4 Plagued by Quilt (16 page)

“Geneva, when Fredda was up here, did she turn the TV on?”

“It is high quality and high def.”

“Did you see
anything
Fredda touched or took?”

“I saw her turn the television off in the middle of
Magnum, P.I
.”

Why had she even turned it on? If she was sneaking around like me, why would she want the distraction of background noise? Wouldn’t she want to be alert to any other sounds? So—maybe she wasn’t sneaking around. Maybe she was comfortable here.

“Are you coming back to the Weaver’s Cat with me?” I asked.

“Yes. Unless you think she might come back and turn the television on again.”

*   *   *

It was torture leaving the file of photocopies behind. I didn’t know what they meant, and now they were scrambled, but they represented a lot of time spent poring over old ledgers and a small investment in copies. It looked as though Phillip had been making connections between the names, and I would have loved trying to make the same connections, or asking one of the posse members to work on it. Before tapping the photocopies back into a stack—which might have been easier to do and neater without the gloves—I took pictures of the first ten pages with my phone. They weren’t the first ten pages as Phillip had arranged them, but there wasn’t anything I could do about that. I did find the photo with the names and Elihu Bowman’s note and put them back on
top. I patted the note for old times’ sake, then tucked the folder under its pile of books.

Other than snickering when I heaved myself inelegantly back out the pantry window, Geneva was quiet and stayed close on the way down the dark road to the Quickie Mart. When we reached the car, she apologized for not finding any important clues.

“I wanted to bust the case wide open,” she said.

“Busting would’ve been nice, but I wasn’t really expecting that to happen tonight.”

“Busting what?”

That wasn’t Geneva. It was another familiar voice. Not quite in my ear, thank goodness, or I couldn’t have been responsible for what I busted.

“W
hat
is
it with you?” I swung around on Clod—both hands open and firmly on my hips so there could be no chance of his misinterpreting one of them as a fist. Also to hide the white museum gloves that might be sticking out of the pocket of my dark jeans. “Why do you always show up when I—” With effort, I swallowed the rest of my words.
When I’m in the middle of an investigation
would have been a bad way to end that sentence.
When I’ve just snooped around a murder victim’s property after illegally gaining access
would have been a worse way.

“When you’ve been out for a moonlight stroll with the invisible friend you were talking to?” Clod asked.

Geneva floated over so that she hovered next to him. “Do you think he can see me?”

I answered both of them. “No.”

“Then what
were
you going to say?” Clod asked. “Really. I’d be interested in knowing.”

“You should count to ten before you answer,” said Geneva, “so that you do not say anything I will regret. For instance, if you are arrested and cannot drive me back to the Weaver’s Cat, then I will regret having to find my own way back there alone. Alone in the dark.”

“You surprised me,” I said to Clod. “You scared me. That’s all.”

“A woman out walking alone at night should be aware of her surroundings so that she
isn’t
surprised,” he said.

“My darling mama warned me about the foolishness of young women walking out alone,” Geneva said. “My dear daddy, too. They were right, I fear, and I am dying proof of that. Although broad daylight is just as dangerous, depending on who sees you, and what terrible thing you have seen him do.” Her voice quavered toward a higher pitch.

Clod stepped between Geneva and me. “Hey, are you all right?”

“I’m fine.” I tried to move around him. Geneva was beginning to keen, and I thought if she could see me, it might calm her. It might give her something to hold on to in this time—here and now. It might give her back some of the strength she’d felt when she came looking for clues. “Everything’s fine,” I said.

“No,” Geneva wailed. “After he follows you into the dark wood, you will never be fine again.”

These were her nightmarish memories resurfacing—her memory of Mattie and Sam lying dead in a grassy field, and what must surely be the fractured memory of her own death. She hadn’t just seen a picture. She must have been there that day and must have seen Mattie and Sam. She either witnessed the shooting or she came upon the scene immediately afterward. The murderer must have seen her there, and then killed her, too.

Reliving the deaths and the grief was almost too much for Geneva. Watching her relive them was almost too much for me. And if she dissolved into a gray fog of weeping, what could I do? I couldn’t scoop her up and
pour her into the passenger seat of my car. I couldn’t leave her there in the parking lot of the Quickie Mart. But maybe I could get through to her by using Clod’s stubborn faith in his own conclusions.

“Deputy, how is your case coming?” I asked. “You caught the
killer
, right?”

A wrinkle of suspicion at my emphasis creased the starch in Clod’s face.

“You’ve got the
killer
behind bars, right?” I looked at Geneva each time I said “killer,” hoping to catch her attention. “The
killer
isn’t still at large, following innocent women into the dark woods?”

“But he got away with it,” Geneva wailed.

“What are you playing at?” Clod asked. “You’re up to something, and whatever it is, don’t think you’re going to get away with it.”

“That’s right. You’re right, Deputy.
No one
gets away with
anything
. So we can all get in our cars and go home now.”

Clod looked left and right. That made me look left and right, too. But the three of us—the two of us, as far as Clod was concerned—were alone in the shadows at the edge of the parking lot. Not even the clerk in the Quickie Mart paid us any mind. Then Clod leaned close and asked, “Have you been drinking?”

“Absolutely not.”

“Because I can give you a ride home if you need one.” He stayed close and took a large sniff. I could hardly blame him.

“Are you
happy
?” I asked, giving him an extra gust of breath on the word “happy” to help him out. “I am stone-cold sober.”

Clod pulled back, one eye narrowed.

“I am not happy,” Geneva moaned. “I am stone-cold dead and nothing can change that.”

“I’ve changed my mind,” Clod said. “Maybe you haven’t been drinking, but you are definitely craz—”

I held a hand up. It might have looked ready to slap. “Don’t say it, Deputy. Don’t. Thank you for stopping by. Thank you for your concern for me and my ‘invisible friend.’ Shall I tell you a story about her? Once upon a time, a long time ago, my friend’s dear mama warned her against strange men in dark places. And her dear mama was right.”

“Mamas usually are,” Geneva said. “The end.”

“The end,” I echoed. “Again, Deputy, thank you for stopping to see that
everything is safe
. Now it’s time to get in the car and go home. There isn’t anything else to say, except for this—although nothing can change the fundamental truth of our individual situations, home and the love of a warm cat can do wonders.”

I’d been speaking for Geneva’s benefit, of course, but glanced at Clod. Expressions flitted across his face almost too fast to read. Suspicion went past again. And confusion sped by, followed by alarm, so I took pity on him and didn’t rub it in by walking around the car to open the passenger door for my “invisible friend.” Tempting though that was.

Geneva shimmered through the windshield and huddled in the front passenger seat. She looked like a heap of damp gray laundry. After I got in and started the car, Clod rapped his knuckles on the window. I lowered it.

“You are the most—” He stopped when I started raising the window again. “Hold on. Hold on. I’m sorry.”

I stopped the window and waited, leaving my finger on the switch, ready for action.

“Believe it or not,” Clod said, “when I saw your car here, I didn’t stop to harass you or to get into an argument. Doggone it, I wish you’d—”

I powered the window up another inch but stopped when he put his fingers on the top edge.

“If you close the window on my fingers, you’ll be assaulting a peace officer.”

“Been there, done that” danced on my tongue, but I held it in.

“Just listen, will you? I stopped to let you know I saw Jerry Hicks at Mel’s over dinner. He uncovered more at the dig today.”

I cut in. “More what?”
More bones? Geneva’s bones?
I looked over at her. She sat silent, listening.

“Associated artifacts. They might be helpful in dating.”

“Or identification?” I shivered and out of the corner of my right eye saw Geneva wavering next to me. She’d draped herself over the steering wheel and looked up at Clod. She put her hand to her throat.

“What shape is her cameo locket?” she asked him. “What shape is it, and what initials are engraved on the back?”

“Hicks’ll know better what he’s got and what it means when he’s had a chance to clean everything,” Clod said.

“Did you find the curl of hair inside?” Geneva asked. “A sweet, dark brown curl.” When Clod didn’t answer, she said in my ear, “The law is deaf to those long dead. It is a sore affliction.”

I gave her a small nod, then said to Clod, “Could one of the artifacts be a cameo locket?” I put my hand to my face and pretended to rub my nose. From behind my hand I whispered a question to Geneva. “What shape is it?”

“Oval,” she said. “A rosy cameo that brought out her
rosy complexion, mounted on an oval locket made of gold.”

“A cameo locket?” Clod tipped his head. “You want to tell me why you think we’ll be finding a cameo locket?”

“Given the time period, a piece of jewelry like that wouldn’t be so unusual,” I said.

“And what time period would that be?”

“Go ahead and pinch his fingers with your electric window,” Geneva said. “I do not like his attitude this evening.”

I almost never liked his attitude, but I didn’t run the window up. “It’s probably wishful thinking on my part, Deputy. A locket, on its own, could be from almost any period. They don’t go out of fashion. But if a locket had initials, that might be another story, and that might tell us something. I’ve been trying to think what personal effects might have survived that burial climate—with that layer of clay—and a locket occurred to me.”

“Uh-huh. Burial climate. That’s good. I like that.” He took his hand from the window and tapped the roof of the car—not the clichéd, cop-show thump, though. It was more of a pat, and a condescending “good dog” pat at that. “Uh-huh. Okay, you’re free to go.”

He might have said something else, but his radio spit static and I didn’t hear. I wouldn’t have heard, anyway, over my grinding teeth.
Free to go?
I’d show him free to go. Grinding my gears as well as my teeth, I threw the car into reverse, not really caring if he knew when to jump clear of a moving vehicle.

*   *   *

The speed at which I drove the dark, winding roads back into town terrified me, but careening around curves perked Geneva right up. First she peppered me with
questions. Then, when I didn’t answer with anything but yips on the hairier bends, she sat forward and imitated a siren. We pulled up in front of Mel’s in record time. Sadly, the café was already closed.

“I wish I had lived long enough to drive a car like a bat out of you-know-where,” Geneva said. “Hanging on to a runaway mule for dear life is exciting, but it jars one’s teeth. Why were we in such a blazing hurry to get here if you are only going to sit in the car muttering and pounding the steering wheel?”

“It was stupid to drive like that, but I wanted to see if Jerry Hicks was still here. Maybe he knows more about the artifacts he’s found than he told Deputy Dunbar. But a cameo locket, Geneva?”

“Maybe.” She rippled and wouldn’t look at me.

“Whose locket? What made you think of it?”

“You sound as unbelieving as the deputy.”

“No! No. I believe you. The problem is, we don’t know if they’ve found one.”

“Yet.”

“Yet. Right. Tell you what—let’s not sit here on Main Street discussing it.”

“Where all the world’s a stage?”

“All Blue Plum, anyway.”

I drove—sanely—to the end of the block, around the corner into the alley, and parked under a security light behind the Weaver’s Cat. Between the stark shadows created by the light and the hollow sound of my feet on the wooden steps up to the Cat’s back door, that town alley struck me as more ominous than the Quickie Mart’s parking lot bordered by woods.

“Did you know that I once read Shakespeare?” Geneva asked.

“No.”

“Frankly, I am surprised that
I
know it; I seem to know so little about myself. I can picture a volume of tales, green with gilt decorations.” She followed me into the shop, and when the door chime said “Baa,” she baaed back. “That is a nice coincidence. The authors of my
Tales from Shakespeare
were Charles and Mary Lamb.”

Argyle roused himself from somewhere and came to meet us, his tail upright and shaking. He said something suspiciously like “baa,” too. They both followed me up to the attic. The light from the landing spilled into the study, making it cozy and almost secret. Geneva and Argyle settled in the window seat, the two of them looking at me expectantly. I switched on the banker’s light that sat on a corner of the desk and pulled out the oak teacher’s chair.

“The love of a warm cat
is
a fine thing to come home to,” Geneva said. “Are you any good at drawing?”

“Why?”

“I can describe it for you. You can pretend that you are a police sketch artist.”

“The cameo locket?”

“Yes. I will describe it while you attempt to draw it, and then I can critique your work and tell you where you get it right and where you make a hash of it.”

“May we talk about something else first, Geneva? If you don’t mind, I’d like to talk about you. I mean, look at how you are right now.”

“Do you realize that you and I are the only two people in the whole world who can do that?” she asked. “Who can look at me, I mean. The only two people and a cat.”

Argyle blinked and settled into a contented meat loaf shape.

“I meant do you see how you’re behaving? Back there, in the parking lot, you were . . . upset. You were emotional. Now you’re rational.”

“Which proves my theory beyond the shadow of a reasonable doubt; searching for clues and answers gives me strength. I think it clears my mind, too, because if I am not mistaken, that shadow, whether it is reasonable or not, is the gold standard for evidence if you want something with a leg to stand on in a court of law. So pick up your pencil and we will get started. The cameo locket is a very important clue. I hope you have a large eraser, in case you are not a good artist.”

I pulled a few pieces of scrap paper toward me and found the pencil Argyle had knocked onto the floor earlier. “Can I ask you a few questions before we draw the cameo?”

“Are they tedious?”

“No, but you might have to think hard before you answer them.”

“Then you probably should not waste our time by asking them.”

“Your answers might give me clues.”

She didn’t say anything.

“I think they’ll be very important clues, Geneva. Clues that might help us find out what happened to Mattie and Sam. About what happened to you. But I don’t want to risk upsetting you the way you were upset back there in the parking lot. You and I were there together, and you were fine, and then you started remembering your mama’s advice about walking alone and you were slipping away—”

“But I came back.”

“You did. You did, and I was relieved, Geneva. And then you brought up the locket, and talking about that
didn’t upset you. Why not? Whose locket do you think they’ll find and why do you think they’ll find it?”

She wavered in the window seat, but she didn’t answer.

“It’s okay. We can come back to that.” I watched her, trying to gauge her state of mind—wondering if I should be gauging my own state of mind—wondering how far I could press her for “clues.” “Do you remember when you and I first met?”