Gourdfellas (22 page)

She stopped, her face crumpling. “What are you saying, Lili? Are you accusing me of something? I don’t believe this.” Trisha Stern started to toss things back into her bag while I stood speechless, trying to think what I could do to salvage the situation.

I hadn’t accused her of anything, not really. Her reaction startled me, and I had to do something to recover. “Trisha, wait. Please, I didn’t mean anything. Please don’t go. I’m really sorry if I offended you. My brother really—”

“Hey, something wrong?” Neil hobbled back into the living room, stopping in the doorway and glancing first at me and then at Trisha. For the first time since he’d arrived, my brother looked sad. Neil’s perplexed frown softened as he turned to Trisha. “What’s up?”

I held my breath, praying that Trisha would accept my apology, for my brother’s sake. Her face no longer had the serene, open quality that made her so likeable, so easy to talk to. This had escalated beyond anything I’d intended. Now I’d alienated the person who was supposed to help Neil recover from his accident. If she left . . .

“I’m so sorry, Trisha. I’ve been going nuts trying to find out anything that would clear my name. I hope you can understand. It’s been so—”

“Look, I can understand your anxiety but it’s not fair to take it out on me.”

The ice in her blue eyes melted just enough to give me an opening to try to convince her to stay. “You’re right, I wasn’t being fair. Gene Murphy and Michele Castro are good cops. They have experience and resources I don’t have. It’s just . . . I’m not used to sitting still when there’s something I can do to help myself. Obviously, I’m not doing a good job of it. And I really am sorry.”

“Then maybe you should talk to Anita Mellon,” Trisha said, still glaring at me. “I hear she’s back in town to sign some papers. She might know more than anyone else about what happened to her mother. But you better figure out how to avoid making her angry and defensive, you know?”

Now that we were speaking calmly, what I heard disturbed me. Trisha’s indignation was clear—maybe even a bit too clear. Yet all I’d done was to mention Marjorie’s name and she’d reacted as though I’d called her a flag burner.

For the first time since I’d moved to Walden Corners, I wondered whether small town life really was right for me.

“You ready to get to work, Neil?” Trisha’s voice was strained, but she smiled as she took the strap and the weights out of her bag. “You’re doing great but you can’t take a day off yet. Let’s start with some aerobic warm up.”

I slipped out of the living room and headed for my desk. I had a brochure to finish. Maybe work, even work I wanted to get out of the way as quickly as possible, would focus me long enough to clear my head so that I could think about everything Trisha had said—especially that deflection of attention away from herself and onto Anita Mellon.

Who really did deserve my attention. Even if nothing came of it, I’d have to figure out a way to meet Marjorie’s long-suffering daughter.

 

The Taconic Inn sparkled in the sun, white columns and the wide plank porch inviting. The rocking chairs would be taken out of storage soon, wicker tables placed between them. The hanging baskets filled with lipstick plants and trailing ivy would form a curtain that would give the illusion that the stately old building was surrounded by nature instead of being on a highway.

I parked in the rear lot and pushed open the screen door to the kitchen. Nora stood, hands on hips, staring down at a mound of asparagus.

“Soup or soufflé?” I asked.

She turned, her face lighting with a smile. “Soufflé—what a great idea! Perfect to go with the lamb. Now all I need is another color family. Beets, maybe, or carrots.”

“Definitely carrots. With a mint glaze.” I lifted the lid on a huge stockpot and inhaled the comforting aroma of chicken stock. “You have a few minutes?”

Nora nodded and passed me a vegetable peeler. “You peel the carrots, I’ll prep the asparagus, and we’ll talk.”

“I hear that Anita Mellon is back in town to take care of some business. You went to school with her, right? What’s she like?”

“Flashy.” She smiled and cut off the ends of several stalks of asparagus. “You ever hear Dolly Parton tell the story of how she got her style? She was ten, shopping in town with her Mama, and she pointed to the blonde woman with bright red lips who was wearing a low-cut blouse and tight skirt. ‘She’s real purty,’ she said to her Mama. And her Mama said, ‘She’s trash.’ Dolly said that she knew that was what she wanted to be when she grew up—trash. Well, that’s Anita.”

I laughed. “Isn’t that the way it is? We either want to be our mother or the farthest thing from. Marjorie wasn’t unattractive, but she certainly didn’t go out of her way with her appearance.”

“Anita drove her nuts. I remember her complaining, we must have been in eighth grade, that her mother had thrown away all her lipsticks. She wore the tightest sweaters, the shortest skirts, had the longest hair. The boys stared, the girls couldn’t decide whether we envied her or despised her. By the time we hit high school, she was running with older boys.” Nora frowned as she chopped asparagus and tossed it into a pot, ladled out some of the stock and then set the pot on a burner. “I always felt a little sorry for her.”

“Because she had no friends?”

“Because she had no idea that she was really pretty under all that makeup. Because she wasn’t secure enough to be herself. She once told me that her mother made her wash the kitchen floor four times until it was done to her satisfaction. And that Marjorie laughed when Anita told her she wanted to be a nurse. Said that it took brains and that she was better off using the assets she had to make her way in the world.”

My mother was starting to sound like a saint.

“So they never got along. And Anita was Marjorie’s sole heir. Which would be interesting, except that she was in Tennessee on the day Marjorie was murdered.”

“But Seth Selinsky wasn’t,” Nora said. “In Tennessee that day, I mean.”

I know I stopped breathing, but I have no memory of inhaling again. Nora put her knife down and took mine from my hand, led me to a chair and sat down across from me at the same table where the poker group had met several nights earlier.

“I just found out something that I was going to tell you when I finished the dinner prep.” She spoke softly, her voice reassuring and warm. “He flew to Nashville day before yesterday. Left from Albany airport at the crack of dawn, came back on the last flight that same day. My cousin works the airline ticket counter. She recognized him. He got all flustered and said something about a real estate deal. I don’t know if it means anything or not, Lili, but I thought you should know.”

That dinner he’d canceled—he’d gone to Nashville instead. To talk to Anita Mellon?

“I don’t get it. Why? What would Seth have to do with Anita, and how does it fit into what happened to Marjorie?”

Nora jumped up from her seat and turned down the flame under the asparagus pot. When she turned to face me again, her eyes had that sorrowful look that made me want to look away. “I don’t know the answers to those questions. I do know that he went with Anita through most of tenth grade. He was in his senior year. Then some dropout mechanic from Pine Plains appeared on the scene. Seth was pretty depressed that whole spring. Moped around, nearly failed history. Finally got it together enough to pass the exam. He went off to his grandparents’ farm in Wisconsin for the summer and when he came back he was a new boy. Man, really. He left for college, and as far as I know didn’t have anything to do with Anita after that.”

People grow up. They change. They learn. If someone were to judge me by the person I was in high school, I’d be in trouble. But in all these days, during the entire time I’d been upset and working hard to clear my name, Seth Selinsky had never once mentioned his relationship with Anita.

He’d gone all the way to Tennessee. To see her? And now she was back in town.

“Thanks for telling me, Nora. I don’t know what any of it means, except that it doesn’t look good, does it?”

“You’re the one who says to be careful about jumping to conclusions. I can tick off explanations for his behavior that don’t have sinister meaning, but we’d both be imagining things. You ever ask him where he was when Marjorie was killed?”

“I couldn’t.” But it was clear that I’d have to face that now. If Seth and Anita had conspired to murder Marjorie so that Anita could get her inheritance a little early . . . If it had, indeed, been Seth who had tried to run me off the road on the day of the storm . . . The thought made my whole body tight with anger.

“Of course not. I still think you can’t put these facts together and condemn the man, though. Maybe you should try talking to Anita, see if you can get anything from her.” A bird twittered outside, and Nora looked out the window, then back to me.

“What would I say to Anita? ‘Hi, I think maybe you and the guy I’ve been going out with murdered your mother and now you’re trying to frame me so please turn yourself in so my life can get back to normal?’ I don’t think that would work.”

Nora walked over to the door, pushed it shut, and plucked a gray sweatshirt from the hook. “No, probably not. But if you went over there and said that you wanted to return Marjorie’s sweatshirt and then just got her talking, that might do it. You can say that Marjorie left it at your house when she stopped by to talk to you about something, I don’t know, you’ll figure that part out.”

I took the well-worn cotton sweatshirt from her, wondering about the person who had worked out in it or just hung around the house wearing it. I’d known Marjorie as a smart, articulate, hardworking woman who had strong feelings about the casino. Her daughter had known another Marjorie, one who had little use for imperfection. How much anger, I wondered, could a child accumulate? And what would happen when it came out?

“Take it however you like, I’m going with you.” My brother straightened the collar of his knitted shirt, a creamy beige that went well with his dark hair and fair skin. His cast had acquired a soft, grayish color that looked good next to the faded denim of his jeans. We’d slashed a couple of pairs of pants so that he could get them over the cast. On Neil it just looked like a new style.

“As my protection?” The thought of him wrestling with a woman with false eyelashes and glossy lipstick almost made me laugh. “It’s all right, Neil, I can do this on my own.”

“Can, sure. But won’t because I’m going with you. Who do you think will get Anita Mellon to talk more, you or me?” He flashed one of his boyish grins and held both hands under his chin, the cherub with ulterior motives. “Besides, I’m going stir crazy here. I mean, it’s a great place and all, but I’ve been here for two weeks without seeing a single thing that I didn’t know I was going to see. I need something new. I need some stimulation. So I’m going with you.”

If Anita still had any of that girl in her that Nora had described, then Neil would surely be the right one to have along. She’d sounded harried when I asked if I could stop by to return the sweatshirt, but agreed to a ten o’clock meeting. I couldn’t help wondering whether Seth Selinsky’s silver pickup would be parked beside the big maple tree near the grand old house.

 

Only a dark, nondescript rental car sat under those spreading branches. I pulled up beside it, came around and got Neil’s crutches from the back, and helped him out of the car.

“Never did this on gravel before,” he said. He planted the rubber tips of his crutches firmly, swung forward, then repeated the motion until he’d made his way to the front steps. I followed behind, ready to catch him, but although he went more slowly than usual, he was steady and strong all the way up the steps to the porch and then to the front door, where he pressed the buzzer.

The grass hadn’t yet grown enough to need cutting, but weeds were starting to sprout in the bed of daffodils and tulips that bordered the porch. If Anita planned to sell this place, she needed to hire someone to tend the property. Curb appeal counted, even where there were no curbs.

“You sure she said ten?” Neil leaned forward and peered into the window, then straightened again.

“Yes. That must be her car.” I pressed the bell one more time, and finally heard quick, light footsteps on the stairs, then the click of locks, and finally the door was pulled back.

The woman standing before me was nobody’s idea of trash.

She had shoulder length brown hair, large green eyes, and a small, perfectly-shaped mouth that smiled a greeting. “Hi, you must be Lili. And you are—?”

“Neil Marino. I’m Lili’s brother. I’ve been cooped up with this,” he said pointing to his cast, “so this is a special treat for me. I’m sorry for your loss, Ms. Mellon.”

The woman at the door shook her head. “Oh, no, I’m not Anita. She’s upstairs getting dressed. I’m her friend Linda Bannerman. Please, come in. Anita will be down in a few minutes.”

She led the way through a center hall into a room that Nora’s mother would have called a parlor. A patterned rug covered most of the wide-plank floor, and two red camel-back sofas formed an L under the windows. The coffee table and end tables were dark wood, and a hunt scene, complete with trumpet and jodhpurs, filled one wall. Porcelain figurines, an old scrimshaw horn, a graceful clock that had stopped at noon—or midnight—were artfully arranged on the tables and interspersed among the books in a built-in nook. The room didn’t look at all like one in which I’d imagined Marjorie. But, then, I hardly knew the woman.

“Get you some coffee? Tea?” Linda spoke directly to Neil, who had settled into a chair with a low ottoman that gave his broken leg support.

“Not for me, thanks. You came with Anita from Tennessee?” Neil’s smile was one of his bright, you’re-so-interesting ones. His beard made him look almost professorial, kind and wise.

I’d have to compliment him later on his technique and his timing. Linda took a while to come up with an answer to what seemed like a very easy question.