Authors: Janis Harrison

Bindweed (15 page)

BOOK: Bindweed

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“She'll understand,” I said.

Yvonne glared at me. “No she won't. Propriety was important to her. Looking good, dressing well, behaving in a manner suitable for a lady was how she lived her life. She would have made the effort to make me respectable.”

Phillip sighed. “Yvonne, honey, it was more important that you called for assistance than whether Leona was dressed in her best bib and tucker.”

“I don't agree,” she said firmly, “but that's my opinion. And since I knew Leona better than either one of you, that's the end of this conversation.”

That was my cue to leave.

Chapter Fifteen

It was almost nine o'clock when I passed Scent-Sational, Melba's candle shop. The “Closed” sign was still in the window. Worried, I decided to stop in and see if she was okay. Her shop was on the corner, so I turned down the side street off of Hawthorn and parked. I went to the front door and tried the knob. The door was locked. I peered in and saw a light in back. I rapped gently on the glass. No little figure bustled forward. I knocked louder. Still no one.

Concerned, I went around to the back of the building. Melba's alleyway was much narrower than the one that ran behind my flower shop. Her blue Ford was parked close to an old porch. The boards creaked and moaned as I mounted the steps. The door was covered with a piece of sheet metal. Again I knocked and waited. No answer. I tried the knob. The door swung open.

I stuck my head in and called, “Melba? It's Bretta Solomon. Are you okay?”

I listened intently but only heard a radio playing. Uneasily, I stepped inside. I was in her back storage room. The shelves were jam-packed with candles and bags of potpourri. They looked pretty sitting neatly in rows, but the sickeningly sweet odors blended together in an overpowering assault on my nose. Were these intense aromas masking something else entirely? I
was thinking about Toby's bowl of white worms. Had he seen maggots? Where? I felt sick to my stomach and blamed it on the oppressively heavy scent of the candles. Or was it my present situation that made my stomach churn?

“Melba?” I called again, and this time I heard the uncertainty in my voice.

Where was she? Why didn't she answer?

The hairs on my arm tingled. In a rising panic, I thought,
Maybe she can't.

I got a grip on my imagination.
Think rationally,
I told myself. The music seemed to be coming from the basement. I walked quietly to the head of a staircase and started down.

Now I was reluctant to call out. I wanted to surpriseânot be surprised. I descended another couple of steps, hunkering so I could see beneath the floor joists. Off to my left, I caught movement out of the corner of my eye. I turned in that direction and crept down another step. Gripping the rail tightly, I bent my knees so that I was almost sitting on the step behind me.

I had a clear view of an artist's studio. Melba was seated on a stool, her back to me. A portion of the canvas in front of her glistened with wet paint.

I almost laughed aloud with relief. Then I focused on the painting Melba was working on. There was no mistaking the setting. The background was a city with emerald green spires, towering among white, fleecy clouds. The Tin Woodsman, the Scarecrow, the Cowardly Lion, Toto, and Dorothy, were asleep among the red poppies. A young man sauntered down the yellow brick road, headed for the Emerald City. There was no question in my mind. The man was Toby. He was dressed in shorts and a T-shirt, the same as the last time I'd seen him alive.

I looked around the basement and saw stacks of canvases, but only a few were facing so I could view the subject. They
were all scenes from
The Wizard of Oz
, but with a unique twist that I decided must be Melba's style.

Melba glanced at me over her shoulder. “I heard you calling my name, but I wasn't sure I wanted company.” She turned her back to me. “I should have known you wouldn't go merrily on your way.”

Hurt by her tone, I said, “I'll leave, now that I know you're okay.” I turned to go, but stopped when she said, “I did this painting years ago, but I had a horse of a different color on the road. I decided last night that before I attended Toby's funeral, I had to paint him on the yellow brick road. It's easier to accept that he's gone if I can picture him like thisâheaded to the Emerald City. Maybe he'll finally get his wish.”

“His wish?”

“To have a mother and a father and brothers and sisters. He wanted a family more than anything else in this world.”

“Did Toby know you painted?”

“Of course. He helped me with some of my ideas. His mental capacities were limited in some areas, but in others he excelled.” She got up and went across the room. “Take a look at this one. It was his idea to have the good witch, dressed in all her finery, have the face of a crone. While the bad witch in her pointy black hat and gloomy cape would be blond and beautiful.”

I smiled. “It is a bit of a jolt seeing that glittery dress on a bent and ugly figure. I wonder how Toby came up with that idea.”

“He said it would confuse the witches. If the bad witch looked nice, she might change into a good witch.”

“But then the good witch could change into the bad one.”

Melba laughed. “Toby didn't reason things out that way or that well. I never told him, but I figured that without his realizing it, he'd made the discovery that just because a person looked nice, it didn't necessarily mean they were kind.”

“Interesting. Are there other paintings that he helped you with?”

She shuffled through a stack and pulled out another. “I only finished this painting the day Toby died. I don't care for it, but Toby thought it was wonderful. He wanted it for his room, but I don't let any of my paintings leave this basement. I do them for my own enjoyment. They relax me. I've been captivated by the
Oz
movie for years, but it was always too much happy ending for my taste. Toby knew what I wanted and seemed comfortable making suggestions.”

She turned the picture around so I could see it. I caught my breath at the scene. It was the one where Dorothy and her gang are in the haunted forest and are being hunted by the flying monkeys. Only in this rendition giant spiders had replaced the monkeys.

“Why spiders?” I asked.

Melba shook her head. “I don't have a clue. Toby said that it made more sense for a spider to drop a net. Monkeys don't have nets, but spiders spin webs. He wanted me to paint the picture so that Dorothy and her friends go free, and the spiders team up on the witch, weaving her into a cocoon.” Melba sighed. “I told Toby that wasn't the way I worked. It's a rule of mine that I have to stay within the story line. Dorothy has to go to the witch's tower so the hourglass can run out.”

“Did Toby understand that?”

“I'm not sure. He said that bad things happen in towers. Spiders need to win. Need to be free.” Melba shook her head. “He didn't always make sense, but then neither do the things that happen in life.” Her shoulders slumped. “I assume you know about Leona.”

I nodded. “I was at the hospital when they brought her in.”

She looked up at me with teary eyes. “It's bad, isn't it?”

Again I nodded.

“I thought so. From the way Yvonne described Leona's condition, it didn't sound good. Yvonne was upset because she couldn't make herself dress Leona before the paramedics arrived. We had a pact, you know.”

“I spoke with Yvonne, but in this case I think it was best that Yvonne left Leona alone. The skin eruptions covered her entire body. She'd had an allergic reaction to some bubble bath.”

“Bubble bath?” repeated Melba, cocking her head. “That's odd. Leona loved using every kind of body lotion, cream, and oil that was on the market. I've never known her to have a reaction to any of them. The only time she had a problem was when she pulled some poison ivy from her garden. She puffed up like a toad.”

“I'm wondering about that bottle of bubble bath. Leona thought a customer left it on the counter. What if it wasn't soap? What if someone put something in it that would cause Leona serious problems?”

Melba stared at me in disbelief. Finally, she pulled herself together. “Bretta, do you think this was intentional? Like the hornets in Toby's house?”

“It's possible. If we go on that assumption, then the next obvious question is, why harm Leona? What did she know?”

“I can't imagine she knew anything more than either Yvonne or I. We pooled our information.” She stared up at me. “In fact, what we know, you know, too. We put everything in our notes to you.”

I wanted to disagree. Leona had strolled into my flower shop with all sorts of information that hadn't been mentioned in the notes. I kept my opinion to myself. Melba was visibly upset. Trying to put her at ease, I said, “Let's not worry about this now. The sheriff is checking on everything and everyone. He'll
get to the bottom of whatever is going on.” She nodded, but I could see she wasn't comforted.

Melba walked around me and sat back down on her stool. “I couldn't sleep after Yvonne called, so I dressed and came here. I didn't plan to open my shop today because of Toby's funeral this afternoon. I was going to unpack some new merchandise, but I came down here instead.”

She turned to stare at the painting she'd been working on. In a quiet tone, she said, “In my mind's eye, I could see Toby on the yellow brick road just as plain as day.” She rubbed a hand across her brow. “But now when I look at the canvas, I see Leona at his side.” She took a quivering breath. “They're walking hand in hand.”

Heavy of heart, I pulled into the alley behind the flower shop. Josh was unlocking the door to his video store. He glanced over his shoulder, saw me, and fumbled faster with the key. Anger replaced my sorrow. I leaped out of my SUV and called to him, “Josh, I want to talk to you.”

He didn't acknowledge me. He wrenched open the door and hurried across the threshold. When he reached behind him to pull the door shut, I was there. He jerked back in surprise. “Oh, hi, Bretta,” he said nervously. “Can't talk now. I have work to do.”

I pushed past him, dodging empty boxes and wads of packing material. “Go ahead and work,” I said. “I'll just follow you around, asking my questions, waiting for your answers.”

Josh flipped a light switch. A single bulb, dangling from a cord, flashed its low wattage on the room. I'd never seen such squalor. Besides the boxes, there were overflowing trash cans. Four plastic five-gallon buckets were filled with empty soda cans. Flies buzzed in the air. The smell was disgusting. Peering
through the gloom, I looked for a bowl that might contain the white worms. If that bowl existed, it didn't stretch my imagination one iota to think that it could be here.

“You don't give up, do you?” said Josh.

“Not usually.”

“Fine,” he grumbled. “Ask your questions.”

“Were you ripping off Toby?”

Josh's chin came up. “That's unfair, Bretta. I would neverâ”

“Hurt Toby because you owed it to his mother, Agnes, to protect her son.” I stared at Josh. “Is that what you were going to say?”

“No. Like I told you the other day, I never met Agnes.”

“So how did you and Toby become friends?”

“It was after Agnes died. I was sweeping off the sidewalk and Toby came by on his bike. I told him I'd pay him to wash my windows, but he said I wasn't on his list. I told him he could make more money by enlarging his customer base. After I'd explained my comment, he washed the windows. When he came in to get paid, he was mesmerized by the video I had playing. We had a conversation. I learned he didn't own a television. He didn't know what a video was. He didn't know about VHS players.”

“So you enlightened him?”

“Sure. What was the harm? I saw him as a potential customer.”

“All right. I assume you set him up with a television and all the equipment he'd need to view the movies he rented from you.”

“That's right. He wouldn't go to the electronics store. Said it wasn't on his list. I bought everything and hooked it up in his bedroom. He didn't want it in the living room. I can't say I blamed him.” He gave me a quick glance. “You ever been in Toby's house?”

I nodded.

Josh seemed surprised. “Really?” He thought a minute, then said, “But only after Toby died.”

“That's right. I saw Toby's bedroom with the
two
televisions. Whose idea was that?”

BOOK: Bindweed

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