Lye in Wait (18 page)

"After a couple of years she got pregnant. Walter dropped out
of school and moved back to town. They got married, and he took
a job working at the lumber mill. The baby was born healthy and
happy, and while things weren't exactly the way he'd planned them,
they were getting by okay."

Walter had a wife? And a child? And Tootie had left them out
of his obituary. I had a bad feeling about what was coming next.

"They died," I said.

She shook her head. "No, they didn't die."

"THEN WHERE ARE THEY?"

"No one knows," she said. "Let me finish telling you what
happened."

I nodded and shut my mouth.

"Like I said before, Cadyville was smaller then. Made it even
harder to keep secrets. It came out that while Walter had been
going to the university during the week, his girl was seen going
around with someone else. He found out shortly after they were
married. And naturally everyone wondered if the child was really
his. I don't know what happened behind closed doors, but in public he never let on anything was wrong, and he was the best daddy
to that little boy. He really loved Cherry. She swore to everyone she
carried his child, that she hadn't cheated on him at all. And she
explained who she'd been seen with. Of course, everyone else in
town already knew."

Mrs. Gray paused and took a sip of tea.

"Who?" I prompted.

"Willy Hanover. Walter's older brother."

"But it was all innocent?"

"That's what Cherry told him. But when Walter asked his
brother about it, Willy told him different. He said it had been far
from innocent."

"Why would he do that? It just seems cruel"

"Willy meant it to be. He wanted Cherry, and she'd married
Walter anyway."

"Because Walter was her true love."

"You're a romantic, my dear. No, because Walter had higher
aspirations than his brother. Willy didn't go to college-started
working at the mill right out of high school."

"But Walter worked at the mill."

"That was the irony. I don't know if Cherry loved either one
of them. She wanted to have a better life than the one she grew
up with. Her mama died when she was about ten, and her daddy
started drinking, couldn't keep a job. He wasn't abusive, at least
as far as anyone knew, but Cherry had to grow up in a big hurry.
Maybe it was being so poor that made her harsh. Made her desperate. Maybe it was not having a mother. Anyway, she had big plans.
Walter was going to be an important scientist, and they'd be able
to move away, if only to Seattle. She wanted to leave Cadyville, and
she wanted her husband to make money. And that meant Willy
wasn't husband material."

"But Walter was. So who did the baby belong to?"

"No one knows for sure. Cherry said it was his, and Walter
chose to believe her. He loved that little boy like life itself, and settled down to raise him here."

"I bet Cherry loved that."

"Indeed she didn't. As a teenager she'd had a bit of a sharp edge
to her, but with a husband and baby to look after and no hopes for
the kind of life she'd intended, she got to be downright mean. She
made Walter's life miserable, berating him in public, scolding him
about what she perceived as his failures, until he eventually came
to believe her. After a while, she started throwing hints about her
relationship with his brother in his face. He was a gentle man, and
she completely emasculated him, stripped every shred of pride
from him. Everyone in town knew she was a shrew, and they pitied
Walter."

"Pity's a hard thing to take," I said.

"It was a humiliation piled on top of everything else."

"What about his son?"

"Whenever Walter wasn't working, he'd carry that little boy everywhere, in his arms, and then later on his shoulders. But Cherry
ruined that, too. As the boy grew older and could understand, she
tried to turn him against Walter with her venomous complaints."

"And it worked? Oh, poor Walter!"

"It would have worked, if things had continued like that. But
Cherry reached the end of her rope. She just up and left one day.
Took the boy with her. He was only four."

"She left? Did she go with Willy?"

"Not with Willy. I don't know if anyone knows where she went
or with whom. But it would have been with someone, because
she'd never done anything on her own. She knew how to use other
people, though. She'd found some other sucker she thought could
give her more."

"What about her father?"

"She never contacted him that I know of. He moved in with
her younger sister in Yakima for a while. I heard he died about ten
years ago.

"And Walter?"

"She left him a ruined soul. It was the loss of that little boy
that really did it. Walter just kept working at the mill. Didn't talk
to people much. Cut off most contact with his family, didn't have
many friends. And he started drinking, just like her daddy had.
After a while it got out of hand, and he lost his job."

I hadn't expected Walter's tale of woe to be so much about
family. He'd always seemed so independent. Well, no wonder he'd
become such a loner.

"He rented from you twenty years ago?" I asked.

She nodded. "Just before he lost his job. But he always managed
to pay the rent. And I tried to keep it low. I was afraid Walter was the
type that could have ended up down in Seattle, sleeping in a doorway in Pioneer Square. He'd just stopped caring. I think it was the
work he did for folks around here that kept him going."

Mrs. Gray paused to drink some tea. "And then six, seven years
ago he just up and quit drinking. Probably saved his life." An uncomfortable silence followed her last statement.

I broke it. "Did you know he was engaged?"

Mrs. Gray's eyes widened. "Really?"

"To a woman named Debby. You might have seen her around,
along with a little wiry guy."

She wrinkled her forehead in thought. "I've seen a man and
a woman at Walter's a couple of times. Is she, um, a little rough
around the edges?"

I nodded, seeing how she'd strike Mrs. Gray that way.

"And Walter was engaged to her?"

"According to her. She's got a big of ring."

Mrs. Gray set her teacup down and leaned back in her chair.
"Well, I'm both glad and saddened to hear that."

I knew what she meant. Nice things had started happening to
Walter after years of difficulty, and he ended up dying. It felt horribly unfair.

Looking at my watch, I excused myself, thanking Mrs. Gray for
the tea and the story. A red pickup with Cadyville Fire Dept. on
the door was parked in the alley, and, knee deep in the blackened
leavings of Walter's house, a man in navy coveralls cut out a piece
of stained blue carpet pad and placed it in an aluminum can like
the type paint comes in. I paused for a moment, but my stomach
growled, urging me home.

BACK IN OUR KITCHEN, I grated cheese over leftover rice pilaf
and popped it in the microwave. Walter's story kindled mixed
emotions. First came pity, but I pushed that aside. He'd received
enough of that in his life; he didn't need yet more of it from me
now that he was dead. But I couldn't help feeling sorrow for a life
wasted, for a gentle soul abused by greed and just plain nastiness.
Anger at the selfishness and cruelty of his young wife. Anger, too,
at Walter for being such a victim. His mother must have been frustrated by Walter's complete acquiescence to Cherry's early abandonment, his inability to get over it and get on with it.

After lunch I threw a load of laundry in the washer, then went
down to my storeroom and turned on my computer. I found several soap orders from my website. Investing in the site had been a
good business decision, and Erin had helped me put it together.
Until now, filling my Internet orders once a week had been adequate, but now early Christmas shoppers had started checking
items off their lists, and twice the usual number of orders awaited my attention. I'd have to check every day if I was going to be able
to keep up with holiday orders. With so much to ship, I'd show
Kyla how to pack up boxes and see about hiring some holiday help
for the crazy time coming in December. In the meantime, I set to
work processing credit cards and whipping out invoices and packing lists.

As I typed and printed, I fantasized about hiring an accountant.
But even when I could afford one, I'd still have to do the order fulfillment paperwork, and today it seemed to take forever to process
the orders from the site. Once I had the packing lists, I dropped
each into an appropriately sized box and lined them on the counter by the storeroom, ran upstairs to switch laundry from washer
to dryer and put another load in the washer, and hurried back
downstairs to deal with my e-mail. Though I'd whipped through
half of it by the time the laundry dried, queries from customers,
entrepreneurial newsletters, and a request for follow-up from one
of my suppliers still remained in my inbox.

They'd have to wait. At two o'clock I left Kyla a note to concentrate on packaging the holiday soaps, took the basket of laundry
up and distributed clean clothes to each of our bedrooms, patted
my hair down, and brushed my teeth. Halfway down the stairs I
spun around and went back up to the bathroom, where I applied
some eyeliner and lip gloss.

When I reached the bottom of the stairs, Meghan came out of
the massage room, Brodie trailing behind her. If Erin isn't home
Brodie follows Meghan around, waiting outside the door when
she's with clients. If Erin is home, Brodie follows her. I rate only
when I'm the only one around, and even then he usually lies in
front of the door, waiting for one of his girls to return.

My housemate tried to keep the hour after Erin got home from
school free so she could find out about her daughter's day and get
her started on homework. I told her about Kyla coming, and she
said she'd watch for her and let her into the workroom downstairs.

Cocking her head to one side, she gave me a look and asked,
"Where're you going now?"

"Beans R Us. Like I said this morning, I want to know more
about Debby and Jacob."

"Going to stop by the Gold Leaf?"

I shrugged. "I don't know. Maybe."

She smiled.

"What?"

"Nothing. You look nice."

"Shut up."

"Oh, stop it. You think the guy's cute. No harm in that."

I grabbed a rain jacket off the hook and grumbled my way out
the door, embarrassed like some adolescent girl caught in a crush.

The sky scudded with clouds above, and rain spit unevenly
toward the ground. I smiled to myself and tugged my hood up,
hoping this kind of weather would drive some of Walter's cronies
into the coffeehouse. Maybe I'd luck out and find Debby and Jacob
themselves.

The scent of freshly ground coffee beans welcomed me into
Beans R Us, causing an instant craving for a steamy latte. As the
same spike-hired woman from the other night took my order, I surreptitiously examined her eyebrow ring. Eyebrow rings were okay, I
mean, if you went in for that kind of thing. But the other stuff, the
jewelry that can get all tangled up in bodily functions, like blowing
your nose or eating spaghetti-or some things I chose not to dwell on right then-I just didn't get. But then again, the idea of committing to living with an image tattooed on your, well, anything,
for fifty years I found nearly as unnerving as a marriage proposal
or the little plus sign popping into view on a home pregnancy
test.

While the milk steamed, I inspected the tables. Two women
huddled together over notebooks and pamphlets. At first I thought
they were students, until I spotted the Bible and overheard enough
of the conversation to realize they were readying a presentation for
their church. They both looked worried, so apparently it wasn't
going so well. At a table by the front window, a man in a rumpled
suit read the Seattle Times and slurped on a grande something-orother. Abruptly reaching the bottom of the cup, he made an irritating sucking noise to get every last drop, rose, folded his paper,
tossed the paper cup in the garbage, and exited.