The Trouble with Tulip (29 page)

“I know this is difficult for you,” Danny said to Mrs. Chutney. “But it's important. What can you tell me about Simon Foster?”

The woman took a ragged breath and swiped at her face with tissues.

“Not much,” she whispered finally. “Just that I'm afraid we were a foolish bunch of old women—with nothing to show for it now except broken hearts and ruined hopes. I can't tell you the promises he made…”

She started wailing again, and Danny patiently waited out her sobs.

“What sort of promises?” he asked finally, but she shook her head and closed her eyes.

“I can't tell you,” she said. “I won't tell.”

He tried to think of a different approach.

“What do you know about Simon?” he asked. “Was he a friend of Edna Pratt's?”

She blew her nose loudly.

“He was a friend of Edna's grandfather,” she said. “They were buddies when they were young.”

“Edna's grandfather?” Danny said. “But Simon is only in his fifties or sixties.”

She closed her eyes and spoke softly.

“He is older than you'd think,” she said. “Much, much older.”

Danny thought of the photos, of all of the doctored pictures that featured Simon at different, recognizable points in time. Was it possible he had convinced these women that he had actually been around when each of those photos was taken? Danny quickly did the math in his head. If the oldest photo had been taken in the mid 1800s, and the guy had been in his sixties at the time, that meant he was now over 200 years old! More than that, throw in the painting, and he'd be closer to 300!

Danny tried not to gasp, realizing that the reason for the photos and the painting was to convince these women that he
was
that old. He had probably been peddling some sort of pills or antiaging cream or something, telling them that if they used it, they could keep from growing old, as he had. Why else would he want them to think he had lived for centuries?

“How do you know he was a friend of Edna's grandfather?” Danny asked, hoping to start simple and move on from there.

“Edna had a photo of herself as a little girl, with him standing behind her and next to her grandfather.”

“Did she remember him from when she was a child?”

“Yes. Of course.”

Danny thought about that.
Edna
remembered this man from when
she
was a child? That meant one of two things: Either she was mistaken, or she was lying.

“Was the photo she had a family scene, on a front stoop, like from the fifties?”

“Yes,” she gasped. “That's the one.”

She opened her mouth as if to say more, but suddenly the door swung open and Mrs. Louise Parker appeared in the doorway. According to Danny's mother, Mrs. Parker was one of those who had walked out of the meeting when she saw Simon's picture.

“Iris!” she said. “What are you doing?”

Danny was devastated to see Mrs. Chutney pull back into herself and close her mouth. He knew this conversation was over.

“I was asking her about a man named Simon Foster,” Danny said bravely. “Do you know him?”

If she did, she wasn't showing it in her face. She simply shook her head, reached out for Mrs. Chutney's hand, and pulled her up from the chair.

“I'm sorry, but Iris and I have to go.”

Just like that, the two women were gone. Danny and his mother looked at each other, eyes wide.

“Don't ask, Mom,” he said, shaking his head. “It's just too complicated to explain.”

Simon couldn't stop pacing. Wiggles had gone out drinking, so he had the house to himself—a rare luxury. As good as his word, Simon had done all the dishes and taken out the trash. After that, he'd dug around in Wiggles' rusty old tool cabinet, coming out with a hack saw and half a can of spray paint. Then he retrieved the stolen bicycle from the the field nearby, sawed off the lock, and spray painted it a completely different color. Now all that remained was to kill time until the morning, when he could call the bank and see if the checks had cleared and the money was available for withdrawal.

Last night's misery—and today's resulting stiffness and pain—had convinced him that this was a risk worth taking. He was going for broke. If the money in the bank was free and clear by tomorrow, he was going to do what he needed to do to claim it. Someway, somehow, Edna had changed her mind and hadn't gone to the police. He just knew it, deep in his gut.

Though it was too early to go to bed, Simon was bone tired. He changed into pajamas, brushed his teeth, and laid the sheets out on the couch. He slid his suitcase from under the easy chair, reached into one of the hidden pockets, and pulled out his favorite picture, one of him and Edna as children. He held it tenderly, wondering if she could still remember that day as vividly as he could.

It was a Wednesday in June 1954, and their father had been released from prison the day before. The three years their dad had spent in the joint had made him thinner and more short-tempered—but it had also made him more extravagant. When he came home, he told everyone, relatives and kids included, to get dressed up because they were heading out for a steak dinner, a true luxury in those days. To this day, Simon wondered how he had paid for it.

Their mother had seemed beside herself, thrilled to have her husband home again, optimistic that everything was going to be easier for her, now that she didn't have to be a mother and the breadwinner at the same time. It had been a happy family day, filled with laughter and celebration. Their neighbor snapped the photo of the whole group out on their own front stoop, and in the picture Simon and Edna stood side by side, brother and sister, friends for life.

A month later, their mother went upstairs and hung herself by the sash from her bathrobe.

In the suicide note, she said simply that life was “too much.” Simon and Edna never knew what that meant, exactly. How much is too much? Would they also someday have “too much” too?

After that, they held on to each other even more tightly. Their father was an okay guy, a little short on parenting skills but he did the best he could. Saddled with two children, he could have taken the easy route and unloaded them onto someone else. Instead, he decided to pull them into the grift. Within months, the three of them were traveling carnies, working the cat rack or the milk bottles, using every trick they knew to separate the customers from their cash.

Their dad had learned a lot in the joint, and he worked hard to pass the knowledge along to his children. Edna was the perfect shill, enthusiastically winning the games as an example for the customers, then quietly returning her “prizes” at the end of the night. Simon's role was a little less defined, but from one night to the next it might include running some three-card monte in the back, playing the shell game, or even doing a little pickpocketing.

They stayed with the carnival until Edna was seventeen and she fell in love with a mark. She ran off with him and reinvented herself, in one quick civil ceremony, leaving behind forever Edna Kurtz, carnie tramp, and becoming Edna Evans, housewife and mother. She distanced herself from her family and her past, and Simon didn't blame her. Given the chance, he might have done the same thing too. Now she was Edna Pratt, twice widowed and no one even the wiser to the truths about her past.

Simon hadn't stuck around the carnival for very long once Edna was gone. He was tired of busting his hump for small change, tired of seeing his father drink away what little money they did manage to bring in. When his dad finally died from liver failure, Simon took off for bigger and better things. Soon, he was working cons his father never dreamed of, big-time stuff, cons that took brains and planning and teamwork.

Simon and Edna stayed in touch. When Sally was born, Simon was allowed to come around, as long as he promised never to breathe a word about Edna's carny past. There was something about having a baby in the family that made Simon feel hopeful, as though something there could still be redeemed. Conning was the only way he knew to make a living, but his hope was that this family legacy would end with his generation.

When Sally was a toddler, Simon entered into his biggest con game yet—only to find that one member of the drag team was actually an undercover cop. Simon got fifteen years and served seven in a cell with Wiggles, who was in for grand theft auto. Simon's life since then had been a series of other cons—some successful, some not so successful—until the biggest one he ever thought up, the one he came to Mulberry Glen to pull off.

If only Edna hadn't messed everything up.

Jo peeked out of the back window, hoping to see Danny walking across the dark lawn from his house to hers. It was taking him so much longer to get home than she expected—and she really wanted to talk to him! She dropped the curtain and returned to the papers she had spread on the table. She couldn't wait to show him what she'd found.

The evening had been an interesting one, to say the least. Marie was thrilled to get the listing, especially because she had already listed another home on the block just a few doors down. So, while she thoroughly examined, inside and out, the home she would be putting up for sale, Jo went through Edna's papers.

Jo was determined to remember where she had seen the name Kurtz—and when she found it, everything came rushing back. Kurtz was the name on Edna's birth certificate—her maiden name—which meant that Simon Kurtz was, most likely, a relative, probably Edna's brother or a very close cousin. There was a boy with Edna in many of her childhood pictures, a boy who could easily have grown up to look like the man they knew from photographs as Simon.

Jo recalled her conversation with Sally after the funeral, when she asked Sally if her mother had known anyone by the name of Simon.

“I used to have a relative named Simon,” Sally had said, “but he died when I was a child.”

Died? Unless there were two Simons in the family, that was more than likely not true. The question now was whether Sally was lying—or if she had been lied to by others.

Jo wanted to call Sally and ask her more about the relative named Simon, but she didn't want to push things too far. Sally had already made it clear she didn't think her mother had been murdered—and that such reasoning, if pursued, could mess up her chances in the upcoming election. Jo was afraid that if Sally knew she was still pursing this notion, then she might fire her from the job of settling Edna's affairs—thus ending Jo's access to Edna's home and possessions.

Tomorrow Marie would be bringing over the real estate contract for the house, so Jo decided to wait until then, using that as an excuse to call Sally for her fax number, and slip in a few of her questions as nonchalantly as possible. It seemed like a plan, anyway.

“Jo, you home?” a familiar voice called, and Jo realized Danny had come in through the front door.

“In the kitchen,” she called.

“Why was your door unlocked?” he scolded as he entered. His eyes were sparkling, and for a moment Jo was captivated by the intensity of his expression. Danny always did have beautiful eyes.

“Why did you come in through the front?” she countered.

“I was running so late, I just parked here instead of at my house. But you really should lock your door.”