“Help me, Meg,” he said quietly. “We’ve got to get everyone out of this room.”
She nodded and together they started herding out the curious, nudging, even pushing, until the dimly lit room was empty of the living. They stood together, shoulder to shoulder, looking in at the lovely room. Chintz sofas, comfy chairs, warm Aubusson carpet, silk shaded brass lamps, the traditionally decorated Christmas tree in one corner, the dead college girl on the couch.
It seemed like only moments until a rush of cold air from the foyer and gruff men’s voices heralded the arrival of the Lower Merion police.
The investigation was a blur, managing to be intrusive, hyper-real, boring, unfocused, and intense, all at once. Most of the time Meg felt as though she were underwater. Technicians took over the living room. The immediate family was sequestered downstairs in the family room. Guests were asked to wait in the dining room, guarded by two uniformed officers who coped with a barrage of requests to use forbidden cell phones, to go to the bathroom, to leave and come back in the morning.
One by one, they were each brought to the kitchen for an interview with the two detectives, who put their questions quietly and took notes. A steady stream of uniformed officers and technicians came and went, each leaning down to whisper information or request instructions from the seated detectives. Someone had made coffee.
Among the last to be interviewed, Meg told the detectives what she could. It was a party like many others, confused, eventful, inconsequential. Soon forgotten, except, of course, for the murder.
She was leaving the kitchen, gratefully clutching her mug of coffee, when an officer brought Henri in for his interview, his head down, disheveled, looking even more broodingly handsome than ever. Meg glanced at him, passing, then stopped. Henri had already begun to speak in his charmingly accented voice, roughened by alcohol and a hint of something else. Megan stood stunned to hear Henri confess.
“I did it, you know? I murdered that poor girl. I didn’t mean to, you know? But I did it. I’m sorry. Désolé.”
His anguish was genuine. Tears streamed from beneath his long lashes. He ran a hand through his tousled hair, then over his stubbled, cleft chin. “I’m sorry. You know? I didn’t mean it. It just happened, you know?”
Meg gaped at him. He was almost as broken as Lulu had been, a monster, a chimera assembled from parts of his former self. His life was over too, and he knew it.
“I wanted her, you know? Sex, it’s what the party is all about, no? Sex. She wanted it too, but then she changed her mind, pushed me away.” A trace of a smile crossed his face, a remnant of his old roguish charm. “Me. She pushed me away. I knew she wanted it, you know? I took her shoulders and shook her, hard, to make her see reason, you know? But she passed out. I was sure it was only that.” He drew himself up a little. “I make love to a lot of women, you know? But never when they are passed out. So I left the bedroom, my beautiful little chérie untouched on the bed. But I must have killed her. Shook her too hard. Her neck must have snapped, you know? I am … I am désolé.”
His voice broke, his shoulders shook, he dropped his head into his arms on the counter and wept. Meg’s mind reeled. She watched until, at a signal from a detective, an officer put his hand on her arm and led her out of the kitchen.
As she left the room, Meg heard the detective ask Henri how the body had ended up in the den. She knew without looking that Henri only shrugged.
After a long while, the guests were released, shocked, tired, bedraggled, and grief stricken, to make their way home. No one met anyone else’s eyes. An officer asked Meg if she wanted to return to Philadelphia at once, but Thom told them she had planned to stay overnight and was considered family. Meg smiled at him gratefully. She would stay.
Brought back through the living room, Meg stood at the entrance to the den and saw the body was gone. Most of the family was now gathered there, sitting on the sofa where the dead girl had lain. Carrie was hunched over, hugging herself, crying. Anise was sitting beside her daughter, looking stunned, reaching out to stroke her arm occasionally, reassuring herself that she was still there. Celia and her boyfriend, their spat evidently forgotten, cuddled in a large chair, her eyes puffy and red, his hand unsteady as he stroked her head.
Bess stood by the fireplace, a glass of champagne, incredibly, in her hand. She smiled at Meg and raised her glass a fraction of an inch, a vestigial toast between friends. In her look there was a trace of something more, a hint of a question, a challenge. Meg, her eyes clear, calmly nodded back. Friends. More. Sisters.
Michelle and her drunken husband had evidently gone home. Most of the police were gone as well. Henri, shattered, had been led out in handcuffs, his leather coat draped raffishly over his shoulders. Henri’s wife Paula, distraught and incoherent, had been bundled out by a female officer before Henri was led away.
Poor Paula. Poor Henri. Megan knew that Henri had not killed this girl. Henri, guilty of many unsavory things, had killed no one.
Oh, he believed he had. His confession had been genuine and it would be accepted as fact. He would receive his punishment, his marriage over, his life, and Paula’s, in ruins. But actually he hadn’t done it, Meg knew. Meg didn’t care. She knew it was callous of her, but she just didn’t.
Her heart was with her friends, the Daggers. The Daggers of Bryn Mawr. The beautiful blond Dagger sisters and their families. Her sisters. Her friends. Bess. Dear Bess, standing by the fireplace, drinking champagne, looking so soignée.
Meg had known it wasn’t Henri from the moment she heard his touching, sad, rambling, French-accented confession—“So I left the bedroom, my beautiful little chérie untouched on the bed. But I must have killed her. Shook her too hard. Her neck must have snapped, you know?”
But it hadn’t been Lulu on the bed. He had left his beautiful little Carrie there. Not chérie, Carrie. Passed out, or just pretending, teasing him. He shook her, yes, but when Meg had glanced in she was sure she had seen the girl stirring. And while Henri might have been drunk enough to confuse the two beautiful college girls, Meg wasn’t. It was Carrie on the bed, alive and well. And although the police had probably asked Henri repeatedly how the body ended up in the den, Henri would only demur, shrugging, maintaining that he didn’t know. Had no idea. It didn’t matter. They had a confession.
Meg knew that Henri hadn’t done it. But who had?
Standing there watching the family, Meg carefully replayed the evening in her head. It passed before her eyes like stills from a movie. Celia outside a bedroom sobbing, calling her boyfriend’s name. Why? Someone had surely lured the hapless college boy into a dark bedroom. Lulu, smug and tipsy, wiping her mouth, heading downstairs. Had Celia killed her in a drunken, jealous rage? She stared at Celia, mousy and red-eyed. Hard to believe.
She thought of Bess coming out of the darkened den, angry at something or someone. The den. Lulu was killed in the den right where she was found. She had fallen to the floor beside the sofa and lay there until Anise found her and scooped her onto her lap, in a mother’s anguish for her lovely daughter. She had indeed been shaken by someone quite angry. Shaken until her neck snapped.
Meg looked at Bess. She could see how it had happened. Bess, protective of her nieces, furious that Lulu had come on to poor Celia’s handsome, spineless boyfriend, had confronted the drunken college girl in the den. Angry that a gorgeous little interloper would come in to the fabulous Dagger family and hurt even the least of its members, the weakest sister, poor little Celia.
No one spoke for a long time. Finally, Thom roused himself. “I’ll make breakfast,” he announced flatly.
And so, life goes on, Meg thought, reaching up to brush her hair away from her eyes. She wished she could brush away what she knew, which seemed to be pressing, almost physically, on her skull.
Bess threw back her head and downed the champagne, then headed after Thom, slipping her arm through Megan’s on the way, pulling her gently along past the law students cuddling, almost cowering in their
armchair.
“We’ll help,” she said brightly, irrelevantly, since Anise and Carrie were still lost in their cocoon of grief, guilt, relief—a girl was dead but it wasn’t Carrie. Gorgeous, glamourous Carrie, full of life and hope, momentarily shattered by the proximity of death, but soon to rally. She was too full of gusto to mourn too long. Joie de vivre. That’s what Carrie had, Megan thought. Joie de vivre. Funny that the perfect phrase to describe her should be French.
Megan squeezed her friend’s arm as they followed Thom to the kitchen. The last silent policeman was leaving with an armload of notebooks and evidence bags. A good start to his new year. Justice had triumphed on New Year’s Day.
Of course, Meg knew that justice had not triumphed. Justice had not triumphed at all.
Bess stopped in the doorway to the kitchen. Thom had already pulled on his chef’s apron and they could see him rummaging in the refrigerator for the casserole of eggs and cheese and ham that had been resting overnight and just needed to be slipped into the oven. Bess touched Megan’s face and met her eyes.
“It’s okay,” she told Meg quietly. “I’ll keep your secret.”
“My secret?” Meg was startled.
Bess looked closely at her. “It wasn’t you?”
Meg shook her head. “I thought it was you.”
Bess stared at her and shook her head.
“Then who?” Meg asked.
Megan and Bess stood and stared at each other as they both silently thought through the suspects. Thom. Anise. Carrie, herself. Michelle, even. Any of the Daggers. Meg was suddenly, strangely proud to have been suspected.
“But I saw you coming out of the den,” Meg blurted out. “You looked so angry.”
Bess just stared at her.
“You looked like you could kill someone. I thought you must have confronted Lulu over poor Celia’s boyfriend.”
“Confronted her?” Bess laughed mordantly. “I wish. No, she wasn’t there. I was angry with her. Very angry. I was talking to Anise. I told Anise.”
“Anise?”
Bess and Megan were standing there outside the kitchen, staring at each other, and they both jumped a little when Anise came up behind them.
“Anise,” Bess murmured.
“Anise,” Meg echoed. And for a moment, Meg flashed back to the old hag on her steps, telling her she wouldn’t be the youngest one. Nor the prettiest. True, but she was one of them, the Daggers. That’s what counted.
Anise hugged them both. Anise, who could never have mistaken another girl for her beloved daughter. Anise, who could never have mistaken the feel of an angora dress for a silk one as she held the dead girl in her arms. The mythology was all wrong. It wasn’t the Pietà at all. It was Penelope among the dead, unwelcome suitors, her knitting all unravelled.
“My sisters,” Anise whispered, hugging them hard, then breaking free to look from one to the other.
“Sisters,” Bess said.
“Sisters,” Meg said firmly.
Anise released them and they entered the kitchen.
“Tell you what, let’s empty the dishwasher and fill it up again. Give Thom some room to work.”
“I’ll do the glasses by hand,” Meg offered.
Thom shot them a smile.
Anise kissed Megan lightly on the cheek. Then she pulled an apron down from the hooks near the door and tied it on, and passed another to Bess, laughing as Bess rummaged through an army of bottles, all empty.
“I’ll open more champagne,” Bess declared, heading for the refrigerator. “We can’t work without champagne.”
They bent to their tasks. Meg looked forward to breakfast on a sunny New Year’s Day morning in a sparkling clean kitchen on Philadelphia’s Main Line. She belonged here. She had arrived. She was home.
YOUR BROTHER,
WHO LOVES YOU
BY JIM ZERVANOS
Fairmount
Friday night, and Nicky Krios is getting dolled up for Nostradamus of all places. These biker boots are made for ass-kicking, he thinks, and tries the eyeliner he borrowed from Janet the bartender’s purse. He hams it up in the mirror, imagining the two of them in another lazy romp, picking up where they left off after work the other night, before passing out on his couch. The darkened eyes bring out the family face—his brother’s, his father’s. He smirks. A veritable Night of the Living Dead.
Nicky spends most of his days wishing he were anywhere but Nostradamus, or at least doing anything else. Three years experience, and he’s still a busboy, despite his pleas to Victor Gold, who treats him like a fucking retard. Still, Nostradamus is the hottest place in Philly, so where else is he going to go on his night off? Plus, he and his workmates have made a game out of sneaking drinks to spite Victor, who parks his yellow Maserati right outside and cocks around, convinced he’s got the world licked.
Such is life for Nicky at twenty-four, living rent-free, at least for now, in a nearby brownstone, thanks to his older brother Chris Krios, the lawyer, whose face is everywhere in this city—in the subways, on the sides of busses. No recovery, no fee. This week Chris said it’s time for Nicky to pony up, be his own man—this in spite of busboy tips he knows don’t even cover living expenses. “You don’t want to end up like Dad,” Chris let slip. “Hopeless, I mean.” Not dead, which goes without saying. “A man needs to move forward in life.” Tough love. You should be happy, Chris always tells him, working at any one of Victor Gold’s restaurants—it’s a great company, he says, as if Nicky’s poised for some rags-to-riches story of his own. We’re brothers, Chris says, to remind Nicky that they share the same DNA; that if the one son can make it, so can the other; that he’s not a chip off the old block. People’s lives can change for the better, Chris insists, just as quickly as they can change for the worse.
Nicky doesn’t want to get too high, so he takes one last hit, pinches the tip with moistened fingers, and tucks the half-joint, the last of his dwindled stash, back into Moby Dick, which he swore he was going to finish this summer. He flips up the collar of his black silk shirt and fakes a roundhouse kick at the mirror, his eyes looking badass.
Chris got Nicky in the door with Victor Gold. The rest is up to you, Chris always says. I can’t ask him to make you a bartender. You create your own luck. Chris and Victor were college roommates, and they both have the Midas touch. Chris bought the brownstone for peanuts, now uses the rent he collects from three downstairs units to pay the mortgage on the condo he just picked up on Spring Garden. Victor’s a whole other story. He must have opened Nostradamus on a dare, Nicky jokes, to prove once and for all to the city, or just to his own world-class ego, that he could create another gastronomical goldmine out of the least appetizing concept—this time serving up Gothic fare in a renovated church a block south of Eastern State Penitentiary.
Night after night, unimaginably lovely creatures, local celebrities, sports stars, and wannabe hipsters in their thirties and forties, and maybe even fifties for all Nicky can tell, find this veritable morgue hiding in residential Fairmount; many of them have the requisite wit, donning sexy vampiric getups—tight leather, flared collars, ruffled shirts, spiked jewelry—downing drinks with names like Edgar Allan Poetini and Exorcism on the Beach. Ordinarily Nicky lies low, winding invisibly through the crowd, carrying plates soiled with remnants of blackened this or deviled that, head down, in the standard black-T-shirt-and-jeans busboy uniform, but tonight he’s playing along, monster shades and all, at least until the sun goes down.
“I saw you snake my fucking eyeliner yesterday,” pale-eyed Janet says the second Nicky snags the corner spot at the half-full bar, best view in the house, where Victor usually sidles up late-night. “I thought you were just playing around, but you snaked it.”
“Shit.” Nicky hops off the stool and pats down the pockets of his slim-fitting cargo pants. He pulls out his cell phone and sets it on the bar. When he proceeds to check the lower pockets puffing at his knees, Janet rolls her eyes.
“Maybe it’s in your sock,” s
he says. “Bullshitter.”
“Come over to my place later and get it,” he says, and straddles the stool, grinning.
“Yeah.”
“We had fun,” he reminds her.
He can see she’s already shaking up his Inquisition Fizz. Drink to excess before Victor gets here, is their strategy, bartenders included. The extra Fizz goes into a shot glass, which Janet clinks, cheers, with Nicky, and throws back in a fluid move, turning toward the cash register, as if she’s going to ring him up.
“You look good with no makeup,” Nicky calls out.
Janet flashes him a smile, then slinks up to him, elbows on the bar. “I’m wearing makeup, sweetie. Lose the shades and see for yourself.” She hooks the frames with a finger and sets them down next to his cell phone. “I just don’t look like a raccoon for once, unlike you.”
He forgot about the shades, and squints now, adjusts his vision. Waning sunlight illuminates the tabletops by the windows. Throughout the shadowy room, dim candles flicker in wrought-iron candelabra.
And then he spots his favorite patron, famously sexy anchorwoman Stacy Fredericks, whose sliver of a profile he recognizes despite the lineup of beer taps and the distance from here to there, not to mention her uncharacteristic Black Widow getup and the familiar swarm of blunderers already stuck in her web. Apparently, like Nicky, Stacy decided to get into the spirit of Nostradamus tonight, to lose the anchorwoman skirt suit and play along, in the fashion, neo-medieval style. By her side, and forever unable to extricate himself, is her network sidekick, Lester Dent, who evidently doesn’t see his own combover in the mirror when he leaves his house, or doesn’t yet appreciate the fact that his thin orangey coif is just one of the reasons that Stacy always maintains a polite distance—his nearly senior-citizen status, baggie pastel suits, and wife and kids rounding out the list of other reasons.
Philadelphia Noir Page 14