Rosemary for Remembrance

by Christine Arness

  Connie bent down to rub the ears of the dog sleeping at her feet. “She was dead. It didn’t seem to matter who’d killed her.”

  The woman’s story had made the scene in the Brown Dog Café come alive for Abigail and now she felt an overwhelming frustration at the abrupt ending. “But Myrtle called the sheriff—they must have made a report of the incident. The man’s threats should have marked him as the prime suspect.”

  Connie’s cheeks and mouth sagged like warm putty, her makeup patchy on tear-swollen features. “Myrtle was bluffing—at least no one from the sheriff’s office ever showed up.”

  “A young woman was threatened and assaulted and no one felt it had a bearing on her death?”

  Connie stiffened as if offered personal criticism; as they had throughout her narration, her hands continued to pull at invisible ropes of taffy. “Spider was a brute. He might have killed me if I suggested he was a suspect.”

  Abigail tried a different tack. “Do you know what your friend meant when she said, ‘If only there was another way…‘?”

  The older woman’s chin quivered as she mopped her eyes. “Rosemary always felt trapped in Lincoln City—claimed her destiny lay elsewhere. She had a plan, but never shared the details with me. I’ve always wondered if that dress had something to do with her escape.”

  A check of Abigail’s notes revealed another question. “Concerning the necklace of ‘real pearls’ that Rosemary said she was going to wear to the dance—do you know where she got it?”

  The mention of the necklace brought Connie to her feet, her eyes glistening like the flame of a candle behind a rain-soaked windowpane. “Nothing is important except the fact that we parted on harsh terms—and she only had a few hours to live!” The sobs started again, her ample bosom heaving with emotion. “Just go away. Rosemary’s dead—let her stay dead.”

  The dogs had risen to their feet, growling, upset by the woman’s distress. Harold moved to the attorney’s side and pointed toward the door. “This interview is over.”

  She started to speak but realized Connie wasn’t listening. The woman was staring at the snail shell vase in a frozen, almost catatonic state, the smudged mascara giving her eyes a bruised, vulnerable look.

  “Mr. Pringle, I think your wife needs help.”

  “She needs for you to get out and leave her alone.” Harold snapped, marching her ahead of him down the hall.

  At the door, he almost shoved Abigail out onto the stoop and the German shepherds filled the doorway behind him, their hostile brown gazes fixed on the intruder until the sound of breaking glass shattered the silence. As if at a signal, the dogs wheeled and rushed off. Harold slammed the door.

  Thoughtful, Abigail walked down the path to her car. Connie’s tone when she talked about Rosemary had contained an eerily possessive quality and an underlying resentment that the other girl hadn’t confided in her. All the bright clutter and knickknacks in the bungalow might be an attempt to fill the void left when Rosemary died and Abigail wondered if Connie had been the one who’d obliterated a portion of her friend’s essay with angry eraser strokes.

  Stopping by the deserted office to check her messages, Abigail had the pleasant surprise of discovering a bouquet of flowers on her desk. Plucking out the envelope held in place by a plastic stem, she opened it to find a drawing of an arrow pointing to a heart; a study of the bouquet, composed mostly of greenery, revealed no other clue to the sender. Puzzled but pleased, Abigail took the flowers home and changed into a forest-green T-shirt dress.

  An hour later a creaking elevator with a sliding gate deposited her on the third floor of one of the older apartment buildings on the east side of town. Walking down the dimly lit hallway, she drew a deep breath to chase away a flutter of nerves.

  Facing the door marked 4-C, the realization came that it might be a mistake not to keep her relationship with Ross formal—she shouldn’t have agreed to play on his home field. Just remembering the pressure of his hand as he clasped hers across the table to seal their partnership raised her pulse rate and summoned up the sound of his voice, “We need to meet without the distraction of other people. My place tomorrow night? I’m a good cook, Abigail James.”

  “And that’s not all you’re good at,” Abigail murmured. Despite the hectic crush of the restaurant, a marching band with seventy-six trombones could have paraded past their table and she wouldn’t have noticed.

  She raised her hand to knock and paused. She could have said no, told him to keep this on a businesslike basis. She would call from the gas station down the street and tell him something came up.

  A woman, bent both by the years and the weight of a plastic bag with polka dots and a torn handle, shuffled toward Abigail. Her expression was dour.

  “Don’t be cluttering up the hall, girl. He won’t bite. Or maybe he does—got the women lining up like they was going to see Cary Grant at the picture show.” A wheeze of laughter. “Like living next door to one of them movie stars.”

  Abigail felt her face burn with color and displayed her briefcase in a defensive reflex. “I’m an attorney—” she began.

  “Gonna sue him? Paternity suit?” Eyes as inquisitive as a mynah bird peered at Abigail as the crone took a step closer. “I knew Mr. Charm was gonna get tripped up sooner or later.”

  Fearing the next question might be a demand to see the baby’s picture, Abigail rapped on the door and was rewarded by a muffled invitation to enter. As she stepped inside, a sharp voice from the hall advised her to “Bite him back.”

  Ross’s apartment contained an elaborate sound system, a leather couch the size of a tractor-trailer flatbed, and a home gym, but the furnishings were dominated by a mural covering an entire wall. Everything he owned, like the man himself, seemed larger than life. “Goldilocks visits Poppa Bear,” she murmured as she dropped her briefcase on the couch and followed a clattering noise to the kitchen and the torso of her host, who was lying on the floor with his head in a cupboard.

  Leaning on the breakfast bar separating the kitchen and living areas, she watched the pile of pans and canned goods tossed out of the cupboard grow higher. “Anything I can do to help?”

  His voice echoed hollowly. “Homemade pizza’s in the oven and I just tossed a salad.”

  “I see.” Abigail brushed a piece of lettuce off the bar. “This is the farthest I’ve seen a salad tossed.”

  Ross’s head emerged, a cross expression marring his handsome features. “Never disturb a man when he’s in the throes of culinary creation.”

  He was even better-looking than she remembered. His eyes met hers with a special brand of intensity, and the vision of beauties lining the hallway conjured up by the insinuations of the old woman vanished with a pop.

  To turn away took all her strength of will. “I leave you to create.” She indicated the mural. “Do you also dabble with a brush?”

  “Came with the apartment.” Ross disappeared and his voice was again muffled by the cupboard’s depths. “A previous tenant asked if he’d be reimbursed for materials if he painted the room. The landlord almost had a stroke at the finished product. Hope the artist becomes famous so I can charge admission, but last I heard he was pumping gas.”

  Ranged along the length of the wall, men flexed powerful muscles, their nude torsos dripping with sweat as they drove spikes into railroad ties, planted trees, and sanded down a ship in drydock. The brush strokes were as broad and powerful as the bodies they portrayed.

  She moved closer. “What was the inspiration for this piece?”

  “I’ve seen stuff like it in museums—WPA workers during the Depression. After compromising with the scum of society, I kick back with blues on the stereo and pretend that the man with the sledge hammer is pounding some sense into a juvenile delinquent.”

  Rosemary had lived through the Depression, but not long enough to see the war—a time that might have granted her the freedom she craved. Abigail continued to prowl and discovered that Ross’s musical tastes ran contrary to
Michael’s mellow tunes—the C.D.s and albums were all jazz and blues compositions.

  Her host was back on his feet and rattling the contents of a drawer. “Why don’t you put on some music? Aids the digestion.”

  His slow smile made her tingle all over and she was glad to concentrate on choosing an album. With Ella Fitzgerald crooning softly, she returned to the kitchen just as he exclaimed, “Eureka! My pizza cutter!”

  “I met one of your neighbors out in the hall,” Abigail remarked, watching him wash the blade of the cutter.

  “Louella, I’ll bet.” He dried the pizza cutter and placed it on the table. “Did she warn you about entering the wolf’s den?”

  “She told me to bite you back.”

  He laughed, a delicious rumble that raised the short hairs on the back of Abigail’s neck as though her body had absorbed a static charge from walking across the carpet.

  “Louella’s been on this block since people lived in caves and kept dinosaurs for pets. She’s gone through three husbands and I’m terrified I’m next on the list. I asked her if she recalled Rosemary Dickison, but she claims she only remembers men.”

  The mingled aromas of pepperoni and mozzarella scented the air as Ross opened the oven door and lifted out a pizza the size of a wagon wheel.

  Abigail chuckled. “What army is coming over for dinner?”

  “I had to add tomato sauce by the pailful, but it turned out perfect. Help yourself to a beverage out of the refrigerator.”

  Abigail opened the door and peered inside. “Beer for you?”

  Ross juggled a steaming loaf of garlic bread onto a platter. “No, I hate the smell. Should be a pitcher of iced tea in there.”

  He’d made a point out of drinking coffee at the Fox on the Green, too, she remembered, and now this. A teetotaler? Descendant of Carrie Nation? Of course—next year was an election year.

  Rebuking herself for jumping to cynical conclusions, she carried the pitcher to the table. “How did you get through law school hating the smell of beer?”

  “It’s a long story. Feel free to drink some yourself—I keep a six-pack on hand for friends.”

  In jeans and a Chicago Bears jersey, his face flushed from the heat of the oven, Ross looked younger and more approachable than he had yesterday, as if taking off the suit and tie had also removed a layer of sophistication. Abigail caught the package of napkins he tossed to her and set them on the table, but was unable to let the subject drop.

  “Too many hangovers in college?”

  Ross came over to pull out Abigail’s chair. “I realize I’m large and this room is not so I’ll try not to tread on your feet.” He seated himself. “Bad associations. My father reeked of the stuff whenever he hit me or my brother.”

  Although his tone was level, his eyes had darkened and his abrupt movements as he sliced the pizza revealed the tension in his muscles. Abigail felt her stomach knot with apprehension.

  Reaching for the pitcher, she poured two glasses and passed one to Ross. “Tea is fine with me.”

  But her attempt to change the subject had come too late and with his hands stilled, he murmured, “I couldn’t figure him out—he was the one drinking up his paycheck and trashing the house and he was the one who was always angry. I was sick of being knocked around, so I started lifting weights, doing five hundred sit-ups a day, and sparring with the guys down at the gym.”

  Abigail knew this fairy tale didn’t have a happy ending but short of cutting his throat with the pizza slicer, she saw no way to stop him from telling the story. “What happened?”

  “One Christmas Eve—I was fifteen—he came home stinking drunk and pushed over our tree. Stomped on the ornaments. When Mom burst into tears, he back-handed her across the mouth. I broke his jaw with one punch.”

  The scent of baked dough and the warmth from the open oven were overpowered by a creeping chill. Abigail folded and refolded her napkin; in her mind’s eye she could see the broken wing of a shattered Christmas angel, a reddened imprint across a woman’s mouth, pine needles scattered across a bloodstained carpet.

  Ross massaged his jaw as though the memory of the incident had bruised his own flesh and Abigail sat in helpless silence until he blinked and refocused on his dinner companion.

  His attempt at a smile was more of a grimace of pain. “What was I thinking of, spilling my emotional guts this way? I apologize.”

  A question still hung between them and after a moment, Abigail asked, “What happened to your mother?”

  Ross picked up the pizza cutter again but slammed it down when he noticed the tremor of his hand. “She threw me out of the house and Dad had to take his beer through a straw for a couple of weeks. Mom died of pneumonia about three years later—she just seemed to give up on life. The last time I saw my father was at her funeral and he looked like an old man. My brother and I refused to sit with him or ride in the same car to the cemetery.”

  Abigail winced at the bitterness in his voice and reached out to cover the back of his white-knuckled hand resting on the tablecloth between them. “You mustn’t assume all of the blame for a tragic situation, Ross.”

  He recoiled from her touch, shoving his chair back until it fell over with a clatter, and Abigail cringed away from the man towering over her. “I hit him to hurt him, the way he’d hurt me. If I’d been any bigger or stronger I would have beaten him to death and I think that’s what killed my mother—the knowledge that her son wanted to destroy his own father!”

  Abigail looked down at her empty plate, aghast at the horror lurking behind the facade of a skillful listener and a man in control.

  She heard him draw a deep breath and the sounds of the chair being uprighted, the creak of wood as he sat down. In a voice drained of emotion, like the narrator of a documentary, he said, “I didn’t understand the monster raging inside me until I was a junior in college. We were in a bar celebrating finals and the man in the next booth slapped his girlfriend. She screamed and that sound, combined with the beer I’d drunk, caused something to snap. The next thing I knew my buddies were pulling me off the guy—I’d almost choked him to death. The incident scared me into making an appointment with a therapist who specialized in children of alcoholics. End of story.”

  Abigail lowered her hands and looked at Ross. The Chicago Bear on his sweatshirt inflated as he drew another breath.

  “Here I am talking and our pizza’s getting cold.” He said the words with real regret, but Abigail sensed an undercurrent that had nothing to do with cold food or his confession. Talking about his father had stirred the banked embers of something ugly within Ross, leaving the sour taste of suppressed violence in the room. A painful and anger-filled childhood, revisited again and again like a favorite relative.

  “Abigail? You’re pale—I’m sorry. Look, if you want to call this disaster of a meal off—”

  She shook her head. Her knees were too weak to get up from the table without falling. As if sensing her distress, he reached for her hand, his eyes meeting hers, and as in the restaurant yesterday, Abigail found herself being hypnotized by the dark green shading in their depths.

  “You’ve listened to my pathetic tale—care to unburden yourself of any baggage from the past, Abigail?”

  She wrenched her gaze from his eyes and concentrated on his mouth, those white teeth and well-shaped, sensuous lips…The fingers of her other hand clenched and she dug her nails into the giving material of the tablecloth. With the revelation of his vulnerability, the pressure of his hand, and the intensity of his gaze he’d created an atmosphere of intimacy that crackled between them like sparks from a generator. Once again she felt his power to shut out the world, tear down the barriers, and isolate them as primitive man and woman, one on one.

  The thought of Michael and what she’d termed their “comfortable passion” flashed in her mind like a stoplight. But Ross wasn’t offering a trip to the stars—it was more of a collision between planets and in her heart she knew she wasn’t ready.

  Abi
gail tugged her hand free and wet her lips, blurting out the first thing that came to mind. “The pizza smells wonderful.”

  A flicker passed over his features. Disappointment? Anger? Then a wicked smile appeared. “Well, I’m ready for a nibble.”

  The emotionally charged atmosphere seemed to have drained both of their appetites and most of the pizza remained in the pan when Ross and Abigail adjourned to the leather couch. The slick surface squeaked in protest under the man’s weight as he sat down.

  “You should oil your furniture,” Abigail suggested in an attempt to lighten the mood.

  A boyish grin. “Olivia always complained it was like making love on a saddle—” He stopped, flushed a dark red.

  Abigail could see from Ross’s reaction that Olivia was a sore subject and wished that her lightest remark didn’t seem to open up a painful chapter in the man’s personal life. Had Olivia been one of the women cluttering up Louella’s hallway?

  They sat in silence, separated by the invisible presence of a third person, until Ross stood up. “How about the Duke?”

  Her eager agreement came a shade too quickly and both of them relaxed as the sounds of Duke Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” filled the room and the conversational void. Ross sat down again and picked up the prints Abigail had obtained at the library.

  He tapped the photo of the town hall. “This whole episode doesn’t fit together. A creep assaults her in broad daylight in front of witnesses, threatens to kill her, she turns up dead that very night—and the coroner rules ‘death by misadventure’?”

  Abigail rubbed the soft leather under her hand and tried to concentrate on the music, to shut out images of Ross and Olivia making love on this couch. Was she a blond, a brunette? Ex-wife or ex-lover?

  “Did you get the sheriff’s report?” Away from the food odors of the kitchen, she was more aware of his cologne, a spicy, masculine scent. One arm draped across the back of the couch, he slouched back, very much at ease, a large hand inches from the back of her neck.