At least Hercules couldn’t spontaneously become invisible. Nope. All he could do was walk through walls. Again, it sometimes had its uses.
I took a couple of aspirin. Then I pulled on my sweatshirt and rubber boots and made my way out to the truck.
Maggie was waiting on the sidewalk in front of the co-op store. Her eyes widened when she saw me. “Good goddess, Kathleen, what happened?” she said.
I held up a hand. “I’m okay. It’s not as bad as it looks.” It probably would have been better if I hadn’t held up the hand with the big bandage on it.
She shot a quick glance at the front of the truck. “Did you have an accident?”
“No.” I shook my head. “The embankment behind the carriage house collapsed out from underneath me yesterday. The ground is completely saturated with water.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
“Because I’m okay.”
“You could have broken your neck.”
“But I didn’t,” I said. “I’ve got some scrapes and some bruises and I twisted my ankle, but that’s pretty much it. Marcus called the paramedics. Trust me, I wouldn’t be walking around if he thought I wasn’t okay. You know what he’s like.”
Maggie folded her arms across her chest. “I know what you’re like too.”
“Would it make you feel better to know Roma gave me the once over as well?”
“It would,” she said. “If you were a horse, or a German shepherd.”
“Roma has said I’m as stubborn as a mule,” I said. “Does that count?”
Maggie didn’t want to smile, but she couldn’t help it.
“I swear I’m all right, Mags,” I said. “But the thing is, when the hill collapsed there were some…remains that were unearthed.”
“Remains?” she repeated. “You mean human remains?”
I nodded, shifting my weight more onto my right leg. If I stayed in one position too long the throbbing in my ankle got more insistent, as though it were doing the percussion intro to the Hawaii Five-0 theme song.
Quickly, I filled in the rest of the story.
“This doesn’t make any sense.” Maggie shook her head. “How could a ring that belonged to Roma’s father end up buried with some old bones out at Wisteria Hill?”
“They may not be old bones,” I said.
“No.” She made a dismissive gesture as though she were flicking away a bug. “You don’t think that’s Roma’s biological father, do you?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Roma insists that he never took his ring off.”
“Town gossip was always that Tom ran out on Roma and Pearl.” Maggie gave me a wry smile. “I spent a lot of time with my grandmother when I was a kid. She knew everyone’s secrets.” She stuffed her hands in the front pocket of her hoodie. “How is Roma handling things?”
“She’s in shock, I think,” I said.
“The Wild are in the playoffs and Eddie’s on the road.”
Roma’s relationship with Eddie Sweeney, star player for the Minnesota Wild hockey team, was only a couple of months old. I had no idea how much he knew about her family.
“I know,” I said. “I’m going to call her later.”
“I will, too,” Maggie said.
“Okay, there’s nothing we can do right now so let’s get your stuff,” I said, dipping my head in the direction of the building.
Maggie unlocked the front door and we headed up the stairs. Halfway from the top she suddenly stopped. “Kath, if that is Roma’s father, how did he end up buried out at Wisteria Hill?”
I slid my bandaged thumb along the wooden stair railing. “I don’t know. Any of the explanations I can come up with aren’t good.”
Maggie unlocked the door at the top of the stairs. She looked around the tai chi studio space, piled with boxes and everything else from the store downstairs, and her shoulders sagged.
I reached over and gave her arm a squeeze. “The rain will stop, the basement will dry out, we’ll stop growing penicillin in our boots and things will get back to normal.”
“Isn’t that what the neighbors said to Noah when he started working on the ark in his backyard?” she said.
I smiled at her and pointed to the far corner. “Look. There’s the bubble wrap.”
We threaded our way around stacks of boxes and disassembled shelving. Maggie eased past a metal cabinet and handed the long roll of green bubble wrap out to me.
“Maybe next time Jaeger starts up I’ll just wrap him up in this stuff,” she said with a sly grin. “Stifle his objections so to speak.” It was good to see her sense of humor coming back.
We found the rest of the packing supplies and the boxes with the artwork that had to be mailed. For all that the space looked chaotic, I was sure that Maggie knew where everything was. Once we’d carried the boxes out to the truck, Maggie did a quick circuit of the empty store. There was no water coming in, no leaks from the ceiling or windows anywhere.
“Do you mind if I check the basement one more time?” she asked. “I forgot to tell you: I talked to Larry Taylor. He may be able to get us a pump.”
Larry Taylor was an electrician, son of Harrison Taylor, Senior, and younger brother to Harrison Taylor, Junior, or as Larry always explained it; Larry, Harry and Harry.
“Oh Mags, that would be great,” I said as I followed her to the back storeroom. With all the rain, pumps were at a premium. Maggie had called anywhere she could think of within a fifty-mile radius of Mayville Heights and hadn’t been able to find one.
“I know,” she said. “Larry said it’s an old gas-powered pump, but I don’t care if it’s the pump Noah used on the ark. The Taylors will be able to get it working and if we can just get the basement dried out, maybe—maybe I can get Jaeger out of my hair.” She fished her keys from her pocket. “I know I shouldn’t let him get to me.”
“It’s not you,” I said. “Ruby doesn’t like him either.”
Maggie looked over her shoulder at me. “We were standing here this morning right after the meeting, because, of course, everyone had to see the basement for themselves, and there was a moment when he was on the stairs that I had the urge to push him in the water. I could actually hear the splash in my head.” She turned the key, opened the door and felt for the light switch.
There was only one light fixture at the top of the stairs, but there was enough light to see Jaeger Merrill partly submerged, floating faceup in the water that half filled the basement.
He was dead.
6
Maggie made a strangled sound in the back of her throat and scrambled down the steps, her foot skidding on the fourth one from the top.
I grabbed the back of her sweatshirt. Momentum pulled us forward and for a moment I thought we were both going to end up in the cold, dirty water. I reached out blindly with my free hand for something to hold on to and found the top stair post, and Maggie somehow managed to keep her balance.
I sucked in a breath. “You okay?” I asked.
She sagged against the railing and nodded, her face pale. I let go of her shirt.
Jaeger’s feet and the bottom half of his legs were on the stairs, the rest of his body was in the water. My left leg was trembling and I could feel my pulse thumping in the hollow just below my throat. I was pretty sure Jaeger was dead but somebody had to make sure. I sank onto the top step and eased my way down to the next one and then the next one.
“Careful,” Maggie warned. Her voice was shaky. “It’s wet.” Her right hand hovered in the air, ready to grab me if I slipped.
Most of the top part of the body was underneath the water; just the eyes and nose were above the surface. Jaeger’s head was turned slightly to the right, his eyes were half closed, and his mouth was partly open.
I reached forward, keeping most of my weight on my good leg and lifted his left arm, feeling for a pulse at the wrist. It was icy cold and his body already seemed to be stiffening. There was a cut on the fleshy part of his palm and the skin around it was puckered and wrinkled. Clearly he’d been in the water for a while.