by Stella Duffy
Caron relaxed as the holds of social constricts and etiquette took over and she found herself in control again, if not of Jasmine, then at least of her own emotions.
“I do however, very much want to hear what you have to say. Why don’t you meet me for lunch tomorrow, say one o’clock? I’ll pick you up, give me your address.”
Jasmine scribbled down an address in Camden and as Caron relaunched herself on the scrimmage of her own party, Jasmine helped herself to a bottle of wine and several smoked salmon canapés, leaving via the back door.
By two thirty the next afternoon Caron had finished pursuing her lightly grilled fishcakes around the thin pink plates in the very private restaurant and Jasmine had managed to eat all of her own meal and most of Caron’s. By the end of their second bottle of wine, again mostly imbibed by Jasmine, Caron knew everything her step-daughter could tell her about the deaths of Anita and John and all she’d managed to infer from what Chris could tell her about Michael’s abrupt departure from the House, which he believed to be, and Jasmine was happy to interpret as, another covered-up suicide. Caron had already decided in her own mind that Max had somehow been involved in Deb’s death, this diatribe, the scene in her kitchen a week earlier, only served to convince her further. Jasmine had not one jot of evidence against the man who was probably her father, but she laid a very convincing case of damning circumstantial possibilities. Max had been in the States when Anita and John were killed. Caron knew he’d gone to visit them, not that he’d ever told her they’d died then, and Jasmine herself had only found out by accident that he’d been around at the time.
“It was years later that I knew he’d been over. The guy they got for the arson has always protested he was innocent – at least of burning down their place – but it wasn’t until I moved into the House two years ago that I had a chance to look through the records. Max was in the States the week they died.”
“How do you know?”
“He called Jake. Jake’s got this thing about accuracy. He records everything, you know? I mean everything. I asked him to tell me about my dad, I mean Max, there is a chance he isn’t my dad. I mean, I’d be much happier if he wasn’t, but anyway, Jake brought out this huge file – sort of like a diary, with every single time he ever talked to Max. He even recorded this phone call when Max was only calling to say hi. Max didn’t want people to know he was in the States, Jake said it was because everyone would want Max to come to the House.”
“Wouldn’t they? People do think he’s something special. They do want to see him all the time.”
“Yeah, I know Caron. I am the child of a guru. Believe me, I know it real well. But I think it’s just a little odd that he happened to be there when my mom was killed.”
Caron thought so too, even more so when Jasmine told her a little about Michael’s death. She found herself shocked that she could so quickly believe the man she had lived with for such a long time was capable of any of this. But she could, and almost easily, because she knew just how devoted he was to the Process. As Max was so fond of saying, most people loved their work if they were lucky, loved their families if they were lucky. Most people liked things a bit, disliked other things a bit and then just trusted to fate or God or the Universe or whatever was going to get them through, but he wasn’t like that. Max really believed he could make a difference. It was part of what made him so attractive. Their marriage had certainly been one of convenience, but Caron had also really wanted to mix her life up with Max’s, to have some of her safe, planned, upper-middle-class life touched by his fierce ambition. And sitting opposite this girl, Caron found herself convinced that Jasmine was Max’s daughter. Physically, she was nothing like him except the eyes, but what was so attractive in Max was recreated in her. And if what was attractive about Max was also frightening, it was doubly so in Jasmine. In Max the desire to make a difference and his fierce ambition had a channel in the Process, in Jasmine it was all directed towards Max himself. She looked across at the fierce young woman and found herself wondering if she wouldn’t be making as big a mistake choosing to trust Jasmine as she had in choosing to trust Max. She decided to leave it up to the girl.
“Jasmine, this is really scary for me. Other than with my work, I’m not actually that good at taking control. I’ve always let Max do that for me. And Deb for a while. I honestly don’t know what to do. I’m confused and yet I think I believe you, but I don’t know what to do about it at all.”
Jasmine poured the last of the wine into her glass and raised it to Caron, smiling at her.
“That’s OK Caron, I know exactly what to do. Cheers – as the English say.”
CHAPTER 27
Saz had every intention of doing just as she’d told Grant and was longing for her bed, but when she got back to the hotel the little red light on her telephone was flashing and she called the desk to be told there was an urgent message to call Carrie, which she did immediately.
“You’ll never believe this Saz, but yesterday afternoon Caron McKenna called me.”
“How did she get your number? My number?”
“You gave it to her when you took the frying pan.”
“Oh shit, I’m so fucking stupid sometimes, I forgot all about that.”
“Obviously. She called last night. She thinks he did it.”
“Who did what? What are you talking about?”
“Caron McKenna thinks Maxwell North killed her assistant, their combined PA and her lover of four years, Deb. Last name not specified. Nationality Oz.”
“Fuck!”
“That’s what I said.”
“Why did she tell you?”
“I told her you were in San Francisco and she said you should be careful and I said why and … well, that’s why. She said she’s suspected for ages that Deb’s death had something to do with Max.”
“You can’t make someone commit suicide, Carrie.”
“Maybe not, but Caron says that a patient of Max’s killed herself just a couple of weeks afterwards.”
“And?”
“Well it’s not many people who have two suicides in their lives within two weeks.”
“Perhaps we should be feeling sorry for him in that case.”
“I think not. According to McKenna he’s obsessed. Would do anything to protect the Process. She thinks this patient who killed herself was going to reveal some problem with it.”
“What problem?”
“I don’t know. She doesn’t know. That’s why she’s worried.”
“Couldn’t she have been worried ten years ago?”
“I didn’t ask.”
“Well it sounds like you asked her everything else.”
“We get on very well.”
“I doubt she’s going to be another of your conquests, Carrie.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure about that if I were you. Anyway, I’m not paid to be your secretary you know, I’ve got to get something out of it.”
“OK. So what else? I can’t just go on her feeling of ‘worry’. Not even Helen and Jude would help me out on as little as that.”
“Shut up and listen. And be grateful that I’m bloody good at chatting up complete strangers on the phone.”
“Obviously.”
“Do you want to know or not?”
“Sorry. Go on.”
“The night Deb died, Caron McKenna left Deb and Maxwell North sorting out the problem of the problem patient. So she goes to bed leaving them talking quite amicably and the next morning Deb’s sharpened her wrists into oblivion, snuggled up in a bloody quilt and then just the following week the aforementioned problem patient dives off the cross channel ferry, only without her water wings.”
“You have such a choice turn of phrase, Carrie.”
“Anyway, Caron McKenna’s moved out to a secret address and as soon as you get back she wants to talk to you.”
“She’s moved? Why?”
“Didn’t say and when I tried – very subtly of course – to find out, she went al
l reserved and middle class on me.”
“And you’ve always been so good at subtlety haven’t you Carrie? Well, I’ll look forward to seeing her.”
Saz then told Carrie about her meetings with Jake and Grant.
“I hope you’re right to trust this kid, Saz.”
“I don’t trust him. I just hope I can use him before he starts using me. But he is cute, more like incredibly bloody attractive really…”
“Oh yes?”
“No Carrie, I’m not you, I’m not likely to fuck him just to see if I still remember how to do it. I wouldn’t have the time anyway, tomorrow morning I’m going up to Mendocino to look for Milly’s mother, she was living at the House during those early years. Maybe she knows something.”
“Or maybe they’re all mad and dangerous.”
“Whatever. I’m fairly well into this now. I can’t just leave it and come home because it’s getting a bit messy.”
“I don’t imagine Molly would agree with you.”
“Yeah, but she’s not going to know about all this because neither of us is going to tell her, right? I’ll just keep calling her everyday and feeding her some soothing little stories…”
“Lies? To your new love, your only true love? Surely not!”
“Don’t push it Carrie, or I’ll ask about the next rent cheque.”
“Why the next? You didn’t even get the last.”
“It’s so good to be able to rely on one’s friends … so, I’ll tell Molly what I think she wants to hear and then she’ll have no reason to worry, will she?”
“Whatever you say, landlady.”
Saz hung up after asking Carrie to call Caron McKenna and assure her that things were under control. It was stretching the truth more than just a little, but it made Saz feel better to at least act as if she knew what was going on. She touched her face with some warm water and brushed her teeth, then climbed into bed massaging her calves, still a little sore from the unaccustomed uphill treks and was just starting to drift off between crisp white sheets when the phone rang yet again. It was the long-suffering front desk where an urgent fax had just arrived for her. She ran downstairs and rifled through the pages quickly as she returned to her room, blessing Claire as she realized that not only had she sent the details of the fire and the inquest report on the deaths, but she’d also managed to get the name and address of Anita’s sister who’d been appointed Jasmine’s guardian and, best of all, a high school photo of Jasmine printed ten years ago in the local paper. Smiling back at her from the fax was a slightly blurry but unmistakable younger version of the Janet she’d met a month ago at the London Process. She sat down on the bed in shock as she realized that her lie about meeting Jasmine on the Process had actually proved to be true – as had her lie that Max knew his daughter. What she didn’t know was whether or not he knew he knew his daughter. And if he didn’t then what was this Jasmine/Janet planning to do?
Saz opened her suitcase and, congratulating herself for not bothering to unpack, pulled out her tattered California road map from underneath her clothes and perused it closely for a few minutes. Then she set her alarm, climbed into bed, turned off the light and fell asleep almost as easily. Two and a half hours later she dragged herself from the bed, showered yet again, changed into clean jeans and a T-shirt and checked out of the hotel. Following the directions of the desk clerk, she hired a car from the place in the next block, praising the efficacy of the American all-night system and, having crossed the bridge, hit Highway 1 up to Mendocino. It wasn’t the fastest route but promised to be the most interesting and she’d get there too early to call on Rose as it was. Things were starting to fall into place and she reckoned it would take her most of the next five days to make the round trip driving from San Francisco to Rose Connell in Mendocino and then travelling across to Idaho where Anita’s sister still lived and Jasmine had grown up. All in time to make it back to catch her plane back to London on Sunday.
The hours of driving ahead would give her time to work out minor details like what lie she would use to meet Rose, how exactly she would make the interstate journey and, possibly most difficult, how best to delicately get information about the long-dead Anita. Meanwhile she drove as fast as US speed restrictions would allow – which was admittedly, much slower than she preferred – with the Pacific on her left side and Thelma and Louise on her mind.
CHAPTER 28
Saz took the hairpin bends and sheer cliff drops on the road north at a leisurely pace and made it in just under four hours, including a break for petrol, toilet and the purchase of twelve Reese’s peanut butter cups. The sickly sweet and sour of peanut butter and chocolate and booming Billie Holiday on the rented car stereo kept her going despite the lack of sleep. Chocolate at regular intervals to keep her blood sugar up and constant singing along to “my man done me wrong” torch songs pumping oxygen into her lungs and through to her brain.
She arrived just after eight in the morning and spent an hour eating pancakes until she thought it might be late enough to start making her phone calls. She sipped her coffee and watched the sun reclaim the sky. She called home, wasting coin after coin on a sleepy and disgruntled Molly who resented being woken in the middle of the afternoon having been on call all night and resented Saz being away and just wanted things “back to normal, now, yesterday”. Saz finally pacified her with the promise of a Greek island late summer holiday and about another ten dollars’ worth of sweet nothings to put Molly back to sleep.
She then turned her attention to the matter in hand. On the drive up, she’d decided to make a clean breast of things with Rose. Wondering in passing, just how clean her own breasts were, as she felt more than a little hot and sticky having spent half the night driving and nibbling the ultimate in chocolate. She figured she could probably be fairly honest with her, after all this was a woman who’d managed to leave the House and bring up a daughter alone, and whose child was considered by current members of the House to be slightly strange for wanting to actually live in the real world – compared to the rest of them, Rose sounded really quite sane.
Finishing her third cup of coffee, she went back out to the call box and looked up Rose’s address in the telephone book. The waitress explained where she should go and Saz followed the convoluted directions up to a cliff overlooking the ocean. There, Rose’s house with its unpainted wood walls and redwood shingles, seemed to gently emerge half-hewn from the surrounding rocks and forest that leant out over the Pacific. The view from the front door was amazing, which is why, when Rose opened her door, she saw Saz’s back first.
“Sarah?”
Saz spun around and came face to shoulder with a woman who had to be six foot if she was an inch. Six foot, redheaded, blue-eyed and with such white skin that for once the expression “alabaster” wasn’t an extravagant hyperbole. Saz immediately found herself wondering how easy – or not – it could have been for a white woman to bring up a black child around here. When Rose opened her mouth and revealed a still strong midwest accent, Saz realized that it had to have been easier here, than wherever Rose had left behind.
“You must be Sarah. I’m Rose. I spoke to Milly last night. I wondered if you might drive up here. Come on in.”
Saz followed Rose into an enormous living space with one entire wall made up of floor to ceiling windows facing the sea. What walls were visible were lined with untouched wood and completely covering the opposite wall was an assortment of feathers. All sorts of feathers. Huge gleaming peacock trophies and the tiny downy ones that Saz collected in the morning after Molly had pulled them from her pillows in her sleep.
“Air and water. I’m Scorpio with Aquarius rising. Moon in Gemini.”
“Sorry?”
“One wall’s water. That’s the sea, courtesy of the universe. The other is feathers – flight, air, courtesy of Milly. What are you?”
Saz answered her without thinking, surprised at herself that she even remembered how to reply to such a question,
“Ah …
Aries, March 28th, Leo rising, moon in Gemini.”
“Interesting. No earth – initially, I mean. You must have some somewhere.”
“You’re an astrologer?”
“I also write, tell stories. And so do you – tell stories – from what I hear.”
“Milly or Grant?”
“Oh, definitely Milly. I don’t have a lot of contact with the House these days. But maybe the story-telling is part of your job?”
“Um – yes. At least until I know who to trust.”
Rose motioned for Saz to sit down on the quilt-covered couch.
“Can you trust me?”
“Hell – Scorpio with Aquarius rising and moon in Gemini? I would have thought I could.”
“You know astrology?”
Saz laughed.
“Not at all. I had my chart done once at a lover’s insistence. We broke up soon after. But I do have a good memory for whole sentences.”
“Useful. So, can you trust me?”
“Well, I decided to very early this morning, around about the third time I had to remind myself to drive on the right side of the road.”
“Good. Then come through to the kitchen and tell me all about it while I make breakfast. You must be exhausted.”
Rose sat Saz on a high stool beside the window and then bustled about in the long narrow kitchen that ran the length of one wall – sea view windows at one end and a cool pantry built right into the rock of the hill at the other. She assembled a breakfast of yoghurt and honey, small warm bread rolls and fresh coffee, handing Saz a tray, the coffee topped with whipped frothy milk and sprinkled chocolate.
“You look like a cappuccino girl to me.”
And Saz laughed as she explained she was also a six-mile-a-morning runner but had barely even looked at her running shoes since she first arrived. They carried their trays into the living room and sat, either side of a low wooden table. When Saz had finished her yoghurt and started on the bread, Rose looked up.
“So, what is this all about? I suppose you’ve come from Max?”