A Short Time to Die

by Susan Alice Bickford

  “Whooo. You know this is kind of fun when you’re not in danger of dying of hypothermia. That hat is very flattering, by the way.”

  Vanessa was glad that they were on more pleasant footing.

  The restaurant was about half full. A waitress showed them to a table in the classic Victorian front window.

  “They’re staring,” Vanessa said under her breath. She studied the menu.

  “Not a lot of people who aren’t white in this town, I’m betting.”

  “Speak for yourself.”

  “Earth to Vanessa. You may look almost white in California, but here you have Mexican written all over you.”

  “My parents are from Colombia.”

  “Sure. That’s the country just south of Mexico, right? The other one with all the drug and violence problems?”

  Vanessa laughed.

  The waitress approached. She looked too young to work, but was probably sixteen or seventeen, with wiry red hair and a plump, pink face, hidden by thick glasses. She had a cute figure, tucked into a white blouse, black pants, and a black cummerbund. A little badge with CLARA printed in bold type dangled at an angle from her right shirt pocket.

  “Are you guys the cops from California?” Clara asked. Her eyes were bright.

  Jack gave Clara a wink. “That’s right. Word travels fast around here, I see. We’re not used to weather like this. We need a recommendation for food that will keep us warm.”

  Clara’s neck flushed bright red. The flush spread to her chin and cheeks.

  “I hear that Louise and Troy are dead,” she said. “Is that true?”

  Jack and Vanessa exchanged looks.

  “Did you know Louise and Troy?” Vanessa asked. “You look too young. They must have disappeared five or six years ago.”

  “Three and a half,” Clara said. She flushed again, and stammered. “My dad was so scared. He’d had a fender bender with Troy and they got into a fistfight, right down there by the lake. Dad walked away, but we were about to leave town, he was so terrified. When we heard Troy and Louise hadn’t shown up for Rosie’s funeral and they hadn’t been seen for a couple of weeks before that, Dad decided to wait and see.”

  “So you didn’t leave,” Vanessa said, hoping she looked reassuring. “Your father will be glad to hear that we have found their remains. We’re trying to close the loop on how that happened.”

  “Dad will be relieved. Maybe he’ll drink a little less.” Clara wasn’t blushing.

  “It turns out he made the right decision to stick it out in this exquisite town,” Jack said. “Even with this cold.”

  Clara’s eyes glowed behind the thick lenses. “It’s only like this for a little bit, right at this time of year. You should come back in warm weather. It’s beautiful then.”

  “It’s beautiful now. You tell your mother that Troy won’t be coming back. Now. Tell us what’s best on the menu tonight.”

  Jack and Vanessa sat in silence until Clara returned with their baked ziti with sausage and pasta primavera, plus a large green salad and two Syracuse Pale Ales.

  Vanessa spoke first. “I hope you get my point about the containment policy attitude of the police. I will grant you that Chip is new, but take a look at Paul. Chip has lucked out in taking on the Harrises when they are in decline or at least more tractable. There are victims all over this town and many more in Charon Springs, you can bet on that. They won’t all be drug dealers and petty thieves. Some are going to be waitresses.” She pointed her fork toward Clara, who seemed to glow each time Jack looked her way.

  Jack studied his ziti. “I get your point.”

  “It does make this a bit more complicated. So many possible victims.”

  “Perhaps not as many in California.” Jack finished his beer.

  “How would we know? Every emigrant from this county could qualify. And that’s just a start.”

  7

  Marly: Called to Account

  October 30–November 7, 2000

  After his cursory examination, Dr. Duckworth informed Denise that Marly did not appear to have strep throat, but he would take a culture, just in case. Marly would feel worse or the same for another day or so and after that she would start to improve. By the next day, she wouldn’t even be contagious. That was how it went with a virus, he explained in a slow monotone voice.

  “He hates Medicaid patients,” Denise said, once they were back in her car. “He talked to me like I was hard of hearing or something.”

  Marly didn’t answer. She had no voice and she was too miserable. Her best friend Andrea’s family had plenty of money and she had said that Dr. Duckworth hated patients with fancy insurance too. Marly vowed that once she was out of this place, she would never again see a doctor she didn’t like. Another item on her checklist.

  Dr. Duckworth was right. By Tuesday she felt much better and by Wednesday she was almost normal. She went back to school on Thursday, despite some laryngitis and a persistent cough.

  * * *

  After school Friday afternoon, Marly stepped into their empty house. She halted in her tracks and sniffed. What was that smell? The scent of cheap cologne mixed with nicotine and nasty body odor lingered in the kitchen. She listened for sounds in the house, ready to run, as she peered into each room and down into the basement.

  In the kitchen, someone had pulled out the containers for flour and sugar and left them askew on the counter. Upstairs, someone had peeled back all the sheets and blankets from the beds.

  Marly could pick up the same scent in their barn. Grass seed covered the floor, the bag emptied. Boxes had been rearranged.

  The back of her neck prickled all evening. She said nothing to Denise or Charlene.

  “Rosie’s real worried. Larry too.” Denise picked over the frozen lasagna Marly had heated up in the microwave.

  “I’m sure they’re upset about Del and Zeke,” Marly said. She hoped she sounded sympathetic. “This situation must be very hard on them.”

  Denise took a long slurp from her gin and orange juice before answering. “It takes money to make money. That’s what Rosie says. She’s in a terrible state because Zeke has money hidden away. He had an accounting written down for her. Now some of that is coming up short. She is just wild to find out where that went.”

  Such a shame. The vision of Rosie in distress was gratifying, but this was not good news and probably explained why their house and barn had been searched.

  Marly’s stomach churned every time she thought of Rosie. No longer able to eat, she cleared the table and started to clean up.

  Lulled by the sloshing water in the sink, Marly thought through Rosie’s motivations. Larry must have searched the house for his mother. It could be that he merely wanted to know if Del had squirreled money away at Denise’s house without telling Rosie. The two brothers didn’t always see eye to eye on money.

  The search might also mean Rosie had decided that Denise, Charlene, and Marly were suspects in the disappearance of Del and Zeke.

  Charlene and Marly carried multiple grudges against Del. Marly was quite certain that Rosie knew this. Over ten years before, Beanie, Marly’s dad, had disappeared after a conflict with Zeke. Even at the age of seven, Marly recognized the whiff of scandal when Del moved in with Denise several months later. In addition, Marly knew that most people—including Rosie—thought that Del was the father of Mark and Pammy, conceived when Charlene was underage. As best as Marly could tell, at least no one thought Del was sleeping with her.

  There have to be some advantages to being the homely daughter.

  Marly tried to put herself into Rosie’s frame of mind. She acknowledged that Rosie would have good reason to suspect all of them of taking the money.

  Denise had a part-time job as a nurse’s aide, but as a family, they subsisted primarily on a mix of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, food stamps, Medicaid, and welfare.

  Marly knew that Zeke gave Denise a small cash stipend every month or two—guilt money for Beanie. Del contribut
ed money for food but little else. His rationale was that he still owned his own place—a double-wide over on Dugway Road. Charlene once mentioned that Del also gave her money every month for Mark and Pammy.

  Charlene did not have a real job, aside from a bit of dabbling in the drug trade. Marly would often wake at night filled with dread over what might happen to the children if Charlene were arrested.

  Marly’s job at the library paid better than most in the area, as did the startup with the addition of worthless stock options. She tried to save for college, but gave half of her salary to Denise.

  Finished cleaning up, Marly headed to the library on her bicycle for her Friday evening shift. She fretted that Rosie and her crew would search there as well.

  It wasn’t like Zeke and Rosie lived high on the hog. Their large main house in the woods had been improved a bit around the edges, but it remained just as tired and sad as Marly’s house, only bigger. All the Harris family insiders drove new GMC trucks and carried fancy guns, but flashed few extras. Del, Zeke, Larry, and Louise flashed cell phones, but those were mostly for show since there was no coverage in the Springs.

  Marly was the only one on staff at the library from six to nine. Visitors were rare after seven. On this night, the place was empty by seven thirty.

  Marly retrieved her duffel and backpack from upstairs and took them to the librarian’s office, located off the main reading room. She closed the door halfway and sorted through the contents she had taken from the cabin in the woods.

  Keeping a watchful eye on the entrance, Marly pulled out the bags of cash she had taken from the first upstairs closet. Her fingers fumbled and she had to count twice: $18,000, about half in twenties and the rest in fifties. She packed those away. The second set of bills from the other closet came to $25,000.

  She next examined the plastic sheets of gold coins. Each sheet held twenty coins tucked into individual slots. Most were gold dollars but there were also Krugerrands from South Africa. Marly counted two sheets from the first closet, one from the second.

  Marly repacked the backpack and placed it in a file cabinet. She took a short break to check the front desk and empty library.

  She didn’t know much about gold or coins. She used the library computer on the front desk to search the Internet for the price of gold—$280 an ounce. She confirmed that each one-dollar coin and the Krugerrands were one ounce. Marly signed off and did the multiplication in her head. She had acquired approximately $16,000 worth of gold from the upstairs rooms of the cabin.

  Marly knew exactly how she would use this money: college. True, her family also needed this money, but she knew that getting an education would be a better investment.

  She had planned to attend one of the State University of New York colleges. The SUNY schools were all considered very good, but she ached to attend someplace like Yale or Princeton or Brown. Andrea’s parents had included Marly on a college tour the year before that included Brown. She had decided that Brown would be the perfect fit.

  Even a SUNY college would be expensive by her standards, and Brown or another private school would be much more for four years, even with scholarships.

  Now she had a Harris scholarship, courtesy of Zeke.

  She looked inside the duffel bag filled with the loot from the basement storeroom. Library closing time was near. She needed to step up the pace.

  She counted an additional $25,000 in cash, two pounds of gold, plus something potentially even more valuable—identities. Her quick glance at the additional bags had been correct—four bags, each with a social security card, birth certificate, and other documents that would allow the holder to change into a new person.

  Marly repacked the duffel bag and replaced that along with the backpack in the eaves behind the low wall upstairs. She rubbed her hands together, both excited and scared. No wonder Rosie and Larry were so angry.

  She rode home after she closed the library and noted with chagrin that living with Del had rubbed off in ways she hadn’t appreciated or even recognized before. Take this little matter of money laundering. She knew she couldn’t walk into a bank and deposit tens of thousands in cash without drawing unwanted attention. In some ways, having too much money was just as bad as having too little. Assuming she managed to keep the money, she’d need to figure out some way to get access to it for college.

  Marly recognized that she had painted herself into a very tight corner. She had stolen a great deal of money and that was a crime, regardless of the source. She couldn’t go to the police now.

  She ran through scenarios of how she might return the money to the Vault or directly to Rosie.

  Forget that.

  Rosie would never overlook the insult, plus she would know that Marly was involved in the disappearance of Del and Zeke.

  Marly spent another sleepless night. No amount of counting breaths helped. She needed to move her treasure. If Rosie and the Harris clan suspected her, they would search the library.

  Because she was under eighteen, Marly could not open a safe-deposit box without her mother’s involvement. Even if Marly used an alternate identity like the ones she had lifted, she would need to get farther afield from the Springs—which had no bank at all—or Avalon, where she would be identified.

  She couldn’t use her own bank account. Someone would notice a big influx of money. Plus, her mother had drained her account the previous spring. After that, Marly had kept most of her assets in cash, hidden in Andrea’s garage in Avalon.

  She dismissed sharing her fortune with Denise or Charlene. Some of this was greed, she did admit, but it was also much too risky. Denise could not be trusted to keep her mouth shut or to spend the money carefully. She would go out and splurge on something bold and stupid, and sooner or later she’d talk. Charlene was almost as hopeless.

  * * *

  The next morning, Saturday, shopping in Avalon helped solve the first part of the money problem. Marly picked up the bags and Zeke’s keys at the library and drove to Andrea’s house.

  Marly’s stomach unknotted and she could feel her neck relax as she pulled into the Melvilles’ driveway. By Marly’s estimation, Bob Melville made lots of money as a lawyer. He and his wife, Jean, had welcomed Marly into their home ever since Andrea had dragged Marly to meet her parents at the beginning of junior high school.

  Andrea was one of the smart girls too, but did not see academics as a field of battle for supremacy. She enjoyed learning and figuring things out and developed a wide range of enthusiasms, pulling Marly along with her. Marly would never have taken up team sports or learned tennis or sailing without Andrea or her parents, who faithfully drove the girls to practices and games. Mr. Melville had taught Marly how to swim, moving her beyond her clumsy doggy paddle to become a confident and graceful swimmer. Every time Marly felt she might be submerged by her life in the Springs, Andrea’s friendship provided a warm lifeline and a glimpse into the better side of human nature.

  If Mrs. Melville was put out to find Marly at their back door on this day, she didn’t show it. She made her famous, gooey grilled cheese sandwiches for the two girls and disappeared on her own errands.

  Seated in the breakfast nook with Andrea’s cat in her lap, Marly savored the taste of warm cheese and the contentment of sitting in a house that was old and graceful, rather than old and moldy, filled by people who seemed to get along.

  “I need to put something in your garage,” Marly said, after her final swallow.

  “Sure. No problem.” Andrea never meddled in Marly’s family affairs unless Marly wanted to share.

  As far as Marly knew, Andrea had never so much as looked into the other bags and boxes Marly had delivered for safekeeping. And so what if she did look and found the gold? Marly would have happily shared everything with Andrea.

  The Melvilles’ garage, a former stable, had ample storage space upstairs with an abundance of natural hiding spots. Marly deposited her backpack behind some boxes in the attic and put the duffel up on the rafters of the g
arage, along with Zeke’s keys.

  With a quick wave good-bye, she left Andrea’s oasis and headed back into the real world of obligations and worry.

  * * *

  On Sunday before church, a small crowd gathered around the town librarian, Mrs. Haas. There had been a break-in at the library the previous night. All agreed that it must have been kids, out for fun.

  Marly could think of nothing else throughout the service. She went through the motions of worship. Could this have been Larry or Louise? Would Rosie have told them to search the library because Marly worked there? She trembled at her narrow escape, glad she had moved her treasure the previous morning, and offered a genuine prayer of thanks.

  “That’s too bad about the break-in,” Marly said to Mrs. Haas after the service. “Do you know who it was?”

  Nancy Haas patted her immaculately coifed gray hair as she looked right and left, as if to make sure that no one was listening. Apparently satisfied, she gave Marly a long look.

  “Yes. That was obvious. You be careful, Marly.” She tugged the front of her Sunday-best tweed jacket as she straightened her back to reach her full five foot two inches and headed toward the parking lot.

  Marly swallowed and drifted away to find her family. Larry and Louise. If they were looking in the library that meant Rosie suspected Marly. It also meant Mrs. Haas knew that too.

  * * *

  On Monday, she sat next to Claire on the school bus. Marly had been home with the cold most of the previous week and they had not spoken since the night of the Halloween dance.

  “Rosie and Louise Harris came to see us on Saturday,” Claire said.

  “What did they want?”

  “They wanted to know about the night of the dance.”

  Marly stared. “I don’t think there was much to tell.”

  “Exactly. I told them I’d dropped you at the Rock to get a ride with Del, but that his truck wasn’t there.”

  “Thanks. Of course that’s the truth.”