Part 2
### Chapter 1: Chapter 1
Three octagenarians, one very young detective, and a murderer who everyone can identify but who always has an air-tight alibi—leads to the murder of Emily Magillicutty. After a nasty divorce, Phoebe moves in with her aunt on the same day as she becomes the newest department detective. Aunt Emily has a gardener and a cook, all three of them being over eighty years old, but none of them are quite ready to call their lives done. In fact, each has work they feel they have yet to complete: Emily, an actress her whole life, would like to have lines for once; the gardener, an ex-cop, wants to solve a last big case; and the cook, who's family had many food allergies, wants to stretch her culinary skills to her French chef training. And all of them want to help young Phoebe get her feet under her again.
Complete Chapters 16
Rating 4.7 ( 38 reviews ) Age Rating 16+
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Chapter 1: In the Perp Chair
Phoebe Stuart sat outside Police Captain Johnson’s office on a perp chair. The old wooden upright’s rungs had deep scars where the backrest joined the seat from the many times handcuffs had been fastened there. It seemed an inappropriate seat for an officer of six years but no chair in the duty room was free of such unique wear marks. Phoebe had been waiting for Captain Johnson for well over half an hour. Not too happily, either. Great way to end this sucky day, she thought. In fact, waiting on a hard chair outside the captain’s office seemed almost the highlight of the day. With her divorce from Phil final, instead of having the freedom to celebrate, she had spent the day packing up all her belongings—what few she could call her own—and loading them into her Prius. She had hoped she’d have a few weeks to find another place, but, no, Phil had insisted she vacate immediately.
After four years of marriage, she thought, one would think I’d actually own more. But the apartment where she’d been staying since moving out of the Ten Oaks Estates house had been Phil’s, the furniture all his. She didn’t even own a single pot or pan. Depressing.
She shifted her body in the uncomfortable chair, her mood slipping into frustration. She fully expected to hear that her application for the detective position available had been turned down. Of course it had been. She was too young, too inexperienced. He’ll say something nice, something meant to be encouraging, then send me back to regular patrol duty, maybe for another six years. After her long day, it was hard not to think all men bastards to a certain extent—especially after dealing with Phil’s staff, who’d supervised her moving out. At that moment, she felt she’d been dumped on by all the men who had ever come into her life. And one of them had been dead since before she was born.
Phoebe looked across the duty room, a sea of desks, none neat or new. Most looked like salvage from a school auction. Some sat front to front so officers stared at each other writing their reports. Others had a grade-school arrangement. The one she had shared with two other officers sat in the middle of the crowded room under roughly stacked piles of paper and folders—work that needed completing and unfinished reports—as well as old cups of coffee, half-eaten lunches, and stale donuts. She had fought to maintain a semblance of neatness on that desk, but the two guys who shared the desk didn’t help. A few desks in the room had family pictures of spouses—rarely—but kids often enough. She’d already trashed Phil’s photo, glad she and he hadn’t had kids. One less mess in the divorce. One less pressure point Phil could have applied.
Each desk had a perp chair next to it for witnesses or suspects. The serious felons and murder suspects always ended up in holding or the interrogation rooms. But Phoebe had yet to have a case significant enough to be interrogated. Questioned in a perp chair sure.
Across the hall in the detective division, near the door, Detective Stan Bradley, a large, balding man who always seemed to be sweating through his worn sport’s jacket, was talking with a woman wearing way too much make-up and way too short a skirt. She was handcuffed to the chair. Prostitute, most likely, Phoebe thought. The woman slouched in that chair, knees open. Sweaty Bradley made no secret of looking at her large bosom stuffed inadequately and rather precariously into a black corset or down to that short skirt. Phoebe was just waiting for him to drop his pen so he could get a better angle to look up it.
Bradley worked vice a lot and really got into his work, so to speak. Phoebe rolled her eyes and looked away, catching a glimpse of herself in a mirror across the way. Though she wore a pants suit in dark blue, not some skimpy flame-red skirt the size of a napkin, she didn’t like the similarity between her body position and the prostitute’s. She slowly pushed herself up into a “proper sit,” channeling her mother at that moment. “Don’t slouch, Phoebe Ann. Only rough people slouch. Sit up proper. Knees together, ankles crossed under your chair, hands in lap. Shoulders back. Head high.” Yeah, thanks, Mom.
As a teenager, of course, she had always hated that directive, usually slouching worse as a response, which had made her mother tisk and shake her head. Then her mom had died. Phoebe had been barely out of college, less than a year into her first real job. Not that being dead ever kept her mother from popping into Phoebe’s head. Over time, Phoebe had become less balky. If she had to sit on a perp chair outside Captain Johnson’s office, she told herself, damn it, she wasn’t going to look like some companion or druggy off the street. Not the association she wanted Johnson to make. But when she looked at that adjusted image of herself in the mirror, she sighed. Way too prim, maybe schoolgirlish, and that wasn’t the image she wanted Johnson to see either. Nope, can’t do it. Sorry, Mom, she thought, and slid a bit down in that unyielding wooden chair. She adjusted again, opening her knees just a bit, knowing pants revealed nothing as exciting as the companion’s short skirt, and leaned a bit forward in the chair. The mirror translated that as eager—too eager maybe. Or nervous, which was worse. That’ll kill all my professionalism. Johnson wouldn’t like that in a detective. She wasn’t going to get the promotion this go around, anyway, of that she was sure, but she didn’t want to leave an impression of being inept. Then he’d never give her a chance at a step up.
Who knew there was a science to sitting? she asked herself. Damn. I do look nervous. I am nervous. Come on, Phoebes, get your head on straight. Oh, great, now I’m channeling Dad.
A glance at the big grade-school clock on the far wall let her know she’d been waiting fifty-five minutes. She sighed. And all for bad news. This sucks. Then she spied the coffee pot on the far end of the room. The coffee was never great, hardly better than roofing tar, and it didn’t usually improve after sitting around, but getting a cup was something to do. She got up and walked through the maze of desks. After pouring coffee into a foam cup, Phoebe took a sip, winced and immediately opened a little serving tub of creamer. Not that it lightened the black sludge much. Nasty stuff.
She heard a pen drop across the hall. She rolled her eyes. So predictable, Stan.
Phoebe walked back to the perp chair outside Johnson’s office and sat again, sipping at the coffee and trying not to grimace as she did so. Another glance in the mirror revealed an image she could tolerate: woman in pants suit, legs crossed, sipping at cup of coffee. Not schoolgirl or companion. Not so eager or nervous as to call attention. She could live with that.
She finished the coffee, almost out of mercy to the foam cup and was just considering getting another dose of poison when the captain’s door banged open with enough energy to startle her. She snapped her head in that direction, knowing she suddenly looked all deer in the headlights, far from a good look.
“Officer Stuart,” said Captain Johnson.
Not warm. Not welcoming. No joy. Yup, I’m still a beat cop. Disheartened, Phoebe stood, adjusted her jacket, raised her head and smiled. She stuck out her hand. “Captain.”
He took her hand, gave it a quick waggle. The grip was crushing. When he released her, she followed him across the threshold of his office, decorated with hunting and fishing memorabilia—pictures of him with celebrities in hunting gear and holding rifles, standing over deer, elk, and bears, awards related to the Governor’s Fishing Opener, fly-fishing lures attached to burlap in a frame, an ancient pistol in a shadow box. The wall behind his chair held certificates, commendations, and a few framed newspaper articles. At sixty, Captain Johnson had amassed a good history of performance as a cop and, apparently, a man’s man.
Captain Johnson closed the door and walked around to his desk, easing his tall frame into a leather chair. “Please have a seat, officer,” Johnson said, his voice low, all business.
“Thank you,” Phoebe said. She sat at the edge of the leather straight-back in front of his desk. Suddenly she wished she had a mirror so she could see what kind of image she was projecting now. Edge of chair . . . too eager, too nervous. She eased back and crossed her legs. Better. More confident. She hoped.
Johnson picked up a folder and flipped it open, studying it. He lifted a few of the sheets stapled to the inside front cover, his eyebrows furrowed. Then he let the sheets settle and made eye contact. His steel-blue eyes were hard to read. Not cold exactly, but certainly not anything approaching warmth. Still, she knew the importance of good eye contact and held his gaze, hoping her face didn’t look too gawky.
“I see you’ve applied to be detective,” he said.
Her heart stepped up its beat. I’m so going back to patrol. She said, “Yes, sir. I’ve been a patrol officer for—”
Phoebe reminded herself not to volunteer anything he could read for himself.
“Test scores are good, evaluation okay, recommendations adequate . . . hmm, but your pistol qualification . . . three tries? Really?”
She rolled her lower lip between her teeth and started to chew on the inside of her cheek. No, bad move. “Yes, sir. I apologize.” She almost went into a long explanation that her gun jammed on the first go round and she didn’t think it should have counted at all. The second time, because of the gun jam on the first try, she was just plain nervous. Luckily she’d gotten her act together on the third go and had a good score. But all that sounded like whining, and she had the good sense to hold her tongue.
Then, just past his head, in a prominent place on his awards wall, Phoebe saw that Johnson had no less than four awards for markmanship with a handgun and rifle. Great.
He closed the folder firmly. “I have three candidates for detective, Officer Stuart, and one slot open.”
Yup. Here’s where I get the thanks-for-applying line and the better-luck-next-time encouragement with a caviat to improve my shooting. Phoebe felt her face scrunching.
“Both the other candidates have better shooting scores,” he said, and she mentally started to leave the room, slinking away like a dog with her tail between her legs. “But I think your other tests were much better than theirs.” She mentally scooted back to the chair and sat perfectly straight, as if waiting for a doggy treat.
He stood. She wasn’t sure what that meant. Had she gotten the position or not? Had she missed something? He leaned toward her over the desk and stuck out his big hand. Then he grinned. He actually grinned. “Congratulations, Officer Stuart, you are now a detective.”
She stood, knees shaking, and took his hand. His grip finished crushing her hand to pulp, and he pumped her arm several times hard, shaking all her arm bones into her elbow. “Report to Detective McKenna Monday morning at eight.”
She was trying to catch up to what had just happened. Against all odds, had she just become a detective? Still working to survive the handshake, Phoebe tried to smile. “Thank you, Captain,” she said. “I won’t let you down.”
His smile widened, and she knew she’d traipsed into being ludicrous in the shock of the moment. He let go of her hand, which looked like a mangled pop can, and she took a step to the side of the chair in preparation of leaving.
“Oh,” he said, and Phoebe took the step back, trying not to make the move look obvious.
“I see in your file that you’re recently separated.”
“The divorce was finalized today.”
“Sympathies, of course. Being a cop is hard on marriages, especially a marriage like that. The question is, are you keeping your married name or going back to your maiden name?”
Her mind caught on “a marriage like that.” What did that mean? Her husband—ex-husband officially now—was a state representative. Not a high ranking one, though his swelled ego saw it as a step to becoming governor. She flashed to the conversation when Phil had told her she wasn’t the kind of wife he needed for his political career. Maybe Johnson has a point.
“Um, I haven’t decided yet, sir.” Truth was, she hadn’t given her name any thought. To get to positive thoughts about her new life, she had to sort her current one. Step One. Get divorce. Done that. Step Two. Move out of Phil’s rental apartment to finish the separation from him. Done that just today. Big Step Three. Get long-shot promotion. Even done that. But she still had to complete Step Four. Move in with her aged aunt because Phoebe couldn’t afford an apartment of her own. Not after what Phil had pulled. Maybe it was a marriage like that.
“It’s Magillicutty, right?” Johnson asked, pulling Phoebe back to the moment.
“Yes.” And Phoebe flashed to an image of her dad, solving murder cases right and left. Was he the underlying reason she had aced out the other two in her bid for detective, even with poor marksmanship? Was her step up to detective just nepotism?
“Zephalon Magillicutty,” Johnson mused. “Who the hell names their kid Zephalon?”
“Not too many parents, I hope, sir.”
He chuckled. “I worked with your dad, of course. Since long before you were born. Old Zip Magillicutty was a hell of a cop in his day—smart detective, great all-around guy. The county attorney never had a problem with any case he brought to them. Sharp guy, that old Zip. Couldn’t get much past his careful eyes. I still miss him.”
“Yes, sir,” Phoebe said. “Me, too.” But she didn’t really. Yes, her dad had been a good detective—she had four boxes of awards and commendations to prove it. More than Johnson had spread out on his office walls. He’d hunted and fished, too, right along with the best of the man’s men. But as a father, he had been rigid. That was on a good day. She remembered him as scary, often mean, and impossible to please. She had never experienced any warmth from the man. He’d always seemed to look at her with a kind of permanent disappointment. She was never smart enough, skilled enough, good enough at anything to get a whiff of pride out of Old Zip Magillicutty. Maybe it was just that she wasn’t a boy, wasn’t—
“When Skip was killed,” said Captain Johnson, “it took all the stuffing out of Zip.”
—wasn’t Skip. She figured her father’s issue with her was that.
She had no memory of Zephalon Chancery Magillicutty, III. He’d died in Afganistan before she was born, after Zip’s divorce from his first wife. After his marriage to Gertrude, too, but certainly before Phoebe came on the scene. By that time, whatever Zip had been before his son died had long since died or dried up, and the detached disapproval she’d always felt from her father was all that had been left. Old photos showed Zip to be a vibrant, smiling mountain of a man, an avid hunter, great fisherman, even better detective. She’d never known that man. The photo albums handed down to her were filled with pictures of a stranger no more familiar to her than the half-brother who died three years before her birth. Skip looked like a younger version of her dad.
“Yes, sir,” Phoebe said. “He thought the world of Skip.”
“He lost the will to live after Skip died.”
Yet he’d had another child, not that Zip noticed much. Lung cancer set in before Phoebe started grade school. The last year of his life, Zip had been a shriveled hollow hulk of angry invalid, bitter and raging most of the time. At his death when Phoebe had been in junior high, her mom had breathed a sigh of relief—not because Zip was out of suffering but because she was free of him. At least that was Phoebe’s assessment.
Captain Johnson eyed her. She knew she’d said that last bit as if Old Zip had loved Skip but hadn’t ever loved her, but . . . well, there it was.
“Whatever you do with your name is fine, of course,” Captain Johnson continued. “Your choice. But I’d decide sooner rather than later, if I can give you a bit of advice. A change in rank and duties is a kind of new start. You’ll be across the hall and under McKenna. If you’re going to switch back to Magillicutty, it’d be best to do it now and not down the road. Less confusing.”
“I’ll give that serious thought, sir. Thank you, sir.”
She reached out with her poor, crushed, mangled hand and went in for one last shake. He gripped her hand hard, harder than either of the other shakes, reducing that dented pop can to jelly. And he pumped it really hard for good measure, which came close to dislocating her shoulder—probably would have had she any bones left in her arm—and clapped her on the shoulder for good measure, which felt like he had completely detached her rotator cuff. She left his office wondering if she could get workers’ compensation for injuries sustained while getting a promotion.
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### Chapter 2: Chapter 2
Before she exited the building, another thought occurred to her. The captain’s office overlooked the street. What if he was looking out his window? She wanted to make sure he saw a professional new detective, even if her marksman score was low. She put her shoulder bag carefully in place, channeled her mom enough to stand straight—shoulders back, Phoebe Ann—and lifted her chin proudly, then pushed out the door. Here’s the young detective walking purposefully to the curb, intent on her car, she thought. “Image, Phoebe,” she said aloud, channeling her dad.
Her hoped-for impression might have gone better had the alarm from the fire station a block over hadn’t gone off just then and if, turning to the blare, the wind hadn’t caught her dusky blond hair and whipped it across her face, and, half blinded, she hadn’t stumbled into the street directly in front of a big, black SUV. She saw the danger at the last second and stepped back up onto the curb just in time. Still, she caught the wind of the SUV’s passing. The briefcase-sized passenger-side mirror missed her by maybe an inch, whipping her hair back out of her face.
Damn, she thought, that would have ended this week on a particularly bad note. The captain would have looked down at the sound of the screeching of tires and said, “I need another Timmy.”
Phoebe scowled at the ass-end of the SUV, recognizing it as a Fore Exursion. She hated the big environmentally unsound vehicles that got maybe eight miles per gallon coasting downhill, hated the sheer bulk of them. Like just a moment ago, their sheer size made it hard for their drivers to see pedestrians or even other drivers doing stupid things. This one hadn’t even slowed or beeped his horn, just barreled blithely on its way, actually coming up onto the curb as it took the corner to turn down Second. Probably never saw me. But the worst thing about them was that her ex-husband loved them, driving the biggest Ford Excursion ever made just because it was big. He could have driven a Hummer, she supposed. He loved his monster truck, kept it in a heated garage at his McMansion. But he had finally yielded to pressure—political, not hers—and recently gotten a Ford Explorer, a somewhat smaller SUV, but still a hulk in Phoebe’s estimation. And, since he’d never use either for off-road driving—would never consider getting it muddy or throwing a load of fence posts or bricks in their back ends—she saw the vehicles as ostentageous without purpose. Kinda like Phil.
Phoebe pushed the hair out of her eyes, looked both ways more carefully and crossed Twelfth. No other cars had to screech to a stop for her to draw the attention of people in the building, like the chief. She pressed the lock release on her key fob and turned as she opened the driver’s door, glancing up to the captain’s window. Blinds cut off the late afternoon sun. He hadn’t seen anything. He’d missed the spacy hair-in-face low-scoring newbie detective nearly running into an SUV as well as any semblance of the resolute young professional she’d hoped he’d see. Probably for the best.
She climbed into her Prius, sighing at the sight of everything she owned stuffed into the back and passenger seat. Mostly books and clothes. She’d had very little when Phil married her; now she had even less. Homeless, penniless, she told herself, but a detective. “Gotta keep that positive outlook,” she said, channeling her mother.
She glanced at the directions to her aunt’s house she’d left on the dash. Her father’s older sister had suddenly reappeared in her life when she had felt the absolute lowest, offering her a room in her house just that week. In many ways this was a godsend. Homeless, penniless. If it hadn’t been for her aunt timely offer, Phoebe might have had to live out of her car. That would have been a huge embarrassment, both to herself and maybe the department. Still, being rescued by an aging aunt felt like failure to Phoebe. Here she was almost thirty, and already her life was a bust. She was divorced and had nothing but an aging Prius, some clothes, and a few old books to call her own. Worse, she could fit all her worldly belongings in the car without even blocking the rear-view mirror. Godsend Aunt Emily might be, but needing to rely on the charity of an old woman felt like bitter defeat. At least you’re done with Phil the Pill. “Thanks for the perspective, Mom,” she muttered.
But how had Aunt Em known she was in need of help? Phoebe would have to ask if her offer was just coincidental good timing or . . . no. What could the old woman know?
Phoebe started the Prius and pulled out of the parking space, watching not only for traffic but for unsuspecting pedestrians doing stupid things. There was still a chance the captain might be watching, might have seen the near-miss with the SUV. No way did she want to compound her stupidity, or she might be back on patrol in a heartbeat.
She merged into what passed for rush-hour traffic for St. Cloud, a glut of vehicles filling the streets for about half an hour. She headed south on Ninth, turned east on Division and crossed the Mississippi River into east St. Cloud. Aunt Emily had a house on a lake south of town, on the Sherburne County side of the river. Here Phoebe would stay just until she “got her feet under her again.”
At a stoplight, she consulted her emailed directions a final time. She had to watch for a green mailbox on the left seven miles after she turned onto East River Road. Should be about a twenty-minute commute to and from work. Not much further than Phil’s Ten Oaks Estates mansion or his crappy Waite Park apartment.
Sooner than expected, Phoebe found the green mailbox and pulled into a gravel drive that meandered through a stand of oak and aspen just coming into leaf, getting glimpses of Long Lake as she got closer to the house. Not overly wide, the lake made a gentle S-curve through farmland and woods. The driveway followed the curve of the lake almost to within sight of the house, then straightened out, left the woods behind, and skirted a wide lawn punctuated by plantings of birch and aspen in tiny groves. The gravel road turned into a circle drive, the center of which was filled with a nice display of tulips and daffodils.
Phoebe pulled in to the smaller of the two attached garages, turned off the engine and just sat there a long moment as the door closed, cutting off the late afternoon light. She set the garage door opener on the passenger seat, and looked at it. Her aunt had sent it by messenger just that morning. Then she looked out the windshield at the door that led into the house. “It’s all about choices, Phoebes,” she said aloud.
Damn Phil. He had looked so exciting when they were dating, and being a politician’s wife seemed glamorous. Going to fancy restaurants and the opera and fundraisers had been fun, but then he’d tried to shape her, mold her into his idea of a politician’s wife. Maybe she should have known he’d do that; maybe he should have known it wasn’t who she was. You married a narcissist. You knew he was ambitious. She had and had learned what that meant.
She finally opened the car door and stepped out. “And choices have consequences,” she said. She grabbed one small bag with a change of clothes, night clothes, toiletries, and her laptop—the necessities of life as she knew them for the moment. In a way she was pleased she could function with so little, but she also knew to get her own apartment, she’d have to have money for all the accoutrements of living on her own, stuff people usually started accumulating with their first efficiency apartment and their first job out of college. At present, she owned neither bed nor couch nor a single plate or spoon. She’d have to have a lot more than first and last month’s rent and security deposit to be on her own again. Choices. So far in her twenty-eight years, she seemed to have accumulated more wrong choices than right ones. And Phil had been her worst choice. Channeling her dad or not, she’d have to do a lot better from there on out.
One of the two key Aunt Emily had sent her was to the door at the back of the garage. She keyed her way into the house and found herself was in a back hall that led past the other garage on its way to the living area. She hadn’t expected the hall would lead past a series of closed doors opposite the garage. Clearly the house wrapped around the back of the garages and was bigger than it appeared from the front view. She tried a door. Locked.
When she figured she had walked past the larger garage closer to the house, the hall changed angles, which made sense to her as the two garages sat at an angle canted from the line of the house. Here she encountered a set of stairs that looked like back stairs. Somewhere up there she figured she had a room. She looked longingly up, wishing she could just climb them to her room and slip inside unnoticed. It’d be such a relief to end this day, but she couldn’t do that. Not on her first day with Aunt Emily. She had to do better now, make better choices in life. Regardless of how tired and worn down she felt, she had to do the politically correct thing, smile and make nice, probably show she was beholding to her dad’s sister for giving her destitute niece shelter. If Aunt Emily was anything like her father, she had a long evening of foot-kissing ahead of her. Can I handle it if she talks about choices the way Dad did so often? She’d have to. God, I hope she doesn’t make me list my expectations out of life. Tonight I just don’t have any energy beyond going to bed. With a resigned sigh, Phoebe set down her overnight bag and laptop at the bottom of the stairs. She gave the stairs a last, longing look, but it was no use trying to escape. Anyway, she had no idea which room her aunt intended her to use.
She continued down the hall. A wide kitchen opened on her right. The whole opposite wall was windows and patio doors to the backyard, which was filled with flowers and patio tables and chairs. It actually looked inviting. A screened room sat just outside to the right. She could see an artificial stream bubbling along a garden path nearby ending in a pond with goldfish and lily pads. A water feature. Rich people love their water features. Phoebe remembered then her aunt telling her she had a gardener and a cook—pretty swanky for modern living. Something Phil had aspired to. But Phoebe also remembered that her aunt had been a Hollywood actress. Maybe that put her in a league above a two-bit junior state representative with asperations to be governor.
Emily’s cook was was an older worman. This much Phoebe could tell from her back. She wore orthopedic shoes, a somewhat shapeless gingham dress down to her calves and had her gray hair tied into a ponytail down her back. Phoebe liked seeing older women with long hair instead of the ubiquitous poodle cut. The woman was humming and intently stirring something on the stove, and, truthfully, it smelled very good, reminding Phoebe that she hadn’t eaten since a Poptart breakfast in her rush to get her stuff out of Phil’s apartment in the time allotted her.
The woman turned, reaching for the refrigerator door, and spotted her. “Ah, Miss Phoebe,” the woman said with a warm smile, wiping a hand on her apron before extending it to Phoebe. “I’m Emogene Beatenburg, your aunt’s cook. I’m so happy to meet you.”
The woman seemed genuine, and her smile prettied up her long, lined face. Emogene’s blue gingham dress had an apron over it that made her look right out of the fifties. She took Phoebe’s hand into both of hers, paused there, then gave Phoebe a hug. Her hands were large, somewhat reddened, but surprisingly strong, and she smelled of spices and flour. Phoebe guessed her to be pushing late seventies at least, which surprised her. Phoebe figured her aunt might want a younger woman as cook so she could help if emergencies arose. But maybe Emogene had been with her aunt a long time.
“I’m pleased to meet you,” Phoebe said. “Whatever you’re cooking smells wonderful.”
The woman smiled widely again, which put a wealth of wrinkles around her mouth and eyes and made her look almost pretty. I bet she was a knock-out when she was young.
“Your aunt’s in the living room. Supper will be ready in about half an hour, if that’s okay with you?”
Phoebe blinked. “Okay with me? Surely it needs to be okay with Aunt Emily. Not me. I’m just a temporary boarder. My opinions don’t matter in the least.”
Emogene gave her a deeply sympathetic look that Phoebe sure could have done without. “Would you like something to drink?” she asked and opened the refrigerator.
“No . . . unless you have a can of sparking water or—”
The can of Mendota Springs lemon water—what Phoebe preferred—was popped open and in Phoebe’s hands in a flash, almost as if Emogene had been reading her mind and reaching for that can in particular, which Phoebe wasn’t sure she hadn’t. “Thanks,” Phoebe said.
“Would you like a glass?” asked Emogene. “Ice?”
“Um . . . no. This is just fine.”
Then the cook pointed and mouthed, “Living room,” and turned back to her simmering pot.
Phoebe took the direction Emogene indicated past a rather nice formal dining room. Beyond it she could see a wide foyer, clearly the official entrance into the house. She could already look through leaded-glass French doors, through which she saw a second set of doors and then the colorful center circle, the lawns, and drive. She caught just a glimpse of blue through the trees. The lake.
From the outside, the place hadn’t looked all that big—not a tract house, clearly, but not the ostentatious look-at-me-I’m-fucking-enormous kind of home Phil wanted when he outgrew the huge Ten Oaks Estates house, which Phoebe already thought was too big. Phoebe had seen from the outside that her aunt’s house—the main house at least—had two floors, which, in her mind was fairly modest, as Phil’s had three floors plus a walk-out basement in the back. Aunt Emily’s garages had been generous—a double and a one-and-one-half garage—but not the three to five doubles some top-end houses had so the owners could collect cars. Many garages said the owner had the wealth to fill them. Typically, they were lined up next to houses to add greater size to the overall structure, but Aunt Emily’s house had camouflaged its size. And, as her a unt’s house was at the end of a long drive shielded by woods, passers-by couldn’t marvel at her wealth the way Phil wanted people to do with his house, which was not only ostentatious but strategically placed on a hill, an artificial one, that made his house the highest in the subdivision. It made Phoebe think of the kids’ game “King of the Hill.”
Phoebe walked past the dining room, seeing that the table was already set. Four places. That gave her pause. She had no idea who was going to be eating with her aunt and her and despaired she’d have to be pleasant with strangers on top of everything else. She had hoped she’d only have to make nice to her aunt, then escape to her room. Now she saw company had been invited. Her heart sank. She hoped her aunt hadn’t invited some eligible man to try to distract her from her divorce. That would be horrible. Or her pastor to lecture her on the ills of divorce. Or some biddy friends. Phoebe almost backtracted to the garage, sure living out of her car would be preferable to suffering an old maiden aunt’s match-making proclivities, a priest’s lecture, or being fourth for endless games of bridge.
Phoebe pressed her eyes shut and worked to slow her breathing. Just tonight, she told herself. You’re too tired to sleep in your car tonight, Phoebes. And there’s no room until you unload half your stuff. Suck it up and be grateful for one night. Drawing in what she hoped was control, she squared her shoulders and crossed through the wide foyer with the double entry doors of the main entrance to her left and a long, curving main stairs to her right. The back wall of the foyer also had large windows overlooking the back gardens. Looking up, Pheobe saw the high ceiling and the balcony of the second floor. A nice chandelier hung down from the second-floor ceiling. Aunt Emily’s house was both spacious and grand, a house Phil surely would have aspired to own someday. If he could stick it up on a hill.
She entered the room on the other side of the foyer, but it was a library, a rather nice one, but clearly not the living room. She turned toward the back of the house, passing a small study, a guest bath, and a long hall leading off to a wing of rooms on that side of the house that she sure hadn’t envisioned coming up the driveway. Had that wing been blocked from view? The house seemed to be growing as she walked. Already it could almost pass for a country inn. Beyond that hall, at the back of the foyer, she finally reached the living room, an elegant but homey room featuring a large field-stone fireplace and an arrangement of couches and chairs, coffee tables, and end tables. Large, expensive paintings graced the walls, and an oriental rug defined the intimate space around the fireplace. The rest of the floor, like most of the floors in the house so far were oak planks. Not the typical “plastic” wood often used for flooring in modern houses, this was real wood, reclaimed maybe, old. It made the obvious large house less McMansion than Phil’s estate.
Phoebe hadn’t spent time with Aunt Emily as a child. The few memories she had didn’t include this house nor anything like this place . . . an apartment perhaps. But now that she thought of it, what she remembered might actually have been a hotel room. Her aunt had lived in California up until the year Phoebe’s dad, Emily’s brother, died. During the frantic years of negotiating high school and college down in the Cities, Phoebe hadn’t visited Aunt Emily, though once in a long while she spoke to her on the phone. Usually it was Aunt Emily calling her.
From what her dad had said in her youth, he and his sister hadn’t gotten along well. According to Zip, he lived in the real world, Emily somewhere else. Her world has a bit of money to it, though, Dad, Phoebe thought. You never told me that.
As lousy as Phoebe’s relationship with her father had been, even if she needed her aunt right then or be homeless, she was loathe to expose herself to another Magillicutty. If sister and brother were cut from the same cloth, she wasn’t likely to enjoy her stay in this big house. It’s just until I get money to leave. What should it take? A month? Two? Regardless Phoebe had to be at least a little bit in her aunt’s world until she could afford a place of her own again. Divorce sure sucked.
“There you are, dear,” Aunt Emily said when she spotted Phoebe standing in the living room doorway. The older woman was up on her feet, arms wide, and swept Phoebe into her embrace in that moment, enveloping Phoebe in lilac scent. Phoebe hugged her aunt back, determined to survive this evening and start out right with this stranger aunt. Better choices, remember, Phoebes?
Emily wasn’t tall, but she was younger looking than Phoebe thought she should be. To her recollection, Aunt Emily, her dad’s older sister, had to be near eighty, if not a few years into her eighth decade, but Emily moved like a much younger woman. She had a petite, trim body that a forty-year-old would kill for, a pretty face even with the wrinkles, and her hair, allowed to gray naturally, was long, full and loose.
“Come in, come in,” Emily chirped. “Come meet my friend and gardener, Jerusalem Emmett Brown.”
Still surprised by her aunt’s energy for one her age, Phoebe was equally surprised to find that her aunt’s friend with the odd name was a black man who was both tall and strong-looking, like an aging football linebacker. The name struck a cord in her memory, but she couldn’t place why. He rose and offered his hand. A little leary of a new bruising to the hand Captain Johnson had crushed, Phoebe reached out. His grip was secure and firm, but not about to put Phoebe into physical therapy afterwards. He cradled her fingers with surprising gentleness that had nothing to do with age or weakness. He was simply not one who thought a crushing grip equated to strength of character.
“I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time, Phoebe,” he said. “I understand you’re in the St. Cloud Police Department.”
She nodded. “Yes, for six years. I . . . ah, well . . .” Allow yourself some pride in this lousy day, she told herself. “I made detective just today.”
Aunt Emily clapped her hands like a little girl, and Mr. Brown smiled warmly. “Your father would have been so proud.”
A connection seemed to exist between this gardener with the odd name and her father, still without clear grounding. Had Mr. Brown been a cop? “Yeah, maybe,” she said, but realized that sounded snorpy. She added, “He was hard to read in his later years.”
“Later years?” said her aunt. “Tisk. Zeph . . . Zip, is what he was called at the department, wasn’t it? Well, Zip was hardly sixty-six when he died. Poor man. It was hard for him to go like he did, weak and infirm. He always thought he’d die in some Tombstone-like shootout. Bringing bad guys to justice. Protecting people.” Emily paused, studying Phoebe. “I know you have some harsh memories of Zeph, but he was a good man and he did love you.”
“Oh, I’m sure he did. He just—”
“Had a hard time showing it. Yes, dear, I know.”
Phoebe got the impression then and there that expressing her opinion and true feelings about her father wasn’t going to sit well with Aunt Emily. She could deal. This living arrangement was one of necessity and temporary at that. Discussion of dear old Dad off the table. No problem. I can do anything for a couple of months.
“I was in law enforcement too,” Jerusalem said.
Phoebe looked at the gardener. “Really? Where?”
“Cities mostly. In later years, up here in St. Cloud. I knew your dad, of course.”
Connections solidified in her brain. Her dad had talked about his friend in the department, a black detective with a funny name. Oh, great. Another member of the Zip Magillicutty fan club. I might have to find that new apartment sooner rather than later even if I have to sleep on the floor and eat microwaved food off paper plates with plastic forks.
“Come sit down, dear,” Aunt Emily urged, drawing Phoebe to a brocaded couch that looked about as comfortable as a razor-backed hog but was surprisingly yielding. The fire in the field-stone fireplace felt warm and homey.
“You have a beautiful house, Aunt Emily,” Phoebe offered and almost meant it. “It’s a lot bigger than it looks from outside, too.”
“Oh, thanks, dear. And, yes, I agree that it’s much too big, but Jerry liked the property, and he’s the gardener. The house is way too full of fussy things—lamps and nick-nacks and memories—but it’s comfortable. We’ll go out to the gardens and the lake after supper. It’ll still be light enough, and the mosquitoes shouldn’t be too bad yet.”
Phoebe mentally sighed at the length of the evening ahead. Choices. She decided to make the best of it. “I saw a lot of flowers in the circle out front and through the kitchen windows for so early in the season,” Phoebe said. “You must be a wonderful gardener, Mr. Brown.”
“Thanks. I enjoy it. But, please, call me Jerry. Everyone does.”
The name Jerry Brown finally rang the bell that had been eluding her. He’d been a detective with her dad. “Now I remember my dad talking about you. He admired you a great deal.”
Jerry’s eyes opened. “Really? If he did, old Zip didn’t waste his complements, did he?”
Phoebe agreed. Dad didn’t waste complements or praise or encouragement either. Whatever he was saving them up for, they sure weren’t for me. “How did you get Jerry from Jerusalem? How did you even get the name Jerusalem?” Then Phoebe’s natural curiousity bumped up against her circumstances as the poor relation. She caught herself. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”
“Oh, posh, dear. It was not,” laughed her aunt, sidling a glance at Mr. Brown. “But it is a long story. Let’s just say it isn’t always wise to pick a child’s name from a hat.” Both she and Jerry chuckled.
Phoebe gaped. “Your parents picked your name from a hat? Really?”
“Oh, yes,” Jerry Brown said. “Our family thought Brown was ordinary, boring. I had brothers named Bob, Mike, Sam, and Matt. Sisters were Mary, Ellen, and Sue. I had uncles named Bob, Mike, Sam, and Matt, too. Also had an Aunt Mary, Mary Ellen, and Sue Anne. Among many others. Had maybe six Sams in the family and probably no less than eleven Marys. Seems like, at least naming-wise, my family was in a rut. My parents decided to spice things up. They had a contest among the relations to find a most unusual name to offset the ordinariness of ‘Brown.’ So all my family, my aunts and uncles—some twenty of them—cousins, and I had nearly forty then, and that’s just first cousins, mind you, my grandparents, and all eight of my great-grandparents, and a small army of more distant relatives got together to put names into a hat. My sister Sue got to pick the names because, at the time, she couldn’t yet read—she was four—and, therefore, couldn’t choose a name she liked.”
“Emmett came first. That was my middle name. Then she picked a folded piece of paper like all the others. Dad opened it and read ‘Jerusalem,’ but then he noticed that ‘Solomon’ was on the other side of the paper. We figure the name had been put into the hat by a great-granddad or a great uncle, some of which were going a little batty. We figure he meant to put in Solomon and had put ‘Jerusalem’ on the other side of the paper to describe that it was a good biblical name. He meant to say Jewish maybe. Then he folded the paper wrong. But Dad had read the Jerusalem first, and that became my first name. I can’t say that picking my name out of a hat was a great idea, but it ain’t a name I ever heard put together and slapped onto anyone else. That’s for sure.”
“I told you it was a long story,” chirped Aunt Emily.
“And I thought Zephalon was a tough name to grow up with. Dad talked about getting tough so he wasn’t beat up so much. Did you have trouble in school too.”
Jerry chuckled. “I did. Yup. I did a lot of fighting because of my name. Can’t say I got tough though. I was this skinny-ass, weighs-nothing kind of kid. I was way too easy to beat up. Didn’t hardly work up a sweat in the guys who did it, either, which is prob’bly why they did it regular-like. Didn’t grow to size ’til I was nearly eighteen. When I went out for football senior year, I finally got left alone.”
Emogene came into the living room. “You guys ready for supper?” she said.
“Sure thing, Miss Emogene,” Jerry said and started to get up from his chair.
“We’ll be right in, Gene,” Phoebe’s aunt said. “Come now, Phoebe. We have a lovely meal for you. I expect you met Emogene as you came through.”
Phoebe nodded and followed as the three headed back through the house to the dining room. Her mother had been a meat-and-potatoes kind of cook—some form of meat plus potatoes fixed in one of maybe three ways, rarely rice. Later, Phil and she seldom had eaten together unless politically adventageous or he had some event to go to where he wanted her on his arm. Since leaving Phil’s big house, she’d subsisted on Poptarts and fast food mostly. That history didn’t prepare her for Emogene at all.
Emogene served a spinach souffle first, followed by a truly amazing mushroom soup. Then came stuffed pork chops with scalloped potatoes and a spring salad. Food suddenly took on a whole new meaning for Phoebe. For dessert, Emogene brought out a flourless chocolate torte that Phoebe thought for sure she couldn’t fit into her belly because she’d had no idea she should have left room for it, but still ate and wanted more. No plastic chicken fundraiser meal, no restaurant fare, or any of her mother’s “homecooked” meals resembled this meal in flavor. Nor did she remember being so satisfied after a meal.
Phoebe had worried about who was joining them for supper. To her surprise, it was Jerry and Emogene. No priest, no potential boyfriend, no card-playing lady friends. Emogene served each course, bringing it in from the kitchen so it was right off the stove or out of the oven, then sat down at the table and enjoyed the course with them. Phoebe began to relax.
The talk around the table was light and chatty, about the gardens needing planting, freezers that needed sorting. Jerry asked how Captain Johnson had broken the news of Phoebe’s promotion. He chuckled and asked how many times she had shaken his hand. Phoebe told him.
“Three!” he exclaimed. “Oh, dear girl, and you can still maneuver a fork? He always had a vise for a grip. Just so you know, he has an exercise ball in his drawer he works half the day just to keep that grip rock hard, scared if he got weak, he’d lose his grip, to make a pun.”
They all laughed. Their easy banter eased some of Phoebe’s concerns about living with her aunt. She might be Zip’s sister, but Phoebe began to believe Emily hadn’t been cut from the same cloth. There had been precious little laughter at home. Of course, with her father getting ill when she was still in grade school, that made sense.
Nor was Emily’s house anything like Phil’s. Emily might have the bigger house, but Phoebe could already tell it was an older, more mindfully constructed place, one that didn’t try to show off its largeness or expense. The house at Ten Oaks Estates, unlike other McMansions in the division, was big only for the sake of size, and the materials used only looked expensive. She had pointed out to Phil how much plastic was masquerading for brass and gold and even wood. He hadn’t cared. Appearances meant everything to him. And even though the addition had been built on reclaimed swamp and, therefore, flat ground, Phil had insisted on that artificial hill. The fill soil had barely grown grass without tons of fertilizer, was rocky and poor in all respects. But that it set off the biggest house in the area made Phil happy.
When Phoebe’s thoughts tracked back to her previous life and threatened to overwhelm her, the three old people’s laughter and good company drew her back, and she’d cheer again. But, finally, that feast with so many delicious foods was over.
“That was an amazing meal, Emogene,” Phoebe said. “Thank you so much for going to all this trouble for me.”
Emogene looked startled and glanced to Aunt Emily, who giggled. “It wasn’t any trouble, Miss Phoebe,” Emogene said. “I’m glad you enjoyed it, but this was a fairly usual Friday night supper.”
Jerry said, “Emogene loves to cook. It’s what she lives for. We’ve rightfully given her her way.”
“She’s a trained French chef, you see,” chipped in Aunt Emily.
Phoebe looked at this tall, angular woman who looked anything but French.
Emogene, a little apologetically, said, “I went to culinary school after college. Well, not right after. I’d tried out another occupation first. But I needed a change, and had always loved to cook. So culinary school in New York City, then a couple-years stint in Paris. I had this dream to be a head chef in a fine restaurant, but, along came Bill. Swept me off my feet. Got me pregnant ten minutes after we were married, too. Twins. He had a good job, so I stayed home with the boys. It seemed the best thing to do. Had five more kids, including another set of twins, a girl and boy that time. They were spaced just enough that I really never got the chance to be a professional chef, and darned if Bill hated most vegetables, and two of my kids were allergic to nuts. One was also allergic to milk. Messed up so many nice recipes. It wasn’t until the kids were grown and Bill up and died on me that I got my chance to cook the way I’d been trained. Miss Emily advertized for a cook and a maid. I didn’t care much for the housecleaning aspect of the job—maintaining a home with seven kids and a husband, all of whom couldn’t seem to pick up a sock to save their lives, had really worn me out—but Miss Emily let me have free reign in the kitchen.”
“It’s always wise to let a cook have her head,” Aunt Emily said sagely. Then she leaned closer to Phoebe, though surely not out of Emogene’s earshot. “I hired a lady to come in twice a week for the cleaning.”
“We did have to cut back on some of the calories, though,” said Jerry, patting his belly, which was barely spreading. “We were all getting a little tight for our jeans, so to speak.”
“I adjusted,” said Emogene with a shrug. “I can do well-balanced and reasonable as long as there’s also taste. And these two don’t have food allergies . . . I sure hope you don’t, Miss Phoebe.” She raised her eyebrow.
“Nope. Nothing. I can eat anything.”
Emogene smiled and gave her a curt nod. “Good. I know you’re not getting on in years the way the three of us are and maybe don’t need to watch your weight, not as skinny as you are, but maybe you’ll be happy to know that, except for the torte, which was, after all, a treat, that meal had about 975 calories.”
Phoebe was astonished. “Really. It was so . . . flavorful.”
“Flavor is preparation,” said Emogene, “not necessarily calories. I never use ‘substitute’ foods though. Everything I cook is real, organic, fresh, and, when I can manage it, locally grown. Getting food fresh really boosts flavor. That and when a recipe calls for butter, it gets butter. I’ll use honey when I can instead of sugar, but I won’t use sweetener. That crap’ll kill you.”
“And your food has always been delicious,” Aunt Emily said, patting Emogene’s hand.
Phoebe was beginning to see that these three were friends. They chatted and teased each other like old chums. It certainly made no difference that one was an employer and two employees.
After supper, Phoebe offered to help with clean up, but Emogene, looking startled, said, “Don’t give it a thought. I have two dishwashers, and the pans are already on. All the prep dishes are done. The kitchen is my domain. You should go out to the gardens and the lake with Emily and Jerry. Scoot now.”
Phoebe backtracked to the stairs behind the kitchen, retrieved her bag, found a bathroom just under the stairs and quickly slipped out of the office pants suit. By the time Phoebe had changed into jeans and a bulky sweatshirt, Aunt Emily and Jerry were already out back looking at a lovely planting of tulips and hyacinths.
“So, I thought we could put in a few more perennials this year,” Jerry was saying. “I’d like some bleeding hearts right there, and maybe some coral bells over there.”
“Sure,” said Aunt Emily. “What about foxglove?”
“Well, they’re biennials, so I’ll still have to start some each year in the greenhouse and grow them up in the junior bed their first year, then each year I can transplant some into the beds. I have some ready to move into the east garden this week.”
“I think I’d like that. Lupines?”
“Oh, Em, we’ve always had lupines. Center garden, lake garden, and out front.”
“Oh, yes. I just keep forgetting what they’re called. The boys have some too, right?”
Jerry seemed to give her aunt a warning look, but Phoebe didn’t understand that. Then he cleared his throat and Emily turned. “Oh, there you are, Phoebe. Good. Let’s walk.”
She hooked an arm around Phoebe’s elbow, and they started down a lovely cobbled pathway. Every now and again, Jerry would point out some of the plantings, prepared beds soon to be filled with transplants, or possible future garden locations.
“We had a really nice large patch the last couple of years in the circle garden, but it died out in the center. I divided it last year, but it just petered out. We can get more.”
“I know you like them,” he said, chuckling. “You told me that every time you passed them last spring. I’ll order more or pick up a couple nice plants at Farmer Seed or Thompsons. I like the really long-spurred ones.”
“Oh, yes. Me too. What about you, Phoebe? What’s your favorite flower?”
Do people have favorite flowers? “Me? Oh, I don’t know. Roses maybe . . . or . . . what are those little white flowers they use a lot in borders? They smell real sweet.”
“Alyssum,” Jerry said. “Sure. I like using them in borders. And roses we got over that way, but not much is showing yet. They’re just waking up with this late spring. So, you like fragrant flowers then?”
Phoebe didn’t know what to say. She had hardly paid much attention to gardens as a child, and, as an adult, she had mostly lived in apartments where she was removed from gardens. In the Phil’s big house, he had a service come and maintain the lawns, but, other than foundation shrubs, he didn’t want anything but grass. Flowers were too fussy. Shrubs presented a stronger image, he said. As if plants denote strength. “I don’t know,” Phoebe said. “I guess when I’d be on partrol and pass a garden, I didn’t much notice except if something smelled nice.”
Both Jerry and Aunt Emily nodded knowingly, but Phoebe wasn’t quite sure what they knew. Then they looked at each other and said at the same time, “Tuberoses!” and both giggled like children.
Phoebe didn’t know if this were some kind of inside joke, but she chose not to show her ignorance by not knowing what a tuberose was. Instead she just smiled. The image the flower’s name put into her head wasn’t encouraging.
The maintained back yard seemed to go on a long ways, mowed grass winding around garden beds and shrubbery plantings until it suddenly opened up into a wide grassy space. A fair-sized greenhouse stood off to the left and a smallish bay of the lake lay to the right. A boathouse nestled just at the edge of the water and a short redwood dock extended over the cattails and lilypads into clear water. Across the lake Phoebe saw some Holstein cows grazing on a grassy rise, and the roof of a barn peeked from between two hills with a couple of silos alongside.
“Does anyone else live on the lake?” Phoebe asked, looking across at the farm.
Aunt Emily said, “That’s Stevensons’ Farms. It’s just us and them. We get milk and strawberries from Stevensons’. They have a truck garden, so we also get vegetables in summer. They grow better melons than we usually do,” she said, casting a raised eyebrow in Jerry’s direction.
“Well, they did last summer,” he said without rancor. “We got some mildew with all that rain. They get more of a breeze in that open land of theirs. Soil’s better over there for melons.”
They continued walking. The cobbled walk turned back towards the house as it rounded the greenhouse and came past the boat house and wove its way along the lakeshore for a ways through a wilder area of woods alternated with marshy meadows filled with marsh marigold in full bloom and young cattail stems. Phoebe could see ducks on the water. And an amazing number and variety of frogs croaked in various keys. They seemed to line the lake and the cattails with their spring calls. Some bird sang long and low from out on the lake.
“Oh, good,” said Aunt Emily. “The loons are back.”
“You have loons on your lake?” Phoebe asked, trying to spot the characteristic black-and-white of the Minnesota state bird. “I thought they only lived up north.”
“Oh, no,” said Jerry. “We almost always have a pair on the lake. If you look way over there to where the reeds get thick. See that platform?”
“That’s a loon nest site. We had the DNR put it there where the farm dogs and foxes can’t reach them. They’ve had more breeding success the last few years because of that.”
“But I thought loons needed a lot bigger lake . . . something about not being able to take off.”
“Ten acres,” Aunt Emily said. “They need a lake at least ten acres. This one’s more like forty, so we’re good. It’s not wide, but it is long, so they’re able to take off.”
“Oh.” Phoebe thought it might be fun to listen to loons. In fact, she was very much enjoying the walk and the path and the gardens, and now the lake. Her life up to this point hadn’t included a lot of nature. “You really do have a lovely place here, Aunt Emily,” she finally said sincerely.
“Thank you, dear. We enjoy it. Don’t you just love the frogs?”
“Hmm? Oh, the frogs. Yeah, they’re nice. So many of them.”
“Frogs are environmental barometers,” said Jerry. “This is healthy land.”
Just by the scope of the house and property, Phoebe was getting an impression that her aunt was a great deal wealthier than she had thought. And that seemed to make sense. Emily had been an actress in Hollywood, though Phoebe didn’t know a single picture her aunt might have been in. She had done some research on that but had come up empty time and again. When she had asked her dad about this years ago, he’d just harumphed and said, “Not the real world, Phoebe. Don’t go there.”
“Um, Dad said you were a film star when you were young,” she said.
“Star? Oh, my, no,” said her aunt with that girlish giggle. “Nothing so fancy as a star. I could hardly be called an actress really. An extra maybe. Most of the time I was in and out of a movie in the first three minutes and nothing more.”
“What? I don’t understand. Why would that be?”
“I’d get killed.” Phoebe’s eighty-year-old aunt said this with complete aplomb.
“What do you mean? Killed? Like in more than one movie?”
“In forty-two movies. Got killed in all of them.”
Phoebe couldn’t wrap her head around this. “You were killed in forty-two different movies?”
“Yup, but actually I was killed fifty-four times total. In a few films I was killed more than once.”
“That’s nuts. Why would you be killed in every movie you were in?”
Phoebe paused on the path. “What?”
Jerry groaned and slapped his hands over his ears. “You should do the same,” he warned.
And then Phoebe’s small, eighty-something-year-old aunt drew in a long breath and let loose with the most shocking, most terrifying, loudest scream Phoebe had ever heard come out of anyone’s mouth. She clamped her hands over her ears at the sheer volume of that scream, and it went on and on, like her aunt had the longest breath on the planet. When Aunt Emily finally turned it off, every creature in the near vicinity had shut up. Not a single frog croaked, no birds chirped, and the loon had dived quite out of sight. The cows, an animal that Phoebe had seldom seen move at anything faster than an amble, that lived on the farm across the lake had found reason to gallop back over the hill to the safety of their barn.
Phoebe said, “What the hell was that?”
“I’m a screamer,” said Aunt Emily, who had somehow transformed back into her aged aunt from some shocking, other-worldly, terrifying monster. With that scream still echoing in Phoebe’s head, her aunt’s small, gentle voice surely must come from someone else. “The studios would hire me to scream in their movies. Some murderer would be attacking a young woman, and she’d scream. The monster showed up to kill its first victim while the opening credits played. The serial killer struck, triggering the events in the movie. The unseen werewolf, the evil butler, the drug lords, the vampire. I was gulped down by a dinosaur once. Then there were the times cars lost in fog went over cliffs, the foolish girl went into the attic or the basement or found her way into the haunted house or graveyard. The scenarios of murder have been endless over the years. Lots of times, if the woman was killed, I was the woman, but sometimes I was just the voice behind the sets. Did that another fifty or so times, but I don’t count them as actually being in a film. I mean they list the griffs and best boys in the final credits, and they never got into the film as such, but no one lists the screamer. Of course, some of my gigs weren’t actually even films. Some were shorts . . . cartoons. I screamed for maybe 100 cartoons and animated films. I was big in Monsters, Inc.”
“Aunt Emily, are you saying you were in over 200 productions of one kind or another?”
“That’s about right, dear. What I just demonstrated was my fall-off-the-cliff-a-long-ways-to-the-wild-sea-below scream. You’d see someone fall, and I’d be the long scream as they plummeted to their death. I can do male or female screams, and I’d cut it off mid-yell when they hit the water. In the films I was killed more than once, I wore a wig and did different screams. I have a large repertoire.”
Phoebe was struggling to understand. “And you made a living . . . screaming?”
“A good living. I mean, forty-two movies that I appeared in, another bunch I screamed for. All the animated stuff I did. For a while, I was the go-to gal for screaming. Disney and Warner Brothers loved me.”
“No way! Seriously? You got rich screaming?”
Now Emily met Jerry’s eyes in a quick glance. “Well, I made a decent living, and I lived frugally. Not being a high-profile actress, of course, I never commanded the big bucks, but compensation was surprisingly good. And once my reputation was established, I got lots of work. Still no one recognized me on the street or invited me to the Academy Awards. I so would’ve liked that, but it never happened. On the other hand, I never had the expenses of high-profile actresses. I didn’t need body guards, secretaries, assistants, a whole team of trainers, beauticians, clothing buyers, and I sure didn’t need a huge mansion in Bevery Hills like others just had to have. Saw no point to all that. For most of those years, I had a small walk-up in the valley. But I . . . I invested what I did make, and those investments went very well.”
“Invested,” Phoebe said, dubious. “Okay. But surely in the many recessions—”
“Oh, and I take the odd gig still,” her aunt said, maybe not hearing what Phoebe had said. “I did a demonstration on Prairie Home Companion a few months back.”
Phoebe tried to wrap her mind around that. “As . . . a screamer?”
“Did Garrison Keiler . . . like your scream?”
“Oh, he wasn’t there, more’s the pity. It wasn’t live. I taped a segment for the radio. It should air next month.”
Phoebe was speechless and a little horrified. Her aunt was going to be on Prairie Home Companion as a screamer. How should I feel about that? “But with the recessions and stock market corrections, how could you—”
“It’s getting dark,” said Jerry. “We should head in.”
“Yeah, sure,” Phoebe said. She had been cut off. Twice. And though neither Aunt Emily nor Mr. Brown seemed irked by her inquiry, Phoebe had the strong impression that these two had secrets. She sighed. Maybe they do, but this is their life and home, and I need to respect that. I’m just a temporary boarder. After all they hadn’t been mean about it. Her dad might have told her to mind her own business, and Phil would have yelled at her, belittled her. Her aunt and the gardener had simply changed the subject. The light banter, mostly about gardens and food, continued as they cleared the woods and entered the back garden area again.
They followed the lakeside path as it curved back toward the house, viewing completely different gardens as they did so. The cobbled path joined the garden path just after the fish pond at the screened in porch just off the kitchen. As they walked, Phoebe realized that it was still really quiet. Maybe it was because the evening had settled in like a cloak around them, but the ducks weren’t quacking, the cows didn’t come back to the lake from the barn, the loon had gone silent, and lots of frogs that had been chirping and beeping all along the edge of the lake seeming to be hiding out. Since her aunt’s epic scream, it had gone quiet and a lot of the animals and birds had just stayed silent. Only by the time they reached the house did some of the frogs—a few—take up again and beep tentatively. Her aunt had some amazing lungs.
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