Still only 8 days to go

Now I had an answer to one part of the puzzle: what had brought Marjory to Leetsville. Not what had taken her out to Deward; I didn’t know that piece yet. But at least we knew for certain it had something to do with her brother, Arnold Otis, and with the End Time cult. I had to talk to Mr. Otis. So many questions—about Marjory, about their mother and what had really happened to her. And about the reason she had to meet him in Leetsville, the thing that had put him in so much danger. Then, what I needed most to know was, why hadn’t he been here? If he was afraid for his own life, didn’t he care that his sister had put herself in danger?

All I wanted was to get home. I’d had more than enough of people and problems for one day. I took the note with me, tucked into my jacket pocket. I would turn it over to Lucky and Officer Winston on Wednesday. Maybe they’d know what it meant or at least could force the wannabe senator to come to Leetsville, sit down, and fill in the empty places in Marjory’s story.

My stomach growled as I turned onto Willow Lake Road, then down my driveway, stopping only to get the newspaper from the box beside the road. I was already visualizing a Swiss cheese omelet with a slice of thick peasant bread from the freezer. Maybe I had half a bottle of Pinot Grigio. I thought so. And it would be cold. And, if I could work up the ambition, I’d throw together a bread pudding. I’d learned to make one pretty close to Emeril’s while covering Mardi Gras in New Orleans one year, but I nixed the bread pudding pretty quick. Not the kind of thing you fussed over for yourself. Then I nixed the nixing. I was worth a little bread pudding.

Like visions of sugar plums exploding into bright pieces in my head, my omelet, my glass of wine, and my bread pudding went off like firecrackers lost in an endless sky. Harry waited on the side porch. Sorrow, getting his ears scratched, sat upright beside Harry’s poky old knees.

He stood slowly when I got to my door and pushed a joyous Sorrow down. I invited Harry in. He usually preferred outdoors for talks but this time he followed and took a seat on the sofa while I made us both a cup of Earl Grey tea, though after one attempt to get his bent finger through the delicate cup handle he gave up and ignored the tea.

“Ya see, Emily,” he started, skinny legs together. “What I’m here to ask you is to go down to Delia’s house with me. We’re having trouble. Delia’s agreed to marry me but her mother’s acting up something awful.”

“Maybe she doesn’t like the thought of living alone after all these years.”

He shook his head. “Got a son down in Atlanta, Georgia, she could go live with. Or I could move into their house there down the road. But she says that’s never going to happen.”

“Could it be your dogs, do you think?”

He gave me an odd look, as if a thing like that had never entered his head.

“So, what I thought you might do,” he went on, ignoring me, “if yer willin’, that is, is to go down there with me, tell Bertha I’m a good provider and how I’m so handy you couldn’t live here without me.”

“You mean now?” There was no hiding my reluctance.

“Yes, now. We can’t just sit around waiting for the old woman to change her mind. I’ve got to do something …” This was as excited as I’d ever seen Harry get. “If that reverend’s right, well, I’m not gonna spend these last days living all alone.”

I sighed and agreed. We drove over to Delia’s in my car because I wouldn’t go in his.

The Swanson house was like all the others along the road, set back in the woods, an old farm house with a steep pitched roof so the snow would slide off, two stories—all the bedrooms upstairs—and a small porch that had obviously been put on years after the house was built. All the houses up here had been built for utility. Maybe the Swansons had actually tried farming in what locals called our Kalkaska sands. Maybe that was the way everybody built their houses back sixty years or so ago. People up here didn’t look for frills.

Delia was expecting us and led us to what she called “the back parlor.” I sat uncomfortably on an upright chair while Harry took a chair across from me. Delia excused herself, bowing her curly gray head and going off to get her mother, Bertha, who was taking a nap. The rousing of Bertha and getting her down the stairs took at least fifteen minutes, during which time Harry sat rolling his eyes at me. An unhappy Bertha came in from the hall with Delia holding her elbow and directing her to the nearest chair. Bertha sat and frowned at Harry and then at me.

“You’re that woman from down the road,” she said. “The one who’s trying to write stories or something.”

I nodded that the description fit me so I must be that woman.

“Nice of you to call.” The old lady dripped sarcasm. “Finally.”

She eyed Harry and said nothing to him. Harry’s face reddened. He looked hard at the floor.

“You come with a reason in mind?” she went on. “Or just being neighborly?”

Delia cut in, before her mother got too testy. “Miz Kincaid came over to put in a good word for Harry. We know you’ve got yourself set firmly against us getting married …”

“Bah,” the old woman spit out. “Married! At your age? You’ve gone straight out of your mind. And Harry Mockerman, of all people. Couldn’t you find yourself a man so you could marry up in the world instead of down?”

The woman made a face and looked toward the door she’d come in, as if planning her escape.

“Harry’s a fine man …” Delia said, defending him as he sat on the edge of his chair with his hands working at each other in his lap.

“Harry’s a good friend of mine,” I said. “He’s a wonderful cook and if I ever need anything done around my house, why, I wouldn’t call anybody else. He’s honest …”

“Phooey, you say. He’s a handyman. To think I’d live to see the day my daughter goes off with a handyman … well …”

The thought was beyond words for Bertha.

“Don’t you think your daughter’s old enough to make her own choices?” I asked, not meaning to set off a civil war. But I did.

Bertha narrowed her eyes. “Get that person out of my house. I want her outta here!”

She coughed, then put a hand to her chest and thumped a few times. She fell back in her chair, mouth open, eyes rolling. Something very serious was going on. I hoped I hadn’t brought on a heart attack—the woman was in her nineties, after all.

Delia went to her mother, then turned to Harry and me. “Maybe you’d better go. She gets like this from time to time.”

I got up as fast as Harry did. At the front door I turned to try to say I was sorry but Delia, bending over her mother and whispering quietly to her, looked up and nodded. She mouthed “thanks” at me. We were out of there as fast as Harry’s old legs could pump their way to my car.

I stopped to let him out at the head of his drive, trying to say I was sorry if I’d brought on a heart attack. Harry only waved a hand in the air and grunted something that sounded like “That one don’t have a heart to begin with” before he was off and hidden among the overgrown trees.

The omelet tasted flat. I’d already had eggs that day, two more seemed to cement the fact I was alone and had nobody to cook for but myself. I decided it was definitely a night calling for Emeril’s bread pudding and put everything into the bowl—the hard bread cut into squares, more eggs—everything. I got out the cinnamon can and tapped it over the bowl. Nothing. No cinnamon. What was bread pudding without cinnamon? I couldn’t waste the other ingredients so I tried more sugar and some nutmeg, but after it was baked it tasted bad. Just bad. I scraped the pudding onto a paper plate to put out for the birds and decided to get my mind off murders and sisters and brothers and everything I’d been thinking about—like Dolly Wakowski having lost her mind.

I went on the Internet and looked up ghost towns in Kalkaska, Antrim, and Grand Traverse counties. There were plenty. I chose two to do the next day: Rugg and South Boardman. I stumbled on a site that listed all the ghosts in Kalkaska County, and decided to broaden my article. Not just ghost towns, but actual ghosts. Now I was having fun. This was something I might enjoy, without too much running around, or going to places such as Deward.

I dug my notebook out of my purse, wrote down directions and what I might find at Rugg Pond and South Boardman, then went out to my car for the camera I’d left on the back seat.

When I was doing stories, features like this one, I always made sure I had spare batteries in the camera case. Being out in the woods with the light dying and the batteries gone was an event I didn’t want to have happen to me again.

And an extra film disk. I slid the disk door open and removed the disk I had in there. It could be full. Better to delete the photos I didn’t need …

It hit me. What I had on the cartridge were photos from Deward. Not just the pictures I took for my story, but pictures I took of Marjory, laid out under the tree. Maybe it wouldn’t make a difference—nothing in the pictures the cops didn’t already have—but I wanted to see for myself. Maybe give the photos to Crystalline.

At my desk, I slipped the disk into the printer and turned everything on. It took a while, as it always does, but eventually the computer recognized the printer and they agreed to bring up my photos. I couldn’t tell much from the small snapshot size of the photos, so I made them full screen and set it to a slide show.

One by one, all the pictures I’d taken that day—of the river, of the foundations of houses, of the trees, the railroad grade—everything moved past me at ten-second intervals.

Then Marjory. Just as serene. Just as colorful. Hands in her lap. I felt that she wasn’t a stranger now that I knew what her life had been. She lay with her hat off to the side, eyes staring out. The jack pine cast shadows even at noon, so some of the photos were dark. Others were crisp and clear. The images went by and the show came to an end. I pushed the button, starting at the beginning again. There’d been something …

I ran the slide show three more times before I chose the photos I wanted to copy.

Something near Marjory’s body that I hadn’t noticed when I was out there. It was caught in the way the sun had moved overhead, or in the shadow of the tree. Something about the ground—a shape. I had to show this to Lucky. I’d show this to Officer Winston. Maybe I was crazy, looking for answers where there was nothing. Or maybe I was so frustrated with how slow this murder investigation was going that I was seeing things. Or, even if what I saw was there, maybe it meant nothing.