AS THE SPARKS FLY UPWARD (12 page)

“Yes.”

“And Dwayne?” asked Alicia in her deep voice. “Is he here, or is he off gallivanting? We live next door, but we see him so rarely these days.”

Irma stiffened. “Dwayne has been wonderful—simply wonderful. And Roger. They’ve all been so kind to me. As you would be to each other,” she added cannily, “if one of you had such a great loss.”

There was a pause while the Grunwald sisters reflected on the fact that neither of them had ever had a lover, and therefore no opportunity for such a loss. Charlotte sat up straighter and said, “You know … you must think that you truly are
lucky
 … to have had the affection you shared.”

“Oh, yes, Charlotte. Yes, I do feel that, and it comforts me. At least we had that time together. Except for the early years with Hugo, it was the most special time of my life.”

Alicia and Charlotte, sensing somehow that their time was up, chattered on about trivialities for a short while longer and then rose to their feet as one. “Dear Irma,” said Alicia, bending down to give her a sisterly kiss. “So good to see you. Promise you’ll drop by when you’re feeling better.”

“Thank you, Alicia.”

“Irma …,” murmured Charlotte, giving her a peck on the cheek. “So good to see you.”

“Charlotte. Kind of you to come. Thank you again for the lovely flowers.”

There was much fluttering and scarf arranging and shrugging on of coats and mufflers at the front door. Alicia settled her gray woolly cap onto her gray woolly curls. Charlotte put on an identical cap and they marched off down the driveway. Snooky closed the door behind them.

Irma came out into the foyer and tossed the bouquet of flowers onto the umbrella stand with a disdainful gesture. “Cheap,” she announced. “Cheap. Eighteen dollars and thirty-five cents at Mercer’s Flower Shop. The cheapest one they have. Those two old vipers! Can you help me up to bed, dear? I feel absolutely exhausted from the effort of seeing them.”

While Alicia Grunwald, marching down the driveway, turned at the same moment to her sister and said with spiteful satisfaction,

“That old bat. That old bat! If only she knew the truth … the most special time of her life, indeed! If she only
knew!
”

Snooky was at Harry’s Market a few days later, picking out lettuce and tomatoes and cucumber for a salad, when a shy tug on his elbow made him look up.

It was Charlotte Grunwald, her gray cap jammed firmly on her head, her hands encased in woollen gloves. She smiled at him shyly. “Hello.”

“Hello, Charlotte. Nice seeing you. How are you?”

“Fine, thank you.”

“Is your sister here, too?”

“Oh, no, Alicia rarely does the shopping. I do most of the shopping and cooking for both of us. It works out better that way. Alicia’s so
busy
, you see,” she added in a flustered way, as if aware of a subtle reproach in her own words. “She has her work, you know.”

“Her work?”

“Oh, yes … yes. She’s an historian, you see. It’s what she trained for. She’s … she’s quite avid about it. Reads all the time. I can’t understand a word of it myself.”

“I see.”

“Her specialty is prerevolutionary New England. She’s
deep into a biography right now of John and Abigail Adams. I think it’s terribly boring myself, but then, she always tells me I don’t have a brain in my head.” Charlotte picked happily over the tomatoes.

“I’m sure that’s not true!”

“Oh, well, it is true, I’m afraid. Alicia has all the brains in the family. She has enough for two.”

Snooky did not say what he thought, which was that Alicia Grunwald’s avocation struck him as a perfect excuse to stay home and read historical romances while her unfortunate younger sister did all the work running the house. “Nice tomatoes today, aren’t they?”

“Very nice. Harry always carries the best. That’s why I shop here.”

Snooky flailed about for something to say. “It was nice of the two of you to come by and see Irma,” he said at last, hating himself for his duplicity.

“Oh … well, it’s such a
tragedy.
We felt so awful … we had to do something.”

“Yes. It’s hard to know what to do at a time like that, isn’t it?”

“Very hard …”

“Hard to know what to say to her.”

“Hard to know …”

“But I think the gesture is what counts, don’t you?”

“Oh, yes … the gesture …”

Snooky began to feel unpleasantly that unless he took matters firmly in hand, the conversation would consist entirely of statements and echoes. But Charlotte surprised him by picking up a tomato, examining it warily, placing it in her basket and continuing in her soft voice, “Of course, naturally I shouldn’t say anything … it’s not kind to speak badly of the dead … but I don’t really think … that is, Alicia and I don’t really think … that everything was just the way poor dear Irma and her family thought it was.”

Snooky leaned his shopping basket against the produce stand. “That’s interesting. What makes you say that?”

“Oh,
well
,” said Charlotte, picking through the lettuce eagerly. She was enjoying this chance to talk to a young man, to be away from her sister and out from under her dominating influence. Her personality expanded erratically in all directions, like a carnival balloon, all globes and cylinders and long jolly tubes. She leaned toward him in a giggly, confiding manner. “Oh, well, you see … Bobby was … oh, I probably shouldn’t say a
word
 … I’m sure Alicia wouldn’t like it if … oh, well. I don’t think my sister would approve, but I’m sure you wouldn’t … if you know what I mean … oh, it’s awful to speak ill of those who have passed on, especially so … so
violently
, isn’t it?” She shuddered delicately and pawed at the cucumbers.

Snooky was not sure what she had said in this incoherent little speech, but he nodded knowingly. She leaned toward him again and gazed around the store, a happy expression in her granite-gray eyes. Her cap, under closer inspection, appeared to be made up of a multitude of tiny steel wool pads. “Well, it turns out … we saw something, Alicia and I. We know something about him …”

“Bobby?”

“Yes … he wasn’t what he seemed to be, no, no, not at all. He was … well, he was … a
fraud.
”

“A fraud?” Snooky thought how ironic life was, that he was now the faithful echo to Charlotte’s conversation.

“Yes! All the time he was dancing around Irma, all that time, he was … he was
lying
to her.” She leaned closer to him, her hat scratching unpleasantly against his cheek. “
He was seeing somebody else
,” she breathed, and gave him a triumphant look.

Snooky said the first thing that came into his head. “Why, Charlotte, that’s … that’s
amazing.
”

She expanded visibly, her confidence billowing out into the wide aisles of the store, wedging itself between the bibb lettuce and the grapes. She clucked and preened herself fondly, like a little gray bird. “Isn’t it?”

“Are you sure?”

“Oh, yes, yes … you see, we actually saw them together
… Bobby and this—this hussy … all blond and made up …” She let her voice trail off disdainfully. “Good-looking blonde, but no
class
, if you know what I mean.”

“You saw them here, in town?”

“Oh, no, Bobby would never be seen with her here. Too many wagging tongues about, if you know what I mean.” Charlotte glanced around, apparently unaware of what her own tongue was busy doing at that moment. “We saw them in Wolfingham one day. Alicia and I were doing some shopping, and I couldn’t find the right color wool here in Lyle for a sweater I was knitting for my godson’s new baby … the cutest little thing you ever saw … the baby, I mean. He weighed nearly nine pounds at birth and his poor mother was in labor for thirty hours, it’s so awful, isn’t it? We women have
so
much to bear.”

“How true,” murmured Snooky.

“His name is Matthew Robert, and he’s the sweetest little thing, truly he is,” Charlotte said ecstatically. “But anyway … where was I? Oh, yes. I wanted to knit him a little winter sweater in sky blue and white, and Frasier’s didn’t have the right color blue”—this was the all-purpose store in town—“I wanted something a little bit
special
, you know, for Matthew, a true robin’s-egg blue. So Alicia and I went into Wolfingham, which we rarely do these days, just when we need something special. They have a beautiful knitting store there, the most gorgeous wool, I’ve never seen anything like it, I really should speak to Frasier’s about it, it’s a scandal, you know, the cheap stuff they carry.” She paused, giving him a buoyant smile. “Anyway—oh, I
am
enjoying this conversation, I hope I’m not boring you—anyway, we were coming out of the knitting store there, but we weren’t quite out of the door, so he couldn’t see us, and there was Bobby, walking down the street with his arm around this blond woman. And they were … well, the only decent way to describe it was that they were making eyes at each other. Pawing each other, really. It was enough to make your skin crawl. Especially when you think how
devoted he always pretended to be toward poor Irma, and how she wanted to marry him and give him all her money and everything. Naturally that was what Alicia and I thought later, that he was with her for the money. A gold digger. Anyway, they didn’t see us—of course they wouldn’t have seen us even if we had been standing on the street in front of them, they had eyes only for each other—and we watched them go by, and then we went on our way. Isn’t that
frightful
?” She pronounced the last word with relish.

“Yes. Frightful is the very word. But how clever of the two of you to have seen it, and not to be seen yourselves.”

“Yes. Wasn’t it? I’m sure he had no idea—no idea at all that his little secret was out.”

“When was this?”

“Oh, I don’t know. About a month ago.”

Snooky calculated rapidly in his head. “A few weeks before Bobby was killed?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Before he and Irma announced their engagement?”

“Oh, yes, I’m quite sure it was.”

Snooky deliberately gave her an admiring glance. “You’ve been very clever, Charlotte.”

Charlotte licked her lips and nearly began to purr. “Do you really think so?”

“Absolutely. So you have no idea who the woman was?”

“None at all. A hussy, that’s how Alicia refers to her. A brazen hussy.”

“I see. The worst kind of hussy,” remarked Snooky. “A brazen one. And have you told Detective Bentley about what you saw?”

Charlotte shook her head scornfully. “We were going to tell the police, because we knew it might be important, but when that awful little man came to our house it was all so unpleasant that we decided not to say anything. Anyway, Alicia decided not to. I sort of wondered to myself … perhaps we should have said
something.
It doesn’t seem right that nobody would know.”

“Well, your secret is safe with me.”

Charlotte looked at him gratefully. “Thank you. And I should be going now. Alicia will be wondering what’s happened to me. It’s an amazing story, though, isn’t it? I’ve been just … well, simply
bursting
to tell somebody. I feel ever so much better now. Relieved. It was kind of you to listen. You won’t tell anyone?”

“No, no, of course not.”

“It would be terrible if Irma found out,” Charlotte said. “That’s partly why Alicia and I decided not to tell. I think the news would kill her. After all, she was planning to
marry
the man. You won’t tell anyone about it? Especially her family?”

“I promise.”

Charlotte nodded. “So very nice talking to you,” she said, her voice floating back over the piles of vegetables and fruit. “See you around, I hope.”

“See you.”

Snooky waited until she was out of the store, then grabbed his groceries, paid for them and sprinted for his car.

“… and then they saw Bobby and some woman coming down the street hand in hand,” he was telling Bernard a quarter of an hour later. “Down the street hand in hand. In full view. In her words, they were ‘making eyes at each other.’ ”

Bernard appeared to be sunken in thought. His eyelids flickered.

“I wonder if anybody else knew about this.” Snooky gnawed at a fingernail worriedly. “Maybe there was no reason to kill him. Maybe he wasn’t planning to go through with the marriage after all.”

Bernard stirred on the sofa. “Or maybe he
was
planning to go through with it, and this mystery woman is the one who killed him.”

Snooky was struck by this. “True.”

“We have to find out who she is.”

“Yes,”

“How do we do that?” mused Bernard. His eyes flickered aimlessly around the room, coming to rest at last on the languid figure of his brother-in-law. “You have to find out who she is, Snooky.”

“Me? Why me? How am I supposed to find her?”

“Wolfingham’s not such a big town.”

“No, but I don’t know anybody in it.”

“You can meet people.”

“Yes. I can meet people. Slowly. And I can hope, after two or three years of meeting people, that I meet the person we’re looking for. Especially if she hasn’t moved away by then, or dyed her hair a different color, or joined a nunnery in Tibet.”

Bernard ran a hand through his hair until it stood up like a cockatoo’s plume. “We need help.”

“I would say so.”

“Bentley.”

“I guess.”

“Do you think he has any chance at all of finding her?”

“Well, he has more than we have. He might know who she is from the description—after all, he lives there.”

“A sad day, when you have to ask Bentley for help,” said Bernard.

“I agree.”

“Do you want to call him, or should I?”

“You do it, please. The soup is boiling over and the muffins are burning. I can smell them from out here.”

Bernard was horrified. “Well, get them out of the oven, then, Snooky. You can’t eat burned muffins.”

As Snooky left the room, he saw Bernard reaching slowly and reluctantly for the telephone.

“Where did you say you got this information from?”

“From a concerned citizen,” replied Snooky.

Bentley looked sceptical. He was settled like a toadstool, his short legs dangling off the floor, on the sofa next to the fireplace. “Who?”