Aurora 08 - Poppy Done To Death (21 page)

“So,” I began, then paused. “You both always knew? When the other was seeing someone else?”

He nodded, and I felt my mouth twist with distaste. Abruptly, I was nauseated by the idea of such a union, and baffled by the point of it.

The baby was getting heavier and heavier. I got up very slowly and carefully and placed him in the bassinet that had been set up by the bed. Whether John David had brought it from the house or the motel had rolled it in, I didn’t know, but I was glad it was there so I could put Chase down without my back positively breaking.

“John David,” I said very softly, looking down at the sleeping child, “who do you think killed her?”

“I think maybe it was her mother,” he said, his voice a hoarse whisper. “I’d hate to think Sandy would do something like that, but you don’t know that family. Let me tell you, any sick pattern you think Poppy and I had, she learned it from her own mom and dad. She’d never get into details, but she never wanted them here. She’d be pretty open about everything else.”

“She talked about the other men?”

“Arthur most of all. He was always obsessive about her. I think it’s pretty damn peculiar that the police chief has Arthur on the case, unless Arthur’s persuaded him he’s found a possible suspect. Arthur kind of transferred all those feelings he had about you to Poppy. He even talked to Poppy about you, all the time at first.”

This was more than I wanted to know.

“And then there were others.”

I shook my head. “I can’t understand.”

“She used them, you know,” he said. He leaned forward, his hands between his knees. I wondered if he’d be able to build a healthy relationship with anyone after this. “They were always some use to her. Or after it was over, she made them useful in some way.”

“What about you?” I asked, not able to think about Poppy anymore. “Is that the way you picked your . . . friends?”

“No.” He shrugged, “I just wanted something
simple
.” After a minute, I realized that he was crying, and I patted him on the shoulder, gave him a little peck on the forehead, and left to search his house.

“We could have hired someone to do this,” Melinda said. We were standing in the middle of the chaos in what had once been a perfectly ordinary suburban home.

“Yes,” I agreed. “We could have. But whatever’s hidden here, it’s us that needs to find it.”

Ungrammatically and inelegantly as I’d put it, Melinda’s dark eyes widened as she considered what I’d said.

She nodded. “Whatever it is.”

“It’s not going to be easy. The Wynns would have found it, if it were easy. And when we do find it, no one needs to see it but us.”

“The police?”

“We’ll see.”

“So we’re like detectives?” Melinda smiled weakly. “Well, that’s a new role for me. I already have so many hats, I can’t wear them all at one time.”

“Hey, we’re more than detectives,” I said, trying to make my voice bracing and hearty.

“We’re Uppity Women.”

“So we are.”

By 10:30, we were putting books back on the shelves in the study. We dusted the books first, since neither of us was capable of reshelving anything that needed a run-over with a rag. And we checked each book for enclosures, too.

Nothing fell from the pages, no matter how hard we shook. The desks were absolutely normal, too. Melinda and I were neat and methodical in our search. We didn’t talk much at first, because we were intent on what we were doing, and because we were trying to move quickly.

Melinda balked after forty minutes. “It’s not the work I mind,” she said abruptly; “it’s the fact that you think we ought to judge whether or not the police get whatever we find.”

“You know that Arthur Smith was Poppy’s lover?”

She nodded.

“You want him to decide whether or not something’s relevant?”

“I’ve been wondering. . .” she said after a moment. “I’ve been wondering if Arthur didn’t actually ... If he might. . .”

“You think Arthur might have killed Poppy?” I was shocked, but not as shocked as I might have been. “He’s got an obsessive personality,” I admitted. “He’s got lots of know-how.” Who was better qualified to be a murderer than a policeman?

I dusted the same book (a pharmaceutical dictionary of John David’s) over and over as I thought about Arthur. “But you know, Melinda . . . their affair was long over. If he’d still been involved with her, I would say it might even be likely.” I thought some more, trying to picture Arthur knocking on Poppy’s glass door.

“I don’t know,” I said, not wanting to picture that any longer. “But that’s why I think we need to talk about just burning whatever we find. However, first, we’ve got to find something.”

After an hour and a half, we had the office picked up, dusted, vacuumed, and searched. We had found absolutely nothing besides the usual detritus of any home filled with busy people.

Poppy had an overdue bill from Davidson’s that I knew I should bring to John David’s attention (it had gotten stuck to another paper with some jelly), and she hadn’t sent in her latest book club notice, so I put that on top of the little pile of due bills so John David would see it first.

The most exciting thing Melinda had found was one of a pair of earrings that Poppy had been trying to find for a month or more. I remembered her telling us, in her dramatic way, how she would just
cry
if she didn’t find the missing earring. We cried a little ourselves when Melinda held it up.

Figuring John David wouldn’t mind, we got some sliced ham out of the refrigerator and made sandwiches, in the process throwing out some leftovers that were obviously way past their prime. Cleaning out the refrigerator hadn’t been high on Poppy’s priority list. I took the first full garbage bag out the sliding glass door to the large garbage can Poppy kept there. After I tossed it in, I breathed in the clear, chilly air for a minute. My lungs felt dusty from all the books. Standing there looking at the back fence jogged a memory. I turned back into the kitchen and looked around. Yes, there on the counter was a radio. I examined it to locate the on button, then punched it. The music that came into the room, admittedly on the loud side, was not the classical or jazz music I usually heard on NPR, but a classic rock station based in Lawrenceton.

Well, there was another puzzle. Lizanne had said that when she’d approached the gate to the backyard, she’d heard the radio playing loudly, loudly enough to obscure the voices at Poppy’s back door. And that was when Poppy must have been murdered. But Poppy’s radio wasn’t on NPR.

Perhaps the crime-scene cleaner—nope, that was ridiculous. Sealed in his hazmat suit, he couldn’t have heard music clearly at all; no reason for him to turn on the radio. That was as ludicrous as the idea of Marvin Wynn, right-wing preacher, turning on a classic rock station while he conducted an illegal search of his dead daughter’s house.

Of course, Lizanne might have been lying. But her account had been so believable, so detailed. Why would she have lied about the radio station? It was something so easy to check.

And yet, no one had checked it until now.

Probably that was next on Arthur’s list of things to do. Right?

Selfishly, I shared my worries with Melinda. She shrugged, not too interested in solving a puzzle with so many missing pieces. We’d been eating at the dining table by the sliding glass door, and I’d pulled the curtain back as far as it could go so the sun could brighten the room.

Suddenly, it seemed confining, sitting in the chair. I pushed back from the table and went to stand by the glass door. I half-turned, easing a finger around the waistband of my slacks. I realized I must have horribly overeaten the day before. I felt swollen.

Should we have reported the Wynns’ activities to Arthur?

I turned my head to say something to Melinda, only to catch her staring at me in a strange way.

“What?” I asked defensively.

“Aurora . . . don’t get me wrong, here. . . . We’re friends, right?”

“Sure.” Confused and bewildered, that’s how I sounded.

“You and Robin are really close, right? Really, really close?”

I understood what Melinda was trying to ask.

“Yes. Really, really close.”

“How long has it been since you had your period?” she said bluntly.

“Oh . . . I’d have to look at my calendar.” I tried to remember. “Let’s see, I was cutting out ghost silhouettes to put up for Halloween, and we decorate the library the second week in October, but I did those early. ...” I shrugged. “I’m not always real regular.”

“So you’re not on the pill.”

“No.” Boy, when Melinda decided to get personal, she didn’t mess around.

“But you are using birth control?”

“Melinda! Well. . . mostly.” I felt my face redden as I thought of one evening a few weeks ago when we hadn’t had time. In fact, we’d been in the bathroom upstairs at my mother’s. It made me feel hot all over when I thought about it. “You know I can’t have kids, Melinda.”

Robin had used condoms all the same, except for that once. Well, maybe one or two others. But it hadn’t seemed like such a big deal; since I’d dated at least one man who didn’t want me if I couldn’t have children, I’d been very up-front with Robin about my infertility. This was. a very sore subject with me, and I’d thought Melinda would respect that.

“I know Dr. Mendelssohn, whom I think is an overpriced jerk, said so. Are your boobs sore?”

I was startled all over again. “Well, sensitive,” I said, thinking of how I’d had to caution Robin to be gentler the night before.

“Have you looked at yourself in the mirror?”

“What are you driving at, Melinda?”

“I’ll bet your bosom is really tender, not just a little sensitive.”

I nodded reluctantly.

“You’ve skipped using birth control at least one time, and I’d bet more often than that, and you’re having sex. Your last period was six weeks ago.”

Well, that had been a long time, come to think of it.

“I’ll bet you’ve been exhausted the past few days, been dropping off to sleep whenever you sat down. You have big rings under your eyes. Did you know that? Have you been queasy in the morning?”

I covered my mouth with both hands, feeling a wave of absolute terror and delight sweep over me.

Melinda waited for me to answer, then went on when I didn’t. “I’ve been pregnant twice, and I’d swear you should have a pregnancy test.”

“Don’t even say it,” I told her. “Don’t even
think
it.” I waved my hands to erase her words from the air. I cursed the hope that sprang up in my heart. This was false and cruel.

“I’m sorry,” Melinda said, looking as though she was going to cry. And she damn well ought to, I thought. “I just think . . .” Then she looked at me and canned whatever she’d been going to say. “Okay, Roe. Subject closed.”

“Let’s work on the bedroom,” I said, holding my eyes wide so the tears wouldn’t spill out of them.

“Sure.” She grabbed a fresh dust cloth, a garbage bag, and the handle of the Dirt Devil. “Let’s go.”

It seems to be a universally held truth that people conceal their secrets in their bedrooms. If I had to hide something, I had to admit that I, too, would probably start looking for a good place in the room that was most mine, the room where I slept. Maybe Poppy, who had single-handedly organized the Christmas food drive at St. James’s, had had a smarter idea, but I planned to be even more meticulous in my search of this room than I had been in our reconstruction of the study. I had observed that Sandy Wynn had picked Poppy’s bedroom to begin her own search, while relegating Marvin to the downstairs room.

Unfortunately, it was a large bedroom and the closet hadn’t been cleaned in a long time.

Poppy’d had a lot of clothes, and so did John David, since he had the kind of job that required suits. Melinda had a problem with small spaces, and though it was a big closet, it was still a closet. So I volunteered, then went back down the stairs to fetch a step stool. I was all in favor of a job that would keep me out of Melinda’s sight for a while. I needed to work around what had happened downstairs. I was so conflicted that I pretty much felt numb. Doing something physical was exactly what I needed.

In no time, I was coughing at the dust I raised. The original searcher, the one who’d been in soon after Poppy died, had left a big jumble, and Sandy Wynn had added to the mess. But I could discern Poppy’s storage method easily enough. She’d kept all her dress shoes in their original shoe boxes. Those had been stacked on the shelf above her hanging clothes, with the outer end of the box labeled—“navy pumps,” for example, or “black patent 2-in.” I dusted the shelf, and then I began examining the boxes and shoes as I dusted and replaced them. It was time-consuming and tedious. Poppy’s everyday shoes had been on a rack on the floor of the closet, and there was a section of cube-shaped storage units toward the back that held Poppy’s sweaters and purses. I restacked them, examining each one.

I’d do her stuff first, then try to restore order to John David’s side.

I could hear Melinda sliding out drawers to look at the bottoms and backs, checking to see if something had been taped in a hard-to-find place. She was also replacing the strewn contents of the drawers as she went, throwing away things like ancient prescriptions, odd socks, hose with runs. We had to walk a fine line here: returning things to order and neatness without interfering too much. We’d agreed to return Poppy’s things to their hangers and boxes; her clothing and paraphernalia would have to be given away someday, but that wasn’t up to us.

The top part of the closet was finally done, and I was hanging slacks when Melinda gave a sort of odd choking noise.

With some relief, I stepped out of the closet to check on her progress. My sister-in-law was standing by the bed, her eyes fixed on something she held in her hand. Her cheeks were flaming red.

“Melinda?”

She opened her mouth to speak, then shut it again. She shook her head violently.

“Melinda?” I reached around her to take the object from her hand.

It was a photograph. It actually took me a few seconds to comprehend what I was seeing. In this photograph, Poppy was giving someone a blow job. The picture had been taken from so close that you couldn’t tell who the male was.