PW02 - Bidding on Death (14 page)

Julia had been taking surreptitious notes, but I’d found a new point of interest. “Who’s Bethany? You think she’s got time in her schedule for new clients?” The only thing I hated more than sweeping was dusting.

“Bethany Daniels,” Evelyn said. “Let me find you her number. With Rose gone, she’ll have an opening, unless someone beat you to it.”

While Evelyn was looking for the number, Julia produced another topic. “I’ve lived here
for thirty years now and have started considering
myself an old-timer – “ (The real old-timers smiled in pitying silence.) “- but I didn’t know Rose had been married.”

“Oh, that’s right!” Linda said. “Lord, I’d forgotten all about that.”

“I think most folks had,” said Reverend Lou. “Didn’t last long.”

“What was the problem, I wonder?” Julia asked cunningly.

The Reverend shook his head. “One of those early marriages. They often don’t take, seems like. The couple isn’t even really grown up yet and don’t really know what they want out of life. Then when they figure it out, too often they want different things.”

Evelyn returned to the group and handed me a piece of paper. She’d been following the discussion and joined in. “Well, let’s remember,” she said fairly, “this was back before the Pill. If young people wanted to – you know, fool around – they pretty much had to get married or they were playing with fire.”

“And young people always want to fool around, it’s human nature,” Linda said tolerantly.

“But who did she marry?” Rose persisted.

“She married Abner Tuckett’s boy Wilson,” Rev said. “He worked at the lumber mill for a couple years, but when they split up, he went looking for adventure, up and joined the Army.”

That was a more halcyon era, when ‘joining the Army’ conjured up images of Presley in Germany, not slogging through waist-high mud in Southeast Asia.

“Oh, that’s right,” Evelyn agreed. “I’d forgot all about Wilson, he never came back here, did he?”

“Where did he wind up?” I prompted. “I assume someone contacted him about Rose’s death? It’s been a long time, but still. And I’m sure the sheriff would like to know where he was when Rose died.”

George gave a laugh that turned  into a wheezing cough. Then he waved and said, “Not that it’s funny, I guess.”

“What’s not funny?” I asked.

“Nobody will be telling Wilso
n anything; he died about fifteen
years back.”

“That’s a shame,” Julia said. “How did he die?”

“Was a lot of things, wasn’t it?” George looked over to Rev for confirmation. Rev nodded, and Geo
rge said, “I know there was
leukemia and a couple kinds of cancer.”

Rev chimed in. “Truth was, it was that Agent Orange that did it, but the Army wasn’t admitting it till after Wilson died.”

Julia had been quietly writing a note in her lap, but now she crumpled the index card and stuffed it in her purse.

Me, I was in awe of the combined knowledge base on tap here at the Historical Society. True, Queen Anne would probably never have a museum. But we did have history, history being people, and the members of the Society kept that history.

“How was the hen party?” Jack asked when I got home.

“You could have come too,” I said, giving him a hug. “We had a couple old goats there.”

I settled across from him in the living room. “Wouldn’t it be nice to have the house swept and dusted once a week?” I suggested.

Jack looked cautious. “Are we going to start the housework debate again?”

We’d been having the same debate off and on for two decades. In theory, Jack agreed that keeping the house habitable was equally our jobs, but old mindsets die hard. Several times we’d tried a ‘chore day’ afternoon schedule, when we each performed cleaning and maintenance projects around the house. But like New Year’s resolutions, chore day never lasted very long.

Now the person most annoyed by the dust and pet hair would tackle the specific site that was bugging them at that moment. It was a haphazard arrangement, and we wouldn’t win any housekeeping awards, but it kept the peace.

“I just had a notion,” I said. “Why don’t we pay someone to come in once a week, and keep the main surfaces under control?”

Jack raised an eyebrow. “I’m game if you are,” he said. “Remember the last time?”

Back when the kids were young, I’d had Help come in once a week. Jack remembered my racing around the house picking up before the Cleaning Lady arrived, so no outsider would know what a slob I truly am. “I think I’ve mellowed since then,” I told him.

“What brought this up?” he asked.

“Rose Jackson had help come in, so there should be an opening for us to inherit,” I explained.

“Ah. Well, we can afford it, go ahead if you want.” He picked up the television remote and clicked on the news.

“Hey, look at the time!” I jumped up and headed to the office.

“The time?” Jack called after me.

“Auctions ending!” I called back, and settled down at the desk and logged onto the internet.

A few moments later, I was whooping.

Jack appeared at the door. “Cissy, what the hell?”

“I made a hundred and fifty dollars!”

NINE

I e-mailed all my buyers before I went to bed, telling them their final total and where to send the checks. Next morning, I had e-mail from all of them, assuring me that the check was in the mail. Encouraged, I listed two Barbies, three Breyers, and the tea set.

And I called Bethany Daniels and
arranged to meet her the next day.

Bethany turned out to be a woman with short salt and pepper hair, a slight mustache, and a no-nonsense manner. She looked around the house, nodding thoughtfully, and we arranged hours and wages.

“Folks say you’re kind of nosy,” she informed me bluntly.

How do you
respond to something like that?
“They do?” I asked weakly.

“I’m glad of it, frankly,” she said. “If you hadn’t gone by Rose’s that day, I’d have found her myself when I came on Friday.”

“Oh! Yes, I suppose you would have.”

“Heard it was nasty,” Bethany said.

“Very!”

We headed toward the back door. “You wouldn’t happen to know anyone who might be interested in taking Paco, would you?” I suggested hopefully. He was back in his laundry room again, and Bethany eyed him thoughtfully.

“Nope,” she said at last.

“He’s a nice little dog!” I insisted.

“All dogs start out nice, maybe,” Bethany replied. “But Rose spoiled him. Ruined him, as far as I could tell.”

“It’s not too late for him,” I assured her. “I’ve been working with him and he’s really very trainable. Don’t tell people he’s ruined. I think he could be a good dog for someone, and he needs a home.”

Bethany headed toward the door, but turned and said with an almost smile, “Looks to me like he’s got a home.”

Oh, dear.

After Bethany left, I let Paco out. He sat down at my feet and looked up at me solemnly. “This is not your home,” I told him. Then I felt terribly guilty. “Well, let’s call it your default home,” I amended.

I called Polly, and took both the dogs out to the back yard. We were working on sitting and staying and coming now. Polly already knew the drill, and Paco watched her closely.
Since he was new at this, I started him out with very short stays and praised him lavishly for remaining in place. For the recall, I started calling him from six feet away.

I couldn’t help smiling when he would come and sit in front of me. He’s just so tiny!

I heard an unfamiliar laugh behind me and turned around. Craig had come out of the barn and was watching us. Craig? Craig laughed? In the two years he’d been here, I’d never heard Craig laugh.

“What’s funny?” I asked him curiously.

“I dunno,” Craig admitted. “
He
looks
so serious. It just tickled me.”

Hmmm. I was about to ask Craig if he’d like a dog, but thought better of it. Craig lived right on the other side of the near vine
yard, I saw him every
day. No need to rush in and probably garner a firm no. This called for subtlety.

But now I had a plan.

The mail that afternoon brought me my new digital camera. I immediately set out around the property, taking pictures for the eventual Passatonnack Winery website. I took pictures of ripe grapes in the vineyard, of Craig at the grape press, of Jack in his lab, of our most imposing stainless steel tank, and an impressive bank of oak barrels.

Jack posed patiently, but didn’t see the point. “It’s not like we’re Westinghouse or something,” he said.

“Pretty soon, all businesses will have websites,” I told him.
“When someone wants to know about wine in Virginia, they’
ll do an
internet
search
, and we’d better be there.”

Jack laughed indulgently. “Have fun with it,” he said. “But not everybody is as into computers as you are.”

“They will be,” I assured him. I narrowed my eyes and tried to do Sinister-Yoda, “They will be.”

I was a prophetess without honor in my own household. But I was sure that someday soon I’d be saying ‘I told you so.’

Being caught up with my contract projects, I ran some errands. I took Amy’s digital camera back to her. I found her out in her garden, where she foisted a large grocery bag of zucchini on me. “I know,” she said apologetically. “Too much zucchini, it’s such a cliché. But it’s so easy to grow.”

“No problemo,” I assured her. “I don’t even grow zucchini anymore, because I know plenty of people will be glad for me to take it off their hands. And I have a great recipe for zucchini bread.”

“Ooh, e-mail it to me!”

“Will do.”

Back home, I determined to make zucchini bread after dinner. Did I have everything I need? I thought so. I went to my row of cookbooks to get the recipe.

I have my cookbooks in a row at the back of the kitchen counter.
The microwave served as one bookend and a jar of marbles held up the other end.
I suspect my
cookbook
selection is pretty typical. I have a 70s era Betty Crocker hardback from my first marriage. A Julia Child from back when I was young and naïve and buying into
the ‘you CAN do it all!’ hype. C
ookbook
s
featuring every
cooking craze du jour of the past thirty years, from fondue to wokking.

And a whole host of spiral bound paperback cookbooks from several decades of church and social group fundraisers. You know the drill; the whole congregation gets hit up for recipes, and it all gets printed up and sold to raise money.

These are the cookbooks that get the most use, because the recipe donors live just like the rest of us do; heck, they are us. There are no diagrams for carving a leg of lamb, and the ingredients lists include canned salmon and cream soups. They’re actually useful for people who work for a living and then come home and have to prepare a meal.

I think the zucchini bread recipe was in the Episcopal cookbook. Here it was.
I looked at the cover, with the line drawing of the local Episcopal church in red,
and realized I’d seen it recently
. Oh right, Rose Jackson had the same cookbook, it was one of the ones I’d knocked into the sink.

I remembered that scene and the kitchen and the row of cookbooks. And slowly backed up till my legs hit a kitchen chair, where I sank into the chair, still staring at the cookbook.

I’m not sure how long I sat there staring, my mind whirling over the possibilities. Then Jack came in the back door. “What’s for – “ He saw me and stopped. “Hon, what’s wrong?!”

He was right beside me. I must have looked awful to garner that instant concern.

“Cissy! Are you okay?”

I looked up at him. “I found the murder weapon,” I told him.

Jack sat down beside me and carefully removed the cookbook from my hands. He turned it forward and back and then laid it on the table and took my hand. “Cissy, I don’t think you can crack a skull with a paperback.”

“Oh.” I realized I wasn’t making sense. “I don’t actually have it,” I explained. “But I know what it is.”

“So, what is it?”

“Well, I don’t know specifically.”

Jack was baffled. “You’ve lost me.”

“Look,” I told him. I went over to my row of cookbooks and moved the jar of marbles. The end books, all soft paperbacks, skidded to the right, and the books fell over like dominoes. “Rose had her cookbooks on the windowsill over the sink,” I told Jack. “I opened the window, because of th-the smell, and some of them fell in the sink, so I put them back. The books filled half the windowsill.”

Jack frowned, trying to follow me. “You think there was a heavier book?”

I shook the jar and the marbles rattled. “Look, Jack! The microwave backstops the books here, like the window frame did at Rose’s. At the other end – you need a bookend!”