The built-in bookshelves on either side of the fireplace were loaded with equally dusty salt and pepper shakers of all sizes and descriptions, many of them imprinted with gaudy letters that proclaimed the item’s geographic origin. Matching headstones came from Tombstone, Arizona. A set of bears were emblazoned with Yellowstone National Park. A smiling senor and senorita had Tijuana printed on their shoes.
“Where are you from?” Rachel asked, walking up to stand beside me.
“I’ve lived in Seattle all my life,” I answered.
She bent down, reached unerringly to the back of the bottom shelf, and retrieved two tiny replicas of the Space Needle. “I got these from the World’s Fair in 1962,” she told me proudly, rubbing off a dusty film with the hem of her apron. “I keep them all loaded. That way I can always put something appropriate on the table whenever we have company. It’s less expensive than ordering flowers.”
She took the two mini-Space Needles to the dining room and placed them in the middle of the table with a genuine flourish.
“What’s your name?” Buddy asked her.
“You be quiet or I’ll cover you up,” she warned. Buddy shut up and ducked his head under a wing.
Daisy came down the steps just then. She was wearing a pair of light khaki trousers and a matching khaki shirt with a giraffe symbol sewn above the breast pocket and a series of silver and gold pins attached to the top of the pocket itself. On her feet were a pair of rubber-soled yellow and gray duck-hunting shoes straight out of an L. L. Bean catalog.
She spoke to Rachel, who was busily setting the table. “It’ll still be light by the time I get home. We can unpack the trailer then.”
Walking over to the hat rack, she peered critically into a mirror while she settled one of the two khaki pith helmets on her head. I took back everything I’d thought about her not being the safari type. She looked the part to a T.
“You’re not planning to leave without eating lunch, are you, Daze?” Rachel asked. “It’s almost ready.”
I think Daisy would have left without lunch if she could have gotten away with it. She sighed, put the helmet back on the rack, and led us to the dining room table.
I would have left, too, if I’d only known what was coming. The table was set with what had once been state-of-the-art Melmac, now scratched and worn with too many years of hard use. The orange wild flowers that bordered the edge of the plates had long since faded to a shadow of their former glory.
Daisy directed Al and me to chairs while Rachel began serving soup into mercifully shallow plastic soup dishes. The moment she ladled some into my dish, I knew I was in deep trouble. It was as though my mother had returned from the grave to haunt me.
It was soup all right, tomato soup, but not the thick, dark-colored, good kind. This was a thin, faded pink, made with milk and tomato juice. Small darker pink sunrises of curdling tomato floated here and there on the pale, milky surface.
The soup was exactly the kind my mother used to make when I was a child. I had been able to choke it down only if I could fill the bowl so full of crushed soda crackers that I couldn’t see the color of the soup anymore- or the curdles. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a soda cracker in sight, only a platter of what later turned out to be tofu sandwiches that proved to be tougher to choke down than the soup.
“We’re both vegetarians,” Rachel explained lightly as she passed me the platter of sandwiches. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about Dotty.”
Dotty evidently wasn’t.
Al managed to down the meal with every evidence of gusto. Daisy finished her soup, gulped half a sandwich, and left the table, taking both a pith helmet and a motorcycle helmet with her as she rushed out the door.
Rachel glanced at her watch. “She’s supposed to be there by two, but she’s always early. That’s the way she is.”
When Rachel disappeared into the kitchen to serve the coffee, I stuffed the remainder of my tofu sandwich in my jacket pocket. Al caught me in the act and gave me a quick wink just as our hostess returned.
“What’s so funny?” she demanded.
“Nothing,” Big Al said. “I got something in my eye.” Telling fibs comes naturally to Detective Allen Lindstrom.
During lunch I had deliberately delayed our questioning in hopes of dealing with Rachel alone. I had a hunch she’d be far more communicative once Daisy was out of the way. Now, over strong coffee and stale cookies, I opened the discussion.
“You don’t seem to be very curious about what happened to your nephew.”
“Curious?” she demanded, with bright sparks lighting up her pale blue eyes. “Why should I be curious about him? Whatever happened to him, it was probably better than he deserved.”
So much for auntlike decorum and sorrow.
“Oh, I’m sure Dotty will be wild with grief,” she continued. “She always doted on him so, even though he never deserved it, not for a minute. He was just like his father, you know.“
“How’s that?”
Rachel looked at me carefully, appraisingly. “Don’t you go trying to trick me into talking to you,” she cautioned. “Our mama always told us that the Beasons don’t wash their dirty laundry in public. I married into the Millers, but I’m still a Beason at heart.”
“Tell me about your sister,” I said.
“Which one, Dorothy or Daisy?”
“Dorothy, the one who’s in the hospital. Which hospital is she in?”
“I told you, she’s in no condition to talk to you. If I tell you where she is, you’ll go straight there and bother her with all this. It’ll be better if she doesn’t find out about it until tomorrow when she’s home here with us.”
“Rachel,” I said reasonably, “the department does its best to notify the next of kin personally. We don’t release the victim’s name to the media until we’re sure the family has been properly notified. In this case, however, someone else may very well let something slip to a reporter. It’s possible your sister will hear the news over the radio or television when she’s by herself with no one there to help her, to be with her.”
I watched Rachel’s face as I spoke. My argument made some headway, but she still wasn’t ready to capitulate.
“Eventually we’ll be able to find her with or without your help,” I went on, “but it would be nice if we didn’t have to fight our way through official channels. It would save us a lot of time.”
“I’ll have to think about that,” Rachel Miller said.
“How long has Dotty been in the hospital?” I pressed.
“Four weeks yesterday. It’s been dreadful. They’re only letting her come home now because there’ll be two of us here to take care of her. The doctor wanted to put her in a nursing home, you see.”
I took a long, deliberate sip of coffee as I tried to understand her reticence. I wondered if maybe she thought Dorothy Nielsen was a suspect in her son’s murder. That was easy enough to put to rest, so I set about doing just that.
“Since your nephew died on Saturday, and since your sister didn’t get out of the hospital until today, we could hardly consider her a suspect, now, could we.”
Rachel appeared shocked that I should even mention such a thing. “Certainly not,” she snapped. “That idea never even crossed my mind.”
“So why are you so reluctant to tell us where she is?”
Rachel sighed. “It’s been awful for her, such an ordeal, that even now she gets confused. I’m afraid to add one more burden.”
“She’ll have to find out sooner or later,” Big Al offered. “Wouldn’t it be better if you had some control over how and when she was told?”
Just then the doorbell rang and Rachel hurried to answer it. Outside I could see an elderly gentleman also dressed in khaki and wearing the same kind of pith helmet, which he removed as soon as she opened the door.
“I saw your car was still loaded,” he said. “I thought I’d offer to unload for a while before I go to the zoo.”
“I’m busy right now, George,” Rachel told him. “I have people here, but if you want to come back later, that’s fine. Daisy’s already gone. She’s working on the Jungle Party this afternoon, but we could use some help later, after she gets back.”