Aurora 08 - Poppy Done To Death (7 page)

“Did you win?” I asked him.

“No,” Robin said, though he sounded cheerful. “But the panel was standing room only, and my signing line went out of the room. Awards are nice, but sales are better.”

“How’s your signing at the bookstore going?”

“Just about to get under way. I’m signing with Margaret Maron, and the store is jam-packed.”

So he had a group of people waiting for him.

“I just have some things I had to tell you,” I said anxiously.

“You’re all right?” His voice was suddenly sharp. “Your stepfather okay?”

“I’m fine, Robin,” I said, my voice soft. “And John is healthy. But John David’s wife, Poppy?

She got killed this morning.”

“In a car?” he said cautiously.

“No, she was murdered.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. From your voice, I’m betting you found her.”

“I’m afraid so.”

“Shall I come home right now?”

“Bless you for offering. But there’s more.”

A long pause. “I’m listening,” he said, just when I was about to ask if he’d hung up. “Did you get arrested?” He wasn’t entirely joking.

“My brother Phillip is here.”

“Your brother? Oh, sure! The little guy who was staying with you all those years ago! Hasn’t he been living in Pomona? What’s he doing in Lawrenceton?”

“He’s at least five eight or nine now,” I said. “And he got here by running away from home.”

“Uh-oh. You talked to your dad and the new wife?”

“She’s not so new now, and my dad cheated on her. Phillip walked in on this little episode,” I said. “That’s supposed to be the reason he ran away, but I’m finding that a little, I don’t know, extreme.”

“So, what do you think the real reason is?”

“Maybe time will tell. He’s going to stay here for at least a week.”

“Hmm. Okay.”

“Yeah, I know,” I said. “He needs this right now.”

“No problem. If you don’t need me instantly, I’ll just do two more signings tomorrow, one in Austin and one in Dallas, and then I’ll fly home from there.”

“I sure will be glad to see you,” I said. “But you keep up with your signing schedule.” I was flattered and delighted that Robin would offer to do that, but at the same time, it scared me.

Had we rushed into this comfortable intimacy? I had just adjusted to being alone in my widowhood when Robin had unexpectedly returned to Lawrenceton. It hadn’t taken long to resume our relationship of a few years ago. Though I hadn’t yet brought myself to discuss my doubts with Robin, I had been thinking the past couple of weeks that we might have hurried things too much. But the minute Robin had left for his convention, I’d missed him. Now I found myself looking forward to his return, not only for the pleasure of his physical presence but because I’d be glad to have his support and his insight— especially in matters regarding Phillip. After all, Robin had been a teenage boy once upon a time.

“I have to go sign some books,” Robin said gently.

The doorbell chimed. “And I have to go answer the door,” I told him. “Just let me know when you’re coming in, and I’ll pick you up at the airport.”

“I left my car there so I could bring my mother back with me,” he reminded me. “Her plane gets in right after mine. I’ll call you when I’m back.”

When I remembered that Robin would not exactly be at my disposal when he returned, I was so distracted by my disappointment that I answered the door without looking through the peephole. That was a bad habit, and one I’d have to break. When I’d lived out in the country, I’d heard every visitor before they’d gotten to the door, and I’d had time to look out the window to find out who it was. Town living was different.

Bubba Sewell, my lawyer (and possibly my next state representative), was looming in my doorway. Cartland Sewell was a big man anyway, and he’d put on the pounds since he’d married my beautiful friend Lizanne.

“Is it true?” he asked.

“Hello. Glad to see you. Why don’t you come in,” I said, waving my hand down the hall. I knew I sounded pissed off, and I was.

“I’m a little too upset for the amenities, Aurora,” he said. When he was in the house, I got a better look at him. Bubba had been crying. I reminded myself to call him Cartland; since he’d gotten into politics, Cartland had been the name of choice.

“What’s put a bee in your bonnet?”

“Poppy,” he said. He seemed to have trouble getting the name out.

I looked at him for a long moment. “So the rumor is true.”

“Yeah, it’s true. I was actually thinking of. . .”

“You weren’t going to leave Lizanne?” I sounded every bit as horrified as I felt. “You idiot!”

Cartland looked as though he was thinking of slapping me. And I would almost have deserved it if he had; not that I think hitting is ever excusable, but I’d been unbearably tactless.

“Poppy was so wonderful,” he said. “She was so beautiful, and she was ... in intimate moments . . . she, ah . . .”

“Don’t want to know,” I said. “Too much information!”

He looked a little embarrassed. “Sorry. But you just don’t know,” he said. “She was everything to me. I wanted her to run off with me.”

“Meaning an end to your political ambitions, your marriage, and your relationship with your children?”

“I could have patched things up politically, eventually,” he said, sounding as if he really believed it. “Lizanne and I don’t get along anyway. And how could she stop me from having a relationship with my own sons?”

“There’s still a lot you don’t know about Lizanne, if you believe that.”

“Roe, Lizanne is a great woman, and she’s beautiful and peaceful and she’s a good mother to the boys, but. . .” He waved his hands in frustration.

“But what?” I snapped.

“But Lizanne’s so
dumb!”
he said. It was as if the words had been ripped out of him.

I opened my mouth to rebut his blunt assessment, but I made myself think over what he’d said. Poppy hadn’t exactly been a rocket scientist, but she was shrewd, and practical, and a follower of world and local events. And she was articulate in voicing her ideas and opinions.

That’s why she’d been tapped to be an Uppity Woman. Poppy was—had been—a very different animal than Lizanne, who admittedly had very limited interests. Lizanne’s intellectual boundaries had never seemed to bother any man before, as I reminded Cartland now.

“You know as well as I know, Roe, that being attracted to someone physically is not the same as being her constant companion.”

“But you’re not Lizanne’s constant companion. You go out almost every night to this or that meeting, and everyone knows you’re counting on a political future.”

“And the reason I did all that was at least partly to get away from Lizanne.”

“I’ve never heard of anyone running for office to avoid a spouse.” Cartland wanted to be our next state representative.

“I’ve done a lot of things lately I never thought I’d do.”

I didn’t like the sound of that. I took a step away from him. “When did you last see Poppy?”

“I saw her last night. John David was going to be at some meeting, so I stopped by.”

“How’d you get in?”

“Went to the front door. I figured it might as well be an open visit, since it wasn’t going to last that long, not with John David due back within the hour. I helped her bathe Chase,” he said tenderly.

I could have beaten him on the head with a baseball bat. I was willing to bet Lizanne could have used some help bathing Brandon and Davis. Why did this man think he was any smarter than his wife? And I’d been considering voting for this jerk!

“When did you leave?” I asked after an appreciable pause to regain control.

“I guess about. . . eight-thirty. She was wearing a bathrobe, since she’d gotten wet bathing Chase,” he said dreamily. “Her hair was all curly from the humidity in the bathroom. She told me she’d think about divorcing John David. I think she would have done it.”

“And who do you think killed her?” I asked, conversationally throwing cold water on his fantasies.

“Her husband,” Cartland said, and he didn’t look like an overweight lawyer anymore. He looked dangerous. “I know it was John David.”

“And how do you know that?”

“She must have told him,” Cartland said reasonably. “She must have told him she was going to leave him for me, and he killed her for it.”

“Where were you all morning?”

“Oh for God’s sake, Roe! I went to my office and worked until about eleven, when I left to speak at the Rotary Club in Mecklinburg.” Mecklinburg was about fifteen miles away. “I was there, in front of about forty people, for the next hour and a half.”

I was going to have to talk to Lizanne soon, and I dreaded it. Those embroidered straps were still stuffed into my purse, and if Lizanne hadn’t gone to Poppy’s house and thrown them down in the driveway to let Poppy know she knew the situation, I was a Jersey girl.

“Okay, get out.”

“What?”

“Get out. I’ve listened to as much as I’m going to.”

Cartland looked stunned. “But Roe, I was trying to explain—”

“Go to hell. You’ve just told me you’ve been cheating on your wife, who is a good friend of mine, with the wife of my brother-in-law; and you are evidently assuming that your wife would be happy to raise two sons of yours on her own, while you raise John David’s boy! You actually think Poppy would have left John David? You’re a moron! Get out! And keep your grief to yourself!”

I had herded Cartland to the front door, snapping at his heels like a sheepdog, and now he left in something of a hurry. I slammed the door shut and glowered at it.

For a few minutes, I hovered outside Phillip’s door, afraid we might have wakened him. But there was no movement from the room, no rustle of sheets. Struck with the sudden fear that he’d crawled out of the window, I opened the door a crack, and was reassured by the sight of a big bare foot hanging off the end of the bed.

I eased the door shut as silently as I could, then I hovered in the hall, trying to think of what I should do next.

Amazingly, it was only 5:00 p.m. Since it was November, the daylight was almost gone, but I thought of some errands I needed to run. I hastily wrote a note and stuck it to Phillip’s doorknob. After checking his clean clothes for sizes, I pitched them back in the dryer and set off for the small branch of Davidson’s that Lawrenceton was proud to have. I got my brother a package of underwear, a bundle of socks, a pair of jeans and a pair of khakis, and two shirts, a T-shirt and a nice sports shirt, and a jacket. Crossing over to Wal-Mart, I quickly purchased a comb and brush, a toothbrush, and a razor and some shaving cream. I grabbed some gloves, too; his hands had been bare.

Satisfied that I could clothe and clean him, I made one more stop, at the grocery store. I had a dim awareness that teenage boys ate a lot, but I wasn’t really sure what they ate a lot of. I got some frozen pizzas, some Bagel Bites, and some egg rolls. I got some milk, too, and a bottle of soda.

By the time I’d unloaded all this booty and folded Phillip’s dry clothes, it was seven o’clock.

I called Mother to find out what was happening. She sounded exhausted and tearful, and she said John wasn’t feeling very well. After a long, long “interview” with Arthur Smith, John David had arrived at the house to assume his role as chief mourner. Mother thanked me from the heart for running him to ground and getting him to go into SPACOLEC with Bryan Pascoe.

“Avery was really angry for a while, but I think he sees now that you were right,” Mother said.

“I’m sorry if you’ve had to take the fallout from people who were really mad at me,” I said.

The thought did cross my mind that it seemed to take very little to make Avery angry with me.

“I had to stay with Phillip, to get him straightened out.”

“I do wish all this hadn’t happened at the same time.” I knew Mother had to have been really distressed even, to voice that much complaint about something that simply couldn’t be helped.

“John told Avery that you’d done more practical things to help our family than had even occurred to him. John, that is.”

“That was sweet of John,” I said, abruptly aware of how fond I was of my stepfather. He was a better man than my real father. I felt cold and disloyal for that thought instantly, but I made myself face it and admit it was true. God wasn’t going to strike me dead for admitting my own father wasn’t a perfect man.

“How long is the boy staying?” my mother asked. Her voice was a little stiff. She had always had a hard time with the existence of another child of my father’s, but I hoped she would get over it right now.

“I think at least for this week. He’s out for Thanksgiving break now. I got the impression that things are going pretty badly between Dad and Betty Jo.” No point in spelling out my father’s peccadilloes. As far as my mother was concerned, it was an old story. “Phillip got caught up in the middle of that. He made his way over here, and I hope he can stay for a while. He’s so big now, Mother, you wouldn’t recognize him.”

“Just like Phil, messing up a second chance to get it right,” my mother said.

This was such a vulnerable way to put it, and her voice was so unhappy, it was hard for me to believe I was listening to the same stiff-backed woman who had created her own fortune after my dad had left her. The shock of Poppy’s death had cracked Mother wide open.

“Have Poppy’s parents come in yet?”

“No, they’ll be here in about an hour, I think. Then poor John will have to go through another emotional scene.”

“Why?”

“Well, he feels obligated.”

“No, Mother. John David is obligated, not his dad. You make John go to bed, tell him John David and Avery can handle the Wynns. In fact, they can all go to Avery and Melinda’s. For that matter, I can put the Wynns up. I have another bedroom, and all I have to do is go make the bed.”

That would make my life even even more confusing, but I wanted to help my mother any way I could.

“I’ll give you a call back on that. But you’re right,” she said resolutely. “John needs to rest more than he needs to worry. Avery and Melinda are perfectly capable of handling whatever comes up. And poor John, he keeps thinking that he and John David are so alike because John lost his first wife and now John David’s lost his ... but the situation is totally different. Tell me, where was John David when you tracked him down?”