A Most Curious Murder (3 page)

“Anything left?” Dora cleared her throat and took up a paper napkin to swipe hard at her nose once Ed Warner was gone. “Any of the books survive?”

“
War and Peace
,” Jenny said. “It got buried under
Fifty Shades of Grey
.”

“Ah, at last, a use for that particular book.”

“I thought you didn’t allow porn,” Jenny teased.

Dora colored up. “Ladies asked for it. Curious, you know.”

“Did you read the book?” Zoe asked.

“Well, I had to, didn’t I?”

Dora tipped her head and stuck out her bottom lip, daring either of them to smile.

“I’m taking this one home.” Zoe held up the copy of
The Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson
she’d put on the chair, tucked under her. “I’ll dry her out.”

“I think
A Full and Complete History of Bear Falls, Michigan
looked kind of okay.” Jenny searched her brain for something more to offer.

“Wouldn’t you know it?” Dora snorted and threw up her hands. “Priscilla Manus, president of the Bear Falls Historical
Society, wrote it. She’s over here every week checking to make sure somebody takes out her book. She’ll probably donate another one, or two, or three, even if we don’t need them. She’s been bedeviling Zoe ever since she moved here to help with a reissue of the book. Probably be after you, too. If you stay long. And I hope you will.”

Dora drew a cautious breath. “I don’t suppose my mother’s
Hans Christian Andersen’s Fairy Tales
made it? It was out there yesterday morning. So it’s probably gone.”

Jenny looked to Zoe for support, then shook her head. She didn’t tell her it was one of the worst off of the books, every page ripped out, only the stained board covers left.

“How your grandmother loved those stories. I read them to you when you were little, remember? You and Lisa? You hated the stag beetle for betraying Thumbelina. And how Lisa loved the old field mouse. I’d hoped to pass that book down to a grandchild.” She sighed. “If one of you girls ever felt like having a baby, that is.”

She shook her head vigorously. “All my fault. I shouldn’t have given that book to anyone. Millie Sheraton’s girl came to the door and asked if I had a fairy tale book and I couldn’t bear to say no. After that, I put the book in the box just in case another child needed a dose of fairy tales.”

“Nobody’s fault, Mom. Unless you count the person who took an axe to the box.”

“Oh, yes it is. Look what I’ve done. Think of my poor future grandchildren. Oh my.”

Jenny smiled and didn’t think of her poor babies since there weren’t going to be any.

Dora put a hand up to finger her toilet paper curlers. “And the others . . . Oh dear, let me think. People have been so
generous, leaving their books in my care, and look what’s happened! No one will ever trust me again!”

Dora wiped at her eyes. “Ed said a hit-and-run, didn’t he? I saw him backpedal, but that’s what he said. Just the way Jim died. Terrible to think about. Like having a curse on us. Oh dear, oh dear. If Jim knew about this, he’d be so disappointed.”

Jenny took her mother’s hand in hers. It was a nervous, flighty hand that couldn’t stay still until the teakettle whistled. Dora made a move to get up to make a fresh pot of tea, but Jenny stopped her.

“I’ll get it,” Jenny said, hoping to show she could take over a lot of things now that she was home. Maybe she could even find a way back to who she once was in this house, where she didn’t seem to fit now and where a tiny neighbor was more at home than she.

Sipping her fresh tea, Dora leaned back and sighed. With the morning light behind her, Jenny couldn’t help but think what a pretty woman her mom still was at sixty-three. Lisa looked a lot like her, but on Mom the blonde was going to gray. The bright-blue eyes were fading, wrinkling only enough to make her interesting. Dora was aging, but in a kind way. Her half smile was still enchanting. A sturdy-bodied woman, not fat, not thin.
Motherly
, Jenny thought, and laughed at herself. That word had so many meanings. Not endearing when Jenny was a teenager and Dora had put her foot down about slipping grades. Not endearing when the principal called, reporting that Jenny was in another fight. But charming again, yes—Jenny had to smile. She thought of how Dora had bit her lip and said nothing all through Jenny’s pretentious wedding to Ronald Korman.

Warm and kind and welcoming when Jenny needed her now.

“I hope Adam didn’t do it, Zoe. Truly,” Dora said. “Man’s had so much of his own trouble, seems he’d think twice before making trouble for somebody else. That father, Joshua Cane.
Awful man. Jim and I heard about him from the first moment we moved to Bear Falls.”

She shook her head. “We saw him from time to time. Never spoke to him. People warned us not to. A big man. He had one of those plastered-down comb-overs, looked like a small plowed field on his head. And what a strut! That strut alone, fancy cane swinging beside him, was enough to keep people out of his way. I don’t think he forgot, not even for a second, that he was worth millions. From what I heard, he left all of it to Abigail. Nothing to the boys.”

Dora was unhappy. “I don’t really like talking about the dead. They can’t defend themselves—but dead or alive, Joshua Cane was a terrible person.”

Dora looked as if she was trapped someplace in her memory. “And what a funeral. That was in 2006.”

She put her teacup to her lips and held it there. “Big affair. Lots of dignitaries came to town. I think the governor was here. The police chief we had then called in other police from Traverse City to help with crowd control. He’s got a big monument in the cemetery in Acme—too important for Bear Falls, you understand. You know how rich people get lauded, at least until the grave is closed.”

“Poor Adam Cane,” Zoe sighed. “Just another ‘wasp in a wig,’ in my opinion.”

“Geez, Zoe.” Jenny gritted her teeth. “Not now.”

“Well, it’s true.
Alice Through the Looking Glass
. You won’t remember because the illustrator took the wasp right out of the book. Poor man didn’t know how to draw a wasp in a wig. The manuscript was only recently found so, of course, I’m featuring it in my new book. The story went that the poor wasp was bedeviled into shaving the beautiful ringlets from his head and wearing an awful yellow wig. Now that’s just the way Adam and Aaron listened to their friends and became hippies, is what I heard.”

“I’m not sure that’s the way it went.” Dora looked disturbed.

“They looked down on money. Scourge of the earth to them. That’s what hippies thought.” Zoe lifted her chin higher to better see their faces. “But then the wasp’s friends didn’t like him anymore. He couldn’t grow back his ringlets and had to wear the yellow wig, which cost him everything and left him a disgruntled old ‘wasp in a wig.’ Just like Adam Cane.”

“I don’t quite see what you mean.” Dora looked puzzled.

“Oh, Mom. Why bother to . . .” Jenny groaned. “This is the one who smells trouble coming. Literally.”

Zoe looked off, ignoring Jenny. “You see, when the brothers could’ve used the money to take them into their old age, they didn’t have it. Lost it all because of what they’d become. They followed their friends. Isn’t that right, Dora?”

Dora nodded slowly.

“Anyway, with no money, they were forced to work at menial jobs around town. That’s what I heard. People didn’t respect them. All those hippie friends were gone.”

Dora turned abruptly to Zoe. “I see what you’re saying now, about ‘The Wasp in the Wig.’”

Zoe nodded gravely and intoned,

“You’re a piece of work, Zoe.” Jenny was so flummoxed by the woman at this point, she didn’t know up from down.

This certainly wasn’t the homecoming she’d expected. Certainly not this Zoe Zola, puffed up and drinking her tea with a tiny pinky stuck up in the air. A woman who sniffed the air and made predictions. Nor a sleeping one-eyed dog under the chair, snorting from time to time and pedaling her paws as fast as she could go.

If the Hatter leaped through the window yelling, “Clean cup,” she would simply get up and move.

Jenny bent to pick up a slippery book and stuff it into the black garbage bag she dragged behind her. Zoe and Fida started at the street and came up the lawn, working toward her, dragging their own garbage bag.

When they met in the middle, Zoe hummed, “Taps,” then drew the blue strings on her bag, closing in the books and pages along with grass and twigs and an old newspaper or two from the street.

“Ready for cremation,” she announced and kicked the bag from one side to the other. “I’ll stick them in the burning barrel, out behind my garden shed, unless you want to do it.”

“No, no.” Jenny’s blood ran cold. “We can’t burn them!”

She was her mother’s daughter, after all.

“What then? Burial at sea?” Zoe asked.

“I’ll dig a hole. We’ll have a proper burial for all those fine minds.” Jenny fell into the mood.

“Dead minds. Living minds. Words, words, words. Sentences. Ideas. Wisdom. Unhappy birds—all of them—never to fly the same way again.” Zoe gestured toward the place where wisdom went.

“We’ll get new copies. Nothing’s really lost,” Jenny said.

The ground at the back of Dora’s yard was soft and easy to dig. Before long, the hole was deep. The loose pages didn’t look like much thrown down to the bottom of the pit, on top of the dozen or more books. It took only a little while to shovel dirt in over all of it and then pat it down. With the job done, Zoe suggested the proper flowers to plant over dead books.

“Bleeding heart. Maybe that one for the Victorians in the bunch. For
Tess of the d’Urbervilles
,” she said.

“Why can’t we keep it simple? I’ll plant a rosebush.”

Zoe’s look could have frozen the devil’s tail.

She went on. “Gas plants. For long-winded writers. Henry James comes to mind.”

“Hmmm,” Jenny thought hard. “Loosestrife for all those shades of grey.”

“Or passion flower,” Zoe said. “I didn’t read the book, but I think that one would work well.”

“Snapdragon for Gertrude Stein.”

“That’s mean,” said Zoe.

“As if you aren’t.”

By the time they got back to the house, they were almost friends.

***

Dora, who’d declined to take part in the burial, waited, rocking fast on the porch.

“I think I’d like an annex,” she said as they fell into rockers beside her.

“An annex to what?”

“To the library, of course.”

“What kind of annex?”

“For children’s books. Another whole house, but like the first one Jim built.”

“So you’ve changed your mind?”

“I think I have.”

“I’ve got the perfect carpenter for you.” Zoe clapped her hands. “Tony Ralenti. He used to be a detective in Detroit, but he was shot in the knee and decided to look for a quieter place to live. He lowered the cupboards in my house. Cut off some furniture legs—like on my bed—so I don’t have to take a flying leap to get in. Built me folding stools that make me taller than anyone I know. Bet you anything he can make that library house look just the way it used to look.”

“Two houses,” Dora insisted. “Identical. One for children’s books.”

“Children won’t know which is theirs,” Jenny complained. “You’ll confuse them.”

Dora
tsk
ed at her. “We’ll attach flags. One will say ‘Big People’ and one will say ‘Little People.’”

Zoe took exception to that, and all talk of rebuilding stopped.

***

There wasn’t much to do the rest of the day. Jenny knew she should drive over to the grocery store; Mom’s refrigerator was empty. But she didn’t feel like going anywhere. There would be too many people at Draper’s Superette. They’d all want to know about her life, brag about their kids, and probably comment on Mom’s library—aflutter with sympathy and offers of help.

She knew Bear Falls people. Along with the bad ones who had driven her from town to begin with, there were plenty of good people. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to see them; it was just that she was tired and needed time to come to terms with at
least one or two of the things that had happened to her before and after coming home.

Zoe went back to her house to write the next chapter of
Lewis Carroll and the Two Alices
. Jenny found cheese and ham slices for sandwiches. She toasted the bread and put a round of pineapple from a can on each plate.
Best I can do
, she told herself, thinking pineapple always went with ham and made for a festive touch.

She made a list of things they needed from Draper’s and then set it aside.

After lunch, Dora remembered the toilet paper curlers in her hair. Jenny took them out and combed the soft blonde-and-white-streaked hair so it curled softly around Dora’s ears. Looking in the mirror, Dora smiled. “Funny. I look like my mother. Only older than I remember her. I like that. Too bad you don’t look a thing like me. You are all your father.” She reached out to run her hand softly over Jenny’s long, dark hair. “You’ve got his nose—so strong. And his body—agile, lean. And his hazel eyes—sometimes I see him in there with you.”

“Dad always said I looked like the mailman.”

Dora dismissed her nonsense with a wave of her hand and suggested they do a picture puzzle together. She brought out a box with the Leaning Tower of Pisa on the front. They sat down to worry pieces of the puzzle into place and argue over pieces that didn’t seem to belong anywhere. Jenny, getting bored, finally made pieces fit whether they belonged or not and put the puzzle away.

Dora yawned. “I’m a little tired,” she apologized as she got up and walked toward her bedroom.

Jenny followed down the hall to cover her with a light blanket and open a window in the stuffy room because the rain had stopped, the day was warming, and the lake air smelled like
freshly turned earth. Dora thanked her and said she didn’t like being closed in.

“Winter’s too long up here.” Dora yawned and drew the blanket to her chin. “Can’t have a window open then.”

Jenny shut the door softly behind her and went to the backyard to sit under the black walnut tree and read. Early summer bees swarmed and buzzed around her head, chasing her back into the house where she settled into a white wicker chair on the porch. She listened to car motors and children’s voices along Elderberry Street. Every once in a while, a teenager would drive by with his radio on full blast. “Va Va Voom” got stuck in her head. She gave up trying to read and closed her eyes to soak it all in—all of home.

Two days ago she’d been in a Chicago courtroom, preparing to see Ronald Korman again after eight months.

She’d tailored the scene in her head to fit her depression: Ronald, in an ill-fitting summer jacket, would be sitting in the front row when she walked in . . . No, when she
strutted
in, looking beautiful, of course. Her long, black hair would glisten and flow. Her pouting lips would be wet and lustrous. A gauzy dress would swirl about her stunning body. She would nod left and right and raise a hand in a Queen Elizabeth wave.

And Ronald, on seeing her, would fall to his knees, beg her to come back to him, and swear he’d given up Tiffany or Chastity or whatever that client’s name was. His arms would lock around her. His tears would flow until there were two wet paths running down his cheap summer jacket. But she . . . oh she, cool and vengeful, she would brush him aside, stride to the judge’s bench, grab the divorce papers, and wave them in Ronald’s face.

Ronald didn’t show up in court. His attorney said he was out of the country but was amenable to the settlement they’d worked out ahead of time.

Jenny decided she wasn’t going to be “amenable” to anything. The bored attorneys, standing in a little clique on one side of the judge’s bench, shot their eyebrows high as she stood to say she’d like twenty dollars more a month in alimony.

Twenty dollars!
She could hear them scoffing and muttering as she stuck to her guns and his attorney went out to call Ronald, wherever he’d finally settled, to get the okay. And then the man returned to the bench to say sarcastically, loud enough for everyone to hear, “Mr. Korman said he was fine with the twenty dollars more a month and wants to know if Mrs. Korman would also like the, I quote, ‘crummy can of cleanser from under the sink.’”

The judge shut him up and it was over. A monthly dollar amount settled on the last eight years of her life. No place to go—the lease on their apartment was up. That was when Lisa called to see how she was doing and suggested she go home awhile. She was worried about Dora, she said. Mom seemed tired when she called.

If Lisa had asked a few more questions, she would have learned that Jenny didn’t have anywhere else to go anyway—not at the moment—and home to Bear Falls was as good a place as any.

Jenny fell asleep until the door to the house creaked open and Mom joined her on the porch. They talked about supper—and what was in the house, which turned out to be eggs and bread. Jenny knew she could at least cook eggs and did, though the scrambled eggs were dry and the toast a little beyond brown.

After supper they shared a couple of hours of television in the living room and then Dora was tired again. She yawned through the evening news and was getting up from her recliner when there was a pounding at the front door.

“Who could that be at this hour?” Dora turned startled eyes to Jenny. “Somebody must be in trouble. You’d better answer.”

Jenny, after living in Chicago for so many years, wasn’t in a big hurry to answer loud noises at the front door. She looked through the glass at the man staring back at her: long and wild gray hair held back by a blue headband, an ugly, angry face twisting as the old man yelled.

Dora, behind her, said, “For heaven’s sakes, that’s Adam Cane. He hasn’t talked to me in—Why, open the door, Jenny.”

She did, reluctantly.

His first words were a snarl. “Who do you people think you are?” He leaned in the open doorway, chicken neck sticking out of a faded undershirt. A hand, holding a blackthorn walking stick, was raised enough to be a menace.

“I’m sorry. You are?” Jenny feigned ignorance, buying time to think how to get rid of the man.

“You know damn well who I am, Jennifer Weston, or whatever your name is now. And I know you well enough. Always was trouble—stealing the kohlrabi out of my garden. Trouble as soon as you came back to town. You and your mom callin’ the police on me! That’s a laugh. I should’ve called them when you and your friends kept ringing my doorbell, the way you did, leaving a burning bag of crap behind for me to stomp on.”

“Mr. Cane?” Jenny smiled and stepped fully into the doorway, blocking his entry to the house.

“You’re damned right it’s me. Had a visit from the chief of police today. Seems somebody broke up that box of books your mother keeps out there.” He turned to flail a hand toward the street. “Somebody did away with it, and I say that’s a good thing. Too many people hanging around. Too many cars. And I don’t like people breaking the law the way your mother does. We’ve got zoning here in Bear Falls, ya know.”

“Adam?” Dora said from behind Jenny, then pushed her daughter aside.

“Whatever are you talking about? It
was
a terrible thing. If you’ve got nothing to be ashamed of, talking to the police was the right thing to do. And if you didn’t go yelling like a madman about our neighbor’s little dog, why, nobody would have connected you to the destruction out front.”

“Street’s so bad, I hardly want to live here anymore,” he mumbled, calming a little. “Should be a hermit, like Aaron. Tried being a good neighbor.”

“Threatening a dog? Shame on you.”

“I knew it was you sent Ed Warner down. Had to be. You or that shrimp that lives next to me. Her and that damned dog—pees on my grass every chance she gets.”

“Zoe does that?” Jenny pretended to be shocked.

Which only made him madder. “You know what I’m talking about, Jenny Weston. Wasn’t me broke up that damned thing you people keep your books in. You send the chief to somebody else’s house next time, Dora. Not mine.” The man, in his dirty blue pants and down-at-the-heels sandals, was too pathetic to be a threat. Jenny started to close the door in his face. Dora stopped her.

“I’m so sorry if you were troubled.” Dora put a hand out to Adam, which he pushed away.

“Only trouble is you and this daughter of yours. And don’t think you’re going to blackmail me for new books—like the police chief said. You find some other old fool to prey on. It’s not gonna be me.”

Now Jenny put a hand on the old man’s chest and gave him a shove out of the doorway and across the porch. His ankles turned in his ancient sandals.

Adam caught himself with his walking stick and righted his body. He held himself firmly in place, half bent over, staring directly at Jenny.

“You turned sour, Jenny Weston,” he growled. “All because of that Arlen boy. Used to feel sorry for you, but now I see why Johnny hightailed it to another girl.”

“Go back to your own house,” Jenny snapped and closed the door in his face. She leaned against the door and pulled in a couple of quick breaths. Mention of Jenny’s good-for-nothing high school boyfriend had her bristling.

“He didn’t mean that,” Dora said. “He’s such an unhappy man. A ‘wasp in a wig,’ as Zoe says. She’s got that one right.”