Kneeling farther along in the flower bed, she began to dig around the roots of a tall old pelargonium. She didn’t know what color its blooms would be, but she remembered seeing masses of bright-pink blooms in these flower beds, as vivid as peppermint ice cream.
She knew she wouldn’t be at work five minutes before her jacket and jeans would be muddy and she’d have smears of dirt over her freckles and in her escaping hair. And she could never work in gloves, could never do anything in a garden without wallowing. It was a wonder her cleaning and repair customers, who included gardening in their varied lists of jobs to be done, didn’t drop her services for someone who looked more professional.Like Cora Lee,Charlie thought, watching the older woman with speculation.
Cora Lee French’s smooth presence was a talent Charlie knew she’d never master. If she felt rocky, she looked rocky. If she was mad, she knew she looked like a vixen. Max said she was always beautiful-but Max loved her. Charlie thought, not for the first time, that Cora Lee would make a perfect manager for Charlie’s Fix It, Clean It. She was getting to the point where she desperately needed a manager, yet even to ask Cora Lee seemed an imposition. Cora Lee had cut back on her waitress and hostess jobs, for which she was always in demand at the best village hotels and restaurants, to pursue her other interests. She had been painting a lot, these past months, not theater stage sets but exciting canvases. And now she had this new venture, at which she was making such good money that she didn’t need to wait tables or manage Charlie’s business. Cora Lee’s hand-painted chests, cabinets, and armoires were selling for very nice sums through the local interior designers. Ryan’s sister Hanni had put Cora Lee’s pieces in some very exclusive homes.
No, Cora Lee was not a prospect as manager, she was far too busy. Charlie wondered for a moment if Mavity would want a stab at the job. Wizened and leathery little Mavity Flowers could still outwork many men; Charlie couldn’t run the business without her. She was fast and efficient at cleaning, at painting and plumbing repairs, and at most gardening chores. But planning and directing the crews’ work made Mavity nervous. Watching Mavity put all her weight on her trowel to send it deep beside a doomed weed, Charlie shook her head. It wouldn’t work; Mavity would balk at the responsibilities of interviewing, hiring, firing, and keeping the records.
Still, she had to find some kind of manager. Her own interests, like Cora Lee’s, were moving her powerfully in other directions. She didn’t want to abandon the business; she was proud of what she had created and the income was good. Charlie’s Fix It, Clean It was the only service in Molena Point where a client could have all manner of small chores taken care of with one phone call, from a broken garden gate to planting spring flowers, from everyday housekeeping to ironing, shopping, helping with parties, or painting a room or two. She would feel like a traitor to her regular customers if she didn’t keep the service alive.
Though the rain had ceased early this morning and the sun had tried to shine, moving in and out of cloud, now the cloud cover was lowering heavily, laying a muted silver haze across the garden.Lucky that the ground was so wet,Charlie thought. The root structure of the pelargonium she was digging went deep. Even with the softened earth, she was making quite a pit getting the plant out without hurting it. And the weeds the two ladies were pulling had roots as big as turnips. Suddenly, as she dug deeper to free the last of the root, a chill slid down her spine, a coldness that left her shivering for no reason.
Where had that come from? Frowning, she slipped a pair of clippers from her jacket pocket. Pruning the giant geranium before she replanted it in a big plastic pot, she looked around her, puzzled.
Behind the two kneeling women, the old house rose up tall and awkward, its peeling exterior darker still where rain had soaked the siding. Its blackened roof shingles curled up as if surely rain would leak inside. What a dour old relic it was, hunched in the center of its ragged yard like some unkempt old man in worn-out, smelly garments. But the price had been right. This would be the ladies’ last home, a comfortable retirement residence for Mavity and Cora Lee, Gabrielle and Susan, and, perhaps later, Charlie’s aunt Wilma. Single, aging women banding together for comfort and security in their last years rather than seeking institutionalized living. Their buying a house together had seemed to be asking for trouble, but so far it had worked very well. Soon they would rent out the two basement apartments, though these, in the future, could accommodate caregivers. Potting the pelargonium, firming soil around its roots, she had set it aside and moved on to the next rangy plant when, again, icy fingers touched her.
And in the next flower bed, Cora Lee knelt among the weeds, suddenly very still. Frozen, her trowel in midair, her hands shaking. Her dark eyes were huge, staring at the earth before her.
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Cora Lee didn’t move. She might have been molded into a frieze. The color of her face was no longer warm cafe au lait, but that of gray cardboard. Had she dug out a snake? Disturbed a rattlesnake? Or uncovered one of those huge potato bugs with the vicious pincers?
Slowly Cora Lee reached down, her hesitant, wary hand hovering above something hidden from Charlie’s view in the turned earth.
“Cora Lee?”
Cora Lee glanced up, then down again, staring at the earth before her.
“Cora Lee?”
Cora Lee looked up, focusing on Charlie, her face twisted, her dark eyes frightened and helpless. Her mouth moved in a soft, begging way, but no sound came. Down the row, Mavity was equally still, watching them. After what seemed hours, Cora Lee whispered, “In the storm, all the bodies floated up.”
Charlie rose and stepped closer.
Where Cora Lee had dug the soil away, she could see dark bones. Bare bones, stained by earth. The bones of a hand. A small human hand. A child’s hand.
Charlie had spent countless hours in art school drawing human bones, human hands. This was not an animal paw that might be mistaken for human, not a raccoon or a possum. She knew a child’s hand when she saw it.
A child’s hand, the fingers all in place as if the hand had been securely embedded in older, harder soil, allowing the loose, wet dirt above to come away. The stained bones were woven through with the little pale roots of the weeds. She could see the wrist bones, but the arm was still hidden by earth-if there was an arm. Cora Lee’s trowel lay abandoned atop the turned soil. Charlie wanted to pick it up and pull the dirt away, free the poor creature if indeed a body was buried there.Call Max. Don’t touch anything. Call him now.
Cora Lee’s thin, lovely face was crumpled with such distress that Charlie rose and gripped her arms, gently helping her up. She stood with her arms around Cora Lee, the frightened woman shivering against her. Charlie didn’t know what Cora Lee meant by bodies floating up, but Cora Lee was far more terrified than seemed reasonable. Charlie reached into her pocket for her cell phone, then drew her hand back and looked at Mavity.
“Go in the house, Mavity. Call nine-one-one. Tell them we need a detective up here; tell them what we found.” Mavity, too, was pale. She needed to do something, to take some action.
As the little wrinkled woman hurried away, the back of her white uniform stained with earth, Charlie held Cora Lee close. Cora Lee was not a weak person; last summer when she’d been attacked in the alley behind the charity shop and so badly hurt, when she’d spent that long time in the hospital, she had been as stoic and strong as rock.
This little hand had brought back something that touched Cora Lee in a way Charlie did not understand. Leading Cora Lee up to the picnic table, Charlie got her to sit down, and poured her the last of the lukewarm coffee from the thermos. They waited, not speaking, until Mavity came out again. She was scowling, her wrinkles multiplied, her fists clenched with annoyance. “Dispatcher had to go through the whole routine of what to do. Itoldheryouwere here, Charlie. That you already know what to do.” Turning, saying nothing more, she picked up the thermos and went back in the house.