“You did not believe your eyes.”
“I don’t think you believed yours, either.”
“It had been so long, I was not used to being seen. But I think it was the beginning of a beautiful friendship, don’t you? Although you will have to be the fishy Frenchman, because I believe you are shorter and rounder than I am, and I am more mysterious, like Humphrey Bogart, and I would look the best in a trench coat. And then you can call me Geneva Boggart, with an extra
g
.
Casablanca
will be on later tonight, in case you are interested. I know I am. I saw an announcement for it on Phillip’s flat-screen television. Did I tell you his television is high def? That means it is very good.” She heaved a sigh that turned into a moan and then trailed off with a few notes of “La Marseillaise.” “Oh dear,” she said after another sigh. “Do you remember what we were talking about?”
I rested my chin on my clasped hands and held my breath to keep from sighing, too.
“Well, memory is a funny thing,” she said. “Before you go, will you please turn on one of my recorded books? Argyle and I would like to hear more about Jessica Fletcher. She is almost as wise as Shakespeare. She is a good role model for me, and Argyle is waiting to see if George will kiss her.”
“Would you like me to find Shakespeare on audio
sometime?” I’d flatly refused to put a TV in the study for her. She might deserve special consideration because she was dead, but I wasn’t willing to share her idea of heaven—television twenty-four/seven. Audiobooks were our compromise
“I would not mind,” she said, “but Argyle prefers cozy mysteries.”
I’d have to take her word for that. Argyle was sound asleep and didn’t wake when I put on the first CD. Geneva was rapt and didn’t wave when I turned out the light and went home.
By the time I pulled into my driveway, I was starving. I also had company. The kind some people referred to as delicious.
“H
ey,” Joe said. He was sitting in the dark on the front steps. I joined him. “I saw the light on at the Cat.”
“And you didn’t see a light on here, but here’s where you decided to wait?”
“I thought you might be busy. If it’s a problem—”
“It’s not.”
We explored that lack of a problem until we were interrupted by a growl from my stomach.
“Sorry. Except for a few of Mel’s cookies, it’s led a deprived life since breakfast. Are you hungry? I’ve got a couple of curried sweet potato pasties in the freezer. It won’t take long and they’re delicious.” That word again. It made me nervous and I stood up. “While they’re heating, you can tell me how the fishing went this afternoon. And what you know about Fredda Oliver.” I tried to lay the Fredda line as artfully and gently as a trout fisherman working a clear mountain stream. Joe held the screen door for me while I unlocked the front door, so maybe I had.
It hadn’t been a good day for fishing along Sinking Creek. Rainbow and native brook trout—brookies to those of us in the know (or to those of us who knew
people in the know)—didn’t like hot, bright afternoons. Neither did the fisherman. He’d emulated the trout and retreated to deep, cool shade. In Joe’s case, that was a quiet and private place in the woods near the retting pond.
“Upwind, too,” he was happy to report. “The deputies have got a mess on their hands looking for anything there. I told them how they could temporarily re-channel the creek and see if the pond will drain. That should help. Mind if I take a rain check on the pastie? Mel had a special on her fresh tomato tart.”
“You
talked
to them at the pond? I thought you were being clandestine.”
“We do want them to find the weapon, though.”
“Oh, right. Huh. I didn’t think I was so competitive. Your brother brings that out in me.” I tossed the frozen pasties back in the freezer and took a bag of salad from the fridge instead.
“He called this evening.”
“With news?”
“With concerns.”
“Ah.” Deputy Clod must have called Joe
after
my invisible friend and I left him in our dust. Interesting. I tossed the bag of salad back in the fridge and looked at Joe with a smile that was supposed to show how unconcerned I was about concerns.
“Are you all right?” His angled brows and soft voice proved
his
concern, but I had to clear something else up before I could concentrate on that.
“Waiting on my front steps—was that your idea or Cole’s?” I was proud of myself for holding back the sarcastic questions I’d rather ask.
Was this a social welfare visit?
A psych evaluation by an untrained professional?
Or was this more of a guard-dog-on-duty kind of thing?
“It’s okay for people to worry about friends.”
“Ah.”
“You keep saying that.”
“It covers a lot.”
He let it cover a few moments of looking at each other, and then he said, “Why don’t you sit down and let me make an omelet for you?”
I didn’t immediately sit, and I wasn’t sure why. And then I could hear Granny, in one side of my head, telling me that being mule-headed was fine as long as I didn’t make a complete mule of myself. And Geneva was there in the other side of my head telling me about the tooth-jarring excitement of hanging on to a runaway mule for dear life. Contradictions. My life was full of them, and while I tried to sort a few of them out, I sat down at Granny’s square maple kitchen table.
Joe went to more trouble for an omelet than I would have, browning cumin seeds in the cast-iron skillet before adding diced onion, jalapeño, fresh ginger, and a couple of beaten eggs. Stubborn as I was, I had to admit it was nice having him there. I’d lived on my own, alone, for years in Illinois. But I hadn’t quite gotten used to the stillness of living in Granny’s house without her footsteps, her laugh and snatches of song, or the sounds of her loom and spinning wheel. I loved having her things around me, but I missed hearing the rhythms of her life.
When the omelet was set and golden, Joe folded it onto one of Granny’s pretty painted china plates, sprinkled fresh cilantro and diced tomato over it, and put it in front of me. My stomach growled a brief grace.
“There’s a cheap Cabernet in the cupboard.”
He poured us each a glass and came to sit across from me. He rolled his glass in his hands, then took a sip. “It
might be cheap, but it’s not tawdry. Do you want to talk?”
“No, I want to eat. You talk. Talk about Fredda. How you know her. How long you’ve known her. How well you know her.”
He listened to my questions and took a larger sip of wine. “Do you have any particular reason to be suspicious of her?”
“We don’t have any particular reason to be suspicious of
anybody
, so I’m being ecumenical and cultivating my suspicions of everybody. But I’m starting with Fredda because I think she was with Phillip the night before he died and because Cole says she’s a good liar. I’m not saying she killed Phillip. I have no idea why she
would
kill him. But now my lovely omelet is getting cold, so you talk. Tell me about Fredda.”
“She’s been around for a few years. Three or four. She moved over here from Asheville.”
“Did you know her there?” He’d lived in Asheville for a while.
“Not well.”
“What brought her here?”
He hesitated. “Getting away from a bad relationship.”
“Like Grace.”
“Like you?”
“What?”
“When Cole called, he said something—”
“
Oh my gosh
. He thought I was talking about
myself
? No, no. Oh, for—I should’ve known better.” I shook my head, took a deep breath and let it out again. It didn’t help. “I should have known he’d get it wrong. Doggone it—he scared the bejeebers out of me in the parking lot at the Quickie Mart. I got mad. He made fun. And then
I thought I was being so smart. I told him part of a story about something that happened to a friend of mine, and he must have thought I was using the old ‘it’s not me, but I have this friend’ routine. What an idiot.”
“You or Cole?”
“Both of us. Okay, so no. No, not like me. But Fredda and Grace both left bad relationships.”
“Grace followed her bad relationship.”
“And Fredda might have fallen into another one. If the police are using abuse as a motive for Grace, it works for Fredda, too. How is it you came to recommend her for the caretaker’s job?”
“I ran into her a time or two. She’d started her lawn care business. She worked hard and the business let her get by, probably just barely. I knew she’d be good out there at the Homeplace and she could use a more reliable income.”
“I’m glad you were able to help her.”
“It helped me, too. I didn’t mind filling in out there short term, after Em died, but I didn’t want to be tied down.”
“You have a reputation to uphold?”
“Renaissance Appalachian Idler. It’s a low-maintenance facade.”
“And you do it well. You even had Ardis fooled for a while this afternoon with your fishing trip. But you can’t fool all the people all the time.”
“What about fooling around with some of the people some of the time?”
It flashed through my mind to wonder if his “some” was just wordplay or if “some” included Fredda. But Joe had been completely matter-of-fact talking about her, not evasive or uncomfortable, and he wasn’t
with
Fredda.
He was with me. Reaching his hand across the table for mine.
That weird sensory business that made me leery of brushing against a sleeve, or of resting my hand in the small of a back, wasn’t a problem at all when clothing didn’t get in the way.
* * *
Due to one thing or another, telling Joe about the missing hackle slipped my mind that evening and the next morning, too. Or maybe that happened subconsciously on purpose, because what he didn’t know wouldn’t be something he might or might not feel obliged to pass along to his brother. Not that TGIF was in competition with the sheriff’s department, and not that we didn’t want Clod to find the murder weapon. But by letting Joe go off and do his Appalachian Renaissance thing without the worry of weighing moral decisions, I felt I’d done my first good deed for the day. Two, really. Because by keeping the rumor about a missing flax hackle from percolating through to the sheriff, I was continuing to be a good, non-interfering citizen. No deputy was going to catch me making reports that couldn’t be backed up by facts.
After a cup of coffee, that logic still made sense to me. I left for the Homeplace and another morning of Spiveys, eager teenagers, quilting, and Hands on History with a clear conscience. But first, I stopped by the Weaver’s Cat to check on Geneva.
Argyle met me at the back door. He twined around my ankles to make sure I knew the way to the cupboard and from the cupboard to his bowl. Geneva floated down the stairs while he supervised portion control. She circled me. Twice.
“You look . . . happy,” she said, going around one more time.
“You make that sound like a questionable activity. The morning is beautiful, Geneva. I’m happy and enjoying it.”
“A good weather report does not usually give you such a self-satisfied look.”
“I, uh, I slept well. How about you?”
“To sleep, perchance to dream,” she said. “There, Argyle wants a rub.”
He butted his head against my ankle and said, “Mrrph.” I knelt and scrubbed him between his ears.
“Rather than sleep or dream,” Geneva said, “I thought of a clue. The other woman in the cottage—”
“Let’s call her Fredda instead of ‘the other woman.’ What about her?”
“I am trying to tell you. She turned off the high-quality, high-def television halfway through
Magnum, P.I.
”
The TV again. I didn’t groan; the morning was that beautiful and Argyle’s attention that sweet. “You told me about that last night.”
“She turned it off at the halfway point.”
“Yes. And
your
point?”
“She turned Thomas on at the beginning. She turned Thomas off halfway through.”
“Thomas?” All I could think of was tank engines and the fact that Geneva was stuck on a one-way track.
“The beautiful morning and the love of a shedding cat have addled your brain. I will try to simplify the clue so that you can follow along. Please pay attention.” She hovered in front of me, back straight, hands clasped—a foggy gray schoolmarm. “Thomas Magnum is a brave
man with a moustache, a current P.I. license, and an exciting caseload. Fredda was in the cottage for half of one case, including commercial breaks for products that made me blush and watch between my fingers. A whole case is solved in one hour—Thomas is that clever. Do you see how this is like a math problem? If a whole case is a whole hour, a half case is a half hour. Fredda was in the cottage for one half hour, and during that time she could have touched or taken any number of things. Unfortunately, we will never know what things, because I did not know she was a suspect. You did not tell me, and I cannot take responsibility for your lapse in judgment.”
I sat back on my heels. “That’s a good clue, Geneva.”
“Thank you. After listening to my audio episode with Jessica last night, I rehearsed my clue so I would not have a lapse in memory the way some people have lapses in judgment. What do you think the clue tells us?”
“I wish I knew.”
“I wish you knew, too. I put a lot of work into it.”
“Thank you for all your work, Geneva.”
“And my attention to detail. Did I remember to mention his moustache?”
“You did.”
“I should have also remarked on his muscles.”
“Speaking of muscles, I liked what you said last night—that searching for clues and answers feels like strength. I think searching for concrete clues really is doing something for you. And that gives me hope that we’ll find answers. Maybe to a lot of our questions.”
She held one arm up in a muscleman pose and prodded her biceps. “Do I appear stronger?”
Oddly enough, she did appear stronger, though not in the sense she meant. I could see her better. She wasn’t as
watery or filmy. She was still gray, but she appeared more . . . dimensional, more solid, and there was something about her face that I could almost see clearly.
“Geneva, pull your hair back from your forehead, will you?”
She lifted her hair and held it just long enough for me to see a frightening crimson streak. But in the next second she cried out, jerking back as though she’d been struck, and she sank toward the floor, falling in terrible slow motion, her hands reaching up to catch hold of something, anything, nothing.
“Geneva?”
She started to fade and, still in slow motion, she collapsed on the floor.
“Geneva! What’s happening? What happened?”
She’d been strong, searching for clues. She’d even been happy. But then what? Had she remembered something?
She lay like a shadow on the wide boards. Like a ghost. Argyle and I sat beside her until I had to leave for the Homeplace.
“Keep watch until I get back,” I told the cat. “And you,” I said to the ghost. “You stay with us.”
* * *
As I turned the corner to head out of town, I saw Thea leaving Mel’s with Wes Treadwell—Thea laughing, her hand on Wes’ arm. That echoed Nadine’s habit, and I was oddly comforted knowing I wasn’t the least bit tempted to put my hand on his arm. I waved as I went past, but neither of them saw me. No matter. That Thea was engaging one of our unknown quantities—up and detecting well before the library opened—could only be a good sign.
* * *
Nadine opened the door for me at the visitors’ center, a coffee mug in one hand. “Good morning, Kath.”
“How are you, Nadine? Oh, sorry.”
I’d caught her with the mug to her lips. She finished with a gulp and a smile. It was nice to see that some of the strain of the last few days had left her face.
“I’m doing better. Thank you for asking.” Some of the sharp tones were gone from her voice, too. Wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and old sneakers might have helped that impression along. Looking forward to working in the herb garden—with a heady mix of green growing things and budding historians—might have helped, too.