Fit To Curve (An Ellen and Geoffrey Fletcher Mystery Book 1) Read online

  Fit to Curve

  an Ellen and Geoffrey Fletcher Mystery

  by Bud Crawford

  © Bud Crawford 2010

  Table of Contents

  Fit to Curve

  Table of Contents

  prologue

  chapter first — sunday

  chapter second

  chapter third — monday

  chapter fourth

  chapter fifth

  chapter sixth

  chapter seventh

  chapter eighth

  chapter ninth

  chapter tenth

  chapter eleventh — tuesday

  chapter twelfth

  chapter thirteenth

  chapter fourteenth

  chapter fifteenth — wednesday

  chapter sixteenth — thursday

  chapter seventeenth

  chapter eighteenth

  chapter nineteenth

  chapter twentieth

  chapter twenty-first

  chapter twenty-second

  chapter twenty-third

  chapter twenty-fourth — friday

  chapter twenty-fifth

  chapter twenty-sixth

  chapter twenty-seventh

  chapter twenty-eighth

  chapter twenty-ninth

  chapter thirtieth — saturday

  chapter thirty-first

  chapter thirty-second

  chapter thirty-third

  chapter thirty-fourth

  chapter thirty-fifth

  chapter thirty-sixth

  chapter thirty-seventh

  chapter thirty-eigth

  chapter thirty-ninth — sunday

  chapter fortieth

  chapter forty-first

  chapter forty-second

  chapter forty-third — monday

  chapter forty-fourth

  chapter forty-fifth

  chapter forty-sixth

  chapter forty-seventh

  chapter forty-eighth

  chapter forty-ninth

  chapter fiftieth

  chapter fifty-first

  chapter fifty-second

  chapter fifty-third — tuesday

  chapter fifty-fourth

  chapter fifty-fifth

  end

  prologue

  Digits stream across the terminal, too fast to register, yellow against the green screen. Grains of sand fill the hourglass, little gold bits pile higher and higher. The genius of the Process is the accumulation of pieces too small for anyone to see. Vigilance, patience, victory. It is almost done. Never forget the risk also accumulates. Vigilance, and the will to defend.

  The terminal emulator is better than the summary window. Everything before your eyes in real time. This batch should wrap up soon. Ah, there! The yellow stream stopped abruptly, leaving just a flashing cursor bar at the top of the screen. Okay, March is done. Click the switch, sharp phht from the monitor, black screen. Orgasmic. But better — you get to keep it.

  chapter first — sunday

  Ellen swung the carton of wine up onto the kitchen counter; it landed with a soft thunk. She set two grocery bags alongside and shook out her cramped fingers. Geoffrey's study door was open, on the far wall of the living room.

  "Is that the Crianza?" he asked.

  "What a gift! You don't need to sniff the cork or read the label, just hear the bottles hit the butcher block. Can you tell me the vintage?"

  "It wasn't supposed to be here until next week. That's great. We can bring it to Asheville, so we're not at the mercy of the local shops."

  "You know perfectly well Asheville has twice as many wine shoppes as Roanoke. Hold on." She walked over to his door. "What's changed here? Your whine's gone."

  "I do not whine, not recently, not ever." He looked over his computer screen at her slim silhouette framed in the doorway, too brightly backlit from the living room windows to see her expression.

  "Now you're not," she said. "But an hour ago, nothing about this trip pleased you. Your acquiescence was thin and sullen and grudging. All of a sudden, you radiate cheer. Tell me."

  He watched her unmoving shape. "You remember Stephanie?"

  "Stephanie. As in Stef-n-Geoff? Stephanie Alden, now, your dancer girl. You know I've never met her." Ellen stepped forward into the room, becoming a little more three-dimensional.

  "You'd like her, really, you would."

  "You've often said so. And I have just as often reminded you, wives aren't required to like old girlfriends. They usually don't, and it's better that way. But, how has she popped up now?"

  "Not now," Geoff said, "tomorrow afternoon. She and Harold are spending their one-year anniversary where they met, at a bed-and-breakfast in Asheville. They're driving up from Charlotte in the morning."

  "Tell me you're kidding. You've built yourself a twisted little fantasy, you're trying to suck me in." She walked over to the side of his desk, hands on hips, looking down at him.

  He did not reach for her. His judgment about some things had improved during the thirteen years of their marriage. "It gets better," he said. "It was you that introduced them, you are the broker of their bliss."

  She leaned in. It wasn't especially friendly. "What are you the hell talking about?" she said, her chin lifting.

  "It was your article for Travel America. They were both recovering from divorces. They'd met through an on-line dating deal, been corresponding for a couple months, thinking about meeting. They each read the article, separately — she was in Detroit, he was in Charlotte. A week in an arty little town, total change of scene, it sounded like the perfect place for their face-to-face. They booked separate rooms at your top-rated joint, the Juniper House. When they met, love fell upon them. The fates had spun then plied their strands into one yarn. And now, a year after, they're going back to celebrate. Tell me you are not moved?"

  "Your fantasy has gone over the top of peculiar." She stood straight. "Or. You set this up." She studied his face.

  "Stef sent me an email yesterday, said she didn't know if she had the right address, was I there? I said, yeah, wassup? I didn't pick up her reply until just now. A how-are-you-it's-been-a-few-years-let-me-catch-you-up kind of note. She told me about how she'd met Harold, about the article. She didn't remember the name of the author, but wouldn't have had any reason to connect 'Ellie Armstrong' with 'Ellen Fletcher.' She apologized for not asking us to her wedding. She's very afraid of you, by the way. I told her we were also heading for Asheville, swayed by that same article. I didn't tell her you wrote it."

  "Totally nuts." Ellen stepped across to the other side of the desk and plopped down into Geoff's deep-thought recliner. "If this is for real, and I'm by no means buying that yet, you're the math guy, what are our odds here?"

  "Actually, I'm a poet. I know I told you about my career and all that. But reaching back to my undergraduate days, I'd calculate it's just life going forward, as usual, against all the odds." He rolled his chair towards her and lifted his foot to rest on her knee.

  "And, what's this 'afraid of me' crap?" She shifted forward in the chair and grabbed his foot in both hands. "What exactly have you told her?"

  "Ow!" he said. "Hurt me and I'll tell Stephanie." She pushed his foot away. His chair rolled back against the bookshelf. "You're gorgeous when you're mad: sparkles of sputtering fury conjoined with the glow of incandescent cute."

  She stood and stepped towards him. "I will promise to do you no lasting harm, if you promise to stop enjoying this."

  "What if I enjoy it a little less?" he asked.

  "There will be scars," she said, "but no organ damage."
She grabbed under his shoulders and pulled him from his chair. He wrapped his arms around her back and lifted her half-a-foot straight up and kissed her. He pressed her lean length against him, enjoying the softness that ballooned here and there.

  They heard the rattling of the kitchen door, and Mimi Allison's voice. "El-len, Geoff-rey, is there anybody home?" Geoff let Ellen slide down slowly. She tugged her red-checkered shirt over her hips and pushed Geoff back into his chair. "Answer your e-mails and your anticipations and your alligator." She turned and went into the kitchen to settle care-taking details with Mimi. Geoff watched the seat of her jeans do a complex figure-eight roll behind the bright red shirttail as she crossed the room.

  ~

  Toni nursed her tea in the Juniper House kitchen while Alistair and Marti sorted the platters and cups. They worked without fuss, anticipating each other's moves. Alistair was six-six, broad and powerful. His stepdaughter was cute and curvy, not small, except next to him. They stacked and scraped and loaded the dishwasher. Marti moved on a plane below Alistair, passing easily under his arms. A two-level ballet, Antonia thought, or one creature with two heads and four arms. If she closed her lids to a slit, their aprons blurred into a pale blob with two long white arms above two shorter brown ones. She gulped some tea and settled back into her chair. Take your fun where you find it.

  She pulled her fingers back towards her wrist, to work the cramps out. Her hands were seized from sanding and oiling the woodwork on the left-hand stairs, after doing the right side yesterday. Boring work; dangerous, even, if you forget that you're always just an inch or two from tumbling down the steps. But it looks so good, the panels and trim, the banisters and newel posts. The wood all slaked and polished and glowing. It had lost luster gradually, the last decade, as the linseed oil finish had dried out. The tung oil should last longer, better had, cost a bloody fortune. She stood and bent down from the waist, to stretch her hamstrings and open up her back. That's better. She rolled up and slid back in the chair.

  Alistair and Marti were done: counters cleared, pots and platters lined up in the drainer, dishwasher ready to run when the guests dispersed. Marti took fresh tea to the parlor, returned to the kitchen to peel off her apron and left, smiling. Off to do whatever she and her pals do. Such amazing skin, soft orangey-brown, but why does she have to show so much? Toni didn't get it. Over the high-heel boots, she wore a tiny little skirt and a tiny little top. Skin above and between and under. Eye-catching show, flashing neon: trouble's here, right over here, help yourself to trouble. When she was Marti's age, it wasn't makeup and miniskirts she craved, it was power tools. She got the guys who also liked power tools, and skipped the ones crazy for eye-shadow and perfume. It was a good arrangement, she'd always thought. Until Ali. His only power tool was a blender, not even guns anymore.

  Marti had already set the rooms for the guests coming tomorrow: the Fletchers, the Aldens, Mr. Ross. With Honoria Staedtler in yesterday, Jerry and Dwight and the Farley sisters new this afternoon, it was a total turnaround, from near empty to near full. Middle of April, that was good. Plus the Herter herd out back. Easier to sleep with Ali when he didn't twitch all night worrying about bills. Course, when there were guests, he'd worry what could go wrong. She was glad she had work to do, a roof overhead and good food. End of the day, share a nightcap with the guests, and curl up around a mystery novel. Wasn't in her nature to worry.

  chapter second

  Two cats to feed, bring up mail, mow and trim enough to keep the house separate from the yard and the yard from the woods. Keeping chaos at bay was the deal with the Allisons when Geoff and Ellen were away. The embarrassing reality was, things would look better when they returned than they did now. Mimi and her husband lived next door, a hundred yards away, across the creek. When developers started buying everything in the township, including most of the Allison's farm, they kept twenty acres around the house and barns. Rich retirees now, still with the equipment and energy to farm two hundred acres. They'd been a blessing for Geoff and Ellen, allowing worry-free trips a dozen times a year, as Ellen researched and wrote her articles. The Allisons, the Fletchers, and a handful of other old farm properties, were surrounded on all sides now by developments, high-end efforts. Which meant old trees mostly were spared, the new mansions carefully tucked in among them. Each house was unique on three to ten acre lots. In lieu of gates and gatehouses, no-trespass signs were posted by the gangs of mail boxes where the private roads hit the state road. There was little enough traffic the signs worked as well as gates, except for the occasional undeterred snoop.

  Geoff lowered his eyes back to the outline of the alligator. Nothing had changed. This wasn't one of those pieces that wrote itself. Poetry never did, of course. But the germs of little lyrics, a phrase or an image, would sometimes come, to stretch and bend into something finished. The alligator was epic in scope and ambition: a treatment of the century just closed, told through life stories that crossed and intersected. A new life threaded in every decade or so, spiraling through the large events of the world. It also had to be a rattling good yarn. The outline had become all-consuming, as his dozen biographies laced through each other, and the century. Only snippets of actual verse existed. As soon as the outline was set, he wanted to believe, his characters would be ready to speak. He was only fifteen years into the job, not so much for a giant masterwork. What puzzled him most was that he never despaired or thought of quitting. Sometimes this worried him, but mostly the enterprise just seemed part of him, like his leg, to be accepted for what it was and got on with.

  He would have to pull off for a month to get his fourth collection of short poems printer-ready. The advance was long-since spent, he had to deliver. Besides, he needed to keep alive his published-poet credibility. But even sooner, he had to evaluate and mark up a satchel full of his students' creative efforts. He had a good batch this year, sixteen juniors at Hollins University, all girls, of course, plus a graduate seminar with two girls, two guys. And a more wide-open class of twenty from Roanoke college, mixed genders, varied talents, varied focus. He'd get the stories and poems and plays marked while they were in Asheville, while Ellen was out gathering material for her article.

  She would like Stephanie, he was sure. Stef was just likable, so open and clear. Seventeen years ago she was, anyway, the last time he'd seen her. She sounded sad, he thought, in her email. Was he reading in too much? It was going to be strange. She'd been his college friend and lover for two-and-a-half years. The first serious adult relationship for both of them. They had thought they were adults, anyway, just like his students now. He hoped Harold was good for her, ten years older, she'd said. Geoff didn't know much about her first marriage. When they blew apart, the end of senior year, they'd stayed apart. But Ellen was right; he was looking forward to seeing Stef. And he wasn't getting any more work done this afternoon.

  He shut down his computer, and went into the kitchen just as Mimi left. "Everything set? You remembered about the keys?" he asked Ellen.

  "Yeah, I gave her two and told her about the one you put under the rock. Carl wants to bush-hog the 'upper pasture' again and spread some more lime and seed."

  "After three years of improving, the grass up there is better than any hay field in the county, and the fence is so tight I can't get through it." Geoff closed the kitchen door. It was beginning to get chilly. "Is he ever going to run cows, or is he just hooked on the preparations?"

  "One milk cow, any day now, Mimi says. He's found a little Guernsey calf that's got his brain dancing with visions of fresh milk and cream, butter and cheese. Mimi tries to get him to think about heats and bulls and breeding, nursing newborn calves, twice-a-day-milking, hauling hay, coyotes, milk fever."

  "Coyotes?" Geoff opened a bottle of Cabernet, and poured two glasses half-full.

  "They're out there, Mimi says. The one point that registers with Carl." Ellen turned towards the little flap beside the kitchen door. Callisto scratched the outside of the vinyl three times, then pushed i
n one front paw, her white-and-orange head, the other front paw, her long body, her back paws, and a long dirty-white tail. She mewed and walked over to sit at Ellen's feet. With a whoosh, a few seconds later, Selassie shot in, hard and shiny and black. He bumped Ellen's leg with his head. "What would you guys think of fresh milk, all warm and frothy?" The cats looked up at her voice. Selassie bumped her other leg. "There's nothing but now, is there?" She mixed a couple spoons of wet cat food with scoops of kibble in the double dish and set it on the floor. Selassie stepped forward and pushed into his half. Callisto circled Ellen's leg, twisting in to rub her backbone the whole way around, then joined Selassie at the dish.

  Ellen took the glass from Geoff. "I got us picnic fixings, for the way down. If we get out of here before nine and have lunch somewhere after the North Carolina border we should be able to meet your girlfriend for tea."

  "I didn't set this up. I didn't." He swirled the clear red wine around his glass, lowered his nose to the glass, like a gentleman kissing a lady's hand, and inhaled. He lifted his head to face Ellen. "Really, it was you, your article. And, really, she didn't know your nom-de-travel-plume. I think it could be a compelling hook for a new piece."

  "I'll ask her, tomorrow. I'll keep my finger on her pulse, carotid artery. The heart doesn't lie." She turned to the basket over the sink, picked out a large yellow onion, pulled a eight-inch chef's knife from the rack, and flopped the big bamboo cutting board onto the counter. She turned on the gas under her pan, splashed in a tablespoon of olive oil and a fat pat of butter. She peeled and chopped the onion. She held the compost bucket under the counter and swept the skins in. "I'm feeding you tonight. Also lunch tomorrow. After that, we'll see."