Chapter 11

STAR FALLS WAS A SPRAWLING SUBURB of rolling hills easily mistaken for golf courses. Its residents were the sort who owned pianos and horses, if not quite wealthy enough to use the seasons as verbs. Delilah’s refusal to volunteer her capacious estate for last year’s holiday party had earned her a public rebuke from Dean Simkins. We held it instead in the front office of the Gray Knight after I drew the shortest straw.

“How much do you professors make?” Hoopel asked as we pulled into Delilah’s quarter-mile driveway.

“Less than whoever mows her lawn,” I said. “It’s family money, from what I understand.”

I thanked him for the lift and closed the door. I hated asking for rides, but Hoopel owed me one. I had given him a sense of initiative. He rolled down the window.

“What now, Mr. Cowlishaw?”

I pointed to the house, another hundred feet down the circular driveway. “I’m going to go there, and you’re going to go alphabetize dead people.”

Hoopel’s window remained down. “Give me something else to look for. I want to find things, Mr. Cowlishaw.”

I rested my arms on his open window. “Okay. See what you can find out about Detective Rick Stashauer of the Grayford Police Department.”

Hoopel revved the engine of what I only now noticed was a station wagon. “Yes, sir.”

“Dig deep, Hoopel. Don’t bring me anything I could have Googled myself.”

“Yes, sir,” he said again and reached through the window to shake my hand.

The driveway culminated in a half-circle in front of a house I had heard Delilah describe apologetically to Londell as “plantation-style.” A birdbath on an island of bleached gravel lent the place a semi-rustic charm. A garage looked wide enough for two cars. Square bushes with bright flowers lined the sloping walkway leading to the front door. On the porch, between a pair of rocking chairs, sat a glass table under which someone had left a potted plant. The envelope on a plastic trident was unsealed. I stood between the windows and door and got out my magnifier.

What I took to be a sunflower decorated the front of the card.

The typed message inside read, “You are a wonderful human being.” The sender had not included a name. I returned the card to its envelope, licked the adhesive, and sealed it. I picked up the plant and rang the doorbell.

The door opened sharply. Whoever stood before me was not Delilah, as Delilah was not in the habit of standing. “More fucking flowers? My mom doesn’t even know this many people.”

“This one’s a plant, actually.”

Juliet Bibb had bright orange hair like her mother, but very little of it. On closer inspection, she had a crew cut. She took the plant, pushed past me, and let it fly from the edge of the porch. The pot shattered on one of the stones around the birdbath.

“I like it there. It adds color,” I said.

Delilah’s only child shoved me out of the way and went back inside. I got my foot inside the door before it closed.

“I’m here to see your mother, actually.”

“God, why?” Juliet Bibb stopped wrestling with the door, walked down a long hallway, and slammed a door.

“Stop slamming doors,” said Delilah in a wan voice unfamiliar, or perhaps overly familiar, with protest. She rolled into the living room from the opposite hallway. “Mr. Cowlishaw, shouldn’t you be in class?”

“Should is a subjective word.”

I waited for her to call me clever in that special way that meant “asshole.” Instead, she wheeled into a larger room with white sofas and an abundance of natural light. I followed, passing an upright piano and the balance of the flowers with which her daughter seemed to have a problem. We came to a stop in a small, warm room with skylights and glass walls.

“Lovely view,” I said.

For a long time, she said nothing. When at last she faced me, Delilah Bibb said, “What can you see, Mr. Cowlishaw?”

People who ask this aren’t interested in the answer. They can see that for themselves. They want to know what you can’t see. I saw a brown surface with dark outlines, beyond it a green blur. “I see your wrought-iron furniture,” I said, “on the deck overlooking your manicured lawn.”

“How do you know the furniture is wrought iron? What makes you think, since I know you can’t see it, that my lawn is manicured?”

“I draw conclusions based on high probability.”

“You make assumptions,” she said, opening what I had not assumed was a French door. She rolled down a little ramp onto the wooden deck.

I followed her outside. If she was trying to get away from me, I liked my chances. I stood beside her at the table and chairs. Delilah’s cold fingers grabbed my hand and put it on the edge of the table. Next she guided my hand to the back of a chair. They were grainy with rust. Chips of paint came off on my fingers.

“Does that feel like wrought iron, Mr. Cowlishaw?”

I lifted the chair, no heavier than a skillet.

“I paid sixty dollars for the set at a big-box department store. I haven’t had my lawn mowed since last August. You assume, because I have money, that I concern myself with nice things. The money, by the way, belonged to my parents. They are both dead, so now it belongs to me.”

Delilah rolled to the edge of the deck. There was a cranking sound. Something small and white became level with her face. She rattled a bag and filled what I concluded to be a birdhouse with five seconds worth of seed.

“And what assumptions did you make about my daughter?” Delilah asked.

A plastic clip fell on the deck. I traced the sound, picked it up, and handed it to her. “She doesn’t seem to like flowers or plants.”

“Did she seem tired to you?” Delilah spoke without looking at me, restoring the birdhouse to its former height.

Juliet Bibb might have thrown like a girl, but not a tired one. “I thought she had spunk. Why?”

“She is having what her doctors call a good day.” Delilah filled a birdhouse on the other side of the deck. “Some days she doesn’t get
out of bed.”

“I believe I’ve had that.”

“Don’t be clever, Mr. Cowlishaw. My daughter is very ill. Last month she had to cut short her freshman year at the College of William and Mary. Her personality has changed. The language she uses…” Delilah trailed off, leaving the birdhouse at eye level.

“Should I assume, since she’s having a good day, that Juliet is not the reason you canceled today’s meeting?”

“Mind your own business, Mr. Cowlishaw.” Delilah aimed her chair at the house.

I grabbed one of the handles on the back of her chair. “Londell said something had spooked you.”

“Dr. Bakker thought wrong.” She pushed in vain against the wheels. “Let go of me!”

“Making Londell do your work for you? That doesn’t sound like the Delilah Bibb I know.”

Grunting, she gave the wheels another ineffective shove. “What are you so afraid of, Interim Dean Bibb?”

“No. I will not. I refuse to cry.”

For over a minute she shook her head. Her refusal was loud and wet. She wiped her face and pulled a pair of uneven breaths into her lungs. Whether it was guilt or fear I couldn’t tell, similar as they often sound.

“This is all too much.” Her voice was high with fresh tears. She swallowed them and said, “I’ve had opportunities over the years. Several times I applied for positions at other schools. I turned down a couple of offers. Juliet was always my excuse, but there were other reasons. I have a confession, Mr. Cowlishaw.”

A long pause allowed me to ponder the implications. A murder confession would negate our deal, but if Londell was next in line, I would probably keep my job.

“I have never been,” she began and repeated the words twice more. “Much of a leader.”

Behind us, a bird went into one of the houses, scattering seeds across the deck.

“That’s disappointing to hear,” I said.

Delilah sniffled. “No one is more disappointed than I.”

That ghost she had seen sounded like the specter of self-doubt. Because my skills at giving pep talks were about as effective as colored sugar, I let go of her chair.

“You know, I was hoping for a different confession.”

She swiftly maneuvered her chair to face me. “Excuse me?”

“Thus far, Delilah, you’re the only one who’s profited from Dean Simkins’s death.”

“How dare you?”

“It looks a little suspicious, taking a personal day hours before the memorial service.”

“What memorial service?”

“The one in the obituary. Didn’t you organize it?”

Her metal foot rest touched my ankle. “No, I did not.”

“There I go making assumptions again. Maybe it was the trustees,” I said, following her through the French door into the sun room. “I don’t know why they wouldn’t have informed you. I hope that doesn’t speak to a lack of confidence in you as Interim Dean.”

“They can go to hell if they think I can’t do a better job than Scoot.”

Anyone with a disability is familiar with self-doubt, but the doubts of others are a taste one never fully acquires. Delilah snagged a set of keys from a waist-high hook on the living room wall. Juliet Bibb emerged from the kitchen with plenty of energy.

“I poured your boiling water down the sink, Mother. Maybe next time you want your cinnamon apple tea, you’ll take the fucking kettle off the fucking stove. It’s been making that piercing sound for like ten minutes, Mother.”

“I need to go back to campus, sweetheart. Try not to watch any television.”

“Who is this, Mother? Did you meet him on your online dating service? I know you’re on one. I think it’s disgusting.”

“I’m just the plant delivery man,” I said. “I’ll bill you for damages to my delivery.”

Juliet stepped between me and her mother’s chair. “I don’t like you. I think you’re snide.”

“I think I’m charming. You’re not the first to disagree.”

“I’m going with you, Mother. I don’t want to stay here.”

Judging from the scream and where Juliet was standing, Delilah ran over her daughter’s toes. “Go get some rest. I have a memorial service to attend.”

Juliet followed us into the garage. “Memorial service? For the dead dean?”

There were two cars. Delilah made her way between them.

“My mother killed him, you know. Snide man, did you hear me? She killed my father, too. She killed my grandparents and one of my teachers and two Guatemalans who were painting our house, and she made me dig the graves in our backyard.” Juliet’s voice got louder, competing with the opening garage door. “She killed my boyfriend because she’s an asexual freak who wants the rest of the world to be as miserable as she is.”

Delilah unlocked the dark sedan. I opened the passenger side. The paint seemed fresher and a little darker on the door. I could feel the uneven patches where it began.

“Don’t you dare take my car, Mother. I have plans.”

“I heard you making them, sweetheart. That’s why I’m taking your car.”

“I can’t drive yours with your fucking hand controls!”

“I know.” Delilah leaned under the dashboard and attached something to the pedals.

“Goddamn you!” Juliet shouted before slamming another door. I took my time getting in, continuing to study the paint job.

“Nice car. What color would you call this?”

Delilah backed out of the garage without turning her head.

“You’re not good with colors, are you, Mr. Cowlishaw?”

“Not all of them.”

“I’d call it black,” she said.