by Mary Daheim
The request seemed harmless enough. Agreeing, Judith started to tell Renie about Mike’s tattoo, but Phyliss had come down from the second floor. “I’ll talk to you later,” Judith said, and hung up.
“I’ll put in a load of laundry and then I’m off to de Tooleyville’s,” Phyliss called from the hallway.
“Look for drugs,” Judith told the cleaning woman.
“Drugs?” The sausage curls danced on Phyliss’s head. “Think he’s got something I can take for my sciatica?”
Judith tried to explain the difference between medicinal and recreational drugs. Phyliss thought that cocaine sounded just fine.
“If it’s that powerful,” she said, heading down to the basement, “it might cure bunions, too.”
Judith had some trouble finding Red Fog recording studios. Although she had gotten the address out of the phone book, the site was unmarked by any kind of sign. After going around the block four times in search of a parking place, she ended up leaving the Subaru in a loading zone and taking her chances with the meter maids.
While the exterior was unadorned and painted an institutional brown, the reception area was ablaze with colorful photographs and posters of various recording artists. The furnishings were less obtrusive, however, with soft mauve predominating.
Judith’s excuse for calling on the record executives was flimsy at best. Without Renie’s graphic design cachet, the only guise she could assume was that of Renie herself.
“I’m Serena Jones,” Judith announced, hoisting a worn briefcase onto the reception desk. The leather case had belonged to her father, and was presently filled with old income tax statements. “I’m a graphic designer. I had an appointment for one-thirty today.”
The pert African-American woman with the head full of cornrows consulted the day book. “Ms. Jones? I don’t have you down. Who were you seeing?”
“Mr.…” Judith feigned a coughing fit. “Sorry. Is he in?”
“Mr. Kerr? Is that what you said?” The receptionist, whose nameplate read Aisha Barnes, looked puzzled.
Judith nodded. “That’s right, Mr. Kerr.”
“He’s in, but he’s busy.” Aisha Barnes glanced at a paneled door next to the desk. “Maybe you should reschedule.” She flipped through the day book. “Next Tuesday at ten?”
Judith let out a vexed sigh. “I can’t. I’ll be in Boston then. In fact, I leave tomorrow, and won’t return until the end of the month.”
Aisha looked perturbed. “My, my—I don’t know what I can do. Mr. Kerr had other unexpected visitors this afternoon, and I’ve no idea how long they’ll take. If you’d like to wait, I’ll check with him when the others leave.”
Judith smiled broadly. “That would be wonderful, Ms. Barnes. I appreciate…”
The paneled door opened, and a short leather-clad man in his mid-thirties ushered out his visitors. “Sorry I can’t be more help, fellas,” said the man whom Judith assumed was Mr. Kerr. “As far is Red Fog is concerned, Harley Davidson was just another DJ on the make. Or take, depending on how you look at it.”
Judith barely heard the words. She was fixated on Mr. Kerr’s departing guests. Joe Flynn and Woody Price entered the reception area and stopped in their tracks.
“Hi,” said Judith in a small voice.
Woody offered a small, if startled, smile from under his walrus mustache. Joe simply stared.
“I was just leaving,” Judith finally gulped.
“That part’s right,” Joe said under his breath, taking Judith’s elbow and marching her to the door.
“But Ms. Jones,” Aisha called after the trio, “Mr. Kerr can see you now for about fifteen minutes.”
Judith flinched as Joe turned to look at the receptionist. “Ms. Jones is having an identity crisis. Apparently, when I changed her name, it didn’t take. She insists on trying out new ones. So long.”
“Joe,” Judith said miserably as they reached the sidewalk. “I can explain. I didn’t realize you knew about the recording executives lunching with Harley at…”
Joe was very red in the face, but he took a deep breath and reined in his temper. “Look, Woody and I actually know our jobs. We follow procedures, we work as a team, within a team. We’ve got assistance from the M.E., the forensic pathologist, the crime lab, a whole battery of skilled professionals. We don’t go by appearances or assumptions or hunches. We dig and interview and dig and interrogate and dig some more. Maybe we don’t jump from Point A to Point D like amateurs do. But we get there eventually. Our success rate is damned good, so we don’t need outside help. By the way, your car is being towed. See you around, Jude-girl. Let’s go, Woody.”
Swerving on her heel, Judith saw a green and white towtruck putting the hook onto her Subaru. “Wait!” she cried, turning back to Joe who was calmly walking away with Woody. “Joe! You can stop this! Tell them I’m your wife!”
Joe kept walking, though Judith could hear him as he spoke to Woody. “Now how can I say she’s my wife when she thinks she’s Ms. Jones?”
Somehow, Judith managed to talk the towtruck driver out of taking her car. She was still stuck with the sixty-five-dollar parking ticket, however. Chastened, mortified, and incensed, though not necessarily in that order, Judith went home.
“Do you know what I’ve done besides make a fool of myself?” Judith asked of Renie as the cousins sat on the Jones’s deck that Thursday afternoon. “The reason I got so involved trying to solve the murder case was because I didn’t want to think about Mike and Dan and Joe. It’s always been hard for me to look back at my first marriage.”
“Painful,” Renie said between quaffs of pink lemonade. The skies were clearing, and the temperature was rising again. Beyond the ornamental cherry trees, the silver spruce, and the hawthorns that enclosed the Jones’s backyard, the mountain range to the east was emerging from the clouds. The aroma of charcoal burning in the barbecue melded with the rose bushes that grew around the deck. Here on the north slope of Heraldsgate Hill, the atmosphere was pleasant, quiet, and, for Judith, soothing.
“It’s going on ten years since Dan died,” Renie continued. “I’m guessing you’ve forgotten some of the bad stuff.”
Judith made a face. “I think I’ve forgotten some of the good stuff, too. Like how Dan and Mike actually got along pretty well. I spent a lot of time feeling sorry for myself, both while I was married, and then after Dan died. When Joe came back into my life, I sort of erased everything that had gone before. It was as if my marriage to Dan was an intermission between the first and second acts with Joe.”
Dodging a bee, Renie gave a little sigh. “It’s true, Dan spent more time raising Mike than you did. It had to be that way, of course. None of the rest of the family knew what was going on—except what you told us—because Dan wouldn’t let us commingle. What we heard was when you were upset and he’d done something awful, like when he ‘allowed’”—Renie made quote marks with her fingers—“you to come to the family Thanksgiving as long as you made him his own dinner complete with all the trimmings, and when you got back, you found the turkey in the birdbath.”
“It was the mailbox,” Judith corrected. “We were too poor to have a birdbath. The birds used to bring us food.”
Renie poked her cousin in the arm. “See? There you go—I mean, it’s basically true, but you’re making it out to be worse than it really was. Ergo, our sympathy mounts for you, and our antipathy escalates for Dan.”
“That’s so,” Judith admitted. “I needed all the sympathy I could get—then. But I don’t now. That’s where I’ve been unfair. That’s why I’m letting Dan keep the one thing he did well—raising Mike. It’s like a memorial, and I don’t think it will matter that much to Joe. After all, he went along for over twenty years not even knowing he had a son.”
“So you haven’t told Joe about your decision not to tell Mike?” Renie inquired.
Judith shook her head. “I haven’t had a chance. Mike showed me the tattoo this morning. The only time I’ve seen Joe since
is at Red Fog studios. It wasn’t exactly a propitious moment.”
Renie inclined her head in tacit agreement. “What about the dress? Did you decide to report it as stolen?”
Judith grimaced. “Do I dare? Then I have to admit I bought it.”
“Well…” Renie rubbed her short chin. “It could be evidence, if you’re right about the smuggling.”
Judith brightened. “You don’t think I’m crazy?”
Renie tugged at the short, shapeless shift that served as part of her rag-tag stay-at-home wardrobe. “Not exactly. There has to be something clandestine going on to tie Tara and TNT and de Tourville together. I doubt if it’s a prayer group.”
Glancing at her watch, Judith saw that it was almost five. Discovering that she was low on rum, she had made an emergency run to the liquor store on top of the hill. Since she was halfway to Renie’s at that point, she decided to chance calling on her cousin. Judith had definitely felt the need for a convivial ear.
“I’d better head home,” she said, rising from the chaise longue. “I’m glad I didn’t interrupt you today.”
Renie wrinkled her pug nose. “I’m stuck until we find a bum. Morris has an underling out looking. I suppose you didn’t ask Joe about Billy Big Horn being in the slammer?”
Judith snapped her fingers. “I don’t have to bother him about that. We can call. Here, give me the phone.”
Renie handed over the cordless model that had been resting next to her lawn chair. It took Judith so long to get through to someone who could give her the information that Renie began arranging shish-kabobs in the kitchen. Following her cousin inside, Judith finally made contact just as Renie was drizzling melted butter on top of the prawns, mushrooms, baby tomatoes, green peppers, and onions.
“Yes, that’s right, Billy Big Horn…It’s the only name I know him by…Well, I suppose it would be loitering or vagrancy or whatever they call that new law where you can’t sit or lie down on the sidewalk…But if you don’t enforce it often, what good is…? Oh—yes, thank you. Yes, that’s it. He what? I see. Okay, thank you very much.”
Judith put the phone down on the kitchen counter and beamed at Renie. “It’s true—Billy was picked up a week ago Saturday for violating that new sidewalk ordinance. He spent ten days in jail, and was released Monday.”
Renie looked up from the roll of aluminum foil she was using to wrap the shish-kabobs. “Hunh. I didn’t think they really arrested homeless people for that.”
“They don’t unless they’re making a pest of themselves,” Judith replied. “Which, I gather, is what Billy Big Horn did. It sounded as if he was lying around all over the place, creating quite a nuisance. Maybe they wanted to make an example.”
“Poor Billy,” Renie remarked. “He seems such a harmless sort. Did you say he got out Monday?”
Judith nodded. “It’s now Thursday. He hasn’t been at the Naples, and nobody’s seen him at his usual spot downtown. I wonder where he went?”
“He might have gotten disgusted and left town,” Renie suggested. “I suppose Morris can find another bum. Let’s face it, to the general public, all homeless people look alike.”
“That’s because we don’t see them as individuals,” Judith pointed out, “only as a symptom of society’s ills.”
“And,” Renie added, getting out a kettle from the cupboard under the counter, “it’s a problem the rest of us don’t want to think about. It’s hard to be reminded that you have a snug home and enough to eat while hungry people are sleeping under a bridge.”
“Which,” Judith said in wispy voice as she headed for the front door, “is where I used to think I’d end up when I was married to Dan.”
Renie paused in the act of opening a canister of rice. “Hey—there you go again. You were never homeless.”
“That’s because after Dan died I came back to live with Mother.” Judith waved goodbye from the doorway. “For awhile there were times when the bridge looked good.”
To Judith’s surprise, Phyliss was waiting for her in the driveway. In her long black raincoat and matching gloves, she looked overdressed for what had become a warm, sunny afternoon.
“Where’ve you been?” the cleaning woman demanded. “I got here half an hour ago. Your crabby old mother told me you were out picking up sailors, but I doubted that. Or were you? She’s kind of convincing when she takes out her teeth.”
“I had to go to the…” Judith cut herself off. Even though Phyliss knew that the Flynns kept alcohol in the house, it didn’t do to advertise the fact. “…store,” Judith gulped. “What is it, Phyliss? Did you forget something this morning?”
Phyliss shook her head. “No. It’s that de Tooleyville. He had some crazy notion that I’d been in the hospital. I didn’t set him straight, ’cause that’s where I should have been the past couple of days. I could see that he was sorry for me, which was kind of surprising, him being such a hoity-toity foreigner and all. He asked a trillion questions, and you can be sure I answered every one and then some, right down to my liver complaint and the uncertainty of my bowels. Then he had to go out all of a sudden, so I started looking for that cummerbund stuff. Though how you can figure what’s cummerbund and what isn’t with all them fancy doo-dads and fripperies and whatnot, I don’t know. So,” Phyliss went on, pausing only for a deep breath, “I sort of kept my eye out for cigars. Lo and behold,” she declared, reaching into the pocket of her raincoat, “I found a couple. They were in the guest bedroom, under the brocade dust ruffle.” In triumph, Phyliss held out two fat, brown cigars.
“I’ll be darned,” Judith murmured. “Good work, Phyliss. Thank you very much.”
Phyliss bestowed a sour look on Judith. “You won’t be smoking these, I hope?”
“Of course not, Phyliss.” She gave the cleaning woman’s bony shoulder a grateful squeeze. “Thank you. Ah…do you want a ride home?”
Phyliss shook her head. “I can take the bus, like I always do. I got nobody waiting for me. Except Jesus.” She tromped off down the drive, the black coat swinging behind her.
If the temperature had grown warmer, the atmosphere inside Hillside Manor had gotten cooler. When Joe arrived home shortly after six, he greeted his wife with a cursory peck on the cheek, and headed straight upstairs to change. Busy serving her guests, Judith tried to put her husband’s aloof manner out of her mind. But when he remained detached throughout dinner and even after they had adjourned to the third-floor family quarters, she could stand it no longer. Judith unleashed an avalanche of explanations, excuses, and apologies.
“So it was because I was upset about you and Mike,” she concluded, wringing her hands. “I had to focus on something else. The wedding was over, so the murder was it. Did I do the right thing?” She turned a tearful face to Joe, who was sitting next to her on the sofa in the family room.
After a long day, Joe was understandably worn out. The last thing he needed was an emotional outburst from his wife. But it had been building, ever since the wedding, and it would be cowardly to dismiss either Judith’s dilemma or her contrition.
On the other hand, he, too, had feelings, though they were often kept under wraps. “I have a daughter,” he said slowly. “Caitlin means the world to me. She was the one good thing that came out of my marriage to Vivian. For a long time, I thought she was my sole claim to immortality. Then, when I met you again six years ago, I found out that wasn’t so. I had a son, a son I didn’t know existed—a son I just plain didn’t know.” Joe passed a hand over his graying red hair. “I still don’t know him, not really. He’s been away at college or working in Idaho all the time we’ve been together. I’ve tried…” Joe paused, cleared his throat, and shifted his gaze to the blank TV set across the room. “I tried to get to know him, man-to-man. Not father-to-son, you’ll note. Maybe I made some inroads, maybe not. Frankly, I don’t feel any closer to him than I do to Bill and Renie’s kids. We pass like ships in the night, at family gatherings, in and out of town, whenever.”
As Joe
hesitated with his green eyes in shadow, Judith put a hand on his arm. “He likes you. I know he does. Mike admires you and respects you. What more could you ask?”
It was a stupid question, and Judith immediately regretted it. “Love,” Joe said simply, finally meeting his wife’s anxious gaze. “Caitlin loves me. It’s natural for a child to love a parent. It’s not natural to love a stepfather. It has to be cultivated. I resent that.”
Judith bit her lip. “Oh, Joe! I’m so sorry!”
“You made your decision,” he said quietly. “It was probably the right thing to do. The truth would upset Mike, put him in therapy, screw up his marriage, his career, whatever. That’s the way it is with kids today, isn’t it?”
“Are you saying Mike’s not man enough to handle it?”
Joe stood up, making for the door. “No. I didn’t say it—you did.” He left Judith alone in the family room.
She hadn’t had a chance to ask him about new developments in the case or what he and Woody had learned at Red Fog studios or if he’d enjoy a cigar. Maybe he didn’t intend to talk about the Harley Davidson investigation any more. Certainly there were things, lots of things, he hadn’t been telling her along the way. Judith turned on the TV, gazed with unseeing eyes at a series of banal, meaningless programs as she channel-surfed, and finally clicked off the remote control.
She’d blown it. Lacking the courage to tell Mike the truth, she’d forever condemned her husband and his son to casual friendship. And all for Dan, that big, worthless lump who’d made her miserable for most of their eighteen years together.
Except she hadn’t done it only for Dan. She’d done it for Mike, too. When Mike needed a father, Dan was there. To Mike, Dan was his father. Joe didn’t even know Mike existed. He was living with Herself, doting on Caitlin, and playing stepfather to the sons that his first wife had borne to previous mates.