Summerkill (2 page)

“Since I’ll be boss down in Platteville, you can figure on coming along,” I called to my temporarily vanished dog. It was
inappropriate to the Garden Center’s image, I’d been informed, to bring one’s animal to a work site. She’s really no problem.
Roxy’s long since figured out that plantings are not something to plunge through or lie down in, she wouldn’t dream of harming
the wildlife, and she’s yet to meet a person she didn’t try to adore. As long as somebody’s there, she’ll stay reasonably
close by. Companionless, she’ll set out to improve her lot—it’s a bad idea to go off to work and leave her free to roam. Thus
the run I made, extending out from the kitchen almost to the east boundary of the property.

On anything remotely resembling a hike she covers at least five times the ground I do, bounding off-trail and doubling back.
That morning she’d gone on ahead of me. As I rounded a curve about two-thirds of the way out toward the road I saw her stopped
halfway on the left track of the driveway, sniffing something, her tail wagging a bit uncertainly. “What you got there?” I
asked, approaching.

She was too absorbed to look up. Roxy can find the key to the universe in a handful of pine needles, but we were talking a
more sizable object this time. An alien object also—Mother Nature never manifests in a white jogging shoe.

“Roxy, dammit!” The force in my voice backed her off, stopped the tail altogether. Two white jogging shoes, I could see as
I drew closer, and no need to wonder who they belonged to—they were still on their owner’s feet. Ryan Jessup wouldn’t be having
any further use for them, though, not with the darkish brown splatters all around him and my favorite long-handled pruner
sticking up from his chest.

A
ction Plan A: delicately, wearing gloves, retrieve my pruner from the dead man’s chest. After which I could move the body
off my property, dispose of pruner and gloves where they would never be found, go about my business, and remain untouched.

Right, and no one would mention Ryan’s and my history of disputes, or the confrontation at that last staff meeting. Or happen
to remember hearing something about me stabbing my stepfather, though that melodrama was now a quarter-century old. The implement
had been much smaller then, and the damage less than terminal. Still …

Twenty-five years ago, panicked by the spurting blood, I’d fled the apartment, thereby blowing whatever control I might’ve
retained over the aftermath. When I resurfaced, the official version of the incident was in place. I never spent another night
under my mother’s roof; my civilian childhood had come to an end.

About time, too. It is sheer idiocy to go around feeling deprived of something that bad. Truth to tell, I lucked out, big
time. This awareness did not come either easily or soon.

That it came at all I attribute to Pete and Janey, my cottage parents at Birchwood, the state foster home cottage complex
I was sent to when I left home. Sizing up this hostile, oversized thirteen-year-old with the off-the-wall temperament and
well-documented history of flailing out at the world, they put together a package of survival tools. “There’s nothing wrong
with getting pissed off at people,” said Pete, who often did, himself, “but if you don’t want to end up in jail, you gotta
start beating them up with your mouth instead of your fists.” He kept picking arguments with me until I got good enough to
win a few, and to realize that demolishing your enemy verbally could be more fun than flooring them. From Janey, a less confrontational
soul, I learned that if you get the other person to crack a smile, you can probably sidestep who beats up whom and nobody
has to nurse a grievance. And it was Janey’s whimsical streak more than anything else that helped me temper the leap-before-you-look
approach to life Ma had never managed to beat out of me. “Visualize,” she kept urging. “Picture whoever’s bugging you buck
naked, or as some animal—nine times out of ten that’ll take the sting out.”

Okay, I conceded after sample testing, but that tenth time? Like the social studies teacher who was hassling me for no reason
I could see except maybe she liked her girls demure and dainty? Flabby nude or charging purple rhinoceros, she wasn’t funny.
“Less easy,” Janey conceded. “But before you tear into the woman, imagine doing it. Make your scene really vivid. Enjoy the
hell out of it. Then, to be fair, you’ve got to picture what happens when she gets to act out, too. If you decide to go ahead
anyhow, at least you’ll know what you can expect.”

At this stage of my life, if not always back then, I know what I would prefer to avoid. Like the major disaster I’d be apt
to pull down on myself by attempting to reshape the aftermath of Ryan Jessup’s murder. Appealing as my image of unviolated
yard was, the body and my pruner had to stay right where they were.

Action Plan B then? As far as I could tell, the best of my bad options was to play things straight. Go in and call the police.
Sincerely disclaim knowledge of how the body got there. Hope I’d be believed.

Hoping is not something I’m great at. Nor do I assume the truth will out or the good guys win—those things happen, when they
do, as life’s little bonuses. Caroming around in my head as I stalked back toward the house were storm-cloud visions of the
effect this would have on my nephews and whatever small sense of security and safety they’d accumulated about living with
me. What if I was hauled off to jail? That had to be a real possibility for the most obvious—if not the only—suspect in a
murder. Even if not, the feel of the crime, the atmosphere of it, would permeate the front yard for God knows how long.

I was working into a fine fury toward whatever bastard had set me up. My yard, my pruner, a man whom I publicly detested.
If somebody felt impelled to kill Ryan, couldn’t they have dumped him out in the woods somewhere? Did they have any idea what
damage they’d done me? Did they care? I didn’t try to talk myself down from that one—better anger than panic. I could still
vividly recall the shriveling-inside feeling that grabs hold when the police take charge of your life.

Indoors, staring at the yellow card of emergency numbers the rescue squad passes out every year, I took a long, fuzzy minute
to comprehend what the choices were. I picked the sheriff’s department number rather than the one for the state police, largely
because the former is headquartered up here in the northern part of the county, the latter twenty-some miles to the south.
It also couldn’t hurt that one of the deputies moonlighted as a backhoe man. We’d worked several Garden Center jobs together
and got along well. The state police were an unknown quantity.

After giving the dispatcher bare-bones information and being assured someone would be right over, I sat there for at least
another minute before it kicked in that there were other calls to be made. Donna Jaworski has handled Vicky’s and my legal
business the last several years with crispness and competence. I caught her on the way out of her office and told her what
little I could. Then I had to ask “Are they likely to arrest me?”

“Not right off the bat, I wouldn’t think.” If it had been a videophone I could have watched her frowning. “It’s well known
you didn’t like this guy?”

“Very.”

“Look, I’ll hustle on down as soon as I’m finished in city court. Shouldn’t be much after noon. Meantime, try to think a minimum
of twice about whatever you choose to say. Which I’d suggest be as little as possible.”

Next I dialed Mariah Hansen’s number. Mariah conducted a large portion of her life over the phone, but she wouldn’t dream
of picking it up before ten
A.M.
I told her answering machine it didn’t look promising for me to get over there today, since I’d just found a dead body in
my front yard.

Willem? He’d called the night before to tell me he was staying over in Marysville, to review some materials in the school’s
design library with one of the people he’d met at yesterday’s seminar. One of the female people, would be my guess. Unless
you’re into camping, there’s only one place to stay out there, and I supposed they’d still be in his hotel room.

Bingo. “News flash,” I informed his lazy, sensual hello; “Ryan was murdered sometime last night—in my front yard.”

His “Ryan?” came through sharp and clear. The female murmuring in the background sounded less than fully awake.

“Our very own. He was stabbed with my long-handled pruner.”

“Val, you didn’t—”

“Of course not!”

What I got instead of the hearty reassurance I craved was a brief pause. Then: “So … I guess I’d better head on back?”

“I wouldn’t rush—it’s not going to be fun. You might want to shore up your alibi, though.”

“Why in the world—?”

“Assuming they get past me as most likely suspect, who are they going to look at next? Maybe the heir apparent who also had
his run-ins with the guy, and whose inheritance is looking a little questionable?”

“That’s crazy. I’ve been here in Marysville since before noon yesterday.”

“When I was in a hurry I used to make that run in less than an hour. All I can tell you about the time of death is it happened
after quarter to nine last night and before quarter to eight this morning. You’re looking at a bunch of non-public hours.
It wouldn’t hurt to get her last name and phone number.”

Vital alerts delivered, I headed outside to wait for the cops. Should I rethink my apparel? My working garb of khaki shorts,
oversized T-shirt, and hiking boots did not suggest a person of refinement and substance. Monetary substance, that is. I stand
5′ 11″ and my body type is much closer to the women Rubens painted than to anyone who might be asked to strut down a fashion
show runway. I do not use makeup; my straight blond hair was in a ponytail that morning instead of the French twist I sometimes
make. When I wear it loose I could put on wooden clogs and a smile and look appropriate in an ad for Dutch bulbs.

Pronouncing it ridiculous to dress up for the occasion, I closed the kitchen door behind Roxy and me. I felt no need, nor
certainly any desire, to approach the body again. My stomach was still queasy from the first viewing. To compensate for not
having a photographic memory like Willem’s, I’ve trained my eyes to fix a scene, detail by detail. Nightmare fuel though it
would certainly become, I’d forced myself to learn all I could, visually.

Ryan’s costume was both more casual and more colorful than it ever got at the office—pale blue khaki pants and the remains
of what must have been a spiffy royal-blue-and-white-striped wide-sleeve pullover. Clean white crew socks inside those Nikes.
He was lying on his back, head slightly angled and slanted off the left side of a fair-sized rock. In life he’d looked younger
than his thirty-two years, his regular-featured Boy Scout face projecting earnestness and reliability. When you understood
the parameters, I suppose he had valid claim to both. I’d be surprised if girls ever described him as cute—he’d been seriously
underanimated for that. His mouth, which had found so little to smile about, hung slightly open in death. Those pale, cool
eyes were open too, normal size; the overall configuration of his features was curiously expressionless. Somebody’s coming
at you with a long-handled pruner—shouldn’t you be showing emotion?

His chest, the grisly focal point of the tableau, was pretty well torn up; my pruner must’ve been worked around several times
before the killer left it there. Beyond that one area, no marks were showing on the upturned side of the body, but there was
a reddish stain on the nape of the neck, I couldn’t tell how large. Something wasn’t quite natural about the way the body
was positioned: like it had been laid out, maybe, instead of having fallen. Or might that be the effect of rigor mortis? The
fingers, in particular, looked oddly stiff.

There was one thing worth checking that was close to the house. The pruner was among the tools I chuck into the back of the
Bronco each spring and leave there as far into November as it’s possible to plant. This part of the season, with most plants’
growth spurts behind them, you don’t have much need for a pruner. The last time I could recall using mine was on a runaway
Japanese quince at Hudson Heights a couple of weeks ago.

I don’t bother locking the Bronco on-site, or just to run into a local store. It does get locked at night, though, parked
in front of my house. Had it been broken in to? Careful inspection turned up no signs of that, or of anything else being missing.
Somebody had planned ahead. To repeatedly plunge a pruner into somebody’s chest and calmly walk away, leaving him dead or
dying? I couldn’t fully take in, just then, that somebody I knew had actually done that.

I was bursting to bring the two men from the sheriff’s department up to speed the moment their car arrived, but they had their
own agenda. Leaving the car at the road end of the driveway, they walked in to within maybe twenty feet of the body, not so
much as glancing in my direction. Satisfied it was indeed a body, one of them came over to Roxy and me and introduced himself
as Sheriff Baxter Dye. The mean-looking, beefy one who remained behind he identified only as Joe.

Pocket tape recorder in hand, he asked my name, if I knew who the victim was, what time I’d found the body, and whether I’d
touched anything. I assured him no on that last one but conceded Roxy had done some close-up sniffing.

He reached over and massaged that loose area of fur right behind her ears, winning instant devotion. “I’d like you to tie
her up for a while, Ms. Wyckoff. Or is that a run back there, behind the fence? And then if you could wait …” He scanned in
vain for a seating area or at least some front steps. “You can, uh, go on in the house, if you like.”

I decided against the run for Roxy—she’s too vocal when something is moving around beyond her range. “Want a Milk-Bone?” I
coaxed. Well, not as passionately as usual, she didn’t, not with two new people on the scene, but she reluctantly decided
she’d take it. Since we’ve established that Milk-Bones live only in the kitchen, she obligingly herded me toward the door.