To signal I was done reading, and done with the conversation, I folded the sheath of papers but also used those few seconds to tell myself, Calm down. Right or wrong, arguing with a police officer is always a bad choice, and I didn’t want to push it too far. Plus, my mother’s garden was at stake, and Loretta, who does have her sweet moments, didn’t have much in life but tending her plants, putting up canned vegetables, and bingo.
The little man was getting nervous, a bit of sweat showing above his lip, and I expected Deputy Tupplemeyer to put me in my place with something stern. Instead, she said, “I’ve never heard of Indian mounds in Florida,” sounding cop-like and cynical but also interested.
“You’re standing on one,” I replied. “Pyramids made of shell before the Spaniards arrived.”
The deputy turned to the little man. “She’s kidding, right? I thought they were hills.”
He was remarking on the subject’s unimportance when his phone buzzed, which allowed the deputy to ask me a couple more questions before explaining, “I spent two weeks in Guatemala. The ruins there. Mayan-it was for a course I was taking. Copán, too. Three weeks, that trip, then a month when I was in college.” She had her hands on her hips, looking at the topography, maybe trying to imagine if what I’d told her was possible.
I asked, “East-west pyramids, is that the way the Maya built their cities?”
“You’d have to see for yourself to understand the attraction,” she replied as if mishearing. But then added, “Yeah, the Maya were astronomers.”
“Same with the people here,” I said, then pointed to a distant island. “See the high trees? That’s the western pyramid. The first day of spring, the sun sets right over it. We’re standing on the eastern pyramid-what’s left of it anyway. Farther east, there’re three burial mounds.”
The deputy looked at the man, who was putting his phone away, then at the house next door, her eyes taking in the terraced lawn, construction residue, insulation, broken stringers stacked by the road. The tracks of a bulldozer, too, used to flatten the mound and load dump trucks that had waited in a line. Then she asked him, “How could they get away with something like that?”
The man shook his head, getting more nervous by the second. “Permits and variances don’t go through my department,” he responded, which was an attempt to distance himself, but it also confirmed the truth as far as the deputy was concerned.
“A thousand years old,” she said, thinking about it.
“Some artifacts, they’ve dated back four or five thousand years,” I told her.
“Here?”
“Right where we’re standing, pottery and shell tools-the artifacts the neighbors didn’t have hauled off to the dump, or wherever they took it. About fifteen or twenty tons of shell mound, just disappeared.”
“There’s something very wrong about that,” Deputy Tupplemeyer told the little man. Then had to show her authority over me by adding, “You shouldn’t be digging a garden either. Like the law says. Not if this is an archaeological site.”
I was explaining that my grandfather had raised pineapples on the plot where vegetables now grew, so it was too late to apologize, we couldn’t go back in time, but we had drawn the line at bulldozing history. That’s when I noticed that the neighbor woman had come outside and was watching. Alice Candor was her name, a medical doctor, local gossip claimed. She had a dog leash in one hand and was using the other to talk on a cell phone. A tall woman, bulky but not obese, with whom I’d never spoken but had seen a few times, distinctive in her appearance, always wearing dark baggy clothes. Often caftans, and she liked scarves. She was dressed that way now, whispering into the phone and watching, until she realized I’d spotted her, then spun her back to me.
That’s when a little light went off in my head. “That’s who complained about the garden, isn’t it? The new neighbors reported us, that’s why you’re here.”
“Who?” the deputy asked, then became official. “Doesn’t matter who did it, the names are confidential.”
The man said, “Of course they are,” but gave it all away when the neighbor woman suddenly knelt to retrieve something off the ground, froze for an instant, then bolted away, shrieking, her screams so piercing they spooked crows from the trees.
The man panicked and began to jog after her, calling, “Something must have bit her! Dr. Candor’s hurt!”
No, the doctor had found her missing Pekingese.
4
When I returned to the house to check on Loretta, she was pacing and looked upset, but it wasn’t because of the neighbor’s shrieking. It was because she couldn’t locate a childhood friend and bingo partner of hers, Rosanna Helms, whom everyone called Pinky. Of special concern was that Mrs. Helms’s answering machine didn’t come on, and three of her other bingo partners hadn’t answered the telephone either.
“Second day in a row Pinky didn’t call,” my mother said, “but yesterday, at least, her damn machine answered!”
At the time, of course, I had no reason to suspect that Mrs. Helms had been given our family antiques or to fear that the woman had been murdered. Like most adult daughters, I assumed my mother’s anxiety was baseless, which is why I treated her with the same gentle impatience she had shown me as a little girl. “You’re worried for no reason, please calm down,” I told her.
“Something’s wrong, I know it,” Loretta insisted, while I steered her toward the recliner. Which caused me to remark that her day nurse, Mrs. Terwilliger, would soon return, so why not swallow her five p.m. meds a little early?
“It’ll settle your nerves,” I added.
My mother pursed her lips to refuse my advice. “Pinky and me talk every afternoon, you know that. Especially today-she was expecting a new wig in the mail.”
“Maybe she forgot,” I said.
“Nope! When the game shows are over, that phone rings. She never missed a day until yesterday. Then I always call Becky Darwin and Jody and Jody calls Epsey Hendry and what’s-her-name, the woman I can’t stand. Now they’ve all disappeared!”
“All five of your friends?”
“What’s-her-name is a damn gossip, not a friend. It’s the other four I’m worried about.”
“Loretta, you’re upsetting yourself for no reason.”
Angry and near tears, my mother wailed, “Pinky’s hurt, maybe dying-that’s not cause to be upset? Hannah Smith, you listen to me! Just a few minutes ago, in my mind, I heard her crying for help! At least drive to the old Helms place and check.”
The poor woman looked frantic, rusty hair hanging in strands over her face and housecoat, her hands balled into pale, knobby fists. The sight of her so frail and frightened squeezed at the heart. My mother had once been sharp and sure and bullheaded, but now the years and a brain embolism had sapped the best part of her away. It had made her so childlike, I wanted to hug her close to let her know she was safe and protected. So that’s exactly what I did before returning with a pillow and a fresh glass of sweet tea, then apologized to her because it was the right thing to do. It was also a way of explaining the cries for help she’d heard.
“I was wrong to doubt you about that Pekingese, Mamma. What you told me was true about the owl. Just now, the neighbor lady found what was left-not far from the oak grove, like you said. That’s what you heard, not Pinky. The woman started screaming. There’s a deputy sheriff trying to calm her right now.”
Loretta’s eyes flashed for an instant, a triumphant look, which I expected, but I didn’t expect her to reply, “Think I don’t know that? I was watching from the porch when that evil bitch found the collar, then picked up a piece of his tail or whatever it was she slung into the bushes. Her bawling has nothing to do with Pinky.” Then again pleaded, “Hannah, please drive me so we can check. Pinky might be dying right now!”