The Readaholics and the Falcon Fiasco (5 page)

I
t was two days later, Thursday, before I heard that Ivy’s death had officially been ruled a suicide. Ham Donner called to tell me the police had released Ivy’s body and he wanted to get the funeral and reception organized and “over with” on Saturday. His words made me simmer, and when I met him at his apartment, which turned out to be a noisome room in a converted motel, to discuss the reception, he gave me the news before I even made it through the door. Not that I had any intention of actually entering the room once I caught a whiff of it. It smelled like stale beer (courtesy of the listing tower of empty cans arranged on the windowsill), dirty laundry (undoubtedly from the pile of grimy T-shirts and tighty whities piled in one corner), and damp metal and mold (from the rackety air conditioner halfheartedly spitting cool air into the room). A small stash of marijuana was partially hidden by a lamp on the nightstand, and a stack of DVDs—a mix of thrillers and porn—had been knocked over so bare boobs, guns, Jason Statham,
Michelle Pfeiffer, and Clint Eastwood stared up from the cases all which-way near the television. Three flies buzzing around a Cheetos bag on the dresser flew off when Ham set his Budweiser down on it to greet me. It was nine a.m. The boldest of the flies was back before the first drip of condensation rolled off the can and onto the dresser’s scarred finish.

“C’mon in, Amy-Faye,” Ham said, making as if to hug me. He wore only a pair of running shorts, which displayed his muscular legs, and a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt, unbuttoned so his hairy paunch hung out.

I stepped back out of hugging range. “I’m hungry. Let’s get breakfast. My treat.”

Ham gave me a half-resentful, half-hurt look that said he knew what I was doing, but muttered, “Okay.”

“I’ll meet you at the diner,” I said, hurrying to my van before he could suggest we drive together. No way, not even for Ivy’s sake, was I getting into the same vehicle as Ham. I’d made that mistake already and barely escaped with my virtue; I was a firm believer in “Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.”

I pulled into the gravel parking lot of the Pancake Pig, with its chef’s-hatted pig statue holding aloft a plate of pancakes from atop a silver pole, and pulled open the door. Chrome and white and turquoise predominated in the diner’s decor, and a 1950s sound track vibrated through a cheap speaker system. The Pig always did a good business, and I grabbed the last table available, exchanging
greetings with friends and acquaintances as I passed. I had time to order two coffees and a short stack of blueberry pancakes before Ham arrived, looking considerably more presentable with his parrot-patterned shirt buttoned and his hair slicked back.

The coffees arrived when he did, and he slumped into the seat opposite me, added two packets of sugar to his cup, and slurped half of it down before saying, “I can’t get my head around Ivy’s being dead. Honest to God, I can’t. It’s really knocked me off my game.”

I decided to take that as an apology for the apartment and his appearance when I arrived. “I almost called Ivy today,” I said, “to ask her if she wanted to watch
The Maltese Falcon
with the Readaholics tonight. Then I remembered.”

“Suicide.” He shook his head. “I don’t know why she had to do that. It’s not like she had any real problems. I mean, she had a good job with a steady paycheck, a nice house. Lots of people don’t have that.”

Meaning him.

“I mean, she wasn’t going to prison or anything, and she didn’t have some awful disease, or a husband who was cheating on her, so why? She even had plenty of friends and family who’d’ve helped her out if she’d let us know she was in a bind. She had me, didn’t she?”

I didn’t respond, merely looking at him over the rim of my coffee cup. Ham was no one’s idea of a confidant or port in a storm. If anything, he added to Ivy’s troubles.

When I didn’t respond, Ham tried again. “She’d
been depressed, you know. Anyone could see it. I’m sure you noticed.” He watched me closely, even though he seemed to be scanning the menu.

“I can’t say that I did,” I said bluntly. “She seemed the same as always Monday night. A little pissed off about something, maybe.”

“She was my sister. We had a . . . a connection.”

Yeah—her checkbook.

“I could sense her sadness.”

“Really?” I put on my politely disbelieving face. It said:
You are lying through your teeth, but I’m too well-bred to call you on it and embarrass us both.
I drizzled syrup over my pancakes. “What was she sad about?”

“I wish I knew,” Ham said with a gusty sigh. “I could have helped her, if I’d known.”

Uh-huh. “About the reception . . .” I steered the conversation toward business.

He flagged down the waitress and ordered enough food to fuel the Buffs’ offensive line. I knew it was because I was picking up the tab. “I’ve been thinking about the reception, and I think we want to keep it simple—”

Cheap.

“—because that’s what Ivy would have wanted. She wouldn’t have wanted a big fuss. And for her ashes, I think she’d prefer that I spread them from a spot she loved—remember the old tree house?—rather than have them interred somewhere. You could go with me. Brooke and Lola, too, since they were Ivy’s friends since forever.”

Ivy loved being the center of attention. She’d dressed like a fairy princess for her wedding and
insisted on all the trimmings. She’d thrown parties to celebrate her birthdays and career achievements like her recent promotion and still had the sparkly tiara she’d worn as a homecoming princess—Brooke had been queen, of course. I decided right then that I was going to throw Ivy the kind of funeral reception she’d have wanted, even if Ham chipped in only enough for Ritz crackers and Vienna sausages.

Biting my tongue to keep from commenting on his cheapness, I told Ham I’d be honored to go with him to spread Ivy’s ashes, and I was sure Brooke and Lola would, too. I hadn’t thought about the tree house in years. We discussed the details of the reception. When I asked Ham for a deposit, he squirmed. “Until I sell Ivy’s house, I won’t have much cash on hand,” he said.

“You’re getting Ivy’s house?” I don’t know why I was so surprised. He was her brother, after all. It wasn’t like she had a husband or children to will it to. I wondered if she’d actually left a will or if he was getting her estate because he was her nearest living relative. The latter, I’d bet.

He smiled smugly. “Yep. But my lawyer tells me I can’t access the money in her bank accounts or sell anything until probate’s done—whatever that is—so I’ll have to ask you to wait for your money. You know I’m good for it.”

I didn’t know any such thing, but since I’d already decided I wanted to throw one last party for Ivy, I merely said, “Sure, Ham.”

He reached across the table and trapped my hand under his. “Look, Amy-Faye. Now that
Elvaston is off the market, maybe you and I could try again, huh? After we get Ivy buried, I mean,” he added as an afterthought, apparently remembering he was supposed to be grief stricken. His lips shone with bacon grease.

I jerked my hand away, appalled that he knew I was still hung up on Doug—did the whole town know?—and offended that he’d hit on me minutes after Ivy had died. “I thought I made myself clear when I kneed you in the balls on our one and only date.”

His hand dropped to his lap protectively. “I figured—”

I interrupted him by signaling for the check. To get off the topic while waiting for it, I asked, “Did the police say anything about how Ivy died? What caused her death, I mean?”

“She poisoned herself. Something in her tea.”

I gasped. “How awful!”

Ham snapped his fingers. “Oleander; that’s it. She drank oleander in her tea. Not the way I’d want to go,” he added. “An easy bullet in the noggin”—he made a gun of his forefinger and middle finger, held it to his temple, and mimed pulling the trigger—“and lights out. Outside, in the woods somewhere. The way she did it . . . I’m going to have to get a cleaning crew in before I can list her house.”

Too disgusted to answer him, I scraped back my chair and walked away, stopping at the counter to hand Carmela Olivera, the owner, enough to cover our tab and the tip.

“I was sorry to hear about Ivy,” she said, her
gaze going from me to Ham. He had apparently decided not to follow me and was using a toast triangle to wipe up the last of the sausage gravy on his plate. “Do you know when the service will be?”

I told her and she said, “I’ll be there. I can bring some tamales to the reception.”

“That’d be great, Carmela.” I gave her a grateful smile, calmer now that I was away from Ham.

She lowered her voice. “Is it true that it was a suicide?” She crossed herself.

“I don’t believe it.” That very moment, I made up my mind to find out what had really happened. Ivy deserved better than to have people talk about her death in whispers, as if it was a scandal, something to be ashamed of. The Ivy I’d known for almost twenty years would never have killed herself, and I was going to prove it. Somehow.

*   *   *

My next stop was at Lola’s nursery, Bloomin’ Wonderful. I’d convinced another one of my brides to use potted daylilies in lieu of cut flowers for her wedding, and I needed to confer with Lola about finding a near-white variety to make the bride happy. Going out to Lola’s always made me happy. Even though her small farm was only five minutes outside Heaven, it felt like I’d traveled back in time, to a more peaceful era, when I trundled down the gravel road leading to her farmhouse. On one side, a field of daylilies, some beginning to bloom already, stretched out in a haze of spiky green foliage. In another month, the field would be a riot of yellow and orange, cherry red and deep purple, and pinks of all shades.
Greenhouses lined the other side of the road, their panes steamed. I knew they held all sorts of flowering shrubs and potted trees, as well as other perennials. The smells brought back strong memories of high school, of driving out here to pick up Lola, who usually couldn’t take the family’s only car, to collect her for a football game or soccer practice the one year we both played on the school’s new and very, very bad girls’ soccer team. Lola was much better than me, faster and more agile. She displayed a competitive streak on the field that I hadn’t even known she possessed. The coach used to say that if the team had eight or nine more Lolas, we might have won more than one game.

The farmhouse was small and painted a cheeky lavender with white trim. Old Mrs. Paget, Lola’s grandmother, rocked on the veranda, shelling peas, it looked like, and I waved. She waved back. An aging hound, resting at her feet, barked once as I passed and went back to snoozing, guard duty done. I spotted Lola with a hose near the old barn that housed her equipment. She was washing out a wheelbarrow, Misty sitting nearby, looking like she was trying to decide whether or not to attack the fat green snake spitting water. The kitten looked like she’d filled out some already. Lola smiled when I got out of the car and shoved her glasses up her nose with the back of her wrist. “Hey, Amy-Faye. Come to help mulch?”

“I don’t think I’m dressed for it, but I
have
come to place an order for a July wedding. Two hundred containers of near-white daylilies wrapped in silver foil. Can you do that?”

“Can I ever,” Lola said, turning off the water. A white smile split her perspiration-shined face. Misty moved forward to investigate the now limp hose. The musty but pleasant aroma of wet earth surrounded us. “Thanks, Amy-Faye. I know you pressured another bride into wanting daylilies instead of roses or carnations and baby’s breath. I think the Joan Senior blooms will do. The blooms should be at their peak then and they’re about as white as daylilies get.”

“I don’t ‘pressure’—I ‘persuade.’” I grinned.

“Come inside and give me the details.” She stripped off her work gloves as we walked back toward the house, Misty trotting behind us, convinced that the hose’s lack of response meant she’d vanquished it.

On the way, I told Lola that Ham said the police were calling Ivy’s death a suicide by oleander poisoning. Lola stopped and looked at me, brow crinkled. “I find that hard to believe.”

“Me, too,” I said, relieved to find someone who agreed with me.

“Did she leave a note?”

The thought hadn’t crossed my mind. “She can’t have,” I said, after a moment’s thought, “or Ham would’ve said so. He inherits her house and everything else, I guess. Seems pretty jazzed about it.”

“Oughta take him less than six months to run through it all, ‘investing’ it in his alligator-wrestling attraction, or . . . what was his last business idea? Edible crepe paper?” She snorted gently and led me in the back door of the house and into her small office, not much more than a closet off the
kitchen stuffed with a desk obscured by a phone, MacBook, and in-box, a filing cabinet, and a waist-high stack of farming and seed catalogs. I gave her the wedding details and she wrote them down in her precise handwriting, every letter a tiny capital.

“It’s not right,” she said, looking up, a line drawn between her brows.

“I’m sure the date—” I broke off, realizing she was talking about Ivy, not the wedding details.

“Ivy never struck me as the suicidal type,” she said. “It’s not right folks should think of her that way.”

“Just what I was thinking.” I dug through my purse and came up with Detective Hart’s card. “I talked to a detective the day Ivy died. Maybe we should see him together and tell him how we’re sure Ivy didn’t kill herself.”

Pursing her full lips, Lola said, “Of course, that does raise a question: If she didn’t drink the oleander on purpose, how did it get into her tea?”

I blinked at her. “Accident?”

She gave it some consideration, in her usual thoughtful way. “Barely possible. Ivy did like those herbal teas. All sorts of plants get used in making them—rose hips, hibiscus flowers, blackberry leaves, chicory, echinacea, hawthorn, and dozens of others. Still, it’s not possible a commercial tea blender could have made that kind of mistake.”

“I never heard Ivy talk about blending her own tea,” I said. “Plants weren’t her thing.” I’d tutored Ivy through high school biology (and maybe done a couple of her labs and projects for her—I’m
admitting nothing) and been thrilled when she’d gotten a C– for the semester.