“Unless they change their minds by Thursday,” I cautioned on the way back to Jake’s. “Thank goodness you finally decided to
open your mouth. That was inspired.”
“Things wanted a little punch,” he said.
• • •
It was past six when I approached Pinehaven village and turned in at the Red Barn. The day had gone a lot better than it might
have—why not treat myself to a dinner out that wasn’t pizza with the boys? The Red Barn’s a steak house, mainly, though there
are a number of other entrees, all of them substantial. The bar just inside the entrance is a popular after-work stop-off.
Make that too popular, I revised, entering. Seated down toward the end was at least one person I’d as soon not get into a
discussion with: Clete Donnelly. Kyle was with him, and Thurman. They looked awfully dressed up—shit, was it post-funeral
time? Fortunately none of them was scanning for arrivals. There were plenty of other eyes on me, though.
As I panned the half-full dining area for an empty small table somebody started waving on the periphery of my vision: Dante
Carmichael, who was in charge of tending Etlingers’ nursery stock. “Val, come sit.”
I did, quickly, wishing he hadn’t invited quite so loud. Dante was also abnormally dressed up, which for him meant a short-sleeve
polo shirt and a pair of pants that weren’t blue jeans. “I’m afraid to ask, but did you come here from a funeral?”
“That was this morning. Didn’t anybody let you know?”
“Nope. Anyhow, I had business down in Platteville today. Just as well—when someone’s body turns up in your yard and nobody’s
in jail for it, you probably want to skip the services.”
Dante isn’t the brightest guy in the world—I doubt he was even tempted to sort that one out. His body movement was somewhere
between a shrug and a head shake. “Well, you didn’t miss much.”
“Small crowd?”
“Big crowd. We got the morning off, so did all the guys who work for Clete. It was one of those, you know, like impersonal
funerals. Like the minister never knew him, so he couldn’t say anything that fit right. The brother didn’t even get up to
speak.”
“Did anybody?”
“Clete and Eleanor. You know how she is. Clete ran on and on. I expect everybody’s glad it’s over.”
“Apparently nobody around here got to know him very well.”
“I sure didn’t. He was okay, I guess.”
That struck me as a good place to leave it. “So except for funerals, how’s it going?”
Dante brightened. “Great!” His standard answer, and I don’t believe it’s an exaggeration. Besides being what they used to
call “a little slow,” Dante’s neither good-looking nor ambitious and he wouldn’t know how to start hustling. Give him a job
that keeps him outdoors, send along a few people he can chat with, and all his days are great. I wouldn’t want to trade personas
permanently, but you could talk me into a week’s swap once in a while.
“Are things getting back to normal at the Garden Center?”
He shrugged. “I stay out back, mostly. You didn’t come say goodbye last Friday.”
“Rodney wasn’t sounding like he’d go for a farewell tour.”
“Willem will patch things up for you.”
“Not this time. That’s what I was doing down in Platteville—talking with clients. My own.”
“Same ones as last fall?”
“New ones, same idea.”
“Great! Can I buy you a beer to celebrate?”
“The only thing worth celebrating where that woman is concerned,” boomed a voice behind me I didn’t need to turn to identify,
“would be watching her leave town. Permanently.”
Shit!
I thought, letting my head come slowly around. Clete looks like he comes on—excessive. Too many pounds on his body, too much
red on his face, too much “screw you” in his posture. Every eye in the room that might have us in view did. I’d as soon have
skipped this one—tell the truth, what I’d have liked most was to hunker down in my seat and become magically invisible. Nonetheless,
I do have some credentials when it comes to playing out scenes. “Jesus, Clete, I feel like I just got dropped into somebody’s
half a star Western.”
“You know what I’m talking about. That poor boy we buried today … You’ve been nothing but trouble ever since you showed up.
I read in the paper how you like to move around. It’s time for your feet to start itching.”
“Funny, they’re not.”
His hands got planted even harder on his hips. “You might not like it around here much longer. I know you were behind what
happened to Ryan. It would take a hell of a lot more than the word of a couple of … kids to convince me otherwise.”
Uneasily I watched Dante clouding up. It would be grossly stupid of him to get on Clete’s bad side, but he’s an old-fashioned
guy and logistically, at that moment, I was his lady. I’d better crank the old belligerence up another notch. “Clete, tell
me something: Is any of this filtering through your brain before it comes out of your mouth?”
“You figure you snowed the sheriff, you’ve got it made? Just because Baxter’s in over his head doesn’t mean nobody else around
here can see straight.”
“I was curious about your thoughts, not your vision. And wouldn’t it make more sense to lean on somebody who can’t provide
an alibi? Assuming you really want to know who did the killing.”
“The person I’m looking for is the person I’m looking at. And I’ll tell you something: Stick around here, I guarantee you’re
not going to like the kind of attention you get.”
Dante was half on his feet. I shot up faster. “Clete, if Pinehaven spoke as one voice and yours was it, I’d run straight home
and put up a FOR SALE sign. Fortunately most people around here can think for themselves. I do not work for you or for anybody
you can intimidate. I do not want anything from you, I do not owe you money, and thank God I’m not related to you. So stuff
it.” I turned to Dante: “I’ll take you up on that beer some other time.”
When I turned to leave, Clete stepped forward as if to block my path. We glared at each other. “Dad,” came Kyle’s calm, soft
voice from behind him. As the big man turned toward the sound, I brushed past him and stalked out. Hopefully, nobody noticed
the shaking.
• • •
Shortly after I stormed into the house from my encounter with Clete, the phone started ringing—Mariah calling to tell me that
what looked like several truckloads of plants, paving materials, mulches, and she wasn’t sure what else had been unceremoniously
deposited outside her front gate during the afternoon while she was away. The Garden Center’s response to her financial arrangement
with me, maybe? Or a sneak preview of Clete’s campaign?
The unexpected delivery had been an act of meanness on two counts. First, if someone had been there to receive those materials,
the heavier ones could’ve been brought much closer to where they were going to be used. More critically, the plants should
have been set out in the shade, to minimize the stress on them before they got into the ground. The area Mariah described
gets full sun, and tomorrow was predicted to be a relentlessly bright day until a cold front came through toward evening.
In my years with the Etlingers’ I’d experienced enough shortfalls of assistance to learn where to look for able-bodied emergency
help. After getting off the phone with Mariah I called around and with the offer of a generous bounty induced three teenage
boys to show up bright and early and bring everything inside the walls. Accessing my settlement data on the computer, I added
in that pass-along, together with a hefty aggravation factor penalty. If we kept going, Mariah’s deductions from her final
payment would gobble up the whole thing.
The prospect of landing a financial right jab on the Garden Center did nothing to diminish the swirling black cloud I strode
around the house under. Poor Roxy, dutifully following, rarely got treated to such a steady expulsion of air-bluing commentary.
That scene at the Red Barn had been ludicrous, and now this additional piece of shit. How had I managed to put up with these
people so long?
More to the point, how seriously should I take Clete’s threat? I didn’t see that he could harm me much professionally—it was
unlikely I’d be trying to work for anybody he could scare off. My local reputation was vulnerable, though. Clete could swell
the number of people who’d believe I’d beaten the rap—unless or until the real killer was found. I wouldn’t care that much,
for me, but if it impacted on the boys … With Hispanic last name and Hispanic features, plus an inner-city background, their
path to fitting in at Patroon Central was already bumpy enough.
There’s also the consideration that stoicism is not a hallmark of my temperament. Might it be sensible to withdraw before
I once again did something unfixable? I wouldn’t be looking at a sympathetic family court judge this time around. Eleanor
was right, I could make a very nice profit on my property, and nowhere was it etched in granite that this had to be a permanent
residence. A move across the river would do it—we’d be nicely beyond range of Clete’s influence but still within acceptable
proximity to both Vicky and the Platteville area.
Except—isn’t once often enough to get run out of your own home? Granted, life with Ma wasn’t paradise; granted, Birchwood
was a lot better for me; granted, Pete and Janey were terrific cottage parents. I nonetheless spent my teens as an outcast,
allowed nominal participation in the world of normal people but no chance to claim full membership. Even when our basketball
team took the sectionals and got as far as the state semis, Ayesha and I were still a couple of Birchwood girls, a phrase
townsfolk would use with, at best, neutral connotations.
“It isn’t fair!” I used to scream at Pete. “So fucking what?” he used to yell right back.
Well, so, damn it, Clete Donnelly wasn’t about to run me out of a territory that was just as much mine as his.
“Don’t sweat it, he’ll calm down,” Kyle started out by saying the next time I responded to the ringing phone.
“Let us hope. Then what?”
“Nothing, probably. Dad was drinking all afternoon, and being a man of … you could say industrial strength emotions—”
“He’s going to call and apologize after he sobers up?”
“I wouldn’t sit by the phone. He’ll keep right on believing you should leave town. But what’s he going to do about it? Dad’s
vented now. That’s usually enough for him.”
“Usually?”
“Val, I really wouldn’t worry.”
“I really wouldn’t either, if I were you.”
When I got around to playing my answering-machine tape, there were several messages: Vicky was “just touching base”; Jake
left me a ballpark plant materials estimate for several of the changes we’d made in the garden plan. Baxter wanted me to call
him when I got a chance. The last message on the tape was in Ayesha’s deceptively lazy drawl. If I could play basketball with
anything like my old point guard team-mate buddy’s flair, I’d still be at it. She is, in an Albany league. She also owns a
mini-chain of two thriving boutiques; the oldest of her three kids enrolled at a morethan-decent engineering school last fall.
Combined, we did wonders for Pete and Janey’s success rate. Her message was a warning: “Pete’s picked the story up on the
Internet—you’d best give him a call.”
I thought about it, as I had the day of Ryan’s murder. And again rejected the idea—maybe I’d been weaned too long. Or more
likely: Pete would come down on the “get the hell out of there!” side, a position Janey would reinforce with her calm logic.
Instead, I dialed Ayesha’s number and assured her everything was almost back to normal, promising to come up for lunch as
soon as I got a breather and asking her to e-mail Pete something reassuring.
“You still haven’t got yourself a new e-mail account? Girl, what’re you waiting for—somebody to give you one for Christmas?”
“I’m waiting for the image of those 572 messages that had accumulated the day before I cancelled the old address to fade away.”
“You’re not supposed to give it out to everybody under the sun, you know.”
“I do now.”
“Anyhow, you could pick up the phone and call Pete. You’ve got their cell phone number, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but—”
“Not quite ready for the third degree, huh?”
“I guess. You know Pete.”
“Okay, I’ll help you out this one time. You make the headlines again, though, you’re on your own.”
“Deal.”
Vicky got the day’s good and bad news both. She thought I shouldn’t take the Clete business to heart. All the waitressing
she’s done, that sort of outburst has long since ceased to faze her. Assholes will be assholes. Jake didn’t expect a callback,
and whatever Baxter wanted, I’d had enough of the whole Ryan Jessup–Hudson Heights–Etlingers’ syndrome to give it a rest the
remainder of the evening.
At quarter after ten the phone summoned me back. “Aunt Val? Are you okay?” Alex’s voice is different on the phone: higher,
reedier. Not what you’d expect from the fierce creature he is.
“Yeah, I’m fine, hon.”
“So why didn’t you call?”
I’d flat forgotten to the night before at Mariah’s; I’d also forgotten the “if not Monday then Tuesday” provision in our arrangement.
The mood I was in I’d have ignored it anyhow. It is Vicky’s policy to be honest with the kids. I have not always succeeded
in implementing that, and it didn’t seem a good idea to go whole hog then. “Alex, are you calling from the camp store?”
“Where else?”
“Okay, so hang up and I’ll dial you back. There’s no point wasting your money.”
“I’ve got enough quarters.” From his tone, I could visualize the dug-in posture.
“Right. Alex, I feel awful about not calling last night. I had to go out. And tonight I just plain forgot. There’s this new
garden I’m trying to get a contract on, and—”
“Yeah.” And me and Galen don’t really matter, he must be thinking. Would I ever get it right with this kid?
“So how are things going up there? Are you guys having fun?”
“I guess. We just sort of thought you’d call. Galen was crying.”
“Tell him I’m sorry and I owe him a big one. Is he there now?”