My comment struck Marcia Rideout as funny. As I watched her laugh, I saw she had more wrinkles than I’d figured, and I upped her age by maybe seven years. But from her body you sure couldn’t tell it. “I didn’t used to have such a problem with being lonely,” Marcia said slowly, her amusement over. “We used to have people renting this apartment.” She waved in the direction of the garage with its little room on top. “One time it was a high school teacher, I liked her. Then she got another job and moved. Then it was Ben Greer, that jerk that works at the gro- cery chopping meat—you know him?”
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“Yeah. He is a jerk.”
“So I was glad when he moved. Then we had a housepainter, Mark Kaplan . . .” She seemed to be drifting off, and I thought her eyes closed behind the dark glasses.
“What happened to him?” I asked politely. “Oh. He was the only one who ever left in the night without paying the rent.”
“Gosh. Just skipped out? Bag and baggage?” Maybe another candidate for the skull?
“Yep. Well, he took some of his stuff. He never came back for the rest. You sure you don’t want a drink? I have some real tea, you know.” Unexpectedly, Marcia smiled, and I smiled back. “No, thanks. You were saying about your tenant?” “He ran out. And we haven’t had anyone since. Torrance just doesn’t want to fool with it. The past couple of years, he’s gotten like that. I tell him he must be middle-aged. He and Jane and their big fight over that tree!”
I followed Marcia’s pointing red-tipped finger. There was a tree just about midway between the houses. It had a curiously lopsided appearance, viewed from the Rideouts’ deck.
“It’s just about straddling the property line,” Mar- cia said. She had a slow, deep voice, very attractive. ~ 87 ~
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“You won’t believe, if you’ve got any sense, that peo- ple could fight about a tree.”
“People can fight about anything. I’ve been manag- ing some apartments, and the tizzy people get into if someone uses their parking space!”
“Really, I can believe it. Well, as you can see, the tree is a little closer to Jane’s house . . . your house.” Marcia took another sip from her drink. “But Tor- rance didn’t like those leaves, he got sick of raking them. So he talked to Jane about taking the tree down. It wasn’t shading either house, really. Well, Jane had a fit. She really got hot. So Torrance just cut the branches that were over our property line. Ooo, Jane stomped over here the next day, and she said, ‘Now, Torrance Rideout, that was petty. I have a bone to pick with you.’ I wonder what the origin of that saying is? You happen to know?”
I shook my head, fascinated with the little story and Marcia’s digression.
“There wasn’t any putting the branches back, they were cut to hell,” said Marcia flatly, her southern ac- cent roughening. “And somehow Torrance got Jane calmed down. But things never were the same after that, between Torrance and Jane. But Jane and I still spoke, and we were on the board of the orphans’ home together. I liked her.”
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I had a hard time picturing Jane that angry. Jane had been a pleasant person, even sweet occasionally, always polite; but she was also extremely conscious of per- sonal property, rather like my mother. Jane didn’t have or want much in the way of things, but what she had was hers absolutely, not to be touched by other hands without proper permission being asked and granted. I saw from Marcia’s little story how far that sense of property went. I was learning a lot about Jane now that it was too late. I hadn’t known she’d been on the board of the orphans’ home, actually and less bluntly named Mortimer House.
“Well,” Marcia continued slowly, “at least the past couple of years they’d been getting along fine, Jane and Torrance . . . she forgave him, I guess. I’m sleepy now.” “I’m sorry you had the trouble with Jane,” I said, feeling that somehow I should apologize for my bene- factress. “She was always such an intelligent, interest- ing person.” I stood to leave; Marcia’s eyes were closed behind her sunglasses, I thought.
“Shoot, the fight she had with Torrance was nothin’, you should have heard her and Carey go to it.” “When was that?” I asked, trying to sound indif- ferent.
But Marcia Rideout was asleep, her hand still wrapped around her drink.
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I trudged back to my task, sweating in the sun, worried about Marcia burning since she’d fallen asleep on the lounge. But she’d been slathered with oil. I made a mental note to look out the back from time to time to see if she was still there. It was hard for me to picture Jane being furious with anyone and marching over to tell him about it. Of course, I’d never owned property. Maybe I would be the same way now. Neighbors could get very upset over things uninvolved people would laugh about. I remembered my mother, a cool and elegant Lauren Bacall type, telling me she was going to buy a rifle and shoot her neighbor’s dog if it woke her up with its barking again. She had gone to the police instead and gotten a court order against the dog’s owner af- ter the police chief, an old friend, had come to her house and sat in the dark listening to the dog yapping one night. The dog’s owner hadn’t spoken to Mother since, and in fact had been transferred to another city, without the slightest sign of their mutual disgust slackening.
I wondered what Jane had fought with Carey about. It was hard to see how this could relate to my immediate problem, the skull; it sure wasn’t the skull of Carey Osland or Torrance Rideout. I couldn’t imagine Jane killing the Rideouts’ tenant, Mark ~ 90 ~
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whatever-his-name-was, but at least I had the name of another person who might be The Skull. Back in my house once again—I was practicing saying “my house”—I began to search for Jane’s pa- pers. Everyone has some cache of canceled checks, old receipts, car papers, and tax stuff. I found Jane’s in the guest bedroom, sorted into floral-patterned cardboard boxes by year. Jane kept everything, and she kept all those papers for seven years, I discovered. I sighed, swore, and opened the first box. ~ 91 ~
Chapter Five
A
Iplugged in Jane’s television and listened to the news with one ear while I went through Jane’s papers. Apparently all the papers to do with the car had already been handed over to Parnell Engle, for there were no old inspection receipts or anything like that. It would have helped if Jane had kept all these papers in some kind of category, I told myself grumpily, try- ing not to think of my own jumble of papers in shoe boxes in my closet.
I’d started with the earliest box, dated seven years ago. Jane had kept receipts that surely could be thrown away now: dresses she’d bought, visits by the bug-spray man, the purchase of a telephone. I began sorting as I looked, the pile of definite discards getting higher and higher.
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There’s a certain pleasure in throwing things away. I was concentrating contentedly, so it took me awhile to realize I was hearing some kind of sound from out- side. Someone seemed to be doing something to the screen door in the kitchen. I sat hunched on the living room floor, listening with every molecule. I reached over and switched off the television. Gradually I re- laxed. Whatever was being done, it wasn’t being done surreptitiously. Whatever the sound was, it escalated. I stiffened my spine and went to investigate. I opened the wooden door cautiously, just as the noise repeated. Hanging spread-eagled on the screen door was a very large, very fat orange cat. This seemed to explain the funny snags I’d noticed on the screen when I went in the backyard earlier.
“Madeleine?” I said in amazement.
The cat gave a dismal yowl and dropped from the screen to the top step. Unthinkingly, I opened the door, and Madeleine was in in a flash.
“You wouldn’t think a cat so fat could move so fast,” I said.
Madeleine was busy stalking through her house, sniffing and rubbing her side against the door frames. To
say I was in a snit would be putting it mildly. This cat was now Parnell and Leah’s. Jane knew I was not partial to pets, not at all. My mother had never let ~ 93 ~
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me have one, and gradually her convictions about pet hygiene and inconvenience had influenced me. Now I would have to call Parnell, talk with him again, either take the cat to him or get him to come get the cat . . . she would probably scratch me if I tried to put her in my car . . . another complication in my life. I sank into one of the kitchen chairs and rested my head on my hands dismally.
Madeleine completed her house tour and came and sat in front of me, her front paws neatly covered by her plumy tail. She looked up at me expectantly. Her eyes were round and gold and had a kind of stare that reminded me of Arthur Smith’s. That stare said, “I am the toughest and the baddest, don’t mess with me.” I found myself giving a halfhearted chuckle at Madeleine’s machisma. Suddenly she crouched, and in one fluid movement shifted her bulk from the floor to the table—where Jane ate! I thought, horrified. She could stare at me more effectively there. Grow- ing impatient at my stupidity, Madeleine butted her golden head against my hand. I patted her uncer- tainly. She still seemed to be waiting for something. I tried to picture Jane with the cat, and I seemed to re- call she’d scratched the animal behind the ears. I tried that. A deep rumble percolated somewhere in Madeleine’s insides. The cat’s eyes half-closed with ~ 94 ~
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pleasure. Encouraged by this response, I kept scratch- ing her gently behind the ears, then switched to the area under her chin. This, too, was popular. I grew tired of this after a while and stopped. Madeleine stretched, yawned, and jumped heavily down from the table. She walked over to one of the cabinets and sat in front of it, casting a significant look over her shoulder at me. Fool that I am, it took me a few minutes to get the message. Madeleine gave a soprano yowl. I opened the bottom cabinet, and saw only the pots and pans I’d reloaded the day before. Madeleine kept her stare steady. She seemed to feel I was a slow learner. I looked in the cabinets above the counter and found some canned cat food. I looked down at Madeleine and said brightly, “This what you wanted?” She yowled again and began to pace back and forth, her eyes never leaving the black and green can. I hunted down the electric can opener, plugged it in, and used it. With a flourish, I set the can down on the floor. After a moment’s dubious pause—she clearly wasn’t used to eating from a can—Madeleine dived in. After a little more searching, I filled a plastic bowl with water and put it down by the can. This, too, met with the cat’s approval.
I went to the phone to call Parnell, my feet drag- ging reluctantly. But of course I hadn’t had the phone ~ 95 ~
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hooked up. I reminded myself again I’d have to do something about that, and looked at the cat, now grooming herself with great concentration. “What am I going to do with you?” I muttered. I decided I’d leave her here for the night and call Parnell from my place. He could come get her in the morning. Some- how I hated to put her outside; she was an inside cat for the most part, I seemed to remember Jane telling me . . . though frankly I’d often tuned out when Jane chatted about the cat. Pet owners could be such bores. Madeleine would need a litter box; Jane had had one tucked away beside the refrigerator. It wasn’t there now. Maybe it had been taken to the vet’s where Madeleine had been boarded during Jane’s illness. It was probably sitting uselessly at the Engles’ house now.
I poked around in the trash left in Jane’s room from my cleaning out the closet. Sure enough, there was a box of the appropriate size and shape. I put it in the corner by the refrigerator in the kitchen, and as Madeleine watched with keen attention I opened cab- inets until I found a half-full bag of cat litter. I felt rather proud of myself at handling the little problem the cat presented so quickly; though, when I considered, it seemed Madeleine had done all the han- dling. She had gotten back to her old home, gained ~ 96 ~
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entrance, been fed and watered, and had a toilet pro- vided her, and now she jumped up on Jane’s armchair in the living room, curled into a striped orange ball, and went to sleep. I watched her for a moment envi- ously, then I sighed and began sorting papers again. In the fourth box I found what I wanted. The car- pet had been installed three years ago. So the skull had become a skull sometime before that. Suddenly I realized what should have been obvious. Of course Jane had not killed someone and put his head in the window seat fresh, so to speak. The skull had already been a skull, not a head, before Jane had sealed it up. I was willing to concede that Jane obviously had a side unknown to me, or to anyone, though whoever had searched the house must at least suspect it. But I could not believe that Jane would live in a house with a decomposing head in the window seat. Jane had not been a monster.
What had Jane been? I pulled up my knees and wrapped my arms around them. Behind me, Madeleine, who had observed Jane longer than anyone, yawned and rearranged herself.
Jane had been a woman in her late seventies with silver hair almost always done up in a regal chignon. She had never worn slacks, always dresses. She had had a lively mind—an intelligent mind—and good ~ 97 ~
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manners. She had been interested in true crime, at a safe distance; her favorite cases were all Victorian or earlier. She had had a mother who was wealthy and who had held a prominent place in Lawrenceton society, and Jane had behaved as though she herself had neither. She had inherited from somewhere, though, a strong sense of property. But as far as the liberation of women went—well, Jane and I had had some discussions on that. Jane was a traditionalist, and though as a working woman she had believed in equal pay for equal work, some of the other tenets of the women’s movement were lost on her. “Women don’t have to confront men, honey,” she’d told me one time. “Women can always think their way around them.” Jane had not been a forgiving person, either; if she got really angry and did not receive an adequate apology, she held a grudge a good long while. She was not even aware of grudge holding, I’d observed; if she had been, she would have fought it, like she’d fought other traits in herself she didn’t think were Christian. What else had Jane been? Conventionally moral, dependable, and she’d had an unexpectedly sly sense of humor.
In fact, wherever Jane was now, I was willing to bet she was looking at me and laughing. Me, with ~ 98 ~
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Jane’s money and Jane’s house and Jane’s cat and Jane’s skull.
After sorting more papers (I might as well finish what I’ve begun, I thought), I got up to stretch. It was raining outside, I discovered to my surprise. As I sat on the window seat and looked out the blinds, the rain got heavier and heavier and the thunder started to boom. The lights came on across the street in the little white house with yellow shutters, and through the front window I could see Lynn unpack- ing boxes, moving slowly and awkwardly. I wondered how having a baby felt, wondered if I would ever know. Finally, for no reason that I could discern, my feelings for Arthur ended, and the pain drained away. Tired of poring over receipts left from a life that was over, I thought about my own life. Living by myself was sometimes fun, but I didn’t want to do it forever, as Jane had. I thought of Robin Crusoe, the mystery writer, who had left town when my romance with Arthur had heated up. I thought of Aubrey Scott. I was tired of being alone with my bizarre problem. I was tired of being alone, period.
I told myself to switch mental tracks in a hurry. ~ 99 ~
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There was something undeniably pleasant about being in my own house watching the rain come down out- side, knowing I didn’t have to go anywhere if I didn’t want to. I was surrounded by books in a pretty room, I could occupy myself however I chose. Come on, I asked myself bravely, what do you choose to do? I al- most chose to start crying, but instead I jumped up, found Jane’s Soft Scrub, and cleaned the bathroom. A place isn’t really yours until you clean it. Jane’s place became
mine, however temporarily, that afternoon. I cleaned and sorted and threw away and inventoried. I opened a can of soup and heated it in my saucepan on my stove. I ate it with my spoon. Madeleine came into the kitchen when she heard me bustling around and jumped up to watch me eat. This time I was not horri- fied. I looked over the book I’d pulled from Jane’s shelves and addressed a few remarks to Madeleine while I ate.
It was still raining after I’d washed the pot and the spoon and the bowl, so I sat in Jane’s chair in the liv- ing room, watching the rain and wondering what to do next. After a moment, the cat heaved herself up onto my lap. I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about this liberty on the cat’s part, but I decided I’d give it a try. I stroked the smooth fur tentatively and heard the deep percolation start up. What I needed, I decided, ~ 100 ~
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was to talk to someone who knew Lawrenceton in depth, someone who knew about Carey Osland’s hus- band and the Rideouts’ tenant. I’d been assuming the skull came from someone who lived close by, and suddenly I realized I’d better challenge that assump- tion.
Why had I thought that? There had to be a reason. Okay—Jane couldn’t transport a body any distance. I just didn’t think she’d been strong enough. But I re- membered the hole in the skull and shuddered, feeling distinctly queasy for a moment. She’d been strong enough to do that. Had Jane herself cut off the head? I couldn’t even picture it. Granted, Jane’s book- shelves, like mine, were full of accounts about people who had done horrible things and gone unsuspected for long periods of time, but I just couldn’t admit Jane might be like that. Something wasn’t adding up. It just might be my own dearly held assumptions and preconceptions. Jane, after all, was a Little Old Lady.
I was worn out physically and mentally. It was time to go back to my place. I unseated the cat, to her dis- gust, and filled her water dish, while making a mental note to call Parnell. I stuffed my car full of things to throw or give away, locked up, and left. For Christmas, my mother had given me an ~ 101 ~
A Bone to Pick (Teagarden Mysteries,2) Page 7
