And we waited. I checked my watch: ten-fifteen, right on time. Heather rang the bell again. Another half minute passed, and then Lillie opened the door. “Oh,” she said through the screen of the storm door, looking surprised, “you made it after all.”
“I’m sorry?” said Heather. “Are we late?”
Lillie’s brow furrowed in thought. “Weren’t you coming at nine-fifteen?”
Heather and I glanced at each other. I said, “My apologies, Lillie. There must’ve been a mix-up. May we come in?”
“Please do,” she said, swinging the outer door. “How rude of me.”
Entering, we stepped directly into the cramped living room. Lillie had already met me in Mother Hibbard’s office on Tuesday afternoon, but not by name, so I introduced myself. And although Heather had phoned Lillie to set up today’s meeting, I extended the courtesy of introducing them as well. Heather hugged Lillie. Then Lillie hugged me. She wore a strong fragrance, which I found odd in the middle of the morning, but I reminded myself that she was welcoming guests into her home. Her scent was rich and assertive, with notes of something exotic, perhaps Far Eastern.
“Please make yourselves comfortable,” said Lillie, stepping farther into the room with us. Heather and I settled on a lumpy brown sofa pinned with white lace doilies. Lillie sat in a spindle-back maple dining chair, turned out from a tiny table for two. I noticed a small crucifix hanging above the table. And the entire space was infused not only with Lillie’s perfume but also with the aroma of something baking, something sweet and distinctive. Unless I was mistaken, it involved coconut.
Lillie said, “I hope you’ll forgive the way I look.”
I thought she looked fine—a bit too prim, as usual, but nicely dressed and perfectly groomed.
She explained, “I’ve been crying. I still can’t believe what happened—to David.”
“Oh, Lillie,” said Heather, moving from the sofa to hunker near Lillie, grasping her hands, “I’m sorry for your loss. I’m afraid I didn’t know David, but I’ve heard he was deeply loved by many friends.”
“Yes”—Lillie sniffled—“he was deeply loved. Thank you, Dr. Vance.”
“Now, now. You must call me Heather.”
“Thank you, Heather.”
Rising from her crouch, Heather straightened her skirt and returned to sit next to me on the sofa.
Lillie sat looking quietly at us, as if studying us. She blinked away a tear as the trace of a smile turned her lips. She said, “The two of you make such a lovely couple.”
While Lillie was off by a mile, I could understand why she might perceive us as a couple—we were both in our thirties, both young professionals approaching middle age, both sharing a certain sense of style that probably did look good together. I told Lillie, “That’s a sweet thing to say, but we don’t want to give you the wrong impression. You see, I’m gay.”
“Oh, I know that,” said Lillie. “You’re married to that other architect, Mr. Miles.”
Heather said, “And I’m pretty much wed to my work these days.”
Lillie chuckled. “I suppose I should’ve said: the two of you would make a lovely couple. Don’t you agree, Heather, that most gay men are just perfect gentlemen?”
Awkwardly, Heather replied, “Well, this one is.” She patted my arm.
I had worried that the underlying purpose of today’s conversation would be difficult to broach, requiring great delicacy, but Lillie had flung the door open, so I stepped right in, asking her, “Your friendship with David was special, wasn’t it?”
She didn’t flinch. “It certainly was. I thought of him as more than a friend—more like a soul mate. Losing him, it’s like part of my heart was torn away.” Pain gripped the features of her pallid face. Her fingers blanched as she clenched her hands.
I offered condolences before asking, “Did David consider you a soul mate as well?”
She stiffened. “No. I don’t believe he did.”
“How could you tell?”
“A woman knows, Brody. A woman always knows when a man wants his distance.”
“Did he tell you that?”
“Of course not.” Lillie flashed me a telling grin. “David was a perfect gentleman.”
I gave Heather an inconspicuous nudge with my elbow. The next question needed to be asked by a woman.
Heather picked up the cue. “Lillie,” she said, “I know how it is to fall for a gay guy—it happened to me once, back in college. I was lucky. I learned my lesson. Neither of us got hurt, and we’re still friends—well, Christmas cards and such. So I know about those ‘special friendships.’ There’s a lasting and difficult bond: she wants but fears closure, while he feels flattered but sympathetic. Not easy, but better than nothing. Does this sound familiar?”
Lillie closed her eyes and gently folded her hands in her lap, taking a few deep breaths. When she opened her eyes, they seemed clear and bright.
“When I was young,” she began, “fresh out of high school, I married a boy because he got me pregnant—not a match made in heaven, and we both knew it. A few months later, he ran off. A few months after that, my baby died in childbirth. I was devastated—about my baby boy—but I felt nothing but relief that my husband was gone. Never tried to find him. He was no gentleman. So after a while, I divorced him in absentia on grounds of abandonment. And that was that.”
Heather said, “I had no idea …”
“Why would you?” asked Lillie. “So at least I have the slim comfort of not being, in common parlance, a ‘spinster’—I was married, and I had a son.”
I felt compelled to ask, “What was your son’s name?”
“Harrison. Not very original—Harrison Ford was on a roll back then.”
I said, “That was around the same period when I was born. I went to school with a couple of Harrisons.”
“Kids at school, I thought they’d call him Harry … but he never…”
After a respectful silence, Heather reminded her, “We were talking about ‘special friendships.’ With gay men?”
“Ah! We were.” Lillie rattled her head. “Everything’s crazy lately. The whole world’s confused. Or is it just me?”
I assumed her question was rhetorical. In any event, I didn’t answer.
She continued, “I have a younger brother who has a large family in Green Bay, four kids, all grown now. But when the kids were young—this was a few years after Harry died—I helped out a lot because their mother worked. So I was sort of their nanny as well as their Aunt Lillie. And they’re all wonderful kids. But the youngest was special, always the perfect little gentleman.” Lillie smiled at the memory.
My eyes slid toward Heather, who glanced toward me as well.
Lillie continued, “Being the youngest of four, Davie—that’s his name—he didn’t grow up having the same burdens of expectation from his parents. The older kids, they were all supposed to perform, to measure up, as if their parents needed to prove something. Which is all well and good. But by the time Davie came along, the pressure was off, and as he grew into a young man, he could be himself, so to speak.”
Heather mused, “Something tells me Davie turned out gay.”
“He did. He came out in high school, which seemed pretty amazing at the time. But now, I understand, kids come to grips with this even younger.”
“Some do, yes,” I assured her.
“Davie was always my favorite of the four. I shouldn’t say that, but it’s true. And when the time came for him to tell his secret, he shared it first with me. To this day, we have a ‘special friendship.’”
It did not escape me—and I assumed it had not escaped Heather—that Lillie’s pet nephew had the same first name as David Lovell. Finding this more than a little troubling, I asked Lillie outright, “Did you have the same feelings for your nephew as you had for David Lovell?”
“Well, no,” she said, horrified. “Davie was a child. And I’m his aunt.”
Heather said, “To be clear about this, Li
llie—how, exactly, would you describe your feelings for David Lovell?”
More calmly than I expected, Lillie explained, “David Lovell wasn’t a child; he was a man. I wasn’t his aunt; I’m a woman. He was a perfect gentleman, and I was desperate to know his love.”
“But he was gay,” said Heather.
“Love conquers all,” said Lillie.
“Oy,” said I.
Coconut was in the air, smelling toasty and sweet, drifting from the kitchen.
Heather asked Lillie, “Are you baking macaroons?”
Lillie nodded. “Don’t you love them? Ever since I was a little girl, I’ve considered them a special treat. Growing up in Wisconsin—plenty of pines, no palm trees—coconut always seemed exotic. Still does.”
“Do you make them often?”
“Whenever my fancy strikes. This morning, when I thought you’d missed our meeting, I figured: put the time to use. So I made a batch. It’s pretty simple.”
I said, “I believe you took some to David on Wednesday—at the church—correct?”
“I did.” She smiled. “David loved my macaroons, so I always brought a fresh batch to our lessons.”
Heather said, “So he’d eaten your macaroons before.”
“Heavens, yes. Many times. Wednesday, when I pulled the covered dish out of my tote bag, he ate a couple on the spot.” She laughed, recalling, “I wondered if there’d be any left by the time I got back.”
I asked, “Why did you leave?”
“I had office mail to take to the post office. There’s usually nothing urgent, but that day there was a large payment on an insurance policy—property and liability. Mother Hibbard asked me to send it by registered mail. I wanted to make sure it would go out with the afternoon dispatch, so I took care of it before my lesson. By the time I got back to the church, well … you know what happened.”
I thought, That’s easily checked, the story about sending registered mail.
I said, “David’s brother, Geoff Lovell, told us he went to the church that afternoon to talk to David. He said he was there when you brought the cookies. Did you see him?
Lillie paused. “There was someone there, yes, but I didn’t pay much attention. During the day, people come and go—the church is open.”
Ding.
Lillie stood. “The macaroons are ready. Care to try them?”
Silly question. After sitting there smelling them for some twenty minutes, on the verge of drooling, I felt ready to pounce—and I thought of Mister Puss reacting to a whiff of beef tenderloin, purring, pacing, nearly dancing at my feet. I told Lillie, “Sure.”
Leading us into the kitchen, she said, “You’re supposed to let’m cool awhile, but why wait? Just blow on’m.”
Lillie’s little kitchen was tidy and efficient, a galley with steel cabinets that I assumed had a white factory finish, originally, but had subsequently been brush painted by various occupants of the house. They were now a light pink—chipped and forlornly outdated.
Heather and I needed to huddle at the far end of the galley, by the refrigerator, while Lillie bent down to open the oven door. Over her shoulder, she asked Heather, “Could you get some saucers from the cupboard? Napkins are in the drawer below.”
Heather leaned and whispered to me, “Look for nuts.”
We quietly opened and closed as many cabinets as we could reach, rattling a few dishes as Lillie slid the cookies from the baking sheet to a wire rack that clattered on the sink’s porcelain drainboard. “There,” she said, turning to us as we handed her the saucers and passed the napkins around, “these are looking splendid. Careful, though—still steaming hot.”
We stood in a tight circle, blowing on the sticky cookies we pronged in our fingers, nibbling at the golden, crusty outer shreds of coconut, cooing at the utter decadence of the combined taste and texture and aroma. The distinctive scent conjured in my mind the warmth and breezes of a beach in Hawaii.
Heather told Lillie, “These are flat-out delicious. Are there nuts in them?”
Lillie shook her head, licked her fingers. “No nuts in macaroons.”
“I didn’t think so,” said Heather. “Only reason I ask is, we’re trying to figure out exactly what happened to David, and we wonder if maybe he ate some nuts.”
Lillie set down her saucer. “No, I’m sure that wasn’t the case. You see, he was highly allergic to nuts—everyone knew that.”
“That’s what I’ve been hearing.”
I said, “Lillie, your macaroons are the best. Could I possibly take a couple home to share with my husband?”
We were sent on our way with a round of hugs and a wad of warm cookies wrapped in waxed paper. Walking from the house to the car, I passed the cookies to Heather, suggesting, “Compare them to the macaroons you took from the church.”
“Got it.” She dropped the bundle into her purse. “So? What do you think?”
“I think she wears too much perfume.”
Heather laughed. “Yeah, I noticed that. It’s Shalimar—I’d know it anywhere. My mom always wore it. Still does. She calls it ‘the perfume of temptation.’”
“Scary thought.” But I was mulling another thought, scarier still, regarding Lillie’s repeated forgetfulness:
On Wednesday afternoon, Lillie had to be reminded to take the mail from Mother Hibbard’s office. This morning, she forgot the correct time of our meeting and then drifted off-topic several times during our conversation. And yesterday, Geoff Lovell described her as ‘ditzed out’ when he’d seen her in the church. All of this made me wonder if Lillie could have forgotten that her macaroon recipe never included nuts. More important, could she have forgotten that David Lovell was allergic to nuts?
And finally, the scariest thought of all: What if Lillie could not forget David’s snub of her advances—and deliberately killed him?
Chapter 7
Sitting in the passenger seat of Marson’s Range Rover seemed like an embarrassment of spaciousness—compared to the passenger seat of Heather Vance’s roadster, in which there was so little room for my feet, I needed to pull my knees up to my chest. After my morning meeting with Lillie Miller, Marson had driven me to a lunch meeting with clients in an industrial park out near the highway, and on our way back into town, I spotted one of those big-box pet stores in a strip mall. I asked my husband, “Mind if we stop here?”
“Whatever for?” he asked with feigned innocence.
Once inside, Marson browsed the pet dishes, dismissing all of them as “hideous,” while I headed down another aisle in search of a more suitable harness for Mister Puss.
There were plenty resembling the gaudy fabric vest that Mary Questman had been foisting on her cat—with no success at all. What I had in mind, however, was something much simpler, more classic, and above all, more complementary to Mister Puss’s regal Abyssinian manliness. (Yes, I was perhaps overthinking this.) Fingering through a rack of unpromising choices sized for small dogs and cats, I was growing discouraged when, aha, hiding behind a particularly ugly specimen that was padded with synthetic plush lining and upholstered in reflective hazard-orange nylon—there it was! I lifted the display hanger reverently from the rack, as if finding the needle in the haystack, the Holy Grail. Consisting solely of thin strips of tanned leather with brass buckles and fittings, it reminded me of a horse’s bridle.
Finding a matching leash proved far easier than finding the harness itself. There were many basic leashes—hand loop at one end, clip at the other. I chose one in tanned leather with brass rivets, about three or four feet long.
By then, Marson had collected an armload of treats and toys. After checking out, we returned to his SUV and headed back to town.
We were planning to visit the construction site of our new house that afternoon, but it was still early—Clem Carter, our contractor, wasn’t expecting us until two—so we decided to go home first and look in on our guest. That morning was the first time Mister Puss had been left alone at the loft.
As
we entered through the back door, the loft was quiet, save for the hum of the refrigerator. I called, “Mister Puss?”
We set our purchases on the kitchen island and walked into the main space. Looking for the cat, I spied him on the top step of the spiral staircase, yawning.
Marson laughed. “He seems to have settled in. Bet he found the sunny spot on the bed, under the skylight.” Marson had a habit of making the bed with military precision, tucking the covers taut, but he didn’t seem at all bothered by the notion that a cat had whiled away the morning sprawled in the center of the duvet.
“Begging His Majesty’s pardon,” I said, “but we come bearing gifts.”
Mister Puss shook himself awake, then trotted down the stairs.
Marson said, “I wonder if this stuff really works.” He opened a small plastic canister of catnip, took a goodly pinch of it, and grinding it between his fingers, let it fall to the concrete floor at the base of the stairs.
Mister Puss approached it with interest, giving it a close sniff. He sneezed. Then he rolled in it.
I said to Marson, “Easy. We just got him awake.” I scooped up the cat and whisked the herbal debris from his snout. He was purring loudly as I grabbed the bag containing the new harness and leash. I singsonged to him, “I think you’re going to like this.”
Stepping into the living room, I sat on the low table and set the cat next to me. I slid the contents of the bag onto the table, telling Mister Puss, “If you can learn to use this, we can take you out and show you off.” The purring stopped.
Marson chuckled. “Good luck with that.” And he headed upstairs to freshen up.
I lifted the cat’s chin with my fingertips and looked into his eyes. “I know you don’t like the harness Mary got for you, and I don’t blame you. It’s not your style at all. But I found something that’ll be quite handsome on you. Shall we give it a try?” I rubbed behind his ears and stroked his back. He was purring again, though it was soft and tentative.
“That’s better,” I said. “Trust me, if you don’t like it, it’s gone. Now, stand up—all fours.” He complied while I examined the harness, figuring out what went where. Then I got him into it and buckled him up. “Very nice,” I said, setting him on the floor. “Very nice.”
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