Carl and his fellow mover hoisted a coffee table waist high and waddled out the door with it.
“This is depressing,” Emily said.
“Grab Ray’s typewriter for me?” I said, keeping my voice low. “I’m going to talk to Sheila alone. I might get more out of her that way. I’ll meet you in the car.”
I mounted the stairs for the second floor, and when I came to the landing, I called out for Sheila, a little surprised that she hadn’t heard me talking to Carl.
“What do you want now?” she called back. “I’m down the hall, and I’m working.”
I caught her drift. She had heard me downstairs and she wasn’t thrilled to see me. I traced her voice to Ray’s bedroom, where she was ransacking the top drawer of a nightstand, a sight that irked me no end. Ray was gone, yes, and Ray’s son had hired this woman, but she lacked the basics of human consideration.
“What are you looking for?” I asked her, infusing my tone with as much irritation as I’d sensed in hers.
She spun back, her eyebrows arching in indignation. “I’m doing what Owen Landry asked me to do. There’s a family heirloom watch we can’t find. I don’t want the movers to take it.”
“Oh.”
“Yes, oh. And you?”
“I thought I could pick up the Ball jars, but I see they’re gone.”
Sheila’s shoulders drooped a little and her eyebrows relaxed. Perhaps she felt a little guilty, disposing of them so quickly, and I considered how that might play in my favor when I asked her about Alana’s murder. Which I was bracing myself to do. Before she could say anything about the jars, I said, “Did you hear that the police are calling Ray’s death a homicide?”
“No, I hadn’t heard. Are they really?”
“It’s not much of a surprise.”
“It is to me.” Sheila dropped to the bed, looking a little shell-shocked. “There was a murder in this house? Now I’ll have to tell potential buyers.” She lowered her head and began to massage her temples. “This will affect the price. I know it. Anything bad that happens in a house always does. Buyers take advantage of it and wheedle the price down.”
Rolling my eyes and biting my tongue, I looked away from her to a chest of drawers next to Ray’s bed. On it was another photo, this one of Ray and his wife, Donna. Focusing on that rather than what I really wanted to say to Sheila at that moment, I asked her if I could keep the photo.
“What? Fine,” she said with a dismissive wave of her hand.
As I reached for it, Minette poked her head from behind the frame and I gasped involuntarily.
“What now?” Sheila said, shooting daggers at me.
“Nothing.”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“No, no. I haven’t. I’ve never seen a ghost in my life. Not once. Have you?”
Judging by her expression, she thought I was out of my mind. “Is that photo what you came for?”
“Yes, I think so.”
When Sheila returned to her ransacking duties, I held open my jacket pocket and jerked my head toward it, signaling Minette. She dove for it, and I seized the photo frame to cover for her in case Sheila’s peripheral vision was top-notch. “Can I ask you a few questions about the Alana Williams murder six years ago?”
She groaned. “Conner told me you were going on about that. Are you a detective now? If I answer your questions, will you leave and not come back?”
“Deal.” She didn’t like me, I didn’t like her, and Ray wouldn’t have liked her either, so that made being brusque with her easier. “The police questioned you because you were seen arguing with Alana the night before she died. What were you arguing about?”
Sheila turned on me, her eyes blazing. “She was interfering with a sale, and that was detrimental not only to me, but to Nick Foley. He wanted to sell his nursery—no, he needed desperately to sell his nursery—and she talked him out of it.”
“How did she do that?”
Sheila laughed. “How do you think? Nick succumbed to her pretty face. Alana almost lost him his livelihood and lost his employees their jobs. And for what? Because she liked visiting the nursery. She liked plants. It was selfish of her, and I told her so.”
“But Nick must have turned things around.”
“Only just, and Alana had no way of knowing he would. He could’ve crashed, gone into bankruptcy.”
“How many other women were seeing Nick at the time?” I asked. “Were you?”
Sheila erupted with a donkey’s bray of laughter. “Are you mental? Me and Nick? I was happily married then, and for your information, there was no attraction. For either of us. Are we finished? I have sixteen hours before my first showing, and now I have to explain a murder in the house.”
CHAPTER 16
I thanked Sheila—a difficult thing to do—and went out the back door, photo frame in hand, so I could talk to Minette before seeing Emily. How was I going to carry her in my pocket back to the Jeep? I was afraid I’d sit on her. I walked well away from the house, pulled my pocket wide, but looked straight ahead, out into the woods.
“What were you doing?” I asked, without taking my eyes from the trees. “You could have been caught, and Sheila Abbottson is not a nice woman.”
“People don’t see me,” Minette said. “Even when they do, they think they don’t.”
“How did you get in Ray’s house?”
“I can get in anywhere.”
“Great, great. Did you want to see his house again? Is that it?”
“Yes. And I heard things to help you.”
“You did?” I stared down at my pocket. I couldn’t help it. I only hoped no one was watching me because I must have looked—in Sheila’s terminology—mental. “Tell me, quickly.”
“Sheila the mean realtor lady was talking with her idiot brother.”
“Minette, his name is Conner.”
“That’s what Sheila called him. Idiot brother.”
“Fair enough. Go on.”
“She called the movers the idiot movers.”
“Okay. Tell me what you heard that will help me.”
“First they talked about money. Her idiot brother said one big sale like Foley’s nursery will set her up for years. And Sheila said, ‘That idiot Foley is doing too well, even with his big overhead.’ She wondered how he does it. Then her idiot brother said Detective Rancourt made him think about Alana again.”
“Really?” I swung back to the house, searched the upstairs windows to make certain I wasn’t being watched, then did another about-face. “What else?”
“Sheila said, ‘Just drop it,’ and the idiot brother said he and Rancourt were talking about Alana because Rancourt started it, not him. He said it was because it’s almost the anniversary of her death. And then Ray of the Forest came up to them and told Rancourt that he had things wrong and Rancourt looked worried after that.”
“Why exactly was he worried?”
“That’s what Sheila asked.”
“And the idiot brother said?”
“He said, ‘I’m not sure. I’m beginning to wonder if I’ve had it all wrong.’ Then a mover shouted upstairs to ask him a question and he went downstairs.”
The back door creaked open. I let go of my pocket and wheeled back.
“Kate? I wondered what happened to you.” Emily trotted down the back steps and walked out to where I stood, still trying my best to appear enthralled by the woods. “What did Sheila say?”
I told her.
“I can’t picture her and Nick either,” she said. “You know, you can always see Ray’s house and yard again. Just take a walk through the woods back here.”
“It won’t be his house in a few days.”
She wrapped her arms about her, fending off the chill night air. “It doesn’t feel like his now. They’re cleaning the place out like he never existed. Wiping it clean. What’s that photo?”
“Ray and Donna in happier times.” I showed her the frame I’d taken from atop the chest
of drawers.
“I put his typewriter in the Jeep, and I took a vase from a kitchen cabinet. The one Ray always put his cut peonies in, remember?”
“Good. I’m glad. Ray would want you to have it.” I hooked my arm right through hers, mindful that my left pocket held Minette, and set out for my car. “Come on, let’s go. I’ve had enough of this.”
We didn’t talk on the short drive home. I was thinking about Ray and how his death had changed everything on Birch Street, and I suppose Emily was too. I parked in my garage and she walked home on the flagstone path, taking her now-treasured vase with her. Minette remained sheltered in my pocket until I reached the kitchen, where she flew out and up to the hutch, landing inside a teacup. There was something about my Wedgwood she liked.
“You have to be more careful, Minette,” I said. “What if the mean realtor lady had seen you?”
“She wouldn’t have believed it, Kate.” Minette leaned forward and rested her arms on the rim of the teacup. “She would have said ‘No, no, no, it can’t be.’”
“Like me?” I smiled, slung my jacket over the back of a kitchen chair, and sat. “Someone like Sheila Abbottson would go after you with a broom and a can of bug spray, whether or not she thought you were a fairy or even real. People can be dangerous.”
“I know this. I know more than you think.”
There was that middle-aged know-it-all tone again, emanating from the innocent, porcelain-like features of a child. “How old are you?”
“I was created fifty-seven years ago.”
“You’re fifty-seven? You don’t seem that old.”
“It’s not old.”
“Tell my bones that. I’m fifty.”
“I know. It was your birthday.”
“Minette, you’ve said things like that before. You know this and that about me, and you’ve been watching me—why? Why have you been watching me?”
“I followed Ray of the Forest.”
“You mean when he visited me?”
“Sometimes.”
“What about other times?”
“Sometimes I came without him and watched you in your garden. I’m going to fly now.” She hopped out of the teacup and onto the hutch shelf, and in one brisk movement she leapt from the shelf, went horizontal, barreled for the table, and hovered two feet from my face, grinning mischievously.
Endearing though she was, and though my fear of her had almost completely disappeared, I was still unnerved by the idea that she had watched me. “Do you watch Emily MacKenzie?”
“Only when she’s here.”
“Then why did you watch me in my garden?”
Minette floated to the table, sat cross-legged, and gazed up at me, her chin in her hands. “You’re kind to ladybugs and crickets.”
“Yes, you said that before.”
“And even worms.”
“You wouldn’t know that unless you had reason to watch me before you saw me with crickets and worms.”
“And I saw you with ladybugs before.”
“You’re being evasive.”
Round-eyed and suddenly slow of language, she said, “What’s evasive?”
I lowered my chin and fixed my gaze on her. “We’ve been talking for more than twenty-four hours and the one word you don’t know is evasive?”
Minette bit her lower lip and then said, “You don’t believe.”
“What are you talking about? Believe? I’m talking to a fairy! How much more believing do I have to be?” I asked, punctuating my words with wild hand gestures. “If I didn’t believe you existed, I’d check myself into a facility right now. If I didn’t believe, would I have taken you out of Ray’s house in my pocket, risking looking like a complete lunatic? Or kept you secret from Emily, my best friend? Who, by the way, will probably check me into a facility herself before this is over.”
The kitchen was silent in the wake of my tantrum. Chewing out a tiny, defenseless creature. That’s not good, Kate. I was about to say something kind but ambiguous when I saw a look of pity in Minette’s eyes. That was it. I was not going to be pitied. “Don’t do that,” I said.
“I’m not doing anything.” Minette sat on her hands, closed her eyes, and held her breath, making herself look small and harmless, I supposed.
“Don’t do that either. Start breathing or you’ll pass out.”
She exhaled and opened her emerald eyes. “You think you’re ordinary.”
“I am ordinary, and I don’t mind being ordinary. In fact, I like it.” I rose and pushed my chair back. “I just don’t want an ordinary life.”
“What is that?”
“A life that goes on and on in a pointless way,” I said. “Everything is hard, nothing is good, nothing means much of anything. That kind of life.”
“That’s not an ordinary life, that’s a bad life.”
“Regardless, no one wants a life like that.”
“You don’t believe.”
“Are we back there again? I’m going to bed.”
Minette flitted slowly upward, her pink wings beating. “You don’t believe in God.”
“I told you I do.”
“You don’t believe he sent me to you.”
“Don’t.” I flung my finger at her, and for the first time I felt real anger, though not at Minette. My anger was without aim, coming from a previously unmined depth in my soul, bubbling up and taking me by surprise. “Don’t say that. He doesn’t send anyone, and he sure doesn’t send four-inch flying creatures to fifty-year-old widows in Smithwell, Maine. Don’t you dare.”
Still hovering, Minette squeezed her tiny hands together. “All right, Kate. I won’t. I won’t.” Her voice was plaintive, imploring.
And I felt like a jerk.
“I need to go to bed to think and write before I turn in,” I told her. “There’s a lot of information swimming around in my head, and I have to make sense of it.” I started for my bedroom, but Minette cut me off at the stairs.
“I must help. I didn’t tell you everything the mean realtor lady and her idiot brother said.”
“Fine. I’ll open my bedroom door in three minutes.”
I trudged up the stairs, changed to my pajamas, plumped my pillows so I could sit comfortably in bed, and retrieved a notepad and pen from my nightstand. Then I opened my door. Minette grinned at me as though we hadn’t just had words—well, as though I hadn’t just had words—and flew to the end of my bed. I got in and, pen poised, asked her what more of Sheila and Conner’s conversation she had overheard. “Did Conner go back upstairs after talking to the movers?”
“He did. And Sheila asked him what he thought he had all wrong about Alana’s murder. And he said he was beginning to think the case could have been solved if people had wanted it solved. Isn’t that scary, Kate? Then Sheila said, ‘Don’t bring it up again. I don’t want any part of it.’ Then Conner looked afraid. He said, ‘This is troubling’ and ‘Ray should never have opened this can of worms.’ Then he didn’t say anything more. That’s all I heard.”
“Good heavens, Minette. Do you know what that means? Conner thinks the police are involved. The police! I wish I’d never talked to Rancourt.”
CHAPTER 17
After a restless night, I rose late the next morning. Minette had spent the night in a teacup on the hutch, and she was wide awake and sitting on a kitchen counter when I got up—raring to go, she said, though I’d already told her she couldn’t follow me to Foley’s Nursery. I made a breakfast of buttered toast and almond tea, and to my surprise Minette ate the bit of toast I offered her. It was the first thing I’d seen her eat since discovering her in my hutch.
“I’m worried about you,” I told her. “What are you eating?”
“The forest is full of food,” she replied. “Nuts and roots and berries. In the spring there are leeks and wild watercress by the river. Oh, Kate, leeks are delicious! I love spring in the forest.”
“What about the fall and winter? How do you survive?”
“Roots,
wild radishes, and reindeer moss.” Minette flitted to the table, where I was sitting with my cup of tea. “And maple syrup from the trees. It’s superb.”
“Superb, is it? Well, I think it’s about time I bought some honest-to-goodness real maple syrup. If I get the chance, I’ll pick some up this afternoon.”
She grinned and gleefully tossed back her light brown hair. “I don’t have to fly to the trees?”
“You don’t ever have to again if you don’t want to,” I said. “And you can stay in my house, out of the cold, for as long as you want.” I rose, took my jacket from the chair, where I’d left it the night before, and dug around for my car keys in the pocket. “I have to pick up Emily and head to Foley’s Nursery.”
“I don’t like that nursery,” Minette said. “I don’t like Nick Foley, I don’t like Sheila the realtor, I don’t like Conner the idiot brother, I don’t like—”
“What about Irene Carrick, the author Ray told about fairies? I bought that orchid in the living room because of her. I thought you’d like it.”
“I do like it! I like orchids, but Irene the writer doesn’t believe—” Minette pressed her lips together, hard, and peered at me through barely opened eyes.
“Never mind that. Why don’t you like the nursery?”
“Ray of the Forest thought it was a place of suspicious activity.”
I dropped like a rock to my chair. “What kind of activity? Did he explain?”
“No, he only said suspicious, but I think it was about money.”
“Suspicious activities often are.”
I’d wondered how Nick Foley went from near bankruptcy to solvency in a short period of time, especially since I hadn’t noticed an uptick in his business over the past six years, after he’d supposedly considered selling the nursery and then irked Sheila Abbottson by declining to do so. Was he engaged in something illegal? Was that why his financial fortunes had improved?
Dying to Remember Page 10
