Twillyweed (33 page)

“Coals to Newcastle,” I said without thinking.

“Yes,” she agreed bitterly.

“Soon enough what's his will be yours,” I reminded her unhappily.

She sighed heavily and said, “Nothing's ever that easy, though, is it?”

“Why, what do you mean? Because Patsy's dead?”

She reached across and grabbed my hand. “You will come, won't you? You promise? Things are always smoother when you're around. I don't know why.”

“I said I would.” I released my hand and settled back into my seat, flattered and insulted in one gulp. I was glad to be going to see Morgan, but disappointed because his fiancée was adamant about having me there. If she wasn't the least bit jealous of me—she who by her own admission was born jealous—where did that leave me?

Jenny Rose

Wendell was taking his time at the sink. She'd had him brush his teeth to distract him while she waited by the bed with a storybook, hoping she could get him to take a short nap before lunch. It was to be a full afternoon. He wouldn't take off his cap. He was overwrought. It was no wonder. “Come on, Wendell, shake a leg.”

He pushed his shoes off and climbed onto the bed and looked out the window. He wouldn't look at her.

“Well,” Jenny Rose said, annoyed now. “What
is
it?”

“You don't believe me.”

She heaved a sigh. “All right, tell me.”

“I
saw
him. I saw Teddy. He put the cat in the box and he put a big stone on top. I was up there at Noola's house. I was in the portyhole cabin, looking out the blue window. I wasn't never supposed to go in unless I told Noola but I had to go for a little attention.” Beads of sweat came to his lip and, hot now, he swiped off his cap and threw it to the floor. “I thought Teddy was playing a game. And he … he got in his car and started to back up over the box. But Mrs. Dellaverna, she come running out waving a big towel and the hacker and chasing him with the hacker and she kicked the box open and the cat ran off. Weedy. That was Weedy.”

Jenny Rose kept her eyes steadily on his. It was the hacker that made it seem true. She'd seen that hacker when they went to the cottage. “He can't have meant—”

Wendell shook his head vehemently yes. “Oh, yes, yes, he did too mean to do it. He put the box down right there in the driveway! But Weedy never come back. Never did. And now everybody's mad at Mrs. Dellaverna.”

Jenny Rose stared at Wendell. “Are you sure, lad? Because—”

“I wouldn't fib to you, Jenny Rose.” He crossed his heart sincerely and continued heatedly, right where he'd left off, the scenario still unwinding before him. “Mrs. Dellaverna and Teddy had a big fight. Right there in the road. And Teddy pretended like it wasn't his fault; he said that Mrs. Dellaverna put the box on the road and she was crazy. But it wasn't that way. And everybody came out and got yelling at Mrs. Dellaverna but I say it wasn't her fault. And when Mama comes back she'll say so, too.”

“Oh, Wendell!” She reached over and took him in her arms. There was no settling him. “Oh, dear one!” She hugged him tightly.

But he wasn't finished. He kept on, nodding and blubbering, “I told Mama everything and she told me not to say another word. Because ‘We're going to trap Teddy,' Mama said, ‘Just like he trapped the poor cat. …' But Mama put her finger here like this”—he pressed his pointer finger on his mouth—“and she said, ‘Don't say another word, Wendell. Promise me now!' and she went out and I never did, not until you came and me and you got to be friends.” He picked wretchedly at a scab on his leg.

“What do you mean? Is that why you never spoke? She told you that before she went away?”

One large tear fought its way down Wendell's heated cheek. “Yes.”

Downstairs, the telephone rang. Mr. Piet was down in the cellar hunting for the rice bin.

Teddy picked up. “Twillyweed,” he said.

“It's Glinty, here. May I speak to the fair Miss Jenny Rose Cashin?”

“I'm sorry,” Teddy said in his most limpid voice, “she doesn't want to talk to you.”

“To me?” Glinty, over the sound of the boats in the background, seemed puzzled.

“I guess not,” Teddy said. “Maybe because of something you said.”

“I said nary an off word.” Glinty searched his mind.

“Or something you promised? I'll bet you must have,” Teddy suggested, sounding concerned. He took out a cigarette and lit it with his gold lighter, then slipped the glamorous Dunhill away in his pocket. “I'll bet you used that sharp tongue of yours. So sharp you might just cut yourself. …”

“I wouldn't bet too soon, if I were you, Teddy,” Glinty shot back, insulted. “What you gain on the horses you lose on the roundabouts.” He hung up the phone.

Claire

We pulled into a backup of traffic. There was a line of cars blocking Carpenter Avenue where the series of yard sales began. “Tourists! Already!” Paige fumed then suggested, “We might as well park and walk the rest of the way. Mr. Piet can come and get the car later.”

Before I could answer her, Jenny Rose must have spotted us, for she came rocketing over.

“They caught Donald Woods fishing off the pier on Island Park Bridge!” she gasped.

“That's wonderful,” Paige exclaimed. “Where's Wendell?”

“Guardian Angel's got it all set up for the kids. Oliver's taken him on the swings.” She lowered her voice. “He's dead upset, you know.”

“Well, aren't we all,” said Paige.

We got out of the car and walked across someone's yard, trampling soft blue pansies and pink lady's slipper. To get out of the way, we segued onto an open lane of card tables filled with beguiling sale items. A lamp made from limestone. Dominoes. Christmas cards from the 1950s. An antique comb and brush set inlaid with ivory. Jenny Rose and Paige hung together and convivially lit their cigarettes. That's the thing about smokers, they get all chummy and you feel like you're not in on something. “This Donald Woods must have protested violently,” Jenny Rose was saying. “He swore he had nothing at all to do with Patsy Mooney's death. Made a big scene!”

Paige shook her match out. “Well, of course he would, wouldn't he?”

“Yeah. He swore he hadn't seen Patsy in more than three years and has a new girlfriend now, who owns a gourmet truck down in Long Beach and they're planning to get married. But Oliver found out at the police station that Donald was
def
initely seen in Sea Cliff the day before Patsy Mooney was murdered. He was seen in the deli. They have surveillance video of him. Positively identified.”

“That about clinches it.” Paige smacked a pile of
Life
magazines.

“Pretty stupid, to let himself be seen like that,” Jenny Rose said, offering me a Tootsie Roll.

“Yeah,” I agreed, taking it, unwrapping it, and greeting that particular sugary bliss of gummy resistance. “I wonder what he said his reason for being there was.”

“Of course he said he had no idea Patsy Mooney even
lived
in Sea Cliff! Said he was here to meet someone who wanted to sell him a motorcycle cheap. Of course there
was
no one. And who cares, right?” Jenny Rose gleamed. “Fuckin' murderer!”

I wondered why he'd come in the light of day? Unless he hadn't meant to kill her but had been carried away by anger. And if that was the case, why hadn't he hightailed off Long Island instead of waiting around in full view for the cops? Unless he thought it made him look less guilty. It just didn't feel right. My ex-husband always told me,
It's not like they say in the movies, you know, how the perps raise a big stink declaring their innocence. Once you catch 'em, mostly they do as they're told nice and easy, walk right into their cell and go to sleep
. And there was something else about this case that kept nibbling at my craw, like a word on the tip of my tongue I couldn't quite catch.

Jenny Rose whispered, “Auntie Claire, we have to talk. It's about Wendell. He—”

But just at that moment Glinty stepped between us, startling me once again with the suddenness of his appearance so that I dropped my envelope of hospital papers. The two of them scurried off. Annoyed, because we did need to talk, I knelt down in the grass to pick them up—and I saw across the yard a pair of boating shoes I knew and liked under an antique school desk. I raised my eyes to his. Both of us held on too long then looked, baffled, apart. The last time I'd admired those worn-out moss green boating shoes they'd belonged to a handsome boat mechanic. Now they belonged to a wealthy North Shore heir. Out of my league. But he strolled toward me. “Say!” he said, sucking in his breath. “Look at this. A copper-lined humidor. Handmade, it looks like!” The canopy of young leaves above us shimmered in a sunlit wind.

Together we bent down, the sun warm on our backs, and peered into the little oven of copper. He was so close I could smell him. Salt. Soap. And the metallic shirk of the box's lining. I turned slightly and he was watching me, his eyes moving down my throat, close enough to kiss. Evidently he'd forgiven me for incriminating him by taking the key to the police. A response to his nearness pulsed inside me and I bumped my forehead on the ceiling and wrenched myself out. Paige had walked off trustingly. It made me feel like a thief. She was standing in the next yard haggling over a sentimental picture when it was the frame she really wanted. She wobbled back over the grass in her heels toward us, all aglow. “Ten dollars!” she sang, disengaging the picture from the frame and tossing the print aside. “It's got to be worth fifty!”

“At least that!” Morgan agreed, admiring the carved, pickled wood, holding it up. They strolled together toward the 99-cent table. He waited tenderly while she scoured each item. “Look, Claire”—she held up a yellowed card of vintage buttons—“something for you!” She chuckled. “Oh, my God. Remember that first night when you came to dinner at Twillyweed? We laughed so hard. Didn't we, Morgan? A lady from Queens with buttons on her ears and a tablecloth for a coat! It was too much. Lord, we were rolling, weren't we, Morgan?” Her eyes twinkled with spite.

Embarrassed, now, Morgan caught my expression and looked away, “Well, we were drunk.”

“Ah!” I smiled and smacked my head, pretending I'd just remembered something. “Gotta run home and let the dog out. Paige, thanks so much for taking me, okay? See you later!”

“Hey!” Morgan called after me good-naturedly. “Who said you could have a dog anyway?”

“I'm the mistress of my universe,” I shot back over my shoulder, “and no man will wither yon me livestock!” Don't ask me where that came from. It was having all these Scottish men around. When I got far enough away from them, I slowed down, Paige's words ringing in my ears. I made my way unhappily back to the cottage. And Jenny Rose might have mentioned to me she was having it off with that … that … scallywag! My car was in the drive. I removed Carmela's jacket and folded it carefully. I was getting a little fed up with taking care of other people's things. Suddenly I got so mad, I flung the jacket down on the ground and kicked it. Feeling better, I threw it in the trunk. And then it came to me, what it was I'd been trying to remember. The men from Twillyweed had sailed to Virginia for that chandelier. All four of them. Any one of them could have posted a letter supposedly from Annabel.

In the cottage, Jake greeted me with so much enthusiasm I felt my blood pressure lower. Settling in, we sat together and looked out the window. We admired the fair-weather clouds, and the fleet of slim white sailboats zinging by, all the trappings of privilege. I jumped at the phone ringing in my pocket. “Hello?”

“Surprise!”

My heart sank. It was Carmela, my sister.

“I'm in Lugano,” she trilled. “It's gorgeous! Can you hear me, really? I wasn't sure. The mountains are so disruptive!”

“Clear as a bell!”

“So I called Mommy to find out the name of that village Daddy's grandmother comes from, Mairengo? And I went there. Population five hundred and sixty two! Boring as hell. Luckily, I'm not alone. Trurio, my handsome guide … well”—she lowered her voice suggestively—“of course, he's young but his father is connected, he works for the government in Milan; you'll meet him because we're
very
close and I wouldn't be surprised if—”

She prattled on. I could see it all. The patent-leather Italian skulking in the background, a ne'er-do-well son of a sanitation engineer, thinking here was his ticket to America. New York, no less! Little did he know our New York was an old house in a once reputable area where temples and mosques now crackled the neighborhood awake over loudspeakers churning out morning prayers, where pigeons reigned and cop cars lurked while high school kids slunk to the park in little herds of cannabis fumes, tossing crack vials like crumbs here and there to help find their ways out.

“Mommy told me all about your saga of woe,” Carmela chattered on. “That's what happens when you jump from one relationship to the next without waiting to get to know each other. Surprises. Nasty surprises. That's exactly what happens.”

She was right. Then I realized she was talking about Enoch. I was supposed to be upset about Enoch, not someone else's fiancé! And what was this
saga of woe
? No wonder she couldn't get her stuff published. “You're right,” I said.

“I am?” She sounded surprised. “Well, now that you realize that, I hope next time you'll look before you leap.”

“All right, all right. I get the message.” I hung up, relieved that she wasn't in town. Relieved I wouldn't have to deal with her at all … and then I remembered Jenny Rose. Why on earth had Carmela called me instead of her? I picked up the phone and hit the green button twice, reconnecting the call.