When Secrets Die (10 page)

“You look too damn grumpy to be selling something.” She was smoking a cigar. She sat on a wicker porch swing, the white paint almost totally chipped away, and her legs, tan, firm, and rounded at the calves, were propped on the porch railing. She took a long draw on the cigar and flicked ash into the mouth of a ceramic frog, then tilted her head sideways.

She was a pretty woman. Really pretty. Face kind of round and inquisitive looking, eyebrows thin and arched and dark, eyes so blue they looked violet. Her hair was dark, and it looked shiny and very soft, which was noticeable in these days of gels and mousse and spray. It hung around her face in a nice way, bits and pieces coming loose from the clip that held it up in some kind of French knot. She wore silver hoop earrings, and her shoulders were bare save the tiny straps on the white sundress she wore. She had a slim neck, and the sundress had a scoop neckline that showed the rounded tops of large breasts that seemed to be holding the dress up, because the straps of the dress had slid over her shoulders.

He could tell she was wearing thong panties, and he could not stop himself from looking where her legs were propped on the railing to see if he could get a glimpse, but she pulled those long legs down off the railing and tucked them up under the dress. Franklin hoped she hadn't noticed his look but she probably had—otherwise why had she pulled those legs up so quick? But she was pretending she hadn't noticed him notice.

“I'm not selling anything. I was invited to dinner.” The defensive tone of his voice made him wince.

Her grin was instantaneous. “Yeah? Name, please, and I'll check the guest list.”

He felt witty all of a sudden. “Iggy here.” Not that she would have the least idea what—

“You like the Iggy movies?”

“Guilty.”

“I thought I was the only person in this town who liked independent films.”

“I'm only in this town temporarily, so I don't count.”

“Oh, you count all right.” She relit the cigar, using a wooden kitchen match. “Smoke?”

“Okay.”

“Hang on.”

She hopped off the swing and reached inside the front door, coming back with a long black cigar. “Portofino,” she threw over her shoulder.

“I'm suitably impressed.” He sat in the swing, scrunched to one side to make it clear he wasn't so much taking the swing over as sharing it. If she was surprised to find him almost in her seat, she didn't show it. He was surprised, though. He was not one to obey impulses, and here he'd done it already four times in the last five minutes.

She snipped off the end of the cigar with a pair of small purple-handled scissors, handed it to him with the box of wooden matches.

The cigar was a treasure. Five dollars apiece, and he never spent near that much on his own. Not that he cared what it smelled like or that it had been raggedly cut with a pair of purple scissors. He was content just to smoke it with this dark-haired woman who smelled of tobacco and Angel perfume.

She put her hands on her hips and looked down at him. “So are you actually here to eat, or have you come to give us fifteen minutes of your precious time and some lame excuse for not staying to supper?”

He took the cigar out of his mouth. “I wish you'd quit reading my mind, it makes me uncomfortable.”

She laughed. He really liked that laugh. It was … what would be a good word? Boisterous. Not a tinkly girl laugh. It made him feel good to know he'd made it happen. The truth was, he often had amusing things to say; he just never actually said them.

“That depends on how much trouble I'm in with Jodina. I was supposed to call and tell her when I was twenty minutes away so she could put the biscuits in the oven.”

Her smile went soft. It gave her a vulnerable look that was a likely conduit to the delicate woman behind the bravado. It made him want to tell her that everything would be okay, and he thought again of Jodina's reference to the safety of little children and body parts.

Please God let this woman be normal
.

“I'll tell her you're here,” she said, and the screen door groaned as the spring eased it closed in increments, finally reaching its limit and letting it slam suddenly shut, reminding him of the summer cabins his family had rented back home in Michigan. His father had been dead for seventeen years—dying suddenly and young of a heart attack—and eleven years later his mother had suffered a massive stroke that had smoked over half of her brain cells. Neither Marcus or Lucca had been cruel enough to want her to linger, and they had been happy for her when she'd died three days later without ever waking up. Franklin knew better than most when to restrain the cruelties of life support, and the ER doctor had been as close to a friend as Franklin usually had. His mom and dad had been gone long enough that he could remember them with pleasure, and it was astonishing to realize that during those summers in the cabins, his father had been younger than Franklin was now.

It occurred to Franklin that he'd been letting the weight issue slide, and that his father had been in much better shape those summers than he was now. His dad had seemed pretty old then, but only a six-year-old would consider a twenty-eight-year-old mother and thirty-two-year-old father
old
.

The screen door slammed open, and Franklin noticed that the wood frame was scarred with the exuberant comings and goings of that slender door. Normally he would disapprove and wonder why no one painted that wood, fixed the spring, or replaced the screen that bowed at the bottom; but somehow the whole effect was so comfortable and homey, he didn't think he'd change a single thing.

Jodina Calhoun beat the woman
(why the hell hadn't he asked her name?)
out the door, and they were both moving so fast, it looked like some kind of a race. They were too much alike not to be related. Not in looks exactly, although it was hard to tell, since Jodina Calhoun had to be in her eighties now or close to it. It was more a matter of their personal ambience.

It struck him then—was this woman the grandniece? The Emma Marsden he had been following in the papers?

The years had made their point with Jodina Calhoun, and Franklin knew very well that she had earned every crease in the aged paper-thin skin. Her back had settled in the C-shaped curve of advanced osteoporosis, and when she held out a hand for him to shake, he was gentle with the thick knobby joints of her long, work-worn fingers. He knew without asking that her fingers were stiff and that the joints gave her pain every day—pain that would be as ingrained in her life as breathing. But she was still vivid, not faded in the way of elderly people who have distanced themselves from a future they have no desire to see. Jodina Calhoun, clearly, was still very much in the game.

“I see you met Emmet,” Jodina said, and Franklin looked again at the woman whose very presence made his nerve ends tingle.

“The
notorious
Emma Marsden,” she said, giving him her tan, slim-fingered hand.

Franklin was not surprised to find her handshake firm, and the skin soft as fresh creamy butter. She looked soft all over, where a woman ought to be soft, and firm where a woman ought to be firm, and he used the handshake as an excuse to move a bit closer and catch another whiff of the present but elusive perfume.

“It's not every day I get to meet a woman who's genuinely notorious.”

“Not living, anyway.”

Franklin was startled into a laugh, and Jodina folded her arms and frowned at her niece.

“It is just like you, young lady, to try and make a bad impression on the one man who might listen to us and see our side of things, and I'd like one good reason I shouldn't wring your neck right this minute.”

“She's made a fine impression,” Franklin said, with complete honesty, then closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and asked what was cooking that smelled so good.

“Oh, my Lord, the biscuits,” Jodina said, and Emma held the screen door open as the old woman barreled back through.

Emma Marsden tilted her head and smiled up at him. She was tall, but Franklin was taller. “Masterful,” she said, and her right cheek sank into a dimple.

Franklin took a deep puff on his cigar and grinned. He agreed.

The kitchen was hot, and sweat had beaded up on the back of Franklin's neck. He stood stiffly beside the kitchen table, trying to stay out of the way. The kitchen floor was old, yellowed linoleum.

The house did not have central air. He'd seen a window-unit air conditioner sticking its rear end from the living room window. The rest of the house seemed comfortable enough—not ice cold like he liked it, but tolerable. His nose was sensitive. He detected the thread of mustiness common to old houses and elderly ductwork, but the kitchen was a study in aromatic layers.

It was a funny kind of kitchen. The table was yellow mosaic tile and black wrought iron, and it looked Italian. Emma told him she'd got it on sale at Pier One when he'd walked in the kitchen and told her he liked it. The black iron chairs had curled-back tops and soft gold cushions lightly coated with animal hair. The tablecloth was French blue, and the dishes some kind of Italian swirl pattern.

White lace curtains hung across the window on the back door and looked like they'd been there since the turn of the century. The countertops were scratched green Formica, and the cabinets country pine with black hinges and handles that blended well with the table. Emma Marsden kept her spices in a conglomeration of various containers. The economy-sized lemon pepper was Kroger brand. Anise, basil, and bay leaves were lined up in red and white canisters that came from the McCormick Gourmet Collection. The baking powder was the familiar white label, red trim, Clabber Girl brand that his mother kept in their kitchen while he grew up. The bag of flour was White Lily, and it sat in a tuffet of spilled powder that trailed across the cabinets and onto the floor. He noticed that Jodina Calhoun had flour down the bosom of her dress and caked in the creases of her palms. This was a real kitchen, where women who loved to cook and were good at it spent a lot of time. Nothing matched, but everything went together, and the room had the ambience and presence of that little coffee shop or bistro you walk into where the owners run the place to suit themselves. As individualized as a fingerprint.

A glass casserole dish that held a cooled blackberry cobbler sat on the white enamel stove. A matching dish held corn pudding. The biscuits were keeping warm in an iron skillet with a dish cloth over the top, and fried chicken drained on a huge platter right by a stainless steel sink that was overrun by mixing bowls and large wooden spoons coated with dried batter of some kind or another. Dirty glasses lined the countertop near the sink.

Emma poured wine from a huge glass jug of Carlo Rossi burgundy. The wine goblets were huge, and each stem was wrapped with a wine charm made of colored glass. Franklin's glass had a green charm, and Jodina's glass had a blue one. Emma's was ruby red. She winked at Franklin, took a plastic ice tray out of the top part of a refrigerator that was no taller than Emma herself, crammed as much ice as she could into her great-aunt's wineglass, then filled it from a yellow pitcher that sat by the side of the stove.

“Peach tea,” she explained to Franklin. “You want tea or the wine?”

“The wine,” he said, because that was what she was having, though the peach tea sounded good too.

“You can have both,” Emma said.

“Yeah?”

She nodded as if it was a proper request, when they both knew it absolutely wasn't. No pretense in this household.

Just as Franklin noticed that there were four places set at the table, the back door opened and a small, long-haired female walked in, followed by a weighty golden retriever.

Emma smiled at the girl and the dog. “Hi, guys. Hungry?”

The girl looked at Franklin and frowned. Her hair was a thick golden brunette, streaked with pink highlights. The hems of her jeans were too long, and ragged from being walked on. A good six inches of slim young tummy showed between the bottom of a tiny green T-shirt and the waistband of her jeans. Her makeup was carefully applied, almost model perfect. She looked a lot like a younger version of Emma Marsden, without the smile.

She'd only glanced once at her mother, but she stopped long enough to give Jodina a genuine hug.

The dog gave a war whoop and ran straight for Franklin, whose knees went suddenly weak.

“Wally,
no
,” Emma said, and to the girl, “Blaine, get the dog.”

Wally was quicker on her feet than Blaine was. She had both front paws on Franklin's shoulders and was looking him right in the eye before the girl could get a hand on her collar. The dog's eyes were brown and intelligent, her muzzle white with age. The animal opened a large mouth, and a pink tongue as thick as a steak fillet hung sideways over the black, saliva-streaked gums.

“Jesus,”
Franklin said. He was a man used to working around strong, unendurable odors, but this dog had the worst breath he had smelled in a lifetime.

The girl yanked the dog backward. “Off, Wally.”

Franklin reached a tentative hand out to the dog's domelike head. “Good boy.”

“Wally's a girl,” the child deadpanned, and Franklin wondered if the kid was having him on.

Emma looked at the girl over her shoulder. “Put her in the bedroom and get washed up for dinner. But first say hello. Marcus Franklin, this is my daughter, Blaine. Blaine, Marcus Franklin.”

The girl looked him over, eyes gone dull and bored. Very unimpressed. Franklin offered a hand. She forced a plastic smile and gave him a limp handshake. In all the articles Franklin had read on the Marsden case, very little if any mention had been made of Emma Marsden's other child. Franklin hadn't expected a teenager.

“Whatcha drinking, baby girl?” Jodina said, and Blaine grinned at her over one slim and tiny shoulder.

“Wine.”

Jodina winked and splashed just a little bit of burgundy into another wineglass. There was an ease between the two of them that made the tension between mother and daughter stand out.