Madeleine was lying under a bush. She was nearly invisible, and I wasn’t surprised we hadn’t seen her from the house. She looked as peaceful as any dead thing can look. Apparently, the old cat had just lain down and died.
I believed that Madeleine was now in heaven with her original mistress, my friend Jane Engle. This conviction came to me so simply and naturally that I knew I would never question it.
“Phillip, I need you to go get a shovel from the garage,” I said. “You can bury her right where she is; maybe move the hole away from the bush a little so you won’t hit too many roots.”
“Me?” Phillip sounded absolutely amazed. “She was your cat!”
“Point noted,” I snapped. “But the one who loves the animal least gets the hole-digging duty. I loved this old cat, and I’m really upset, and you’re twenty years younger than I am, and you get to dig the damn hole!”
I spun on my heel, as much as you can do that in clogs, and stomped back into the house to listen to my phone messages.
I sniveled and wiped my eyes and nose on a napkin before I poked the play button on my answering machine. The first message (after the three I’d listened to the night before) was from my father, and it went as Phillip had said. What Phillip hadn’t said, of course, was that my dad sounded both stunned and indignant, as if he’d never expected his straying from fidelity could have such dire consequences. And, apparently, Dad had never considered the fact that his wife might have followed his example. I noticed right away-and Phillip hadn’t mentioned this, either-that my dad said nothing about Phillip coming home.
Hmm. Dad and I needed to talk.
The next message was from my mother, confirming that Poppy’s body would be back in Lawrenceton on Saturday, today, and would be ready for burial on Monday. John David had set the service for ten o’clock at St. Stephen’s, and the interment would follow immediately.
I’d have to check the work schedule and see if I needed to arrange for the morning off. At this rate, Sam would cut me from the payroll. The library budget was always tight. I’d been picked to take a course in Atlanta about computer usage for librarians, and I was very excited about it. I’d been on the verge of asking Sam if I could come back on the staff full-time. Maybe now I’d better not make that call, I thought.
Melinda had left a message to say Aubrey could see us at ten-thirty this morning.
“Oh my God,” I muttered, glancing at the clock. I washed my face again and put on some makeup, though my eyes looked red and swollen behind the rims of my glasses. I wore black ones today, with gold decorations on the earpieces. These made me look serious but fun-loving, I thought. I pulled on a pair of cerise pants and a cerise-and-white-checked sweater, so I wouldn’t look funereal. Then I thought I looked too cheerful, but there was nothing I could do about it. I had to go so I wouldn’t be late. I hate being late.
Besides, I thought as I backed out of my driveway, the day would probably take care of obliterating any cheerfulness.
Melinda got out of her car as I pulled into the lot by the church. She was wearing sweats today, jolly red-and-green sweats that had a huge reindeer head on the front of the shirt. With this outfit, she wore cute little red sneakers with green laces, and her red coat. The Christmas buildup had begun.
“Avery’s got the kids,” she said. “He’s pretty miffed at me because I wouldn’t tell him why we needed to talk to Aubrey. He’s very obviously trying to be brave about hiding it. I can’t think of the last time I had a secret from Avery.” She sounded mildly amused.
“Have you seen John David?”
“Yeah, he’s over at our place, too. He’s asking questions about baby care and what to do when. I feel like a big fat traitor, coming here to ask Aubrey if we should tell.”
“It seems to me this was your idea,” I said somewhat indignantly. I sure had better ways I could spend my morning, what was left of it.
“I know, I just… I guess I didn’t foresee how complicated this would be. Emotionally.”
“Well, we’re here now,” I said, acting ungracious and grumpy. I started down the sidewalk to the outside entrance to Aubrey’s office, which was at the back of the church.
Aubrey seemed maybe a little less than delighted to be seeing us on a Saturday morning, since Saturday and Monday were his days off. Well, tough. We had a major moral dilemma.
Realizing I was definitely in a truculent mood, I advised myself to put the brakes on.
Catch more flies with honey, I reminded myself, glancing around to make sure that reminder had been given mentally rather than out loud. Since Aubrey and Melinda were discussing the Altar Guild rotation, I was pretty sure I was in the clear.
“Aubrey,” I said rather sharply. “Melinda and I have run into a problem.”
We began to explain.
Thirty minutes later, Melinda and I were leaving Aubrey’s office, none the wiser. I had considered Aubrey pretty much unflappable, but I found I’d been wrong. Aubrey seemed to be as confounded as we were, and his parting words had been that he planned to pray about the problem and hope God would give him guidance. He had raised more questions than we already had. How could we be sure either of the samples had come from John David? (That one floored us.)
“This is extremely serious,” Aubrey said. “We should not do anything in a hurry. I tend to think you should turn this piece of paper over to the police. If Poppy was putting pressure on the father of her son, he might have reacted with violence. But let me think another day.”
Waiting for God to give us guidance seemed as good a course as any.
The only resolution I’d formed was that it would not be me who told John David what we’d discovered. No sir.
I dropped by to see my mom and John. They certainly seemed in better spirits now that the plans for the funeral were definite. Mother was just buzzed at the idea of finally having something to do, at some conclusion having been reached. True, Poppy’s murderer had not been named, but at least the family could go through the ritual of burying her. John, she said, had just returned from the funeral home, where he’d gone with John David to select a casket and make all the arrangements with the funeral director.
“I offered to go with them, and so did Avery,” Mother said. She was wearing a blouse and skirt featuring a lot of dark blue, and she looked as neat and elegant as always, but the sun coming through the window hit her squarely in the face and I noticed, as if for the first time, that my mother was getting an enlarged network of tiny wrinkles at the corners of her mouth and eyes. She was still impressively attractive, and I was sure she always would be, but there was no denying that age had laid its hand on her.
“I was glad to go with my son,” said John very quietly. “John David was with me when I ordered his mother’s casket. Avery was too upset that day. Of course, I never thought I’d have to return the favor. Poppy was so young, so full of life.”
She had been. She had looked forward to every day of her existence, at least over the past few years. I was willing to bet on that.
No matter what her faults, she had been robbed. So had John David and Chase.
I said good-bye without telling Mother about my father’s phone message. I’d have to tell her sooner or later, but right now, until I knew what I was supposed to do with Phillip, I thought I’d just keep Dad’s marital problems to myself.
“I guess it would look bad if I went out to the club for round of golf,” John said longingly as I paused in the doorway. My mother patted his hand.
“I don’t think there would be anything wrong with that,” she said, and I wondered again at my mother’s late-in-life love affair. “You need to get out of the house, and the funeral is two days away. The exercise will do you good, if you bundle up.”