Down by the River (12 page)

June had her arm looped through Myrna’s and whispered, “How are your nerves?”

“As solid as a rock, thanks to you, dear.”

“Me? What did I do?”

“You should know. You simply wouldn’t take
seriously all my ridiculous fretting. Why, it’s like I’ve known Edward all my life. You know, for writers, sometimes knowing each other’s work is more intimate than what is shared by husbands and wives. It’s intellectually intimate.”

“Goodness,” June said, giving silent thanks that she wasn’t a writer. She stole a glance at Jim, who stood at her side, and her breath caught. It was a feeling she never hoped to replace with intellectual intimacy. She reached for his hand.

Myrna was oblivious. “It’s true. In all the years I spent with Morton, we were never as intellectually close as Edward and I.” She chuckled conspiratorially. “I wonder, if Morton had stayed, if I’d have ended up having an affair with Edward.”

“What rubbish,” Elmer said.

“Rubbish to
you,
maybe,” she returned contrarily. “But don’t think I haven’t thought about it lately. You see, dear, Morton was a love, but he was dull. And Edward, while years older than Morton, is extremely stimulating.”

“Is that right?” June asked out of politeness. “Look, the people are getting off the bus. You’re sure you’ll know him? There wasn’t a single photo on any of his book jackets.”

“I’d know him with my eyes closed,” she said. “Plus, he promised to wear a red carnation in his lapel.”

Seven or eight people disembarked, then there was a break and no one came. Then another six or
seven, then no one. For a long time afterward June asked herself what would have happened if there’d been no red carnation. What would they have done? Finally, after about twenty people got off the bus, there came this very slight, very neat-looking man of eighty-six in a rather old-fashioned but tidy navy blue pin-striped suit, white shirt and red tie, dark felt hat with a black satin band, and wearing a red carnation. And it was none other than Morton Claypool.

“Dear God,” June said in a breath.

“Jesus Christ in heaven,” Elmer concurred.

“What? What’s the matter?” Jim asked, as the little man drew near.

Finally the man stood before a speechless Myrna, slowly removed his hat and bowed. He smiled. “My dear,” he said. “I am home at last.”

June was stricken with disbelief, but finally tore her eyes away from Morton to glance at her aunt. Myrna’s lips were pursed and her cheeks redder, if possible. Her hair seemed to spring loose from under her wide-brimmed hat.

“That’s what you think!” she said, then turned on her heel and stomped off.

“This is what we usually refer to as a fine kettle of fish,” Elmer told Morton.

Elmer drove Jim’s truck with Morton as a passenger, his bags tossed in the back, while June drove the Caddy, Myrna sitting in the passenger seat in a monumental pout and Jim in the back seat. Myrna
would not even consider having Morton in the same vehicle with her. She’d fled to the Caddy, got in, slammed the door and locked herself in while the others all stood around and tried to figure out how to shuffle drivers and passengers.

“She didn’t appear especially happy to see me,” Morton said.

“You’ve always been a gifted observer,” Elmer said. “Morton, what the devil were you thinking?”

“I was thinking of coming back to Grace Valley,” he said. “Now that I was convinced Myrna wanted me.”

“Where the hell have you been?” he demanded.

“Mostly in Redding. But I did treat myself to a little traveling.”

“But why did you stay gone so long? We looked for you! We were worried!”

“Piffle,” he said.

“What?”

“I said ‘piffle.’ You didn’t look. No one looked. Not at all.”

“Well…” Elmer didn’t quite know what to say. No one had looked until very recently, and by then the trail had gone cold. In fact, Myrna insisted that no one look for him. In double fact, she hadn’t even noticed he was gone until
months
had passed.

“I bet no one even noticed I had gone until years had passed,” Morton said.

Elmer felt himself blush. “That’s just not true,” he said. It wasn’t
years.
“My sister quite naturally
thought you’d walked out on her. Left her. Her reasoning was very simple, if you’d been hurt or killed, your employer would have called her. But when she checked with the paper company, they said you’d been showing up at work regularly.”

“Humph,” he said. “I imagine no one in your family will
ever
admit how long it was until someone called them.”

“Now, see here,” Elmer said, getting a little miffed himself. “Are you going to pretend to be angry at all of us? It’s possible that Myrna waited a bit too long to call your employer, but think of her feelings, man! She was abandoned! And it turned out you were quite well, working away, not even bothering to phone her!”

“That’s not exactly so, but I’m not going to defend myself any further. I was invited for Thanksgiving and I’ve come. If no one wants me around after that, I’ll go back to my little apartment in Redding. No hard feelings.”

“No hard feelings?” Elmer echoed, astonished.

“Not on my part,” he said.

Elmer sighed deeply. “You know all those books in which the husband was killed off?” he asked.

“I should. It was originally my idea.”

“Well, it could become a reality. She’s pissed.”

In the Caddy, there was a similarly emotional conversation, but that’s where the resemblance stopped.

“You had absolutely
no
idea?” June asked.

“What do you think?” Myrna countered.

“But now, in thinking back, did nothing trigger suspicion?”

“That Morton, he always did have a sneaky, underhanded streak. You have to watch those quiet, dull ones.”

June drove quietly for a spell while Myrna sat way across the seat, seething. “Imagine,” June finally said. “The very man who suggested that you write book after book killing off the husband was
your
husband! Tell me, when you were being investigated by the district attorney for suspicion of murdering him, did he say a word?”

“Not a peep!”

“What balls,” June said with a short laugh.

“He’s a blithering coward! A boring one at that. Didn’t I always say so?”

“You did indeed, and you were completely wrong, weren’t you.”

“What in the world…”

“Auntie, I don’t know the exact reasons for all this, but essentially your husband went away and began writing you letters. The man you didn’t have all that much use for wooed you in print and won your heart. You said yourself, you were intellectually closer to ‘Edward’ than Morton. You spent more years adoring him through the mail than you ever did when he was right under your roof!”

“And now I despise both of them, regardless. I
wonder, is that old shotgun of my daddy’s still in the attic?”

“Hoo-boy” was heard from the back seat.

She pulled off to the side of the road, put the car in Park and faced her aunt. “Auntie, listen to me. I know you’re miffed, and maybe you have a right to be, I don’t know—”

“You don’t
know?
”

June folded her hands over her rapidly growing stomach, peered down at her tiny but formidable aunt and lifted one brow. “Auntie, you didn’t realize for six months that Morton was gone. It’s possible he left because he was feeling just a tad neglected.”

There was a sound from the back seat. It was something like a backward sneeze that dissolved into a clumsy fit of coughing. Or else it was a poor attempt at disguising unintentional laughter.

“He should’ve spoken up if he needed something,” Myrna said. Then she glared over the seat at Jim. She made him redden.

“Be that as it may, I’m certain both of you bear some responsibility for this mess. He’s here, it’s a holiday, a
family
holiday, and we’re going to make the best of it. I don’t know how this whole thing will turn out in the long run. Morton might choose to go right back where he came from. He seems to have made a good life for himself, writing. In the meantime, we’re going to be civil. And kind. Aren’t we, Auntie?”

She huffed and looked out the window.

“Aunt Myrna? Aren’t we?”

She looked back at June. “This is going to take some doing.”

“Whatever it takes. Right, Auntie?”

“I suppose you have a valid point. We probably both contributed, although my contribution was slight and my retribution could be vast.”

“Aunt Myrna,” June warned.

“I can be civil. I can
attempt
to be civil.”

“There. You see? We might as well have an enjoyable holiday. I’ve been baking for days. I’ve gotten good at it.” June turned back to the steering wheel and put the car in Drive. “Think of it this way. We’re blessed that Uncle Morton is alive!”

“Humph. We’d be
blessed
if he were under the rhododendron!”

W
hen June opened her eyes on Thanksgiving morning, the rare northern California sun was shining and there was the distinct sound of birds. She loved this, waking up on her own instead of by the phone. Lazing around in the morning while other doctors made the calls and staffed the clinic. In the back of her mind she heard John’s voice just as the baby gave her a sound kick. “Don’t get used to it!”

Ah, yes, breast-feeding every two hours. Twenty diapers a day. Potty training, Mommy and Me swimming lessons, preschool, soccer, piano lessons, ballet… Oops, it’s a boy, remember? Okay, revise that to soccer, piano, football.

It was cold in the bedroom so she gravitated toward the heat beside her, but she had to kick Sadie out of the way. Jim was spoiling the dog. Sadie, the wayward slut, now thought she was Jim’s dog and only went with June as a last resort.

“Hmm,” he hummed, feeling her stomach kicking against his back.

“We’re going to need a piano,” she whispered.

“Before breakfast?” he asked after a long moment of silence.

She giggled. “All children take piano lessons,” she informed him.

“Ah. So we have a few weeks, then?”

She giggled again, but it made her want to pee. This child had been sitting on her bladder for at least the past month. She was afraid to laugh, cry, sneeze or cough. Jim started to turn over. “Don’t move!” she instructed hotly. “I have a bladder situation!”

Jim froze. It occurred to him that this was the sort of dialogue couples should have after years of marriage and not mere weeks of living together. Yet it all felt so oddly natural and sweet. “June, did anyone ever tell you that you’re at your romantic best first thing in the morning?”

She laughed in spite of her better judgment. “You’re tempting fate.”

He wiggled his back against her rollicking stomach. She made a panicked sound, rolled away and dashed for the bathroom. Sadie barked at her flight, thinking it might be playtime.

In a minute she was back, comfortable and with freshly brushed teeth. She jumped back into the bed and this time snuggled into his embrace. Then she thought about Myrna and Morton. Although a very nice evening at Hudson House had been planned,
last night hadn’t been the festive occasion hoped for. The Barstows, stunned by the revelation of who Edward Mortimer was, served up their predictably inedible dinner openmouthed. The only two people at the table who ate were Morton and Myrna, and they did not speak to each other. At dinner’s end, Elmer took Morton home with him and a spare bedroom was fixed up.

When June and Jim were leaving Hudson House June said to her aunt, “I hope we can do a little better at Thanksgiving dinner than we just did.”

And Myrna had replied through clenched teeth, “Doesn’t he just sit at the table as if he hasn’t been gone a day?”

Now June snuggled against Jim and said, “Don’t I have the most interesting life of anyone you know?”

He sighed. “Can’t we just stay here today? Make some grilled cheese and tomato soup?”

She hoisted up on an elbow and looked down with amusement. “Come, now. You’ve chased down hardened criminals. Surely you’re up to today.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s all pretty weird.”

Thanks to the Barstows, who must have stayed up pretty late on the phone, the word was out about Morton. Of course, they only called women they knew, but the women quickly filled in their husbands, who made sure all bases were covered. Gossip in Grace Valley was a time-honored tradition.

June made it a point to get to her father’s early to help with the cooking, and to help with the transition—or whatever it was—between Myrna and Morton. But by the time she got there Morton had already been called on by Sam, Judge Forrest and Birdie, George Fuller and Tom Toopeek.

“News travels fast,” June said to her father.

“I’m surprised CNN isn’t here,” Elmer returned.

June noticed that Elmer had really worked up a sweat in the kitchen. His bald head was gleaming and there were sweat stains on his shirt. “Is this upsetting you?” she asked her father.

“What? Having my dead brother-in-law reappear after twenty years? Having the town at my door while I try to stuff the goddamn turkey? Having my eccentric older sister out at that haunted house of hers, trying to remember how to load our deceased father’s hundred-year-old shotgun? Naw,” he said, shaking his head. “Just another day in paradise.”

“Maybe I should take your blood pressure,” she suggested.

“No, you don’t. Right now I’m just a little irritated. I don’t want to be scared to death on top of that.”

“Sit down,” she said, pushing him into a kitchen chair. She opened a window, letting some of the oppressive heat out. She fished around in the cabinets until she produced a single aspirin and a glass of cabernet. “Cook’s cure,” she said, fixing him up. “Jim and I will take over the dinner.”

He took his aspirin, a sip of the wine, and said, “Great timing, June. Everything is done for now.”

“Good. Then, you relax. For now.”

Jim was bringing in June’s baking, load after load. Four pies, dinner rolls and candied yams.

“So,” June whispered to her father, “what have you found out?”

“That he didn’t have amnesia and he’s very happy to see everyone.”

“That’s all? That’s it? Come on! I know if Judge and Sam were here they asked him why he left? Why he’s been away so long?”

Elmer inclined his head toward the living room. “Suit yourself,” he said to his daughter.

She found Morton seated in Elmer’s favorite chair, probably the main cause of his sweaty brow and rosy cheeks. Morton was such a tiny man. He seemed even more so now than she remembered. But then she recalled that Myrna and Morton had always been thought a cute couple, both of them so tiny and frail-looking. And, as it turned out, wiry as steel cords.

“Hello, Uncle Morton,” she said, sitting down in the chair opposite him. “How are you this morning?”

He put down his paper and smiled at her. He wore his pin-striped suit pants, but over his white shirt and tie he had on a red cardigan. Neat and tidy. His feet barely touched the floor, his legs were so short. She thought maybe he stood about five feet and two inches to Myrna’s five feet in her shoes.

“Good morning, dear June,” he said, folding the newspaper onto his lap. “How wonderful you look. When Myrna said you were expecting after so long a wait I knew I had to get back here to see you and your father. He’s very excited, you know.”

“Thank you, Uncle Morton. Now, before Aunt Myrna arrives, do you mind if I ask you a question or two?”

“Not at all, my dear. Not at all.”

“First, the obvious, what caused you to leave?”

“Oh, my.” He looked upward as if the answer could be encased in the ceiling. “It certainly wasn’t any one thing. I had grown unhappy in my work, I suppose you could say. And retirement was looming. Now, there are two ways to face retirement, as I’ve learned. As an opportunity for a new beginning, or as the end. It all seems very simple now, but I admit, June, at the time I grappled with it.”

“You haven’t quite answered,” she pointed out to him.

“Well, I suspect I was depressed. In the way you medical people diagnose.”

“Did you see a doctor?” she asked.

“No. No, no. I simply looked for a new beginning. And Myrna was such a wonderful help in that!”

June was dumbfounded. “Wait a minute. She didn’t appear to know where you had gone.”

“True. True. It’s really not so very complicated. I went on one of my sales trips as usual, and I wrote her a fan letter, telling her how much I have always
loved her work. And how it had long been a dream of mine to be a writer, but I didn’t get much encouragement from the people who knew me. I left a post office box and she wrote me back immediately, telling me I must reach for my dream and never allow anyone to dissuade me. Why,” he said, smiling at the memory, “it was so refreshing. So delightful, that instead of coming back to Grace Valley as usual, I simply wrote her another letter. And another, and another.” He leaned toward her and reached out his old and trembling hand to touch hers. “Frankly, I thought she knew it was me. It was months before she mentioned that her husband had abandoned her.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth. “She was put out, to say the least.”

“Uncle Morton! And you didn’t tell her?”

“I guess you know the answer to that,” he said.

“Not very gentlemanly, Uncle Morton.”

“Perhaps not. But I don’t think she dislikes the way things worked out for her. Those books about the dead husbands—genius! Can you imagine my thrill at seeing her on talk shows? And she must take credit for encouraging me in my own writing career, for I couldn’t have done it without her!”

“But, Uncle Morton, you could have done it so much better had you just come home to Hudson House and—”

His face, marked by the passage of eighty-six years, melted into an expression of sadness. “But there’s the rub,” he said softly. “It was Edward
Mortimer she mentored. She told Morton Claypool not to be absurd.”

June was stunned silent. She knew her aunt very well, and while Myrna would never be deliberately cruel, she did have this no-nonsense side of her that could be terse. Too matter-of-fact.

So that’s how it had been. As Morton approached retirement, feeling useless and perhaps used up, maybe a little depressed in the shadows of his famous novelist wife, he’d expressed a desire to start a writing career of his own. Myrna tossed it off as a ridiculous notion and Morton was injured. So he wrote to her and found a whole new woman at the other end of his letters, a woman who didn’t find him absurd, but rather talented and exciting.

“How is it we couldn’t find a trace of you? Even through the social security rolls?”

“Why, I can’t say. Did you have the right number?”

“I thought so,” she said with a shrug. “Could we have gotten it wrong?”

“Perhaps so, June. I haven’t had a problem getting my checks. They come every month to Edward M. Claypool. Writing is not as lucrative for me as it is Myrna.”

“Edward M?” she asked.

“Edward Mortimer Claypool, though I’ve always gone by Morton.”

She stared at him, her mouth parted in consternation. So that was why Myrna didn’t know. She
finally recovered herself. “I bet you signed that very first letter Edward Mortimer, didn’t you?”

He looked down. “Imagine my disappointment…” he said softly.

“When Dad and I tried to locate you, we were looking for Morton Claypool. We didn’t know any Edward! Did Aunt Myrna even know that was your full given name?”

“Perhaps not, June. We never even had a joint checking account in twenty years. I introduced myself to her that first day as Morton and that’s who I was to her. Always.”

“Oh, Uncle Morton, you must explain this to Myrna.”

“I think she may be a bit too upset with me to listen just now. If she doesn’t send me packing too quickly, I’m sure we’ll get to the bottom of it.” He smiled suddenly. “I have no hard feelings, after all.”

“You might have to give her a little time, Uncle Morton. I can’t guarantee you Hudson House, but Grace Valley is your home as long as you want it to be. You have family and friends here, after all.”

“That’s very kind of you. Quite a few of them have already visited today. Nosy buggers, aren’t they?”

“They are,” she laughed.

“I haven’t attempted to explain to them because, you see, I wouldn’t want to bring any embarrassment on Myrna. I saved the explanation for you. And when she’s done being furious with me, perhaps we’ll talk about it.”

June grimaced, remembering the stony silence at dinner last night. “Do be patient,” she said. She prayed her aunt Myrna wouldn’t stand them up for turkey dinner.

She was not held in suspense for long. Myrna arrived in early afternoon. Though she wore a serious and aloof expression, only June knew that she also wore her very best cranberry chiffon cocktail dress and favorite hat and gloves.

The Toopeek household teemed with family. Lincoln and Ursula had had seven children, all of whom were educated through college, had married and had children of their own. They hadn’t all returned to Grace Valley for this holiday, but four of them had, making a total of twenty-six people under one roof. The food was unbelievable, the laughter contagious and the chaos of sixteen children enough to bring the roof down.

In the midst of this, Tom crept away to his bedroom and reappeared in his uniform. He asked his wife how much time he had before dinner and she told him it would be hours yet. “But please don’t get yourself hung up unnecessarily,” she pleaded.

“Of course not,” he said, kissing her.

“You’re running away from the noise, aren’t you?” she accused.

“You’re on to me.” He laughed, but inside he was filled with the happiness of having three brothers and a sister and their families with him.

Tom and the deputies were on call, but no one was going to keep the police department open unless they had some trouble they couldn’t easily diffuse. Tom was optimistic. He felt in his bones that it would be a calm night. His father had said that later that night a peaceful harvest moon would rise.

Tom drove his Range Rover out to Rocky’s roadhouse. There were only two pickups outside. Both had gun racks with nothing in them. Inside the bar was dark. Rocky stood behind her counter drying glasses with a dish towel. At one end of the bar sat Cliff Bender, a crusty old woodsman who rarely socialized with anyone. He also rarely drank alcohol, but this was a special occasion. He was probably giving thanks of a sort. On the other side of the room were two men, MacAlvies.

Tom stood before the table. “Vern. Ben,” he said.

“Chief,” they both intoned, looking up from their mugs.

“How about dinner? You have plans?”

“Yeah, Chief. We planned on drinking dinner,” one said. The other laughed.

“George cooked again this year and I’m trying to drum him up some business. I’ll drive you over, have a cup of coffee and piece of pie while you eat, then bring you back here. Hardly put a dent in your drinking time.”

“What you think, Vern? Interested in food?”