Death in Reel Time (17 page)

I heard the front door and recognized Jack's footfalls. I waited for his usual “Soph? Whereyaat?” but instead he appeared in the doorway, pale and agitated.

“What's wrong?” I asked, setting the laptop back on the sofa.

“Something weird happened at work,” Jack said. “But I'm not sure if I'm making something out of nothing or if it's something the cops oughta know about.”

“Well, out with it.”

He sat stiffly on the edge of the sofa cushion, his arms propped on his knees, hands clasped tightly together. “One of my workers called me out to the greenhouse just as we were closing up. You know Solomon, right? He's my crew foreman and he does a quick inventory of the equipment and supplies every couple of days to make sure we haven't left anything behind at a site or had anything stolen. He's very fastidious about it. He called me out to look at a tarp he found.”

“What was special about it?” I asked.

“First off, it wasn't ours,” Jack said. “I buy blue ones so they're harder to overlook. This one was dun-colored. It was folded like we fold ours, only not as neat or tight as my guys do it.”

“Okay, so you have an extra tarp from somewhere?” I asked. “I mean, aren't they pretty cheap?”

“Yeah, but just listen. We unfolded it, thinking maybe it would have the name of the company stenciled on it or something. If we'd picked it up by mistake I figured I'd return it. When we got it all opened there was something all over it, and Soph, it looks like blood. I remembered all those questions Denny asked about how we do yard care at the Crescent Hill houses and I sort of put two and two together and got some ugly math.”

“Yeah, I see. I'm getting a pretty wretched four, too.”

“But here's the thing: It might not be blood, it could be anything,” Jack said. “Paint maybe or some sort of fertilizer or
motor oil. I don't want to look like a complete wing nut if it's nothing.”

“Where do you store your tarps?” I asked.

“Behind the greenhouse,” Jack said. “Back near the mulch pile and the chipper. Solomon built a wooden rack to stack them in.”

“I remember now,” I said as I visualized the area behind Jack's greenhouse. “So if Solomon checks these things every day or two, this outlier tarp couldn't have been there long, right?”

“No, not right,” Jack said. “Solomon's been on vacation. He just got back yesterday. It could have been there for up to two weeks.”

“Where is it now?” I asked.

“Locked up in the greenhouse. You think I ought to call the police?”

“Denny and Esme will be back soon,” I said. “If it's all the same to you I'd rather you tell him than have Jennifer Jeffers at my front door. We'll see what he has to say. Like you said, it could be nothing. In the meantime, I'm starved; let's eat and watch the movie.”

“Uh,” Jack said, opening his hands as if searching. “I forgot the pizza—and the movie. I'm sorry, Soph. Everything just went out of my head.”

“It's okay,” I said, picking up the phone from the side table. “We'll get pizza delivered, then I have a little movie here on my laptop I want you to watch. Maybe you can help me figure out the plot.”

A
HALF-CENTURY-OLD FILM ABOUT EVERYDAY
life in a one-stoplight North Carolina town wasn't exactly the thriller we'd planned on for the evening's entertainment. But after we'd polished off the pizza, Jack settled in next to me to view the section of the Crawford film I'd watched earlier. I didn't want to prejudice him toward the theory I was developing, so I didn't say anything by way of introduction.

Jack occasionally made comments about the clothes, hairstyles, or cars. When we came to the part featuring Olivia's kin I simply said their names. I stopped it when their part was over.

“Tell me what you noticed,” I said.

Jack frowned. “Is this one of those tests to see how observant I am? Was there something freaky going on in the background that I missed 'cause I was looking at the people on camera?”

“No, nothing like that. I just want your impressions.”

“Okay,” Jack said, drawing the word out. “Well, for one thing I'm glad I'm living now instead of back then. I don't
care what people say about the good ol' days. That looked pretty hardscrabble if you ask me.”

“What else? What about Olivia's people?”

“Well, her uncle and aunt looked like salt-of-the-earth types. Her mother seemed self-conscious, a little out of place maybe. And I'd say her dad was one of those showboat guys who likes to be the center of attention and in charge. Is that what you mean?”

“Yeah, that's exactly what I mean. And tell me if I'm reading too much into this.” I told him what I'd observed of the exchange between Beth and Blaine by the front door at Olivia's house. “Could it be that these women, grandmother and granddaughter, were each being abused? Psychologically, at least.”

Jack considered then shrugged. “Sure, it's possible.”

His ready reply took me aback. I'd been expecting, hoping, that he'd tell me my theory was a stretch. “But surely Beth wouldn't put up with that kind of thing, right?” I protested. “She's an accomplished person. She earns her own living. It's not like she's trapped in a marriage out of financial want. And they have no children. Why would she stay and take that?”

“You know my sister, Kelly, right?” Jack said. “You wouldn't think she'd stay, either, would you? But she did. And in her case it wasn't just psychological. Kelly married young. Fell for a guy with a few rough edges she thought she'd be able to file down. She stayed with him for nearly four years, hiding bruises under makeup and wearing long sleeves. She didn't tell anybody, not even me. She couldn't bring herself to leave him until the night he pushed her out into oncoming traffic in front of a coffee shop because she put too much cream in
his coffee. Hadn't been for an alert driver, she'd have been killed. She packed her bags that night and finally developed a stone ear for all his promises about how it would never happen again.”

“That's so awful. I can hardly believe it. Kelly's such a strong person,” I said.

“Yeah, she is—now,” Jack agreed. “She met Mark a year later. It took him a long time to earn her trust but to his credit he hung in there and proved his mettle, and six years and two kids later he's still proving it. Looking back on it Kelly herself can't even understand why she stayed as long as she did. I think this is one of those things that looks a lot different from the outside than the inside.”

“Well, I may be wrong about Beth and Blaine, but I'm convinced Olivia's mother, Renny, was controlled by her husband, maybe even physically abused. And in those days even when women got up the courage to speak out there was little in the way of help. Lots of times even cops would dismiss a complaint as a family matter and wouldn't intervene. Maybe that's why Renny wouldn't leave Johnny. She'd defied her parents to marry him, given up everything of her old life, and she was probably too ashamed to admit she'd been so wrong about him.”

“Yeah, well, Beth and Blaine seemed like the perfect couple from all appearances, but like I say this thing looks different from the inside. I guess it wouldn't do to just come out and ask her, would it? And anyhow, what difference does it make now?”

“None, I suppose. Except it could be motive. If Beth was being mistreated anyone who cared about her would want that to stop—one way or the other.”

“You got candidates?” Jack asked.

“No, not really,” I said, though my mind was already constructing a list of those who might be most outraged: Daniel, Tony, even Olivia, however unlikely a suspect she might be. I thought of all those petite women who—if legends were to be credited—could call upon mama-adrenaline to lift a car off a pinned child.

Thankfully, these unpleasant musings were interrupted by the sound of Esme and Denny laughing in the front hall. Denny came in, looking far better than he had when he'd left.

“How was the massage?” I asked.

Denny crooked his neck from side to side and shook his arms. “I can't remember when I've felt this loose,” he said. “I was nearly able to forget the case for a while there.”

I looked over at Jack, then we both gave Denny a rueful smile.

“Sorry,” Jack said, “but I think maybe I'm about to put some of that tension back in.” He told him what he'd found and the two of them immediately set off for the greenhouse.

Esme stood at the window, a wistful look on her face as she watched Denny's car back out of the driveway. “Ah, well, duty calls.” She glanced at her watch. “It's early yet; let's you and me read some more of Celestine's diaries so we can get all the books back to Olivia before we leave for Wilmington. How far did you get?”

“Is Celestine still urging you onward?” I asked, avoiding the question.

“Oh, honey,” Esme said, flapping a hand. “She was even there while I was having my massage, and not happy I was
trying to relax when there was work to do. Even that Tibetan new-age music they play couldn't drown her out. Same message—
It's not right
—over and over again.”

I told her the tidbits about the dog and the timing of Johnny Hargett's draft notice. Then I told her my theory about Johnny and Renny's relationship.

Esme considered. “I don't doubt it,” she said. “Looking at the way he was with her in that movie set my teeth on edge. My husband was just like that, a peacock, full of charm and strut and pretty to look at. I was young and silly and beguiled by all that. Until we got married and I tried to turn him into a husband. He couldn't catch on to the nuts and bolts of that job and the swagger lost its allure real quick. Nobody to blame but myself, though. Mama warned me not to marry a musician.”

Esme had married young and was still young when she became a widow. Her husband had been killed in a car crash on his way to a gig. After he died Esme took back her birth name and swore never to put her trust in a man again, until Denny came along and convinced her, with our help, to go to coffee with him.

“Yeah, well, here's the other part,” I said. “I see some similarities between that relationship, Renny and Johnny I mean, and how Beth and Blaine acted that day at Olivia's.” I told her about what I'd seen in the front hallway and how it paralleled what I'd seen in the Crawford movie.

“That's a big leap based on one little interaction,” Esme said.

“I agree, but it might explain why Beth got so upset when we watched the Crawford movie that day. Remember? Olivia
thought it was seeing a happy couple that undid her, but now I'm wondering if she saw her own pain reflected back. I sincerely hope I'm wrong. I know it's complicated, but it's hard for me to accept that Beth would stay in that kind of relationship.”

Esme stared off into space for a moment. “
Complicated
is one word for it,” she said. “I might have ended up in that same boat if Roland had lived longer. I don't think he'd ever have hit me, considering I was a head taller than him and fifty pounds heavier. Plus he'd have been too worried about damaging his hands and not being able to play his sax again. But he tried his best to keep me in what he thought was my place and little by little I was letting him box me in.”

That shocked me, but I tried to keep it off my face. Esme was the last person in the world that I could ever imagine being subservient to anyone.

She shook her head as if to clear it, pulled a diary off the stack, and flipped it open to look at the date. “This one takes up the time frame when Johnny decamped,” she said. “I'll start in on it and you finish the one you were reading.”

“Deal,” I said. “I'll fix us a cup of tea.”

“Chai for me, please,” Esme said, settling on the end of the couch and kicking off the high heels she insists on wearing, as if six foot two weren't altitude enough.

By the time I came back she'd stretched out with a blanket over her legs, taking up the entire sofa, and was deep into her reading.

I set her chai on the table and she murmured an absentminded thank-you. I went back to skimming the diary I'd been reading, sucking in the words like a baleen whale
straining to find the bits of info that might be useful in constructing Olivia's family tree.

We read in companionable silence, stopping occasionally to read aloud to one another. The more we read, the fonder we both were of Celestine. So I had to share her excitement when she first suspected Renny was pregnant with Olivia:

Renny is putting back on a little weight here lately. That's a good thing because she had fell off to where I was worried she was going to waste away. I am awful glad but nervous, too, as I figure it means something more than her having an extra biscuit once in a while. I believe she is in a family way, which is thrilling and worrying at the same time. It tickles me to death to think we might have a little one around here, but I worry for Renny's health and I worry even more for what kind of daddy Johnny will make if he does not grow up right quick like. I was hoping he'd surprise me and make a good husband to Renny, but that has not been the way things have gone. Oh, but putting all that on the side, a baby! That would be joy heaped on top of joy.

“I imagine that must have been hard for Celestine in some ways,” Esme said, her voice wistful. “She'd wanted children herself and it hadn't happened for her.”

I heard the tremor in Esme's voice. “Did you want children, Esme?” I asked.

“I did,” Esme said quietly. “Very much. But I was waiting for some sign that Roland was ready to be a father.”

“And then he died.”

Esme tilted her head. “I think I'd given up on babies long before Roland died. Then life just went on like it will and then it was too late.”