I’d told Willem twenty minutes, so I could arrive first, check if any media people had mounted an empty-house watch, and warn
him off if necessary. From down the road I could see one car in the driveway—not his, not anybody’s I knew. Wrong again, I
corrected, turning in. I didn’t recognize the vehicle, but I could put a name to the man who stood facing the house, camera
up to his eye. Good old Jack Garrett.
A little farther along I could also read what he’d found interesting enough to photograph: in time-honored white block letters,
someone had chosen to paint on the wall of my house, directly under the high bathroom window: GO AWAY, BITCH! A person with
neat hand and artistic inclination. The first two words descended vertically; the last, in larger letters, saucered around
the base of them. Too bad Jack’s publication had liberalized its vocabulary of what was fit to print for family reading. If
it wasn’t already too late, I’d make damn sure the anonymous artwork didn’t get captured for television.
He opened the conversation: “Make any more interesting discoveries today?”
“I liked your article, but bug off” was my response as I strode toward the kitchen door. Not noticeably offended, he followed.
“I’m not inviting you in,” I cautioned.
“Your choice. Rule of thumb: one murder’s good for two or three days’ coverage, unless there was something special about the
victim or the juicy details keep coming along. Two murders in a row in a small town like this, both bodies found by the same
person? Honey, trust me—that’ll keep a dozen of us on your tail for weeks. There might even be a book in it, or a miniseries.”
“What makes you think it’s two murders? Look, there isn’t an awful lot I can tell you. If you want to wait while I get something
from inside we can talk for a few minutes, okay?”
“An improvement.”
There was plenty of leftover paint around to do the job but I opted for a quicker temporary fix. My tatty old king-size blue
blanket had more than sufficient dimensions. Patting Roxy on my way through, I fetched it from the bedroom closet. My household
tool stash in one of the kitchen cabinets yielded hammer and nails. “I should’ve left you out, sweetie,” I told the dog. “We
both know you wouldn’t bite, but all that open-air barking might have unsteadied their hand.
“Out you go,” I instructed, back-stepping as she bounded through her run door. I emerged from the house in time to see her
give up barking at Jack Garrett and make a beeline for some object about a third of the way along the length of the run, a
few feet in from the fence. I thought I’d better check it out. “Roxy, no!” I yelled, spotting the ragged porterhouse bone.
And when she’d backed off a little, “Sit! Stay!”
Dropping the blanket and tools, I opened the outside run gate and raced toward the bone. Roxy watched, her entire body pulsing
with the desire to seize her treasure before I appropriated it, but she held position. “You are a wonderful, wonderful dog,”
I said hugging her with my free arm. “And you will have a wonderful supper. I promise.”
Jack Garrett had come over to the fence to watch. “Your dog isn’t allowed bones?”
“Only the ones I give her—which would never be a porterhouse, with that thin spine. Did you pitch this in here?”
“I let restaurants cook my steaks. They keep the bones.”
“Was it here when you came?”
“Who knows? I was focused on your graffiti. You think somebody was trying to poison her?”
Belatedly I sniffed at the bone. All I could smell was overripe steak. Paranoia setting in? “I’ll have it checked. Maybe it
was there just in case she came out, to divert her attention. I’d better see if anything else is lying around that shouldn’t
be.”
A patrol of the run yielded nothing further. I got the kiddie snow shovel I keep in there for pickups, removed the sod in
the area where the bone had lain, and threw it outside the fence. “Okay, you’re set,” I told Roxy, patting her again.
In the kitchen, the bone went into a large Ziploc bag. I put the package on top of the refrigerator, washed my hands, and
went back outside. “So,” I told Jack Garrett, picking up the blanket and shaking it out, “how about making yourself useful?”
“Can you talk and hammer at the same time?”
“Let’s find out. Here, we’ll start with this corner. Just hold it right where your hand is. How long have you been here?”
“Twenty minutes, maybe.”
“Was there anybody around when you came?”
“Not a soul. Your graffiti was dry, so I didn’t just miss them.” He winced as I started pounding in the first nail, though
it was a good foot from where he was holding. “My turn. This Mariah Hansen was a friend of yours?”
“Friend and client. I was working on her garden.”
“You do that evenings?”
“I’d told her the day before I wanted to stop by and check on some plants I just put in,” I improvised.
“How’d you get in?”
“I have a key to one of the gates. In case I wanted to work when she wasn’t there.”
“You weren’t expecting her to be there?”
“I rang the front bell and there was no answer, so I assumed she was out.”
“Your sheriff’s allowing as how it might be a suspicious death. I suppose you’ve got an alibi for this one, too?”
I decided not to tell him Baxter hadn’t bothered to ask. “Absolutely.”
“So, what do you think? Was it a suspicious death?”
I stretched the blanket across the lettering and started attaching the other top corner. “That’s not my call. Besides, I wouldn’t
want to say anything that might hamper the investigation.”
“We’ll make it off the record then. Scout’s honor.” To his credit, he smiled a little. “You do think it was murder?”
“Yes,” I decided.
“On what grounds?”
Kneeling, I went to work on a bottom corner and prepped myself. I didn’t want to talk about that awful scene, but obviously
I was going to have to, at least a little. Jack’s “off the record” was like hoping Roxy would sit and stay three feet from
a steak bone—you couldn’t expect to win them all—so I’d best get my official version laid out right. “Mariah would not have
owned a hair dryer like the one that was in the spa with her body,” I began after a minute. “It was big and black, looked
like a discount store special. Not her type of shopping, not remotely her taste. I also don’t believe she’d have tried to
use one sitting in the spa, or anywhere near it. There’s a bathroom right inside the house, with one of those hair dryers
that’s fitted on the wall. That’s the only one I’ve seen her use.”
“If it’s murder, do you figure there’s a connection to the first one?”
Another point for decision making. “Well, there aren’t that many people around here. But those particular two would’ve recognized
each other on the street, is about all.”
“Oh, we can knit them together better than that. There’s you finding both bodies. If that’s a coincidence, it’s a damn bizarre
one.”
“I was meant to find Ryan Jessup’s body. Finding Mariah’s was pure chance.”
“In my book, chance is never pure. Then there’s the fact that Ryan Jessup was associated with Etlingers’ Garden Center as
an employee, Mariah Hansen as a client. What do you suppose is it makes the Garden Center such a dangerous place to be associated
with?”
“I don’t know how to answer that.”
“Maybe you’d just rather not. Rumor has it you and Willem Etlinger have had a thing going now for a few years. Also Mariah
Hansen and Willem Etlinger. This guy does spread himself around. He was also the main person Ryan was moving in on, careerwise.
Giving us another link, of sorts.”
“If your bottom line is that I think Willem is a double murderer and am trying to protect him, you’re wrong on both counts.
I’ll take it further for you. I very much want these two murders to be solved, regardless of who committed them. How else
am I going to get my privacy back? Or my sense of safety?”
“Yeah, well, I wouldn’t feel all that safe at the moment either, in your position. But you know, publicity can be a damn effective
defensive weapon.”
“Meaning?”
“If there’s somebody you think might be a threat to you, throw out the name a few times. To me, or whoever—you won’t have
any trouble getting media space. No need to make accusations. Merely establishing the association has a good chance of backing
him off, because the law would know where to come looking.”
I reminded myself that this was a man after a story. Still, I told him, if I had a single name, or a couple of them, I’d be
tempted to buy into his theory. Seven or eight names seemed excessive. That I didn’t tell him.
“If you come up with something, give me a buzz. I’ll be in touch anyhow, I expect.”
I had to laugh. “So do I.”
• • •
To my considerable relief, he was out of there a good five minutes before Willem showed up. I probably shouldn’t have had
him come to the house. No telling who might drive by, recognize his car, and draw troublesome conclusions. But I did want
to see him, and he’d sounded like he very much wanted to see me, and when or where else could we hope for a private get-together
any time soon?
Even through the screen door, I could see the change. Willem was blessed with a truly sunny disposition. The defects in his
home, family, and professional life affected him only in shallow, transient ways. Unlike most of us, he never had to struggle
to be happy. I’d sometimes suspected he’d find it a struggle not to be.
Until that afternoon. I was looking at a man no longer charmed. I opened the door, and we were holding each other tight, sobbing.
Rarely had we been together in that sort of isolated proximity without making love. That afternoon it wasn’t even a matter
of temptation resisted. There was no residue of tension, no anticipation, just … nothing. Except the need to hold on to one
another.
It was a while before either of us formed words, longer still before we could let go and start moving beyond fragmentary expressions
of loss and condolence. It didn’t feel that great, being separate again. I poured him a glass of wine and opened myself one
of the leftover Molsons.
“It was you on the phone last night, wasn’t it?” he asked, leaning against the refrigerator. I nodded. “I’m so sorry. I should’ve
called to check, but Kate was in her ‘I’m going to stay up as long as you do if it means all night’ mode.”
Because she already knew? “There wasn’t anything you could’ve done. I wanted to be the one to tell you, was all. How did you
end up hearing about it? Radio, TV—?”
“Mother was the first of us to hear. I’ve never seen her so shaken. I know she and Mariah didn’t get along and there was that
nonsense about not speaking, but … She was calmer about Ryan, although that’s making us some heavy problems.”
“Maybe she feels guilty.”
He looked briefly startled. “Oh, you mean for not making up before it was too late? Having to do that one-sided, at the wake.”
I silently contemplated Mariah’s response, were she granted one, and managed not to smile.
“Val, this had to be an accident, right? I haven’t been able to make sense of the story. Something to do with a hair dryer
falling into the spa? But Mother says the radio referred to mysterious circumstances. And Baxter’s making the rounds again,
wanting to know where everybody was late afternoon yesterday.”
Hesitating only briefly, I went into my official version of the mysterious circumstances.
“So you think somebody killed her? Why would anybody want to kill Mariah? I mean, she loved to stir things up a little, but
nobody in their right mind would consider her enough of a menace to—”
“It’s even harder to believe she’d hook up a big clunker of a hair dryer to a bright orange extension cord and try to use
it in the spa.”
“Phil says there’s some indication she’d been drinking. Maybe that was a factor.”
“Mariah regularly drank from four o’clock on. Three, if it had been a bitchy day. Did you ever see her drunk enough to do
something that colossally dumb?”
Of course he hadn’t. “God, Val, what’s happening?”
“I don’t know. I thought after Ryan maybe it would all go away. Did you notice that blanket nailed to the wall outside?”
“I could hardly help it. Why is it there?”
“Come, I’ll show you.”
It had been too rush-rush a job. When I pulled out the lower right corner nail, that whole side gave way. The sight of the
graffiti made him look even worse. “Why you? What have you done?”
“It could be a virulent case of shoot the messenger. Clete seems to hold me responsible for every bad thing that’s happened
the last few years. Is that the general sentiment? If so, it had damn well better change, and soon. I can’t have the boys
coming back to this kind of shit.”
He looked dazed. “It’s what, a week and a half till public school starts? Surely by then …”
“Not without some help, I don’t think.”
“Do you seriously believe Clete wrote what’s on your wall?”
“Not his very own self. I think he was behind it.”
“I can say something, if you want. Not that he’s in the habit of listening to me.”
I’m not sure why all thoughts of circumspection vanished at that point, but I felt the snap. “Relay a quote. To anyone you
wish—go ahead and spread the word among your extended family. So far I’ve hardly said a word to the media. All the public’s
seen is this large, scowling woman trying to avoid satisfying their curiosity. But I’ll tell you, if anything out of the way
happens again that involves me, I’m going to get downright chatty about some of intricacies of life around here. And I’ve
made arrangements to see the material gets to the right places, in case I’m not around to deliver it personally.”
“I can’t believe what you’re implying.”
He looked so stricken I would almost have taken it back. On the other hand, if Mariah and I hadn’t been so circumspect about
Ryan’s murder, so careful not to bruise his sensibilities on the subject of his family, maybe things would have turned in
a direction that didn’t lead to her death. The thought made me as angry with Willem as I’d ever gotten. “Let’s try to be grown-ups.
Somebody’s making all this happen, and there’s not a goddamn chance it’ll turn out to be a mysterious stranger.”