Isabella Moon (35 page)

But her mother was just eight inches away, her casket a final, harsh reminder of her existence and her opinions and her will. Lillian had known, somehow, that Paxton wasn’t good for her. Now she was truly torn. A part of her wanted to try to save Paxton, to keep him so close to her that he would need nothing else and no one else to complete his life. But seeing how high he was—recklessly, publicly high—she knew that he was already on the edge of his self-control. And he wasn’t holding on to it very tightly. It wasn’t his fault, she knew. He was some kind of addict—addicted to sex, drugs, risk. He was sick. But she knew that she couldn’t be the one to cure him.

All during the service, she could feel Paxton watching her from the back of the church. She tried to listen to the pastor as he eulogized her mother, staying noticeably away from the subject of her murder. He celebrated her life to frequent, ragged choruses of “Amen.” But even as she rose to put the single white rose on the casket, she knew Paxton was watching her, and she silently cursed him for taking this moment from her and her mother.

Later, as she followed the casket out of the church, she knew right where Paxton was standing, but she avoided his eyes. If she looked at him she might relent and let him join her as she knew he wanted to. Or she might scream at him to stay the hell away from her. She knew she could go either way and didn’t want to risk it.

The church was so full that she almost didn’t see Kate and Caleb standing up against the back wall, a distinguishable space surrounding them. People didn’t want to get too close to Kate, what with the discovery of the little girl’s body. Francie hadn’t talked to her in several days, and so hadn’t heard the truth from Kate herself. The suspicion that Kate had been involved in her mother’s death nagged at her.
But was she being truly honest with herself? Was it really Kate she suspected?
When she saw that Kate’s face was wet with tears, she felt only pity for her.

As the casket was taken off its bier to be carried over the threshold, Francie stepped over to Kate and put her arms around her. When Kate only began to cry harder, she felt guilty. Kate was her friend and she knew she was hurting. Francie pulled away and rested her cheek against Kate’s.

“I’ll see you later,” she whispered.

37

HIS MARY-KATIE
looked damned good to him. Even from across the cemetery, Miles could see that she was in great shape. Her face was sad, but in a way that had always charmed him. There was something childlike about his Mary-Katie, an innocence in her aspect that thrilled him whenever he looked at her. The late morning sun mellowed the amber highlights in her hair, blowing softly around her face. He had missed her.

She stood close beside a man who held her arm proprietarily, but Miles wondered if he saw hesitation on his Mary-Katie’s part. A reluctance to lean against the man even in her grief? Miles pegged him as one of those outdoorsy types, the kind who would drive a pickup truck, wear Patagonia anoraks, and carry a canvas messenger bag. He had never figured his Mary-Katie as someone who would go after such a schmuck, but she’d been gone a long time. In her desire to start her life over, she’d obviously slipped down a couple pegs on the style scale.

Miles was secure in the knowledge that he was the one who had lifted his Mary-Katie up to his level. Her grandmother had been a nice enough old bird, but not the kind to hobnob with social registry types. It was a wonder to him that his Mary-Katie had rejected him so brutally—violently!—along with all the advantages he had given her. Her ingratitude made him sad.

He wanted to call out to her across the tombstones to startle her. It was like a joke. Miles back from the dead!

She had indeed left him for dead, and part of him wanted her to be rotting away in some women’s prison for attempted murder. His Mary-Katie should be the toy of some homely tattooed dyke instead of the Johnny Appleseed character standing beside her. It was only his mercy that had kept her from such a fate. The question was, did she even realize it?

How naive she had been, changing her name to her grandmother’s, pretending it would make her invisible to him. Two weeks after she’d rented her little cottage in the country, the agency he’d hired reported back to him. She’d been living at his mercy for more than two years. She didn’t know how blessed she had been.
No more. His patience had run out.
The call from the sheriff had merely prodded him out of inaction. If his Mary-Katie was in some kind of trouble, maybe he could help.

How, he wondered, could she have deluded herself for so long, imagining that she would never see him again?

The walking stick he carried now was his constant reminder of her perfidy, and when it had become clear that he would always need to have one with him, he started a collection. In honor of his trip to the land of moonshine and horses, he’d selected one carved from oak and topped with a redheaded serpent whose body twisted and curved so it appeared to be devouring itself.

While a walking stick gave him a kind of rakish air that he liked very much, the pain was less amusing. Dr. Narjal had kept him on morphine for weeks after the surgery. Now, it hurt only when he walked. There was no question that he would ever run again, or play tennis. He’d found it hard to stay in shape, but had managed. That inconvenience was something else for which he’d have to thank his Mary-Katie.

The burial was a brief affair, and the crowd diverse, as at so many southern funerals. He had a vague curiosity about who might be in the casket, mostly because he wondered what connection the person—whom he assumed to be female because of the white box—had to his wife.

When it was over, a number of the mourners surrounded the sheriff, but far more clustered around the stunning young black woman who, by her disposition and actions, seemed to Miles to be related to the dead woman. Prominent in the second group was a well-dressed young man with a shock of white-blond hair who tried to take the young woman’s arm and pull her away from the rest of the crowd. She resisted. Miles couldn’t hear what was said, but the woman was obviously distressed. The man tried again to get her to come with him, and this time Johnny Appleseed stepped in and the two men exchanged words. As they argued back and forth, several of the other mourners, led by a woman whose protective movements caused her enormous breasts to sway alarmingly to and fro in her floral dress, engulfed the young woman.

Miles watched as his Mary-Katie hurried over to the sheriff to get him to take some action. But before he could get to the two men, the blond man punched Johnny Appleseed, causing him to stumble back, holding his hand against his jaw.

“Enough, Birkenshaw!” The sheriff’s voice was sufficiently loud to carry to where Miles stood.

For a moment the blond man looked as though he would submit, but then he turned his back on the sheriff and the crowd and stalked away. When the sheriff started after him, the young woman called out for him to let him go.

In a move that surprised Miles, the sheriff halted, watching as the blond man hustled to a small Mercedes parked on the other side of the road. Then the sheriff turned and spoke briefly to Johnny Appleseed, who shook his head.

It seemed that the blond man was going to get away with socking Johnny Appleseed, and Miles liked the bastard for it. He thought that he wouldn’t mind having a go at Johnny Appleseed himself.

His Mary-Katie went to Johnny Appleseed, who was looking a tad sheepish, and fussed over him. The other young woman, too, came over to see if he was all right. All heads turned when the Mercedes squealed off down the road.

Finally, the crowd began to melt away. Some walked to their cars, others to houses in close proximity to the cemetery. His Mary-Katie, her Johnny Appleseed in tow, went to link arms with the young woman. As they walked slowly down the path leading out of the cemetery and into the street, the women tilted their heads together like they were two girls in a shampoo commercial. It seemed that his Mary-Katie had made herself some friends in this hillbilly town. He watched as the three of them got into a small blue convertible parked near the cemetery’s entrance.

Already he was jealous of both Johnny Appleseed and the black girl. He wasn’t sure what would be the result of his reunion with his Mary-Katie, but he was damned sure that it wouldn’t include anyone else besides the two of them.

The blue convertible was nowhere in sight, but, sure enough, a taupe-colored pickup truck sat in his Mary-Katie’s driveway. That meant that she and Johnny Appleseed were much more than good friends. Miles could hardly blame the guy. His Mary-Katie was an excellent lay even on her worst day. Even half asleep she wasn’t so bad.

Aside from the antiques mall, there were no other buildings close enough for him to draw anyone’s interest, but Miles knocked anyway to make it look good, though he knew no one was home. After a decent interval, he tried the doorknob. Of course she would lock it. His Mary-Katie was careful that way. But it was an old knob with a single lock in the handle. No dead bolt. His Mary-Katie wasn’t being
so
careful. He felt a twinge of disappointment. He had taught her better.

Miles slipped a small leather case from the inside pocket of his trench coat. He liked to have just the right tool for every job. He slid the thinnest picklock from its narrow slot in the case and fitted it into his palm. The lock was old, its tumblers likely nicked and bent. Two or three minutes passed, and he began to think that he would have to try again another day. But he finally finessed the thing. Opening locks was one of his talents, and it irritated him considerably if he came across one that wouldn’t give in immediately.

His Mary-Katie’s taste had regressed: the inside of the cottage reminded him of her grandmother’s house in Beaufort. She’d taken nothing from that house that he knew of, but here were crocheted throws and large, colorful pillows and an overstuffed couch that looked as though one could disappear in its cushions. What a romantic his Mary-Katie was.

Miles walked around the living room touching the things that she had arranged, moving them subtly, needing to let her know in some small way that he’d been there. She wouldn’t really know, of course. But he would.

He went over to the secretary and tugged gently on its door. Seeing it was locked, he started for the case, but reconsidered. He was not in any sort of hurry. He felt around the back of the desk and behind the shade, but found nothing. Running a hand along the desk’s underside, he picked up a splinter in the pad of his middle finger. As he tried to suck it out, he glanced around. He spotted a vase on a whatnot shelf on the wall.

The splinter wouldn’t come. He would have to deal with it later.

Taking the vase from the shelf, Miles shook it and heard something rattling inside. When he upended it into his palm, a small key fell out.

Regarding the key, he wondered what his Mary-Katie had been thinking, leaving it in such an obvious place. Why would she lock the desk at all? There was no evidence of children who might get into her things. Perhaps she was concerned about Johnny Appleseed prying into her life. It was true that she was masquerading as someone she wasn’t. She definitely had things to hide. He smiled to think of how naive his Mary-Katie was, still so innocent.

In fact, there wasn’t much of interest in the desk. There was a checkbook recording a modest sum and several bills, but nothing going further back than two years. Then he found the photo of himself, slipped in between a blank birthday card (had she been thinking to send it to him?) and a shoe catalog.

He put a self-conscious hand to the side of his head. Since the photo had been taken he’d lost a shameful amount of hair. Pride kept him from the hair weavers or the pills that promised new growth. But he wasn’t above letting the stylist rinse a bit of color into it to hide the gray that had shown up since the accident. (Even though he wanted her punished, he preferred to think of his Mary-Katie’s attack on him as a complicated kind of accident. She certainly wouldn’t have done it if she’d been thinking more clearly. He knew that she loved him more than life itself.)

Looking at the photograph, he regretted the choice of the dove gray morning coat he’d worn for the ceremony. A darker gray would have been a better choice. His Mary-Katie had been young and inexperienced, and he’d had to tell her what would be appropriate.

It had been the sort of wedding that he knew young girls dreamed of, his gift to her to show his trust and devotion and intention to stay married to her forever. Why she never showed more gratitude than she had, he didn’t know. He’d found the leather-bound album of their wedding pictures buried in her closet after she ran away, hidden as though she wanted to forget them. He’d given so much of himself to his Mary-Katie, and she had treated him shamefully.

Driven by his hunger, Miles went into the kitchen, to find that she’d returned to the spartan way of eating that he thought he’d educated her out of years before. There was nothing fresh in the refrigerator except a carton of eggs and a large bag of the Granny Smith apples that she liked so much. He grabbed a can from a six pack of diet soda and popped the lid, to drink it down standing before the open refrigerator. Looking around the kitchen, he found a milk crate with a few other recyclables in it and tossed it in. He liked to do his part.

After eating a few of the stale crackers he found in the cabinet, he replaced the box and took a nearly empty jar of peanut butter from its shelf. Taking a spoon from the silverware drawer, he ate some of the peanut butter, rinsing the spoon after each mouthful. Finally, the gnawing in his stomach appeased, he went to look around the rest of the cottage.