Smile Beach Murder, page 25
I swallowed. Part of me felt like I was taking too wild a leap. A quieter, deeper part of me said there was nothing wild about it.
Picking a piece of mulch out of my hair, I went on. “Here’s what I’m curious about, Whitman. Did you and Pearleen overhear Eva describing a glass vial she’d dug up? It had been topped with cork. Sealed with burgundy-colored wax. Inside was a little scroll, and a mysterious message written in fancy blue ink. My theory is this: accidentally hearing about Eva’s discovery reawakened an old fear inside your grandmother. Made her realize the awful truth about Israel Overton could finally come out, after all these years. Does any of this ring true?”
“Whit?” Pearleen stood in the driveway, halfway up the hill that led to the mansion. She was dressed to the hilt, looking like a life-size cake topper in an impeccably tailored brocade skirt suit, hair swirled on top of her head like icing. “Who’s out there?” she called.
Whitman kept his gaze on me. His eyes narrowed. “How do you know we haven’t laid some sort of trap for you? What makes you so sure you can trust us?”
“Because despite your reservations, your grandmother wants to come clean. And you love your grandmother.” I picked up my bag and threw it over my head. “She called me and didn’t leave a message. Twice. I figured—one call like that might have been a butt dial. But a second, ten minutes later? That was no butt dial. It was a guilty conscience.”
He stepped up to me. I could tell he was flexing his muscles by the way the seersucker seemed to twitch. His six-foot frame loomed over me, but I held my ground, even as his arm flung out. He pointed at my car. “Take your insane theory, climb that bony butt of yours back over that gate, and get lost. Unless you want me to stuff you through those bars myself—”
“Whitman.” Pearleen had reached us. She placed a hand on her grandson’s arm. “That’s no way to speak to a lady.”
“A lady? But, Grandmother—”
“Show Miss Padget inside.”
“But—”
“Now.”
* * *
• • •
I followed Whitman and Pearleen across the foyer, into Pearleen’s study.
“You’ve got a bit of dirt on you still,” Whitman said, draping a few towels over the velvety sofa. The towels were so vibrant and fleecy I felt bad sitting on them. “You were right about a lot of things,” he said as he and Pearleen sat on the love seat opposite me. Behind them hung that painting I’d noticed when I was here a few days ago, the one of the sailboat.
“Tell me what I was right about,” I said as I got settled. “And more importantly, tell me what I got wrong.”
The two cats, white and black, slithered in. They rubbed against the old woman’s shimmery stockings. She reached down and stroked them head to tail, saying, “Israel had an affinity for cats.”
“You knew Israel Overton personally?”
“He was my best friend,” she said. “My only friend.”
“He—he was?” I couldn’t see her face, just the top of her whipped-cream head and, as far as my untrained eye could tell, a diamond-encrusted barrette. She wore a jeweled ring on each bony finger, even her thumbs.
“Israel was—well, in my day we said slow or simple.” Sitting back, Pearleen gazed past my head, out the window. “His job was to push a broom, twelve hours a day.”
“The Sweeper,” I said.
“That’s right. He loved when we called him that.”
I scraped my teeth over my bottom lip. Ronnie had gotten it wrong—and I had gone with the unfounded narrative. Israel Overton hadn’t been a villain. He’d been a victim. He wasn’t someone who cleaned up Thornton Standish’s messes. He was, literally, a sweeper. One who swept. “Tell me about him,” I said.
“Most days after school, I walked straight to the factory. Daddy insisted on it, because by that point in the afternoon, Mama was usually ill. That was their word for it. I used to sit on the stone steps leading into the factory and wait for Daddy.
“But the Sweeper would show up first, carrying his uneaten lunch: a can of chicken noodle soup. The second he sat next to me on those steps, a gang of feral cats shot out from the bushes across the road. They were meowing and drooling. Israel opened the can, dumped the contents onto the steps, and the cats licked up every last bite. The only sound louder than the purring was the growling of Israel’s darned empty stomach.
“I started saving my lunch. I’d give it to him—a cheese, ham, and jam sandwich, usually. And you know what he did with it? Fed it to the cats. He and I ended our afternoons hungry. But those mangy felines were fat and full. I sometimes wonder if Antoinette’s Tin Man is a descendant of them. Or these two, for that matter.”
As if comprehending, her cats tucked themselves into bread loaf–like shapes at her feet.
“I talked that poor man’s ear off,” she said. “Prattled on about school and my enemies and my teachers. He never said much. Just listened to me go on and on. Every now and then he’d pat my knee and say, ‘Yes, Miz Pearleen. That’s a fine story, Miz Pearleen.’ Bless his heart.”
“What happened to Israel?”
“There was a small group of workers who protected him. A few men from the woodworking department, and a few women from upholstery. That’s the way it was back then, the division of labor. And anyway, they were all friends, and they looked after the Sweeper. A lot of the other workers didn’t treat him very well, you see. And one day—it was around this time of year—one of the bullies demanded that the Sweeper help fix some sort of great big spinning machine, deep inside the factory. I never saw this machine. That old heavy furniture-manufacturing equipment was off-limits to a young girl. But my understanding is, it went all the way up to the high ceiling. And it had malfunctioned.” She smoothed her skirt, then got up and walked over to the sailboat painting. “The Sweeper, always wanting to be a good helper, reached inside it and got hold of one of the levers. And it snatched him up and flung him around and around. He was caught somehow. Despite all efforts to free him—to shut off the machine—he struck his head repeatedly on a steel beam.” She placed her hands on the painting’s gold frame, lifted it, and set it on the floor.
Inside the wall was a safe.
“Daddy was aghast,” she said. “He immediately fired the man who’d lured Israel near the machine. He wanted to compensate Israel’s family. But Israel had no family. None to speak of. Not a soul in the world. He’d been an orphan.
“Israel’s protectors at the factory were furious. There were six of them. And they marched into Daddy’s office demanding that more be done. That justice be served.”
“This was before OSHA,” I said, leaning forward. “Before workers’ rights. They had no recourse.”
“That’s right. In response, Daddy donated a hundred thousand dollars to the orphanage on the mainland that had raised Israel. It was going to shut its doors, but that money kept it open. Until the seventies, anyway, when it finally did close.” At the safe, Pearleen held her finger over a keypad. A light glowed orange to green. Beeping, the door popped open. She reached inside.
Before she closed it, I noticed a blur of pink.
She returned to the love seat, cupping something in her wrinkled hands. “Not long after Israel’s accident, the uproar, and Daddy’s subsequent donation to the orphanage, Daddy and I were heading home one day when he realized he’d forgotten his hat. An old straw boater he used to wear. We went back into his office. And there in the middle of his desk sat his hat. And underneath it—Lord knows why he saved it all those years.” She held out her hands.
A glass vial. Cork top, cracked wax seal. Inside the vial was rolled-up paper, the edges burnt.
She uncorked the vial and tipped the scroll into my open hand.
Filling my lungs with all the air they could hold, I unfurled the tight cylinder.
Sixteen times Sweep struck his head.
One good bash does big Thorn dead.
How does big Thorn make wrong right?
Tell the world. Bring wrong to light.
“The man who wrote this was named Chip deSilva,” I said. “He was on your father’s payroll. A furniture maker.”
“Chip deSilva,” she repeated. “We never found out who left it. He must have been among the workers who were very angry.”
“If not the angriest,” Whitman said.
“Did anything ever come of this threat?” I asked.
“Not that I knew of,” she said.
Chip deSilva had been a glue person. A real shepherd, in Tammy the nurse’s words. My mental portrait of the man was fleshing out, taking on more contours, more shadows. At the factory, he must have been one of Israel’s self-appointed guardians. He’d have been young then, in his early thirties. He might have even tried to rescue the Sweeper, tried to loosen whatever mechanism had cinched ahold of him.
“Is he your eyewitness, Callie?” Whitman asked. “Is this Chip deSilva the same man who came forward, wanting you to write some sort of tell-all?”
I shook my head. “Chip deSilva died in 2010. He’d been all alone in the world too. What happened next?”
“Daddy had the paper and glass tested for fingerprints,” Pearleen said. “But nothing came of it. He hired bodyguards, and I was no longer allowed at the factory. After school I had to go straight home, where the housekeeper occupied me, keeping me from my drunken mother. Lonely years. I missed the Sweeper something terrible.”
“What I don’t understand,” Whitman said, “is how Eva Meeks came across her vial. A rhyming riddle? Handwritten ink? By the same man?”
“She dug it up in her yard,” I said.
“She lived where that park used to be, didn’t she?” Pearleen asked. “Across from the factory housing.”
I nodded. “Chip deSilva planted a treasure hunt. He must have hidden that vial underneath a park bench or something. At any rate, it was never discovered. Until last weekend, when Eva was planting flowers.” I told them a few details and mentioned the hurricane. “So you overheard her on the CB radio in the Ferrari. Who was she talking to? Who did she call?”
“We couldn’t make it out,” Pearleen said. “We recognized her voice, but . . .”
“It was a man,” Whitman offered. “But his words were garbled. His end of the conversation didn’t come through.”
“What was she saying, exactly? Besides describing the riddle.” My chin trembled. Eva’d had no idea that phone call was the last she’d ever make.
Pearleen cleared her throat, a tiny noise. “There was a lot of static. The only other phrase we heard her say loud and clear was . . .”
“What?”
“Meet me,” Whitman said.
Meet me.
Who had met her?
I breathed in deep, dipping my chin to my chest. Then I addressed Whitman. “You’ve been against coming out with the truth of Israel’s accident. You’re not convinced it’s a good idea.”
“It’s a public relations nightmare. But if it’s what Grandmother wants, she’s the boss.”
“Whitman told me he offered you hush money, Callie,” Pearleen said. “I want you to know that I knew nothing about that.” She turned to her grandson. “Whit, dear, would you excuse us?”
After a surprised pause, he stood. Something about the ornateness of the room, along with Pearleen’s dismissal of him, made him seem diminished, as if all those muscles didn’t amount to much real strength. He left, softly closing the door behind him.
* * *
• • •
“I don’t think your riddle was part of any treasure hunt,” I said to Pearleen.
She shook her head. “When I heard that Eva talking on the CB—going on about a glass vial and red wax and a riddle—I immediately thought it was somehow going to lead back to my father’s one big mistake in an otherwise stellar career.”
“You could ask Trish Berryman at the Crier to write about Israel Overton. I’m sure she would salivate over this story. And the article might result in some sort of compensation being done. You and Trish could even solicit ideas from the community. She’d have to vet your story somehow, of course. But I have a feeling all you’ve said here is going to check out.”
“It will, because it’s the truth. I’ll likely be received as a repulsive troll. Then again, this town doesn’t think too well of me anyway. What would the harm be? It’s only a reputation, after all.”
“The donation your father made. Wasn’t that enough?”
“How could anything ever be enough? He installed a safety rail around that spinning machine. But that didn’t ease his conscience either.” Pearleen leaned forward, her palms upturned. I hesitated, then slid my hands into hers. Her skin was satin. “My father made that donation anonymously, you know,” she said. “He never took any credit for it. That’s why I make my good works public knowledge. I want the Standish name on everything. When I found out Eva Meeks had beaten me to the punch over the butterfly sanctuary?” She shook her head. “I must have come off as a cruel cow. Not my finest hour. I could easily outbid her now, of course. Get those naming rights once and for all. But that seems rather a vulgar thing to do.”
“You’ll have to pardon me. But why are you sometimes so . . .”
“Nasty? It’s quite all right, child. I’ve heard it before, believe you me. I guess I thought I needed to be nasty in order to make it as a woman in the business world. And then the nastiness just spilled into my other worlds.”
“So it’s not really you?”
“Oh, it’s me. But it’s not the only me.”
“You put a can of chicken noodle soup on Israel’s grave.”
“I do every summer, to mark his passing. Much to the chagrin of my two gluttonous pussycats here.” The white cat leapt onto her lap, luxuriating as she scratched it under the chin. “You don’t have an eyewitness, do you?” Pearleen asked. When I didn’t answer, she chuckled. “You’re a little firecracker.”
“How come your father didn’t ‘bring wrong to light’? How come he didn’t come forward? Admit what happened?”
“Maybe because no one else demanded it. He never discussed the accident. Not even with me. Not even after I’d become an adult and started taking over the business.”
“You never brought it up?”
“Standish Furniture was my father’s whole life. And then it became my whole life. I’ve been doing a lot of thinking. If admitting this stain on SFI history will somehow lead to some peace around Eva’s death, and now that poor young lighthouse keeper’s too, then . . . it’s the right thing. It’s time.”
“I hate to be intrusive,” I said. “But I have one last question.” There’d been that blur of pink inside Pearleen’s safe. What if it could explain the threatening sticky note, also pink, inside my Little Free Library? A stretch, perhaps, but I was hungry for as many answers as I could get. “When you opened your safe, I saw something pink. Any chance you could show me what it is?”
Pearleen smiled. I noticed for the first time that she had apple cheeks just like boy-Whitman in the photograph on her desk.
She stood and put the vial back inside the safe. When she returned to the love seat, she held a handmade card, faded and heart-shaped. “I take it out from time to time,” she said, placing it on the table.
It was dated February 1954.
To my darling dearest wee Pearleen:
I will always protect you. Happy Valentine’s Day.
Love, Daddy
65
At Hudson’s house, my shower was rushed, my makeup application even more so. There was no time to dry my hair; it clung damply to the back of my shirt. But I felt confident in a figure-hugging ivory top, swingy linen pants, and wedge sandals. On Cattail Island, there weren’t many reasons to get gussied. The Cattaillion was one of them.
As night fell, I walked to the waterfront. Queen Street was transformed. Chatting Cattailers of all ages weaved among the bidding tables, pausing to sign clipboards or strike up conversations. Caterers circulated, offering cups of cattail salad. “Tastes like cucumbers,” was the famous refrain. A string quartet lent the evening an air of refinement. Beyond the rising and falling of the bows, the Pamlico Sound heaved, the waves bigger than usual thanks to the wind, which was picking up.
I tried to drink it all in, the charm and camaraderie, the white lights twinkling overhead. But I couldn’t ignore the undercurrent of unease. News of the police’s turnabout was spreading, and words like murder and nervous peppered the bits of conversation I overheard. Plus, Pearleen’s story still swarmed in my mind, along with a nagging question: If she didn’t have anything to do with the threatening sticky note, then who did? And would that person strike again?
I picked my way through the crowds, heading for the MotherVine. Toby seemed speechless as I reached Cattail Family Martial Arts. He was sitting out front at a table, auctioning off lesson packages.
“Hey,” he said, standing. “You look—wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen you wearing anything other than a casual dress or running clothes.”
“Thanks.” I brought a fingertip to my eyelashes, unused to the gooey sensation of mascara.
