Deadly Memoir

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER THREEMargaret Thackrey

Staring out of her study window, Margaret smiled. Robert was cutting wood as if they faced an Arctic winter, his chainsaw buzzing frantically. Now that she had finished her article and packed it for mailing, she would go and help him. Even back on the farm in East Texas in her youth, she had always loved to cut and stack neat cords of wood. She also had a childlike love of chewing through thick logs with the saw. Besides, she and Robert worked well together, enjoying their wordless cooperation as they meshed their efforts.

She put on her gloves and stepped outside, just as he killed the saw and began stacking the jumble of pieces lying below the saw-frame. As she neared him, he glanced up with a smile.

The wall of wood grew longer, stretching along the back of the house. They paused when the sun was well past noon. “The person who invented the chainsaw deserves a medal!” said Robert. He wiped his forehead on the tail of his cotton shirt. “As one who spent his youth on the end of a crosscut saw, I am in a position to know.”

Meg laughed. “To that I would add the man who invented the electric milking machine. My misspent youth may have strengthened my hands past belief, but I was much happier after we bought a second-hand McCormick-Deering milker. Before we got that, I’d help with milking thirty cows, dash through the shower, hop onto the school bus still damp, and hope I didn’t smell like cows all day at school.”

She chuckled, recalling her frantic mornings in those days. “I’d skip breakfast so I had time for a real, soaking bath. It improved my temper a hundred percent.”

“A bath instead of breakfast—just what I’d expect,” Robert said with disapproval.

“The knout instead of breakfast,” she laughed. “Though it wasn’t the cows that spoiled my appetite for a morning meal. It was the school bus. To get onto it on a cold morning with all the windows tightly closed and half the children aboard unwashed is to turn your stomach. I learned that if I got on empty, I wouldn’t have to throw up into the step-well, which didn’t improve the atmosphere one bit. It didn’t make the driver happy, either.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Much to my disgust, I can’t say it damaged you much. Even at your advanced age….” He ducked the chip she flung at him. “You look great. But you haven’t run your two miles this morning yet.”

“Deadline,” she sighed. “I’ll catch up this afternoon, when we get back from the post office.”

They ate sandwiches and drank fruit juice at the kitchen table, watching the deer come out of the woods behind the house to sniff at the fresh sawdust. Their big ears pricked uneasily at any sound, though the animals knew they were safe in that place, if no other.

Then it was time for the daily trek down to Silverton and the Post Office. Just as Meg was taking the car keys from their hook, the telephone rang. She frowned as she lifted the receiver. It was, of course, her agent. “Got to get that manuscript off tonight,” she mouthed to Robert. “Have to drive to Salem if we’re much later.”

“Margaret Thackrey,” she said.

“It’s Hal, and we need to settle a couple of things about this new contract, Meg. Do you have about an hour?”

Robert grinned from the doorway as she sighed and said, “Can’t we do it by letter? I hate doing business over the phone; it’s better when I can read the details in black and white.”

“Can’t be done. This has to be nailed down with Henry. We’ve done most of the dickering, but he’s going on vacation in two days. And I wouldn’t negotiate with Carver—he doesn’t know a thing except bookkeeping. We do this right now, or we waste two weeks.”

She gave the “stand down” signal to Robert, who grunted and left the room. Pulling her chair around, Margaret took up a pencil. “Okay, shoot. What is the problem, and what do we do about it?”

When Robert peeped into the study again, the sun was getting low. Hal was still talking, taking the contract item by item. Meg shrugged, but Robert motioned toward her pocket and pantomimed putting a key in an ignition. She grimaced, taking the keys from her pocket and tossing them to him.

Her husband took up the packet of manuscript, saluted, and went up the hall whistling. The front door banged behind him. Damn! She had wanted to go along, and now she probably wouldn’t even have the time to run today.

She heard, over Hal’s voice, the sound of the car cranking. It droned away down the tree-lined drive, leaving her to finish her business. When Hal completed the discussion, she checked off the points on the list she had made as they talked.

“That’s that, then. If Henry agrees, we have it correct. Thanks, Hal. There’s somebody at the door. God knows who, for nobody except our son ever comes visiting. Goodbye!”

She hurried up the hall toward the door, where someone was pounding frantically. “I’m coming! What on earth is wrong with you?”

Then she was staring into the stunned gray face of an elderly man. “Mr. Keller! What is the matter? Is Mrs. Keller all right?”

He didn’t reply at once. Standing there, his old hands quivering, his mouth worked as if he found the words all but impossible to say.