Back home, I intended to sleep a few more hours to prepare for another night at Country Peace, but Magnolia knocked before I could get to bed. I opened the door, and she swept in surrounded by Popsicle swirls of red and orange.
She twirled. “Isn’t this gorgeous? My third cousin on Great-grandma Phillipe’s side sent it to me from Hawaii, along with all sorts of information about that branch of the family.”
Magnolia claimed ancestors from various bloodlines around the world, and, fortunately, most of the people she tracked down seemed willing to grant her relative status. Now she steadied her balance with a grip on the sofa. The dress kept twirling. “That’s the French side of the family, you know. I believe we’re related to Marie Antoinette.”
“Fantastic colors,” I murmured, not wanting to get into French ancestry. “Lemonade?”
“Oh yes, lovely. And then I have a surprise for you.”
Uh-oh. Magnolia had once surprised me with a vase in the shape of a purple mermaid playing a harp. Another time it was a book on the joys of genealogy. So I was a little wary now about the merits of this new surprise.
I poured two glasses of lemonade, and we went out to the backyard. Magnolia inspected Thea’s plants.
“They don’t look too bad so far.”
“Thank you.”
“Will you be taking them to DeeAnn soon?” Magnolia turned a leaf over and studied it as if estimating how long it might survive under my care.
“Probably not until Thanksgiving. I’m thinking I’ll get some Miracle-Gro and give them a dose to hold them over.”
“Good. You know, this is the third time I’ve been over to see you,” she complained as she settled into a lawn chair that creaked under her bulk. I sat on the bench Harley had made years ago. It was oak, weathered now, but still solid, and I always felt the comfort of Harley’s own solidity when I sat on it.
Now, with a hint of accusation, Magnolia added, “I pounded and pounded on the door, but you never answered. And your car was in the driveway.”
“I … haven’t been sleeping well at night,” I said. Perhaps not total truth, but truth as far as it went. “So I’ve been napping during the day.” Which I’d discovered went much better with earplugs to shut out sirens and meter readers. And, apparently, persistent door pounders.
“I could swear I saw a car pulling out of your driveway late last night. I was afraid maybe something was wrong, and you were headed for the emergency room. But then I realized it was probably just someone turning around in your driveway. After a couple of hours at the bars, some of those guys don’t know which way home is.”
I decided a detour away from discussion of my daytime naps and nighttime excursions would be prudent. “Will you and Geoff be staying home now, or do you have another trip planned?”
“We may stay home for a while. Gas is so expensive now, you know. And the motor home guzzles it like an old drunkard bellied up to a bar. We had a rather unnerving experience too.”
Magnolia waited expectantly for me to express alarm, and I obliged. “Oh, dear. What happened?”
“We broke down out in the middle of nowhere in Arizona. It was an eerie place, all these strange cactus standing around looking like people turned into statues.” Magnolia raised her arms, making statue shapes. “Then out of nowhere comes this weird guy with a backpack, and he starts telling Geoff he’s had a message that alien spacecraft are going to land in the area. And he kept looking at us, as if he thought maybe we were aliens in disguise.”
“That does sound creepy.”
“Actually, it all turned out okay,” Magnolia admitted. “He showed Geoff what was wrong with the motor home, something about a loose spark plug wire.”
“Perhaps he’ll be able to help the flying saucer aliens, then, if they have mechanical problems,” I suggested.
Magnolia rewarded the facetious comment with a righteous frown. “But he could have been a serial murderer, and we’d have wound up as a newspaper headline: ‘Middle-aged Couple Found Decapitated in Luxury Motor Home in Arizona Desert.’”
Luxury motor home? Stretching it. Middle-aged couple? No way. Then I chided myself for this flippant attitude. Because desert decapitation was no doubt gruesomely possible.
“Of course, reading the newspaper or listening to the TV about things going on right around here is just about as scary,” Magnolia declared. “Can you believe what’s been happening?”
“I guess I haven’t been keeping up with the news too well lately.” My nighttime excursions and daytime naps didn’t allow for much newspaper perusal. And I hadn’t had the TV on in several days.
“Well, just awful things have been happening. That boy who took a gun to school and wounded three people. That girl’s body found in the river. That shameful vandalism out at some old cemetery. That whole family selling drugs, even the kids. The man who—”
“Whoa. Back up. Vandalism at a cemetery?”
“It’s out in the country somewhere. There were photos of several overturned tombstones. The police are asking anyone in that vicinity to keep an eye out.”
Perhaps that trip to the sheriff’s office had done some good after all.
“Has Thea’s renter moved out?” Magnolia added, moving on with one of her rapid changes of subject. “I haven’t seen her car for several days now.”
“I don’t think so. She said she was going to pay another month’s rent. I don’t think she’d just pick up and leave without saying good-bye.” I hadn’t been paying attention to Kendra’s car.
“But she didn’t pay the rent?”
“No, not yet.” Actually, as of now, Kendra’s rent was several days past due.
“Well, maybe she did leave then. If she didn’t, I’d certainly hit her up for the rent and not let her get behind. She seemed nice, but you just can’t depend on young people these days.”
“I’m sure there are any number of thoroughly dependable young people around,” I protested. “You just don’t hear about them like you do the other kind.”
Magnolia murmured a humph of doubt, set her empty glass on the grass, and stood up. “Oh, you almost let me forget my surprise.”
Magnolia didn’t appear to be carrying anything, which I took as a good sign. No more odd vases or books on genealogy. But her pleased-with-herself smile was not so good.
“Surprise?” I repeated warily.
“I want you to come over for a barbecue Saturday night. I’m inviting some people from our RV Roamers group.”
I relaxed. A barbecue was fine. Geoff did a great job with chicken or hamburgers. And I didn’t mind recreational vehicle people, though they did tend to spend an excessive amount of time discussing where good dump stations were located. “Can I bring something? A pie or cobbler, perhaps?”
“Yes, that would be lovely. I’m sure it will make a terrific impression on Mac.”
I stopped relaxing. “Mac?”
Magnolia clapped her hands. “Mac is my surprise! He’s this lovely man we met in Arizona. Not the weird, flying saucer one,” she added hastily. “He travels the country in his motor home, and he’ll be arriving here Saturday afternoon. I just know you two are going to hit it off.”
As a surprise, I thought glumly, I’d rather have had another mermaid vase after all. Trying to be tactful, I said, “That’s very nice of you, but I’m really not interested in—”
“That’s the problem,” Magnolia scolded. “You should be interested! You and Thea did everything together, and with her gone you’re going to be sitting around here alone. You need companionship, and there aren’t a lot of eligible men in our age group. And Mac is very eligible.”
I couldn’t argue with Magnolia’s statement about men in our age group. Statistics always shout their scarcity. It is also a fact that their scarcity had never particularly concerned me. It’s like pickled eel at the supermarket: If you don’t want pickled eel, who cares if the store doesn’t have any?
I searched for a polite way to wiggle out of the barbecu
e. Finally I settled for honesty. “Magnolia, I appreciate your concern about my being alone. And I’ve enjoyed meeting other RV people from across the country who’ve come to visit you. But I really don’t want to get involved in a … matchmaking situation.”
“Just meet him, Ivy.” Magnolia’s tone managed to reproach, cajole, and accuse. “You don’t have to elope with him the next day, you know.”
I sighed. Opposing Magnolia was like trying to stop a combination of charging bull and pleading kitten. I also knew she honestly cared. If I’d ever expressed interest in acquiring a man, she’d have been hauling them in by the truckload long before this.
“Where’s his home?”
“I think he used to live in California.” Magnolia airily waved a hand. “But the world is his home now. He lives in his motor home.”
No rooted home? I found that difficult to comprehend. Harley and I had talked about traveling but never about giving up our home. I rubbed a row of itchy mosquito bites on my leg.
“Is he into genealogy?”
“Well, no …” Magnolia frowned at this flaw I’d so quickly uncovered. Then she brightened. “But he has a fabulous head of hair. And not a trace of potbelly. Every morning he was out jogging around the RV park there in Arizona. And he reads a lot, just like you.”
“Does he know you’re planning to serve him up like an hors d’oeuvre to the widow down the street?”
“He’s a writer, so you’re going to have so much in common.”
I noted that Magnolia had dodged my hors d’oeuvre question. The homeless but fabulously haired, non-potbellied Mac had no idea a booby trap was waiting for him. “I’m not a writer,” I pointed out. “So I don’t see the connection.”
Magnolia dismissed that objection with another of her all-purpose airy waves. “Books, Ivy, books. No one knows more about words and books than you do, after all those years in the library. Mac does these fantastic articles about fabulous places for travel magazines. That’s why he lives on the road and travels all the time. I’m sure he’ll probably do a book one of these days.”
“Thanks so much, but—”
“I’m simply not going to take no for an answer,” Magnolia declared. She frowned, pulling insulation pink lips into a down-turned bow, and shot me a sideways glance. “This sleeping in the daytime is not a healthy sign, you know. I’m concerned.”
I was not about to explain the reason behind my daytime sleeping. Magnolia would give the yelp-heard-round-the-world if she knew about those nighttime activities.
Okay, Mac had a couple of good points going for him, I conceded. One, he wasn’t into genealogy. Two, if he was on the move in his motor home, he wouldn’t be here long.
“Okay, barbecue on Saturday night. I’ll be there.”
“Wear something western. And be sure to bring that peach cobbler.” Magnolia winked a blue-shadowed lid. “Who knows, maybe it’ll be love at first sight and you’ll want to elope with him the next day.”
9
After Magnolia went home, I dug unread newspapers for the last several days out of the recycle stack on the back porch. I found the piece about the vandalism at Country Peace on an inside page in one of the papers. A photo showed two overturned tombstones. The caption said that eight of the thirty-six stones in the cemetery had been similarly desecrated. A bottom paragraph added that efforts to reach an officer in the Country Peace Association, which was the owner of record, had so far been unsuccessful. Responsibility for restoration and maintenance at the cemetery was at this point undetermined. A representative of a local mortuary was quoted as saying that Country Peace had been closed to new gravesites for many years, although at the moment he did not have information why.
“But it’s a beautiful setting and certainly undeserving of this disrespectful treatment,” the mortuary representative had added. “Perhaps a restoration fund could be set up.”
The developer of one of the subdivisions between the cemetery and town was quoted as expressing concern that the vandalism might spread to the heavy construction equipment he had on the property and might even carry over to when houses were built and children were living in the area.
The tone of the article expressed indignation at the vandalism, but I didn’t see anything to suggest increased patrols by the sheriff’s department. I’d earlier thought about skipping tonight’s stakeout but decided against it. In my bones I didn’t feel the vandals were done yet. Maybe I could still nail them.
The people making drug-dealing a family enterprise were on Monday’s front page. Inside was a piece Magnolia hadn’t mentioned, about a dozen elderly people being scammed with a phony bank scheme. The discovery of the body of the young woman that she had mentioned got several paragraphs on page 3 of yesterday’s paper.
The body had been found by children playing along the river and was as yet unidentified. There was a gunshot wound in the woman’s chest, but further details were not available.
I shivered in spite of the muggy afternoon heat. Magnolia was right. Terrible things were happening.
There was more about the woman’s body in that evening’s newspaper. Now information was expanded to a specific description: approximately 22 to 28 years old, 5 feet 7 inches tall, 118 pounds, brown hair and blue eyes. The body was clad in a flowered red and black blouse or dress. It had probably been in the water for several days. The authorities were seeking help from the public in identifying her.
I folded the newspaper. A small frisson of uneasiness prickled my skin. Could the body possibly—
No. Unthinkable. Not even if Kendra did generically match the description and owned a black dress with exotic red flowers. Not even if I hadn’t seen her for several days.
I went over after supper to pick up Thea’s mail in the box by her front door. I carried the advertisement from AARP and a bill from a cardiologist around to the back, because that was the door to which I had a key. Kendra’s car was not in the carport. Had it not been there for several days, as Magnolia had said?
Inside, the house already smelled musty and unused. I added the mail to the pile on the dining room table awaiting Molly’s arrival. On the way out, I eyed the ring of keys hanging by the back door. A key to the apartment was undoubtedly among them.
I tapped the doorknob, undecided. I had no solid reason to believe anything was amiss, and Kendra, private person that she was, would surely be appalled if I snooped.
I went outside and peered at the basement windows. The dead-fish curtains were closed, and I couldn’t see into the apartment.
Perhaps just a quick peek wouldn’t hurt.
The third key on the ring unlocked the door. I peered inside, then pushed the door open wider.
I stared in astonishment. No pictures on the walls, no knickknacks, no pillows on the sofa, no magazines on the coffee table. I flicked the light switch, and a fluorescent fixture in the kitchen buzzed on. I opened a cupboard door above the bare counter. No food. No dishes. I opened the drawer below the oven of the kitchen range. No pots and pans. Empty refrigerator. I crossed over to the one tiny bedroom. No linens on the bed. No clothes in the closet.
So Kendra really had moved out without even bothering to say good-bye. Disappointment twanged me, even a twinge of betrayal. Not what I expected of Kendra. The phone was sitting on the nightstand by the bed. I picked up the receiver and heard a dial tone.
Kendra must have forgotten to have it disconnected. Perhaps because she’d left in such a big hurry. The apartment wasn’t dirty, but neither was it spic and span. Crumpled tissues and bits of debris on the carpet, plastic clothes hangers scattered on the closet floor, overturned container of Comet in the bathroom. The empty medicine cabinet was open, as were the drawer of the nightstand and the bottom drawer of the mirrored vanity.
Now I also realized that all the furniture was fractionally askew. Not noticeably out of place, but not quite in place. The coffee table was off-center of the sofa. The nightstand stood at an awkward distance from the bed, and the vanity was
angled against the wall. As if everything had been moved and then hastily shoved back into place.
My sense of order made me push the nightstand into proper position next to the bed and straighten the vanity against the wall. The movement revealed a snapshot lying on the floor, one corner bent, as if it had perhaps been tucked into the frame of the mirror and had fallen. A young man, tall, husky, clean-cut looking. Very blond. He was standing in a driveway beside a sporty bright red convertible, in jeans but shirtless and barefoot, as if he had just washed the car. I turned the photo over, but there was no identification on the back.
This was not the tall, lanky guy who’d bumped into Thea and me that night. That guy had been older, not nearly such an impressive hunk. Could this man in the photo be the central figure in Thea’s speculation about a tragic romance in Kendra’s past, the reason why Kendra had left California?
In any case, Kendra had now moved on, apparently in a hurry, considering the less-than-pristine state of the apartment.
Well, that was Molly’s concern, not mine. I had a date with a stakeout.
*
The vandals, however, did not have a date with me. No activity in the cemetery. No illegal trash dumpers on the bridge.
Yet on this warm, moonless night, sleepiness was not a problem, even though I’d gotten only minimal sleep that day and had forgotten to bring snacks. Tonight nagging thoughts even more than mosquitoes kept me awake.
The thought that it simply was not like Kendra to leave without a word. Kendra had always been so thoughtful and kind, and this bordered on rude and inconsiderate.
I also thought about that eye-catching, black-and-red flowered dress in which I’d last seen her, the backless one with the plunging neckline and seductive slit up the side. The newspaper article hadn’t said anything about a slit and had even indicated the item of clothing could be a blouse. But if the body had been sloshing in the river for several days …
No, it couldn’t be Kendra. Kendra wasn’t missing. She’d simply loaded everything she owned into her car and moved away.
Although there was a detail I decided it wouldn’t hurt to check out.
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