Ed Lynskey - Isabel and Alma Trumbo 01 - Quiet Anchorage (14 page)

Sleep proved elusive but popping a pill was taboo. Flaked out in bed trying to get lost in a new mystery, Alma fretted over whether Megan was tossing and turning on a lumpy, narrow cot in a cold, dark cell. A ringtone sent Alma unearthing the cell phone buried in front of the headboard, and she gave her signature “hallo” greeting.

“I don’t have much to say, but I can’t sleep worth beans,” said Isabel from their house’s opposite wing.

“Count me in the same boat,” said Alma.

“Deputy Clarence Fishback fought with Jake.” Isabel deliberated for a long second. “Put Clarence under our microscope, and what do we see?”

“Even with my memory holding like a sieve, I recall Sheriff Fox hired him straight out of high school.”

“Wait, my air conditioner is whining at me, and I can’t hear you,” Isabel set down her cell phone.

Meanwhile Alma placed the mystery facedown on her bed table. Thinking better of it, she inserted a playing card—the queen of hearts—to mark her right page.

“Hey, I’m back,” said Isabel. “Wasn’t Clarence a stinkpot as a kid? This one time I saw him tip over the gumball machine in the drugstore. You should’ve seen the gumballs and charms bouncing every which way. I was shocked, but his mama just scolded our lad. If it’d been you or me, we’d’ve tanned his hide but good.”

“Old school discipline isn’t kosher now. Besides that behavior, no matter how bratty, doesn’t brand a kid as a future killer.”

“True. What’s your take on Sammi Jo?”

“She’s well-intentioned and helpful but opinionated as all get out. That said, I still like her.”

“She’s awfully excited to take her shots at Clarence.”

“That’s part of why I like her. Look, she’s a high-spirited, proud girl. Apparently he made her look bad, and she wants to cut him down to size. If I were in her shoes, I’d do the same thing.”

Isabel let Alma’s assertion fade away, then said, “I’m debating on getting another dog, but a friendly mutt, not a lap dog.”

“Fine, but you’ll also take care of this one.”

“A dog isn’t so much hassle. This time I’ll build a pen out back by the patio, and we’ll just let out Samson to take care of his business.”

“Some lucky recipient gets to rake out the pen. Samson will also pick up fleas if he’s outdoors. My allergies can’t handle setting off flea bombs every other week.”

Isabel had a ready solution. “The exterminators in Elkton can come out and spray the place.”

“Maybe we’d better shelve the dog idea for the time being. Our all should focus on freeing Megan.”

“Are we making any headway? So far our f
l
oundering around hasn’t struck any live nerves.”

Alma swapped the cell phone to her other ear. “Do you think our search has been that far off the mark?”

“Enough so we should consider taking a different angle. Who tops our suspect list?”

“You said Deputy Clarence Fishback.”

“But besides him, there’s Jake’s peeved customer. We can add a rival at the drag strip as well as a jealous ex-lover. Investigating those four possibilities should keep us busy.”

“We better try and get some sleep.”

“See you in the morning then.”

Alma thumbed off and dropped her cell phone into the knitting basket, a short-lived hobby she’d taken up, then abandoned due to having ten thumbs. Her half-foot stirred under the sheet. Stupid accident. She sat up and unfolded the funny papers to spread out on the bed.

Feeling guilty for the distraction, she returned the funny papers to the bed table. If Isabel and she struck too close for comfort, she reasoned, the murderer would make an impulsive move to better cover his (or her) tracks and unveil himself (or herself). She didn’t quibble with Isabel’s appraisal on how they hadn’t made the murderer nervous enough, but surely no murderer could lay low forever in a hamlet like ours.

“Has anyone left town lately?” asked Alma.

She picked up the local newspaper, flipped to the gossip column, and slipped on her pair of drugstore reading glasses. She found six families had hit the road and then gave up her search. Many families had left for the beach or mountains in the weeks before Labor Day. In the “Around the Area Roundup” column at the page bottom, she noted a new cancer treatment center soon to open its doors in Gainesville, a spate of jewelry store burglaries in Fredericksburg, and the new Civil War museum near completion in Brandy Station. Restless, she gave the newspaper a fling back to the bed table, ranged up from the bed, and tugged out her closet door.

The small cedar chest decorated with brass fittings was Alma’s trunk. What did one do with one’s trousseau that had long since outlived its original purpose? She opened it to whiff the tangy cedar before removing a sheaf of pages ripped from kids’ coloring books. Serious crayon marks gave the cartoons their colorful character. Megan as a preschooler years had mailed her works of art, and Alma converted them into sentimental keepsakes. With no children of her own, she lavished too much love on her only niece.

Feeling sadder, she nestled the pages back in the trunk and shut the closet.

She warded off a rising stab of despair. Isabel and she ached for a solid lead. Then she knew where to go and find a little support. Flipping on the lights as she advanced, she reached the end of their long house. The last door let her into to a cavernous room. Left unheated through the winter, it was called Siberia, and it was a mystery bookworm’s paradise. Paperbacks lined the inset shelves from floor to ceiling because neither sister liked to part with a book once it was read.

Dabbing her nose on a tissue, Alma launched her paperback hunt for the right title to refresh her memory on a plot. The exact twists were hazy, but she felt rereading this particular one would offer her a fresh, new approach to go at cracking Jake’s murder. Her thumb pad bumped across the book spines. She paused at one mystery, but she knew it was the wrong title. She pressed on. The author was female. She’d narrowed down her search by that much.

A rash of vintage lady mystery novelists—the mystery aficionados of her age group would know most—was represented, alphabetized, and eager to share a story. She greeted Charlotte Armstrong, Ann Bannon, Frances Crane, Babs Deal, Helen Eustis, Leslie Ford, Dolores Hitchens, Dorothy B. Hughes, Helen Innes, Helen McCloy, Margaret Millar, Helen Reilly, Dorothy L. Sayers, Dorothy Uhnak, and Ethel Lina White. Whew, that was some authorial lineup.

After removing her reading glasses, Alma chewed on the temple piece. As luck would have it, no author or title chimed its clear bell in her. She prowled down the same rows of books, only slower and repeating each title out loud, and after reaching a few science fiction novels, the second foray also petered out. Frustrated, she broke off her search and shut her eyes.

“This murder took place at a bump in the road like ours, but the plot’s details are all fuzzy. Am I really losing my mind?”

After taking down an Agatha Christie, she riffled through its dog-eared pages. Isabel liked to crease the page corners to mark her reading place. Alma had bought her a batch of wild flower bookmarks for Christmas, but the old habits died hard. Isabel had turned huffy the one time Alma brought up her peeve. Going along to get along, she had made her peace to co-exist with the dog-eared pages.

Isabel’s corny notion to adopt a dog also bemused Alma. She’d seen the neighborhood dog owners, their plastic bags in hand, walking their charges at all hours of the night. Rain, sleet, or snow, the dog still had to visit the wilds. She thought a dog’s keen talent of smell could track Jake’s murderer into the woods near his auto shop. Yes, the woods, she ruminated. They hadn’t extended their quest beyond Jake’s yard to the treeline. Did the evil forest harboring witches and hobgoblins also hide the vital clue?

She reshelved Agatha and slipped out a well-thumbed copy of Dorothy B. Hughes’s
The So Blue Marble
and shuddered. Ms. Hughes had created a pair of ice-blooded antagonists in the Montefierrow twins. Those nasty villains sporting trick canes, wiry smiles, and decorous cigarette holders had personified Evil with a capital E. Alma’s eyes gleamed, and her lips pursed.
Right, twins and Jake
, she thought, something rippling the waves in her memory. She returned to her bedroom and fished her cell phone from out of the knitting basket.

“Isabel, didn’t Jake have a twin brother?” asked Alma.

“I don’t know but Old Ben Taffy used to joke how Jake had one.”

“Uh-huh, but didn’t Ben have an ax to grind?”

“Ben disliked Jake’s father because Hiram got the girl and Ben didn’t.”

“That’d goad Ben to start rumors out of spite. Foiled again, it appears.”

“Take heart. We’re not doing all that badly. I’m deliberating about writing a book.”

Alma smiled at her older sister’s whimsical mood tonight. Earlier it was dogs and now books. “What genre?”

“Why, it’ll be a mystery, naturally. Lillian Carter joined the Peace Corps late in life. If she could swing the Peace Corps, I can hunt and peck on the keyboard. I’ll pick up a used typewriter from the pawnshop in Culpeper. Last time down in Charlottesville, I saw a typewriter repair shop, and I bet typewriter ribbons are easy to order over the Net.”

“You might find it more expedient to use a computer.”

“No, I’ll stick with a typewriter because I know from experience you can’t teach this old dog new tricks.”

“Be careful what details you include your book or some angry troublemaker will sue the pants off you.”

Isabel clucked her tongue. “No, they put in that disclaimer at the front of books. I’ll read it to you. ‘This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and occurrences are
blah, blah
.’ So there.”

“I’m not trying to talk you out of it. God knows we’ve read enough mysteries to understand how they work. I’m only acting as the agent of caution.”

“Doesn’t Megan’s situation remind you of a mystery plot?”

“Yes, it does so I poked down to Siberia and scanned every library title, but nothing jumped out at me.”

“Maybe we’re striving too hard. Let’s say we sleep on it.”

“Four sound hours should do me splendidly.”

“Goodnight for real this time.”

* * * *

Isabel soon discovered she was also too jazzed to fall asleep. She sat up on her pillows, her eyes shut, and replayed the events in how they solved their recent mystery, the one that had put them on the local map as amateur sleuths. It tickled her how they’d followed the trail of right clues and gave the solution to Sheriff Fox. One day after lunch, they’d driven the block to reach their church, went inside, and sat in the tortuous chairs outside their pastor’s office.

“Did you know a soda now costs a dollar?” said Isabel.

Blinking, Alma squirmed in the chair. “Didn’t you buy one?”

“I’ll never pay a dollar for a soda once costing only a dime.”

“Aw, don’t be tight as Dick’s hatband and go buy your soda.”

Isabel put on a superior look. “Being older, I’m also wiser.”

Alma tweaked her lips into a sly smile. “You’re also thirstier.”

“Remind me why are we cooling our heels here.”

Alma rearranged the bulky, black purse to rest in her lap. “The money in Sunday’s missionary fund went astray. The ushers last saw Mrs. Brittle carrying the basket.”

“Do they now accuse her of the theft?”

“If you already knew, why did you ask me?”

“I only drew the most reasonable conclusion.”

“Pastor Cecil is anxious to settle this before it mushrooms into a Federal case.” A crumpled tissue appeared from Alma’s rolled up cuff, and she sponged her nose. The spring days brought toxic dandelions, tree pollen, and the devil’s spawn of allergies.