Paula K. Perrin - Small Town Deadly

by Paula K. Perrin

  She pulled herself out of the water, too. She took the hairpins out, and her braid fell over her shoulder and along her breast. She undid the elastic band and began to separate the strands of her braid with her fingers. “Your family reminds me of the feudal system. Spies bringing in reports, serfs out tilling your soil, knights crossing the moat to your back door at midnight.”

  “Idiot!” I said.

  “Ah, yes, me as the court jester in the kitchen.”

  “Fran! Maybe Mother plays the lady royale, but I never have.”

  She laughed. “You’re the vague eccentric in the attic, above it all.”

  I kicked water at her. “Have I been snotty?”

  “You float around on a fluffy little cloud of privilege and never really focus. I bet that started after your dad left, didn’t it?”

  I shrugged.

  “No one knows how hard you work. Or that you work at all! Can you see how people would think you feel you’re better than everybody else?”

  “But I don’t,” I wailed. I got up, wrapped one of Fran’s lush bath sheets around me like a sarong, and went into the living room.

  Wearing a jade green velour robe and carrying her hairbrush, Fran followed.

  I collapsed in the far corner of the couch against a peach pillow. “I’m not a snob,” I whispered. My chin quivered.

  Fran sat, one long leg bent under her, at the other end of the couch. She began brushing her Rapunzel hair. “You know what we should do? We should push up our trip to New Zealand. I don’t have the money yet, but you can front it, can’t you?”

  “You’re always boom or bust. I learned a lot from that financial management course. I’d be glad to—”

  “Don’t bore me with bottom-line talk! Come on, live a little!”

  “Aren’t you forgetting Andre’s murder? Gene would suspect us both if we took off now.”

  “He didn’t tell us not to leave town, did he?”

  “No, but probably only because he didn’t think we would. It’s crazy, Fran. Besides, I can’t leave Meg until I get things straightened out.”

  “We’ll take her with us. A change of scene might be exactly what the kid needs.”

  I sat up straight. “That’s not a bad idea. We’d get her out of Gene’s clutches, and while we’re gone, if he’s any good at all, he’ll find the guilty party.”

  “And we won’t have to go to the funerals.”

  I groaned. “We won’t be able to walk down the street without each and every citizen laying a guilt trip on us.”

  “Small town etiquette can kill you. Screw ‘em all!” Her green eyes sparkled, her blonde hair swirled around her as she leaped to her feet and spun in a circle. “How soon can we go? You don’t mind lending me the money, do you? I’ll call Annama—” Her eyes dimmed, and she stilled. “Damn, I’m going to miss her. I’ll call her travel agency.”

  I held up my hand. “Wait. We’d better think this out. I don’t want to be dragged back across the International Date Line in handcuffs.”

  “Oh, Liz, don’t think this to death. Let’s just go.”

  I bit the inside of my lip and winced. “What if we humbly asked Gene’s permission to leave town?”

  Fran’s stomach rumbled. “Bad idea. He might not think to warn us not to do it, but if he knew—”

  I shrugged. “I suppose.” I got up, crossed to the CD player, and turned off Hank Williams, Jr. “He is the most self-pitying man—how can you listen to that junk?”

  “I like the stories. You should understand that, you used to write confessions.”

  “Oh, yeah, go for the jugular,” I said.

  She grinned, then rubbed her stomach. “Let’s go get some dinner. You owe me something spectacular.”

  “Okay.” I crossed to the phone. “I’d better tell Mother I won’t be home for dinner.” I stopped, my hand on the cold beige plastic.

  “Don’t want to talk to her?” Fran said, coming to rest an arm across my shoulders.

  I looked up at her.

  She grinned “That’s why a vacation is such a good idea.”

  “You never give up.”

  “Nope.” She gave me a gentle push. “Go get dressed. I’ll call her.”

  I crossed to the door in the corner and entered Fran’s huge, walk-in closet. I didn’t want to get back into my suit.

  For a moment Fran’s voice was just a vague murmur. Then sharply, “I can’t, I’m busy.” A murmur. “Yes, I’ll tell her.”

  I poked my head out of the closet. “I don’t want to know.” I held up a short-sleeved lavender silk shift. “May I borrow this? Is it going to be ridiculously long?”

  “I have just the thing,” she said as she crossed to a lacquered cabinet and rummaged through a drawer. “I’ve got a long scarf you can use as a belt. About time you quit hiding that lush figure of yours.” She plucked out a long scarf in iridescent blues and silver. “You’ll look beautiful in that lavender as you play bouncer.”

  “What?”

  “Laurel’s going crazy with people arriving for the play. She needs help. Claire said you’d go.”

  “Why me?” I moaned, beginning to dress. “If I go, you go.”

  “Can’t. I have to go to the travel agency.”

  “That can wait.”

  “You don’t want mean old Gene to snag Meg, do you?” Her green eyes sly, she said, “Tell you what. I’ll go help Laurel if you’ll do the travel agency.”

  “You know how I hate that—too many options—which flight, which hotel.”

  She patted my head. “Now you leave everything to Auntie Fran,” she said. “It’s Friday, bon voyage night, they’ll be open late.” She stopped, finger on her cheek. “Or will they be closed because of Annamaria, do you think?”

  I shrugged. “They may have canceled the punch and cake, but people who haven’t heard about Annamaria will still drop in expecting to pick up tickets and stuff.”

  She turned away, unbelting her robe.

  I held out a restraining hand, “But—”

  She turned back. “I’m just going to gather information, that’s all, but then we’ll be set if we do want to go.” She planted her hands on my shoulders, “Liz, promise me you won’t do any work tonight when you’re through with traffic control.”

  “I’ve got to. I’m overdue—”

  “You’ve had a terrible 24 hours. Rent a movie or take a long bath. Come on, promise no work.”

  “Oh, all right.”

  “Don’t forget our date at the rock gym in the morning. We should have thought of this before: no matter where Meg’s been hiding, she’ll show up for that.”

  “Yeah, the way she’s been chortling over winning that bet and getting us down there.” Suddenly I felt better. “We’ll pick you up at eight.”

  “No, I’ll come get you.”

  “You have no idea how much stuff Meg lugs with her. We’d better take the station wagon—you can give up just a little bit of control, can’t you?”

  “Just for being so nasty, you have to buy my ticket to New Zealand.” She grabbed my hands and swung me around in circles to the door. “We’re going to have so much fun!”

  She opened the door and pushed me through. “Hey, Liz, know what would be even more relaxing than a video?”

  “What?”

  “Getting laid.”

  “Fran!”

  “Put this celibacy shit aside and go for it.”

  “Could you say it a little louder so the whole town can hear?”

  She grinned, standing tall and beautiful in the light spilling through the doorway, elegant despite her disheveled hair.

  I shivered. The early evening air was cool after the long soak in the hot tub. “Maybe you’re right about getting away,” I said.

  “Shall I make reservations?” she asked eagerly.

  “Air fare is going to be so high, doing it at the last minute,” I said, “maybe we should wait—”

  She groaned. “Don’t be cheap, Lizzie.”
/>   “I’m not cheap!”

  “‘Just cautious,’ I know, I know,” she said. “But don’t be just this once, okay? I’ll make res—”

  “No. Just get the information.”

  Her face fell, then she brightened, “I’ll talk you into it. I’ll get you when your muscles are all jelly after climbing around in that gym.” She smiled even wider, “Or maybe when Meg’s got you dangling twenty feet in the air on a thin little rope.”

  I shivered again.

  She laughed. “See you in the morning, little Lizzie,” she said, stepping back and closing the door.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Only Jared’s maroon truck was in the high school parking lot. I spotted him sitting on a cement bench, hunched over a book.

  The yellowish lights of the covered walkway made his sallow skin sickly. “It’s about time,” he said.

  “Where are the hordes Laurel couldn’t cope with? And for that matter, where’s Laurel?”

  He set his book down and stretched. “She’s at the library in case anyone shows up there.”

  “Couldn’t she have put up a notice?”

  He pushed the lank brown hair off his forehead. “All I know is, when I got home, Mom had agreed I’d come over here to help.”

  “Mothers,” I said.

  We exchanged a rueful look.

  He picked up his biology text. “Gotta go.”

  He balanced the book on one finger. “Mom wants me to help her at the travel agency—she’s gotta make sure things go all right—” he bounced the book off his finger and caught it one-handed as he started toward his car. “Oh, Laurel said to tell people to watch The Bird for rescheduling information.”

  “Do you think people would still come?”

  He turned back. “You couldn’t keep them away with spear guns. Will you finish the play with us?”

  “I’m sure your mother will be able to find someone else. If it were just dancing, that’d be okay, but I know I’ll blow my lines.”

  “Is it that or because you think one of us killed Andre?” he asked, walking back to me.

  “I can’t believe any of us—”

  “Who’s your candidate for the role of murderer?”

  “I don’t want—”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if Victor did it,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “He was brown-nosing Andre at the early rehearsals, hoping to get in on Andre’s old Hollywood connections. As if an interior decorator from Podunk, USA, could—”

  “Don’t be such a snob,” I said. “Victor’s done wonders with the community theater.”

  Jared shook his head. “Andre made it clear that he wasn’t impressed, and Victor’s pretty hot-tempered.” He looked at his watch. “I’m late.”

  After he drove off, I sank onto the hard, cold cement bench where he’d been sitting, thinking of what he’d said. Why did I keep finding how little I knew the people I thought I knew?

  Behind me a bush rustled. I jumped a mile. I turned just in time to see a possum pulling back out of sight. What was I doing sitting here alone, barely 24 hours after a murder had occurred? Why did “sitting duck” sound so apropos?

  I drove over to the library where Laurel stood shivering by the book return boxes. I unrolled the window. “I’m leaving, and you should, too. It’s stupid to be out here alone.”

  She looked haggard, with dark circles under her eyes, one pearl earring missing, her blouse untucked on one side. “I think I’m safe here, so close to the street, don’t you? And you’ve got Jared.”

  “No, he’s gone over to help Alisz.”

  “Please stay, just till 7:30.”

  “Sorry. Considering what’s happened, I think it’s a crazy thing to do.”

  “But people will think—”

  “If you’re worried, put up signs, but leave it at that.”

  She wrapped her thin arms around her body and stared at the pavement.

  “Would you like me to stay while you put up signs?” I asked.

  A martyr’s sigh. “No, go on home if you’re scared.”

  I thought of arguing “scared” versus “good judgment,” but rolled up my window and hit the gas instead.

  I drove to our house, but as I passed our driveway, I saw Meg still hadn’t returned. Tired but restless, I kept rolling around the corner.

  I drove down to Vancouver, and walked into the movie that was just starting. It turned out to be about a virus threatening to take over California and then the world. As I walked out into the cool evening, the only single in a sea of couples, I decided that though the plague set the action going, the movie was actually about principled humans being brave and working together to overcome deadly peril. It cheered me up, and when my stomach growled, announcing a jumbo bag of popcorn was not enough dinner, I cheered myself further with a couple of tacos before going home.

  When I got there, I couldn’t pull into the driveway because Meg’s Cabriolet sat sideways, partly on the driveway, partly on the grass, and partly in the street.

  I leaped out of my car, heart hammering. Her driver’s side window was rolled halfway down. I opened the door and saw her keys in the ignition. I leaned on the seat as I reached for the keys, the car rocked, and the empty wine bottles on the floor clinked together.

  I straightened up, Meg’s keys digging into my clenched hand. The kitchen door was ajar. I tiptoed into the kitchen and down the hall toward the stairway. Mother’s light spilled into the hallway through her open doors.

  I crept like a panther. My foot was on the first stair when Mother’s voice said, “Liz?”

  Her voice held an edge of fright when she said, “Liz, is that you?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “Meg came home.”

  “I saw her car.”

  “I’m afraid she was quite inebriated.”

  I didn’t reply.

  She said, “Will you come in here, please? I don’t like talking to the invisible woman.”

  “I’m going to look in on Meg.”

  I snapped on the hall light. Bunny sat at the top of the staircase watching me ascend. His paws and legs were dark with mud. A twig was snarled in the beige hair of his right ear.

  Even before I reached the landing, the acidic stench of vomit assaulted me.

  The poodle walked beside me to Meg’s door. I snapped on the light.

  Meg didn’t stir. Her shoes had smeared mud across Grandmother McDowell’s quilt. Perhaps she’d tried to lean off the bed when she got sick, for there was vomit on the quilt at the edge of the bed. It had dripped and formed a pool on the floor.

  Disgust caught at my throat.

  I listened to her deep breathing. It would be better to discuss things in the morning over coffee. She’d be excited about the climbing gym—perhaps that would hold her temper in abeyance, and I’d be able to get some answers even if I dreaded what they might be.

  I felt a little pity for the hangover she was bound to have.

  Then I thought that maybe the news of Annamaria’s death had caught up with her. They had loved each other. Even with three daughters of her own, Annamaria had made room in her family for my niece. Maybe consuming all that wine was Meg’s way of coping.

  I felt dizzy from the carousel of emotions swirling through my head. “Sufficient unto the day—” I whispered. But hadn’t I already left things too long? No more excuses, no more putting off an uncomfortable encounter. “Meg,” I said, “wake up.”

  Her head lifted an inch then sank back. “Go ‘way,” she moaned.

  “Get up,” I said, “we have to talk.”

  Her head lolled back against the bed and her eyelids inched up enough to show her unfocused eyes. A sly, contemptuous smile formed on her crusted lips. “Ol’ Aunt Lizzie,” she singsonged, “so outta touch—” her voice died away as her eyes drifted shut.

  A moment later they flew open and she said, “Sick!” She struggled out of bed and staggered to the door.

  Bunny stood in the
doorway, his body rigid.

  Meg swerved, and I grabbed her arm and guided her across the hall. Just as we reached the door of the bathroom, she suddenly stiffened and spewed hot, stinking liquid over my shoulder and chest.

  I gagged, my eyes streaming, and pushed her away. She reeled sideways. Time froze, and I saw what would happen. She would stumble, loose-jointed as a scarecrow, across the checkerboard floor, the tub would catch her at the knees and she would fall into the tub and crack her head open.

  “Meg,” I moaned, and reached for her, moving through those nightmare molasses you never expect to encounter in a waking moment.

  Her legs hit the old claw-footed tub, she started to fall backwards, and I couldn’t get to her. I couldn’t get across the black-and-white floor in time.

  And then, as Meg fell, she clutched at the shower curtain. For just a second, she hung suspended, and then POP, POP, POP, the curtain tore loose from its rings. She fell, but slowed enough by her encounter with the curtain that even her sluggish reflexes allowed her to grab the side of the tub. She fell sideways, her head hitting the thick red bath rug slung over the end of the tub.

  I collapsed beside her and gripped her hand.

  After awhile I realized Mother was calling our names. I called to her in a shaky voice, “We’re all right.”

  Bunny stood nearby shivering. “It’s okay,” I said, reaching to pet him, but he slunk away from my touch.

  I shook so hard my teeth chattered.

  The ends of the shower curtain had floated down around her as she fell, leaving her face exposed, but wrapping her body like a shroud.

  “Meggie …”

  “Go ‘way,” she said, reaching up to run her hand through her tangled hair. Her fingers stopped where they encountered long strands stuck together. “Go away,” she screamed.

  “Let me help you up, let’s make sure you’re all right. Then we’ll clean up, and—”

  “Clean it up, clean it up. Tha’s all you know, lil’ neat packa … packa … bundles all tied with ribbon. Never show anything, just lil’ skellons in the closet all tied up…”

  “Meg, let me help you. You’re drunk, and—”

  “No lie!”