supported an old sofa. Also floral. No car in front of Marta Moye’s impeccably kept house—she no longer drove. A vintage yellow Cadillac was the only thing that was impeccably kept on the property next door.
Marta, who had recently celebrated her sixty-eighth birthday, was sitting on the wicker sofa, obviously waiting for me. Today, she was the one who had called 911, so hers was the story I needed to hear first.
Despite the flowing woven cotton jumper she wore, her usually pale, round face was flushed bright red beneath a halo of pink-toned gray hair. As much with agitation as with heat, I thought. She sputtered as she stood, still clutching her tiny Yorkie, Peanut, against her ample breasts.
“That…that…man…urinated on my hedge!” she shrilled the moment I set my foot on her porch.
That man was Larry Hayes, the proprietor of the Antique Attic and Marta’s senior by at least a decade. I glanced at my watch knowing that, these days, Larry opened the Attic closer to noon than ten. That was, when he bothered opening it at all. I shook my head slowly, thinking that his retirement hours were leaving him plenty of time for his feud with Marta.
Rumor had it that there was a good reason that the break in the fence between their backyards had remained unrepaired for decades. Scandalous, the usual local gossips maintained. Such carrying on—especially at their age! And they wondered if the affair had been going on before Marta’s husband had died and Larry’s young wife had deserted him.
But a month earlier, on my first official visit to the two frame houses, I’d noticed that the passageway had been crudely repaired—on both sides of the fence. A neat square of latticework on Marta’s side. Mismatched scraps of lumber on Larry’s. And the same ladies who had been happily outraged now happily discussed the inevitable consequences of “that kind of behavior.”
The feud between the two seemed to be escalating. In the past week, their calls to 911 had almost become a daily event. Most of them in the morning, when the two seemed to take particular pleasure in annoying each other. Usually, I tried to be patient. I liked Larry. I liked Marta. But today, with the memory of a root-ensnared skeleton fresh in my mind, their complaints were particularly irrelevant.
Twenty minutes later, after taking enough notes to keep Marta happy, I climbed the steps onto Larry’s front porch. He looked utterly relaxed as he sat on his battered floral sofa, sipping extra-sweet iced tea. He was dressed in slim jeans, aged and bleached to a soft blue, and a short-sleeved shirt in a shade of pearl-pink. The V of the shirt revealed a turkey neck and a curl of white chest hair. Given the proximity of their yards and Marta’s volume as she’d spoken with me—and assuming that Larry had turned his hearing aid on—there was no doubt in my mind that Larry had heard every word of her complaint.
Difficult to know if it was friendship or anticipation that brightened Larry’s face when he saw me, but it prompted him to offer me tea from a nearby pitcher. When Katie and I were younger, Larry’s tea had ranked as one of our favorite beverages, though I’d probably had gallons to her quarts. I drank it to wash down the peanut-butter-and-cheese sandwiches that Larry and I ate while we sat in his battered, flat-bottomed boat and fished for anything that’d bite.
Katie had hated fishing. Hated, she’d said, to see defenseless things die. Not just the fish we caught, but even the worms that baited our hooks. At the time, I’d thought that odd. I still did, but for a different reason.
Today, as usual, the aluminum pitcher was stacked with ice and sparkled with beads of condensation. I was hot, sweaty and sorely tempted. But I’d turned down Marta’s lemonade just minutes earlier, so I couldn’t accept a cup of tea from Larry. There’d be no end of trouble if I appeared to be taking sides.
“Thanks, but no,” I said.
I perched on the porch railing just across from the tanned, skinny old man. I spoke in a normal voice and judged from his posture and expression that he was having no problem hearing this morning. A change from the visit I’d had to make a few days earlier, when I was sure he’d deliberately turned his hearing aid off. And he’d made a point of keeping his bad ear turned toward me.
“So, tell me, what’s going