Countdown (21 page)

‘Yeah, but he’s not creepy and that Uncle Max is. Then again, so’s that neighbor. What was his name?’

‘Neil Davenport. And yes, he’s creepy. Did you notice how his wife seemed to disappear into the woodwork?’ Jean said.

‘Oh, right. I forgot he had a wife.’

‘Exactly. And then there’s Walter’s old business partner.’

‘That weasel-faced little guy with the Amazonian wife?’ Jewel asked.

‘Yep.’

‘But he hardly seems the type—’

‘Bullied by a wife bigger, stronger and more assertive than he, and finding a child more pliable—’

Jewel shuddered. ‘Oh, stop! I can’t stand it! If anyone had done that to any of my children, I’d, I’d—’

‘Be really upset?’ Jean supplied.

‘I’d rip their bellies out with a garden hoe!’

‘Wow, you country folk really know your way around revenge!’ Jean said.

Jewel threw a cushion off the chaise lounge at her sister-in-law. ‘I’ll have you know I spent fifteen years in the big city of Houston – where revenge is a sport played on the freeways because somebody’s not going fast enough!’

Jean laughed. ‘True.’ Sobering, she said, ‘I’m sorry I brought this up—’

‘God, no! Don’t be sorry. I’m glad you shared it with me. Now I can be on guard, too.’ Jewel got up and walked to the bed, where she leaned down and hugged Jean. ‘I’m so sorry this happened to Paula – her past and her present. The poor thing – no wonder she was rude. I would be too just from having a mother like hers, not to mention the other stuff.’ She straightened and said, ‘I’m heading to bed. You get some rest.’ As Jean started to rise, Jewel motioned her back down. ‘Don’t get up! I’ll let myself out. You want me to lock your door?’

‘Sure,’ Jean said. ‘That might be a good idea. And you might want to do the same.’

‘Ha!’ Jewel said. ‘I’m not only going to lock it, I’m going to put a chair under it like you see in the movies!’

I went back to the shop only to find it all locked up. I opened it, went in and checked to make sure the phone system had been forwarded to our on-call deputy, which today was Jasmine Bodine Hopkins. I know she hates it when I put the ‘Bodine’ in there, as that was the name of her ex-husband who was a philandering shit and who also happened to be a total idiot. I guess I could substitute her maiden name, Flowers, but I always thought that was so damn cute it made me want to puke. Jasmine has three sisters: Iris, Rose, and Daisy. Mr and Mrs Flowers either had a weird sense of humor or were just plain cruel.

I called Jasmine on her house phone and Emmett picked up.

‘Hey,’ I said when I heard his voice. ‘Jasmine getting any calls?’

‘Got a cat up a tree. She told the old lady to call the fire department.’

‘Ah, they’re mostly still in the hospital,’ I said.

‘Yeah, should take her a while to figure that out. By then, the damn cat will have crawled down, if he hasn’t already,’ Emmett said.

‘Anything else?’ I asked.

‘Not a peep. You working?’

‘Went by and interviewed Larry Pottz, our drunk teenager in the cell next to Darrell’s.’

‘And?’

‘Not so much. He smelled the pizza, puked, heard Darrell and the pizza guy laughing about him puking, saw one of ’em open the box, saw the pizza and passed out. He thinks.’

‘You’re right. Not so much. Any more keen ideas?’ Emmett asked.

‘I need to check with Anthony. He was supposed to go by the ER this morning and see if anyone saw Drew and Joynell together, and set up a time to have a talk with Drew’s partner, Jasper. Other than that I’m gonna stick my hand up my ass and wait for you to come up with something.’

‘Hope you’re constipated, ’cause I don’t have diddly squat.’

‘Like I didn’t already know that.’ I said bye and hung up. Then I locked the shop back up and headed home. I thought it might be fun to get my son and go do something.
What
I didn’t know. He was grounded, sure, but from his friends, his iPad, his Xbox and his Wii, not from adventures with his dad. As I stepped outside it hit me. The sun was bright and warm, there was a cool breeze, and as I was the sheriff I figured it didn’t really matter that my license was twenty years out of date. I was gonna take my boy fishing.

Saturday at the mansion started with a modest breakfast in the family dining room, four newspapers for those who wanted to read –
The New York Times, The Kansas City Star, The Washington Post
and
The Wall Street Journal.
Jean and Jewel were alone in the room. Food was in chafing dishes on the large buffet and consisted of two types of scrambled eggs, bacon, sausage, biscuits, croissants and bowls of fruit. Before either of them had time to choose, the cook came out of the kitchen and asked, ‘Is there anything in particular you would like? A poached egg? Fried egg? Waffles? Hot cakes? I can do anything you want.’

‘No,’ Jean answered. ‘Thank you, but this is just fine.’

Jewel nodded her head in agreement. ‘Looks wonderful,’ she said.

‘I want eggs Benedict, Martha,’ said a voice entering the room. Jean turned to see one of the stepdaughters, Dru, going up to the table. ‘And some of that chi tea I brought with me. With half and half. Is that fruit fresh?’

‘Of course, Miss Dru,’ the cook said.

‘How fresh?’ Dru asked. ‘I mean, did you buy it at the store yesterday or what?’

‘It was brought in this morning from the farmer’s market,’ Martha the cook said.

‘Humph,’ Dru said, then sighed. ‘I guess that will have to do. Bring me the tea now.’

‘Of course, Miss Dru,’ Martha said, and backed out of the room.

Jean had the overwhelming urge to stick a bar of soap in the girl’s mouth. That had been her own mother’s choice of punishment for everything from foul language to skipping school to being rude. Instead she just said, ‘Good morning.’

The girl looked up like she’d just noticed the presence of the other women. ‘Oh. Right. Morning. Whatever.’

‘Did you sleep well?’ Jewel asked in what Jean had come to know as Jewel’s sweetly insincere voice. She used it on officious, rude and other sweetly insincere people.

‘What?’ Dru said, taking her eyes off the empty space she’d been staring into. ‘I guess. Whatever.’

Jewel laughed as she took her loaded plate back to the table. ‘You are so charming, Dru! Did you go to a special school to learn that?’

Dru stared at Jewel for a full minute, her face showing utter confusion. Finally she gave up trying to figure out what Jewel had said, uttered, ‘Whatever,’ and got up to go to the buffet for the almost adequately fresh fruit.

At that point the other stepdaughter, Megan, came into the room. The girls were negatives of each other. Megan was blonde and blue-eyed with a honey-colored complexion. Dru had very dark brown hair, brown eyes and a pale, freckled complexion. Other than that, they looked exactly the same. Square-jawed faces with pert noses and high cheekbones, both perfect size twos and almost exactly the same height. The only difference in the height, Jean figured, could very easily be the difference in shoes. Where Dru was wearing a Vanderbilt T-shirt, cut-offs and flip-flops, her sister was dressed more appropriate to her surroundings in gray trousers, a white long-sleeved blouse and flats with just a bit more heel than Dru’s flip-flops.

‘What are you having?’ Megan asked her sister as she entered the room.

Dru brought her fruit bowl back to the table. ‘I told Martha to fix me eggs Benedict,’ she said. ‘And she’s taking her own sweet time about it.’

‘Good morning, Doctor McDonnell, Mrs Monk,’ Megan said as she walked to the buffet. ‘How are these eggs with the red stuff?’

‘A little spicy,’ Jewel said, ‘but quite good.’

‘Oh, goody, I love spicy,’ Megan said and spooned a huge amount onto a plate, along with several rashers of bacon, some sausage links, a heaping scoopful of hash browns, then covered it all with cream gravy. She popped a grape into her mouth but that was it for the fruit. She sat down next to her sister.

‘Oh my God, how can you eat that crap?’ Dru demanded.

‘You just don’t know what’s good!’ Megan said, sticking a napkin in the front of her blouse to keep it clean.

‘I do know this – when I turn thirty I’ll still look great, while you’re going to be a freakish blob!’ Dru countered.

‘Uh uh,’ Megan said, her mouth full.

‘Uh huh!’ Dru said, taking a bite of fruit.

The cook came in with a tray which she handed to Dru. ‘Your eggs Benedict and your chi tea, Miss Dru.’

‘About time,’ Dru said, never looking at the cook, who glanced at Jean and Jewel, rolled her eyes and walked out.

Megan laughed. ‘I saw that!’

‘Saw what?’ Dru demanded as she cut up her food.

‘Never mind. It’s not for you to know.’

‘What’s not?’

‘What I’m not telling you!’

‘What aren’t you telling me?’ Dru demanded, having abandoned her attempt to cut her food in order to glare at her sister properly.

‘Oh my God! Where do I start? What am I not telling you?’ Megan shook her head and went for another forkful of scrambled eggs and gravy. ‘Let’s see, I failed, I’m sure, to mention that your half of our rent is due – or did I already tell you that? Oh, and you haven’t paid your share of the phone bill.’

‘Fuck off,’ Dru said and dove into her food.

Jean’s good right leg was going numb from the kicks she’d been receiving under the table from Jewel, and she was quite in awe of Megan’s ability to thwart her sister’s questioning and turn it around on her. When the two girls finally stopped their bickering, Jean asked, ‘Do you know what time we’ll be leaving for the funeral?’

Neither girl answered for a minute, then Megan looked up. ‘Oh, are you talking to us?’ Jean nodded and Megan nudged her sister, causing Dru to stick her forkful of eggs Benedict in her cheek rather than her mouth.

‘Watch it, for Christ’s sake!’ she said, elbowing Megan in the ribs.

Deflecting the blow, Megan said, ‘Doctor McDonnell wants to know what time we’re leaving for the funeral.’

‘Good for her,’ Dru said.

‘Do. You. Know!’ Megan bellowed.

‘No, I don’t fucking know! Jeez! Leave me alone so I can eat in peace!’ Dru said.

‘So the two of you live together?’ Jean asked.

‘Umm,’ Megan said, her mouth full of food. Swallowing, she said, ‘Yes, we do. We have an apartment off campus at KU.’

‘Oh!’ Jewel said. ‘I thought Dru went to Vanderbilt, what with the T-shirt and all.’

‘Ha!’ Megan said. ‘She couldn’t get into Vanderbilt even if Daddy hadn’t lost all his money. No, we both go to KU in Lawrence. Constance helps us with a small monthly stipend, but we both work so we don’t have to get student loans. I work at the campus bookstore and Dru works—’

‘Dru works,’ Dru said. ‘That’s all that matters.’

‘At a bar off campus. She waits tables. Unfortunately, with her personality, the tips aren’t that great,’ Megan continued.

‘Shut the fuck up,’ Dru said, bending further over her plate. Jean could see some color come to Dru’s face. So the girl could get embarrassed, Jean thought. Nice to know.

‘Which one of you is older?’ Jewel asked.

‘Me,’ Dru said.

‘By two minutes,’ Megan said. ‘We’re fraternal twins.’

‘Oh!’ Jewel said. ‘I didn’t realize that. What year are you at KU? My son’s at OU in his last year.’

‘Bully for him,’ Dru said under her breath.

‘We just started our junior year,’ Megan said.

‘And you’re majoring in …’ Jean left the sentence open-ended.

‘I’m in electrical engineering,’ Megan said. ‘Dru is studying … Hum. Dru?’ she said, turning to her sister. ‘What is it you’re studying this semester?’

‘Fuck off,’ Dru said, sinking even further into her plate.

Megan laughed. ‘Dru has changed her major every semester so far. I think possibly basket-weaving is her future.’

Jean was beginning to re-evaluate her first impression of the sisters. Although Dru definitely had an attitude problem, Megan was certainly showing signs of advanced mean-girl syndrome. Jean smiled to herself, thinking about the possibility of getting such a diagnosis past the board and onto the DSM – the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for mental disorders.

Dru reached out her free hand and began to paw through the newspapers on the table. ‘Why the hell isn’t there a
People
mag around here?’ she muttered. ‘This is all crap.’

‘Dru’s the intellectual one of the two of us,’ Megan said, then laughed out loud.

Yes, that diagnosis certainly needed to be in the DSM, Jean thought.

Constance came through the door to the family dining room. ‘Good morning, ladies,’ she said, smiling at one and all. ‘Lovely morning for a funeral. The sun is bright and the temperature is supposed to rise to at least the high seventies. A nice day to be outside, even if it is a cemetery,’ she said as she graced the buffet with her presence. She was wearing a floor-length dressing gown of raw silk – pale pink with pink fur-topped mules. Her hair and makeup had already been artfully arranged.

‘What time will we be leaving for the service?’ Jean asked.

‘The service will be at the funeral home at one p.m., then we’ll go from there to the cemetery where the Carmichael family plot is located. It’s fairly old and no longer in the best part of town, but Mother insists on the tradition,’ Constance said as she sat down with her plate. ‘So we’ll probably need to leave here a little after noon.’

Martha, the cook, stuck her head out. ‘Would you care for anything from the kitchen, Mrs Mills? Or you, Miss Megan?’

Both women shook their heads. ‘I’m fine, thank you, Martha,’ Constance said as the cook retracted her head and shut the door. Looking at Jean and Jewel, she said, ‘Mother insists on the ancient rituals, like having the servants come to the funeral, as if they thought of my sister as the little lady of the house. Most of the people now employed here weren’t with us when Paula and I were growing up and they only know her from the past three years, since she’s been back.’ She took a bite of scrambled eggs, chewed, swallowed and leaned closer to Jean and Jewel. ‘And these past three years have been a total disaster. Drunken binges, bringing strange men home at all hours of the night! Hung-over mornings when she’d lambast the servants for God only knows what reason!’ Constance shook her head. ‘I see no reason why these people should be dragged to the funeral.’