Philly Stakes, page 7
We settled not only on today, but immediately. She was five blocks away.
I pushed cans back into cabinets and the sofa back against the wall, flicking dust rags and racing in circles with the vacuum, making fun of myself all the while. Alice Clausen was not arriving with white gloves to inspect the premises. She was not a woman who saw clearly half the time, anyway. Still and all, I tidied and made nice. My mother would be proud.
My mother! I had to return her call. But as I remembered that, my own caller arrived.
Alice Clausen was so glazed, my furniture could have been upside down and she probably wouldn’t have noticed. I was surprised she’d found the house. I helped her in, took her mink coat, scarf, hat and gloves, one by one as she remembered and located them, led her to the sofa, poured coffee for both of us and settled across from her in the suede chair. She had classic good looks—fine, quiet features, a delicate frame and straight pale blond hair. Still, as she sat facing me, she looked like a life-sized sculpture. Almost human. Almost alive.
I put on a tape of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons because I believe that baroque music induces sanity.
I cleared my throat. Recrossed my legs. Asked if she wanted another cup of coffee, then realized she hadn’t touched the one in front of her.
“How about a fire?” I regretted the words as soon as they were out of my mouth. Nonetheless, they represented action, a project and more heat, so even though she didn’t visibly react, I fixed the logs and lit them.
Then I waited for a lead. Eventually, I began to fear that we would sit silently through the new year. “You wanted to talk,” I reminded her gently.
She blinked, inhaled, then slowly deflated as the air escaped.
I smiled encouragingly.
“Laura told you,” she finally said. Her eyes filled. She clenched her hands. “I know she did.”
I admitted nothing. I didn’t know what the mother-daughter relationship was, aside from the sorry scene at the Christmas party. Perhaps this was the person who had convinced Laura that she was innately bad. I waited for the point.
“Have you told anyone else?” she gasped out, and when I shook my head, her relief was overwhelming. “Because she—she gets confused.” Her breathing eased, some anxiety dissipating. “Sometimes she isn’t sure if she dreamed something or imagined it or did it.” Her eyes were large and dark gold, the color of good Scotch whisky, but rimmed in red. “I thought she needed help about that, somebody to talk to, a professional, but Alexander…” She slumped into silence.
Her brief burst of energy seemed over. “She’s never seen anyone?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I thought when she ran away, or after the fire—the first one… But he wouldn’t, he—it was an accident. She didn’t mean to, but she was so upset, all the time…” The first fire. I had tried to forget Laura’s history as a suspected arsonist.
I went in search of tissues.
“And I was…” She still faced my chair as if unaware that I had vacated it. “I didn’t… I knew something wasn’t right. She was such a bright, happy child and then…” She accepted a tissue and blew her nose. I settled back in.
“Prying quacks, he called them. Thought it was shameful, getting that kind of help. He’d even get angry at television shows if they had psychiatrists helping people. Turned them right off.”
The doctor’s appointment the day before had probably been Alice’s first session with a psychiatrist. Alexander had to die before she could start to heal. Maybe she’d come calling for both my silence about Laura and validation of her seeking therapy. “Your husband was wrong,” I said. “It’s smart and important to get help.”
Who was I to put the stamp of approval on anything, and who was she to look so grateful and surprised when I did so? It was becoming obvious that Santa Claus had preferred to walk all over his family instead of his lush carpets. Both Laura and Alice were almost mashed flat.
“To be honest…I have a…little problem,” she said.
I nodded, not agreeing, not implying that I was aware of her problem and that it didn’t seem little to me. Obviously, she had no memory of the night of the “lorvely parny,” or of pitching into me. Nor had she been in any condition to notice, as I had, how unsurprised Laura was to see her mother pass out.
“I have…bursitis,” she said.
I had never heard it called that before.
“And it hurts, so sometimes—even the doctor said a drink could help. But sometimes it doesn’t, it takes more, and I…” She studied her hands. She had long fingers and beautifully manicured nails. “Bad nerves, too. I can’t get steady. It isn’t all my fault. I wanted to be a good mother.”
I was trying hard to fill in the gaps between her visit, Laura’s confession, bursitis and her effectiveness as a parent.
“Sometimes I wasn’t…”
I settled back, hands folded across my midriff as if I were Dr. Freud until I remembered that my turf was dangling participles, not exposed ids and mangled egos. Even if I figured out what she was saying, I had no idea what to do with her revelations.
“I didn’t listen,” Alice Clausen said. “I didn’t—”
I interrupted. “Nobody can listen all the time. Every mother thinks she could have done more. Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“I turned away. My shoulder hurt. I didn’t listen.”
“You know, that idea of talking to a trained professional is a good one. I think somebody like that could be very helpful.” I left my shoes on the floor and curled my bare feet under me as a reminder that I was very untrained and barely professional.
“Should I tell him, then?” she asked.
“Tell who?”
“Because if I don’t, maybe it’ll be listed as an accident. Why not? Why shouldn’t it be? Would it matter?”
I tilted my head, hoping for a clearer view of what was going on.
“If I told him, would he keep it secret? Is that how that works? I’m afraid to ask him.”
My neck would only stretch so far, and even sideways, she wasn’t making sense.
“But if Laura rushes to the police, even to your friend, I’d have to do something.”
“Mrs. Clausen?”
“Alice.”
I took a deep breath. “Alice, what are you saying?”
“I have to do something!” She was suddenly agitated. Her expensively kept hands flapped like rags in a strong wind. “I never do anything! I never listen!” She stood up, a reedy woman trembling in the winter light. “She protects me!”
I, too, stood up, at the ready, even though I wasn’t sure what was coming. What would I do if the woman had a psychotic break? My only medical knowledge was first aid and whatever was the residuum of a long-lost summer fling with a medical student. My pulse accelerated as I followed her. She looped around the room, bumping into furniture, hands flailing. I moved a pot of dried flowers to the center of the coffee table, put our coffee cups out of danger in the sink, and picked up the still-unread sections of last Sunday’s New York Times, which she’d bumped onto the floor. She paced and I followed. “I have to!” she said abruptly.
I stopped her, put my hands on her shoulders and spoke calmly. “What do you have to do?”
She gave an exhausted sigh. “Tell them, of course.”
“Tell who?”
“The police.”
“No, wait. We agreed that we wouldn’t say anything to them yet.”
“Laura isn’t supposed to. I have to.”
“Why? What do you have to tell them?”
She looked surprised I’d ask. “That I did it,” she said. “I murdered my husband. Finally.”
I lowered my hands and sat down abruptly. I didn’t believe her, but then I hadn’t believed Laura, and I believed even less that Santa held his breath until he died.
“Laura is so used to covering for me, that she’ll say she did it. And they’ll believe her, because of…” She perched uncomfortably, tentatively on the arm of my mother’s old sofa, as if she might take flight any moment. “Because there was that…”
“Other fire?” When she nodded, I continued. “But you said it was an accident. In fact, I thought both fires were.”
She examined her manicure.
“Well, for the sake of conversation, then, how did you, ah, do it?” The room temperature plummeted forty or fifty degrees. I put another log on the fire, but it made no difference.
“I don’t remember,” she finally whispered. “I was…having a bad night. I was upstairs, asleep, hating him, and then I was downstairs, so angry, and he was dead and I was glad.” She studied her nail polish again. “Sometimes I…don’t remember. Even when I’m awake. It happens.”
“Maybe you woke up, went down and found him already dead? And you were sleepy and confused, so you thought you had done something?”
She shook her head.
“But the news said you were asleep when the fire started. I assumed—a smoke alarm woke you up, didn’t it?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Did you and your husband quarrel?”
She shook her head.
“So for no particular reason, you—”
“I had reasons.”
“Such as?”
“You think he’s so nice. Everybody thinks he’s so nice.” She looked at me darkly. “He was evil.”
“How? In what way?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“So you woke up, went downstairs and—did what?” I made a deal with myself. If Alice Clausen mentioned fireplace pokers or baseball bats or poison or knives or any weapon, if she screamed until he had a heart attack—anything that would have made her husband die before the fire, then I’d contact Mackenzie immediately. If, instead, she said she put a match to him like kindling, I’d maintain my skepticism and silence. “What did you do?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But the police will want to know.”
She shrugged.
I changed course. “If what you’re saying is true—”
“It is!”
“Then why is Laura saying that she—”
“I told you! To protect me!” The arms windmilled. “You don’t understand how it was! You don’t understand anything!”
She was right on the mark. Not only that, but with unrepentant, wobbly confessions from both wife and daughter, I wasn’t overeager ever to understand how it had been.
“Still and all,” I said, “there’s no need to talk to the police yet, is there?”
“What if she does, though?”
“Laura?”
Alice Clausen nodded woefully.
I slumped into a lethargic and heavy confusion. Alice perched like a nervous bird on the arm of the sofa, and we’d probably still be in those positions if the telephone hadn’t rung, breaking the spell.
It was Mackenzie. “Mandy?” I knew from his tone this wasn’t going to be an invitation to party.
“You’re still at work?” Maybe the thirty-six-hour shifts of medical residents are necessary, but why should homicide detectives work that way? After all, their clients are already dead.
“Again, not still. Actually, I’m supposed to be home sleepin’. I’m on four to twelve. Didn’t I tell you? I juggled it around so we’ll have Christmas Eve and Day. Didn’t I give you my schedule?”
“Schedule? You have one? I thought you were indentured.” He didn’t chuckle.
“Maybe real late?” But he was yawning by midsentence, so there went Saturday night.
“What you doin’?” he asked.
I was doing finger exercises on the scales of justice, but I saw no need to tell him.
“Remember that Clausen business?” he asked, idiotically. How could I forget it—even if its players hadn’t been rushing to confess to me? “Surprisin’ thing happened about it just now. A boy, Peter Shaw, called.”
“About…that?” I didn’t want Alice to go on alert.
“You sound weird. Is somebody there with you?”
“Uh-huh,” I said, relieved.
Mackenzie’s voice grew cold. “Didn’t realize you were entertaining. Sorry to interrupt. Get back to your guest.”
“Oh, for the love of—” I gave him three more seconds to fantasize my romantic suitor, and then I opted for honesty. “Alice Clausen’s here.”
With no sound of grinding gears, Mackenzie switched suspicions. “Why?” he demanded.
“For a chat.”
“Sure.” He grew silent, ruminating, meditating, speculating.
“You called because…?”
“Peter. Says he got my name from you. You talk to him?”
“No. But the kids at school remember you from last spring. Besides, nothing about a teacher’s private life escapes them.”
“He hasn’t spoken to you about this?”
“I haven’t seen him since…that night. Why’d he call?”
“You know him, though?” Mackenzie, unlike me, gets the answers he wants.
“Taught him two years ago, if that counts.”
“What was he like?”
“Then? Going through a rough period. Punky, arrogant. Acting out.”
“You think he’s violent?”
I took a deep breath. He had been. Definitely. Also provoked. His father had been an alcoholic who beat up his wife. Peter had intervened, attacked him back, and the father had pressed charges, trying to have Peter institutionalized. Ugly, stupid case that was eventually dropped when the mother filed for divorce. I knew of no further incidents. I chose my words carefully. “He went through a bad time, but it’s long since over. He looks scary with the hair and the muscles and the black clothing, but it’s all adolescent show. Why did he call you?”
“Said he heard I was an okay guy, so he picked me. I thought for a while he was asking me out on a date.”
“Picked you for what?”
“I told him it wasn’t my case, but he didn’t care. He was on his way over and he wanted me. Flattering, I guess.”
“Wanted you for what?”
“To wrap things up with this Clausen business. The kid says he had a fight with Alexander Clausen. Says he killed him. And says he’s not one damned bit sorry.”
Six
MAYBE CONFESSING HAD BECOME TRENDY. I’D HAVE TO ASK MY MOTHER.
What bothered me most was that while everybody seemed ready to be named a murderer, not one of them even mentioned remorse or sorrow about the act. In fact, they seemed chilly and proud of having done the deed.
That made it sound like a group effort, but nobody claimed membership in a club. Not a one of the trio had spoken of collusion or cooperation. Each had acted alone, yet nobody is killed three times.
Either one had done it and two were lying, or all three were guilty of conspiracy and were playing with the truth. Or, and this was my theory of choice because I wanted it so, all three were innocent, lying for reasons I didn’t yet know.
I wondered if anyone had found the missing guest list, or if anyone would even care about doing so now that Peter had confessed.
Alice Clausen sighed jaggedly, startling me. There was something pathetically forgettable about her, a sense that she hadn’t made much of an impression even on herself. “That was your policeman friend, wasn’t it?” she asked anxiously. “What’s happened?” She cringed in anticipation of my answer.
“I’m not sure.” That was the truth, pretty much. Besides, if Alice was confessing to protect Laura, she might react to news of Peter’s confession by retracting her own. Or, worse—if Alice was confessing because she honestly did her husband in—would Peter’s confession let her remain in unpunished, guilty silence?
I didn’t know what to tell her and, more importantly, I didn’t know what I should have told or should now tell Mackenzie. I had made a few side steps, for good reasons, and now my feet were so pretzel-twisted I couldn’t move without falling.
“Did Laura?” Alice Clausen asked. “Tell me. Did she tell him? She promised she wouldn’t, or I wouldn’t have let her out, but…that’s why he called, isn’t it?”
“He didn’t even mention Laura.”
She looked at me suspiciously, then stood up. “Laura’s probably back at Alma’s. It’s too cold to keep walking this long. And Alma’s so busy with Christmas and then they’re going to Antigua, and we’re in their way and…” She began to cry again.
I located the tissue box, patted and clucked sympathetically.
“And of course there’s the funeral…” She blew her nose. “If they ever finish those things, those tests they do.” She paused, and I could almost hear her gears shift again. “It’s so hard!” She shuddered. “Alexander took care of things, not me!”
A part of me registered, with distaste, that she was blindered, drugged, dependent and willingly ineffectual. Not my image of womanhood. But another slice of my consciousness knew that I should stop ticking off a list of character flaws. They weren’t a person. Alice Clausen was, and after watching her synapses wave idly like sea anemones, connecting only by chance, I knew she needed help. And quickly. She was out on an emotional ledge, one foot poised for a dive unless somebody skilled talked her down.
I wasn’t that person, but I could try coddling and the little psychological first aid that I did know. “Let me walk you back to your sister’s,” I said. Once she was settled, I would do my Christmas shopping in one wildly efficient swoop. I thought about the wind-chill factor and the Alice-induced ten-block detour, but realized that aside from humanitarian considerations, I also had no choice on a pragmatic level. If I didn’t help the woman on to her next destination, she’d sit in my living room until she became a nervous fixture, something to be fed and maintained along with the cat.
Alice Clausen looked grateful, embarrassed and suspicious. “I can’t let you…” she said. “It’s out of your way. You mustn’t…” I waited, but she didn’t finish it.
So I armored myself against the great outdoors in Sherpa chic—boots, an extra sweater, coat, scarf, hat and gloves—until I could barely move.
Macavity, the original, definitive “house cat,” jumped onto the sill, verified that the panes were still frosted and returned to the hearth. Smart cat.
