Love Me If You Must

30

I ran a hot shower, hoping to calm my nerves and get some sleep. But later, as I lay on my cot, I couldn’t banish the day’s events.

The whole town knew about my grandmother. And they all thought I killed Martin Dietz.

My self-preservation instinct told me to never leave the house again. Order my groceries in, finish the renovations, and get out of town fast.

But the rebel in me said, Hold your head up. Don’t let anybody run you out of Rawlings.

Tonight I sided with the rebel. But who knew? Maybe tomorrow I’d go along with the preservationist.

A train whistle blew in the distance. The faint rumble grew louder and louder until the whole house shook from the vibration of fully loaded boxcars flying past on narrow steel rails.

I imagined I lay in a hole in the cistern, damp sand and lumpy pebbles beneath me. A layer of wet, slimy cement mix covered me, getting thicker and thicker as it hardened. Yet with each lurch of the train, the cement settled around my body, filling in every tiny crack and crevice, until my face, hands, and foot protruded from the grave like a plaster cast. Whoever had poured the concrete mix on top of me hadn’t counted on tremors from the tracks doing such a great leveling job. I needed another layer of cement to cover my features, so anyone looking down at me couldn’t see me screaming and clawing and fighting for my life. I wasn’t finished.

I sat up on my cot. Beads of sweat dampened my forehead. That’s what Jack kept saying. The job wasn’t finished.

I swung my feet to the floor.

Did Jack have something to do with the murders? Or was I being paranoid? Even Brad seemed to know a little more about neighborhood events than he let on. He shouldn’t even be on the Dietz case. He was too embroiled in the whole affair to be impartial.

Who was Brad protecting in this mess? Just Jack? Or was Rebecca a part of it?

I rubbed my temples. With my mind moving as fast as the train outside, I’d never get any sleep. I stood. The warning bells outside quit dinging, and the rumble of boxcars faded into the distance.

I was wide awake. I might as well get something accomplished. I grabbed my paint supplies from a corner of the parlor.

The front stairs creaked and groaned as I made my way to the second story.

I flicked on the light to the bedroom directly at the top of the steps. The room had an odd shape where it angled in for the staircase. It looked like a square with one corner cut off. One window looked out to the side yard, right into the branches of the maple tree. The other looked out onto the balcony. The walls were in decent condition—nothing a little spackle couldn’t cure. The Hershels had been kind enough to strip the thick bands of woodwork down to a light pine color. I spent the next half hour taping the trim so I could edge around it with a fresh coat of paint.

But taping was a mindless job. Thoughts of murder, bodies, and motives had plenty of room to roam. I’d already narrowed down the identity of the body in my basement to three possibilities. Unfortunately, by midnight, the list of suspects topped ten and continued to grow. Even the biddies from the clothing store weren’t immune from my late-night scrutiny.

Motives ran the gamut from love scorned to money owed to rumors spread. And still nothing made sense.

I had to get this thing figured out. Then maybe the authorities would take my body-in-the-basement theory seriously. And I could be cleared of Dietz’s murder.

I poured paint into an old cottage cheese container and started cutting in. I wondered what David must think of me now that the story of my grandmother was out. Would he avoid me like the plague? Would he plague me with accusations? I couldn’t blame him if he reacted just as everyone else had over the years. Like I was worthless because of what I’d done. Who wanted to hang out with someone capable of murder?

I wished I could go back ten years and redo Grandma’s last days. I’d been too eager to please. I should have said no. I should have had standards, morals, ethics, something that would have prompted me to do the right thing instead of the easy thing. I should have had compassion. I should have had a backbone. I should have known better. I should have been more patient. I should have had more faith.

I dipped the brush in the paint and tackled another section of wall. But why stop with Grandma? I carried an equal load of guilt for Martin Dietz’s murder. I should have seen it coming. I should have tried to stop it. I should have known arguing with Dietz was a waste of time. I should have gone along with him and not made him mad. I should have installed a security system so people couldn’t sneak around in my basement when I wasn’t home.

I could bury myself in should-haves. Or I could figure out what made this small town tick like a bomb about to explode, and try to stop it.

I yawned. It had to be almost 1:00 a.m. My body ached, my brain ached, my heart ached. I wrapped my brush in cellophane. I’d come back up tomorrow to finish the job.

The baseboard pipes clunked as the furnace kicked on. I glanced out at the hallway. Blackness. I stretched plastic wrap over the paint, half-expecting to see Jacob Marley standing in the doorway of the room. With my favorite tappy hammer, I sealed the lid on the paint can. I wiped a glob of ivory on my pass-me-around pants.

The neighborhood seemed eerily quiet tonight. No midnight train, no cars bouncing over the tracks. Even the wind had died. It was as if the hot water pipes and I were the only two noisy elements in the universe.

I cupped hands around my eyes and peeked outside. A foggy halo circled the streetlight in front of my house. Without the snow, the town had gone back to looking like Halloween. Spooky, and silent as the grave. And I was the main caretaker of the graveyard.

The skin on the back of neck my prickled. Beneath me, two flights of steps down, lay a body. I was almost sure of it.

I jolted down the steps, shaking the walls around me as I beelined to my bedroom and slammed the door.

My sleeping bag became a sanctuary. In its warm safety, I finally drifted to sleep, ghosts and guilts and guys flitting through my mind.

A week went by as I hunkered down in the house, my brushes and rollers my only friends. Dorothy had come by a couple of times and brought soup. I wouldn’t answer the door. She left the pot on the porch, and I snuck out to get it after she’d left. I never heard from my buddies at the cop shop. Officer Brad may have dropped by once or twice, I don’t know. I ignored any knocking I heard when his cruiser was parked out front. He never barged in to arrest me, so apparently, the local loon squad had some other culprit in mind for the Dietz murder. Even so, that didn’t erase the fact that I’d been fingered for the crime. And you couldn’t brainwash a whole town into forgetting the details that had surfaced throughout the ordeal.

Becoming a hermit for the week definitely lowered my stress level about the Dietz/Grandma accusations. I pretended that nobody really paid attention to gossip and rumors anyway. I gave everyone in the Village of Rawlings the benefit of the doubt when it came to holding a grudge against a truly harmless, albeit too-daffy-for-her-own-good Renovator Chick.

But today, the cans of nuts, the dried fruit, the cereal, and the slightly moldy bread had run out. I was Old Mother Hubbard. And I was hungry.

Deucey gulped twice, then fired up after the long vacation. I backed her out of the garage and turned on to Main Street.

The second block past the tracks, a sign caught my eye: Parker Floral Designs. I hit the brakes, earning a blast of the horn from the driver behind me. Traffic cleared and I maneuvered Deucey into a parking spot made for the compact cars of a new generation. There was barely room to squeeze my knees past the bumpers as I made my way to the sidewalk and into the quaint flower shop.

Eucalyptus seemed to be the mainstay of every arrangement in the shop. Its mellow odor greeted me at the door and stuck with me to the back counter.

“May I help you?” a middle-aged woman asked. Short brown curls bounced with her animated walk. She rounded the end of the counter and nearly tackled me with her perkiness.

I stepped back. “I got a flower arrangement a couple weeks ago from a secret admirer. I was hoping you could help me figure out who it is.”

The woman gave a look of disapproval. “We value the privacy of our clients. If the individual wanted you to know his identity, he would certainly have revealed himself to you on the card.”

I had no idea floral arrangements were protected by the Privacy Act. Take two. “Actually, it’s more complicated than that. I’m dating a guy who got me some flowers. But I think they were really flowers that he got from somebody else. I just wanted to make sure he really got the flowers for me.” I took a big breath. “I absolutely hate hand-me-down roses.”

Her eyelids peeled back in a look of horror. “That would be understandable. How do you know they came from Parker’s?”

I fished in my jeans pocket, relieved the woman couldn’t know they hadn’t been washed since the night I’d snuck over to David’s. I pulled out the card and envelope and handed it to her.

She studied the chunky black lettering.

twenty-five years. remember that.

“Not very romantic. From the letter formation, I’d say a woman wrote this. Did this come with your bouquet?”

“Not exactly. I found it later. I’m sure it wasn’t meant for me. I guess that’s why I’m a little upset. Can you find out who originally purchased them?”

“I’ll see what I can do. You said you got the arrangement a couple weeks ago?”

“Yes. There were twenty-five red roses. I counted.”

“Hmm. Twenty-five. Just like on the note. Sounds like somebody was sending a definite message. That’s what flowers are for, you know. Let’s take a look.”

She tapped at the computer on the counter, entering data faster than I could think.

“Were they delivered to you?”

“No. Picked up by David Ramsey.”

The woman’s fingers came to a dead stop. She looked at me through curly bangs, never lifting her head.

“I see. You must be Patricia Amble, just down the street.”

I held my head up. “Yep.” The word may have come out a little snotty, but I had my pride.

Her chest rose and fell in quick little gasps. She was nervous. Scared to death, even. Here she was, stuck alone with a woman on a possible killing spree.

“Here it is,” she stammered. “Twenty-five red roses. Tea roses, to be exact, which appropriately stand for remembrance. Wired through central ordering. No information on the sender. To be picked up by David Ramsey, 306 South Main.”

She pushed away from the counter, putting distance between us. “There you go. Hope that helped.”

“Thanks.” I watched her squirm a minute. Then I left and climbed in my car.

I pulled into traffic and drove to the supermarket. The flower lady’s attitude was no big deal. Reputation wise, I’d gone from being the twin of Dietz’s reject to being a slayer of old people and maybe even the zoning lord. Definitely a lateral move.

I shopped at full speed, dumping items into my cart without checking prices or expiration dates. Never once did I look into a pair of eyes. Even the checkout girl got the brush-off.

I bolted out the door, positive I could sense haughty looks and vicious whispers on my tail.

I wanted to climb up the nearest lamppost and scream down at those arrogant people, “Don’t you know how hard it was? You would have done the same thing if you had been me!”

But what was the point in defending myself? Everyone sat in judgment over me. I could scream ’til I was blue in the face, and nobody would ever understand why I’d done what I had. If only they’d been there. If only they’d been me. Then they would know how hard a decision it was. Then they’d quit condemning me for what I’d done. Because they would have done the same thing.