Child of My Winter

by Andrew Lanh

  A simple valedictory to a man who lived a modest though wonderfully examined life—and never expected to be brutally murdered.

  “Sophia told Martin and Melody that they could take whatever they wanted from the apartment,” Liz told me the night before. “Anything. Furniture, baubles, photos, anything. Martin told her he’d be there the next day—and that she’d better not throw anything out. Or hide anything. That surprised Sophia.” Liz clicked her tongue. “She said he had a voice laced with anger.”

  “At her?”

  Liz had sighed. “I think Martin is angry at the world.”

  “His newest divorce?”

  “His being born. Maybe.” Liz had laughed into the phone.

  When I pulled up in front of the apartment, darkness was falling, a grainy twilight, the day bone-chilling with gusts of sleet. All the lights blazed in Ben’s first-floor apartment. Liz’s car was parked in front, and I pulled in behind it. A decade-old red Chevy convertible with a smashed left fender was parked in the driveway, in effect blocking access to the rear parking lot. As I walked by, I touched the hood: warm to the touch, crystals of glistening melted sleet. Martin’s car, I figured.

  Inside Martin was standing by the front window, gazing out at the street. With the shadows thrown by the fading light and the yellow glow from a lamp on a table next to him, he reminded me of his father: a short man, the bumpy nose on a round face, his fuzzy hair already receding.

  “You look like your father.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that. It explains why women run from me.”

  “I meant it as a compliment.”

  “Well, thank you. Such proper manners.”

  I caught Liz’s eye. She sat next to Sophia on the sofa by the back wall, the two women with shoulders touching, both with their hands folded in their laps. Still life of sisters with wonder in their eyes.

  Liz spoke. “Martin is surveying the apartment.”

  Said, the words hung in the air, a sardonic judgment, and Martin, moving away from the window, shot her a baffled look. Sophia cleared her throat, ready to stand, but sank further into the lumpy cushions.

  “Where’s his computer?” Martin asked.

  “The police took it. With his papers. His files. Anything that…”

  “I want it back.”

  Sophia said in a soft voice, “I’m sure you’ll get it. They’re reviewing everything.”

  “He’d want me to have it.”

  Sophia drew her lips into a thin line. “And have it you shall.”

  He didn’t look at her but spoke to me. “They ransacked his place.”

  “No,” Liz began slowly. “This is a murder investigation and the State Police Crime Unit knows what to do.”

  “Did they find anything?”

  “No one sent me a report.” Liz shook her head back and forth.

  Martin then swaggered around the rooms, pulling at drawers, lifting a blotter on Ben’s desk, even tipping a wing chair on its side.

  “What are you looking for?” I asked.

  An edge to his tone. “I don’t know what I’m doing here.”

  “Are you all right?” I asked.

  He stopped in front of me. “Just why are you here?”

  Good question: I had no answer. “Friend of the court.” A wise-guy response he ignored.

  The apartment had a starved look about it. Yes, Ben’s ragtag furniture had been shuffled around, but his work area had been stripped of his papers and files. The computer stand empty. The life of an academic, stripped bare. Martin—maybe Sophia?—had begun emptying out his life there. By the front window five cardboard boxes were neatly lined up like railroad cars at the station, each filled with miscellany: I spotted a framed family photograph, a sports trophy, a Red Sox pennant, even Ben’s Ph.D. diploma in a simple black frame. A copy of Ben’s last book. Evangelical Fury.

  Liz had a tickle in her voice. “Martin provided his own boxes.”

  “I want that computer.” He was talking to himself.

  In fact, Liz had told me earlier that Detective Manus had let her know that the State Police Crime Unit had found little of value—at this stage of the investigation. The only document that related to Dustin was a photocopy of his brilliant paper, with Ben’s laudatory comments in the margins. Nothing else. No fingerprints of the boy, who’d obviously never been inside the apartment. I learned that Dustin had voluntarily submitted to fingerprinting the day he was questioned. No letters, notes, warnings, threats, reprisals. Nothing. A blank slate. Neither was there anything that pointed to another killer. Nothing at all.

  Watching Liz’s face, I mouthed the words: Why am I here?

  A cautionary finger in the air. Wait.

  Martin stopped fidgeting and pointed at Sophia. “What did you take?”

  She waited a moment, rolled her tongue over her lower lip, and smiled. “Three small paintings.” She pointed to a wall. Empty space, three small nails visible.

  “They’re mine.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  “Why should you have them?”

  She deliberated what to say to him. Finally, in a cool, low voice she said, “Bucolic scenes of the White Mountains.”

  “They’re mine.”

  Her voice deepened. “Were you in bed with your father and me when we nestled in that rustic cabin and talked about buying them the following day?”

  His jaw went slack. “That isn’t funny.”

  “Yes, it sort of is.”

  His foot kicked one of the boxes. “I’m outta here.” Then, swiveling around, “I want all the furniture.” He pointed at the sofa they were sitting on. I was leaning against an armchair and his gesture pointed at that. “All of it. Since my…separation, I’m living in a fleabag welfare motel on the Berlin Turnpike, surrounded by white trash mothers with too many kids. I need this stuff.”

  She shrugged. “It’s yours.”

  Sophia stood up and walked to a table. “Here.” She held out her hand. “An extra key. Move it all out when you want. But by January fifteenth. So sayeth the landlord.”

  “What were you going to do with his stuff?”

  A mischievous smile. “Full circle, Martin. Most came from Salvation Army on Route 10, and it was going back there. Life is a circle.”

  “Yeah, sure.” He gripped the key, dropped it into his pocket. “I’m out of here.”

  The doorbell chimed, and Martin walked to the front window, peered out. “Oh Christ. Melody. She said she wasn’t coming.”

  I opened the door and greeted his sister.

  “I changed my mind,” she said to her brother as he rolled his eyes. She smiled at all of us, each in turn, even at Sophia. “It would be…the last time, you know.” She looked around the room. “Maybe.”

  Sophia stood up and grasped her hand. “Look around, Melody.”

  Her hand dropped to her side. “I don’t know what to do here.”

  Martin reached into one of his boxes and took out a framed photograph: Melody in her high-school graduation gown, standing with her father, his arms around her shoulders. A broad smile on both their faces. “This.” He thrust it at her.

  She brought her face close to the photograph, and then held it to her chest. “I remember this photo.”

  “Yeah,” her brother snarled, “he kept it on his nightstand. You notice there wasn’t one of me.”

  “That’s not fair,” she began, but then stopped, a sidelong glance at Sophia and then me. “Not now.”

  A horn blew, shrill and long, someone leaning on it.

  “Christ, what?” From Martin.

  Melody whispered, “Mom’s in the driveway.” A heavy sigh. “She insisted on driving me over.”

  Sophia peered out the window. “Ask her to come in.”

  Martin scoffed. “You gotta be kidding. Her? In th
is place. Dante’s inferno has more appeal.”

  “Nevertheless, a cold car…”

  Sophia left the room and returned with a vase. She held it out for us to see. “Roseville.” A light robin’s-egg-blue vase, perhaps a foot high, clusters of faint pink roses circling the lip. “Ben said they bought it on their honeymoon. At an antique store in Buffalo.”

  “Buffalo?” Martin made a face.

  Melody was shaking her head. “I don’t know.”

  “Do you want to give it to your mother?” Sophia asked. “It should be hers.”

  Neither said a word. Finally, exasperated, Sophia cradled the vase in her arms and, coatless, left the apartment. We congregated by the front windows, watched Sophia slowly approach the car, her footfall tentative on the icy patch. We watched her knock on the closed window. Exhaust billowed behind the car, the heater on full blast. Suddenly Charlotte rolled down the window, muttered something to Sophia, and reached for the vase. Something was said, but Sophia didn’t move. Then the window rolled up. Sophia stood still, though she glanced toward the apartment. Instinctively we all jumped back. Suddenly the interior light snapped on, and I could see Charlotte holding the old vase up to the light, turning it. From where I stood I could see her shock of bright yellow hair framing the blue vase.

  Then the window rolled down again and Charlotte jammed the vase into Sophia’s chest. Sophia staggered back, then watched as the window rolled back up.

  Back inside, Sophia stood in the doorway, clearly rattled, shivering from the cold, her hands clutching the vase. Quietly, she placed it on a table. Her face was flushed. “She told me to smash it to pieces.”

  Martin laughed. “I’m surprised she didn’t smash it on your head.”

  Melody whispered, “Mom is…filled with anger.”

  “Join the club.” Martin grabbed his overcoat from a wrought-iron hall tree by the door, nodded at his sister, then Sophia. “This place will be empty in a few days.”

  “Take the vase,” Sophia said.

  “Yeah, of course. It’s mine.”

  Melody mumbled something about the sad way things had turned out and she left, still cradling her graduation photograph.

  Then we were alone. I sat in the armchair watching Sophia and Liz staring back at me. “That went well,” I commented. Then, gesturing toward the departed Winslow family. “And the reason I was invited to this wake?”

  They exchanged looks, conspiratorially.

  “Houston, we have a problem.” Liz’s smile was melancholic.

  Sophia walked to the hall tree and fumbled with a jacket hanging there. A brightly colored red brocade Chinese-style spring jacket. “My jacket.”

  “Yeah?”

  “I always kept it here. If we ran out and I needed…anyway, I found this in the pocket.” She showed me a folded-over white envelope, crumpled. She opened the envelope slowly, her fist closing on something. Two tiny microcassette tapes. “From Ben’s answering machine.”

  “Game change,” Liz said to me. “Ben must have purposely hidden them there.”

  My heard raced. “And they tell us what?” I caught my breath. “Dustin?”

  “Yes, both of them,” Sophia said. “Ben was getting scared. One is a partial conversation, as though he started recording it midway through a talk, probably sensing he needed to document something. The other is a full but brief conversation. Deadly.”

  “Deadly?”

  “Like lethal?”

  “For Dustin?”

  Liz nodded. “You judge.”

  The answering machine was on an end table next to the sofa, an old-fashioned clunky apparatus Ben used for years. Sophia sat down next to it and pressed a button. We heard: “Hello, this is Ben Winslow. Please leave a message after the beep. Evil telemarketers beware.” A beep, then nothing. Sophia snapped out the small tape and inserted one of the others. “A little shaky at first, like Ben didn’t know what he was doing. But…”

  A scratchy voice, Ben’s. I leaned in to listen:

  (Static, mumbled words, more static)

  Dustin:…hear me?

  Ben:…about…

  Dustin:…no…

  Ben: No? You gotta make up your mind…

  Dustin: Sorry I told you…

  Ben: Why did you?

  Dustin:…static…a nice guy…trust

  Ben: I am.

  Dustin: You can’t do this. I mean no disrespect, sir.

  Ben: You don’t know the meaning of respect, Dustin. Otherwise you wouldn’t do this. Do you know what this means? I keep telling you over and over…

  Dustin: (a shaky voice) I’m confused…what to do.

  Ben: (loudly) You know what to do.

  Dustin: I gave my word.

  Ben: (furious) Then break it, dammit. There’s a higher truth here, Dustin. For Christ’s sake. You’re better than this. You’re a bright boy and…

  Dustin: I wish I didn’t know.

  Ben: But you do. You do. Hear me?

  Dustin: No.

  (Click. The line went dead. The drone of a dial tone.)

  “Good Christ,” I muttered. “This is horrible.”

  Liz held up her hand. “Tape number two the next night—two days before Ben was murdered.”

  Sophia changed the tape. Her hand shook and it slipped onto the floor. She was sobbing.

  “His voice,” she said. “Ben’s voice. It’s…horrible.”

  “Listen.” Liz watched me closely.

  Dustin: You told me to call you.

  Ben: Decision time.

  Dustin: No, I…

  Ben: You have no choice.

  Dustin: You have a choice.

  Ben: No, I don’t. But I warned you, Dustin—I will do something. I’ll report you. I can’t sit on this info and not do anything.

  Dustin: It’s not your business.

  Ben: A dumb thing to say.

  Dustin: Why?

  Ben: This is serious. People—people live…they wonder…You have an answer.

  Dustin: I made it all up.

  Ben: Dustin, don’t play games with me.

  Dustin: I mean no disrespect, sir.

  Ben: But you do, Dustin. Respect for others.

  Dustin: I don’t…

  Ben (a long pause) Dustin…I get no answer from you. (pause) A life lost, Dustin.

  Dustin: I know.

  Ben: Dead.

  Dustin: I know.

  Ben: You know where the body is.

  Dustin: (pause) No.

  Ben: All right, you have a choice. You call the authorities or I do. But I want you to do it. You have to step up. I’ve given you two days to man up. The deadline is tomorrow. Tomorrow. Call me and let me know. Otherwise I drop a dime on you.

  Dustin: You can’t.

  Ben: I will.

  Dustin: You’re headed for trouble, sir.

  (Click. The line went dead.)

  Silence in the room. We stared at one another.

  “You’re gonna have to give the tapes to Detective Manus right away,” I said.

  Sophia nodded. “I know.”

  Shaking my head, frustrated, angry at Dustin, I reached for my cellphone, scrolled my contacts, found what I was looking for.

  “Yeah?”

  “Dustin? Rick Van Lam here.”

  “What?”

  “You told Ben Winslow about a dead body.”

  Click. The line went dead.

  I faced the two women. “I shouldn’t have done that, but no matter. The cops’ll ask him the same question.”

  “So now it really begins.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  The next morning Liz texted me:

  Dustin in for questioning. Won’t talk. More to follow.

  Lingering over a cup of coffee, I texted
back:

  Let me know. Telephone now?

  The impersonality of early-morning texting—I wanted to hear her voice, gauge the tenor of her words. She replied:

  Can’t do. Sit tight.

  That wasn’t easy to do. A restless night, flashes of those recorded messages dipping in and out of my brain, startling me awake. Dustin one minute tremulous and unsure, the next minute bold, demanding. Two sides of a coin tossed willy-nilly into the air. Ben’s demands, a resolute tone in his voice I’d never heard before.

  But then—I’d never known where a body was hidden.

  A body? Murdered maybe?

  The body in question…

  Late morning Gracie knocked on my door. I smelled fresh-baked cupcakes under a dishcloth. But I also detected the questioning look in her face. Noontime: I was still in my flannel bathrobe, bare feet, hair askew because I hadn’t showered yet.

  “Good grief, you look like an unmade bed.”

  “I am an unmade bed.” I scratched my head. “You look—like one of the lesser Andrew Sisters.”

  She strode past me. “I had more talent, of course. A high-kicker for the Rockettes needs to be—dimensional.”

  She was wearing a bright yellow dress with an elaborate lace design across the bodice. A tall, willowy woman who never lost her dance-school body, she stored trunks of vintage clothing in a back room—“and none of it needs altering.” She eyed me sharply. “I’m headed to the market. Do you need anything? Shampoo?” A pause. “A new bathrobe?” A grunt. “A personal valet?”

  “Yeah.”

  She laughed as she placed the plate of goodies on the table. “Ben Franklin wouldn’t condone such laziness, Rick.”

  “He also demanded all of us imitate Jesus and Socrates.”

  “Good advice.” She grinned at me. “Though I suppose you can throw your Buddha into the mix.”

  She went into my kitchen and put the teakettle on. Within minutes she was rattling in my cupboards, finding the white lotus Chinese tea we always shared. I sat on the sofa with my eyes closed, drifting back into slumber. Setting a tray on the coffee table, she nudged me. “You’re bothered.”

  I told her about Dustin and the tapes. She leaned into me. “Snippets of tape like that probably can lead the police in a thousand different directions.”