Authors: Sharyn McCrumb
Alban brought her another cup, and she poured tea for herself. “Now what is this all about?” she demanded.
“I’m afraid it’s bad news, Mother.”
“Well—are you going to tell me or not?”
They told her, in rambling and what they believed to be diplomatic terms. Louisa, however, immediately pressed for details.
“Who do you suppose did it?” asked Louisa with lively interest. “Are the migrant workers here yet?”
“Mother!”
“Well, who else could it have been? That nervous young man she’s engaged to? I don’t see why he’d do it. It wasn’t as if she had been unfaithful to him, like—”
“Mother, the sheriff will take care of the investigation!” said Alban sharply. “I think we should worry about what we can do to help Uncle Robert, don’t you?”
“Yes, Alban,” said Louisa in a more subdued tone. “It’s such a shame. Eileen did so want to be happy. I don’t think she would have been with that young man of hers, but I wish she had been given the chance anyway.” She walked to the desk and began to rearrange the roses in a crystal vase. “Why is it that every time Amanda and I plan a wedding, something terrible happens? How is Amanda, by the way?”
“She went up to her room and we haven’t seen her since,” said Elizabeth.
“Just like her. Oh dear, Alban, do you think the white roses are past their prime? Or should we just go with the red?”
Elizabeth stood up. “I’d really better be getting back,” she whispered to Alban.
“All right. I’ll walk you to the door,” said Alban, following her into the hall.
“Just to the door?”
“I’d better stay with Mother. Why? Are you so afraid?” Then he smiled and patted her shoulder. “Oh, you’ll be safe, Cousin Elizabeth. As long as you stay off of boats. Now, do you want me to walk you back?”
“No,” murmured Elizabeth. “I guess I don’t.”
With a hasty good night, she let herself out the front door, and hurried across the dark road.
By the time she remembered to worry about lurking murderers she had arrived at the front door of the Chandler house. The porch light had been left on for her, and the door was unlocked. She closed the front door as quietly as possible and tiptoed down the hall.
“Is that you, Elizabeth?” called a voice from the kitchen.
She peeped around the corner and saw that the kitchen light was on. “Geoffrey?” she called out in a stage whisper.
“No. It’s me. Charles. I found some cookies. Want some?”
He was sitting at the kitchen table with a plate of chocolate chip cookies and a glass of milk.
“Well, maybe just one,” said Elizabeth, taking the other chair. “Thank you for waiting up for me.”
“Nah. Had to get up to answer the phone anyway. Your brother’s roommate called. He said Bill wasn’t back yet, and since it was getting so late, he’d have him call first thing in the morning. Want a glass of milk?”
“I guess so,” sighed Elizabeth. If people keep comforting me with liquids, she thought, I’ll have to carry a bedpan around with me.
He took a plastic milk jug from the refrigerator and filled another glass. “There you are.”
“I guess everybody else has gone to bed.”
“Yep.”
“Couldn’t you sleep?”
“No.”
As conversations go, this one wasn’t going far. Elizabeth cast about for a new topic.
“So Charles, what do you know about anthropology?”
Charles peered at her over the rim of his glass, which he had been about to drink from. “Anthropology?”
“Yes. Well, really, archeology. You know: digging for lost cities and all.”
“Elizabeth, I’m a physicist.”
“Well, of course, I know that.” She coughed. “I—er—just thought that since it was science, you might know something about it.”
Charles was puzzled. “But why would you think that?”
“I don’t know. I just …”
His face lit up with mistaken comprehension. “I see! You mean because of the dating process!”
Elizabeth blushed. “Well, actually I haven’t even met him—”
“Carbon-fourteen dating! Of course! It’s practically indispensable in archeology. They use it to determine the age of their finds. Wonderful trick, really. Here, I’ll explain how it works.”
“But, Charles, I—”
“—heavy radioactive isotope of carbon, mass number fourteen, and—”
Elizabeth nodded politely through the explanation of half-life and radioactive traces. She reasoned that if she admitted her real interest in archeology—a misty image of herself and Milo discovering Atlantis together—she would sound much more foolish than she cared to. Sitting through Charles’s lecture seemed to be the easiest way out. After several minutes of animated explanation, Charles wound down. Noticing a glass coffee pot on the stove, Elizabeth asked: “Were you planning to make coffee? The water’s not on.”
“Good Lord! I’d forgotten all about it. Thanks for reminding me! I’d better move it before somebody tries to make tea with it.”
He moved the beaker of water from the stove to the countertop, in slow cautious movements.
Elizabeth watched him wide-eyed. “It won’t explode, will it?”
“What, this? It’s just salt and water.”
“It looks clear to me,” said Elizabeth. Like nitroglycerin.
“I supersaturated the water with salt while it was boiling. That’s why you can’t see it. That was hours ago. While we were waiting for the sheriff to call, and I didn’t have anything to do.”
“What is it?”
“Oh … just an experiment. Or maybe a statement. I dunno. Here, I’ll show you. I boiled water in this glass container, and I dumped salt into the boiling water—lots of it. More than it would hold if it were room temperature. Got that?”
“Yeah. You wasted a box of salt. So?”
“Then I left it covered and waited a few hours for it to cool.”
“Okay. And you want to see what will happen?”
Charles looked pained. “I know what will happen. Don’t you?”
Elizabeth shook her head. “No.”
He shook a few grains of salt into his hand. Carefully extracting a few grains from his palm, he blew the rest away. “Now. I have between my fingers a grain or so of salt. Watch.”
He walked over to the glass pot on the countertop and lifted the lid. Elizabeth followed him, peering closely at the clear liquid inside. With a dramatic flourish, Charles dropped the salt grains into the liquid. As Elizabeth watched, the solution around the new grains began to thicken into a bog of oatmeal consistency, the reaction spreading outward from the grains second by second until the entire liquid had become a mass of soggy salt.
“Hey! I didn’t even see any salt before!”
“I know. You want to know why I did this?”
Still watching the beaker, Elizabeth nodded.
“This wasn’t an experiment. It was a prediction. I think that solution was like our family. There were a lot of things floating around, so to speak, but you couldn’t
see them. And Eileen’s death is that little grain of salt I dropped into the pot, which makes everything crystallize.”
He dumped the contents of the beaker into the sink and rinsed the pot. “Good night, Elizabeth,” said Charles, strolling off toward the stairs.
Elizabeth stared after him, wondering for the first time if Charles might also be a poet.
E
LIZABETH SLEPT BADLY
that night. Even though she locked her door and got up twice to make sure the bedroom window was fastened, she half waked at every creak the house made. A fitful early-morning dream about looking for an Indian village in the stacks of the university library abruptly changed into a funeral scene in which Aunt Amanda was nailing Eileen into a pine box. In her dream, Elizabeth suddenly became the one in the box, and she could feel the blows of the hammer vibrating against her upturned face. When she finally struggled to consciousness, she found that the pounding was coming from the bedroom door.
“Honey, you got a phone call!” Mildred was saying. “He says he’s your brother.”
Elizabeth shook her head and yawned. The clock on the nightstand said 7:15. In haste she grabbed the terry-cloth robe at the foot of her bed. She was still struggling to knot the cord around her waist when she reached the bottom of the stairs. The receiver was lying on the hall table, and Mildred was nowhere in sight.
“Hello … Bill?” said Elizabeth carefully. “Why are you calling at this hour? What do you mean you just got in? Did Milo tell you why I called? Oh, Bill, it’s awful!”
“One thing I can’t figure out, Wes,” said Clay Taylor, reading the lab report. “If somebody threw her in that boat on the top of a snake, is that murder or just assault? I mean, the snake did the killing, if I’m reading this report right. Does that mean the person who hit her on the head isn’t responsible, or do we just consider the snake an exotic murder weapon?”
Wesley Rountree sighed in exasperation. “I’ll tell you what I consider it, Clay. I consider it the prosecutor’s problem. All we got to worry about is finding him somebody to prosecute. Now let me alone a minute. I got to make up a list of things for Hill-Bear to do today.” Rountree reared back in his swivel chair and considered his list.
Taylor put down the lab report and went over to check the electric percolator atop the filing cabinet. Its cord was loose, so that if he didn’t keep jiggling it, the water never would get hot. “Don’t forget the capias we got on Johnse Still well.”
“Oh yeah. Another bad check. I’ll put it on here. Anything else?”
“The Bryces went to the beach this week, and they wanted us to pay particular attention to the house while they’re gone.”
Rountree grunted. “Hope they remembered to stop the paper this time.”
“The water’s hot, Wes. Want some coffee?”
Rountree shook his head. “No. I’m meeting with Simmons this morning, and he doesn’t use instant. I’ll wait.”
Taylor considered this as he poured his own cup of coffee and ladled sugar into it. “Chandler case, huh?”
“Yep. Consult the family lawyer.”
Clay settled back at his own paperless desk. Months of neatness-by-example had failed to effect any change at all in Rountree’s habits. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “this case could be tricky. I didn’t come
up with any fingerprints on the easel and paintbox, except those of the deceased. We don’t even know why she was killed.”
“No, but we got a lot of whys to choose from,” snapped the sheriff. “An inheritance, a reluctant groom, and let’s not forget that damned picture that nobody can find.”
Taylor smiled. “Aw, you don’t think somebody killed her for a picture, do you, Wes?”
“Not to hang it in their dining room, no. But somebody sure wanted to get rid of it. And she was painting by the lake.”
“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” said Clay, in a puzzled voice.
“Well, I don’t either,” Rountree admitted. “But you’re going back out there right now, and check it out. Maybe you can come up with a few answers, instead of so many questions.”
“Diving gear?” said Taylor hopefully. Since he had taken the scuba diving course the previous fall, he had been on the lookout for opportunities to use his skills in the line of duty, but so far there had been no drownings or aquatic emergencies. The Chandler pond would be the perfect excuse to test his newly learned diving prowess.
“No. Not diving gear,” Rountree growled. “Whatever she was painting had to be visible to somebody standing on the shore. Just walk around and look on the banks and in the shallows. Report anything unusual that you find.”
“I’m on my way.”
Rountree deposited his note on Doris’s desk. It was five minutes after eight; she should be arriving anytime in the next ten minutes without an excuse, or in the next half hour with one. “Meet me at Brenner’s at eleven. I’ll wait on Doris and Hill-Bear.”
“Right.”
“Oh, Clay! If you find a sunken treasure in that lake, call me at Simmons’s office!”
Taylor closed the door to the sound of the sheriff’s chuckle.
* * *
“Robert, I assure you that I am perfectly capable of carrying on,” said Dr. Chandler’s wife in a cold voice.
Amanda Chandler had come downstairs after breakfast, looking haggard, but without a sign of tears. Her stiff black dress was so severe and unfashionable that it could only have been used for mourning. Refusing all nourishment except a glass of grapefruit juice, she took her customary place in the den.
“Someone must see to these things,” she informed her husband. “May I ask what arrangements have been made?”
“Arrangements? But, Amanda, there hasn’t been time! It hasn’t even been—”
She nodded triumphantly. “There. You see? No one has done a thing. I am not even allowed to mourn my child in peace, because I am the only practical soul in this house. So many people to be notified. Telegrams! Do they have black-bordered ones? And what does one do about gifts? Perhaps Louisa would know, since Alban’s wedding was cancelled so abruptly.”
Dr. Chandler blinked before the onslaught of such efficiency. “Must we do all this now, Amanda?”
“It is certainly my duty,” said Amanda severely. “I’m sure you can cancel your rounds at the hospital, but you’ll be of no help to me. You might send Elizabeth in, though. I would appreciate some assistance from her. I may also need Geoffrey. Please tell him not to make plans for today. I suppose Father Ashland has not been called?”
“Now, Amanda, you know he hates to be called ‘father’—”
“Then he should have been a Baptist. As an Episcopalian, I assure you that my term is correct. Now, may we get back to my task, while I still have the strength?”
Chandler bowed his head. “All right.”
“Thank you. Before anything can be planned, I need to know when we may put her to rest. Have you received word?”
He shook his head. “Not yet. But if you are going to
plan funeral arrangements, I’ll ask Michael to come in and see you.”
Amanda stared. “Robert, whatever for?” she demanded.
“Well, they were nearly married …”
“Nearly is immaterial. He is not family. His preferences in the matter do not interest me in the least. Now, please go and find Elizabeth.”
Dr. Chandler opened his mouth to continue the conversation, thought better of it, and turned to go. “I’ll be in my study if you need me.”