Mulch (15 page)

Her eyes teared up and she smiled at him. “You’re a nice man.” She got out her bandanna handkerchief and blew her nose and wiped her eyes. “And I didn’t mean to make fun of the police and hypnotism.”

“I know that, Mrs. Eldridge,” said Geraghty.

She leaned forward. “I’ll be hypnotized. I’ll do anything you want. Tomorrow; I’ll do it tomorrow if you want.” She flailed her hands helplessly in the air. “I just want to be rid of this, get it away from my family.”

Geraghty scratched his fingernail thoughtfully on the table-top. He did not look at Louise. “I wish it was that simple. These cases don’t solve themselves that quickly, unless the police have a stroke of good luck.” He looked at her solemnly. “You’ve gotta be strong. And you can’t have too high expectations. Six months from now we still might not have the murderer. Right now, we don’t even know who the victim was. The fact is”—he looked down again at the table—“sometimes torso murders never get solved.”

“Torso murders,” muttered Louise, pulling in her breath. “So that’s what you call this?” Suddenly the heavy dose of protein, fat, and carbohydrate overlaid with a dose of caffeine changed from a friend to an enemy in her beleaguered stomach.

J
ANIE’S SHOULDERS SAGGED AS SHE AND
M
ELANIE
approached the corner of their street. She dreaded the sight of their yard as she had left it late this morning, all marked with the policemen’s garish yellow tape. But with relief she could see through the trees that the tape was gone. She brushed her blond hair away from her eyes and said, “Oh boy, am I glad they took that down. It was … just so
embarrassing
.”

“You wouldn’t even know anything
had happened at your place any more,” said Melanie comfortingly. She knew Janie was tired of talking about finding body parts in her backyard. The word had gotten out at school and Janie had had to answer questions all day from people she barely knew, including teachers, who seemed just as nosy as the kids.

“Want to play a little b-ball later?” asked Melanie. “It’s really nice out. Like the weather guy says, it’s Indian summer in November.”

“Sure, if my mom will let me,” said Janie. “It’ll take me about ten minutes.” Actually, she was tired and her stomach growled with hunger. It was an outside chance, but maybe her mom had something good baked. After all it had been through, the family could use some putting back together.

First Janie tried the door to the addition and knocked. Her mother wasn’t in there busily writing as she usually was. She unlocked the front door and went in. “Mother,” she called in a tentative voice.

The house was empty. Through the tall windows she looked out at the backyard, her eyes searching out the spot where they had found the body parts.

“Oh, no,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I guess I’m alone here.”

She put her books carefully in her room and took off her good pink cardigan and replaced it with an old sweatshirt from elementary school that she had not quite outgrown. The only problem was the sleeves, which grew a little shorter every year. Comfortable now, she headed for the kitchen.

She found a note from her mother on the counter. It said she was out with Detective Geraghty, returning to all the
places where they had picked up leaves. She wasn’t sure when she would be home.

“Oh, Ma,” muttered Janie as she tidily disposed of the note in the wastebasket. “If you weren’t such a gardening nut this would never have happened.” Then she turned her attention to the refrigerator.

Good. There were the makings of a real sandwich. French bread, two big slices. Gruyére cheese, three even-sized chunks. Baked ham slices, two. Tomato slices, two and a half, just enough to cover the surface of the bread. A dab of Dijon. Four hot peppers arranged in a square. Lettuce. A large glass of milk in a nonbreakable old plastic glass they had had ever since Janie remembered. And a pickle, her father’s favorite kind: a half-sour dill.

She took these prizes and went to the family room, grabbed the TV remote control, flipped on “Jeopardy,” and curled up in her favorite chair, the one that used to be Great Gram’s. Between bites, she called out the answers she knew. During commercials her mind free-floated, often a prelude to giving up and taking a nap. But Melanie expected her. Better still, Melanie’s brother, Chris, might be there. As much as she liked the thoughtful Melanie, she had come to like her brother even more. She hopped out of the chair, put her dishes in the sink, and ran out to the cul-de-sac.

Melanie was sitting in their spot. It was a slight depression almost in the middle of the asphalt circle forming the cul-de-sac. Water puddled here when it rained. When weather was fair, this spot caught the last rays of sun through the high walls of trees. Melanie and Janie had started meeting and talking here when they met in late summer. They would sit around
the small depression as if in an Indian kiva and trade pieces of teenage wisdom.

Now Melanie sat cross-legged, scratching the asphalt aimlessly with a piece of stick while waiting for her friend. She looked up at Janie with thoughtful gray eyes just like her brother’s.

“Hi. You forgot your ball.”

“I thought you were bringing yours.”

They heard a door slam and a figure dash out of Melanie’s house. “Here comes Chris. He has one.”

The tall seventeen-year-old sprinted across his yard and onto the street and immediately began bouncing his ball with practiced beat. The sitting spot was on the perimeter of the shooting area for basketball, with the free-standing basketball hoop and backboard in the parkway in front of Michael’s house.

Chris sank a few shots, then came to join them.

“Want to play two on two? Michael’s coming.”

“Oh goody, Michael,” said Melanie, her lip curled. Janie knew she liked him a lot.

Chris squatted down beside Janie, who was trying not to look at him. He lifted her hair away from her eyes as if he were lifting a tent flap. “Janie, hey, are you in there? Are you all right?”

Janie looked at him in all his blond and gray-eyed beauty and blushed to her toes. “Wha—what do you mean?”

“Well, if that had happened in my yard, I’d feel bad. I’d do something.”

Janie pulled at a thread in the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “I don’t know what I can do.” She looked up at him, crouching
there, as it ready to spring. She shook her head as if helpless. “What do you want me to do, go look for the criminal or what?”

Chris smiled his wonderful smile. “That’s what I’d do. What’re the police doing?”

“My mom right now is out with the detectives tracing where she went, where we both went.”

Chris tugged at her worn sleeve. “That’s just it! You know something. You could go out investigating.”

“Chri-is,” admonished Melanie. “Why would she do that? That’s what police are supposed to do.”

“Janie could help,” said Chris, turning to his sister and then back to Janie. “You were right there when she went leaf picking, right?”

“Right,” said Janie, “most of the time.”

“Well, I’ll go with you if you’re scared, but you ought to go back to those places … find out who lives in the different houses … you know, stuff like that.”

The sun was gone now and Janie was beginning to get cold. But she didn’t want to move away from Chris. “I told you, my mother and the police are out doing that already.”

“Yah, but who knows the neighborhood better than we do?” said Chris. Janie had never seen him so animated; as a rule he barely talked to her.

“Think of it this way, Janie. The more detectives you have investigating a crime the better, right?”

She smiled up at him. “I guess. Well, if you want to, we could do that, go around, retrace our steps and everything.”

Melanie leaned over and grabbed Janie’s arm in hers and
glared at her brother in mock anger. “What about me?” she said. “After all, I’m the one who’s Janie’s friend.”

Chris stood up, towering above them. “Sure, Melanie. You can come if you want. When’ll we do this, Janie? Tomorrow?”

Janie sighed and dropped her head for an instant. “Tomorrow. That will give me time to catch up on my sleep.” When she looked up again, Chris was gone to the opposite perimeter, trying for a three-pointer.

N
ORA GOT UP QUICKLY FROM THE TAN LEATHER
sofa and strode across the room. It was 4:30 and the sun was about gone; just a streak or two of rose glowing in the handsome, big-windowed room. Nora, with her brown hair and gray eyes, was a dark figure against the dark afternoon. She wore jeans and a huge gray flannel shirt and Greek leather thongs on bare feet. She went to a set of controls on the living room wall and pressed a switch. A low, powerful hum filled the house, but it did
not overpower Mahler’s Fourth on the CD player. Then she moved quietly through the room, turning several lamps on low. She returned to the couch and slipped gracefully into her usual position, perched at the front of the cushion and, even with her long legs crossed to the side, looked like a cat ready to pounce.

She said to Louise, “There, the fan’s on; now it can’t bother you,” and pulled from her pocket a pack of cigarettes and a lighter and lit up a long brown cigarette.

“Smoking isn’t easy, is it?”

Nora turned her head a little away from Louise and exhaled a long stream of smoke. “You probably wonder why I don’t give it up,” she said, in her low, silky voice.

Louise could not think of what to say. “Bill and I gave them up years ago” would sound so smug. She remained silent and continued to sip her oolong tea.

Nora latched on to Louise with her languid glance. “I find smoking is almost as good as sex.” Then she inhaled deeply and turned away again to exhale.

That did it. Louise was already feeling acutely overdressed and somewhat uncomfortable. This was the woman in front of whom she had burst into tears. She remembered with embarrassment how she had poured her heart out to Nora—all the details about her unsettled state after their move back to the Washington area. Was that only two weeks ago? But Nora had been kind and steered her into writing. And Louise had at least
started
writing.

Today was an invitation to tea. Mistakenly she put on a dress, the knee-jerk response of a foreign service wife. Tea? One always dressed. She should have realized Nora’s style was
totally casual, which on Nora came out looking like
Vogue.
And was this woman putting her on now with that remark about smoking? Louise decided that if they were to be friends at all, she would have to stop analyzing.

So she said slyly, “Well, anything that’s almost as good as sex has to be encouraged.”

Nora looked at Louise and then threw back her head and laughed. “I don’t think you mean that.” Then she sobered. “There is a physical thing with smoking.” She made a lilting upward movement with one hand. “A lift. With me it’s a big lift.” She looked more closely at Louise. “And there’s another reason. I tried to give it up before. I don’t want to prove again to myself how little self-control I have. But enough of that. I’m not worried about me; I’ve been worried about you, Louise … even though I haven’t come over like the others.”

Most of the neighbors had, commiserating with her and Bill about finding the body parts, realizing they had been plunged innocently into a terrible crime.

“The important thing, Louise, is, are you still writing?” Nora looked as if her happiness hinged on the answer.

Louise looked down at her hands, empty in her lap. “I’ve fallen off, that’s for sure. It’s just been so … distracting.” She opened her hands in a little helpless motion. “The media. You must see them hanging around sometimes, even going into the backyard. Calling, day and night. I never answer the phone until I hear it’s someone I want to speak with. And I’ve tried to help the police. I’m even going to be
hypnotized.”

Nora looked at her curiously. “Hypnotized. Intriguing. What do you think your subconscious has to say?”

Louise blushed. “Oh, nothing that important. Maybe something
I might have seen when I went around collecting the leaf bags.”

“I hope it works,” said Nora warily. “It would be nice to clear the air. After all, someone did kill her. Which leaves a murderer out there somewhere.”