Aunt Dimity Digs In (12 page)

“You . . . um . . . pointed to it,” I said, avoiding her eyes. We transferred the boys from their bouncy chairs to the playpen, and I backed toward the hallway. “I’ve got some phone calls to make,” I said. “I’ll be in the study, if you need me.”

“All right,” said Francesca, observing me closely.

I darted up the hallway, praying that she’d blame my jumpiness on hormonal fluctuations. I slipped into the study, paused to take a calming breath, and gently closed the door. Then I grabbed the blue journal from the shelf and banged it open on the desk.

“Dimity, what do you think you’re doing?” I demanded. “Do you
want
Francesca to think I’m nuts?”

I wanted to get your attention.
If handwriting could appear petulant, Dimity’s did.

“You’ve got it,” I said, “but I wish you’d come up with a more discreet way of attracting it.”

“Why shouldn’t I be angry?” It wasn’t easy, venting my spleen in an undertone, but I managed. “Peggy Kitchen’s got the town in an uproar. She’s making the vicar’s life hell, she tricked Adrian Culver into signing her stupid petition, and she got Bill plastered last night because he tried to quit morris dancing. If that weren’t enough, she’s spreading filthy rumors about Francesca and Adrian.” I thumped my fist on the desk. “You bet I’m angry.”

“What?” I said impatiently. “What did you want to remind me of?”

“My . . .” I stared at the words on the page, then straightened slowly and touched a hand to my forehead. “My eighth birthday?”

“Of course I remember.” I looked from the journal to the archival boxes that held the letters my mother had written to Dimity over a span of some forty years. I didn’t have to refer to them to remember the most glorious birthday gift my mother had ever given me.

“My bicycle.” I lowered myself onto the desk chair, rested my elbows on either side of the journal, and stared at the sunlight flickering through the ivy. “My first bicycle. Mom got it secondhand, but I thought it was the most beautiful bike I’d ever seen. It was blue with white hand-grips and a white seat.”

I glanced down at Dimity’s words and smiled. “Mom came out and watched me ride it up and down the block all afternoon. I felt like I was flying. I’ll never forget it.”

I turned my face away. I didn’t want to know more. I fought to hold on to my anger, but I could feel it slipping from my grasp. She’d been no older than Rainey. . . . I felt my chest tighten and forced myself to look back at the journal, where the loops and curves of Dimity’s fine copperplate were scrolling inexorably across the page.

“Francesca’s father . . .” I murmured.

“I wish she’d stop,” I said softly. “ The war’s been over for a long, long time.”

“I think it’s a little late for that,” I said.

The writing stopped. I heard a scrabble of claws and a strange snuffling noise in the hallway, slid the journal back into place on the bookshelf, and turned to face the hall.

“Emma?” I called.

The door opened and Ham trotted in, nearly tripping Emma in his eagerness to greet me. Ham—short for Hamlet—was Nell Harris’s black Labrador retriever. Like Rocinante, he’d been left in Emma’s charge while Nell was in Paris.

“We’ve come to view the corpse,” Emma intoned while Ham frisked about my knees.

“I don’t recommend it. Bill’s not a pretty sight.” I bent to fondle Ham’s ears. “He should’ve known better than to spend an evening drinking Dick Peacock’s mead.”

Emma’s eyebrows rose as she sank into one of the tall leather armchairs near the hearth. She was wearing black Wellington boots, baggy cotton trousers, and a gardening smock over a violet tank top. “I can’t believe it,” she said. “You’re blaming Bill’s condition on
Bill?
”

I ducked my head. “No, I’ve just been talking with—” I looked at the open door, then jutted my chin toward the blue journal. “How about a walk in the garden?”

Emma got the message. “Ham needs a run,” she said, getting to her feet. “Poor pup’s been stuck in the car with me all morning. I’ve brought first aid for your stricken husband,” she added as we left the study. She reached into the pockets of her smock and pulled out a ceramic honey pot and a brown paper packet. “Homemade thyme honey and strawberry leaf tea. Harris’s patented cure for hangovers.”

“Bless you,” I said. “I wouldn’t trust anything Peggy Kitchen dug out of Xanadu.”

“Peggy did help me find an awfully nice birthday present for Rainey in that back room of hers,” Emma countered.

“Was that before or after she forced you to sign the petition?” I asked.

“After,” Emma admitted sheepishly. “But she didn’t so much force as encourage.”

“With a two-by-four,” I muttered. “Horrible old cow.” Emma patted my shoulder. “You’re beginning to sound more like yourself again, Lori.”

Francesca seemed to think that a walk in the garden would do wonders for my unsettled nerves. “Take your time,” she urged, shooing us out. “I’ll look after the boys—all three of ’em.”

Ham bounded ahead of us, through the solarium, across the sunken terrace, over the low retaining wall, and into the wildflower meadow that ran down to the brook. Emma and I took a slightly more conservative route, going through a gap in the stone wall instead of jumping over it, and strolled across the meadow at a leisurely pace.

It was too hot to go any faster. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky, the air was perfectly still, and a deafening chorus of insects sang in the rustling grasses. Emma slipped out of her gardening smock, and I wished I’d worn shorts instead of jeans. As the sun baked our foolishly unprotected heads, I made a point of praising each flower we passed. I managed to misidentify every single blossom, but Emma seemed to appreciate the effort.

“I’d like to do the same sort of thing with the meadow behind the vicarage.” She raised a hand to shade her eyes as she surveyed her handiwork. “ The vicar’s field runs down to the river instead of a brook, but I could give it a similar treatment—sprinkle it with drifts of bluebells and daffodils. If this dry spell keeps up, though, I’ll have to consider using desert plants.”

“How bad is it?” I asked.

“Burt Hodge is beginning to worry about his crops,” Emma replied, “and if you didn’t have a stream running through your property, you wouldn’t have any flowers at all.” Emma pointed to her boot-clad feet. “I plan to start on the Buntings’ garden as soon as I leave here.”

“ Thanks,” I said. “Any luck on the computer search for the Gladwell pamphlet?”

Emma shook her head. “Nothing so far. I’ll keep looking, but most libraries don’t list that sort of thing in their on-line catalogs.”

“We’ll just have to hope that Stan’s word-of-mouth search succeeds.” I walked on a few steps before I realized that Emma hadn’t moved.

“Why are you walking like that?” she asked, staring at me.

“Like what?” I said.

“Like this.” She strode past me with her head down and her shoulders hunched.

I contemplated her performance in puzzled silence. Then the penny dropped. “Diaper bag,” I said, hunching one shoulder. “ Toy bag,” I went on, hunching the other. “Rations and medicine kit.” I bowed my arms as though imitating a fat man, held the pose, then flung my arms over my head and spun a circle in the grass. “Look at me! I’m weightless! Race you to the bridge. . . .”

It was only fifty yards, but by the time Emma and I reached the brook, we were sweltering. She kicked off her boots, I kicked off my sneakers, and we leaned on each other for balance as we wrestled with our socks. We rolled up our pant legs and sat side by side on the split-log bridge, trailing our toes in the water and relishing the cool breeze rising from the shallow, rushing stream. Ham plunged right in, then splashed upstream and out of sight, his tail wagging like a banner with damp fringes.

“I’d almost forgotten what it was like to be strap-free,” I said when I’d caught my breath.

“You should get out more often,” Emma said. She leaned back on her hands. “How did you fare yesterday? Bill told Derek you were trolling the square for suspects.”

Emma gave me her full attention while I expounded on Sally Pyne’s one-woman uprising, Christine Peacock’s cleaning frenzy, Katrina Graham’s excessive devotion to her boss, and Adrian’s possible involvement in the Culver Institute.

“Wouldn’t you agree that Sally, Chris, Katrina, and Adrian qualify as suspects?” I concluded “They’ve each got a pretty strong motive to steal the Gladwell pamphlet.”

“I suppose so.” Emma lifted a hand to adjust her wire-rim glasses. “I suppose some of the motives might even intersect. Sally and Christine, for instance, have sound business reasons for wanting Adrian’s museum to pull in tourists. They might have stolen the pamphlet in order to keep him here.” She flicked up a splash of water with her toes. “I suppose I can understand Katrina Graham’s motives, as well. I had a huge crush on my advisor at MIT.”

“See?” I spread my hands. “Katrina might have stolen the pamphlet in order to protect her mentor.”

“I’d have stolen anything for Professor Layton,” Emma said, with a wistful sigh, “but Professor Layton would never suppress evidence in order to keep a project going. Does Adrian Culver strike you as unscrupulous?”

“Hard to say. I keep meeting him under unusual circumstances.” I turned to Emma. “Do you believe in love at first sight?”

She looked away, with a ghost of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth. “Yes,” she said, “as a matter of fact, I do.” She rubbed a thumb against her wedding band. “Why do you ask?”

“Because Adrian took one look at Francesca,” I said, “and turned to mush. She treated him like dirt, but he didn’t care. She could’ve stomped on his toes and he would have apologized for putting his foot in the wrong place.”

“Why was she so rude to him?” Emma asked.

“She doesn’t want outsiders invading Finch,” I said, “and she thinks Adrian’s pulling a fast one on the vicar. Plus, she’s anti-archaeology—thinks it’s rude to dig up dead people’s possessions. I think she inherited that point of view from her father.” I listened for a moment to the water gurgling over the smooth black stones. “All I can say about Adrian is that he
seems
genuine. He seemed surprised by the amount of equipment his students packed, and flabbergasted when I told him about the Culver Institute.”

Emma pursed her lips. “Sally Pyne has been known to turn a crumb of information into an entire loaf. We don’t know for certain what she found in Katrina’s room, do we?”

“It should be easy enough to check out,” I said. “No one gets financial backing for something as unwieldly as a museum without leaving a trail.” I glanced at Emma. “Would you . . . ?”

Her nod lacked enthusiasm. “I’ll search the Net for any mention of the Culver Institute, but . . .”

“But?” I prompted.

“But I think you’re on the wrong track.” She put a hand up to hold her glasses in place, slid off the bridge, and landed with a controlled splash. “Come on in; the water’s fine.”

The water was, in fact, just this side of arctic, but I jumped in anyway and tottered after Emma, gripping the slippery rocks with my toes as the brook foamed around my calves and ankles.

“The eyewitnesses don’t seem to be coming to you,” Emma was saying, “so you should be going to them. Nothing goes unnoticed in a village. I’d suggest you try—No! Stop!
Heel!
”

The cry came too late. Ham had exploded from the bank like a furry avenging angel, tickled pink to find a pair of playmates in the water. He barreled into Emma midstream, Emma grabbed at me, and we both sprawled backward, arms windmilling wildly. Our landing made a splash that should have flooded the meadow.

Emma floundered, spluttered, then sat up, laughing. “I’m not hot anymore,” she managed, “but I think parts of me are going numb.”

I clambered to my feet, pulled Emma to hers, and scrambled up the bank. We grumbled halfheartedly at Hamlet as we followed him into the meadow, and he responded by giving us a bone-chilling shower as he shook himself dry. When Emma ordered him to sit, he stretched out in the sunlight and closed his eyes.

I pushed my wet curls back from my forehead and followed his example. “Should’ve dumped Bill in the brook last night,” I commented, turning my face to the sun. “It would’ve sobered him up faster than thyme honey and tea.”

Emma wiped droplets from her glasses. “You seem awfully complacent about Bill’s delicate condition,” she observed. “Derek said you were breathing fire last night. How did Dimity manage to calm you down?”