French Polished Murder (21 page)

While I owned a TV, it had been bought at a thrift shop, had a fourteen-inch screen, I stored it in the closet in the bedroom, and I rarely watched it. I kept it on the off chance there would be something I absolutely needed to know that was only available on TV. And for Ben, if it was some event so specialized that Ben couldn’t find out about it hours earlier via the Internet and call me about it. I guess I kept it on the off chance that the revolution would be televised. And
only
televised.

The TV was there, as was my cheapo iPod knock-off. However, the deciding factor was that Ben’s Netbook was also still there, sitting on the sofa, where I’d left it. “Okay,” Cas said. “I think I can rule out a break-in, if Ben’s Netbook was left,” he said, and looked relieved. “So, not a problem. Now . . . I could bother Ben and Nick and ask them to buy an aquarium on their way here, but I think I’ll go do it.”

“Uh . . . where are you going to buy an aquarium at eleven p.m.?”

“All-night pet supply place!” he said, then grinned at me. “Twenty-four-hour superstore, hon, of course.”

He was back in less than half an hour, with the aquarium, a new package of cottonlike nesting, a water bottle, a running wheel, and a play tunnel for the rats. “What can I say?” he said, when I teased him about it. “I don’t have any kids to spoil.”

“Oh, great,” I said. “Next thing you know you’ll get them a motorcycle.”

“No, no. A drum set,” he said.

I made tea and we sat on the sofa, drinking tea and talking. It was one of those rambling, intermittent conversations, having nothing much to do with anything. Recollections of our childhoods. The fact that he’d finally read the books my parents had given him for Christmas. He had sharp things to say about most of the police procedurals, but he liked Jill McGown and a lot of the cozies. Eventually our conversation degenerated into a Miss Marple versus Poirot point-by-point discussion and I was gratified to know that he, too, preferred Miss Marple.

We were still holding hands, interrupted by brief but intense episodes of making out, and I was leaning against his shoulder, more than half asleep when the door opened and Ben and Nick came in. I noted they were holding hands as they came in, though they let go almost immediately. However the hand holding made me quite happy, not the least because I’d dare Ben to deny they were dating now.

We took them to the kitchen and played the message for them, and then Nick called the police station and talked for quite a while, while I spoke to Ben about what had happened to the aquarium. “Yeah,” he said. “We need to find them homes.”

Nick looked up. “How about you take three and I take four?” he asked. “If we need two aquariums to keep males and females separated, that’s okay. Frankly, I miss having pets, and the apartment I’m in doesn’t allow cats and dogs.”

“To be honest, they probably don’t allow rats, either.”

“Yeah, but who is going to tell them?”

“And you’re a policeman,” Ben said, in mock reproach and they gave each other a sappy smile.

“Well, sometimes you have to—” Whoever he was waiting for on the phone must have spoken again, because he said. “I see. Yes. I’d say so. I’ll visit tomorrow and ask a few questions, and see if there’s reason to ask for a warrant, shall I?”

They must have agreed because he closed the phone. “I hadn’t thought of that angle,” he said, looking up, with that intense expression that Cas got, too, when the gears were turning in his head. “I just realized that I should have been calling people who put adoption ads for animals other than cats and dogs, and asking if they’ve had these calls. Of course, I didn’t realize our poisoner’s abilities also extended to speaking on the phone.

“Or at least squeaking on the phone,” he said.

“Sounds like he or she inhaled helium,” Ben said. “To disguise the voice.”

“Which you have to admit is an innovative technique,” Nick said.

I made coffee—mostly because I wasn’t about to have Ben make tea. I wasn’t sure that Nick knew about Ben’s weirdness about tea, and I wasn’t about to expose him to it. You never knew. He might decide Ben was a bad investment before Ben was done reeling him in, and that would be just wrong.

So, instead, I made coffee. I had seen the standard of coffee at the police station. There was no way I could make it worse. However, that Ben didn’t protest about coffee this late at night was a mark of how far gone he was. He and Nick kept giving each other sappy looks that made me want an insulin injection.

Still, to give them credit, their conversation was perfectly normal, at least for a given definition of normal.

Perhaps it was inevitable that with two policemen sitting at the table we would end up talking about the letter and the star-crossed couple. I noted that no one was surprised with the idea of a KKK mayor. Considering that we’d all grown up in Colorado, I’d either have to assume I was naturally innocent and disposed to think the best of others or—and this accorded more closely with reality—that I’d happily zoned out through most of my history classes.

I think the last point of the night was made by Ben, pensively stirring his coffee. “I wonder,” he said. “Why those trees were planted so close together. Wouldn’t it be weird if they’re planted over the bodies of the supposed runaway couple?”

With such a declaration before going to sleep, I
should probably have expected to have nightmares all night, and I did. The oddest of them involved someone chopping the two trees for kindling.

I woke up at eight a.m. with the phone ringing. It was my cell phone, which I usually put on my bedside table before going to bed. However, it had clearly been taking instruction from the house phone, and decided to hide in my bed. I finally found it wedged between the mattress and the side of the bed, and fished it out. “Yeah,” I rasped into the phone.

“Ms. Dare?” a very polite somewhat familiar voice asked from the other end.

“Yeah,” I said, then managed to discipline both mind and lips to say, “May I ask who is calling?”

“This is Mr. Martin’s housekeeper,” the woman said, just as her voice fell in place. “I was wondering if you would have a few minutes free around eleven? I very much doubt it will extend to an hour.”

“May I ask for what purpose?”

“Of course. Miss Martin would like to meet you. She has heard you intend to write a book about her dear mama and of course she would like to give you all the help she can.”

“Oh. I . . . I’ve already spoken to Mr. and Mrs. Martin,” I said.

“Naturally,” the housekeeper said. “And they’ve told Miss Martin how very nice and kind you are, and now she would like to speak to you. You see, no one has done anything with her mother’s story, and she really feels it’s such a poignant story. She wants to determine if you’re . . . worthy of the task, I suppose I should say.”

“Oh, but it wouldn’t be a book about Almeria Martin, by itself,” I protested. “It’s supposed to be about a lot of unsolved Colorado mysteries.”

“Miss Martin understands that,” the housekeeper said. “However, she also believes that once you know the real story you might find that her mother’s disappearance deserves a full book of its own. Who knows? She would like to tell you the story, and she’s quite agitated, the poor dear. I can tell she’s hardly slept a wink, and as she had a stroke just a year ago, I can’t risk having her this excited. So, if you would . . . It would be a kindness.”

“All right,” I said, at last. I had about as much wish to go and meet the invalid Miss Martin as I had of pouring ice over my head or of getting up at eight a.m. for that matter. But it must have been my day for it, because the moment I hung up, the phone rang again, and this time it was my mother, “Candy!” she said, in that way that always sounded like it was Halloween and we’d gotten one of the more militant trick-or-treaters.

“Yes, Mom?”

“I thought I’d best remind you the furniture has been delivered, and I’d like you to come over and take a look at it and make sure it’s everything you expected. Not that I suspect the Martins of trying to cheat you, of course, but those men who delivered it weren’t at all what I’d call trustworthy types.”

I thought back to the Starving Students and nodded. No, my mother wouldn’t like them. “All right, Mom,” I said. “I tell you what. I have an appointment at eleven, but I’ll come by before then, and see if everything is as I expected.”

Groaning, since I’d gone to bed at close to three, I got up, and took my clothes into the bathroom with me so I could get decently dressed before coming out. It was a habit I had acquired when E was very small and had first seen me come out of the bathroom and commented, dismally, on my utter lack of penis.

The shower helped, like needles on my skin, waking me up, but I didn’t feel like I was truly awake until I had got two cups of coffee into me. They were one of my typical compromises. Considering my very fancy coffee machine, I felt guilty as I poured the leftover coffee from the night before into cups and warmed those in the microwave. It was more than a little acid, and Ben would wax sarcastic if he saw me do it.

But I was in luck. Ben slept through my hasty breakfast of reheated coffee and cheese toast. In fact, he would have slept through my leaving all together, except that I thought I probably should tell him I was going to be away and he was left on his own with the cat, the rats, and E.

I wondered if I should feed the rats, but Ben had fed them just before going to bed, and they no longer seemed to need night feedings, or belly rubs. In fact, the Internet sites I consulted said that we should soon start trying them on Cheerios or other easily digestible cereal. So I contented myself with saying hello to them through the glass.

Then I checked on E who was still fully asleep, with berry stains all around his mouth and on his blanket, so that he looked like an alien murder victim with very oddly colored blood.

He also looked like an angel, a feat he only manages while sleeping. I kissed him, and went back to the living room. Where Ben didn’t look like an angel, unless one’s idea of an angel were someone rather large, with a face more handsome than pretty, almost twenty-four hours worth of reddish blond stubble, sleeping in what I called “the mummy position.”

Ben slept face up, with his arms by his side, absolutely immobile. If he put a blanket over himself before falling asleep, the blanket would be in the same position and quite undisturbed when he woke up. I considered it unnatural and had several times mentioned that someday someone would mistake him for a vampire and drive a stake through his heart. His response to that wasn’t printable anywhere children might read it.

The best way to wake Ben was to call his name repeatedly. Touching him didn’t actually work, which was why, when we were seniors and he’d fallen asleep on the sofa during a party at a friend’s house, we’d crossed his arms on his chest, put candles on either side of his head, and had a mock viewing. He’d woken up in the middle of it, and—in true Ben form—been puzzled and embarrassed in equal measures, though he laughed at it now, twelve years later.

So I called him repeatedly, until he opened his eyes and looked at me.

“Ben, are you awake enough to understand me?”

“Quite,” he said, then blinked. “What is it? Six in the morning?”

“Almost nine.”

He groaned. “I really should go to bed at more civilized hours.”

“You probably should, yes,” I said, “but that would require not getting home at two in the morning.”

He gave me a sheepish grin and put his arms behind his head. “I’d have stayed out all night if someone hadn’t scared the living daylights out of me about her lost key.” He made a face. “Of course, I might not have slept any more.”

“If you’re going to brag—”

He just smirked and I chose not to prod. “Look, I have to go out. The furniture I bought from the Martins has been delivered to Mom’s house and she insists I come check it out. And then I have to go somewhere at eleven. Do you have a lunch date or something?”

“No. Nick is probably going to spend all morning calling people advertising about giving away pets. He said he’d call me this afternoon. We’ll probably go out and buy aquariums for the rats. So he can move his and I can move mine, and I can stop camping on your sofa to keep the animals apart. I mean, I’m sort of assuming you can handle E and Pythagoras.”

“I can handle Pythagoras, though, for proper results, he might need a psychiatrist,” I said. “And E will be going to his father, probably tomorrow. Which reminds me that I need to buy the materials and start the French polishing.”

“Uh . . . good idea that.”

“Isn’t it? I feel I would be a lot more awake, if you hadn’t been babbling on about the corpses of Almeria and Jacinth being buried under those trees.”

He looked baffled. “I was? Wow, I must have been more slaphappy than I realized. Wow. I wasn’t, like, wanting to look under the tree or something, right?”