When I called Emil Gardener’s house, a woman answered who identified herself as Elizabeth Doll.
I told her what I was doing. She said, “Oh dear.”
Gathering my courage, I asked to speak to Erica Doll Gardener. She apologized. “My aunt is literally dying. She’s in a coma. She couldn’t talk to you if she wanted to.”
“You know about the woman accused of killing Mr. Gardener.”
“I do know. And Aunt Erica did too. My aunt was sick even when she was a young woman. She was so sad that she couldn’t have children. But she really loved Emil. He really loved her too. Can you make sure that you say that?”
“I will,” I told her. I wanted to weep. “I’m sorry for your loss and her loss. Is there someone you’d prefer me to talk to instead of you?”
“Oh no! I’m fine. With them, you know how it is when you love someone, you want him to be happy.”
“Not so much as that,” I said, without taking time to think, and immediately repented it.
“He was devoted to Erica in other ways. He read to her every night, for almost forty years. They went to church together every Sunday, even when Erica was in her wheelchair.”
“Can I mention that?”
“Yes, of course you can. I don’t blame you, you know, Miss...?”
“Reenie. Reenie Bigelow.”
“Reenie, I don’t really blame you. I know you’re only doing your job. Do you think that woman really killed Emil?”
“It seems the police are pretty sure. But there are so many questions. The dates don’t line up very well. And no one knowshow they died really, except probably some kind of poison or toxin.” I asked then, “Can you tell me about Emil?”
He was apparently just like another grandfather to those nieces and nephews, so generous at Christmas that they thought of him as the second Santa Claus. He had no family of his own, an only child whose parents died in their middle years. His wife’s family was as dear to him as if they were his own. The Gardeners paid for college for four nieces and a nephew.
“Uncle Em is why I’m a nurse now, and lucky thing, because I can look after Erica.” She said then, “Gosh, it probably won’t be long now, and she’ll be with Emil.”
“So she was a believer?”
“She was a churchgoer. I suppose none of us really knows about what happens after we die. That’s what you take on faith, right?” I murmured something that I hoped sounded like assent. Elizabeth Doll added, “My mom and my aunts will pray for that young woman as well. Her family must be crushed.”
“Thank you,” I said and then got flustered, because I wasn’t the one needing the prayers, although I’d take them if they were offered. She asked if I needed anything else. Ivy had instructed me to arrange for photos of the survivors, but there was no way I was going to further intrude on these people. Just a photo of the couple, I said, that the magazine could copy. The niece agreed, saying there was a lovely clear picture of the two of them at a summer picnic.
“You know, Erica would want you to find out what really happened. She was a very smart woman. She wanted to be a lawyer but she was the oldest, so she wound up in the dairy business. Wanting to help was in her nature. My brother and my aunts and I, we think it’s almost a blessing that Aunt Erica is not aware of all this.” She apparently had been in and out of consciousness for months, and no one knew if she understood that Emil was dead—although she sometimes asked for him.
When I finished talking to the niece, I felt as filthy as if I’d been left overnight in an old deep fryer. I wanted to call her back and tell her that I was not the mercenary she probably imagined me to be.
So it was almost gratifying by contrast when Cary Church’s wife, Suzanne, barely let me finish saying my name before she ripped me a new asshole.
“I want to say I can’t believe your gall but of course, I can. You’re a vampire so I shouldn’t expect any kind of moral behavior from you...” I counted backward from ten, reminding myself that this was a newly bereaved mother of two who’d suffered an additional shock in addition to the death.
“I’m not trying to hurt you, Suzanne. This is something that already happened and I can’t change that.”
“But you can squeeze it and shape it until it sounds like Cary deserved to die...”
“I would never do that. In fact, your perspective on Cary will help people see that there was another side of him...”
“What do you mean, ‘another side of him’?” she snapped.
“Another side of his character, as a husband, not just as a guy who paid Felicity Wild for... companionship.”
“There’s no proof that he did that,” Suzanne Church said. “Just because you can only see the worst, because you’re a bottom-dwelling slug...”
“Wait! Are you suggesting that he did not have a paying friendship with Felicity Wild? Why else would he take out a two-million-dollar life insurance policy with her as the beneficiary?” Something snapped in me then, and I said, “Cary’s death is horrible for your family and a terrible injustice. But I don’t see how not writing about it would benefit anybody.”
