In Hollywood, Charlie thought, in a few days.
“And that stock market you godless count on is merely smoke—as was the certain value and future wealth of land of which God would never make more. Those poor demented souls up at Gentle Oaks are all there on Medicaid.”
Charlie’d thought listening to the evening news was depressing.
“I notice, Charlemagne Catherine Greene, your intense interest in that portrait above the mantel. I think we both know who that is, don’t we, my dear? And recognize her likeness to you?”
“Myrtle?”
“Yes, our founding mother and our curse, and ultimately yours, too. She died, harlot, because she betrayed her family as you betrayed yours and as Edwina plans to betray hers.”
CHAPTER 14
CHARLIE AND HER mom walked out of Great-aunt Abigail’s smothering house from Psycho into Myrtle’s silent ice world. They were silent, too. For once the cold felt refreshing even though it took Charlie’s breath away.
Halfway down the front sidewalk, Edwina’s feet went out from under her so fast, her daughter nearly tripped over her. When she tried to help Edwina up, Charlie went down instead. They sat in this ignominious position for the longest time, cushioned by other people’s “fat” coats, blinking, breathing steam into each other’s face. Until Edwina, who’d been near tears ever since Great-aunt Abigail had led them into the parlor, cracked up.
Charlie had rarely heard the professor’s laughter go out of control. It got so violent that Edwina had to search her purse for Kleenex to keep her nasal drainage from being an embarrassment in air cold enough to sear the lungs.
“You look so funny in that coat.” She found a clean tissue for Charlie, too.
“Right. I’ve been thinking all day how much you look like a fireplug. You hurt?”
“No. Think we can get up?” For no known reason, that remark and their attempts to do so brought on another laughing gale and the two ended up on their knees hugging each other, but it was at least some improvement.
“Charlie, can you imagine what old Abby and the neighbors fortunate enough to be looking out their windows are thinking right now?”
That lost them whatever leverage they’d gained with the ice. “Mom, stop. I hurt.”
They were on their backs again staring up at black, bare tree limbs, limned in gloomy, gray-sky light, branches like claws reaching for them. Two crows the size of condors stared down, cawing ridicule. Charlie felt laughing tears freezing on her cheeks. “Oh, please—I’m going to crack ribs again.”
When they finally reached the rented Chevy, Charlie intoned, “Now repeat after me, ‘I will not let that bitch ruin my life and my retirement. She’s already caused too much misery and deserves no more from me.”
Once inside the car, Charlie added, “And we spend tonight in a decent hotel in Mason City, before our blessed escape back to our own worlds. Where are we headed now?”
“Gentle Oaks.”
“Oh, shit.”
“I’ll buy you a beer at Viagra’s for lunch. We’ll skip the special and just have french fries. Charlie, I wish I’d had the nerve to talk to Great-aunt Abigail like you did back there. I’m proud of you and Libby. Each generation works up a little bit more sass. But you build on what those of us who had less power and self-esteem did before.”
“I know that, and I’ll gladly take you up on Viagra’s. But why do we have to go to the Oaks?”
“Hey, we’re here. We’re leaving soon. Whatever unfinished business we can finish before that won’t come back to bite us later.”
Myrtle had been sort of executed by being locked in a root cellar, similar to the home place’s cellar, with some food and water and candles—all because she’d announced her intention to run off with some guy to the Wild West. He was probably a forerunner of Kenny Cowper. Because in her large family she was the least comely girl, Myrtle had been chosen as the sacrificial daughter—and should have been honored by the role since women were worth so little. No one had thought for a second that any man but a ne’er-do-well would have someone like her. So she was hidden away until such time as she would come to her senses and agree to fulfill the destiny God had designed for her in her family, the community, and the scheme of things.
Talk about shunning. No one spoke to her or saw her for two months. When the root cellar was opened, the ugly Myrtle was dead, as was her stillborn child—a son the family would greatly have appreciated if she’d been chosen for that role. Sons seemed to have been a disappointment to the Staudts for generations.
“So part of the curse of Myrtle,” Charlie had said to Abigail, “is disappointing sons and disobedient daughters. Three wonderful great-aunts didn’t marry and have children and it doesn’t sound like they took on the eldercare either, did they? Just added to it. And they didn’t provide daughters that would, right? They took on righteousness instead. Which is some sort of protection, I suppose.”
Apparently, Myrtle had left a blasphemous note outlining the conditions of her curse. Again, as happened so often in Charlie’s life, the real world made clear it was even crazier than Hollywood, which at least was well aware that it was not the real world.
“What did she do, write it in the dirt floor in blood by candlelight after miscarrying? Any society that merciless deserves a worse curse than that. They were like the Taliban.”
“The Taliban are heathens.” Great Aunt Abigail had set down her tea cup, suggesting the audience granted was now over.
“If I’d been Myrtle, I’d have turned all you maiden Staudts into fat prostitutes with harelips and crossed eyes. The lesson here is that no amount of self-righteousness justifies such evil cruelty.”
“No, slut. The lesson here is that those with black eyes should not spawn, and you are a perfect example of why.”
“And you are a nasty, mean, helpless old woman, and my mother is far too intelligent to get caught up in your sacrificial scheme of things. You, Abby Staudt, deserve Gentle Oaks for years and years and years.”
At Gentle Oaks, snowflakes began to flutter against the windshield again and the oaks looked anything but gentle. Dark and bare and gloomy, they hovered over the building as if preparing to pounce on it. The dark sky barely cleared their tops. A dark, dank, threatening atmosphere closing in on the Greenes.
Oh, get real. And you think Harvey Rochester’s moody.
Well, I get carried away by atmosphere.
“I noticed.”
“You noticed what?”
“I noticed how strongly I’m affected by atmosphere. And this one’s a real downer.”
“Just remember how beautiful you thought Myrtle and Iowa were yesterday. We won’t be there long. Viagra’s will cheer you up. Just hang in.” But they sat staring at the bleak scene. Charlie and her mother had not gotten along well since Charlie’s hormones kicked in—similar to Charlie’s experience with her own daughter—and the relationship had further deteriorated with a teen pregnancy. But as selfish as Charlie knew she was, and how much she longed to be out of here, she worried about what would have happened if Edwina had come to Myrtle alone. That cry for help had been justified.
Charlie hadn’t realized how far back in the family this ponderous guilt thing had gone, how steeped with it her mother’s upbringing had been, had always assumed it started with her own great mistake. Did it really go all the way back to Myrtle? She was about to broach the subject of her birth mother and the dark eyes among the blue around here when Marshal Delwood roared up in his red Cherokee.
Gentle Oaks was vastly different from what it had been on the weekend. For one thing, the administrator was in. And the place bustled with staff. The temporary weekend people had been replaced by locals, who came from town, from nearby farms or, like the administrator, from Floyd. Except for the Hispanic aides. Charlie wondered how many came to work on tractors with lugs like Darla.
Elsina Miller had two large prints of Jesus in her office. They were identical and you saw one upon entering and the other
upon leaving. While activity and some panic swarmed around her, she remained serene, pleasant, benign, all-knowing—like the angel that touches people on TV, but she didn’t have the teeth. Nor was she as pretty or worldly-wise.
She had lots of lush brown hair with the beginnings of gray salting it and an oily streak at the crown. Her dress was flowery with a matching belt, gathered and mid-calf. Her sweater matched one of the powder-blue flowers in the dress, somehow reminding Charlie of Dona Reed on Nick at Night. She wore hose with tennis shoes. When she sat down and crossed her legs, you could see the tops of her knee-highs. She was slender but with the ploop of a belly beginning below the matching belt and the early rise of a hump at the base of her neck in back.
They sat on opposing couches in her office while Delwood raged on his cell phone to somebody. Elsina Miller smiled apologetically and benignly at the Greenes. There’d been another death at Gentle Oaks.
While all this was going on, the administrator studied Charlie, finally asking gently, “Are you saved, Miss Greene?”
This angel didn’t begin to compare on the threat scale with Great-aunt Abigail. “I must be. Lost my Toyota in a near-death experience, you know.”
“No, I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t? Everyone else seems to.” Hell, I’ve been between the sheets with Mitch Hilsten. You must have heard of my one claim to fame. Del’s cellular reminded Charlie that she must get ahold of Larry Mann, her gorgeous secretary.
“It looks as if Jesus loves you. He spared you.”
“Tell that to the twelve who died in the same accident.”
“Jesus has a purpose we do not know. I wish I could convince the marshal.”
“Who?” Charlie asked when Del turned off his phone and while Elsina explained that death wasn’t really dying or something.
“Ida Mae—Helen’s mom.”
“Myrtle’s curse again?” Charlie asked so the condescending administrator could explain that there was no such thing as curses and that Jesus supervised all.
Charlie began to study Elsina as a possible suspect.
The worst part was that it was Helen who had discovered her mother dead this morning.
No, the very worst part was that Cousin Helen had decided Charlie should look into the suspicious deaths recently plaguing the Gentle Oaks Health Care Center. David Wyborny had apparently been sending home to Vivian more than just Charlie’s accidents and notoriety in the industry news mags. Charlie was no detective, nor had she any desire to be, but the law of nature or Murphy’s law or some other ridiculous, universal, or otherwise unnecessary law seemed to dictate that if you stumbled over one dead body in your life, others would follow. In Charlie’s case, rather monotonously.
Fatty Staudt, Edwina’s cadaverlike grandfather who used to be fat, wheeled his wheelchair in to ask Charlie if she was done with the combining yet.
“Yes.” She and Helen were having a staring match, Elsina trying to convince all that Jesus would see to everything.
“And have the boys finished the haying yet?”
“Yes.”
“Let us bow our heads in prayer. Lord Jesus, we pray thee—”
“Cousin Helen, you need professional law enforcement here.”
“Goddamned right,” the marshal agreed.
“That old Oliver still pulling the plows?”
“Your fucking Oliver’s pulling just fine. Now get your hands off my butt, dirty old geezer.” No wonder Edwina had disowned him.
But everything came to a halt when the booming voice with the Broadway modulation boomed from the lobby, “Now what the bloody hell?”
CHAPTER 15
CHARLIE’S DERRIERE WAS sore from more than Fatty Staudt’s pinches. All that falling down must have left some ugly bruises. She and her derriere were crowded into a booth at Viagra’s with Delwood beside her, Edwina and Harvey across from her, and their server, Kenny Cowper, on a chair he’d pulled up at its end. Five steins of beer and a platter of french fries lay on the table between them.
The town watchman sat at the bar with a burger, pretending not to be listening. Outside the windows, snow fell thick and straight down, with no wind, making Viagra’s feel cozy and safe.
“Kenneth, my boy, you would not believe the vile invective that came from those beautiful lips. Made even me blanch. Where perchance did such a fair maiden learn such words as those you laid upon our pure and dear Elsina?”
“My mother,” Charlie answered the big-time businessman of Myrtle, and all eyes switched to the other woman in the bar, even the watchman’s.
“Oh, come on. There were a few there I’d never even heard.” The research scientist, biology professor, and expert on rats and bats of the high desert plateau dipped a fry in ketchup and then paused with the morsel halfway to her mouth. “Of course you have to understand the context here, Squirt. We had just come from an audience with her highness.”
“Abigail Staudt?” Kenny put down his stein and stared back and forth at the women. “You went straight from Abigail to Elsina? Beer’s on me, women—bravery beyond the call of duty, least I can do.”
“The worst part was when Gladys and Marlys applauded Charlie’s performance and so excited did they become that one at least soiled her Depends. On the spot. And you know how our administrator prefers to keep her office pure, even of that sort of thing.” Rochester sounded almost gleeful.
“And that horrible alarm was going off and frankly, I’d already had a big day. I totally lost it. Lucky I didn’t deck somebody.” Charlie savored another french fry. “Do you do the bartending and the cooking, too? These are fantastic.”
The barkeep had a way of laughing at you with a total lack of expression and no sound whatever. “Nah, I’ve got this secret weapon.”
Charlie wasn’t about to touch that one. “Mr. Rochester, do you have a grand piano in your living room or parlor?”
“No, ma’am.”
“You stay away from my daughter, Squirt.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
The marshal wasn’t about to be left out. “Ken, the really worst part was when Helen Bartusek insisted Miss Greene here investigate the rash of deaths up at the Oaks. Her mother bought it last night.”
“Yeah. Ida Mae, I’d heard. But what did Miss Greene here answer to that? Leaving out the vulgar language of course.”
“Said that was a job for professional law enforcement.”
“And Cousin Helen replied, ‘We don’t have any in Myrtle,’” Edwina replied. “‘But you, Charlie, have been involved in murder before and can help us.’ And Charlie said, ‘Only if you let my mother go.’”
“Almost biblical,” Harvey said as the hamburgers arrived.
Charlie and Edwina had agreed to share one. They make the biggest buns in Iowa. Even halves would be more than either could eat.
“Mr. Cowper, how do you keep your figure with food like this?” Charlie asked.
“He runs and lifts barbells,” the marshal ratted.
“Got his own special refrigerator in the kitchen here full of rabbit food. Don’t crunch, he throws it out,” said Myrtle’s watchman-snitch from the bar stool where he was paying no attention to them. He wore a knitted cap with the edges rolled up all around.
“And my secret weapon.” The proprietor of Viagra’s made a special point of pointing out the thick slices of tomato and lush leaf lettuce and grilled onion on his plate and theirs.
Charlie would never know if this food was so wonderful because of special cooking, secret weapons, or the fact that her mood and the rest of the atmosphere were so miserable. Or because from somewhere there came the delightful scent of real coffee, fresh-ground.
“So Ms. Greene, have you decided to take on the case? So that your mother’s family will let her go?”
“Is that real coffee? Like a skinny latté with nutmeg sprinkles?”
“You answer my question first.”
“I’m my mother’s family and I’m taking her out of here, dudes. No way am I goin
g to let this happen to her because some Taliban society mistreated an ugly woman for its own purposes.” That’s what she’d meant to say but not how she’d meant to say it. Charlie pushed the half-filled stein of beer away.
“But she did condescend to look at the body.”
“It was dead,” Charlie assured them. Ida Mae Truex had been a short and very heavy woman. She was a great mound beneath the sheet. She’d been dead for a while. By the coroner’s orders, they were to touch nothing if a patient was found unexpectedly dead until he arrived, since the rash of deaths was causing suspicion.
One eyelid had been open halfway, showing some clouding. Could have been death, could have been cataracts, for all Charlie knew. She wondered if someone had closed them for her after death. The nuthouse that place was last night, anything could have happened. Ida Mae could have just died a natural death and someone tried to lower her lids. Charlie didn’t know what color suffocation made the skin. Ida Mae’s was sort of mottled. The bedclothes were decidedly rumpled. Maybe that was normal, too.
The staff had been late getting to work what with the ice storm, and in the frenzy to take care of all the adult babies still hyped over the full moon, Ida Mae’s demise had been a late discovery.
“And we have a very large staff during the week, most of whom live nearby.”
“Women come cheap here,” Kenny explained. “And so do the Mexicans.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t come cheap. Old Marlys even called me top dollar out at the cemetery before I lost her.”
“I’ll vouch for that,” Edwina said.
“You want that latté, you have to tell what you discovered when you examined Ida Mae’s body.”
“I hire men, too. It’s the weekends that are the devil at all long-term health-care facilities.”
“We don’t call it a nursing home in front of Harvey,” the marshal explained. “It would be insensitive.”
The Rampant Reaper Page 9
