Sing It to Her Bones

by Marcia Talley

  “Oh? What are you writing, Bill?”

  “A novel.”

  “That’s ambitious.”

  “I figured I wasn’t getting any younger. I’m almost finished with the first draft.”

  “What’s it about?”

  “It’s a suspense thriller. Like, John Grisham meets Stephen King.”

  “What happens? A lawyer goes berserk and starts eating his clients?”

  Bill didn’t laugh and looked so serious that I was almost sorry I teased him. “Oh, no! All this guy’s family starts disappearing without a trace, so naturally the police are suspicious, and so he hires this lawyer to defend him. It’s called Vanished.”

  How could I tell him that Fletcher Knebel had beaten him to that title twenty-some years ago? “Sounds promising,” I lied. I didn’t think Vanished would find its way onto my towering bedside pile of to-be-reads anytime soon.

  “Thanks.” He resumed sweeping.

  I couldn’t resist. “Danny DeVito in the lead and Harrison Ford as the lawyer.”

  “I wish,” Bill mumbled.

  I looked over the shelf he had indicated, where a limited selection of pain relievers was flanked by laundry powders and dish soap on the one side and notebook paper and Magic Markers on the other. I ticked them off: “Bayer, Advil, Tylenol. What I really need, Bill, is some good drugs.”

  Behind me the sound of sweeping stopped abruptly. I turned to smile at him. “Just kidding. I think!”

  I had selected a bottle of Motrin and pulled a bottle of iced tea out of the cooler to take it with when Ellie suddenly appeared from the direction of the kitchen. “Poor you! Hal was in earlier and told me about the accident. How are you feeling?”

  “Not too bad. It walks. It talks. I think I’ll live.” I opened the bottle of Motrin—damn thing was sealed up like Fort Knox—pulled out the cotton wadding, and tipped two tablets into my palm. I swallowed them with the tea. “Ugh!”

  “Excuse me for butting in, Hannah, but I think you should see a doctor.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “Look, Dr. Chase’s office opens in just ten minutes. It’s only a few doors down. He probably won’t charge you more than twenty-five dollars or so.”

  “It’s not the money I’m worried about. I just don’t want to waste his time.” I rotated my shoulder to demonstrate how nearly cured I was, then winced and sucked air in through my teeth as a hot arrow of pain shot down my arm. Ellie gave me an I-told-you-so look.

  “Your argument is persuasive.” I pushed the tablets toward her on the counter and saluted with my half-empty drink bottle. “I’ll just get these, then, and head on over to the good doctor’s.”

  Ellie patted my hand and yelled toward the kitchen. “Angie! I need you out here!” She turned back to me. “Sorry. I’ve got the UPS guy coming in five minutes. Angie’ll take care of you. Gotta run.” She disappeared in back.

  Almost immediately Angie appeared, wearing a chef’s apron over a pink V-neck T-shirt and a faded denim skirt. Tennis socks the same hot pink as her shirt peeked out over the tops of her tennis shoes. “Oh, hi, Mrs. Ives.” She raised a hinged section of the counter and squeezed through the narrow opening.

  “Please call me Hannah. Between you and Bill here, this Mrs. Ives business is making me feel ancient.”

  “I’ll try to remember that.”

  While Angie tapped the amount of my purchase into the cash register, I tried to figure out exactly what I was going to say. “Angie, could I talk to you for a minute? In private?”

  She had bent over to search for a paper bag. Her head popped halfway up over the counter so I could see only small dark eyes and luxurious eyebrows with a deepening furrow in between. “I guess so. Why?”

  “I just wanted to ask you a question.” Angie straightened and was staring at me now. “A question about Katie.”

  She accepted my money, made a long job of counting out my change, then closed the cash drawer with a firm shove with the palm of her hand. From the body language, I expected her to clam up, tell me to mind my own business. Instead, she leaned back against her stool. “You know, after Katie disappeared, a lot of years went by before one day I stopped to realize that I had actually gone through a whole day without thinking about her even once. But now, now I just can’t stop thinking about her!”

  I was aware of Bill busily sweeping next to the nearby rack of candy bars, practically breathing down my neck. “I know that, Angie, and I’m really sorry.” I waited until Bill moved around to the other side of the shelves before asking. “Can we go out on the porch?”

  “I guess so. Mom!” Ellie’s head appeared from behind the UPS counter. “I’m stepping outside with Hannah. Be back in a minute. Do you mind?”

  Ellie, a piece of packing tape clamped firmly between her teeth, simply waved a limp hand.

  I followed Angie’s broad, swaying hips as she pulled open the screen door and passed through. I caught the door with my hand so that it didn’t slam shut behind me. Angie pulled a paper towel from the pocket of her apron and used it to wipe the dust off a slatted wooden chair, then eased her ample bottom into it as the chair loudly complained. I sat on the end of a wooden bench and faced her.

  “Angie, when we talked yesterday at the funeral, you claimed you barely knew Chip. But I saw you afterward, walking down High Street with him and the other basketball players.”

  “Oh, that. That wasn’t anything. They were just going my way.”

  I knew that Angie and her mother lived behind the store, the opposite direction from where Chip and the Wildcats had been headed, so I tried to remember what else was out on the road toward the high school. The fire station for sure. The Royal Farms store. But nothing had been on fire, and she’d certainly had plenty to eat and drink at the reception. The library then? Angie didn’t seem the type to pass her days in the stacks. While I thought, Angie sat fidgeting with the paper towel, twisting it into a corkscrew and weaving the results around the fingers of her left hand. “Angie, I’m not going to beat around the bush here. When I saw you with Chip, it looked very much like you two were having an argument.”

  Angie shrugged and glanced away. “It wasn’t an argument, Hannah.”

  “You could have fooled me. You were shouting so loudly I could hear your voice all the way from here.” Angie stared at the bank across the street where a short queue was waiting to use the ATM. A teardrop materialized in the corner of her eye, and I suddenly felt sorry for her. I touched Angie’s hand where it lay, restless on her knee. “Tell me what you and Chip were arguing about, Angie.”

  She pressed her full lips firmly together and shook her head, like a stubborn and unhappy child. Two big tears coursed down her pale cheeks. “Angie,” I said. She turned her head to look at me then, her face a mask of misery.

  “I promised Katie I wouldn’t tell. Ever.”

  “But Katie’s dead, Angie. Surely the secret can’t matter now.”

  “It matters to me.” Her body sagged. “At first I thought she’d just run away and that she’d come back. Even after all these years with no word, I thought she’d come back. I expected her to walk into the store with that funny, lopsided smile of hers and say, ‘Hey, Ange. Guess who?’ But now she’s dead, and it’s all Chip’s fault.” Her shoulders shook as she sobbed.

  “But the police talked to Chip, Angie. Don’t you think they’d have arrested him by now if they thought he had anything to do with Katie’s death?”

  “Maybe they would have if they knew what I know.”

  “Angie, if you have information that would help the police find out who murdered Katie, you shouldn’t be keeping it to yourself.”

  Her face was red now, bloated and unattractive. Between her plump cheeks and swollen eyelids the tiny eyes she turned in my direction had nearly disappeared. “Even if it would hurt Katie?”

  “There’s nothing anybody can do anymore to hurt Katie.”

  Angie seemed to have reached a decision. She untwisted the paper towel an
d used it to wipe her eyes and blow her nose. “You’re right, Hannah. I was mad at Chip. I was absolutely furious with him. You see, it’s all his fault that Katie’s dead.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “A couple of nights before the prom Katie came over to my house all excited. She dragged me into my bedroom and shut the door. Then she told me that she was pregnant. It blew my mind! She said that Chip was the father!” Angie threw both her hands into the air. “How can he deny it, Hannah? Yesterday he looked me straight in the face and denied ever having sex with Katie.” She leaned her head back against the chair and blew a slow stream of air out through her lips. “And I certainly know that wasn’t true! Katie told me everything!”

  “So she was having sex with Chip?”

  “Like rabbits. In his car, in the locker room after school. He was crazy about her.”

  “But wouldn’t she have used some sort of birth control?”

  “Katie told me that Chip used a condom, but it broke.”

  I sat in silence, digesting this bit of news. I thought about what Chip had told Dennis. It made me wonder if Katie had made up the story about the baby. Somebody was lying, that was for sure.

  “She wanted the baby, you know. You should have seen her at the dance, Hannah. Her feet were so far off the ground … she was so happy!” Angie pressed her hands together and giggled. “Katie told me in the rest room that she was sure that when she told Chip about the baby, he would be happy about it, too. She knew he would marry her. But then she disappeared and—”

  “And you thought something had gone wrong with her plans?”

  “I thought Chip had refused to marry her and that she’d decided to run away and have the baby on her own. Put it up for adoption, maybe. I thought she’d come back after that. I always thought she’d come back.”

  “And now? What do you think now, Angie?”

  “I don’t know! I think Chip’s lying through his teeth! He claims he didn’t have anything to do with any baby. He says Katie never said one word to him about being pregnant, and if she was pregnant, it certainly wasn’t with his child!” Angie’s balled-up fists pounded on the arms of her chair. “All that religion! All that ‘Thou shalt not’ crap. What a crock! So I hit him and kept hitting him until David Wilson made me stop. He grabbed my hands … oh, they all thought that was so funny. They just laughed and laughed. Jerks!”

  “Angie, you need to tell Lieutenant Rutherford what you just told me.” Angie’s head drooped, and she whispered something into her lap. “Angie …”

  She looked up at me sideways through dark lashes glistening with tears. “But then he’ll know that I lied to him when he interviewed me the other day.”

  “If you don’t tell, he’s going to find out anyway.”

  She played with her ring, a star sapphire set in gold, twisting it around and around her finger with her thumb.

  “Angie?”

  “Okay. I’ll call him.”

  I wasn’t entirely convinced. It was like reasoning with a child. “Call him right now, Angie.”

  “I’ll need to tell Mom first. Then I’ll tell the police.” She stood up and extended a hand. “I promise. And thanks, Hannah. You can’t imagine what a relief it is to get this off my chest. You’re so much easier to talk to than my mom. I’d give you a hug, but—” She nodded toward my injured arm.

  “Oh, that!” I shrugged. “I’m heading over to Dr. Chase’s in a few minutes. I’m sure he’ll fix me up as good as new.” The Motrin had kicked in and was taking the edge off, but I found myself very much looking forward to my visit with the doctor. I could kill two birds with one stone; maybe Dr. Chase could ease the discomfort in my body as well as in my mind. After my conversation with Angie, I had something very important I needed to ask him.

  chapter

  10

  Because I wasn’t exactly sure where I was going, Bill joined me on Ellie’s front porch and pointed out the back of the old Chase house on Princess Anne Street. He told me that Frank Chase’s office was on the ground floor of the house he had inherited from his parents, but that the doctor actually lived in a luxury condo catering to young professionals on Ferry Point Road, not far from Hal’s marina.

  “What’s on the second floor then?” I asked.

  “I haven’t the foggiest. Files, I imagine. Boxes of paper gowns.”

  I thanked Bill, waved good-bye, and backed my trusty Toyota out onto High. At the light at Church Street I turned left. As I prepared to turn left again onto Princess Anne, preoccupied with the questions I planned to ask Dr. Chase, I had to slam on my brakes to avoid an old man who was proceeding through the middle of the intersection, hunched over a walker.

  “Damn fool!” I shouted before it came to me. I know that face. Old Mr. Schneider.

  Oblivious of the traffic that was screeching to a halt all around him, Dennis’s father-in-law crept across the road, pushing the walker in front of him. An attendant shot out the back door of the nursing home and caught up with him. Mr. Schneider paused, glanced up, and studied my car as if wondering where he’d seen it before. I tooted my horn, and he lifted a shaky hand from his walker to wave, but he couldn’t have had any idea who I was. He probably waved at everyone. The attendant pointed Mr. Schneider in the opposite direction, signaling an apology to me and the three other cars waiting at the intersection. I smiled, and waved back, thinking he looked familiar, too. He might have been the same guy I’d seen on the porch the day of Katie’s funeral, but all the attendants looked the same to me in those ugly green uniforms.

  Before Princess Anne dead-ends at the water next to Hamilton’s Seafood Restaurant, it winds through a handsome residential neighborhood and is lined with trees whose leaves were already beginning to form a canopy that by midsummer would shade the street so completely that you’d need a flash to take a photograph there. As I pulled up to number 37, the fleet of cars parked in front of the office surprised me. Maybe I’d arrived in the middle of a flu epidemic. Not wanting to catch anything from some sneezing, sniveling child, I considered not going in, after all, but was reminded by the pain that shot up my arm when I set the parking brake that that might not be such a good idea.

  “Come on, Julie Lynn!” I held the door open for a young woman in her twenties dragging a reluctant toddler by the arm. Julie Lynn’s face was flushed, and she clutched a bright orange Elmo doll to her chest. Julie Lynn’s mother swiped with the back of her hand at a strand of hair that curled damply down over an eyebrow. “Thanks. It’s really packed today. We were here for two hours … but everything seems like hours when you’ve got a sick three-year-old on your hands.”

  Inside, in what must have been the former living room of the house, I saw she was right. The doctor’s waiting room was full; at least all ten chairs were occupied. Several patients looked up as I entered, then returning to reading, knitting, or just sitting there listlessly, staring at the walls. In a corner near the reception desk a freckled blond-headed kid sat at a small table on one of two wooden chairs, an assortment of crayons and several coloring books spread out before him. Bits of discarded crayon wrapper littered the floor at his feet. As he colored, he experimented with a variety of humming noises combined with wetly buzzing his lips as if he’d just learned the trick and was trying to impress (or annoy) as many of us as possible. As I watched him work, I remembered, with a pang, that Emily had never liked to color within the lines, either.

  The reception desk was waist-high and stretched the width of the room. No one was sitting behind it as I approached, but a nameplate, Nora Wishart, was propped up on the polished Formica. I stood there for a few minutes listening to the phone ring and looking for a bell to push, waiting for Ms. Wishart to appear. “Hello?” I warbled hopefully.

  A voice somewhere behind me said, “He’ll be out in a minute. You’ll just have to wait. Nora’s not here, so things are a little backed up.”

  The advice came from a very pregnant young woman, sprawled uncomfortably in the molded plastic
chair, her feet stretched straight out in front of her.

  “I see.” I lounged against the counter and watched in fascination as the blond kid colored Mickey Mouse green with an orange face. A red feather gradually took shape over the top of Mickey’s head. “That’s a nice hat,” I said.

  He scowled up at me as if I were the stupidest grown-up in three counties. “That’s not a hat.” Tongue protruding with the effort, he ground the red crayon up and down a few more times over Mickey’s ears. “His hair’s on fire.”

  I was imagining how the little monster would look with a violet blue Crayola shoved up his nose when Dr. Chase suddenly appeared, helping an elderly woman into her coat. “Don’t forget now. One of the white pills and one of the blue pills with each meal. Here, I’ve written it down for you.” He pressed a piece of paper into the woman’s hand, watched with patience as she transferred the paper to her purse, then opened the front door for her. Dr. Chase stood there for a few minutes observing the woman’s progress as she tottered down the sidewalk. When she had safely reached her car, he turned and addressed the pregnant woman. “I believe you’re next, Mrs. Quigley.

  Mrs. Quigley struggled to her feet, but before the doctor could get away, I thought I’d better let him know I was there. I crossed the room, grinding one of the brat’s crayons into the carpet with my heel. “Dr. Chase, I’m Hannah Ives. I can see you’re very busy, but I just wanted to know if you would be able to see me today. I fell off my sister-in law’s boat—”

  Dr. Chase ran a hand through hair that was thick and dark, except for a bald spot in the back the size of a pancake. “Of course, but I’ll probably be another hour or so.” He spoke to Mrs. Quigley. “Excuse me for a minute, will you?” The phone was ringing again, and he reached over the counter to answer it. With the receiver tucked between his ear and shoulder, he retrieved a clipboard with a blank form attached to it along with a ballpoint pen on a string. He made a scribbling motion with his fingers, then nodded in the direction of the waiting room. I gathered from this pantomime that I was to have a seat and fill out the darn thing.