, Meg had decided the policewoman had forgotten. This morning, impatience had taken over. How long did it take to run a check on license plates? The man who answered the phone at the police station was polite about taking a message.

“Yes, I'll make a note of it,” he said. “She'll see it as soon as she comes in.”

Meg wanted to remind him that he had a radio he could use, but decided he wouldn't use it for a request as seemingly unimportant as hers.

A black sedan pulled into her driveway, and Meg stood, brushing dirt off her hands. John Eppler got out, holding a sack, and strode toward her, looking as if he were ready to review the troops.

“Brought you some honey,” he said. “The light is clover; the dark is basswood. Nice taste, the basswood. Either one'll do you for toast, cereal, biscuits, and burns.”

“Burns?” asked Meg, opening the bag and taking out a large jar of thick, amber liquid.

“Natural antibiotic,” he said. “A little messy, but the best treatment there is. It should be the natural, raw honey, not that processed stuff from the grocery. You'll heal in no time. No scars either. They use it in China. Not here. I guess the AMA and the big drug companies don't see much profit in bee products.”

“Thanks,” said Meg. After her recent experience, she didn't like even thinking about burns. “This is really nice of you. I hope I don't need to find out how well it works, except as food. Would you like some iced tea? Or something else?”

“No, I've got to get back. My daughter's coming out this afternoon, and I need to straighten up. She's always after me about the condition of the house.”

“Your daughter's visiting? How nice.”

“Doesn't come often enough,” he said. “At least, not often enough to suit me. But she's a busy girl with her own life. And quite the big-city success.”

“Will she bring you more lovely mugs?” asked Meg, teasing him.

“I sure hope not,” he said. “There's not an extra inch in that cupboard.” He started toward the driveway.

She refrained from suggesting how he might make room.

He waved a hand and got in his car. “Cuts, too,” he said through the open window. “Or eye infections. Heals them right up.”

*   *   *

The library was about to close when Meg approached the desk with a stack of books.

“Just in time,” said the librarian. “Interested in silver, I see.”

“Yes,” said Meg. “I didn't expect you to have anything, but you did.” Several of the volumes had sturdy library bindings, but one, carefully covered in plastic, bore a jacket showing various beautiful old pieces.

The librarian inserted date-due cards, and Meg picked up her books and turned. Mike was behind her in the line.

“Starting a new career?” he asked, nodding at her books.

“I don't actually need a new career,” she said. “Yet.”

“Wait a second; I'll walk out with you.”

When they emerged, Jack was leaning against what was temporarily her car in front of the library, arms crossed on his chest, talking to Jane. The girl was laughing up at him, twirling a lock of hair in her fingers. Mike nodded briefly to Jack, punched Jane gently on the shoulder, and kept walking.