Chapter Four

 

“Uh, no,” J.X. said after a pause. “You didn’t.”

I was liking him less and less.

I stared at the ring of faces. The kid in the horn-rims looked ready to swoon. Between J.X. and the stuffed moose, it was hard to tell who looked more put out. “Well,” I said. “It was just a thought.”

“It must have occurred to you for some reason.”

I had a sudden vision of what he must have been like when he was a cop—curt and sarcastic and no-nonsense. Nothing like my own delightful Inspector Appleby, who so ably assisted Miss Butterwith on all her cases.

“It looked to me like she was hit over the head with a tree branch.”

Rita made a sound like seals do when they see sardines flying their way. Her husband gave her a warning look.

“A branch could have broken in the wind and hit her,” J.X. objected. “That was a hell of a storm last night.”

“True,” I said. I mean, why should I argue? I hoped it was an accident. Murder would complicate an already complicated situation, as I could see from the Morse code looks passing between him and Edgar.

“Why would anyone want to hurt Peaches?” That high wobbly voice belonged to the kid with the Velma hairdo—and she seemed to be talking to me.

I opened my mouth to assure her that I hadn’t the foggiest—that despite the knife Peaches had dug between my shoulder blades, I wished her nothing but long life and prosperity (well, long life anyway). But J.X. cut me off with a crisp, “We can discuss it on the way.”

It appeared we were under martial law. However, since nobody else seemed willing to challenge J.X.’s assumption of authority, I figured protest would be a waste of time. The sooner we got this over with, the sooner I could eat some supper and get into bed—preferably with the covers over my head and a chair jammed beneath my room doorknob.

The rain had resumed as we filed out the back entrance, and Edgar handed me a battered felt hat from the rack next to the door. It was the kind of hat homely fat squaws wear in politically incorrect cartoons. I pulled it on and followed them outside.

We scuttled across the rain-slick wooden deck and down a rickety set of steps. I reached for the wet railing. Not that a broken leg wouldn’t have been a piquant touch to an already novel vacation. Or should this descent into hell really be called a vacation? No way would it be classified as such on my tax return.

We reached the lower level safely and started down a slippery walkway which snaked through a small courtyard with dripping patio chairs and tables stripped of their umbrellas. The overhead lights cast blurred reflections in the cement as we hurried past.

We came to a long arbor wreathed tightly in woody vines. It was as dark as a tunnel. The sharp, dry smell of summer reached my nostrils. The withered vines deadened the sound of the rain. Ahead of us, I could hear the steady clomp of Edgar’s boots, though I could barely pick out his bulk moving through the dim light.

“Watch your step,” J.X. threw over his shoulder as the cement path abruptly gave way to a much rougher wooden walkway. I realized this must be one of the original structures on the property, and put out a hand to orient myself. My fingers brushed J.X.’s jacket.

His voice drifted back to me. “Afraid of the dark?”

“Only the things that go bump.”

I meant that literally, as in I didn’t want to trip or bang into anything, but I heard his laugh and realized that he took that quite a different way. Which shows how little he knew me; I hadn’t flirted with anyone since… Frankly, I couldn’t remember the last time I’d flirted with anyone.

Exiting the arbor, we seemed to have traveled back in time. The walkway had given way to hard-packed earth. There were no reassuringly modern overhead lights here, and the lights glinting through the tall hedge of dwarf yew seemed a long way away. We passed a long, low line of chopped firewood. An axe perched in a stump, glistening in the wet. Ahead was a tall brown wooden building, probably the former carriage house.

We dived in a side door, and Edgar turned on the wall switch. Two mini buses, a Land Rover, and a giant pickup with a double cab gleamed in the waxen light.

“Better take the truck,” said Edgar. “Don’t want to take a chance on getting stuck in the mud.”

I murmured agreement. I must have sounded pretty vehement, however, because J.X. glanced at me. His thin mouth twitched with amusement—probably the look the old Conquistadors wore when they were torturing helpless Indians. “What do you have in the way of a tarp or canvas covering?” he asked Edgar.

Edgar moved off toward one of the well-organized shelving units, and J.X. followed. I tuned out their grim debate on what to bring. Pick axes? Shovels? Spray paint? Were they planning on putting in a new swimming pool while we were out? No need to bother. The back forty was now a lake.

Finally they loaded their toys into the back of the pickup, and J.X. gave me a hand into the cramped confines of the double cab. Maybe he thought I had time-warped into my dotage. I took his hand, felt the hard calloused strength of it as his muscles flexed.

Climbing into one of those giant trucks is never the most graceful maneuver, and my ascent was made less graceful by the fact that my foot caught in the giant cuff of my left jeans leg and I nearly pitched headfirst into the narrow confines of the backseat.

“Easy there, young fella,” Edgar advised, watching me right myself with a hostile look at J.X. He started the engine as J.X. swung up with ease and slammed the door shut after him. The cab seemed very crowded; the scent of leather and aftershave and cinnamon was overwhelming. Granted, the cinnamon was me—or rather, Rachel’s scented bath gel.

Edgar hit the remote, and the now-mechanized carriage house doors swung up. We had a stark panoramic view of flooded landscape and the black bulk of the hills beyond.

“Lonely out here, isn’t it?”

“Sometimes,” Edgar agreed, putting the truck in gear.

“Explain to me exactly why you think Peaches was murdered,” J.X. requested as we bumped and bounced down the soggy road.

“I said it was a possibility. I didn’t say I knew it for sure.”

“What you said was, aren’t the police going to have a problem with us traipsing over their crime scene? Sounds to me like you were pretty sure.”

Did he have phonographic recall or something equally annoying? Imagine the horror of being with a man who remembered precisely everything you ever said. And what kind of shelf life did his recollections have?

“It’s kind of a blur now,” I said vaguely. “But, okay, the one really odd thing was that Peaches was out there in her pajamas and bare feet. Doesn’t that seem unlikely in this weather?”

“Go on.”

The truck wheels slipped and spun as we splashed through a pothole the size of a small lake. I held my breath until we had regained firm ground, then replied, “And I already told you about the broken and bloody tree branch a couple of feet from her body.”

“Sounds like an accident to me,” Edgar commented, his attention on the muddy road.

“Yeah, I’m not following.” J.X. directed that my way.

“Look, it was only an impression. I’m probably wrong.”

“Probably.”

I was leaning forward, so we were practically cheek to cheek. Close enough to whisper sweet nothings into his ear. Nothing being about all I had to say to him.

Glancing up, I caught Edgar’s gaze in the rearview mirror.

“Okay, except what was she doing out there in her jammies in that weather?”

“Who the hell knows.” J.X. faced front again. “She was eccentric. To say the least.”

“She was a high-spirited gal,” Edgar agreed. He added after a moment, “What made you go into the woods there?”

“Bad luck,” I said. “I was trying to find a dry place to change shoes.”

As we crested the hill my suitcases appeared in the truck’s headlights. Edgar slithered to a stop, and J.X. got out. He tossed my suitcases in the flatbed and climbed back in the cab.

We continued on our way in grim silence. It was only a few minutes’ drive, but all the same it was dark by the time we reached the shrine.

“I think it’s along here,” Edgar said, pulling up on the side of the road. “This look about right to you?”

“I guess. It all kind of looks alike this time of night.”

J.X. opened his door. Edgar turned off the engine. “You can stay here if it’ll be easier.”

“Not that a little practical experience wouldn’t do your books a world of good,” J.X. tossed back.

It would have been definitely easier—and preferable—to stay in the truck, but after that crack I didn’t have a choice. I climbed down and squelched after them into the wet and silent woods. The smoke from our breath hung in the air, the shadows were deep as night.

It didn’t take long to find the temple.

Frankly, I half expected that the body would be gone, like the corpse in Miss Butterwith and the Dear Departed. But there she lay, her hair plastered and dark against her gray-white skin, her clothes colorless in the gloom. I could see by the stiffness of her limbs that rigor mortis was now advanced.

“Sure you wouldn’t rather wait in the truck?” Edgar asked, switching on one of those industrial-sized flashlights. Peaches’ toe ring glinted in the beam.

Oddly enough, I no longer wanted to wait alone in the truck. I stood to the side, sheltered beneath the tree branches, and watched them.

J.X. circled the body and took picture after picture from different angles with a small digital camera.

“I wish the light was better,” he muttered. He snapped, and the flash briefly illuminated Peaches’ face. Not pretty.

“There’s the branch.” I pointed.

J.X. took a couple of photos of the bloody branch, and then he and Edgar measured the distance from the body to the branch.

“About two feet,” Edgar concurred. He glanced at me. “You’ve got sharp eyes.”

I shrugged.

To J.X. he said, “She could have staggered a foot or two after she was hit, I guess.”

“Maybe.” To his credit J.X. sounded more polite than convinced.

“You didn’t see anything…funny…when you found her?”

Funny? Well, no. I shook my head. Edgar looked like I had confirmed his own thoughts on the subject.

“What about footprints?” I asked J.X.

“Can’t tell a damn thing in this light. Pine needles would cushion them, I guess.”

Between the steady rain and the pine needles, I guessed that there probably wasn’t much chance of tracking Peaches’ footsteps—or the footsteps of anyone following her.

“There’s no way she walked out here,” I said. “And she obviously didn’t drive herself.”

Neither man answered. I knew what they were thinking—that the day’s rain would have eradicated any tire tracks.

“We should probably stake a tarp over her,” J.X. said at last. “I don’t want the crime scene compromised any more than it has been.”

He didn’t look my way, but I still felt this was a criticism.

“The thing is,” Edgar said slowly, “the critters are liable to…”

He didn’t finish it. He didn’t have to. Maybe there weren’t bears in these woods, but there were certainly coyotes, foxes, ravens—even ants and bugs would contaminate the crime scene.

No one spoke. The rain pattered down softly around us.

“You think they’ll be out tonight?” J.X. inquired. “In this weather?”

Edgar gave him a look that in a salsa commercial would convey a certain New York City! sentiment. It occurred to me that if we weren’t leaving Peaches, she would be a travel companion on the way back to the lodge.

J.X. wordlessly considered what Edgar refrained from saying. Then he knelt, pulled the can of spray paint out of the bag they had brought. He scooted around the dead woman, carefully brushing the pine needles and leaves away from around her body. Rising, he slowly, painstakingly sprayed a thin line of navy blue paint around Peaches’ sprawled form.

“Seems a mite disrespectful,” Edgar muttered. I couldn’t seem to speak around the obstruction in my throat.

J.X. said nothing. When he had finished roughly outlining the body and the possible murder weapon, he and Edgar spread the tarp out beside Peaches.

He looked at me, and I saw what he expected. I said—and it was God’s truth, but it sounded horrifyingly lame, “I’ve got a bad back.”

His expression told me that this was exactly what he had thought I would say, and I opened my mouth to refute it—but I’d have sounded lamer than I already did. In silence I watched them lift her up, depositing her body on the canvas and folding the flaps over her like they were wrapping a sandwich.

They picked her up and carried her to the truck. I moved out of the way, though I was not in the way.

Circumnavigating the crime scene, I walked over to the Japanese building and peered inside. It smelled of damp wood and something animal. I studied the floor and the torn screen. No convenient cigarette butts or a scrap of material or a matchbook. Real life is so unsatisfactory compared to fiction.

I peered more closely. There seemed to be two shadowy shapes in the darkness.

I jumped at a whisper of sound behind me.

J.X. knelt beside where Peaches had lain. As I watched, he slipped something in his pocket. Then, with gloved hands, he quickly shoveled the pine needles over the spray-painted outline of the body to preserve the paint from further rain.

“I think her suitcases are in here.”

His head snapped up, and he rose, coming to join me. He stared inside the small structure.

“Edgar,” he called.

“Do you think he’ll return to the scene of the crime?” I asked.

He glanced at me but didn’t respond as Edgar rejoined us.

“Her suitcases are inside there.”

Edgar didn’t seem to hear. He handed J.X. an empty trash bag. “You want to put your murder weapon in that?”

By his tone of voice it was clear to me that Edgar still clung to the belief that Peaches had gone for a midnight stroll and been unfortunately conked by a fallen branch. I couldn’t blame him. Murder would not be good for business.

J.X. said, “Someone wanted us to think she left voluntarily.”

“Maybe she did,” Edgar said stubbornly. “Maybe she stashed those suitcases in there herself.”

J.X. didn’t bother to argue. He picked up the branch with his gloved hand and began to wrap it in the black plastic.

Then he hesitated—just for an instant.

I looked from the branch to his face and then back to the branch, which he finished wrapping in the black plastic.

“Something wrong?” Edgar asked.

J.X. shook his head.

But there was something wrong, and I knew what it was thanks to Miss Butterwith, the retired botanist with an insatiable love of gardening. All those nights spent reading seed catalogs and planting journals were paying off. The branch that hit Peaches over the head had not come from any low-hanging pine tree. For one thing it had been partially sawed off on one end. For another, it wasn’t pine. It was black oak. And there wasn’t an oak tree anywhere around us.