Summerkill Page 8

  And he and Matt had become good buddies. You never know.

  “Hey, guys,” I said breezily, “any good mudslides out at old HH lately?”

  Running a hand through his thick, curly black hair, Matt came up with a weak grin. “Not since you stopped messing around. So how’s it going?”

  “Lots better than yesterday.”

  Thurman looked half-poised for flight. “Is there any news on this terrible murder?” he asked.

  “One huge hot flash, Thurman: they’ve figured out I couldn’t have committed it.”

  “Good to hear!” To my suspicious ears Matt’s heartiness sounded less than full strength, but he recovered quickly. “So when are we going to get together on those three problem residentials you guys are signed up for?”

  “We’re not. The Garden Center and I are kaput.”

  “Jesus, first Skip, now you. What’re they trying to do, self-destruct?”

  “Sometimes I wonder. Do try not to let them bulldoze that nice stand of clump birches on number twenty-eight. And Thurman, can you make sure those Cornell Pinks and the bank of shrubs behind them keep their feet wet? If that background hasn’t grown together better by September you might want to nudge Willem to fill in with some evergreens. Otherwise those Cornells are going to look like a bunch of skinny orphans next spring, assuming they survive that long.”

  “After all we’ve been through with those shrubs, I’ll carry the watering can personally if I have to. I do think we’ve finally got the problem licked, though, don’t you?”

  “I wouldn’t bet the farm. Cornells are notoriously temperamental.”

  “Just like some people, would you say?” Matt’s grin looked a little better. “So, what do you figure to do with all that time you won’t be using to come around and give us grief?”

  “Something more constructive. I plan to get a head start on developing my own clientele, down in the south county mainly. That was on next spring’s agenda, anyhow.”

  Matt made a face. “The artsy, back-to-nature crowd?”

  I shrugged. “They do think ‘garden,’ not ‘is this going to obstruct our view of the ninth hole?’ There’s nothing wrong with it, beyond the boredom factor, but all the people building in Hudson Heights have asked for so far is decent foundation plantings. I’ll be working with Jake Southeby, making use of the sort of plant material he grows. We already did one garden last year.”

  “Well, there’s got to be money down there. I wish you luck extracting some of it.”

  I took Thurman’s nod as an indication he was collaborating in this wish. “Thanks,” I told them both.

  Back in the Bronco, I contemplated where to take the newspapers to read in peace. The prospect of another end-of-driveway encounter did not appeal. But then why put myself through that? Sue wouldn’t mind if I left the Bronco at her place and walked the rest of the way home.

  Their property is coming along, though not so fast these days, since Denny’s getting more and more paying projects. It’s a wonderful old Victorian house, its exterior lines intact, the inside pretty much deteriorated. Shabby, you could say, or extremely well lived in. A real bitch to heat.

  Sue had company: Kyle’s silver Saturn was parked next to the house. He was the only one of Denny’s siblings to keep in close touch with their renegade brother. The Donnelly family diplomat, I guess. Kyle and Kate, second and fourth born, respectively, were the nicest-looking, most polished of Clete’s four children. Also the closest to one another. The oldest, Clete Jr., was said to be a replica of his father, only more so. A career military man, he reputedly spent most of his time abroad, doing the sort of things you’d just as soon not ask about.

  My neighbor Denny was christened Royden, after a great-uncle. It is a name he passionately detests and will only resort to when he needs to be official. Heavyset, bearded, and soft-voiced, he gives visible advance thought to what little he finds to say. You’d think he wouldn’t be worth spit sticking up for himself, but like Clete Jr. he’d resisted getting sucked into the family business. It couldn’t have been easy.

  Never much interested in schoolwork, Denny was good with his hands and somewhere along the way developed a fondness for restoring old houses. Mostly self-taught, he showed a real feeling for the nuances of the different styles. It was his joy to bring a decayed wide-plank floor or a broken, much-painted Victorian cornice back to the way it was supposed to look.

  My shell of a building was nowhere near classy enough to be a candidate for restoration, but one day shortly after I took title Denny saw my Bronco parked outside and walked up to have a look. We got to talking, and he came out with so many ideas I asked if I could hire him to help make it livable. During that project we discovered, without sinking a lot of words into it, that we were companionable. We like being neighbors.

  Enlisting Denny turned out to be a wonderful move in terms of the remodeling. It did not, however, get me off to a great start with Clete, who was bent on closing off outside work in the hope of forcing Denny into the fold. I told Clete when he braced me on it that I thought Denny was old enough to choose his own fold.

  Did Kyle ever feel he had that option to exercise? He seemed comfortable as his father’s second in command: easy to talk with, even-tempered, efficient, capable of holding his ground without roiling things up. Still, I could see it was stressful, inhabiting a territory that stretched between Clete Donnelly and the rest of the world. Kyle maintained his smile, but he popped a lot of antacids.

  His private life he kept low profile. He and Mariah’s much younger half sister Emily had married not much out of high school and produced a son, Chad, a year later. After which, according to Mariah’s strongly unsympathetic version, Emily decided she needed to find herself and took off for Mexico to paint. For all I knew, she was still searching for that elusive inner Emily; there’d been quite a few scene changes since Mexico. She showed up back in Pinehaven once in a while, moving in for the duration with ex-husband and son if Kyle didn’t have a girlfriend in residence. The sisters had made up somewhat, but she still didn’t log much time at Mariah’s place. Chad hung out there a lot, though. He was a skinny, quiet kid who played oboe—about as un-Donnelly-like an instrument as you could find—in the high school orchestra.

  I peeked through the kitchen screen door. Sue, who loved to feed people, was giving her brother-in-law lunch. “Is it okay if I leave the Bronco here while I sneak over home?” I asked her. “There’s still a bunch of cars out by the road.”

  “Five or six when I drove by,” Kyle confirmed. “I guess you’d have to expect that.”

  “Not for much longer, if they’re hoping to watch me get arrested.”

  “Well, of course you’re not going to get arrested!” Sue exclaimed. “We just heard Baxter saying on the news that you’re definitely not a suspect.”

  Kyle sauntered over to the door. He’d always been pleasant to me, but in a couple of steps back sort of way. I connected more strongly with his father—not more positively, to be sure, but the definition was better. “He didn’t go into much detail. I guess you’re not supposed to in a murder investigation. It’s something about the timing?”

  “Right.”

  “You weren’t home when it happened?” He looked puzzled. “They’re saying between ten and midnight. If you came home later, wouldn’t you have—?”

  “Run over the body, unless I swerved. No, I was home from before nine on. With my nephews. What we established was I didn’t go outside.”

  “You must have a couple of night owls there.”

  “Yep. How’s Clete taking all this?”

  “You know Dad.” He smiled. Solidly built but lithe, with dark wavy hair and strong blue eyes, he always seemed to have trouble standing or sitting still for long.

  I smiled back. “Has he got his sights fixed on me?”

  “Well, he did. And I’m not sure how seriously he’ll take the word of a couple of young boys. Not after the three he raised. I wouldn’t make a special effor
t to cross his path just now.”

  “When did I ever? Well, see you. Oh, Sue—you can let Alex and Galen come on over if they want. I’ll be home the rest of the afternoon. Just have them use the path and the porch door.”

  The boys’ path was still our secret; I had no trouble getting home unobserved. Roxy set up a racket once she realized I was in the house. She was sounding a little hoarse; probably I shouldn’t have left her out in the run. I slipped the bolt on her doggy flap and she charged in.

  The first thing I did was call Jake Southeby and alert him to the possibility of doing a second garden this fall. I had plans pretty well worked up for a couple we’d consulted with in June. Hopefully yesterday’s events hadn’t torpedoed their interest. Jake said he’d get on it.

  Normally my porch was securely private, but after last night’s would-be intruder I opted to take the papers and a diet Coke and stretch out on my bed, under the skylight. For a few minutes, there, I was feeling pretty pleased with myself.

  The Star-Journal account was about what I’d expected. To our district attorney, this shocking tragedy appeared to have the makings of an open-and-shut case. Indeed, he wouldn’t be surprised to see an arrest soon. From the remainder of the story, a simpleton could plug in my name. It would be late evening before Sheriff Dye’s shoot-down could reach print anywhere. But if Sue and Kyle had already heard on some or other news, things ought to start getting better really soon.

  The Albany Record torpedoed that theory. Their story was bylined Jack Garrett, probably the most familiar name on the paper’s editorial staff. He’d been around a long time. I remember looking at his Sunday column once in a while when I ran out of things to read at Birchwood. Even back then, his schtick had been to provoke reactions, stir something up.

  His story provided roughly the same immediate background as the Star-Journal’s except it didn’t cite Phil Thomson as a source. The enhancement came in the category of less immediate background. Jack Garrett had gotten hold of some details about the incident with my stepfather: dates, names, a significantly short of bottom-line take on the family court disposition. Which of us would qualify for the title of most appalled? I figured I had a strong shot at it.

  So did my mother, on her own behalf, when she called about twenty minutes later. “How dare you involve us in your miserable life after all this time?” was her response to my wary hello.

  “Nice to hear from you, Ma,” I said, glad she couldn’t see the receiver shaking in my hand.

  “Could you cut the crap? The phone hasn’t stopped ringing this last hour. What do you expect us to tell people?”

  “That having shunned me for twenty-five years, you’re hardly in a position to comment on whatever’s going on down here. Or would that be too straightforward?”

  “Whatever might be happening right now is not our problem. If you wanted to share that awful business of twenty-five years ago with the world, couldn’t you have had the decency to omit our names?”

  “Ma, think about it. Why would I want to advertise myself as being handy with a pointed instrument? Or mention your names? Believe it or not, I’ve acquired better references. I was halfway wondering if you and your husband decided to go for a preemptive strike. Especially when I read the part about how things went in family court.”

  “That’s preposterous!”

  “No more than my choosing to babble. Anyhow, we’re talking non-problem, here. I’ve been cleared as a suspect— it’s already been on the news.”

  “That may take care of the media, but our associates will still be curious. Most of them have forgotten all about your existence, if they ever knew. We have to tell them something.”

  “‘None of your business’ has a nice ring.”

  “Do you still work at being obnoxious, or does it come naturally now?”

  “It depends on my audience. Anyhow, I’d be very careful how I went around explaining twenty-five years ago.”

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “Jonny doesn’t sound too good in my version. Or, if you’ve forgotten, in the court transcript. I kept my copy as a souvenir.”

  Her response was to slam down her receiver. I chuckled, having already pulled mine back in anticipation. We’d both used to work our tails off to get the last word, however meaningless it generally was. Nice to know I hadn’t lost my touch.

  No, it wasn’t, not really. I’d never fully succeeded in purging that little background hope that someday she’d make contact, try to set things to a better rest. Maybe even have a cautious go at mother-daughter. And I could show her … I threw the phone against the wall, denting the Sheetrock. Show her what that she’d ever care to see?

  That first parental encounter in a quarter-century— dismayingly similar to the clashes we’d had as far back as I can remember—left me spoiling for more of a fight. So when Roxy started barking at the porch and I looked and saw a man bent over trying a screen for looseness, I stormed out. “Who the hell are you and what do you think you’re doing?”

  When he straightened up, I recognized him from the picture they run with his Sunday column. I’ve never thought he looked like a nice man; it turns out the picture is flattering. “Name’s Jack Garrett, I’m with the Albany Record, and I was trying to find out if anybody was home. Presumably you, if you’re Valerie Wyckoff.”

  It was as well the screen door stood firmly between us and I had no immediate choice but to make do with my mouth. “What a coincidence. I was just reading your story.”

  That made him smile, sort of. He looked to be in lousy shape—skinny except for the belly, a little stringy brown hair showing along the sides, the reddened nose of a drinker. “Great. Then can we talk?”

  “Like hell it was great, and no, we can’t talk. Look, I’ve been cleared of suspicion in this murder—which I’d think you’d know by now if you’re such a hot-shot reporter. I’m totally pissed that you dragged out that long-ago business with my mother and her husband. Not to mention you got it substantially wrong. You want to quote me on that, go ahead. Meantime, get your tail off my property before I call the police back here.”

  “Hey, lady, this is what I do for a living. I tried to phone you last night—five times. Both before and after I found my way around here through the woods. And then your damn dog kept barking and you wouldn’t come near the door.” His voice took on a harder edge. “The business about you stabbing your stepfather was valid news when I ran it. It’s fine with me you’re cleared—the whole thing looked too damn obvious to be real. So don’t you want to set the record straight, tell your side?”

  “No.”

  “It could do a lot for your public image.”

  “I don’t give a shit about my public image.”

  He shrugged. “I’m doing at least one follow-up, regardless. You may as well have some input.”

  “Not about twenty-five years ago. That’s past tense to me.”

  He tried a smile. “Hey, I’m flexible. I’ll settle for some backgrounding on Ryan Jessup and Etlingers’ Garden Center.”

  “I’d be gossiping. Not my thing.”

  “Well, then, how about bringing me up to date on this Valerie Wyckoff we last left being deeded over to the state? Sounds like you’ve had a rosier time of it than your folks expected. Could you warm to that subject?”

  And get in a plug for Birchwood plus some business credentials? “Maybe. There’s something you’ll need to tell me first. How did you come up with your information about me and the Keegans?”

  “Get serious. If I went around revealing my sources, I’d be long past having any.”

  “Well, you know, family court proceedings are supposed to be confidential, too. You were quoting almost verbatim from Jon Keegan’s deposition, there. How did you get it?”

  “I’ve never laid eyes on Jon Keegan’s deposition. Journalists don’t have access to that kind of records. They’re sealed, for crissake.”

  “Did he tell you about it, then?”

  “The
closest I’ve come to contact with Jon Keegan was when I finally got through to his home phone today. This woman who answered, presumably your lovely mother, hung up with a vengeance. My ear still hurts.”

  “Then where did your information come from?”

  “Maybe you ought to look among your friends. Maybe some of them aren’t as good at keeping secrets as you thought.”

  “You didn’t write my version of that particular secret. Did it come it from one of the Etlingers?”

  “Why are you so intent on identifying my source?”

  “I’d like to know whose minefield I’ve been walking through.”

  He considered that. “You don’t tell where you got the name?”

  “Scout’s honor.”

  “Or go stab anybody?”

  “You’re a laugh a minute.”

  He blew out a little puff of air. “The ID and we can talk?”

  “Along the lines I agreed to.”

  Shrugging, he put his hand on the door frame, near the latch. “I hit the Garden Center late yesterday afternoon. I honestly don’t remember which of them first brought up the thing with your stepfather. They were all familiar with it in a general way, but I wasn’t getting any juicy details. Until Mrs. Etlinger—”

  “The older one?”

  “Nah, the good-looking brunette. I’d already left, thought I’d extracted all I could. She caught up with me in the parking lot.”

  CHAPTER 7

  The solid thunk of another down-the-middle wood split resounded in the evening air. I felt curiously deserted. My niece Gina had called around three, offering to drive down after work and pick up the kids. It would let them get an earlier start in the morning and spring Alex and Galen from a second night stuck indoors. I told her it was a great idea, and to have her boyfriend use the Donnelly detour—an unnecessary precaution, it turned out. The hangers-around no longer hung, and the traffic volume on Wilbur Creek Road was almost back to normal. My fifteen minutes of fame must’ve expired before I got around to enjoying them.