Broken Strings Page 7

  “I can call the ambulance and charge it to you,” Cedric hollered at Willard, “or you can take them both to the ER.”

  Willard prayed that at least the whimpering sister had insurance as he and Cedric shoved her into the front seat of Fay’s pickup. But when Rudolph tried to squeeze in next to her, she snapped, “Put him in back. He smells.”

  There was no back seat, only the open truck. Besides, Willard’s back was to the wall. He didn’t like the smell either, but she’d just have to bear it. “Get in,” he told Rudolph. He shut the door after the ex-con and stumbled around to the driver’s side. The sister was still hollering and Rudolph was groaning, like he might not make it to the hospital in time.

  Willard’s heart out-thumped the pickup’s broken muffler as it grumbled down Route 7 toward town. If there’s anyone not going to make it, he thought as he dared a yellow light – and lost to a red – it’s me.

  * * *

  “What took you so long?” Fay asked as Willard walked into the kitchen three hours later, followed by a scowling Rudolph with a brace on his back. They all looked up to see him: Fay, Glenna, Ethan, Chance, Apple and Beets. Beets looked away when his old man groaned for sympathy. The boy was talking to a friend on the cell phone his father had sent for his birthday – a phone purchased with stolen money, in Willard’s opinion, but he hadn’t wanted to rain on the boy’s present.

  “Daddy,” Apple said, and put her hand on Rudolph’s arm, while he looked back at the screen door like he hoped the girl might run out of the kitchen and out of his life. He didn’t need two kids, his face said.

  Words couldn’t fully explain what Willard had been through so he didn’t try. “I got the stage,” he said. That was what he’d been sent for and he did it. By himself he’d done it, his so-called helper being in a brace. “She wants the Beauty puppet, though. I got to make a copy for you.”

  “She?” Fay said.

  “The sister.”

  “Marion’s sister? Puss?”

  “That one.” He couldn’t bring himself to use the nickname. “She’s staying over at Cedric’s, with a splint on her ankle. Wants the White Rabbit, too. Calls it Harvey. I tried to tell her it’s not Harvey, it’s from Alice in Wonderland.”

  “Same thing,” Glenna said, waving a fork full of mashed potatoes. “They’re cousins.”

  “Well, she can’t have it. I hope you told her that. Oh-h, poor man. What happened to you?” Fay had just discovered Rudolph’s brace. She made a place for him at the table, completely forgetting Willard but it was all right. There were times he felt himself invisible here at Flint’s. He preferred it that way, actually; he could come and go without a lot of talk.

  “Hurts like hell,” Rudolph said, hunching over. “Doctor wants to see me again next week. I told him you said I have to be out of here in five days. He said he still wants to see me. I said maybe you’d change your mind.”

  Apple put an arm around his waist. “You can stay, Daddy. He can have my bed,” she told Fay.

  “No he can’t,” said Fay.

  Rudolph looked down at the child like he’d just discovered her. Then he groaned and tried to straighten his back.

  “No way,” said Glenna.

  “Sit back down. Now,” Fay told Apple. “Okay, people. Back to work. We were having a conference when you came in, Willard. Why are you standing? You’re not leaving right off?”

  “He hasn’t got a chair to sit down in, that’s why,” Glenna said. “Get one out of the living room, Willard.” She puckered her lips. “One more addition to this family and I’m moving into the trailer.”

  “So we have this crisis,” Fay was saying when Willard pushed his chair between Beets, who’d just put away his cell, and Apple. He was more comfortable with the kids, to tell the truth. Kids weren’t so judgmental. They didn’t have all these grown-up issues: competition, jealousy, envy, prejudice, the way Glenna was suspicious of Rudolph, although, in truth, Willard wasn’t overly fond of the fellow – bursting in here, taking them all by surprise. But he was going to see to it that the man had a bath, with soap, maybe a little disinfectant. The fellow claimed to have slept two nights in a shelter, and three more in somebody’s barn before he found Fay.

  “First, we keep the marionettes like Marion asked,” Fay said. “Chance, Willard and I will handle them – I’ll find a fourth somewhere.”

  “Billy could do it. He’d make a beautiful prince,” Chance said.

  “I was thinking of someone younger,” Fay said.

  Chance glared at her. “He’s just had a poem published online,” she said. “Called “Making Love while Lying on the Couch with a Good Book.”

  “Good for him,” Fay said. “He’ll make a fortune out of that. So Ethan will do the P.R. and be technical director.”

  “Huh,” said Ethan, but he looked pleased about the technical director.

  “I’m the artistic director,” Fay went on. “And Willard’s in charge of staging and creating marionettes. Actually, we’ll all help make them. You, too, Glenna.”

  “No sewing though. I won’t sew,” Glenna said. “When Mac threw his socks at me to darn, we got divorced.” Mac had been Glenna’s husband for five years, Willard knew, before he ran off. And personally, though he liked Glenna, Willard couldn’t blame him.

  “That wasn’t the whole reason, Glenna,” Fay said, “and you know it. You brought in a cat and Mac began sneezing.”

  “And he said the cat goes or I go, and I said the cat stays and he left!” Glenna laughed her big belly laugh and Fay laughed with her. Personally, Willard thought that was no reason to break up a marriage. It was sad, in fact. If it were he and Fay, he’d let Fay keep the cat and himself go on sneezing.

  “So here’s Part Two of the crisis,” Fay said. “I want to find who killed my friend Marion. I need everybody’s help.”

  “For God’s sake, let the police do it,” Glenna said. “That Higgins fellow you have lunch with: let him do it.”

  “A friend,” Fay went on, waving away Higgins. “A true friend. And Cedric still maintains it was accidental. Even the police! I can’t let them bury her and forget.”

  “Put flowers on her grave,” Glenna said.

  “It’s not enough!” Fay cried with passion. Everyone was quiet then.

  “I could hear Marion crying from the grave,” Fay went on, as if Willard had spoken. “Who did this to me? Find him, find her,” and Willard thought of that P sister. The woman was a suspect in his mind.

  Now Fay was throwing out orders, jobs, like so many M & Ms. “Ethan, go on the internet. Look for artists who paint skulls.”

  Ethan said, “O’Keeffe? Our art teacher showed us a slide. Cool.”

  “Not Georgia O’, no. She’s been dead for years. I mean, someone alive now, or within the last six months. Someone from Vermont most likely; the letters were mailed in the state. Check out the Northeast Kingdom. Chance: keep an eye on who goes in and out of Alibi – per our conversation the other night, okay?”

  “Wait a minute,” Chance said, folding her arms. “You said I can’t go inside the Alibi till I’m eighteen.”

  “Not in it. Near it. Just keep an eye for you know who. With you know who.”

  “Whom,” said Chance, looking smug.

  It was the darndest order Willard had ever heard, but Chance seemed to make sense of it. She was smiling to herself. Willard worried about the girl though; he didn’t like that shifty-looking boyfriend who kept coming around. It wasn’t that the fellow was out of school and no college; Willard had only managed two years himself at night school after his father died and he had to keep the family going. But this Billy was in his twenties, maybe older, and did no work at all, so far as Willard could tell. The word ‘slacker’ came to mind.

  “Glenna,” Fay went on. “There’s a woman with a long grayish braid who comes to practically every show. She came to the memorial service, too. Break the ice with her if she comes to the next one, okay? Find out who she is. Why she keeps coming.�
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  “What for?” Glenna asked. “She some kind of secret agent?” But Fay waved her away. She was on a crusade. Willard tried to sneak off to the bathroom but Fay reached out a steely arm and pulled him back. He hoped he could hold on without wetting himself.

  “Apple and Beets. Come with me to Marion’s house tomorrow afternoon. I’ll pick you up after school.”

  “I’m not in school, remember?” said Beets.

  “How come?” said Rudolph.

  “He hit a kid,” Apple said, her pink and white face grinning. “And got suspended.”

  “Way to go!” said Rudolph, and Beets stared into his glass of milk.

  “I’ll thank you to keep out of this,” Fay told Rudolph, looking mad. “And you’re going back to school Monday, Beets. You’re going to behave. There are rules in this house. And one big one is ‘No Bullying’.”

  “But he was the one – ”

  “He was smaller than you. And you’d teased him, your teacher told me. And you hit back.” She glared at Beets whose face was practically in his glass, and then at Rudolph, who smirked. “Anyway, Beets and Apple, your job is to look around Cedric’s house. I mean, when I take you there with me. See if you find anything suspicious.”

  “How will we know what’s suspicious?” Apple asked.

  “You won’t know. Just tell me what you see. Anything you happen to overhear.

  Especially if Cedric’s on the phone. Or his sister-in-law, Puss. If he isn’t around, we’ll all go in and have a look-see.”

  “You can’t do that!” Willard cried. “That’s breaking and entering. You need a warrant.”

  “Didn’t take no warrant for me most times,” Rudolph said, and everyone tried to suppress a smile, except for Beets, who looked embarrassed. He was ashamed of his old man, Willard figured; he blushed when Rudolph patted the boy’s shoulder. There was some good in the boy. But it might be squashed if the old man stayed around too long. There was a lighted match between them, Willard feared; any time it could flare up.

  “Willard,” Fay said. He braced himself. What more did she want from him? He’d just pulled a back muscle trying to move staging. “Find out everything you can about yew.”

  “About himself?” Ethan said, and giggled.

  “Y-E-W,” Fay spelled, sounding irked. “What the poison does, how it can be administered. It was in Marion’s body, that’s what killed her. But the coroner found nothing in her thermos or the rosin pack or on the controller. Which is why Cedric and the police are insisting it was accidental, though they can’t explain how. And go to the Co-op to see if they make any use of yew. Sergeant Nova said he would, but we should double check.” When Willard started to reply, she added, “No, wait. I’ll go there myself. I have to shop there tomorrow anyhow.”

  “Now can I get up?” Willard asked, and everyone laughed. He felt their eyes on his back as, desperate, he hurried to the bathroom. Inside, he turned the water on hard. One should never put a bathroom in a corner of the kitchen.

  Maybe I’m too old now to marry, he thought as he put down the seat when he finished – a courtesy to women as his mother taught.

  They were done with the ‘crisis’ conversation when he got back; Fay was serving a bowl of Jell-O and whipped cream and a plateful of Glenna’s burnt cookies. He’d dispense with those. Yew, he thought. Where to find out about yew? He supposed he could begin with that bush Glenna planted. Though safer to get an encyclopedia. Or go see that expert who’d already worked on it some. He guessed he’d do that. It was safer than handling the plant. He wanted to live, he had things to do. Challenges. Like Fay. It was getting so he was lonely in Mother’s house. Had the puppets now, sure, but they weren’t real, they were just pulp and wood. Pinocchio came to mind. Wanting to be a live boy, grow to be a real man. Which in the end he did. Like himself?

  “Heading home,” he told Fay. “Have to build that Beauty puppet – not sure where, how to start. Papier mâché or clay or wood or – ”

  “Try an old electric bulb,” said Glenna. “Nice and round.”

  “There’s no waist on a bulb,” Fay said. “Marion used a combination of clay and papier mâché. But not too much detail, she always said, just the salient Beauty features.”

  “Grace and generosity: what the fairies gave her,” Willard remembered – he’d seen the play in Burlington. But that ending was rather depressing. He’d wanted Beauty to have her prince and then let them grow old together. Something worth waiting for.

  So what if Beauty was older than the prince? he thought, squinting at Fay, who looked younger than he did, actually.

  Fay nodded, that passionate look on her face again. If he could capture that on the marionette’s face… But already she’d assumed the mother role. “Beets,” she ordered, “it’s your turn to do dishes. Rudolph, you can help him.”

  “Me?” The man looked put upon.

  “You can dry. You don’t have to bend over. Chance, oversee the operation. See if Apple needs help with her homework.”

  “Make the puppet look like Fay, why don’t you?” Chance said, with a smirk.

  Willard blushed. Sometimes, the girl saw right through him. And now everyone, it seemed, was looking at him. He excused himself to go outside; he was thankful for a cold breeze, for his face was on fire.

  Chapter Eight

  A Ransacked House and a Human Marionette

  Friday, September 28

  The Branbury Natural Foods Co-op was busy as usual Friday morning: men, women and children hustling through the aisles, tossing organic lettuce, dried apricots or pineapple, maple and almond granola, ripe red tomatoes and green tea leaves into wire baskets. Lately the store had set up a hot food bar, a salad bar, and a counter for herbal drinks. Fay sidled up to the young man with the auburn ponytail who had just finished grinding something chocolate-brown for a customer. “I’m wondering if you were here last Wednesday? A friend of mine came in for a salad and her usual beverage?”

  “Yeah? Well, there were two of us. Who’s your friend?”

  “Was,” she explained, and she described Marion. The ponytail looked blank. He was sorry to hear she’d died. “Old timer, maybe?”

  “Fortyish. Young – to me, anyhow.”

  Forty was old to this fellow who was rubbing the faint fuzz on his chin. “That’s tough, yeah. Well, me, I can’t recall I saw her. Lemme ask Hal. Hey, Hal, you seen a woman, fortyish, black hair, good looking – in here last Wednesday?”

  “African-American,” Fay said. She should have said so earlier. African-Americans stood out in Vermont, even in this college town. Ponytail relayed the message.

  “The puppet lady,” Hal said. “Sure, she was in here. Ordered the usual.”

  “Which was?”

  “A Lily Monster.”

  Fay glanced over at the SPECIALS. Lilly Monster: banana, almond butter, honey, vanilla extract, soy milk, yogurt, cinnamon. $4.50. “That’s all?”

  “Well, I might of thrown in a trace of pepper or ginger – the lady likes a little spice. Why you asking? You want me to make one?”

  “Would you, please?” It would mean a fiver, but Fay would see what it looked and tasted like. Marion’s thermos was opaque, its contents weren’t visible. Of course the coroner hadn’t found any yew and the thermos was virtually empty. Or if Marion hadn’t emptied it, someone else had dumped it out afterward, as a precaution.

  “She died,” Ponytail told Hal, and Hal stopped grinning. “At an elementary school.”

  “No kidding?” Hal said. “When? Accident?”

  “In the middle of a show,” Fay told him. “After she took a taste of your drink.”

  “What?” Hal practically exploded. “Look, ma’am, there’s nothing but health in this drink.” He pointed to the Specials board.

  “It’s possible,” Fay said, “that someone might have visited that drink. Afterward.”

  Hal was quiet for a minute. “Whew. We’re talking –” He couldn’t say the word.

  “School kid m
aybe? Mad at a teacher? Got the wrong thermos?”

  “Don’t think a kid would have yew,” Fay said and Hal purpled. “Yew? Yew – Christ. How’d yew get in there?’ He handed over the drink. Fay hesitated, the thought that it just might contain yew made her heart race, then sipped it tentatively. It was a little spicy for her palate, but healthy, like Marion would want. “That’s what we’re trying to find out,” she told Hal. “You ever heard of yew put in anything here in the co-op?”

  Both men looked blank. Then Ponytail called over a tall, yellow-haired woman in jeans and a black shirt that read SHOTOKAN KARATE OF AMERICA. “Sammy here would know, if anyone,” Hal said, and repeated Fay’s question.

  Sammy shook her head. Samantha, her badge read. “Not in here. Not in our organic foods co-op. We’d never put yew in a drink, are you crazy?”

  “What about that pagan place you’re always talking about?” Hal asked.

  Sammy shrugged. “Well, my brother brought some back from Glastonbury. Yew tree growing there since 3000 BC, they figure. Green-tree-bury, the name means. Glastonbury. A sacred spot.” She closed her eyes and looked meditative.

  “Bury,” Fay murmured. Marion had been cremated after the autopsy, half of her ashes buried in the local cemetery, the rest thrown in Lake Dunmore, as she’d asked in the unofficial will Cedric agreed to honor. There were ten of them standing around, each saying a few words about Marion. What had Puss said? Something about Marion at Glastonbury? Fay would have to talk to Puss.

  Was it suicide, as the police thought? Had Marion poisoned her own drink? Oh, no way, Fay thought. “What did your brother do with the yew he brought back?” she asked Sammy. “I mean, how did he get it through customs?”

  Sammy grinned, a dimple in her chin. She looked at Hal and he laughed. “Of course, illegally. He probably wore it inside his boxers.”