by Madelyn Alt
My mom arrowed in on that. “You know who did this?”
Louisa plunked the bucket down, sloshing steaming water over the edge and wetting her rubber Wellington boots. “I have my suspicions, but of course I don’t like to say anything without proof.”
“Well, it doesn’t bother me to say,” Pink Lady jumped in. “Of course it was those boys. The same ones who have been giving you so much trouble for calling the police on ’em. Don’t you think, Frannie?”
“I’d bet my bottom dollar on it.”
“The little bastards—”
“Grace!” Frannie said on an intake of breath.
“Sorry,brats —have been wreaking havoc on Louisa and others out this way for weeks, and the police just let them run roughshod over the entire neighborhood.”
Defensive words leapt to the tip of my tongue, but I bit them back. It wouldn’t do Tom any good for me to protect his civic honor. My mom took one look at my face and stepped in.
“You remember my daughter Maggie, don’t you, Louisa?”
I would have shaken Mrs. Murray’s hand, but she was busy drawing on blue latex gloves and barely noticed me. Gloves in place, she took the spade in hand and began to wield it like a pro. My nose twitched as the tip of the blade disturbed the pile of manure. Its drying surface broken, it let loose an odor that was unmistakable.
“Here, now,” my mom said, placing a staying hand on Louisa’s arm. “Why don’t you let us help you with this? The five of us will have this taken care of in a jiffy.”
I couldn’t help wondering what Grace and Frannie thought of being included in the venture, but it was far too late for any of us now. My mother had already removed her wool jacket and was rolling up the sleeves on her silky blouse, despite the cooling evening temps.
“I couldn’t—” Louisa protested.
“Piffle. You just hand that spade over to Maggie, she’s better dressed for that sort of thing. Do you have any other scrub brushes?”
I knew it was the nice thing to do—it wouldn’t be neighborly to let one of my mother’s friends, and a widow to boot, suffer through the cleanup from this mean-spirited attack on her property while we stood by and watched. But geez, was it too much to ask to be consulted before Mom went about offering my services for things? And exactly what was wrong with the way I was dressed, anyway?
I know, I know. I grabbed the shovel anyway. “Um, where would you like this?”
Louisa turned and fluttered her hand toward the flower border that rimmed the picket fence along the front walk. “In the roses is fine.”
I took a hearty scoopful, swallowing the gorge that rose as the blade sank into the stinking mess. Eeeeeh. I lifted the shovel with both hands and turned in the direction she’d indicated, took a few steps down the walk, and paused. “Roses?” All I saw was mounded hillocks with oddly shaped and gnarly lumps emerging at semiregular intervals.
Her back to me, Louisa paused. She took a deep breath, held it a moment, then let it out in a rush. Toward the end, the sigh broke into a thousand pieces. I watched in horror as her shoulders began to quiver.
Oh, my God, was she crying?
Frannie and Grace sent me withering stares as they and my mother put down their brushes and sponges and hovered over their weeping friend. I tightened my grip on the smooth wooden handle, feeling ineffectual as my mother began to pat her friend on the back. “There, now,” she crooned. “It’s all right. The police will find out who did this. Maggie’s boyfriend is on the police department”—I cringed at that—“and she’ll be sure to put a bug in his ear about this. Just don’t you worry anymore.”
But Louisa seemed more angry than sad or worried. Or was it just resignation? She jerked away from my mother’s hands, and thrust her scrub brush into the bucket of soapy water, applying it fiercely to her door. “It doesn’t matter anymore, does it? You can’t even tell the damned roses were there. Years I spent, tending them. Slaving over them. Years. And now they’re gone, in the blink of an eye. Not even worth a good layer of crap that some vicious little…”
She clamped her lips to stop the diatribe and swished the brush in the bucket again. Frannie and Grace exchanged a look.
Unexpectedly, Louisa dropped everything and rose to her feet, regaining at once the poise and quiet demeanor that had slipped momentarily. “On second thought, let’s just leave this. It’s not going anywhere, and I wouldn’t be much of a hostess not to recognize that we could all use a cup of coffee.”
She wouldn’t take no for an answer, and shooed my mom and the older ladies inside as though guiding hens toward their roosts for the night, arms outspread, manner purposeful. I, on the other hand, still had a loaded shovel in my hands, and it was getting heavy. Couldn’t exactly drop it. I turned and walked the pungent scoopful down the path to where the roses used to reside. They really were pitiful, these ravaged root-balls. Whoever had cut them down had done a wickedly effective job. The cuts (hacks?) had bitten ruthlessly into the root-balls. I let the stuff slide off the end of the spade into the compost, covering the one with the most obvious damage, and then followed everyone into the house.
My mom was waiting for me at the door. “Thank you, Maggie,” she said in an undertone. “Louisa has been having a hard time of things lately, as you saw.”
I felt instantly guilty. “I live to serve,” I said lightly, just in case she looked close enough to notice.
“The rest of the girls are in the living room,” she said as she took my jacket from me.
“I was just looking at what’s left of her roses, Mom. Not much, unfortunately. Who could have done that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe those boys she was talking about. Anyone who knows Louisa at all knows how much those roses meant to her. She was always out there, spraying, deadheading, tending. Even talking to them. She used to tell me that was her secret, talking to them. It’s a shame. A crying shame.”
We made our way into the living room, just in time to catch the tail end of a similar discussion.
“You should report it.”
“No. No more reporting,” Louisa said, leaning forward in her chair to fuss with a coffee tray on the table before her. “I’m done with that. What has being a good neighbor and concerned citizen gotten me except a lot of grief? No, I’ve made my last police report. The police can do nothing to help me.”
Grace made a harrumph of displeasure. “Well, in my opinion, you need a man, Louisa Murray. How long has it been now since Frank died? Two years? Time for you to move on and get yourself hitched to that wagon again.”
Mom and I slipped into the room, taking seats on a loveseat as unobtrusively as possible. This was one discussion neither of us would dare take part in. More power to Grace.
“Men aren’t immune to violence, you know,” Louisa said, unperturbed by Grace’s forward remark. She picked up the coffee pot and began to pour the steaming liquid into the cups before continuing. “Just think of the reason we’re here today. Luc Metzger was a man in his prime, I think we’ll all agree, and someone found a way to dispatch him.” She set the cups in front of each of us.
“Shocking,” Frannie agreed. “And unnerving, if a girl thinks about it too much.” She gave an overly dramatic shiver.
“Imagine, winning that auction on the day of that poor man’s precipitous death. Now that’s what I call unnerving. Doesn’t it make you feel just a little off, having that cabinet in your house, Louisa?” Grace asked. “Makes me go all goose pimply, just thinking about it.”
The armoire…I had almost forgotten. I glanced around surreptitiously, wondering where it was. A bedroom, perhaps. I wouldn’t mind taking another look at it.
Louisa didn’t seem to take offense. “Just bad luck, I guess. If you believe in that sort of thing. Now ladies, why don’t we get started?”
“Oh, yes, of course.”
“Why don’t you lead us through, Louisa?” my mom suggested.
Louisa took a spiral-bound notebook from the table and opened it. She to
ok a deep breath. But before she could say anything, Grace cut in again. “That Luc Metzger, though. Hooeee. Now that was a looker. That man could have trimmed my bushes any time.”
Frannie looked confused. “I don’t think he did gardening, Grace.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “Frannie, dear, has it really been that long for you?” “For what?”
“For sex, dear heart. You know. A tasty tumble on the kitchen table. A hearty roll in the haymow. Rocking the old porch swing. Good gracious, dear, have you forgotten already?”
“For your information, Grace Mansfield, my memory serves me perfectly well. You needn’t act so high and mighty about it. I’ve done my share of rolling in the haymow, if you must know. I just choose to be a lady and not discuss it, that’s all,” she said with a haughty sniff.
“Good. Then you’ll agree with me that Luc Metzger was one hot bit of honey who looked like sugar wouldn’t melt on his tongue, but a woman certainly would.”
“I will not.”
“You didn’t think so?”
“I didn’t say that.”
Louisa heaved a long-suffering sigh. “Ladies, please. Must we discuss that man in this way?”
“What way?”
“It isn’t right to discuss him like a piece of meat.”
“Well, lah-dee-dah. Aren’t we the pious one today?”
A flush crept up Louisa’s neck. “Isn’t it enough that he’s dead? It isn’t right to speculate on his…his…”
“Virility?” Frannie supplied helpfully.
Through gritted teeth, Louisa said, “Precisely.”
“Oh, pooh. You’re no fun.” Grace’s mouth, carefully drawn in crimson, puckered in disapproval.
Louisa leapt to her feet and with a jerky movement removed the tray from the coffee table. “We’ll be needing more refreshments, I think,” she said stiffly before turning on her heel and heading toward the kitchen.
My mom leaned back in the loveseat with a sigh. “Well, now you two have done it. She’s wound up like a cuckoo clock. And is it any wonder, given what she came home to this afternoon?”
Grace’s mouth twisted up like a corkscrew. “You haven’t seen the half of it. Wait ’til you see the backyard.”
Mom and I looked up in surprise. “What’s wrong with the back—”
Before we could finish, Louisa came sailing back into the room like an avenging angel, seized her notebook, and took her seat before fixing us with a baleful stare. “If you all are done gossiping, perhaps we could get back to the business at hand, hmm?”
The meeting of minds proved short and sweet. Where I had no experience to back up my wishes to be helpful to Mrs. Metzger and her family, Louisa, Mom, Frannie, and Grace had boatloads, and I deferred to them on every point. Together they made up for my lack a dozen times over, with ideas and plans flying back and forth while I took notes. My only real contribution was to suggest that we use Enchantments as a drop point for donations in order to ease the burden on St. Catherine’s. Mom and Louisa took care of the rest, bless their civic-minded hearts.
Finally, Louisa closed her notebook. “How’s the new hobby going, Louisa?” my mom asked.
“The scrapbooking? It passes the time. Amazing how many pictures one accumulates throughout one’s lifetime, isn’t it? A habit learned from my mother, I suppose, snapping pictures of everything and everyone. And now, sorting through them, cataloguing them, finding just the right memories…it’s like recording the story of one’s life for posterity, isn’t it? A little daunting, when you think about it that way. How do you want people to remember you when you’re gone? Do you show everything? Or do you pick and choose, to remember your life in the most positive way possible?”
“Well, I, for one, would prefer they remember me young and beautiful,” Grace declared. “They can do wonders with computers these days. They can fix up wrinkles, nip in waists, perk up the boobs, the whole works.”
“Isn’t that a bit like lying?” Frannie asked owlishly.
“Oh, pshaw. What’s a little lie among family and friends? And besides, I’ll be gone then. It’ll be too late to matter to anyone then.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking about taking up scrapbooking,” my mom mused aloud. “But I’m afraid I don’t even know where to start.”
Louisa rose to her feet. “Come into my project room. I have a couple of books I’d be happy to lend you that might give you a few ideas.”
We all obediently filed along behind her to a room just off the short hall. A long table, set up along the wall to the right, was loaded with an extraordinary number of frilly pink photo boxes, numerous organizer trays filled with papers of all colors, boxes of ribbons, cups of pens and scissors and punches. A smaller table rested beneath the windows that overlooked the back yard. On it rested a digital camera at the ready, a laptop, and a photo printer. And to the left—voilà—the armoire I had been looking for. Louisa had covered it with a white sheet, a corner of which had fallen away, revealing the carvings on one door frame.
Louisa led the way to the table, where her most recent pages were spread out. While Mom and the girls were oohing and aahing over the pictures of roses Louisa had taken last summer, lovingly rendered in Louisa’s scrapbooking vision, I backed away slowly to take another look at the armoire. It really was beautifully done, the carving heavy but not overbearingly masculine. In fact, the motifs—woven braids, trailing vines, stunning sunbursts—were quite graceful when taken one by one.
“That’s the cabinet, isn’t it, Louisa? The one from the market.”
I didn’t have to turn around to know that they’d all gathered behind me.
“Yes, that’s it.”
I smiled at her. “You were lucky to get it—my boss, Felicity Dow, was especially keen to have it at the store.”
“Ugghh.” Grace gave an exaggerated and noisy shudder. “Gives me the willies just looking at it now. I don’t know how you can have it in your home, Louisa. You know what they say about people who die unexpectedly—their restless spirits are doomed to walk the earth, and they attach themselves to things that were important to them.”
You could have heard a pin drop as the five of us stared at the massive piece of furniture.
“Don’t be so dramatic, Grace,” my mom said in a voice like the crack of a whip. “You know there’s no such thing.”
I didn’t want to be the one to burst my mom’s bubble, so I kept my mouth shut, even though I knew differently.
“Well, if there was such a thing,” Louisa said mildly as she swept us from the room, “the man wouldn’t be here. You can be sure of that.”
I was the last to follow her through the door. As I reached for the light switch, I heard the low click of a latch. From the corner of my eye, in that second between the flip of the switch and the anticipated darkness, I saw the door to the armoire drift open. I hightailed it out of the room, but not before I glimpsed more pink photo boxes ensconced within the armoire.
Was the spirit of Luc Metzger attached to the armoire? I couldn’t help wondering as I helped Louisa carry the cups and tray to the kitchen sink while the others fetched their coats. I didn’t see why or how. And then I remembered the way the power had drained at the murder site as I had prepared to leave. That had been spirit, too. Luc’s spirit? I had worried so at the time. Maybe he wasn’t attached to the armoire. Maybe he was making himself known to anyone who could “see.” And since I had been there that night…
Was he making himself known to me in particular?
It was not a thought that sat well with me. I’d never wanted to be a guru to the tenants of the Otherworld. And really, if he knew how little control I had over my abilities, Luc would definitely have chosen another ground control.
As I reentered the living room, my mother’s gaze followed me, a quiet watchfulness on her face. Then, frowning, she let her gaze drift over my shoulder, toward the hall.
In the blink of an eye she resumed her usual staid demeanor. “Good-bye, Louisa, dea
r,” she said, taking her friend gently by the shoulder and leaning in for the air kiss. “You take care of yourself, and you call if you hear anything that makes you nervous. I can always send Glen out to check up on you at the very least, if need be.”
Louisa cupped Mom’s elbows and air kissed her back. “Thank you, Pat. You’re very kind.”
Grace and Fannie said their good-byes, too, before Louisa led us out through the kitchen to the back door, instead of the front. “I apologize in advance for the state of the yard,” she said, “but I did manage to get the walk and porch swept off. Don’t mind the—”
Eggs. A single bulb shone pitifully from the old fixture beside the door, not enough to cut through the gloom of the backyard but more than enough for us to see the remains of a large number of eggs splashed, dashed, and smashed against the back of the house.
“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” my mom said, crossing herself.
“Didn’t I tell you so?” Grace said with just a touch of one-upsmanship.
Mom turned to Louisa. “Would you like me to send someone out to help with this? Really, it would be no trouble.”
I hoped she didn’t mean me. There was something I didn’t like about Louisa’s backyard. Something…predatory. Maybe it would be different if I saw it during daylight hours, but now, in the full swing of darkness, the trees hanging over us seemed like the clutch of a great black beast. The wind rustled through the woods as though whispering secrets. Grace and Frannie didn’t seem to notice. They turned to wave as they hustled down to the nondescript sedan and were gone before Mom had finished her offer of help.
“No, really. I’ll be fine. It will clean up fast.” Louisa gave a small, tight smile. “I’ve done it before.
The boys that she was afraid of could be out there, right now. Watching us.
What was the world coming to when Sunday school teachers and charity mavens were attacked, and when peace-loving Amish were struck down in their prime? Was anyone safe anymore?
