Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 44, No. 7 & 8, July/August 1999

Dragons by Sharon Mackey

I held my breath and ducked into the upstairs eaves of Prudence Geasley’s Victorian, unable to suppress the feeling.

It was shock, I suppose, then sheer anger, when I first discovered my late husband Jeb and Eva Wadsell in the catacombs of his law office “looking for something” as Jeb had so eloquently put it. I tried not to remember the scene: Eva giggling, scrambling for her Chinese mother-of-pearl comb and Jeb, shoeless with a face full of frosted-pink smears.

After that Jeb swore he’d never venture there again, although I suspected he’d carried on in other dark and sundry places with other reckless and irrelevant women.

I whacked at a cobweb, bumping my head on the slanted ceiling, my shins grazing cardboard boxes stacked in the vicinity of alphabetical order.

Years ago Prudie had raised the rent five dollars when Jeb had asked permission to store “dead” files in what he’d dubbed “the catacombs.” Lawyers had to keep everything, he’d said. Malpractice claims were rampant. You get rid of something today, and the next day they want it on a silver platter with a serving of smoked salmon and dill sauce.

I rooted toward some peeling magnolia wallpaper around the chimney, grabbed the entire carton of M’s, and ducked back through the doorway, smacking my crown on the way out.

I dropped the box on Jeb’s pressed pecan desk thinking a lawyer’s s work was never done, especially a dead lawyer’s work. I knew lawsuits weren’t limited to the living, that malpractice claims could also be brought against the paltry estate of a formerly careless, now deceased lawyer like Jeb. That’s why I wasn’t exactly waxing nostalgic. As far as I knew, he’d left me with no will whatsoever, his law office rent, and an address book full of Tammies and Mimis and Darlas.

I couldn’t find the deed. Ernest Minks’ vulture neighbors were putting up chain-link faster than an uphill semi could chum exhaust, and I had to find the deed to his sixty acres, the deed my late husband had failed to record at the Poke County Clerk’s office twelve years ago.

My fingers rustled the tops of the manila folders. It was unfair, the pressure I was feeling to satisfy Jeb’s already unsatisfied clients. The law office had closed the day after his heart attack. And besides, the place was now my part-time investigative headquarters where I occasionally took orders to retrieve stolen bicycles or spy on unfaithful spouses. If things really got hopping, I might be asked to find somebody’s lost dog, who could be identified by no collar and a mild case of the mange.

I found Myrick, Mason, McClary. The files were nowhere near in alphabetical order. I’d almost exhausted the entire M section when I saw the Murdock name filed next to Meeples. MURDOCK, JEB E. I jerked the manila folder out of its slot, opened it, and stood there. I vaguely remember my mouth dropping open and the sound of the rotating fan rustling a legal pad on the desk behind me.

Inside the folder was the will I’d thought never existed, a document Jeb drew up for himself four years ago, six years after we married.

It was a standard draft with a peculiar ending. Jeb had bequeathed all his worldly goods to me, “especially the Eastlake walnut secretary, which I hope she will cherish since it was left to me by my Grand-daddy O’Neil Murdock and holds a sacred and undeniable truth in the bottom drawer.”

I read it again. And again. Sacred and undeniable? It didn’t sound like Jeb. And why couldn’t he have just stated his truth right there in the will? Probably in too much of a hurry to meet one of his redheaded conquests, perhaps the one who misfiled his will.

Furthermore, the Eastlake secretary was a nine foot tall monstrosity with the one redeeming quality of a small amount of burled wood along the upper cabinet edges. Besides that, I’d already cleaned it out and sold the thing to an antique dealer named Nell last summer because I hadn’t entirely cherished it as Jeb had hoped. I in fact loathed Jeb’s Eastlake secretary. One of the reasons being that the now noteworthy bottom drawer, the only drawer, stuck. Actually, the drawer had a small keyhole, and Jeb had always claimed he’d locked it and accidentally lost the key (with Jeb everything was an accident). I’d halfheartedly tried to pop the drawer open with a bobby pin before I sold it, figuring there was nothing of value there.

The stepback, he had called it. Grampy’s Eastlake stepback.

I don’t remember how long I sat in front of the fan with Jeb’s will in my lap, another one of his bombshell surprises. I was smack in the middle of my summer vacation from teaching high school algebra to the brazen juveniles of Deerfoot, Tennessee, and I’d fully intended to spend the weeks enjoying the unfettered company of Clint Knuckles, the new history teacher at Deerfoot High. His mustache reminded me of a thin Clark Gable. And he’d promised me my first official date as a widow that very evening — buttered popcorn and a decent movie at the Hippodrome Theater.

One thing was certain, I fully did not intend to spend my summer traipsing around Poke County looking for some walnut malformation with a stuck drawer. Jeb’s stepback could be in North Dakota for all I knew. Also, I wasn’t certain what he might’ve deemed sacred and undeniable.

Until my eyes wandered toward Jeb’s prized print of Thomas Jefferson on the wall near the doorway.

Sacred and undeniable truths? It was in the Declaration of Independence, Jefferson’s original text.

Goosebumps materialized on my forearms, and I wondered what could ever be more sacred and undeniable than the truth. I suddenly knew how Jeb had chosen his words so carefully sitting there at his desk four years ago.

“Shoot-fire,” I said, and grabbed my Deerfoot directory.

Nell’s place wasn’t listed in the phone book, and I’d driven six miles before stopping a codger at a gas station for directions. He pointed down a worn asphalt road and told me Nell’s was at the edge of Poke County, “the last stop on the shady road to nowhere.”

Three more miles and I saw it nestled between two willow trees, a gray painted farmhouse with one sloping gable in front rendering NELL’S ELEGANT JUNK in bold turquoise letters. Except for a maroon El Camino in the parking lot, the place seemed deserted.

Inside, there was an oak counter holding up an old fashioned cash register and an untidy stack of children’s drawings, dragons with dimples, scales, eyelashes. Crackled endtables were stacked on dusty buffets, sepia-colored pictures hung crookedly on the walls, a couple of loveseats were spread with vintage linens. The only voices came from the back. Maybe Nell, I thought.

I wandered back there ready to explain myself, Jeb’s will, how I needed to make sure there’d been nothing in the drawer when I tossed it out with the wave of an indifferent hand...

That’s when I became aware of my breathing, the muscles in my throat. Jeb’s stepback was crashed facedown on a nine foot stretch of stairs, a filigreed chandelier dangling high above like a spotlight... then I saw the hand, a human palm, slightly open, purple, brushing one of the white painted spindles.

I hadn’t spoken to the couple, a middle-aged woman holding onto the banister’s curlicue and making a feeble effort at lifting the top of the stepback and a scrawny elderly man in an untucked shortsleeved shirt tugging from the top of the stairs.

I swallowed, managed an “oh no,” and grabbed a corner, trying to help lift the thing. “Lift it straight,” I said through gritted teeth. “We don’t want to damage the body.”

“Did you hear that, Hancil? Lift it straight up.” She duplicated my words like a screeching parrot.

I felt the weight of the stepback as I tried to raise it, but the angle was awkward. The outside corners were wedged against some shattered spindles, and there was no way to lift it more than a fraction of an inch.

The woman blotted her catlike eyes with a filmy handkerchief then waved it in the victim’s direction. “It’s bound to be Nell. We live down the road, the trailer. Came in here not ten minutes ago and found her plumb smashed up under that thing. Lord.” She dabbed.

“We got an episode here,” said Hancil. His knees creaked as he stood up, his hands bony wisps on his hips. “Cain’t lift the thing, Rosalie, must weigh nine hundred pounds.”

I felt my face warm and pale at the same time. “Has anybody called the police? An ambulance?” I asked.

The woman’s hair was short bleached blonde and curly. She was dressed from head to toe in Pepto-Bismol pink, a skirt, blouse, and bubblegum colored pumps that looked brand new. She looked up at Hancil with an inquiring mind. He rubbed his day-old beard. “This is not a quiz show, folks,” I said.

“There was no time,” said Hancil. “We thought she might still be alive.” He pinched a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket.

They watched as I got a foothold several steps up, then took a pulse. There was none. A yellowed tag on the back of the stepback read Eastlake, walnut, Plantation: Stepback Secretary, early 1800’s.

Rosalie wagged a finger all over the place. “I told her not to be movin’ this junk around by herself, there was bound to be an accident sooner or later. Bound to be. She wasn’t careful enough, not near careful enough. I told her you got to watch it around here—”

“We got an episode,” said Hancil. He was fighting a cigarette.

I remembered a telephone near the cash register and tripped over an old wicker baby buggy trying to get back. They scurried after me, Rosalie casually looking under chairs, buffets, inside armoires.

The wall phone was black, archaic. I shot around the counter and picked up the receiver.

“Doesn’t work It’s just for looks,” said Rosalie, “Nell don’t have a phone.” Hancil was out on the porch blowing smoke rings. Through the screen door I heard him call out a name. Mary.

I glanced at the drawings again. The top one was of a lone, cute dragon with a cloud of thought. Inside the cloud children were holding hands with the dragon, riding on his back laughing. There was no clue as to the identity of the artist. “Was someone else here, a child?” I asked.

Hancil answered through the screen door. “Nell’s niece. She—”

“I’ll tell it, Hancil!” Rosalie was twisting the handkerchief in a tight spiral. “We were goin’ on vacation, just got packed, then she, Nell’s little niece, rode to the trailer on her bike all out of breath. Said Nell was in trouble, said Nell was plumb smashed up under some heavy thing. When we got here, I knew there was no way Hancil and me could lift it, I watched a half dozen men carry it in here months ago. See, Nell lives in the back of the antique shop and she bought that walnut thing to put in her bedroom, but it wouldn’t fit in the back door so she had ’em take it up the stairs through the little hallway that leads to the back. Trouble was, it wouldn’t fit through that door either, so she had to just leave it there at the top of them stairs.” She took a breath and checked her nails. Pink.

“We have to call somebody, report the death,” I said for what seemed like the hundredth time. “And we need to find the girl.”

The handkerchief fluttered. “Hancil!” He hopped out of the way as she shoved through the door. I followed in her wake of dime-store perfume. “You stay here and wait for the girl while I run to the trailer and call somebody. Uh, thank you—” she said to me.

“Marcy Murdock. I live in town, in Deerfoot.”

“You kin to the lawyer?” Rosalie stopped digging around in her purse and made eye contact with me.

“Late husband.”

“Small world, ain’t it?” I felt her sudden twinge, a connection she was making behind her mossy green eyes. “I believe we can take care of everything here.” She rummaged through the purse. “Hancil’ll wait,” she said as if that were my cue to leave, which I had no intention of doing. Not with Nell lying unattended under my drawer full of sacred and undeniable truths and a frightened child on the loose.

Rosalie brandished a pink rabbit’s foot key chain and was headed toward the El Camino. “Tell the sheriff to bring three strong deputies,” I called.

The body had been removed, and he’d heard the whole story from Rosalie Sikes Timmons and her newly wedded husband Hancil. Sheriff Don Earl Keck paced across the wide front porch of Nell’s Elegant Junk, then propped his black shoe on the crate where I sat. And I was ready. Ready for “There’s no murder here, Marcy,” or “You can go on home to your spy novels now, Marcy,” or perhaps “My, my, my, you do get around, don’t you, Marcy.”

But all he said was, “What do you think?” with what sounded vaguely like respect. I could smell the Juicy Fruit gum he was folding into his partial plate while I searched for an answer.

“I’m worried, sheriff,” I said. Not an hour had passed since I’d seen Nell Hopper’s palm and wrist, lifeless, the only visible sign of her body caught beneath Jeb’s humongous piece of walnut.

He nodded thoughtfully, gnawing the gum while I took the privilege of speaking my mind a bit farther. “First, there’s the question of how, Don Earl. How did it happen? How did—”

“Furniture doesn’t move all by itself,” he said. I agreed. Then he stood up and motioned me to the edge of the porch out of earshot from Rosalie, who was telling Hancil how to smush out his cigarette. Don Earl’s voice was as deep as a toad’s. “That’s what I was thinking, Marcy, but it could have been an accident. Nell could have been trying to move the thing herself—”

“Or somebody could’ve pushed it down those stairs on top of her.”

He bristled. Murder was sometimes complicated, and Don Earl was not a complicated man. Also, he hated being interrupted, but I couldn’t help it. “We need to question the girl if she turns up,” I said. Another faux pas. It sounded too much like an order. I couldn’t help that either.

He placed a thumb in his black leather holster and walked over to the squad car with a bothered look. Rosalie and Hancil were rearranging suitcases, a lamp, an ironing board in the back of the El Camino. “She’ll turn up,” said Rosalie to everybody, holding up a can of something perspiry wrapped in the handkerchief. I wondered if they were still going on vacation.

I could barely see the stepback through Nell’s front windows. It was propped at the bottom of the stairs now, an upright angular blob. No one had been allowed in the shop after the sheriff had arrived, and I hadn’t had a chance to tug on my bottom drawer.

I heard the static of the squad car’s radio as the sheriff put out an ABP on Nell’s niece. “No trespassing, Marcy,” he said before I hopped in Jeb’s truck and drove away.

I remembered my date with Clint Knuckles and spotted my stowaway at the same time. Her small sunburned arms and ponytail loomed from the brown canvas in back of my truck like a butterfly emerging from a cocoon. I gently hit the brakes and pulled under a shade tree on the side of the road. She dodged my reflection in the rear view mirror.

I got out of the truck, checking off my mental list of what else could go wrong today. “Are you okay under there?” I said. “It’s awfully hot. You can ride with me in the truck if you want to.”

I was drumming my fingers on the side of the cab.

She threw the canvas away and sat up, perspiration dripping from her flushed face. She looked down the road toward Nell’s place. “What about Aunt Nell? They get that thing off her?” Her voice was slightly hoarse.

“Yes, honey. They got it off.” I knew better than to ask all the questions reeling through my head. Why didn’t you come when we called? Don’t you know better than to hide in a stranger’s truck, I could’ve been an axe murderer for heaven’s sake? “By the way, I’m Marcy,” I said.

She ignored my offer of a handshake, squinting from a square of sunlight that fell between the tree limbs. “I don’t wanna go back there. You live in town?” she asked.

I hesitated. Not that I don’t like kids. I do. I used to be one. But I did have that date with Clint, and I wasn’t running a babysitting service, and even if I was, I didn’t see anybody handing out five dollar bills.

“Don’t you know where you live?” she said, shading her face with a little hand.

“I do, um, live in town,” I said out of pure guilt, shifting my feet. “You like ice cream?” I added.

She shed the canvas, climbed over the truck’s gate, and said, “I’ll have a popsicle.”

Her name was America Joyce Brumbeck, but everybody called her Merry, like Merry Christmas. And she had just turned eight years old. Other than that she didn’t say a word the rest of the way back except to tell me Ed’s Dairy Cheer had color-change popsicles in Neon Lime, Tutti Frutti, and something I understood to be Mega Melon Fizz. I watched while she slurped and dripped a Neon Lime all over the seat of my truck, then with her sticky fingers tucked strands of light brown hair behind her ears.

I followed her up my office steps noticing the popsicle smudges on her backside where she’d wiped her hands. She plopped down behind Jeb’s desk, pried a folded-up drawing and a key from her denim shorts pockets, and unwrinkled the drawing, leaving her lime fingerprints around the border. Another dragon, this time with sneakers and an umbrella. She found a pen and started to draw, adding ears and claws. Her ponytail moved from side to side as she concentrated, another claw, another scale. The light brown strands fell around her face.

I leaned an arm on the desk. “Nell was your aunt, right?” She nodded, barely. “Where do your parents live?”

“In Ohio. But they’re in Guatemala right now. They do missionary stuff out there. I was stayin’ with Aunt Nell for the summer.” Her nose crinkled.

I began watering the droopy plants on the windowsill. “The sheriff found your mom and dad’s phone number in Nell’s house. He’s gonna let them know you’re safe,” I said. “They’ll be here as soon as possible.”

She sat up straight, tapping the pen. “Ed’s also has Cherry Bomb-bomb,” she said, looking over her shoulder at me with the most soulful eyes I’d ever seen. They were the color of topaz, large, familiar eyes that made me forget about the step-back and the popsicle and my date with Clint. The ponytail bobbed around, and she drew a long snaky tail without looking up. “Aunt Nell’s dead, isn’t she?”

I spilled water on my shoes. “I’m afraid so, Merry. I’m sorry.”

“That’s what I thought,” she said. She was drawing again. The dragon would wear a baseball cap. “I’ve only known her sometimes. My mom and dad are doctors, they go to India, Bolivia, Chicargo, places like that where poor people need shots. You know, vaccinations. When they can’t take me along, I stay with Aunt Nell at her antique shop. It’s always in the summertime.” She printed her name at the bottom of the drawing, adding a star to the end of the y.

I pulled up a stool and sat beside her. “Nell was pretty nice, huh?”

She nodded. “She let me sit by the cash register and draw. She loved all that stuff in there. I did, too. It smelled like the olden days. We played hide-and-seek in there sometimes. She’s got an ugly boyfriend who brings in all that stuff by the truckload. She made him and a bunch of other men put that big old thing at the top of the stairs, you know that big black thing that fell on top of her. She was trying to get it into her house, the back part, where she lives. When that didn’t work, she told ’em to set it at the top of the stairs for now so we could all see how big and beautiful it was. She talked about furniture like it was people. Her boyfriend wanted that big chest for free, but she wouldn’t let him have it. She said she wanted it for herself. Must’ve been worth a gazillion dollars.” Her grin was subdued, fake.

She tapped the pen slowly, thinking. “My mom and dad might let me stay here all summer. I could sleep on that couch.” She pointed with the pen to a sofa in the loft area of my office. This time, her smile went all the way up to her gums. My scowl was minor. She crossed her legs, pink from the sun, found a clean legal pad on the desk, and sketched. Baby dragons followed a big dragon across the page. “What kinda office is this, anyhow? P.I. What’s that?”

“I help—”

“Is it like a detective?” She lifted the pen and frowned at me. I sort of nodded. “Wow. You have a magnifier glass and stuff like that?” Her eyes were two melting caramels.

“Not really—”

“You spy on bad people?” She’d stopped drawing altogether.

“It’s a little different—”

“You gonna find out who killed Aunt Nell?” She swiveled the chair around.

“I thought it was an accident,” I said, cautiously.

“Somebody pushed that thing over.” She swiveled about, unnerving me.

I tried to shrug. “Aunt Nell was probably tugging on a drawer and—” She spun around, one full turn. I stopped the chair with my arm. “What happened, Merry?”

“You’ll let me stay here?”

No, no, no, no, no. The sheriff is coming to get you, he’ll make arrangements for you to stay in some other strange place until your parents can get here. I couldn’t say it. What I said was ten times worse. “Merry, honey, I have to go to the movies with somebody, a man somebody. It’s a date, and, well—” I sounded so foolish I couldn’t finish. Besides that her mouth was starting to pucker. “Okay, Merry, okay. You won’t have to leave here until your parents come. Tell me, what happened?” Now my voice was too intense.

She sighed, started another dragon, this time a tall skinny one wearing polka dots. “They acted funny when I told ’em about Aunt Nell. I rode over there on my bike, and I was pulling on Miss Rosalie’s arm to come help, and she just told that Hancil man to put the ironing board in the back of the car. I rode back to the shop, and they came after me.”

“Where were you when Nell — when the accident happened?”

“At Ed’s Dairy Cheer. I ride down there on my bike every day after lunch for a popsicle. It’s not that far.”

I stifled my urge to count the number of popsicles she’d devoured in an afternoon. “Nell had given you permission to ride down to Ed’s? And she was okay before you left?” I was walking semicircles behind her.

“Yeah.” She was nodding, the ponytail bobbing furiously. “I hid my bike under the porch, then got under a drop table in Aunt Nell’s shop, and they came in there to find me. I said a prayer, then you came in.”

I have to admit I was flattered, being an object of divine intervention and all, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the El Camino packed with boxes, a lamp, the ironing board. Rosalie had said they were going on vacation, and I’d been confused, wondering what kind of original oddball would take an ironing board and a lamp on vacation. “Are you saying they were just pretending to help Nell?” I asked.

She nodded.

“They got all interested in it the minute you walked in.” The dragon wore clown shoes.

“Was Rosalie nice to you, before?”

“Kind of. She’d come in to shop for knickknacks and stuff. Sometimes she’d buy me coloring books and stickers. I liked her okay until today. She called me a name. I didn’t like the way she said it.” She drew little dragon puppets on the skinny dragon’s outstretched hands. “Do you think I’m vinegary?”

“Nope. But I like vinegar. Used to drink it right out of the bottle when I was your age.” She laughed, high and giggly, then got back to the dragon.

I wandered around the office in the same circle, remembering Rosalie’s words after I’d introduced myself. Small world... I rifled through a couple of drawers in Jeb’s file cabinet, but I couldn’t find a file on Rosalie Sikes or anybody named Timmons, then opened the closet door in the loft area and braved the catacombs again, this time feeling nothing but a sense of urgency I hadn’t experienced in a long time.

I hoisted out a box of files containing the S’s and T’s, then shut the closet door with my foot, catching sight of Rosalie Timmons herself strutting up my office steps wearing the same pink outfit hanging off her thin bony frame. Her mouth was set in a permanent frown as she reached the top step. I continued to hold the box.

“I could cause you a lot of trouble.” She shook a finger in my face. “Taking that child off like that in that rickety old rattletrap of a truck! That’s what I’d call kidnapping.” I glanced at Merry, who’d already scampered beneath the desk.

“She’s just fine here with me, and besides, I called the sheriff—”

“Sheriff! He don’t have the right to give you permission to take an unknown child into your home!” I noticed Hancil toddling across the service porch outside. Rosalie stiffened, reminding me of her ironing board, and held her voice low. “She knows me, Miss Murdock, and I will take her home with me now. Merry? Merry, honey-pie?” She proceeded to flit about my loft like a pink mosquito. “Come to Miss Rosalie, sweetheart, I’ve got some dumplin’s on the stove. Is Merry hungry?”

I dropped the box and stood in front of my office door, propping my arms against the door casings. She actually laid a hand on me, trying to push her curly bleached head under my arm. “Merry, I am taking you home!” She shook her spindly fists in the air and stomped her pink shoes to make her point.

“Over my dead body,” I said, fresh out of dignity.

“We’ll see about that.” She glared, then marched down the stairs and out the door.

“We’ll see about that,” I mocked sitting on the floor and rummaging like a maniac for an incriminating file.

“She gone?” called Merry from somewhere over my shoulder. Two little arms wrapped themselves around my neck.

“Gone as a goose,” I said squeezing her hands. She tiptoed to the window and stared out, like a little princess trapped in a castle, waiting, wondering about her future...

Rosalie Sikes’ file, almost five years old was near the bottom of the box in a thick gray folder. I sat on the floor, Merry tapping her pen on the desk, and read a judgment denying an adoption petition on the grounds that “Petitioner Rosalie J. Sikes is not a person suitable for the above task.” The decision was based on a prior felony conviction, referencing case #90-CI-682.

I scribbled the case file number on my hand and asked Prudence Geasley to babysit Merry for an hour or so while I made a little trip to the county seat of Jones’ Fork for a dose of paydirt.

It was late afternoon and the line in the circuit court clerk’s office extended into the hallway. I elbowed my way toward the snack machine in front and saw, of all people, Eva Wadsell, Jeb’s one time honeybun, who just happened to be the new deputy court clerk. She was sitting behind her desk mourning a paper cut, jangling a gaggle of bangle bracelets while an elderly woman in a wheelchair who was first in line complained about the snack machine. No peanut butter nabs. I could see the gray metal cabinets behind Eva with the case numbers labeled on the drawers. I cleared my throat loudly. Eva told the lady to sign on the X, pretending not to know who I was. “I’d like to review a case file, please,” I said with the warmth of an icicle.

“Case file? I don’t recall you being a law school graduate,” Eva said with a smirk, briefly looking up.

“I’m workin’ on a case, Eva. It’s very important. A child’s safety may be at stake.”

“Sorry.” She blew on her paper cut. “You gotta be a lawyer to see a file, and you ain’t a lawyer.” She gave me a quick goodbye wave.

I moved away from the desk flaking an exit and thinking the day Eva Wadsell had an impact on my life would be the day I took up cocktail waitressing on a Playboy yacht. I wasn’t above sneaking or making a fool of myself not if it was for Merry Brumbeck or, in my philandering late husband’s words, “the quest for justice.”

I’d neared the hallway when the woman in the wheelchair backed up, causing a domino effect on the line of people behind her. Somebody rammed into the snack machine and landed on the linoleum.

Eva left her post with a handful of Band-Aids, gooing and gushing all over whoever it was lying on the floor and giving me the chance to do something I seldom do, scuttle like a crab. I got around behind her desk to the cabinet with Rosalie’s case file, jerked open the drawer, pulled the file out, shut the drawer with an elbow. I scuttled back into the hallway, Eva’s bracelets clanging like dinnerbells while she tried to open a Ninja Turtle Band-Aid with two-inch-long fingernails.

I found a quiet place in the hallway and read bits and pieces of a trial transcript, a trial that had been appealed. The felony charge was for first degree assault. Rosalie Sikes had passed a stopped schoolbus twelve years ago and hit a child as he was crossing the street. The child, a boy, lived but sustained a major injury to his femur, causing a noticeable limp. The parents, Rosalie’s ex-husband and his wife, claimed the assault was intentional. The prosecutor had gone into Rosalie’s past, citing multiple miscarriages while married to the ex-husband, and called Rosalie “a childless woman ravaged with spite.” The motive was sheer envy.

I slid the folder next to Eva Wadsell’s Rolodex and slunk down the hallway. Maybe I wasn’t the answer to a prayer after all. Maybe America Joyce Brumbeck was an uncanny judge of human character. Maybe her good sense, her instinct, had caused her to sneak into the pickup truck of a stranger and be carried a safe distance away from someone she felt was untrustworthy. And then maybe, as she said, my showing up wasn’t coincidence at all...

I found a pay phone and called Prudie. Merry had cried in the bathtub over her Aunt Nell for a few minutes, then consumed half a cantaloupe and a hot dog with mustard and was currently sitting in the parlor perusing a box of Russell Stovers. Clint Knuckles had driven by three times or four, Prudie couldn’t remember.

I rolled down the windows in Jeb’s truck to freshen my brain. Poor Merry. And poor Clint. He’d been stood up by the teacher voted Most Likely to Have a Bad Hair Day by Deerfoot High’s senior class. I figured it would be a miracle if he ever called again.

Dark clouds were swelling in the west, and blustery winds had kicked up all over Deerfoot. I couldn’t fathom the train of thought that skirted the edge of my sanity — Rosalie’s insistence that Nell’s disaster was an accident, her reluctance to tell me about the girl, the packed El Camino waiting for takeoff to somewhere, to anywhere she could get away. None of it was enough for a conviction of first degree murder. Rosalie’s fingerprints got on the stepback when she tried to “rescue” Nell. Mine were there, too. She could’ve gotten away, would have...

Thunder pounded the sky, and I remembered something in the antique shop that didn’t fit. Something brand-new.

Gale force wind warnings saturated the airwaves as I made the drive into the far corners of Poke County, back to Nell’s Elegant Junk. I skidded into the gravel drive, avoiding tree limbs blowing like tumbleweed across the road.

The sheriff had strung the entire place with yellow tape and turned on the neon sign, which now flashed a permanent CLOSED. I went under the tape, used the key Merry had found in her shorts pocket, and unlocked the door. One of Merry’s dragon drawings drifted to the floor. I couldn’t chance turning on any fights, but there was still enough daylight left to see Jeb’s stepback where the sheriff had left it. The burly mass stood near the bottom step like a neurosis. But it looked different. The brunette wood had been cleaned and polished, even around the broken glass that stuck in the upper cabinet doors.

I noticed the stairway. Dark smears stained the worn carpet on the steps — but the killer had wiped her weapon clean. No fingerprints, no evidence.

I tugged at the bottom drawer of the stepback, spit out a choice four letter word, and bent down behind the chest, thinking I could reach in from underneath. It was boarded almost to the floor, where traces of bright pink flaked across the back lower edge. Bubblegum pink — the color of Rosalie’s shoes, new except for the dark scuffmarks across the toe of each one. She’d been nearly flush with the stepback when she stood behind it ready to push after she’d somehow coaxed Nell up the stairs, leaving gravity to do the rest of the damage. She’d used the strength of her entire body to push the thing over and had caught her feet just under the back of the chest as it went down.

“Thought that was your pickup out there.” I hadn’t heard her walk in. I moved toward the side of the stepback. The pink shoes stood out in the gloom of the antique shop, pointy bright triangles, with the scuffmarks still on them. Even murderers can’t think of everything, I thought. Rosalie hid her hands behind her back. “It’s such a pity, bout Nell,” she said, her eyes wandering over the stairs. Thunder rattled a chandelier, a stack of china. “Merry okay?”

“She’s fine.” I leaned against the front of the stepback. All I needed were the cotton-picking shoes.

“I want my girl, Murdock,” she said. “I used to be a nurse, and I’m a good friend of Nell’s, a responsible citizen. I’ve met Merry’s mom and dad. I know it’d be best if I had complete charge over her till they can come get her. Hanoi’s gone over to your place to get her now; then he’s comin’ back here to pick me up. I hope to God you didn’t leave that child alone.”

“I know all about the miscarriages, Rosalie. The botched adoption, the felony.”

“I’m appealing that,” she said.

“You also intend to appeal a murder charge?”

“You can’t prove that.”

I glanced down at the shoes, and she shoved me against the stepback so hard it rocked backward, hit a chandelier, and toppled against a bulky upright piano stacked haphazardly with dishes. I scooted around on the floor and pulled myself up on the piano bench. She landed against a sofa leg, grimacing, holding her lower lumbar.

“Was it so bad, Rosalie?” I said, breathless, mad. “Were you so desperate for a child that you had to kill Nell Hopper for the chance to kidnap her niece? Why murder? Why not just a kidnapping charge? Why didn’t you just take Merry and flee?”

Her cat eyes darted around the shop, then landed on me. “Nell had to be gotten rid of and it was too easy. I went on and on over that walnut piece, asked her to show me how the desk folded out. On the way up, I dropped a quarter. She picked it up and... well, she had to be gotten rid of. That’s all. She woulda been the first one to go blabbing to the police. I’m the only neighbor, I woulda had a good half day to get away if you hadn’t come along, nobody woulda known—”

She tried to get up, and I lunged forward, snatching a shoe off her foot as she headed for the front door. She stopped and turned around. “I did not intend for Merry to find Nell Hancil was supposed to flag the girl down on her way back from the store, keep her at the trailer. He botched everything.” Her voice collided with a thunderous boom. “I had a right! It was my right to be a mother, it is not a sin to love a child!” She was hobbling toward the door. “Merry was all I ever wanted.” I watched her shadow limp into the rain.

A flash of lightning skittered across the shop, illuminating the entire room with a sharp white blaze, and for an instant I saw the step-back lying on its side against the piano, shards of porcelain scattered beneath it. A jagged edge split the middle of the lower cabinet, and the bottom drawer was jutting a third of the way out.

I crawled toward the stepback and slid my hand into the shallow dark crevice, feeling a packet of folded papers rubber-banded together. I pulled out the packet, took off the rubber band, and unfolded a set of drawings. The one on top was a drawing of a baby dragon in a playpen by America Joyce Brumbeck, age three, and there were more she’d drawn at ages four, five, and six. Dragons in ballerina costumes, standing on their heads, blowing bubbles. Beautiful dragons. All of them were labeled at the top: To Uncle Jeb.

I sat on the lower stairstep flipping through the drawings, looking for something more. I turned the first drawing over and found a note written in black ink:

I wrapped the drawings back in the rubber band, picked up the shoe, and walked out onto the porch, letting the sacred, undeniable truth sink in. The truth that Merry’s real mom and dad were Nell Hopper and Jeb Murdock, that the folks she thought were her real parents, the doctors, were Nell’s sister and brother-in-law. The agreement.

No wonder Nell had bought the stepback. She’d wanted something of Jeb’s for her daughter.

I was surprised Jeb had fathered a child, not surprised he’d never told me. I guess I’d always been afraid to ask, afraid to believe the possibility existed. My strongest ties with Jeb had always centered around his work, where I’d held up the investigative end of his criminal cases. It was something he’d said I had a knack for. That had been Jeb’s saving grace, his way of making congenial conversation.

He’d also had eyes that could stir you. And that was the real surprise, that I hadn’t figured it out sooner, looking at his reflection in Merry’s brown-eyed gaze.

I drove home through a pouring rain as fast as I could to check on Merry, my stepdaughter. I figured Rosalie was crouching somewhere under a thicket of briars waiting for the ever-reliable Hancil to come to her aid.

The poplars in Prudie’s front yard were swaying like palm trees. The El Camino, still packed, was illegally parked across the street. I wiped the raindrops from my eyes as I jogged across the yard.

“Prudie! Merry!” My knuckles banged against the door just as Prudie opened it holding a crusted bottle of rum. I fell into the living room scanning the house for Hancil, who was sitting at the kitchen table with a case of the hiccups, holding a tall drink of what I took to be Prudie’s triple Long Island Tea. I could tell he was intoxicated by the way he tried to stand up to greet me. Merry was sound asleep on the sofa, Prudie’s striped afghan wrapped around her.

The sheriff was there within half an hour to escort Hancil to the squad car. He slurred claims of being guilty but henpecked, a defense I suspected would not up hold up in a court of law.

Two days later, after the burial, the doctors Brumbeck stood beside their white rental car thanking me profusely for the care of their daughter. “I guess I’m goin’ to Guatemala,” Merry told me; then, “Friends write each other, it’s a rule.” She sounded like a proper schoolteacher.

I bent down to her level. “I’ll always be your friend, Merry, but I’ve got to know one thing. Why do you draw dragons all the time?”

She eyed me, then tilted her head. “Because people are afraid of them. Some people even think they’re not real. But if you find one and get to know it, they aren’t so bad after all, and they can even be your best friend.” She beamed as if she’d just revealed the secret of the universe.

“Really?” was all I could get through the lump in my throat. She nodded and handed me a drawing — two dragons holding hands, each with the letter M stamped on their bulging yellow chests.

Merry waved to me from inside the car while Prudie stood on her porch sniffling and wadding a blue Kleenex. I could’ve sworn I heard her elderly voice mutter, “God bless America.”