Chapter Seven #2
Apparently oblivious to my presence, she pushes open the dumpster and hefts in a bag.
“Excuse me—” I say again as I get closer. “Are you the manager? Zelda?”
She doesn’t respond and I take a few steps closer, getting within arm’s length of her.
When she finally turns and sees me, there’s a moment of confused startlement, and then she brushes a curl away from her cheekbone and I see a cochlear implant processor hooked over her ear with the cable trailing back into her hair.
“Sorry. Didn’t have my ears switched on,” she says after adjusting the processor.
“Frankie said you wanted to talk to me,” I say. “I’m Annie Gore.”
“Oh! You’re the private investigator?”
“That’s right,” I answer.
She gives me an appraising look and I return it. She’s about my age, I guess, early to mid-thirties, with an impish quality that’s underscored by her rosy cheeks and swipes of gold-tinted eyeliner that shimmers in the sun.
Finally, she says, “Let me wash my hands and grab something to drink. I’ll be right back. There’re some picnic tables down the hill, over that way.”
“Okay,” I say.
I check my watch—two minutes past eight—and walk in the direction she’d pointed. When I make it to the group of empty old picnic tables, I put down my food, and pull out my phone. I tap Tina’s number, take in a deep breath and—already wincing—tell her the bad news.
“You WHAT?” she bellows. “You WRECKED Honey?”
I explain exactly what happened and listen as she bustles around the house. If a person can get ready in a violent manner, then that is exactly what Tina is doing. I hear Mel, Tina’s partner, in the background asking what’s going on, and then Tina huffs and shouts, “She’s wrecked Honey!”
“Tina,” I say. “I know it’s Memorial Day but—”
“Annie, shut up. I’m already on my way. I can borrow a wrecker. You know it’s a holiday weekend. My guy’s gonna charge me extra.”
“I know,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“And I’m gonna charge you extra,” she says, stomping across the hardwood floor of her old Highlands house. One door slams. Then another.
“I know.”
“I’ll be there as soon as I can,” she says.
“Drive safe,” I say.
She hangs up on me.
I sigh and sit down and tear open my bag, flattening it to use as a combo plate-placemat for my breakfast. I unwrap the biscuit like a present and the savory scent hits me in a wave of salty comfort.
But the smell is nothing compared to the first bite.
The pork is perfectly tender and juicy and wedged in the middle of a buttery, crumbly cathead biscuit.
I’m practically moaning with pleasure when Zelda returns, lugging a big Styrofoam cup with a red milkshake straw.
“Frankie said that Katie King hired you,” she says as she sits across from me.
“That’s right,” I say. “Though she’s Katie May now.”
“Is she okay?” Zelda asks. “I’ve always wondered.”
“For the most part,” I say. “She seems like she’s doing very well. Successful, married, a baby.”
“That sounds okay, I guess,” she says with a half-snarky smile before taking a big sucking slurp of her milkshake. “The rumor is you think Ezra was murdered and that’s why you’re looking around. Is that true?”
“No,” I say. “I mean, not exactly.”
“But isn’t that what private investigators do? Solve murders?”
“Murder cases are for cops,” I say. “So, ultimately, if I do find evidence of foul play, I’ll have to hand the case over to them. Otherwise, I’d risk contaminating evidence.”
“So, what do you do?” she asks. “Up until then?”
“Honestly, most of my job is just asking questions, digging into people’s secrets.”
Zelda grins approvingly at that and I try to get us back on course. “You knew her from before? When Katie lived in town?”
“That’s right,” she says. “Maggie, Katie’s mom, worked here.
She was a waitress. My dad—before he died—was a cook here, and I hung around all the time.
Maggie was funny and beautiful, and I thought she was the coolest. I didn’t really think about it at the time, but she was very young.
She must’ve just turned nineteen when she had Katie.
Anyway, once Katie was big enough, Maggie would bring her in and I sort of babysat her, even though I think I was only about four years older than she was.
We were friends, but I didn’t have any other siblings so, at the time, it felt more like sisters. Like Katie was my little sister.”
I nod and eat another cheddar tot and push the greasy envelope of golden rounds a little closer to Zelda. She takes one and gnashes it the same way I did.
“Then, one day, she was gone. My dad and I came into the Dairy and it was going around that Maggie left Mount Zion and took Katie with her. I think I cried for a whole week. My dad was best friends with Matthew Dishman and he got the chief to look into it, but there wasn’t much anyone could do—Katie’s mom had left a note explaining that she was leaving. ”
A minor chord strums in my chest at that. The image of Katie’s mom leaving a note on the kitchen table, exactly the way my mom had. Only, in Katie’s case, her mom put her in the car, buckled her up safe, and took her along for the journey, away from her father.
Zelda continues, “My dad told me later that he was glad she’d left, in a way, that he could tell their marriage had been a big mistake.
I mean, Ezra must’ve been almost in his thirties when they got together.
And she was barely out of high school. I think Dad could see the writing on the wall before anyone else. ”
The writing on the wall, I repeat in my head, almost laughing to myself. The sense of foreboding, the understanding that something is about to go wrong. I’d never thought anything of the phrase, what it truly meant or where it came from, until last night, when Will explained it to me.
“Anyway,” Zelda says, “All I knew when I was little was that I missed Katie. It broke my heart at the time.”
“I’m sorry,” I say.
“We never knew where she went,” Zelda says.
“There was gossip that Maggie had been cheating on Ezra and ran off with some guy and that’s why Ezra didn’t go looking for her.
And, because she’d left a note, we all sort of let it go.
Then, years ago, I heard that Maggie had died in a car accident.
And that she and Katie had been living in Louisville this whole time.
I wanted to reach out to Katie but … didn’t.
It seemed too awkward. Anyway, when I heard you were in town, I guess I just wanted to know what happened.
Why Katie hired you. I mean, Ezra King was bit by a snake, right? So, what are you doing here?”
“Well, Katie wanted me to look into her father’s death because there was no autopsy and the funeral happened so quickly and she had a bad feeling.”
Zelda cocks an eyebrow.
“I’m sorry, did you say a bad feeling?”
“Yes,” I say, and leave it at that.
“Hmm,” Zelda says.
“What do you think?” I ask her. “Were you surprised to hear that a private investigator was in town investigating Ezra King’s death?”
Her lips squish to the side while she considers. Eventually, she says, “I guess so. I didn’t think there was anything mysterious about how he died. He was playing with snakes. That’s what you expect to happen, isn’t it?”
There are two tots left on the paper and I pop one into my mouth and slide the other toward her and she takes it.
When we’re done, I wrap up the remnants of my meal and stand.
Zelda gets to her feet with me. We walk back toward the Dairy in silence, but before we step onto the asphalt, I turn toward her and say, “Can you think of anyone who might have wanted to hurt Ezra King? Any enemies?”
She shakes her head. “No. People loved him.”
“Really?” I ask. “Because I get the feeling you didn’t love him.”
She looks down at the gray curb that divides the grass from the asphalt and then looks at me and says, “He’s the reason Maggie left with Katie and never came back.
And I don’t think she would’ve done that—left her hometown and everyone she knew—if he’d really been as pious and God-fearing and wonderful as people seem to think. ”
I’d like to ask her more, but she raises a hand, switches off her implant, and walks away, crossing over the already seething asphalt and disappearing through the back door of the Dairy. I guess that’s one way to end a conversation.
Twenty or so minutes later, after driving slowly through Brimstone Hollow—trying not to look too hard at where I went off the road the night before—I find myself back at Mount Zion Church of the Healing Redeemer.
A man sweeping the floor tells me Will Carpenter is in the parsonage, so I head out of the church and go around the side and back to the little house that had stood empty the day before.
The screen door is shut, but the front door is standing wide open.
I knock briefly on the doorframe and then open the screen door with a creak and step inside.
It takes my eyes a moment to adjust to the comparative gloom of the interior, but I look around, blinking, and see a living room with a small sofa and a large empty space big enough for an oversized easy chair.
This room, I suddenly realize, is the room in which Ezra died.
I recognize the sofa, the carpet, the pale wallpaper.
On the far side of the room is a wide doorway and, beyond, a kitchen with a white tile floor.
I start toward the room and then pause in my tracks when I hear the characteristic, stomach-dropping sound of a snake’s rattle.
Kkkkksssshhhhhhhh.
I look up, through the entryway, and see Will Carpenter.
He stands at the kitchen table, a huge black-and-brown timber rattlesnake twisting its body around his arms.