by Molly Macrae
By then I knew I didn’t want to knock. I also knew that if Phillip took much longer to show up, he wouldn’t have time to show or tell me what he was so excited about. I pulled out my phone and punched in his number. While I waited for him to pick up, I studied the cottage and pictured Geneva as I’d found her there—dismal, depressed, lonely. Where was she now? And where the heck was Phillip?
I thought about calling Nadine. But why? To tattle on Phillip? She would arrive before I needed to set up for the students, anyway. In the meantime, the morning was too beautiful to waste on sour thoughts or standing around. The pond, where Phillip had submerged the flax for retting, was a comfortable distance from the house. It lay beyond a wild growth of rhododendrons at the edge of the woods, but it wouldn’t take long to stroll over and see how it was coming along—or to smell it.
I’d taken part in a retting project only once. The growing flax had appeared so innocent—stalks waving like a field of wheat, delicate flowers making it a sea of blue. But cut the flax and bundle it, lay the bundles in water to rot for a few days, weighed down with wooden planks and rocks, and the sweet, flowery story changes. I was pretty sure the students would be mightily impressed, if not completely overwhelmed, when we touched on the flax-processing part of the program.
Turning my back on Phillip’s cottage proved easier than turning it on the nosy questions now pestering me. Especially the nosiest one—had that been Grace with him last night? Yow. And since when was I so easily scandalized? They’d been married, for heaven’s sake. Maybe Geneva’s prudishness was rubbing off on me. I followed the path into the gnarled rhododendrons—pushing past waxy leaves and twigs that caught at my sleeves like priggish fingers—annoyed at Phillip for being late and at myself for feeling so prissy. Maybe the smell of the rotting, retting flax would snap me out of it.
Or the sight of Phillip’s crumpled body beside the pond.
Chapter 6
The last time I’d smelled retting flax I’d been sure a sewer pipe had broken nearby—it was putrescence personified. And the smell rising off the pond now must have hit me with the same sledgehammer, but my other senses quit working as my field of vision contracted to the strip of ground occupied by Phillip’s body. I had no doubt it was a body I was staring at. He was staring, too. But not at anything he’d ever see again. There was no movement. No breath. I made myself go to him to feel for a pulse. In his wrist. Not his neck. His neck—something had attacked him—bitten his neck? A dog? What else would make puncture wounds like that? I had to stop looking at it.
Sound returned to my universe with a rustle and the snap of a twig in the woods on the other side of the pond. I jumped back from Phillip. Looked around wildly. Saw nothing, heard nothing more than the whisper of leaves. Squeezed my eyes shut and touched his wrist. Searched for a pulse. Felt nothing except how cold he was.
Then, between the sight of Phillip and the retting stench that finally hit me, I lost it. I stumbled to my feet and ran—panicked that whatever had killed Phillip was going to burst out of the rhododendrons and catch me, too. I gasped and gulped most of the way back to the visitors’ center, until I saw Nadine with a knot of women—my TGIF volunteers.
* * *
“She found him? Why am I not surprised?” That could only have been the voice of Deputy Clod Dunbar. Why was I not surprised?
I was sitting at a table in the education room of the visitors’ center, a wet washcloth pressed to my forehead and eyes, courtesy of Nadine Solberg. I didn’t take the washcloth from my eyes. Seeing Clod’s mulish face wouldn’t erase the image of Phillip’s dead body from my mind’s eye or improve this awful situation.
“Is she all right?” Clod asked.
I could have told him I was being self-indulgent and hiding from reality for a few minutes. He probably would have understood that. But I indulged myself further by pressing the washcloth more firmly to my forehead and letting Nadine or one of the TGIF volunteers answer. The problem with hiding behind a wet washcloth became obvious, though, when an annoying, familiar, but completely unexpected voice answered Clod.
“She’s just unlucky.”
“A regular Typhoid Mary,” added another, equally annoying voice.
I couldn’t help it; I groaned. When had Shirley and Mercy Spivey arrived? And why? The twins were, unfortunately, members of TGIF, but they hadn’t signed up to work with Hands on History. I groaned again.
“I was going to compare her to Jessica Fletcher,” the first twin’s voice said. “Except that Jessica doesn’t fall apart at the drop of a hat.”
“Or the drop of a body,” said the second twin.
At that point—and at practically no previous point in the existence of our acquaintance—I was glad to have Clod intervene.
“Ms. Spivey and Ms. Spivey, I need you to step away from Ms. Rutledge. I need to speak to her alone. I’d appreciate it if you ladies will move your meeting to the auditorium. I thank you for your cooperation.”
“Come along, ladies,” one twin said.
“Chop-chop,” said the other.
Chairs scraped and there was a buzz of whispers that reminded me of the bees in the lavender outside Phillip’s cottage. I pictured the Spiveys, pleased with their new leadership roles, ushering the other TGIF volunteers into the auditorium.
“Deputy Dunbar”—Nadine’s voice of reason cut in—“why don’t you use my office across the hall?”
“I didn’t want to presume,” Clod said.
“Not at all. It makes sense. Although I presume you will also want to speak to me?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Whenever you’re ready, then. In the meantime, we have our own work to do. There are people I need to contact. And the students. This is . . . we won’t let this be a public disaster. But someone should meet the students as they arrive.”
“I can do that.”
I let my washcloth shift so I could see who’d spoken—it was the man Nadine had brought out to the excavation, the new Homeplace board member. Les something?
“Thank you, Wes,” Nadine said. “Tell them we’re meeting in the auditorium and let me know when they’re all here, will you? I’ll have to make an announcement—” She stopped and no one else said anything. I shifted the washcloth again so I could see her. She stood, head bowed. But only for the space of a few breaths, and then she was back in control.
“Deputy,” she said, “I need information before I can make an announcement. Before I make decisions. Is this a situation where . . . what is the situation? Can I open the site for business today?”
“For the short term, until we have a better idea of what happened, no.”
“I deal better with specifics, Deputy. When can I open the site? This afternoon? Tomorrow?”
“As soon as we have answers, I’ll let you know.”
“Then let’s get going, shall we? Let me get my notes and laptop and then the office is all yours. Kath, how are you feeling?”
“She can’t help it if she looks peaky,” a Spivey said.
When had she popped back into the room?
“Redheads come by peaky naturally,” the second Spivey said, thus proving a timeworn Blue Plum adage: Wheresoever you find Mercy, Shirley, her sister, will not be far behind.
“Ms. Rutledge is feeling fine,” Clod said more loudly than necessary. “Unless she requires my assistance to walk across the hall . . . I didn’t think so.”
* * *
Nadine gathered her laptop and notes and gave my shoulder a squeeze in passing. Clod closed the office door behind her. I folded the washcloth—which I’d continued to hold against my brow to prove a point—and set it tidily on a coaster on the desk.
“This is so awful,” I said. “Awful all the way around. For Phillip, for Nadine and the site. And with everything she needs to do now . . . well, it was nice of her to inconvenience herself and turn her
office over to us.”
The office was comfortable enough. Not cramped, as so many of the offices were in small museums I’d been in over the years. Nadine had room for a couple of bookshelves, the desk, and two easy chairs with a square red-lacquered Parsons table between them. But any small space with Clod standing in it was crowded.
“Not us,” Clod said. He hadn’t moved from the door and seemed to be practicing his “I am in command” stance, with his hands on his hips and his jaw set. Or maybe he was standing ready in case I tried to make a break for it. “Me. She turned her office over to me so that I can do my job with the fewest interruptions.”
“You’re right. Sorry.” I went to look out the window behind the desk. It was a handsome desk. It looked like walnut, possibly an antique. “Oh.” I gulped. “That might be another reason she didn’t want to work in here.” The window looked toward the woods and the pond. And several more lawmen walking toward the rhododendrons. “What did that to him? That injury?”
“Come away from the window. There’s nothing to see.”
“But did you see? Did you see his neck?” My hand found its way to my own neck and stayed there protectively.
“Kath, come on over here and sit down.” He said that in his least cloddish tone, but then he blew it. “Unless you need your stage prop washcloth again.”
I bared my teeth in a snarl, but only because I was still looking out the window and had my back to him. Before turning around, I took my hand from my neck and wiped the snarl away. Nadine’s comfortable-looking desk chair caught my eye and tried to lure me into it and its power position. I patted the back of the chair and it swiveled seductively, but I made myself walk past it to one of the easy chairs Clod had asked me to sit in.
“Tell me how I can help, Deputy. I’ll answer your questions as best I can, but then I should go see how Nadine is doing and find out how she plans to handle the program.”
“What are you up to?”
“Sorry?”
He hadn’t moved from in front of the door. He still had his hands on his hips, but now he also had an assessing look on his face.
“You’re . . . different.”
He’d noticed. I was pleased. But not in that way. I was pleased because I was working very hard to be “different.” Clod and I shared the memory of that one speeding ticket. We’d also had one disastrous date. Ours was a history of butting heads. Although once it was my fist and his head. Actually, my fist and his nose. But now that Joe and I were dating, it seemed like a good idea to try to improve my interactions with Clod, starting with remaining calm and logical. And avoiding sarcasm. None of that should have been too hard. By nature, nurture, and professional training, I tended to be calm and logical
But sarcasm—that’s what I had to fight against. Sarcasm is the sign of a weak character, Granny used to tell me. She was right, and I believed her. The joy of a good sarcastic zing fizzled in a nanosecond, and that fizzle always left me feeling less than minuscule. Before meeting Clod, I’d gone whole weeks, if not months, without being sarcastic. But since I’d known him, even my thoughts about not being sarcastic were sarcastic.
“I’m trying to do my bit,” I said calmly.
“Huh.”
“I’m at your disposal, although I have to tell you that I went, I saw, and I left, so I don’t know how much help I’ll be.” And the longer he stood there suspecting my motives, the faster my character was heading downhill to its weakest point. I dug my fingernails into the palms of my hands, in hopes that the small pain would help me hold firm. “I didn’t see any tracks, if that helps. It’s been so dry lately, and there’re weeds and rocks and not much mud near the pond. But what’s your first question, Deputy?” Feeling civil. Holding my own in my skirmish against sarcasm.
“What is that god-awful smell at the pond?”
“Oh my gosh—the retting!” I told him what it was and gave him the gist of the process, and that was the first time I’d seen him show interest in, or be impressed by, anything to do with fibers or textiles. His hands even left his hips.
“Retting?” He held up his left index finger as if to keep that word pegged, then he held up his right index finger and asked with exaggerated enunciation, “Or rotting?”
“Both. It’s retting, but retting really is rotting, possibly etymologically as well as physically, although I’m not sure the etymology’s been proven.”
“And it makes linen?” He mused over that, nose wrinkled. “Makes a pukey smell, too. It’s so bad Shorty nearly lost his breakfast.”
“Poor Shorty.”
“Yeah. Heh. I could almost believe you needed that sham washcloth to help you recover from the stink. So why were you and Bell meeting this morning, and at what time? And why there? At least we know it wasn’t for reasons of a romantic nature.” He thought that was funny, too. While he laughed, I calmly thought about how it was only logical that I’d developed a low-grade headache to match his low-grade humor. “Did you see or hear anything before or after you found him?”
“Nothing unusual. A twig snap? That’s what it sounded like. Across the pond in the woods. It spooked me. Well, not spooked; more like startled.” Geneva took offense at the cavalier use of the word “spook.”
“Nadine said you were running when she saw you. Getting out of there was smart. That’s like leaving your house if you realize someone’s been in it. Good. You’re learning.”
Should I burst his bubble? Logic told me yes. “But first I looked to see what might have made the noise. Only a quick look. And I didn’t see anything. Then I checked for a pulse in his wrist . . . but I didn’t think he was . . . and he wasn’t. And then I ran. Do you think it might’ve been a dog? Or would a coyote do that? I remember reading about a bear down in the Smokies that killed a woman.”
“It wasn’t a bear,” he said with clear derision. “Go back to why you were meeting him there.”
“I wasn’t. He was supposed to meet me here, at the visitors’ center, to go over his research.”
“Is that anything like being invited to look over his etchings?”
Give me strength, I prayed, because the pressure of un-zinged sarcasm is building. But Granny would have been proud of me. Containment levels were maxing out, but a breach was not imminent. “He was researching local names,” I said. “We were going to compare notes. He didn’t show up. He didn’t answer his phone. I was killing . . .” I stumbled and recovered. “I decided to go see how the retting was coming along.”
“Given the stink, that was an odd choice.”
“Given my professional background and interests, it wasn’t.” Slipping, slipping. I dug my nails harder into my palms and pasted on a smile.
“You’re hiding something.”
“What? No I’m not.”
“In your hand, there. What’s in your fist?”
A knuckle sandwich. Oops. Calm, calm. I opened my hands and laid them palms up, as nonthreateningly and non-sarcastically as possible, in my lap. And then I canceled the pretend smile. It was surely screaming “sarcasm” by then. But putting all that hard work into my sarcasm-prevention program had distracted me. I hadn’t really been listening to the tenor of his questions. What was he getting at? Why did he care when or why I was meeting Phillip? Unless he was trying to pinpoint time of death . . . or didn’t think it was an animal attack. So why had I thought it was an animal? Because what else could have caused that many puncture wounds? Because what kind of human being could inflict that kind of damage on another human being? And with what? And from what distance? How close? Arm’s reach? Maybe I should have looked for defensive wounds . . .
“Two,” Clod said, holding up both index fingers again. “Two bodies in two days.”
I didn’t see where he was going with that. And he was exaggerating. “One of them is only an elbow so far.”
“Aha! So far.” He leveled his index fin
gers and stabbed them both at me. The stabbing fingers weren’t particularly threatening. He’d probably read an article in a law enforcement magazine about useful unnerving gestures, but I’d seen him do it before and it didn’t worry me. The slant of his eyebrows, though, made those fingers look extremely sarcastic, and that set my tit-for-tat reflex close to igniting.
“You can’t tell me you aren’t up to something,” he said. “So there’s nothing in your hands, but you are hiding something. I can see it in the way your eyes move when you’re thinking.”
Calm breaths. In and out. In and out. I made him wait while my sarcastic pressure came down. “Deputy Dunbar,” I said then, my voice even. With an effort. “Truthfully, I’m not hiding anything. But I’d venture to say that you’re hiding a lot.” Voice not so even there. I smoothed a wrinkle in my pants leg before continuing. “What happened to Phillip Bell?”
“We’re still in the information-gathering phase of the investigation.”
“No. Don’t hand me that.”
He crossed his arms over his chest. “We are still gathering information.”
“Hooey.”
His eyebrows rose. “Hooey?”
“It’s a perfectly good word, and I’m sure you know what it means.”
“I do. For instance, your Ms. Oh-so-cooperative act isn’t pulling the wool over my eyes. I saw what you were doing with that cold compress while you were recovering from your swoon—”
“I didn’t ‘swoon.’”
“Pardon me. While you were recovering from your near swoon. You couldn’t help yourself, and you let your stage prop droop a time or two so you could see what was going on.”
Our interaction was doing tremendous things for my character. So I told myself, as I bit the inside of my cheek and tried not to show I was in pain. To Clod I said, “And I probably looked silly.”
“Nosy. You looked nosy.”
“And we both know that I am, although ‘curious’ sounds more polite. So what’s your point?”
