Page 36

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

I backed away from the opening her question offered.

Chicken? Or sensing the timing wasn’t right?

“That’s a puzzle, isn’t it. I was thinking about puzzles, specifically, a conversation with Kit about jigsaw puzzles.”

“The one when you and she were telling me about how people approach puzzles different ways?” Clara asked. “She goes by shape, starting with the edges. You group colors and patterns.”

“Yes. And you said murders as puzzles don’t come with edges, which, by the way, is a brilliant insight.”

She grinned. “Why, thank you.”

“You’re welcome. And then, later, I was showing Teague how to wrap packages and we talked about wrapping being another kind of puzzle.”

“Or a way to hide a puzzle. To add a layer — literally to the puzzle of what’s inside the box, for instance.”

“True. So, then Teague asked why Kit likes to do puzzles so much and she said it occupies layers of her brain to keep them from interfering with her thinking, especially about a book. She doesn’t look at the cover — she doesn’t want to know what it’s supposed to look like.”

“Just like we do with murders. We’d love to know what they’re supposed to look like, but if we did, they wouldn’t be mysteries.”

“Exactly.”

“Maybe that’s why you don’t look at puzzle box covers. Because they’re more like murders that way.”

“More like I’m afraid of Kit snarling at me.”

She chuckled, then sobered immediately. “But what made you think about puzzles now? I mean, I know the general connection between looking into murders and figuring out puzzles. But is there something specific?”

“It could be nothing.” My words stretched long with doubt.

“Or it could be something. So, tell me.”

“Well, it was like you mentioned, that I group colors and patterns. And it struck me that Mamie is a recurring pattern in this.”

Her brows popped up over widened eyes. “She’s certainly the reason we got involved.”

“Combined with your soft heart.”

She waved that off. “But how else is she a recurring pattern?”

“She was with Robbie when he got the phone call about his father. She was with Robbie at the hospice center. She was with Robbie when he rushed out.”

“You’re not saying—Are you saying—? You can’t mean—”

“I’m not saying she was involved with the murder. I’m not not saying it, either. My point is, we don’t know.”

“But—”

“Not for certain. I know she’s nice. I know she seems sweet. But to look into a murder we have to look into everything.”

“I was going to say, but she asked us to look into this and if she’s involved, that wouldn’t make sense.

Although, I also know sometimes murderers do things like that to throw off the investigators.

” From the height of dignity, she slid down to her usual manner to add, “Although she is nice and she is sweet. And you can see how much she cares about Robbie, so unless she thought that killing his father would protect him somehow... Especially since she’d have to know it would upset him—”

“Though she has said she’s surprised by how upset he’s been.”

“But she wouldn’t have wanted to upset him even to the extent she could have expected, much less how much he’s actually upset.”

I unexpectedly remembered my late-night prep of the spare key, even though I hadn’t decided to give it to Teague. Even though I hadn’t put into clear words the question of whether I would or should give a house key to Teague.

“I wonder if Robbie even knows what he’s upset about.”

Clara cut a look at me. “You mean there’s him being upset about his father being murdered — the sort of normal upset, if you can call it that. And then something else? Something more?”

“Maybe.”

We sat in silence for several minutes, tracking the erratic paths of the dogs as they chased and caught and chased again.

I wasn’t ready to tell Clara about giving Teague the key, so I also couldn’t tell her about my below-the-surface-of-my-conscious-brain wanderings while preparing it.

Why wasn’t I ready to tell her?

The answer surfaced in my conscious brain all too readily.

In case he gave it back after I told him about my past.

“Not just maybe. Probably.” Clara’s words jerked my thoughts back from Teague to what we’d been talking about. “It explains why Robbie’s upsetness seems... out of rhythm, the timing off, just a little. Like when the audio of a movie gets out of sync with the visual.”

I wanted to hug her. Not only for not calling me nuts, but for putting her finger on what had been bothering me.

“That’s it, exactly. His timing has been slightly off. And that could be because—”

“He’s upset about something beyond or in addition to his father’s murder,” she concluded. “But what?”

“I have a thought about that.”

****

She stared at me a moment, then frowned nearly as ferociously as she had at Emil Dorrio.

“You can’t mean... When you hesitated before... Were you thinking Dova was covering for Robbie? Because she believes he killed his father? No. No, no, no. You’re wrong. He didn’t.”

I knew it wouldn’t go over well with her, but at last it was out.

“Why do you say that? Because he’s a kid? Because it will break Mamie’s heart? And Dova’s? None of that is proof, Clara.”

“Thinking he might have done it isn’t proof, either.”

“I know that. And I wouldn’t go as far as saying I think it. I am considering the possibility. We need to consider all the possibilities. That’s the only way we stay open to gathering all the evidence that can lead us to the truth and to proof of the truth.”

“Why? Why on earth would he do it?”

I didn’t answer directly. “Where is this cliffs park Mamie talked about?”

Clara didn’t insist I answer her defense of Robbie. So maybe her certainty wasn’t so certain. Instead, she answered, “Idlewild Cliffs is what it’s called. It’s in the northwestern part of the county, close to the river.”

The western-flowing Ohio River scallops the northern border of North Bend County before it wiggles south along its western edge, forming an irregular knob. That knob was the least populated part of our county, with its highest elevations and deepest chasms.

“They’re rock outcroppings from when the glaciers moved through,” Clara added.

I turned toward her. “Who are you?”

She emitted a quasi-chuckle, but her frown remained. “Project for school.”

“How do we get there?”

****

The isolated entry road, flanked by erratic drifts of bare tree trunks, wound up and up, but when we arrived at the parking area, it was clear we’d have a lot more climbing to do without the benefit of engine, tires, and comfy seats.

Something else was clear.

There was not another vehicle in sight in the small parking area. Had there been any indication of another vehicle passing this way lately on the way in?

Nothing surfaced in my memory. Still, I wished we’d brought the dogs instead of dropping all three off at my house and swapping Clara’s van for my sedan. Furry alarm systems might have come in handy.

During the drive here, I’d held off Clara’s questions, but I didn’t know how much longer I could. Unless I came up with some distraction.

“I still don’t—Why are you looking around like that?” she asked.

“Like what?” I twisted my neck to look in the other direction.

“Like that . Were you expecting someone up here, in the winter?”

“Not expecting anyone. Though I suppose you get better views this time of year than when all the vegetation’s out.”

“Uh-huh. Okay, Sheila, spill. You are creeping me out, like you’re telling the truth but there’s something worse that you’re not saying.”

“You aren’t going to want to hear this.”

“Tell me.”

“When I lived in New York—”

Which was true — I had lived in New York. Only I’d lived in the city, while Clara and Teague and anyone else who’d cared enough to ask, thought I lived in upstate New York and taught high school English. They thought that because that’s what I’d told them.

But only when I had to say something . My first choice was to say nothing.

Especially after learning Teague was a high school substitute teacher, which meant he knew a universe’s worth more about teaching than I did.

See why I needed to talk to him?

See why I was worried about talking to him?

“—sometimes I went along with Kit when she interviewed people for her murder mysteries.” Clara uh-huhed impatiently. “A couple law enforcement people got talking about spots where you’re vulnerable where you might not think you’re vulnerable.

“They said lots of people think it’s safer if there are no other cars, but, actually, it can mean someone is lying in wait who needs a car. Or if there’s one car, it could be two people waiting and they’ll attack you and the second person will drive off in your car. So that’s not any better.”

She stared at me.

I tried to backtrack. “Of course, that could apply more to interstate rest stops, not, uh, parks and places like this.”

She still didn’t say anything.

“You can always stay here in the car with the doors locked,” I proposed.

“And let you go up there by yourself? Forget it. Just remember, this was your idea to come here and why you couldn’t have remembered all that about people lying in wait to attack us before we came up here, I don’t know.”

We both looked around thoroughly before we got out. Clara also checked her phone, mumbling that she’d take even one bar over no bars.

We headed toward the sign proclaiming the beginning of the trail.

The path was clear, but not wide. Or easy.

Rocks poked up from the surface like ribs, with their tripping hazard upped by washouts of soil around them.

Branches and even tree trunks had fallen across the path in places. The older ones had mostly been cut in place, leaving a gap for the one-person path to pass through. A few more recent ones required climbing over.

The route curled around trees, forming switchbacks in touching distance of the trunks.

“Poor Mamie,” Clara said, puffing from behind me.

“Why poor her?” I puffed back.

“She was trying to do this at full speed, trying to keep up with Robbie. We can take it relatively easy.”

“True. But he went even faster, so poor him.”

“Yeah, but he must have had a reason and she didn’t know what it was, so that made it scarier for her.”

I thought about that as we climbed higher and harder.

Yes, something had driven Robbie.