Eine Kleine Murder (8 page)

Chapter 13

Berceuse: A cradle song, lullaby (Fr.)

I sat with Al for awhile, but, after a long hug and thirty minutes of both of us mostly staring straight ahead, swiping at our tears, Al told me he'd rather be alone. When I left, he was stroking the unfinished knitting Grace had left on the end table.

I opened the door of my place and stepped in, realizing I hadn't locked it when I went down to swim with Grace. After I locked up, I moved through the cabin with caution, turning on all the lights as I went. Nothing looked disturbed. My purse was right where I had left it. Still, the cabin was different. No longer safe. Somehow… out of harmony.

The air was stuffy and stale in spite of the one tiny side window I had left open. I picked up one of Grace's brownies from the counter and wandered out to the porch and cranked open the louvers. Grace's and Gram's deaths were weighing me down, pulling at my every movement, my every thought.

I finished the brownie, then went back into the cabin and pulled my cell phone from the charger. Nothing happened when I entered Neek's number. I checked the battery icon. It was charged. I shook it and dialed again. Still dead. I didn't see any connection bars on the phone's screen. Stupid Peter the Mediocre. Maybe I'd rename him Ivan the Terrible. A new cell phone was at the top of my wish list. I'd try Neek later.

That made me think about what day of the month it was; my phone payment would soon be due, and I still didn't have a forwarding address so Neek could send me my bills. I could call her from the Toombses' or Al's tomorrow, if I still couldn't connect, and have her cover the phone bill for me. Since I did have my checkbook with me, I could mail her a check later. On second thought, I decided I'd use the phone at the yellow house tomorrow, but only if Martha was the only one there.

I spread the beach towel, dry by now, on one of the daybed couches, showered, and changed into my nightgown, then sat on the brightly lit porch, pondering my future.

Did I want to stay here longer? I was torn in two directions. Go or stay? Go back to Len's stalking or stay with Gram's ghost?

Maybe I would leave straight after Gram's funeral. No, I should stay for Grace's, too. Was there really any way those two women could have both accidentally drowned in the same spot, at the same time of night?

Then a horrible thought hit me. I gasped. Would Grace be alive if I had gone with her? Or would I be dead, too? I desperately wanted to talk to Neek. The dark windows reflected my unhappy face back at me. I couldn't see anything outside with the inside lights on.

But someone else could see in. Remembering the evidence of a peeper, I knew I was too exposed on the porch. I turned off the lamps, went inside the cabin, and closed the door to the porch. There sat my composition, on the breakfast bar.

An idea hit me like a flash,
sforzando
. I would dedicate this piece to Gram. I would fill it with life, with her passion, her fascination with just about everything. Above all, I would fill it with the sounds of this place she loved. I had a vague sense of making something up to her, of atoning for her death.

A sweet melody came into my head and I jotted it down. I tried to imagine if Gram would like it or not. From an early age, probably as a result of having had musicians for parents, I started making up ditties on Gram's piano whenever we weren't on the road. Sometimes she recorded them and played them for other people. She thought I was a genius and I never tried to talk her out of that idea. Really, all I was doing was composing melodies, but she loved them. I eventually learned there's a lot more to composing than that. She grew more proud as my music matured.

I decided she'd like this one. Then I found myself wondering if my mother would have liked it. Or my father. Putting away such unproductive thoughts, and satisfied I had the bare bones of something I could work with tomorrow, I made up one of the daybeds and climbed in.

I could hear the night sounds through the small open window above the bed. The sounds were of last year's dead leaves being disturbed, of live leaves riffling with the passage of animals, and of the peculiar woody scratching sound I'd heard my first night.

I raised both ears off the pillow to hear that last one better. That last noise was definitely not coming from outside. It came from inside the cabin. And more clearly than ever. Right across the room. It must be in the kitchen area. It had to be a mouse. The droppings atop the armoire had told me mice had been here. The scratchings told me they were still here. Shoot! The cabin was far from airtight. I'd seen places on the porch where daylight peeked through the chinks.

For a moment I thought I smelled cigarette smoke coming through my window. I fought my panic and tried to convince myself Len wasn't here. Neek had seen him in Chicago. But Mo was a smoker, too. Should I look out the window? While I was still paralyzed by indecision and fear, the pure, clean country air replaced the odor.

Now I had a new worry. Was Mo lurking outside my cabin at night?

Chapter 14

Agitato: Agitated (Ital.)

My eyes flew open to blankness and dark. My heart rattled like a set of castanets. I was sure I'd heard a gunshot. Was Len shooting at me? No. The trees were singing? The leaves were speaking? Ah no, listening more closely, I could tell it was rain swishing through them. I turned over to resume my sleep but was interrupted again by a terrific flash and a thunderclap that sounded like it struck two feet from the front door. My heart hammered like a snare drum for several minutes.

How does anyone ever get any sleep around here?

The storm continued. I jumped every time the lightning struck and the thunder boomed—until the storm moved off into the distance and was only a faint rumble. Then silent lightning flickered on the walls. Eventually the rain settled down to a soothing sigh coming steadily through the arbor and lulled me into a deep, deep sleep.

The rain had stopped by morning, but the day dawned sunless. I put on blue jeans and a T-shirt and went across the road to check on Al. He had dressed and fixed himself breakfast, but didn't want company this morning. His sons weren't able to come for a couple more days, but he said he was fine with that. Would everyone be so casual if the authorities weren't calling the deaths accidental? I offered to go with him to pick out Grace's casket. He said he wanted to get it done before his children arrived.

I was worried about Al, but knew there was nothing more I could do for him. I walked back to Gram's cabin,
my
cabin. It squatted on the hill like a toad. For some reason, the anxiety I felt last night returned and I wasn't able to go in, even though my symphony beckoned.

I peeked inside the red shed in Gram's yard, next to the road. So far I hadn't paid much attention to it. I guess I expected it to hold storage items. And it did, but Gram's car was also there. A blackness composed of more guilt enveloped me. When I first arrived and didn't find her, it hadn't occurred to me to check if her car was there. Would it have made any difference? Could I have found her sooner and saved her? My conscience ignored the fact that she'd been dead long before I arrived. The blackness was deep and silent.

A scent of lilacs wafted by that brought Gram's smile before my eyes. It went with a mental picture of her sitting at her vanity with the round mirror, brushing her hair out… then the scent was gone, but the blackness lifted an inch or so.

A movement beside the house caught my eye. The phone line dangled beside the pole. No wonder Gram's phone didn't work. I wondered if the chattering squirrel halfway up the pole was responsible. There was something to add to my task list; I certainly couldn't bother Al with this now.

Before I went inside, I searched for the footprints of a possible nighttime lurker in the mud under the window. The ones outside the porch from the day before were gone. If any had been made last night before the rain, they were already washed away.

I walked around the cabin, at loose ends, and came to a stairway that led down to Gram's dock. The steps leading to the landing were probably muddy, and I figured the thick grass down there would be sopping wet from the rain. With that and this pea-soup weather, there wasn't any point in going to examine Gram's boat. Her overturned rowboat near the dock displayed its gaudy bright red bottom. It looked inviting. Some other time.

The sound of tuneless humming caught my attention as I turned back. It was coming from the cabin next to mine. A woman's face appeared in the window and she called out.

“Hi there! Come on in for a minute.”

Well, I sure don't want to go back to Gram's cabin right now. This is the woman Al and Grace talked about, the one whose husband murdered their children. I wonder what she has to say about what's going on?

She was taking a batch of cookies out of the oven and talking a mile a minute when I walked in through the screen door. The cookies smelled like chocolate chip. I was a sucker for those.

“Just sit down while I get another batch in.” She waved toward a wooden chair and drapes of tan, wrinkled skin swung from her thin upper arm. She moved with quick, sure movements, working just as rapidly as she spoke.

“I'm Eve. It's really Evangeline, but that's too long.” Her ancient, beaming face was creased and furrowed, her skin seemed too big for her and hung from her prominent bones. “Nobody has time to say that. Just call me Eve. I've had this cabin for years and years. Ever since my husband's been gone. You must be Ida's granddaughter. I miss having her there next door to me. Who have you met so far? When did you get here?”

She scraped the cookies from the cookie sheet onto the counter top. There were two pies cooling on racks next to them. What an odd woman. I wondered if she supplied a local bakery.

Her cabin was a lot like mine, consisting of one large room with a corner walled off for a bathroom. But it looked a whole lot smaller because it was crammed full of furniture. Instead of a countertop breakfast bar, Eve had a wooden kitchen table and chairs next to the small kitchenette. In the front half of the cabin were an L-shaped sofa set, two recliners, and several stuffed chairs, along with a hutch, a coffee table, and other small tables and chests. A large round-backed trunk looked like the only real storage space, since she had no wardrobe, and neither of us had any closets.

“I got here a few days ago,” I said, breathing in the aroma of the pies. She didn't act like she knew about Gram's death. Or Grace's. “I've met the Toombses, and their son, Mo.”

Eve plopped cookie dough onto the sheet with small rapid motions and sniffed in disdain.

“None of them are worth much. And what's your name, dear?”

I told her as she stuck the cookies into the oven and wiped her hands on her apron.

“Interesting name, Cressa. Is that short for something?”

“No, it's just my first name.”

She picked up a huge knife and started hacking away at leaves that were lying on a cutting board. I could hear the frantic rhythm of Leroy Anderson's
Plink, Plank, Plunk
as the knife hit the wood. That's a
pizzicato
piece, where the string players pluck their strings instead of bowing them.

“You'll meet Sheila, I'm sure. She and her husband take care of the grounds. At least that's what they get paid for. Don't ask me what they do. They live in one of those campers over there. Kind of trashy people.” The leaves were in tiny bits, but she kept cutting, the large knife beating a rapid staccato on the cutting board.

“Do you know my grandmother drowned the night I arrived?”

“Oh land sakes, yes. Tragedy. You poor dear. And then that nice Grace, too.” She stood still for a moment, but her body hummed with suppressed energy.

“Did you know my grandmother well?”

“Oh, I don't know about ‘well.' I knew her.”

“Do you think it was peculiar she drowned where she swam every single night?”

She gave me a hard look. “Odd things happen, you know.”

“It looks like you've been baking for days. There must be a bake sale somewhere soon,” I said.

“Oh, no! I just like to bake.” She dashed to the oven and peeked at the cookies. “The kids sometimes stop in for cookies. And these are rhubarb pies for whoever pops by. Mostly the children. Their parents stay away.”

I recognized the leaves then. Gram used to bake rhubarb pies back in Moline. They were rhubarb leaves.

“I didn't know you could use the tops of rhubarb for anything.”

“Oh, you can't. Not that I know of. I'm chopping them up to throw away. They fit in the trash easier that way. Would you like a piece of pie?”

How strange, chopping them up to throw them away. What an odd person.

“Thank you, but I have work to do.” Watching her made me tired. “I saw two little girls come in here yesterday. Rachel and Rebecca, I think?”

“Those are the Blake girls. Poor things. Their mother is Martha Toombs's daughter, Hayley. Hayley's divorced and lives in the cottage down there.” She brandished the knife with her long thin hand toward the next-door cabin as she chattered.

“Only Martha's daughter?” I asked. “Not her husband's, too?”

“No, Hayley is from Martha's first marriage. Hayley would never claim Toombs for her father. They don't get along. He's not too good to the girls, either.”

A fleeting spark of light, reflecting off the knife blade from the overhead fixture, dashed hotly across her face.

“They like to come over to my place. Poor tykes. That's their house there, right next to mine. With the light blue shutters.”

We said our good-byes, with me promising to return soon. For pie.

She put the knife down and followed me to her door. Eve pressed a small packet into my hand, fluttered a wave as she shooed me out the door, then darted inside to tend to her baking.

She had given me a sandwich bag with three of her homemade cookies in it, still warm. They might come in handy later, I thought. A person never knows when she'll need a chocolate chip cookie.

I went back to the cabin, not so loath to enter it this time. Since Gram's funeral was scheduled for tomorrow, and I had finished making all the arrangements, there was nothing more I needed to get done today. I could have sat down to work, but it was a confining feeling rather than a freeing one, since there was also nothing I really
could
do. I paced the cabin, restless.

Was I the only person in the whole world with an inkling those two women didn't just happen to drown? I wanted to shake Chief Bailey until he saw the urgency. If only we were in England, I could call Scotland Yard, or MI-something. I'd have to keep my eyes and ears open. I knew from reading mysteries and newspapers that criminals eventually slip up. Usually.

If I didn't know how to investigate Gram's death, there was at least one thing I knew how to do for her: devote my composition to her.

I fixed tea and toast, then spread my papers out on the glass-topped table on the porch. It didn't feel so exposed during the day. The notes I had set down yesterday weren't right today. A couple of the ideas were good, and some of the melodic passages had promise, but everything was bland. The piece should be full of life. Of passion. It should express the abundance of life and epitomize its goodness. If I wanted this to be a tribute to my Gram, it had to be exuberance itself. To capture the excitement of living, the thrilling sound of the endless choir of birds that awakened every morning, the almost sinister murmuring of the frogs at night, the mystery of the morning fog.

I got up and put one of Eve's cookies onto a paper plate beside my manuscript paper.

Maybe, if I captured Gram in song, I wouldn't have really lost her.

I sat. Nothing came. It was hopeless.

After I had munched half the cookie, I began to notice an odd tang to its taste. Maybe I shouldn't eat Eve's things.

I noticed all the crumbs I'd dropped onto my music and knocked them off, then thought maybe I should have just left them there and put notes where they had randomly fallen. That couldn't be any worse than what I already had.

I stared at the paper and my mood continued to darken. Misgivings trampled on my confidence. My struggle went on. Time passed. I wrote nothing.

I have no talent. Why the hell did I ever think I could be a composer? Or a conductor?
I should forget about it.

Who cared if I got a master's degree anyway? Gram, my biggest fan, wasn't even here anymore. The thought that came to me in my darkest moments came to the surface: I had been the cause of my grandfather's death. There wasn't a soul who would be disappointed if I became a drunken bum. A complete fuck-up. Except maybe Neek.

Struck by this hard fact, I swept the papers onto the floor and stood up, immediately beset by dizziness and a pounding headache. A large rock had landed in my stomach. I need to clear my head, I thought. I reached my hand up to finger my locket in my distress, but I hadn't put it on.

I tore through the cabin, throwing the cushions off the daybeds and kicking up the throw rugs, but couldn't find my necklace. The day was still dark and cloudy and the cabin held shadows in all its corners.

Damn! If I've lost Gram's locket, I don't know what I'll do.

Okay. Draw a deep breath. Ugh. That makes my stomach hurt worse.

My heart hammered and the pain in my head was like a living being. Swallowing hard, refusing to vomit, I tore the place apart.

Hadn't I set it down somewhere last night, on my way to go swimming with Grace? On the daybed right inside the door? Yes. The cushions were already on the floor. I stripped the bed, then got onto my hands and knees and peered underneath. My panting breath disturbed nothing but dust. That necklace wasn't in this cabin.

I sat on the floor and sobbed. I'd lost my Gram and I'd lost the locket she gave me. I didn't need to worry about becoming a complete fuck-up—I already was one.