by Diane Capri
“Miss Andy? Not really. I hadn’t spent any time with him in years.” She said this lazily, without rancor. Maybe she was taking tranquilizers. Her affect was so flattened, her response time so delayed, that she must have been taking something.
I gently pulled all ten of Cary Grant’s claws out of my left thigh, and he just as gently hooked them back in my right thigh, making holes through which my patience was leaking out.
I stood up and walked around the room. Curiously, there were no photographs of Andy or Deborah anywhere. There was one formal portrait of their three children hanging over the fireplace. The portrait was several years old.
“I guess I thought you two had been together more since you became empty nesters, but Andy’s job probably took him away quite a bit,” I said.
“Andy had been away quite a bit, as you put it, all of our lives. When the children left home, that reduced the number of excuses he had to make.” Deborah stood up now, too. “Would you like a cup of tea?”
As an excuse to get away from the fur lap robes, I accepted. We walked into the kitchen, Deborah still carrying Caesar Romero. A trail of cats followed behind me. How many were there? I’d stopped counting at twenty.
In the dark kitchen there were six chairs, none of them empty. I remained standing.
Looking out the windows, I saw that the boat in which Andy died was still tied up at the dock. I’d thought it would have been impounded and removed by the crime scene investigators.
But this was a break for me. I’d walk down there after I’d finished with Deborah.
I returned to the living room, where I retrieved the tote bag containing my camera and slung it over my shoulder.
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Tampa, Florida
Saturday 11:30 a.m.
January 29, 2000
WHEN I ENTERED THE kitchen, Deborah had managed to fill the tea kettle. I watched as she opened the cupboard. Another cat perched on top of the plates stored on the cabinet’s bottom shelf.
“Dean Martin,” Deborah chided, “I’ve been looking for you.”
She petted his head, but didn’t ask him to move, then removed two lovely antique china cups and saucers of different patterns.
She left the cabinet door open. So he could see us, I guess. Deborah walked around the kitchen collecting the tea things as well as a box of what the English call biscuits and I call crackers. She set them all on a beautiful old silver tray with a silver tea service.
All this she accomplished with one hand, while still holding one or another of the cats. Cats occupied every available space, every cabinet she opened, every flat surface I could see.
Finally, Deborah finished the tea service and was forced to put the cat down to carry the tray. “Shall we go out onto the patio? It’s lovely out this morning in the garden.”
After I had moved Robert Mitchum off the chair I wanted and Deborah had convinced Grace Kelly to let us put the tray down on the coffee table she was sunning herself from, I quickly picked up my cup and held it in my lap.
Robert Mitchum eyed me from the floor right by my feet. It was a little difficult to maneuver the cup and plate, eat the stale crackers and keep an eye on Robert Mitchum while investigating murder. I realized the absurdity of the situation, but I didn’t know what to do about it.
“Haven’t you been lonely out here by yourself all these years, Deborah?” I asked her.
I felt more than a little ashamed that I hadn’t kept in touch with her. One can never have too many friends and I’d always liked Deborah. She badly needed a human friend.
A wave of shame washed over me then, as it always does when I know my behavior would have disappointed my mother. I could do better. Most of the time, I try. It’s irrational, at my age, to feel I’m disappointing a mother who died half my lifetime ago, but the emotion was visceral now.
Deborah allowed a smile to light up her face. “Not really. I have all my cats to keep me company, and you can see it’s hard to get lonely with them around.”
Then, the smile drifted away. “Besides, I’ve felt like a widow for years. In my heart, I buried him a long time ago.”
Completely nonplussed, I blurted out the first thing that popped into my mind. “Do you mean you’ve been having an affair?”
She laughed. “Only with Cary Grant and Robert Mitchum here.” Then, she sobered quickly. “Sex has never meant that much to me, or to Andy. It’s never been worth it.”
I didn’t understand her meaning. “Worth what?”
Instead of answering me, she asked a question of her own. “Did I ever tell you how I got Andy to marry me?”
Without thinking, I almost asked her the question I’d had since the day Craig Hamilton was shot: why she’d wanted Andy to marry her and whether she’d been glad he did, but I just shook my head.
She looked dreamy, as if she was remembering her childhood’s happier times. “I was the lonely little girl next door. Andy never paid me any attention at all, but I was in love with him from the time I was five years old. My own parents were dead. I was always at Andy’s house and his parents became very dear to me.” I itched to find my recorder in my tote bag, but I didn’t want to interrupt her.
“Albert, Andy’s dad, was my special favorite. He was disabled, you know, in World War II. He operated an old country store at the crossroads of nowhere and back, and I helped him out after school. When he didn’t have any customers, he’d tell me stories about our town, the war, and Andy. How he loved his son!”
She offered more weak tea and stale biscuits. I took both, just to keep Robert Mitchum off me. The real Mitchum hadn’t had as much trouble with women, I’m sure.
“Anyway, I was determined to marry Andy and to have Albert for my dad, too. When Andy graduated from college, we had a big party back at the house. Andy had been in ROTC and was going into the army with a commission two weeks later.”
She stopped her tale for a while.
When I thought I’d have to ask her to continue, she said, “I got Andy drunk and seduced him. When I turned up pregnant, he had no choice but to marry me.”
Deborah turned her bright, empty smile toward me. She looked so fragile, a small woman, left alone too soon, living in seclusion with only her cats to console her. Sympathy smothered my pluck. There were plenty of tragedies in this story. Too many.
When I said nothing further, Deborah told me bravely, understanding, perhaps, that she was not the only casualty of her marriage, “I always felt sorry for Robbie. Andy wanted a boy desperately. He was so disappointed when Robbie was born. He never got over it.”
What could I have said to that? Might I have said that Robbie was a vicious woman who could more than take care of herself? I couldn’t bring myself to do so. “Well,” I told her instead, “it sounds like Andy participated in the seduction, too. It wasn’t totally your fault.”
Deborah’s eyes widened and her mouth formed a little O of surprise. “Actually, he didn’t. Even when he was drunk, he didn’t seem interested at all.”
Then, flatly, as if the past was old, uninteresting history, “And after that, we only made love because Andy wanted sons.”
I was appalled. Deborah was one of the most gracious, pleasant women I’d ever met. Many men must have wanted her. It was such a waste that she’d never been loved, except by her cats.
She took a deep breath then, and petted the cat on her lap in what might have been real contentment. “So you see, Willa, I didn’t really miss him all that much. He was just someone else to wait on. And he treated all of us as if we were privates. We were allowed to do only what he ordered us to do. Andy was a very unhappy man and when he was around, he made the rest of us unhappy, too. It was a relief when he left, actually. Now that he’s never coming back, I can’t say I’m sorry.”
She’d bowed her head and I couldn’t see her face clearly. Was she rationalizing her empty life? Or was this the truth?
When George and I came to this house the day after Andy died, Deborah h
ad played the part of the bereaved wife so beautifully. But then, she’d played the part of the army wife perfectly all those years, too. You never knew a marriage until you’d lived in it.
“It was worse for the children, though,” she said, without being prompted.
“Why?”
She looked straight at me now, candid, sharp. “Because I chose Andy. I chose my life. They had nothing to say about it. These happy babies, growing up with a father who hated them. I’ve never forgiven myself for that.”
“Surely you’re exaggerating,” I know I sounded shocked to her, because I sounded that way to myself.
She shook her head back and forth.
“Unfortunately, I’m not. It took years of alcoholism followed by more years of therapy for me to deal with it all. The children never enjoyed the escape of booze. It’s ironic,” she said with a quirky little smile in the corner of her mouth. “Andy wanted to be a family man because he thought he needed it to get promoted. You can’t be a single general, you know. But he didn’t want a family. And now, none of his children are sorry he’s dead. Sad, isn’t it?”
She didn’t sound sad. She sounded kind of satisfied, actually. Like she’d won, in the end.
Her tone made it easier for me to ask her about Andy’s death. She didn’t seem quite so vulnerable at the moment. “We both know George didn’t kill Andy. But, who did?”
People seldom ask direct questions. Even media interviewers. Unlike cops, normal people never just come out and ask: Did you do it? It’s surprising what you could learn when you asked questions directly.
As if she was discussing strangers, Deborah replied, “It’s hard to say. There are so many possibilities.” She’d given me the impression that all three of her children might have murdered their father, and she didn’t try to correct that impression.
Based on my experience so far, I thought Robbie, at least, was capable of murder. And after this interview, I had to accept that Deborah would have had reason to kill her husband, too. She was the one who was here, in the house with him the night he died. Had we all simply overlooked the most obvious suspect?
“Were you here the morning he died? Did you hear or see anything that might help me?”
“Yes, I was here. Sound asleep. I was in my room, with the windows closed, the curtains drawn. I’d taken a Valium before I went to bed.” She shuddered. “That dinner at George’s restaurant was so dreadful, I wanted to be swallowed up in sleep. I actually prayed to die in the night, just so I wouldn’t have to face you or anyone else ever again.” Now, a little anger crept into her tone. “Andy was always doing that to me.”
“Doing what?”
The anger grew stronger. “Embarrassing me in public. Not caring how I felt. He never cared how other people felt. He just did whatever he wanted.”
“You didn’t kill him, did you Deborah?” I laughed a little, like
I was making a joke. Some joke.
She didn’t deny it right away. She took more tea, and another stale cracker onto her plate, not looking at me. I waited for her answer, sensing that something was going on here that I didn’t quite understand and wasn’t sure I wanted to.
Finally, she said, “No. I didn’t kill him. Not that I hadn’t thought about it. But if George did kill Andy?” she put a little uplift at the end of the sentence. “Thank him for me, will you?”
I felt disoriented, as if I’d been conversing with a multiple personality. I didn’t know what to say.
She changed the subject back to her cats and I’d had enough of that. I stood up, as if to leave, but I asked her, “Do you mind if I take a look around outside? I’ll stop back to say good-bye.”
“Be careful of the gators,” she said, as she carried the tea tray back into the house.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SIX
Tampa, Florida
Saturday 12:30 p.m.
January 29, 2000
THE BACK YARD WAS as overgrown as the front. Kudzu vine covered everything, including the trunks of the trees. The foliage grew so thick overhead as to completely block out the sunlight. Somehow, the yard seemed more sinister today than it had when I was here the last time. Maybe because there was no cop with a gun standing at the entrance to the old dock now.
I made my way carefully through the dank vegetation, each footfall meticulously planned. I wiggled my toes, thankful for my closed, flat shoes, and kept my gaze to the ground, watching for snakes.
Poisonous cottonmouths were most likely around the water. Unlike rattlers, cottonmouths were quiet, they snuck up on you, and their venom could kill a grown adult. I’d been told that cottonmouths were often confused with harmless water snakes, but my goal had always been never to get close enough to tell them apart.
Diamondback Rattle Snakes were plentiful around here, too. They can strike up to four feet. I saw one on the golf course not too long ago and refused to get out of the cart for the rest of the game.
Torn between watching for alligators that might be hanging out in the brown tinted water and keeping my gaze fixed on the kudzu that covered what was once the lawn, I stepped slowly, conquering my fear, although I wanted to run straight to the dock and get off the damned kudzu. But one misstep could cause me to fall. And if there was anything I really didn’t want to do right at that moment, it was lie down on the tangled mess.
I was almost to the water’s edge when a tree branch as thick as my forearm slithered across my path. I screamed out loud and jumped back ten feet. The snake coiled up then and I could see the large lump in the middle of its thick body, distorting the characteristic diamond patterns clearly visible on its sleek skin.
He hissed at me and that was all I needed to run a wide circle around him and jump onto the dock, struggling not to fall into the brackish water. Maybe because he’d so recently fed on a field mouse or something (I prayed his meal hadn’t been one of Deborah’s cats), the diamondback let me go.
I watched him uncoil and slither on, disappearing into the kudzu at the edge of the orange grove.
When my pounding heart had settled down to twice its regular thumping rate, I found the courage to make my way along the rickety boards of the weathered, old fishing dock. But I swept my gaze from side to side, watching for alligators and cottonmouths.
Unlike cats, which are somewhat territorial and may stay fairly close to their chosen home, snakes and alligators cohabited and moved about freely. Both liked to kill small animals, including small humans. And they could do serious bodily harm to large humans like me, too.
Again, I realized that no one knew where I was. I hadn’t told George, or Olivia. And I doubted that Deborah even remembered I was out here. It wasn’t likely my cell phone would work here, either. Even if I could manage to haul it out of my tote bag in time to call anyone for help. What in the world had I been thinking?
If a diamondback struck me, or an alligator attacked, I could die, and no one would know.
That was when the uncontrollable shaking started.
I also realized that Andy had to have been either the bravest man I’d ever known, or the dumbest. The story was that he came out here every morning, before daylight, to go bass fishing because the fish liked to feed then and might be lured onto his hook. Each day, he traversed that god-forsaken kudzu snake haven in the semi-darkness, made his way to where I was standing now, and then into that small boat, just to go fishing?
Now that I’d reached the dock, I wanted to finish up the job I came for quickly and get the hell out of here.
CHAPTER FIFTY-SEVEN
Tampa, Florida
Saturday 12:45 p.m.
January 29, 2000
THE OLD DOCK WAS in disrepair, too, just like the rest of the place. The boards were slimy with green fungi. I put each foot down purposefully, testing the strength of the rotted boards, one at a time. The length of the dock was about thirty feet, but it felt like walking a very long gangplank.
I reached the spot where Andy’s fishing boat was tied up about a hundred years af
ter I’d wanted to get there. When I turned to see how far I’d come, I noticed the big bull gator sunning himself on the shoreline, inches away from the dock’s entrance. He opened his mouth wide enough to let me see his powerful teeth and then closed it, smiling at me. As if to say, “Just wait. I’ll catch you on the return.”
For some reason, that did it. I stood up straight and got a hold of myself. Whatever courage I possessed found its way back into my body. That old gator was more afraid of me than I was of him. So what if more than three hundred of the damn things had attacked humans in the last fifty years. No gator had killed a human in a long time. I wouldn’t be the first.
With judicial detachment, I stood now and looked down at the fishing boat. I reached into my tote bag, grabbed the digital camera, and took some pictures. The first one was of the gator. If he killed me, I wanted to leave something so he could be identified.
The second that thought arose, I started to laugh. And then I forced myself to stop. I told myself it wasn’t hysteria.
The aluminum fishing boat was about twelve feet long. It had an old Johnson outboard motor on it, twenty-five horsepower, according to the writing on the side. The little boat would scoot along with the motor opened up. The motor had been white once, but now it was covered with the same green slime as the rest of the boat.
Everything in the boat had an unused quality to it. There was an old, red tackle box, and a couple of fishing rods with open-faced reels attached. I saw a boat cushion that probably doubled as the required life preserver. A few coffee stained Styrofoam cups rolled around in the bottom along with several inches of dirty water.
Based on the police photographs and the crime scene investigator’s reports, the killer had stood on the dock, about where I was standing now. I held the disposable camera up and took a couple of pictures. In the shady daylight, I doubted the pictures would develop into anything useable.
At the time he died, Andrews was sitting in the only seat the boat possessed, the blue and white one from which he could steer by holding the protruding tiller of the small motor. My pictures of the empty seat weren’t as gruesome as the pictures of Andrews, slumped over, with the hole in his head, that I’d seen in the police file.