Summerkill Read online

  Vicky’s usually had a main man in her life, or one on the horizon. She feels there’s something missing otherwise. To me, a man on the side is just fine, and I haven’t much minded the dry spells between them. In Willem I may have found my ideal man on the side: caring but not demanding, around but not hovering. A treasure, Mariah once pronounced him, and I do see her point.

  “Depends on what?” he broke into my musings, tired of waiting.

  “World-class repentance,” I decreed. “That message you left last night—you sounded half-convinced I was a long-handled-pruner murderer.”

  “I was not! But you know how they get when they absolutely believe something.”

  “This morning I was treated to a vivid glimpse of how your father gets.”

  “Dad says he was actually afraid of you there for a few minutes.”

  “If that’s how he carries on when he’s actually afraid, he should take basic survival lessons.”

  “He probably should. And of course he’s feeling awfully sheepish—about accusing you.”

  “Bullshit. He wouldn’t know how.”

  Willem laughed. “Well, anyhow, you can consider yourself un-ejected from the premises.”

  “I prefer ejected.”

  “Val, come on. Dad was just being … excessive. When you consider the information they were getting fed—”

  “He was obnoxiously excessive. And they chose their information feed—not a one of them bothered to check with me. It’s past time I’m out of there.”

  “But with Ryan gone I’ll be able to find something decent for you. There’s that Reeves garden we looked at over on the river, there’s—”

  “Willem, let it go.”

  “Ah, but … Look, Mother would like to talk with you tomorrow. At least hear what she has to say?”

  “There’s really no point, but okay, if we can make it in the morning. Vicky and I are going up to Speculator after her lunch shift, to spend the night and part of Sunday there.”

  “Speculator?”

  “Where the boys went for the week.”

  “Oh, right. I wish I could get away for a couple of days.”

  “You just did, remember? I hear that hasn’t gone over well.”

  “Does it ever? But hell, I’m not about to start considering physical expression of perfectly normal human affection a major crime.”

  “You don’t have to sell me on it—I’d never marry you in the first place. Speaking of the woman who was that foolish, how did Kate learn the names of my mother and her husband, and their version of what happened twenty-five years ago?”

  “From this afternoon’s Record, I assume, the same as I did.”

  “Guess again. She was the source for that story.”

  “How could she be? All you told me was your mother remarried and it turned into a bad situation. You made a point of not mentioning names. I didn’t even realize this all happened in Albany.”

  “You weren’t supposed to. No way could have you resisted trying to put us back together. Nonetheless, Kate damn well did get those alleged details from somebody. Big Daddy, maybe? Ask her—I’m curious.” He wouldn’t, I knew. “Oh, and who was it told you about the vandalism at Hudson Heights on Tuesday?”

  “Somebody phoned it in—Emma’s message was on my desk when I got back from lunch. Kyle or Matt or Thurman, I imagine. Why?”

  “Just wondering.”

  “Oh, right. God, you’re starting to sound like Baxter.”

  “Giving you a hard time, is he?”

  “All of us. ‘Where were you at ten o’clock Wednesday night? How about midnight? Who were you with? Did you and Ryan Jessup have any problems? No? Well, somebody was telling me—’”

  “You did clear yourself about Marysville?”

  “Well … I mean I can if I absolutely have to. She didn’t like the sound of last name and phone number—we both knew it was a one-time thing, and it’s not like her husband would be thrilled. Anyway, how many people can prove where they were in the middle of the night? Or never had any differences with somebody? I think Baxter’s carrying a grudge because of what happened with his ex-wife.”

  “Which was?”

  “After Kate and I got together, we tried to pull Laura and Baxter into our group—the girls have been best friends practically forever. Laura’s been a wonderful fit. Baxter—doesn’t seem to be a very social person.”

  “Aren’t we sounding a wee bit snotty here?”

  Willem laughed. “We privileged folk just can’t help doing that sometimes. Even when we know we’re going to get called for it.”

  “And you don’t really care, either. Anyhow, you think that was part of what broke up their marriage?”

  “It couldn’t have helped. Still, that’s hardly a reason to hound us now. Mother’s said something to Phil about it. It’ll probably turn out Ryan was killed by somebody he ran into when he was out jogging. Or maybe a couple of kids were trying to rob him and things got out of hand.”

  “Reality check? Ryan was murdered in my yard with a tool that had been lifted from my Bronco ahead of time. Somebody planned to kill him and to make it look like I did it. We’re not talking kids or casual encounters, we’re talking people with some connection to both of us. That’s not a huge group, and it does include your family.”

  “You really don’t believe one of us did it?”

  “I really don’t know. Whoever’s in the clear should have nothing to worry about. But it sounds to me like Baxter’s asking the right people the right questions.”

  • • •

  True to her son’s word, Eleanor called Saturday morning. When I declined her invitation to come in and discuss things, she asked to stop by and see me. We agreed on a time.

  The first couple of times she’d been out to my place I was nervous, hustling around picking things up, debating what I should offer her to eat or drink. I must have supposed that winning Eleanor’s acceptance in some vague area beyond employee status was both possible and to be tried for. It soon sank in that, though less obvious about it than her husband, she was an entrenched Us/Them person. You were one of her people, or you were not. I couldn’t possibly be.

  It would be a stretch to say I liked the woman, but there was much I’d come to find admirable about her. A knowledgeable horticulturist, nationally known among daylily fanciers for several of her hybrids, she’d long been a major force in the local garden club, and her flower arrangements were regularly solicited for Albany shows. She had a strong sense of responsibility and managed—I don’t know about well, but at least respectably—in a marriage to a man who brought very little to the party. And as best she could in a problematic business environment.

  Eleanor showed little warmth or appreciation of humor, though once in a while she’d catch you off guard with a clever one-liner. Among her own people, Mariah claimed, she was a tad looser. I couldn’t imagine Eleanor letting anyone see her out of control.

  Her maiden name, den Besten, had a distinguished pedigree. Eleanor claimed direct descent from of one of the Patroons, those minor Dutch nobles who, centuries ago, were given land grants to large tracts in this area by the government of Niew Nederland. The family hung on when the English took over; indeed, it flourished. An ancestor was briefly governor of New York State, another a court of appeals judge, still another went to Washington to serve in the cabinet of Martin Van Buren.

  But all that was long past. By the time the family mantle passed to her father, Abram den Besten, he was it, in terms of direct line, as Eleanor and Willem would become in their generations. Being a person whose known family tree consists of a few branches and no roots, I’ll never be able to feel how much this means to them, both the distinction and the burden. I’ve observed it, though.

  Abram was a well-regarded plantsman who made little more than a decent living from the nursery he’d named Pleasant Valley. Whether it was his idea or Eleanor’s mother’s or maybe even her own, it became a family dictum that Eleanor needed to bring mon
ey into the den Besten coffers. For a young woman of her era and social orientation, the way you did that was to marry it. The Etlingers, though of less distinguished lineage, were socially acceptable, and Dan Etlinger had made a name for himself in Albany banking. Rodney, the better looking of his two sons, was a young man with assured entrée into the financial world and parental expertise to guide him.

  It would have taken much more. Even before his father’s death Rodney had bombed out as a banker; his brother would prove even more of a financial sponge. As the Etlinger money dwindled, Eleanor and Rodney came to pin their hopes on Pleasant Valley, which they renamed Etlingers’ Garden Center. It had to become larger and grander and produce more income than in Abram’s day. In spite of what Willem’s college degree certified, they couldn’t help but realize that he was not business oriented. It was up to them to make his artistic talent economically viable, but to convert the Garden Center to a vehicle for his landscape design gifts would take more capital investment than they could manage. Thus it fell to Willem to enrich the family coffers the same way his mother had.

  Did it ever get stated that baldly? I’ve no concept of how they talk among themselves.

  I wonder if anyone seriously contemplated the extended family stresses that would ensue. As things went along, Clete Donnelly came to feel he’d bought his daughter some awfully expensive social cachet. He was too blunt a man to keep this enlightenment to himself, or to profess false admiration for a philandering son-in-law with extravagant indifference to financial realities.

  If Clete and Willem have anything positive in common, it’s that they both think big. However the choice came to be made, Willem was a natural for the Hudson Heights landscaping. And what a design he had come up with. Once he’d flattened off the top of the hill and built up along the eastern edges for still more surface area, Clete went wild in his scheme for the summit. He insisted—over the architect’s suggestion that cedar shake structures with the normal ratio of openings would be more appropriately rustic—on making the clubhouse and inn white-clad, glassy buildings and on paving over a good third of the remaining plateau surface for a parking lot. Boating along the Hudson on a sunny day or reaching the top of the steep access road, the effect could be temporarily blinding. Mariah: “If you didn’t know Clete was behind things, you’d take one look and start preparing for the second coming.”

  It was Willem’s challenge to harmonize the buildings and their surroundings. Going for a woodsy or native look would only emphasize the misfit, as would the sort of airy Floridian vividness of plantings the buildings suggest. The landscaping had to be lush and substantial but not overpowering, dense with a look of greenery that was believable for the area, well dotted with effects that could be recognized as special. Lines needed to be disguised and softened, vistas suggested and extended, footpaths delineated and enhanced.

  The full measure of Willem’s achievement was not visible yet, but the sense of the right elements being in the right places was already coming into force. The architect looked happier every time he stopped by.

  Eleanor hardly ever looked happy. She couldn’t help looking elegant, though, and she always made me conscious of relative mass. At 5′7″ Willem is the tallest of the family by several inches. They’re not undernourished-looking, just built to small proportions. Even Kate is, though the rest of the Donnellys are tall and fairly bulky. I invariably felt out of scale, which maybe should have told me more than it did years ago.

  My favorite thing about Eleanor was that she genuinely appreciated my garden. That morning, like the other times she’d been there, she made straight for it, leading.

  Some people wouldn’t even call this area a garden, since the ratio of flowers to greenery is not very high. But you can do lots more with textures and colors and sizes and shapes of leaves than most petunia and marigold addicts ever recognize.

  Not that my garden never blooms. There are something over fifty varieties of spring wildflowers, few of them splashy, all of them special, plus an assortment of trees, mostly native, which flower in that season. Then come woodland phloxes, then the old roses I’ve started with slips from area ones that have gone wild; some bloom well into summer.

  The roadside daylilies are in their glory in late June and early July. That’s my strongest block of color. By August we’re looking at fringe bloomers, mainly: Joe Pye weed, several goldenrods, thalictrum, lots of gooseneck loosestrife, physostegia. A few of the asters are starting up then, too, and berries are brightening into their fall colors.

  “You’ve made it so nice back here” was her comment that morning. “All the plant material in prime condition, as usual. From time to time I’ve tried for the natural effect, but somehow I always end up with rows. Willem despairs of me.”

  “Willem often does rows himself.”

  “But rather more striking ones. No. Somehow, I can manage to combine flowers in a container in reasonably interesting ways. Give me a plot of ground and I make—rows.” I didn’t argue the point. Eleanor had little patience with people disputing what was patently true, nor, I was sure, did she judge herself seriously defective in terms of talents.

  Inside, seating herself at the opposite end of the sofa from me, she got down to business. “I want you to know we are prepared to provide you with suitable work for the remainder of this season. Of necessity on small projects; we have no large ones scheduled. Since it is your preference, we’re willing to arrange for you to spend most of your time on-site.”

  I couldn’t help smiling. “You can relax, Eleanor. I’m not going to sue you, and I strongly doubt you’ll want to sue me either. Let’s leave it that our association ended yesterday.”

  “Please take the time to be sure. You’ve assumed serious financial responsibilities with your nephews.”

  “That’s not a problem.”

  “Of course you should be able to get a nice price for this place once you fix up the front.”

  “I expect so, if I were looking to sell.”

  “I’m told you plan to work down in the south county with Jake Southeby. He’s an awfully difficult man.”

  “Several of those around. Jake and I touch enough of the same bases, I think. Anyhow, we aren’t making anything legal yet.”

  “That’s prudent. Won’t you be wanting to relocate closer to your work, though?”

  My contracts with Etlingers’ always stipulated that I couldn’t take on independent projects within the Township of Pinehaven. “Half an hour’s tolerable, and who knows, after this season we may want to branch northward some. Besides, this feels like home.”

  She looked, ever so briefly, as if that statement was beyond her comprehension. “Well, then. I assume we can work things out financially at the end of the season, as per schedule.”

  “In terms of us, this is the end of the season. Let’s settle up now. I’ll give you a breakdown of what I think would be fair. If there’s a ready cash problem, Mariah is willing to withhold whatever you owe me from her last payment.”

  “Oh, I’m sure.” Eleanor had this expression I’d come to translate as “I do not appreciate this, but I will not stoop to argue with you.” What she said was, “We’ll handle it that way, then. For all your complaints, you’ve done well for yourself this year. Not in terms of bonus, obviously, but factoring in those extra charges you insisted on for what you did at Hudson Heights.”

  “I had to play glorified crew chief there instead of doing the sort of work that qualified for a bonus. I’d lots rather deal with my own designs than plant someone else’s. Even Willem’s.”

  “We did not ask you to get involved with Hudson Heights.”

  “Technically, that’s true. But when you cited my landscape architect’s license on the contract application—without even bothering to get my okay—you did effectively involve me.”

  “You’ve rather milked that license, it seems to me. Just because Willem hasn’t gotten around to picking his up—”

  “Eleanor, he can’t do that at
Price Chopper. One time we went over what he’d need. He found time for enough design courses on his way to that useless business degree, and he could probably negotiate most or all of the four years’ field experience. That leaves sixteen to twenty technical credits and maybe a couple of prerequisites. Most of this he could do right around here—winters, evenings—if he really wanted to.”

  “Or needed to. Willem’s made a name for himself as a designer. This is something you haven’t achieved, license or no.”

  “Come on, Eleanor, we’re not talking competition here. Willem wants to work big. Big means the Garden Center will need a LA on staff. It’s not brilliance of design they’re looking to guarantee, it’s competence of execution. You’ll also need a much better crew chief than Johnny Armitage, not to mention more reliable workers. And, while you’re at it, somebody who can figure bids realistically.”

  Eleanor drew herself up from the sofa and towered over me as best she could. “I have been in this business all my life, and unlikely as you seem to find it, I do believe we have the capacity to determine our future needs and address them. But thank you for your suggestions.”

  “You’re welcome,” I said politely, rising too.

  • • •

  Half an hour later I was refitting the Bronco for the run up north—tools out, camping gear in. Sensing she was part of the excursion, Roxy enthusiastically supervised. A sheriff’s department car pulled in to the driveway and tooled on back, skirting the crime scene corral and coming to a strongly punctuated halt. The figure that emerged was not Baxter Dye but my old heavy-machinery buddy Calvin Keller, the deputy I kept hoping would show up after I called in about Ryan’s body.

  “Leaving town, huh? Mighty suspicious looking.”

  “Chill out, it’s only an overnighter with my sister. Hi, there. I thought you must be on vacation.”