this piece of paper over to the police. If Poppy was putting pressure on the father of her son, he might have reacted with violence. But let me think another day.”
Waiting for God to give us guidance seemed as good a course as any.
The only resolution I’d formed was that it would not be me who told John David what we’d discovered. No sir.
I dropped by to see my mom and John. They certainly seemed in better spirits now that the plans for the funeral were definite. Mother was just buzzed at the idea of finally having something to do, at some conclusion having been reached. True, Poppy’s murderer had not been named, but at least the family could go through the ritual of burying her. John, she said, had just returned from the funeral home, where he’d gone with John David to select a casket and make all the arrangements with the funeral director.
“I offered to go with them, and so did Avery,” Mother said. She was wearing a blouse and skirt featuring a lot of dark blue, and she looked as neat and elegant as always, but the sun coming through the window hit her squarely in the face and I noticed, as if for the first time, that my mother was getting an enlarged network of tiny wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and eyes. She was still impressively attractive, and I was sure she always would be, but there was no denying that age had laid its hand on her.
“I was glad to go with my son,” said John very quietly. “John David was with me when I ordered his mother’s casket. Avery was too upset that day. Of course, I never thought I’d have to return the favor. Poppy was so young, so full of life.”
She had been. She had looked forward to every day of her existence, at least over the past few years. I was willing to bet on that.
No matter what her faults, she had been robbed. So had John David and Chase.
I said good-bye without telling Mother about my father’s phone message. I’d have to tell her sooner or later, but right now, until I knew what I was supposed to do with Phillip, I thought I’d just keep Dad’s marital problems to myself.
“I guess it would look bad if I went out to the club for round of golf,” John said longingly as I paused in the doorway. My mother patted his hand.
“I don’t think there would be anything wrong with that,” she said, and I wondered again at my mother’s late- in-life love affair. “You need to get out of the house, and the funeral is two days away. The exercise will do you good, if you bundle up.”
“You’re nagging,” John said fondly.
I smiled but tried to hide it. “I have to be going,” I said. “I left Phillip at home, busy doing a job for me.”
“I’ll talk to you soon,” Mother said automatically.
“I’m sure you will.” I smiled openly.
I was thinking of Madeleine on the way home. Though I felt temporarily wept out, I was grieving about the old orange cat. I had spent a lot of years with Madeleine, as many years as Jane Engle had had with her. I remembered how cute Madeleine’s kittens had been, and I wondered how many grandchildren she had. Probably great- and great-great grandchildren, come to think of it.
That reminded me of Cara’s call about Moosie. It wasn’t right that Poppy’s cat should be in the care of a neighbor, not when I could take the cat in until John David could get back on his feet. After all, I had a fenced-in backyard and cat food, though possibly my fence was low enough for Moosie to leap over, claws or not.
To get to Cara’s house, which faced onto the street parallel to Swanson, I had to drive past Poppy’s house once again. To my extreme irritation (I didn’t seem to be able to be moderate about anything these days), Arthur’s car was parked in front of the house.
This was tacky, to say the least. After all, the house had been released to John David, and he and Chase might arrive at any moment to resume living in it again. John David couldn’t stay in a motel forever, and now that the initial shock of Poppy’s death had passed, he might be ready to return to his very clean home.
I parked behind Arthur’s car in the driveway and marched up to the front door. I still had the key I’d borrowed from John David, and I opened the door and went in.
“Arthur!” I bellowed.
He appeared at the head of the stairs, looking considerably startled.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I asked, surprising even myself.
“I’m the detective in charge of the investigation into the death of the home owner,” he said evenly. “I have a right to be here.”
“Now that you’ve given John David the green light to move back in? I don’t think so,” I said with more confidence than I felt.
“Are you jealous because I came to love Poppy rather than you?” Arthur asked as he came down the stairs. I remembered that yesterday I had wondered if I should be afraid of this man, and I’d had a friend with me then.
“No, I’m not jealous of Poppy, especially over your affections. I think Poppy loved life, but I think she lived it badly. I don’t think she ever appreciated what she had, or what she could do with it.”
Arthur stood right in front of me, looking down at me, and he was maybe a little puzzled. “What could Poppy have wanted that she didn’t have?” he asked.
Smarter lovers, for one thing.
“Poppy could have wanted stability, but instead she created instability. She could have wanted to heal from the badness in her past, but instead she clung to the… the emotional problems that caused her to live so… dangerously.” Maybe I sounded a tad pompous.
“She was wonderful,” Arthur said, unbelievingly. “She was smart, and she was funny, and she was pretty. Like you.”
“But unlike me, she liked to sneak,” I said bluntly. “Unlike me, she liked multiple partners. This isn’t about how great I am in contrast to Poppy. This is about you letting go of a dream of Poppy, a Poppy who never really existed. You can’t afford to pin her down this tightly, Arthur. Let her go, so you can look for who killed her.”
I wondered how much sleep Arthur had been getting. He was definitely on the smelly side, and he certainly needed a shave. That curly pale hair was dirty, and his shirt was rumpled.
“Was it you who searched the house after she died, Arthur? The one who searched her bedroom?”
“I think it was Bubba Sewell,” Arthur said. “He seemed awfully concerned with how long the house would be off-limits to the family. I don’t know what he was looking for.”
I did. “She didn’t take pictures of you?” I said, unwisely.
“Pictures? What the hell are you talking about?”
“When were you with her? It’s been almost two years, right?” I’d just had the worst idea in the world. I was wondering if you added Chase’s age, plus nine months…
“Less than that,” he said, and my heart sank. Arthur was a candidate for Chase’s father.
“Oh, well, doesn’t make any difference,” I said bracingly. “What were you actually doing here today, Arthur? Were you just mooning around, or were you working on the investigation?” Poppy must have had a higher regard for Arthur than for the others, but I wasn’t up to explaining to Arthur why that was so.
“A little of both,” Arthur said. His voice was mild, which was a relief. “I’ve been talking to Sandy Wynn. She called Poppy that day, said she was coming to talk to her. She admits she was here the morning Poppy was murdered.”
“Did she do it?”
“She says that when she got here, Poppy was already dead.”
“Where did she park her car? Did anyone see her car?”
“The woman across the street. Almost everyone on this street goes to work in the morning, but this woman, the one who also described the Sewells’ van, incidentally, was home with the runs that morning. In between trips to the bathroom, she sat in her living room and watched television, with the front curtains open. She didn’t get a good look at Lizanne, but a better one at Sandy. She picked her picture out of a photo array. Sandy parked down the street, in the driveway of a house for sale, and walked up to Poppy’s.”
“Why would she do that if she didn’t plan on doing something bad?”
“She planned on talking Poppy into giving her something, something that belonged to Marvin Wynn. Of course, thanks to you and Melinda, we know what that thing is-the letter. Sandy broke down when I showed it to her. She said Poppy forced Marvin to write that letter by threatening to tell John David and the rest of the world what Marvin
