18 Deader Homes and Gardens (8 page)

“Even if he wasn’t into the family thing, all of you must have been upset when he died in the fishing accident.”

“It wasn’t an accident,” Nattie said as she popped a strawberry in her mouth.

4

I choked on a mouthful of tea. Once I’d recovered, I said, “Not an accident?”

Nattie handed me a napkin so I could dry my chin. “The police investigators were happy to write it up that way, and the Hollow family was hardly going to disagree. Out of respect, the report didn’t mention the two empty wine bottles. Those, coupled with the marks in the mud, satisfied them that Winston was inebriated when he lost his balance.” She reached for the pitcher. “Let me refill your glass.”

“Thank you. It still sounds like an accident, Nattie. If Winston consumed two bottles of wine, he easily could have slipped.”

She gazed at the valley for a long while, gnawing her lower lip as though I’d said something profound. “I don’t disagree with that, but…”

“But you don’t believe it was an accident. Why not?”

“As I said earlier, Winston had problems. When I encouraged him to tell me what was going on, he was evasive. At first I thought he was missing his former life in New York City. Farberville isn’t exactly a hotbed of artistic excitement, and it must have been a devastating culture shock for him. Some people aren’t meant to live in the countryside, where the loudest noises come from starlings and bullfrogs. I occasionally caught him during the remodeling, and he told me that he missed the clamor of garbage trucks, the incessant sirens, the honking horns, the kamikaze cabs, and the daily parade of pedestrians.”

I heard something that was neither avian nor amphibian. “What’s that thumping noise?”

She listened for a second and then said, “The clothes dryer in the basement. It’s twenty years old and about to expire any day now. The washing machine sounds as if it’s about to explode. Moses has a medical condition that causes him to change clothes often. He … uh, leaks.”

I was sorry that I’d asked, and even sorrier that she’d answered. “Tell me more about Winston.”

“When the house was finished, he and Terry invited all of us to a party. Felicia was apoplectic about the quantity of alcoholic beverages, and she and Charles stalked off after half an hour. In truth, it was uncomfortable for all the family members. The boys continued to have boisterous parties every week or so. I could hear them from the Old Tavern. However, the parties became less frequent and then stopped. I would run into Winston wandering in the woods, his shoulders slumped and his eyes dull. He seemed to become more depressed over the three years. The last time I saw him, he was sitting on a fallen tree trunk, staring at the ground. That was in early March. I was concerned because it was cold and he wasn’t wearing a coat or gloves. He wouldn’t even acknowledge my presence. I felt so helpless.”

“You think he committed suicide?” I asked gently.

Nattie nodded. “I think he took the fishing gear as a ploy so that it would look like an accident. He drank the wine to rally his courage and then flung himself in the freezing water.”

“Did he own a fishing pole?”

“It’s hard to imagine that he did,” she said slowly. “He never fished or hunted when he was a child. He hated to kill things, even worms. That’s a good point, Claire. The only thing I can come up with is that Moses left a pole and a tackle box down there. He loves to go fishing in all weather. If it ever got so cold that the stream froze over, he’d be out in the middle of it, cutting a hole in the ice. Luckily for me, he never brings his scaly trophies home. I’m not keen on cleaning fish.”

Handling fish guts was not my idea of a pleasant pastime, either, so I returned to the pertinent topic. “Maybe it was a ploy, as you suggested.”

“Poor, sweet Winston. If only I could have convinced him to tell me the truth about how he felt, I could have helped him. We were so close once upon a time.” She sighed. “As they, whoever they are, say, ‘Of all the words of mice and men…’”

“Kurt Vonnegut, actually. You shouldn’t feel responsible, Nattie. You tried.”

“And failed. The Hollow family may not be able to trace its lineage to the
Mayflower,
and there have been more scoundrels than heroes, but I hate to see the family reduced to suicide, dementia, feral children, and whatever lies in the future. Once there are no more direct descendants to inherit the property, some real estate developer will bulldoze the greenhouses and put in a fancy gated community.”

I sympathized with her bleak vision, but I wasn’t in the mood for maudlin sentiments. “Maybe Pandora Butterfly’s children will grow up to become lawyers and engineers, marry, and produce a new crop of happy little Hollows.”

She laughed. “In a pig’s eye. Pandora plans to home-school them, so the odds of them ever learning to read are minuscule. One can only pray that they’ll end up in prison instead of being killed by a drug cartel. Well, this is my worry, not yours. You must have more entertaining things to do than listen to the creaking branches of the family tree.”

“I enjoyed talking with you,” I said as I stood up, “and I’m eager to learn how to make your cinnamon rolls.”

She insisted on wrapping the remaining ones in a napkin so that I could take them home. I did not object. After a brief hug, I went to my car and placed my precious bundle on the passenger’s seat. When I turned around to start the car, Moses’s face was in the window.

“Whatcha got there?” he asked with a leer.

“Just something Nattie gave me,” I said to let him know I wasn’t about to share. “How are you today?”

He rested his arms on the windowsill. “Got a toothache, which is strange since I ain’t got teeth. So you and Nattie were talking? Did she tell you a bunch of lies? I swear, that woman would try to persuade you that the sun rises in the west if she was of a mind to.”

“She and I were having tea.”

“Cinnamon rolls, too. I smell it on your breath.”

I could smell liquor on his breath, but it didn’t seem polite to point it out. “I have some errands to run, Moses.” I put the key in the ignition in case he missed the hint. “Enjoy the sunshine.”

“Did she tell you about Winston?” he asked with a snigger. “How we went to a party at his house and got snockered on fine whiskey? Well, l’ll bet she didn’t tell you half of what happened later.”

“What’s the other half?”

“That’s between me and the Colonel. Look at him up there, waiting for the Yankees to come thundering through the valley.” Moses stood up and stuck out his arm. “Into the Hollow Valley rode the six hundred! Cannon to the left of them! Cannon to the right of them! Volley’d and thunder’d! Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die!” His ferocity startled a flock of cowbirds into abandoning their roost for a more peaceful perch elsewhere. A squirrel on the bench raised its bushy tail but hung on to its acorn.

Nattie came around the corner of the Old Tavern. “Moses, whatever is wrong with you? You’re scaring Claire, who has better things to do than listen to you mangle poetry. How about a nice glass of milk and a slice of bread?”

“With honey?” he called back, his arm still beckoning the Light Brigade.

“With honey,” she replied.

Moses lowered his arm and bent down to whisper, “She’s not the only one who knows what happened to Winston. Other people have eyes, too. Don’t let her fool you.”

“I won’t,” I whispered in response. I started the car and drove carefully past him, not wanting to add crushed toes to his list of ailments. When I continued to the main road, I was relieved that Pandora Butterfly had taken her ballet troupe elsewhere.

*   *   *

Caron was still in her pajamas when I arrived home. She looked up from her bowl of cereal long enough to mumble, “Some guy called.”

“Terry Kennedy? Is he already here?”

“No, Danny something. He wants you to call him.” She briskly transitioned from spoon to cell phone and started texting.

I sat down before my knees buckled. “What did he say?”

“He said for you to call him, Mother. Are you developing ADD? That’s attention deficit disorder, in case you’ve forgotten. Inez’s parents decided that her little brother had it because he kept staring into space and walking off in the middle of conversations. They took him to a therapist and everything. It turned out that he was building a bomb in his room. What a hoot!”

I was impressed that she had not broken her texting rhythm during her remarks. “What happened to the bomb?”

She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “How should I know? He didn’t blow up the house or his school or anything. Oh, and I wrote down the guy’s number on the cereal box. He sounded anxious.”

I took the box of pastel marshmallow rice puffs and the phone out to the balcony. The number proved to be that of Danny Delmond Enterprises Inc. The receptionist questioned me as to my identity and objective and then put me on hold. I waited impatiently until a male voice said, “Mrs. Malloy, I need information from you. Angela failed to show up to a deposition this morning, and I understand that you’re involved in her pathetic charade as the innocent victim. Where is she?” His voice was brusque and accusatory, as if I’d stashed Angela under my bed. As if anyone could fit under it now that half of Peter’s and my wardrobe was residing between the storage boxes of shoes, blankets, and sweaters.

“I have no idea where she is,” I said, already disliking him.

“Don’t give me that crap, Mrs. Malloy. My attorney can get a court order compelling you to produce her under penalty of contempt of court.”

“Tell him to have at it. My husband can have your car towed to the police compound to be searched for bloodstains.” I despise bullies, and from what Angela had said about him, he was the worst kind. “It would be a shame if it got scratched, wouldn’t it?”

“I’ll sue you, your husband, and the police department if anyone lays a finger on my Jaguar. Now just tell me where she is and we can end this ridiculous conversation.”

“Do you have a short-term memory problem? I don’t know where she is, Mr. Delmond. If neither of us knows, it is indeed time to end this ridiculous conversation.”

I put my finger on the pertinent button but paused when he said in a much more conciliatory voice, “I apologize, Mrs. Malloy. I’m worried about her. We’re in the middle of a divorce, but we were married for ten years. I still have some feelings for her.”

“Okay,” I said, unimpressed. The only reason that he was apt to have been worried about her was that her absence interfered with the legal proceedings. His current girlfriend could have put down her foot and demanded that the divorce be finalized before she reached her twenty-first birthday. Or he’d won a twenty-million-dollar lottery ticket and was not inclined to share. “I haven’t seen Angela in a couple of days.”

“Neither has her office,” Danny muttered. “I was told you were with her before she disappeared. Was she upset? Did she say anything about a relative or friend that suggested there was an emergency?”

“She mentioned something about your lake house.”

“Oh, shit. Did she hear that … uh, I’m planning to use it this weekend?”

“I believe she did,” I said, enjoying his discomfort. I wondered if visions of flames were dancing in his head. “Do you and she have a temporary agreement about the place?”

“That’s none of your business. I’ll send someone out there to look for her.”

He hung up before I could ask him to let me know if she was there or not. I put down the phone and popped a pink marshmallow in my mouth. Two seconds later I spit it out and vowed to lecture Caron on the virtues of whole wheat and fiber. In a year, she’d be away at college, eating and drinking whatever she fancied. I would have an empty nest, but a glorious empty nest that I could feather with bouquets of wildflowers. If Terry Kennedy cooperated, that is.

When I went back inside, my nestling informed me that she and Inez were going to the park to play tennis. I skipped my lecture on nutrition and told her to have fun. Since I didn’t know when Terry would arrive at the Farberville airport-of-sorts, I found a familiar mystery novel and settled down to read. Regrettably, I had the attention span of a toddler, but I assured myself it was not ADD. After indulging in fantasies about my little house in the valley (prairies are so dull), I replayed the conversation with Danny Delmond. Either he was the egocentric womanizer of whom Angela had spoken so bitterly, or he was a crafty schemer. Calling me could have been a ruse so that he would not be a suspect if something dire had happened to her. Maybe he’d already been to the lake house to bury her body. The call she’d received at Winston’s house had displeased her. Danny perpetually displeased her, and a call from him might have sent her charging to confront him. Danny was a developer. He could have dumped her body in a hole that was by now covered by six inches of concrete. And I’d be on the witness stand, repeating the conversation he and I had.

At five o’clock I made myself a drink and pretended to watch the local news. If the anchorman had announced that a meteor would strike the planet within minutes, I missed it. If biologists in Brazil had captured a live fairy, I missed that, too. I would have paced had it been safe, but I’d stubbed my toes on a daily basis. Anxiety wasn’t gnawing me; it was wolfing me down.

Which explained why I spilled my drink when the telephone rang. I lunged across the sofa and grabbed it. “Hello,” I yelped.

“Claire?” Peter said. “Is something wrong?”

I struggled into a more dignified posture, although the front of my shirt was soaked and my hair hung in my eyes. “I was hoping you were Terry.”

“Sorry to disappoint you, my dear. Husbands can be a nuisance when a wife is carrying on with another man.”

“Idiot,” I said. Since I’d told Peter about the previous evening’s conversation, I did not feel obliged to carry on about his manly attributes and accomplishments. “I do want to keep the line open. Unless you’ve been appointed head of Homeland Security, I’ll call you later.”

“A quick word about Angela Delmond, and then I’ll hobble back to the next round of meetings. I asked Lieutenant Jorgeson to let me know if her name appeared on any reports. Her car was found in Maxwell County early this morning. It was parked near a private landing strip. No sign of her, or any hint of foul play.”