I’m not much on physical exertion. I’m sort of a lazy klutz and proud of it. I keep my figure because of good genes and lots of prayer. But I really wanted to hear the gossip about Giselle, so I bravely followed Charli down to the trail.
The Orange Ridge Branch Battlefield Trail is the newest park in Glenvar. It’s called a linear park and, as I said, it stretches for two miles, meandering along a creek, winding back through some woods, following an old railroad bed to Glenvar’s semi-famous Civil War era battlefield site, Orange Ridge.
(Semi-famous because there wasn’t really a battle there. I think it has to do with Glenvar’s collective inferiority complex regarding Salem, the city next to us. They have a real Civil War battlefield, Hanging Rock. Glenvar’s forefathers, jealous of the attention Salem got for their site, decided that they needed one too. So they scoured all the local’s archives and found out that a minor skirmish between two cousins, one who fought for the North, the other for the South took place at their grandmother’s house on Orange Branch. Voila`: Glenvar’s very own Civil War era battlefield.)
Personally, I’ve never walked on the trail, my aforementioned aversion to exercise being the primary reason. Charli climbed the little hill to the packed cinder path and dashed off at a speed that made Usain Bolt look slow.
I trotted after her. “Hey, slow down,” I said, nearly out of breath after the first fifty yards. Charli was already twenty yards in front of me and the distance was growing by the step. At the pace she was going, she’d lap me in about eight and a half minutes. She stopped and waited, smirking at me, her hands on her hips.
“Gosh, Marty, I’m only going at ten minute mile pace. That’s just warming up speed. You really ought to start exercising more. You’re not going to have that metabolism forever, you know. If you aren’t careful, you’ll get fat.”
I caught up to her and bent over, hands on my knees, until I caught my breath. “Well, geez, Charli, you didn’t tell me you were trying out for the Olympic team.”
She stuck out her tongue at me and began to walk, although it wasn’t a lot slower than her running had been. “Is that better?”
“No. Please, can we slow down?” She rolled her eyes and sighed, but slowed down to a pace I could hold. Almost.
“Now, give it up. Tell me about Giselle. Did she try to donate her brain to science and get turned down because they had plenty of cotton balls? No, no, wait, I’ve got it! She tried to read a picture book but her head exploded from all that effort.”
Charli rolled her eyes again. “Quite the comedian, Marty. You must have made those up yourself. They’re about as lame as they come.”
“Lame? No they aren’t. They’re funny. You just don’t have a very good sense of humor. You’re one of those humor impaired people. What do you call them? Never mind, it’s not important. Go ahead and tell me what happened to Giselle. Did her hair all fall out?”
Charli took off at her breakneck pace again. “Nope, even better.”
I scrambled along, trying in vain to catch up to her. “Better? What could be better than that? Come on, sis. Tell me.”
Charli turned and faced me but kept walking slowly backwards. “You’ll never guess.”
“Enough all ready. You’re acting like that nurse in Romeo and Juliet. Tell me. Please?”
“Okay, I suppose I’ve tortured you long enough. She was fired from her job at Channel 42.”
I caught a few flies in my mouth. “Fired? Are you sure? That is truly awesome news! Now she can’t plaster anymore BS about me all over the air. What’d they can her for? Was it for something really bad?”
“Well, I heard from Sue, who heard from Kate, Dicey’s secretary, who heard it from Dicey, who, of course, heard from Robby, that Giselle was sleeping with the head of the station and his wife caught them, um, you know, in the middle of things. So anyway, turns out that the wife’s family owns the station, not the husband, and she laid down the law to him: either Giselle went or he did.”
Finally, proof that what comes around goes around, although I did feel just a twinge of guilt over being happy about Giselle’s misfortune. If, indeed it was true. I checked the links in Charli’s gossip chain. They were all rock solid and reliable.
“When did all of this supposedly happen?” I asked
“Yesterday morning.”
Okay, so what came out of my mouth next, I’m really not proud of, but I really didn’t want to go down to that unemployment office again. “Do you think I’d have a shot at her job?”
Charli turned back around and pointed to an informational sign about a tenth of a mile up ahead. “Power walk to that sign, ready, go!”
She took off so fast that it reminded me of the way Tim goes after one of Dave’s rib baskets. I was barely holding up at the pace we’d been walking so I didn’t even bother trying to catch her. When I finally reached the sign Charli was jogging in place, waiting for me.
“Well, do you?” I asked Charli.
“Do I what?”
“Think I have a chance at Giselle’s job.”
Charli gave me a sad little smile. “No, hon. Sue said that Dicey told Kate they’ve already hired someone.”
“That fast?”
“Yes. I guess the wife’s niece is a former Miss Virginia Swimsuit Model of the Year who’s been trying to break into journalism, so they hired her to take Giselle’s place.”
“Oh well, I didn’t really like the idea of being on TV anyway. They’d make me wear makeup and bug me about my hair. It’d be like working for Mom or something.”
Charli smiled and stopped jogging. “That’s for sure. They probably wouldn’t approve of your wardrobe either.”
“What’s wrong with my wardrobe?”
“Hey, don’t get your back up.”
Okay, so maybe I sounded just a tad defensive. “I’m not. I’m just sick of the way you and Mom are always criticizing me.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it to sound like that. I wasn’t being critical. I simply meant that t-shirts, jeans, and shorts aren’t exactly the sort of thing news reporters and anchors wear. Your clothes look good on you. They’re just more suited for radio than for TV, don’t you think?” She began doing jumping jacks and toe touches. Watching her was sort of like being in gym class all over again. It almost made me break out in hives.
We were about a mile into the trail, in the deepest wooded section, and the air felt cool and fresh. Not that I’d admit it or anything, but I was almost enjoying the walk. Of course Charli’s news about Giselle might have helped elevate my mood just the tiniest of bits.
While Charli hopped around like a bunny on speed, I read the information sign. It described the design and operation of the old railroad coal trestle, a portion of which still stood off to the side of the trail. A squirrel chattered to me from the branch of a maple tree.
Maybe I would get myself into shape. If I walked the trail every day for a couple of weeks or so, I’d be able to start running. When I got good enough, maybe I could join the pro track circuit, make a little bit of dough. Yeah, right. Like that was going to happen.
I let go of my track-star fantasy and studied the diagram on the information board, comparing it to the coal trestle itself. There, what’s that? I stared hard at the leaves underneath the trestle. Something was down there. Of course with my overactive imagination, the first thing I thought was that the bundle lying buried in the leaves underneath the trestle was another dead body. On closer inspection, what it actually appeared to be was a log or a railroad tie. Yes, that’s what it was: a railroad tie.
I’d just come to that conclusion when Charli dug her nails into my wrist. “Marty,” she whispered, “is that what I think it is?” She pointed to the spot where I’d been looking. Charli’s imagination is even more overactive than mine.
“Looks like a railroad tie to me,” I said. “Or maybe a rotten log.”
“I know, that’s what I thought at first, but look, there, sticking out of the leaves down at the bottom
, I swear it looks like a shoe.”
She was right; it did look like a shoe. A hiking boot, to be precise. But, then, maybe our thinking so was simply a case of our being from the same gene pool as Great Aunt Willie Bob, who claimed to have been abducted by aliens, to have invented Spam, and who thought her Chihuahua, Barky, was the reincarnation of Rin Tin Tin.
“I can’t tell. I don’t know. I sort of think it looks like a boot, but then again… Do you want to go call the police?”
She hesitated. “No. I don’t want to get laughed at if it turns out to be just an old shoe or something. Maybe we should go down and take a closer look.”
I wasn’t keen on the idea. It was off the trail, down where there were bugs and snakes and other creepy-crawlies, and really, when you think about it, it probably was just the result of our having recently seen the very dead body of Frank Billingham that was causing us to imagine things that weren’t there. But, when Charli gingerly picked her way down the bank, I, of course, like an idiot, followed.
Charli picked up a stick and poked the leaves away from what was most definitely a hiking boot. “No,” she whispered. Not only was there a boot, but it was also attached to a very human leg.
“No! Not again,” I said, grabbing my sister to keep her on her feet. “We’d better call the police.”
Charli dropped the stick and leaned against me. “Okay,” she whispered again. “I’ve got my phone.” She pulled it from her pocket and with shaky fingers dialed 911. “Uh, yes, this is Charlene Carsky. My sister Martina Sheffield and I are out on the Orange Branch Trail, down by the coal trestle, and, uh, well, there, uh, seems to be an, uh, dead body. Could you send someone down here pronto? Um, well, it’s buried under some leaves and I didn’t really want to look any closer, but yes, I’m sure that whoever it is, they’re dead. Yes, that would be a good idea. Yes, I’ll stay on the line until they arrive.”
We climbed back up to the trail and sat in the dirt, our arms around each other. Charli periodically answered a question from the dispatcher through her tears. I didn’t cry, but kept staring at the body, wishing that when the police arrived it would turn out to be a false alarm.
It was a matter of minutes, minutes that felt like years, before the police, rescue squad, and fire truck arrived. There were about six people at first, two police officers, a couple of rescue squad people and two firemen. They were quickly joined by a whole swarm of people, including Tim who was with the second wave of law enforcement people to arrive.
“Are you two okay,” he asked.
Charli, who had finally stopped crying, turned the waterworks right back on when he hugged her. The detective in charge, the same one who was heading up Frank’s murder investigation told Tim to get us out of the way, but to keep an eye on us, especially on me.
We slowly trudged back down the trail toward the parking lot.
A crowd had gathered in the parking lot and everyone was milling around, wondering aloud about what was going on. I didn’t want to sit in Tim’s squad car to wait things out, afraid that it would look like I was being arrested.
“Can we sit in my car?” I asked.
Tim shook his head at first, but I guess he changed his mind because he opened the door of the Mustang and motioned for us to crawl in.
“I can’t believe this,” he said when we were safely ensconced inside. “What the dickens is going on with you? I mean, really, how the heck do you do it? We’ve had exactly three murders in Glenvar in the past year and you’ve managed to find the bodies each time. Marty, this is not going to look good for you, you know? Detective Winger is going to want to have you tossed in jail this time. He already thinks you’re guilty of killing Frank. Now this. You really have got to get your act together.”
I wanted to pound his snotty little head into the ground. “For God’s sake, Tim! It’s not like I planned this, you know. I don’t even like exercising. I only went with Charli because she made me. She’s the one you should be yelling at, not me. I’d rather have been sitting at home eating cookies and watching TV.”
“Well, you weren’t, were you. You had to go getting yourself right smack dab in the middle of yet another murder investigation.”
“Shut up, Tim. Shut up before I give you a big fat lip!”
“Enough!” Charli said. “That is absolutely, positively enough. I ought to separate you two, forbid you from seeing each other ever again. Y’all fight worse than my kids do and I’m sick of it. Screaming and yelling at each other all the time is not going to help things. Tim, you know that Marty didn’t have anything to do with the murders of Frank and whoever this turns out to be. And Marty, Tim is just concerned about you. He worries about you just like the rest of us do. You know he loves you.”
Tim’s face burned redder than Giselle’s Corvette. “No I don’t. I mean, I love her like a sister, but I don’t love love her.”
Charli rolled her eyes and started to say something, but another police officer arrived to tell us we could go on home. “Detective Winger will want y’all to come down to the station house tomorrow morning,” he said. “Officer Unger, I need to have a word with you.”
“Sure,” Tim said as he climbed out of the passenger seat of the Mustang. “Marty, Charli, I’ll swing by later to check on y’all.”
Charli crawled out of the backseat and into the one Tim had vacated. As all of this was going on, I heard the other cop tell Tim that they knew the name of the deceased.
“Who is it?” Tim asked. “Anyone I know?”
The other cop leaned over and whispered to Tim the name. All my recent spying practice helped me to hear what he said. My mouth dropped open and I stared at them in complete shock.
“Are you sure?” Tim whispered back, his voice seeming to roar in my ears. “Are you sure it’s Robby Pluck?”
15
In a place as small as Glenvar, bad news travels at the speed of light. The food moves even faster. The whole afternoon and evening, starting about half a second (or so it seemed) from when I first heard that whispered “Robby Pluck”, people delivered casseroles, cakes, cookies, pies, ice, coffee, soda, gallons and gallons of tea, ham, a four-pound roast, and various other delicacies to Dicey’s house.
Tim, who was assigned the unfortunate job of breaking the bad news to Dicey, left Charli and me with her because, as expected, she was devastated. Thankfully, Mom and Dad arrived soon after to help out and Mom put her superb organizational skills into action. If it had been left up to me, the doors would have been locked, the phone unplugged, and we would have all been hiding in the closets.
Mom, on the other hand, was like the director of a Broadway play. She assigned us to various tasks, polished the silver, sorted out the kitchen, and never even broke a sweat. She had us moving about our duties so smoothly that even I looked graceful. Well, almost.
She sent Dad to their house for masking tape, disposable storage containers, and coolers, then, when he returned from that trip, out again for some supplies from the grocery store. Along with the other tasks Mom assigned us, Charli took on the phone duty, and I did door-answering detail. Dicey alternately cried and blamed herself. As much as we could, Charli, Mom, and I took turns hugging her, bringing her tissues, and holding her hand.
“I can’t help it. I know it’s foolish, but I loved that boy,” she said, for what must have been the two hundredth time. “I wanted us to get married, but he said people would talk. Why didn’t I insist?”
Mom was in the kitchen boiling water for hot tea and trying to wedge all of the casseroles and other food into Dicey’s fridge and the coolers. Charli was still manning the phone, taking message after message and telling people, “thank you for the thought, but I really can’t think of a thing in the world Dicey needs food-wise. Yes, I’m absolutely sure. Thank you so much for offering. Of course, I’ll let you know right away if there’s anything you can do.”
I patted Dicey’s hand again and was about to murmur my usual spiel about how he loved her too, that he was a good
guy and only wanted to protect her, when the doorbell chimed. I plastered what I hoped passed for an appropriately sad look on my face, and prepared to greet yet another neighbor bearing offerings of chicken and mushroom soup casserole or lemon lust. I suppose astounded would be an accurate description of how I felt when I saw who was at the door.
Giselle looked terrible, like she’d been rolling around in a gutter. She reeked of cheap cologne and body odor. If I hadn’t felt so bad for Dicey, I probably would have been tempted to make some smart alecky remark about her appearance.
“What?” I said. “What in the world are you doing here?”
Her eyes were ringed with dark circles and were so bloodshot they were more red than white. “Let me in,” she croaked, “I need to talk to Dicey.”
I planted myself squarely in the doorway. No way was she getting past me. “No. She’s too upset. She doesn’t need you harassing her.” I stepped back and pushed the door to close it, but Giselle stuck her foot in and shoved it open.
“So am I. He was my friend too, you know. Don’t be mean, Marty. Let me in.”
I thought about slamming the door in her face, but she had a point. I hate her, but I’m not totally without compassion. She had been a friend of Robby’s. And according to what I’d overheard Art and Robby saying at Pilazzo’s, maybe more than just a friend.
I let slip one of Mom’s ‘could I possibly be any nicer’ sighs and shook my head. “Oh all right. Hold on for a minute. I’ll go check with Dicey and see if she wants to talk to you.”
I left Giselle standing on the porch and went back to Dicey’s cheery study. She was curled up on one end of the leather sofa looking small and vulnerable. “Dicey, Giselle is at the door. She wants to come in. I told her to leave, but she insists that she needs to see you. I told her I’d check with you.”
Dicey stared at me, not seeming to comprehend. “Giselle? Wants to talk to Robby?”
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