Peony Street Read online

  “That’s refreshing. In L.A. how you look is always the first question.”

  Sammy came back down the hall with a battered blue cookie tin with snowmen printed on it. He handed it to Claire. He then leaned against his mother and let her ruffle his hair and kiss the top of his head.

  “What you’s bring me?” he asked her.

  Hannah reached into her jacket pocket and took out a small egg-shaped object that looked like it was made of fur and feathers held together by mud.

  Sammy gently took the item and held it close to his face, turning it slowly around and around as he examined it.

  “What is it?” Claire asked.

  “An owl pellet,” Hannah said.

  “Gross!” Claire said.

  “It not gross!” Sammy said, and scowled at Claire.

  “Sorry,” Claire said.

  “You can take it apart and see everything the owl ate.” Hannah said. “Sometimes there are mouse bones or chipmunk teeth in them.”

  “Cooooool,” Sammy said in awe.

  Claire made a face.

  “No say gross!” Sammy said to her.

  Hannah leaned down and kissed Sammy on the cheek, a big wet smacking kiss. He smiled but did not break his concentration on the owl pellet.

  “Her’s my mama,” he said, briefly glancing up at Claire. “Her’s allowed to kiss me.”

  “Lucky her,” Claire said. “Can I look at your treasures?”

  He nodded gravely.

  Claire opened the cookie tin and looked inside.

  “Takes them all out and puts them on the table,” he said. “So we can sees them.”

  Claire carefully removed each object and put it on the table.

  “That frog is dried out that way,” Sammy said. “We finded him in the garage.”

  “He’s missing a leg,” Claire said.

  “It broked,” Sammy said with a shrug.

  “That’s new,” Hannah said, pointing to a silver key ring attached to a rectangular key fob that looked as if it had something inside of it, like a Swiss army knife, but it didn’t look like a knife.

  “I think it has a bottle opener inside it,” Claire said. “If you push on one side it should flip out the other.”

  Hannah and Claire both tried but they couldn’t get it open.

  “I guess if he can’t open it he can’t kill anybody with it. Where’d you get this?” Hannah said. “It’s not one of Daddy’s, is it?”

  “Delia gives it to me,” Sammy said. “I never stoled it.”

  “Mom’s always finding little treasures at tag sales and flea markets,” Claire said. “She’s like a magpie about shiny silver things.”

  “Like that silver frame on the mantle?” Hannah asked. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Actually, that was a gift from me on their fortieth wedding anniversary.”

  “That was a great party,” Hannah said. “It’s a shame you couldn’t come.”

  “I was in Spain,” Claire said.

  “How does your dad seem to you?”

  “Who’s you’s daddy?” Sammy asked Claire.

  “Ian’s my dad and Delia’s my mom.”

  Sammy seemed to reflect upon this new information.

  “He’s changed a lot,” Hannah said.

  “He looks so old,” Claire said. “Mom says there’s nothing that can be done but I’m going to talk to Doc Machalvie. Surely there’s some specialist we can take him to.”

  “Ian falled down,” Sammy said, and then pointed at the living room, “in there.”

  “Sammy was here when he fell,” Hannah said. “He was a brave boy and went up to the service station to get help.”

  “I three. I can counts to twenty,” he said, and then proved it.

  “That’s pretty good for three,” Claire said. “So he crossed the S.T.R.E.E.T.?”

  “Yep,” Hannah said. “He said he thought Grandma Alice would be too scared to help.”

  “Her’s silly,” Sammy said. “I gets up on her’s nerbs.”

  “You have to admit that’s a very accurate description of my mother,” said Hannah. “When Mom found out I was having a boy she said, ‘I’ve had enough boys; I want a pretty little girl to dress up.’ Cause you know I was not having that kind of thing when I was little.”

  “You were a tomboy,” Claire said. “There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Grandma Alice is up on my nerbs,” Sammy said. “Her no likes dinosaurs or even trucks.”

  “His vocabulary is amazing,” Claire said.

  “What’s cabulary?” Sammy asked.

  “It means you know lots of words,” Hannah said.

  “I gots lotsa words,” Sammy told Claire, “but no bad words.”

  “I have to pay him a dollar for every curse word I say in front of him,” Hannah said.

  Claire counted the money from the cookie tin.

  “At this rate he’ll be able to buy a car by the time he’s sixteen.”

  “I never says bad words,” he said. “Hannah says them all the day.”

  “Sammy likes his money and he likes a good trade,” Hannah said.

  “He calls you Hannah?”

  “Sometimes, and sometimes he calls me Mama; but he always calls Sam ‘Daddy.’”

  “Her’s gots ‘C’s on her necklace,” Sammy told his mother. “But her not trade them to me.”

  “It’s Chanel,” Claire said. “If I take the logo off how will anyone know how special it is?”

  “You could tells them,” Sammy said.

  “That’s not the point,” Claire said, and then to change the subject, “you have a mighty fine collection.”

  “Mighty fine,” Sammy said with pride, and then to his mother, “I hungry.”

  Claire offered him a spoonful of peanut butter.

  “Yuck,” he said. “That the dog jar.”

  Hannah made a face.

  “Why didn’t you tell me before?” she asked him. “Gross!”

  “Ian’s gives the dogs peanut butter outta that jar,” Sammy said.

  Hannah tickled and hugged him until he laughed.

  “Her’s my mama,” he told Claire. “Her’s allowed to tickle me.”

  “He seems very concerned with what you are and are not allowed to do,” Claire said.

  “We talk about who’s allowed to do what,” Hannah said. “We’re establishing healthy boundaries and learning about stranger danger.”

  “Stop, drop, and roll,” Sammy said in a very serious voice, “when the fire’s on you.”

  “You couldn’t have learned any parenting skills from Alice,” Claire said, referring to Hannah’s mother. “From what I remember she was always in her bedroom lying down with a headache.”

  “Sam’s all over this child rearing thing. I’m a little more casual in my approach.”

  “You gots kids?” Sammy asked Claire.

  “No,” Claire said, “just Mackie Pea.”

  Sammy looked over at Mackie Pea, curled up on a rug in the corner.

  “Mappy Pete’s a little girl dog,” he told his mother. “They’s cut off her’s tail.”

  “Sammy,” Hannah said, “Daddy’s coming in a little while to take you to the Megamart to get some new shoes.”

  “Alright!” he shouted, and then danced around. “Megamart! Megamart! I wants a tractor; a big one with big wheels!”

  “You have to take a nap first.”

  His whole body sagged.

  “I no nap,” he whined. “I not sleepy.”

  “Then no Megamart,” Hannah said. “It’s the deal.”

  Mother and son locked gazes and Claire was not sure who was going to give in.

  “Claire said she would rock you and sing songs,” Hannah said. “She’s allowed to do that.”

  “You know any good songs?” he asked Claire.

  “I know all the ones your Aunt Delia knows,” Claire said.

  “Her’ll be comin’ around the mountain?” he asked her.

  “And ‘I’ve Bee
n Working on the Railroad,’ and ‘How Much is that Doggie in the Window,’ and ‘My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean,’” Claire said.

  “Ian sings old Bonnie lies in the bakery, please keep that old Bonnie away,” Sammy said.

  “That’s not very nice,” Claire said.

  “I scared of Aunt Bonnie,” Sammy said.

  “Me, too,” Hannah said.

  “Me, too,” Claire said.

  “Okay,” Hannah said. “Here’s the deal: Claire will rock you, you lie down for one hour, and then Daddy will take you to Megamart.”

  “I gets a new tractor?”

  “That’s a deal you’ll have to make with Daddy. We’re working on my deal right now.”

  Sammy seemed to weigh the acceptability of the deal on the table.

  After a short silence he asked Claire, “I gets to have my passie?”

  “Is that okay?” Claire asked Hannah.

  “His daddy hasn’t let him have a pacifier since his third birthday, but Delia keeps an emergency passie on top of the fridge.”

  “It’s a mergency,” Sammy said. “I needs it.”

  “Well, since it’s an emergency,” Hannah said. “I guess it’s alright.”

  To Maggie she said, “I don’t care if he sucks on a pacifier until he’s in college as long as it makes him feel better. Maybe if every adult had one there’d be less of a need to self-medicate.”

  Sammy dragged a chair over to the kitchen cabinet, climbed on top of the counter, and then on top of the microwave. He took a pacifier out of a basket on top of the fridge. Hannah helped him down.

  “Got it,” he said, holding the pacifier up for Claire to see before popping it in his mouth.

  It seemed to have an instantaneous sedative effect. He rubbed his eyes and yawned.

  “Do you have to pee?” Hannah asked him.

  He shook his head.

  “Rock him for five songs, although he will try to get you to do one more about a million times,” Hannah said. “Then put him down on the couch and cover him up with the afghan; the soft blue one, not the scratchy red one. Set the kitchen timer for one hour, and he can’t get up until it dings, whether he sleeps or not. As soon as he gets up he has to pee, which he can do by himself, and then he gets some juice.”

  Sammy removed his pacifier, said, “the yellow sippy cup with the monster truck,” and then stuck his it back in his mouth.

  “Got it,” Claire said.

  Claire went in the living room and sank down in the upholstered rocker in which her mother had rocked her and her brother many years before. Sammy climbed up on her lap and snuggled in her arms. He took out his pacifier and pointed it at his mother.

  “Bye, Hannah,” he said. “Be good.”

  “Bye, Sammy,” Hannah said, and waved as she went out.

  “Daddy sings everything alright,” Sammy said. “You knowed it?”

  “I’m sorry,” Claire said. “What song is that?”

  “Two little birds on the front porch,” he sang, “singing sweet songs, melody four and two, singing, this is my messy to you-hoo-hoo.”

  “That’s Bob Marley,” Claire said. “I think.”

  “Sing it,” he commanded, and put his pacifier back in his mouth.

  He snuggled back down with his head on her shoulder, sucked on his pacifier, and reached a tiny hand up around her neck. Claire wished she had thought to make him wash his hands after he held the owl pellet. As she rocked the chair springs twanged just like they had all those years ago.

  Luckily Claire knew all the actual words to “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley, and Sammy was asleep by the end of the second chorus. His body went completely limp and his hand dropped from her neck. Claire smelled the top of his head. His tangled golden curls smelled like baby shampoo and wood smoke.

  Claire reflected that there was no way she could exactly duplicate the many colors of his hair, although she liked to think she could come close. The client would have to be dark blonde to begin with; a darker shade and she’d have to bleach it and then use toner, which was harder on the hair. Silently she calculated all the colors she would have to mix to get four different shades, from dark caramel to medium golden blonde to light honey to platinum. She would have to use foils and weave the color in a few strands at a time. It would take hours; she would charge a fortune.

  Mackie Pea ran into the living room, jumped up on the other side of Claire’s lap, turned around two times and curled up. The little dog didn’t seem to mind Sammy being there. Claire reflected that Mackie Pea seemed to have a facility for adapting to change; it was a good thing.

  Claire considered worrying about being a murder suspect, about how her folks were doing, and about what in the world she was going to do with the rest of her life, but decided instead to just put all that aside and enjoy holding Sammy and Mackie.

  “Every little thing is gonna be alright,” she sang quietly.

  Instead of putting Sammy on the couch she closed her eyes and continued to rock him until she, too, fell asleep.

  Scott had been sparring with Sarah for over an hour, but he knew he was right and was determined not to back down. He’d spent the morning interviewing local people, trying to find someone who saw or heard something, anything that would help Claire.

  “She says she lost her cell phone,” Sarah said. “But how do we know she didn’t steal his and hide them both? I say we get a search warrant and turn her parents’ house upside down.”

  “With Claire’s permission and her cell phone service provider’s assistance I procured her call and text log from the past week,” Scott said. “There was no record of phone calls or texts to the victim for twenty-four hours before the time she says she lost her phone, or any calls or texts going out after.”

  “You expect me to believe that whoever found or stole her phone didn’t use it to make calls?”

  “Claire’s phone has a security feature that requires a pin number to unlock it. Her account cannot be used without that number.”

  “Can the service provider give us the text content or let us listen to the voicemails?”

  “No.”

  “I bet they could if we were the feds. If we can get that movie star boss of hers involved we could probably call in the feds.”

  Scott took a deep breath.

  “The victim landed in DC at around eight p.m.,” he said. “He rented the car at around eight-thirty. It takes at least four hours, in daylight and good weather, to get to Rose Hill from Ronald Reagan Airport. The earliest he could have arrived was half past midnight. There was thick fog all along the river so Route 1 would’ve been slow going. I figure it was closer to one or two before he got here.”

  “Maybe he waited longer to start out. Maybe he was waiting in DC for her to arrive and he followed her.”

  “Claire landed at eleven p.m.” Scott said. “The quickest she could get here was four hours, again, if the weather was perfect, which it wasn’t. She had planned to make a connecting flight to Pittsburgh at midnight and drive down, which would have brought her here by three a.m. at the soonest, but there was a storm and her connecting flight was delayed.

  “She rented a car at Reagan Airport at 11:45 p.m. She came to the fire station at four-ten. The quickest she could have driven here, in perfect weather, mind you, was four hours. If she made that good of time, that would have put her here at just before four. By the time Malcolm got to the body it was four-twenty.

  “If she killed him at 3:45 a.m., which is the earliest she could have arrived in Rose Hill, and Malcolm saw him at four-twenty, his blood would still have been flowing. Hell, he would have been warm to the touch and possibly still alive. It was 4:30 when I saw him. His skin was cold, his blood was congealed, and the onset of lividity was evident.”

  “She killed him somewhere else, brought him here, and dumped him.”

  “Sarah,” Scott said. “Patrick saw the victim’s car in front of the Thorn when he left at two a.m.”

  “That’s the bartender, rig
ht? He’s one of those Fitzpatricks you can’t walk around here without tripping over. I remember him from the Eldridge murder investigation. I seem to remember he lives in the trailer park down on Peony. Why didn’t he see the body? Doesn’t he walk home that way?”

  “He didn’t go home,” Scott said.

  “Where did he go?”

  “To the home of a local woman.”

  “Did you question her?”

  “Not yet, but I will.”

  “Maybe I should do it.”

  “You know folks around here won’t tell you anything.”

  “What’s Patrick’s relationship to the suspect?”

  “They’re cousins.”

  “Isn’t that convenient?” Sarah said. “He might have conspired with the suspect to commit and cover up the crime. He may have both cell phones.”

  “What’s the motive?” Scott replied. “The victim and Claire both worked for the same person. Claire fulfilled her contract and was coming home for a short vacation before she goes back to L.A. The last she heard from the victim he was still working for their employer and planned to stay in the UK for the foreseeable future. They had no personal relationship beyond work. She says they weren’t particularly close, had known each other less than two years, and didn’t socialize together on their own time. She doesn’t know why he came here, and until we recover one or both phones, we won’t know why either.”

  “I want to see the log again,” Sarah said.

  Scott gave her the printout.

  “So these calls and texts came from four numbers other than the victim’s: her former employer, the PR firm, the agent, and a law firm in New York,” Sarah said. “It looks like she was still receiving calls and texts up to the point when the report was printed.”

  “I’ve left messages with all of them but so far no one has returned my calls.”

  “Why would he come here without her knowledge?”

  “She doesn’t know.”

  “It’s too big a coincidence.”

  “It’s mysterious, that’s true. I’m sure if we had either phone we could find out what happened.”

  “I wish his family would get here. I’m counting on them to get me access to his service provider’s call log.”