Halfway to Half Way (17 page)

 

 

* * *

Take the fork to the left, a skosh past a fence post with an MFA Feed sign stapled to it. At the second rock cornerstone, go right, then left again at the third sycamore from the chimney where the old McGill place stood before it burnt. If you come to the trestle bridge over Turkey Creek, you'd done gone too far.

 

 

Hannah smiled, remembering the morning Ruby Amyx drew a map to David's house on a handful of paper napkins. They were still in the Blazer's glove box, though she now knew every dip and heave in Turkey Creek Road's concrete-slab surface.

 

 

Oncoming drivers had always raised a four-finger
howdy
and most smiled to back it up. Such was the literal passing acquaintance that native Ozarkers bestowed on everyone, yet familiarity had quickened the waves and broadened the smiles. Even though they wouldn't recognize one another on the sidewalk downtown, it was nice to be a member of the rural road-less-traveled club.

 

 

Along the shoulders, spiky purple blazing stars and blooming goldenrod mingled with taller, feathery Johnson grass—an allergy sufferer's second circle of hell. And a very short-lived bouquet, as Hannah learned when she was little.

 

 

Chiggers had feasted on her legs, while she'd hacked and sawed a butter knife through gobs of what she'd thought were wildflowers. A vase being as impossible to find in the trailer as a sterling tea set, Hannah had pawed through the trash heap underneath it. To a six-year-old kid, a bunch of flowers crammed in a rusty coffee can with wrinkled bits of aluminum foil glued to its sides was absolutely beautiful.

 

 

By the time Caroline Garvey had come home from the bar where she worked, Hannah had scratched her chigger bites bloody and her bouquet had wilted to a droopy "mess of goddamn weeds dirtying up the table."

 

 

Her mother had later apologized for yelling and said it was the thought that counted. The bleach water she'd dabbed on Hannah's legs had stung, but not as much as the sight of the beautiful vase and flowers strewn outside in the dirt, where her mother had thrown them.

 

 

"I still think they're pretty," Hannah told the dashboard. Particularly the tufts brushing the mailbox beside the lane to David's one-bedroom farmhouse. His temporary home was barely large enough for a bachelor sheriff, but many a memory had been made there.

 

 

The new house was gorgeous, but she'd miss hearing the rain drum on the farmhouse's sheet-metal roof, cuddling with David on the porch watching fireflies wink in the meadow, the deer grazing in the false dawn.

 

 

All that would change was the perspective. They would soon have a bluff-top vantage point, instead of being close enough to see horseflies pester a doe's flank and smell the vaporous ground fog that fell and rose with the moon's wax and wane.

 

 

Silver and gold,
Hannah thought, humming the Girl Scout song about old and new friends. Her tenure in a troop had lasted maybe two meetings, but those tunes, "Kumbya" and "Gopher Guts" were ingrained in her brain.

 

 

Farther on, the narrow trestle bridge at the bottom of a hill that Ruby had warned was "too far" was now a landmark crossed before the turn into the A-frame's driveway.

 

 

Hannah lowered the window glass and breathed in the creek's loamy scent. The wet-weather springs that fed it were already slowing to trickles. In a day or so, the delicate minirainbows shimmering above eddies and near the banks would vanish and a toy boat would founder on the rocky bed.

 

 

Like the lane to the farmhouse, the new entrance was merely a break in the treeline bordering the unmown verge. Low-hanging branches snapped by bulldozers, well-drilling augers, cranes and concrete mixers would gradually reform a leafy arbor you'd have to be looking for to notice.

 

 

"Sort of like the Batcave." Hannah frowned and tried again, in a perkier tone of voice. "Sort of like the Batcave!"

 

 

Had Malcolm been along for the ride, he'd have rolled his eyes, too. Practice, she thought. That's all it takes. And a different frame of reference couldn't hurt.

 

 

Thinking of the places her personal superhero took her last night sent shivers tingling through every nerve ending. David never needed a map, or directions, to find them. Just as well, since most were gloriously uncharted territory.

 

 

From the first time they'd made love, the man had been like Magellan, constantly discovering, exploring and conquering worlds she hadn't known existed. Waking to a half-empty bed always dimmed the lingering afterglow, yet she knew a note beside the coffeepot would begin, "Good mornin', sugar" and close with "Love, David." Reading it was almost as sweet as hearing it spoken in that deep baritone drawl.

 

 

The A-frame appeared before her, its steep-pitched roof clad in shingles the color of tree bark. By day, rows of skylights resembled elongated blue mirrors, and after sunset, became a star-spangled observatory. A wraparound deck widened at the rear where a fieldstone barbecue shared its chimney with the interior fireplace. At the front, a prowlike wall of glass seemed to stretch the view to the edge of the world.

 

 

The temporary parking lot that would become the side yard ordinarily looked like McDonald's during the lunch-hour rush. Since carpooling to a construction site hadn't caught on with the local carpenters', plumbers', drywallers', electricians' and cabinetmakers' unions, Hannah had seen as many as twenty vehicles crowd the flat, once-grassy area.

 

 

Either today was a holiday she wasn't aware of, or the spirit hadn't yet moved the crew. If nobody showed before she left, she'd call David and tattle. In the meantime, she was happy to have the place to herself for once.

 

 

Acclimation was the intent. Taking and making the leap from
David's house
to
our house
to
home.
Feeling it, not just thinking it and saying it.

 

 

Rambo emerged from the trees, his delight at seeing her again so soon masked by a steady amber stare.

 

 

"I come in peace," Hannah told him, loudly enough to be heard by any potential wild bears renowned for shitting in the woods. Or mountain lions, who'd pretended to be extinct in this area for decades.

 

 

To Rambo, she added, "If you ever tell David, I'll swear you're lying, but it's kind of nice having you around."

 

 

Sedge grass and joe-pye weed brushed her calves as she strode to the back door. Tucking her pant legs inside her boots repelled ticks and chiggers.

 

 

Nature was a great thing. There was just so much of it here, all at once. Everywhere you looked—nature, nature, nature. Trailer-park kids and condo-dwellers didn't know from nature. Was it her fault, she preferred hers…neater? Channeling her inner Laura Ingalls Wilder, Hannah ducked kamikaze June bugs and keyed the back door.

 

 

The A-frame's interior was light, airy and blessedly enclosed. Despite tarps, ladders, scaffolds and dangling electrical wires, its bones were the Ponderosa meets Ikea, with a dash of industrial chic.

 

 

Exposed beams and posts supported and traversed the cathedral ceiling. Above the hearth area, open galley kitchen and guest bedroom was the master suite loft. When needed, shoji-style screens would allow privacy, without blocking the light from the window wall.

 

 

David had asked her opinion on everything from the unsuited guest room's fixtures to the hardware for the kitchen cabinets. "This is our house, not just mine," he'd said, about eight gajillion times, which approximated the number of decisions attached to building a house from the foundation up.

 

 

Strange—or maybe not—that only once had Hannah's preferences deviated from his. That's why the bathroom basins were rectangular, rather than the traditional oval. Life, in her unspoken opinion, was already too complicated to obsess over switch-plate covers, doorknobs and the relative merits of Colonial Sage wall paint over Spanish Moss Sage.

 

 

"Besides," she said, moving to answer Rambo's request to patrol the front deck, "the man made stained plywood look like parquet, already."

 

 

Retrofitting a Brazilian cherry floor was negotiable, she decided. There'd be a fight for sure, if David ever tried to rip out the concrete countertops.

 

 

Compared to the interior coolness, Mother Nature was stoking up the sauna outside. The view from the deck truly was spectacular, though. It was kind of like being in a skyscraper, Hannah thought. With a view of treetops and a glade, instead of clustered billboards, neighboring rooftops and a six-lane freeway.

 

 

"A skyscraper," she repeated. Word associations tumbled, then clicked. Her tentative smile widened to an openmouthed grin.

 

 

The Friedlich brothers had started their agency in a rented, two-room walk-up. Back then, Hannah's former employers had less advertising experience between them than she now did, by herself. Friedlich & Friedlich still managed the Clancy Construction and Development account, but it was hers for the taking. If Jack balked at the idea, she'd tell his mother.

 

 

A mental cheerleading squad yelled,
Go for it
. The stern voice of reason demanded research, a feasibility study and a prospectus. It also reminded Hannah of a Mod Squad assignment to complete, and the grocery list in her purse.

 

 

However, Reason assured, stupid as you've been not to have thought of going into business for yourself before now, maybe, just maybe, you can leave Valhalla Springs, physically, and still stay connected. From right here, at the corner of East Jesus and plowed ground. In David's—her—
their
dream house.

 

 

 

10

D
elbert and Leo knelt beside the equipment bag they'd dragged into Chlorine Moody's backyard. Delbert handed his operative a face mask, plastic goggles with duct tape over the ventilation holes, and a pair of rubber dishwashing gloves. He then parceled out heavy-duty plastic scoops, prelabeled zip-top bags and his
pičce de resistance,
a folded grid map of the targeted terrain.

 

 

Numbered squares corresponded to those on the bags' labels. That way, each soil sample they took could be matched to a location and voilŕ—an
X,
or more likely, several of them would mark Royal Moody's grave.

 

 

If, Delbert thought, he was right about Chlorine's modus operandi. And if being right didn't kill them before they could prove it.

 

 

He struggled to contain the jump-out-of-his-skin feeling he'd had ever since they'd breached the hedge. Before that, really. He'd nigh wet himself when that nosy kid on the bicycle had appeared in the alley out of nowhere. Then those bona fide public works department yahoos had scared his liver up behind his left ear.

 

 

"Quick, accurate and careful," he told Leo. "No shortcuts. No shillyshallying. Agreed?"

 

 

"Yes. What we are doing and why we are doing it, I don't get."

 

 

"Simple. Core out a plug of grass with the scoop. Dig down about six inches, then dump a good scoop of dirt in the bag and seal it. Fill in the hole, best you can. Cork it with the grass plug. Move to the next square and start over."

 

 

Leo's chins buckled. He looked from the goggles to the mask to the gloves. "Now tell me what it is, you are not telling me."

 

 

"Damn it, Schnur. We don't have time to—"

 

 

Leo sat back on his butt and crossed his arms. He glared at Delbert like a nearsighted Teutonic Buddha in muddy coveralls and a cap. When Schnur's stubborn side took over, a dynamite enema wouldn't move him.

 

 

"Promise you'll cooperate, if I tell you?"

 

 

Suspicion narrowed Leo's eyes. He shook his head.

 

 

Well, hell. On second thought, the truth would get him off the hook for feeling guilty about endangering his best friend. Mostly off the hook. If Leo got sick, even of his own free will, Delbert would never forgive himself.

 

 

He whipped off his cap to yank the goggles' elastic band over his head. "Gotta have these, the gloves and the mask for protection. Gotta have protection, because I'm betting Chlorine poisoned Royal with arsenic."

 

 

Pulling on a glove, he ignored a sound from Leo's position similar to air sputtering out of a birthday balloon. "If she did," Delbert went on, "arsenic doesn't degrade. Ever. What's leeched into the dirt may have stunted the roses on this side of the fence, too, but we can't prove diddly without soil samples to back it up."

 

 

"The poison," Leo squeaked, "it is in the dirt?" He scrambled to his feet. "And you want we should dig it up and for to put it in
bags?
"

 

 

"We don't have to," Delbert shot back.

 

 

"Thank God, for—"

 

 

"We could just cut to the goddamn chase and dig up Royal, instead."

 

 

Leo staggered backward, spouting gibberish and waving a frantic negatory.

 

 

"You're right about that," Delbert said, in a congratulatory tone. "If his corpse is loaded with arsenic, he's about ten times more toxic than the dirt ever thought of being."

 

 

And probably looked close to the same as he did when Chlorine buried him—a fact Leo didn't need to be apprised of, but that sent gooseflesh crawling up Delbert's arms.

 

 

From the CivilWar to the early twentieth century, arsenic mixed with water was used as an embalming fluid. Delbert didn't know who discovered that the poison had an equally fatal effect on microorganisms that caused decomposition as it did on a spouse you wanted to shed. The embalming practice wasn't banned until somebody noticed that undertakers were expiring regularly due to repeated exposure to that deadly preservative.