A visit from nobody : Sunday stillness : Vicarious education
Byron Ashdown was twirling the small plastic skull that hung from the rearview mirror of his turquoise Ford F-250 when the old woman shut the front door. He sat up and tried to slap his brother, who dozed with his cheek smeared against the opposite window. His hand wouldn’t reach, and Byron wasn’t the kind of person to lean, so his hand swiped the air.
“Hey, Lonnie,” he said, “she’s leaving,” but Lonnie didn’t wake up. Byron watched her cross the covered porch of the old pioneer home and stop. She opened her handbag and rooted through it.
“Okay, what now? What now?” Byron said.
She walked back to the door, hesitated, looked through her bag again, then opened the door and went back inside the house. Byron cursed once and kicked the floor.
Lonnie bolted awake and looked around, shouting, “What, what?” Then he said, “Come on, I was asleep.”
“She came out, then went back inside.”
“She still in the house?”
“Do you see her anywhere?”
Lonnie rubbed his eyes, then squinted. The old white house sat back from the street behind a wide strip of lawn with a cluster of tall spiraling dandelions on the north side.
“That’s it. We’re hosed,” Byron said, pounding the steering wheel. “She saw us.”
Lonnie turned and looked through the gun rack that covered the rear window. The street was empty. A few cars were parked on the wide gray pavement, but most were garaged. The sun was a thick yellow bead lying on the palisade of red rock that surrounded the town. He looked back through the windshield and saw more of the same. The sky was free of clouds. It was going to be a hot one. “What’s to see? Just two guys sitting in a truck. That’s pretty much the only thing that happens around here,” Lonnie said. “If the cops come, we can tell ’em we had to pull over to read our texts.”
“And they’ll just think we’re a couple of Boy Scouts, right?” Byron checked the time on his banged-up flip phone. It was five to eight.
“You should get a smartphone,” Lonnie said.
“So they can find me? No thanks,” Byron said. “Look, I just want to get in there, get the stuff, get out, get paid.”
“Getting worked up won’t do nothing,” Lonnie said, frowning at a fast food hash brown patty half-eaten in its crumpled wrapper.
Byron started rocking anxiously in his seat, then unconsciously he took the tip of his thin ponytail and painted it in figure eights across his cheek. Lonnie watched him do it and tried not to comment.
After a few minutes, the old woman reemerged, her handbag snug in the crook of one arm. Byron noticed the addition of a hat. She closed the door and slid her hand along the wrought-iron rail as she stepped carefully down each of the three steps.
“Get down,” Byron said, hunching below the dashboard. Lonnie joined him. “What’s the hat for? Where’s she going? We’re screwed,” Byron said. Together, they listened to the car start, then to the squeal of the steering pump, then to the silence.
“Man, she’s just going to church. Old ladies wear hats,” Lonnie said, sitting up first. “The coast is clear.”
As Byron sat up, Lonnie unfolded the hash brown wrapper and ate the rest of the patty.
“You eat like a dog,” Byron said. “That’s why your gut hurts all the time.”
“That nurse said my flora was off.”
“I’m not getting into a thing about your flora. Can you just stick to the plan so we can make a little money?”
“There’s more of them than there is of us,” Lonnie said, “like ten times more.”
“Of who?”
“Bacteria.” Lonnie crumpled the paper and belched. “I should’ve had a yogurt.”
They got out of their truck looking nervous. Byron’s head cleared the hood of their truck by a few inches. His body was thick and squared off, like a roast. Lonnie was almost a foot taller, thin and stoop shouldered. His strides were twice as long as his brother’s, and he crossed the street before Byron was halfway. When they got up to the house, they tried to look like they were supposed to be there.
“Where’s the guy?” Lonnie asked.
“Supposed to be out of town,” Byron said. They gathered at the door. “Tell me the plan one more time,” Byron ordered.
“Go in, find where he keeps the maps. Grab anything that says Swallow Valley or has that Indian word on it.”
“Almost,” Byron said. “If we only take one kind of thing, then they’ll know what we were after. We need to grab any cash, watches, whatever. Break some stuff. It needs to look like we had no idea what we were doing.”
“But we don’t.”
“Then we’re headed in the right direction.”
Byron went in first and Lonnie followed, the door opening into a hallway that ran straight back into the house, past a set of stairs on the immediate right, which went up a half flight and turned just above an old color photograph showing a young couple sitting together in the red rock, the man holding up a whole and complete yucca sandal, the woman wearing sunglasses with a scarf tied around her neck, leaning back on her hands, taking it all in.
“Where’s the stuff?” Lonnie whispered.
“Shut up,” Byron said, creeping forward. He looked into each room as he went past. When they both got to the end of the hall, they saw a kitchen in one direction and more hall in the other. Byron turned and put a finger to his lips.
“But there’s nobody here,” Lonnie said.
“What’s that?” somebody said from an open door at the end of the hall.
Byron and Lonnie froze, then tiptoed toward the sound.
“Did you forget where you were going again, my love?” the voice continued.
Lonnie leaned and looked around the doorframe. He saw a man reading with a large magnifying glass. He was surrounded by pottery, baskets, books, stones, tools, coils of rope, apothecary jars, bundles of papers tied up with brown string, accordion files, and dusty terrariums filled with dirt, gravel, and a multitude of cacti. Many places on the shelves sat empty, though they were cataloged with tiny numbers on small slips of paper.
It took a few seconds before the man thought to pause his reading. “You were on your way to church, dear. If you need me, I can take—” The man glanced up and saw Lonnie staring. “Who in the Sam Hill are you?”
“We’re nobody,” Lonnie said, stepping into the open doorframe so he wasn’t leaning over. Byron squeezed past and into the room. “Leave the questions to us, old man.”
Lonnie followed his brother into the room and became instantly distracted by the books. “I’ll bet a reader like you knows where that joke came from,” he said.
“What joke?” the old man asked.
“The nobody joke.”
“It’s from the Odyssey, you moron,” the old man said.
“That’s enough about minivans,” Byron said. “We’re here on business, and you were supposed to be at some Indian pot nerds meeting.”
“How would you know that—” The old man’s face went red, then changed. “Frangos,” he said, huffing. “Frangos sent you. She needs to—you know what—I think you better leave.” He stood weakly, his robe open, exposing the scooped neck of his T-shirt and his white chest hair.
“We never heard of anybody called Frangles,” Byron said. “So, maybe sit back down and listen.” Byron pulled a snub-nosed .38 from the back of his pants.
“Why’d you bring that?” Lonnie asked.
“You take anything,” the old man threatened, “and you won’t be able to sell it. Dealers know what’s mine. Frangos knows that. And she should have told you it’s all going back where it belongs.”
“Shut it,” Byron said, brandishing the gun.
“How is this gonna work, since he wasn’t, like, supposed to be here?” Lonnie asked, holding his hands against the sides of his head.
Byron split his attention between the old man and his brother.
“You said it needs to look like we don’t know what we’re doing, but with him here it will look like we do—you know—know what we’re doing. And that’s what he’ll say,” Lonnie said.
The old man cleared his throat, yanking Byron’s manic attention back. “You two are obviously idiots,” the old man said, his eyes narrowing. “Get out of my house or I’m calling the police.” The old man reached for the phone.
Byron jabbed his gun toward him. “Dial and you’re dead.” The muzzle wavered, then became motionless. His eyes locked with the old man’s for an instant, then he turned to Lonnie. “Make yourself useful. I need to think.”
Lonnie browsed the study, picking things up and looking them over, which agitated the old man. Lonnie picked up a white pot the size of a cantaloupe. Inside was a red image of a face, something both alien and human, with round eyes and monstrous teeth.
“Put that down,” the old man directed. “It’s over five hundred years old.” He turned back to Byron. “You can tell Frangos the answer is no. It’s always going to be no. She can’t build a collection with money. You have to earn it. It takes a lifetime.”
Lonnie set down the pot and picked up an unbroken geode from the top of a filing cabinet. He tossed it in the air a couple of times to feel its weight. “How come you ain’t split it open?” he asked. “The good part is on the inside, like a Tootsie Pop.”
“Please, just put it down.” The man reached for the phone and started dialing. He had only punched a single number, when Lonnie swung the geode hard against the man’s temple, slamming him instantly to the desk. Blood jetted in an arc, startling Lonnie so much that he pressed down on the man’s head with the flat of his hand. “Oh jeez,” Lonnie said.
“What did you do?” Byron shouted. Lonnie put his other hand on top of the first. “What did you do?” Byron shouted again.
“I was thinking about what would happen if he called the cops. You got two strikes already, Byron.” Lonnie leaned on his hands to increase the pressure. Blood seeped through his fingers, and the old man didn’t move. “Two strikes. I didn’t want you to go back.”
“Come here,” Byron beckoned, his voice softening.
“I can’t,” Lonnie said, nodding toward his hands. Byron slipped the gun into his pants and walked toward his brother with his arms opened wide. Lonnie thought it was for a hug, but Byron grabbed him by the hair and pointed his head at the growing pool of blood on the desk. Lonnie flapped and fought against his brother, covering Byron’s shirt with red handprints.
“You reach in there and find out if he’s still alive,” Byron growled.
“How do I do that?”
“You check his pulse.”
“How do I do that?”
“You’ve seen it on TV. We all have. Just do it.”
Lonnie reached under the man’s neck and felt around. “I can’t find it,” he said.
Byron tightened his grip on his brother’s hair. “Keep trying.”
“He ain’t cold or anything.”
“Well, brother. Why would he be cold?” Byron let go of Lonnie, took the old man’s wrist, and looked at the ceiling while he tried to find a pulse. After a minute, he tossed the hand away. “Now you’ve done it,” he said. “Ain’t gonna be any money in this situation if it stays this way.”
“Is he dead?”
“Headed that direction.” Byron paced around the room while Lonnie stood dumbfounded, hands dangling at his sides, staring at the old man. Byron took out his phone and flipped it open.
“You’re gonna call him?”
“Of course I’m calling him.” He dialed the number and looked at the phone while it rang. When the line connected, he put the phone to his ear. “I know you said not to call, but the situation got away from us. Yeah . . . Lonnie put him down . . . That’s correct . . . All the way down,” he said, then he listened for a while. “It happened before we could . . .” he said. “No, we did not get to the list. Not yet.”
“Is he saying what to do?” Lonnie asked. “Ask him who this Frangles lady is.”
Byron dragged a finger across his neck. “Okay,” he said, “we can do that. It should help us cover our tracks. We’re on it. Thank you, sir.” He flipped the phone shut.
Lonnie looked at him and waited. “‘Sir’?”
“Shut up.” Byron thought for a second, then said, “Check to see if this guy has a shotgun somewhere.”
___
Sheriff Patrick Dalton opened his eyes and saw two people through the windshield of his cruiser staring back at him. One was an EMT he didn’t recognize, and the other was Chris Tanner, one of his deputies. The engine was off, but Dalton grabbed the steering wheel, which gave him the fleeting sensation that he was about to run them all down.
Tanner said something to the EMT, then tilted his head and pressed the button on his shoulder mic. “You want us to come back later?” came crackling through the radio. Dalton pulled the key from the ignition but didn’t get out. He looked around at the old pioneer home, the crisscrossed police tape, the ambulance, traffic cones, strip of brown lawn, dandelions, wrought-iron handrail, blue sky. Sunday stillness.
An hour ago, he was sitting in church, head bowed, when his phone buzzed. He turned it over and read the text banner. It was from Tanner: SORRY ABOUT THIS, BUT YOU NEED GET DOWN TO THE CLUFF HOME. WE’VE GOT A SITUATION WITH BRUCE. He turned the phone back over and looked around the chapel. The Sacrament was going around. If he left now, people would wonder. So he waited. In a few minutes, the phone buzzed again. All it said was 10-56.
This meant it was a suicide. He thumbed open the lock screen and typed: ON MY WAY.
Bruce Cluff was one of his dad’s oldest friends, and he was his mother’s prom date. When Dalton’s dad passed, Bruce shouldered the coffin. Bruce’s wife, Raylene, pulled his mother out of a depression that lasted most of a year. All of this went down while he was on his second tour in Afghanistan. Thinking about Bruce taking his own life yanked the breath out of him.
There was a knock on the cruiser’s hood. Tanner shrugged and lifted his eyebrows. Dalton unbuckled his seat belt and got out. As he stood he realized he wasn’t in uniform. His dark suit and white shirt stood out against Tanner’s khaki and the EMT’s white. He pulled his tie off and opened the trunk, taking out the sheriff’s department windbreaker he kept in back.
“You gonna be all right?” Tanner asked.
“I’ll have to be,” he said. “What happened?”
“We’ve got Dr. Cluff in the study with a shotgun,” the EMT said.
Dalton walked past Tanner. “Tell the new guy he can’t make it sound like we’re playing Clue.” Dalton ducked under the yellow tape. “How long until the medical examiner gets here?”
“An hour or so,” Tanner said.
“Did Bruce leave a note?”
Tanner shrugged. “Maybe. There’s a lot of things on that desk we can’t read anymore.”
Dalton stopped outside the front door and turned back to look down at the scene. The quiet old street was filled with vehicles now. He looked at his watch. In another hour the neighbors would get back from church, and this would all change from a concern to a calamity.
From where he stood, he could see across the rooftops south toward the red plateau, all the way to the national monument. The blue desert sky was brushed with abstract white clouds gathering at the horizon. He tried to keep ahead of the panic attack, let it hit him head-on like his therapist taught him. It’s the only way to know none of it is real. Don’t resist change. That just brings sorrow. Let things flow naturally forward in whatever way they like. Breathe. Follow your outbreath.
“I know you’re getting your game face on,” Tanner interrupted, “but our window of opportunity is shrinking.”
Dalton blinked. “Is Bruce going to get up and walk out of the house?”
“We’ve got to tag evidence before the ME gets here. You know, and it’s June. So, heat.”
“Is the A/C on?”
“They’ve got a swamp cooler, but it’s off. It’s pretty bad in there already.”
Dalton opened the door and went in and led himself down the hall and around the corner to the study. Tanner followed. The EMT was gone. “How’s Raylene?”
“At the neighbors’.”
“Please tell me she didn’t find him.”
Tanner nodded sadly. “She came home from church after an hour because Bruce was sick. She said he was supposed to be at a collector’s convention, but he canceled.”
“Does she know where that meetup was supposed to be?”
Tanner shook his head. “She says she can’t remember.”
At the doorframe of the study, Dalton stopped and gathered himself. He drew on his childhood memories to map out the space in his head, then he turned the corner.
The blood-soaked desk was covered with numbered plastic A-frames marking the evidence. The top half of the tall leather office chair was blown off, the wood frame serrated like the edge of a flint knife. Somewhere on the floor behind the desk lay the body.
“I told you it was bad,” Tanner said.
“I’m a big boy,” Dalton answered.
It looked like the shot knocked Bruce out of his chair, spinning it around so it faced away from the desk. He lay sprawled on the ground in a heap, the robe spread behind him, the shotgun flung from his hands, the books in the shelves behind him stuccoed with brown blood and bone. Dalton imagined what happened to the body when the gun went off, the energy of the shot oscillating through the jaw and brain, discharging from the other side of the skull.
A camera flash strobed behind him.
“And nobody’s touched anything?” Dalton asked.
“Nobody did,” Tanner said.
Dalton surveyed the Navajo rugs, porcupine quill baskets, cedar masks in blue and red, tiny unpainted clay birds, wooden flutes, small irregular petroglyph panels, old green and brown books, maps on wooden stands, bird fossils, purple crystals, whole geodes resting on plastic rings. There were so many treasures in this menagerie: a stuffed weasel, arrowheads in shadow boxes, spearpoints under glass, perfectly round stones of various sizes, framed newspaper clippings about Bruce and his discoveries, antique compasses large and small, steel protractors, and brass telescopes. But he noticed that quite a few shelves had empty spots.
“This place is right out of an old photograph. How would anyone know if something was missing?” Tanner said.
“Raylene might. There used to be a lot more pottery in here.” Dalton pointed at a plain bowl. “When I was a kid, this place was full of stuff like that.”
Tanner’s face became still. “A guy like Bruce with all this Indian stuff in here. I mean some of this has to be in the gray zone as far as the law goes. Are we looking at another Federal pot hunter crackdown?”
“I haven’t heard of anything.”
“I mean, if the FBI is looking into collectors again, you know, like that guy in Page who drove himself off a cliff once they came after him—if that’s coming around again, we’ll have all kinds of trouble. The Carver family will go nuts, probably get on YouTube and take over another tortoise refuge.”
Dalton walked around the body and tried to make sense of what he was seeing. He thought he’d have some kind of deeper reaction, but it was all flowing around him, like floodwater going around a boulder. He was fine now, but he felt the sand underneath him starting to loosen. “If you’re wondering about garbage like that, go talk to Stan Forsythe at the paper,” Dalton said. “Crazy talk is his love language.”
“I’m not wondering. I’m just thinking. The Feds would let you know if they were coming, right?”
“Feds do what they want.”
“That’s what the crazies say. I’m asking you.”
Dalton’s phone buzzed and he looked at it. It was his ex-wife. He lifted his thumb to open the lock screen, but instead he sent her to voice mail.
“The crazies aren’t wrong,” Dalton said. “I just can’t talk to them.”
___
Sophia Shepard shut her book, which was bristling with Post-it Notes, and she set it on the orange Formica dinette table. The scholarly title, UNESCO, World Heritage, and the Human Factor, set it apart from the whimsical Airstream travel trailer she was living and working in for the summer.
She took her insulated coffee mug and stepped out of the trailer and into the late afternoon air, which was hot and dry and riddled with the trilling of songbirds. The white sun filtered through the canopy of desert trees, mature sycamores, and cottonwoods that sheltered the trailer park from the blazing sky. In one direction lay the street, and beyond it, a self-serve car wash crouching in the open glare next to a run-down laundromat with two duct-tape Xs running across each of its dust-covered windows. Behind that bleached outbuilding stood an orange sandstone rampart that ran vertically for a hundred feet.
In the opposite direction, the other trailers were arranged in a semicircle like giant silver beetles. Across the way was Mrs. Gladstone’s trailer. It was an Airstream like the rest but larger because she was the owner. It had been upgraded with a covered porch, Tibetan prayer flags, and potted succulents, not all of them thriving. Mrs. Gladstone was asleep in a rattan chaise lounge, a Pomeranian perched upon her stomach with its nose in a bag of cookies.
Sophia shouted at the dog, who looked up at her, flicked an ear, and returned to the bag. “Hey, you little monster,” she said again, crossing from her trailer to the small patio. She wouldn’t call the dog by its name, Cleopatra, but had secretly renamed her Mīkrós Thḗrion, “the tiny beast.” Mikros, for short. It was one way she tried to keep up on her Greek while she was working in southern Utah.
“Hey, Mikros, knock it off,” she shouted, which woke Mrs. Gladstone with a start. Mikros switched from licking the bag to bathing the woman’s face with her tongue. “Oh, you tiny starving thing. Did you get all your cookies?” Mrs. Gladstone looked inside, reshaped the bag, tipped the crumbs into one corner, and poured them into her hand.
“Good afternoon, Sophia,” Mrs. Gladstone said while the dog snuffled up the last of the crumbs before jumping to the ground and sniffing around the potted plants. On a side table was a can of Diet Coke with a lipstick-printed straw sticking out of it. Behind her, a hummingbird buzzed through the covered porch and landed on a plastic feeder that hung from the edge of the corrugated roof. As it drank the sugar water, other hummingbirds buzzed in and scrapped for a spot. It was vicious for one explosive moment, then they disappeared all at once. The old woman paid them no mind.
“Have you been reading all day?” Mrs. Gladstone asked.
Sophia nodded. “Dissertations don’t write themselves.”
“I don’t suppose they would,” Mrs. Gladstone said. “I also can’t imagine there would be so much to say about—what is it again?”
“The ethics of preserving ancient artifacts.”
“Oh, that’s right. Museums and national parks and providence. One of these days I’ll remember without a hint.” She smiled and brushed back stray wisps of hair.
Sophia was about to correct her and say, it’s “provenance,” not “providence,” but she’d done this bit before and wanted to skip it this time.
Mikros barked, sending a lizard across the patio and under Mrs. Gladstone’s chair. The dog growled but didn’t chase it. Mrs. Gladstone sat up. “I always wanted to be an architect, my dear, but I was told that was for boys. They told me to be a nurse or a teacher. I told them to blow it out their butts.”
“So you went to college anyway?”
“I went to Hollywood.”
“You’re perfect, Mrs. Gladstone,” Sophia said. “Absolutely perfect.”
“And look at me now. I’m the queen of all I survey.” Mrs. Gladstone unfolded her arms and let a dozen bracelets jangle down to the elbow. “But really, a girl like you should be out on the town on a summer night, not holed up. Don’t you have plans?”
“I like to get out, but you know there’s not much nightlife around here. It’s a little dead unless you’re up for a milkshake.”
Mrs. Gladstone sipped her Diet Coke and set it back on the side table. “Once upon a time, people used to call this hamlet Little Hollywood. Pretty glitzy for southern Utah, don’t you think?”
“What was Kanab like before all that?” Sophia asked.
Mrs. Gladstone shrugged. “What you would imagine. Frontier, red rock, tumbleweeds, Indians. Not much else. A whole lot of nothing, really.”
“Mrs. Gladstone, Native people aren’t nothing,” Sophia said.
“Well, you know what I mean,” Mrs. Gladstone said with a wave.
Sophia didn’t veer. “I’m not sure I do.”
Mrs. Gladstone closed her eyes and tilted her head to show she disapproved of this turn in the conversation. “Back in the day, my dear, you might bump into Ronald Reagan, Ernest Borgnine, Sidney Poitier, Raquel Welch. Everyone who was anyone came to town. We were surrounded by stars, and there were a thousand different flavors of nightlife. A girl could get into the right kind of trouble, if that’s what she wanted.” She looked around, smiled, and shrugged a coy shoulder. “This girl did.”
Sophia knew she wasn’t ready for a detailed description of the right kind of trouble, so she steered the conversation back to her work. “Tomorrow I’m going into Arizona to check sites in the Antelope Valley. South, near the bluffs. I’ll be back by nightfall. Send in the cavalry if I’m not back by Tuesday morning. I’ll leave a map in my trailer.”
“Speaking of the cavalry, that gorgeous ranger dropped by to see you the other day,” Mrs. Gladstone said. She lifted her penciled-in eyebrows and sang: “And he was on a mo-tor-cy-cle.”
“Paul?” Sophia asked, hiding a smile with a sip of her coffee.
“There isn’t an ounce of fat on that man,” Mrs. Gladstone said. “He said he was planning a trip for you two to go off into the backcountry.” Mrs. Gladstone smiled. “So, that’s what they’re calling it these days?”
Sophia sprayed her coffee.
Mrs. Gladstone shrugged dramatically, sending the dozen bracelets clattering in the other direction. “I’m just an old woman, trying to live vicariously through the nomads who stay here with me.”
Sophia held up her book. “Well, tonight you’ll get the chance to absorb information about UNESCO World Heritage Sites.”
“Vicarious education is the best kind, darling,” Mrs. Gladstone said.
Sophia laughed. “Did Paul want something specific, like to ask me if I wanted to go into the backcountry?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Mrs. Gladstone said, looking around, trying to recall if there was something she was supposed to remember. “He has very good manners for a young man.”
“That is true,” Sophia said. “If you happen to see him again, could you tell him to email me?”
“Don’t the young people just Chap Snap now? Email is so old-fashioned.” Mrs. Gladstone took another sip of Diet Coke, and Mikros climbed back into her lap. The phone in her trailer rang. She struggled to get up, until Sophia offered to get it, then she eased back in her chair. “Thank you, dear,” she said.
Sophia stepped into the trailer, which was a patchwork of bright color: shelves hand-painted orange, purple, and green, full of self-help books and poetry. Two ceramic parrots stood atop overturned terra-cotta pots, arranged to look as if they were chattering to each other. The space was filled with messages written in script on planks of wood: YOU ARE SUFFICIENT—DON’T TOUCH MY CHOCOLATE—FRIENDSHIP IS FOR KEEPS—SOMETIMES LIFE JUST GIVES YOU THE LEMONADE. The whole place smelled of jasmine and garbage.
“It’s next to the fridge!” Mrs. Gladstone called out.
What she meant was that it was under a stack of magazines next to the fridge. Once Sophia found it, she dashed back with the ringing phone and handed it over. As Mrs. Gladstone listened to the caller, her face fell. “You can’t be serious?” she said, then she covered her mouth with one hand. “A shotgun?” Her eyes found Sophia’s. “That doesn’t sound right at all. No, I do not accept it.” Sophia heard the woman on the other end say that a neighbor heard the shots. “The police are still there? What about Raylene? I’ll come get her.” Mrs. Gladstone paused and listened, her face hardening. “Well, how long until the sedation wears off?” she asked.
Mikros trotted back to the porch with a wet sack of trash in her mouth. Sophia tried to take it away, but the dog ran off.
“I don’t like it,” Mrs. Gladstone said into the phone, then she switched it off and set it carefully on the side table and gripped the arms of her chaise, tears softening her mascara. “I’m sorry for this, Sophia,” she said, gesturing to her face. “An old friend took his life today. Bruce Cluff.”
Sophia knew the name. “I was introduced to him my first week in town. When I tried to ask about some of the pieces in his collection, he got pretty angry with me.”
“Oh, Bruce was angry with everyone.” Mrs. Gladstone dabbed at each eye with a fingertip. “But I shouldn’t speak ill,” she said.
“Seems like he must have had a lot on his mind.”
“Bruce had his head in the clouds most of the time—in the dirt, really. I said he was an old friend, that’s not quite right. He was not a particularly nice man, if you ask me. But his wife was a dear, dear friend. She’s not well. I need to see her as soon as I can.”