The Dead Past (3 page)

There are times you must return home to a place that is no longer home, and you might startle yourself with how easily the movements become familiar again. How quickly you fall back into the same routines, and how at ease you feel coming back to them.

I stepped into the kitchen and brought out what she'd made, dish by dish, though we'd never eat it all. I tried not to ruminate while she fixed me a heaping plate: eggs Benedict, French toast, buttered bagels, hash browns, and enough bacon to harden my arteries just by staring at it. She always
cooked
as if we had a large family left.

"I can only assume that Deputy Tully picked you up at the airport for a specific reason?"

"Not really," I said.

She smiled. "He knew I'd call you immediately, and realized you'd take the first flight in. He's a bright and caring man, even if a bit standoffish. He deserves to be in charge of our police force more so than Sheriff
Broghin
." Her lips curled when she said his name, and I wondered for the nth time if it was true that they'd been lovers five decades ago. I'd never gotten up the guts to ask her, though I knew she'd tell me the truth. I didn't want to think about how narrowly I'd avoided being related to
Broghin
. "I'm obligated to ask ... have they discovered anything new since last night?"

This was going to be some meal, all right.

"Lowell didn't say much."

"Eat, dear, eat."

I tried to eat, answer, and not talk with my mouth full all at the same time and nearly choked to death. "Swallow, dear, swallow."

"He told me that Wallace's report would be ready"— I glanced at the kitchen clock—"right about now."

"Good. We'll phone when we've finished eating."

"Don't get pushy, Anna. It took us a while to mend a few neighborly fences after your last couple of encounters with
Broghin
and Wallace."

"I would not call them, in effect,
my
encounters. If two men in such a professional capacity as they are inclined to let ego and petty rivalries get in the way of serving the common good, then it only proves my point that we must, on occasion, circumvent these by-the-book police investigations."

I glanced over at her bookstand and saw that she'd been reading too much goddamn Miss
Marple
again.

"Easy for you to say, Anna; it wasn't you who spent time in a cell with a drunk who cried all night long about spiders crawling out of his eyes."

"I can't argue that."

"At last."

"But are you willing to allow that the police can overlook the more . . . imaginative crimes, due to their formal training?"

"I'd rather have spiders crawl out of my eyes than answer that." How could I deny it, considering she and I had helped
Broghin
out six times in as many years, tracking down two blackmailers, a child-
napper
, and three murderers, including the filth who had killed my parents?

But my grandmother hadn't spent time in a county jail cell for contempt of court or resisting arrest, and I had. And while a cell in Felicity Grove was vastly different than one on
Rikers
Island, it was still no picnic waking up for nearly three months with bars surrounding you.

She also hadn't been slashed across the chest with a Bowie knife, shot a half inch above her kidneys, or had her left clavicle broken twice. And as rotten as jail was, a hospital bed was even uglier, with tubes jammed in your nostrils and mouth and sticking out of your forearms, blood and sugar dripping the entire sleepless night like the Chinese water torture, with catheters shoved up my personally favorite organ, one which should definitely not have things shoved up it.

"This is different," I told her. This had a personal touch to it, with a corpse left right out front like a calling card or a private message, or worse, a dare. That frightened the hell out of me.

"Perhaps."

"It's called obstructing justice, Anna."

"It's justice, period," she said with finality. Anubis noticed the edge in her voice and lifted his head beside her. We were and weren't arguing about the same thing; I wanted answers too, and I had no compunction with going around
Broghin
or anybody else if I felt it was necessary. Six years ago it had been, and I'd sidestepped the overweight, tobacco-chewing, walking-short sheriff and the rest of his department, and I'd do it again if I had to.

I ate without much appetite. Talking about murder over eggs just wasn't an appealing combination so far as I was concerned. Distracted, I felt my attention continually being tugged away from what I was saying. Something about the house was different, I thought, but I couldn't be sure, and the harder I glanced about the room the stronger the feeling became.

"What is it?" she asked.

The photographs on the living room wall had been changed: frames held new pictures. My parents smiled out from behind clinked champagne glasses; me as a kid on a tricycle had been replaced by me as a kid scribbling with crayons; plenty of people I didn't know grinned and laughed and
shmoozed
for the camera: four young women in uncomfortable-looking swimwear sat by a pool laughing, and my grandfather sat posing in a recliner with a copy of Steinbeck's
The Wayward Bus
opened on his lap.

"You've noticed," Anna said.

"I know that I'm getting way too maudlin, but you too?"

"Sentimental perhaps, but that's not entirely the reason why. Last week I was cleaning out that junk closet and found a great many old letters. Thoughts of one friend turned to another and another, like dominoes of memory, and soon I was digging in other closets as well, looking through photo albums that haven't been opened for years."

"I like the change."

"At first, I wasn't sure if I would, having grown so accustomed to the way things were. But I enjoy the shift in the scenery, if you will."

I went to the wall and studied the age-cracked photographs. There was a picture of my mother, taken when she was maybe ten, sitting on the curb just outside with a
skirtful
of tulips, playing with a black kitten while a sprinkler shot a high arc of water behind them. Seeing the front of the house from that angle dredged up a question I'd been meaning to ask. "Who discovered the body here at midnight, Anna? This morning you said, ‘His body was found in my garbage can...'"

The smile stayed stapled to her face but the warmth fled. "I should have clarified the point. Jim
Witherton
was returning home from his night security job. In the blizzard he noticed something odd on the lawn as he drove by but couldn't be certain as to what. Apparently it stuck with him and a few minutes later he walked back down the block and discovered Richie
Harraday
in his unenviable position. Jim woke me then and I telephoned the police immediately."

"He stayed with you?"

"Yes, until the sheriff and Deputy Tully arrived. He's now employed with
Syntech
computer labs over in Norwood County. Are you familiar with it?”

“Yes." They had their own private security force at
Syntech
, and I'd heard that the training program was as difficult as the police academy; good, that made me feel a little better, knowing that a rent-a-cop was only up the block. "How long did it take for
Broghin
to arrive?"

She paused and considered. "No more than ten or fifteen minutes.”

“Did you inspect the area before he got here?”

“No," was the flat answer she gave—chin held high, gathering a haughty air about her like a sweater—but she said a lot more with her eyes. I know my grandmother in ways that parents can never know their children, to a point that most siblings will never arrive. I remembered how Anubis had whined, picking up the vibes of his mistress. I knew she had been terrified last night. Did she see more than she was telling? Was Anna hiding something?

"Will you call Wallace or shall I?" she asked.

"You can do it.”

“Fine. Afterwards, I think we will begin with—”

“No," I said. "Before anything else, I want to visit the cemetery."

This house was full of ghosts, those of my parents and those of our making. Blood followed blood. The dead could stuff your lungs if you let them. "I should go, too. I haven't been quite as conscientious in the past weeks as I should have been, but the weather often makes it difficult for me.”

“I wasn't chastising you, Anna."

I wondered if Richie
Harraday's
brother, Maurice, would visit him a lot. Anna kept an eye on the photographs, on herself and the unsaved. "I would accompany you but I realize you'd rather go alone.”

“That's true," I said, "but right now I'm going to buy some flowers."

~ * ~

Gouts of snow and slush spattered the windshield. I drove Anna's van downtown; learning to use the hand controls had been hellish in the beginning, and I was thankful I remained adept.

Even with the cold I kept the window down. The air felt good in my face—I must've looked like Anubis when he came for a ride, his snout turned into the breeze—with room to move and air to breathe and no steel monoliths or crackheads hogging the view. In a couple of days I'd be bored out of my socks with the town, but for the moment I enjoyed the change in atmosphere.

I'd been wondering what had happened to Margaret Gallagher's flower shop after her death, whether it had been closed or put under new management. I would miss Margaret's chattiness and empathy, and all the flowers and kind words she'd given me since the death of my parents.

I made a left onto Fairlawn and passed the shop. There was a WE'RE OPEN sign on the door, so I parked at the curb and walked in. Chimes that had never been there before tinkled as I entered.

On rare occasions life unfolds like a series of scenes from a good movie.

You step into, say, a flower shop, and there is a girl with her back towards you. It is an extremely sexy back, and you don't even try to make an effort to understand how a back can be sexy. You take what you can get. She turns slowly in your direction, this owner of the back, and you see, inch by inch as she completes her turn, that the front is as beautiful as the back. Her face is a compendium of all the lovely features you want to be there; the dark hair falls in thick curls that frame her face in such a way as to highlight each quality; animate green eyes like a fortune in jade, a smile both luscious and yet unintimidating. Most people would say the freckles across her nose had been "splashed" there, but you disagree. Each seems painstakingly placed to perfectly underscore those eyes, smooth skin, the dimples and sleek jaw line, and you learn something of her life by each soft etching of furrow in her forehead.

You hope she is not as crazy as your ex-wife.

Of course, by this point she is asking, "Can I help you?" for the third time and you are staring like an idiot.

I snapped out of it and smiled, trying my best not to fawn too blatantly, and failing. "
Uhm
, ah, I'd like to buy some flowers," was my stimulating response. I could feel my IQ plummet to below sea level.

She proved to be kind, though, and didn't make an issue out of my obvious stupidity. "Well, you've come to the right place then." She laughed gently and Cupid nailed me in the chest with another batch of arrows. I promised God not to be so chintzy this time if only this girl would marry me before sunset.

She had one of those crooked grins that clamp down at the ends, adding a round friendliness to her face. It was then I noticed she looked familiar. "Were you looking for anything in particular, or just a bouquet?"

"Tulips," I answered.

She led me to the refrigerated area in the back where the fresh flowers were stored. She went through the racks, shoving various bins aside, opening other doors and pulling out different types of flora, but no tulips. "I'm sorry, but we're out. I'm new at this and having a heck of a time getting the proper ordering forms in to the right people."