A Most Curious Murder (23 page)

She didn’t wake up until the middle of the next day. She’d cried part of the night and wanted to laugh another part of the night. She finally fell asleep curled up with
Alice in Wonderland
tucked into the curve of her body.

Jenny slid her bare feet slowly to the wood floor, mouth open wide midyawn. It didn’t seem real, Ronald showing up, with all the other things happening around her.

All she could hope was that he got the message and stayed away, though she doubted it. Ronald Korman might be her eternal penance. Nothing she couldn’t handle and without a hair shirt. All that pain was gone, with only a minor hole in her psyche left behind.

“‘You’ll get over it.’” She laughed at herself, checking her bleary eyes in the dresser mirror. The voice was Zoe’s. Pragmatic. Tough. Hardheaded.

The room was humid. It was a cloudy morning. Trees, beyond her windows, dripped from an early rain. Everything was so very green and polished. Mom was banging things in the kitchen—her idea of how to wake a slugabed.

Jenny smiled, then slowly unwound the sheet she was wrapped in and thought about a cup of hot tea and a muffin.
She could smell the muffins baking. Blueberry muffins were Mom’s way of soothing a daughter’s misery.

And it worked. Jenny felt better sitting at the table, bare knees drawn up in front of her, a large red mug of tea on the table, the half-eaten muffin leaving a trail of warm crumbs from the plate to her mouth.

“They say anything about Ronald?” she finally asked Dora, who was emptying the dishwasher.

“Who?”

“Tony. Zoe.”

Mom shook her head, but said, “Didn’t you think the man was a bit overdressed for Bear Falls? Zoe and Tony seemed . . . unimpressed.”

“I bet.” Jenny laughed, knowing she was being teased. “
Unimpressed
. I guess you could call it that. Or maybe
dumbfounded
’s a better word.”

“Tony called an hour ago. He’s coming at noon, after a meeting with a client. He said you’ve all got to get in Adam’s house to search. Penelope and Zoe are joining in.”

Jenny felt a sliver of ice run over her skin. Go to that house? Not what she wanted to face this morning, but there was no other place to turn. If anyone had that box, it would have been Adam or Aaron. Neither of the men knew he was about to die. Neither would have moved it.

“I’m glad Tony covered the Little Libraries with a tarp last night, before it started raining,” Dora said. “He’s going to leave it like that now until our party. People have been so kind. I’d like to repay everyone. But not yet.” She sighed. “Not yet. Abigail will want to be there.”

Jenny glanced toward the living room where some of the books were sorted, lodged in brimming crates and boxes, ready to go out when the time came.

“A party sounds like a great idea. Maybe Lisa would come home.”

Dora waved an impatient hand. “I’d love to have her, but she’s so busy. She’ll come when she can.” Dora heaved another sigh. “I hope it’s soon, though. Things do go so much more smoothly when she’s home.”

Jenny felt the old catch at her throat. Just the teeniest touch of jealousy. She got up and put one arm briefly around Dora’s waist. “I know they do, Mom. We’ll make sure she’s here.”

***

Jenny was nearest to the phone and answered when it rang just before noon. The voice on the other end whispered something.

“I can’t hear you,” Jenny said.

“It’s Abigail.” The voice was still low, but huskier, solid.

“Oh, Abigail. I’m so happy to hear from you. How are you feeling?”

“I don’t have time for that, Jenny. I’m still at the hospital. The doctor says I can go home tomorrow.” There was a pause. “I’m afraid to go home, Jenny. But I’m also afraid to stay here.”

“What can I do?”

“Find the box. Your little friend has the key. We need the box. I think I know everything but . . .”

There was a voice behind Abigail. She must have turned away to speak to someone.

When she came back, she said only, “I’m at the nurses’ station. This is their phone. I’m not supposed to use it, the nurse said. I guess . . .” There was a long pause. “I’ll call you when I get out of here. Don’t come until I call.”

“But Abigail, do you know where the box is?”

The phone was dead.

The air was hot and stagnant in Adam’s house with a faint whiff of rotting potatoes to it. The living room was small and spare, except that the chairs were knocked over and the cushions torn apart. The old sofa threw up stuffing. A mirror had been torn from the wall and smashed to the floor.

“He’s been here,” Tony said between clenched lips.

“Before or after he hit my house?” Zoe asked. She was dressed in old gardening jeans with patches at the knees. “My breaking-into-houses suit,” she’d told them when they met on Adam’s porch.

“Probably this was before he—or they—tried your house,” Jenny said.

“So he’s getting desperate. Unless it was hidden at Aaron’s and is gone by now.”

“Should we split up and look around?” Jenny asked, feeling uncomfortable in the murdered man’s house. “We might be better at hunting than the killer was, you know.”

Zoe’s looked bothered. “I hope Adam’s ghost isn’t hiding around a corner. He’d be roaring at the sight of me in here.”

“He’s in the cemetery, Zoe. Won’t be chasing anybody today.” Tony, having had about as much as he could take of fairies and ghosts for one day, spoke in a very coplike voice. “We’ll each take a room. Check out what we can. Look for any place a wooden chest could be hidden. If Adam had it, and the killer’s still hunting for it, it’s got to be here.”

With their orders set, Zoe took the kitchen where every drawer yawned open. The refrigerator—door ajar—was still running, food tossed out to the floor.

Jenny went into Adam’s bedroom. Dingy sheets, a bare pillow, and a striped featherbed lay in a tumble on the floor.

A single bureau, the only piece of furniture other than the bed, stood against one wall with the drawers pulled out, the contents dumped into a haphazard pile of yellowed T-shirts and old boxer shorts. Jenny went through the man’s belongings, hardly touching them, moving things aside with one finger to see if there was something hidden beneath.

In the closet, a white shirt lay among old flannel shirts and plaid cotton shirts on the floor. Under the shirts, there were a couple pairs of tired-looking dungarees and a single pair of ancient, almost colorless dress pants, all dotted with impressive dust bunnies.

Jenny brought a wooden chair in from the kitchen and stood on it to search the top of the closet where there was a tipped-out cardboard box. Old bills and receipts from town stores and utility companies were scattered along the shelf. A photo album lay open behind the box. She pulled the album down to look through it. Images of the boys—little tykes in short pants to pale men in their forties. There were photos of the brothers standing beside the wall of a house they were building. The wood behind them almost gleamed with newness. Both men held hammers in their hands. Adam was dressed in dungarees
and one of the striped shirts from the closet. Both wore do-rags wrapped around their long, gray hair. Neither man smiled.

She turned the page. Old photos of Abigail. Nothing more. Not a graduation picture. Not a posed photo with their father. No family pictures at all—though there were many empty places where photos must have been. She closed the sad album and put it back where she found it.

Nothing under the bed but a few empty boxes.

A promising suitcase leaned in a corner, but it was empty.

She knocked along the walls, hoping for a secret compartment.

There was no wooden box needing a small brass key in this room. She joined Zoe in the kitchen.

Zoe, working the lower cabinets, was doing no better. Jenny got on the chair and searched the upper cabinets. They were all empty.

Together she and Zoe stood in the middle of the room, circling, looking around and around. There was a cubbyhole beside the refrigerator, closed off with a faded curtain. Zoe pulled the cloth aside and stuck her head in, reporting that spice cans and some Campbell’s soup cans lay within. The shelves were empty and very dusty. There was no place to hide anything.

“Adam’s not the kind to have trusted a safe deposit box.” Zoe looked around again as if a wooden box could be right in view—if only they knew where to look. Or how to look. “Where would
you
put a box if you wanted to keep it hidden?”

Nothing came to either of them.

“I checked the shed,” Tony said, coming back in the house from the yard. “Empty except for old tools and a broken mower. A lamp. Oh, and an inhabited mouse nest. Maybe Adam rented storage space in Traverse City.”

“A whole storage area for a single wooden box?” Jenny scoffed. “It’s somewhere in here or he destroyed it.”

“Or Aaron had it,” Zoe said. “That’s where the key came from and where I found the letters.” She put two fingers to her forehead and thought deeply. “His house must’ve been ransacked by now.” She paused. “I can’t think of an answer. ‘I wish I hadn’t gone down this rabbit hole.’ I truly, truly wish.”

“‘A riddle with no answer,’ right?” Jenny felt nothing at having answered with a quote. Zoe’s world was a dream storm heading for some far horizon. Her joy in all their back and forth was gone.

“You’ve got to stop quoting things you know nothing about.” Zoe, as if understanding, stood up as tall as she could reach.

“And you’ve got to stop pretending we don’t have a real and enormous problem on our hands. One that if we don’t fix will land you directly in jail, no passing Go.”

Jenny stood tall too, in imitation of Zoe’s high dudgeon.

Tony cleared his throat.

“I saw some photos.” Jenny returned to the job they were supposed to be doing. “There’s a photo album in Adam’s closet. Most of it’s empty, but there’s a picture of Adam and Aaron building a house together. You think it was Aaron’s house?”

“Gave them a chance to build in a hiding place. Into a wall. Into the foundation. Under the floor. A hole left behind a cupboard.”

Tony headed back out. “I’ll call Ed. Tell him we’re going over there to take a look around. Don’t want to mess with whatever he’s got going.”

“This is getting too weird.” Jenny walked out behind Zoe. “An old chest. Letters from a blackmailer. A key on Fida. And none of it has anything to do with you, Zoe. So you probably aren’t the killer.”

“That’s right, Jenny.” Zoe turned to clap her hands. “You are such a sharp lady. I’m so terribly impressed. You have a useable organ up there after all.” She pointed at Jenny’s head.

“And where is that usable organ of yours when we need it?” Jenny asked “You haven’t smelled anything worthwhile in days.”

All Jenny could imagine was being alone, going somewhere her thoughts wouldn’t constantly be fragmented. She grabbed her bathing suit and drove out to the Lake Michigan beach where she’d lost her virginity—though she didn’t miss it.

She laid a towel on the sand and sat down to watch the water. The breeze was chilly, the way it got on northern evenings. Jenny shivered, rubbed her hands along her arms, and then ran everything from the last week through her head.

Not at all what she’d come home for.

Something had changed in her. To be honest, she thought it might be the possibility of Tony, the man she’d just told to wait five years for her. Or maybe something inside herself. Maybe the bravery of Zoe. The kindness of her mom. Even the inflexibility of Penelope. Or the détente between her and her sister.

The thought of all of them made her smile. Friends. Friends who’d made faces when Ronald was there. Friends who gave her space to learn what she felt for Johnny.

Friends.

Friends like Tony
.

The beach was empty. It wasn’t a weekend, when sunbathers gathered. And it was almost dinnertime. Not dark enough for lovers.

She walked into the water, surprised how warm it was. A good swimmer, she swam straight out, then turned to swim parallel to the beach, stopping to look at the horizon, the shadowed hills, the white ribbon of sand.

She wiped hard at her skin when she got out and huddled in a towel on the beach to think.

Everything was coming together, though she hadn’t quite figured out what “coming together” really meant. These murders had nothing to do with Zoe, that was obvious to her worst detractor by now. And they had nothing to do with Johnny. He was an alcoholic, a cheat, a philanderer, a user . . . but he wasn’t a murderer.

She leaned back, hands in the soft sand behind her. Everything that had ever happened to her started with this lake, with looking out at spaces that went on forever, unlike all the good things in her life.

She and Johnny had made love on this beach. She still couldn’t take that lightly. But the babies were Angel’s. The grown man was Angel’s. Her Johnny was lost behind drunken eyes. Her Johnny was tangled in anger and something deeper. Something so much worse.

A car pulling into the parking lot up the sand hill surprised her. She couldn’t make out the person getting out but watched, worried because there was no one else on the beach—in either direction. A figure stood atop the hill looking down at her.

She put a hand up to see better. A woman picked her way down through grasses and deep sand. Halfway to Jenny, she lifted her hand to wave.

Cindy Arlen. Johnny’s mother. A woman she barely saw anymore. She came down the hill with her arms waving, feet slipping in the sand.

“I was coming to see you,” Cindy said when she reached Jenny. “You pulled out just as I got there. I was going to leave you alone . . . sorry to disturb—”

“Oh no. You want to sit down?”

The woman wasn’t dressed for beach sitting. She wore a blue pantsuit. Maybe she’d just come from the nursing home where she worked.

“I . . . I . . .” Cindy looked around as if a rock or blanket might appear where she could sit but had to settle carefully beside Jenny, brushing at the pants she wore, pulling the pant legs up to keep the edges from the sand.

“I wanted to talk to you, and Dora, too. But Dora wasn’t home.”

“About Johnny?” Jenny stared out at the water where gulls rode small waves. Low sun blinded her.

Cindy tipped her head up and away from Jenny.

“I didn’t know.” Cindy’s words were haunted. “I swear to you, Jenny. They never told me anything.”

Startled, Jenny leaned away.

“What are you talking about? Do you know who killed Adam and Aaron? You should go talk to Ed, not me.”

She shook her head. “Gerry came home. He said he wants it stopped.”

Jenny left the words alone. Left them hanging in the air.

“I have to tell your mother. He said he can’t do it.”

“Are you talking about my father?” A shock ran through her. “Was it Gerry?”

Cindy couldn’t answer. Jenny couldn’t ask again.

Finally, Cindy nodded. “It was an accident.” Cindy’s voice broke. She hesitated over her words as if she could change them halfway out.

“He could have called someone.”

Nothing came for long minutes.

“I wanted you to know mostly so you’d understand what happened to Johnny.”

“What happened?” Jenny wanted to explode at this woman. “He barely spoke to me all that summer when my family was hurting so badly. Johnny’d been the rock of my life . . .”

Jenny couldn’t say another word.

“Johnny wasn’t there. He’d didn’t have any part in it. Only, Gerry begged him to help. That’s his brother, Jenny. What could he do?”

Jenny didn’t answer.

“They got Gerry’s car out of town and junked it. Johnny got him to Chicago. Left him there. When he came back, he couldn’t face you, that’s what he said. And you were suffering with your own pain. By the time you two met again, you were out of his life, and Angel was in it. I never understood what happened. If they’d only told me . . .” Cindy bowed her head. “I swear to you, Jenny. I never knew.”

“Gerry won’t talk to my mother? Give her that much satisfaction?”

“He can’t. Just can’t bring himself.”

“What about Johnny?”

Cindy shrugged. “I hope there’s that much good left in him. But I don’t know.”

“I’ll tell her. I hope she calls the police and gets them put in jail.”

“I hope she won’t.”

“That’s why you’re telling me? To get my mother to forget it happened?”

“Of course not. Whatever she has to do, she’ll do. They both came to me. I don’t know why now, but Gerry doesn’t look well. There could be more he’s got to tell me. I don’t know. Johnny and I talked, too. He wanted you to understand what happened. He could never explain. Maybe if he hadn’t gone with Angel . . . but who can tell? He drank heavily all that summer.”

Jenny had trouble catching her breath.

Cindy, hands tight around her knees and staring out at the water, went on, “Angel’s not a bad wife, and she loves her kids. I think she tries her best, but Johnny’s not an easy man . . .”

“He was with Deanna Moon when he broke up my mother’s library.”

Cindy nodded. “I won’t make excuses for him. He chose his own path. I think, though, it was because he heard you were coming home. He knew he couldn’t see you or talk to you. He took his anger out on something else your mother loved.”

Jenny took a deep breath. She wanted Cindy gone. She wanted Johnny gone.

“You know Johnny’s not who he would have been with you.”

Jenny said nothing. Waves, like old, ugly sins, ate the sand under her feet.

“I’ll go back with you to tell Dora.”

Jenny got up from the towel and brushed sand from her shorts and legs.

“No thanks. I think I want to talk to Lisa first. She was hurt as much as everybody else.”

Cindy got up. “I lost both my boys,” she said, palpable pain in her voice.

Jenny wanted to scream at her that she didn’t care. Only the terrible fact that Gerry Arlen killed her father was important.

She couldn’t.

She ran up the hill to her car and locked the doors as if Cindy Arlen might try to get in with her.

She drove home, parked, and sat still for the next hour. She had no tears left for any of them.

Johnny was finally gone, just like that—a dark hole where he used to be.