Part 14: Aunt Toni

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Previously in the Vines Inquiry— Hearing the mysterious bell song again, Frank ventured into the Carlisle Pines to search for a woman he swore he saw walking through the blizzard. Lost and succumbing to hypothermia, he reminisced on the night of Dick’s death before somehow arriving at the Big House.

Frank fidgeted in wet pants, crinkling the trash bag he’d set down between himself and one of his mother’s dining chairs. He pulled the bag back, making sure it covered all the upholstery and received a wary nod from Toni. Neither aunt nor nephew were strangers to Rosalind’s housekeeping standards. 

“I still think you should stand,” said Aunt Toni. “What if it leaks through?” She held her hand over the kitchen phone’s receiver, blocking their conversation from the police station on the other end of the line.

Frank stood and shivered, crouched over the chair and huddling beneath the comforter Toni had pulled from the nearest bedroom. 

“Oh, forget it, Cis. Just sit. Damn her chair. They’ve got extras. Not like anyone is coming to visit them anytime soon. Which, begs the question yet again—what the hell are you doing here?” 

Frank dropped his head between his knees. 

Aunt Toni. Thank god you’re here. 

The eldest sister to Rosalind’s youngest-child neurosis. All three of the Vines daughters looked like they’d been crafted by the same artist, but in different mediums. Rosalind might be pearl or marble, a smooth stone that was tough to crack, but very noticeable once done. Aunt Toni was closer to Rocks. Random edges and rough-hewn with a body that showed an almost religious attachment to CrossFit. His mother was no lay about, but The Firm offered different results than group self-flagellation at the altar of something called a burpee. Frank had never been, but one of his bellhops had made it sound like a full-on cult…

Oh no. 

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“Cis, you look like you haven’t slept since Thanksgiving.” Toni smacked her forehead. “So obviously they made you stay here last night. I swear to god, I grew up in this house and have not missed it a G.D. inch since I left. The freakin’ doors alone. The doors, Frank.”

“The doors…” he sputtered, still shivering. 

“I’m sorry, hon.” She rubbed one hand on his shoulder, trying to spark some heat back into his body. Someone on the other end squawked through his parents’ landline. An odd holdout, Frank had to admit, but it did mean he never had to explain the newest app he barely understood to them.

Toni nodded and ‘uh-huh-ed’ a few times. “Thanks.” She set the receiver back on the wall. “I always want a coin to come out of it when I’m done. Like a pay phone. You have those, right?” Frank tried to think if he’d ever seen a working payphone back home, and then got sad he hadn’t. 

“Yup,” he said. “Tons. Did they say anything about the woman running through the woods? The lungs?”

Aunt Toni shook her head. 

“I’ve only been back six months, but they’re a good group of guys. They’ll find her. The lungs… Your parents aren’t the most popular people in town. Could be a prank. These new little shits, they do a lot for pranks.” Frank thought of the two kids he’d seen burst from the pines the night before. “Damn, maybe it was her. Your Woods Woman.” 

“Don’t make fun!” He was immediately embarrassed at the hurt in his voice. Toni was the cool aunt, and he was supposed to be the cool nephew. At least in her eyes. The one that wasn’t worried about being perfect or happy all the time. Really, Frank just learned early and often that if he and Dick were racing, Francy was never going to win. 

Aunt Toni had been the sheriff on Carlisle since Frank could remember; a largely ineffective role. As the locals knew, or at least spoke under their breath, the island was a dangerous place. Mysterious. “Haunted.”

It wasn’t exactly crime-ridden, but Carlisle sported a relatively-high unsolved death per capita. The only time Frank ever remembered his aunt arresting someone, or ‘solving a crime,’ was after Coach Sunderson got caught buying cigarettes for some sophomores—and even that was only because one of the deputies was on minute forty-nine of his fifteen-minute break inside the local convenience store.

That and Dick’s death.

She’d moved off the island after that. New Jersey or Del Mar. Frank couldn’t remember. Toni had promised she’d call, and she had. But they always ended up talking about the same old things, painful things. At some point when Frank was in college, they’d both let the space between the weekly chats grow and grow until poof. He was thirty and she was cough and now they were here, shivering in Rosalind’s kitchen. 

“Been back?” said Frank. “You moved back?”

Toni nodded. “Maybe six months ago. My old job opened up, and your proud mother called me and said that the year had been really hard on her. Both your parents. I don’t know why, but they said they were really feeling it this year. Maybe because you’re getting old…”

“Eh hmm?”

“…der. But aren’t we all, bucko?” She whistled through her two front teeth, the slight gap between producing an arcing note. Her head followed that same curve as she looked over the massive Vines kitchen. “Do you know where anything is? I don’t know where anything is. A miracle we made it to the kitchen without getting lost.” 

Frank stood and together they looked through nearly every cupboard before finding two mugs. Toni set the kettle on while Frank continued searching for tea or coffee. Neither cared.

Toni fiddled with a dishrag, refolding it. She threw out the trash bag and comforter Frank had been sitting on and put the chair back just-so. Her bluster faded in those moments, instants where Frank guessed she didn’t realize he might be looking. She washed a knife that was sitting in the sink, scrubbing it twice while she talked to him over her shoulder. 

 “I haven’t been up here in ages,” she said, staring out the back of the kitchen into the conservatory. “Could use a little help, huh?” 

 Frank followed his aunt’s eyes, seeing the cracks and dying plants again. At least I know that part was real. 

“Yeah, or yes. Sorry,” he said. 

“Cis, it’s me.” He plopped tea bags into the mugs as the kettle started to scream. Toni gave the knife one more scrub. “You know how she is.” 

While she was laughing to herself, giggling to coat her jab in a spoonful of sugar, Frank saw his opening. Maybe his one chance. He could gab with Harlow all day and night, but no one knew Rosalind and Richard Vines as good as his Aunt Toni. 

“I thought I did.”

He threw his voice down a peg, aching to sound dour. Toni rinsed the knife a final time and hung it on the magnetic strip next to the stove top. She pulled the kettle off the flame and started to pour, both of them steeping. 

He stayed quiet, staring at her with heavy eyes holding back every detail. She finally made contact with Frank and shivered from his glaring, glugging some of the liquid onto the counter. Toni quickly went for the kitchen towel to wipe up the spilled water.

Frank watched it soak into the tea towel as he fell, smelling only bleach. No sea air from where he’d have to jump. 

“I had…an inquiry?” He leaned in, eyebrows arched.

Toni stopped wiping and turned to him, decades of this damn place settling onto her face. 

“What did you just say?”

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