Rosemary Harris - Dead Head

All I’d learned was that without a name, driver’s license, or description it was difficult to know where to start looking for someone. Most of Nina Mazzo’s clients were looking for the money. Quel surprise. What was I looking for?

In fact, what was I doing? I was playing with someone’s life. Someone’s hopes. I got back in my car, determined to get in touch with Grant and call the whole thing off; then I heard the echo of Grant’s voice telling me how much Caroline trusted me and needed me. Me. I hadn’t been needed for anything other than the perennial beds for a long time. And whether I liked to admit it or not, sometimes even they did just fine without me.

If it hadn’t been for Caroline, Dirty Business might have gone under. Our friendship had sneaked up on me when I wasn’t paying attention, like those extra five pounds or a bad habit that you don’t even realize you’re engaging in until you see yourself doing it in a reflection or a photograph. It hadn’t been easy striking off on my own. If I admitted it, I would have been lonely in Springfield without her and Babe.

I left the downtown decorating area and took the back roads home to my place, past my new favorite nursery, the pond, and the school where I voted. Not far from the school, I got trapped behind a school bus that had its hydraulic stop sign sticking out. A seemingly endless stream of children exited the bus and the driver waited for each of them to waddle off in their colorful puffy jackets and disappear into their homes.

I put the car in park and sat there thinking. If I couldn’t look for a who, maybe I should be looking for a why that would lead me to a who. And maybe it wasn’t cherchez la femme as much as it was cherchez d’argent. Perhaps I had learned something from Nina Mazzo. I called the Sturgis home. Grant answered on the first ring.

“It’s me. Listen, was there a reward offered for Caroline?”

I heard nothing, then a quiet “not as far as I know.”

Rats. That meant there had been no financial incentive for a stranger or a bounty hunter to track Caroline down and inform on her. On the other hand, that meant it had to be someone she knew, either here or back in Michigan. Grant listened in silence as I explained.

The schoolkids had vanished and the bus drove away.

“Grant, are you still there?’

“I’m here.”

“Have there been any new people in Caroline’s life lately? Anyone she might have shared her secret with?”

There was dead silence on the other end; then he answered in a monotone. “Mickey Cameron asked me the same question a few hours ago.”

“And?”

“You’re the only one she would have told. Only you. How could you do it?”

The crash of Grant Sturgis slamming down the phone rang in my ears until it was replaced by the sound of cars honking their horns at me to get moving.

It was true. I had befriended Caroline, I’d had drinks with her on more than a few occasions, I was a former television producer (read ambitious, unscrupulous wench), and I was getting a reputation in Springfield as an amateur sleuth and a busybody. And it was no secret I wasn’t rolling in dough. No wonder Grant Sturgis thought I’d informed on his wife. He probably thought I had sold her story for big bucks and was already casting the lead for the eventual movie of the week.

But I never had a chance to explain. To him or to anyone. Grant stopped taking my calls, probably on the advice of his attorney, and I noticed a distinct chill in the air at the Paradise Diner whenever I arrived. As we’d all learned when Caroline had been arrested, bad news travels fast in a small town. My phone had stopped ringing. The leaf cleanup jobs had evaporated. No one had said anything-they didn’t have to. The suggestion that I’d been the one to drop a dime on Caroline Sturgis had rippled through Springfield. That and the fall weather were enough to make me a pariah.

Some hard-liners must have secretly supported the tipster; once or twice I thought I saw a little smile from people who thought that I’d been the informer. One woman, Althea Tripplehorn, the self-appointed moral compass of Springfield, had even started a petition that all newcomers should somehow be vetted by the real estate agents who sold them their homes. A little thing like the Constitution didn’t bother Althea. I knew sex offenders had to register in some towns, but former media execs? Ex-New Yorkers?

It got particularly quiet when I entered the diner and the Main Street Moms were in attendance. Caroline might no longer have been one of their own, but I doubt they appreciated an interloper coming in and shattering their nice neat little world.

After three years of hard work, I’d reverted to being an outsider again, except to Babe, who stuck by me. I took to going to the diner at off-peak hours so I wouldn’t see anyone I knew.

“I’m screwed. Not only does Grant Sturgis hate me, but half my clientele thinks I put the finger on one of the nicest women in Springfield. She volunteers, she carpools other people’s bratty kids, she does all those craftsy things for charity events. Come gardening season I’m going to be unemployed, broke, and a social outcast. I’m going to have to start a victory garden just to eat.”

Babe was sympathetic. She herself was a local who’d returned after a long absence, and even then it took a few years for her to rejoin the fold.

“They don’t hate you. They’re just nervous,” she said. “And that Althea. She hasn’t had a good cause to get up in arms about since the seventies. If it was up to her, the whole town would be gated. What about O’Malley? Can’t he do something?”

“Please-the man doesn’t know how close he came to being throttled the other night, but we were in the police station and a little too close to those benches with the shackles.”

Besides, there was nothing the Springfield police could do. They hadn’t received the tip, the Michigan police had. The locals had no jurisdiction in Caroline’s case and had only been notified as a courtesy less than an hour before federal marshals came to arrest her. The tipster didn’t break the law. Caroline did.

“You are screwed,” she said, “unless you can find out who really did it and why.”

“Me? How is that my job?”

“Fine. You can keep avoiding people and coming here for breakfast at nine o’clock in the evening. Doesn’t bother me.”

Yeah, that’s all I had to do-and there weren’t any place mats to help me out with that. Just like the cops in Michigan, I needed a tipster.

Outside, a vehicle crawled by the diner, disappearing at the far end of the lot. Then it appeared a second time, hanging a U-turn and pulling into a space. I thought it might have been the last of the intrepid reporters, but most of them had moved on to Bridgeport where Caroline, in a orange jumpsuit, had been transferred to a larger facility. It wasn’t.

Becka Reynolds, one of the Main Street Moms, peered through the glass door. She surveyed the few other customers in the diner before coming in, and Babe and I waited to see if she was friend or foe.

I’d never worked on her property but recognized her as one of Caroline’s neighbors. She came and sat on the stool beside me, even though there were plenty of empty places a safe distance away from Springfield’s new least-popular person.

“This is kind of late for you, Ms. Reynolds,” Babe said. “What can I get you?”

“Nothing. No, a decaf, please.”

“Gotta make a new pot.”

“That’s fine, I’ll wait. And it’s Becka.” She pulled off a pair of buttery leather gloves and carefully, needlessly, flattened them out on her thigh but still said nothing. The silence was getting weird. Finally we both started to speak at the same time.