18 Deader Homes and Gardens (15 page)

Margaret Louise was not a sweet, white-haired granny in an apron, with a smudge of flour on the cheek. Her choppy hair was black, and she was wearing shorts and a T-shirt emblazoned with Mick Jagger’s leering lips. A cigarette drooped from her lips. The only age-appropriate thing about her was her wrinkled complexion.

I wanted to dash back to my car, but I held my ground. “I’m Claire Malloy,” I said. “I’d like to talk to you, if it’s convenient.”

“Yeah, okay.” She turned around and walked away. After a moment, I followed her through the living room to a small deck. She sat down in one aluminum chair and flipped her hand at another one. “You’ve made a mess of things,” she commented as if speaking of the weather.

“Yes, I have. Terry Kennedy died this afternoon.”

“That’s a shame. He really shouldn’t have come back.”

“It’s his house,” I pointed out. “Why shouldn’t he have decided to stay there for a few days?”

“You’ll have to ask Nattie. Shall I put on some reggae music? It’s Saturday, and we should get it on, don’t you think? Margarita time!”

“I’d prefer to talk,” I said as I watched cigarette ashes trickle down her shirt. “What did you think about the relationship between Winston and Terry?”

Margaret Louise flipped the cigarette butt into the stream below us. “You mean because they were gay? I thought a helluva lot more about those chocolate truffles. I don’t care what they did in their bed. Back in my day, there’d be at least three or four people in the bed, all of ’em stoned out of their gourds. I was at Woodstock, and I saw the Grateful Dead at the Hollywood Palladium in ’seventy-one. I rode with the Angels one year. Two gay guys? That’s as exciting as tepid milk.”

I tried to keep my eyebrows from hitting the eave. “In perspective, I guess it is. I understand that the Finnellys were not as enlightened.”

“They have tomato stakes up their butts,” she said. “Splintery ones. Charles was the one who browbeat Winston’s parents into packing him off to school. He thought that Winston’s homosexuality was contagious, and that Ethan, Zack, Shelly, and the rest of the cousins would take to strutting around in tutus. He didn’t have to make much of an argument—it was obvious that the kid needed to get away. I was sorry when Winston came back a couple of years ago ’cause I knew it wasn’t going to be any better.” She lit a cigarette and blew a smoke ring. “I saw it coming.”

“Winston’s accident?”

“That’s a joke, right? He was dead drunk, in case nobody’s told you, and probably sat on the bank and sobbed before he took the plunge. I hate to speak ill of the gay, but he was a wimp from the day he was born. When the boys teased him, I’d find him hunkered under this deck. I’d haul him up here, make him take a gulp of brandy, and send him back into battle.”

“Then you believe that he committed suicide,” I said flatly.

“Hush,” she said in an exaggerated swoosh. “If the media hear of it, the scandal will be bigger than all of Elizabeth Taylor’s divorces combined. Isn’t every last soul in the country speculating about the death of Winston Hollow Martinson? I’m surprised that there aren’t any conspiracy theories yet. The meadow could be the grassy knoll. Or maybe it was aliens. I’ve always liked aliens.”

“Me, too.” I took a minute to recompose my thoughts. “There is a rumor that Winston was pushed, Margaret Louise. Do you think that anyone out here would do that in order to keep the property in the family?”

She appeared to be more interested in a hawk on a branch across the stream, but she finally said, “You mean Charles, I assume. I did hear him muttering about tar and feathers, but he’s nothing but hot air. Make that scorching hot air from the middle of the Sahara. I’d be surprised if they have to turn on their furnace in the winter. Felicia probably makes s’mores on the top of his head.”

“Anyone else?” I had not forgotten her comment about Nattie.

“No, not really. Despite our eccentricities, we’re really just an ordinary bunch of people running a family business. You can look at the Colonel’s statue and deduce that some bad genes filtered down through the generations. Jordan has the record, as far as I can tell. Talk about a pain in the neck. I’ve never heard such an endless deluge of whines and complaints. This is no Sunnybrook Farm, and she’s no Rebecca. Has she told you anything about me?”

“Nothing that matches reality.” My cheeks tingled, perhaps from the late-afternoon sun.

“She and I play this asinine game. If you’re in range later, you’ll hear her shrieks when she discovers that I deleted all her names and numbers from her cell. And if she told you about my so-called sniffles, she was lying. I told her that I had a hangover, but that didn’t fit into her script. Oh no, she wanted sympathy—and an excuse to skip out from the greenhouse when Ethan turned his back. I warned him never to do that. I told him the same thing about that Butterfly creature, and look where it got him. It’s no wonder he works so late at the nursery. I’d rather kill myself than listen to her drivel.” She clamped her hand over her mouth. “Oops, not a good phrase.”

She didn’t look all that embarrassed, and I suspected she was covering a smile. I said, “You don’t think anyone in the family murdered Winston. What about Terry?”

“Like I said, he shouldn’t have come back.”

“And you said that I should ask Nattie about it. Does she know something?”

“Do I think she poisoned him?” Margaret Louise lit a cigarette and took a deep drag. “No, I don’t. She was grief-stricken when Winston died, but Terry had nothing to do with that. He had the best alibi of all of us.”

“Were you grief-stricken as well?”

“Why would I have been? I’m just the bookkeeper.” She stood up. “I didn’t realize how late it is, Claire. I must change into suitable drabness before Jordan and Ethan get back from a delivery. I keep losing my damn granny glasses. In the sixties, they were standard issue. I wore them to the March on Washington and listened to Martin Luther King Jr.’s speech on the steps of the Capitol.”

“I believe it was at the Lincoln Memorial.”

“Hey, I was stoned. It could have been the nearest McDonald’s for all I cared.”

She yanked off the black wig to expose thin gray hair as she went back through the living room to the front door. Once again, I followed her. I thanked her, but she was humming “We Shall Overcome” like a kazoo. I retreated to my car to consider what she’d said. I wasn’t sure how much of it was true, or how much of it was permanent brain damage from hallucinogenics in the sixties. However, it didn’t take much effort to imagine her in a graffiti-laden VW bus careening across the country, the windshield wipers slappin’ time …

It was still early enough for a surprise visit to the Finnellys’ house—unless they ate dinner at six o’clock so they could tuck themselves in bed at nine. I had a brief flash of them in bed with Margaret Louise and her merry pranksters and started laughing. As long as I could keep the image in mind, Charles could not intimidate me. Which isn’t to say he could in other circumstances. I do not daunt easily. I drove around the green and turned down their driveway. Unlike the more primitive road surfaces, it was made of pricey aggregate. The house was a large redbrick rectangle, reminiscent of a Georgian manor. The landscaping was perfunctory; there were no cheerful flower beds or window boxes. I surmised such things were frivolous and therefore vanity. I vaguely remembered that Job had worried about vanity as well, along with the death of his family and other minor inconveniences. The new gold Cadillac was merely a basic necessity.

I pushed the doorbell and tried to look as if I’d been in Sunday school all day (which was harder than it sounds, it being Saturday; I certainly couldn’t claim to be Jewish if I wanted to be invited inside).

Felicia opened the door with the same pained look I’d seen after the ambulance drove away. “You,” she said. “Why are you here? We don’t want to have anything to do with you or your kind.”

“And what kind would that be?” I pictured her dressed in hot red lingerie, sprawled across a tangle of sweaty, hirsute bodies.

“You’ll have to search your soul for the answer.”

“I am kind of adorable, or so my husband says, and I’m kind to the elderly and the infirm. I’d like to talk to you about Winston’s death. Is Mr. Finnelly here?”

“He doesn’t want to talk to you.”

I expected to be chased away with a broom, but she continued to watch me as if she were a buzzard and I were a baby bunny. “Are you afraid to talk to me?”

“Most certainly not,” she replied, although her eyes were shifting rapidly. Her puckered lips reminded me of a cat’s derriere. She took several minutes to come to some kind of decision. I anticipated being ordered off her doorstep and was surprised when she suddenly smiled and said, “Wait here.”

She closed the door, then locked it in case “my kind” stormed into any old house we chose. I watched squirrels leap from branch to branch for a good five minutes, prepared to stay on the doorstep all night, ringing the doorbell at random intervals. I had just dressed Charles in frayed cutoffs, with a peace sign on a shoelace hanging on his scrawny chest, when Felicia returned, her mouth tight. Her fleeting smile must have been a muscle spasm, I thought.

“We will give you five minutes. Please watch your language. This is a Christian household.” She gestured for me to precede her into the living room. The furniture was as bland as she was, functional but unappealing. There were doilies on the arm rests of the brown sofa and straight-backed chairs. There were no photographs or artwork. I was told to sit down, so I complied.

She sat across from me, her hands folded in her lap. We looked at each other in uneasy silence until Charles Finnelly came into the room. He remained standing, his arms crossed and his stare contemptuous. Long live the king.

“You have five minutes,” he said.

I wondered if he had a stopwatch in his back pocket. “Terry Kennedy died this afternoon from an unidentified poison. The lab is testing the contents of the vodka bottle.”

“Oh, no,” Felicia said, putting her hand to her mouth.

Charles handled the news without a twitch. “There has never been a bottle of alcoholic beverage in my house. Drunkenness leads to depravity and degeneracy. That it led to Kennedy’s death does not surprise me. He and Winston flaunted their perversity, and they died because of it.”

“Okay. I understand that you didn’t approve of their lifestyle. Let’s not get into a debate about it. Do you think Winston committed suicide?”

“My opinion is none of your business.”

I felt my chin edge forward. “It may not be any of my business, but it is police business. You’ll have to go to the department tomorrow to make a statement about it, and about Terry’s death. You’ll miss church, and we must pray that no one sees you entering or leaving. You know how your kind are. They might think that you’re involved in an ugly crime. Someone might start a rumor, and rumors tend to grow tentacles with every repetition. What would the congregation do if they heard you were accused of possessing child porn, for instance?”

“That’s absurd!” Felicia said.

“Be silent,” her husband commanded, then said, “Why is talking to you going to save me from further inconvenience?”

“I’m married to the deputy chief. He listens to me. If I tell him that you have no pertinent information, he may not send a squad car to pick you up in the morning.” Odds were good that he wouldn’t, since he’d be at the Atlanta airport. Besides, he never listens to me, even when I’m telling him what to buy at the grocery store.

“What I think about this suicide is not pertinent. We did not socialize with Winston and his ‘friend.’ He might have accepted the truth that he was an abomination in the eyes of God. Since he was unable to rein in his unholy lust, he did the only thing he could.”

“So he killed himself out of remorse?”

“Sadly enough, God will never allow him to enter heaven. There can be no forgiveness for such a sinner.”

“Amen,” Felicia said under her breath.

Charles swiveled his head to stare at her. “Go to the kitchen and see to my dinner,” he said sternly, then watched her scurry out of the room. “She forgets her place, as do other women.” We both knew to whom he was referring.

“Terry didn’t commit suicide out of remorse,” I said. “He was poisoned by someone who lives in Hollow Valley.”

“That is a false utterance, Mrs. Malloy. If you repeat it, I will sue you for slander. You won’t be able to buy a trailer when I’m finished.”

“So sue me. I’d like nothing more than to see this in the local paper. We might even warrant the front page. No, it’s more likely to end up buried next to the church listings. That’ll put the Hollow family in the spotlight, won’t it?”

“It’s my dinnertime, and I cannot abide overcooked chicken. Your five minutes are up. Allow me to escort you to the door.”

“Do you have a key to Winston’s house?”

“Of course not! Do not require me to be obliged to forcibly expel you.” He maintained his stare as I walked across the room.

“I can’t see Winston giving you a spare key so that you could water the houseplants whenever he and Terry were out of town,” I said as I stopped in the doorway. My elegant nose was in peril should he attempt to slam the door, but I found a high level of satisfaction from irritating him. “However, no one seems to allow locks to thwart them. Moses has no difficulty getting inside the house. He prefers merlot, but he was into the whiskey yesterday morning. He may not be the only Hollow who likes to snoop.”

Charles’s face turned redder than Caron’s. “Snoop?” he sputtered. “I do not snoop! I set foot in that house one time, and it was adequate to satisfy myself that it was a warren of perversity. The very thought of what went on in that house makes me shudder. I felt a moral compunction to go there the next day, but I stayed on the porch while I offered Winston the opportunity to repent and become a true Christian. He had the audacity to smirk, Mrs. Malloy. No one smirks at me. After that, I forbade my wife to acknowledge their presence in Hollow Valley.”

“Were you angry enough to whack him on the head and push him in the stream?” I asked, battling the impulse to produce the most superb smirk he would ever see until he encountered St. Peter.