Sharyn McCrumb - Sick Of Shadows

“What is it?”

“Oh… just an experiment. Or maybe a statement. I dunno. Here, I’ll show you. I boiled water in this glass container, and I dumped salt into the boiling water-lots of it. More than it would hold if it were room temperature. Got that?”

“Yeah. You wasted a box of salt. So?”

“Then I left it covered and waited a few hours for it to cool.”

“Okay. And you want to see what will happen?”

Charles looked pained. “I know what will happen. Don’t you?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “No.”

He shook a few grains of salt into his hand. Carefully extracting a few grains from his palm, he blew the rest away. “Now. I have between my fingers a grain or so of salt. Watch.”

He walked over to the glass pot on the countertop and lifted the lid. Elizabeth followed him, peering closely at the clear liquid inside. With a dramatic flourish, Charles dropped the salt grains into the liquid. As Elizabeth watched, the solution around the new grains began to thicken into a bog of oatmeal consistency, the reaction spreading outward from the grains second by second until the entire liquid had become a mass of soggy salt.

“Hey! I didn’t even see any salt before!”

“I know. You want to know why I did this?”

Still watching the beaker, Elizabeth nodded.

“This wasn’t an experiment. It was a prediction. I think that solution was like our family. There were a lot of things floating around, so to speak, but you couldn’t see them. And Eileen’s death is that little grain of salt I dropped into the pot, which makes everything crystallize.”

He dumped the contents of the beaker into the sink and rinsed the pot. “Good night, Elizabeth,” said Charles, strolling off toward the stairs.

Elizabeth stared after him, wondering for the first time if Charles might also be a poet.

ELIZABETH SLEPT BADLY that night. Even though she locked her door and got up twice to make sure the bedroom window was fastened, she half waked at every creak the house made. A fitful early-morning dream about looking for an Indian village in the stacks of the university library abruptly changed into a funeral scene in which Aunt Amanda was nailing Eileen into a pine box. In her dream, Elizabeth suddenly became the one in the box, and she could feel the blows of the hammer vibrating against her upturned face. When she finally struggled to consciousness, she found that the pounding was coming from the bedroom door.

“Honey, you got a phone call!” Mildred was saying. “He says he’s your brother.”

Elizabeth shook her head and yawned. The clock on the nightstand said 7:15. In haste she grabbed the terry-cloth robe at the foot of her bed. She was still struggling to knot the cord around her waist when she reached the bottom of the stairs. The receiver was lying on the hall table, and Mildred was nowhere in sight.

“Hello… Bill?” said Elizabeth carefully. “Why are you calling at this hour? What do you mean you just got in? Did Milo tell you why I called? Oh, Bill, it’s awful!”

“One thing I can’t figure out, Wes,” said Clay Taylor, reading the lab report. “If somebody threw her in that boat on the top of a snake, is that murder or just assault? I mean, the snake did the killing, if I’m reading this report right. Does that mean the person who hit her on the head isn’t responsible, or do we just consider the snake an exotic murder weapon?”

Wesley Rountree sighed in exasperation. “I’ll tell you what I consider it, Clay. I consider it the prosecutor’s problem. All we got to worry about is finding him somebody to prosecute. Now let me alone a minute. I got to make up a list of things for Hill-Bear to do today.” Rountree reared back in his swivel chair and considered his list.

Taylor put down the lab report and went over to check the electric percolator atop the filing cabinet. Its cord was loose, so that if he didn’t keep jiggling it, the water never would get hot. “Don’t forget the capias we got on Johnse Still well.”

“Oh yeah. Another bad check. I’ll put it on here. Anything else?”

“The Bryces went to the beach this week, and they wanted us to pay particular attention to the house while they’re gone.”

Rountree grunted. “Hope they remembered to stop the paper this time.”

“The water’s hot, Wes. Want some coffee?”

Rountree shook his head. “No. I’m meeting with Simmons this morning, and he doesn’t use instant. I’ll wait.”

Taylor considered this as he poured his own cup of coffee and ladled sugar into it. “Chandler case, huh?”

“Yep. Consult the family lawyer.”

Clay settled back at his own paperless desk. Months of neatness-by-example had failed to effect any change at all in Rountree’s habits. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “this case could be tricky. I didn’t come up with any fingerprints on the easel and paintbox, except those of the deceased. We don’t even know why she was killed.”

“No, but we got a lot of whys to choose from,” snapped the sheriff. “An inheritance, a reluctant groom, and let’s not forget that damned picture that nobody can find.”

Taylor smiled. “Aw, you don’t think somebody killed her for a picture, do you, Wes?”

“Not to hang it in their dining room, no. But somebody sure wanted to get rid of it. And she was painting by the lake.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it,” said Clay, in a puzzled voice.

“Well, I don’t either,” Rountree admitted. “But you’re going back out there right now, and check it out. Maybe you can come up with a few answers, instead of so many questions.”

“Diving gear?” said Taylor hopefully. Since he had taken the scuba diving course the previous fall, he had been on the lookout for opportunities to use his skills in the line of duty, but so far there had been no drownings or aquatic emergencies. The Chandler pond would be the perfect excuse to test his newly learned diving prowess.

“No. Not diving gear,” Rountree growled. “Whatever she was painting had to be visible to somebody standing on the shore. Just walk around and look on the banks and in the shallows. Report anything unusual that you find.”

“I’m on my way.”

Rountree deposited his note on Doris’s desk. It was five minutes after eight; she should be arriving anytime in the next ten minutes without an excuse, or in the next half hour with one. “Meet me at Brenner’s at eleven. I’ll wait on Doris and Hill-Bear.”

“Right.”

“Oh, Clay! If you find a sunken treasure in that lake, call me at Simmons’s office!”

Taylor closed the door to the sound of the sheriff’s chuckle.

“Robert, I assure you that I am perfectly capable of carrying on,” said Dr. Chandler’s wife in a cold voice.

Amanda Chandler had come downstairs after breakfast, looking haggard, but without a sign of tears. Her stiff black dress was so severe and unfashionable that it could only have been used for mourning. Refusing all nourishment except a glass of grapefruit juice, she took her customary place in the den.

“Someone must see to these things,” she informed her husband. “May I ask what arrangements have been made?”

“Arrangements? But, Amanda, there hasn’t been time! It hasn’t even been-”

She nodded triumphantly. “There. You see? No one has done a thing. I am not even allowed to mourn my child in peace, because I am the only practical soul in this house. So many people to be notified. Telegrams! Do they have black-bordered ones? And what does one do about gifts? Perhaps Louisa would know, since Alban’s wedding was cancelled so abruptly.”

Dr. Chandler blinked before the onslaught of such efficiency. “Must we do all this now, Amanda?”