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"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 pla
"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."
"You're nagging," John said fondly.
I smiled but tried to hide it. "I have to be going," I said. "I left Phillip at home, busy doing a job for me."
"I'll talk to you soon," Mother said automatically.
"I'm sure you will." I smiled openly.
I was thinking of Madeleine on the way home. Though I felt temporarily wept out, I was grieving about the old orange cat. I had spent a lot of years with Madeleine, as many years as Jane Engle had had with her. I remembered how cute Madeleine's kittens had been, and I wondered how many grandchildren she had. Probably great- and great-great grandchildren, come to think of it.
That reminded me of Cara's call about Moosie. It wasn't right that Poppy's cat should be in the care of a neighbor, not when I could take the cat in until John David could get back on his feet. After all, I had a fenced-in backyard and cat food, though possibly my fence was low enough for Moosie to leap over, claws or not.
To get to Cara's house, which faced onto the street parallel to Swanson, I had to drive past Poppy's house once again. To my extreme irritation (I didn't seem to be able to be moderate about anything these days), Arthur's car was parked in front of the house.
This was tacky, to say the least. After all, the house had been released to John David, and he and Chase might arrive at any moment to resume living in it again. John David couldn't stay in a motel forever, and now that the initial shock of Poppy's death had passed, he might be ready to return to his very clean home.
I parked behind Arthur's car in the driveway and marched up to the front door. I still had the key I'd borrowed from John David, and I opened the door and went in.
"Arthur!" I bellowed.
He appeared at the head of the stairs, looking considerably startled.
"What the hell are you doing here?" I asked, surprising even myself.
"I'm the detective in charge of the investigation into the death of the home owner," he said evenly. "I have a right to be here."
"Now that you've given John David the green light to move back in? I don't think so," I said with more confidence than I felt.
"Are you jealous because I came to love Poppy rather than you?" Arthur asked as he came down the stairs. I remembered that yesterday I had wondered if I should be afraid of this man, and I'd had a friend with me then.
"No, I'm not jealous of Poppy, especially over your affections. I think Poppy loved life, but I think she lived it badly. I don't think she ever appreciated what she had, or what she could do with it."
Arthur stood right in front of me, looking down at me, and he was maybe a little puzzled. "What could Poppy have wanted that she didn't have?" he asked.
Smarter lovers, for one thing.
"Poppy could have wanted stability, but instead she created instability. She could have wanted to heal from the badness in her past, but instead she clung to the ... the emotional problems that caused her to live so... dangerously." Maybe I sounded a tad pompous.
"She was wonderful," Arthur said, unbelievingly. "She was smart, and she was fu
"But unlike me, she liked to sneak," I said bluntly. "Unlike me, she liked multiple partners. This isn't about how great I am in contrast to Poppy. This is about you letting go of a dream of Poppy, a Poppy who never really existed. You can't afford to pin her down this tightly, Arthur. Let her go, so you can look for who killed her."
I wondered how much sleep Arthur had been getting. He was definitely on the smelly side, and he certainly needed a shave. That curly pale hair was dirty, and his shirt was rumpled.