A Shiver of Wonder (3 page)

Stretching east from the public square was a
two-block-deep swath of businesses. Not a mall in sight, but a few
enterprising chains had recently begun to slip through the cracks
of local proprietorship. Bordered on the north by Willow Avenue and
on the south by Oak, with Larch Avenue bisecting the middle, this
wealth of various establishments extended from Third Street all the
way down to Seventh, where the town immediately began to peter out,
taking only two subsequent blocks to transition into farmland.

No one knew for sure which variety of tree
had provided the original grove for which Shady Grove had been
named, but with Maple, Gum, and Birch Avenues bridging the gap
between Oak and Smithfield, it was anybody’s guess.

The foothills north of the town began to set
up shop a touch early, midway through the public square. And while
this made for a natural locale for the outdoor amphitheater, with
the audience backing toward the corner of Willow and Second and the
stage set cozily into the curvature of the land, it also made for a
wonderful view of Shady Grove from The Restful Nook. And The
Restful Nook is where David and Genevieve truly met, three months
after David moved into the Rainbow Arms.

“No Johnson today?” had been the question
lobbed down a hallway as David exited a room, irritated and in a
hurry to catch the trolley that would depart Willow Avenue in a few
minutes.

“Huh? Oh, hi. No, no dogs allowed.” He
certainly recognized the woman, but couldn’t place her.

“Oh! I suppose I should have known that, but
it’s never been an issue for me.”

She had taken several steps toward him, and
as he took in the delicate cheekbones, the sensuous eyebrows, and
the hints of warmth behind the businesslike exterior, it clicked:
she worked at Gâteaupia! It had instantly become David’s favorite
dessert haunt when he’d discovered it a few weeks before.

“You don’t know my name, do you, David?” But
she was amused, not upset.

He attempted a grin. “I do. I… uh – ”

“Genevieve.”

“Ah. Pronounced like that.
That
I
didn’t know.” His grin was widening, becoming honest as he realized
that she actually didn’t care.

“And do you recall where we’ve run into each
other, David?” she threw out coyly. The warmth was melting her
habitual cool, and David understood that Genevieve enjoyed
challenges. Especially when she was challenging others.

“Gâteaupia,” he beamed. “You’re… You’re a
counter girl there.”

This last response elicited a genuine peal
of laughter. David glanced around them, nervous suddenly that he
really
had
put his foot in it. There was no audience present
for his faux pas, though.

“All right,” she managed to say, “I’ve been
called many things in my life, some of them
not
so
complimentary, but that’s a new one.”

David began running synonyms through his
head, as fast as he could: server, salesperson, waitress,
attendant, menial, drudge… Not
one
of them was appropriate,
or any better than counter girl.

Her hand reached out to gently touch his
arm. A smile followed. “Being a counter girl would be a relief at
times,” she said quietly. “I actually own it, though.” Her hand
withdrew. “So. Who are you here to visit?”

Relieved that the subject had been changed
so smoothly, David glanced back down the hall. “My Grandpa. Henry
Wilcott. He’s actually the reason I chose to move to Shady
Grove.”

“Oh, so that’s why we’d never seen you
before a few weeks ago!”

He smiled. “Your cakes are pretty much the
best cakes I’ve ever eaten.”

A hand rose to brush hair off her cheek.
David liked her hair; it was strawberry blonde with subdued
highlights, usually tightly wrapped in a bun, but today hanging
loose below her shoulders. Genevieve smelled sweet, too, like brown
sugar with a dusting of cinnamon.

“Thank you,” she said. “We try. Is your
Grandpa pleased that you moved here?”

David couldn’t help but grimace. “I’m not
sure. He’s… angry a lot of the time.
All
of the time, to be
honest.”

“He doesn’t like being old?”

“Who would?” But David shook his head,
unable to make light of it. “The last time I’d seen him was five
years ago. He lived down on Gum then, in the same house in which
he’d lived for over fifty years. He was independent, a bit crusty,
but content. My Grandma died a decade ago, and he’d been dating
some, which he loved.
Always
younger women! He had a fall,
though, about two years ago while he was pruning his trees, and
that was it for the independence. One knee went out, and then the
other, and everything else in his body apparently decided to follow
suit.”

Genevieve’s eyes hadn’t left his. “That’s
sad.”

“I know. I try to make him happier, but it’s
tough. I’ve even brought him some of that Bourbon Chocolate Tipsy
Cake of yours, which is his absolute favorite, but then he just
starts going on about all the things he
can’t
eat
anymore.”

“Oh! That’s really sad.”

David couldn’t help but grin. “We tried
playing cards today. When I was a kid, he always used to let me win
at Uno and War. It made me happy, even though I hadn’t known at the
time he was doing it. Today, I let
him
win – bottom dealing
and such – but
nothing
will make him happy. He’s just… He
just wants it to be over, I think.”

Genevieve glanced away from him, toward a
picture window that overlooked the town, and David found himself
doing the same. It was an incredible view, for The Restful Nook sat
atop a low hill, cattycorner from the amphitheater in the public
square. The multitude of trees appeared as a rolling carpet; a
slight haze above the distant farmland induced a mystical aura; the
square itself was humming with Saturday activities.

“May I ask who you’re here to visit?” David
said without turning toward her.

“Abby Lowell,” she replied, also still
gazing outside. “I call her my angel. She taught me art once, and
when I opened Gâteaupia, she became one of my first customers. She
told all of her friends that they had to come in and try my cakes,
so they did. And then she told them to tell all of
their
friends. She’s bought cakes for schools, for her clubs, for her
church, for everything, really. I’ve never had such a booster. I
adore her, and I try to come every week to see her.”

“She doesn’t sound that old.”

“She’s not! She’s our age or younger, just
stuck in a 76-year-old’s body.”

David turned to look at her, struck suddenly
with a surge of admiration for this successful businesswoman who
still made time for those people in her life who had helped her
become
successful. She was definitely a bit forbidding, but
yet at the same time he wished he could have been more like her.
Her confidence in herself, her obvious ability to choose a path and
stride down it, remembering the steps she’d taken and not
second-guessing each move, not
making
wrong moves that she
would then spend years ruing.

Genevieve’s head tilted toward him. “Lydia’s
going to be jealous. She thinks you’re cute.”

“Lydia?”

Again, she laughed. “The girl with the
purple streak in her hair and a hummingbird tattooed on her
shoulder.”

David couldn’t help but look delighted.
Lydia was his favorite server at Gâteaupia. Bright eyes, a raunchy
wit, a penchant for making every type of cake sound like the best
type of cake.

“I think you’re cute, too,” Genevieve added.
“And maybe I’ll see you in the store again sometime soon.”

She tapped his shoulder as she passed by,
but her eyes lingered on his until she was a few feet away.

David decided that he could walk back to the
Rainbow Arms instead of taking the trolley. He could think, and
then perhaps he and Johnson could meander back into town for a
piece of cake.

Thirty-three hours after Detective Ormsby
had so rudely awakened him with his barrage of knocks and brusque
queries, David was enjoying the mid-afternoon sun in the courtyard.
Johnson lay dozing by his feet; the fountain was murmuring
pleasantly; his newspaper lay on the bench at his side, its
contents perused, mulled over, and digested. Obviously, the story
of Heck Vance’s killing hadn’t made the Thursday papers, but
Friday’s edition was practically about nothing else.

David had worked at home on Thursday –
Ormsby’s warning aside, it had been his original plan – but this
morning, he’d spent several hours at the Culpepper Mills corporate
offices, where both he with his questions and Johnson with his
companionable disposition were always welcome.

While the subject of the murder had indeed
come up, no one at Culpepper had put together that David lived in
the same building.

And David hadn’t volunteered this
information to anyone.

The Shady Grove Courier was full of facts,
speculation, paradoxes, and innuendo in equal measure, exactly what
any self-respecting rag in
any
city, large or small, would
print. Color pictures of Heck and the Rainbow Arms on page one to
draw in the looky-loos, and then ambiguous quotes from Detective
Ormsby, along with seemingly endless rehashes of the same
information, on the inside.

Hector Vance lived with Janice Templeton at
565 Piston Avenue.

Heck Vance did
not
live at the
Rainbow Arms, but with his sister-in-law in Greenville.

Janice Templeton was head cashier at the
Bargain Bin at Willow and Eighth.

Janice Templeton worked as a waitress at The
Hot Spot.

Heck Vance was a drug dealer.

Heck Vance
worked
for a drug
dealer.

Glass hashish pipes had been found at the
scene, along with vials, digital scales, and zipper storage
bags.

A backpack belonging to the deceased had
been found that contained drug paraphernalia, but no drugs had been
discovered despite an exhaustive search of the premises.

The few facts that were apparently
not
in dispute are as follows: that Hector Vance, a
37-year-old man with an expired driver’s license and a slew of
unpaid parking tickets, had expired himself in the kitchen of
Apartment 1D of the Rainbow Arms. The back of his head had been
stove-in by brute force with an as-yet undetermined weapon. The
murder occurred sometime between the hours of 11:00 a.m. and 2:00
p.m. on Wednesday. When Janice Templeton made the call to the
police at 11:00 p.m. Wednesday night, she was initially the prime
suspect. She was
not
considered a suspect after officers
determined that she had been 240 miles away, visiting her mother in
the northern part of the state, from Monday evening until she
returned to Shady Grove approximately 52 hours later.

It was all true. However,
no
fact
couldn’t be proven untrue with the right set of new facts.

“Hi, David.”

David almost fell off the bench. Johnson
stood straight up, ears and tail vertical, but quickly relaxed
again.

“Hi, Clair. How do you
do
that?”

David hadn’t been facing the gate, but his
peripheral vision should have caught the motion as Clair entered
the courtyard. Not to mention the click of the latch opening, the
clunk of gate closing, her footsteps as Clair in those pristinely
clean saddle shoes walked toward him.

A ghost of a smile. “I don’t know. I just
thought I’d come in and say hi.”

David had become inured to Clair finding him
to ‘say hi’ in the little garden courtyard. She always seemed to
know when he was there… but then again, he never knew if she sought
him there when he
wasn’t
outside, either at work in his
apartment or gallivanting about the town with Johnson.

He had come to like Clair. An odd, quiet,
shyly introspective girl, she emanated a certain fragility and
loneliness, yet at the same time owned a distinctive core of
strength and soundness. Many times, David had found himself
puzzling over the things she’d said to him, hours later, days
later. Her words were simple, and yet not so simple. She possessed
wisdom, despite a skewed sense of perspective she couldn’t help
because of her age.

She was an enigma, but a pleasant one.

“I don’t like him either,” Clair stated.

David smiled. Typical Clair: an assertion
uttered without the slightest iota of context. “Who?”

“That man. The detective.”

“Oh. Him. Did he bother you guys too?” He
cocked his head. “And how would you know if I did or didn’t like
him?”

“Wasn’t it obvious?” She strode forward and
sat down on the bench facing David. She was wearing shorts today,
and a tee shirt with two large bumblebees on it.

David couldn’t recall seeing Clair
or
Mrs. Rushen among the bystanders on the second floor the morning
before, but perhaps his altercation with Detective Ormsby had been
more strident than he’d thought. “Some excitement yesterday, huh?”
he said cautiously, unsure of what Clair might have been told.

“If you call a death excitement,” she
returned evenly.

“You know what happened?”

She nodded. “And if I hadn’t, it was all the
kids at school could talk about today.”

“Oh…” David reached down to scratch
Johnson’s head. “Did any of them know you lived here?”

She shook her head. “I told Mrs. Jenkins,
because I thought I should. So she knows. But she agreed with me,
that it would probably be best if I kept that fact to myself for
the time being.”

David couldn’t help but grin as he sat up
again. Mrs. Jenkins agreed with
Clair!
But very possibly, it
had actually been like that; the girl’s self-possession was nothing
if not extraordinary.

A door shut nearby, and Johnson immediately
bounded toward the gate that led to the caretaker’s cottage. The
latch clicked open, and within seconds he was leaping all over Bill
Lopes.