Paula K. Perrin - Small Town Deadly (14 page)

Mother called after him, “Kirk,
don’t leave.”

“No,” he said, turning.  “I’m
sorry that Liz hasn’t got more faith in me, but if it will make it easier for
her, I’ll leave.  I don’t need to hear about the phone call she received. 
But,” his fierce gaze swung to Meg, “you’d better take every precaution to
protect yourselves.  If you’re not going to trust me, then don’t be stupid
enough to trust anybody else!”  He slammed the door behind him.

“Elizabeth Macrae, I have never
been so humiliated in my life!” Mother said in a low, quivering voice.  “How
dare you presume to tell a guest of mine to leave?”

Meg said, “Actually, she didn’t
get around to—”

“Be still!” Mother snapped.  Her
hands trembled.  “I have never understood you, Liz, never.  I have made
allowances, but I warn you, if you ever—”

My hands trembled, too.  I gripped
the back of the couch.  The acid in my voice surprised even me as I said, “I’m
sorry for not trusting Kirk, but I can’t see any reason that we should.”  I
took a deep breath.  “Both the phone calls sound as though the caller is
enjoying the pain he or she is causing.  Wouldn’t that person stay close to us
to see the havoc they’ve wrought?  And who stayed when everyone else had gone?”

“But Kirk is so nice,” Meg said,
her arms folded across her chest.

“We have to protect ourselves.  If
the person who called you was the killer, then you both are in danger.  We have
no way of knowing it wasn’t Kirk,” I said.

Mother sat stiffly in her chair,
her lips pinched so tightly she looked as though they’d been sewn together.

Meg said, “You haven’t told us yet
about the call you got at Fran’s.”

“I couldn’t tell who it was, male
or female.  The person laughed when I said Fran was dead.  He—she?—asked how
I felt.  I thought—I wanted to believe it was a mistake, someone playing a
joke or drunk or—”

“But you think the caller knew it
was you?” Mother asked.

I nodded.

“Why would someone want to hurt
you, Aunt Liz?”

“I don’t know,” I said miserably.

Meg crossed to Mother and sat on
the arm of her chair.  Ordinarily Mother wouldn’t have allowed it.

“And if the person hates me so
much, why not kill me?  Why Andre and Fran?”

“So you would suffer and they
could see it,” Mother said.

I shivered and crossed my arms
over my breasts.  “What have I ever done to make someone hate me so much?”

The sun slanted through the high,
beveled glass windows on either side of the fireplace throwing prisms of light
that died in the lap of Mother’s black dress.  A lawnmower’s drone drifted in
through the open front door.  From the kitchen came the smell of scorching
coffee.

“You should both leave town,” I
said as I turned away.

“They’re after your best-loved,
Liz, that hardly puts me in danger.”

I forgot the scorching coffee and
stared at the grim old woman before me.  I was so used to the ladylike,
imperturbable mask she put on daily along with her corset that her trembling
lips and the hostility shimmering in her eyes unnerved me.

I clasped my hands behind me.

“At a loss?” she prodded.  “You’re
usually so good with words.”

“Mother, of course I—”

She drew herself erect in her
chair.  “Don’t bother with a fabrication.”

I hadn’t realized I’d been holding
my breath until it escaped with a hiss, and with it my temper.  “You
cold-hearted, self-righteous hypocrite!  You want me to love you with all my
heart and soul when you’ve never once been on my side or approved of anything
I’ve done?  Or been grateful for the sacrifices I’ve made?”

Her icy voice cut across mine, “Do
you imagine I like being blamed for everything that goes wrong in your life? 
You’re just like your father.”

Meg had risen from the arm of
Mother’s chair.  She stepped back, onto the hearth.

“It’s no wonder my father left
you,” I stormed.  “It’s a wonder he stayed as long as he did.”

“You never tried to understand
what his actions did to me.”  Her brown eyes glittered with spite.  “In any
case, a spinster’s a fine one to talk about love.  As misguided as my
affections were, at least I took a chance—”

“Lucky you to have the
opportunity.  You didn’t have to take care of a crippled mother, did you?”

Her gnarled hands clutched the
black fabric of her dress.  “You let people believe you can’t marry because of
me when you have no trouble at all flying hither and yon when you feel like
it.  Going to Mexico and Egypt and who knows where, leaving me to Jill
Ferguson’s scant mercies.

“We’ll call a spade a spade: 
you’re the one as cold as ice.  What other reason could there be for turning
away a fine man like Hugh Cameron?  He was so in love with you, and you tossed
him aside without a thought—”

I shouted the words my mother had
forbidden when I was small, “Shut up!  Shut up!”  Trembling, heart pounding,
gasping for breath, my voice came out a harsh whisper, “Without a thought?  I
loved him so much I would have died for him.”  I stopped, sobbing, pressing my
hand to my mouth trying to shut in the words that came out anyway, “But what I
wouldn’t do was marry him when I thought I’d get arthritis like you and turn
ugly and short-tempered and bitter until one day he couldn’t help but hate me.”

Gene’s quiet voice came from
behind me, “It smells like there’s something burning in the kitchen.”

I turned on him, furious that he’d
witnessed the fight between Mother and me, furious.

He took a step back, hands raised.

I rushed down the hall to the
kitchen.

The tempered-glass coffeepot sat
on a burner, brown-black sludge dried on its bottom.  The bitter smell of burnt
coffee filled the kitchen.  I picked up the pot and immediately dropped it, my
hand singed.  The pot exploded on the floor, and I rushed to the sink to plunge
my hand under cold running water.  My knees were so weak, I clung to the sink with
my left hand.

Because of the water I didn’t hear
his footsteps, but I felt vibrations in the old floor.

“Just go away,” I said between
clenched teeth.

“I’d love to, but with two murders
in town in two days, I have to stick around and talk sense into people who
leave their doors wide open.”

I hunched over my hand.  It stung
and throbbed.  My head ached.  My eyes burned.  I felt as shattered as the
coffee pot whose shards littered the floor.

“Those handles are supposed to be
heat-resistant,” he said.

I let the water run.

The floor vibrated some more, then
something brushed the back of my leg.  I jumped and glanced over my shoulder to
see Gene sweeping the floor.

“Protect and serve?” I sneered.

“I’m cutting you some slack,” he
said.  “Don’t take it too far.  You and your mother were the ones who left
urgent messages that you needed me.”

I went back to watching the water
bubble over my hand.

After awhile he stood next to me,
gently grasped my wrist and pulled my hand from under the water.  “Doesn’t look
like it’s going to blister,” he said.  “Good thinking, putting it under the
cold water right away.  Remember when we were little and our moms thought the
thing to do for burns was put butter or bacon grease on them?”

I nodded.

His finger tip gently touched my
palm.  “That hurt?”

“I’m okay.”

“Then come on out to the parlor,”
he said, “No matter how mad you are at Cousin Claire, I still need to talk to
you about these phone calls, and together would be better.”

I shook my head.  “I can’t.”  I
cleared my throat again.  “I can’t take any more, Gene.”  I’d been staring at
his polished boots.  Now I looked into his blue eyes.  “Please.”

“I know you’ve been through the
wringer, but—”

With a will of its own, my left
hand settled on the warm, soft flannel of his sleeve.  “Please.”

He sighed.  “Will you stay right
here?”

I said, “Thank you,” and sat in
one of the chairs at the round oak table that was covered with casseroles,
loaves of bread, store-bought cakes, and one frozen, home-made cherry pie the visitors
had brought.

I stood up and glanced at the
clock in the stove.  Only 11:30, early for lunch, but I pulled some hamburger
and Italian sausage out of the refrigerator and started it browning in a pan.  I
pulled out stuff for a salad.  I got the stool and climbed up so I could reach
our highest cupboard shelf for the last two jars of the spaghetti sauce we’d
made last September.  Pain stabbed as I remembered Fran was dead.  How long
would it take until it quit pouncing on me unexpectedly?  How I wished Fran
were here so I could talk over the fight with Mother.

A fight—the last one I could
remember was the summer after Dad left when Mother made me practice the piano
every day for two hours.  One morning I planned to sneak out to meet my friends
for a day-long bike ride, but Mother caught me and insisted I practice the
piano first.

When I said I wouldn’t, Mother
screamed at me, “I won’t allow you to be the hoyden your father made you.”

Her wild eyes frightened me, and I
turned to run.  Mother caught my ponytail and dragged me to the piano, threw me
onto the bench and stood over me until I began to play a Chopin nocturne I was
learning.

Mother kept me there for exactly
two hours, timed by the Seth Thomas clock on the mantel.  I’ve never cared for
piano music since.

More than 25 years of control
blown.

I’d put the spaghetti into the
boiling water and was setting the table when the back door creaked open and
Kirk stuck his head in.  “Oh, hi, Liz.”

“Looking for Mother?”

He’d changed back into civvies and
wore cutoffs that exposed strong legs thickly covered with blond hair.  Topping
the cutoffs was another Hawaiian shirt, mostly red, which matched his face.

“I’m sorry about earlier, Kirk.  I
just don’t know—”

“If I’d been through what you
have, I think I’d be ready to suspect the bishop!”

I sighed.  Kirk would hardly
attack Mother, Meg, and me when we were all together, and surely I was wrong to
suspect him anyway, and if life ever turned back to normal, I’d be seeing him
in church.  “Would you like to stay for lunch?”

He turned even redder.  “Honestly,
I don’t plan it this way.”

“It’s okay.”

“I came to tell you something.  I
didn’t want to say it in front of everyone, and I’m not even sure—well—I do
hate gossip.”

“You’re supposed to.  Come on, Kirk,
spill it.”  I moved to the stove and hooked a strand of spaghetti out of the
boiling water to see if it was ready.

“Maybe I did see Fran’s car last
night.  I had to go to the hospital, the Henderson baby took another turn for
the worse—”

“Those poor people.”

“Yes.  It’ll be a blessing when
it’s over.  Anyway, I had to get gas, and I always go to Harry’s.”

I turned from the bubbling pot. 
Harry’s was within sight of The Bird.  “You saw Fran?”

“Well, I saw her car, anyway.  The
way it was sitting in the middle of the lot with the lights on attracted my
attention.  Another car was sitting next to it so that the driver’s sides were
close—I guess they were talking to each other without getting out of their
cars.”

“What time was this?”

“A little after 9:30.”

“Did you recognize the other car?”

“It was a light-colored station
wagon.”

“Victor’s?”

“It could have been.”

“I’ve got to tell Gene!” I said,
starting for the door.

“Wait!  I don’t want to seem to be
accusing—”

“Gene will know what to do with
the information.”

“But it might not have been
Victor’s—”

The spaghetti water overflowed the
pot, hissing and steaming as it hit the burners.

“Rats!” I yelled and scrambled to
lift the pot off the stove.  Kirk got the colander, and together we drained the
spaghetti as Gene ambled back into the kitchen.

To Kirk I said, “Will you please
tell Mother lunch is ready?”

When he left, Gene said in a
near-whisper, “You could be a little easier on Cousin Claire.”

I snapped, “What do you know about
dealing with family problems?  You just keep divorcing them.”

He blinked.

We were both silent as I reached
into the cupboard for plates.

Gene cleared his throat.  “It’s
just about impossible to get an official tap on the phone,” he said.  “I could
buy the equipment, though, and you could install a recorder yourselves.  It
wouldn’t do any good in court, but it might give us a clue.”

“Mother would never allow it.”

“Even now?  I don’t want to scare
you, but—”

“I’m scared enough, believe me,” I
said.

“So what about a recorder on your
phone?”

“I could use the memo feature on
my answering machine to record.  I’ll have to find the booklet—I don’t remember
how.  And I’ve got caller ID on the phone in my bedroom.  We’d know who it was
right away.”

“Depends on whether your caller has
a blocked number—”

The sound of clicking claws
preceded Bunny’s entrance; Meg followed.  She pulled open the kitchen door for
him.

I yelped, “A leash, Meg!  He’ll
run!”

“No, he won’t,” she said calmly,
as the bang of the screened door on the porch announced that he’d nosed it open
and escaped.

“If you want to keep him, you’re
going to have to—”

“Aunt Liz, will you just give me a
minute?  You’ll see for yourself.”  She went to the cupboard and pulled out the
aspirin.

“Fine!” I sniffed and started
piling spaghetti on plates.  I concentrated on the task of spooning sauce into
the nests of noodles as Kirk and Mother came into the kitchen, mother’s cane
thumping.  When I couldn’t put it off any longer, I turned to face Mother.

“I see you came to your senses and
didn’t try to keep Kirk out any longer,” she said.

And Gene thought I didn’t know how
to back off!

Meg’s voice was loud as she said,
“Doesn’t this spaghetti smell great?”  Her pale, moist forehead testified to
the effort it cost her to be near food at the moment.

His face burning, Kirk pulled a
chair out for Mother.

Gene said, “Come sit down, Liz.”

Mother said, “Liz, you’ve
forgotten the parmesan cheese.”