Emily Littlejohn - Inherit the Bones

I jerked a thumb toward the birdbath. “Her name is on that piece, right below the dedication to the McKenzie boys.”

“Well, I’ll be. That’s right,” Kirshbaum said with a snap of his fingers, his face brightening. “I’d forgotten all about that old birdbath. They had it up at City Hall for years and years, right in the front, by that fountain, and then it cracked, at the base, so my mother brought it back here.”

Finn stood and peered back at the birdbath. He looked at me, his eyes wide, and then he asked Kirshbaum, “Did you know them? The kids?”

The heavy man moved his head in a half shake, half nod. “Sure, I was a few years behind them in school. I was quite young.”

“Your mother, she knew them?”

“Of course. Everyone knew them,” he said. “Cedar Valley is a small town. It was even smaller thirty years ago.”

I thought of what I’d told Moriarty in the bar after Nicky’s funeral, about not believing in coincidences. The cop in me places a deep-seeded trust in facts, figures, and cold, hard evidence. But I’ve always thought that there are currents running through our world and our lives, threads if you will, that touch and connect all things. Events, years after they’ve happened, leave faint fingerprints that linger and change the surface of places over time.

I’ve known that the Woodsman left his mark on Cedar Valley thirty years ago. Chills ran down my spine as I realized, truly, completely, for the first time, just how deep that mark might run.

Kirshbaum said, “My mother’s ready for you, if you still want to speak with her.”

Oh, boy, did I ever.

He motioned us to follow him. The house was dim; window shades were drawn against the heat and the air was cool and smelled of floral potpourri and something else, like sawdust or a woodshop.

Kirshbaum led us to a narrow stairway. He said, “Come on, she’s upstairs.”

I pushed Finn in front of me with my elbow and we headed up the stairs after Kirshbaum, his enormous behind swaying before us like the rear of an elephant. At the top, the attorney took a sharp right. We passed a room with a door half-open and I heard a low cackle.

I paused by the door and while I didn’t sense anything was amiss, we were in a strange house with a strange man. “Is there someone else here, Mr. Kirshbaum?”

He stopped at the end of the hallway and came back to us and pushed the door open the rest of the way. Inside the room was a daybed, covered in a pale blue and white quilt, and a sewing table, and a wooden cage the size of a person. Inside the cage, perched on a thick branch, a black bird with an orange beak and legs stared at us. The bottom of the cage was lined with wood chips and overripe pieces of fruit.

The bird cackled again and then said, “Honey, I’m home,” in a woman’s voice with a harsh New York accent.

“Jesus, that’s creepy,” Finn said.

Kirshbaum laughed. “That’s Margaret, my wife’s Mynah bird. They are incredible mimics. Margaret likes to imitate my wife.”

“That exercise bike won’t pedal itself,” Margaret said, and laughed. Kirshbaum’s face darkened and he reached around me and pulled the door shut.

“My mother’s waiting,” Kirshbaum said, and led us down to the last doorway at the end of the hallway. He called into the darkened room and a quiet, firm voice answered back.

Kirshbaum whispered to us, “We keep the lights low, my mother has sensitivity issues with her eyes. The dimness seems to help.”

We followed him into the bedroom, a small space with framed lace handkerchiefs on the walls and faded oriental rugs on the floor. An older woman, somewhere in her early seventies, lay in the bed, propped up against a stack of ivory silk-covered pillows. Her gray hair hugged her head in tight curls, framing an attractive face. She was petite, and the handmade quilts and afghan blankets pulled up to her chin almost swallowed her.

I introduced myself, and Finn, and sat on the edge of the bed. Finn stood in the corner, his hands in his pants pockets, his expression saying he’d rather be anywhere than here, in this woman’s bedroom, where she’d likely stay until she died.

I touched the threads on the top blanket.

“This is an echo quilt, isn’t it?”

Her voice was worn but steady. “Yes, it is. Are you a quilter?”

I shook my head. “My mother had a real passion for quilts. She couldn’t afford to buy many, so she took pictures of them instead. I have a whole scrapbook with photographs. I always loved the names: album, clamshell, crazy, memory, in-the-ditch, echo.”

“It’s a lost art, quilting. I had to ask Canyon to take away my television; I couldn’t stand all the horrible shows on TV now, where women attack one another. There used to be a real sisterhood. Women would come together and share their stories and their troubles and together, create something from nothing-like this quilt,” she said.

I thought of Tessa and Lisey and the cruel things they had said about, and to, one another. “There are a lot of things that are different nowadays, aren’t there?”

Mrs. Kirshbaum eyed me out of the corner of her eye and nodded slowly. “Canyon, make yourself useful, dear. Make us another pitcher of that iced tea, would you?”

Kirshbaum stood at the foot of the bed and excused himself. Finn’s cell buzzed again, and after checking the caller ID, he too left the room.

“Ma’am, you’ve lived here a long time, haven’t you?” I asked.

She sighed. “Yes, a long time. It won’t be much longer, though, I think. My time is coming and there’s nothing anyone can do to stop it. Not that I’d want to stop it, mind you. I’m ready. I’m tired.”

There was a confessional tone to her words and her voice and I thought of the birdbath in the backyard, and the effort it would have taken her to call the police station.

Something weighed on this woman’s mind, something dark and heavy.

I said, “In all the years you’ve lived here, how much evil have you been a witness to? I’m talking about real evil. Like two kids disappearing thirty years ago. Like a young man being killed last week. Like a cop-a friend of mine-getting hit by a car and losing his leg.”

Her face paled but her voice never wavered. “Do you believe in God, Detective?”

I nodded. “Yes, I believe there is a higher purpose, a higher power.”

“I do, too. I knew there would be a day when I would be asked to answer for my sins,” she said. She leaned back and closed her eyes. “I’ll tell you a story, dear. I’m not proud of it, but I think it’s getting on late for this old bird. Sunset is a-coming and dirty deeds best be aired before night comes.”

Her eyes opened. “That’s something my grandfather used to say. He was a fearful, superstitious old codger.”

She grasped at the quilt with gnarled pale fingers that looked like claws. “Would you like to hear a story, Detective? It’s a story about a secret that’s been kept for thirty years.”

It took an hour for Mrs. Kirshbaum to tell her story, and by the end I was an emotional wasteland. She paused early on, listening to the heavy steps of Canyon as he made his way up the stairs and down the hall and into her room. He set the tray down and gave us each a glass of iced tea. Then he sat in the corner, watching his mother, and at some point he joined in the story, adding details that only he would have known. In a way it was that much worse, hearing the two of them tell their sad tale, a nice enough mother and an accomplished son so intrinsically linked to Cedar Valley’s most notorious mystery.

The tale itself was straightforward enough.

But Sylvia Kirshbaum wasn’t just telling me a story; she was reliving the past, one excruciating memory at a time. And in my mind, I could see her: prim and proper, with her hair done up, and her dress hemmed to hit just about midpoint on her knees, and her pumps, sensible one-inch heels. This was 1985, after all.