“How do you stand it?” I asked, nodding my head toward the noise in the square.
“The carols? Oh, after a while you just tune them out,” she said wearily. “They just leach the spirit out of me.”
“Maybe that’s what made the purse snatcher deranged,”
I offered, and she burst into laughter. Mary Maude had always laughed easily, charmingly, making it impossible not at least to smile along with her.
She hugged me again, made me promise to call her when I came back to town after the wedding, and scampered back into the store, her body shaking with the cold. I stood looking after her for a minute. Then I threw a couple more boxes into the car and drove carefully out of the alley.
Within a block of turning out onto the side street, Macon, I passed Dill’s pharmacy.
I had a lot to think about.
I would have given almost anything to have had my punching bag.
I returned to Varena’s place and packed everything I could find. Every half hour or so, I straightened up and looked out the window. There were lots of visitors at the Osborn house: women dropping off food, mostly. Emory appeared in the yard from time to time, walking restlessly, and a couple of times he was crying. Once he drove off in his car, returning in less than an hour. But he didn’t knock on the cottage door again, to my great relief.
I had carefully folded Varena’s remaining clothes and placed them in suitcases, since I didn’t know what she’d planned on taking on the honeymoon. Most of her clothes were already at Dill’s.
Finally, by three o’clock, all Varena’s belongings were packed. I moved all the boxes into my car, except for a short stack by the front door that just couldn’t fit. And of course, there was the remaining furniture, but that wasn’t my problem.
I began cleaning the apartment.
It felt surprisingly good to have something to clean. Varena, while not a slob, was no compulsive housekeeper, and there was plenty to do. I was also actively enjoying the break from my family and the alone time.
As I was running the vacuum, I heard a heavy knock on the door. I jumped. I hadn’t heard a car pull up, but then I wouldn’t have over the drone of the machine.
I opened the door. Jack was there, and he was angry.
“What?” I asked.
He pushed past me. “My room at the motel got broken into.” He was furious. “Someone came in through the bathroom window. It looks out on a field. No one saw.”
“Anything taken?”
“No. Whoever it was rummaged through everything, broke the lock on my briefcase.”
I had an ominous sinking somewhere in the region of my stomach. “Did you find my note?”
“What?” He stared at me, anger giving way to something else.
“I left you a note.” I sat down abruptly on the ottoman. “I left you a note,” I repeated stupidly. “About Krista O’Shea.”
“You signed it?”
“No.”
“What did it say?”
“That she hadn’t been to the doctor in weeks.”
Jack’s eyes flickered from item to item in the clean room, as he thought about what I’d told him.
“Did you call the police?” I asked.
“They were there when I pulled in. Mr. Patel, the manager, had called. He had seen the window was broken when he went to put the garbage out behind the building.”
“What did you tell them?”
“The truth. That my things had been gone through but nothing had been stolen. I hadn’t left any money in my room. I never do. And I don’t carry valuable things with me.”
Jack felt angry and sick because his space, however temporary, had been invaded, and his things had been riffled. I understand that feeling all too well. But Jack would never talk about it in those terms, because he was a man.
“So now someone knows exactly why I’m here in Bartley.” He’d cover that violated feeling with practical considerations.
“That person also knows I have an accomplice,” he continued.
That was one way to put it.
Suddenly I stood, walked over to the window. I was crackling with restless energy. Trouble was coming, and every nerve in my body was warning me to get in my car and go home to Shakespeare.
But
No, that wasn’t completely true. I could have brought myself to leave my family if I felt threatened enough.
Without a thought in my head, I made a fist and would have driven it into the window if Jack hadn’t caught my arm.
I rounded on him, crazy with jolts of feeling that I wouldn’t identify. Instead of striking him, I ran my arm around his neck and drew him ferociously to me. The stresses and strains on me were almost intolerable.
Jack, understandably surprised-, made a questioning noise but then shut up. He let go of the arm he was gripping and tentatively put his own arms around me. We stood silently for what seemed like a long time.
“So,” he said, “you want to talk about whatever this is that’s got you so upset? Have you run out of tolerance for being in your parents’ house? Has your sister made you mad? Or… have you found out something else about her fiancй?”
I pushed away from him and began to pace the room.
“I have some ideas,” I said.
His dark brows flew up. I should’ve kept my mouth shut. I didn’t want to have the whole conversation: I’d tell him I would get in the houses, he’d tell me it was his job, blah blah blah. Why not skip the whole thing?
“Lily, I’m going to get mad at you,” Jack said with a sort of fatalistic certainty.
“You can’t do the things I can do. What’s your next step now?” I challenged him. “Is there one more thing you can find out here?”
Sure enough, he was looking angry already. He stuck his hands in the pockets of his leather jacket and glanced around for something handy to kick. Finding nothing, he too began pacing. We shifted around the room as if we were sword fighters waiting for our opponent to give us an opening.
“Ask the chief if I can go in and look at those files at Dr. LeMay’s,” he suggested defiantly.
“It’ll never happen.” I knew Chandler: He would go only so far.
“Find whatever the murderer was wearing when he killed the doctor and the nurse and Meredith Osborn.”
So Jack had decided, as I had, that the killer had worn some covering garment over his clothes.
“It’s not gonna be in the house,” I told him.
“You think not?”
“I know not. When people hide something like that, they want it to be close but not as personally close as their own house.”
“You’re thinking carport, garage?”
I nodded. “Or car. But you know as well as I do that’ll put you in a terrible position legally. Before you do that, isn’t there anything else you can try?”
“I’d hoped to get something from Dill. He’s a nice guy, but he just won’t talk about his first marriage. At least his attic has a good floored section now.” Jack gave a short laugh. “I thought about going back to reinterview the couple that lived next door to Meredith and Emory when they had their first child,” Jack said reluctantly. “I’ve been reviewing what they said, and I think I see a hole in their account.”
“Where do they live?”
“The podunk town north of Little Rock where the Osborns lived before they came here. You know… the one not far from Conway.”
“What was the hole?”
“Not so much a hole, as… something the woman said just didn’t make sense. She said that Meredith told her the baby coming was the saddest day of her life. And Meredith told her that the home birth had been terrible.”
