by J. J. Murray
And we could never get access to them. “Who would know any of this for sure? Who do you know at the post office?”
“They are all young now,” Nonno says. “And much too sour and efficient. They do not like to hold conversations with old men like me.”
“Would Louise know?”
He frowns. “I am sure Louise would know.”
“Call her.”
He shakes his head. “But we have, as you say, broken up. She will not speak to me.”
“Exactly what happened, Nonno?”
He sighs. “When I delivered the clock to her house, she said, ‘Well, it is about time,’ and I said, ‘Yes, it is a clock, it is about time.’ And she said, ‘It took you a long enough time to fix it,’ and that hurt my feelings, so I told her that her tea was far too watery to be tea and her cake had the consistency and flavor of pumice.”
I laugh. “You didn’t?”
“Yes. It got a little ugly after that.”
“It should have gotten a little ugly before that, Nonno! You must apologize to her.”
“It will not do any good,” Nonno says. “She was so angry at me that she couldn’t speak.”
Wow. Louise was angry. “Call her for me anyway.” I hand him my phone.
“And what do I ask her?”
“Ask her if she knows anything about Mr. Simmons and his mail.”
He presses in Louise’s number. “Louise, it is Franco … I am sorry for the things I said … Your tea is very good.” He grimaces. “And your cake is delicious.” He sticks out his tongue. “Friends? Okay. I have a question that only you can answer. Do you know anything about Mr. Simmons’ mail?” He covers up the phone with his hand. “She wants to know why I want to know.”
“It’s important to me.”
He puts the phone to his ear. “This is important to Gio … He had his mail delivered directly to his house once a week. Who delivered it?” He nods. “Your cousin-in-law Ralph Carey.”
“Ask her if Mr. Simmons got a lot of mail.”
“Was there a lot of mail for Mr. Simmons?” He shakes his head. “Thank you, Louise. Again, I am sorry— … I am sure you are mistaken, Louise … I set that clock precisely … No, it could not chime two minutes early—”
I grab the phone. “Louise, this is Gio. He will come collect your clock tomorrow and fix it properly this time. Good-bye.”
“But there is nothing wrong with that clock! There was nothing wrong with it! It was maybe half a minute slow. She is trying to trap me with that clock.”
“And you weren’t trying to trap her with that clock?”
He looks away. “I was not.”
“Better the clock than her cake.”
“I agree.”
“So Dodie’s other letters were delivered once a week to Mr. Simmons.”
He turns toward me. “If she wrote any more letters.”
“Maybe they’re somewhere in the house,” I say.
“Oh yes,” Nonno says. “I am sure Mr. Simmons hid them under the floorboards or in a mattress.”
“He might have.”
He shakes his head. “Why not ask Dodie if she kept writing to him?”
That would certainly be the easiest way to find out, but … “I can’t ask her that.”
“Why?”
“She’s a lonely old lady, Nonno,” I say. “I don’t want to be accusing her of trying to break up a marriage for forty years.”
“When you give the letters back to her, she will know that you know.”
“I won’t give them back then,” I say.
“So you hide the letters again.”
I nod. “I don’t want to upset her.”
“Probably for the best,” Nonno says.
“You know, I’m a little worried about Dodie,” I say. “She’s all alone on that mountain, and she may have the beginnings of dementia.”
“She still has her cats, doesn’t she?”
“Not anymore,” I say. “They all escaped.”
“You saw no cats at all?”
“None.”
“That is very strange.”
“You want strange? I didn’t tell you this, but Dodie told me she used to spy on Mr. Simmons from Spectacle Road through the scope on her Winchester.”
“That does not sound like spying,” Nonno says. “That sounds like hunting.”
“Yeah, it does, doesn’t it?” I say. “I wouldn’t worry about Dodie doing any hunting. She says her rifle is missing high and to the left.”
“How would she know this?”
“She said she fired high and to the left when she was shooting at one of her cats.”
“She shot at her cat?”
“I don’t know if she did or not,” I say. “I also think she has Alzheimer’s. She said the cat had gone feral and was in her garden eating her kale, spinach, and collards, so she shot at it twice, high and to the left both times.”
“But a cat should not eat kale, spinach, or collards,” Nonno says. “Your nonna and I had a housecat named Claude before you were born, and she mixed greens into Claude’s tuna fish every day. After a while, Claude became listless and did nothing but sleep. We took him to a vet in Calhoun, and the vet said Claude had anemia. Claude was a very sick cat until your nonna stopped feeding him kale, spinach, and collards. Gio, why would Dodie, who has owned many cats for many years, grow such plants in her garden?”
I smile. “She likes to eat them?”
“Or she meant to harm her cats,” Nonno says.
“Why would she harm her only companions?”
“They are no longer her companions, yes?”
“Because they ran away,” I say. “She leaves her doors and windows open when it’s hot, and her windows don’t have screens.”
“Claude had a mind of his own and sometimes disappeared for days at a time, but Claude always came back.” He stands and paces. “Her cats would not run off and stay away from the only home they have ever known.”
“Okay. So?”
“Do you not see? Dodie has been spying on Mr. Simmons with her rifle. Her cats are gone suddenly.” He drags a stool close to me and sits. “Gio, you know I am not crazy.”
“You’re the sanest person I know.”
“These letters were written by a crazy person, yes?”
“Love makes you do crazy things,” I say.
“And she has been writing these crazy letters for many years.”
“Okay. And?”
“I think Dodie is crazy enough to have poisoned her cats with what she fed them. I think they are dead. And I also believe that Dodie might have been shooting at Mr. Simmons, but she missed him high and to the left.”
“That’s crazy, Nonno.” And how could she have missed hitting some part of Mr. Simmons? “Why would she shoot at her first love?”
“Because he did not come back to her after Blanche died.”
Have I ever wanted to kill Owen? No. But then again, I’m not eighty-eight and suffering from some degree of dementia. “Someone would have seen and heard something if she was up there firing off rounds, Nonno.”
“We hear gunshots all the time during hunting season, yes?”
True. “But if you went up to Spectacle Road, where many hunters park before they go off into the woods, I am sure you will find plenty of shells and shell casings.”
“We must take a metal detector to the farm to search for bullets,” he says.
“What?”
“To see if Dodie has been shooting at Mr. Simmons.”
“You want to search all two thousand acres?”
“Not me or you. You must call Captain Downs. He will have the state police do it.”
“Nonno, are you all right?”
He spins away in his seat. “I am perfectly sane.”
“Is your espresso machine fixed yet?”
He shakes his head. “No.” He spins around, smiles broadly, and laughs. “Ha!”
What just happened?
“Ha!” He sq
ueezes my hand. “I am, as they say, messing with you, Giovanna. I do not think Dodie has harmed her cats. I do not think she has been shooting at Mr. Simmons. I do not think she is completely crazy. She may have unintentionally hurt her cats with what she planted and they escaped, not ran away. Many people plant kale, collards, and spinach because they grow the fastest in the spring.”
“So why did you bring any of that up?”
“I saw your mind at work with these letters,” Nonno says. “I can see you still do not believe Mr. Simmons died of natural causes. You are trying to connect these letters to his death. I am worried that you will drive yourself insane with a case the police have already closed. I do not want you to go insane.”
“I’m letting it go.”
“We will see. If Dodie is the killer, how did she do it? She weighs no more than one hundred pounds, and Mr. Simmons weighed four hundred pounds.”
“Mr. Simmons died of pulmonary edema. His lungs filled up with fluid. She could have filled his lungs with fluid.”
“How?”
“I don’t know, with a funnel.”
He laughs. “A funnel?”
“Yes. She could have knocked him out and used a funnel to … No. She couldn’t knock out such a big man. Or, she waited until he was asleep and then she poured … no, he would have awakened.” Wouldn’t he?
“Gio, look at me.”
“I’m looking.”
“It was his time to go.”
“But he wasn’t a sick man, Nonno.”
“You saw the outside of the man. You did not see inside the man. Please, let him rest in peace.” He turns over his wrist to look at his watch. “We will eat, and then we will continue working on the truck because you have to give Dodie a ride someday.” He stands. “I will bring down the—”
“Why would that specific piece of information be in the will, Nonno?”
“Hmm?”
“Why would it be so important to Mr. Simmons for me to give Dodie a ride up the mountain?”
“I do not know, but that is unproductive. We have plenty of to do, and—”
“It practically announces that Mr. Simmons still loved her.”
Nonno sighs. “Perhaps he did. Now would you like to have—”
“But he didn’t return to Dodie after Blanche died.”
Nonno returns to his stool. “You will not let this go.”
“I will. Just … not yet.”
“Okay. I will offer an explanation. Mr. Simmons did not go to Dodie after Blanche’s death because he was showing respect to his wife by mourning her.”
“For thirty years? You didn’t wait thirty years.”
“Louise and I are only friends,” he says. “And perhaps Dodie and Tiny were only friends, too. Maybe they spoke on the telephone like you and Rinaldo do only without all the leaving of messages.”
The phone! “Did Mr. Simmons even have a phone?”
“Of course he had a phone.”
“I looked for one the night he died and couldn’t find one.”
“How else would he have contacted Mr. Daniels? And I always called before I went to his house every June fifth. He did not always answer, but when he did, he spoke to me. Therefore, he had a phone.”
“Did you ever talk to him inside his house?”
“No. The closest I got was the bottom step of his front porch. But what does—”
“I need a phonebook.” I race up to the front counter, grab the thin Gray County phone book, and return to the workbench.
“Gio, what are you doing?”
I’m calling a dead man’s house. “Calling Mr. Simmons’ house.” I find the number and punch it in. It rings. “It’s ringing.”
“Okay. It is ringing.”
“That means Mr. Simmons had service.”
“Hello?”
Fernando! “Hey, Fernando, it’s Gio.” How do I explain that I’m calling to see if anyone could call that number?
“Gio. Hello. How are the tractor repairs going?”
“Good.” Now what? “I know this is going to sound strange, but why didn’t you change your phone number?”
“This is my first phone call,” Fernando says. “I heard a phone ringing and found this phone under the bed across the hall from my bedroom.”
Under the bed?
“I am putting it on a nightstand now.”
Someone hid it so I couldn’t find it! “What color is it?”
“Green.”
Not yellow. That’s not the kitchen phone. “Um, what color are the curtains in that room?”
“They are green. Why do you ask?”
People used to match their phones to the room’s décor. “Is it the kind of phone you could hang on a wall?”
“I do not think so. It is square and heavy.”
Square. The space on the wall in Mr. Simmons’ kitchen was rectangular.
“Gio, why did you call this number?” Fernando asks.
To see if it would ring. The ring! “Have you have found Mr. Simmons’ ring yet?”
“No.”
What else? “Have you found any letters?”
“Letters? What kind of letters?”
He hasn’t found any. He would have seen thirty years of letters while he was cleaning. “Oh, just wondering if Mr. Simmons’ mail was lying around.”
“Why would it be lying around? He is no longer able to read it.”
“I know. Well, if you find any under any floorboards or in a mattress, give me a call, okay?”
“Why would I do that, Gio?”
I sound like a crazy woman. “Gotta go. Good night, Fernando.”
“Good night, Gio.”
I put my phone on the workbench. “The house had two phones.”
“And how is this unusual?” Nonno asks.
“The other phone was hidden under a bed when it could have sat on a nightstand.”
“And how is that unusual?”
“Someone deliberately put that phone under that bed, and someone took the kitchen phone.”
“You cannot know that.”
“The phone under the bed was green and square, the wrong color and shape for the kitchen. The kitchen was yellow, and the outline on the wall was rectangular. Why would someone take the kitchen phone and hide the other phone?”
“You do not know if someone took any phone, Gio. Perhaps it broke and Mr. Simmons threw it out.”
Unlike today’s phones, those rotary dial phones were built to last a lifetime. “If the kitchen phone did break, he most likely would have brought the bedroom phone to the kitchen. There was plenty of room on the kitchen counter.”
“Why would he do this?”
“Convenience. He would want a phone closer to an outside door. If he heard it ringing, he wouldn’t want to run halfway through the house to a bedroom to answer it, would he?”
“Ah, but would he have heard it ringing from out in the field?”
“That’s not the point, Nonno.” What is the point? “I think someone took that kitchen phone for a reason, maybe so I couldn’t call from the house to report his death. I had no cell service, right? I wasn’t supposed to call from the house because …” I shiver. “Because whoever did it needed more time.”
“More time to do what?”
“I don’t know, but that would mean they were still there, Nonno, maybe in that house while I was still there. They could have killed me, too!”
“You cannot be serious, Gio. Only you and Mr. Simmons were in that house that night because he died of natural causes.”
“They didn’t kill me because they thought they had committed the perfect crime.”
“Gio, there was no crime!”
“They killed a man and made it look like he died of natural causes. If they had killed me, too, it would have been too suspicious. And they knew I had a rifle. I had just fired it because of the wolves, and they might have thought I was coming inside the house armed. And if they were hiding in the house, they might not have known I had
put the rifle back in the Jeep.”
“You were not in danger because a man died in his sleep!”
The floorboards creaked in that house. Could one person have been in the house while the others were outside? “A healthy man died in his sleep, Nonno.”
“Giovanna, please let this go. The coroner says it was a natural death.”
“But the coroner originally said it was a homicide.”
“He made a mistake, and now he is correcting it.”
“Maybe.”
He stands and rests his huge hands on my shoulders. “Giovanna Marie Ferrari. I rarely tell you what to do and what not to do anymore, but I am telling you now. You are thinking too much. It is making you crazy. Stai vedendo cose che non ci sono.”
“I’m not seeing things that aren’t there, Nonno. I’m trying to work with what was there.”
“You said the phone was not there.”
“Right. And that means something.”
He rests his forehead on mine. “Oh, you must stop reading those mystery books at once! They are filling your head with too many possibilities. There is no mystery here. Mr. Simmons was nearly one hundred years old, he went to sleep, and he did not wake up again. There is no mystery in that. It happens every day. If you had read about it in the newspaper, you would have no trouble believing he died of natural causes.”
“I don’t know if I would have, Nonno.”
“You would have,” he says. “But because you were there, you see things that are not so.” He leans down and looks into my eyes. “You remember when your mama died, yes?”
I nod. “I will never forget.”
“She was gone, Gio, she was singing with the angels, and yet you ran to the phone and called for an ambulance.”
“I was trying to save her, Nonno.”
He hugs me. “But she had been gone for many hours, Gio. You could not have saved her because it was her time to go.” He kisses the top of my head. “And now you are trying to save Mr. Simmons.”
“I’m not trying to save him.”
“Then what are you doing?”
“I’m trying to save myself,” I say. “I’m trying to save my good name. I’m trying to right a wrong.”
“There is no wrong, Gio,” he whispers.
