Mud Bog Murder
Page 24
“I know you,” he said, getting out of his chair. “And I bet I know what you want.”
His voice was so loud, I looked behind me, thinking he was talking to someone who had just entered.
I’d never met the man before—believe me, I’d remember him—and I was about to say so, but he gestured to the chair, and in his booming voice, told me to sit. I sat.
“How do you feel about guns?” he asked.
“What?”
“Guns. If you’re gonna be a PI, you need to carry. So you like guns or not?”
“Uh, I don’t know. I’ve never given it much thought. I suppose it might be easier to take down a bad guy armed with a gun rather than a black patent-leather stiletto sandal.”
He roared with laughter.
“Could you tell me how you know who I am?”
“Your friend, the other detective around here. Alex.”
Alex.
“He said you were a real snoopy kind of gal, one who liked to get involved in criminal stuff. So are you? Snoopy, I mean?”
I thought about that for only a moment. Yes, I was snoopy. I nodded.
“Sit down. You need to fill out this application.” He pushed a paper across the desk at me, as if expecting me to start work right away.
“I haven’t decided what I’m going to do for now, but thanks.” I got up and left. What was I thinking. Me? A private eye?
“You’ll be back,” I heard him call out as the door closed behind me.
Madeleine had a doctor’s appointment that same afternoon, so I managed the shop. She and I had decided to put off final decisions about the rig and the shop. We both liked the idea of splitting our time between places, although it would mean we wouldn’t be working together. I’d miss that, and I knew she would too, but we could take the rig to the coast on Sundays and sell there together. I was certain Grandfather Egret would want to take over one of the shops on an afternoon or two. With his help and Shelley’s, we’d do just fine.
“Eve, Eve!” shouted Madeleine, running into the shop from her doctor’s appointment. “Look at this.” She waved a grainy black-and-white photo in front of my face. I couldn’t make out the image.
David trailed behind her, the silliest smile on his face.
“Our first baby picture,” she said. “It’s done by ultrasound. Isn’t it wonderful?”
I looked at it more closely and still couldn’t discern much but a lot of shadows. “Sure. I guess.”
She looked hurt at my reaction. “Don’t you see?”
“You tell me. I’m not good at these baby things.”
“Twins. I’m having twins.”
“We’re having twins,” David repeated, the loony smile still in place.
“Maybe you better sit down,” I suggested.
“I’m fine,” Madeleine replied.
“No, I meant David. He looks like he’s in shock.”
Twins it was to be, and so we began the naming thing. First, a list of girls’ names and a separate list of boys’ names. Then from those lists, a list of girls’ names, each paired with another girl’s name, a list of boys’ names each paired with another boy’s name, and finally a list of boys’ names, each paired with a girl’s name.
“Why so many lists? Why can’t we simply generate a list of girls’ names and a list of boys’ names?” I asked that same evening when we sat down at my kitchen table with pads and pencils in front of us. Of course everyone had to be there to help: Grandy and Max, now back in Key Largo but in Sabal Bay for the weekend, Alex, temporarily back from Miami, Sammy, Grandfather Egret, and even Nappi and Jerry. Madeleine was that happy.
“We have to make certain first that we like the name,” she explained as if she thought I had the mental capacity of a three-year-old turtle. “Then we have to make sure the one name goes with the other.”
“Huh?” I said, proving I did have the IQ of turtle.
“Oliver, for example,” she said.
“You like the name ‘Oliver’?” I asked.
“It’s just an example, Eve.” She began again, “Oliver couldn’t be used with Olive now, could it?”
I didn’t like either name, so I kept my mouth shut for the rest of the evening. I wondered how long this naming thing would continue. I feared it would go on until the actual day of the birth.
Most of the month I spent waiting—I couldn’t put into words for what. I was certain I’d know it when it happened. Then the day arrived, almost a week after the shop cleansing. I was home by myself, Grandy and Max having returned to their boat. I stepped out onto my back patio.
He was standing there, washed in the light from a full moon. His dark eyes were like soft velvet when he turned and looked at me. I reached out my hand, and he took it and placed it on his chest. I remembered his mother’s words cautioning me against taking his feelings too lightly, but I knew now that I would never do that. I felt the strength of his heartbeat, and I leaned into him. My heart took up the same rhythm as his.
He whispered into my hair, “A ride in my canoe to our place in the swamps?”
“Yes, yes,” I said.
“This time I have no pound cake.”
We both smiled.
Pound cake was not what we yearned for.
* * *
Lesley A. Diehl retired from her life as a professor of psychology and reclaimed her country roots by moving to a small cottage in the Butternut River Valley in Upstate New York. In the winter she migrates to old Florida—cowboys, scrub palmetto, and open fields of grazing cattle, a place where spurs still jingle in the post office and gators make golf a contact sport. Back north, the shy ghost inhabiting the cottage serves as her literary muse. When not writing, she gardens, cooks, and renovates the 1874 cottage with the help of her husband, two cats, and of course Fred the ghost, who gives artistic direction to their work.
She is the author of a number of mystery series and mysteries as well as short stories. Mud Bog Murder follows the first three books in the Eve Appel mystery series, A Secondhand Murder, Dead in the Water and A Sporting Murder.
Visit her online at www.lesleyadiehl.com.