Aurora 08 - Poppy Done To Death (4 page)

Not so.

Though I’d always liked Poppy, and had often admired her terrifying habit of saying exactly what she thought, I didn’t approve of some aspects of her marriage. To me, marriage is the chance to put away the trappings of a single life and concentrate on making one good thing work really well. The cornerstone of this would have to be—in my view—faithfulness. There have to be some assumptions you make when you agree to bind your life to another person’s, and the basic assumption and maybe the most important of all is that this person will get your exclusive attention.

Poppy had had at least two flings that I knew about, and I would not have been surprised to hear there had been more. I had tried—real hard—not to judge Poppy, to enjoy the part of her I liked and ignore the part that made me queasy. I behaved this way for several reasons. The most important reason was that I was also bound to her by marriage, my mother’s marriage, and to make a family work, you have to be willing to keep your mouth shut and park your judgments by the door. The last thing in the world I wanted to do was complicate my mother’s life by causing trouble in our new family.

Another reason was my attempt to live my religion. When I’d dated our priest, Aubrey, he’d commented once or twice on my ardent wish not to cause trouble by speaking up about other people’s behavior. “You have to take a stand for what you believe,” he’d said. Well, that was true. What was the point of having beliefs if you didn’t express them and live them?

“I don’t have to take a stand by telling other people they’re wrong,” I’d protested. “What business is it of mine?”

“If you love them, it’s your business,” he’d said firmly. “If their misbehavior is intruding on the happiness and well-being of others, it’s your business.”

I don’t know what Aubrey would have said about Poppy and John David, because I never asked him. I always felt I had so many weaknesses myself that the last thing I should do was point out other people’s flaws to them. So I never mentioned their infidelities to John David or Poppy, and I didn’t want them to discuss those affairs with me.

For sure, I didn’t want that.

When other people would try to tell me what my in-laws were doing, I’d just hurry the subject right past my nose.

Avery interrupted these unwelcome memories to tell us that Poppy’s parents were on their way to Lawrenceton. John, my mother, Melinda, and I were sitting around the table in the kitchen, coffee mugs in front of us... trying. Trying to think what to do next. Trying not to talk about where John David might be. Trying not to think about what to do with Chase, a baby with a dead mother and a missing father.

“At least he’s weaned,” Melinda muttered to herself.

I raised an eyebrow at her.

“I bet Avery and I end up with him,” she said, then tried to sound happier about it. “He’s a sweet baby, but. . .” She struggled to keep the words “I already have my hands full” locked down in her throat. “Poppy’s parents are too old, Avery’s dad and your mom are too old, and I can’t picture John David raising a kid by himself, can you?”

No, I couldn’t.

“Poppy was a good mother,” Melinda said quietly. “You wouldn’t think so, but she was.”

I nodded. “Poppy had a lot of good qualities.”

“What—excuse me, Roe, but I need to know—what actually happened to her?” Melinda asked, keeping her voice hushed.

“I think someone stabbed her,” I said, not meeting Melinda’s dark eyes. I was actually quite sure about that, but I’m no coroner, and I wasn’t going to give any final judgment on Poppy’s death.

Melinda made a little sound of horror, and I winced in sympathy. How scared Poppy must have been . . . how much it must have hurt. Had she hoped Melinda and I would come to save her, arrive in the nick of time?

I snatched my mind away from this fruitless conjecture and gave myself a good scolding.

Poppy must have died very quickly, perhaps within a scant few seconds. Melinda pushed back from the table and left the room. Avery followed her. After a moment, I could hear the murmur of their voices coming from the living room.

My mother was watching John like a hawk, on the alert for signs of heart trouble. John was staring down at the table, studying a tablet open to a blank page. He’d stated his intention of starting a list of people he needed to contact, like the funeral home and the church, but he’d stalled. I knew that couldn’t wait any longer. I went upstairs, carrying the cordless phone into my old bedroom. I called Aubrey’s house.

“Hello.” It was the cool, composed voice of Emily, Aubrey’s wife.

“Emily, this is Aurora.” I sounded just as calm and sweet. We couldn’t stand each other.

“Hey, how are you?”

“Well, I’m fine, thanks, but we have a family trouble, and if Aubrey is handy . . .”

“Roe, he’s over at the country club, playing golf. Jeff Mayo asked him to make up a foursome. You know, Monday’s supposed to be his day off. ...” Her voice trailed away delicately.

Bitch.

“Yes, and if my sister-in-law hadn’t been murdered, I wouldn’t dream of disturbing him,” I said somewhat less sweetly.

A long silence.

“He has his cell phone,” Emily admitted. “Let me give you that number.”

“Thank you so much,” I said with no expression at all. Why couldn’t I have dated a vet, or a bartender, or a farmer? Why had I dated a cop and a minister before I met my first and now deceased husband, Martin Bartell?

Who shows up in emergencies? Policemen and preachers!

I repeated the number to make sure I’d gotten it right, then bid Emily good-bye. I knew she would set the drums beating to alert the Women of the Church to the imminence of a funeral meal. Emily always did her duty.

I took a deep breath and called Aubrey before I could change my mind.

I don’t like cell phones, and I almost never turn mine on; to me, it’s an emergency tool, like a car jack or a rifle. But today I was really glad our priest had one.

He said he’d be at the house in thirty minutes.

Aubrey made it in forty minutes, and he was wearing his black shirt and dog collar when he rang the doorbell. Aubrey had had very dark hair when I met him, and he was graying heavily now. He’d shaved his mustache the year before, which had changed his appearance drastically.

And he’d gained a few pounds, even though he played golf, tennis, and ran three times a week.

Still, Aubrey was an attractive man, and Emily was very watchful around the single female members of the congregation—and some of the married ones, for that matter.

Take Poppy, for example. Emily had always been markedly cold toward Poppy, who had laughed it off.

I took a ragged breath and hugged Aubrey out of sheer thankfulness for his presence. Then I took him into the kitchen.

Somehow, the appearance of the priest gave weight and substance to the fact of Poppy’s death. If the priest showed up, it had to be true. Aubrey’s arrival was both a shock and a relief.

I wandered in and out of the kitchen, keeping a sharp eye on John. He looked good, considering the horror of the day. He was practically vibrating with worry over John David’s absence. I thought he would not feel the impact of Poppy’s death until he could be sure of his son’s whereabouts and safety.

John had to be aware that we were all thinking that until John David showed up to establish his innocence, he was the chief suspect in his wife’s murder.

Even John had to be thinking that.

Where the hell could John David be? I walked through the kitchen, the dining room, the formal living room, back through the family room. Then I made the circuit again. I noticed my pattern was irritating the hell out of Avery, but that was just his bad luck. It helped me think.

If I were John David, and I’d left work early, and my wife was busy, and my son was safely at his aunt’s house ... I’d go visit my mistress. The answer popped into my mind with the air of finality your subconscious reserves for sure things. Whom had John David been seeing lately? I could feel my upper lip wrinkle with faint disgust at even considering such a question. I made myself comb through the half-heard rumors.

There was Patty Cloud, who’d worked for my mother for several years before becoming Mother’s second in command. I’d never cared for Patty, who was a cold and manipulative woman. There was Romney Burns, the daughter of a murdered detective in the Lawrenceton Police Department. There was Linda Pocock Erhardt, whose bridesmaid I’d been; Linda, divorced for many years, had two daughters in high school, and I knew she should be at work today. She was a nurse for my doctor, Pincus Zelman.

I felt much better now that I had a mission. I slipped out of my mother’s house and into my car and began touring the town. I’d never driven through Lawrenceton hunting down love nests before, and I felt queasy about doing it now. I know I’m not such a wonderful moral person.

But somehow, the slipping and creeping, the surreptitiousness of it, the deceiving . . . well, I had to shrug and sigh all over again at my own censoriousness.

Linda’s car, as I’d expected, was parked behind the doctor’s office. And there was a phalanx of vehicles in the parking lot. I was 98 percent sure that Linda was inside taking temperatures and blood pressures, just as she ought to be. I called my mother’s office and asked for Patty, and when she came to the phone, I told her my mother wouldn’t be in for the rest of the day.

Patty replied in a puzzled sort of way, saying that my mother had already called her to let her know that very thing, and I laughed weakly. “Guess we got our signals crossed in all the confusion,” I said, and Patty said, “Um-hum” in a loathsomely skeptical way.

That left the least palatable alternative.

Linda and Patty were both strong women, veterans of the divorce wars, and both quite capable of making their own decisions. Romney Burns was neither of those things. Romney’s apartment was a duplex, and I spotted John David’s car immediately, parked in the neighbor’s driveway. I assumed the neighbors were at work and that this was John David’s way of casting up a smoke screen. How subtle.

Romney was a lot younger than John David. Romney was— well, she had to be less than twenty-six, I rapidly figured. And she’d lost her father less than two years before. Sandy-haired and fair, Romney had shed the weight she’d carried in high school by the time she graduated from college and returned to Lawrenceton, where she’d gotten a poor-paying white-collar job in the financial aid office of the junior college. Mother had told me Romney was the financial aid officer’s assistant.

I hoped they didn’t have any loan emergencies at Sparling Junior College today, because it looked like Romney was home.

I took a deep and unwilling breath before knocking on the shabby door. I would rather have been pulling my eyebrow hairs out one by one than doing this.

Naturally, Romney answered. Her light hair was a real mess, and she was clothed only in a bathrobe. It took her a second to recognize me, and when she did, she looked disgruntled. I hadn’t been her father’s favorite person, either.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped. She had to realize that seeing John David’s sister-in-law at her door meant bad things.

“John David needs to get his clothes on and get out here right now,” I said, abandoning any attempt to put a polite gloss on the situation.

“Who?” she blustered, but she discarded that quickly. Then she straightened. “Well, maybe I better come, too, since I might be a member of the family before too long,” she said, both defensive and proud.

“Oh bull,” I said. “This is the third place I tried to find John David, honey. Not the first.”

I saw comprehension leak into her eyes as she struggled to maintain her position. “He loves me,” she said.

“Right, that’s why you two are walking down Main Street arm in arm,” I said, and turned my back on her. The door slammed behind me. Big surprise.

“What the hell is this about?” John David said when he joined me. He was put back together pretty well, as far as clothing goes, but his composure had big holes in it. John David had a more florid coloring than his father and brother, and fairer hair. He was a powerfully built man, and a handsome one. But I didn’t like him anymore, and in my eyes, he would always be ugly.

“John David,” I said slowly, suddenly realizing I’d condemned myself to breaking the news.

“How long have you been here?”

“What business is it of yours?”

We faced each other, standing by my car.

“Believe me, it’s my business. Tell me.”

John David was no fool, and he’d picked up on the undertone.

“I’ve been here since I drove back from the office at eleven,” he said. His voice was even.

“Now, you tell me what’s happened.”

“It’s Poppy.” I met his eyes squarely.

His face began to crumple. I swear that he looked as though this were news to him.

“Poppy was attacked in your house after you left this morning.”

“So she’s in the hospital?” There was a desperate hopefulness on his face.

“No,” I said. No point stringing this out. I took a deep breath. “She didn’t survive.”

He scanned my face for any sign that what I was saying wasn’t true, that my words might have some other meaning.

He knew before he asked, but I guess he had to. “You mean she’s dead,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “When Melinda and I went to check on her, she was gone. I called the police.

I’m very sorry.”

Then I had to hold this man I didn’t even like anymore. I had to put my arms around him and keep him from sinking to the ground while he wept. I could smell the scents of his deodorant and his aftershave, the laundry detergent that Poppy had used on his clothes—and the smell of Romney. It was intimate and disgusting.

There really was nothing more to say.

When he calmed a little bit, I told him he had to go to the police.

“Why?” he said blankly.

“They’re looking for you.”

“Well, now you’ve found me.”

“They’re looking for
you
.”

That got his attention.

“You mean that they think I might have killed her?”

“They need to rule it out,” I said, which was as diplomatically as I could phrase it.