Eine Kleine Murder (27 page)

“Grace's killer, too, of course. I don't know if justice was served by his death or not. A rough justice maybe.” I listened to the breeze stir the leaves of the nearby maple.

“These people aren't really evil, Gram. Toombs was the closest to that, I think, but the others were just doing what they thought was right for them. Eve Evans isn't a bad person, just a casualty of circumstance and precarious mental balance. Even Toombs's awful acts stemmed from his love for Mo, his desire to protect him, I think.

“But wait till you hear the debut of your piece,
Affirmation
. It's a song of life. I think you'll like it.”

I returned to my car and retrieved my keyboard. After switching it on, my fingers flew over the keys. My piece floated over Gram's grave and wafted through the leaves of the maple, then up to the heavens. I closed my eyes, still streaming tears, and leaned into the music. The notes felt exactly right.

“Did you like it?” I asked when I'd finished. I was sure she had.

A red-winged blackbird sang his agreement and flew off, flashing his bright red shoulders.

To my intense relief, I found I needn't have feared my errand. These tears were different. Not bitter, but cleansing. I tucked the locket back into my purse and picked up my keyboard. I had begun to come to terms with my loss and hoped to soon lay my guilt to rest. I hadn't made a conscious decision to move on; it had just happened. As Gram used to say, “Life goes on.”

Back at the cabin, I related the meeting with Daryl's dad to Neek over my new cell phone, named Edmund the Magnificent in hopes he'd live up to his name. I now had a P.O. Box and all my bills were paid.

“His dad looks so much like Daryl—there's one guy that could never deny paternity.”

“They say you should look at a guy's father to see what he'll become.”

I laughed. “And a woman's mother, don't forget.” My mother never got to be very old, though. “I'd say it would be okay if Daryl turned out like Mr. Johannson.”

“So you think things are going to work out for you and Daryl?”

A cardinal sang, “
Pretty birdy, pretty birdy
,” in the blue spruce.

“We'll see. It's a good possibility. By the way,” I remembered to ask, “what does finding a dime mean?”

Neek's gasp came over my cell phone loud and clear. “No! Not a dime! That's terrible!”

“You're telling me.”

“Actually, it can be really, really good, or really, really bad.”

“I guess it was both. I survived it.”

Epilogue

Postlude: A piece played at the conclusion (Eng.)

The sun felt marvelous. I scrunched down into a bunch of cushions at the prow of the boat, soaking up the heat. Daryl lazily fished off the back. The motor was tipped up out of the water. We drifted, silent, on the lake through the warm July day.

In the past year I had done a lot of thinking. After he'd moved to Chicago, Daryl and I had written each other constantly and seen each other occasionally. He was in Evanston, on the North Side, and I was at DePaul, so it wasn't easy getting together. Our phone bills were high. The longer we knew each other, the more I could feel an empty spot inside of me being filled up with his essence.

I was spending another summer at Gram's cabin and getting a great deal of composing done. Daryl had taken a week off from teaching his private students in Evanston.

I was funny about never wanting to get into a boat without a motor. Daryl humored me. My trauma from last summer was beginning to fade, however, just as Daryl's obsession with the fire from his childhood, now that he could discuss it openly, was dwindling.

We could see the cabins along the shore as we floated by. My red cottage could be glimpsed through the greenery riffling in the light breeze. The boat dock still had missing boards, but I would get it fixed soon.

The cabin next door, the one that used to be Eve's, housed a middle-aged couple who took care of the grounds now. The man had taken early retirement from a factory in the Quad Cities and was delighted to find a job in the country. They had bought some of Eve's furnishings when they purchased her cabin, and they visited her in the rest home in Rock Island occasionally, bringing her news of the lake people.

Our boat floated on down the lake past the cabin with the light blue shutters. It was still for sale.

Daryl pulled in his line and began to row. We passed the site of the burnt cabin. The lot had been sold and a young couple was building a summer house there. The blackened trees had been taken down and the house was half-finished. The buzz of a power saw vied with the racket of the katydids and locusts. We waved at the couple, out working on the window frames, as we drifted past.

A fish leapt in the shadows near the shore and sent thick, shining rings our way.

Around the bend, the Toombses' yellow house was empty. Hayley visited the lake with her girls and stayed there almost every weekend. They were starting to act less frightened, to run and shout, like Freddie and Pat's children.

“I got a letter yesterday from Mo,” said Daryl. “He's finished boot camp and is waiting for his orders.”

“I hope they send him far away,” I answered, fingering my locket, hung around my neck on a new chain.

“At least he told me about your grandmother and Grace. He confirmed what Martha told you.”

“I guess that's good.” He had told Daryl essentially the same story as Martha's about his father drowning the two women. Daryl eventually confronted him about my locket and chain and, when Mo handed him the necklace and a set of rings, Mo told Daryl the rings belonged to my Gram. For some reason, he had never fenced them.

Al got Grace's earrings back, too. He was saving them for his granddaughter.

I felt like a big chapter of my life had closed, except for the missing letter Gram had mentioned, the one my parents left for her to give to me. That story wasn't done yet. Somehow, I would keep trying to find out what they'd wanted to tell me. I didn't know how, but I would.

Mo was seeing things straighter with his father gone, according to his letters to Daryl, but I didn't want to have anything to do with him. He had left the lake the day of Grace's funeral and bummed around several states before joining the army.

Daryl turned the boat and rowed slowly back the way we had come.

“I'm so glad Pat and Freddie decided not to prosecute Eve Evans,” I said as we passed her cabin again.

“It might have been a different story if their children hadn't gotten better,” said Daryl.

“Yes, that's something to be thankful for. I ran into Freddie last week at Southpark Mall in Moline. I asked him to come out sometime and fix my boat dock. Did I tell you?”

“No, you didn't.”

The woods rang with bird song and I replayed passages of last summer's opus in my head. I had nicknamed my piece “Song of Life,” but I would also always think of it as a Song of Death.

“Let's go in. I'm starving.”

“Okay,” said Daryl. He wheeled the boat toward the cove. There was a motor, of course, but he liked the feel and the sound of dipping the oars into the water, the oars dripping their way back for the next stroke.

“Someone's there,” I said, sitting up. “On the dock.”

Daryl turned around. “Looks like Freddie. Maybe he's ready to fix your dock.”

Freddie helped pull the boat over as we floated in, bumped the dock, and tied up.

“How's your carpentry business going, Fred?” asked Daryl, stepping carefully over a space where a board was missing. He gave me a hand to help me out.

“Great guns.” Freddie grinned his huge warm grin. “I'm so busy I hardly have time to eat. But Cressa said she needed work done, so I decided to drop everything and do it. I owe a lot to you, Cressa. I don't know what would have happened if Hayley had gone ahead and sued us for spreading lies about Toombs and her girls. Pat didn't mean to cause trouble for anyone, she was mostly mad at Toombs for not paying us for all the work I'd done that summer. Do you know he was threatening to kick us out for not paying rent, on top of everything?” Freddie shook his head, knelt, and pried up a rotten board with a ripping sound.

“Oh, I don't think Hayley really wanted to sue you,” I said. “She was upset about her mother's death and was lashing out at whomever she could. After Wayne and Sheila were convicted, she felt much better.”

“Well, Pat thinks you're the one that talked her out of her lawsuit. And then that money from Eve. I think you had something to do with that, too.” He started hammering pieces of new lumber into place.

It turned out Eve had a huge bank account balance when her affairs were looked into. Even though she was committed to a nursing home and diagnosed as mentally impaired, she was considered competent enough to bestow a large sum of money on the Fiori family. Maybe it was considered as reparation in place of prosecution. She had a few lucid moments now and then when she was horrified at what she had done and wanted to make up for what she had put that family through. She told me, during one of my visits, she didn't have any living relatives after her husband passed away last winter in prison.

Shouts rang out from the woods on the hillside above us. “Ready or not, here I come!” A scream of pure joy soon followed, along with scrambling sounds through the brush.

“I brought the kids along. They miss the place,” Freddie said. “Hayley says ‘Hi,' by the way. Pat talked to her a few days ago. Nursing school's going great for her. Pat gives her all the encouragement she can.”

“I'm so glad Hayley has decided to take care of herself,” I said.

“So, Daryl. When do you start your new job?” Freddie asked through the nails in his mouth, whacking another board into place.

“Next semester, this fall.” Daryl brought him another board from the stack on shore.

“You two will be teaching at the same college?”

“Some of our classes are even in the same building,” Daryl answered. “Did you know Al Harmon used to teach at that college, too?”

I laughed. “He told me he wanted to turn this complex into a retirement home for DePaul University professors someday. I can't picture it myself.”

“Can't say that I can, either,” said Daryl.

Freddie stood and stretched his back. “There. That ought to hold you for awhile.”

“Freddie, thanks so much,” I gushed. “What's your charge?”

“Absolutely nothing. I said I owe you.” He ignored my protests and gathered up his equipment. “That art show you had last winter sure got the write-ups,” Freddie said to Daryl. “I saw photos of your paintings in the paper, but I just don't understand them. Except that one you did of Cressa. I like that.”

“Thanks. I guess it's that picture and that show that got me the job working at Cressa's college.”

“Wow. Hope you both like teaching there.”

“I know I will,” said Daryl. He threw me a wink with his brilliant green eyes.

The sun threw a bright shaft onto one of Freddie's new planks. I passed through the warm light to Daryl's side.

“I hope I will. We'll see,” was all I could say. If anything deeper developed between us, I was going to make sure it was on my terms, as well as his. I had learned something from Len.

We linked arms and followed Freddie up the steps. I had cookies in the cabin the Fiori kids might like. There were no dark flecks in them.

THE END

Biography for Kaye George

Kaye George is a short story writer and novelist who has been nominated for Agatha awards twice. She is the author of two mystery series, the
Imogene Duckworthy
humorous Texas series and the
Cressa Carraway
musical mystery series. Her short stories can be found in her collection,
A Patchwork of Stories
, as well as in
Fish Tales: The Guppy Anthology
,
All Things Dark and Dastardly
,
Grimm Tales
, and in various online and print magazines. She reviews for
Suspense Magazine,
writes for several newsletters and blogs, and gives workshops on short story writing and promotion. Kaye lives in Knoxville, Tennessee. Find out more at her website, www.kayegeorge.com, or through Twitter and Facebook.