Lye in Wait (4 page)

Flipping off the switch for the tracks overhead, I peered out at
the night. Definitely Walter's.

My father always left the lights on when he exited a room. So
had my husband. Apparently our handyman had managed to live
up to his Y chromosome, as well.

Opening the door, I stepped outside. Walter had told us he hid
his spare key under a flowerpot on the windowsill. There couldn't
be a better time to use it. The wind kicked up, and, as I ran through
the chilly darkness, fallen leaves swirled around my tennis shoes
and whapped at my legs like faint hands.

At the back door to the cottage, I saw I didn't need the key after
all. Walter hadn't pulled the door closed all the way, and the wind
had nudged it open a crack. Inside, I turned to shut it behind me,
and my elbow hit a pile of old magazines stacked on an end table.
They slid in all directions, slapping onto the floor like wet fish. I
picked them up, restacked them on the table, and then gave my attention to the rest of the room.

This was the first time I'd been inside Walter's house, and I
found myself at the rear of the living room. And it looked like he
had done a lot of living in it. The open space formed a stubby ell
around the enclosed kitchen. The front door opened into a small
tiled entrance. One doorway to the kitchen opened off the tile, and
the second, ahead and to my right, allowed access to the kitchen
from the other end of the ell. In the dim light I could just make
out the shadowy plane of a countertop.

Straight ahead of me a sagging and dusty sofa hunkered under
the window facing the street, the claret-colored plush rubbed off
the arms and seat cushions, leaving behind pink swaths like exposed skin. A coffee table squatted in front of the sofa, its fauxwood surface punctuated with dozens of sticky fingerprints between the piles of magazines and several half-full water glasses.
Built-in shelves marched down the wall to my right, their original
light wood darkened by age and neglect. Behind me, an ornate
floor lamp with silk tassels hanging from its dingy shade emitted
the light I'd spotted from my workroom. The cottage was silent
except for the loud ticking of an old black-and-white clock like the
ones that had hung above the classroom doors in my high school
years ago.

I took a few steps down the short hallway, flipped on the light,
and peered into the bedroom. Nothing to see. A row of work
clothes hanging in the closet. An unmade bed. Next to it, a grungylooking bathroom smelling of mildew and Old Spice.

Back at the built-in shelves, I poked at the sparse detritus. Pictures and office supplies, a signed baseball, a bowl of soggy peppermint candies, junk mail, catalogs, a stuffed bear wearing a Santa
hat, three screwdrivers, a pack of gum, a wooden duck decoy, a
chunk of petrified wood, an electric razor with bare wires sticking out the back, a stained pad of fishing flies, a book on baseball
collectibles, a Bible, and among it all, the ubiquitous magazines.
Walter had subscribed to everything from Newsweek and Popular
Science to Sports Illustrated and Nature, and it didn't look like he'd
thrown a single issue away. Ever. Dust streaked everything, a mottled, fuzzy coating as if the items had been handled and returned
to their spots with most of the dirt intact.

One of the framed photographs showed an elderly woman, dark
gray eyes looking out of a face encased in crepe-paper wrinkles and
topped by a thick white braid coiled into a crown on her head. She
sat in a wheelchair, scowling, while someone in a poor excuse for a
rabbit suit leaned over and put a fluffy pink arm around her shoulders. HAPPY EASTER FROM CALADIA ACRES was stamped in dark
pink metallic type across the bottom of the photo. Caladia Acres was
a nursing home on the north side of town.

Other pictures revealed a much younger Walter than the one
I'd known. In one, he looked about ten, laughing open-mouthed
as a beagle puppy slurped his chin. In another, Walter and two
other boys who looked like him-brothers, I assumed-posed
with a humongous fish, grins all around. Four earlier pictures of the gray-eyed woman, black-haired and sans Easter bunny, convinced me she was their mother. One picture showed four teenagers: Walter, two boys, a girl-sister?-his mother, and a man I
assumed was his father.

His baby picture, a sepia-toned, formal studio portrait, perched
on a shelf by itself. He'd been a beautiful baby, and I don't mean that
in the all-babies-are-beautiful sense. While I could easily see the resemblance to the man I'd known, age and alcohol, if what Erin had
said at dinner was true, had imposed their effects on his features.
Nice as he may have been, I'd never considered Walter to be a goodlooking man.

I knew I should turn off the light and go back home, but my
curiosity proved more powerful than my guilt. Next to the shelves,
a card table covered with a mountain of loose paper beckoned to
me. A metal folding chair invited me to sit down. Seconds later I'd
dived in, rifling through an amazing array of unorganized information. Someone would have to step in and take care of things like the
funeral. His mother might still be in the nursing home, but I saw
Walter every week, sometimes every day, and he'd never mentioned
her. Maybe she'd predeceased him. If not, I wondered whether she
knew he was dead. Of course, the police had all sorts of ways to find
out about next of kin, and they would have told her.

Many of the smaller slips were receipts. I found a few from the
previous year for Caladia Acres, but the others had me stumped.
They were receipts for donations. Walter had given money to the
March of Dimes, Save the Children, Children's Miracle Network,
and half a dozen other charities. This inexplicable generosity both
shocked and touched me. I added up the cluster of figures in my head. The total came to over $300,000, and I doubted I'd unearthed all the receipts.

The crash of breaking glass in the kitchen wrenched me to my
feet, heart pounding. I whirled, squinting into the dark. From my
vantage I could see only the faint outlines of counters, the gleam
of the white refrigerator. Something on the floor glittered. Feeling
like the girl in the slasher films you know is going to die because
she's too dumb to run when the background music sounds like
that, I moved to the doorway of the kitchen, tiptoeing as if the carpet wouldn't effectively muffle my footsteps. I must have looked
like an idiot.

But I stopped berating myself when I heard the front door open
and then close on a muffled oath. A shadow passed outside the
kitchen window. Groping along the wall, I found the kitchen light
switch and fumbled it on. The sink overflowed with dirty dishes.
The counters were cluttered with everything from cereal and cracker
boxes to coffee mugs and empty soup cans. An explosion of glass
shards littered the yellowing linoleum floor, dull reflections in the
weak overhead light. A shiver skipped across my shoulders.

"Police. Turn around slowly."

My heart, already hammering away quite nicely, thank you,
took another leap in my chest. I turned to find the sandy-haired
officer from that morning standing in the doorway off the alley.
His hand hovered near the gun in his unsnapped holster.

"Miz Reynolds?" His palm relaxed away from his hip, and I
found myself able to breathe again.

"I just saw him go by the kitchen window. Maybe you can still
catch him," I said.

His voice took on an edge. "What're you doing in here?"

I gestured toward the floor lamp. "Saw the light on. Doesn't
matter. But someone was in here with me, and they just hightailed
it out the front way. C'mon!" I moved toward the entryway, motioning for him to follow. He didn't budge.

"Who was it?" he asked.

"I don't know. I didn't see them."

"Then how do you know someone was here?"

"Oh, for heaven's sake! I was sitting at that table and heard a
crash in the kitchen. When I went to look, the front door opened
and closed. Then you sneaked up behind me, which, I can tell you,
did nothing for my nerves."

"So this was just before I came in."

"Yes! You saw me looking in the kitchen, didn't you?"

"Sure. Standing there in the doorway looking around. Tell me
again why you're here?"

"I saw the light was on and came over to turn it off."

"Ah. And perhaps you couldn't find the switch and thought the
instruction manual might be among Mr. Hanover's papers." He
pointed to the card table and then to me. I looked down and realized I still clutched several receipts.

I dropped them on the table like they were on fire. "What are
you doing here, Officer? Isn't your shift over by now?"

"We're shorthanded-I'm working a double. And we got a call
that someone was moving around in the house."

"See! Someone was here."

"Yes. Someone was" Sarcasm laced his smile. I counted myself
lucky he hadn't shot me out of youthful enthusiasm.

"Listen, Officer-what's your name, anyway?"

"Owens"

"Well, Officer Owens, I saw the light and came over. It's not
like I broke in. The back door was open when I got here. And Walter didn't talk about family much, so I don't know who'll be taking care of the funeral arrangements. When I saw his paperwork, I
thought maybe I could find out. We were friends, Officer. And he
died a horrible death in my workroom today."

"I'm sure I locked that back door when I left this afternoon."

But I thought I saw a spark of doubt in his eyes. "You were in
here?"

He nodded.

"Well, if you locked the door, then someone broke in before I
came over.

"Or someone had a key," he said, with a look that said it would
be nice if I produced said key immediately.

"Or someone had a key." I sighed. "Look in the kitchen."

He did. I followed behind him.

"Was that broken glass all over the floor earlier?"

"No. So your intruder did that, huh?"

I could tell he thought I was responsible for the mess. But I
was too distracted by the sudden, strong smell of peppermint to
bother defending myself.

He switched off the lights and shuffled me out the door.

"Have you informed his mother already?" I asked once we were
outside.

"They told her late this afternoon," Owens said as he carefully
checked that the back door had latched behind us. "She'd probably
welcome your help with the arrangements. Maybe it'll help you
feel better about it, too. That lye you use is pretty nasty stuff."

The last comment made me want to kick him in the shin. I
contented myself with a withering glance in his direction. He
didn't seem to notice.

Walking across the alley to our backyard, Owens assured me he
would check Walter's front door lock. Maybe take a look around
the neighborhood for the person I'd heard in the house.

Yeah, right.

Back in my workroom, I checked the windows again. The exposure to the darkness outside spooked me on a deeper level now,
and I didn't like the sensation. In the space of a day, the feeling of
safety I'd felt in my own home had vanished. I'd smelled peppermint mixed in with the lye Walter had spilled on my floor. Then
that same smell in Walter's kitchen, left by someone who shouldn't
have been there.

I didn't like the coincidence, didn't like it at all.

Could Walter have been driven to commit suicide?

Or perhaps, just perhaps, his death was something else altogether.

Maybe his mother really would like some help with the funeral
arrangements. I'd make a trip out to Caladia Acres in the morning
to see her-maybe Mrs. Hanover could tell me where the money
for those donations came from.

Groaning at the thought, I realized I absolutely had to do some
work tonight if I planned to take time out tomorrow to visit Walter's
mother. Not down here, though. Not tonight. I loaded a large basket
with bars of cut soap, handmade papers, and labels. The scent of
lavender would soothe, so I'd package those first, then move on to
the bars from which my special citrus blend wafted. An old movie
on cable and a nice cup of chamomile tea would see me through.

I FOUND MEGHAN SITTING on the couch upstairs. She had lifted
Brodie onto the cushion next to her and was stroking the corgi's
soft ears with one hand while she stared out at the occasional car
going by on the street. A small fire crackled in the fireplace, and
smoke from the well-seasoned apple wood faintly flavored the air.

"How's Erin?" I asked.

"She's asleep. She'll be okay. Just needs some time."

"Yeah. Us, too."

Meghan nodded.

"I was just over at Walter's" Wrapping the colorful paper strips
around the bars of soap and affixing each with the appropriate
label, I recounted my recent adventure across the alley. When I'd
finished, I said, "I wish I knew what's going on."