Mother Nature

by Sarah Andrews

  Suzanne was sitting on her couch, sipping another cup of tea. “You forget something?” she asked dryly.

  “No, but this time we’re going to talk.”

  “And why is that?”

  “Because I finally understand why you don’t want to talk to me about Janet.”

  Suzanne arched one of her lovely eyebrows ever so slightly. “Oh?”

  “You don’t trust Janet’s father.”

  She shrugged. “And?”

  “We have that in common.”

  Suzanne thought about that a moment, then rose calmly from the couch and turned toward the kitchen. “Tea?”

  I nodded my head and followed her deeper into her domain.

  * * *

  STRONG HERB TEA on a disgruntled stomach is a strange experience. It wasn’t anything out of a package; Suzanne brewed it from a handful of twigs and dried flowers and berries that she pulled from half a dozen glass jars. She wouldn’t speak while she was preparing it, except to ask about my hand and to give me a towel to dry my hair. “Is it infected?” she asked casually, staring at the bandage.

  “No. Just happened.”

  Suzanne opened one more jar and dropped something that looked like dried moss into the pot, then excused herself to the bathroom while it steeped. I considered following her, to make sure she didn’t climb out a window, but instead waited in the kitchen, uncomfortably aware of this brew that smelled like damp things from the woods. When she returned and poured me a cup, I sniffed it suspiciously before I took my first sip. Which I found oddly refreshing. I sipped again. The decoction at one and the same time soothed and roused me, making me feel even more bold.

  Suzanne examined me with those big smoky-gray eyes and sipped from the teacup she had been holding when I arrived. She held her cup with both hands, elbows on the table coyly drawn close to her breasts. Steam rose in pale curls around her eyelashes.

  “Why did you tell me you didn’t know Janet?” I demanded.

  “Janet’s gone.”

  “I know that, damn it, that’s why I’m here.”

  “Don’t you like to let people go when they’re done being here?”

  This was the limit. I’d heard about this California New Age poppycock, and here it was, herb tea and all. “Sure. And sometimes it takes a little more than a ‘too bad’ to lay the dead to rest.”

  Suzanne mapped my face with her eyes. “So you’re taking her ghost for a last little ride.”

  I didn’t like the way she said that, kind of half-mocking, half-serious. Her steady gaze was becoming increasingly unnerving. “Listen, Suzanne, Janet was a friend of yours, and a sister geologist to me. I’m trying to find out who killed her. Let’s just stick to that, okay?”

  “Okay. So. What have we found out?”

  I shook my head. “No, that’s not how this is going to go. I’m not reporting to you. I don’t know you, and right now I barely even trust myself.”

  “That’s reasonable,” she purred.

  “So you just answer a few simple questions and I’ll get out of here.”

  “Lovely.”

  I began to feel the urge to look over my shoulder, like someone was watching me. “What was Janet working on at HRC just before she left?”

  Suzanne smiled beatifically. “I don’t know. Really.”

  “Come on!”

  “Come on, yourself. You must have learned this about Janet by now; she was tight-lipped at the best of times, and she took matters of honor very seriously. Even company proprietary interests were part of her code of honor, no matter how dishonorable her employers.”

  “What do you know of the dishonor of her employers?”

  Suzanne just smiled.

  “Now you come on,” I said. “You’re not going to come this far and stop, are you?”

  Suzanne put a hand to her breast in mock sincerity. “I? Stop? We are not on the same pathway, dearest. And we never were.”

  “Quit twisting my words! Listen, I don’t get this. You lived with the woman for two years. I’m told that you were close, that you beat drums together or something. Now she’s brutally murdered, and all you seem to have on your mind is getting her belongings out of the room so you can rent it to someone else. Excuse me if I’m missing something here, but that seems to lack a little in compassion.”

  Suzanne’s gray eyes took on the deep, predatory gleam of the mountain lion, that single-minded look of the creature hunting meat. Either this woman was insane, or I had hit a nerve that ran deeper than the grave. But she said nothing.

  As we continued to stare at each other, another voice broke the silence, making me jump: “You leave her be!”

  I spun around in my chair. A short, ugly woman stood in the doorway. Drop earrings thrashed beneath closely cropped hair. Her belly sagged out farther than her breasts, suggesting that she exercised her tongue and her jaws more than any other part of her body. Her skin had the look of cold oatmeal, and her eyes reminded me of halved hardboiled eggs set in tomato aspic. Her lips were drawn into a crazed pout, and her neck thrust forward far enough to draw her double chins taught. In a bleating, nasal voice, she declared: “Janet was doing the work of the Goddess. She has fought her good fight, and we are releasing her!”

  I grasped my chair, ready to spring if necessary. Was this one apt to get physical?

  Suzanne narrowed her eyes at the other woman in warning. “Liza, this is Em Hansen. How was your meditation?”

  Liza’s wild eyes flared. “Shitty. Like you said, there are too many unsettled vibrations in Janet’s room.”

  I wasn’t going to let Suzanne swerve the subject without a fight. “Liza, I’m trying to finish Janet’s work. Can you tell me anything about what she was doing?”

  “Janet loved the Goddess!”

  Suzanne cut across her words. “Janet had a thing for wetlands, Liza; she didn’t give a hoot for your religion.”

  Liza shot her neck forward at Suzanne. Heading off an argument that might distract them from what I wanted to talk about, I interjected, “Can you tell me about her wetlands work?”

  Liza looked blank.

  “Or anything she might have said about her employers?”

  “They were for sale!”

  “Can you give me a for instance?” I asked politely.

  “The list is endless.” She swept a hand dramatically through the air between us, her pestilent eyes wild with drama.

  I couldn’t imagine Janet confiding in a person like Liza when she wouldn’t confide in anyone else. “Did this ‘for sale’ stuff have anything to do with why Janet was fired?”

  Liza bristled. “Yes, they crucified her because Janet wouldn’t lie for the bastards!”

  “About what? The job she was doing?”

  Liza’s bombast faltered. Clearly she was not privy to certain details, but she blustered along anyway: “Yeah.”

  “And what do you know about the job?” I asked, letting my tone suggest that I didn’t quite believe her. I knew I wouldn’t have to goad her very hard; wackos like that take everything personally.

  Liza puffed her chest indignantly. “The thing was on a tight deadline.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because she’d been working through the weekend to get it done, and couldn’t help me with The Project. She had to have a draft of some report for Monday morning. All she’d tell me was that there was something in that draft that her boss would want out, but she was going to leave it in.”

  “She told you that?”

  Liza tilted her chin up in defiance. “She told Trudy.”

  And you wormed it out of Trudy, whoever she is. “So he fired her? For that? Why didn’t he take whatever it was out and remove her signature line?”

  Liza and Suzanne looked at me like I was speaking Greek.

  “I’ve looked at one of her older reports. It’s constructed like a letter with a long documentary text. The state requires registration on such documents. Janet wasn’t registered, but Rauch is. So it end
s with sincerely yours and her signature, her title, then Rauch’s under that. So I wonder why he didn’t just take her report and do what he pleased with it. You can do wonders with a computer,” I concluded dryly, thereby answering one of my own questions. That was why I hadn’t found her report on the computer. My mind skipped ahead, wobbling slightly in the effort, as I considered breaking back into the computer system at HRC to retrieve that file. But then, all I would find in that report would be what Rauch had left in, not what he had taken out. “Did Janet bring home a draft of that report?”

  Suzanne waved a hand casually. “If she did, the Sheriff’s detectives would have taken it when they went through her room.”

  My head was beginning to feel a little thick. “Do you have an inventory of what they took?”

  “No. They gave that to her mother.”

  “Her mother?”

  She shrugged. “Isn’t that who gave you Janet’s truck?”

  It was hard to keep the shock from showing on my face. “No, it was left for me at the airport. How can I reach Janet’s mother?”

  “The lady didn’t leave a number.”

  Liza blasted in on the conversation again. “Janet hated her parents. Hated them.”

  To Suzanne I said, “Why didn’t her mother take the rest of Janet’s possessions with her?”

  “She didn’t even come in. She just rang the buzzer and demanded the keys.”

  “Then why did she take the truck? Didn’t that mean she left another vehicle here?”

  “No.”

  The room began to seem a little far away, Suzanne’s voice more distant. “Speak,” I insisted, struggling to stay focused.

  Suzanne arched an eyebrow. “Someone dropped her off. I gave her the keys. She left.”

  “Some man? Who, Janet’s father?”

  “I’m sure I wouldn’t know him if I saw him.”

  “A vain old fart with wavy hair?”

  “No.”

  “Then who? Come on, Suzanne,” I whined, “what aren’t you telling me?”

  Liza bellowed: “Hey! You back off my friend!”

  Suzanne turned toward Liza, a well-oiled gun turret shifting its aim, and fixed a glare on her. Liza evaporated from the doorway. Turning back to me, Suzanne said, “Nothing. It was the day after they found Janet. Janet’s mother came by only to get the truck after identifying her body. The Sheriff’s deputy had found the next-of-kin information when they searched Janet’s things and called her. That much I know. You want speculation? I rather think she didn’t want to ride back home with the man who was driving the car she arrived in.”

  “Did she tell you his name?”

  “Burble; something like that.”

  I was beginning to feel tired, even lethargic. “Murbles,” I said doggedly. Murbles with the long fingers, who seemed bent on filtering his boss’s communication with his hired detective. Murbles, slipping in and out of the county like a mist …

  “Yes.”

  So the inestimable Curt Murbles had driven Janet’s mother to Santa Rosa to identify Janet’s body, and had pissed her off so thoroughly that the woman wouldn’t ride a mile farther with him. That argued well for her character. “Where does Janet’s mother live?” I asked, beginning to wonder how much time she spent with her famous husband.

  “San Francisco?”

  I set Suzanne’s strange brew down. “Do you know the Karshes?” I asked, trying to be thorough. My head felt like wool. I wanted to leave.

  Suzanne set her cup down abruptly. “Stay away from Mrs. Karsh,” she said, her face hard. To herself more than to me, she muttered, “I told Janet that, but would she listen to me? No.”

  At last Suzanne was showing some passion. “Mrs. Karsh seems like a nice person,” I taunted.

  “Then you met the tip of the iceberg.”

  “What aren’t you saying now?”

  She stared out the window, as if at something far away.

  I was getting tired of Suzanne Cousins. I was tired of her attitude, tired of her selective interest in reality, and very tired of her tea. “What did you put in this brew?” I demanded.

  “A little chamomile. You seemed tense.”

  “And what else?”

  Suzanne grinned, her eyes narrowing like a cat who’s getting rubbed just right. “Oh, this and that.”

  “A little eye of newt to chase away the ghosts?” Something was wrong. My tongue was too loose. I needed to get out of there. I stood up.

  Suzanne stood up, too. “I think it would take a little more than herbs to help you with your problem, dear.” She advanced on me, smiling like the cat who is about to catch the canary.

  I backed toward the door. “I’ll stick with plain water, if you don’t mind.”

  “Fine, whatever works for you.”

  “You think of anything else important, you just give me a call, okay?”

  “Sure,” she purred, and slammed the door behind me.

  22

  It took me two hours parked near a nice, safe supermarket to sleep off that tea. When I awoke, I stumbled out of the truck to the phone booth under the supermarket portico and called information hoping to talk to Janet’s mother if her father couldn’t be bothered, but found no listing for a George Harwood Pinchon in San Francisco. In case Suzanne’s guess had been wrong, I also tried Sacramento, the state capital, but had no luck there, either.

  I steered the truck down a side street in Miwok Mills, to the home of Timothy “Duke” Swege, where I found Duke’s granny, but no Duke. She came out on the front porch of her petite brand-spanking-new town house and chirpingly announced that “Timmy” was out riding his bicycle. Granny Swege was a shrewd little tub of a woman, with tiny eyes like hard little beetles. The tight, tidy waves in her apricot-colored hair gave her a misleading cuteness. “What happened to your hand?” she inquired.

  “My hand?” I lifted it and stared at the bandage as if it had only just materialized. “Oh, just a little scrape.”

  “Hah.”

  “Timmy be back soon?”

  “He promised to be back by five so he could clean up and take me to the Christmas Spaghetti Feed.” She looked at her watch. It was three forty-five.

  “Oh, the Spaghetti Feed at the firehouse,” I said. “I hear that’s quite an affair.”

  Granny cocked her head sideways, a gesture that brought to mind a mountain chickadee that had once watched me from a nearby perch as I sat eating my lunch in Yellowstone. Suzanne’s tea was still having its way with me: as I stood there on that tidy little front porch in California, the memory of the chickadee set off a cascade of associations, one of which was inevitably Frank, and it was some moments before I began to make sense of the words that were coming out of Granny Swege’s mouth. “… all my life, that’s seventy-two years, and the Feed has been going on only since the Coulter boy took over as fire chief, which was, let’s see, back in sixty-eight, so that’s…”

  I did the math for her. “Almost thirty years.”

  “Exactly. Of course, they just use the money to buy beer, but I figure our boys can have a drink now and then if they want to.”

  Bless her heart, Granny Swege was a self-starting gossip! I fell quickly into the small-town cadence. “I reckon.”

  “Of course, that Ted Coulter was a smart boy. Too bad he had that mishap with the tractor.”

  “Yes…”

  “Left three kids, and his wife pregnant with a fourth. Tchh.” Tragic shaking of head.

  I shook my head, too. “The best and the brightest.”

  “Tchh.”

  “Like the Karsh boy,” I lured.

  Granny’s eyes brightened. “Oh, and he was a bit odd to begin with, don’t you know.”

  “Really! What was he like?”

  “Oh, always an uncoordinated child. His mother sheltered him, so he never quite developed, you see.” Knowing shake of head.

  “And so when that other kid hit him on the slide at the playground…”

  Hand to mouth, r
itually aghast at the memory. “A terrible thing. Even starting out peculiar, he could have become someone, coining from his family, but now you never see him.”

  “Never comes to town?” I asked hopefully.

  “Like he’s buried out there on that ranch.”

  “It must have been awful for the child who hit him.”

  “Oh, Dexie was in torment, he was so sorry. Everybody blamed him, poor child, but I didn’t. I told him, ‘Tom Dexter, he probably saw you coming and just didn’t move hisself out of your way. He never was quite normal, sticking to his ma like that.’”

  “Dexter, you say?”

  “Yes, you know, the one that joined the Sheriff’s Department. Like I say, he felt responsible, always did. Wanted to pay his debt to humanity.” Granny pursed her dry old lips, shook her head again, and added, as an aside, one knowing woman to another, “Kind of a Jesus Christ complex.”

  I almost dropped my teeth. “Nice guy, though, that Tom Dexter. Big guy, still fit for his age,” I said, double-checking.

  Granny fixed those lively little eyes on me. “Noticed, did ya?”

  Moving right along, now … “Ah, sure. But I suppose the whole Karsh family suffered, having a brain-damaged son.”

  “Oooh, yes. Hmm-hmm.” Knowing nods aplenty.

  “And then the daughter…”

  “Sonja, yes. Wasn’t she a spirited girl, though. Bright as a button. It was the personality, not the looks, that always drew attention.”

  “Something like me?” I joked.

  Granny Swege laid her head back and took a squint at me. “Yes, I’d say so: kind of average, but game for a hard day’s work or a good gallop.”

  Swallowing my pride, I said, “Rode, did she?”

  “Uh-hmm. A real horsey girl. The apple of her daddy’s eye. And her granddaddy.”

  “But she ran off?”

  “Thankless child.”

  I lowered my own lids, knowingly, nodding ever so slightly. “But no one’s ever heard from her.”

  “Makes ya wonder, doesn’t it? Course, they say she went off into the drug culture down in the city, but that’s what they said about every kid that slipped the traces back in the seventies.”