“That’s right,” I said, taking the paper from my aunt, laying it down on the book again. “I was thinking about Mick Sanchez.”
“But it was an accident. An accident!” she insisted, then snatched the paper and book, and ran out of the room.
I had seen the look in her eyes: one of fear. Not surprise, not anger. Fear. Of what? What didn’t she want meJoanna — to figure out through a psychic reading?
Her footsteps along the porch ended with the slam of a screen door. She was in the kitchen. I suddenly realized what she could do and raced after her. Entering the kitchen, I saw the stove’s blue flames leap up to the sheet of paper. It curled into a black leaf. She turned another knob on the stove, and I saw that the notebook was on the back burner. I rushed forward. Shoving her aside, I turned the greasy knob, but the book had already caught fire. I picked it up by the corner and threw it into the sink. Turning on the faucet, I let the cold water run over the book and my arm. The underside of my wrist felt burned. What was left of my mother’s book hissed into a crumpled mess.
“Why did you do this?” I cried.
“I told you before, Joanna, it’s dangerous to pry into the secrets of others.”
“What secrets?” I demanded.
“I warned you. Only animals can be trusted. People will turn on you.”
“People like Audrey?”
She put her hands over her eyes, as if she were trying to block out what she saw. “Forget about Mick. It was an accident.”
Her fear and insistence made me think his death was anything but.
I remembered her first mention of Mick and how puzzled she was when I, trying to play the role of my mother, had referred to him as “my lover.” I remembered the tone of surprise: “Your lover?” Of course, Mick was a generation too old for my mother. He was Audrey’s age; he was Iris’s age. What if he had been Aunt Iris’s boyfriend? Was this one of the secrets that she could never tell?
If I asked directly, she would probably deny it. I had to cast the question in another form. “Aunt Iris, why did Mick choose to marry Audrey?”
She stood still, her fingers gripping the knobs of the stove, and for a moment I thought she was going to turn it back on. I set my hands lightly on her arms. “Why didn’t he marry you?”
She pulled away from me. The large frame of her body bent forward and her shoulders sagged. I began to regret my question.
At last she spoke, her voice rough. “He said I was crazy.
He said I was sick. He said I was too sick in the head to raise a child. That’s what he said.”
“I’m sorry.”
“He was afraid of me.”
“I’m really sorry.” I lay my hand on her back, but she slipped away, withdrawing into the dining room, walking slowly down the hall, climbing the steps quietly.
I didn’t like Mick Sanchez. If I discovered that my greataunt had killed him, I wasn’t sure I would tell the police. But I had to know, because it looked as if Joanna had been trying to find out the same thing and had paid the price for it.
Picking up a pen, I jotted on a napkin the images and wording I could remember from the poem. As I wrote, I became aware of the stinging heat in my wrist. I got up to retrieve some ice from the freezer.
It had become a habit, reaching up to catch the large, speckled fish before it fell on my foot. But there was no fish today. I looked in the shelves and bins of the lower part of the fridge, then in the trash can. I’d have smelled the fish if Aunt Iris had cooked it. I looked out the back of the house.
Maybe she threw it into the creek. Maybe she thought it would perk up and swim away.
Returning to the kitchen, I wrapped a chunk of ice in a dish towel and held the cold pack against my wrist, studying the images I had written down.
Did the snake represent a sneaky form of killingsomething that masked itself as a naturally occurring heart attack? Were the rabbit and cat symbolic of other people who had been involved? The turbulent emotions of the last week and lack of sleep were catching up with me: Images shifted in my mind like the colored shapes in a kaleidoscope. I needed fresh air to clear my head. I went upstairs to change into shorts and running shoes. After checking on Aunt Iris, finding her asleep in her room, I grabbed an apple and headed out for a walk.
The gardens once kept by Mick Sanchez were a short distance away. What if there was a literal basis for my mother’s images, something concrete and specific that tied her garden symbols to Mick? Perhaps if I saw the gardens, the images would make more sense. With less than an hour of sunlight left, I hurried to the Fairfax estate.
FIFTY MINUTES LATER I stood scowling at the Fairfaxes’ fence, tall metal bars that ended in an earthy-smelling marsh. The ground had turned soft and wet beneath my feet, and with each step, I sank in deeper, my footprints becoming puddles. The high river grass was alive with whining insects.
I imagined that snakes liked it too.
I hadn’t been able to enter the property from the road. The estate’s large gates had been locked electrically. There was a keypad for punching in codes, and I had tried some obvious ones without luck. If there was a caretaker on the property, he hadn’t responded to the intercom button that I’d pressed repeatedly. So I’d followed the iron fence, thinking there might be a service or employee entrance, and discovered a smaller gate with a narrow driveway. But it, too, was locked electrically and didn’t accept the random codes that I’d tried. I’d peered through the bars; if there was a car parked inside, the landscaping prevented me from seeing it. The left side of the property was thick with trees, so I’d turned back and searched on the right side instead, moving toward the Flemings’ property. There was no break in the fence, not until it ended where I was standing now, in a marsh.
I did not want to wade any farther into the muck, not in the growing darkness. I realized that Marcy might know the gate codes, but she’d ask questions I didn’t want to answer yet.
And this time, I knew, there would be an immediate call to the sheriff. I would have to be patient and search again in daylight.
I took a shortcut across the Flemings’ property. No one was on the terrace. Ducks waddled fearlessly on the lower lawn. Beneath the dock light, the cabin cruiser and rowboat rocked gently. The rowboat!
I tried to recall the water approach to the Fairfax property.
The house sat on top of a hill, with all but its roof invisible behind the trees. The shoreline itself was crescent-shaped, the creek cutting into the land. As I remembered it, the drop from lawn to water was a steep clay and sand bank, a wall of erosion high enough to make climbing difficult. With the family gone, there was no place for docking and no wooden steps up to the lawn. But if the rowboat could be nosed onto the tiny strip of beach, I might be able to climb upespecially if Zack gave me a hand.
I walked quickly around the Flemings’ house to the front. I heard Clyde baying before I reached the porch. He stopped, as if silenced. As soon as I rang the bell, Audrey answered the door.
“She’s gone off, hasn’t she! I knew she would. These things work in cycles.”
“No, Aunt Iris is fine,” I replied. “May I speak with Zack, please?”
“He isn’t home. I knew it was going to be a bad night,” Audrey went on, her eyes peering into the darkness behind me as if she saw signs of evil hanging from the trees. “When I took the dog out, I heard Iris screaming like a banshee.”
I was curious now. “What was she saying?”
“It was gibberish, all gibberish. The devil’s language.”
“I see. Do you know when Zack will be home?”
Audrey shook her head. “He went out with that girl.”