Midnight In The Garden Of Good And Evie

by Marianne Stillings

  Max laughed and shook his head as he helped Evie load the beast into the bed of the truck, then she headed down to the pharmacy on Water Street.

  Sitting in the nearly empty parking lot of the Olympic Pharmacy, Max glanced out the back window of the truck. Evie had told him the llama would be fine, but he felt uncomfortable about it, so he climbed into the bed and sat with the creature, enjoying the mid-afternoon sunshine.

  When Evie was gone more than ten minutes, he began to seriously crave caffeine.

  He glanced at the door of the drugstore, told himself she shouldn’t be much longer. He could hang on for a few more minutes.

  “Fernando?” The llama stared at him, blinked, and flicked its ears. “You need to take a leak, buddy?” The llama stared at him, blinked, and flicked its ears.

  “In case she asks,” he told the llama, then glanced at the pharmacy again, “I tried to make this about your needs, but it’s really all about me. I need some coffee. There’s a walk-up just down the street. And since I can’t leave you here…”

  He let his voice trail off and shook his head when he realized he was explaining his motives to a llama.

  Standing next to the fluff monger, he commanded, “Fernando. Un-kush!” The llama stared at him, blinked, and flicked its ears. So much for theory. “Fernando, stand up, you miserable piece of carpet lint. Up!”

  The llama blinked languidly and slowly rose to his feet. He looked a little pissed, if Max was any judge.

  Unlocking the tailgate, he lowered it and jumped to the ground. Muscling the plank into place, he tugged on Fernando’s lead rope. “C’mon, buddy. I’m a desperate man. Maybe they have llama lattes. My treat.”

  Fernando plodded onto the plank and down to the ground, his head high, his eyes alert. He turned toward Max, neck stretched, nose up and ears back. His body had gone erect and his tail was raised. Uh-oh.

  “No!” Max shouted, raising his hands in a defensive gesture. But it was too late.

  The llama coughed, and a giant spiderweb of green slime emptied onto Max’s hair, hands, shirt, and pants.

  “Oh, God!” he yelled as he backed as far away from Fernando as he could. “God, what is that smell!”

  “Max?” It was Evie, standing in the doorway of the pharmacy. Rushing forward, she went to Fernando and put her arms around his neck in a protective manner.

  “What did you do to my llama!” she demanded.

  Max shook his head and held his hands away from his body. “What did I do to your llama? Look at me,” he shouted. “I’m covered with toxic waste, and you ask me what I did to him? The little fucker threw up on me!”

  He glared at her, and she began to laugh. Covering her mouth with her fingertips, she giggled until tears formed in her eyes.

  “You look really disgusting,” she choked, then laughed some more. The llama stood with its mouth hanging open, as if to air out a smelly garage.

  When Evie calmed herself, she said, “It’s called spitting, but it’s not saliva. It’s partially digested stomach contents. You must have made him really mad for him to do that.”

  Max raised his head. “Yeah. I offered to buy him a latte. I can see how that might have offended him. How do I get this crap off of me?”

  “There’s only one thing that will eradicate the odor,” she said as she headed for the driver’s side of the cab. “You two hop in the back. I’m taking you to my house.”

  It was less than a ten-minute drive to Evie’s cottage. Of course, in Port Henry, he realized it was less than a ten-minute drive to most anywhere.

  She pulled up in front of a pretty yellow rambler with a white picket fence covered with white roses. Parking in the short driveway, she unloaded the creature and tied it to a post at the side of the house by the kitchen.

  As she unlocked the door to let Max in, she said, “Don’t touch anything. Go directly to the bathroom and take off your clothes inside the tub.”

  He stepped closer to her just to watch her nose wrinkle in disgust.

  “My hands are sticky,” he said in his most sincere tone. “I may need your help undressing.”

  Pushing open the door, she went to a drawer and pulled out a plastic bag. “Here,” she said as she dangled the bag in front of him. “Put everything in this and I’ll wash it while you’re in the shower.” With his clean two fingers, he took the bag and walked through the small kitchen and into the hallway.

  “Last door on your left,” she yelled after him. “Leave the bag on the toilet seat and I’ll grab it while you’re showering.”

  He wanted to take a look around her house, but there’d be time enough for that later. Right now he needed to get the spitball from hell out of his hair and off his hands and face.

  Toeing off his boots, he stepped into the tub and stripped, then shoved his clothes into the bag. He set it on the closed commode, yanked the clear plastic shower curtain shut, and turned on the water. As steam rose around his body, he rubbed honeysuckle scented soap all over himself. Out of the corner of his eye he saw the door open an inch or two, a hand reach in, and the bag disappear.

  He lathered his hair, grinning to himself. She wasn’t the type to just march on in, take a look, and stride right out again, or, even better, join him. No, Evie would need an invitation to look at his naked body… an invitation he was going to make damn sure she got.

  Chapter 14

  Dear Diary:

  Living on an island is really fun! You get to ride on a boat every day to g0 t0 school and stuff. And sometimes Edmunds takes me over to the mainland in the runabout just s0 I can see my friends or when I go to a birthday party or a sleepover. I like the boat rides a lot, except for when it gets windy and cold and the waves are gigantically huge, even in the summer! Then I get scared and living on the island isn’t so fun anymore.

  Evangeline—age 11

  Under his capable fingers, the keyboard’s rapid taps and clicks sounded like music. On the screen, the tune came alive in the form of numbers and names, cities, countries, and very impressive totals.

  And it was all his.

  It hadn’t always been this way. He’d grown up poor, and worked like a demon to make his way in the world. He owed his success solely to himself, and if the world at large thought well of him, he deserved their adulation, had earned it, and intended to keep it.

  While Tommy Heyworth had frittered away vast sums on food and drink and women and stupidity, he had kept his nose to the grindstone. He’d played along, been friendly, but not a friend.

  For all his family’s wealth, Heyworth had been a cynic, and a suspicious one at that. It had taken forever to get the bastard to trust him, but in the end patience had won out. Patience, and greed, and luck. Not the kind of luck that was happenstance, but the kind of luck he had made happen.

  As he closed one spreadsheet and opened another, he chuckled to himself. Trust was such an elemental thing between people. Once it was firmly established, a dishonest man could use that trust to pilfer and plunder and take his revenge in any number of ways. And Heyworth had never suspected; at least, not until just before his death. As long as he’d had all the money he needed, the bills were paid on time, and he could continue with that ludicrous writing career of his, Tommy Heyworth seemed not to care at all what happened to the rest of the Heyworth millions. And with no heirs to muddy the waters, nobody ever would.

  He jabbed the keyboard, anger rising from deep within him at the injustice of it all. At how, out of the blue, the stupid son of a bitch had decided it was time to acknowledge his heir. His heir! Some brat gotten off some slut maid thirty years ago could step in and take it all away? Not bloody likely.

  Heyworth wanted to change his will, wanted to acknowledge the little bitch, open the records and make an accounting of his holdings. Well, that was out of the question.

  Tommy had to go, and go he had gone. Too bad the first attempt had been botched. This murder hunt business was tiresome and stressful, and the sooner he found the last clue and destroyed it
, the better.

  The phone rang and he answered it.

  “She’s in town. I seen her with her boyfriend.”

  “She doesn’t have a boyfriend,” he drawled. “It’s probably Galloway. Where are they now?”

  “Her house. A little quality time in the sack, I bet.”

  He sighed. “Knowing her, I sincerely doubt it, but feel free to imagine whatever you wish as long as it costs me nothing extra.”

  “You got it. So, we still on for tonight?”

  “Yes. Call me the minute they leave so I can establish my alibi. Then head for the boat. You know what to do.”

  “You sure you want me to do this tonight? She won’t be alone.”

  “Listen, Sam,” he snapped, losing patience with the incompetent ass. “It doesn’t matter whether she’s alone or not. It has to be done, and soon. Your little barn accident was a total failure. Take care of it this time, and stop asking stupid questions.” He closed the file and shut down his computer. “I’ll consider your getting rid of Galloway payback for having failed to eliminate James, and for screwing up the first attempt at Heyworth. If not for that, we wouldn’t be engaged in this asinine game. Finish her tonight, or I’ll find someone who will, and I’ll pay him your ludicrous fee.”

  “Hey, don’t threaten me, pal. I know where all the bodies are buried. Remember?”

  “And I know who put them there, so shut up and do your job.”

  When Max came out of the bathroom, a pink-and-white-striped towel wrapped snuggly around his hips, Evie was gone. Instead, the seductive scent of brewing coffee lured him toward the kitchen. A note on the small oak table said: Be back in a minute. Keep an eye on Fernando. E.

  She’d left him a note. Why he felt that was something special and intimate between them, he couldn’t have said, but he liked it nonetheless.

  He picked it up, examined her handwriting. It was lovely, just like her. Not small and scratchy, not big and blousy, just neat little swirls and curls, and the prettiest initial E he’d ever seen.

  Grinning at the piece of paper like a total idiot, he traced the E with his fingertip, then folded the note in his hand and went looking for his clothes. On the enclosed back porch, the washer was still going, so he figured he was a good hour or so away from clean, dry clothes.

  He wandered through the small house, his bare feet slapping against the cool hardwood floors. A kitchen, a single bath, two bedrooms, nice and cozy. Max imagined her here on winter evenings, correcting spelling tests and grading papers, a small fire crackling in the fireplace as she sipped a mug of spicy tea.

  It was mid-July, School wouldn’t begin for over a month. Maybe he’d come back one cold autumn night, bring a bag of Chinese food, coax her out of her flannel nightgown and make love to her by the warmth of that fire.

  He looked out the window to see Fernando kushed and staring off toward the town, his lead rope still securely tethered to the post. Good thing. There was no way he was jogging down the street after a runaway llama wearing only a pink-striped bath towel.

  A blue truck pulled into the driveway. Evie.

  As he entered the kitchen from the hallway, she pushed open the door and set groceries and a department store bag on the table. Tossing her purse down, she smiled at him, and he realized he was very glad his impromptu kilt was made of such heavy terry cloth.

  “Sorry I was gone so long,” she said. “On my way back from getting groceries, I drove by Harbisson’s department store. They were having a great sale. Bras and panties half off…”

  “I prefer them all the way off, myself.”

  “…and I realized you wouldn’t have anything to wear until your clothes were washed and dried.”

  “But I don’t wear panties and bras anymore,” he chided. “Not since I got caught that time—”

  “Shut up.” She picked up the plastic bag and threw it at him. “New clothes. Put them on. Your presence in my kitchen in nothing but a towel is… perverted.”

  He caught the bag and peered into it. “Thanks. But you weren’t initially going to say perverted, were you?”

  She pulled a container of mushrooms out of the grocery bag. “If you don’t shut up and get dressed right now, Pm not going to feed you.”

  She was going to cook for him? For that he would promise never to speak again.

  Tucking the bag under his arm, Max went to the coffeemaker and poured himself a mug. Without another word, he backed out of the kitchen and went to the spare bedroom to change.

  He had coffee, and she was making him dinner. He didn’t stink anymore, and he had new clothes. Life just didn’t get any better than this.

  Well, he grinned as he let the towel fall to the floor, it might get a little better if, say, he could eat Evie for dessert.

  Evie checked the meat loaf and adjusted the heat under the potatoes. While she’d been busy preparing dinner, Max had spent the last hour in the back bedroom at her computer. As she turned to set the table, she bumped straight into a wall of solid muscle.

  His arms came around her, keeping her from falling, pulling her close to his body.

  “I didn’t hear you come in,” she choked.

  “Mea culpa,” he said. “I didn’t want you to hear me.”

  “Why not?”

  Lifting his shoulder in a shrug, he said, “So I could scare the hell out of you so you’d bump into me and trip and lose your balance so I could grab you to keep you from falling so I could pull you close so I could do this.”

  He lowered his head and took her mouth.

  Dear God, the man knew how to kiss. Did it come naturally to him or was it something he had cultivated over the years? She quickly decided she didn’t care.

  He pulled back, and their lips clung for a moment, so he nibbled them free.

  “Thanks for the new duds,” he said. “But I didn’t mind the towel.”

  “You, um, you have a very impressive chest.”

  “Likewise, I’m sure.” He chuckled, bending, taking the lobe of her ear gently between his teeth.

  “Dinner’s nearly ready,” she said, closing her eyes as he nuzzled her neck. “In the meantime, I—I have some ideas about the clue…”

  “Such as?” he murmured, obviously not giving the hunt the attention it deserved.

  “Such as, I think our next stop is Olympia.”

  “I know it well.” He trailed his tongue along her collarbone, and she just about lost her mind.

  “It’s the southernmost part of Puget Sound,” she said as his hand slid up to cup her breast. “I’m w-willing…”

  “My favorite words,” he growled. “You’re willing to what?”

  “…t-to bet Clue Number Four sends us up the west side of the Sound, back toward Port Henry.”

  “You’re probably right.” With his free hand he cupped her other breast, then gave them both a little squeeze.

  “How do you like them, regular or mashed?”

  His hands stilled. “Excuse me?”

  “Potatoes,” she said, flicking a glance at the bubbling pot on the stove.

  With a laugh, he kissed her quickly, then released her. “Mashed would be great.”

  He walked to the kitchen window. “Assuming the next clue is in Olympia, where do we look? The passage refers to a five-and-dime, and to my recollection, there aren’t very many of those around anymore.”

  Taking the meat loaf from the oven, Evie said, “I have an idea about that. I want to look at the book again tonight. There’s a particular passage I’m thinking of that might answer that question.”

  “It’s getting a little misty out there. We should probably hurry if we want to get back to the island before the storm hits.”

  But they didn’t hurry. They lingered over dinner, Evie talking about what it was like to grow up on an island, Max discussing the finer points of wood shop, and the nutcracker he’d made one Christmas for his mom.

  “It wasn’t very good,” he said, leaning back in his chair. “In fact, it broke the firs
t time she tried to use it, so I made her another one, and another one, and another one, until she had a whole collection. The last one even works.” He grinned across the table at her.

  She liked it when he spoke of his mother. His eyes softened and his mouth turned up on one side when a particularly funny memory came to him.

  “Did you make anything besides broken nutcrackers?”

  He laughed and tossed his napkin on the table. “Yeah, woodworking became a hobby after that. I made my coffee table at home, a couple of clocks from burls I found on hikes. I even carved a set of chess pieces I’m rather proud of.”

  And he was. She could tell by the lift in his voice as he described designing each piece, finding the right kind of wood for it, then slicing away the excess until he had just the form he wanted.

  They talked so long, by the time they finished dinner and reached the dock the sky had dimmed from lavender to murky indigo and a layer of mist hovered above the rolling water. Overhead, the cloud cover broke here and there to reveal a velvet sky scattered with glistening bits of starlight. A slice of moon hung low on the horizon like a golden hook descending to pull a mermaid from the sea.

  The wind had steadied, forcing the water to peak into whitecaps, creating an endless sea of waves crawling over each other to reach the shore.

  Gauging the conditions, Max said, “Looks a little iffy to me, but there are other boats out there and nobody seems to be in trouble.”

  Looking out across the water, Evie said, “It’s only a twenty-five-minute boat ride, and I’ve made it in much worse weather than this. I wouldn’t risk Fernando’s life if I thought for a second it was too dangerous to cross.”

  “Fernando’s life? What about mine?”

  She smiled up at him. “Jealous of a llama, Detective?”

  As she walked back to the truck to get Fernando, she heard Max mutter a soft, “Maybe.”

  Once Evie and Fernando were settled in the runabout, Max punched the starter and the motor roared to life. He flipped on the running lights and tossed the line, easing the boat away from the dock.