Cold Flat Junction

“What I’d like you to do, Emma, is write this up for me.” Mr. Gumbrel held up his palm as if I’d been going to object. “Don’t say it’s already been written up until we’re blue in the face, because it hasn’t. Don’t tell me that you don’t have a lot more to add, and don’t tell me these reporters didn’t include a pile of misquotes and mistakes—including Suzie Whitelaw!” She was passing by his little glassed-in cubicle, and he wanted to make sure she heard this.

She did. Her face went cherry red. She’d been walking by just to find out what he had me in there for.

“Oh, yes, there were mistakes all right.” I did not give as an example the city paper that had spelled Regina Jane ReeJane (as suggested by me), this spelling having been picked up and flaunted by a dozen other papers. “But I’ll correct them.” Except for that particular mistake, I didn’t add.

“Good! Wonderful! What I have in mind is your in-depth history of this whole affair. Maybe begin with telling how you came in here over a month ago, wanting to read our report on the death of the Devereau girl. It’s stuff like that, it’s the details I want. And I want it spread”—his hands measured off a width of air—“through at least three and maybe even four or five issues.”

I was really excited, but kept it in check. “Yes, I can see a story like this could take a lot of print.”

“—she’ll take offense I turned her down,” Mr. Gumbrel went on. “But obviously she can’t write it.”

“Oh, my goodness, yes. Came in here like the Queen of the Nile, telling me she was a lot nearer the source than Suzie Whitelaw and so could do a better job.” He plugged the cigar into his mouth, took it out again. “I had to remind her the one little thing she wrote a couple years ago didn’t constitute ‘experience.’ Which is what she says she has. There’s a girl could turn a silk purse right back into a sow’s ear.”

My progress from the Conservative up Valley Road was marked by bursts of jumping and laughing. I guess anyone who might see me would conclude that fame had driven me mad.

No one did see me, though, for both Valley Road and Red Bird Road were so empty of houses. On Red Bird Road, the mobile home with its half-moon garden had set a plastic goose family among the zinnias and petunias. A pink flamingo had been added to this plastic family, and I had to admire the owners’ attempt to draw what color out of life they could.

Dr. McComb’s house seemed, as always, to be drowsing in its acres of tall grass, weeds, gladioli, and Queen Anne’s lace. The lack of a front porch or a cellar gave it this submerged and sleeping look. The front door stood open, so I didn’t have to knock, which might have summoned the strange, tall, voiceless woman, who I personally thought was as crazy as a loon, but then I’d been too long among stories of the Devereau sisters to have a good slant on madness.

I walked through the kitchen to see if any baking was going on. It was; from the oven wafted the smell of lemons. I went out to the back.

I plowed through buffalo grass and strange tall winged flowers until I got to him. He was wearing his floppy broad-brimmed straw hat the color of burnt grass, which he swept off as he made me a courtly bow amid the butterfly bushes. “Brilliant! Brilliant! How’d you do it?”

“Autopsy information?” He looked swiftly around as if he had overlooked a dead body. “Did I dig someone up?”

Slapping his straw hat back on his head, he said, “Emma, as I recall, all I did was confirm what you’d already figured out. That the child could have been drowned beforehand and someplace else.” Then he put his arm around my shoulders. “This is at least a two-brownie topic. Let’s go.” He picked up the net and we walked back to the house.

“Good grief! Does your investigative prowess never take a holiday? Right now what’s baking is a citron pound cake. I already made the brownies, especially for your visit.”

As we pushed through the weeds and Queen Anne’s lace I said, “There’s something else I wanted to thank you for, though.”