“I know it sounds strange.”
“It’s just that the age difference . . .”
“I can try and explain it if you like, but the truth is, I don’t know if I can. I was coming off a shitty relationship with someone my age who turned out to be a worthless human being. Your father and I . . . it was almost instant, like when you feel you’ve known someone your whole life five minutes after meeting them. And he was kind, as you know. But he was married, and even if he wasn’t, he was nearly twenty-five years older than me, so it’s not like I thought there was potential. But I let myself fall in love, even became a little obsessed. I think he knew—no, I know he knew—and I think he decided to not take advantage of it. But whenever he came to the city he’d take me out to dinner. We had a place, a Spanish restaurant, that we always went to. We’d started going there when we first met because it was the first restaurant we’d hit when we walked out of the blacked-out portion of the city to where there was still electricity. And we kept going there. We even had our own special table, not that we always got it, but we usually did, and the owner and his wife treated us like we were a couple.”
“But you weren’t yet?” Harry said.
“Well, not yet, but then we were. It wasn’t casual, Harry. It was serious. That’s why I know he wasn’t having another affair. I think your stepmother made that up, that maybe she’s trying to deflect the police from looking at her.”
“You think she had something to do with my father’s death.”
“I don’t really know why I’m here, but yes, I’ve thought about it, thought about Alice having something to do with your father’s death. That’s why I came up, I guess, and why I wanted to meet you. To find out if you knew anything.”
“Did you think Alice found out about you and my father?”
Grace shifted forward. “The last time I saw your father, about two and a half weeks ago, he talked about Alice a lot. It was something he never really did, so I thought it was strange. He told me that she’d started acting strange toward him. She couldn’t make eye contact, she was totally cold. He kept asking her what was going on, but she wouldn’t say anything.”
“It sounds like she found out about you two.”
“That’s what we thought, but we went over it, and there just didn’t seem to be any way she could have.”
“There could be a thousand ways. She could have found one of your hairs on his coat, she could have hired a detective, she could have just felt it, known it.”
“I know. Like I said, it’s why I came here. I had to see her, at the funeral. I thought I might just know, from looking at her.”
“And did you?”
“I don’t know what I know anymore, but I think I should go to the police, tell them I was having an affair with him. Maybe it would make a difference.”
“You should,” Harry said.
“I will, before I leave.”
“That will mean that Alice will know about you.”
“I guess. If she doesn’t already.”
“She already knows about this other woman.”
“There is no other woman,” Grace said.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Your father and I talked. I was definitely the only person he was involved with. He was racked with guilt. He said it was the first time he’d done anything remotely like this.”
Harry felt her eyes on him, looking for confirmation. “I don’t know what to tell you,” he said. “But think about it . . . he was deceiving Alice with you. What makes you think he wouldn’t have deceived you with someone else?”
Grace pursed her lips, then said, “Because he wouldn’t have. I don’t believe it. Alice is making it up because maybe she wants the police to look at someone else.”
Harry felt a little bit of loyalty toward Alice. He said, “Why wouldn’t she just tell them about you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe she didn’t know about us. Maybe because I wouldn’t be a good suspect because I was down in New York City.”
They were both quiet for a moment. Harry’s eyes traced a water stain in the corner of the bedroom’s high ceiling. Finally, he asked, “Were you hoping that my father would leave Alice to be with you?”
“Of course that’s what I was hoping,” Grace said, her voice loud.
“I just didn’t know . . . I didn’t know if you saw it as a fling.”
“I thought it was just a fling, because he was married, and because he was twice my age, and all those other things, but, like I said, I was in love with him. We got one another. So, yeah, I had fantasies that he’d leave Alice and move back down to the city and in with me. It didn’t make me feel good about myself, but I thought about it. I thought about it all the time.” She paused, and Harry didn’t say anything. “Are you mad at me?” she said.
“What do you mean?”
“I seduced your father. He was a married man. It’s possible that I’m the reason he’s dead.”
“I don’t know if I’m mad at you, but I want to know more. About you and him.”
“You’re just like him, you know. You don’t talk about yourself. You just keep asking questions. He did the exact same thing. I thought he was selfless, at first, but I changed my mind. I think it was selfish. I think he didn’t want to give anything of himself away, and I think you’re the same.”
“I don’t know what to say to that,” Harry said.
“Yeah, that’s what he used to say,” Grace said, her voice tinged with anger. Then quietly, she said, “What’s the name of this woman he was supposed to be involved with?”
“Annie Callahan.”
“How did he know her?”
“She worked at the bookstore, the one up here. Alice said that my father hired her because he’d heard her husband was out of work, and she needed the money.”
Harry watched Grace, who was chewing at the side of her thumbnail. He thought she looked doubtful, for the first time. He wanted to say more, wanted to convince her that there was a possibility that his father had been involved with two women on the side. Maybe it was a midlife crisis, maybe it was a pattern he’d had his whole life. Harry no longer knew what to believe.
“Grace,” he said.
She stopped biting at her nail and looked up at him.
“You should definitely tell the police you’re here,” Harry said.
She shrugged, and said, “I’ll talk to them. They won’t believe me, but I’ll talk to them.” She started chewing at the side of her nail again. He wondered what she’d done today—if she’d left this room, or had anything to eat. He was going to ask her, but instead he said, “I should go. Thanks for telling me the truth about my father.”
“Stay a little longer,” she said quickly, smiling weakly, her eyes locking on his.
“No, I should go back,” Harry said. He stood.
“Okay. I understand.”
Harry didn’t immediately move. “Are you going to be okay?” he asked.
“I will be. I’ll be fine.”
“I’ll check in with you tomorrow morning, okay?” he said. “Bright and early. I think we both need to get some sleep.”
“Okay,” she said, her shoulders dropping. There was a sad smile on her face, and she looked defeated. “Be careful,” she said.
“I’ll be fine. I’ll be back tomorrow. We can go to the police, together, if you’d like?”
“Yes,” she said. Harry went through the door, shut it behind him, and retreated, hand on a banister, down the dark stairwell, and out the front door, back out into the night.
Back at Grey Lady, he shut the front door quietly behind him. He could hear gentle snores coming from the living room. He took his shoes off by the door, and went and looked over the couch at Alice, sleeping, while another home renovation show, this one with a pair of handsome twins, played on the television.
Harry left her where she was and went up to his own room. It was warm and stuffy, retaining the heat from earlier in the day. He opened a window, took off
all his clothes, and got under his single sheet. He cracked a book even though he knew there was no possibility he’d be able to read anything. He stared at the illegible lines of print, and thought about the day, and about how little he’d known his father.
Chapter 20
Then
The police returned the next evening. Not Officer Wilson with his fuzzy mustache, but a woman with a perm of tight curls who introduced herself as Detective Metivier.
“Sorry to come around during dinner hour,” she said to Jake at the door, as Alice listened from the living room, “but I have some follow-up questions for Alice.”
Jake let her in, offering her coffee that she turned down.
Alice had called in sick at the pharmacy, and was still in her pajamas and her favorite robe. She wasn’t sick, but she really didn’t want to be out in public, listening to people speculate about what had happened to Gina Bergeron. They must have been gossiping like mad in Kennewick, because they had already begun to gossip in the world at large. Alice had watched Entertainment Tonight the previous evening, and Gina was the second story. A promising model who had mysteriously died in the ocean while visiting her family. Alice had been shocked when one of the pictures they chose to show was her own favorite picture. Gina in the yellow bathing suit with the sad eyes. Well, they’d picked it because of how haunted she looked, probably. At the end of the segment, John Tesh had said something like “More to come on this story, for sure,” and Mary Hart had frowned and tilted her head. Alice had thought: Why is there more to come? Another tragic model, drugs and suicide. What else was there?
After Jake pulled up a chair for Detective Metivier to sit on, Alice, settling on the edge of the sofa, noticed that the detective held a small plastic box in her hands. It looked like a square toolbox, or a piece of medical equipment. The detective caught Alice looking at the box, and said, “It’s a kit for making a tooth imprint, Alice.”
Jake, still standing, said, “What’s going on?”
“Alice, did you bite Gina Bergeron on Friday night?”
“Yeah, I bit her on the hand.”
The detective looked a little taken aback, as though she’d been preparing for a denial.
“Can you tell me why?”
“Okay. I went to dinner at the Bergerons’ house because Gina’s mother invited me. After dinner, Gina and her mother asked me to come outside, and then they attacked me—”
“They attacked you? Physically?” the detective asked, gesturing. Alice noticed that there were no rings at all on any of her fingers.
“Not physically, but they ganged up on me.”
“Why did they do that?”
Alice turned and looked at Jake. His normally placid features registered a small amount of concern. She turned back to the detective. For someone who didn’t wear jewelry at all, she wore a lot of makeup.
“They didn’t like that I was still living with Jake. They thought I should get my own place.”
“Alice, you—” Jake began, but the detective interrupted.
“Why did they think that?” she asked.
“You obviously know, because you’ve talked with Mrs. Bergeron. She must have told you about the bite, so she probably told you all about everything else.”
“I’d like to hear it from you, Alice.”
“They thought Jake was taking advantage of me. It’s sick. I have no family left, and Jake is all I have. He’s more than a stepfather to me, more like a real father, and they were telling me that I should get away from him. It was crazy. I took off.”
“Why do you think they thought Jake was taking advantage of you?”
“How do I know? Gina got it stuck in her sick head, and she told her mother, and her mother believed her, I guess.”
The detective turned to Jake for the first time and asked: “Did you know anything about this?”
“No, I’m hearing this for the first time. It’s totally ridiculous. Alice is, was, my wife’s daughter. That’s all it is. Alice, why didn’t you tell me about this?”
“Because I didn’t want to bother you. Because it was disgusting.”
“So, Alice,” Detective Metivier said. “What can you tell me about the bite?”
Alice breathed deeply through her nostrils. Some of the anger she’d felt that night was coming back, and for a brief moment she could feel Gina’s flesh between her teeth. “They kept accusing me, and I got upset. We were in the backyard and I decided to just leave. Gina ran over and grabbed me, and I just took her hand and bit it. I wanted her to let go of me, and it worked.”
“But Gina came back that night. She came here and tried to talk with you some more, right?”
“I already told the other policeman all about that. Gina was drunk. She came to apologize and wanted to go swimming as a way to restart our friendship, or something. I told her I didn’t want to, and she left. That’s all that happened.”
“You didn’t go swimming with her?”
“No. I stayed here. If I’d gone swimming with her she probably wouldn’t have drowned. Does her mother think I went swimming with her?”
Instead of answering, the detective asked, “Why didn’t you tell us the whole story when Officer Wilson first questioned you?”
“I told you, because I hadn’t told Jake about what Gina and her mother were saying. I didn’t want to upset him. And it had nothing to do with what happened later. I’m sorry, I should have told you, but I didn’t.”
“That’s okay, Alice,” the detective said, and looked as though she was about to stand.
“So you don’t need my teeth . . . you don’t need to use your . . .”
“I don’t, not if you’re telling me that it was you who left the bite mark on Gina’s hand.” She stood, glancing toward Jake, then back to Alice.
“What does Gina’s mother think? Does she think I had something to do with what happened to Gina?” Alice asked.
“She’s pretty upset. She says that Gina hated swimming, and would never have gone swimming alone in the middle of the night, especially with her hand the way it was.”
“She didn’t hate swimming. Like I told that other detective, we’d been swimming before.”
“Okay,” the detective said. “Thank you, Alice, for clearing up the issue of the bite.” Something in the detective’s voice and body language told Alice that she’d just decided that there was nothing mysterious about Gina’s death. Alice had passed, somehow. But then Detective Metivier turned to Jake and said, “Do you mind walking me out to my car? I have a couple of questions just for you.”
“Oh,” Jake said, then nodded. “Sure.”
Alice was able to watch them talking in the parking lot from the window in Jake’s office. They stood side by side near what was probably the detective’s tan car, something American, maybe a Chevy Celebrity. It was a grey evening, the air filled with fine mist, and Jake, wearing only a sweater, stood with his arms across his body. The detective had put on a white trench coat with a big, floppy collar. She seemed to be mostly listening as Jake spoke. She nodded several times, then began patting at her pockets as though she was getting ready to leave. Jake unfolded his arms and held out a hand for her to shake. Then she was pulling out a pack of cigarettes, offering one to Jake. To Alice’s surprise—he’d quit a couple of years ago—he took the cigarette. The detective lit her own with a lighter then handed the lighter to Jake. After she drove off, Alice watched him stand, greedily smoking the cigarette, and looking out across the road toward the ocean, lined with whitecaps.
When he came back in, his skin was damp with the mist from outside, and he smelled sharply of the cigarette.
“Why’d you smoke one of her cigarettes?” Alice asked.
“You were watching us?”
“I saw you through the window, but you smell like cigarettes.”
He sniffed, and rubbed at his nose. “I was just being polite. She offered.”
“What did she ask you?”
“Let me get a drink, and I�
��ll tell you. Why didn’t you tell me about Gina and her mother? Jesus, Alice.”
She followed him into the kitchen. “I didn’t tell you because who cares what they think.”
“Maybe I would’ve cared. You have to tell me these things, Alice. I need to be prepared.”
“What did that detective ask you?”
He poured whiskey into a tumbler, then added some ice and soda water. It was what he drank when he was drinking a lot, what he drank all day on Sunday when there were football games on.
“She wanted to know what our relationship was.”
“What did you tell her?”
“I told her that it was none of her business.”
“Why didn’t you tell—”
“She said that Vivienne Bergeron told the police she has proof that we’re involved, that one of her friends saw us together at a restaurant in Portland.”
“That doesn’t mean anything. Besides, who cares, and what does it have to do with what happened with Gina?”
“Nothing. Nothing at all. That’s what I told the detective and she agreed. She says that Vivienne Bergeron is kicking up a fuss, convinced that because they had accused you that night, somehow you got revenge on Gina. She’s been talking about the bite, and how she knows for a fact that Gina would never have gone swimming by herself.”
“That’s stupid.”
“I’m just telling you what the detective told me that Vivienne has been saying.”
“So what does she think I did? Does she think I killed Gina and threw her in the ocean?”
Jake shrugged. “She just lost a child. I don’t think she’s thinking straight. Can I get you a drink?”
They watched TV. Jake let Alice pick what to watch. Mystic Pizza was on USA and they watched that, Alice occasionally flipping over to MTV during commercials. Jake went back and forth several times to the kitchen to get a new drink. When the movie was over, Alice turned the television off and said that she was going to bed.
“Wait a moment, Ali, okay?”
Her body was instantly cold. “Sure,” she said.
“I’d like to talk with you about something.”
All the Beautiful Lies Page 15