A Most Curious Murder (8 page)

In the small lobby of the station, Jenny motioned to Zoe, sitting on the edge of her chair, to follow her out of there. They had things to do, and warning or not, Jenny was going to see that Zoe didn’t get railroaded just because somebody was outsmarting the chief.

The ride home was quiet. Zoe sat slumped in her seat, head barely reaching the window. She didn’t look out and comment on gardens the way she usually did, finding fault with people who didn’t have a single fairy house.

“It’s ’cause I’m a stranger here,” she groused after a while. “’Cause I don’t belong. He’s looking for an easy answer. Wants something that won’t disturb the townspeople too much. That’s what it is, you know. Throwing a bone to a bunch of dogs, and that bone is me.”

There was something in Zoe’s voice Jenny hadn’t heard before: a flattened spirit. Her usual happy sparring was gone.

The bright June day turned flat and artificial, a tinge of gray behind it, like a faint storm on the horizon. Or something more ominous, Jenny thought as she drove.

She recognized Zoe’s depression, the sense of being overwhelmed, the sense of being a target and not knowing why. It was the same thing that hit her after she’d called Ronald repeatedly, certain he was dead on a Chicago street corner, then hysterically telephoning the police and hospitals until he called to
say he was in Guatemala with his client—Tootsie or Monique or whatever—and wasn’t coming back.

Ever.

In the driveway, Zoe slowly sat up straight, her head popping above the windowsill to look around. She turned to face Jenny. “It’s not even what Ed Warner thinks that’s bothering me so much. It’s Fida.” Her lips went white around the edges. “Not in Adam’s house. Not in his yard . . .” She struggled to get a breath. “Not buried or anything. At least not where we can find her.”

“Maybe she really is lost.”

She shook her head. “I’ve been through this town at least ten times looking. With everything else happening, Fida’s disappearance has got to be a part of it somehow. I keep thinking and thinking. Usually I come up with something pretty quick. It’s from getting into Lewis Carroll’s mind, you know. Figuring out the ‘Jabberwocky’ made me into a code breaker, and not just because that first stanza is in mirror English.” She sighed and shook her head. “It’s the words, Jenny.
The words
. Listen: ‘’Twas brillig, and the slithy toves / Did gyre and gimble in the wabe; / All mimsy were the borogoves, / And the mome raths outgrabe’”

“And that helps?” Jenny was incredulous.

“Of course it does. Once you know that ‘brillig’ means four o’clock, ‘slithy’ means ‘lithe and slimy,’ and ‘toves’ means badgers or lizards or corkscrews, who live under sundials and eat only cheese.”

Jenny shook her head. “And that tells you . . . what? You lost me, Zoe.”

“What you’re looking at is a suitcase word. Meanings packed in on top of meanings, and all you have to do is dig deeper, down to the bottom, to discover what was meant to begin with. This whole murder thing’s like that. Look at what happened to
Adam and then dig deeper and deeper until you get down into the labyrinth and find the criminal brain behind it all.”

She sighed. “Ah, ‘Jabberwocky.’ What a mind Carroll had. Everything tight together in his head, like little pieces of spaghetti—wound round and round. Don’t you wonder sometimes where all our thoughts are stored? And why we can find some and have to wait for others to arrive?”

“Nope. Never thought to worry about that, Zoe.”

“Humpty Dumpty knew all about words, remember?” She looked out the window as Jenny turned on Elderberry Street.

Jenny shook her head.

“Well, you’ll have to read it again.
Through the Looking Glass
. You could use a good dose of magic. So many buried artifacts—like the hatchet. Don’t you see? Humpty Dumpty said, ‘I can explain all the poems that ever were invented—and a good many that haven’t been invented just yet.’ That describes genius. If we could get to the interior of words, I’ll find Fida there. And I’ll find a murderer.”

Jenny pulled the car onto their driveway. “How can you be buried in ‘Jabberwocky’ with so much going on around us?”

“Better there,” Zoe said after thinking a good two minutes, “than in a world where they call me a murderer. Or maybe ‘murderess.’ Or it could be ‘Sseredrum?’ You see? If only I had a mirror, I could show you how to make words your captives.”

Jenny, knowing by now that it was no use to talk to Zoe when she was in an Alice funk, opened her door and got out. Zoe followed, letting her small body slide slowly to the driveway. She stood still, listening.

“I always hope Fida will come running.” She shook her head and, shoulders bent, started across the lawn toward the tall pines between their houses.

“Tell your mom I’ll be there later,” she said over her shoulder. “Tony’s coming to your house tonight. He made another drawing. Maybe I’m wrong, but I get the idea Dora wants to cheer me up with happy thoughts about the new library, and Tony’s excited about the job.” She gave Jenny a wan smile and walked off, soon disappearing under the trees, only a disembodied voice trailing behind her.

“A good man. A really good man, Jenny. Have you ever known a really good man besides your father? You might want to take a look at this one. Wouldn’t hurt.”

Zoe was gone.

***

“What happened?” Mom asked from the porch.

Jenny hurried up the steps to drop into a chair. “Looks like Ed Warner wants to make Zoe into the murderer. Man’s crazy. At least, he’s in over his head.”

“She couldn’t hurt anybody, and everybody knows it.” Dora rocked and fanned herself with a folded newspaper, then tapped one foot angrily on the porch floor. “Always so much easier to blame the stranger from out of town. As if we don’t have enough sinners right here in Bear Falls to choose from.”

“Heard anything about Adam’s funeral? I don’t suppose I’m going.” Jenny leaned back and thought about doing nothing.

“Of course you are. Everybody goes to funerals. Have to pay your respects, you know. Funeral is tomorrow. Vera Wattles stopped by while you were gone. Vera said Abigail’s secretary and her lawyer took care of everything, and from what she heard from Tom Tannin over at the funeral home, they spent almost nothing on Adam’s funeral. Poor man. Probably Abigail’s orders.”

“Do we have to go?” She was whining and didn’t care.

Dora raised her eyebrows. “Of course we do. Adam was our neighbor. Do you remember that line from
Death of a Salesman
? ‘Attention must be paid. He’s not to be allowed to fall into his grave like an old dog.’”

***

That settled, they rocked. Dora fanned.

“I hear Tony Ralenti’s coming over.” Jenny stopped rocking to think about a shower before Tony got there. She felt grimy and hadn’t washed her hair in two days. She pulled a fan of her long black hair out so she could see how it shone with too much oil. Yes. A shower was in order. And a change of clothes. She might even go for
pretty
.

“He’s got sketches to show us. I’m eager to see what he’s come up with. I wish it was rebuilt already and everybody was coming by with the books they promised, and we could throw a party. And I wish everything in Bear Falls was back the way it used to be—without the violence and people getting killed.”

Jenny understood “the way it used to be.” Back when there weren’t dead bodies among the fairies houses. When tiny neighbors weren’t accused of murder. When she didn’t run into Johnny Arlen—anywhere. When a little dog wasn’t missing . . .

“Ed Warner wants me to come up with a list of my patrons. The sign-out sheets are gone, but I know most of them. I told Ed I’d do the best I could for him, but between the two of us, I think he’s barking up the wrong tree. Only nice people read books, you know. Bet anything there’s not a big call on death row for
Wuthering Heights
or
’Tis
.”

“Or
Lord of the Flies
or
As I Lay Dying
,” Jenny teased.

Dora got up slowly. “I think you are making fun of me. To think I went to college to be a librarian. Who would have
thought Bear Falls was where I’d end up? Still and all, I think a library is a library is a library, don’t you? No matter how big or small. Books are important.”

Jenny, feeling guilty because she had been making fun of her mother, vehemently agreed.

***

After a shower, with her hair brushed until it shone, a good dose of cream all over her body, clean underwear, clean white shorts, and a low-cut cotton shirt with inserts of white lace, Jenny went downstairs, following the smell of pot roast.

Dora had gone to the market herself after Jenny’s abortive shopping trip. She was boiling little potatoes to go with the pot roast. And carrots with herbs. And a salad. Strawberry shortcake for dessert, made with fresh Michigan berries. A real meal.

If she was going to stay in Bear Falls and be any kind of help to her mom, Jenny figured she’d better reclaim some of the wifely skills she’d lost when Ronald abandoned her. And maybe find a market in Traverse City.

They ate, relaxed, feeling better than either had felt in the last two days. They talked about the books they were reading: Jenny reading
M Train
and rereading
Alice in Wonderland
. Dora back into Jane Austen. Things felt almost normal in the Weston house. As soon as the table was cleared and the dishes placed in the dishwasher, there was a knock at the screen door. Tony Ralenti walked in, the slight hesitation in his gait hardly noticeable.

Tony carried a scroll of papers under one arm and spread them across the cleared table with a flourish. He bent forward, lowering his dark head and planting his hands directly on the papers. He looked up at Dora. “I think I’ve solved the problem,” he said, smiling broadly.

He turned to Jenny, eyes widening. “Well,” he said with clear admiration, “you clean up pretty good, Jenny Weston.”

His face wrinkled into fine creases when he smiled, making her blush like a teenager. She wanted to kick herself for making the effort.

“What problem was that?” Dora frowned.

“The two houses.” Tony’s voice was a deep baritone. One of those male voices Jenny found reverberated in her head. Something of a deep well to it. Almost haunting. Easy to recall.

“Here’s the children’s house. You were right. It should be separate from the other one. We’ll just stand them side by side on separate poles. Room for about twenty books in each one, though I think this one should open from the front so the kids can reach in easy.”

“The children’s house . . . hmmm,” Dora said.

“I’ve got yours right. You agree?”

“It’s perfect, as far as I can see. Jim would love it,” she answered.

“So I thought I’d make the other one look like your neighbor’s place. That way Zoe can paint fairies on the outside and Superman flying up the pole, or Spider-Man hanging by a thread from the eaves. She can put anything she wants inside: maybe a
Cat in the Hat
. Anything she wants. An extra surprise. Could maybe plant a kind of fairy garden behind the posts.”

Jenny leaned in close enough to see these two perfect houses. One was a copy of their house. The other house was Zoe’s—white siding, red door, and all.

“They’re fine. They’re truly fine.” Dora smiled happily from Tony to Jenny.

“Thought your neighbor’s would work.” He looked back at the women. “She writes about fairy tales and little people.”

“She’ll be pleased,” Dora said. “Now there will be two perfect libraries. And to think Lisa’s coming home in a few days. She’ll be so excited. Lisa met Zoe the last time she was here and just loves her. Things are certainly getting better. I didn’t want to change what was, but now we’ll have more children stopping by, along with the adults. And I’ll get to read books I haven’t read in ages.” Her mind drifted. “
Mary Poppins
and the Nancy Drews.”

“
The Indian in the Cupboard
,” Tony joined in.

“
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie
,” Jenny said, making them laugh.

Tony rolled up his plans and promised to begin work in two days, after Adam Cane’s funeral, because, of course, everyone in town was going to that.

He left as Zoe walked up the steps. They stopped to talk a minute before Tony went on his halting way. Zoe came in, screen door slamming shut behind her.

“Tony said you’ve got a surprise for me?” She looked from Jenny to Dora.

“We’re going to build two Little Libraries,” Dora said.

Zoe smiled a tepid smile. “That’s good, Dora.”

“Tony’s building a children’s house. Remember? You wanted that.”

Zoe lifted one side of her bottom to get on a chair and then slid the rest of herself up to bounce into place.

“That will be a very fine thing.” Zoe smiled again.

“Tony’s drawn up plans for the children’s library to look exactly like your house.”

Now her eyes flew open. For a minute, she said nothing, as if picturing such a place in her head. “Would there be room for fairies?”

“Paint some on the pole,” Dora said. “And how about a couple of superheroes for the boys?”

“And maybe a fairy on the roof,” Jenny said. “And fairy faces looking out the windows.”

Zoe’s eyes were huge by the time they’d finished.

“What a fine thing it will be!”

Dora had more happy news. “Also, Lisa’s coming home for the weekend.”

Zoe was even happier at that. “Be great to see her. I’d like to hear about that documentary she’s doing. We should have a party.”

Dora hurried to pour glasses of lemonade all around. “It might not look right, Zoe, with Adam’s death and all. I mean the party.”

She sighed. “Oh well. It will still be so nice to have Lisa home.”

Jenny felt her back get a little stiff. All this celebration over Lisa the Good. A tinge of old sibling jealousy zipped through her head.

Zoe picked up the heavy glass in front of her and took a dainty sip. “Good news is such a magical thing,” she said. “It changes you inside and pulls you right out of the doldrums.”

Dora clapped her hands. “Then you’re happy again. I’m so glad.”

Zoe’s eyes gleamed with mischief. “‘About as happy as King Charles the First when he was imprisoned.’”

Jenny rolled her eyes.

Zoe looked offended. “Lewis Carroll said that himself in a letter. But how happy could the king have been when he ended by being beheaded?”