French Polished Murder (18 page)

In addition, it was a bright, fluorescent purple, that almost glowed. As for the two little saplings in the front yard, they’d grown quite a lot. They’d been planted, I realized, less than six feet from each other, so that they had grown entwined, like two lovers taking a parting embrace.

How odd
, I thought
. Perhaps they are possessed by the spirits of Almeria and Jacinth.
It gave me the oddest feeling, thinking of that and looking at the two maples, their branches growing entwined.

I am not normally given to poetic thoughts, but in that time, in that place it seemed . . . almost inevitable.

When I got home, I reached in my purse for my key,
and it wasn’t where I normally left it, in a little pouch just inside the zipper.

Sometimes it fell into the greater inside of the purse, so I rustled about in there, but found nothing. On the verge of panic, I checked all my pockets, then decided I must have left it in the pocket of the jeans I had been wearing earlier.

I knocked at the door and Ben let me in. And I went to look through my jeans, but both pockets were empty.

Ben, already fully dressed for his date, this time in a slightly more colorful, darkish green pullover over a white shirt—for a miracle without a tie—and dark brown pants, seemed absolutely baffled by what I was doing. He followed me around, as I looked through the clothes in the hamper, on top, then looked in the pockets of my leather jacket hanging from a peg in my bedroom and then in despair looked through the pockets of my robe, thinking perhaps I’d considered going out in the morning.

“What are you looking for?” he asked me.

“My house key,” I said.

He frowned. “Your . . . key?”

“Yeah, I swear I had it in my purse when I went out, but it’s not there now, and I wonder if I forgot it in here, somewhere.”

“Dyce, you have to have it. You drove home. Isn’t it with your car key?”

“No. It wouldn’t be lost if it was.” He stared at me and I sighed. “Ben, you’re the one who told me not to have all my keys on the same key ring, in case someone stole my car while the key was in it. Besides, you know how much I hate it when the keys jingle on the ring in the car.”

“All right. And you’re sure you had it before you left for the tea?” He frowned at me. “Dyce . . . I have to ask—why did you go to that tea?”

“Oh, to see what I could find out about the people who wrote the letter. I mean, the woman who wrote it and the man it was written to.” I said it as if he should have known this, and perhaps he should, the man had known me for so long. As if to confirm it, he didn’t show any surprise.

“Let’s think through this,” he said. “There were people at that party who were relatives of a woman who disappeared almost a hundred years ago, right? So . . .”

I shook my head. “I hadn’t thought of that. I mean, that they might have taken my key. And I don’t think they could have anyway, Ben. There was a crowd, and even though the place was . . . well . . . packed, people were wearing nice clothes. They wouldn’t want to jostle each other. No one touched me. Besides, the couple, the Martins, were always in front of me, unless he was off in search of whiskey.”

“Um,” Ben said. “Do you want me to cancel my date? Or are you going out with Cas tonight? Under the circumstances I don’t like leaving you and the E Monkey here alone while I’m gone.”

I shook my head. I was fairly sure there were worse sins in the world than raining on Ben’s potential dating life when he was just starting to acquire one again, but I did not plan to go out and kill puppies with blunt scissors, anyway. “No, Cas isn’t coming over tonight, but it’s okay. I’m sure I just put the key somewhere stupid. I’ve been known to do that, and then, of course, I knew you’d be here, so subconsciously, I was sure of being let in the house. I’m sure that’s all. There is nothing to worry about.”

Ben crossed his arms on his chest. Ben’s father was a high school teacher, a rather massive sort of man. His mom taught piano, but she was not exactly a small woman, though not by any means fat. I had always had the impression that somewhere in Ben’s ancestry there sailed a never-ending number of Vikings standing at the prow of their longships, looking for new things to conquer and pillage.

Of course, if they were Ben’s ancestors, they had probably worn fur ties with their impeccably polished horned helmets, but I was sure, judging from the way my friend glowered when he got mad, that they had committed their fair share of mayhem. Right now, with his arms crossed, Ben looked like he was contemplating committing some of his own. “Dyce, it’s not safe. I can picture you and E going to bed, all confident, and someone coming in with your own key.”

“Okay, then . . . I won’t go to bed,” I said. And at that moment, from the way Ben frowned, I realized I’d said the wrong thing and started apologizing. “Oh, I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t realize. Were you planning on . . . I mean, did you intend to—maybe not come back here tonight?”

He opened his mouth, then closed it, then said, with a sort of forced cheerfulness. “No, no. It’s fine. I mean, no. It’s too early for that, isn’t it? We’ll just go to dinner and a show or something and . . . I’ll be home by twelve. How does that sound?”

“Sounds fine. I can stay awake later than that. Don’t hurry home because of me. I’ve been known to stay up till two.”

He hesitated. “Are you sure Cas can’t come and stay with you?”

I shook my head. “No, he’s working on a case. Something about a body being found in the amusement park.”

“I think I read a piece in the paper about that,” he said.

“Yeah, well, he expects to be busy for a while.” I gave a thought to the fact that recent possible murders were no doubt more important to the Goldport police than century-old possible murders.

“Hey, E,” I said. “You can come and draw at the kitchen table, while mommy cooks, all right?”

“What is mommy cooking?” My unmotivated son asked without looking up.

“Mac and cheese!” I said. “With Vienna sausages.”

Ben muttered, “The dinner of champions!” but E’s eyes lit up and he said, “Yay!”

Ben followed me and E to the kitchen. “Shouldn’t Nick be here?” I asked.

Ben shook his head. “No, he said between five and six. He’s also very busy, see, with the animal cruelty case.”

“How is that going?” I asked.

“They’ve found dead animals all over this neighborhood,” he said. “Another one today. Poisoned. Same way Pythagoras would have gone if we hadn’t saved him. But whoever is doing it is being very smart. He or she is using industrial fertilizer, and in a region with ranches and farms . . . it’s almost impossible to focus in on a suspect. Nick is sure it wasn’t anyone downtown, but that’s it.”

He played with the metallic band of his watch, something he did when he was worried or thinking deeply. Finally, he said, “It’s obvious that you’ve been holding back on this entire investigation thing you’re doing. I thought you knew better than that. Are you going to tell me what you’ve been up to, or do I have to cancel my date?”

I made a face at him. But part of me wanted to tell him. Oh, yeah, sure, Ben is overprotective and so methodical that OCD cases are envious. Also, he can be a bit of a stick in the mud. Okay. More than a bit.

The thing was, though, that when it came right down to it, if you needed someone to stand by you in good times and bad, Ben would be your very best choice. And I was feeling confused and upset about this entire almost hundred-year-old murder. I needed someone to talk to other than Cas who had already warned me off.

I told Ben the entire story, starting with my research at the library, which for some reason made him smile and ask me if I’d even attempted to take the first step to find out how to French polish the piano and if I didn’t think Cas was likely to notice it hadn’t so much as been varnished.

I made a face. “I’ll get around to it,” I said. And cleared my throat. “Eventually.”

“Uh-huh.”

I was afraid he’d cross his arms again, so before he could, I continued with my story, while I boiled the mac. I finished with the two trees, interlaced.

“I don’t know,” I told him. “It gave me the shivers. Those two trees just newly planted—I mean, you could still see the ground disturbed under them in the picture—when Almeria and Jacinth disappeared, and now they’re grown all entwined. Like they’re possessed by the ghosts of the lovers.”

“Maybe you should write the book,” he said. “You do know that it’s entirely possible it wasn’t an affair. Her grandson said—”

“Her grandson told me a well-rehearsed story,” I said. “I’m sure of it.”

“Why,” Ben asked, and smiled infuriatingly. “Because it’s not romantic enough?”

I shook my head. “No, Ben, because she signed the letter ‘Yours always.’ That’s not what a woman writes to just a friend.”

“Maybe not these days,” he said. “But it’s quite possible people of that time did. They had different modes of conduct. It’s also possible that, having made a pact with him—a pact that saved both their lives—this was her way of reassuring him she wouldn’t back out.”

I mumbled something. It seemed to me in that case she’d have written, “I won’t back out” or “My mind is quite made up” not “Yours always.”

“I think you’re making a storm in a teacup,” Ben said. “It’s entirely possible they simply left in a big hurry and that they didn’t dare come back or contact anyone. Hell, if I had some maniac after me with an ax, I might decide the climate was a little uncongenial. Wouldn’t you?”

I shrugged. “I don’t know, Ben . . .”

He smiled, that infuriating way he smiles when he thinks he knows better than I do. He gave me that stupid smile all the time when I was taking pre-calc and got stuck on a problem, because he was an advanced math student and was, at the time, studying calculus. “I see,” he said. “You still need to convince yourself, or perhaps come down from the high of investigating what you’re sure must be a murder, haunted trees and all . . . Tell you what,” he said, as the doorbell sounded. “You can use my laptop to research whatever you want. It’s right by the sofa.”

“Thanks,” I said, because I knew he hated to have anyone play with his electronics. “But if you think it wasn’t murder,” I called after him, “why are you so worried about what happened to my key?”

“Simple,” he said, as the doorbell sounded again. “Theft, home invasion, rape, and the fact that there’s a nut bar around this neighborhood poisoning innocent cats and dogs.”

“Oh,” I said, as I heard him open the front door and greet Nick. Then he called out, “I’ll be home before two. Keep the door locked.”

And he was gone. I made mac and cheese, and E and I enjoyed it thoroughly. Then I read to him an exciting lab rats book—about gold-plating objects, it turned out—and put him to bed. For a wonder, he went to sleep, perhaps because he had Pythagoras right there along with him, snoring up a storm. How a cat that small could have such a huge snore was something I couldn’t understand.

I went back to the kitchen and fed the rats that were now very playful and jumping all over each other. They no longer had their paws splayed to the side, doing the ratty shuffle, but had them firmly under them and were doing the things toddlers do while playing, including chasing each other all over the aquarium, mock fights, and tumbling about. I thought we should get them some play structures, of some sort, and for once I was very glad that Ben had laundry markered their fat little butts, otherwise I’d have fed some of them—Rat Fink—at least twice, and left others—Rat Face—completely unfed.

I had to wipe down You Dirty Rat who had somehow managed to get himself all sticky, but after an hour or so they were all fed. I checked on E again. He was asleep. I checked on the bolts both on the front and the back door. And suddenly, for no logical reason, considering how many nights I had spent alone with E in this apartment, I felt very nervous.

It was the damn key, which I was sure would show up under—I did a perfunctory look under the sofa cushions—or behind something. Maybe Pythagoras had taken it for a toy. I gave up on that idea, because Pythagoras wasn’t, after all, the sort of cat who played. In fact, other than eating paper, I hadn’t seen him do anything but eat and sleep and look like he was afraid we would shove him out into the cold, cruel world, or perhaps like we would at any minute force him to write, direct, or act in psychologically profound movies.

This was not good, because it meant I had, at the very least, lost the key outside the house.

Feeling discomfited, I grabbed Ben’s laptop. My first thought was that it wasn’t a real laptop—just a little thing that looked like the lead in a movie called
Honey, I Shrunk the Electronics.
Then I remembered what Ben had told me about having acquired a Netbook, which at the time had sounded very odd—and sighed. Oh, well. Keeping up with the Ben in electronics would mean I wouldn’t even have money for my daily pancakes.