Died in the Wool (11 page)

“Did your grandmother ever mention Glory? I mean, other than the fact she'd given her the quilts?”

“You want to know what happened in that house, don't you?” she asked.

“Yes,” I admitted.

“I can tell you some of what my grandmother knew, but I don't think she shared everything with me. I don't have time to go into it all right now. Why don't you come by later tonight or tomorrow, and I'll tell you.”

“Okay,” I said.

“Just suffice it to say that my grandmother never trusted the brother,” she said.

“Rupert?”

“No, Whalen,” she said. “I don't have time right now. But there is one other thing I wanted you to know.”

“What's that?”

“I think somebody was in my house last night,” she said. “The back door was cracked when I got up.”

“Could the wind have knocked it open?”

“No, it's a sliding glass door,” she said.

“Have you told the sheriff?”

“No,” she said, as if that had never occurred to her. “I'm telling you.”

I chuckled a bit. “Was anything taken?”

“Not that I can tell, but I know somebody was there. I could tell by the garden.”

“The garden?”

“Whoever it was broke off one of my elephant ears and trampled my Graham Thomas.”

“Your what?”

“It's a rosebush,” she said. “Lovely fragrance. A yellow blush color.”

“Oh.”

“Look, I need to go and get this meeting over with. It's gonna take a lot out of me, you know. Eleanore will be there.”

I rolled my eyes. “Sorry.”

She turned to go and I stopped her. “Hey, what year was the first yellow rose?”

“Oh, uh … well, if you mean a true bright yellow rose, that would be right around 1900. A man named Joseph Permet-Ducher had been breeding roses trying to come up with a true yellow and had failed up to that point. Then one day he was walking through a field and there was a mutant. A yellow rose. He used that rose to produce yellow and orange roses, and we've had them ever since.”

I smiled and waved to her as she left. Then I put my bouquet of freshly cut roses in a vase and put it in the sitting room. I didn't want them all the way back in the kitchen where nobody could see them. I had no idea what sort of rose they were, what fancy names they had or anything of the sort. As I looked at the vase all I was thinking was
Pink, white, oooh sorta pink and white together. Fat, fluffy. Pretty.
That was good enough for me.

Just as I was about go back upstairs, the front door to the Gaheimer House opened and Colin walked in. “Hey,” I said. “What's up?”

“Your mother wants me to head over to the garden club meeting,” he said. “In case there's any excitement.”

“You're not the sheriff anymore,” I said.

“Yeah, but I'm bigger than all of them, so if they start any crap I can … I don't know, stand up and look menacing, I guess.”

I laughed. Leave it to my mother.

“How's it going on that Kendall thing?” he asked.

“It's going. I've been finding out a lot of new stuff.”

“Oh, yeah?” he asked. “Like what?”

“You don't have time to hear it all. You've got a meeting to go to,” I said.

“Right,” he said. He looked utterly dejected. At one time he would have been right in the thick of things, giving me warnings and telling me how much of a pain in the butt I was. Now he was attending garden club meetings.

“You want to come with me?” he asked.

“Not really,” I said. “I try to avoid Eleanore if at all possible.”

“Okay, well, I'll let you know if there's any excitement,” he said.

“You do that, Colin,” I said.

Nine

Rudy, the kids, and I were all seated at Velasco's Pizza later that evening. Not only is the pizza really good, but the owner, Chuck Velasco, is one of Rudy's best friends and his bowling partner. So we try to eat here once a week to support one of our own. It has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that I hate to cook. Nothing at all.

Velasco's is done in a 1950s décor, and Chuck himself takes orders, cooks pizzas, and fraternizes with the customers. He wears flannel plaid shirts and work boots nearly every day, except in the summer. He looks like he should be driving a backhoe rather than flipping pizzas, but he confided in me one day that he'd always wanted to be a chef. Chuck has a temper, too. We were eating dinner here one night several years back when he threw the glass cookie jar at his ex-wife.

“Hey, guys!” Chuck called out from behind the counter.

We all waved. Matthew was busy tearing up his paper napkin with his fork, while Mary was preening, running her hands through her hair every five seconds. I realized that Tony, the adorable Italian boy who was in her class, was sitting by the window with his family. The great thing about Rachel having a steady boyfriend was that she didn't preen quite so much anymore. Once she realized that Riley liked her regardless, she even stopped wearing eyeliner. Wonders never cease.

“Mom, can I dye my hair black?” Mary asked.

“Why would you want to do that?” Rudy asked.

“I'm asking Mom,” she said.

Rudy shot her a death look, and I said, “Hey, watch your mouth.”

“Oh, like he's gonna know what color would look good on me,” she said. “I'm asking you. Because even though you're old, you at least have some taste.”

She was thirteen. I had seven years to go until she was twenty. I was not so sure I would make it without killing her.

“Really,” I said. “Like what?”

“You have excellent taste in shoes,” she said.

“Oh, thanks,” I said.

“Don't get a big head,” she said. “Please, I wanna dye my hair black.”

Here's the dilemma we face as parents of today's teenagers. Did I want my thirteen-year-old to dye her hair black? No, of course not. She's got gorgeous blondish hair with little coppery highlights. Like I want that ruined? No. Her hair is also naturally curly, but she straightens it every morning. As much as I wanted her to inherit curl from her father instead of the straight boring stuff that I have, she wants just the opposite. Straight-as-a-poker hair is in right now. Anyway, did I want to make a big deal out of something that would last a couple of months and grow out? No. The trick is to pick and choose your battles. Would it hurt anything if she dyed her hair black? No, although she'd probably ruin at least two towels in the process. On the other hand, will it hurt if she goes to a rave party? Yes. So, see, I have to choose which battles are the most important, because if I just shoot her down on everything, she'll rebel. I had to make her think that I didn't want her to dye her hair and was giving in only under great pressure so that she would think she'd won some huge major battle, so that later when she actually loses a big major battle it won't be such a big deal to her. In actuality, as much as I don't want her to have black hair, in the grand scheme of things, black hair is no big deal. Pierced noses are no big deal, either. Tattooed face? Big deal.

“Please?” she asked with her hands clasped together.

“We'll see,” I said.

“We will?” Rudy asked. I tried to tell him to shut up with my eyes, but that never works with him.

Mary slumped. “‘We'll see' always means no.”

“No, it doesn't,” I said.

“Although it probably does in this case,” Rudy said, glaring at me.

“She just wants her hair black so she can be different,” Rachel said. “Nobody at her school has black hair. Well, except for Lexy, but hers is natural. Nobody has fake black hair.”

“Whatever,” I said.

“You just need to shut up,” Mary said to Rachel.

“Oh, and who is gonna make me?”

“Stop,” Rudy said.

“I'll come right over there and make you,” Mary countered.

“You and what army?” Rachel asked.

“Oh, jeez,” I said. “Stop. Eat. Next person that says a word gets grounded from the computer.”

Both girls just looked at each other and made faces.

“That means talking with your face, too.”

“I wanna be a spy when I grow up,” Matthew said.

Just then Eleanore came bursting into Velasco's—you know, I've noticed that Eleanore never really enters a room in any other way other than bursting. Something told me she was here to see me. Maybe it was the fact that she headed straight for my table. Maybe it was the way she barreled over two waitresses and three-year-old Tommy Burgermeister to get to my table.

“Uh-oh,” Rudy said.

“That woman is not right,” Mary said. “She looks like a giant strawberry.”

Yes, she did have on her strawberry outfit today. She usually reserves that for the Strawberry Festival. Maybe everything else was dirty. “Torie!”

“Yes, Eleanore,” I said.

“Your stepfather told me to shut my face.”

I couldn't help it. I burst into laughter, as did Mary and Rachel. Rudy tried to remain stoic, and Matthew was too busy killing his napkin to notice anything. “I'm glad you think that's funny.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“It's the way you said it,” Rachel said.

Eleanore's icy gaze nearly wilted Rachel on the spot. My daughter went back to eating her pizza.

“Sorry,” I said. “Start from the beginning.”

Eleanore pulled a chair from the table next to us and straddled it like a horse. “We were at the garden club meeting, which he is not even a member of, but anyway, and all I did was give my opinion on the rose show—which by the way, I have over thirty-seven callers voting for Mister Lincoln—and Colin jumped up and said, ‘Eleanore, shut your face.' Well, let me tell you, I was never so insulted in all my life. So I asked him what gave him the right to even be at the meeting and he said, and I quote, ‘I am acting within the official capacity of the office of mayor.' What in Hades does that mean, exactly?”

“It means Colin is bored stiff and wants his old job back,” I said.

“Torie,” Rudy said.

“Well, he does,” I said.

“You tell your mother to keep a tighter leash on him,” Eleanore said. “I was never so embarrassed. In front of all of my garden friends!”

“Colin is not on a leash,” I said.

Although my mother had insisted that he go to the meeting in the first place. I smiled to myself to think that maybe my mother does keep Colin on a leash. Of course, I think there's no place that Colin would rather be than on the end of a string held by my mother.

“Then your mother better get one,” Eleanore said. She took a piece of pizza from our table. “Because I will not stand for this. People can't just publicly humiliate somebody else and get by with it. They can't just behave like that and think it's okay.” She took a big bite out of the slice of pepperoni and mushroom pizza, put the chair back, and left the restaurant with her confiscated food.

“I really hate that woman,” Mary said.

“That's not nice,” I said. Rudy's eyes were smiling at me, because he knew Mary had said what I really wanted to say.

After dinner was over, Rudy paid the bill and met us outside. “Can we stop by Maddie Fulton's on the way home?” I said.

“Sure, as long as it's fast, because I'm meeting the guys to go bowling in half an hour. Why?”

“She has some information for me. Plus, I want to hear her side of what happened at the garden club meeting. I think Eleanore and Colin's stories are both going to be slightly one-sided,” I said. “Besides, it'll only take a minute.”

“Okay,” he said.

We drove through town with the windows down, and a warm, moist spring breeze tickled our faces through the open windows. It would have been an exceptionally calm and serene moment if it hadn't been for Mary in the backseat saying, “Stop touching me.”

“Chill,” Rachel said.

“He won't stop touching me,” Mary said. “Tell him to stop touching me.”

“Matthew, stop touching Mary,” I said.

“Mom! Do something! He won't stop touching me,” Mary cried in hysterics.

“For the love of God, Matthew, stop touching your sister,” I said.

“Is this the house?” Rudy asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I'll just be a minute.” I jumped out of the car—I couldn't get out of there fast enough—and left Rudy to deal with the kids.

The lights were on in Maddie's house, but she didn't answer the door when I knocked. I knocked again. I could hear Mary screaming from the car and Rudy yelling something about sleeping in the stables with the horses. I tried the doorknob, and it was unlocked.

“Torie, do not go in that house,” Rudy called out from the car window.

“I'll just be a minute.” I was a bit worried about her, since she wasn't answering the door. If I entered and she was indecent, I would apologize until the cows came home, but if there was something wrong, she'd be eternally grateful. I took the chance and entered the house. “Maddie? It's me, Torie.”

She wasn't in the living room or the kitchen, so I headed down the hallway toward the bedrooms. In the first bedroom on the left, I found Maddie lying on the floor with the phone knocked off the hook. Her face was locked in a horrible grimace, and spittle ran from her mouth. Her back arched, she was in the throes of some sort of seizure. “Oh, Jesus,” I said. I flipped open my cell phone and called the sheriff's office directly.

“Mort, it's Torie. Get an ambulance out to Maddie Fulton's house right away, and I mean fast. Break the sound barrier if you have to.”

Just then I heard Mary's voice getting louder and louder. “I cannot live one more day with that freak you call a daughter,” she said, rounding the corner. “Oh, gross.”

“Get out of here, Mary.”

“Mom? What's the matter with her?”