Ten

On Monday morning, just after nine o’clock, Felicity crossed the street from the parking lot to Town Hall. She glanced at a window on the first floor and stopped in the middle of the street at the sight of a tall man leaning over the table where the tax assessment printout was displayed. She was late with the other half of her property taxes, and she prayed a lien hadn’t already been recorded. She veered toward the steps and headed into the building.

The man she’d seen in the window bolted out of the assessor’s office and into the hallway, knocking back a clerk. Her arms full of folders, the clerk didn’t have a free hand to grab her glasses as they slid down her nose and off her face, dangling on their beaded chain. She fell back toward Felicity, who jumped forward and held her arms out to catch her. The man apparently didn’t notice, continuing to walk toward the stairwell leading down to the police department and storage.

“Thanks,” the clerk said. She clutched the files closer to her chest. “Not my day, I guess. I’m just glad I didn’t drop these.”

Felicity bit her tongue as she watched the man disappear down the stairs. “Clod. Him.” She nodded toward the now-empty stairs. “I’m here for the bad news,” she added.

The clerk laughed. “Taxes? We haven’t got to the liens yet, if that’s what you’re worried about.” She smiled. “Besides, Felicity, we know you’re good for it.” She winked and headed on into the office. Felicity followed her, and then went over to the table where she’d first seen the stranger in the window. The printout, organized by name, was open to a page that included her property.

Startled by the idea that the man she saw could be Franklin Gentile, the buyer working with Marilyn, Felicity jumped back, ready to run down the stairs after him. But before she could do so she spotted him walking down the sidewalk to the intersection, where he turned left and walked out of sight.

“Damn.”

“You complaining about me?” Chief Kevin Algren walked up behind her.

Felicity spun around and shook her head. “Hi, Kevin. I thought I saw someone I’ve been trying to meet. Sort of.”

“Sort of meet? If you’re here to make your statement, go on down. I’ll be there in a minute.”

Felicity walked down to the police department. “Kevin’s on his way,” she told Padma. “Do you know who that man was who just came through here?”

Padma looked up from the small paper sack she’d been inspecting and shook her head. “I don’t have a clue even though I’m right here in the heart of town government.” She gazed around at her empire of cast-off desks from the 1930s, stacks of old army green metal files, a row of lampshades looking for lamps, and folding metal chairs stacked in a corner. “He didn’t even stop to say hello. You here to see the chief?”

Felicity nodded as they heard Kevin’s footsteps on the stairs. “How’s he feeling about all this?”

“Guess! He’s miserable. I feel for the guy, I really do. He loves West Woodbury, but now that he’s at the end of his career he says the things happening these days make him feel like he’s a stranger here. He feels like he stayed too long at the party. He says—” Padma stopped to consider this. “Do people really feel that way?” She dropped the paper sack into an open drawer. “Good morning, sir.” She chirped the greeting before Chief Kevin Algren had even made it all the way into the room.

The chief closed his office door behind Felicity and motioned her to a chair. “Don’t tell me I look sick, Felicity. I just spent an hour with the town accountant who’s trying to sell me on some kind of nature medicine.” Felicity shut her mouth. She knew better than to tell Kevin exactly what she thought of the way he looked.

“I’m going to ask Padma to come in and type up what you have to say, but before I do, is there anything you want to tell me first?”

Felicity shook her head, then stopped. “Oh, there is one thing.”

“I knew it.” He closed his eyes and sighed. “Go on.”

“It’s not that bad, Kevin. Anyway, when we were looking for my dad, Pat remembered there was an old cabin back in the woods where we were searching. We looked in the cabin, just in case Dad might have been going there. Zeke owned that place. He died quite a while back, but that cabin is being taken care of. I thought someone had been there recently and I was sure I could smell something, but I couldn’t figure out what it was until much later. Anyway, after we started searching through the woods, I passed a dying squirrel.”

“A dying squirrel?”

“You said the medical examiner found vomit in Sasha’s mouth,” Felicity said. “But there was no vomit on her clothing or her body when we found her.”

“So?”

“So I think I smelled vomit in the cabin and I think she ran away and vomited in the woods and then whoever was with her, followed her and cleaned her up and left her in the woods, setting her up to look as though she just sat down to die.”

“What’s the squirrel got to do with it?”

“I think the squirrel ate the vomit. The poison was in the vomit.”

“The squirrel ate the vomit?”

“Don’t look at me like I have ten heads, Kevin.”

“Okay, only five heads.”

“I saw this squirrel stumbling around but I was too focused on finding my dad to pay attention. But it was weird.”

“A squirrel.” He pushed himself away from his desk. “Let me get Padma in here. Maybe you’ll start sounding normal if someone else is listening to you.”

“You have to check the cabin. Pat checked the firebox and he thought someone had been there in maybe the last two days, from the way the ashes felt.” She swung around in the chair as he walked to the door and pulled it open. He called for Padma.

“So, I’m looking for a dead squirrel in how many acres? Six hundred? A thousand? Two thousand?” Kevin pointed Padma to the computer.

“Are you going to check out the cabin?”

“Old Zeke Bodrun’s place?” Kevin sat down again. “Will it make you happy?”

Felicity grimaced.

“And I’ll bring in any dead squirrels I find, too.” He told Padma to type up the statement on Sasha Glover. “Ready, Miss O’Brien?”

Felicity managed to make it to the Pasquanata Community Home before lunch. Since her father’s foray into the larger world, she’d fretted and worried and worked herself into as much of a state as he had been in the day he bolted. She found him in the lounge watching the birds outside the window.

“Pussy willows,” he said when she sat down.

She checked his wardrobe on every visit and was pleased to see how well cared for he was—his clothes were always clean, the items of clothing made sense, and each item seemed to still fit. Today he wore his favorite khaki slacks and a light yellow shirt, well ironed, and a gray cardigan. She didn’t know but guessed the nurses would have removed his cold-weather jackets from the closet, to discourage any ideas of stepping outside again. But she knew that was akin to magical thinking—if he wanted to go out he would, regardless of the weather and the availability of suitable clothing.

She leaned over him to the window to look at the pussy willows. “We have some behind the barn. I’ll cut some and bring them in. A harbinger of spring, for sure.”

He listened to her with a vacant look, an expression of thinking about something else while waiting until something she had to say caught his interest. “You’re Lissie, come for your regular visit.”

“Yes, Dad, I’m Lissie.”

“I went looking for you.” He reached across and grabbed her hand. “You need a sign at the end of the driveway.”

“A sign for Tall Tree Farm?” Felicity’s heart sank. She’d been thinking about repainting the sign during the summer. It was beginning to look a little ragged. As long as she could remember, they’d always had a sign at the end of the driveway. Perhaps there had been a time when there was no sign. Perhaps that was where he was now. This morning, she couldn’t bring herself to correct him. Let him have his reality, if it made him happy.

He nodded. “Three words.”

“I’ll be sure to do that.”

“It’s special. It’s what we called it when we were hanging out together.” He lowered his voice to a whisper and looked around.

“You and Mom called it Tall Tree Farm when you were young?”

He wasn’t listening to her. He’d drifted off on another memory. “Perfect name. But couldn’t use it, couldn’t use it. But it’s okay now. No one will know and if they do, they can’t do anything about it. Tall Tree Farm is forever.”

She kissed his gnarled, stiff hand and then his cheek. At first she didn’t know what he was talking about, and it didn’t matter. But then, the foray into the past and the naming of the farm began to make sense.

“Don’t forget, Lissie. It’s forever.”

“I won’t forget.”

“And no one can do anything about it.”

She shook her head, still smiling, waiting to hear what he would say next.

“Old Zeke is gone now.” He grew sad. “A true friend.”

“You were great pals, I heard.” Felicity was beginning to think she understood the heart of this friendship, but she could still be wrong. She wanted to be sure.

He eyeballed her, alert and suspicious.

“Loretta, Jeremy’s mother, told me you and Zeke were great pals when you were young, before you married Mom.” She hoped this mention of Zeke would lead her dad into a reminiscence that would shed more light on what was behind his seemingly inconsistent feelings about the Bodruns.

“Loretta.” He relaxed and smiled at her once again. “Good-looking woman in her day. She had a little boy. Jeremy. And another one. Daniel.”

“They’re grown up, Dad. You know them.”

He nodded thoughtfully. “Good farmers too. I always liked them, Jeremy especially.”

“I’m glad, Dad. I do too.”

That seemed to ground him in the present, and a warm smile spread over his features. His history with Zeke Bodrun would have to wait for another visit.