Invisible (9 page)

I went to church, but I didn’t go back to Country Peace that night. Partly because I was feeling dragged out from keeping such odd hours, but even more because of an unexpected reluctance to return to the cemetery.

I couldn’t pinpoint the reason. Not some newly awakened apprehension about ghosts or graves splitting open. Not some fresh fear of the vandals. But the encounter with the illegal dumper had left me feeling . . . jittery.

On Monday evening I determinedly ignored that feeling and was back at my usual spot beside Aunt Maude’s fallen tombstone. I had taco chips, M&M’s, and a can of Pepsi. I’d bought some dark socks, so my feet were more comfortable. No tombstones had been disturbed during my missing night. There was no reason the cemetery should feel different, yet somehow it did.

There were unfamiliar squeaks and rustles and thuds. Whining, bloodthirsty mosquitoes. Heretofore unnoticed shadows on the ground and in the trees. A vaguely unpleasant scent. Maybe the dumper had simply tossed a big bag of rotting garbage.

I’d seen an occasional bat chasing night bugs before, but now a whole flock of them swooped around the tombstones. But I didn’t chicken out. I determinedly stayed until night turned to a pink dawn and it was light enough that when I paused on the bridge I could peer into the murky water below. Whatever the dumper had tossed was either heavy enough that it had sunk to the bottom or light enough to drift away, because all I could see was the same old refrigerator half submerged at the edge of the brush-covered bank.

* * *

Tuesday night’s stakeout was also uneventful. I slept until noon on Wednesday, fixed a quick egg salad sandwich for lunch, and drove to the Palisades Nursing Home to visit my old friend Cecile Kettridge.

As usual, though Cecile’s body was bent and painful with arthritis, her mind was bright and sharp, her conversation snapping with caustic humor. “Hey, have you heard this one going around?” she asked me in greeting. “Give a man a fish and he’ll eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he’ll sit in a boat with a fishing pole and drink beer all day.”

“I’m glad to see you’re in good humor.”

Cecile had a friend who supplied her with these Internet tidbits. Some good, some not so good.

“I might as well be. It’s the only thing that will keep anyone sane around here. How about this one: Time may be a great healer, but it’s a lousy beautician.” She inspected me critically. “Although you’re looking pretty good.”

I waited a while, letting her run through a few more lines, then told her about Thea’s death. Cecile no longer read the newspaper, calling it too depressing, so I knew she hadn’t seen the obituary. We reminisced a bit about Thea and the good ol’ days on Madison Street, and shared a prayer. Then I kissed her on the cheek and repeated a line I’d read somewhere and had been saving for last. “Just remember, being young is nice, but being old is comfortable.”

She tilted her head, considered that, and then smiled. “It is, isn’t it? No more panty hose. No more curlers in the hair. No more worrying if your skirt length is out of style. And we’re
expected
to be a little eccentric.”

* * *

Back home, I intended to sleep a few more hours to prepare for another night at Country Peace, but Magnolia knocked before I could get to bed. I opened the door, and she swept in surrounded by Popsicle swirls of red and orange.

She twirled. “Isn’t this gorgeous? My third cousin on Great-grandma Phillipe’s side sent it to me from Hawaii, along with all sorts of information about that branch of the family.”

Magnolia claimed ancestors from various bloodlines around the world, and, fortunately, most of the people she tracked down seemed willing to grant her relative status. Now she steadied her balance with a grip on the sofa. The dress kept twirling. “That’s the French side of the family, you know. I believe we’re related to Marie Antoinette.”

“Fantastic colors,” I murmured, not wanting to get into French ancestry. “Lemonade?”

“Oh yes, lovely. And then I have a surprise for you.”

Uh-oh. Magnolia had once surprised me with a vase in the shape of a purple mermaid playing a harp. Another time it was a book on the joys of genealogy. So I was a little wary now about the merits of this new surprise.

I poured two glasses of lemonade, and we went out to the backyard. Magnolia inspected Thea’s plants.

“They don’t look too bad so far.”

“Thank you.”

“Will you be taking them to DeeAnn soon?” Magnolia turned a leaf over and studied it as if estimating how long it might survive under my care.

“Probably not until Thanksgiving. I’m thinking I’ll get some Miracle-Gro and give them a dose to hold them over.”

“Good. You know, this is the third time I’ve been over to see you,” she complained as she settled into a lawn chair that creaked under her bulk. I sat on the bench Harley had made years ago. It was oak, weathered now, but still solid, and I always felt the comfort of Harley’s own solidity when I sat on it.

Now, with a hint of accusation, Magnolia added, “I pounded and pounded on the door, but you never answered. And your car was in the driveway.”

“I . . . haven’t been sleeping well at night,” I said. Perhaps not total truth, but truth as far as it went. “So I’ve been napping during the day.” Which I’d discovered went much better with earplugs to shut out sirens and meter readers. And, apparently, persistent door pounders.

“I could swear I saw a car pulling out of your driveway late last night. I was afraid maybe something was wrong, and you were headed for the emergency room. But then I realized it was probably just someone turning around in your driveway. After a couple of hours at the bars, some of those guys don’t know which way home is.”

I decided a detour away from discussion of my daytime naps and nighttime excursions would be prudent. “Will you and Geoff be staying home now, or do you have another trip planned?”

“We may stay home for a while. Gas is so expensive now, you know. And the motor home guzzles it like an old drunkard bellied up to a bar. We had a rather unnerving experience too.”

Magnolia waited expectantly for me to express alarm, and I obliged. “Oh, dear. What happened?”

“We broke down out in the middle of nowhere in Arizona. It was an eerie place, all these strange cactus standing around looking like people turned into statues.” Magnolia raised her arms, making statue shapes. “Then out of nowhere comes this weird guy with a backpack, and he starts telling Geoff he’s had a message that alien spacecraft are going to land in the area. And he kept looking at us, as if he thought maybe we were aliens in disguise.”

“That does sound creepy.”

“Actually, it all turned out okay,” Magnolia admitted. “He showed Geoff what was wrong with the motor home, something about a loose spark plug wire.”

“Perhaps he’ll be able to help the flying saucer aliens, then, if they have mechanical problems,” I suggested.

Magnolia rewarded the facetious comment with a righteous frown. “But he could have been a serial murderer, and we’d have wound up as a newspaper headline: ‘Middle-aged Couple Found Decapitated in Luxury Motor Home in Arizona Desert.’”

Luxury motor home? Stretching it. Middle-aged couple? No way. Then I chided myself for this flippant attitude. Because desert decapitation was no doubt gruesomely possible.

“Of course, reading the newspaper or listening to the TV about things going on right around here is just about as scary,” Magnolia declared. “Can you believe what’s been happening?”

“I guess I haven’t been keeping up with the news too well lately.” My nighttime excursions and daytime naps didn’t allow for much newspaper perusal. And I hadn’t had the TV on in several days.

“Well, just awful things have been happening. That boy who took a gun to school and wounded three people. That girl’s body found in the river. That shameful vandalism out at some old cemetery. That whole family selling drugs, even the kids. The man who—”

“Whoa. Back up. Vandalism at a cemetery?”

“It’s out in the country somewhere. There were photos of several overturned tombstones. The police are asking anyone in that vicinity to keep an eye out.”

Perhaps that trip to the sheriff’s office had done some good after all.

“Has Thea’s renter moved out?” Magnolia added, moving on with one of her rapid changes of subject. “I haven’t seen her car for several days now.”

“I don’t think so. She said she was going to pay another month’s rent. I don’t think she’d just pick up and leave without saying good-bye.” I hadn’t been paying attention to Kendra’s car.

“But she didn’t pay the rent?”

“No, not yet.” Actually, as of now, Kendra’s rent was several days past due.

“Well, maybe she did leave then. If she didn’t, I’d certainly hit her up for the rent and not let her get behind. She seemed nice, but you just can’t depend on young people these days.”

“I’m sure there are any number of thoroughly dependable young people around,” I protested. “You just don’t hear about them like you do the other kind.”

Magnolia murmured a
humph
of doubt, set her empty glass on the grass, and stood up. “Oh, you almost let me forget my surprise.”

Magnolia didn’t appear to be carrying anything, which I took as a good sign. No more odd vases or books on genealogy. But her pleased-with-herself smile was not so good.

“Surprise?” I repeated warily.

“I want you to come over for a barbecue Saturday night. I’m inviting some people from our RV Roamers group.”

I relaxed. A barbecue was fine. Geoff did a great job with chicken or hamburgers. And I didn’t mind recreational vehicle people, though they did tend to spend an excessive amount of time discussing where good dump stations were located. “Can I bring something? A pie or cobbler, perhaps?”

“Yes, that would be lovely. I’m sure it will make a terrific impression on Mac.”

I stopped relaxing. “Mac?”

Magnolia clapped her hands. “Mac is my surprise! He’s this lovely man we met in Arizona. Not the weird, flying saucer one,” she added hastily. “He travels the country in his motor home, and he’ll be arriving here Saturday afternoon. I just know you two are going to hit it off.”

As a surprise,
I thought glumly
, I’d rather have had another mermaid vase after all.
Trying to be tactful, I said, “That’s very nice of you, but I’m really not interested in—”

“That’s the problem,” Magnolia scolded. “You should be interested! You and Thea did everything together, and with her gone you’re going to be sitting around here alone. You need companionship, and there aren’t a lot of eligible men in our age group. And Mac is very eligible.”

I couldn’t argue with Magnolia’s statement about men in our age group. Statistics always shout their scarcity. It is also a fact that their scarcity had never particularly concerned me. It’s like pickled eel at the supermarket: If you don’t want pickled eel, who cares if the store doesn’t have any?

I searched for a polite way to wiggle out of the barbecue. Finally I settled for honesty. “Magnolia, I appreciate your concern about my being alone. And I’ve enjoyed meeting other RV people from across the country who’ve come to visit you. But I really don’t want to get involved in a . . . matchmaking situation.”

“Just meet him, Ivy.” Magnolia’s tone managed to reproach, cajole, and accuse. “You don’t have to elope with him the next day, you know.”

I sighed. Opposing Magnolia was like trying to stop a combination of charging bull and pleading kitten. I also knew she honestly cared. If I’d ever expressed interest in acquiring a man, she’d have been hauling them in by the truckload long before this.

“Where’s his home?”

“I think he used to live in California.” Magnolia airily waved a hand. “But the world is his home now. He lives in his motor home.”

No rooted home? I found that difficult to comprehend. Harley and I had talked about traveling but never about giving up our home. I rubbed a row of itchy mosquito bites on my leg.

“Is he into genealogy?”

“Well, no . . .” Magnolia frowned at this flaw I’d so quickly uncovered. Then she brightened. “But he has a fabulous head of hair. And not a trace of potbelly. Every morning he was out jogging around the RV park there in Arizona. And he reads a lot, just like you.”

“Does he know you’re planning to serve him up like an hors d’oeuvre to the widow down the street?”

“He’s a writer, so you’re going to have so much in common.”

I noted that Magnolia had dodged my hors d’oeuvre question. The homeless but fabulously haired, non-potbellied Mac had no idea a booby trap was waiting for him. “I’m not a writer,” I pointed out. “So I don’t see the connection.”

Magnolia dismissed that objection with another of her all-purpose airy waves. “Books, Ivy, books. No one knows more about words and books than you do, after all those years in the library. Mac does these fantastic articles about fabulous places for travel magazines. That’s why he lives on the road and travels all the time. I’m sure he’ll probably do a book one of these days.”

“Thanks so much, but—”

“I’m simply not going to take no for an answer,” Magnolia declared. She frowned, pulling insulation pink lips into a down-turned bow, and shot me a sideways glance. “This sleeping in the daytime is not a healthy sign, you know. I’m concerned.”