by Molly Macrae
For an even briefer nanosecond I thought about calling Clod Dunbar and reporting J. Scott Snooprat. But that was even stupider. Clod would listen, ask questions, and then zero in on the ones I couldn’t answer. How did I know he’d been in the study and why was I reporting it so many hours after the fact? I could tell Clod that Ernestine or John had told me and that they must have forgotten to tell him, but that would be dropping them into the middle of a lie and it wouldn’t be fair. Dear, dear. It was the old conundrum: If no one else could see or hear the witness, did her evidence exist?
For lack of anything more constructive to do, I fell back on being petulant. Remembering, first, to put the phone to my ear. “Geneva, why didn’t you tell me he went in the study?”
“I didn’t recognize him dressed up in his frock coat. That was a very handsome style, don’t you think? Men just don’t dress the way they used to.”
“They haven’t dressed the way they used to for a long time, if you’re longing for men in frock coats.”
“I haven’t thought of frock coats in a very long time. Anyway, when he took the coat off I realized who he was. Frankly, he’s not my type.”
“His type hasn’t got anything to do with it. What did he do up there?”
“Let me think.” She tapped a finger against her cheek. “Well, he didn’t steal anything. I suppose that’s a point in his favor.”
“We aren’t keeping track of points. What did he do?”
“Argyle and I were having a nap in the window seat. He disturbed us by opening and shutting the window.”
“Did he go through the desk?”
“You’ll have to ask him. Argyle and I left.”
“You left while he was in there sneaking around? Why?”
“He isn’t Argyle’s type, either.”
“Well, isn’t that the—”
“Please don’t swear at me.”
“I wasn’t going to. Okay, maybe I was. I’m sorry. I’m tired.”
“You also have a tendency to become overwrought, but as long as you don’t start overexplaining or overacting, the way he did, I don’t mind.”
“Gosh, thanks.”
“You should stop being overly sarcastic, too.”
“Got it.”
“And snapping overly often—”
“Geneva? Let’s go back to the part where I said I was tired. I really am. So do you mind if we wrap this up?”
“Not at all. But thank you for asking if I had an opinion on the matter.”
“You’re welcome. Would you like to come home with me?”
“Mm, I don’t think so.”
“Okay. Anyway, I am glad to know that it wasn’t my imagination and that you thought. J. Scott Prescott was putting on a performance, too.”
“It is possible he’s always like that. It would be unfortunate for his kith and kin—do people still say kith and kin?”
“Rarely.”
“Really? I’m glad I asked. I like to be up-to-date. In that case, it would be unfortunate for his nearest and dearest, but there are peculiar people in this world.” Said she, who was a ghost, to the only person who ever saw or heard her.
“You’re right. There are,” I said. “But peculiar or not, I think we need to find out more about J. Scott and whatever his relationship was with Reva Louise. And we need to know a lot more about Reva Louise.”
“Do you know if she had a butler? They’re a shifty bunch.”
“A butler’s doubtful, but knowing more about her husband would be a good idea.” I yawned in the middle of the word “idea.” “And now I really do need to go. I wish you’d come home with me tonight.”
“Are you afraid of the dark?”
Her question caught me off guard. Was I? And if I was, would that be a bad thing? “Maybe I am a little. But it’s more that I still don’t know when I’ll be able to get back into the shop.”
“They will have to let you back in sometime tomorrow because you left Argyle here.”
“Good point.”
“But I should stay here, anyway, to keep him company and to be your eyes and ears. Argyle and I will be on the alert, ready to defend the Weaver’s Cat with our lives.”
“Thank you, Geneva. That makes me feel better.” Not much, because one of them had nine lives and the other was already dead, but it was the thought that counted.
“After all, the villain might break in tonight to retrieve incriminating evidence.”
I stared at her.
“Don’t you think Mr. Prescott’s sudden appearance out of the dark was ominous and possibly sinister and might portend trouble in the small hours of the night? But don’t worry. You go on home and get a good night’s sleep. Argyle and I will be on guard, ever vigilant.”
Unless they were napping or left the room because the villain wasn’t their type. I swallowed panic. But, really, how likely was it that the shooter would risk leaving more evidence by breaking in to look for evidence the police would almost certainly have already found? Unless the killer knew the shop’s many nooks and crannies better than the police and knew exactly where he’d left that incriminating piece of evidence behind.
Deep breaths, I told myself, deep breaths. I massaged my forehead, making large, slow circles with my fingertips. I made an effort and managed to dredge up an ounce or two of common sense and logic. If the killer left something in a nook or cranny, a place so cleverly hidden the police hadn’t found it, then the killer wouldn’t need to risk breaking in to retrieve it. He would wait for the shop to reopen, walk in, like any safe, smiling, ordinary customer, and get it. Whatever “it” was. Unless “it” was a complete figment of a ghost’s and an overwrought woman’s imagination. I really did need to go home and give my brain a rest.
“One more question. Then I’m gone,” I said.
“Okay, and to demonstrate for you how fine-tuned my eyes and ears are and how I won’t miss a nuance of chicanery in the Weaver’s Cat until you come back, I will tell you that I’ve noticed it is taking you an agonizingly long time to actually leave.”
I massaged my forehead in large, fast circles.
“I’m waiting for your question,” said Miss Eyes and Ears.
“Okay, okay. You said you haven’t read supernatural hogwash, right?”
“A load of drivel.” She could give lessons in sniffing with derision.
“But when Reva Louise looked up and waved, just before she died, you thought she saw you. If you haven’t read the hogwash, then how do you know that someone who’s about to die can see ghosts?”
She drew in a—a what? A ghost of a breath? Then she drew in on herself, pulling her arms in until her elbows touched, her hands clasped tightly under her chin. “Because,” she said, speaking so softly I had to lean in closer, “I saw one.”
“You saw a—”
“I saw one,” she repeated, starting to rock and billow. “Before I fell into darkness.”
“Oh, honey, it’s okay. Where were you? Where was the ghost?”
“Above. I was looking up. Like Reva Louise.”
“Looking up at a window?”
“At betrayal.”
“Geneva, wait—”
But she billowed and swirled and was gone and I felt almost breathless. Over the months I’d known her, she’d dropped clues about her age and I’d caught glimpses of her background, but it was hard teasing her memories from the tangle of story lines planted in her head during her years of endless television. Now, for the first time, she’d mentioned her own death and I had no trouble believing it was her memory or that she believed she’d seen a ghost.
• • •
I sat on the porch a while longer in case she came back. She didn’t, so I started home, skirting the shadows, figuratively and literally. The moon was high and small, far away and far too cold to offer light or any kind of comfort. I was glad for my rubber-soled shoes—if I wasn’t making any noise padding home in the dark, it was all the better to hear someone else sneaking along behind me. As I
passed the mercantile, sneering at it in a way it didn’t deserve, a movement across the street at the courthouse registered in my peripheral vision. The front of the courthouse was lit from several directions by lights set below it in the grass, but I turned in time to see someone slip into the shadow of the columns at the top of the steps, to the right of the double front doors. I pressed my back against the mercantile’s bricks and watched.
The person inched from behind a column, keeping an arm around it as though hugging it for support. It was a woman and she stayed like that, her face turned away, turned toward the columns on the other side of the door. She might have been looking or listening, I couldn’t tell. She peeled herself away from the column, moving slowly so her arm still touched it, then just her hand, her fingers, then their tips, and then she let go and walked to the center of the top step where Sheriff Haynes and Mayor Weems had spoken. It was Mercy Spivey’s daughter, Angie Cobb.
Angie and I were a few years and a few pounds apart. She led me in both. She led me in bravery when it came to clothes, too. I’d seen her looking uncomfortable in conventional, casual business wear. Uncomfortable and unhappy. But I’d also seen her, as now, in skintight black jeans and a formfitting camisole top. This was Angie, tough and determined, Angie who could stand up for herself and to her mother, Angie who, according to Mercy, was studying for a real estate license. Her camisole top was red and it looked as if she had on red stilettos to match. She’d let her drab brown hair grow. It hung loose, brushing her shoulders.
Angie did something then that tickled me. She threw her arms out, one shoulder slightly forward, head back, and she looked for all the world as though she meant to belt out a chart-buster. But not a peep came out and I was glad she didn’t seem to know I was watching. She plopped down on the top step, wrapped her arms around her knees, and rocked. In that position, if she’d been less substantial and wearing filmy gray instead of skintight black and bloodred, she would have looked like Geneva.
Someone else moved from behind one of the columns, from the direction Angie had been looking when I first spotted her. It was a man, but he didn’t move far enough out of the shadows for me to see him clearly. Slim, the colors of his clothes indistinguishable in the dark, medium height to tall? I couldn’t tell. He must have said something, called Angie. She jumped up and ran to him. It looked like the kind of run that should end in a hug or a kiss or an enveloping embrace. It didn’t. He put his arm around her shoulders. She briefly leaned against him. They withdrew into the shadows and were gone.
I waited another minute or two, then walked the last few blocks home, wondering what that had been about. I stayed up another hour or so, making notes, getting the questions down, thinking about how to find the answers.
In the morning, I made the sleep-deprived mistake of opening the front door to someone’s knock without first checking to see who was there. It was Shirley and Mercy Spivey and it was earlier in the morning than I’d ever seen them. It was also earlier than I ever wanted to see them again, but something was obviously, terribly wrong. They weren’t wearing matching outfits.
Chapter 17
“It’s Angie,” said one of the twins, pushing past me into the house before I could stop her.
The second twin made it in on the tail of the first. Sobbing, she still managed to echo, “It’s Angie!”
I hadn’t closed the door, to save the twins time when they were on their way back out. I took my eyes off them for a second and looked to see if Angie was on her way in, too. She wasn’t. “What about Angie?”
“She’s gone!”
“I saw her last night,” I said.
“Where?” Both twins lunged at me. They probably only stepped closer, but I jumped back as if they’d lunged. They were definitely in a bad way. Both wore odd combinations of nightwear and haphazardly tossed-on daywear. One twin’s hair stuck up in back; the other had combed hers but wore shoes from two different pairs. The most telling sign of their distress, though, was that neither of them, even at close range, smelled of Mercy’s cologne.
I made them sit, putting them side by side on Granny’s old chintz sofa. Neither of them had splashed on the wretched cologne, but they both looked so completely wretched that I pulled a chair over and sat directly in front of them. They leaned forward, listening, as I told them about seeing Angie at the courthouse and about seeing her leave with the man I couldn’t identify. I held back the details of Angie standing with open, operatic arms and then sitting and rocking on the steps. Until I knew what was going on, her private moment of misery—or whatever it had been—would remain private.
“Has she been seeing someone?” I asked. “Maybe they—”
The twin on the right, the one who’d been sobbing and hadn’t run a comb through her hair, interrupted. “She’s been too busy with her coursework. Making something of herself. Making me pro-hou-hou-houd.” And she dissolved back into tears. So that twin was Mercy.
Shirley, on the left, wearing mismatched shoes and what looked like a man’s striped pajama top over a pair of pink capris, turned toward her sister and opened her arms. Mercy fell into them and I sat there feeling uncomfortable. When Mercy’s howls quieted, I asked if one or the other would please tell me what was going on. They both did. Working in tandem, their tale was efficient, although not as dramatic as it had promised to be.
Angie wasn’t home. That was the gist. I stared at them.
“We told it badly,” Shirley said.
“She doesn’t believe it any more than Cole Dunbar,” said Mercy.
“You filed a missing person report with Deputy Dunbar?”
“Tried to,” Shirley said.
“He says she hasn’t been missing long enough,” said Mercy. “But I know my daughter.”
“But she’s only been gone . . .” I looked at the mantel clock and tried not to groan. “It’s eight forty and I saw her between ten and ten thirty last night. She’s been gone less than twelve hours.” I thought about her red camisole and heels. “Maybe she went to a party and stayed over? Or got up early, went out for breakfast?” Surely the woman had a life of her own. I didn’t say that out loud, but they read it easily enough on my face.
“Come on, Shirley.” Mercy struggled to rise from the sofa.
“We’ll find her ourselves.” Shirley tried to pull herself up by hanging on to Mercy so that they both ended up back where they’d started. And Mercy started crying again. I quietly cursed whatever tender trait I’d inherited that attracted sobbing people and ghosts.
“Mercy, Shirley, please,” I said. “I’ll be happy to help. I like Angie. I’ll call around. I’ll look for her myself. But I need more to go on. Look at it from my point of view, from Deputy Dunbar’s point of view.” The thought of sharing a point of view with Clod Dunbar made me shudder. I rushed to move past it. “Angie is a grown woman. She lives in her own house. She’s independent. She has her own friends.” I hesitated. “She does, doesn’t she? Have friends?”
Then I did something I never imagined myself doing. I patted Mercy Spivey on the knee. It was awkward, but she seemed to appreciate it.
“Let’s go out to the kitchen. I’ll make coffee and you think about what else you can tell me.”
“We’d rather have tea,” Shirley said.
“And toast,” said Mercy, sniffling into a tissue she pulled from the leopard-print bra peeking around the edge of the Blue Plum High School hoodie she’d thrown on. “With low-cal spread, if you have it.”
• • •
They sat at the small table in the kitchen—after I moved newspapers off one of the chairs and cleared my own breakfast dishes into the sink. While water for tea heated, I found a jar of Granny’s blueberry jam in a cupboard. Every July, Granny had driven over Iron Mountain Gap to pick berries in a field outside the little community of Buladean. I wondered if she would mind if I fed her jam to the twins and decided she wouldn’t.
“Do you know we’ve never been in this kitchen?” Shirley said.
&
nbsp; “It looks like Ivy,” said Mercy. “Lloyd, too. Must be the colors and the woodwork.”
Shirley sighed. “It is one of our abiding sorrows that we weren’t as close to Ivy as we might have been.”
“Ivy was fey,” Mercy said. “Always was.” She might have noticed when I put the jam jar in front of her with more force than was called for. She blinked and added, “That’s not criticism. People are what they are.”
That was true enough. Shirley and Mercy certainly were whatever they were, only more so because everything was doubled. I took two plates, two knives, two teacups, four pieces of whole wheat toast, and Granny’s blue teapot to the table.
“Now, tell me how you know Angie is missing.”
“We talk twice a day, like clockwork,” Mercy said. “I call her at seven in the morning and again at seven in the evening.”
I couldn’t help thinking, Poor Angie.
Mercy couldn’t help reading that on my face. “We’re very close,” she said. “Sometimes she doesn’t answer. She does have a life of her own. But then I send a text and she always gets back to me.”
“Always? Even when she was married to Max Cobb?”
“Even if it’s just to say, ‘Back off,’” said Shirley.
Mercy glared at her. “I have always taken my role as a mother seriously and she always gets back to me. Angie did not answer last night, and she hasn’t answered yet this morning.”
“Is she working these days?”
“She’s pouring her energy into her classes,” Mercy said.
“Have you been by her house?” That was a silly question. Of course they’d been by her house. They’d been in her house, too. Mercy showed me the key.
