by Delia Ephron
“Hello.” I extended my hand.
“She’s covering it for the paper,” said Tom. Then he regaled his brother with the details of the dead woman—her exact location, how her feet had been poking out from under an inkberry bush, where exactly he had been when the call came. All this talk smothered any possibility that Billy and I would connect past his mumbled “Nice to meet you” and a handshake, in which he engaged only after wiping his palm on his pants.
As I’d figured, Billy was the fellow who’d been hanging out with Tom at the deer meeting. Tonight he wore the official company windbreaker, gray nylon with “Sakonnet Bay Security” printed in an arc of yellow letters on the left upper sleeve. The jacket barely zipped up, girdling the solid mound of his belly.
“There’s nothing here.” Tom began remaking the bed. “You know, Billy, I thought since she was lying here that day, there might be something.” Oh, I see, the picture was coming into focus. Tom was disguising our crime scene as hers.
“How’d you hear about her death?” I asked Billy.
“His radio,” Tom answered. “Not a clue how she died.” He was mostly reassembled and completely self-possessed. Awesomely so. Only a few visuals were askew. His official police uniform was unbuttoned to mid-chest, although he had a white T-shirt under it, and he was capless, his hair spiky. That could be construed as postwork casualness, I suppose, if one were into self-deception. At the moment, God knows, I was.
Billy screwed up his face, his eyes nearly disappearing into swells of chubby flesh.
“What?” Tom identified the look as confusion.
Billy took a moment to figure out what was bothering him. “Why’d you get the call?”
“What call?”
“That something might be going on here tonight. I was on duty.”
“Who knows? I give my card to everyone and his uncle. And it’s got my personal beeper number on it, not the company emergency. I was lucky to get the call. It gave me a legal reason to search.”
“I was interviewing him when his beeper went off.” Why did I volunteer that? Billy hadn’t asked, and why else would I be here? I reached into my purse for my notebook, relieved that I was able to produce it, although I did not possess a pen.
“I was just driving by, checking out the place.” Now Billy sounded apologetic, and aimed his comment at Tom.
“You thought we were robbers?” I laughed.
“Saw his wheels.”
“Oh, right.” I forgot, everyone knows everyone else’s car, and brothers do for sure. “And this is the first suspicious death since when?”
Billy’s eyes skittered my way. Could he see my underwear bulging in my pocket? “I better get,” he said.
“Since a bar brawl two years ago.” Tom answered my question, tossing me my jacket, which lay on the floor. “Don’t forget this. Summer people. College kids. Remember it, Bill?”
Billy didn’t answer, just thrust his hands deep into his pants pockets and rocked. He acted indifferent to tonight’s news. I would have expected some slobbering, for him to beg his brother for the skinny. Maybe the unexpected shocking discovery was my being here with Tom. My presence had trumped a dead woman.
“Were you here that day when your brother saw her?”
Billy shook his head. “I kind of better be going … I better …”
“Sergeant McKee mentioned tire tracks in the sand. Who do you think that could have been?”
“Huh?”
“A four-wheel-drive car. Some kind of SUV. Not yours?”
“No. N-O.” As he spelled it out, he looked at his brother, who laughed.
“She thinks she’s a detective,” said Tom. This remark hurt my feelings, sort of, but then he winked, or did I imagine it? One eye closed while the other didn’t—that must have been a sign to me that we were together, playing along. He pushed his brother toward the door. “Let’s go, there’s nothing here, that cleaning lady’s a fanatic. You could use her, Billy.”
“Oh yes, is that right? Are you messy?” I asked.
Tom commenced some friendly joshing about Billy’s place being the town dump.
As we trooped out, I caught a glimpse of myself in the gilt-framed mirror, which I hadn’t noticed, since it was to the right of the door and we were always focused left, bedward. My eyes were dewy; my cheeks flushed with thrill. No wonder Billy kept trying to excuse himself. Just because he could hardly string together a three-word sentence didn’t mean he couldn’t spot the obvious: I looked as though I’d just been laid.
We spent some minutes alone on the landing while Tom investigated the two other bedrooms. Billy kept his flashlight pointed at our feet, so our faces remained in shadow, a relief to me. I felt less exposed, and wondered if he did as well. “It’s eerie,” I said, “knowing she was here.”
He chuckled—a reaction I found odd.
“Your brother’s been really helpful. I was coming home from the movies when the police whizzed by. I followed. I’d like to interview you, too.”
“I got nothing to say.” Peculiar inflection here—he wasn’t denying that he had specific knowledge, but that he had any knowledge whatsoever. Astonished he was that anyone would think he had. Not that I jump to conclusions, but Billy McKee’s self-esteem was not in the normal range. Low. Say, basement level.
“We could talk about your job. Get publicity for your company.”
“Don’t know.”
In the bedroom, Tom had answered almost every question for him. I wanted Billy to myself. “How about Monday?”
“What?”
“An interview. It’s fun. You’ll enjoy it.” Why hadn’t he answered that alarm? Where had he been? Perhaps he was bringing girls out to these fancy houses, showing off. He might need to inflate his bitty ego in this grandiose way. I could pump him without having his brother along to throw out a life preserver. “About two. At the Comfort Café.”
“Can’t.”
“When are you free?”
“Four.”
“Fine. Four o’clock.”
Abruptly he flashed his light in my face, blinding me, then dropped it again. That shut me up. We stood in silence, and I became aware of how bulky he was. With a push down the stairs, I’d be history. Allan, my ex, had once been mugged. He’d been entering the subway station, reading The New York Review of Books, his version of showing off, when an arm circled his throat from behind, choking off circulation. He tumbled six steps and broke his ankle. He could have broken his back.
Tom rejoined us, announcing that the place was spotless enough to perform open-heart surgery in.
“Maybe somebody in addition to the housekeeper turned the place out. Somebody especially careful,” I said.
“Could be.” Tom pointed his flash down the stairs, indicating that I should proceed. I demurred. I wasn’t going to descend the staircase ahead of Billy.
Tom would probably cover for his brother. He’d covered for him the day of the dog bite, speeding us over here. Wouldn’t he cover again if Billy eliminated me because I guessed that one of his rendezvous had gone awry? Unless Tom loved me, in which case he’d be torn asunder trying to reconcile my death with his brother’s guilt.
The naked woman would be Billy’s first victim; I’d be the next. Multiple murders. “Got out of hand,” said Billy McKee to whoever interviewed him on Monday at four because I was too dead to do it. “Got out of hand.” I could see this guy rising to the occasion with an explanation that psychologically perceptive.
But he did not kill me on the way out of the house. He burped once, making me wonder if he’d been drinking beer on the job, and when we were outdoors in the prosaic world of timer lights, he mentioned that Mrs. Stockley, a client, would throw a fit if she didn’t see their security company car pass every twenty minutes. He and Tom laughed about it. “So how’d she die?” he asked.
“I told you, I don’t know yet,” said Tom.
Billy played with the zipper on his windbreaker.
“Pretty insane
,” said Tom.
Billy continued to zip, up and down, up and down, as he backed toward his car.
“Nice to meet you,” I called.
“Uh-huh.” At least that’s what I thought I heard him reply, as he climbed in.
CHAPTER 11
WE WATCHED as Billy’s taillights receded into the night.
“Did he suspect?”
Tom shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.”
“No?”
We got into the car, and traveled upright and well-behaved back to my block, our clasped hands hidden by the dashboard.
“I’m crazy about you,” said Tom.
Blissful words.
“I solved the crime at Deborah’s Hair and Nails,” I told him.
“Janet Rosco.”
“How did you know?”
“Curls tight enough to lay a mattress on,” he said.
And so we resumed our post-lovemaking intimacy, cozy speculation on how the hideous permanent had come to pass, hideous even by the woolly-lamb standards of Sakonnet Bay. All the while our hands joined and rejoined, fingers intertwining, thumb adjustments that sent electricity along with oxygen through my bloodstream. Deborah had miscalculated the proportions when she mixed the goo, or hadn’t set the timer, so Janet Rosco’s hair had overcooked. Perhaps the box of hair dye had had an expiration date long past.
“Like old milk,” said Tom, letting go of me only long enough to open the glove compartment and distribute Myntens, lemon-mint this time, as we compared our moments of discovery. I told him about awakening from a nap on the bleachers to the awesome sight, the cap lifted, the hair revealed. He’d solved the case while barbecuing. “Chicken,” she’d requested, “be sure it’s done.” When he’d handed over a paper plate containing a leg and a thigh (from his lips, even poultry parts were a turn-on), the plate buckled, the chicken slid. As Janet Rosco had bent to save her lunch, her cap tumbled onto the barbecue. McKee had spiked it before it charred, and upon returning it to her, could not help noticing her permanent.
We were parked on my corner now. “The hair through the mail slot wasn’t gray or curly,” said McKee. “Wonder whose hair she snipped.”
“Her daughter’s?”
“Doesn’t have one.”
Sitting here we were courting discovery. “I’d better go,” I said, not moving. “Does she have a dog?”
“I think so.”
“I knew it. What kind?”
Tom kissed his hand and placed it over my mouth. “I’m crazy about you,” he said again.
I pushed against the door, the handle poking into my back, providing the equivalent of electrical grounding. I had to be able to stand upright. It was essential that my legs maintain the strength to convey me from this corner to home.
“Tell me what breed.”
“Golden retriever,” he acknowledged, as his hand traveled along my neck. Now a lone finger heading south.
“Whose coat is a brownish orange, the exact color of the strands on the beauty salon floor. You see, you should listen to me. I’m good.”
“Good night, sweet Lily, I’ll call you tomorrow.”
He didn’t drive off until I reached the driveway of my house, a moment before I saw a bushy beast the size of a backpack underneath my car. An opossum or a raccoon. I sprinted to the front door, expecting the animal to dash after me and attack my feet. I fumbled getting my key in the lock, desperate for a table to leap onto, when I felt a soft touch on my shoulder.
I could not have screamed louder.
“God, you’re nuts—take it easy.”
“Bernadette?”
“Don’t let anyone see me.” Bernadette ducked behind a bush as Mr. Woffert opened his front door. He was wearing a plaid flannel bathrobe and carrying a rifle.
“Oh, hello, Mr. Woffert.”
“You got a problem?”
“No, I just saw an animal or something. I’m very sorry, it scared me.”
“It scared you?” He didn’t seem to believe me.
“I’m fine,” I yelled to my neighbors across the street, their porch lights glowing, front doors ajar. “Fine” was beginning to plague me. “Really,” I told Mr. Woffert, who had noticed that the paint on his porch post was peeling. He chipped at it with his free hand, while the other still gripped the gun. “I’m sorry I woke you.”
His wife turned up now, pink quilted robe buttoned to the neck. “What’s that, your gun?” She relieved him of it.
“My sincere apologies for waking you,” I said to her. “I’m not used to country sights.”
“No trouble here, never been any,” said Mr. Woffert.
“Good night,” I called, “I’m very sorry.”
“This isn’t the country,” Mrs. Woffert insisted, and he answered, “To her it is, I guess,” as I closed my door and waited for Bernadette’s inevitable knock. She’d be really screwed if Woffert decided to repair his porch then and there, producing a putty knife that he probably carried everywhere, even to bed. She might be stuck in the shrubbery for days. But a few seconds later I heard her rap.
“Where were you, I was waiting for ages.” She assessed her options, then headed into the living room and flopped into a chair. She stuck her legs out, and bopped her toes together a few times. “Where’s your kid?”
“Sam’s away for the weekend.”
“My boyfriend’s after me.”
“The same one who hid in the bushes?”
“Who else? Don’t you love fleece?” She sprang up and over to me, raising her arm so that I could stroke her fluffy jacket.
“Yes. Fleece is nice. What do you mean he’s after you?”
“This house is cool. You have good taste.”
“Thank you.”
“God, where were you, anyway? I thought you’d never come home. With some guy? Were you in that car at the corner? Who was that?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You’re seeing someone who doesn’t even take you home? That’s a bummer. My mom has a quilt like that. Is it worth a lot?”
“I have no idea.”
“Please, Lily.” Tears welled up with impressive speed. “You’ve got to let me stay here.” She threw her arms around me and rubbed her damp eyes against my neck.
“You must have friends you can stay with, Bernadette.”
“He knows my friends, he knows everyone, nobody knows you.” She sniffled a few times.
“If he’s a threat to your safety, you should call the police.” I pushed her away and moved toward the kitchen. She stayed at my heels.
“He’s not a threat. God, he wouldn’t hurt a flea. He doesn’t want me to break up, and he’s just bothering me to death. Wherever I go, he’s going to bug me, but he’ll never find me here.”
I took down a can of peanuts, and before I’d even unlocked the vacuum seal, Bernadette held out cupped hands, awaiting her portion.
All I wanted was privacy, the one thing that now seemed unattainable. I needed time for some processing and for the sexual thrall to subside, but Bernadette was relentless. I settled her for the night on the living room couch; but with my bedroom door closed, I could hear her rattling kitchen cabinets, helping herself to God knows what, raising the TV volume, flipping channels. She was a noisy, fidgeting presence, incapable of doing anything unobtrusively. The next morning she appeared early, that was irritating, complaining that there were no shades on the windows and, besides, she couldn’t sleep in a strange place. “Your bed’s big, could I sleep with you?”
“No.” Did that request mean she planned to remain another night?
I had tiptoed past her into the kitchen for coffee, and when she came in yawning and grousing, I was contemplating the telephone, worrying that Tom might call and she might answer, worrying that while I was at the airport getting Sam, she might answer, and worrying that when Sam came home, he might answer. Or even Deidre might pick up: Deidre had smarts enough and an attention span long enough to put two and two together.
>
Concealment was going to be a full-time job.
And the phone wires were sizzling. News of the dead woman had traveled around town, and every time the phone rang, I leapt for it, stretched for it, raced for it, with athleticism I didn’t know I possessed. “I can answer, you know,” said Bernadette as I practically catapulted over the kitchen table to seize the phone from under her nail-bitten fingers. These lunges were like sliding into home plate. Safe, the umpire shouted, as I grasped the receiver.
“You can’t answer the phone,” I told her, “or people will know you’re here.”
“Oh, right.” This seemed to depress her.
She hung around, listening to my end of a conversation with Jane. “Why didn’t you tell me last night?” asked Bernadette.
“Why didn’t you call me?” said Jane, virtually simultaneously.
“It was late.”
“I’m going to the bank tomorrow to separate my money from Jonathan’s, what’s left of it.”
“Oh, dear. Have you talked to him yet?”
“Who?” asked Bernadette.
I ignored her. “No,” said Jane. “Meet me at Suffolk Bank, would you? At one? I need propping up.”
“Of course.”
As soon as I disconnected, Bernadette grilled me: What was it like on that deserted road? The dead woman’s skin, was it blue and bloated? Had I seen her face? I mentioned that she’d been nibbled at. It was stupid to nourish Bernadette’s ghoulish interest or cheapen the tragedy, but I couldn’t resist watching the pop and widening of her eyes.
Art called, wanting me to write up my experience, a column as well as a standard news piece. I shouldn’t forget a story on the Oktoberfest as well. “Big day,” he said.
I received a call from the receptionist. Peg had heard I was there when the body was discovered, as had Coral Williams from the Comfort Café, and Rob, the other reporter, who lamented the fact that I’d gotten my claws into the story first. I repeated my tale again and again, the drive home, the sirens, the feet poking out of the brambles.
I persuaded Bernadette to keep me company when I drove to the airport. I left the phone machine off, a fact she pointed out, and I replied gaily, “Who cares.” As we drove through town, we saw people standing in clusters. Dead-body talk. LePater’s, on this Sunday morning, was packed to capacity. News like this meant doughnut-eating time.