Death in the Cards

by Sharon Short

  Most mornings, I notice it, that moment of “ahhh” when I first come in through the back door to my storage room/office, but I also take it for granted.

  Not so, the morning after Owen and I discovered Ginny Proffitt’s body in the back corner of the corn maze. I turned the key to my laundromat’s back entrance, stepped in, shut the door behind me, then leaned against it and closed my eyes. I didn’t even bother to snap on the light just yet. I breathed in slowly. Ahhh.

  The smell of clean, fresh laundry. The soapy smell of the small boxes of laundry detergent I keep on hand to sell to customers (at only a small markup) mingling with the scent of fabric softener sheets.

  You know, smell is the most underrated of all the senses. But it’s a very personal thing, even though it’s hard to describe. How do you describe the smell of green tomato relish as it’s being cooked and canned? I’m not sure. But just the phrase “green tomato relish” brings back the memory of Aunt Clara and her determination to make sure Guy would always be provided for.

  How do you describe the smell of fabric softener sheets? Even the marketing writers aren’t sure. They just put “clean laundry fresh” on the box. But still, the scent means a lot of things to me: comfort. Purity. All’s in order and right with the world.

  Some people have that reaction to chocolate chip cookies or fresh bread—some homey memory of coming home from a bad day at school to the comfort of that scent. Me, I remember many a day of trudging home from school, feeling down after John Worthy—now the chief of police—and his pals teased me for being Nosey Josie. I’d stop by the laundromat on the way home, to help Uncle Horace. And I’d step in and smell that clean, soapy, laundry scent, and somehow, I’d know that things would be okay.

  And that’s how it felt as I slowly breathed in the air of my laundromat the morning after the discovery of poor Ginny Proffitt’s murdered body.

  After a few minutes, I opened my eyes and snapped on the light. I shrugged off my jacket and hooked it on the coatrack that had always been back there. For a moment, I felt a pang, wishing I could see my aunt and uncle’s coats—both tweed, threadbare, the only coats I remember them having—hanging side by side on that rack.

  I shook my head to clear it. I’d taken the day off the previous day, I reminded myself, and no doubt I had orders to catch up on. Plus the day would be busy. Not only was it Saturday, but we’d suffered a long dry spell, a drought, really. That—and a sudden unseasonable cold spell with temperatures earlier in the week plunging below freezing—had made for more vibrant autumn colors, but it had also meant that the water tables were low. We were fine in Paradise proper, but the folks who relied on well water out on farms would be coming in to town to do their laundry, as they’d want to preserve their water for cooking, livestock, and bathing.

  I sat down at my desk to sift through the previous day’s mail, but my mind immediately started drifting back to the night before, replaying images.

  The most pleasant ones were from spending the night with Owen. We went by my apartment, above the laundromat, and I picked up a change of clothes. I knocked on the door of the LeFevers to tell them the news about Ginny Proffitt, but they weren’t home, which didn’t surprise me. The psychic fair that night was running until 10:00 P.M. and it was about 10:45 P.M., but I reckoned they were still at the Red Horse, attending to details for the next day of the fair.

  I wondered again what had drawn Ginny away from the fair, and how the LeFevers had reacted when they realized their star psychic wasn’t there . . . or had Ginny been there part of the evening, then slipped out?

  I drove my car over to Owen’s, following him, since I knew I’d want to be back at the laundromat early, well before he’d want to be up and about.

  We showered together after we got to Owen’s place, both feeling the need for cleaning after what we’d witnessed at the corn maze. After that, still damp, we snuggled in his bed . . . and kissed . . . and then some . . . and after that, he dozed off.

  For a long while, I just snuggled awake against Owen’s chest, finding comfort in the slow, even rhythm of his breathing, in the clean scent of the Zest soap we’d used on each other. Finally, I fell into a long sleep that was restless but that at least wasn’t interrupted by any visits from Mrs. Oglevee.

  In the morning, I woke up early—around 5:30 A.M.—and dressed quietly. I drove into town and went to Sandy’s Restaurant for biscuits and sausage gravy with a side of sausage and hash browns and coffee—lots of coffee. I hoped the caffeine would help me shake off my tiredness.

  I ate by myself at my usual spot—third stool from the right at the counter—and took in the talk buzzing in the booths behind me. There weren’t too many people at Sandy’s at that hour—two guards on their way to work at the state penitentiary over by Masonville, an elderly couple, the Greatharte sisters—but they were all talking about Ginny Proffitt’s murder. The Greatharte sisters were saying how they were going to the psychic fair that day and Joe (one of the guards) was admonishing them that his pastor, Dru Purcell, had preached against all such foretelling the previous Sunday.

  Henry, the other guard, allowed as how his mama had practiced Bible-cracking, which is closing your eyes to ask a question of God, then letting the Bible fall open where it may, then poking your finger onto a page, and taking whichever verse your finger lands on as God’s answer. He didn’t see all that much difference between Bible-cracking and, say, going to a crystal ball gazer, and if it was good enough for his mama, it was good enough for him, a sentiment that seemed to comfort Heffie and Bessie Greatharte.

  Bless you, Henry, I thought, as he and Joe left, debating the Godliness of Bible-cracking versus other means of intercessory communication with the good Lord.

  When Sandy came over to hot up my coffee, I put down an extra-large tip of three bucks and said to her, “I was at the Serpent Mound yesterday.”

  “Uh huh,” she said, in her voice made baritone by years of smoking. Today she was wearing her favorite T-shirt, a black one with the words, WHO ASKED YOU? in bright yellow.

  Sandy’s customers come for the good home cooking.

  Well, she hadn’t asked me, but I told her anyhow. “Saw Ginny Proffitt there. With Dru Purcell. Hugging.”

  Sandy lifted her eyebrows and overflowed my cup. I grinned at her. She hurried away, not bothering to clean up the spill, scratching her teased-up hairdo with the eraser end of the pencil she usually keeps tucked behind her ear.

  I pulled a wad of paper napkins from the dispenser, sopped up the spill, and felt a little song spring forth in my heart as I sipped my coffee and watched Sandy talking animatedly with Bea, the morning cook.

  They turned and stared at me. I nodded, gave a little finger wave, thought “what the hell,” and left another buck on the counter.

  Then I went to my laundromat, where I took in the comforting scent and sat at my desk and stared at my mail without really seeing it. I told myself I really ought to check the bin, tucked in a corner behind the front counter, for any orders that might have been dropped off the previous day.

  But I was distracted from that task by a knock on my back door. I got up, went to the door, opened it, and was surprised to see Hugh Crowley standing there.

  He looked weary, the heavy lines in his face more deeply grooved than ever.

  Rebecca and Maureen and Ricky Crowley’s problems were getting all the attention now, but the truth was that Hugh’s life hadn’t been any easier. Hard work and a hard life had etched his face, with lines and a settled look of resignation and soft sadness in his eyes.

  Hugh had dropped out of school forty years before, when he was just thirteen, to help his father run the farm. He’d never done well in school, and saw himself as the “dumb” one compared to his little brother Ed, three years younger than him. When Mrs. Crowley took ill, Hugh stayed home to help with the farm and to be sure his little brother could stay in school, although Ed had his share of chores on the farm.

  It hadn’t been easy for Ed, either,
I reckoned. He’d had school, football, and farm duties to juggle, and no doubt a ration of guilt over big brother Hugh dropping out to make sure Ed could pursue his dreams.

  Then as soon as Ed graduated from high school in the early 1970s, he joined the military, swearing he wanted nothing to do with the farm ever again. By then, Hugh had married and had one son. Hugh and his wife, Lily, and Hugh Sr. managed the farm just fine for quite a few years. Hugh’s son Sam and his bride Jenny moved in with Hugh and Lily. Sam and Jenny loved the farm life, and each other, and their son, Matt.

  But driving home from Gatlinburg, Tennessee, where they had celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary, Sam and Jenny were in a car wreck that took their lives. Hugh raised Matt as best he could, while tending to Lily, who had breast cancer. Lily died six months after the wreck. Hugh’s father, who by then was in his nineties, died a few months after that.

  After that, Ed didn’t re-up for the military. He changed his mind about the farm, and came home with Rebecca and their only child, Maureen. Hugh focused on Matt and when Matt graduated from high school and wanted to go away to Ohio State University to study agricultural science, the whole family was proud.

  When Matt called home to say he’d switched his major to fine arts and wanted to be a photographer, Ed was furious, but Hugh gave him his blessing.

  Last year, Matt moved to Seattle.

  A lot of this—the tragedy of the wreck, Lily’s breast cancer—I knew about because everyone in town knew.

  And most people in town knew about Matt moving to Seattle to pursue his dream of being a photographer, although they mostly shook their head and clicked their tongues over the impracticality of such a goal, and in such a far-off place, too.

  I knew about the discord Matt’s decision had caused because Hugh had told me.

  And I knew something else that no one outside of Hugh’s family knew.

  Hugh was illiterate.

  He’d struggled with reading all through school. Ed had helped his big brother as much as he could, but after Hugh dropped out, he lost much of what he’d learned. Then Lily had covered for her husband. After she passed on, and Ed and Rebecca returned, Ed again helped Hugh.

  But after Matt left, Ed was so furious at him for abandoning his family, as he saw it . . . even though Matt had made the same choice that Ed had made years ago . . . Ed refused to read any of the letters that Matt sent home to Hugh.

  About six months ago, Hugh had a confidential talk with my good friend Winnie Porter, who is the Mason County Library bookmobile librarian and a volunteer tutor and coordinator for the county’s literacy tutoring program. I’d just completed my tutor training and so Winnie had assigned me as Hugh’s tutor. And Hugh had been a diligent student, even after Ed died from a heart attack two months before and the burden of the farm fell, again, to Hugh.

  Normally, we met at my laundromat, in my combo storage room/office, on Sunday afternoons when my laundromat’s closed. Our tutoring was scheduled for after church but before I went for my weekly visit to see Guy. I’d given Hugh a key to my office so he could let himself in if I was running late.

  So I was surprised to see Hugh at the back door of my laundromat on a Saturday morning, especially after all that’d happened out at the corn maze the previous night.

  “Mornin’, Josie,” Hugh said. He sounded tired already. “I just came by to give you this.” He held his hand out to me. In his palm was my spare back door key.

  I didn’t take the key. “Hugh, why? You want to meet somewhere else?”

  Hugh shook his head. “No, Josie. I can’t meet any more at all. Rebecca needs me. All her time’s tied up with Maureen and Ricky, and after what happened last night, she can barely think. I’ve got to focus on keeping the farm going. No time for book learning.” He smiled thinly. “Never would’ve thought way back when I was in school I’d be sad to say that.”

  He pushed his hand toward me, urging me with the gesture to take the key. But I wasn’t about to let Hugh give up on himself quite that easily. I stuffed my hands in my jeans pockets.

  “Now, Mr. Crowley, let’s talk about this.”

  I stepped back. Hugh didn’t move.

  “I’ll make a fresh pot of coffee. Have to get it ready for the customers, anyway.” I always have a fresh pot of coffee on a little table at the front of my laundromat.

  Hugh glared at me.

  I lifted my eyebrows.

  He sighed, put the key back in his pocket, stepped in, muttering, “Women. Ornerier than mules.”

  I turned my face to hide my smile, then went and made the coffee.

  A little bit later, we sipped coffee from styrofoam cups, both of us sitting behind my desk, just like we do during tutoring. I gave him the desk chair—it’s sturdier and easier on his back, which I know gives him trouble every now and again—while I sat in a plastic chair from my laundromat. It’d taken me a month to convince him to let me do him this favor. I’d finally won out by standing through an entire lesson. He’d called me ornery then, too, but he’s taken the wooden chair without comment ever since.

  “I don’t like talking outside the family, but truth is Rebecca’s fit to be tied about what happened to that poor psychic woman last night. Says no one will come to the corn maze now and we won’t be able to raise money for Ricky’s care,” Hugh said.

  I didn’t think that was the case. In fact, I thought, more people might give in to the gruesome side of their human nature and go on out to the Crowley corn maze just to gawk. But Hugh was usually a man of few words, carefully chosen, so I thought it best not to interrupt him on the rare occasion that he felt like talking.

  “Rebecca says we ought to shut the whole corn maze down, even though Chief Worthy said we could still let people in, except the section the police have taped off. I designed the maze in nine equal sections, so I can reroute around the closed section.” Hugh took a sip of coffee. The cup trembled in his hand. “With her worrying over Maureen and Ricky or driving down to the hospital in Cincinnati, I can see the farm’s going to need all the attention I can give it. Besides redoing the corn maze, I need to work on the books and plan for next spring. Lots of repairs needed on the barn and tractors. Now’s the time to do it with harvest over, before the cold really sets in.

  “But I can’t neglect any of that for my studying for our sessions.” Hugh took another sip of coffee, looked at me. He was old enough to be my daddy, but there was something about his sad eyes that rendered his deeply lined face boylike, and made me want to hug him. Such a thing would have scared him, though, so I stayed put. “I don’t want to let you down, Josie.”

  “Mr. Crowley, you don’t need to worry about letting me down. You’ve given your whole life to other people and to your family’s farm. Maybe you oughta think about not letting yourself down.”

  Hugh shook his head slowly. He put his cup on my desk, reached in his pocket and pulled out the key again, holding it out to me. “That’s not my way,” he said.

  I put my own cup down and crossed my arms. “Fine. Don’t come here anymore then.” Hugh looked a little surprised, and even a little hurt. The tutoring meant more to him than he would admit. “I’ll come out to your place Sunday afternoon. That way you’ll be available to your family in case there’s an emergency.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not just the meeting times, Josie, it’s studying in between—”

  “And we’ll just meet every other week,” I broke in. Aunt Clara and Uncle Horace had taught me better than to interrupt or sass my elders. But they’d also taught me never to give up on a person. “That way you can take a little longer to get each lesson down. Of course, you can call me any time you need help or have a question.”

  “But—”

  I held up a hand. “This way, we won’t lose what you’ve achieved, but you won’t feel under so much pressure and you can still be there for your family.”

  Hugh stared at me for a long moment, and I held his gaze, stubbornly keeping my arms crossed. No way was I t
aking back that key.

  At last he sighed, and shook his head again. “Ornery woman,” he muttered.

  I smiled and finally uncrossed my arms. I took his rough, calloused, thick hand in mine and closed his hand over the key. “Keep it,” I said, “for when you’re ready to go back to once a week tutoring.”

  Hugh stood up, put the key back in his pocket. “Now about tomorrow. Maybe week after next would be better—”

  “I’ll be there at 2:00 P.M.,” I said.

  “But—”

  I stood up. “You missed last Sunday ’cause of finishing up the corn maze. Tomorrow. 2:00 P.M.”

  Hugh went out the back door muttering “ornery” under his breath.

  I grinned to myself and went out into the laundromat and opened up the front doors.

  8

  Just as I’d predicted—from common sense, no crystal ball or tarot cards needed—my laundromat was even busier than usual for a Saturday morning, what with the water tables low outside of town.

  Again, I meant to check the bin in the corner behind the front counter for orders from the previous day, but I got too busy, too fast.

  I showed Gurdy McGuire my trick for making throw rugs look like new—adding a half-cup or so of table salt to the wash water.

  And I showed Matt Peterman how to get the Silly Putty out of his daughter’s frilly go-to-church dress—pouring rubbing alcohol over the putty, rubbing, and repeating until the Silly Putty disintegrates or can be pulled right off.

  Of course, just as Sandy’s Restaurant had been buzzing with talk of Ginny Proffitt’s death, my laundromat was, too. Most of it was the same, contemplation about which of the other psychics had killed Ginny.

  In between helping my customers and catching up on the mail and bills in my back storeroom, I considered the psychics who’d known Ginny. Many of them had had motives, I realized, thinking back on the previous afternoon’s trip to Serpent Mound. There was Karen Smith, who wanted Ginny to stop stealing “child prodigy” Skylar’s limelight. Max Whitstone, Ginny’s ex-boyfriend. Could he be jealous? Even dear old Samantha Mulligan, the pet psychic, who’d lost money on a business deal and who’d gotten a message of vengeance from Xavier the squirrel.