Murder & Sullivan Read online

  “Laura.” At last, an answer.

  “Okay, Laura, let’s go home and see her.” Now if you just know where home is, Joan thought. If you still even have a home. “Up you go.”

  She hoisted the child out of the creek and clambered after her. Suddenly Laura began running toward the house on the hill. Of course. No wonder she was alone, if she lived that close. Blink twice and a little girl that age would be at the playground before you could say “Stay in the yard.”

  Joan stumbled after her, past trees that looked as if someone had twisted them out of the ground and then stripped off the bark. Already stiff, she couldn’t keep up, and she quickly lost sight of the little figure. The only people in sight were a man, a woman, and a teenage boy and girl wandering around near the house at the top of the hill shouting something she couldn’t hear. Shingles had blown off their roof, and the yard was littered with twisted debris, but the main house itself was standing. The wood frame of an addition under construction had splintered. Joan wondered how her own little house had fared—and Andrew. Doggedly climbing the hill, she tried not to think about what might have happened to Andrew.

  Suddenly the woman screamed and pointed in her direction. Joan swiveled, but saw no new funnel cloud behind her—the tornado was truly over. Turning back toward the family, she saw Laura running to the woman, who dropped to her knees in the mess.

  “Mama!”

  “Laura! Oh, Laura! Thank God!” Hugging her, Laura’s mother was laughing and crying at the same time. The others crowded around them. Joan watched, relieved. Laura’s mother, as blonde as her little girl, looked to be several years younger than Joan, probably in her late thirties, and a little more comfortably rounded, though her legs were slender in their tight jeans. Laura’s father was about the same age and of medium height, with a full head of dark hair and a good suntan. He, too, wore jeans and a T-shirt. The boy, several inches taller, resembled his dad, and the older girl, her mother.

  Coming close now, Joan said, “Hello.”

  “Oh my God!” Laura’s mother said, and Laura hid behind her.

  “It’s all right, Laurie.” Her father smiled warmly and picked her up. “She won’t hurt you.” The older girl and boy were staring frankly.

  Joan looked down at her muddy arms and legs and tugged at the front of her skirt, still wadded up and saturated with clay from her slide down the bank of the creek. The hem relaxed, almost to her knees. She kept tugging.

  “Do I look that bad?” she couldn’t help asking.

  “I’m sorry,” Laura’s mother said, and gulped. “You startled me—I wasn’t expecting to see anyone come up out of there alive. I can’t imagine how Laura survived.”

  “She was with me.”

  “With you! Where?”

  “In the creek. It was the lowest place.”

  “How can we ever thank you!” Laura’s father said. “We thought—” His face crumpled and he couldn’t go on.

  “One minute she was right here,” her mother said. “And then—”

  “I know,” Joan said. “I’m glad I saw her.” She felt suddenly wobbly. “Is there—is there someplace I could sit down for a minute?” Silly question, she thought. Their lawn chairs are probably in the next county by now.

  “You poor thing! Are you hurt?” Laura’s mother ran to support her. Normally independent, Joan didn’t resist. Just leaning felt good.

  “I don’t think so. A little muddy.” She stood on her own again, relieved to find that she could.

  “David, can you drive her home? She doesn’t look so good.”

  “You bet,” Laura’s father answered. Passing Laura to the girl who might have been her twin except for the ten years or so between them, he attacked the worst of the mess on the driveway. The boy helped.

  “Please don’t bother,” Joan said. “I just have a few blocks to walk.” If only my legs would stop shaking.

  “It’s no bother,” David said. “Get us a towel, won’t you, Ellen?”

  Checking first that Joan could stand alone, Laura’s mother ducked into the house and emerged with a huge beach towel, which she wrapped around her while David backed a neat white pickup truck out of the double garage.

  “I’m all right, really,” Joan said, and realized she was shivering in the cool air that had replaced the sweltering heat before the storm. “But thanks.” She huddled inside the towel.

  “It’s the least we can do,” David said. He held the door open, and Joan glimpsed the truck’s pristine interior.

  “I’d better take off my shoes.” She peeled off the first sandal. The contrast between the astonishingly clean skin beneath it and the rest of her foot gave her some idea of how her face must look.

  Even so, when David helped her into the cab of the truck, the mirror on the sun visor shocked her. Every inch of exposed skin was covered with a layer of fine mud. Her eyelashes were coated. Her long brown hair, blown in all directions, stood out with its own stiff support. When she closed her lips, her mouth disappeared entirely.

  Andrew will laugh, she thought. Andrew—the fear washed over her again. She hung on. Come on, David, let’s go.

  David tucked her in and fastened her seat belt gently, as if she were Laura. He backed out of the driveway and drove slowly past the devastation, past downed trees and around huge branches and sputtering power lines, past bricks and boards and rubble where she had seen her neighbors’ houses in the morning, where families were now wandering in shock.

  “Look at that,” he said, shaking his head. “Those poor folks are going to have to build from the ground up. If they can afford to rebuild at all.”

  At least they’re alive, Joan thought. Does Andrew even know where to go in a tornado? How could I bring him to Indiana and not tell him that?

  After a block with little damage, they came to her own block. On the corner, Henry Putnam’s new house stood with the crown of a silver maple sprawled across its roof and its secrets exposed to the world. Looking through Henry’s smashed picture window, Joan held her breath for him. Then she saw him come around the corner of the house. Good. He’s all right.

  “Thank God,” David said. “At least Uncle Henry’s okay.”

  “He’s a dear old man,” Joan said. So Henry was David’s uncle. Some days she thought everyone in Oliver was related to everyone else.

  And there was her house, still standing, but looking vulnerable. The wooden wraparound porch was gone, and the front door hung five feet off the ground.

  “Ours is next door to Henry’s,” she told David. “The one with the door up there.” He pulled over carefully. Joan scanned her windows for Andrew’s curly head.

  “Watch out for those live wires, now,” David said, and walked gingerly around the truck. He opened the passenger door and offered a tanned hand to help her down.

  “Uh-huh.” She scarcely heard him. Then her front door flew open and Andrew leaped to the ground, ran to the curb, and hugged her, mud and all. Joan dropped her sandals and towel to hug him back.

  “Mom! You’re alive!”

  “Andrew! I was so worried!”

  “I went down to the furnace room. But what happened to you?”

  “I hid in the creek.” She looked down at her skirt. “Got a little dirty.”

  He roared, and she grinned. Belatedly, she turned to thank David, but he was already deep in conversation with Henry. She heard David say “board it up” before they disappeared around the back of Henry’s house.

  “Who’s the guy who brought you home?” Andrew asked.

  “David somebody. Henry’s nephew. He lives down the street, by the park. I spent the tornado in the creek with his little girl.”

  “Figures. You look like the creature from the mud lagoon.”

  “It’ll wash off. How about the house?” She took a step toward it, but Andrew stopped her.

  “The yard’s full of glass. You’ll cut your feet.” He knelt to strap on her sandals. For the second time, she realized how wobbly she was and didn�
�t argue.

  They made a quick tour of the yard. Except for broken windows and the corpse of her silver maple tree out back, which had missed their power and telephone wires by mere inches, the only serious damage appeared to be the missing porch and steps.

  “I’ll have to find a carpenter,” Joan said.

  “We can use the back door for a while. And I found some plastic in the furnace room to tack up for temporary windows.”

  “You do that, Andrew. I’m heading for the shower.”

  Ten minutes of steamy shower and three shampoos restored her. With the mud gone, more scratches and bruises appeared on her arms and legs, but she felt lucky to have escaped with nothing worse. She felt a twinge in her right ankle, but was sure it wasn’t serious.

  Why is it we always feel lucky to have only minor injuries? she wondered. Luck would be no tornado at all.

  The telephone rang while she was still dripping. Rats.

  “Andrew?” she called. But she could hear him hammering downstairs. She left a trail of drops across the bedroom floor and answered the phone in the altogether.

  It was Fred Lundquist. Both Andrew and her daughter, Rebecca, who’d met Fred when she’d come to Oliver for the quilt show a year ago, called him “Mom’s cop.”

  “You all right? I hear your neighborhood was hit hard.”

  “We’re fine. Lost our front porch, but we’re safe.”

  “Good. I may be able to come by later, but the department’s jumping.”

  “I can imagine. It was sweet of you to check.” Worth answering the phone right out of the shower to know you cared that much, she thought, and smiled to herself as she hung up. Andrew safe, strangers helping, and Fred caring—she wasn’t nearly as alone in the world as she had felt down in the creek.

  The phone rang again. This time it was Alex Campbell, the woman who conducted the Oliver Civic Symphony. A different matter altogether.

  “Joan, I have a job for you.”

  No “How are you?” from Alex, but then there never had been—certainly not since Joan had taken over as manager, a part-time job that had swelled to take all the free time she was willing to give it, though her low monthly pay hadn’t budged. But she didn’t owe Alex anything now. Preparations for the symphony’s fall season were well in hand.

  “A what?” Joan stretched an arm for the terrycloth robe draped over the end of her bed.

  “I’ve just agreed to conduct a Gilbert and Sullivan orchestra this summer. You won’t need more than two or three firsts and seconds, a couple of violas and cellos, a bass—”

  “Wait a minute, Alex.” Joan shrugged the robe on, a shoulder at a time, passing the receiver from hand to hand. “What do you mean, I won’t need them? I didn’t agree to anything.”

  “You’re the manager.” Alex combined authority with wounded innocence.

  “Sure, of the symphony. Not of any other orchestra you happen to agree to whip up.”

  “I can’t do it without you, Joan.”

  “Then you should have asked me first.” Listen to me standing up to her, she thought. Compared to a tornado, Alex is just a big wind.

  “Joan—” Suddenly nothing. Then a dial tone. Good, Joan thought, and hung up. With luck, you won’t be able to call me back tonight.

  She wiped up the wet trail back to the bathroom before pulling on jeans and a T-shirt and starting to unsnarl her hair. It was still tangled when someone began pounding on her back door.

  4

  My pain and my distress

  I find it not easy to express.

  —SIR JOSEPH, H.M.S. Pinafore

  Joan flew down the steps with the comb in her hand, ignoring a sudden sharp jab in her right ankle. “Coming!”

  Throwing the back door open, she barely recognized the grim face of the man who had just driven her home. It’s Laura’s father, she thought. Henry’s nephew. David. But why is he so dirty all of a sudden?

  “Your phone working?” he demanded, skipping the niceties.

  “Come in,” Joan said, and handed him the receiver of the kitchen wall phone.

  “Call 911.”

  I knew it, she thought, and dialed the old phone. Someone did get hurt next door. At least Henry’s okay. Andrew emerged from the basement while David paced her kitchen, tethered by her long phone cord. Fred wasn’t kidding, Joan thought. It never takes this long to get through to 911.

  “This is David Putnam,” he said finally. “My uncle, Henry Putnam, is trapped and hurt in his house at the northeast corner of Chestnut and Prospect. I can’t get him out, and he looks bad. There’s a beam on his back. No, he can’t. He’s seventy. Just a minute.” He turned to Joan. “What’s Uncle Henry’s address?”

  “I don’t know. This is 716.” Not Henry, she thought. It can’t be. I just saw him. He was fine.

  “One house west of 716 East Prospect. It’s the northeast corner. No, I can’t tell you the phone number there—the phone’s dead anyway. Yes, I’m calling from 716. Dammit, cut the Mickey Mouse! He needs help now! Good.” He hung up and started for the back door. “They’re on the way.”

  “What happened?” Joan asked.

  “Uncle Henry insisted on going back in the house to look for his dog. The floor collapsed, he fell through, and a beam landed on his back. It shouldn’t have happened.” His face was grim.

  “I’m so sorry. You’d better take him some blankets. He may be in shock.” She wondered whether David wasn’t feeling shock too. “Andrew, can you run up and get them?”

  Andrew took the stairs two at a time and returned with a load that included Joan’s sneakers. Bending to lace them while Andrew and David went ahead with the blankets, she winced at a sharper pain from her ankle.

  Why now? she wondered. I was all right in the park. Could I have jolted it on the way downstairs? But I felt it when I got out of the shower. Maybe I hurt it in the park after all, and the adrenaline is just now wearing off.

  She tried a step or two, and it bore her weight, but the pain increased.

  They’re going to have to take care of Henry without my help, she decided, and limped to the refrigerator to fill an ice bag. Propping her right foot on the sofa, she listened for the ambulance. The siren wailed closer and then died abruptly. Through the plastic on her front window she saw lights flashing next door and heard the men calling to one another. Then there was nothing but the lights and sporadic, unintelligible bursts from the radio in the ambulance.

  It was taking much too long. The urge to go over was almost overwhelming, but common sense kept her where she was. Finally the voices returned, and then the siren began again.

  Andrew came back alone.

  “How is he?” Joan asked.

  “Conscious. But I don’t think he can move his legs. No one said much. David took off after the ambulance.”

  She shook her head. It wasn’t fair.

  “What happened to you, Mom? I thought you’d be over there.”

  “I don’t know. There’s something wrong with my ankle. It can’t be too bad—I walked out of the park on it.”

  “Don’t count on it. Remember the quarterback who played ten minutes with a fractured leg?”

  “No,” she said honestly. “Andrew, it’s not broken! All I need is a little more ice.” Spending a hot, muggy southern Indiana summer trussed up in a cast was more than she could bear to think about. Henry’s summer is probably going to be much worse, she told herself, but as usual, competitive suffering failed to comfort her.

  “What were you doing in that creek, anyway?” Andrew asked after a trip to the kitchen for more ice.

  “Darned if I know. Kneeling over Laura and trying to keep my head down.”

  “You probably just hyperextended it. You can use my old crutches if you want to. I’ll lower them for you. If it gets any worse, I’d better take you to see a doctor.”

  She smiled at his mothering, but she needed him.

  “Thanks, Andrew.”

  Two hours later, Joan was sitting on the examin
ing table of Dr. Robert Cutts, who had been recommended to her when she first moved to Oliver almost two years ago. She’d seen him only once before, for a routine physical. She hadn’t yet been treated to the wonderful bedside manner she’d heard old ladies at the center rave about.

  Liz MacDonald, Dr. Cutts’s buxom, no-nonsense nurse, refused to guess what he would say. She sat down at a little desk and wrote something on Joan’s chart.

  “Take your shoe off, please. He’ll be with you in a few minutes. He barely took time for supper—we’re kind of an auxiliary emergency room tonight, with all the minor injuries from the tornado. How did you do this?”

  “I don’t know. My son thinks I hyperextended it when I got caught in the creek.”

  Liz looked up.

  “In the creek? What were you doing in the creek?”

  “I was halfway through the park when the tornado hit. I ended up hiding in the creek with a little girl named Laura Putnam.”

  Liz stared at Joan’s chart—there wasn’t enough on it for her even to pretend to read it. The silence grew.

  “David Putnam’s daughter?” she asked finally. In a town the size of Oliver, Joan knew better than to ask how she knew. Liz and David were about the same age—odds were good they’d known each other since childhood. But what was the long pause about?

  “Yes. David drove me home.”

  “Lucky you,” Liz said, and snapped the chart closed. Color rose in her cheeks. Oho, Joan thought, remembering how thoroughly married David and Ellen Putnam had seemed. Liz stood up, picked up the chart, and slid it into a pocket on the outside of the examining room door.

  “The doctor will be with you soon,” she said, and shut the door behind her.

  Dr. Cutts entered the room humming. Joan admired his big eyebrows and the whiskers in his ears. She wouldn’t have called him handsome exactly, but she could understand why the old ladies liked his pixie smile and wavy white hair. He exuded cleanliness—just right for a doctor. After manipulating her ankle, he asked a few questions and ordered an X ray, “just to be on the safe side.” Liz set it up right there in the office, and in no time Joan had the verdict. No fracture, but a hyperextension, just as Andrew had thought.