French Polished Murder (19 page)

Instead, I concentrated on my research. To be exact, I concentrated on finding what there was online about the Martins. It seemed like the least I could do.

I figured if I typed in John Martin I would get a never ending number of pages, even if I added Goldport. So instead I typed in
Abihu Martin
and waited.

The first link to come up surprised me so much that I felt like I was waking from a deep dream as the phone rang.

I leaped up to get it partly because I was afraid it would wake E—and I’d trained myself through my years of motherhood to do
anything
rather than wake E. Partly because I felt like talking to someone else—anyone else—would be an improvement on dealing with what was on my screen.

It wasn’t.

As I picked up the phone and said, “Hello,” a raspy, low voice answered me. It sounded less like a voice and more like the entire malice of the world distilled into vocal signals.

“What do you think you’re doing?” it asked. And before I could recover from the shock, it added, “Stop it. Or we’ll make you stop.”

The words by themselves didn’t seem all that threatening. But the voice in which they were delivered added a dimension of malevolence and terror that left me standing by my kitchen counter, shaking.

To be honest, it was so horrible that it was almost a relief going back to the unbelievable stuff on the computer screen. Even if the top headline running across the page was “Abihu Martin, KKK Mayor of Goldport
.
”

The article itself made fascinating reading, of the sort they don’t tell you about in school—on how the KKK had once been a force to reckon with in Colorado politics, even placing their candidates for governor in office. Goldport had been at the tail end of this influence, but apparently the original lockers in Goldport’s North Elementary—long gone by the time I attended—had born inscriptions thanking the KKK for their gift.

It was hard to credit. Like most people of my generation, I had grown up believing that the KKK were always a fringe movement—crazy people who walked down the center of town in their hoods and sheets, only if the town would allow them. Nothing, I thought, that could reach for the levers of power, much less touch them.

Mr. Martin’s term as mayor—other than his detestation of anyone with dark skin, Jews, Catholics, and immigrants—seemed to have been almost admirable. By modern standards, the fact that he had decided Goldport needed a downtown and commercial buildings and had undertaken to tax and bully the businesses and citizenry into creating his vision might seem autocratic, but I had read enough books set at that time to know that the strong leader who made decisions and got things done was the kind of man people looked up to.

They had a picture of the man, at the end, done in the same sepia tones, then a picture of him again, near his death in the seventies. Both showed a pale, fair-haired, almost colorless man with a high-bridged nose.

I wondered how he looked when he talked about axing people to death. That kind of anger didn’t seem to go with his almost aristocratic features.

Had John Martin and his wife sold me a load of goods? Or was there fury hidden beneath Abihu Martin’s bland countenance? That would almost have to be true, wouldn’t it? After all, he was supported by the KKK, a group hardly representative of kindness and light.

The phone rang again. This time, I was prepared, and hit the record button on the answering machine right after I pressed the answer button.

The lunatic had taken balloon juice. At least what came out of my phone was squeaky and high and almost incomprehensible. “Ratty, ratty, rats,” it said. And then what sounded like, “I bet you’re planning on eating them!”

This so shocked me I forgot to be scared.
“What?”
I asked.

He repeated what he’d said before. Or she. At the range the person was speaking it was impossible to tell, but this time I could hear the words, which were, “I bet you if you sell them, someone will eat them. Snakes, snakes, snakes. They eat rats.”

“Excuse me? Who are you?”

“Let them go free. Release them in the wild. Nature will take care of them, Gaia the all loving.”

By this time I had pulled the phone away from my ear so it wouldn’t hurt me, and was staring at it as if it were in danger of growing tentacles. The thought that the phone had gone insane was ever so much more comforting than the thought that I had gone insane. I have nothing against the environment, and even—if understood as an interlacing of systems—nothing against calling Earth Gaia, but this idea that nature would take care of anyone, that nature was personified, a goddess of sorts and benevolent to boot, that struck me as the most bizarre nonsense. Anyone who believed in the benevolence of nature never watched a boy go through adolescence or a woman go through menopause.

“Rats were born to be free!” said whoever was at the other end of the phone. “Rats and raccoons. Not to be pets and slaves of men. Not like cats and dogs.”

And they hung up. I stared at the machine, wondering what I should do. It occurred to me that the calls might be related to the case Nick was investigating.

Well, hopefully he would come in with Ben, and I could tell him.

Meanwhile, I went back to my Web search, but other than more articles about the infamous—or sainted, depending on what you read—Abihu, the Martin family was unexceptionable.

There were pictures of John Martin’s father—a surprisingly swarthy man who must have taken after his mother’s side—and his wife who had the same broad face as his son. The wedding announcement of John and Asia showed a sturdy boy and a frail, blond girl who, even back then, seemed to have an interest in library science, which she was studying at the UCG down the street from where I currently lived.

John’s horses had won prizes at horse shows. He seemed never to have had another interest in life. He was involved in charities, but they were all about horses. Homes for aged horses, medical care for horses whose owners were in strained circumstances, horses for the third world. It was a little daunting, as if he thought horses were a more worthy species than man. And perhaps he did.

His mother and father had been involved in some local charities, but were neither great philanthropists, nor great socialites. They seemed to have raised John between the ranch and the city, and it was clear he loved the ranch better.

Asia Martin, besides her library, was devoted to charities for children at risk, and seemed to donate a lot of money to things involving foster care.

Well. Good for her.

Absent from all these reports on the family were mentions of Diane Martin, John Martin’s aunt. Oh, there was a mention of her now and then. She’d been present at the funeral for her father. She sometimes attended the symphony.

When she was mentioned, her name was always prefaced with the “frail” Miss Martin—no one ever called her Ms.—or there were references to her ill health not allowing her to take place in this or that.

Reading between the lines, it was easy to realize that Diane Martin was the only reason her nephew had ever bothered to divide his time between country and city, instead of living near his beloved horses. Further proof of this was the fact that now that she was going into an assisted-living facility, the Martins were moving to the country once and for all. I wondered how the old lady, who’d lived her whole life in that house, felt about letting it go.

I was feeling vaguely melancholy as the phone rang again. I marched to it, this time hissing under my breath and wondering what version of the voice would greet me. I picked up the phone and almost yelled into it. “Listen, I don’t give a damn what you think about the rats. If you wake my son up, I’ll stew you and the rats together in ginger sauce.”

There was a deep drawing in of breath from the other side, and I expected the click of a slammed phone. Instead, I got a “Dyce?” in Cas’s voice.

“Cas!” I said. “I’m sorry. I thought it was—”

“Someone who wants stewed rats?”

“No,” I said. “No. It’s a . . . uh . . . I’ve had two anonymous phone calls, and I expected this to be the third.”

“Oh,” he said, sounding somewhat worried. “Are you alone?”

“With E. Ben is out on a date.”

“Oh,” he said again. “I was wondering if I could come by.”

“I have E,” I said.

“Yes, I realize that. But I just want to come by and talk to you for a few minutes.”

“Oh,” I said. “All right. I’d love to see you, even if only for a few minutes.”

And at that moment, I heard E, from the dining room, “Mommy?”

Wonderful. Once the E was up, it would be almost impossible to get him to sleep again. I put my best face on. “Yes, Bunny?”

“Peegrass can’t sleep,” he said. He stood in the middle of the dining room, rubbing his eyes, Pythagoras beside him.

“I can see that,” I said. I looked toward the aquarium. Apparently the rats couldn’t sleep, either—they were playing a version of ratty leapfrog. I wondered about the lunatic who was so concerned with them.

“Rats play?” E said.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “They’re little boys, like E.”

“Rats need motorcycle,” E said firmly, putting paid to my notions that he’d forgotten the accursed toy.

“Oh, yes,” I agreed. “We’ll ask Ben to buy them one, okay?”

“Yeah! Then they can ride around the ’quarium.”

“Right,” I said and, casting about for something that might make E go to sleep. “Would you like some nice milk?” I asked.

He looked at me like I’d offered him Pythagoras’s head on a platter. “No!”

Similar offers for reading to him and/or a blow to the head failed, and by the time Cas came in, E had regained his second wind, and was running in circles in the living room, while I sat on the sofa watching him.

“Uh . . .” Cas said, looking aghast.

“Well, the phone woke him. I doubt I’ll be able to make him go to sleep again tonight.”

“Uh.” Cas said, again. I fully expected him to bolt out the door saying something like, “Kind lady, I didn’t realize that the son you had was a complete lunatic. I will now be taking my affections to ladies less burdened.”

But instead, what he said was, “Would taking him out for a ride help?”

“Taking him out for a ride is almost the only thing that helps, but I didn’t particularly want to go driving around in my car, on roads that ice at night. I don’t have snow tires.”

He grinned. “Ah, but I do.” Catching E midrun, he picked him up and took him to his bedroom, “Come on, kiddo, we’ll go get you a blanket and a nice stuffed animal, and we can go for a ride in my car, how’s about that?”

“I want ice cream,” E said, always one for pushing his luck. I don’t know where he gets it.

Cas should have said that with the temperature outside edging into single digits the idea of ice cream was at best insane, and at worse criminal. He didn’t. Instead, as he came back with E wrapped in his big blue blanket, snuggling his platypus, he said, “Why not? Jor and Jas gives extra points for buying ice cream in cold weather.”

I grinned, as I put my jacket and boots on. Jor and Jas were college boys who had made good, starting an organic ice cream company in downtown Goldport. I imagined they’d had more trepidation and fears than not, but the company had grown, heavily patronized by college students.

Now it was one of the biggest establishments in downtown Goldport and did a brisk business summer and winter.

To encourage business in winter, though, they had a point system, by which they gave you extra points for a free cone if you came in during a snowstorm or when the temperature was below a certain level.

I didn’t mind. I locked Pythagoras in the bathroom, despite his apologetic meows, and we were off. It was warm in Cas’s truck and the trip downtown took less than five minutes.

But when we got there, as he was parking, he said, “Dyce, do you mind if we don’t go in? Just get cups and eat in the truck? I’ll take us to a scenic overlook, if you want . . .”

I looked at him. “Why?”

“I want to talk to you, and I’d rather not do it in an ice-cream shop.”

I took a look at E in the backseat. “What is so important that requires sacrificing your upholstery to E and chocolate ice cream?”

He grinned. “Ah, well. That’s what upholstery cleaners are for, isn’t it?”

Then he grew serious. “I want to talk to you about Jacinth Jones.”

“You had an answer to your query about him?”

“Yeah.” He didn’t sound particularly happy about it.

It turned out Cas’s upholstery was in much worse trou
ble than I thought. E picked raspberry and chocolate ice cream in a cone. While Cas drove away from the store, E kept making little comments from the backseat, about “Ice cream” and “Num num.”

“I’m sorry,” I whispered to my patient love. “Your seat is going to be a mess.”