Pascoe. I was supposed to work for a few hours. I had to go to the grocery store again. I wanted to spend some brain time thinking of what could have been hidden in Poppy’s closet, something so valuable that it was worth breaking into the murdered woman’s house before it had even been cleaned of her blood.
And, most of all, I needed to talk to Lizanne, who had been outside Poppy’s house the day she was killed.
Melinda and I had kept silent about Lizanne’s presence at Poppy’s that day, and we’d struggled with our decision for all of thirty seconds. Both of us believed that there was simply no chance at all that Lizanne had stabbed Poppy. But we did need to talk to her about why she’d been there. I guess I had a tiny, tiny sliver of doubt that needed to be erased by hearing Lizanne tell me, in person, what had happened that day.
I called Melinda to ask her to go with me. She was very busy, as you can imagine, but she agreed to go. She wanted to hear what Lizanne had to say as much as I did.
The yard had not been put to bed for winter at the sprawling ranch Cartland had bought when his practice had begun flourishing. The flower beds needed weeding and more mulch, and the grass hadn’t gotten its final mowing. Someone had given up just a little too soon. A fenced-in area was strewn with little kids’ toys, bright plastics that would crack in the coming cold. But the smell of corn bread rolled out of the back door when Lizanne answered our knock.
“Come in,” Lizanne said placidly, her arms full of baby. “Let me just pop Brandon in his playpen, and Davis is already taking a nap. Then I can get the corn bread out of the oven, and we can talk.”
Melinda and I came in cautiously; I thought we were both taken aback by Lizanne’s casual air. She had to know why we were there.
Brandon was deposited in his playpen with absolutely no fuss, and he sat up and watched with interest as his mother, still one of the most beautiful women I’d ever known, despite having popped out two babies in almost instant succession, slid a pan of corn bread out of the oven and set it on top to cool.
“For the dressing,” Lizanne explained, poking it with a finger to test its doneness. I figured that might be a sign of nerves; she certainly didn’t need to tell us that. In a bassinet against the wall, Davis gave a little sound and went back to sleep.
“Do you fix yours in a separate pan or in the bird?” Melinda was serious when she asked this burning question. Melinda had been on the quest for the perfect dressing for the past two years.
“Both. There isn’t enough, if you just stuff the turkey. And I put some sausage in.”
Melinda’s eyes lighted up with interest, and she began to talk apples, oysters, and chestnuts. They might have been sitting there for an hour, talking food, if I hadn’t interrupted.
“Listen, Lizanne, we found the straps.”
“Oh.” She looked quite unsurprised. “Why didn’t you give them to the police? You should have.”
“What were you doing there?”
“Well, I was getting tired of Bubba going out at night and making these silly excuses,” Lizanne said. She would never call her husband Cartland, not in a million years.
“So, you confronted Poppy?”
“I was ready to.” I watched Lizanne’s hands, long and thin, clench into fists. “I didn’t get the chance. She never came to the door. And the kids got hungry, and they started crying. I couldn’t stand to have anything of hers, so I took the pacifier straps and threw them down in the driveway so she’d know what I thought of her. And I came on home.”
“What were you going to say to her if she’d come to the door?” I asked out of sheer curiosity.
“I was going to remind her that since, at Bubba’s request, I quit my job after we got married, he is the boys’ and my sole support. I was going to point out to her that there are better fish in the sea than Bubba.”
Melinda and I exchanged glances. “What do you mean?” Melinda asked. Lizanne was measuring sugar into water to make cranberry sauce.
“Poppy was more serious about Bubba than she was about the other men,” Lizanne said after a long pause. “I don’t think she wanted to divorce John David and marry Bubba, but I don’t think she’d completely dismissed the idea, either. But she might have just been stringing him along. I don’t understand people like that.” Lizanne turned to us, a half-cup measure in her hand. Her face was white and disturbed. “She just didn’t seem to care whom she hurt. She would have what she wanted, and everyone else could just go to hell.”
Had Poppy really been that careless, that conscienceless? I had never crossed Poppy. I had never had anything she wanted. Melinda, I noticed, did not look shocked at all.
I was dismayed and a little mortified by my lack of acuity.
“So you just pulled up to the house…” I said, hoping to prod her into a more complete account of her actions.
Lizanne poured a whole bag of cranberries into the pot. She was going to have a lot of sauce, and lot of dressing, too. I wondered how much company she was having. It reminded me that I needed to get home and start working in my own kitchen.
Lizanne, having given the berries a stir, turned back to face us. “You all want a drink of something?” she asked politely.
“No thanks,” we said in chorus. She laughed, and we all relaxed a little.
“I pulled up to the house, and the boys were in their car seats in the back of the minivan,” she said. “I knew Bubba was going to be giving a speech that day, out of town, so there wouldn’t be any danger of him driving by and seeing me. John David would be at work. I figured it would be a good time to talk to Poppy. I just wanted to let her know that I knew all about… them, and that I wasn’t going to divorce Bubba without as much stink as I could raise.” Lizanne said this with absolute sincerity. “I know Bubba thinks I’m dumb, and I am about some things.” And you could tell she didn’t care. “But I know how it’d look in the papers. Mother of twins, orphan of murdered parents, abandoned by her lawyer husband for another woman. And you know what else?”
A little stunned, Melinda and I shook our heads.
“The second I learned about this affair, I started taking the kids to church every single Sunday. I wasn’t so consistent before, but I haven’t missed a sermon in five months. Wednesday nights, too. And Bubba hasn’t gone with me twice, I bet.”
Lizanne was going to use God as a character witness.
“
By this time, I was gaping at the woman I’d thought I’d known. I didn’t know if I admired her or if I was horrified. I didn’t dare look over at Melinda.
“But I don’t really want to get a divorce,” Lizanne explained, never stopping her little tasks around the stove and sink. “I get along okay with Bubba, and we have everything we need. I’d have to go back to work if we got divorced, and I like being home with the boys.” She beamed over at Brandon, who smiled back. He seemed to have inherited his mother’s placid nature. “So I went to see Poppy, to try to talk some sense into her. I knew Poppy was at home because her car was in the garage. But she never came to the door.” Lizanne blew on a spoonful of cranberry sauce, then held it away to examine the color and consistency. “After a minute, I went over to the fence, thinking I’d go through the gate and knock on the sliding glass door on the patio.”
“And did you go into the backyard?” I asked, sitting on the edge of the kitchen chair.
“Oh, no,” Lizanne said, her voice once more serene. “There was already someone there, so I went back to the car.”
“There was someone there,” I repeated.
“Yes, I could hear them talking.”
“Them?” Melinda said in a croak.
“Yes, them. Poppy and someone else.”
“Who was it?” I felt as if the air in the kitchen were vibrating.
“Oh. I don’t know. The radio was on, so I couldn’t hear very well, but I could hear two voices, and the louder one was Poppy’s.”
“What did you do?”
“I went back and sat in the car. After about ten minutes, I went and knocked on the door again. But she still didn’t come. So after a little bit longer, I threw the straps out of the van and drove away.” Lizanne turned back to the stove and stirred.
