The Grandmother Plot

by Caroline B. Cooney

  “Gordon Clary,” said the doctoral candidate, beaming at Closet. “I talked to Kemmy, Mrs. Maple,” he said, leaning around the Closet’s huge waist to make eye contact, as if he routinely found sopranos crushed by giants. “I know it’s on its way back, and I’m so relieved and excited. I didn’t handle things well. I went overboard, it’s a tendency I have, and of course I also apologize for being short with you last Sunday. Its price is beyond dollars, and when I called back, Kemmy reconsidered and gave me permission to make appointments with the proper experts.”

  Oh, Gordon, thought Laura, your tempos are too fast. You shouldn’t have waltzed in like this. You should have waited. You’re so young. If I die, at least I’ve had my life. If you die, you haven’t started yet. How do I get you out of here? Do I give up Freddy to save you?

  But if she did tell Closet Guy how to reach Freddy, he wouldn’t say “Oh, thanks for the information” and head on out. These men were here for entertainment, and the entertainment value had just doubled.

  Gordon extended his hand to shake with Closet Guy.

  Classical musicians, thought Laura. They’re near-sighted whether they wear glasses or not. He doesn’t see how scary these men are. Or perhaps he thinks they’re my sons, because they are the right age and they’re in my house. Perhaps he’s thinking: tattoos—ponytails—creepy teeth—that’s her problem. I’m just here for the manuscript.

  Closet Guy ignored him, walked into the little hall, and bolted the back door.

  Gordon, unfazed by the refusal to shake hands, moved deeper in the kitchen. “Gordon Clary,” he greeted the Ponytail.

  Ponytail Guy held the real gun in one hand and, with the thumb and first finger of his other hand, pretend-shot Gordon.

  Gordon came to a halt.

  Closet was back in the kitchen. “What exactly is beyond price?” His street accent was gone. He sounded like a Yale man himself.

  The grunge stuff was an act, thought Laura. But then, everything about drugs is an act. Lying is part of the culture. It still makes me so mad at you, she thought at her dead husband. All that lying and acting. With me! Who loved you so.

  They were evenly distributed on the limited floor space. Laura in the corner by the sink, Gordon a few paces away, and Ponytail standing between two huge crates. Closet guy filled the kitchen entrance. The grand pianos blocked the arch.

  “He’s referring to a manuscript,” Laura told Closet, forgetting to sound British. “But it isn’t here yet. We’re awaiting delivery. The UPS truck should arrive shortly.” Maybe so much action would deter them. Maybe they’d just go.

  The Closet shook his huge head. “Nobody uses paper anymore. Manuscripts are digital.”

  Gordon backed away from the gun Ponytail was swinging around and positioned himself in front of Laura. He lifted his double chin and stared straight back at Closet.

  Gordon, thought Laura, I wronged you. I judged you on your starched collar and your boasting. But you are a good man. You have no idea what is happening, but you’ve seen a gun, a crazy druggie, and the hugest piece of muscle you and I have ever encountered, and you are trying to protect me.

  Fear had already filled her eyes with tears, but now she felt the hot prickle of emotional tears. Double crying, as it were.

  In his fussiest voice, Gordon Clary said, “It is an historic music manuscript, handwritten long before the advent of the internet. I shall call UPS and confirm the delivery.” He took his cell phone from a cute little waist holster.

  The Closet simply took the phone away in a hand literally twice the size of Gordon’s. They could have been different species. The thug was not a man who could play the organ or piano. His fingers wouldn’t fit.

  Dropping Gordon’s cell phone into his shirt pocket, the Closet tapped his own.

  Virginia had run out of the house and left the door ajar. She was now screaming in the front yard, trying to be heard over the whine of leaf blowers. “He killed my husband! Somebody call the police! That man killed my husband!”

  Freddy could race out of the living room, run past Virginia, leap into his car, and whip out of here at high speed. Who would stop him? Not the crews with their leaf blowers. Not the neighbor with the flimsy metal rake.

  But he’d given his name to Virginia. The rake woman had seen him. Freddy’s fingerprints, which were not on file anywhere in the world, were on the statue thing. Very soon, his fingerprints would be on file, and he would be too. Filed in a jail.

  Br, incarcerated by a vicious woman’s vicious joke.

  Shawn, incarcerated by a vicious man’s vicious plan.

  Freddy, incarcerated because he was an idiot, showing up in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  He got slowly to his feet, staring down at the pathetic corpse.

  Kenneth, he thought, you and me, we’re alike. Neither one of us spotted danger, even when we knew there was a murderer around.

  Did you refuse to let Virginia replace the furniture? Does she hate your hair? Is she the killer of Maude, and you decided to turn her in, so an innocent med tech wouldn’t be blamed? Or are you the killer of Maude, and Virginia didn’t take the news very well? Or does she like a different TV channel?

  It didn’t matter now. Freddy had no way out.

  And the dead body in this mustard-colored room also set him up for Maude’s murder. The police wouldn’t care about motive, because once cops knew you made drug paraphernalia, they didn’t care about anything else. You were guilty. Period.

  Freddy had always known the risks of glass crime. But he would not go down for that. He would be accused of two murders.

  Maude and Kenneth, dead by his hand.

  People would think that?

  Would his sisters stand by him? He wanted to believe that all three would charter planes, screaming, Our brother would never do that!

  But he wasn’t sure. It was incredibly painful, not to be sure of his sisters.

  He took out his cell phone, a lifelong reaction to everything: when in doubt, check your phone. Yet more messages had arrived, but where Freddy was going, messages wouldn’t matter.

  Might as well be proactive.

  He called 911.

  Gordon looked into Laura’s eyes, but she could send him no message, give him no information, and worse, no hope. They both looked at Ponytail, who obligingly waved the gun again.

  Closet caught the motion, saw the gun for the first time, and glared. “Where did you get that?” he snapped. “What do you think you’re doing? Put that down!”

  Ponytail gave a silly apologetic grin and slid the gun back into his pocket.

  From the other end of the house, Laura heard a tiny woof and a faint click. Somebody had come in the front door, which of course Laura had failed to lock. She felt almost cheerful. I’m not going deaf after all! I just get distracted. I still have excellent hearing.

  It couldn’t be Kemmy at the door. She was shopping or else dragging her husband to the doctor.

  It wouldn’t be Freddy, who had never been here and would surely recognize the car of danger, the car of Closet and Ponytail. There must be three cars here now: the red SRX, the white whatever model these two came in, and blocking their retreat would be Gordon’s car, whatever he drove.

  The front-door person could be the junk-run guys, but she was fairly sure they’d come to the same back door by which they had taken out the piano. Besides, they had knocked before. They wouldn’t just walk in.

  Whoever had come inside was advancing. She heard footsteps.

  If it was reinforcements for these home invaders, there was nothing she could do about it. But what if it was a concerned neighbor? “Don’t come in!” she screamed. “Get out, get out!”

  Closet glared at Laura, glared at the hall, glared at the cell phone still in his hand. Even his glare was huge.

  A uniformed police officer walked into the k
itchen.

  They were all astonished: the officer, Laura, Gordon Clary, Ponytail Guy, the Closet.

  There was a moment of nothing: no breathing, no speech.

  The policeman was much smaller than Closet Guy, but his uniform lent him weight and power. He was loaded with equipment, as if next he planned to climb Mount Everest.

  Laura could practically read the chapters flipping through Closet Guy’s mind: caught, arrested, imprisoned. Time to roll.

  But Ponytail’s whole face came apart, like a jigsaw falling on the floor, a mouth here, an eye there. He yanked out his little gun and aimed.

  Laura stared at its little black hole. He would pull that trigger until the weapon was empty, he would empty it into all of them; their whole little row—Laura, Gordon, the policeman. She would die from a hole in her heart. I already have a hole in my heart.

  The policeman was also young; the whole world was young but Laura. Shoot me! she tried to say, elbowing to the front, but Gordon Clary pinned her to the cabinets with his back.

  Oh, Gordon, don’t die for me. I want you to have life.

  “No!” said Closet forcefully, dropping his cell, raising his huge flat hand to stop Ponytail. He stepped forward. “NO!”

  The gun went off.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Freddy was still just standing there in the mustard-colored room. They had cuffed him. It was not frightening to have his hands fastened behind his back. It was more like the expected end of the road. I’m twenty-six, he thought, and it’s over.

  He felt bleary and only half-present.

  He had that lawyer’s number in his cell phone, although the cops had taken his cell; they had taken everything in his pockets, sickeningly satisfied to find a knife there. Of course it was a penknife and it was closed, but they were so smug it was like they’d found DNA.

  The place was noisy: engines and sirens and crew, policemen on radios and phones. Outside, he could hear sobbing and yelling.

  He remembered a line or maybe a title from some book or play he was supposed to have read in high school English and of course hadn’t. Full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

  But the sound and fury in this room signified the end of Freddy’s freedom. Like Br and Shawn, he was going to be behind a lot of bars for a lot of years with a lot of scary people. I’ll be able to remember freedom, he thought, but I won’t have it. Shoulda gone to Alaska while I had the chance.

  A plaid recliner separated Freddy from the techs and the ambulance guys, who were hanging out until they could move Kenneth. Two uniformed women were taking crime-scene photos and videos.

  He thought of Shawn’s body camera. If Freddy’d been wearing one when he walked into this house, he could just play his little video and the cops would have said, “Wow, Freddy, Virginia’s a piece of work, isn’t she? Handing you the murder weapon and all? Gosh, Freddy, how about you go home and rest up while we carry on here?”

  Home. His shop. The beads not finished, the pipes not shipped. The Box of Pain. His Instagram account and the followers who would never see another post. That guy who wanted a Freddy would never get one.

  Then they were walking him outside, and he thought, This is my last outside. Smell the autumn leaves, Freddy Bell, because this is it.

  He hadn’t worried enough; that was his problem. There had been so many worries that they had diluted each other. And he had worried about the wrong people.

  He thought of his grandmother. He couldn’t visit now, let alone bring her home. Grandma, I’m letting you down. I never meant to let you down. I’m sorry.

  The rake lady with her rake was jumping up and down, waving her cell phone. “I photographed him,” she yelled, blocking Freddy’s police escort. “Cell phones record the exact moment of the photo. Just before he knocked on the door, we waved at each other. And when Virginia raced out screaming, I photographed her too. She came outside less than a minute after this guy went in. Listen to me! He didn’t have time to kill Mr. Lansing.”

  Freddy tried to process this, but the handcuffs seemed to have cut off circulation to his brain. Plus he was having a yawn attack from nerves or exhaustion.

  “Why did you video this man?” the cop asked her sternly, as if photography of neighbors was against the rules in Farmington.

  “Because he’s cute,” said the rake lady, and she grinned, and Freddy saw that she was very young. Probably the teenage daughter. The baggy blue jeans and the old sweatshirt had misled him. She held his eyes, wanting him to smile back, but Freddy’s repertoire of smiles was gone.

  The cops did not believe her, or they figured one minute was tons of time for Virginia to witness him bashing Kenneth and still get out of the house to scream for help.

  Freddy had never sat in the back of a cop car. It wasn’t a privilege. He stumbled walking into the police station, maybe because it was the last threshold he had ever wanted to cross.

  Everybody stood around, milling here and there, saying stuff.

  Freddy felt so detached, his soul could have fallen off. He didn’t listen. He kept yawning. You didn’t think during a yawn; you were an animal.

  They removed the cuffs. Probably you didn’t need handcuffs once you were behind bars, although there weren’t any bars yet. They were in some large room full of desks and computers and stuff. Bars were the next step. Everything would be a step. Roll your finger pads here, Freddy. Make your statement now, Freddy. Walk into this cell, Freddy.

  “Freddy,” they kept saying.

  He wasn’t choosing to exercise his right to remain silent. He was a man one wall away from a jail cell. He couldn’t form words.

  A cop got right in his face. Wayne Ames. What was he doing in Farmington? Didn’t these guys keep to their own territory, like wolverines?

  “Hey, Freddy. It’s cool,” said Wayne Ames, grinning and bouncing on his toes. “You didn’t do Robert Lansing. His wife, Virginia, did. The poor guy’s been dead for hours, and you couldn’t have done it, just like your rake-lady friend said. Anyway, Virginia came apart pretty quick. She told us all about it. She even waved her bloody garden gloves at us. She’s quite proud.”

  Kenneth had been dead for hours? The cops and ambulance guys must have realized that right off. So why the cuffs? Why the little trip to a police station?

  Because they’re cops, he thought. It entertains them.

  He wondered if they gathered around when the shift changed and watched their little body-cam videos together, laughing at the people they arrested, the way Jade laughed at residents on her videos.

  Chill, he told himself. Stand still, stay silent, show nothing. He massaged his wrists, although they didn’t hurt. He had no cuts or bruises, not even tissue memory from those cuffs. It was just an occupation so he could look somewhere other than at cop eyes.

  “And before we even asked,” said Ames cheerfully, “she admitted killing Maude!”

  Fat, frazzled, weird old Virginia had suffocated Maude?

  “See, Maude just wouldn’t die,” said Wayne Ames, “even with Robert Lansing spooning his own medication into her. Virginia was tired of it. She wanted to inherit, sell their houses, and live large. She went into MMC that evening and nobody noticed her. She capitalized on it. Picked up a hand towel, suffocated Maude, walked back out, wasn’t seen leaving either. She feels pretty crafty.”

  Freddy wanted a cigarette. And he never had gotten breakfast. Or lunch. Plus no sleep.

  He wondered if Virginia was also in this building. Sadder, more frazzled, and beginning to realize what her future was.

  “You and Laura Maple already figured out that Kenneth was really Robert Lansing, didn’t you?” asked Wayne Ames.

  I’m not participating in this reveal, thought Freddy. Old Wayne will keep talking regardless. I’m literally his captive audience.

  Somebody held out a can of Coke, which wouldn’t b
e as good as a cigarette or a joint, although cold and sparkly sounded great. But if they could get him to drink from the can and then leave it behind, they could lift his prints. He shook his head no, even though his tongue was so dry it hurt against the ceiling of his mouth.

  He was suddenly intensely aware that he had not been fingerprinted. These guys knew who had killed Kenneth/Bobby and they knew who had killed Maude and they knew Philip’s death was from their own negligence. They didn’t need prints to rule Freddy out. He might actually leave this building without his fingerprints on file in a police department.

  “The problem Robert and Virginia Lansing faced was that the real Kenneth wrote a will leaving all his money and his million-dollar house in Old Greenwich to charity. It would be nice to know how the real Kenneth died,” said Wayne Ames, “but he was cremated so we never will. Robert Lansing cremated the real Kenneth under his own father’s name. Then Robert took over as Kenneth. He wrote a new will, as Kenneth, and left the money to himself: Robert.”

  That kind of complexity was way beyond Freddy, who couldn’t even manage to get Grandpa’s vehicles insured. Would Kenneth/Bobby’s plan even have worked?

  Maybe.

  Will—husband of Irene—was a lawyer. Freddy could picture Kenneth/Bobby visiting MMC to establish himself in a friendly down-home way with an attorney—Will or somebody else—ensuring that his identity as Kenneth would never be questioned. The considerate lawyer, moved by Kenneth/Bobby’s loyalty and love for Maude, would have done whatever Kenneth/Bobby needed.

  It was pretty sick to cremate your cousin and pretend he was your dad. Freddy thought of the thing Virginia had handed him, that she killed her husband with. Could it have been a tall, heavy urn? Was the real Kenneth actually inside the murder weapon that took the fake Kenneth down?

  Whoa.

  “Turns out when Maude was first brought to MMC, she even said this man wasn’t her husband. Robert Lansing laughed right along with the staff. Apparently most memory-care residents, if they live that long, don’t recognize their own family. So nobody paid any attention to Maude.”