Death in Reel Time Page 10

  “Definitely not nothing,” I said.

  eleven

  ESME AND DENNY WERE HAVING peach cobbler when I got home. I didn’t think I could eat another bite, but the aroma was intoxicating—and I wanted to be polite.

  I waited until Denny had finished the last bite, so as not to ruin the pleasure for him, then asked, “What do you know about Alan Corrigan? And do you know where he was when Blaine was killed?”

  As often happens, Denny answered a question with a question. “Why do you ask?”

  I told him what I’d overheard at Top o’ the Morning and about the altercation between Alan and Peyton. “I don’t know what all their relationships are about. And maybe it had nothing to do with the case, but it seems worth mentioning.”

  Denny nodded, turning to stretch his legs out and assuming his thinking pose, arms crossed, a half-clenched fist pressing against his mouth.

  “Definitely worth mentioning. As far as I know, Alan Corrigan was on his way back to Chicago when Blaine was murdered. I haven’t done due diligence and verified he was actually on the flight, but he was for sure in Chicago the next morning because I spoke to him on a landline at his home there.”

  “Well, like I said, it probably had nothing to do with the case. I know you’ve got to be inundated with tips.”

  Denny barked a sour laugh. “We need a big-city police force to run them all down. Phones are lit up like a Christmas tree. Unfortunately we’ve only got two officers to sift through it all. So far it’s been wild rumors and crackpots mostly. We’re still hoping Beth will get at least some memory back. That’s our best hope. Though it might behoove her to hang on to her amnesia. There’s something really troubling there, but I can’t get at it.”

  “You’re not telling me you suspect Beth, are you?” I said with a half laugh.

  Denny looked up at me for a long moment, his face serious. “I’m not saying that, but I’m saying something was wrong with the scene at her house. I haven’t figured out exactly what yet. I admit it’s been a while since I’ve done yard work. I’ve lived in an apartment for a few years now. But I think I remember how it’s done. There was something in that yard that was out of place, but I can’t put my finger on it. It frustrates me no end. You ever have that happen where you know there’s something you’re supposed to be understanding, but it’s just too slippery or too convoluted for your mind to get hold of?”

  “Happens to Esme all the time,” I said, earning myself an over-the-glasses glare from Esme.

  The front door opened and Jack called “Soph? You home?”

  I called back and Jack headed to the kitchen by echolocation. “Well, here’s your lawn care expert,” I told Denny. “Maybe he can help you out.”

  “You got a big job for me?” Jack asked.

  “Not unless you’d consider a windowsill with a half-dead aloe plant a job,” Denny said. “But maybe you could help. If you’ve got time, that is.” He nodded toward the stack of folders Jack was carrying.

  “Oh yeah, sure,” Jack said, hefting the folders. “Nothing urgent. It’s my family history stuff and they’re all still dead and not going anywhere. I just need Sophreena to double-check some things for me. How can I help you?”

  “Okay,” Denny said, “I know I don’t need to remind any of you that I wouldn’t want what we talk about here to get out.”

  “Have we not earned your trust by now?” Esme asked, her voice brittle.

  “Yes, you have, Esme,” Denny said, reaching over to cover her hand with his—a thing not many men could do. “But the heat on this one is intense so I needed to say that out loud, okay?”

  “All right then. You said it. Go on,” Esme said, not entirely mollified.

  Jack pulled up a chair and I poured him a coffee, doctored it the way he liked it, and slid it in front of him.

  “You all know firsthand how Beth was behaving that night. She can’t remember much about that entire day, but she does remember she was doing yard work that afternoon. And there’s something about the scene as we found it that doesn’t make sense to me.”

  “Such as?” Jack asked.

  “I’m not sure. That’s the thing. Do you have any clients up on Crescent Hill?”

  “Yeah,” Jack said. “There are a few, like Beth, who enjoy doing it themselves, but most folks up there hire it out.”

  “So could you walk me through your procedures, tell me what you’d do this time of year?” Denny asked, taking a small notebook and pen from his pocket.

  “Sure,” Jack said. “We do quite a bit of trimming in the fall, cutting back shrubs and hedges, but a lot of it is leaf management. Blowing, raking, and bagging or composting the leaves so they don’t smother the turf.”

  “Anything special about how you’d handle a job up on Crescent Hill as opposed to other houses in town?” Denny asked.

  Jack frowned. “Yeah, that terrain is a little different. There’s usually what I call the upper and the lower property. Most of the houses, Beth and Blaine’s included, have a fenced-in backyard that’s mostly grass, with maybe a few trees for shade or ornamentation. There’s always a gate somewhere along the back of the property with a walkway or trail that leads down to the lake. Those areas are generally not manicured at all. The leaves are left to compost naturally.”

  “And what do you do with the leaves from the fenced part of the backyard?”

  “We blow them or rake them onto a tarp and, depending on the client’s preference, we either drag them out to the natural area beyond the gate, or around to the front if it’s about time for the leaf sweepers to come around, or else bag them for pickup.”

  Denny nodded. “Beth says she remembers she was raking leaves in the backyard, and we saw that she’d trimmed some of the shrubs near the foundation because she hadn’t picked up the trimmings, and her loppers were lying there on the ground.”

  “What else?” Jack prompted.

  “There were two rakes, both of them lying on the ground as well, and a leaf blower, still plugged into the wall outlet.”

  “First off, I don’t approve of treating tools like that,” Jack said, touching his lips to the rim of the coffee cup to check the temperature before taking a sip.

  “That doesn’t sound like Beth to me,” I said. “She’s usually very meticulous.”

  “That’s what I’d expect, too,” Denny said. “Though I imagine we can blame that breach on her falling and knocking herself senseless.”

  Jack nodded, now quaffing coffee. “So under normal circumstances,” he said, “the tools should have been attended to, the lopper and trimmer blades wiped, any debris cleared from the blower and the cord wrapped, the rakes hosed off and hung to dry, and the tarp folded and stowed.”

  “There was no tarp,” Denny said. “There was no tarp,” he repeated slowly, digging his phone from his pocket. “Where’d the tarp go?” he asked, the question obviously not meant for us. He swiped through a series of photos, then turned the phone’s screen toward Jack. “What’d you see here?” he asked.

  Jack squinted at the display. “I see where a tarp was,” he said. “That perfect voided corner in the grass there with the leaves all around it, that’s not organic. Maybe she’d already put the tarp back in her shed.”

  “Nope,” Denny said, swiping to another photo. “Here’s the shed interior. No tarp.”

  “Maybe she’d dragged it out to the natural area and hadn’t brought it back in?” Jack suggested.

  Denny shook his head and swiped through more photos. “No tarp.”

  “What exactly does that mean?” Esme asked.

  “No idea,” Denny said. “But I gotta think it means something. A tarp would’ve made a very handy conveyance for a body. I told you there were several samples of blood collected from Beth’s backyard. Could be all the samples will turn out to be from her injuries, but somehow I don’t think that’s the case. At any rate I’m gonna be waiting at the lab door for those results.”

  “What does that mean for Beth?” I
asked, feeling a tightening in my chest.

  “I don’t know,” Denny said. “That’s the problem. Maybe she witnessed something, maybe she was attacked, too, and her brain has just shut it all out. In which case she may be in danger. Or maybe it means something else entirely. Maybe she did something she’s suppressing. I don’t like it, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to take off the kid gloves with her.”

  “Well, I don’t like it, either,” Esme said. “Not one bit. You know that young woman didn’t kill her husband. She’s not capable of something like that.”

  “Esme,” Denny said softly, “you never know what people are capable of given a particular set of circumstances. At this point even Beth herself doesn’t know what happened. Sometimes people do things in the moment they regret for the rest of their lives.”

  Esme rubbed at her temples. “Sometimes longer than that,” she murmured.

  * * *

  “I thought I’d be happy when I finally found this,” Jack said. He nodded to the folders stacked between us on the sofa. “I mean this is the whole reason I started my family history search to begin with, to find out if I really was descended from Robert Ford. And now I’ve got the proof right there.” He tapped the folders and his face puckered as if he’d tasted something vile. “It seems I’m in the direct line of descent from the man who shot his friend and fellow outlaw, Jesse James. I don’t know how to feel about that.”

  “Conflicted is a good choice,” I said. “We’ve talked about this before: Our ancestors were flesh-and-blood human beings with all the glorious and ignominious traits humans are capable of, sometimes within the same person. Have you got everything nailed down?” I opened a folder but Jack reached over to close it.

  “Let’s not do this right now,” he said. “It doesn’t seem so important after that conversation with Denny. I hate to even say this out loud, but I wonder if he’s right about Beth. Something was wrong with her that night.”

  “Yes, she had a concussion!” I said, hardening into defensive mode. “Listen, I’ve idolized Beth for practically my whole life. Once when I was with her at the grocery store she told the clerk to add a nickel to her bill because she’d sampled a grape to make sure they were ripe. If she wouldn’t filch a grape, she’s sure not going to murder her husband.”

  “Maybe it’s because you’ve had her up on a pedestal you can’t look at this with a clear head. I like Beth and I’m not questioning her moral compass. But from what Bonnie’s told me I’m not sure everything was as rosy at the Branch house as they wanted people to think.”

  “Maybe not,” I allowed. “I, of all people, know family relationships can get awfully tangled up.” I pointed a finger at him. “Which does not mean I think Beth’s guilty of anything. And friendships can be complicated, too.” I told him about the altercation I’d witnessed between Alan and Peyton and about what I’d overheard between Alan and Bonnie.

  “I don’t know how Peyton fits into the group,” Jack said, “but the others were all college chums. They were all in the same little posse; you know how that goes in college.”

  I did. I was still tight with a number of friends from my undergrad days. There’s a natural clumping mentality at that life stage. Most kids are away from home for the first time and while they enjoy their first taste of real freedom, they also need the security of a structure akin to family.

  Jack went on. “It was Blaine, Alan, Bonnie, a guy they called Neutron, don’t know his real name, but he lives in Silicon Valley now. Then there was Sarah somebody, who married a doctor and moved off to Minnesota or Wisconsin or some cold state, and another guy, whose name I forget, who moved to Australia.”

  “Wow, you and Bonnie must talk a lot,” I said, not particularly pleased.

  “More lately,” he said. “She was sitting out on her deck a couple of nights ago when I was putting up a motion sensor light on mine. There’s a rude little neighborhood raccoon who seems to think my planter pots are there for his entertainment. Anyway, Bonnie looked lonely and when I called a hello she invited me over for a glass of wine. She seemed to need to talk, so I mostly just listened. She was all nostalgic about their college days. Simpler times, I guess.”

  “Beth wasn’t part of their crowd? You didn’t mention her.”

  “I take it Beth was sort of on the fringes. She was a more serious student than the rest of them. From the sound of it they were all playing musical chairs with the relationships. Bonnie went out with Blaine for a while herself, but it never went anywhere. Ditto Alan. And Alan had a thing for Beth before Blaine started going out with her, though he never actually made a play for her, and Blaine moved in.”

  “Wow, regular little Peyton Place, wasn’t it?” I said.

  “Yeah, there was more him and her and she and him—they and them, for all I know. I think I sort of tuned out at some point.” He stretched and stifled a yawn. “I’m beat and I’ve gotta get up early tomorrow. I’ll leave this stuff here with you. Look it over when you get a chance to make sure I haven’t screwed up somewhere along the way and my documentation is square. Would you?”

  “Sure,” I said. “And as far as your ancestor goes, maybe you should give Robert Ford the same understanding you so freely give others. When people get hemmed in they have to make a call right on the spot. Sometimes they own it and sometimes they regret it.”

  Jack nodded. “I’ll keep that in mind. How about you? You got any further on the search for your mother’s people?”

  “A few bread crumbs to follow,” I said. “I’ve found an elderly couple who were friends of my grandparents around the time of my mother’s adoption. They’re in an assisted living facility in Kansas City and their memories aren’t the sharpest, but their daughter’s agreed to help me do a virtual interview with them soon. Maybe I’ll learn something useful. I’m sure my mother’s adoption was illegal, maybe highly illegal, which is why there’s no paper trail and no one wants to talk about it. But my grandparents are gone now and so is my mother, so what difference does it make?”

  “Legally, probably none, but to you it seems to make a lot of difference, else you wouldn’t still be pursuing this like a terrier after a rat.”

  “Lovely image,” I said. “You really know how to make a girl feel special.”

  “I’m a sweet talker,” Jack said, rising with a half grunt. “Lunch tomorrow at the diner? Maybe I can think of a more flattering comparison after a night’s sleep.”

  “Okay,” I said, trying to suppress an answering yawn. “Noon at the diner.”

  “Good night, Soph,” he murmured, then leaned down and planted a kiss on the top of my head. I felt his lips on my scalp, even through my mass of hair.

  Well. This was new.

  twelve

  ESME WAS ALREADY IN THE workroom when I got up the next morning. She was holding her head, a sure sign she was being hectored from another dimension.

  “I didn’t hear the blender,” I said. “No smoothie this morning?”

  “I was waiting for you to get up,” she said, heaving a long sigh. “Celestine is applying the whip now, urging me on to read her diaries.” She gestured to a plain, lined tablet of the sort used in schoolrooms back in the day.

  “I’m sorry, Esme,” I said, rubbing her shoulders. “I know it’s hard on you when this happens. Maybe we should just pack these up and let Olivia be the one to read them. I’m not sure we’re going to get any useful information about what happened to Olivia’s father anyway.”

  “No,” Esme said, holding up a hand. “No, I won’t turn my back on Celestine. She’s a sweet lady and I want to do my best to help her, but I just can’t get a grip on what it is she wants me to know. We can pack up some of it, but not the diaries. I’m going to read every word the woman wrote.”

  “Why don’t these spirit people just come out and tell you stuff?”

  “I’ve told you, Sophreena, I don’t lay claim to being any kind of expert on the afterlife, but I’ve learned some things since this first started happ
ening with me when I was a child. Some questions I can get clear answers to most times. Like where something is. Where’s the will? The heirlooms? The gravestone? So apparently lots of people get awarded with a cosmic GPS when they cross over. But anything having to do with relationships, or events, or any kind of story or feeling, and it all becomes a miasma. Things get lost in translation. Either they can’t get it out or I can’t understand it. It causes a muddle of miscommunication.”

  “Sort of like with living people,” I said idly, running my fingers along the cover of one of Celestine’s diaries.

  Esme laughed. “Hadn’t thought of it like that, but I guess that’s right. I’ve wondered over the years if it’s something about language. We depend on it so much and yet I know we’ve all had times when we find it inadequate. Maybe language mostly dies with us or else it becomes irrelevant. Sometimes I get actual words, but most times I get symbols, images, metaphors, and signs, or just a feeling or an emotion. Problem is, it’s up to me to decide what it means and I can be awfully dense about it sometimes.”

  “And you can be brilliantly perceptive about it, too, Esme. What exactly are you getting from Celestine?”

  “Just a feeling she wants me to hurry up and read these diaries and that something is not right.”

  “Hm,” I said, “it’d be nice if she could be a little more specific, eh?”

  “She’s trying. I feel like I’m getting to know her by reading all these and I can see why Olivia was so fond of her. She was a caring person. Listen to what she wrote in October of 1942”:

  They had a sale on school shoes this week down at Rolene’s General. Seventy-nine cents a pair for little oxfords. They’re not Red Goose or Buster Brown, but they look good and sturdy. It came to me the Calvert younguns are down to wearing shoes with newspapers stuffed inside them where the soles wore out. I know their sizes cause I’m in charge of getting up all the children’s measurements for the Christmas swap at the church. But the Calvert kids will be barefoot by then. So I bought a pair for Georgie and one for Polly, too. But then when I got home I had to study on how to get them to the children. The Calverts are proud and I wouldn’t do a thing in this world to shame them as I know they try hard as they can to make do for their children. But it is hard times and George has been sick and not able to work much this past year. So it came to me I could put it to Minnie that I’d like to trade her the shoes for some of her flour sacks in the pattern I need to finish up a dress, which is nearly the truth. I’ve got right smart of chicken feed sacks saved up that I was going to make me some dresses out of, but now I’m thinking we’ll do up some curtains and pillowcases for Renny with them. And I really do love best of all the flour sack patterns with the little yellow flowers the Occo-Nee-Chee flour comes in. I use Silk Floss flour, even though it’s priced a little more dear as it makes a lighter biscuit and Riley is particular about his biscuits. I don’t get a chance to get any of that print unless I swap out with somebody and with Minnie squeezing every penny that comes her way the Occo-Nee-Chee sacks is all what she’s got in her larder. She was pleased to trade me and we laughed about how glad we are the government is claiming all the burlap for the war effort. We’re behind that because we want to do our part, but also we surely do love all the pretty cotton flour sacks and feed sacks they’re giving us now and they’re welcome to the tow sacks.