“Oh, yeah. I know when his wife comes in by the perfume. She must buy White Diamonds by the gallon.”
“What does Mr. Retzloff look like?”
“Well, uh, short and kind of paunchy. Moustache. He thinks no one knows, but he’s had those little hair plug-in implants. It’s kind of like a hairy garden sprouting on his head.”
Again, more than I wanted to know. But Mr. Retzloff was definitely not the lanky, no-moustache guy Thea and I had bumped into. But one more question. “Was anyone curious about where you’d gotten the picture?”
“Mr. Retzloff was. Probably because he’d like to own that car. But I figured you wouldn’t want your name connected with any of this, so I just told him I’d found the picture fallen down behind a drawer in my desk.”
“Thanks, Tiffany, I appreciate your efforts. See you tonight.”
*
I called Dix to tell him I’d visit this evening instead of this afternoon, and that I’d be bringing a friend. I suppose he assumed the friend was someone my age, because he straightened up in bed as if an electric prod had hit him when Tiffany and I walked in through the now-unguarded door. Tiffany was wearing hip-huggers … or are they called low-riders now? Whatever, they were definitely living up to the name, with lots of swing.
Dix didn’t have a lot to say, but Tiffany chattered with bubbly animation. She had all these stories about odd people she’d encountered at Bottom-Buck Barney’s, and she acted them out with verve. The woman who was all set to buy a little Nissan, until her poodle didn’t like it. (Demonstration of poodle yips and growls from Tiffany.) The woman who traded in an old Oldsmobile, then came back to tell them her conscience was bothering her. “You see, that cah is haunted.” Tiffany was speaking in her southern voice now as she imitated the customer. “Mah Aunt Elsie, who’s been dead a dozen years now, is in there, and I wouldn’t mind, ’cause she was a sweet thang, but she just won’t quit singin’ them old Elvis Presley songs.”
Tiffany had Dix laughing, and the laughter circled my heart with a nice warmth.
Before we left, Tiffany said tentatively, “I could come back again tomorrow night,” and Dix said, “Yeah, that’d be great.”
Outside in the hallway she gave me a grin and a thumbs-up sign, and I mentally preened. Magnolia, let me show you how a real matchmaker does it.
The next evening was also successful. Wanting to give Dix and Tiffany time alone to get acquainted, I tactfully said I couldn’t make it the following night. When Tiffany left, Dix asked me to stay a minute. I thought he wanted to thank me for introducing them, but what he told me was that Detective Harmon had called.
“He checked out the VIN on the red Corolla at Bottom-Buck Barney’s. The car came from Colorado and was traded in on a new car at one of the big dealerships here in town. It was older and had a lot of miles on it, so they wholesaled it to Bottom-Buck Barney’s. Detective Harmon said he confirmed this with the former owners themselves, a retired couple who moved here to be near their daughter.”
“Oh. Definitely not Kendra’s car then.” I was half relieved, half disappointed.
“Like Detective Harmon said, one red Corolla looks a lot like another red Corolla.”
So much for my car identification skills.
Dix didn’t say it in so many words, but I had the impression Detective Harmon had been smugly superior that the red Corolla on Bottom-Buck Barney’s lot had been totally legit. He hadn’t wanted to bother checking it out, and he’d been right. No connection with Kendra. Then I remembered I had something to show Dix, something totally unrelated to the case. I dug the newspaper clipping out of my purse and handed it to him.
“Hey, all right!” Dix said after he read my letter to the editor. “Very well done. Do you suppose some church would take on the cemetery restoration as a project?”
Riverview United? A possibility, of course. They were always raising money for something. Country Peace looked to me like a more worthwhile cause than another stained-glass window, although I doubted the idea would “climb the steeple and ring the bell,” an expression I’d heard applied to the consideration of another project. But Tri-Corners Community? Hmmm.
*
They did Dix’s surgery on Friday morning, putting the leg back together with metal plate and screws. Tiffany had to work, but I went to see him that evening. He was back in his room by then, more alert than I expected. He wasn’t the kind of guy to want to make lengthy conversation about his operation, so I asked if he’d heard any more from Detective Harmon about Kendra’s case.
“No. It’s his case now. He won’t be reporting to me.”
Which meant my private line into the workings of the police department was also cut off. All I’d know now would be what I read in the newspaper.
*
My phone was ringing when I got home from the hospital.
“Aunt Ivy, where’ve you been?” my niece DeeAnn exclaimed. “I’ve been calling all evening. I was getting worried. I didn’t think you went out much at night anymore.”
“Just visiting a friend at the hospital.”
“I wanted to find out how you’re doing.”
“Fine, just great.” I’d never told her about Kendra, not wanting to worry her about such a terrible thing happening in the neighborhood.
“We really want you to come down for a visit. And this time we won’t take no for an answer. Sandy’s suddenly into crocheting, and I can’t help her with that purl two stuff—”
“That’s knitting, not crocheting.”
“See? We need you. We’ll take the boat out on the lake and go yard-saleing and barbecue some ribs and play Go Fish. It’ll be great! And we’re starving for some of your fried chicken.”
I dredged up excuses. My garden. This friend in the hospital. Although basically I dragged my feet because it just didn’t seem right to dash off and enjoy myself with Kendra still in the morgue and her murder hanging out there unsolved. I also didn’t want to run off and abandon Dix. Then another thought surfaced.
DeeAnn lives near a small town called Woodston, in the Ozarks area of Arkansas.
And Clancy, home of the real Kendra Alexander, is also down in Arkansas …
18
I could discuss this with Dix and see what he thinks …
I kicked that idea into the trash bin. I knew what Dix would say. No way, Mrs. M., keep away from Clancy. Stay out of this.
But it wasn’t Dix’s case anymore …
So I could discuss it with Detective Harmon. Yeah, right. I could also offer my skills in military strategy to the Pentagon. The proposals would undoubtedly be met with equal enthusiasm.
Which didn’t necessarily mean the idea of further investigation in Clancy was without merit …
Yet what would be the point of my prowling around there? The real Kendra’s family had already told the authorities they couldn’t identify the girl in the photo claiming to be Kendra.
“Aunt Ivy, are you still there?”
Out of the corner of my eye I could see the pot of Thea’s ferns that I’d moved in from the backyard because the fronds were curling like toes on little elf shoes. This was one of several I’d been hiding from Magnolia. Thea’s plants desperately needed the safety umbrella of DeeAnn’s green thumb.
The thought also occurred to me that Dix was in good hands with Tiffany. They’d discovered they both liked Goldie Hawn movies and Szechuan Chinese food, and they both wanted to learn to scuba dive. She also occasionally went with her parents to South Hill Baptist. I’d hardly be abandoning Dix if I left him in her hands for a few days.
With the support of those two virtuous thoughts, I yanked the Clancy idea out of the trash bin. Who knew what an investigation might produce until that investigation was actually made?
“Yes, I’d love to come visit you. Would tomorrow be too soon?”
“Tomorrow?” I suspected DeeAnn was a bit taken aback by the early date, but she rose to the occasion. “Tomorrow’d be just great! I’ll go get your usual
bed ready right now.”
“I’ll bring some plants Thea left. Some of them could use a little TLC.” Right. Some of them could use CPR and life support.
“TLC we’ve got,” she assured me. “For both the plants and you.”
Believing a good guest should also offer a departure date, I added, “I can stay until Thursday.”
I was, I noted to myself, careful not to say I’d be coming home on Thursday.
*
I called Dix at the hospital. He thought my going to visit my niece was a great idea. I packed my old Montgomery Ward suitcase and cosmetics case and called Magnolia the next morning to ask her to pick up both my and Thea’s mail while I was gone. She insisted she and Geoff come over to help load the plants. Concern for my back, or concern I might leave some poor, helpless plant behind? No matter. It was Magnolia’s good heart that counted.
The backseat of the Thunderbird looked like a Noah’s ark of vegetation by the time we were done. Magnolia gave me a big hug, her floating caftan enveloping me like a parachute.
“I’m so glad you’re doing this. It’ll do you good to get away from everything here for a while.”
“Everything,” as it turned out, included an event far outside my wildest imagination.
*
It began as a wonderfully enjoyable mini-vacation. I loved the wooded, mountainous area of northwest Arkansas. Rick and Rory hadn’t left for their college jobs yet, and on Sunday, we all— DeeAnn, her husband, Mike, daughter Sandy, and the twins, whose college-age bodies had caught up nicely with the size of their feet— went to church together. Afterward we crowded into two little boats, theirs and a borrowed one, and rowed to the far end of the sun-sparkled lake for a picnic of the fried chicken I’d cooked up the night before. The twins made a chair of linked hands and carried me from boat to picnic table as if I were an exotic princess. On Monday I gave Sandy crocheting lessons, and we turned out a handful of snowflake Christmas tree decorations in psychedelic colors. DeeAnn kept bringing up the subject of my coming there to live with them permanently. I kept demurring.
But by then I’d reluctantly decided I had to tell them about my plans for Clancy. I couldn’t in good conscience just drive off without informing them that I wasn’t headed straight home.
But before I got around to saying anything, Magnolia called.
“Oh, Ivy, it’s just awful! I hardly know where to begin!”
“It can’t be that awful if you’re in good enough shape to call me,” I assured her. Magnolia did tend to go melodramatic occasionally. When Geoff had to cut down one of her magnolia trees that died, she wrote a eulogy for it.
“I went over to pick up your mail a few minutes ago. I hadn’t gone earlier because I was getting my hair done. I found the back door wide open. Somebody’s been in there. Ivy, it’s a disaster—”
“You mean a burglar broke in and stole things?”
“It’s such a mess that I can’t tell if anything’s been stolen or not. Broken dishes, slashed furniture, smashed television—” She broke off on a big sob.
I tried to maintain my own calm and not push Magnolia over into hysterics. “It’s okay,” I soothed. “It’s just stuff.”
“I feel so to blame. We should have been watching more closely.”
“It must have happened at night, and you can’t watch things twenty-four hours a day. Do you have any idea when it did happen?”
“I picked up the mail on Monday morning, and everything was fine then. So it was sometime between then and now. I’ve called the police, but no one has come yet.”
I should have put timer lights on a couple of lamps so the house wouldn’t look dark and empty, of course, but I just hadn’t thought about it. Too often I neglect the fact that Madison Street is no longer a genteel residential neighborhood.
“Okay, when the police get there, you tell them I’ll be home by tomorrow evening. And don’t let this upset you. These things happen. Vandals just saw a dark house and decided to go on a wrecking spree.”
But after I got home late Wednesday afternoon, I wasn’t so sure about that.
Magnolia had been watching for me, and she and Geoff rushed over as soon as I turned into the driveway. Magnolia’s hair had ripened from insulation pink to rich raspberry.
“Go in the front door,” Magnolia said. “They broke a hinge on the back door, and Geoff nailed a board over it.”
Hearing from Magnolia that the house was a disaster was one thing; actually seeing it was something else. I walked slowly through the rooms. Harley’s old chair slashed, stuffing sticking out like a furry tongue. Sofa crisscrossed with Xs. Shards of colored glass like sharpened confetti on the carpet. Drawers of papers dumped out. Phone smashed through the TV screen. Broken dishes in the kitchen, including the old Meito china platter my mother had treasured. Blankets of flour and sugar from canisters dumped on the floor. Bottle of shampoo squirted around the bathroom. Mother’s old kerosene lamp smashed.
I’d assured Magnolia that it was just stuff. Even now I could remind myself that whatever had happened here was trivial in the eternal scheme of things. But some of it was stuff that held memories and couldn’t be replaced, and the loss left a little hollow in my heart. The prospect of cleaning up the mess also made my stomach feel as if those confetti shards were churning around in it.
The vandals had been upstairs too. Bedspread ripped, feathers from slashed pillows everywhere. Scent of my smashed bottle of faux Eternity, a gift from Thea, hanging in the air. More dumped drawers. And a crude lipstick scrawl on the full-length mirror on the closet door.
I got a big cramp in my stomach as I studied it. Stick drawing of a woman—identifiable by the triangular shape of a skirt—with a noose pulled tight around her neck. Her eyes were bulging circles, her tongue was hanging out the side of the wobbly line of her mouth. Below the drawing was a crudely printed message: Old busybodies die!
Did they mean me?
“Artists they’re not,” I muttered. There was a certain cartoonish silliness to the drawing. But it wasn’t funny.
Magnolia twisted her hands together. “Who would do such a terrible thing?”
I shook my head and tried to look on the bright side. The drawing had been done with a scarlet lipstick I’d bought on magazine advice that bright red gives an older woman’s face pizzazz. All it had given me was the look of an over-the-hill strumpet, but I’d been too thrifty to throw it out almost unused. It was certainly used up now, the plastic carton crushed in a garish smear on the carpet.
“I’m just glad you weren’t here,” she declared. “Who knows what might have happened if you’d been home?” Downstairs, she pounced on a scattering of purple shards. “Oh, and look, they broke that lovely vase I gave you!” she wailed.
The harp-playing mermaid had indeed been a casualty of the vandals’ attack. I decided this was not a good time to philosophize about clouds having silver linings, good coming out of evil, etc.
Geoff had been quiet, but now he said, “Your homeowner’s insurance will probably pay for cleanup and replacement of what’s broken or ruined,” and I blessed his practical heart for reminding me of that.
Geoff went around the back way to remove the board he’d nailed across the door. Magnolia and I waded across the kitchen, flour billowing around our ankles and sugar crunching under our shoes.
When I looked in the backyard I knew for certain that this was not random destruction. My house had been targeted.
19
Harley’s heavy wooden bench had been yanked off the oblong of concrete where it had stood for so many years. Then dragged across the yard until it smashed to smithereens against an old maple tree.
Uprooted and dragged just as the tombstones at Country Peace had been uprooted and dragged …
The similarity was unmistakable. There was a phrase for it, I remembered from my mystery novels. An MO. Method of Operation. An MO used both here and at Country Peace. This and the crude drawing and threat upstairs said the vandals were we
ll aware of who occupied the house.
But why would the Country Peace vandals be after me? I was positive the two men hadn’t seen me that night. Even if they had, they had no way to identify me and target my house. Except …
Old busybody.
It had never occurred to me that vandals might be readers. Was it possible they had read my letter to the editor … and not liked what they read? Connecting the name in the newspaper with an address would be as simple as looking in the phone book.
I remembered the beefy face of the man I’d seen there that night, the squeaky voice of the other man in the shadows. I shivered at the possibility they’d been in my house, my bedroom.
I stared again at the broken pieces of the bench, the rope still tangled in the wreckage. The old bench, too, was just “stuff,” but it had comforted me when I sat on it. The solidity of the oak always reminded me of Harley’s strength, the curve between seat and back a reminder of the curve of his body spooned around mine at night. I felt a sick plunge of loss.
“The police came?” I asked.
“Yes, an officer was here this morning.”
“Did he have any comments?”
“Only that it’s been a busy season for vandals.”
*
I called DeeAnn that night to tell her the house was indeed a mess but that everything was under control. I didn’t tell her about the threat on the bedroom mirror. I decided not to worry Dix about that either, at least not right now.
The officer had left a card with Magnolia, and I called him next morning. Officer Larson was sympathetic and polite but not optimistic about apprehending the villains. “Have you had time yet to determine if anything was stolen?”
“I don’t see anything missing. Just destroyed.”
“Too bad. Sometimes stolen items turn up in a pawnshop or secondhand store and give us a lead.”
“I think they must have used a vehicle to drag the bench across the yard. Wouldn’t there be tracks?”
“We checked, but your driveway is gravel, and there were no identifiable tread marks.”
Invisible Page 15
