“Who did this, Becker?” I said. “Who would kill Francy? How could she let someone hang her up? Francy. She was the gentlest, sweetest woman. She put up with so much.”
George came, and soon someone from the Children’s Aid showed up. I wouldn’t let go of the baby until I had looked deeply into the eyes of the worker they’d sent. She was young, younger than me, but she looked capable and concerned. She had to pry Beth loose.
George took me home to his place and put me to bed in the spare room. I guess I had come apart, a bit, like Francy had done after Eddie bonked John on the head. Although my memory was fine, I wasn’t planning to do any sleuthing for a while. All I wanted to do was sleep.
“You’re on overload,” Cass Wright said. George had called her after we got home. She was my GP, one of the last of the breed that makes house calls. She was ancient.
“You’ve seen too much and your brain can’t cope with it,” Cass said. “Put this under your tongue, Polly. It’ll make you sleep.” “This” was a pill, yellow and menacingly small. “The police said they’d talk to you when you’re ready.”
Not long after the little yellow pill dissolved, I began to drift away, aware that George was right there if I needed him. His hand, which had been holding mine, kind of disembodied itself and started to float around the room like a pale, freckled starship. I addressed the hand.
“There’s treasure in my pocket,” I told it. It patted me gently. “Really,” I said. “Four hundred treasures. Doggy food.” I was gone.
Hours later, when I returned to the land of the living, I felt better, although my tongue felt like a towel.
I went to the bathroom to get a drink of water and stared blearily at my reflection in the mirror. I had a little trouble focusing. “Polly Deacon, Private Eye,” I said aloud. Then I giggled. I guess there was something mildly hypnotic in the yellow pill, unless I was just going mad.
“Polly? That you?” George called from the hall.
“Yup. I’ll be out in a sec.” I splashed cold water on my face and stuck my head under the tap, trying to erase the Don King bed-head I’d woken up with.
I heard George shuffle up to the door and lean against it. “Becker the policeman is here,” he said quietly through the wood. “Are you ready for speaking to him or do you want to go back to bed for a while?”
“No. I’ll talk to him.” I combed out my soggy locks with my fingers and stopped caring how I looked.
Becker was sitting at the kitchen table, nursing a cup of coffee. He started to get up when I came in, which was gallant but unnecessary. Embarrassed, I flapped my hand to make him sit down again.
“Hey, Polly.”
“Mark.”
George muttered something about the goats and went outside.
“Are you feeling any better?” Becker said.
“Some. But whatever the doctor gave me seems to have left me a wee bit stoned. It’s legal, though. Prescription. Don’t worry.”
“I can come back later if you’d rather,” he said.
“No, it’s fine. Really. It’s not as if you haven’t seen me stoned before.”
I offered it as a giggle, as a test, but he didn’t smile. Whatever crashed and burned the night before seemed to be permanent. I could really have used a hug from him—or at least some sign that our night together was at least in his thoughts, but there was nothing. I felt cheap and stupid.
“When did you last see Francy Travers?” he said.
“You mean alive?”
“Yes, alive.”
“I helped her clean up the—mess in her kitchen yesterday. About noon or half past.”
“Did she seem okay?”
“Well, she certainly wasn’t swinging from the rafters at that point.”
“Hey, now. Easy, eh? I’ve got to ask these things.”
“I know. Sorry. It’s stress.”
Becker stared hard at me for a moment, perhaps trying to gauge how tranquilized I really was. My pupils were probably huge. I felt like I was wrapped in cotton wool. Next time he spoke, it was as if he were speaking to a rebellious teenager. He sounded patient, reasonable, with just a hint of anger boiling just below the surface.
“So she was fine when you left her… when?”
“About two o’clock, I guess. And she was still fine when I dropped off some groceries for her a couple of hours later.”
“She didn’t seem depressed?”
“Not at all. She seemed happier than she’s been in a while. She was thinking about ways to get her life back together. She was looking forward to it. Hey, wait. You’re not seriously thinking suicide, are you?”
“It looks that way, Polly.”
“No way. No goddamn way, Becker,” I said. I was getting mad, really fast. “Francy would no more commit suicide than you would. Her father hanged himself. Way back when she was a kid. She was the one to find him. There is just no way she would do the same thing. She saw what it looks like.” Poe, who was listening, ruffled his feathers and shifted uneasily.
“So, it runs in the family, eh?”
“Jesus, Becker. No!”
“She left a note.”
“What?”
“There was note on the table. She confessed to John’s murder, said she couldn’t stand the guilt and asked for someone to take care of Beth.”
“Somebody else wrote it. No way she did. Who was it addressed to?”
“It wasn’t addressed to anybody. It was just there. And it was written on the same kind of notepaper you got your warning message on. I’m surprised you didn’t see it when you found her. We think she was trying to scare you away from being involved.”
I knew I had to stay coherent. I knew I had to remain calm and reasonable, but I was so angry I was shaking. Poe started clicking his beak.
“You—are—so—wrong,” I said.
“Try to accept this, Polly.”
“Try to accept it? Accept that my best friend would commit suicide when she was finally free? Accept that she would write a suicide note and not address it to me? Accept that the police are so fucking stupid that they can be taken in by a planted suicide note and a nice neat answer to the murder of John Travers? I don’t think so.”
“Insulting me isn’t going to help,” Becker said, standing up.
“What is? You want some evidence? You want me to do your job for you? It was Freddy at the dump who did the squirrel thing, Becker. He practically told me so.”
“So, Francy Travers got Freddy to do her dirty work. It’s no surprise. We were on to him.”
“Bullshit. You were on to nobody. You don’t know what the hell you’re doing in this case and you never have. You’ve been trying to pin this whole thing on Francy since it started, and now somebody’s tied it up in a nice little bundle for you and you’re glad, aren’t you? You’re glad Francy’s dead and you’ve got a note to tell you whodunnit. Check out the handwriting, you moron. It won’t be hers.”
“Look, I know you’re angry. I would be too, if it was my friend dead. But you’re still in shock, and you’re saying whatever comes into your head.”
“I am