Charlaine Harris: Poppy Done to Death

I took a ragged breath and hugged Aubrey out of sheer thankfulness for his presence. Then I took him into the kitchen.

Somehow, the appearance of the priest gave weight and substance to the fact of Poppy’s death. If the priest showed up, it had to be true. Aubrey’s arrival was both a shock and a relief.

I wandered in and out of the kitchen, keeping a sharp eye on John. He looked good, considering the horror of the day. He was practically vibrating with worry over John David’s absence. I thought he would not feel the impact of Poppy’s death until he could be sure of his son’s whereabouts and safety.

John had to be aware that we were all thinking that until John David showed up to establish his innocence, he was the chief suspect in his wife’s murder.

Even John had to be thinking that.

Where the hell could John David be? I walked through the kitchen, the dining room, the formal living room, back through the family room. Then I made the circuit again. I noticed my pattern was irritating the hell out of Avery, but that was just his bad luck. It helped me think.

If I were John David, and I’d left work early, and my wife was busy, and my son was safely at his aunt’s house… I’d go visit my mistress. The answer popped into my mind with the air of finality your subconscious reserves for sure things. Whom had John David been seeing lately? I could feel my upper lip wrinkle with faint disgust at even considering such a question. I made myself comb through the half-heard rumors.

There was Patty Cloud, who’d worked for my mother for several years before becoming Mother’s second in command. I’d never cared for Patty, who was a cold and manipulative woman. There was Romney Burns, the daughter of a murdered detective in the Lawrenceton Police Department. There was Linda Pocock Erhardt, whose bridesmaid I’d been; Linda, divorced for many years, had two daughters in high school, and I knew she should be at work today. She was a nurse for my doctor, Pincus Zelman.

I felt much better now that I had a mission. I slipped out of my mother’s house and into my car and began touring the town. I’d never driven through Lawrenceton hunting down love nests before, and I felt queasy about doing it now. I know I’m not such a wonderful moral person. But somehow, the slipping and creeping, the surreptitiousness of it, the deceiving… well, I had to shrug and sigh all over again at my own censoriousness.

Linda’s car, as I’d expected, was parked behind the doctor’s office. And there was a phalanx of vehicles in the parking lot. I was 98 percent sure that Linda was inside taking temperatures and blood pressures, just as she ought to be. I called my mother’s office and asked for Patty, and when she came to the phone, I told her my mother wouldn’t be in for the rest of the day. Patty replied in a puzzled sort of way, saying that my mother had already called her to let her know that very thing, and I laughed weakly. “Guess we got our signals crossed in all the confusion,” I said, and Patty said, “Um-hum” in a loathsomely skeptical way.

That left the least palatable alternative.

Linda and Patty were both strong women, veterans of the divorce wars, and both quite capable of making their own decisions. Romney Burns was neither of those things. Romney’s apartment was a duplex, and I spotted John David’s car immediately, parked in the neighbor’s driveway. I assumed the neighbors were at work and that this was John David’s way of casting up a smoke screen. How subtle.

Romney was a lot younger than John David. Romney was- well, she had to be less than twenty-six, I rapidly figured. And she’d lost her father less than two years before. Sandy-haired and fair, Romney had shed the weight she’d carried in high school by the time she graduated from college and returned to Lawrenceton, where she’d gotten a poor-paying white-collar job in the financial aid office of the junior college. Mother had told me Romney was the financial aid officer’s assistant.

I hoped they didn’t have any loan emergencies at Sparling Junior College today, because it looked like Romney was home.

I took a deep and unwilling breath before knocking on the shabby door. I would rather have been pulling my eyebrow hairs out one by one than doing this.

Naturally, Romney answered. Her light hair was a real mess, and she was clothed only in a bathrobe. It took her a second to recognize me, and when she did, she looked disgruntled. I hadn’t been her father’s favorite person, either.

“What are you doing here?” she snapped. She had to realize that seeing John David’s sister-in-law at her door meant bad things.

“John David needs to get his clothes on and get out here right now,” I said, abandoning any attempt to put a polite gloss on the situation.

“Who?” she blustered, but she discarded that quickly. Then she straightened. “Well, maybe I better come, too, since I might be a member of the family before too long,” she said, both defensive and proud.

“Oh bull,” I said. “This is the third place I tried to find John David, honey. Not the first.”

I saw comprehension leak into her eyes as she struggled to maintain her position. “He loves me,” she said.

“Right, that’s why you two are walking down Main Street arm in arm,” I said, and turned my back on her. The door slammed behind me. Big surprise.

“What the hell is this about?” John David said when he joined me. He was put back together pretty well, as far as clothing goes, but his composure had big holes in it. John David had a more florid coloring than his father and brother, and fairer hair. He was a powerfully built man, and a handsome one. But I didn’t like him anymore, and in my eyes, he would always be ugly.

“John David,” I said slowly, suddenly realizing I’d condemned myself to breaking the news. “How long have you been here?”

“What business is it of yours?”

We faced each other, standing by my car.

“Believe me, it’s my business. Tell me.”

John David was no fool, and he’d picked up on the undertone.

“I’ve been here since I drove back from the office at eleven,” he said. His voice was even. “Now, you tell me what’s happened.”

“It’s Poppy.” I met his eyes squarely.

His face began to crumple. I swear that he looked as though this were news to him.

“Poppy was attacked in your house after you left this morning.”

“So she’s in the hospital?” There was a desperate hopefulness on his face.

“No,” I said. No point stringing this out. I took a deep breath. “She didn’t survive.”

He scanned my face for any sign that what I was saying wasn’t true, that my words might have some other meaning.

He knew before he asked, but I guess he had to. “You mean she’s dead,” he said.

“Yes,” I said. “When Melinda and I went to check on her, she was gone. I called the police. I’m very sorry.”

Then I had to hold this man I didn’t even like anymore. I had to put my arms around him and keep him from sinking to the ground while he wept. I could smell the scents of his deodorant and his aftershave, the laundry detergent that Poppy had used on his clothes-and the smell of Romney. It was intimate and disgusting.

There really was nothing more to say.

When he calmed a little bit, I told him he had to go to the police.

“Why?” he said blankly.

“They’re looking for you.”

“Well, now you’ve found me.”

“They’re looking for you .”

That got his attention.

“You mean that they think I might have killed her?”

“They need to rule it out,” I said, which was as diplomatically as I could phrase it.

“I’ll have to tell them where I was.”