Dead Sleeping Shaman (27 page)

Home felt different from
the moment I unlocked the door. Something in the air, a different kind of energy, as if a good friend had been here and left behind good wishes.

I loved the feeling—as illusory as it was.

Sorrow danced himself silly out the screen door to the first spot on the driveway he found to squat—unfortunately it was beside my car, but, I asked myself, what did that matter? In the whole scheme of things—with the imminent end of everything quickly coming upon us—what was a little pee running toward a tire?

The feeling of someone there with me was so strong I had to check the bathroom, the bedrooms, and Sorrow’s screened-in porch before I was convinced there was no one in my house.

My next thought was the answering machine, maybe a good voice on it, telling me I’d won the Publisher’s Clearing House million-dollar prize; or the guy in Nigeria really was going to put money into my bank account. I had myself well amused by the time I pushed the button showing only one message.

I knew the voice. My stomach dropped; my heart dropped; my chin quivered—here it came, an in-person rejection.

Madeleine Clark—in that high-pitched, languid voice, speaking as if expecting me to pick up at any moment. “Emily Kincaid? Madeleine Clark here. I’ve finished your manuscript and would very much like to represent you and
Dead Dancing Women
. I need to talk to you, of course, but I’ll be in London for a week. What I’d like to do, in order not to hold up anything, is return the manuscript with edits and suggestions for strengthening the story. It might require some work … well … you should have it by the middle of next week. I’m looking forward to representing you and hope our relationship will be a satisfying and successful one. I’ll call when I get back from London. I have ideas, where the book should go. A couple of editors I know would be perfect for your book …” Her voice trailed off, ending with a faint “bye-bye.”

I played it again. Then again. Then again. After that I leaped into the air, pumping my fists at the ceiling and screaming. Sorrow leaped and barked with me. This was it—the next step. All I had to do was rewrite parts of the manuscript …

With a thud, a new thought struck me. What if Fritch was right? Wouldn’t that be the cruelest cut of all—to taste success and have it stolen by four guys with flaming swords? That part of what was going on had to be put out of my mind. I just wasn’t going to go there. This was my chance. What kind of god would dangle that before my nose then stick his/her tongue out as it was snatched away?

What I had to focus on was getting back to work on the same manuscript I’d been working on for over a year and make it better, even though I’d thought it was perfect as it was. That brought me down with another jolt, like Mary Poppins at her uncle’s tea party. More work—but who cared? I had an agent! She liked my novel. She was going to sell my novel.

This wasn’t the kind of news you kept to yourself. I picked up the phone. I would call Bill. But I couldn’t. I’d failed the friend test, or whatever line we’d almost crossed the evening he got back from Lansing.

Jackson? He would turn it around to be about him. This wasn’t something he would celebrate. I’d probably get asked again to recommend him to Madeleine Clark, then get blamed and hear what a terrible agent he’d heard her to be, if she dared turn him down.

Dolly wasn’t even in the picture, though I had the feeling she would have been happy for me. First thing she’d do would be to claim she’d known it all along, that it was her who kept encouraging me, and if I’d only listened to her in the first place I could have saved myself a lot of my goofy agonizing.

I sat on the floor, folded my legs under me, took Sorrow’s head in my hands, and stared directly in his face. He blinked and rolled his eyes. “Did you hear my news? Isn’t it great?”

He lifted his head, trying to get free of my hands. I took that for a “yes.”

“Just a little more work, Sorrow. We can do it,” I whispered and buried my face in the top of his curly black head. “We can do it. You just watch.”

He groaned and hit the floor. He stretched his legs out, and closed his eyes. I sat, patting his head as he went to sleep, figuring that though he was my best friend, he was just a little bored with exuberance, and maybe not quite as ambitious as I.

Saturday, October 24

Ready, set, 3 days to go

Three days until the
world was going to end. I spent the day cleaning my house and doing laundry so I’d have more than one holey, purple thong to wear—just in case. I changed the sheets on my bed though it wasn’t their week to be changed. I got a ladder from the shed and wiped off the ceiling fan, then took a moldy cheese from the refrigerator, then cleaned out the dryer. It wasn’t that I thought my cleaning would matter or that I was sparing myself harsh judgment due to the cleanliness of my lint trap; still, I would be a liar if I said I wasn’t a little nervous about losing this new world I was coming to love.

Like everyone else in Leetsville, I was on edge. When I closed my eyes, I pictured flames and fiendish faces. Every dark pit and nightmare from childhood came back to plague me. I wasn’t nervous about the state of my soul—it had no true state, and if it did I didn’t have a clue what that state might be. I was more afraid of facing pain. Even more than me, I worried about Sorrow, out snapping at dead ferns along the path down to the lake. He was only a pawn in this whole big prophecy, nothing to say about anything, and probably with a soul as big as mine, if not bigger—or no soul and the whole thing would end in a flash for him and he’d never be the wiser.

Winston called midday to say he’d gone back out to the campground. Both men weren’t available but he would keep trying. “Something going on I don’t understand …” he said.

“Well sure, the world’s going to end.”

“No.” I could almost see him shaking his head. “Something else. Can’t find that Arnold Otis. Even his aide says he hasn’t seen him. That’s three men I can’t seem to locate. It’s a real puzzle, Emily. Don’t you get the feeling when we have them all together we’ll know what’s going on?”

I had to admit that I did feel both murders were connected in some way to the Reverend Fritch. I just couldn’t say how.

My house was clean with nothing much left to do. I lay down on the sofa under an afghan and read my new P. D. James. Later, I picked out clothes to wear to the Blue Tractor, in town, found an egg expired only a few days, boiled it, salted it, and sat down to dinner with half a bagel and the boiled egg rolling back and forth on my plate.

Sunday dawned gray and blustery. The weatherman predicted sunshine later that afternoon, but at nine a.m. the trees whipped back and forth, leaves blew in circles, limbs fell in the woods, and rain pelted my windows.

I stepped out to the deck, bracing myself as wind tore at me. I wore only an old sweater over flannel pajamas. The smell of rain was in the air, and the feel of fine mist on my skin. It was a transitional morning—fall and winter in battle. I hugged my arms to my body and was going to go back in when I heard the cry of a single, lonely loon come from down at Willow Lake.

I’d thought they’d all gone for the season. But there it was, that familiar melodious swinging up and down the scales, the two-toned hurrah. I was the luckiest woman alive—to hear the last call of the loon, to share this moment with him—he on his way south for the winter; me staying put, there to greet him in the spring. The thought brought tears to my eyes, from joy to sorrow and then regret. Damn, I thought. What if all of this did end, the way the Reverend Fritch predicted? Some day it would. Everything ended—that was why everything came into being.

I hurried in. I had a freshly washed quilt to snuggle under and my P. D. James to finish. I had a few hours to spend exactly as I wished to spend them. Wasn’t I the most fortunate of women, at this precise moment, in this precise place, being precisely who I chose to be?

Sunday, October 25

2 days

The promised afternoon sun
never materialized. The wind was still raw; the drive to town rocky. Traverse City was empty as only a resort town can be on late fall afternoons. I’d never been to the Blue Tractor Cook Shop before. My budget didn’t lend itself to solo drinking binges.

Jackson—and Regina, his assistant, whom I hadn’t expected—were seated at a high table in the wood-walled bar, glasses in front of them. A few early diners filled other tables.

Jackson stood and enveloped me in one of his bear hugs. I nodded to Regina, who sat next to him, then hopped up on the other side of the table. I ordered a glass of wine. To celebrate this new place I was in, I made the wine a chardonnay. Not exactly a major break with habit.

Jackson threw an arm over Regina’s shoulders, pulling her clumsily in close to him. “I thought this might be the perfect way to get to know each other better. Regina is the perfect assistant. She knows everything about my work—including my ups and terrible downs.”

He hadn’t mentioned this goal, this “get to know each other” party.

I smiled at Regina, who frowned at Jackson as she shrugged out from under his arm.

“Not this new book, Jack,” she said. “You haven’t told me a thing about it.”

“But I’m telling you both now. You and Emily. My two best girls—together.”

The wine came. I buried myself in the glass to keep my mouth busy.

“Here’s what I have so far,” he went on, not noticing that I wallowed in wine. “It’s the mystery I mentioned. Maybe you could tell me if I’m on the right path, Emily. You know, of course, that this will be a literary mystery. Not one of the lighter things, such as you write. Not that there’s anything wrong …”

I bared my teeth at him.

“You see.” He cleared his throat and leaned back, looking off as if watching his story unfold. “There is this very fine young man. Probably from Bostonian aristocracy. He will fall in love with an older woman.”

He stopped speaking and looked from me to Regina, his eyes growing wide with the pearls he was about to drop before us. “Here comes the twist. The older woman is a widow, the widow of his late uncle. What I’m thinking here is that it will slowly be revealed that she murdered the uncle, and is perhaps preparing to murder my young man. There will be all manner of what you might call ‘subplots’ along the way and …”

I looked over at Regina. She was young, still, maybe she’d noticed what I’d noticed. She gave me an open-mouthed, confused stare.

“Sound familiar?” I asked, trying to put pieces together.

“Please!” Jackson laid his fingers against his forehead, then shook his head.

“No. Really, Jack. I’ve heard that plot before.”

He made a scoffing sound deep in his throat. “There are only so many plots in all of literature, Emily. Perhaps, in another context, in another …”

“Noooo …” I dragged out the word, my brain fumbling to come up with a title.

Regina frowned over at me as Jackson downed the rest of his wine in one long gulp.

“I thought you’d be happy for me—that I’ve come up with such an original idea.” He held his glass up, getting the waitress’s attention. “After all, it’s you, Emily, who does things like that—rewrites old stories. I can understand a twinge of jealousy, but please don’t project your faults on to me. I’m sure a book like mine has never been attempted before. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought this up to you. I know how disappointed you’ve been in your own work …”

It was at that moment that Regina’s face lit with the answer. The same time my brain spit it out.

“
My Cousin Rachel
,” we said in unison.

Having been where Jackson was now, I sympathized immediately that he’d settled on an old plot from a well-known mystery. But to tell the truth, I enjoyed myself far too much.

Jackson’s mouth hung open. He had his
I know you two are wrong
face on.

“Daphne du Maurier,” I said. “Came out in the nineteen fifties, I think. Maybe earlier.”

First he gaped at me. Then he shook his head. Then he smiled his belittling smile, eyes half closed, chin up.

“You’re both teasing me.”

“No, Jack,” Regina sat forward. Her dark hair framed her face. “Emily’s right. I read it not too long ago, in an English Mystery course I took at Michigan.”

He frowned. “You don’t have to pull one of those female solidarity things on me, Regina. Perhaps I should have asked a male mystery writer about this; a real writer like my friend, Aaron. He would recognize something very new in the genre …”

“Write it,” was all I said as I looked around for a waitress and a second glass of chardonnay.

“I thought you could help …”

I shook my head. “You don’t listen.”

“Perhaps if I get some of the story written. The first five or six chapters. You could read them. I’m sure you’ll see that though the storyline might be similar—my approach will be very different.”

I shrugged, dreading a return to critiquing his work—futile job at best. “I won’t have the time for a while. I’m beginning a new novel of my own …”

He blew away my words with one brushing hand.

“You’re always writing a new novel. Surely you’ll have time. I mean, it’s not as if the world is clamoring at your door …”

Here was one of those supreme moments in life we all wait for but don’t often get. I wasn’t about to pass up this perfect time. I smiled, enjoying my long smile as if it were licorice. I shook my head—so sadly. Ah, poor Jackson, he had no idea how I was going to lay waste to his ego.

“But the world has beaten a path,” I leaned forward, and waited, smiling wider, letting the possibility of what was to come sink into his head.

“I have an agent. Madeleine Clark called. She’s excited about my mystery and wants to represent me.”

I wouldn’t say he fell apart, more that he froze. His eyes took on the vacant look of someone hurriedly thinking, wheels spinning faster and faster. You could almost smell burning rubber. He sat very still then looked at Regina and back to me.

“Well … my goodness … I must say …”

“Just say congratulations,” I prompted.

“Of course. Congratulations. I couldn’t be happier for you …” He looked off to where a party of late tourists sat eating quietly, then back to me. “I suppose she wants changes, they always do.”

I nodded. “She’s going through the manuscript now and sending it back with suggestions.”

“Ah ha—yes, suggestions. That’s what they all say and then they reject the book after you’ve worked so hard.” He clucked a time or two at me as he shook his head in sympathy.

“I doubt that will happen in this case, Jackson. She’s excited about my book.”

He nodded. “Yes. Of course she would be. I imagine you are very good.”

He pulled himself back, blinked a few times, took a deep breath, then smiled as broadly as I was still smiling. “So, moving on … I have news, too.”

I waited, almost afraid to hear what he’d come up with by way of retribution.

He looked around until his eyes fell on Regina, who leaned back away from him.

“Why … the reason I really wanted you here today … well …
I’m … I mean, I’m about to propose to Regina. I thought it nice if you …” Even he had to gulp getting the words out.

“Who?” Regina and I asked together.

“Regina,” he shook his head sadly at her. “Why, the two of us, of course.”

“Huh?” Her eyes were bigger and rounder than ever, and utterly uncomprehending.

“You know I’ve been preparing to ask.”

“Come on! We’ve never talked about anything …” Her voice had a valley girl’s “As if”’ buried in it.

He took her hand in his and held on tight, though she tried to pull away. “You see, Emily? Like you, I’m full of surprises.”

That wasn’t all he was full of, I told myself.

I nodded, then looked at the very shocked, and not happy-looking, Regina, who sat upright, tight, and angry.

“I’ll look forward to the wedding,” I said, smiling at both of them, bestowing my heartfelt blessing. “I assume there will be one.”

“Yes, yes, of course. We’ll be planning …”

“Shit!” was all Regina said, and knocked back the last of a strawberry daiquiri.

I excused myself, telling them I had a book to write. I got up, giggled a demented giggle I tried to turn into a burp, and walked away, glancing back only once to see them arguing vigorously, Regina’s pretty face a mask of confusion.