Follow the Dotted Line (24 page)

“Simple,” Lorna agreed. “Very good, Harley. A downright elegant deduction.”

It was, Andy had to admit, and still she was annoyed with him. “It’s not a recording studio,” she instructed her nephew. “It’s a recorder’s office. And how do we find these relatives?”

“Online,” said Lorna. “It’s worth a try, Andy. It might help explain what this woman is up to. Or . . .” She decided to abandon the thought.

“Or what?” Andy wanted to know.

“I’m not sure I should say it.”

“Say what, Lorna? What have you already thought of that won’t occur to me until next week?”

“Well, there’s one other way to find out what Tilda has in mind.”

“Which is?”

“We could just wait.”

Andy tried to look ahead and see the implications of that strategy. She couldn’t. “Fill in the blanks, Lorna. Please. I clearly can’t keep up with you.”

“If Tilda really is after Mark’s cabin, then she’s only half way there. We could just wait until she takes the next step.”

“The next step?” Andy asked, unconsciously squinting her eyes.

Harley leaned excitedly into the conversation, like a man with X-ray vision. “You mean, we could wait until she files Mark’s death certificate, don’t you?” he nearly squealed, “because if she does
that
, then we’ll know for really, truly certain that he’s dead!”

Dawn finally arrived, and Andy saw the horizon. They could keep chasing Tilda’s backstory and see what more they could learn about the grant deeds of Mark’s predecessors. Or they could let whatever was happening between Tilda and her former husband play itself out until the bad news arrived at the recorder’s office in the form of a death certificate.

“So we shouldn’t wait around. We should keep investigating?” Andy asked.

“That’s up to you,” Lorna replied.

“But this woman is truly wicked. We’re sure of that now. I’m not crazy?”

“You’re not crazy, Andrea. You’re absolutely right.”

Andy looked down at the lake of melted ice cream that now swamped her uneaten cobbler. Maybe it was time to walk away from all this saturated evil before it caught up with her.

“Andy?” Lorna asked.

“I’m thinking.”

“About the cobbler?”

“Metaphorically.”

“Hmm.” Lorna looked down at Andy’s plate. “You’re wondering if you should finish the mess sitting in front of you?”

“Uh huh. Or if I should just get up right now and leave it behind.”

“That
is
the healthy option.”

“Probably.” But Tilda, like sucrose, was physically addicting; everything about the woman energized Andy. The rush was irresistible, even though she sensed, somewhere, there was going to be a crash. “What would you do, Lorna?”

A question the account had undoubtedly heard a million times. “Not really my choice, is it? This one is entirely up to you.”

Andy smirked. “Always the consummate professional. I hate it when people let me make my own decisions.”

“So?” Lorna wondered.

“So,” Andy said, picking up a soupspoon and diving into the creamy quagmire before her, “let’s hear what else you found at the cabin, my friend.”

Without uttering a word—or winking—Lorna managed to convey her approval. She returned her eyes to her phone screen and began scrolling.

“Bank statements.” she said. “I’ll print these out and show them to you when we get home. Not long ago Mark liquidated all of his assets. I suspect at Tilda’s urging. These were hefty accounts, and her name was on each one of them. She didn’t need him alive to drain these. She could have done that all by herself.”

Harley, who had been curious about the cobbler all evening, unconsciously picked up a spoon of his own and reached for a bite without asking.

Damn it, thought Andy. Now
there’s
a metaphor.

“And her passport,” Lorna added to the list of her ‘finds.’

“She has a passport?” Andy asked. She tried to imagine if someone could be clairvoyant in other countries—and which ones. “Did you get a look at it?”

Lorna arched her pencil-perfect brow. “Someone was in a rush to leave,” she observed, wryly.

“You mean Aunt Andy, right?” Harley asked, now fully committed to the cobbler and eager to point out that their early departure was definitely not his fault.

“Okay, musketeers,” Andy sighed. “
Mea culpa
. Anything else?”

“That about does it,” Lorna said.

“You’re amazing, Lorna. Forget those cigar-smoking P.I.s. Give me a CPA with a good manicure and perfectly plucked brows any day.”

The well-worn vinyl behind Andy creaked, as she leaned back in the booth and conceded the leftovers to her nephew. The ice cubes under her leg had melted, and water was dripping through the plastic. “I think it’s time to go back to your cabin, Lorna.”

“Amen to that,” said Lorna. “We could all use a good night’s sleep.”

They wound their way back to the large log house through a noiseless neighborhood on the brink of tucking itself in. Exhausted and thoughtful, the trio said little. Still, there was a feeling of triumph among them, as well as an unspoken agreement that it would be bad form to gloat over the success of what was, after all, a break in.

“I think we should go home in the morning,” Andy said, as the car rolled into Lorna’s driveway. “We’ve probably learned everything we can here.”

“What about the Elks Lodge?” Harley asked.

Lorna turned off the engine, and both women looked quizzically into the depths of the backseat, where Harley reclined across the entire spread of new leather.

“The Elks Lodge?” asked Lorna.

Pleased by the attention, he hoisted himself onto an elbow. “We could hang out there tomorrow and find out who Bernie is.”

“I don’t really want to know,” Andy said, tuckered out by the mere idea of additional surveillance.

“And if Tilda shows up to meet him, she might recognize either you or Andy,” Lorna posited. “And that would tip her off to what we’re doing.”

“Oh,” said Harley, unable to hide his disappointment. “I guess. It’s just that—I like what we’re doing. What we’ve been doing so far. It’s kind of fun, you know. And exciting. Truth is, I don’t actually want to go home. All that much.”

Andy sighed with the weariness of someone who had only one obstacle left between misery and a good night’s sleep. “You don’t want to go home all that much, Harley, because you don’t have all that much to do once you get there. Spreading the Good News used to pretty much fill up your dance card. Now all you’ve got is that yarmulke.”

“What’s a dance card?” he asked, blankly.

“Never mind. Listen to me. You can’t rely on women of a certain age to provide you with high quality entertainment 24/7. You’re going to have to get a life. And as soon as you do, we’re going to call your mother and explain what it is. Until then, I’m putting you to bed whenever I want. Which is now. And I’m going, too. So let’s get moving.”

Moments after they walked through the door, Andy collapsed into bed. Not surprisingly, home invasion was a highly effective sedative. About midnight her phone chimed with a text message from Edinburgh, which went unheard and unread until the next morning. She woke reasonably rejuvenated, tapped on her messages, and received the news she had been hoping to avoid for the rest of Harley Davidson’s life.

Yo. Just home from the motherland. Lecture went great. Met with local researcher. Found records of the relatives. We’re definitely part of the Chosen People. What was God thinking?

Of course we are, Andy thought, mindlessly rolling over on her battered thigh. “Jesus H. Yaweh!” she hissed, taking the name of both her old and new God in vain. She carefully repositioned her body so that she was aimed toward the bathroom, then rocked off the mattress onto the floor. As she put one foot in front of the other, she found herself speculating on how long it would take Harley to talk her into buying him a ticket to Israel.

When she finally arrived in the kitchen, Andy’s fellow gang members were seated at the breakfast table playing Scrabble.

“Sorry. We ate without you,” Lorna smiled. “Eggs and bacon are in the frying pan.”

“Wanna play, Aunt Andy?”

She limped toward the stove, picking up a plate en route.

“No thanks, Harley. I’m afraid I am the bearer of some good news this morning,” Andy said with resignation. Eyeing the contents of the pan, she pinched a slice of bacon from the surrounding grease and wrapped it in a paper towel, then extracted it, holding it up for examination. “I got a text from Sam this morning.”

The game made an unscheduled stop.

Lorna watched her friend wave the strip of pork back and forth like a flag of surrender. “Oy vey,” she muttered.

“Oy vey,” Andy confirmed. “Let me make two points,” she continued, turning her gaze squarely on her only relative in the room and biting into the bacon at the same time. “First, I will
never
keep a kosher kitchen—”

Harley’s body began to contract in anticipation.

“—and, yes, we are definitely Jewish.”

“I knew it!” he erupted. “I just knew it!”

She graciously gave her nephew his moment of jubilation.

“Do you have any idea what this means?” he trilled.

“I do not,” she said with faux curiosity, as she walked toward the coffeemaker, trying not to imagine the deep well of stupidity from which he would draw his answer. Dutifully, she took the bait. “Please, Harley. Tell me.”

“It means Tilda’s powers are for real!”

“Tilda’s powers?” She’d forgotten all about the question he’d asked at his psychic reading. Great, now even our genealogy is tainted by the she-devil, she thought.

“And so is that scrying stone,” he whispered, shocked and awed.

“Ah, yes, the scrying stone,” she repeated. “That does give one pause, doesn’t it?”

She turned to Lorna for a little tacit pity; the accountant was too busy enjoying the show.

Andy filled her cup with liquid comfort and felt the familiar chafe of enamel on enamel, as her molars began their predictable grind.

The Attitudes of Entomologists

“That’s because the scientists who study spiders are generally male,” Lil hypothesized. “Only men would come up with a term like
sexual cannibalism.”

“Still, the truth is, black widows eat their partners, right?” Andy argued.

“Yes. But insects are not people. And the problem is that people, male people, like to foist their sexist vocabulary onto arachnids. It probably sells more textbooks.”

Without mentioning the weekend trip to Big Bear, Andy had not-so-nimbly gotten herself into a discussion with her eldest daughter about the chances of Tilda Trivette being a man-eater. They had been talking, uninterrupted by munchkins, for nearly twelve minutes, and Andy feared the end was statistically very near. She tore headlong into the topic.

“All I’m saying is that when a woman under forty has four husbands and each one of them dies intestate, it sounds a little anthropomorphic, don’t you think?”

“No,” Lil corrected. “That would be giving the spider Tilda’s characteristics. You’re doing the opposite, Mother. You’re making this whole thing sound
animalistic
. In fact, you’re trying to make it is sound downright insecticidal. But Tilda is not a spider, and whatever she’s up to, you can’t explain it using the mating habits of another genus and species. If she really is killing other Homo sapiens, somebody’s gotta prove it. And I’m not sure that responsibility falls to you. Which, of course, begs the obvious question.”

“I’m not sure I’m following your logic, Lil,” said Andy, who was, of course, following it precisely.

So Lil brought her train of thought into the station. “You’re not doing anything dangerous, are you?”

“No!” Andy heard herself protest, with just the right touch of indignation. It was amazing how easy Tilda had made it for her to lie to her children. “Scout’s honor.”

“Good. And have you managed to find out where Tilda is?”

“Still working on that.”

“Okay. But you absolutely promise you won’t go near her, wherever she is?”

“I promise,” Andy pledged, without hesitation. “Right now, I’m trying to learn more about Tilda’s other three husbands.”

“That’s a little out of your purview, isn’t it? I mean, I thought you were supposed to be finding out what happened to Dad.”

“I’m looking for a pattern from which to extrapolate, Lil.”

“The black widow pattern,” Lil said, with a little more condescension than Andy thought necessary.

“Well, the truth is, I have no idea at this point what’s happened to your dad. So I thought I’d work on his predecessors for a while.”

“Good luck with that.”

“Thank you.”

“I was being disingenuous, Mom.”

“I wouldn’t have you any other way, Lilly.” Feeling she had fulfilled her obligation to keep her offspring apprised of her current activities, Andy decided to move to higher, safer ground. “How are my Boise Boys?” she asked.

“We are going to a cape party next weekend. They’re very excited.”

“What’s a cape party?”

“You dress as your favorite superhero. The boys like seeing themselves in capes. I kind of get off on seeing them all in tights.”

“You’re dressing the twins in tights?”

“Oh, yes! Little matching Batmen. It’s the closest I’m ever going to get to having girls.”

In the background, Andy heard the battery-powered cacophony of light sabers and knew the end was near.

“I have to go,” Lil announced, unnecessarily.

“Right.”

“Oh, I wanted to ask you a favor.”

“Out with it,” Andy said, trying not to hold up the conversation.

“If I send you a bag of clothes, will you take it to Scotland with you next week?”

“How many clothes?”

“Jeans. Some shirts. Two jackets. A few sweaters . . .”

“Lil . . .”

“You can make room, Mom. I know you can. And Sam really needs them for Jake.”

“Okay. Okay.”

“I’ll send them UPS, so you’ll have plenty of time to pack. Thanks. Love you.”

“Love you, too, honey.”

Traveling to Edinburgh had grown from routine to ritual for Andy in the decade since Samantha and Graham had met and married. She often went twice a year, always preferring August, when the days are as warm as they ever get in the neighborhood of the North Sea and when the city’s arts festival turns pub crawling into an aesthetic experience.