Murder Crops Up

by Lora Roberts

  “Hey, Amy. Was the flight good?”

  “Not so good.” She swallowed. “Lost my pretzels in a major way.”

  “Do you want to hit the bathroom?”

  “That would be fine.” She looked a little wobbly. Maybe airsickness was all that ailed her.

  “So, flying isn’t so hot after all?” I leaned one hip on the counter and watched her wash up.

  She was teenager enough to glance around and make sure no one was staring at the novice flyer. “Well, it was pretty exciting,” she admitted. “And scary, too. I kept imaging all the stuff that could go wrong. I was, like, let me off! But then it was cool for a while, until we were crossing the Yosemite mountains.”

  “The Sierra,” I said.

  “Yeah. The Sierras, or whatever. It got bumpy then.” She shivered and splashed a little extra water on her face. I realized she wore no makeup, another major style change. “Anyway, I’m here. Really fast, too. It’s much better than riding the hound.” She smiled, though wanly, at my puzzled expression. “Taking a Greyhound bus,” she explained. “I don’t mind hurling if it saves so much time.”

  “I’m glad you’re here.” I picked up the carpetbag. It weighed a ton. “Let’s get the rest of your luggage.”

  “That’s all.” She wrested it away from me, and I let her. “I didn’t bring anything else.”

  We chatted about family stuff on the way to the parking garage. Amy exclaimed with rapture over Barker, who erupted out of the bus when she opened the side door. “Such a big boy! Such a good boy!” He writhed his happiness, licking her hands, and when she grabbed him around the neck, her face. Then she straightened guiltily. “I know, Aunt Liz. Not allowed.”

  “Only in greeting or parting,” I agreed.

  She ordered Barker back into the bus, slung in her carpetbag, and climbed up into the passenger seat. “Babe looks good,” she remarked. Amy was responsible for the name Babe; she’d christened my bus during her last visit.

  “Just got her 225,000-mile oil change,” I bragged. I admit to pampering the bus in terms of oil and timing adjustments, which I’ve learned to do myself. So far, the pampering has worked. Buying a replacement vehicle would empty my savings account.

  Amy fell silent as I pulled onto 101. Conversation in Babe is difficult anyway, due to the roaring.

  We were almost to Palo Alto before she spoke. “Thanks for letting me come, Aunt Liz.” She gripped my arm for a minute, then went back to petting Barker, who stood between the two front seats as I drove, nudging Amy whenever her hand stopped its attentions.

  “I’m just glad to see you.” I didn’t say anything about Rita’s death. With any luck, it would be cleared up before Amy even knew it had happened. “A very dramatic way to get a holiday.”

  “No kidding,” Amy muttered. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back.

  “Do you feel bad, still? Do you need something in your stomach?” I stole glances at her, slackening my already stately pace a bit. “We’ll be home in less than ten minutes. Should I stop?”

  “Aunt Liz. I’m okay.” She gave me a shaky smile. “Just leftover airsickness, I guess. Maybe it would help to eat something. Are there crackers in the emergency kit?”

  I reached between the passenger seat and the sink that faces backward behind it, and pulled out the plastic container that’s meant to tide me over in case an earthquake strands me in Babe someday.

  Amy rooted around in the shallow bin, finding a package of peanut butter crackers, which Bridget buys for me at Costco, making them the only packaged snack I can afford. By the time we pulled into my drive, the crackers were gone and she looked better.

  “I got some stuff for lunch,” I told her, unlocking the front door. “Real food, I mean.”

  Amy grinned and headed for the refrigerator, an automatic teenage response that appears to be triggered by coming into any house, anywhere. “Look, presliced cheese! Wow! And mayo, too!”

  “I remember what you like.” Amy’s taste in food was, in my opinion, horrid. She did join me in cherry tomatoes and baby carrots from my garden. And she drank a big glass of the gallon of milk I had gotten instead of my usual half gallon. I make granola for myself, but remembering how much cereal Amy could put away in one sitting, I had bought an enormous box of Cheerios for her, which she started on directly after her thick cheese sandwich.

  Putting down her glass and taking an absent swipe at the resulting milk mustache, Amy gazed around the kitchen. “It’s good to be back,” she said, with a contented sigh. “Aunt Liz, is it possible to be poor and happy? Don’t you hate not having enough money for things you want?”

  I blinked under this unexpected attack. “I don’t know, Amy. I always feel so lucky just to have a house to live in. And lately I’ve made enough writing to keep from having to do temp work. That’s about as good as it gets in my life.”

  Her lips twisted. “You’re not helping.”

  “What would help?”

  “It would help,” Amy said, slumping in her chair, “if you told me I would never be happy unless I got a good education and earned enough money to give myself a good life—not like Aunt Molly, who has everything but feels bad because Uncle Bill does all the providing. And not like Mom, who has to ask Dad for everything and take what she gets. I want to get it for myself—everything! I want to travel. I want to feel important. I want to pick up the phone and order myself the things I want, the things I worked for!” She halted the tirade, drawing in a deep breath.

  “Well, okay.”

  “Huh?” She focused on me instead of her inner vision.

  “Sounds like a plan. What’s holding you back?”

  She wouldn’t look at me again. Instead she stacked her cereal bowl, sandwich plate, and glass and took them to the sink.

  “Aunt Liz, are you still Catholic?”

  I realigned my mind. “I’m getting confused here, Amy.”

  “I mean, do you go to confession, and all? Do you go to mass?”

  “Not for a long time.” Not since the middle of my disastrous marriage, which had shown me the kind of mercy a patriarchal religion reserves for its daughters. “I’ve sort of evolved my own religion. Gardening is one of its central rites.”

  She smiled, but it didn’t last long. “I don’t know what to do. I’m in terrible trouble.”

  It all came together for me, finally. I felt very dumb not to have seen it coming. “You’re pregnant.”

  Amy heaved one great, shuddering sigh. “Oh, Aunt Liz.” Her voice broke, and then she was crying.

  I got up and put my arm around her, guided her back to her chair. I put the kettle on and got out the chamomile tea. If ever there was an occasion that called for soothed nerves, this was it.

  Finally she stopped sobbing. I fished my clean bandanna out of my pocket and gave it to her, and she mopped up and accepted the cup of tea.

  “It’s such a relief to be able to tell someone,” she said, her voice still quivering with emotion. “I couldn’t tell Mom. She would hit the roof. And Dad—I can’t imagine.”

  I could, only too well. “It would be epic,” I agreed. “But—does this mean you’re not going to tell them?”

  “I don’t know.” Amy used the hankie again, then squared her shoulders. “It’s my problem. I’m going to decide what to do. Then maybe I’ll tell them.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Amy would be a pariah in the Sullivan clan if any of them knew. I didn’t feel that I could encourage her to keep her parents in the dark, though. Maybe we were denying Andy and Renee the chance to show their magnanimous sides.

  Nah.

  “So, are you thinking abortion?” It seemed like a good idea to get everything on the table.

  “Of course I am.” Amy stared at me. “It’s the first thing I thought about when I suspected. I don’t want to have a baby. I wasn’t trying to have a baby.”

  “What were you trying to do?” She frowned, and I added hastily, “If you don’t mind my asking.”


  “You won’t believe it.” She stared into her teacup. “I sort of told Tiffany. I mean, I didn’t say it was me. I just said I heard it happened to someone, and she couldn’t stop laughing. No one would ever believe it, even if it’s in Ann Landers all the time.”

  “Why don’t you tell me and let me see?”

  Amy looked up at me, her chin thrust out. “I was at a party at this guy’s house I didn’t know very well. There were a bunch of jocks there, which isn’t my scene really. But my friend Amber and I had decided we would get drunk, not really drunk, but drunk enough to see what it was like, and we knew there’d be booze at this party because the jocks always get booze. So Amber and I bagged a couple of beers and went to the sunroom. It was a really nice house, and there was a hot tub in the sunroom, and after we had the beers we got in—with our underwear on, you know. Everyone had their underwear on. A couple of the other girls went off with a couple of the boys, and Amber and I had another beer, and I got kind of sleepy. Next thing I knew, it was dark and Amber was gone and this jerky boy was putting the moves on me.” Her lower lip trembled. “He had my panties off and was humping on me—like Barker does to people’s legs sometimes—but right on top of me.”

  “Oh, Amy. He was raping you?”

  “He didn’t get that far. I grabbed his balls and told him to stop bothering me or I’d make him a eunuch.” She shook her head, scorn dripping from her voice. “He didn’t even know what that meant, for Pete’s sake. Anyway,” her eyes slid away, “he came right there, like he couldn’t help himself, and then he scrambled out. He was such a moron! I wouldn’t have his baby if the future of the human race depended on it!”

  “So that was it? He didn’t—penetrate?”

  “No.” She added reluctantly, “He was a total loser. But to be fair, I probably looked like a slut. I can’t really blame it all on him.”

  “But you didn’t get help? No one else saw?”

  “It didn’t seem like that big a deal, and there weren’t any witnesses, so what was the use of talking about it? Besides,” she added, “I couldn’t find my panties, and I didn’t want to get out without them on, because after he left, other people came into the room. I was sitting there, groping around the hot tub with my toes, trying to find my panties.”

  With a supreme effort I kept my face straight. “I hope you did find them eventually.”

  “I didn’t. But Amber brought me a towel.” Her lips twisted. “And just because of that I get pregnant. It’s not fair. I wasn’t even really misbehaving. Why should I have to pay such a heavy price?”

  “You could have the baby and give it up for adoption.”

  She shook her head stubbornly. “I’m not going to school pregnant. I’m not going through all the whispering and the questions. Do you think that jerk would even acknowledge it was his? It would all be on me. Mom, Dad—Gramma and Grampa would all croak.” She stared at me, wide-eyed. “Is that what it was like for you?”

  “No, but it wasn’t pleasant. And, as it turned out, they were right to tell me not to marry him.”

  “They would make me have the baby,” Amy said with conviction, “and I would die.”

  “You wouldn’t die. But I agree that you’re old enough to decide for yourself what to do.” I watched her nervous fingers pat the bread crumbs on the table. “How pregnant are you?”

  “Less than two months.” Amy hugged herself. “I have to decide soon.”

  So she hadn’t really made up her mind yet.

  “Well,” I said, refilling her milk glass, “as long as you’re eating for two, I’ll get out the apple pie Bridget sent me home with last night.”

  Chapter 12

  Amy ate more than half of the little pie and seemed to feel better. I, however, could not be comforted by apples, even with lots of cinnamon. The ramifications of Amy’s pregnancy chased everything else out of my brain. “Man,” I muttered, getting up to carry plates to the sink. “Renee would—”

  “You’ve got to swear, Aunt Liz.” Amy jumped out of her chair and grabbed my arm. “You’ve got to solemnly promise that you will never, never tell Mom, no matter what. You’ve got to, Aunt Liz.”

  Her mouth was stubbornly set, her eyes brilliant with command. For a moment I saw my father in her, the rigid, controlling man who wanted us all to dance to his piping. Then tears filmed those sharp eyes, and she was just Amy, desperate with trouble.

  I loosened her grip on my arm and patted her hand. “Amy, hon, I can’t promise that. You can’t tie my hands before we know all the circumstances. What if there were complications and you ended up in the hospital? Don’t you see the position you’re putting me in here?”

  She wasn’t listening. Tears rolled down her cheeks. Her head came to rest limply on my shoulder. “They can’t know. I can’t tell them now, maybe not ever! You’ve got to help me!”

  I guided her into the living room. “You’re so tired, Amy. Why don’t you try to take a little nap? I won’t tell anyone anything you don’t want me to. Rest now. Then we’ll talk.”

  She let me tuck the afghan around her shoulders, nestling her head into the pillow I’d put together from unpieced quilt squares left in the closet after my friend Vivien’s death. Barker assumed his Sphinx position on the rag rug beside the couch, until he saw me put on my garden shoes. He sprang to attention, prancing out the door before me.

  We went around the raised beds, tending the baby veggies. I pulled enough carrots and little beets for dinner, then added some more, remembering Amy’s appetite. I also cut the small ruby leaves of kale, and the baby spinach and mustard greens. Whatever she did about her maternal dilemma, Amy had to eat properly.

  Bridget stopped by just as I finished plucking a few ripe cherry tomatoes off the browning vines. She was wearing that vertical line between her eyebrows, the one that indicated worry. “Where’s your young visitor?” she asked, glancing around the yard.

  I remembered her concern when she heard Amy was coming. “You guessed Amy was pregnant, didn’t you?”

  “So she is? God, I hoped I was wrong.” Bridget sank onto the edge of the raised bed. “You certainly don’t need this.”

  ‘‘Neither does Amy.

  Bridget pressed her lips together. “Amy did the deed, so she should take responsibility. And if she needs help, she should go to her parents for it, not you.”

  It was a little surprising to hear Bridget speak so sternly; she usually bends over backward to give people the benefit of the doubt. Part of me agreed with her. Part of me felt put upon by having to cope with Amy’s troubles. But in this particular case, I didn’t think Bridget’s poor opinion of my niece was deserved.

  “It wasn’t as much her fault as you might think.” I spoke cautiously, not knowing how much of the story was mine to reveal.

  “Oh, no. She wasn’t raped, was she?” Bridget looked aghast. “Oh, how could I say such mean things? Poor Amy.”

  “No, no. She wasn’t raped. Not technically. Not in any way that seems to bother her.”

  “Liz, if you think you’re reassuring me—”

  I tried not to say anything, but it popped out regardless. “Hot tub.”

  For a moment, Bridget looked blank. “You mean—”

  I nodded. “Evidently it happens a lot. Amy said people write Ann Landers about it.”

  We stared at each other, faces solemn. Bridget spoke, her lips barely moving. “Is she watching?”

  “She’s asleep.”

  Her jaw began to quiver, and finally I could stand it no longer. We burst into laughter simultaneously, smothering the whoops and giggles as best we could against each other’s shoulders. From a distance it must have seemed that two women were crying and consoling each other.

  Bridget was the first to recover. “I feel terrible for doing that,” she gasped, wiping her eyes.

  “I feel much better.” I reached for my bandanna and realized I’d left it with Amy, already sodden with female emotional collapse. “But I know what you mean. It’s so hard t
o have to make this kind of choice knowing that people are trying not to laugh.”

  “It’s no laughing matter.” Bridget sobered completely. “She’s thinking about an abortion?”

  “My family is Catholic, you know.” I wanted Bridget to understand why Amy dragged her troubles to my doorstep, like a cat with a dead mouse. “And Amy already doesn’t get along well with her parents.”

  “Then they all really need counseling.” Bridget’s voice was gentler, but adamant. “Unless she’s in physical danger from them, she should give them a chance to help her. They might surprise her.”

  “I said that, too.” I picked up my basket. “But the thing is, I can see her point. I wouldn’t want to tell them I was pregnant, knowing my brother, my dad. They’re so proud of Amy’s grades, and she’s the only granddaughter. Renee would probably be on Amy’s side, but she would feel compelled to tear a few strips off her verbally first.”

  “Well, I do feel for her.” Bridget sighed. “Especially since she didn’t really ask for it. And birth control can fail, as I personally know. It’s just too bad anytime a baby isn’t cause for celebration.”

  We ambled toward the house, Bridget stopping to smell the roses. “Why don’t my flowers ever look this good? All I have is dead sticks,” she complained.

  “You stopped watering too soon. We haven’t had enough rain for that. Besides, I gave the whole garden a big nutritious mulching in late August. This is the thanks I get.” I dug the shears out of my apron pocket and cut off a spray of Margaret Merrill, a rose I think particularly appropriate for Bridget. “I’ll put this in a milk carton or something and you can carry it home. Where’s your little helper, anyway?” It suddenly occurred to me that Moira was nowhere to be seen.

  Bridget buried her face in the creamy blooms. “Mmm—fragrant, too. Emery’s doing the dad thing this afternoon while I go Christmas shopping.”