Third Degree

by Maggie Barbieri

I served Kathy and Jane some wine and made a plate of cheese and crackers to nosh on while we visited. We finished one bottle of sauvignon blanc and started a bottle of Sancerre. After a couple of glasses of wine, I finally got the courage to ask Kathy and Jane the question that had been niggling at me since we had last been together.

  “Why are you so negative about Lydia Wilmott?” I asked Kathy.

  Jane shot her a look that transmitted her discomfort with this conversation. Kathy ignored her, emboldened by the white wine or tired of staying silent on the subject.

  Kathy looked at Jane. “You know I’m conflicted about this,” she said to her. Jane looked down. “If it wasn’t for Lydia and her crackpot ideas, we wouldn’t be together.” Kathy turned to me. “It’s like this. Lydia did the same number on Jane as she did on you, thinking that Jane’s complaints about her ex, Stu, were veiled hints at abuse. She’s the one that convinced Jane to get out of the marriage, thinking that Jane’s well-being was at stake. But Jane wasn’t abused. She was gay. And Lydia misread the entire situation, just like she did with you, and created all of this conflict where there was none.”

  Jane was silent, staring into her wineglass.

  “You just didn’t know who you were when you married him,” Kathy said softly, putting a hand on Jane’s knee. It sounded as if they had had this conversation many times before and it wasn’t a pleasant one. “I like Stu. He’s a good guy. Actually, he’s a great guy. He just had the unfortunate luck to marry a gay woman who befriended a woman who did everything in her power to make him seem like a really bad guy.” Kathy squeezed Jane’s hand. “Listen, if I were straight, I would have fallen for the guy. He’s handsome, he’s smart, and he makes a lot of money,” she said, laughing at the last part of her description. “But he’s not an abuser. And Lydia caused a lot of trouble for him unnecessarily, making him have to deny something that he never did.” She looked at me intently. “Stu’s my friend, believe it or not. We have a weekly tennis game. I don’t think I can forgive her for trying to ruin his reputation.”

  Kathy was very invested in Stu’s reputation and it was obviously a subject she felt passionately about. I changed the subject to the rescheduling of Jimmy Crawford’s pool party and got their input on the appropriate dress for the meet and greet with all of the Crawfords, which would happen eventually. Jane—who suggested that I wear a sundress—was more helpful than Kathy, who suggested wearing a bathing suit under a terry-cloth cover-up.

  “Thank you,” I said. “You have been little to no help at all. First of all, I don’t own a sundress, and second, I would no sooner be caught dead in a terry-cloth cover-up than a tube top. But thank you for your input.”

  They left after the second bottle of wine was finished and all that was left of the cheese and cracker platter was the rind of the Jarlsberg that I had served. I cleaned up and, seeing that it was just a little before five, decided that I would go over to Lydia’s to thank her for setting Queen up in what was a very nice guesthouse with a hint of a river view outside of the bedroom window.

  Let bygones be bygones.

  I drove over to the Wilmotts and bypassed the house, opting to park in front of Queen’s little guest cottage so I could check in with her to see if she needed anything. She was already in possession of the futon from my guest room, until she was able to buy a bed, and a set of old china from my mother’s family that I didn’t think I’d ever part with but whose pattern I hated nonetheless. I figured my mother wouldn’t mind; giving the china to Queen was what my colleague Rabbi Schneckstein would call a “mitzvah.” The house was a miniature replica of the big Wilmott Colonial, down to the boxes filled with flowers that hung in front of the leaded windows. Queen opened the door. When she saw me, she grabbed me by the arm and pulled me into the small living room.

  I objected loudly to being manhandled and she put her hand over my mouth. “Be quiet,” she said. “Hear me out.”

  With the exception of Crawford, I wasn’t used to looking up at someone. But I looked up into her dark eyes and did what she asked: I heard her out.

  Thirty-Five

  I don’t lie.

  But I’m really good at keeping secrets.

  Heck, I’ve got a head full of secrets and, most times, I can forget about them and live in a world where none of the details of those secrets ever happened or would ever come to light. Remember, Max is my best friend—my sister, really—and has been for a very long time. If I didn’t keep many of the facets of her interesting and complicated life a secret, she’d be in a heap of trouble with a lot of people. My secret-keeping began when we were first friends, back at St. Thomas, back when I was an impressionable kid who toed the line but was in thrall to my new friend, one who lived life on the edge.

  To me, keeping a secret is way different than out-and-out lying, but it was a slippery moral slope and I knew that.

  Max’s inability to walk the straight and narrow path and her clinging to her patented brand of extraordinarily bad judgment started long before we were adults, which will come as no surprise to anyone. Fueled by liquor, her judgment goes from extraordinarily bad to unconscionable and that’s how I found myself stuffing her alcohol-soaked body into a closet one December night at St. Thomas when we were both still teenagers, me concocting an alibi for her as she slept off one of the worst drunks I had ever witnessed.

  The police were not amused. Nor was the Guatemalan cab driver who wailed about his cabina over and over until Sister Marguerite Durand—aka Sister Billy Martin for her striking resemblance to the Yankees manager of the 1970s—was roused from her holy slumber on the fourth floor and came down to the first floor to see what all of the commotion was about. The commotion concerned the driver, who had left his cab running as he ran into the building to use the men’s room on the first floor, and his missing vehicle. As the resident assistant on duty, I was doing my best to take charge of the situation but was doing a fair to middling job at best.

  The last time I had trembled like that was when I had food poisoning and a hundred and four fever. I prayed that Max, in the coat closet right inside the front door of the building, didn’t wake up before Sister Marguerite, the two cops, and the cab driver vacated the premises. I guess I might have noticed that one of the police officers was young, handsome, and tall, wearing a clean white undershirt that peeked appealingly from the top of his unbuttoned uniform shirt. I know for sure that I did notice the gold band glinting on the ring finger of his left hand, thinking that he was too young to be married. He was sent to find the cab, which he did with alarming alacrity. Turns out our cab thief, one Maxine Siobhan Rayfield, hadn’t driven it very far; it was found, running with all of its doors locked, about five hundred feet from the circular driveway in front of the dorm but as close to the river as one could get with a motor vehicle without getting it wet. The officer, whose name I never got, had jimmied the lock on the driver-side door and driven the car back to the dorm. He was the closest thing to a superhero I had ever encountered.

  Sister Marguerite looked at me as the cabdriver described the young woman whom he had picked up in front of Maloney’s on Broadway: short, thin, dark haired, dressed all in black. Drunk as a skunk. Sister looked as though she were ready to blurt out Max’s name, but something about my expression stopped her. Maybe it was the recognition that if Max was fingered and subsequently expelled (or worse), I would be lost; my father had died suddenly the summer before of a massive heart attack at the age of forty-four and Sister Marguerite knew that I was hanging on by the thinnest of emotional threads. Maybe it was the idea that Max’s stunt would cast aspersions on our fine institution of higher, Catholic-style learning. Maybe it was the dawning realization that she herself would be in deep shit for not keeping a closer eye on things. Whatever it was, she stopped and disavowed any knowledge of the little deranged pixie who, if found, would be charged with a felony. She paid the cabdriver the fare from petty cash with an extra twenty for his trouble, apologized profusely for wasting everyone’s time,
and told the police officers and the cabdriver that she would pray for their safety every day for the rest of her life at evening vespers. She never did bring up the incident again but it was clear that she wasn’t pleased and that she would look for any transgression to boot Max’s skinny little ass from the dorm and, eventually, St. Thomas.

  It was an incident that I had buried deep in my unconscious until Crawford had brought it up at dinner the week before. I was ashamed that I had been part of the incident, and that all these years later, I was still lying to protect my delinquent friend. He sometimes asked me why I was still friends with her and all I could say was that I loved Max. She had seen me through some very dark days and I was forever in her debt, as she was in mine. In her own way, she takes care of me. We don’t always see eye to eye but we share a history. I am an only child and both of my parents are dead, having died long before they should have. Before I met Crawford, Max was all I had.

  I understand undying love, even the platonic kind. I understand going to the ends of the earth for someone you love, even when they disappoint you or even when they betray you. I understand doing things that go against your very core so that they don’t suffer for their transgressions or for the things that they don’t even bring on themselves. I understand all of that.

  So I understood why Lydia Wimott wanted her husband to die.

  Queen had already figured out who had put the explosive device on Carter’s car engine. She had been in the guesthouse less than twenty-four hours and had solved the mystery of who else wanted Carter dead, but that’s what happens when you’re dealing with amateur criminals. They talk too much, and leave too many clues. You just have to be looking in the right place at the sort of right time, and you’ll know everything that went into the commission of the crime.

  Queen had been looking for a hedge clipper in the shed so that she could trim the boxwood that grew around the front door of the guest house. She never did find the hedge clipper, but she did find a cache of explosives and some copper wiring, and some kind of electrical setup that would serve as the igniter, or so she surmised. It was all there, right next to a bag of fertilizer and three half-empty cans of paint, the same paint that had been applied to the outside of Queen’s doll-like new residence.

  Unlike me, who gets all of her information through idle gossip or snooping, Queen does research. She went through her list of fellow Hooters waitresses until she came up with someone who had done a stint in Iraq and knew a thing or two about explosives. She told her coworker what she had found and her suspicions were confirmed. Just like eggs, flour, and butter sitting on a counter indicate that baking will commence, copper wiring, electronics, and fertilizer can mean only one thing. A bomb is in the works.

  Armed with that information, I headed up to Lydia’s, where I found her at the same counter at which I had originally encountered her, her hands deep in the sudsy water in the sink, washing out a wineglass. The sun setting over the Hudson cast a golden glow over the kitchen and I took a minute to admire the view.

  “He wasn’t healthy as a horse at his last physical,” I said. “That’s what your sister told me the first time I came here. I’ve been wondering why she offered up that information so readily and without provocation.”

  Lydia looked up and regarded me with her dark eyes. I was momentarily distracted by the hunk of diamonds around her neck. “What are you talking about? And how did you get in here?”

  “ALS. Lou Gehrig’s disease.” I pointed to the front door. “And I walked in through the front door.”

  Her usually impassive gaze turned sad. She didn’t ask me how I knew about Carter’s diagnosis. “What do you know about terminal illness, Alison?”

  “More than you’d think.”

  “Have you ever seen anyone die after a long illness?”

  I swallowed hard, forcing the emotion back down into my gut. My sadness about the loss of both my parents, but especially my mother, was like a wound in my heart that opened occasionally and brought with it great pain and suffering before it closed over again. It was always there and never healed completely or for very long. It just lay dormant until something reminded me of it and how much it hurt. “Sadly, yes.”

  “So then you know.” She placed the wineglass that she had been washing on the drain board next to the sink, wiping her hands on a dish towel. “It’s not pleasant.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “I would never want anyone to suffer like Carter’s father had.” She saw the look on my face. “Yes, Carter’s father died of ALS, as well. We know how it goes and it’s not pleasant,” she repeated.

  “So you were going to blow him up.”

  The blank expression returned.

  “The explosives,” I said, showing her a little piece of copper wiring. “This.” I thought back to the day at Beans, Beans, and how Lydia had asked for the car keys. And how she had started the car from a safe distance with the remote access feature.

  She glanced at the copper wiring briefly. “Interesting.” She put her hands together as if in prayer. “I hope Queen is comfortable.”

  I was silent. If she wanted my thanks, she wasn’t going to get it.

  “I’m not sure why, but I loved him more than you’ll ever know, Alison.”

  “Enough to kill him?”

  “Enough to know that I never wanted to see him suffer as much as that disease would have made him suffer.”

  And with that one statement, I had my answer. Lydia stared at me and I stared back at her, neither one of us really seeing the other. I didn’t know if she was telling me the truth; for all I knew, she wanted to blow him up to punish him for his various and numerous transgressions. Or she really did love him as much as she claimed. All I knew was that if I could have saved my mother the suffering that she had endured, I would have. The thought had crossed my mind on more than one excruciating night that it would take nothing to smother her and put her out of her misery and hasten the peace that she was due. I had always felt that I had failed her by letting her suffer all those many days and nights until she had reached her inevitable end.

  “He had a lot of enemies,” she stated flatly. “Any one of them could have set up that bomb and the timer to explode when Carter started the car.” She looked out at the river. “Any one of them. They would have wanted him to die violently.” She looked back at me. “Don’t you think?”

  I snapped out of my reverie and looked at Lydia, seeing her for what she was: a betrayed yet grief-stricken woman. Her story was certainly plausible because, yes, Carter had a lot of enemies. And most of them would have wanted him to meet a violent and untimely end. She had crafted a very believable explanation in the event that she was found out by someone other than me and Queen. I believed her; I wasn’t sure why. My own unrelenting grief over the loss of my mother clouded my judgment, but I walked from the Wilmott house, secure in the knowledge that, like the identity of who had stolen Mr. Posso’s cabina, the identity of the person who had rigged Carter Wilmott’s car to explode would remain my secret alone.

  Because I understand that kind of love.

  Once back in my house, I took a deep breath and felt the wound that was my sorrow close over one more time.

  But it would open again. It always did.

  Thirty-Six

  I found myself sitting in front of the Millers’ tidy abode just a few minutes later. I wasn’t sure what had brought me there. Maybe it was to offer a silent apology to George Miller for suspecting him of murder these past days or maybe it was to see how he was doing. Everyone had suspected him of murder, so I couldn’t take on that guilt all by myself. And I didn’t know him, so why would I care how he was doing?

  The Subaru Outback that had belonged to Ginny, the car that she had used to follow me and Crawford on the day that Carter had died, was parked in front of the house with a homemade FOR SALE sign stuck inside the windshield on the dashboard. BEST OFFER, it said. The car was a little banged up, and had a few miles on it, just lik
e its previous owner, and I wasn’t sure how much money George would actually get for it, but it was clear that he wanted it gone. Beyond the car and down the driveway, I could see George Miller crouched beside a motorcycle, a toolbox beside him. Before I lost my nerve, I walked down the driveway toward him, a man with a lined and florid face that telegraphed sadness and a slight bit of menace, if I was being completely honest with myself.

  I imagined Crawford’s reaction when I told him what I had done, deciding then and there that he would never know. Why give him another illustration of my poor judgment and lack of common sense?

  George stood slowly as I approached, pulling a handkerchief out of his back pocket and wiping his brow. He folded it neatly and put it back into his pocket. Introductions weren’t really necessary, but he held out his hand anyway. “George Miller.”

  “Alison Bergeron.” I shifted from one foot to the other. “I’m very sorry about your wife. About Ginny.”

  “I know what my wife’s name was,” he said, not unkindly. A brief smile passed over his face. “And I’m sorry about what happened to you. I never meant to hurt anyone.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I touched my eye briefly and was relieved to find that it no longer hurt. That was the thing about physical pain: it goes away. The emotional kind just lingers and that’s what makes it so hard to transcend. I thought about this as I stared into George Miller’s craggy face. I would never know how deep his pain went, but judging by his eyes, it had no end.

  “You interested in the car?” he asked. “I saw you looking at it.”

  “No,” I said. “I was just thinking about how Ginny chased me in that car on the day that Carter died.”

  “She made it her business to make sure that I didn’t get convicted.” He ran a hand over the glossy leather motorcycle seat. “I’m lucky she was so devoted.”

  I knew why I had come. “Why did she kill herself, George?” I asked. “I mean, I have my suspicions but it’s been bugging me. Why take her own life?”