Whittaker 03 The Secrets We Keep

by Donna White Glaser

  Following it brought me to a clearing. I emerged into an immense riot of color and light.

  The garden.

  Drawn forward, I walked down a winding stone path and beheld a Monet painting brought to life. The volume and variety of foliage was overwhelming in its abundant richness, and my senses were assaulted for the second time that day. This time I welcomed the feeling, letting the explosion of beauty flood over me and carry me along. Although I realized Eli had to be maintaining this Eden, I didn’t believe he’d started it. This was the creation of a lifetime, maybe of several lifetimes.

  Continuing on, I passed through a world mostly unknown to me, a vast, breathtaking expanse of vibrant pinks, yellows, blues, and greens in every intensity and hue. Raised in the Midwest, I recognized some of the more familiar species: roses, peonies, irises, especially the flashier versions. I dredged their names—Stella d’ Oro, Sunny Border Blue, Columbine—from childhood memories of my grandma’s garden.

  And it wasn’t only flowers.

  Once I could pull my eyes from the arresting display, I noted the carefully plotted medley of shrubs and trees. In addition to a luxuriant, leafy backdrop, these furnished necessary shade for the more delicate variations of flowers. Peeking under a red maple, I spied the gentle, nodding heads of a fragrant patch of Lily of the Valley. The latter’s fragrance floated on the breeze. I discovered several fruit trees, past the point of bloom, but with tiny buds, future offerings, studding their branches. Scattered across the garden floor were bruised blossoms of lilacs and magnolias.

  A bend in the path led to the edge of a shaded hollow where I discovered a pond, fed by a stream that trickled over a rock fall, splashing brightly at my feet. Statues of angels, in varied poses, dotted the rock shelves and crevices, silently blessing the sanctuary. Offset around the pond’s edges and placed under the shade of two graceful willows were several marble and wooden benches.

  Following the sloping path, I accepted the unspoken invitation and sat down. The seat was curved and worn smooth from years of use. Gazing into the water, I lost myself in the ripples, achieving a near Zen-state from the mesmerizing pattern of water-rings and bubbles. After staring into the depths for an unknown time, I was pleased to discover I wasn’t alone. Dappled orange and silver silhouettes darted in the shadows of the pool, under lily pads, and in the cool dimness provided by willow and fern-cover. I watched the koi water-dance for what felt like hours. I would like to say that I achieved a higher state of mind.

  Instead, I fell asleep.

  TWENTY EIGHT

  Dragging myself up from a deep sleep, I woke again in paradise. The illusion that a maniacal nurse was stabbing me with a million hypodermic needles faded as I realized that I’d fallen sideways on the wooden bench, trapping my arm beneath me. Lurching erect, I shook it as if it were a towel I could fluff back into freshness.

  A faint rustling made me turn my head: Beth. She sat on the grass near the waterfall, legs crossed, with an expression on her face that could rival the Dali Llama for serenity. After a few motionless moments, she turned and grinned.

  “Ommmm,” she hummed.

  “I think you’re supposed to say Namaste.”

  “Can you believe this place?” she asked. Stretching and sighing, she rose gracefully from her lotus position. “Eli sent me out. I probably should have woke you up, but I didn’t have the heart.”

  “It would have been okay. I’m ready to head back to the house.”

  “Really? Because I’d like to stay here forever.”

  “Might get a little cold come December.”

  Chatting lightly, we moved slowly down the path, back to the real world. We didn’t talk about the night before; it felt sacrilegious to talk about evil here. I even waited until we cleared the garden’s borders to ask what time it was.

  I was shocked. “4:20?”

  “Yeah. That’s why Eli sent me. I think he was afraid you’d flung yourself into the pond or something.”

  “That pond can only be about three or four feet deep. Not exactly the best choice if I was trying to end it all.”

  “He should have realized you were just bewitched.”

  “That’s exactly what it felt like. So, why did he send you instead of… “

  “I bet that’s what you were really trying to set up, wasn’t it? Huh? Eli comes down to get you, and oops! A little Adam and Eve scenario, frolicking in the ol’ Garden of Eden, right?”

  “Well, he does come complete with his own snake, doesn’t he?”

  I meant the tattoos.

  Laughing, we reached the house. Instead of going inside, Beth led the way around the porch to the back. A couple of aged outbuildings stood a short distance away, and a charcoal grill area had been set up just off the porch in a patio of paving stones. There, we found Eli and another man, dressed in khaki shorts and a polo shirt, ensconced on two wicker chairs, sweating Pepsis from a nearby cooler in hand.

  If I was surprised to discover a stranger, he was not. Beth solved the mini-mystery by introducing Jimmy, her long-suffering husband. Her words, but who would argue? Jimmy extended a neatly manicured hand, greeting me with quiet but nevertheless friendly warmth.

  Eli remained seated, but I could feel his eyes searching, assessing my mood. I walked over, kissing him lightly. What the hell—he had an awesome garden.

  By unspoken agreement, we shelved, for the moment, any discussion of murder or date rape drugs or any other unpleasant topics. The guys puttered around the grill and talked car stuff. Beth threw in an occasional comment. I sat back and enjoyed the company and the sun.

  While we ate, Eli answered questions about the garden, showing himself to be incredibly knowledgeable about plants and flowers in the process. So much so that commerce-minded Jimmy asked whether Eli had ever considered opening a nursery or florist shop.

  Mosquitoes came out soon after we finished eating, sending us into the house. The change in location as well as my time in the garden had reinforced my resolve. When Beth broached the subject I was ready.

  No surprise, Bruce took top billing on the suspect parade. Eli had already filled Beth and Jimmy in, so we didn’t need to rehash the previous night’s details. It did raise the question of whether Bruce had drugged me for his own sick plan or whether the ploy was connected to Trinnie’s murder.

  “It was after I brought up the past and history repeating itself that Bruce started getting antsy,” I said. “He didn’t mention the judge until after I told him Fochs and I had lunch. To me, it felt like Bruce was retaliating; Fochs pointed the finger at him, so he threw the judge under the bus. But whether he started acting weird because of that or because he was getting ready to drug me I don’t know.”

  “Obviously,” Eli said, “I’d like to introduce that asswipe’s cranium to an aluminum baseball bat, but drugging Letty in the middle of a restaurant seems like a pretty desperate way of dealing with a witness. Not to mention, stupid.”

  “That’s true even if all he was trying to do was take advantage of her,” Jimmy pointed out. “Sorry, Letty. And from what you’ve said about the guy, it doesn’t sound like we can rule out stupid.”

  “But as a method of witness tampering? It seems like such a stretch. And why just Letty? Unless you’ve had any problems, too?” Eli turned to Beth.

  She shook her head at the same time as Jimmy said, “The alarm.”

  After a long pause, Eli and Jimmy batted back and forth the likelihood of Bruce attempting a home invasion. I didn’t think he had the nerve, and said so. Bruce was a sneak. Breaking in would take more courage than he could muster.

  Thinking of courage brought me to Paul. Despite his string-bean, gangly physique and a nervous, socially-backward personality, he had courage. He’d demonstrated it. I hoped he would remember that if the case against him got any worse. I needed to see him.

  Coming out of my reverie, I realized the conversation had shifted. Jimmy was speculating on the possible motives for Trinnie’s murder. “Money,” he sa
id. “Isn’t it always money?”

  “It is, according to Agatha Christie,” Beth said. “But even if her family has money, Trinnie didn’t. They cut her off.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “Bruce said something about Fochs ‘following the money’ and implied a sexual relationship between him and Trinnie that preceded Fochs and Kitty. And she did mention Fochs in her Fourth Step.”

  “So, he’s saying Trinnie had money, and that’s why the judge was hooking up with her?” Beth said. “She sure didn’t live like it.”

  “How old was she?” Jimmy broke in.

  “Twenty-six or twenty-seven,” I said. “I could check her obituary. But Beth’s right—she didn’t live like she had money and why would she have stolen eleven grand from Paul, if she did. Trinnie wasn’t purposely mean.”

  “Maybe she couldn’t get to it,” Eli said. “Like a trust fund. Something that would revert to her at a certain age. Kitty could have had control of it until then.”

  I said, “It also means the judge is still in the running. On her Fourth Step list, Trinnie said he blamed her for something. I’d like to meet with him again and see if there’s anything else I can dig out.”

  “There are enough motives here to choke a horse,” Beth moaned. “Let me play devil’s advocate, for a minute. Do you think Trinnie knew she was in danger? If so, why would she warn whoever it was by calling them the night before?”

  “I don’t think she was warning people, necessarily,” I said. “But when she called me she say she was calling everyone on her Fourth Step. So if you ask me, that would rule out Bruce, who she knew was nuts. And Big Dude, whoever he is. She said straight out she was afraid of him.”

  “He works at Red Hot,” Eli broke in. “Manny asked around. He’s a bouncer at Red’s. Very big, very mean. And we can’t rule anyone out, not without direct proof.”

  “But she was on a binge when she started making the phone calls,” I said. “Obviously, she wouldn’t have been exercising the best judgment.”

  Eli put his hand up. “Okay, money or some kind of issue in Trinnie’s past could be the factor. That’s put that on hold for a minute, and look at possible current motives. What about that thing with the kid? She felt guilty.”

  “That could bring Fochs back into it,” Beth said. “She said he blamed her for something.”

  Jimmy looked confused.

  “In her Fourth Step,” Beth clarified.

  “Let’s look at the timeline again,” Eli continued. “We have Trinnie feeling guilty about some kid and crying in her beer. Sometime around November, she gets religion. If the motive had to do with some kind of an accident, whatever happened would have occurred before November.”

  “Before November and probably after last summer when she went back out drinking,” I added. “I think she would have told me if there was something she felt particularly bad about.”

  “Even so, how would we ever find out what it is?” Beth sounded discouraged.

  “Newspapers, to start with,” said Jimmy. “They archive them.”

  After some discussion, we nominated Beth to dig through the back issues at the library and see if she could come up with any accident or trauma to a kid that Trinnie could have been involved in. She wasn’t thrilled, but everyone else had full schedules and she lost the rock-paper-scissors contest.

  Jimmy, in particular, liked her assignment. He wasn’t thrilled with our “field trips” to the bars. “Besides,” he said, “I think you should be looking for someone with more to lose.”

  “More to lose? From whose point of view?” Eli countered. “Everybody has something to lose… and something to hide. Just because someone has less doesn’t mean what he does have isn’t precious to him. And worth killing for.”

  “Or her,” I added.

  Eli raised his glass to me. “Good point. I think one advantage we may have over the police is the ability to stay open-minded. Flexible. They have to be under a lot of pressure from Trinnie’s family to solve this. It’d be very easy for them to focus on one or two theories, which is what you two were worried about to begin with. If they spread the net too wide, they run the risk of overlooking the target, and too narrow could mean the wrong direction altogether.”

  “So you suggest a democratic look at the crime?” Jimmy said, the laugh lines around his eyes crinkling.

  “The equality of evil, man. It’s for real.”

  “You’re right, of course. And thank you for not calling me an elitist. I just… I’m worried.” Jimmy reached over, took his wife’s hand, and kissed it. “On several levels.”

  Beth smiled gently. “I’m not going to tell you not to worry. That’d be crazy, but as far as the bars and drinking go, Letty and I will watch out for each other. And I’ll try to take in an extra meeting every week.”

  “Thank you, dear.”

  “So, what’s the next step?” I asked.

  “I have an idea.” Beth’s smile shape-shifted from tender to mischievous. “I checked Grace Lutheran’s website to see when they’re services are, and found a whole bunch of upcoming events listed.”

  “What events?”

  Beth put on her wide-eyed, innocent face—a look as artificial as her fingernails. “They have a married couples group that sounded very interesting. They call it Couples Corner, which is a little too cutesy for my tastes, but whatever. They meet on a couple evenings a week, and it’s specifically for ‘troubled marriages.’ If Trinnie was into married men as much as she seems to have been, we might be able to pick up some connection there. Plus, wouldn’t it be the perfect place to look for Lover-Boy and Saint Bitch?”

  It was a good idea. So, why did I feel so uneasy?

  “I think you and Eli should go. You could be newlyweds.”

  And there it was. I refused to look at Eli. “Why not you and Jimmy?”

  “Because, first of all, nobody would believe Jimmy and I would need marriage therapy, and second, Jimmy isn’t available on those nights.”

  “What nights?” I asked.

  “Any nights. You sent me to talk to Reverend Gibson, remember? So he already knows I’m curious about Trinnie.” She smirked, highly pleased with herself.

  Defeated, I finally glanced at Eli. He winked.

  TWENTY NINE

  The marriage group met on Monday and Thursday evenings, so we decided it made sense to check Grace Lutheran out beforehand. Attending the Sunday service would work.

  Since we needed to be “married,” Eli and I met at an Amoco station a couple blocks north of the church, so we could drive in together. Beth also planned to come, but she wouldn’t make open contact with us. Before leaving Eli’s last night, we’d worked out a plan where she’d approach Rev. Gibson for grief counseling giving her an opportunity to ask questions about Trinnie’s behavior and friendships in the church. Since Gibson had met Beth at Trinnie’s funeral, it would be believable.

  I wished she’d just stay home. Bad enough to have to act opposite this particular leading man, but I dreaded performing under Beth’s gleeful eyes.

  When I turned into the lot, I spotted the Camero parked to the side, under a large maple. Eli leaned up against the back fender looking spiffy in khakis and a moss green dress shirt. He’d even donned a tie—goldenrod; it picked up the flecks in his eyes. Given his body art, he’d wisely elected to wear long-sleeves. He looked way too tasty for church.

  I’d picked out a demure, shell pink sundress, swept my hair up and off my neck, and limited my jewelry to a pair of pearl earrings. Eli snapped to attention as I emerged from my car, apparently approving of my less-is-more approach. Seeing my pleased blush, he responded with his trademark flirty smile.

  “Good morning, sugar,” he drawled.

  The simple greeting was so weighted with sexual overtones, it ignited a flash-image of us waking entwined in the pink light of dawn rather than dodging sticky gum wads as I crossed the service station’s ethyl-scented blacktop.

  As I got closer I noticed him pat his shir
t pocket nervously making me wonder if he was a former smoker, too. Ever the gentleman, Eli held the car door and waited while I tucked my legs in. Since I’d avoided eye contact, I had no way of knowing whether he was checking my legs out or not, but his grin as he crossed the front of the car told the story.

  The drive over to the church felt surprisingly awkward, but at least there wasn’t much time to wonder about it before we pulled into the lot. Eli parked in the manner of men who are protective of their vehicles: in the farthest corner, angling across two parking spaces, away from any trees harboring pooping birds or drippy sap. We were early for the service, so we sat beside each other, trapped in our new shyness.

  He patted his pocket again, shifting uneasily in his seat.

  “Eli, what’s up?”

  He cleared his throat, glancing out the window at some early arrivals. Turning back, he squared his shoulders and—I swear—blushed. Now, I was worried.

  “Um, okay” he mumbled, jumpstarting his sentence. “It’s like this… I don’t want to give you the wrong idea or anything, but I, um… “

  “What?”

  He fumbled in his shirt pocket. “Here.” So saying, he pulled out two rings; they twinkled in the sunlight. Luckily, my eyebrows were not removable or the velocity with which they shot up would have launched them off my face like fuzzy twin missiles. Eli’s fingers, more suited for taking a carburetor apart, looked alien holding bits of jewelry. He took a deep breath, then dropped them in my palm.

  It was nice one of us could breathe. The rings, obviously a costly wedding set, shimmered sweetly up at me. The engagement ring’s center jewel was a dawn-pink oval boulder surrounded by pear-shaped diamonds that radiated outwards like a sunburst. The companion ring held alternating emeralds and diamonds, also pear-shaped. When joined, they formed an ethereal fairy tale flower that I guessed were family heirlooms.

  Expensive ones.

  “Eli?”

  “They were my mother’s.” He spoke in a rush. “Actually, the center diamond came from my Grandma Ella’s wedding ring. My dad had it re-set for my mom. Try it on. We need to see if it fits.”