The Dead Past (19 page)

"Another safe, pat answer."

I reached over and held up
The French Powder Mystery
. "It's not as cut and dried as this, Anna. On the one hand, you're the strongest, smartest person I've ever known, but on the other you allow yourself to allow your natural nosiness to turn awful events into charming entertainment. It's not about solving riddles and puzzles. It's about digging into lives and raking muck and dealing with somebody who could put a twenty-two in a lady's ear and pull the trigger, and maybe finding out that somebody you cared about is capable of killing your parents. Yes, I want to watch over and protect you. You say
Broghin
being frightened disturbs you—well, how's it make you feel that I'm on the cusp of being fairly terrified myself?"

She enunciated quite carefully. "Jonathan, it is a part of life."

"Ah, only if you're lucky."

"I believe you are in sore need of clarification yourself. I read mysteries because I enjoy them. I do not spend my days fantasizing that I am a detective, or that you are my sidekick, for that matter. Do not put such emphasis on my attitude." She wheeled forward. "Rather accept your own." Almost as an afterthought she added, "And in case you've forgotten, I do happen to know something of death."

"I haven't forgotten," I said. "I'd just like to get some distance."

She kissed me on the cheek, took my dirty plate and cup and put them in her lap, then went to the kitchen. She filled the sink with soapy water and began washing the dishes and pans while I stared at her back wondering if anything had been resolved. There was a knock at the door.

I looked outside; the window was too thick with rime and snow to see anyone. I called Anubis with a firm order. Even in his most temperamental moods he'll do what I say when I use that tone of voice. He shot up and stood beside me. For perhaps the hundredth time I wished I didn't hate guns so much that I didn't own one. I opened the door.

Two adolescent girls with snow shovels stood at attention just a hair less rigid than a pair of marines. They were ready to work. One wore a perfectly fitted pink ski suit that would have made an Olympic skier proud, and the other had on white ear muffs, a powder-puff coat, cross-threaded boots and tight leather gloves. They had stern faces and red cheeks.

The first girl said, "We're going to shovel the walk for Mrs. Kendrick now, okay?"

"Okay," I said.

"It's still snowing so we might be back later to go over it again, okay?"

"Okay."

They looked confused and didn't move. The weight of the economic recession bore down on them.

"Do you want money now?" I asked. I didn't know what kind of an arrangement Anna had established with them, whether she prepaid them for the season or what.

"Yes, please," the one with ear muffs said.

I opened the storm door, took out my wallet and gave them ten bucks. The girl held it by the corner as if it were actually roadkill with a picture of Alexander Hamilton on it.

"More?" I asked.

"Yes, please," she said.

They were polite extortionists. I handed the girl in the pink ski outfit another ten. They each put the bills in identical change purses that contained no change but lots of wadded bills. The lowest denomination I saw was a twenty. The girls started shoveling the porch and ramp. They were a great deal more skilled at the job than I was, hurling shovelfuls of wet snow over their shoulders and chopping down to crack four-inch layers of ice. If they'd heard what had transpired last night they didn't let it impede their performance.

"Cripes, kids are serious nowadays."

I hopped up and sat on the kitchen counter the way I used to when I was a boy; perhaps I was trying to regain my youth when I did not have to pay two girls twenty bucks to shovel the walk, when I myself did the same to the tune of only fifty cents and felt helplessly ripped off.

"At least we now have a definite course of action," Anna told me.

"Yeah, to sell the shop and start shoveling driveways for a living."

She grinned. "Christine and Josepha do attack their chosen profession with a great deal of verve."

"They can afford to. So what's our course of action?"

"The letter may be nothing, as Deputy Tully suggested, but he admits he did not read its entire contents. Something within that note may shed a new light. We have to read it."

"And how do you propose we do that?"

She
pursed
her lips. "In this instance I truly believe honesty is the best policy," she said. "I will ask him. And I am confident he will tell me what he's been hiding. He was prepared to do so last night, but I couldn't help him get over the initial hurdle." She gave me a puzzled frown. "Why you decided to let Lowell wait is beyond me. I don't share your patience."

"But you've got conviviality."

"Barrels of it."

I got down from the counter and put on my coat.

Anna raised a soapy hand and pointed at me. "I suggest you let me speak with the sheriff alone, Jonathan. If you two start irritating one another even more than usual we'll never get anywhere."

"I'll leave that part of it to you, Anna. I admit you can handle
Broghin
much better than me. But I still have to go talk with somebody."

Maybe we'd managed to get a handhold on enough threads of the tapestry—now I had to use them, tie knots, and set a snare. It was time to start pushing harder and shove the killer out into the open, and hopefully be nowhere near when it happened.

"Who?" she asked.

"Lisa Hobbes might know if Karen was having an affair with Richie or if they had some other tie." I opened the front door and Anubis raced forward, and when I pressed him back he gave me a hurt look of betrayal. "If Lisa doesn't know then I suppose I'll have to go ask Mary Jean Resnick."

Lisa and Doug Hobbes's house sprawled at the top of Saint Gabriel Court, not far from the Corner Convenience. It was a split-level ranch with intricate brick work trim, wood pattern shingles, and high tech aerials to nab cable channels from Buenos Aires. Lisa's yellow El Dorado sat shining in the driveway.

When they were newlyweds they started out in the basement of Doug's father's house and eventually bought the place from his Dad when the old man moved to Florida. Doug's father had been our Little League coach for our worst season: one and nineteen. We even lost against the Prospect County Indians for the first time in twenty-five years; Doug's dad got into a couple of brawls with steel mill workers who didn't take losing to the Prospect County Indians too well, and much to our relief that ended his dubious career as a Little League coach.

Lisa liked cats. There were three in view, wandering the yard, slinking over the chain-link fence and poking through the small doorway of the shed, straw and
detris
clinging to their whiskers. They lived outdoors all year round and grew thick layers of fat and fur in the winter.

I rang the bell and could hear a faint
ding dong
within. As I waited, two of the cats sauntered up the stoop and made figure eights around my legs, mewling loudly. I rang the bell again and only more cats came. Four of them now. I stopped ringing the bell. They smelled badly, not dirty but strangely clean, antiseptic. I didn't dislike cats but I hated to see whole packs of them. It reminded me of the unbalanced elderly ladies in the city who take in dozens of strays until the health department is finally forced to remove them.

I turned and started back to the Jeep and the front door opened. It took Lisa about ten seconds to focus on me. Her mouth gnarled into a stunted smile. She wore baggy jeans and an incorrectly buttoned white blouse, and she looked like a brick wall had toppled on her. Her eyes were extremely red, with brutal dark circles under them. She had her hair pulled back in a messy pony tail that left as many tufts out of the rubber band as tucked in.

"Johnny," she said.

Seeing her, it hit me how wrong I was to come here and churn questions. Lisa and Karen had been close friends since before kindergarten. For them it had always been a case of opposites attracting—hushed and loud, small and tall, extrovert and introvert. Now Lisa seemed halved. They had been a proper pair counterbalancing each other. Karen had once almost knocked Doug on his ass in study hall because he'd been too shy to ask Lisa to the homecoming dance. When he finally did ask, she'd been too timid to say yes. Karen wound up having to connive a ride from Doug and virtually flinging them together on the gym floor.

Lisa watched over Karen too, who enjoyed playing devil's advocate far too much for her own good. Before she'd married Willie, her flirting had on occasion tempted too many rednecks into the fold. The summer after graduation, she cut out the back of Jackals to smoke a joint in some guy's car and a half hour later came running in bleeding from her nose and mouth, naked from the waist up. I didn't know the guy and she didn't press charges and he supposedly split for greener pastures soon thereafter. She settled down with Willie that autumn, but being the center of attention meant a lot to her. She always said she wanted to be a comedienne. And she couldn't forgo the thrill she got from wiggling smoothly under male noses and laughing so loudly the whole room was forced to turn and look.

Had she done it that night at
Raimi's
?

My voice was thick, the words inane. "How are you doing,
Lise
?"

"Come in," she said, and I walked in and shut the door. "You look full of intent. What can I do for you?" Her bottom lip gave out immediately and she started crying. We stepped close together in the foyer and hugged, and her whole body shook as though she would shatter in my arms. I muttered worthless sentiments and she nodded and sobbed. We stayed like that for a long time.

She sniffled and said, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be."

"It's just that…"

"You don't have to explain."

It smelled antiseptic in the living room, too; she'd been dusting, mopping with detergent, polishing, washing dishes, keeping herself busy. Housewives in pain had nowhere to go but deeper into their houses. A vacuum leaned against the coffee table. Her wedding album and high school yearbook lay open on the couch. There was a box of tissues on the table. She took one and wiped her eyes and blew her nose softly.

"I want some tea," she said, laughing the way people will after choking on tears. "Would you like a cup?"

I couldn't think of anything I wanted less at the moment than tea, except maybe for decaffeinated coffee. "Yes," I said. "Please.”

“I only have herbal.”

“Whatever you're having is fine.”

“Chamomile it is."

She put on the pot, and I paged through the wedding album. I liked her gown but thought the bridesmaid dresses were garish. Only Karen looked good in hers. I opened our yearbook and scanned some of the comments Lisa's friends had written. Most of them had so many inside jokes and high school jargon they were unintelligible. I read my own remarks and didn't remember any of the things I'd been referring to.

Lisa entered with a tray of cookies, pie, and tea. She tried pouring me a cup, but her hand shook and the hot water splashed. I took the kettle from her.

She glanced down at the albums and said, "Lot of memories in those.”

“For me, too.”

“You didn't come to my wedding, did you?”

“I couldn't." She'd been married somewhere in the middle of my three-month jail term.

"Yes, that's right." She pushed some pillows aside and sat. She shoved the plate of cookies at me. "I hope you like chocolate chip. Doug doesn't, but I'm addicted and they were on sale. There are some Oreos, too, in the cupboard, if you'd like.”