Maggie Dove

by Susan Breen

  “What a family. She’s looking to get rid of her kids while they’re still mourning their father. He’s trying to take control of Noelle’s body. It’s sort of discouraging that the only person behaving well is a stripper.”

  He laughed at that, flicked the shift. He had nice hands, she thought. A musician’s hands, with long fingers.

  “Now, how about we get some food to eat?” Frank said. “I’m famished.”

  “I don’t think I should. I have to prepare a Sunday School lesson for tomorrow and I haven’t done a blessed thing.”

  “Maggie Dove,” he said, stepping on the gas. “Forgive me, but you’re forcing me to kidnap you. I will take you out to dinner if it’s the last thing I do.”

  “Oh well,” she said, figuring that after thirty years of teaching Sunday School, it would probably be all right to slack off for one class. She did have that vegetable movie.

  “I surrender.”

  Chapter 27

  They wound up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Maggie hadn’t been there in years, not since she was a fourth grade class mother and Juliet’s class was learning about tapestries. She’d loved it, kept meaning to go back. Time went by so fast.

  “Have you ever been to the private dining room?” Frank Bowman asked.

  “I didn’t know there was a private dining room.”

  “Ah.” He guided her through the entryway, past giant bouquets of dogwood branches and lilacs, past lines of tourists and then through the Medieval section, past all those solemn Madonnas clutching so fiercely to their babies, and then into the sunshine of modern sculpture, and then into the private elevator, Frank again showing his pass, up to the fourth floor. The door opened to the sort of hush Maggie had only experienced before in a church. A friendly gentleman came and sat them at a table in the corner, next to a huge glass window that looked out onto Central Park.

  “I feel like Marie Antoinette,” Maggie said.

  Frank laughed at that. A man who appreciated her humor. A good sign.

  “We’ll have the prix-fixe dinner,” he said to the waiter, which wound up being four separate courses all relating to the paintings of Goya. Each serving coming with its own wine pairing, each plate more wonderful than the next, a tomato crostata followed by squid.

  “A day boat squid a la plancha,” the waiter intoned, “with arròs negre, saffron aioli and Espelette pepper.”

  “Squid,” she said. “I’ve never had it.”

  It was like a painting, the squid on its side with a dollop of green sauce.

  “You’ll try it?” Frank asked.

  “Of course.”

  It was wonderful, and Maggie, giddy with her triumph with Char, with having found out information about Noelle, with the excitement of this beautiful place, found herself talking much more than she ever did. She was so excited to have uncovered something Campbell hadn’t. “I can’t wait to see what he says. I mean, I know he’ll dismiss it. He thinks I’m an amateur, which is funny when you think about it, because he’s an amateur.

  “I would love, just once, to see a look of uncertainty on that man’s face. A moment of hesitation and doubt. He’s so sure of himself all the time. So smug.”

  The waiter poured more wine. “A Bodegas Terra Sigillata Filon Real Garnacha,” he said, “2011.”

  “So how did you come up with Inspector Benet?” Frank asked. He leaned back in his chair, as relaxed and attentive as a talk show host. “Winifred made him sound like the perfect man.”

  Maggie laughed, sipped some of her wine. It tasted like rubies, she thought. And the sun. And Spain.

  “She was always on my case about that. She felt he was too bland, he should have a flaw. Be an alcoholic or missing a leg or having suffered from abuse as a child. She wanted him haunted, but I wanted him to be serene. He was my fantasy, after all.”

  “Your fantasy was to have a perfect man.”

  She blushed. “Not perfect in the sense of boring, or rigid. But I wanted him to be a sort of romantic hero. I suppose I pictured him as one of those Regency sorts with the thick thighs and riding crops.” She moved away her wine, resolving not to have any more until the next course.

  “You loved him?” His eyes smiled as he spoke, she felt like she was being interviewed.

  “I did love him, isn’t that weird? I suppose, on some level, it’s because he was similar to my husband, no matter what Winifred thought about the matter. But there were times he seemed quite real to me. Times I could almost see him, like a ghost. Times I could feel him.” She blushed again, thinking of one particular time, calling her husband Claude, their faces merging together.

  “I took jujitsu lessons,” she added, “to understand him better.”

  “Jujitsu!”

  “Yes, and not just ordinary jujitsu. Brazilian jujitsu.”

  “Are you good?” he asked.

  “To tell you the truth, the most important thing I learned is that if you’re under attack you should make as much noise as possible. Scream. It won’t get rid of everybody, but it will get rid of the ones looking for easy prey. Of course,” she added, “Inspector Benet did not scream. He lunged. He was master of the most esoteric moves.”

  She felt herself sparkling as she spoke, looked out and saw the city sparkling too. Beautiful city. With the candlelight flickering, she felt like she was in a movie. So often since Juliet and Stuart died, she’d felt dislocated, as though she’d wound up in the wrong life. She was a happy, strong woman who was starring in a tragedy. This, in this place, with this man, was more what she’d intended.

  “My husband used to say I should give my inspector a gun,” she said, and started blushing again, though thankfully then the waiter came by with a new set of plates.

  “A spring lamb,” the waiter said, “with artichoke, white asparagus, fava beans and piquillo pepper.”

  “My goodness,” she said, ready to tuck in.

  And then another wine, this one an even deeper red.

  “Was your husband jealous of Inspector Benet?” Frank asked.

  “This is the Bodegas Mano a Mano,” the waiter murmured, “from the Castilla–La Mancha. It accents the spring lamb.” She sipped it and thought how wonderful it tasted.

  His eyes were so gray, Maggie thought. Gray like the Hudson on stormy days. She felt as if she could live in those eyes, like no one had ever looked at her quite as intently as he had and she experienced the strangest sensation, something she hadn’t felt in a long time, something unfolding inside her. “No,” she said. “My husband never suffered from jealousy. He had a very strong ego. I suspect when you’ve been a professor for as long as he had, when you’re used to so much adulation, you develop a fairly strong sense of yourself.”

  “He sounds intimidating.”

  “No, he was very warm. He had a lot of friends, from all over the world, and they’d show up at our house when you’d least expect it. Three in the morning and the doorbell would ring and there would be some Russian poet with a chapbook, and then we would all sit in the kitchen and I’d make borscht. The one thing I learned how to do.” She took a deep sip of her wine. “He was a professor of Russian poetry.”

  “You loved him.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I did love him, but he’s been gone for a long time.”

  Twenty-one years, she thought. Twenty-one years since he went to Russia to do research, or the Soviet Union, as it was then. The heart attack, the call, Maggie frantically getting over there, Juliet by her side, unable to find his body because they cremated him, and only a year later Juliet gone. Maggie’s first thought was gratitude that Stuart had not lived to see it.

  She looked into Frank’s eyes, which seemed to burn with an intense emotion. He was so handsome, she thought. His hair so thick, his gray eyes so arresting, his nose that sort of sharp, straight nose that always made her think of princes and kings.

  “Dessert?” the waiter said.

  “Please.”

  “A torta de tres leches,” the waiter said.
“With a salted marcona almond brittle and a Valencia orange confit, accompanied by some Jerez sherry.”

  She gulped the sherry down.

  “Tell me about you,” she said, flustered and slightly dizzy and somewhat happy. “Why are you living in an old age home?”

  He laughed at that. “It’s not an old age home. It’s assisted living.”

  “Even so. You seem like you could be on your own.”

  He shrugged, a Gallic gesture, so much like Inspector Benet. “I don’t want to have to go to any trouble. I like having all my things looked after. No need to cook, no need to do the laundry. I’m just lazy.”

  “But don’t you find it a little depressing?”

  He paused for a moment. She liked the way he always seemed to think about his answers. He took what she said seriously.

  “I want to be able to enjoy my life,” he said. “I want to do what I want to do, without worrying about details. To take a beautiful woman to dinner and not have to worry about mowing the lawn.”

  She laughed at that because, in truth, nothing was harder to imagine than Frank Bowman mowing a lawn.

  By the time they left, the restaurant was empty. They’d talked for hours, and she leaned on his arm as they walked out the door, slightly unsteady. When she sat down in the front seat she closed her eyes and didn’t wake up until Frank was pulling in to her driveway. He walked her to her door, and she stood there, on her veranda, for just a moment, enveloped by his presence, the sweet smell of him, the solid weight of him, so much more solid than he appeared. Up close he was larger than he seemed.

  “Good night, Maggie Dove,” he said, as he leaned forward and gently kissed her on the lips, and she found herself kissing him back, harder, though he pulled away. “This has been an enchanting evening.”

  “It has been,” she said, as she floated into her home. “It has been.”

  Chapter 28

  The next morning was a bad one. Some were like that. Sometimes the better the time the night before, the worse the morning after. Payment. Maggie woke up, clawing for air. She felt Juliet close to her, as though she’d been with her in her sleep. She couldn’t remember her dream, but she felt like she’d been falling. The sensation stayed with her, a feeling of panic, terror. She grabbed on to her bed. She cried out her daughter’s name. “Oh, Juliet.”

  Maggie closed her eyes, tried to pull herself together. She thought of the 77th psalm, which had been such a comfort to her in the terrible days after her daughter’s death. “In the day of my trouble I sought the Lord.” She had to get out of bed. It was Sunday morning. She had to teach. That was a blessing.

  She’d learned the only way to feel better was to be out, to be with people, and church helped. Being in that beautiful building, surrounded by kind people and bolstered by the presence of something larger than herself, that helped. If she could but get there.

  But not yet. She had time. She put on WQXR and there was Mahler. Ninth Symphony. The answer to a prayer. Thank God for Mahler. Did anyone understand grief the way he did? She lay back on her bed and let the music soothe her, Mahler’s great farewell to the world, written after he lost his own daughter. The music wept for her. Maggie closed her eyes and let Mahler carry her along, the wail of the trombones, the French horns, the ominous pounding of the bass drums. The harp, which made her think of Char Bender. She waited for her favorite part, which came in the last movement, when it seemed like Mahler let everything in the world pour through him. When it was over she closed her eyes and slept for a while and when she woke up she felt better, though tender.

  Maggie made her way to the kitchen and sat down in her small, sunny room. She had some tea and toast and looked out at her oak tree. Pretty little tree, and then she took out her Bible, and turned, as she always did, to the front of it, where the family tree was. There were her grandparents’ names, written in their patchy old ink, there her parents’ names and then her own name. Margaret Rose Leigh, born October 4, 1953, and next to her, her husband’s name, Stuart Dove, and then Juliet’s name, born June 22, 1978. Died on May 18, 1996. She planned to give the Bible to Peter when she died. She’d sketched his name in, one desperate night, when she thought she couldn’t bear to see the end of the line, and she thought that love was as strong as genetics.

  She thought about all that had transpired. He had got in trouble for working a party at which teenagers were drinking and Bender found out and wanted him fired. He’d had some sort of argument with Winifred about something, maybe money. He’d rushed to help Maggie when she found Bender, dead, and in the process he hadn’t been as careful as he should have been. Had Walter Campbell not stepped in with his expensive test, no one would ever have known Bender was murdered. And then Winifred was murdered. All the facts swam in front of her. So much anger. She would tell Walter today about what she’d found out regarding Noelle’s pregnancy clause. That was important. A true reason for murdering Bender.

  But what she was missing was a link with Winifred. That was what kept tripping her up. She could think of a million perfectly good reasons for killing Bender, but she couldn’t think of any for killing Winifred, and certainly none that linked them. They knew each other through a real estate transaction, but there was no hint of trouble surrounding that. Winifred and Bender’s first wife had Parkinson’s. She sensed that must be important, but wasn’t sure how. She wished she were smarter. She wished she could see what seemed to hover right outside her view. But she was a plodder, she needed to keep looking for links. She felt sure that someone in the village knew the answer to the questions she had. She just needed to find that person, which brought her back to church. She had to get dressed, ready.

  She took a shower and put on her dress. Somehow it never seemed right to wear anything casual to church, though people did. She’d noticed more and more people bringing water bottles too, which struck her as funny. As though you couldn’t make it through a service without hydrating. She put on some makeup because her face was so pale. A beautiful woman, Frank Bowman had called her. All right, she was flattered. She looked into her eyes, rubbed some cream onto the wrinkles that sprung up after a late night. She put on her pearl earrings, and had started to go toward the door when her phone rang.

  “I wanted to see how you were.” Frank’s voice soft and smiling. She imagined his harem trying to ensnare him.

  “A little hungover, but otherwise all right.”

  She could hear him smile. “Oh dear, I hope I haven’t compromised a Sunday School teacher.”

  “Not yet,” she said, which didn’t come out quite like she was hoping. “But that reminds me, I’m supposed to invite you to our Dining Out Club. It meets on Friday night, if you’d like to come.”

  “What on earth is a Dining Out Club?”

  Maggie laughed. “A bunch of us from church get together once a month and go to a local restaurant, usually one that’s in financial difficulty, and then we all eat there, except the problem is that the food’s not always so good. Hence the financial difficulty.”

  “I don’t see how I could miss it.”

  “You would be most welcome, I assure you. At the moment it consists of Agnes Jorgenson, who is a piece of work, and the Faraday sisters. There are three of them. One can’t hear and one can’t see and the other one collects coupons. She’s the organizer of the club, you might say. Then there’s Helen Blake, our newest member, with her little hellion of a child. Peter Nelson goes, and so does our minister. She’s very nice, ethereal. And then there are assorted special guests. That would be you.”

  “That would be me,” he said.

  “We’re meeting at a Thai restaurant this time. At six o’clock.”

  “Would you like me to drive you there?” he asked.

  “That would be fabulous,” she said, and felt ridiculously cheerful, which was a good thing because she needed to get ready for Sunday School. She only had ten minutes to prepare, as opposed to her usual two hours, but she prayed that attendance would be low, and she had actua
lly settled on the vegetable movie, because why not? There was always something to learn, and she was curious to see what vegetable would represent Judas and she was humming when she went into the classroom and saw her faithful three students and Walter Campbell. Walter Campbell, wearing a kilt and standing next to a girl who could only be his daughter, and Maggie knew, at that moment, that she was in a great deal of trouble.

  Chapter 29

  Walter Campbell in a kilt. Dear God. It was as though Frankenstein were Scottish. Maggie could hear her best friend cackling in her ear. Be quiet, Winifred, she muttered, hoping she hadn’t said it out loud. But Walter Campbell, for the first time in her acquaintance with him, did not seem to be mad at her.

  “This is my daughter,” he said, gesturing toward that tree-like girl with such reverence and adoration that Maggie actually felt pinpricks of affection for the man, at least until he looked at her and spoke: “I hope you’ve planned something good for today,” he said. “She’s 10 years old, so she’s a little old for your class, but I told Jane you were the best.”

  She felt flattered and oddly annoyed. Now she couldn’t show the vegetable movie. Any other Sunday he could have come and she would have something well planned. But today, for the first time in her career as a Sunday School teacher, she didn’t have anything planned and her head hurt from her night out with Frank Bowman and she still felt a lingering sense of doom from her restless sleep last night. A sense of doom. She didn’t believe in the supernatural, but she surely believed in trouble.

  Any other Sunday, she thought. Any other Sunday.

  Still, Maggie recognized she had to do something impressive. Something remarkable, something that would blow Walter Campbell’s socks off, a horrifying image if ever there was one. She would have to do something that would engage his daughter, and impress him, and so she decided to go to her default best project. She would bake pretzels.