Murder in the Marketplace (4 page)

She thought about this, and gradually her lower lip returned to its place. “I’ll find a job,” she said optimistically. “I’ve been a waitress, you know. And a manicurist, for a little while. Can you believe they fired me just for taking a tiny little break to fix my own nails? I mean, I wasn’t away from my station more than a nanosecond. What kind of manicurist has a chipped fingernail?” She held up her black and white talons for inspection. “See, on the bus trip the polish chipped again.”

“Do you type?” I was signed up with a temp agency, although the woman who ran it didn’t seem to like me. Working for Emery wasn’t so bad—at least he saw me as a person. The jobs I was offered through the agency were for faceless cogs willing to be ground away by the big machine. I hated those jobs. Sometimes, if I’d sold an article, I turned them down. Maybe that’s why Mrs. Rainey didn’t like me.

“With these nails? You’ve got to be kidding.” Amy inspected the chipped polish anxiously. “Hey, how far is it to the Pacific Stock Exchange?”

“I don’t know.” I squatted down to finish tightening the new belts I’d installed. “Did you want to check your portfolio?”

“Actually, yes.” She sounded on her dignity. Peering out from under the bumper, I could tell I’d hurt her feelings. “I did some investing for a school thing, and I, like, have a talent for it. My picks all went up. Maybe I’ll get a job on the floor.”

With a great effort of will, I refrained from pointing out the statistical likelihood of that plan. It was pleasant in the sun. The gravel crunched under my knees and the bees hummed in the lavender that edged the drive. Amy’s voice rose and fell, telling me about PE ratios. At first I thought these had to do with gym class, but it turned out they involved some complicated investment formula. I was impressed by Amy’s knowledge, but my attention wandered in the warm sunshine.

My cottage has a small green lawn in front, old turf dotted with little daisies and clover and chamomile that I’d sown that spring. The daffodils I’d planted along the front walk were long gone, of course, but forget-me-nots were blooming there, and I’d bought a couple of bareroot roses at the very end of the season, getting them cheap and soaking them for a couple of days to help them recover from the plastic bag. Now they had big blooms, and I could smell them over the engine oil—the dark, seductive fragrance of Oklahoma, my favorite hybrid tea, and the fruitier scent of Amber Queen. The sun, the scents, were transcendently peaceful.

Even Amy was affected by it. Her voice died away. She tilted her dead-white face to the warmth and closed her eyes. I cleaned the battery terminals and replaced the oil filter.

“So what did you do that was so bad, Aunt Liz?” Amy sat up straighter, opening her eyes. “I’m dying of curiosity.”

“Didn’t they tell you?” I don’t like talking about my past, even with relatives.

“You got married to a jerk.” She inspected a ladybug that had crawled onto her knee. “But I don’t see what’s so big about that. My mom and dad yell at each other all the time. Once he slugged her, and she broke the turkey platter over his head.” Amy shrugged, elaborately nonchalant. “They’re both jerks sometimes, so why did they get so mad at you?”

I wasn’t surprised that my brother was capable of domestic violence. My dad had knocked my mom around a bit, after the accident that took away his work with the big cranes. She’d been stoic about it up to a point, but when she handed down the ultimatum, he’d stopped. As far as I knew, which wasn’t far. At least Renee, Amy’s mother, could defend herself.

“I don’t know, Amy. I married a middle-class jerk instead of a working-class one. Maybe that was why.” I certainly didn’t want to talk about my ex-husband. I’d come to grips with all that, and as far as I was concerned, that part of my life was over. I handed Amy the ignition key. “Would you start it up real easy? I’ll tell you when to turn it off.”

The bus hummed sweetly, like a giant bee. I try to keep it from developing major problems that would be beyond my power to fix.
It was coming up on the big 200,000—a lot more zeros than I saw in my savings account. A new used car would wipe me out. Besides, I was attached to my bus. We’d been through things together I hadn’t shared with any human.

Amy turned it off. I wiped my hands once more and carried my tools into the garage. She followed, examining everything with great interest. “It’s really radical that you can fix your car,” she said, watching me put the tools away.

“I can maintain it, but if the engine blows I’m sunk.” I stripped off the old coveralls I keep in the garage for car work and hung them on their hook.

“You probably need a new car anyway.” Amy looked back at the bus, and I looked, too—at its faded blue and white paint, the dents I had inexpertly filled, the dimpled bumpers and duct tape-patched seats. Even thinking about a new car was disloyal.

“This old bus has some great attributes,” I told her, shutting the garage doors. “For one thing, I’m absolutely safe from carjackers. For another, I never have to lock it.”

“True.” Amy nodded wisely. “It’s kinda Zen—less is more, and all that.”

“Very philosophical.” She glanced at me sharply, and I tried to rein in my sarcasm. “Actually, that’s my point of view. It works. That’s what matters.”

Amy looked up at the blue, blue sky. “It’s so different here,” she offered. “Warmer, for one thing. The air is wetter, somehow. And—oh, I don’t know—thick or something. Not smoggy,” she hastened to add. “I mean, it looks clear and all that. But it must be the altitude.”

“Or lack of it.” I hadn’t lived in high altitudes for a long time. The Denver I remember had its share of polluted air, made worse by the thinness.

She breathed deeply, nearly coming out of her T-shirt, and scrutinized the back of Drake’s house. He had painted the place and hired a mow-and-blow crew to take care of the yard, so it was considerably trimmer than when he’d moved in. My driveway looked directly out on the street; we could see the occasional car going by. “So is that guy your lover?” Amy said casually.

“Who? Drake?” The sheer unexpectedness of her question rattled me. “Is that any of your business?”

“Guess not.” She didn’t seem put off by my reply. “I just wondered if he was going to show up in the evenings or anything.”

“He might show up, but not for sex.” I could feel a blush rising on my face. It was embarrassing to have her speculate on my love life. Not, of course, as embarrassing as it would have been if I’d had a love life. “We’re friends. Neighbors.”

“He’s a cop.” She looked disapproving. “I’m surprised at you, with your record and all.”

“So you know about that, do you?” I turned toward the house.

She followed me. “I heard Aunt Molly telling Mom something about it. Don’t you hate the police for putting you in jail?”

“It was better than the alternative." I sat down in the living room, gesturing Amy into the shabby, overstuffed chair by the fireplace. I didn’t want to talk about it, but obviously she did. “I spent some time in minimum security. It would have been better if I hadn’t felt the need to try and kill my louse of a husband, but actually I’m for people being locked up when they shoot other people. That’s Drake’s job, and he has my support for doing it.” I took a deep breath. “He’s not—we’re not involved in anything but a neighborly relationship. If it’s all the same to you, Amy, I would prefer not to be quizzed about all this. How would you like it if I asked about your sex life?”

“I don’t have one,” she said frankly. “I mean, I had sex once, but it wasn’t at all what I thought it would be, so I’m a virgin again.”

“Virginity can be regained?” I stifled a laugh, not wanting to hurt Amy’s feelings. If renouncing sex made you a virgin, I could qualify.

“Why not?” Amy didn’t find it troubling. She yawned. “Gosh, I slept and slept on the bus, and now I’m sleepy again!” She looked at the sofa I was sitting on. “Is that a Hide-a-bed?”

I got up. “Yes. I hope you’ll be comfortable there tonight, but you can use my bed for a nap. I’ve got some work to do in here.” My computer sat in the corner on an old library table. There were several writing projects in neat stacks around it; I had lots to do.

“So I’ll sleep here tonight?” Amy looked, for a moment, lost and waifish.

“Guess so. Before you nap, we’ll go call your parents.” She stuck that lower lip out again, but she didn’t say anything. I took my keys off the key rack by the door.

“Where’s the phone?” She followed me out the door.

“We’ll use Drake’s—he’s given me permission to do that. We’ll leave some money to pay for it. I don’t have a phone.”

This, in Amy’s eyes, was an even bigger problem than the smallness of my house. She marveled over it all the way across Drake’s yard. I opened the back door and let us into his kitchen. It was larger than mine and full of implements that hung from the ceiling and bulged from the cabinets.

Amy’s mother answered—I could tell by the high-pitched, frantic quacking that came out of the phone when Amy identified herself. She rolled her eyes at me while she tried to get a word in edgewise. “Mom. Mom—I’m okay. Of course not! Mom, listen! I’m at Aunt Liz’s.” More quacking. “Liz. Yes, in California. I took the bus.” She scowled into the phone. “I didn’t tell anyone! She says I can stay. So I’m going to.” More than a hint of bravado colored her voice. She crossed her arms, cradling the receiver between ear and shoulder, and sullenly examined her chipped nail polish. “I’m going to get a job,” she said finally. More eye-rolling. At last she held the phone toward me. “She wants to talk to you.”

I wasn’t well acquainted with my sister-in-law. She and Andy had gotten married not long before I did, and Amy’s birth had followed in six months or so. She had been very shrill about denouncing me, though, perhaps because all the flap over my marrying and quitting school had diverted attention from her “premature” eight-pound baby.

Now her voice on the phone was frosty, as if I’d somehow enticed her daughter away. “You’ve offered Amy a place to stay for the summer?”

"That’s tight, Renee.” Amy wandered around Drake’s kitchen and through the archway into the living room. “She’s spent all her money on the bus ticket, and I’m not too flush myself. She’s going to get a job, and if she can’t, I’ll front the money for her to get back home.”

“Just what kind of job?” Renee didn’t sound overjoyed. “What kind of racket are you running there, Liz?”

My patience began to seep away. “Look, Renee. Your daughter landed herself on me without a word of warning. You can come and get her or send her a plane ticket if you think she’s in danger. Believe me, I wouldn’t want a child of mine on the streets these days. I live very quietly, and a teenager is not my idea of a fun surprise, not to mention the expense. I don’t have a phone, and this call is costing me. If you have anything else to say, be brief. Otherwise, you have my address.”

Amy came back into the kitchen in time to hear this. Her eyes rounded.

“Settle your problems with Amy,” I said, exasperated. “I’m not
in loco parentis,
and I make no guarantees beyond offering her a clean bed and a sympathetic ear.”

Renee was speechless for all of thirty seconds. “Well! Really, Liz, I hardly think after what you did that you can set yourself up as some kind of example for an impressionable sixteen-year-old. What makes you think you can deal with an incorrigible young girl? Andy will have a few things to say about this! You must—”

At that point I gently cradled the phone.

“You hung up on my mother.” Amy blinked. “She’ll just call right back, you know.”

“No, she won’t. That’s the beauty of not having a phone. Annoying people can’t reach you except by letter, and you can throw those away.”

This viewpoint hadn’t occurred to Amy before. She was thoughtful until we got back to my house.

“I could really use a shower.” She picked up her knapsack and looked at me. “Would that be all right?’

“Certainly.” I tried not to think about the hot water heater. It had only started acting up after I’d done what good homeowners are supposed to do and drained it. It seemed to miss all that rusty sedimentary fluid that had lurked in its depths for untold years. Now whenever I used hot water, it fired itself up with an angry roar, and then delivered water that varied from scalding to freezing in seconds. I warned Amy about that, and she went off to clean up.

I turned my computer on, determined to finish editing a rough draft intended for
Organic Gardening.
It was hard to concentrate on the details of seed germination, though. And even harder to think about going back to census duty later on, facing a multitude of Renee-like people without being able to hang up on them.

Chapter 4

"So where is she?” Claudia Kaplan shrieked over the din in Bridget’s living room.

“Who?” I screamed back.

Walking in the door, I’d been assaulted by the noise and the hunger-inducing smell of something barbecuing. Claudia, an imposing woman in her late fifties, semaphored her arms across the room toward the bank of audio equipment, causing the hibiscus blossoms on her caftan to billow.

“Turn it down!”

Her bellowed request was picked up by several other people in the room, and the scruffy-looking guy who’d commandeered the tape player finally obliged. There were audible gasps of relief.

“Greg’s been experimenting with percussion as a background to his readings,” one of the women standing nearby explained in the relative silence.

"That wasn’t percussion,” Claudia said, scowling across the room at Greg, who sheepishly tucked his tape into a pocket. "That was aural torment.”

Bridget came bustling out of the kitchen. The crowd of people in there made a lot of noise, but nothing like it had been before. "That’s better,” she said, setting a stack of paper cups on the top shelf of a bookcase. “I was afraid for everyone’s eardrums.”

“Where are the kids?” Claudia squinted into the kitchen.

“I got rid of them,” Bridget said frankly. “They’re too young to worry about with so many people around.” She came over and gave me a hug. "I’m glad you could make it, Liz. Paul said you were pretty busy working two jobs.”