Eine Kleine Murder by Kaye George Page B

at a tear. “She must have tired out.”
    â€œI have to say, though,” put in her husband, “I was shocked to hear Ida drowned. I never would have thought that she …”
    I wouldn’t have, either , I wanted to scream.
    â€œWhat a character your grandmother was.” Al sipped his iced tea, then rose and paced while he talked. “Right after she moved in, her water line started leaking and her water had to be shut off for a couple of days before someone could get out to fix it.”
    â€œOh, yes,” said Grace, watching her husband walk back and forth in the small kitchen. “I remember that. We offered our shower to her, and the sink to wash dishes. She could even have slept on the couch if she wanted.” She threw a glance at Al, who still paced. “But she insisted on staying in her cabin. She hauled water in a bucket from the campground shower across the road. Bucket after bucket. She was tough.”
    â€œYes, she was,” I said, feeling anew the raw void she had left. A dark space. Would it ever fill with light? “I wonder what happened to her telephone? It doesn’t seem to be working.”
    â€œThat’s strange. I’ll look at it tomorrow,” said Al. “You live in Chicago, right?” He scraped his chair back to lower his long body and resume his seat, and his sweet corn.
    â€œNear Fullerton and Racine.” I had to have one more ear and busied myself buttering and salting it.
    â€œThat’s quite a ways from here,” he said. “Do you think you’ll keep the cabin?”
    â€œGram left it to me. At the moment I think I’ll keep it. It’s lovely here and would be a good place to do my work.”
    â€œWhat kind of work?” asked Grace. “I thought you were in school.”
    â€œYes, I’m teaching piano and working on my master’s degree at DePaul University. I write music, too. In fact, I’m composing a piece for my degree. This would be a good place to finish it.”
    â€œAl is a retired English professor,” said Grace. “He used to teach at DePaul several years ago.”
    â€œQuite a few years ago,” he added. “It was one of my first teaching jobs.”
    We chatted about the changes at DePaul for awhile and I learned the Harmons were both avid readers and made weekly trips to the library in Moline. He had become hooked on fishing since his retirement, and she had recently taken up studying wildflowers and herbs, and was doing experimental cooking with them.
    As I ate another ear of sweet corn, the Harmons talked of local happenings for a bit. The way they picked up on each other’s conversation, Grace and Al went together like a violin and bow. I caught a phrase Al used, “before the lake.”
    I licked some salty butter off a finger. “Hasn’t it always been here?”
    Grace told me it was man-made. “This lake is a strange phenomenon in this flat cornfield country, isn’t it?”
    â€œI sure remember the stories about when they made it,” Al said.
    â€œAnd the controversy,” added Grace. She leaned forward over the table. “There was a regular feud between the factions. It lasted for years.”
    â€œToombs’s father,” Al said, “was totally against it. Now Toombs makes his living off it. The idiot.” Al’s face mottled at the thought of Toombs. His sudden, hot anger alarmed me.
    â€œYes, there was bad blood between his whole family and the Greys.”
    â€œIt was built,” said Al, “when they made the highway that goes through the middle of Alpha. That small two-lane road doesn’t look like much, with all the interstates and cloverleaves they build today, but it was a nice road when it was first made. The stream was dammed up to provide water for mixing concrete. That’s what created the lake.”
    â€œAh, so the half-moon shape is because of the shape of the valley,