Let There Be Suspects (7 page)

Two weeks ago, after countless hours sifting through the flotsam and jetsam to be sure nothing of value was hidden away, we had a garage sale. A furniture dealer bought the furniture we didn’t want to keep, and everything that didn’t sell either went to the dump or a local charity. Everything except the garden ornaments. The house next door—an aluminum-sided Colonial—is still occupied by a friend of our former owner, and I promised her the garden ornaments as mementoes.

I kept a few things to sell with the house: the nicest of the tea sets, a collection of porcelain spaniels, a leather-bound copy of
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
. We kept just enough furniture to make the rooms look lived in and made enough money on everything else to help with our renovations.

The key that unlocks the front door is an antique, solid brass with a barrel stem and ornate head. Lucy wanted to replace it, but I think whoever buys this house might treasure a nod to the past. Our Victorian is in a transitional area of Emerald Springs. It’s zoned for commercial use, but in addition to the woman next door, there are other people living on the street. Luckily no developer bought this one as a teardown, so Lucy and I can fix it up, perhaps as a gift shop, perhaps a tearoom, with a cute little apartment upstairs for the shop owner. There’s something about the old wreck that calls out for one more chance. We aim to please.

I used the key and the front door with its oval, etched glass pane swung open with a creak. The creak I can fix easily, the blackened varnish on the old wood will take warmer weather and a lot of stripping. The outside is not our priority just now. We hope to redo the inside just enough to expose the potential, then put it back on the market. If it doesn’t sell right away, we’ll wait until spring and tackle the exterior before we try again. Although I like the idea of a finished product, selling and moving on is our new livelihood.

“Up here,” Lucy called from the second floor, when the door banged shut. “Bring the mop and bucket.”

I set down the grocery bag of cleaning supplies I’d brought with me and grabbed the mop and bucket at the bottom of the stairs. I found Lucy in the smallest bedroom—and the one with the ghastliest wallpaper. Let’s just say the wallpaper in the house fits the overwrought decor. I’m not even sure how to describe the pattern. The background is dirty gray, covered with large pink and red daisies poised at angles with Japanese screens and other geometric shapes in bronze. The effect makes me dizzy, particularly since some of it is hanging in curls where seams have come unglued or torn. It seems more psychedelic than Victorian, and even the most devoted enthusiast of the period would remove it.

Lucy had begun the task using a clothes steamer, a mixture of fabric softener and water, and a tool that scores each section once it’s soaked through. She was standing on a stepladder working near the ceiling.

“You’re just in time,” she said. “You can start scraping. I started in the corner and it ought to be wet enough.”

“What got into you?” Lucy and I took one look at this place right at the beginning and knew we had to hire help. This renovation is too big a job, and our time too limited to do it alone. We’ve been searching for the right handy person, but not successfully.

“I had a couple of free hours between appointments. I’m going to keep work clothes in the closet so I can dart in and out. You should, too.”

Sadly most of what I wear can be called work clothes. There’s rarely a reason to change.

I rolled up the sleeves of my black turtleneck and reached for the Sheetrock blade. “I only have a little time. I have to meet Teddy’s teacher before she heads home. This could have waited until after the holidays.”

“I figured you had a lot to scrape off.”

She wasn’t talking wallpaper. “Like sisters?”

“You’re going to give me the scoop. The whole scoop, right?”

“I already told you about Ginger and Sid.”

“Not everything, I bet.”

I tried to remember what I had told her. “Well, I told you how Ginger came and went, how she always managed to make Sid look like the villain, how she stole her boyfriend. We called him the Prom King.”

“Uh huh. But, you know, those don’t seem like good enough reasons to shove Ginger into the eggnog.”

I stopped scraping. “What makes you think Sid did?”

“Oh puh-leeze! Of course she did. You as much as warned me it was going to happen.”

I relaxed a little. “Just keep that to yourself, okay? I don’t want the world to know.”

“Well, good luck with
that
. So, come on . . .”

I sized her up. Lucy was wearing farmer overalls and looked darned cute in them. She had a bandanna over her wacky red curls and a skinny corkscrew of wallpaper nestling beside one ear.

“Who put you through college?” I asked.

She looked down. “My parents. They started saving the moment I was born.”

“My dad helped with whatever he could.” My dad lives in an Indiana survivalist compound. Life there is not what anyone would call expensive, although new body armor sets him back every time they improve that technology.

“I figured your dad for somebody who doesn’t believe in education. At least not the kind they teach at universities,” Lucy said.

“He has a master’s degree in Asian Studies.”

“Which he puts to good use planting corn and shooting intruders?”

“He’s really a very peaceful person.”

“Just cautious.”

“Ummm . . .” Ray Sloan was not the topic of this conversation. “Junie helped with whatever expenses she could afford, too. Between them, with loans, scholarships, grants, I got myself through school.”

“And your point is?”

“Well, Sid’s father couldn’t help much. He’s, well, let’s just say that Patrick Kane was busy with the IRA at the time.”

“You mean IRS.”

“No, IRA.”

Lucy clicked her tongue. “Aggie, is just
knowing
you enough to get me a file at the FBI?”

“You might want to shield your face when we’re in crowds together.”

She looked as if she might consider that. “So what happened to make Sid hate Ginger?”

I noted the volume of the question; she was getting cranky. “Sid’s dad wasn’t much help with her college plans, and Junie?” I shrugged. “Junie got a small inheritance that year, which would have helped Sid a lot. Instead she used it to get Ginger into the Culinary Institute of America.”

Lucy was silent. I went back to scraping. “It was the final slap in the face for Sid,” I said. “She thinks Junie chose Ginger over her.”

“So what did Sid do?”

“She settled on a state university instead of a private one, scraped up loans, worked part-time, put herself through in five years instead of four. Junie helped when she could, but by then the inheritance was gone and Ginger had quit school.”

“Eggnog was too good for Ginger.”

“Pretty much.”

We worked in silence for a time. The wallpaper was coming off without a lot of effort on my part. And it was curiously satisfying.

“Did this destroy Sid’s relationship with your mom?” Lucy asked at last.

It was time to go. I set down the scraper and wiped my hands on a rag. “It’s a silent hurt. Once Junie decides something, there’s no point in trying to talk her out of it. Sid set out to show Junie she didn’t need help. And she’s made a success of her life, but nothing like Ginger has. I’m sure that rankles.”

Lucy climbed down and walked me to the bedroom door. “I’ll stop by on Christmas Day. I bought Hanukkah presents for the girls.”

“Stay for dinner. See the fireworks if Ginger and Cliff are still around.”

“And speaking of fireworks?” Lucy reached up and flicked the light switch, which was older than I am. Nothing happened for a few seconds, then the light blinked and finally went off. “I had the inspector look at these. The wiring is sound enough, but we need new switches. And a couple of new plugs in the bathrooms.”

I should have been able to put in switches myself. Junie might look like a fluff ball, but no daughter left her home without basic wiring and plumbing skills. I was going to replace the innards of all the toilets right after Christmas, a job I could easily manage. But I have this problem with technology, and it extends to simple wiring, as well. In a nutshell, everything I touch goes berserk. Last week our phone service was disconnected when I tried to use the call-waiting feature. The phone company swears this isn’t possible, but we went for three days without service before it mysteriously turned itself back on.

We’d have to find someone else to do the switches.

Lucy went to clean up so she could show a townhouse later in the afternoon. I let myself out and decided to make the ten-minute walk to Teddy’s school. Emerald Springs experienced its first big snowfall last week. Our landscape is white, but the snow is dry and powdery and our sidewalks are clean. Later in the winter walking won’t be as easy. I wanted to take full advantage.

Okay, the truth. I wanted to delay the return to my house after I met Miss Hollins. Walking back and forth to my minivan would buy me an extra ten minutes. It would also give me time to gird my loins for dinner with the whole glorious tribe. Vel was cooking. I hoped Ginger was bringing her own poison taster and his name wasn’t Cliff.

Emerald Springs may be provincial, but it’s really a pretty little town. Old hardwoods and evergreens tower over picturesque houses. Yards are large enough for children to have swing sets and puppies. Streets are quiet.

Right now the streets of this part of town caroled Christmas. Wreaths adorned front doors, and reindeer skeletons pranced in yards, waiting to light up the night after sun-down. A wilting blow-up Santa had his arm around an equally flaccid Grinch, and a corner house had a Technicolor nativity scene with a giant plastic Frosty in an attitude of prayer—a sight I doubt the Holy Land ever witnessed. In the middle of the third block, children were pulling each other on sleds, although the snow was only a few inches deep.

Teddy’s school, Grant Elementary, is a two-story, red brick rectangle, built in the early fifties. It’s a baby boomer school, and the hallway closest to the office displays endless photos of classrooms filled with little girls in crinolines and little boys with Howdy Doody plaid shirts and slicked back hair. There have been extensive updates, of course, but the building retains the feel of another age, when computers were comic book fantasies and the media center consisted of one rattling movie projector.

Teddy’s classroom is on the first floor looking over a playground that nowadays houses state-of-the-art climbing equipment. I’d enjoyed my first look at the room during the annual fall orientation for parents. Miss Hollins was young and enthusiastic, a bit huffy when questions were asked but otherwise pleasant enough. I think she’s so new at this that she’s not ready for anything that sounds like criticism. She’s feeling her way. In a few more years her confidence will soar, and she will smile indulgently at our fruitless attempts to control our children’s education.

She was waiting for me when I arrived, her head bent over papers. Jennifer Hollins looks a lot like her first graders. She wears her brown hair loose to her shoulders, with jumpers and soft flowered dresses that remind me of pinafores. Her glasses are round, very Harry Potter, and her skin is warmly freckled.

Her expression, however, is prim and all business. At least with parents. She donned it the moment she looked up to find me there.

Miss Hollins got to her feet and waited for me to approach the desk. She smiled, but I could tell her heart wasn’t in it.

“I’m sure you’re really busy,” I said. “I bet you’re looking forward to the holiday.”

She relaxed a centimeter. “How are you, Mrs. Wilcox?”

I am Aggie
Sloan
-Wilcox, but I know when to make a point of that. Definitely not now. “Harassed. The holidays can really do that to you, can’t they?”

She smiled again, thinly at best. There was no point in softening her up. She knew I’d come to take issue with something. I cut to the chase.

“Teddy refuses to write a story about angels. She’s decided that angels don’t exist, and she refuses to be part of any conspiracy. I wondered if—”

Miss Hollins blinked. “This is one of those Civil Liberties problems, isn’t it?”

I
blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“You’re complaining because I asked the children to write on a religious topic.”

“Well, actually, no, I—”

“Because I researched this very carefully.” Now her eyes were sparkling with anger. “I am not unaware of the need for diversity at this time of year. There are angels in almost every religion. The Buddhists have their
devas
. These are very close to angels, if I may say so, and
devas
show up in Hinduism, too. And Muslims believe that angels are emissaries from Mohammed. The earth-centered religions believe in spirits—”

I held up my hand to stop her. “
Teddy
doesn’t believe. History of world religions isn’t going to do it for her.”

“So what would you like me to do about
that
?” She folded her arms.

I’d had enough uppity women in my life lately. I came out fighting. “Even if every religion in the entire universe believes in angels, you have to face the possibility that not every child in this school is religious.”

“Like Teddy?”

I counted to nine; ten took too long. “My husband is a minister.”

Her eyes widened. She really hadn’t known, I guess.

“Teddy is a child who questions things.” I remembered to breathe. “It can be a problem, I know, but we encourage her to think things through.”

“Well, maybe you shouldn’t.”

Okay, now I was
ticked
. I made it to eight and spaced my words carefully. “Right now Teddy only wants to believe in the things she sees.” I didn’t share my daughter’s disenchantment with Santa Claus. I wasn’t sure this young woman could see the connection. “This may change and it may not, but for now, she doesn’t want to write about angels. Is . . . there . . . something . . . else . . . she can write about instead?”