by Joan Hess
“Terry must have felt horrible that he wasn’t there at the time of the death,” I said.
“He was in Italy. I don’t remember why.”
“Winston was fishing when he lost his balance?”
“That’s the story,” she said as she raised her head. “If someone else had been with him, it could have been averted. No one was, though.”
“The article I read claimed that he banged his head while struggling to keep his balance and was unconscious at the time.”
Pandora sobered up from the heady drench of sunshine. “Why are you asking all these questions? Just because you want to buy Winston’s house doesn’t mean you have any business snooping around. Everybody in the family still feels bad about the accident.” She stood up and crossed her arms. “Hollow Valley is private property. Until you actually own Winston’s house, you’re trespassing!”
Her small tirade reminded me of my exceedingly good reason for trespassing. “Have you seen Angela Delmond anywhere in the area? She’s five-six, short dark hair, designer shoes and handbag, maybe driving a silver SUV.”
“No, but this is the first day that I’ve ventured out of the house since Sunday. I was doing my monthly cleansing fast and restorative meditation. Now that I have rid my body of toxins and swept away the negative energy from the recesses of my psyche, I am free. You are trespassing.”
“I’d best trespass back to my car,” I said. “I hope we can avoid each other in the future. Have a nice day.” I walked up the driveway, trying to decide if her act was credible. Despite all her gibberish about the glories of nature, I’d caught a glimpse of calculation. She and Ethan had met at an ashram, according to Nattie. I wondered if the ashram was a haven or a hideout.
When I arrived at my house, I was chagrined to discover that the front door was locked. Peter must have turned the button on the doorknob when we left. Or, I thought more brightly, Angela had been back to secure the premises. She could be at home or at her office while I was out beating the bushes for her. Metaphorically, in that I didn’t trust nature not to retaliate with a swarm of bees.
I drove to the Old Tavern and parked within the pale of Colonel Hollow’s glare. No one was about, but I could hear the muffled groans of heavy machinery from the direction of the greenhouses. I was less interested in tractors than I was in monthly cleansing fasts. I used the heavy iron ring to knock on the door. It echoed inside, but no one invited me in for tea. I was walking back to my car when Nattie emerged from behind the house.
“Claire,” she called, “what a … surprise. I was working in the vegetable garden out back. Can I help you with something?”
“I’m still tracking Angela, and I wondered if she might have come back to Hollow Valley.”
Nattie wiped her hands on her jeans as she joined me. “Well, if she has, I didn’t see her. Would you like a glass of tea?”
“Spiked with ginseng and lemongrass?”
“I was thinking of Lipton. I gather you’ve met Pandora Butterfly. Ethan must have been on drugs when he married her. There’re some chairs and a table in the garden. Make yourself comfortable while I make a pitcher of tea.”
I strolled around the corner of the Old Tavern. The view was not of an orchard and a meadow. A barn that had once been red was the color of rust. There were two more outbuildings, and beyond them, a truck was rumbling across a bridge. Angela had mentioned that the delivery trucks used a back road. I had no idea how often they came and went, but they would not disrupt the bucolic serenity.
I sat down on an aluminum chair and idly watched the truck disappear into the woods. There were voices in the distance, presumably workmen doing serious things like planting and plucking. I had yet to meet four members of the Hollow family: Ethan, Charles and Felicia Finnelly, and Aunt Margaret Louise. If I was lucky, I might never run into them. I certainly wasn’t going to invite them to a housewarming party. Nattie was agreeable. Jordan was a temporary blight. Moses might prove to be a nuisance, but I could handle him.
No, in my fantasy land Peter and I would sit on the terrace while Caron hosted pool parties. In the fall, I’d harvest apples to make applesauce and pies. When the weather turned cold, we’d snuggle in front of a blazing fire with mugs of homemade cider. We’d decorate for Christmas and have parties at which the local literati read poetry or debated politics. Later, Peter and I would sip champagne in the oversized bathtub, listening to mellow jazz and engaging in adult behavior.
I was so caught up in my blissful imagery that I almost fell out of the chair when Nattie said, “I’m so glad that you’re moving to Hollow Valley, Claire. It can be lonely out here.” She set a tray on the table and poured me a glass of iced tea. She’d also brought a plate of cinnamon rolls and a bowl of strawberries.
I helped myself to a cinnamon roll. “This is delicious, Nattie.”
“I baked them this morning, along with several loaves of bread. As Jordan said, it can be boring out here if you let it be. I bake, garden, and often pack a sandwich and hike around the entire valley. I sketch birds and wildflowers. Yesterday I saw a Canada goose and four goslings. I also write in my journal every day. I’ve kept one since I was ten.”
“Have you always lived here?” I attacked a second cinnamon roll, hoping she would produce a response long enough to let me slowly devour it.
“No, I grew up in a small town in Alabama. I’ve been back here for fifteen years. I had a difficult time in college. So many demands, all those people pushing and shoving, the promiscuity—it was too much for me. I tried counseling, but the therapist was as bad as the others. My parents were furious when I refused to return after the third year. I found a menial job, but I knew I had to come here, where I would be safe.” She made a vague gesture at the wooded slopes. “I spent my summers here. There were several of us cousins about the same age. Ethan, Sheldon, Ruth, Zack, myself, and of course, Winston. We swam in the stream, played hide-and-seek, went on picnics, and lay in the grass on hot summer nights, waiting for shooting stars. I lived for the summers.” Her abrupt laugh startled me. “Reality sucks, doesn’t it?”
“Sometimes,” I said cautiously. “Once we’re here, you can teach me how to make these divine cinnamon rolls. We’ll go out to lunch every week.”
“We might even have fun,” she said, “if I can remember how. I picked the strawberries this morning. Tomorrow I’m going to hunt for blackberries. Are you a birdwatcher?”
“Not yet, but I’m willing to learn.” I ate a strawberry while I considered how best to politely interrogate her. “May I ask you about Winston? He had a fatal accident while fishing, didn’t he?”
Nattie regarded me over the rim of her glass. “You must have read the story in the newspaper. Winston was a very talented young man, and we were all saddened by his death. His mother taught high school math, and his father wrote long, wearisome tomes about the Napoleonic Wars. I did my best to read one, but after five hundred pages I was begging for Waterloo. Anyway, we saw very little of Winston after his parents sent him to a prep school in the East. He spent summers at a camp in Michigan or Minnesota. It changed him, turned him against us. During the holidays, he was polite but remote.”
“Why do you think he moved back here?” I asked.
She glanced over her shoulder as if Jordan might be hunched behind the tomato plants. “I suspected he had some health problems—mental and physical. Last Christmas, he and Terry turned down my invitation for dinner.” She shook her head. “That’s understandable, though. I’m sure they had a much better time with pheasant and white wine than they would have had with Felicia’s dry turkey, Margaret Louise’s lumpy mashed potatoes, Pandora’s pickled okra, and a glass of water. I know I would have.”
“Even if he wasn’t into the family thing, all of you must have been upset when he died in the fishing accident.”
“It wasn’t an accident,” Nattie said as she popped a strawberry in her mouth.
4
I choked on a mouthful of tea. Once I’d recove
red, I said, “Not an accident?”
Nattie handed me a napkin so I could dry my chin. “The police investigators were happy to write it up that way, and the Hollow family was hardly going to disagree. Out of respect, the report didn’t mention the two empty wine bottles. Those, coupled with the marks in the mud, satisfied them that Winston was inebriated when he lost his balance.” She reached for the pitcher. “Let me refill your glass.”
“Thank you. It still sounds like an accident, Nattie. If Winston consumed two bottles of wine, he easily could have slipped.”
She gazed at the valley for a long while, gnawing her lower lip as though I’d said something profound. “I don’t disagree with that, but…”
“But you don’t believe it was an accident. Why not?”
“As I said earlier, Winston had problems. When I encouraged him to tell me what was going on, he was evasive. At first I thought he was missing his former life in New York City. Farberville isn’t exactly a hotbed of artistic excitement, and it must have been a devastating culture shock for him. Some people aren’t meant to live in the countryside, where the loudest noises come from starlings and bullfrogs. I occasionally caught him during the remodeling, and he told me that he missed the clamor of garbage trucks, the incessant sirens, the honking horns, the kamikaze cabs, and the daily parade of pedestrians.”
I heard something that was neither avian nor amphibian. “What’s that thumping noise?”
She listened for a second and then said, “The clothes dryer in the basement. It’s twenty years old and about to expire any day now. The washing machine sounds as if it’s about to explode. Moses has a medical condition that causes him to change clothes often. He … uh, leaks.”
I was sorry that I’d asked, and even sorrier that she’d answered. “Tell me more about Winston.”
“When the house was finished, he and Terry invited all of us to a party. Felicia was apoplectic about the quantity of alcoholic beverages, and she and Charles stalked off after half an hour. In truth, it was uncomfortable for all the family members. The boys continued to have boisterous parties every week or so. I could hear them from the Old Tavern. However, the parties became less frequent and then stopped. I would run into Winston wandering in the woods, his shoulders slumped and his eyes dull. He seemed to become more depressed over the three years. The last time I saw him, he was sitting on a fallen tree trunk, staring at the ground. That was in early March. I was concerned because it was cold and he wasn’t wearing a coat or gloves. He wouldn’t even acknowledge my presence. I felt so helpless.”
“You think he committed suicide?” I asked gently.
Nattie nodded. “I think he took the fishing gear as a ploy so that it would look like an accident. He drank the wine to rally his courage and then flung himself in the freezing water.”
“Did he own a fishing pole?”
“It’s hard to imagine that he did,” she said slowly. “He never fished or hunted when he was a child. He hated to kill things, even worms. That’s a good point, Claire. The only thing I can come up with is that Moses left a pole and a tackle box down there. He loves to go fishing in all weather. If it ever got so cold that the stream froze over, he’d be out in the middle of it, cutting a hole in the ice. Luckily for me, he never brings his scaly trophies home. I’m not keen on cleaning fish.”
Handling fish guts was not my idea of a pleasant pastime, either, so I returned to the pertinent topic. “Maybe it was a ploy, as you suggested.”
“Poor, sweet Winston. If only I could have convinced him to tell me the truth about how he felt, I could have helped him. We were so close once upon a time.” She sighed. “As they, whoever they are, say, ‘Of all the words of mice and men…’”
“Kurt Vonnegut, actually. You shouldn’t feel responsible, Nattie. You tried.”
“And failed. The Hollow family may not be able to trace its lineage to the Mayflower, and there have been more scoundrels than heroes, but I hate to see the family reduced to suicide, dementia, feral children, and whatever lies in the future. Once there are no more direct descendants to inherit the property, some real estate developer will bulldoze the greenhouses and put in a fancy gated community.”
I sympathized with her bleak vision, but I wasn’t in the mood for maudlin sentiments. “Maybe Pandora Butterfly’s children will grow up to become lawyers and engineers, marry, and produce a new crop of happy little Hollows.”
She laughed. “In a pig’s eye. Pandora plans to home-school them, so the odds of them ever learning to read are minuscule. One can only pray that they’ll end up in prison instead of being killed by a drug cartel. Well, this is my worry, not yours. You must have more entertaining things to do than listen to the creaking branches of the family tree.”
“I enjoyed talking with you,” I said as I stood up, “and I’m eager to learn how to make your cinnamon rolls.”
She insisted on wrapping the remaining ones in a napkin so that I could take them home. I did not object. After a brief hug, I went to my car and placed my precious bundle on the passenger’s seat. When I turned around to start the car, Moses’s face was in the window.
“Whatcha got there?” he asked with a leer.
“Just something Nattie gave me,” I said to let him know I wasn’t about to share. “How are you today?”
He rested his arms on the windowsill. “Got a toothache, which is strange since I ain’t got teeth. So you and Nattie were talking? Did she tell you a bunch of lies? I swear, that woman would try to persuade you that the sun rises in the west if she was of a mind to.”
“She and I were having tea.”
“Cinnamon rolls, too. I smell it on your breath.”
I could smell liquor on his breath, but it didn’t seem polite to point it out. “I have some errands to run, Moses.” I put the key in the ignition in case he missed the hint. “Enjoy the sunshine.”
“Did she tell you about Winston?” he asked with a snigger. “How we went to a party at his house and got snockered on fine whiskey? Well, l’ll bet she didn’t tell you half of what happened later.”
“What’s the other half?”
“That’s between me and the Colonel. Look at him up there, waiting for the Yankees to come thundering through the valley.” Moses stood up and stuck out his arm. “Into the Hollow Valley rode the six hundred! Cannon to the left of them! Cannon to the right of them! Volley’d and thunder’d! Theirs not to reason why, theirs but to do or die!” His ferocity startled a flock of cowbirds into abandoning their roost for a more peaceful perch elsewhere. A squirrel on the bench raised its bushy tail but hung on to its acorn.
Nattie came around the corner of the Old Tavern. “Moses, whatever is wrong with you? You’re scaring Claire, who has better things to do than listen to you mangle poetry. How about a nice glass of milk and a slice of bread?”
“With honey?” he called back, his arm still beckoning the Light Brigade.
“With honey,” she replied.
Moses lowered his arm and bent down to whisper, “She’s not the only one who knows what happened to Winston. Other people have eyes, too. Don’t let her fool you.”
“I won’t,” I whispered in response. I started the car and drove carefully past him, not wanting to add crushed toes to his list of ailments. When I continued to the main road, I was relieved that Pandora Butterfly had taken her ballet troupe elsewhere.
* * *
Caron was still in her pajamas when I arrived home. She looked up from her bowl of cereal long enough to mumble, “Some guy called.”
“Terry Kennedy? Is he already here?”
“No, Danny something. He wants you to call him.” She briskly transitioned from spoon to cell phone and started texting.
I sat down before my knees buckled. “What did he say?”
“He said for you to call him, Mother. Are you developing ADD? That’s attention deficit disorder, in case you’ve forgotten. Inez’s parents decided that her little brother had it because he kept staring into spa
ce and walking off in the middle of conversations. They took him to a therapist and everything. It turned out that he was building a bomb in his room. What a hoot!”
I was impressed that she had not broken her texting rhythm during her remarks. “What happened to the bomb?”
She glanced at me out of the corner of her eye. “How should I know? He didn’t blow up the house or his school or anything. Oh, and I wrote down the guy’s number on the cereal box. He sounded anxious.”
I took the box of pastel marshmallow rice puffs and the phone out to the balcony. The number proved to be that of Danny Delmond Enterprises Inc. The receptionist questioned me as to my identity and objective and then put me on hold. I waited impatiently until a male voice said, “Mrs. Malloy, I need information from you. Angela failed to show up to a deposition this morning, and I understand that you’re involved in her pathetic charade as the innocent victim. Where is she?” His voice was brusque and accusatory, as if I’d stashed Angela under my bed. As if anyone could fit under it now that half of Peter’s and my wardrobe was residing between the storage boxes of shoes, blankets, and sweaters.
“I have no idea where she is,” I said, already disliking him.
“Don’t give me that crap, Mrs. Malloy. My attorney can get a court order compelling you to produce her under penalty of contempt of court.”
“Tell him to have at it. My husband can have your car towed to the police compound to be searched for bloodstains.” I despise bullies, and from what Angela had said about him, he was the worst kind. “It would be a shame if it got scratched, wouldn’t it?”
“I’ll sue you, your husband, and the police department if anyone lays a finger on my Jaguar. Now just tell me where she is and we can end this ridiculous conversation.”
“Do you have a short-term memory problem? I don’t know where she is, Mr. Delmond. If neither of us knows, it is indeed time to end this ridiculous conversation.”
