French Polished Murder (12 page)

Mom sighed. “Well, you could write a book on the unexplained mysteries of Goldport. Almeria was one of them. Your grandmother’s generation, you know . . .” She hesitated. “Your grandmother didn’t seem to think Almeria was very happy with Abihu, though. You know, these great men . . .” She sighed again. “At any rate, your grandmother refused to listen to rumors that involved that bar owner, whoever he was. But the thing is, Almeria did disappear one night, and was never heard from again. Your grandmother was very hurt that she didn’t at least get in touch with her and their other friends. It was a great grief to her.”

I bit my tongue, trying to avoid asking Mom whether Almeria might have been killed. Suddenly the letter I’d found seemed sinister again. Maybe she had been killed. By her husband with whom she didn’t get along? Or by the bad boy she’d run to? There was no telling.

“I don’t suppose,” I said, “you could introduce me to John Martin and Asia?”

There was a silence from the other end. “Well . . .” she said, “I suppose . . . depends exactly what you want from them. I mean, they’re divesting themselves of most of their good furniture, but I don’t think you could afford . . .”

“No, no, not that. For research, you know?” I hastened to appease her. “Not that I have any intention of asking them bluntly, to their faces. I just want to know, you know, if there’re any family legends of what might have happened to Almeria. It might come up in conversation . . .”

“Well . . .” Mother said, “as a matter of fact I’m hosting a tea for the historical mystery society tomorrow, and both John and Asia are attending, since they are such history buffs. It’s at the country club. I can take you as my guest. If you promise to wear something decent.”

“Sure,” I said.

“Your ex’s wife will be there.”

“Michelle?” I think my voice squeaked. Not that I had anything against the woman, except that she always made me feel ill dressed—or worse. “They’re back in town then?”

“I don’t think so,” Mom said. “She said something about getting into town before lunch, then coming to the tea, and how she’d probably be all shopworn when we saw her.”

Right. Shopworn. She’d still look about ten times more elegant than I’d manage at my most fixed up. I tried to concentrate on the good news, instead, and hung up the phone, and went to the living room where Cas was still reading to the mostly asleep E.

“All-ex will be back tomorrow,” I said.

“Daddy?” E asked. Then shook his head. “Don’t wanna Daddy. No Peegrass. Or rats.”

The idea of my ex allowing either Peegrass or rats into his immaculate McMansion made me want to laugh, but I said, “Only for a few days, baby. Then you can come home to me again.” I’d almost said to us, and bit my tongue at the thought, though Cas was looking incredibly domestic, as he rose from the sofa, holding E. “Come on, now, kiddo,” he said. “Let’s get you to bed, okay?”

We got him into his pajamas and into bed, an effort only slightly hampered by the fact that he had gone all heavy and limp, like a very large rag doll. Pythagoras got into bed, by his side. As I leaned over and kissed E, he said, “Kiss Peegrass, too!”

So I did, and Cas patted them both as if they were dogs, which both of them seemed to be all right with. We left E asleep and Pythagoras stretched out by his side in the faithful-guardian position, and went back to the living room.

“I was saying,” Cas said, as soon as we were sitting on the sofa, “I wasn’t proposing any sort of temporary arrangement.”

I noted he didn’t mention marriage, either, and I sighed, but was glad, because that might be the one offer I couldn’t refuse. Instead, I said, “I don’t know, Cas. I still say we’ve only known each other six months . . .”

“Okay,” he said. “I realize it’s different for you, because you’ve been married before and all, and you’re not sure if this will work out. I just want you know where I stand. So . . . when you’re ready . . . you know . . . let me know.”

Right. I’d let him know. If I was ever ready. The problem was that, having had a marriage blow up in my face, I should—at least if I were a feminist heroine—have sworn off marriage for good and decided that from now on only casual relationships of the most transitory and carnal kind would do.

The problem was that I was not a feminist heroine. In fact, it was quite possible I wasn’t any sort of heroine. I was almost sure I wasn’t the main character in a book, either. But if I were, it wouldn’t be one of those deeply philosophical tomes on the six-thousand-year home oppression of female kind. It was my considered opinion that both female kind and male kind were oppressed in completely different ways, and though they did occasionally oppress each other—and the Victorian age, other than its houses—had been one of those periods, most of what did the oppressing of both men and women was biology. A biology that came from a certain evolutionary history and that, therefore, was quite different for the hunter side of the species and the gatherer side of the species. Not to mention the one for whom spreading seed far and wide on as broad a dispersion setting as possible was a viable evolutionary strategy, versus the one who would pay in energy and vitality for each cub.

What was amazing, given the differences between men and women, was that we ended up being more alike than not and being able to understand each other on an intellectual level. Though I still said Ben was making up that thing about different tones of beige.

So, if I were a character in a book, it would probably be a cozy or perhaps a book on a woman who had an unhealthy relationship with discarded furniture. This left me with the ability to realize it wasn’t marriage itself I had a problem with, but marriage when the other half didn’t take it seriously.

Which meant, of course, that jumping into a relationship that most people took even less seriously than marriage was quite out of the question. I sighed as I snuggled into Cas, “I’ll let you know,” I repeated.

He leaned over and kissed me. “I hope so,” he said. “And I hope it’s soon.” And then he kissed me again.

Let me make it very clear that any woman being kissed by Cas shouldn’t be able to think of anything else. So I must have been really worried about that letter in the piano, because as we broke off kiss number two and Cas started descending for number three, I said, “Can I consult old files, at the police station?”

This, predictably, caused him to recoil, which was a pity, and say, “What?”

“Do you still keep records of cases in the twenties?” I asked. “And would I be allowed to look at them?”

He was frowning at me, slightly, as though he weren’t absolutely sure I hadn’t been taken over by pod people from Saturn. Frankly, I was starting to suspect it myself. After all, the words at the back of my mind were
what were you thinking? We were about to be kissed.

But the front of my mind was in full command. “The thing about that letter? Remember?”

“Oh, the woman? The star-crossed lovers? Dyce . . . why would that be a police report?”

“No, not the star crossing or lovering.” I proceeded to tell him about my research at the library and what Mom had said. I abstained from mentioning that I was going to a tea with the family tomorrow because, after all, it was none of his business. Also, Cas got worried about the stupidest things.

In fact, I could already tell he was getting worried, from the way he was frowning as he looked at me, with his forehead all wrinkled and his eyes squinched.

“Would you mind terribly not looking into it any more?” he asked. “I mean, I might be an idiot, but the whole thing feels off to me. And you know, you really shouldn’t disturb this old stuff.”

“What are you afraid of?” I asked. “That the ghosts of Almeria and Jacinth will come back after me?”

He shook his head. “No. More . . . you know . . . people have friends and descendants and . . .” He shrugged. “Look, Almeria and Jacinth have to be dead. Okay, her husband might have made their lives miserable, or they might have ruined all his happiness, but the thing is . . . you know . . . they’re all dead. What does it matter?”

But to me the idea seemed rather like saying that in a hundred years we’d all be dead, so what did it matter how we lived? Human life might be brief and all, but it should count for something. Otherwise, what was the point?

“I’m curious about it, is all. I just want to know if there was a disappearance claim over Jacinth, and what it says. Do you have reports that old?”

He sighed like he meant it. “Some. The building of the police station is still the same, and we have some stuff.”

“Could I look at it?”

He made a face. “Maybe. Some reports are public, or I can get permission for you to look at them—you know, local history and all. I can ask my boss. If he says you can look . . .” He perked up. “I’ll call you tomorrow, if he says you can come and take a look. And then if you come before lunchtime, we can have lunch together. That way you can satisfy your curiosity, and I get to spend time with you.”

I avoided groaning. So tomorrow there would be lunch and tea. Such were the dangers of criminal investigation “Sounds fun,” I said.

“Good. So now we can resume what we were doing when we were so rudely interrupted by your prurient curiosity about past loves.”

We resumed. And it was a very good resumption. So good, in fact, that though we heard a car pull up in the driveway and saw the lights being turned off, I wasn’t in the least alarmed when Ben didn’t come in immediately. In fact, though I didn’t pay much attention, it was quite a bit of time before Ben came in.

“Oh, for the love of Bob,” he said, as he came in the door. “Don’t you two hear the rats squealing? Have you fed them at all?”

“Once,” I said, as I looked up and noted that Ben’s hair was rumpled and he’d somehow lost his tie.

“Isn’t Nick coming in?” Cas asked, in the most casual of ways, though I was sure he too had noticed the lack of tie.

“No. He . . . had to leave.” The blush came like a tide up Ben’s face, and I wondered what in hell it all meant. Not that I had time to ask, as he more or less fled to the kitchen. Even if it was the most casual-seeming retreat I’d ever seen him beat.

When I went to check on him, he was feeding one of the rats, and looked at me accusingly. “You didn’t mark the feeding on the notebook!”

I had a night of disturbed dreams, where the piano
kept appearing in my mind again and again, in what I presumed was its glory. A woman in a Victorian gown, her face invisible, and the handsome Jacinth Jones from the newspaper picture stood cornered in front of it, while an ax came down, and her letter fell inside the piano.

I woke up feeling so strange that I actually went out to the shed, in my T-shirt and shorts—what I slept in when Cas wasn’t spending the night—to see if there were any ax marks on the piano. Needless to say, there weren’t.

When I came back in, Ben was in the bathroom. I didn’t hear the shower. This was generally a bad thing, since it meant that Ben was having quality time with his beauty products. By their quantity alone, they required the sort of attention that Solomon must have reserved for his harem.

I could have pounded on the door, but I didn’t feel awake enough to, so I went back to the kitchen and started coffee going, while I checked on the rats. There was a little sticky note taped to their aquarium, in Ben’s handwriting. “Just fed them, leave them alone.”

With nothing more to do I turned my hand to pancakes, at which I was amazingly accomplished because E and I had lived on them for most of a year.

When Ben emerged, fully dressed, I had dished up pancakes, scrambled eggs, and bacon and was feeling rather pleased with myself. The fact that he gave me a worried frown as he sat down and helped himself was weird, but not as weird as the hesitation in his voice as he said, “Uh . . . you don’t have plans for lunch, do you?”

I started to open my mouth to tell him that I might have a date with Cas when the phone rang. It was Cas and he sounded altogether too cheerful. “Hello, beautiful,” he said. “So, are you ready to come and keep me company for a while?”

“Uh . . .” I said. “Does this mean that you found . . .”

“It means that you should come and spend some time with me, in about two hours or so. And then I’ll take you to lunch. How does that sound?”

“Great,” I said. “See you for lunch, then.”

Ben’s fork clattered down on his plate. “You didn’t just make a date for lunch!” he said, sounding about two years old.

“Um . . . I did, why?”

He glared at me. “I suppose we can feed the rats, and lock Pythagoras up to make sure he doesn’t get in trouble, but you’d better be planning to take E.”

The idea of taking E to the police station while I was trying to do research didn’t exactly make my hair stand on end, but it didn’t fill me with warm fuzzies, either. Frankly, the few times I’d taken him by there—usually when we were picking up Cas for dinner or meeting him for some other reason—E’s sell-by date went to about five minutes.