Family Practice (9 page)

Taylor? They all thought he was a plain, old-fashioned fortune hunter when Dorothy married him. He was too slick, too smooth, and—in Ellen's opinion—not to be trusted an inch. He must have gotten a nasty shock when he found out the money wasn't all that easy to get at. Ellen uncoiled herself, padded over to the chest, and poured a glass of white wine.

“Don't talk nonsense,” Willis said, flushed. “None of us killed Dorothy.”

Carl stretched his mouth in a tired smile. “The cops are looking for motive, among other things. Every one of us benefits from Dorothy's death.” He looked at Taylor and tossed off the remainder of his drink. “Except perhaps the grieving husband. But we don't know about that, do we?”

“I fully realize you'd all like to pin it on me.” Taylor looked at them one by one, his slightly bloodshot eyes scornful. Had he been crying? His voice was level, but Ellen noticed dots of perspiration on his forehead. “All of you gain from her death. I don't. I've lost my wife. I just identified her body.”

His eyes were suddenly moist. Could he have loved her? Totally untried thought.

“Nicely done,” Carl said dryly. “Although there is Dorothy's own money. Can we assume that goes to you? And we don't actually know she didn't do something sneaky about our mother's will.”

“The ancestral home?” Taylor laughed. “You can bet that stays in the family. Willis has probably already started packing. And Vicky's making up schedules for remodeling.”

“There's no need to throw around accusations,” Marlitta said. “It's preposterous to think one of us killed her.”

It might be preposterous, Ellen thought, but they all were sliding glances at one another and wondering.

Not a one of them mentioned the gun.

8

U
PSTAIRS IN HER
old room, Ellen spent a restless night with sleep lurking just around the corner and being chased back by memories.

“Ellen! Get up!” Dorothy was calling from the foot of the stairs. “Hurry up! You're going to be late.”

Ellen woke, groggily rolled over, and was on her feet before she realized she'd been dreaming. Easing down on the side of the bed, she leaned forward and gripped the edge of the mattress with both hands. For a moment, she'd been fourteen and hearing Dorothy yelling at her to get up, she'd be late for school.

Oh, God. Just dump her back here and she was a kid again. The room hadn't even been changed. Heavy oak bed with carved posts, dresser, bookshelves with kids' books. Cripes, books she hadn't looked at since she was ten. Stuffed animals all over the place. Same quilted bedspread with squares of different kinds of flowers. Yeah, well, don't knock it. You lived in here. With Daddy away so much, Mama always working, and brothers and sisters so much older, she'd mostly been left to herself. Those old books were friends.

She crept to the window and slid aside the lace curtain to let in the pearly light of pre-dawn. The thin nightgown reached to her knees, and she tugged it up to kneel on the window seat, looked out at the backyard. There was not yet enough light to see the masses and masses of flowers her mother loved so much. A gardener took care of all that now, but not when Mama was alive. She was better with flowers than with children.

Ellen pulled on a robe, opened the door a crack, and peered out. The house was silent. She wondered if Taylor had gotten any sleep. What had he thought about in the wee hours of the night? She padded across the hall to the bathroom and turned on the shower.

Dressed in jeans and a striped blouse neatly tucked in, she moved quietly along the wide hallway toward the stairs. At the doorway to the sunroom, she paused. The wall of windows reflected the rosy tint of sunrise and gave a ghostly cast to the white wicker loveseats. Daddy used to be wheeled in here, after his stroke. He'd sit slumped in the chair, face stiff and distorted on one side, unable to speak with any sense. Her throat tightened, and tears prickled her eyes.

Downstairs in the kitchen, she started a pot of coffee, found some bread, and dropped two slices in the toaster. She tried not to make any undue noise, just like when she was a kid and hoping not to attract Dorothy's attention. Waiting for the toaster to do its thing, she stood by the back door and watched the world get light. Except on schooldays, she always got up early. There was something secret and exciting about being the only one awake in a sleeping world.

She pressed her hands hard against the sides of her face, trying to get a grip on reality. Weird being back here. Right back into the same slot in the family, same patterns of thought, same habits. Like all those years in between hadn't happened. Maybe she could stay with one of the others.

When the toast popped, she jumped. She smeared on butter and forced herself to eat. No taste. Hard to swallow. She was putting off driving out to her place, afraid of what she'd find. Or not find. Putting off thinking about it too.

Like a good product of Dorothy's training, she stacked the dishes, brushed up the crumbs, and then found the small thermos in the corner cabinet, right where it had always been. Nothing ever changed. So go stay someplace else. Willis wouldn't mind, but what about Vicky? Marlitta? Ellen grimaced. Definitely not. Brent would probably paw at her in the living room with Marlitta in the kitchen. Carl, maybe. She could ask.

She poured coffee in the thermos, heard Taylor stirring around, quickly screwed on the cap, and left by the back door.

It was working up to another hot, humid day. The forecaster on the car radio predicted more rain. Too bad. There'd been too much already. Better pick up her raincoat while she was there. Past the old wooden water tower on the edge of town she speeded up.

The sky was early-morning blue, only one huge, cottony cloud streaked with pink. Behind barbed wire, the fields on both sides had standing water. A meadowlark sitting on a stone fence post sang a long trill of flutelike gurgles. She topped a rise and headed downhill. In the low-lying area on her right, part of the Kress farm, the field was nothing but a big lake. Tethered in the center was a gaudy, inflatable sea horse with enormous eyes and a dopey grin. She braked as she came to a hand-lettered sign: “Lock Kress Monster.” She burst out laughing, took her foot from the brake, and pressed the accelerator.

From the crest of the next hill, she could see her stone house—her very own—the trees tall behind, the hills lush and green rising and falling away. Just seeing it helped restore her adult self. After a deep breath of woodsy-smelling air, she went inside, plonked the thermos on the pine table, and went around opening windows. It was almost chilly inside; the thick walls made the house nearly impervious to heat. She opened the kitchen door. Across a corner at the top of the frame, a large spiderweb, covered with dew, sparkled like diamonds.

The house wasn't large but had enough space to suit her: a good-sized kitchen; a living room with a stone fireplace; a bedroom and bath in the rear as well as the big room she used as an office; two small attic rooms with steep-pitched ceilings under the eaves. So far the upstairs rooms were empty, but she'd labored for hours refinishing the wide board floors.

Yanking open the bedroom closet door, she shoved boxes and clutter aside and grabbed the shoe box buried beneath.
Oh, shit.
The box was too light. She flipped off the lid. Empty. No no
no.

Even though she knew it was useless, stupid, a waste of time, she searched every room, every little niche and hidey-hole. All she accomplished was a broken vase, nudged off the shelf while she was groping behind books. She kept thinking Willis, Marlitta, Carl. Willis, Marlitta, Carl. Oh, God, she needed to talk with someone.

*   *   *

Nadine, stalwart friend, faithful employee, backbone of Good Gourd. She answered the door still wearing her robe, baby asleep against her shoulder, long blond hair hanging loose down her back instead of coiled on top of her head. She looked like a witch, a good, kind witch with endless compassion. Tears glistened in her eyes, and she put her free arm around Ellen in a tight hug.

“Oh, Ellen, I'm so sorry about Dorothy.”

Tears seeped into her own eyes. “I can't seem to really believe it. I'm sorry I'm so early.” It wasn't yet seven o'clock. “I wasn't thinking. Did I wake you up?”

“With this guy?” Nadine nuzzled the baby's fuzzy head. “He just went back to sleep. I'll put him down.”

The apartment was tiny, one of four in a boxy, fifties-style building in need of paint, furnished with donations from relatives and items picked up at flea markets. Ellen squeezed around the stroller and sat on the sagging brown couch with a jumble of freshly washed clothes on one end. She set the thermos on the glass-topped coffee table next to a stack of folded baby garments.

“He should sleep for a while,” Nadine said when she returned. “I'll make some coffee.”

“I brought some.”

Nadine got cups from the cramped kitchen and filled them from the thermos. She set one on the coffee table, plopped into the overstuffed armchair, and, before taking a sip, eyed Ellen critically. “What's wrong?”

“Wrong?” Ellen laughed, heard the thin thread of hysteria. “Everything's wrong. Dorothy's dead. Somebody shot her. I can't find my raincoat. And—”

“I didn't mean it that way. You just seem—”

“I'm afraid.” Ellen picked up her cup. “Nadine, that time you lost your keys.”

“I didn't lose them. They were stolen.”

“Yeah.”

Nadine had claimed that at the time, but Ellen had been doubtful. Nadine always misplaced keys. She'd set them down and forget where. How she could be so meticulous about business and so careless with keys Ellen could never understand. “When?”

“I told you. At the crafts fair.”

Ellen nodded. “Who was there?”

“Everybody.”

“Willis? Marlitta? Carl?”

“Probably. Vicky, for sure, because she got a skirt I wanted to buy. And Marlitta. Maybe the others. Everybody was there.”

Ellen shoved both hands, fingers spread wide, through her hair. “I don't know what to do.”

“Hey now,” Nadine said. “Try to hang on. It's terrible. It's tragic. You'll get through it.”

“I thought it was my imagination.”

“What was?”

“When I thought somebody'd been in the house. Stuff just a little bit different. Like whoever it was had been careful. I couldn't be sure.”

“I told you we should have called the cops.”

“Nothing was stolen. There's nothing to steal. Unless somebody got an irresistible urge to have a few gourds. I didn't want to be treated like a nervous nut.”

“What are you afraid of?”

Ellen picked up the cup and cradled it against her chest. “The gun is gone.”

Nadine stared at her. “Somebody stole my keys to get the gun?”

“I don't know.”

“Who knew you had it?”

“Nobody,” Ellen said, and looked at Nadine. “Except my family.”

*   *   *

When Ellen pulled into Carl's driveway, she was relieved to see his car in the garage. The house was modest by Barrington standards: weathered wood, split level, a deck on one side above a gurgling creek, three towering walnut trees in front. If he hadn't been here, she would have thrown herself on his porch and howled. She banged on the door, and when he didn't answer right away, banged again. She heard thumping around inside and waited.

Carl, hair standing up in spikes, wearing only khaki shorts hastily pulled on, squinted at her with bloodshot eyes. “What the hell, Ellie?”

He plodded into the kitchen, looked blearily around, and rubbed a hand over his jaw. “Has something else happened? What time is it?”

He dumped leftover coffee in the sink, opened a cabinet, and gazed at the shelves as though he'd forgotten what he was searching for.

“I'll do it.” She nudged him aside and moved around cans until she found the coffee.

He pulled out a chair and collapsed in it, legs stretched under the table. “What are you doing here at the crack of dawn?”

“I was up before dawn ever cracked. Did you get any sleep?”

“No.”

She scraped the used grounds into the disposal and turned it on. He clapped his hands over his ears. Standing in the stream of sunshine pouring through the window, she washed the pot, spooned in fresh grounds, and poured in water. She didn't really want any more coffee, but the homey actions were comforting; they put a cushion of normalcy between her and events too awful to contemplate.

Sitting down across from him, she clasped her hands on the table and stared at them. “What's the matter with our family?”

With a wry smile, he reached over to ruffle her short, dark curls. “Oh, little Ellie, it would keep a herd of psychiatrists happily busy for years. Is that why you came rushing over here?”

He leaned back and hooked an elbow over the chair. “It probably has something to do with our crazy daddy and our mother who had to be so much in control she set things up to keep control long after she died.”

Ellen got up, found two mugs in a cabinet, and set them on the counter, then stood watching the coffee drip through. The sunlight hitting the glass pot made the liquid look like warm molasses. “The gun is gone,” she said.

“What gun?”

“Daddy's gun.”

“He didn't have a gun.”

“Yes he did.” She felt like stamping her foot. Let her be around her siblings and she was right back to childhood. “I remember when he bought it.”

“Oh. Yeah. Probably intended to do himself in. Mother took it away from him. What were you doing with it?”

“I don't know.” She filled the mugs, carried them to the table, sat down, and pushed one across to him. “I just had it. After he died, I took it. I had this feeling that I wanted something of his, and— It doesn't matter. The point is, it's gone. And Dorothy was shot.”