Donn's Hill

by Caryn Larrinaga

  I nodded. As macabre as this conversation was, it felt good to be talking to someone about the body, someone who wasn’t treating me like a delicate child and patting my hand in sympathy. “Yeah, I know what you mean.”

  Brian handed me the latte. He rested his arms on the counter and inhaled deeply. “I can’t say I was surprised when they pulled back that sheet. Everybody else thought Tom had run off.” He shook his head. “I knew better. He was my best friend. He loved Penelope in his own way, and I knew he’d never leave her. But given what really happened, I wish he had run off.”

  We stood without speaking for a moment. The only sounds were a light gurgling from the percolator and a giggle from the corner table.

  “So you two were close?” I finally asked.

  Brian nodded. “Grew up together, right here. He was in my life for longer than he wasn’t, know what I mean? He was as good as a brother.” He slapped the counter. “No, better than a brother. He always had my back. He even gave me the startup loan I needed for this place. I would’ve done anything for him.”

  “Do you… Do you have any idea what could have happened to him out there?”

  Brian’s eyes flashed. “Oh, I have a couple theories. I’ll be looking into them. You can be sure about that.”

  The door to the shop opened and several teenage girls entered. Brian lifted his hand in a farewell wave to me and then moved off to take their orders.

  As I left the counter and headed to the door, a half-folded newspaper on one of the tables caught my eye and made me stop. It was the obituary section of the Donn’s Hill Dispatch. Tom Bishop, wearing a Chicago Cubs baseball cap over shoulder-length wavy hair, smiled up at me from a black-and-white photograph. Unlike the night he’d appeared in my bathroom, he looked happy and relaxed. He was definitely a good-looking man. Between that and his money, I could see why he had so much success with the ladies. I picked up the paper and read the text that followed the photo, skimming past his birth details to the description of who he’d been while among the living.

  He spent his life in Donn’s Hill, the town he loved, and constantly strived to make it a better place. Tom loved to laugh and will always be remembered for his nearly endless repertoire of bawdy jokes. He also loved to travel and made time to visit every major league baseball stadium in the country. He brightened all our lives with his smile. He was a pillar of the community, volunteering annually for the Afterlife Festival and creating jobs at the E-Z Sleep Motel, Main Street Diner, and T&P Delivery Services. He will be dearly missed by his family, friends, and employees.

  Tom is survived by his wife, Penelope; parents, Bradley and Maribelle; brothers, Bradley Jr. and Zachary; and many dear friends. Funeral services will be held this Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. at the Hillside Chapel.

  It felt strange to be reading the obituary of someone I’d only encountered after death. And it seemed everyone had a wildly different opinion of the man. Kit couldn’t stand him, and even Graham, who hated saying a word against anyone, disliked him. Just now, Brian had called him his best friend but alluded to Tom not being a perfect husband. The obituary painted him as an upstanding member of the community.

  None of those versions jived. Plus, even though I might not have met Tom while he was still alive, I’d been in two of his businesses, and neither one of them seemed like a place I’d be proud to own. Tom was handsome and well-traveled; Penelope seemed obsessed with her own appearance. Why were the motel and the diner both so filthy and run-down? What was really going on with them?

  Which was the real version of Tom Bishop? And what did he do to upset someone so much that it got him killed?

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Striker and I spent most of Tuesday reading the books Yuri had given me as homework for the Soul Searchers. Before bedtime, we got in a little exercise by playing with a crumpled ball of paper. She let me throw it across the apartment, and then she retrieved it like a dog playing fetch, bringing it back to me to throw again. When she got tired of the game, she held the ball between her paws and ripped it to shreds with her teeth.

  I marveled at the change in her appearance. After living with me for only a couple of weeks, she no longer looked like the half-starved stray that had followed me around town. Her face and haunches were filling out, and her coat was glossy and healthy.

  Sitting on the floor, I leaned forward onto my bed and rested my head on one of my hands. I used the other hand to scratch Striker’s face. “You’re so tough,” I told her.

  In response she yowled, hopped up onto the window seat, and rubbed her jaw against a window crank. As she’d trained me to do, I stood and opened the window for Her Majesty.

  “Paper toys aren’t cutting it, huh? I guess you want to go catch a real mouse.”

  She stepped outside, then spun around and planted her front paws back on the window seat. Looking straight at me, she yowled once more.

  “What? You want company?”

  She started purring and came back inside long enough to rub up against my leg before darting outside again. A cool breeze picked up, carrying in the crisp evening air.

  “That does actually sound pretty nice. Let’s go. I’ll meet you outside.”

  I left my apartment, wound my way down the stairs to the foyer, and exited onto the covered porch. It was a little bit chilly outside, as though the weather was considering moving backward to winter again. The sky was clear and the stars shone down onto Primrose House.

  As I stepped off the porch and onto the path, I heard a series of thumps above my head. I looked up just in time to watch Striker leap off the roof and into the branches of a twisting crabapple tree. She picked her way down the trunk to land in the grass with a soft thump and then trotted over to me to rub her head against my ankles.

  We set off together toward the town square in no particular hurry. The streets were quiet; most of Donn’s Hill was already in for the night, probably relaxing in front of their televisions with hot toddies or cocoa. Striker stopped often to sniff at spots on the pavement, chase bugs, and nibble on grass, but eventually we made it to Main Street and started meandering our way up the hill.

  A red neon closed sign glowed in the front window of Nine Lives Book Exchange. I paused to stare at it, wondering if it was too late to call on Gabrielle. It’d be fun to stop in and chat for a while, maybe look through her psychic supplies and ask questions about my mom.

  Just as I’d decided it was too late for an unannounced visit, Striker took off running. She dashed down the long driveway and into the backyard, disappearing behind Gabrielle’s house and out of sight.

  “Striker!” I stood on the sidewalk, immobilized by indecision. Striker ran around outside without me all the time. She probably often roamed all the way to the city limits, and I was none the wiser. But something felt off. I followed my gut and tore down the driveway behind her.

  When I rounded the corner to the backyard, Striker was sitting next to the overgrown boxwoods that hugged the house. She brought her chin low to the ground, raised her rump, and wagged it back and forth before pouncing into the bushes. I heard her crashing through the foliage after something.

  “Striker!” I hissed. “What are you doing?”

  There was no response. I thought about leaving her to her feline activities before Gabrielle came outside and found me creeping around her backyard, but a sudden, sharp yelp from the boxwoods stopped me.

  “Striker?” I hissed again.

  Silence. I dove into the bushes, hoping they would open up at the other end so I wouldn’t have to backtrack all the way through this scratchy tunnel. I couldn’t imagine how I would do that if I had to clutch an injured cat to my chest, but I was determined to find a way if I had to.

  I finally reached her glowing eyes and saw that the bushes opened up just a few feet down, where they’d been trimmed back to accommodate the central air-conditioning unit. I reached out to grab her, and she let me pull her toward me. She seemed to be fine—a little dirty, nothing more. I opened my
mouth to scold her for scaring me but closed it again.

  Angry voices were drifting down from the window above us. I froze, instinctively trying to stay silent. I didn’t want anyone to think I was spying on Gabrielle or up to something shady. Would they believe I had chased my cat into her bushes?

  The voices were growing louder. It sounded as though they were moving closer to the window. One voice was male. The other belonged to Gabrielle.

  “That doesn’t sound very plausible,” she said.

  “Look, he didn’t want you to know.” Now that the voice was closer, I recognized it. It was Brian.

  “Know what?”

  “He was running drugs out of the diner. And you know that sleazy motel was always a hotspot for working girls. He got into that too.”

  My skin crawled, and I silently gagged. The motel was a place where hookers did their business? I’d stayed there and slept on those sheets. They could have been washed in pure bleach, and I still wouldn’t consider them clean. There I was, worried about some wet footprints, when I was running around barefoot on carpet in a place like that?

  “Damn it, Brian, why didn’t you tell me that before I got involved with him?”

  “He asked me to keep it quiet. Your relationship with him wasn’t like mine anyway.” Brian sighed. “Listen, I’m just saying, he was involved with a lot of dangerous people. Who knows? Maybe a pimp didn’t like Tom moving in on his girls, or maybe one of his suppliers decided to cut out the middleman. Either way, I’m sure this was related to one of his side businesses. Somebody took him out. And I won’t rest until I find out who it was.”

  “Oh, God.” Gabrielle’s voice cracked.

  “I’m going down to his office to see if I can find anything.”

  “I’m sure the police have been all over his office—all of his offices.”

  “They’ve searched the ones Penelope knew about. But I don’t think she knew about the one at the lake. I’m sure that’s where he kept the good stuff.”

  Neither of them spoke for a moment. Brian finally broke the silence. “I’ll let you know what I find.”

  “Be careful.”

  The yard went dark as the lights in the house were shut off. I heard the back door open, and someone descended the wooden steps. He or she walked down the path along the bushes, passing within feet of where I was huddled. I held my breath and prayed my heartbeat wasn’t as audible as it felt.

  I waited as long as I could before exhaling, then tried to keep my breathing as quiet as possible. I listened for any sound from the yard or the house. After several minutes, Striker crept out of the bushes, and I followed her. Together we stole back down the driveway and across the street. I paused beneath a tree and glanced back at Gabrielle’s house, wondering what on earth I’d just overheard.

  Striker led the way home, and I collapsed onto the window seat in my apartment. My mind raced. Gabrielle had said she was “involved” with Tom. Were they having an affair? I could see it, especially since Kit and Graham had said Tom was a notorious womanizer. Gabrielle might have been vulnerable to his advances in the wake of losing her sister.

  Or was she having an affair with Brian? It sounded as though Brian might have been involved with Tom too, seeing that he mentioned their “relationship.” Surely the three of them couldn’t have been together. I blushed. I never like thinking about other people’s sex lives.

  I only knew one thing for sure: I couldn’t tell either Gabrielle or Brian that I’d overheard them. With the way they’d parted under the cover of darkness, it definitely wasn’t a meeting they wanted anyone else to know about.

  Striker jumped up onto my lap. I moved my hand to pet her, and she sniffed it. She pulled her head back, opened her mouth, and bared her teeth at me. The meaning was clear: I stunk. I looked down at my hands. They were covered in muck.

  “You know, it’s your fault I’m so filthy,” I told her. “A little gratitude might be nice.”

  She hopped down onto the floor and began cleaning the spaces between her toes. I left her to it and went to wash off the evidence of my romp in the bushes.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Hillside Chapel sat at the far end of Main Street. The cold weather of the night before had disappeared, replaced by the warmth of an early summer. Graham announced that it was too far to walk on such an unseasonably sunny day and drove us to the funeral in his Metro. I thought walking might have ended up being faster, though. The old car struggled and lurched against the steep grade of the only hill in a hundred-mile radius and was only capable of making progress while screaming in first gear.

  “You can do it, Baxter,” Graham murmured.

  “Baxter?” My fingers were crossed in my lap over the simple black dress that I’d borrowed from Kit. Thanks to her short stature, the dress cut off higher than I would normally have liked, and I kept tugging it down over my knees.

  Graham glanced sideways at me. “Yeah, Baxter. It’s his name.”

  I tried to smother my laugh before it escaped but a tiny bit managed to squeak out through my nose. “You named your car?”

  “Hey, Baxter is a good friend. He’s gotten me where I’ve needed to go since I was eighteen with hardly any trouble.”

  We were in the middle of a line of cars streaming up the road to the chapel for Tom Bishop’s funeral. I didn’t relish the thought of standing next to a smoking, broken-down car as half the town passed us by, so my fingers remained crossed until the road ended at a sloping parking lot. Graham guided us into the nearest empty space and the car shuddered to a stop. I got the feeling we’d only just made it.

  Graham patted the dashboard as if it were the head of a well-behaved dog. “Good boy, Baxter.”

  We unbuckled our seatbelts, and I stared out the car window at the church. It looked like a barn, constructed entirely of gray stones. The wood-shingled roof sloped downward from a tall white steeple. A large cemetery stretched up the hill behind the structure and spread out from both sides. At the crest of the hill, a stone monument in the shape of an angel, with arms and wings outstretched to the sky, gleamed in the afternoon sun.

  “I think they’re selling this place a little short by calling it a ‘chapel,’” I told Graham. It was as beautiful as a cathedral, and though it wasn’t nearly as big, I thought it would easily fit a good portion of the town’s populace. It could probably hold everyone who, for whatever reason, felt the need to celebrate Tom Bishop’s life… or his death.

  I studied the throng of Donn’s Hill residents that were plodding up the path to the chapel. Was Tom’s killer among them? Brian seemed to suspect that it was a drug dealer or a pimp. I scanned the crowd for people I thought might fall into one of those categories but didn’t see anyone who matched the stereotypical images in my head. No purple velvet suits or oversized animal-print hats. Maybe his death was mafia related. Those guys from The Godfather were always so well-dressed. They’d blend right in at a funeral.

  As would Penelope. I wondered what fashion magazine she’d consulted to decide whether a scoop neck dress or a plunging neckline was more appropriate for attending your husband’s funeral. There had to be an article somewhere: “10 Tips for Looking Your Best After Hiding Hubby’s Body in a Lake.”

  Or maybe Brian and I were both on the wrong track. Tom’s killer could be a jealous mistress who was furious he wouldn’t leave Penelope or an enraged husband who didn’t appreciate being cuckolded.

  Graham and I stepped out of the car and made our way up through the parking lot. As we drew nearer to the chapel, it grew more imposing until it seemed to loom over us. We passed through a pair of immense wooden doors into the chapel’s interior, which was bright and open. An usher handed me a program that featured a color version of the same photo of Tom Bishop that had accompanied his obituary, and Graham led me to a gray-cushioned pew roughly halfway up the aisle.

  He fidgeted in his black suit. It was a boxy cut that was too wide for his slim frame. Apparently, neither of us was happy with what we w
ere wearing. He jerked the bottom of the jacket downward and smoothed his striped tie.

  “Quite a turnout,” he said, glancing around.

  The pews behind us were filling quickly, and soon every seat in the place was taken. Ushers disappeared behind a tapestry at the back and returned with armloads of folding chairs that looked like the same model as the ones at the festival volunteer meeting. The latecomers were doomed to develop bruises on their backs that would match mine.

  At last the stream of townsfolk slowed to a trickle, and the building was full. Everyone was murmuring at once, filling the air with the hum of a hundred different conversations. Then the organist signaled that the funeral procession was about to begin by shocking us all out of our seats.

  It sounded like someone had turned the volume all the way up on the instrument then ripped off the knob. It was impossibly, painfully, stupidly loud. Everyone around me had their shoulders riding up as high as possible, but none of them had actually committed to protecting their hearing by jamming their fingers into their ears. I suspected it would be disrespectful somehow if I covered mine, so I resisted the urge and kept my hands at my sides.

  It took several bars of music before I recognized Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” being pounded out on the ancient pipe organ. I’d never heard it played as an instrumental before, and it would’ve been quite beautiful if my eardrums weren’t being attacked.

  Apparently I wasn’t the only one who felt this way, because after a minute or two, the volume dropped to a more reasonable level. The congregation let out a collective sigh of relief and our shoulders all dropped at once, like part of a choreographed dance. I glanced up into the choir loft and saw Mark’s unmistakable mop of red curls move away from the organ. I made a mental note to thank him later.