Paula K. Perrin - Small Town Deadly (8 page)

She didn’t reply.

I stood there soaking in the fresh
air and the sunshine and watching a pair of robins at the far edge of the broad
expanse of velvet lawn.  I felt a sense of wrongness, but thought maybe it was
my reaction to the huge chip that had always balanced comfortably on Alisz’
shoulder.  I felt impatient and unappreciated.  It wasn’t as though I didn’t
have things to do besides tote casseroles around the county. 
She’s just
lost her best friend—be patient.

Without turning, I asked,
“You haven’t seen Meg today, have you?”

“No.  Is something
wrong?”

“No, not really.  Patricia
was looking for her,” I said.  “You’re right about Andre’s part being
easy, just mingling with the crowd before the play starts, chatting as if he’s
there to watch a variety show.”

“You will keep Annamaria’s
part as Ethel?”

“I wish you’d find someone
else.”

“But now you have altered the
dress and learned the lines.”

“That was only because it was
an emergency.  You’ll have time to cast someone else.”

“You are not ashamed of your
play, are you?”

I laughed.  “No, it just
scares me to death to try and remember lines in front of a bunch of people. 
Remember how I nearly flunked English junior year when I couldn’t give
speeches?”

“Yes, the only time you were
not better than everyone else.”

I clutched the cold aluminum frame
of the door.  Carefully I said, “If you don’t want me here, just say
so.”

“I only meant that you were
always good in school.”  Cigarette smoke wafted past me as she moved to
stand at my shoulder.  “We have been friends since second grade.  Surely
you can forgive me if I am not so careful in my speaking today, considering
what has happened.”

My shoulder hunched.  I took a
step out onto the flagstone patio, and it was then I realized what had made me
so uneasy.  “Hugh’s fountain!  What did you do to it?”

She had slipped on a pair of
sunglasses before following me outside.  “He was a doctor, Liz, not a
stonemason.  His fountain leaked in a thousand places, so I had it removed.”

Grief stunned me.  Slowly I walked
to the edge of the patio.  Just a few weeks before his death I’d run into Hugh
at the pet store, looking into a tank of goldfish.

“Come help me choose my
denizens of the deep,” he’d said, smiling into my eyes.

Together we’d chosen six fish, the
ones whose markings most appealed to us.  He’d insisted that I accompany him
home to view their launching.  He’d said I had to see this architectural
wonder, no one was home to help him celebrate.  He’d been so proud of the fountain,
an elaborate three-level construction with water falling here and dribbling
there.

“I collected all the rocks
myself,” he said.  “Alisz complains I never stay home, so I’ve spent
months pottering around back here.  Hadrian had nothing on me.  This will amaze
people for thousands of years.”

While the goldfish floated in
their plastic bags, acclimating to the water in the lowest pool, Hugh fixed gin
and tonics for us.  We sat in the sun.  We’d laughed so much.  When we leaned
over the water, opening the plastic bag and letting the fish loose, our hands
met, and Hugh’s fingers, warm in the cold water, closed around mine.

“Liz,” he said, his
voice coming from deep in his chest.  “Liz.”

I’d looked into his eyes, seen
everything, felt everything.  I’d fled.

Now his fountain was gone, he was
gone.

Alisz was saying how much easier
it was to care for the lawn without having to trim around the fountain’s bulk.

I took a last look around the
perfectly smooth, green grass, and turned to Alisz.  “I’d better get going
and let you rest.  If there’s anything we can do for you, please let us
know.”

We walked back into the
amber-tinted family room and down the dim hallway to the front door.  There,
Alisz laid her hand on my arm.  “Please come by next week.  I will make us
lunch and we will talk about all the silly things we did in school.  All
right?”

“Sure,” I said, pulling
the front door open and stepping onto the flagstone path.

I saw a white car with the
distinctive, boxy shape of a VW Cabriolet rolling out of sight along the curve
of the street.

I shouted, “MEG.”  No
results, but not surprising considering how loudly she played her tapes.

Praying all the neighborhood kids
were in school, I screeched a U-turn, zoomed past the golf course and caught a
glimpse of brake lights flashing red before the car turned east.

The will-o’-the-wisp Cabriolet led
me into the little town of Hockinson where the chances are high you’ll get a
ticket if you speed.  I sped anyway and was rewarded by the sight of the car
topping another rise heading north.  I chased her around curves, past fields,
barns, and grazing cows.  I honked my horn a couple of times, but she didn’t
hear.  I’d never known Meg to drive so fast.

We turned east again and kept
Salmon Creek company as it burbled alongside the road.  I lost sight of her on
a long, twisting grade.

Finally I spotted the Cabriolet
parked next to an old blue station wagon on the shoulder of the road.

“Curiouser and
curiouser,” I said.  I pulled up behind the car.  A narrow dirt path led
through a break in the berry bushes that lined the road.

The embankment dropped down about
ten feet to a narrow beach along the creek.  A young woman wearing a short
black skirt and white blouse picked her way over the rocks toward the
dark-haired man dressed all in black who waited for her.

Why hadn’t I realized it was Laurel’s Cabriolet?  Because they were as alike as two peas in a pod.  Because the car had
pulled away from Annamaria’s and I’d expected Meg to go comfort Patricia. 
Because I had to find Meg.

I backed up quickly.  My cheeks
burned as I made my way back to my car.  What was I embarrassed for?  My
mistake was innocent.  Their meeting was not.

In view of Andre’s murder, their
meeting seemed positively sinister.  Perhaps I should try to listen to their
conversation?  But there was no place to hide, and if they did conspire to kill
Andre it might be dangerous if I was caught.

I went straight to the police
station just as any good citizen would.

Gene was sitting in his Uncle
Jed’s chair talking on the phone.  His red hair had furrows in it from a recent
combing.  He gestured to his visitors’ chairs while he concluded his
conversation.  As he hung up, he said, “Have you brought Meg in?”

“No, I haven’t seen her yet.”

“I need to see her. 
Soon.”

“Gene, I just saw a
suspicious thing.”

His blue eyes narrowed. 
“Yeah?  What’s that?”

“Laurel and Victor meeting on
a deserted beach.”

One shoulder lifted.  “Big
deal.  Jeez, you make me so mad when you try a cheap trick like this,” Gene
said, his fingers raking his hair.  “You’re like a mother killdeer trying to
lure me away from Meg.  Don’t you think I’d like to clear her?”

“Would you?”

He stood abruptly, Jed’s chair
skidding back on its broken caster.  He planted his large hands on the desk and
leaned over them.  “What in hell do you think of me, anyway?”

“I think you’re looking for
someone to arrest.”

“And just anyone would do?” 
He turned away, turned back, his blue eyes blazing, “Someone—probably
someone from the cast—killed Andre just minutes before you went down that
hallway, and that someone might have killed you, too, if you’d gotten there a
little sooner.  Have you thought of that?  Now cut this bullshit attitude that
I’m out to hang just anyone so I can look good.”

“I don’t care what you do to
‘anyone,’ I care what you do to my niece.”

“There’s evidence, Liz.  Hard
evidence that needs to be explained by Meg.  If you want to help her, get her
butt in here.”

“What evidence?”

“Sorry, I can’t tell you.”

I tried to stare him down, but my
eyes began to fill with tears.  Quickly I turned away.

“You always could dish it
out, but you never could take it,” he said.

“I never cried, not even when
you and two other guys tackled me and gave me a concussion—”

“If I never hear about that
fucking concussion again, it’ll be too soon.  Now get out and let me get back
to work.”

Far too angry to get behind the
wheel, I stomped a couple of blocks to the market and bought raspberry iced
tea.  I drank the whole thing on the way back to the car.

According to Gene, someone I knew,
someone from the play, had smashed Andre’s head.  No.  Someone could have
sneaked in.  Victor had brought a piano in through the outside door near the
janitor’s closet.  Would he have locked that door after him?  Would Gene have
asked about the side door?

I drove to our house just in case
the right Cabriolet was sitting in the driveway.  It wasn’t.  I kept on
rolling.

Kirk, mowing the lawn in front of
the rectory, looked up and yelled, “Liz!”  He dropped the handle of
the old mower he was using and jogged over to the car.  He’d changed once
again, now wearing cut-offs and a blue T-shirt designed by one of the kids in
our youth group.  It featured a white dove and bold red lettering that said: 
LET THE HOLY SPIRIT SWOOP DOWN ON YOU.  His shirt revealed strong, square
shoulders, muscular chest and arms, a little layer of fat around his waist.

I’d always thought of Kirk as a
chubby, harmless creature, maybe because of his round, boyish face.  Now I
remembered how easily he’d pulled me to my feet last night.  Good grief!  I
couldn’t suspect a priest, could I?

I rolled down the passenger side
window.

Kirk crouched on the sidewalk, and
looked in at me.  “Found Meg yet?” he asked.

“No.  Why are you so interested
in finding her—and don’t tell me it’s for Patricia’s sake.”

He looked down the street toward
our house, then back at me.  “I really can’t go into it with you—just, if
you see her, please call me.”  Effortlessly, he rose from his crouch and
went back to his mower.

I watched for a moment, the scent
of newly cut grass dizzying, the whir of the blades matching the whir of the
gears in my head.

Meg had never shown interest in
church since Sunday school when she liked to go because she got to wear frilly
dresses and Mary Janes.  Now she played the organ on Sundays only because of
Mother.  What on earth could Kirk want with her?

I turned past the church and went
west on Main Street.  Two blocks down I passed Sheila’s In and pulled into the
curb.  I glanced at my watch—nearly 3 o’clock.  She was closed now, but she
might still be in the kitchen.  I ran across the street, opened the gate and
followed the old, cracked walk that led away from the front door and around the
cottage to the back.

Through the screen door I heard her
oldies station offering Elvis crooning “Are You Lonesome Tonight.”  I
stepped over the white Persian on the stoop and opened the screen door, walking
into the eye-watering miasma of chopped onions.  Sheila stood sideways to me at
the butcher block in the middle of the kitchen working with a huge, gleaming
knife.

At the counter near her, Gene,
wearing a clean white apron over his uniform, stood kneading bread dough.  His
rolled-up sleeves revealed brawny, floury arms.  A leather jacket with a
Warfield police patch on the shoulder hung over a ladderback chair at the pine
table.

I’d only caught one word,
“Meg,” before silence fell.

Sheila’s knife didn’t stop as she
glanced at me and said, “Hi, hon, what’s up?”

“I wanted to pay you back for
this morning.”

Gene stared intently at the dough
he continued to knead.

“No hurry, Liz.”  Sheila
stopped chopping onions.

I dug my wallet out of my purse
and took out a ten.  The muffled whomp of Gene’s fist punching dough was the
only sound in the sunny kitchen.

I turned away, took a step, turned
back, catching the guilty look on Gene’s face.  His floury hands rested on the
counter.

“Why were you talking about
Meg?” I asked, my voice scarcely audible.

Gene said, “You shouldn’t
eavesdrop.”

“Don’t,” I said. 
“Please.”  I rubbed my forehead.  The headache had returned with
reinforcements.  “I want to know what you’re saying about Meg.”

Sheila said, “It wasn’t
nothing, honey.  Andre’s housekeeper says—”

“Sheila!  I told you that in
confidence,” Gene protested.

“Hon, it’s gonna to be all
over town by church time Sunday, and you know it.  Anyways, she says Meg’s been
at Andre’s a lot, so we was just wondering—”

I glared at Gene.  “Why is it you
can tell Sheila, but when I asked you—”

“I shouldn’t have told her,
either, but—”

I shoved the screen door so hard
it crashed against the side of the cottage.  I stumbled on the uneven cement
step, stopped to catch my balance.

The door crashed open again, and
Gene said, “Are you all right?”

Shivering uncontrollably, I stared
down at the deeply notched leaves of a dandelion, and for a moment all I could
think of was a Mickey Mouse record I’d had when I was little where a dandelion
turned into a real lion and chased him.  George and I used to—

Gene’s hand touched my shoulder.

“No!” I said.

His hand stayed.  “Liz, come
on.”

I looked at them, Sheila standing
now behind Gene.  The white cottage behind them reflected dizzying spears of
light into my eyes.

“I don’t understand,” I
said.  “Why are you out to get Meg?”

“Hon, he’s not.  We were trying to
come up with a good reason why a kid Meg’s age—” she looked toward Gene.

“I asked you about her
relationship with Andre—”

“I told you what I knew!” I said.

He sighed.

“Tell her about the wringer thing-ma-jigger,”
Sheila prompted.

“Sheila!”

“Oh, go on.”

“Apparently the murder weapon was
the wringer mechanism off one of those janitorial buckets—”

“I thought they were all one
piece.”

“You can get ‘em apart.  They’re
real heavy.”

“It must have been a man, then,” I
said, “because he’d have to be tall—”

“There was a stool in there,
someone could have stood on it and the wringer’s heavy, but not unmanageable. 
I’m not out to get Meg, but she’s a climber, she’s got good upper-body
strength, so how can I help wondering—”

I ran along Sheila’s cracked
cement walk and out her gate.