Sharyn McCrumb - Sick Of Shadows

“I’ll try,” murmured Elizabeth, wondering how anyone could be expected to prevent Amanda from doing something she’d set her mind to.

When she reached the pine-paneled den (or as Geoffrey termed it, “Mother’s Lair”), Elizabeth saw that Amanda was making notations on the back of an envelope. With her auburn hair pinned in an untidy bun and her glasses balanced precariously on the tip of her nose, she looked like the classic picture of a school-marm.

“Here I am, Aunt Amanda.”

“Elizabeth. Good. There is just so much to be done. Scads of things. You’re very sweet to offer to help me.” Elizabeth blinked at this, and Amanda continued, “I thought that we would just carry the burden ourselves and not disturb poor Michael with any of it. Don’t you agree?” Amanda patted the cushion of the couch next to her chair.

Elizabeth hurried to the couch and sat down.

“The first thing we must do is to compose a telegram to notify the invited guests from out-of-town. Oh, and I do wish you would call Todd and O’Connor. They’re in the phone book, and… let’s see…”

She leaned over to hand the scribbled envelope to Elizabeth. Without meaning to, Elizabeth pulled away. What was that smell? It took her a moment to place it, only because she would never have associated Aunt Amanda with whiskey. Elizabeth studied her aunt with a new interest. Amanda, mistaking this attention for dedication to the task, went on detailing the day’s obligations.

What a strange reaction to Eileen’s death, Elizabeth thought. I wonder if I ought to tell Uncle Robert. She forced her attention back to the problem of the funeral arrangements, and found that Amanda was repeating herself and rambling on about trivial details.

“… Todd and O’Connor. Did I tell you to call ’em? Silly-looking man, Azzie Todd. Like a stick with ears…” Amanda giggled.

“I’ll call them, Aunt Amanda,” said Elizabeth loudly.

Amanda nodded happily. “Flowers, of course. Got to send flowers to the out-of-town guests…”

Elizabeth sighed. This is impossible, she told herself. Telling a potted sophomore to go to bed and sleep it off is one thing, but one’s bereaved aunt is quite another matter. There was a certain dignity to Amanda’s condition, which made it sad. I can do the calling and the arranging, Elizabeth decided, but I cannot deal with this. With a murmured excuse, she fled.

Dr. Chandler was not in the living room or the library, both of which were empty. Elizabeth decided to check the morning room in case he had gone in for a midmorning cup of coffee. He was not there, but Carlsen Shepherd was, dividing his attention between French toast and the Atlanta newspaper.

“Where’s Uncle Robert?” Elizabeth asked without preamble.

“He went to the community hospital; said he’d be back before noon. And good morning to you, too,” said Shepherd.

Elizabeth flushed. “I’m sorry. I guess I got caught up in things. I just have to talk to Uncle Robert, because-” Her eyes widened. “Oh! You’re a doctor, too!”

Shepherd put down the newspaper with a weary sigh. “Not me. I’m a shrink. I don’t carry cold tablets, I don’t prescribe Valium, and I don’t know poison ivy from hives. Sorry.”

“This is serious!” said Elizabeth, lowering her voice to an undertone. “I think my Aunt Amanda has been drinking!”

Shepherd speared another piece of French toast. “Umm-hmm.”

“Is that normal?” she hissed.

“Well, it is for her, of course.”

“To react to Eileen’s death that way, you mean?”

“No. It’s normal for her to drink. She’s an alcoholic. Pretty close to the chronic stage, I’d say.”

“I beg your pardon?” stammered Elizabeth.

“Yep. I only mention it because you came charging in here asking for Dr. Chandler, presumably to report all this to the poor guy. So I thought I’d head you off and save some embarrassment all the way around. Want some toast?”

Elizabeth sat down. “He knows?”

Shepherd nodded. “It’s pretty obvious, don’t you think? The psychological reasons are all there, of course: domineering woman married to a passive man; the daddy-fixation; perfectionist. Textbook stuff. The little signs that you seem to have missed. How she stays in her room after dinner and nobody sees her again until morning. That’s drinking time. And the fact that she eats so little. Her moods…”

Elizabeth nodded absently. She was reviewing every detail of the past few days with Aunt Amanda. It made sense-now that someone had spelled it out for her.

“So, now that you know, I guess you can do like everybody else around here and ignore it. Pretend it’s another family eccentricity, like theater or sailing ships.” Shepherd’s voice was heavy with sarcasm.

Elizabeth considered this. “Shouldn’t she be getting help?”

“And your next words will be ‘You’re a psychiatrist,’ ” snapped Shepherd. “Look, her drinking problem has been going on for years, and it’s not going to clear up in a ten-minute chat with me, the pope, or anybody else. She has to want help. At this stage, she wouldn’t even admit to the problem.”

“Oh.”

“So I’m not going to offer her any advice, because she doesn’t want it, and it would be an embarrassment to her and a waste of time for me. I’ll give you some advice though. Okay?”

“Please.”

“Go back in there and pretend that nothing is wrong. Do all the calling and writing and arranging that the poor woman wants you to do, and get it done as quickly as possible. Then tell her that you know she’s devastated, or whatever, and send her up to her room to sleep it off. She should be all right by this evening.”

“I guess I can do that. Just treat it as a form of grief?”

Shepherd nodded. “Well, it is. Only, she’s been unhappy for a very long time.”

Clay Taylor would never admit to being uneasy as he followed the footpath to the Chandlers’ lake. In making as much noise as possible, brushing aside branches and trampling twigs, he attempted to be the picture of unconcern, complete with whistled accompaniment. The tune he had chosen was “Marching to Zion,” and it was just as well that he did not dwell on its implications, because he was in fact more nervous than he cared to be. He had given up distracting himself with thoughts of the Tuesday night softball game or with attempts to compose a shopping list without paper. Finally he settled on picturing such outlandish dangers that he became entertained by the “movie in his mind,” to the exclusion of more probable dangers. A large fin-footed swamp creature, twenty million years old, had awakened in the depths of Chandlers’ pond, and…

As he arrived at the edge of the lake, the reverie was ending with himself in diving gear, having just harpooned the fish-creature, destroying monster eggs at the bottom of the lake. Clay looked out at the peaceful lake scene and grinned. He had not brought his crime kit with him this time because all the death scene procedures had been done the day before. His only assignment today was to look for unusual features about the lake and its surroundings. Something a painter might notice. He had brought a gunny sack to take back evidence. Did Wesley want him to photograph the stuff in place first? he wondered. Well, he hadn’t brought the camera, so if he found anything, they’d just have to take his word for it. He reached the spot where the easel had been. There was a mark in the grass; he looked toward the forest. Trees… a lot of underbrush. Not too much visibility. Nothing out of the ordinary. He had read in some crime text about hikers finding a rag on a bramble bush that had turned out to be a piece from the shirt of a missing child whose body was found buried nearby. From his vantage point, he examined each bush within the range of sight. No rags signaled a forest grave. Taylor shrugged. The lake, then. Something floating in the lake? A bank bag, maybe? Showing where the loot from some holdup had been deposited in watertight containers? Except that nobody had robbed any banks around there since ’52, and that money had been recovered. Taylor pictured Rountree shaking his head and saying, “Stop detecting, boy, and keep looking.” Obedient to the phantom Rountree, he looked. Blue sky, pine trees, greenish brown lake, couple of dragonflies that had better watch out for bass, sun glinting on the water. He looked back, squinting, at a bright spot near the shore. Now what was that? He walked to the water’s edge for a closer look. Just some brown glass in the shallows that had happened to catch the light. Taylor looked again. A lot of glass, he mused. Wonder what it is? He pulled out his handkerchief, because even if he didn’t have to worry about fingerprints, there was broken glass to consider, and pulled out the shiny fragment. The label read “Old Grand-Dad.” The deputy snorted. Some discovery! He was about to heave the glass into the center of the lake, when another thought occurred to him. There wasn’t anything else, so maybe… With his mind busy on the implications of his find, Clay Taylor pulled the rest of the bottle out of the shallows. And another, and another, and another…