Caught in the Middle

by Gayle Roper

  As soon as Whiskers heard the dry rustle of his food, he abandoned my shins and began wrapping himself lovingly around Curt’s legs.

  “Fickle beast,” I said. “I’ll be back. I’m going to get warm, dry socks. Want a pair?”

  “They’d fit?”

  “Does it matter? They’d be dry.”

  “I’ll take a pair. And a towel,” he added as melting snow ran from his ringlets down his glasses.

  I took Curt a fluffy towel and a pair of my brother, Sam’s, socks that I had confiscated to keep my feet warm at night. Then I took my boots off in the bathroom, dumping the ice and snow in the tub. Staring down at the soaked leather, I lamented the probable loss of my favorite footwear. I also studied my red, chapped ankles, then slathered hand lotion on them, ignoring the stinging. Finally, I slipped on my warmest socks and a pair of sneakers.

  While we waited for the water to boil for the pasta, we made the salad and heated the sauce. We baked a roll of Pillsbury French bread to go with our Italian feast.

  “He said he didn’t do it,” I said as I placed my mismatched silverware on the little table in the dining room.

  “He said he didn’t do what?” Curt asked, carefully folding napkins into neat triangles. “He didn’t kill Pat? He didn’t shoot at you? He didn’t try to strangle you? What?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know what he meant. Maybe he didn’t do any of it?”

  “That’s a pretty big jump in logic,” said Curt. “Remember that the circumstantial evidence clearly points toward him.”

  “Just because he used to date Hannah?”

  “Along with other things like stalking and disappearing and running.” Curt took two glasses from the cupboard and carried them to the table. “Don’t automatically jump to his side on this thing, Merry. He could be lying. He probably is lying.”

  “Okay, he probably is, but why is he still hanging around Amhearst? If he did kill Pat, why hasn’t he run? Wouldn’t you run?”

  “That’s a hard question to answer,” said Curt as he checked the pasta for doneness. “I’ve never even thought about killing anyone, let alone done it. I don’t know how I’d think in those circumstances.”

  I looked at him, exasperated. “Can’t you try to imagine?”

  He held out a piece of spaghetti to me. “Is it done yet? And while I don’t know if I’d run or not, I certainly don’t think I’d stop to talk to the woman I was trying to kill.”

  “Which brings us back to why was he here tonight? He had to have some reason to speak to me. He never did before. I think he’s genuinely upset.” I forked pasta onto our plates. “How hungry are you?”

  “That’s plenty,” Curt said, rescuing his plate and ladling on sauce. “Of course he’s upset. Wouldn’t you be upset if you’d killed one person but kept missing the next target? Do you always bleed for the underdog?”

  “My parents say I do. My brother, Sam, says I do. He calls me Marshmallow Merry. I just like to help people.”

  “It’s a wonder you haven’t married some poor schlep who needed his hand held, and you thought that was love,” he said with a weird sort of kind criticism.

  I hoped he thought the flush that rushed up my neck and face was a reflection from the spaghetti sauce.

  He grinned at me. “But I must say that however that scenario was thwarted, I’m glad.”

  I became very intent on pouring my Diet Coke neatly into my glass.

  When we finally started to eat, I thought what a poor choice we had made for a first meal together. Nothing revealed weaknesses in manners faster than spaghetti. Flippy ends. Drippy sauce. Spatters on clothes.

  I watched to see if Curt was a twirler or a cutter. Recently I had come to wonder about the depth of friendship a twirler can have with a cutter. Jack was a cutter, and that should have been warning enough. I’d been too infatuated to see the handwriting on the wall. Mene, mene, tekel, uparsin. You have been weighed in the balance and found wanting, because you are a cutter.

  I sighed in relief. Curt was a twirler. That was nice. Curt was nice.

  Nice? I could hear Jack say. Nice? Nice is what you say when you’re too polite to tell the truth about a person. Nice means exactly nothing—unless it’s that you’ve got too many manners to say anything unkind.

  Jack is wrong, I thought. Nice does mean something. It means Curt and the kindness he’s shown me.

  We were halfway through dinner before I found the courage to ask the question that was eating at me.

  “Why don’t you and Don like each other?” I blurted. “I don’t understand. You’re both such nice guys.”

  Curt studied his spaghetti very carefully for a full minute without saying anything. Then, ruefully, “I didn’t realize it was that obvious.”

  I nodded. “It’s only obvious by comparison. You’re so pleasant and polite to everyone else that your antipathy toward him shows.”

  “Antipathy, eh? Good word.” He slathered a piece of French bread with enough butter to raise his cholesterol a good hundred points but said nothing more.

  I took the hint. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t mind your asking. Really I don’t. I’m just trying to figure out how to answer you. After all, you work for the man.”

  I nodded and waited, but before he could continue, the doorbell rang.

  Sergeant Poole refused my offer of a plate of spaghetti. “I was at McDonald’s when I got your call. Just had a Big Mac. Thanks, though.”

  “How’d things go at the Project?” I asked, referring to the call he’d gotten—was it only hours ago? It felt like weeks—at The News office.

  “Nothing special. Domestic squabble. Too much liquor.” He shrugged. “They’ll be fine until tomorrow night.”

  “Don’t you get tired of it all?” I asked.

  “Sometimes. But someone’s got to hold the line. For some reason, I think that someone’s got to be me.”

  “You feel called to be a cop,” I said.

  He seemed uncomfortable with that idea. “I don’t know about that. Ministers are called. Missionaries are called. Like by God, you know? Me, I just feel I got to hold the line.”

  There was a moment of silence as we all thought about that. To me it was nothing short of a miracle that a man or woman was willing to hold that line against problems of an evil nature I couldn’t even begin to imagine. Ministers and missionaries I understood. They had answers to offer. But a cop risked his life just to hold the line for me and civilization. Amazing and wonderful.

  “So,” Sergeant Poole said, shaking off the philosophical lapse for what really mattered. “You had a face-to-face with Andy Gershowitz.”

  I nodded. “But he didn’t hurt me. He didn’t even touch me. And he said he didn’t do it.”

  Sergeant Poole cocked his head and snorted. “Oh, he did it all right. We’ve got the weapon, a massive crescent wrench that used to belong to Pat Marten’s father. Apparently Pat always used it in memory of his dad.” Sergeant Poole shook his head at the irony of such a family piece being used as the weapon. “And it’s covered with Gershowitz’s fingerprints. Clear as a bell. The possibilities came down late this evening from IAFIS, and the fingerprint man at the Lancaster Barracks made the final match.”

  I knew the Lancaster Barracks meant the state police, but I was unfamiliar with IAFIS.

  “Integrated Automated Fingerprint Identification System,” Sergeant Poole explained. “It’s an FBI database available to us upon request. It narrows the choice down to about ten, but an officer has to do the final match. We have Gershowitz’s prints on file from the time he got in trouble when he was in high school and from a DUI last year, and we have a positive match.”

  “What a tragedy,” I said. “His life’s as ruined as Patrick’s.”

  “Merry.” He looked at me very seriously. “He’s still breathing, which is more than you can say for Patrick. And he’s a murderer. Don’t feel too sorry for him. Remember he’s
tried to kill you, too.”

  “But why would he seek me out tonight?” I said.

  “For the same reason he sought you out before,” Poole said.

  “But he didn’t hurt me.”

  “This time. He didn’t hurt you this time. He didn’t know you had anybody with you, right? You said you came down the walk alone because Curt was getting the food from the backseat.”

  I nodded. “You’re right. Who knows what he would have done if Curt hadn’t been there. But I still come back to why. Why was he here? And why does he want to kill me?”

  “I know you’re not going to like this,” Poole said, his face apologetic, “but I keep thinking there’s something you know that you don’t know you know.”

  I shook my head. “I’ve gone over that evening in my head so many times. Believe me, there’s nothing.”

  “Want to try a hypnotist?” he asked. “There’s a guy in Philadelphia that we could contact.”

  I shrugged. “Do you think it’ll help?”

  “Can it hurt?”

  I looked at Curt. He spread his hands in a why-not gesture.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Sergeant Poole left soon after, and we finished our dinner. I served Curt a piece of Pepperidge Farm chocolate layer cake and said, “Okay. Tell me about Don.”

  “If I can have a cup of that coffee I’m smelling.”

  “It’s not Starbucks, but it’s not too bad,” I said as I poured him a mugful. “Now give.”

  “My sister, Joan, and I had a great childhood,” Curt said. Talk about beginning at the beginning. “Our parents were wonderful—fun, involved in our lives and thoroughly committed to living as Christians should. They held us accountable for chores and behavior and homework, all the old-fashioned things, but we laughed. We laughed a lot.” He smiled softly as he spoke.

  “Joan brought home various boyfriends through the years, and as her younger brother, I looked them all over and disapproved of them all. Then she brought home Don.”

  “Don?” I blinked. “Your sister dated Don?”

  “My sister married Don.”

  I thought of Jolene’s nattering about Don’s wonderful marriage and looked at Curt’s unhappy face. Something didn’t ring true.

  “Joan was in her early twenties when Don came to town to be editor of The News. She met him at church and fell hard for him. He was a few years older, but he seemed equally taken with her.”

  “But you didn’t like him any more than the others,” I said.

  Curt shook his head. “It was more than that. I didn’t trust him. I was about twenty, ignorant as only a kid who grows up in a healthy home can be, but I knew something wasn’t right. I might have thought it was just me, but Mom and Dad weren’t overjoyed, either. I think Joan’s wedding day was one of the saddest days of their lives.”

  “But I’ve heard such glowing stories about Don’s storybook marriage.”

  Curt stirred his coffee, staring into the miniature vortex. “I know. He was—is—a master at appearances.”

  “But if Joan was happy…”

  Curt nodded. “She was, at least at first. Then the inner glow that she’d always had started to dim. Oh, not all the time, and not enough so that others noticed. But we did, Mom and Dad and I. See, Joan thought that you could just take people as they appeared. She had no guile, and she didn’t know how to look for it in others. She thought all men were as nice and kind as our father.”

  “Or as nice and kind as you,” I said, reaching out and putting my hand over his, where it was frozen to the stirring spoon.

  He smiled at me, momentarily distracted, and put the spoon down. He drew a deep breath. “But Don is not nice or kind.”

  I thought about that. Don had never been unkind to me, despite his distance and distraction since Trudy’s death, nor had I seen him be unkind to anyone at the paper. Oh, he worked us all hard, and he sometimes made guys like Mac Carnuccio angry, but that was no different than countless bosses who also made fine husbands. And Don didn’t ask anything from us that he wasn’t willing to do himself.

  “Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?” said Curt.

  “It does,” I said. “But I can see you’re convinced.”

  Curt looked at me somberly. “I’ve said more than I should. I’m not being fair to you, putting you in this position, asking you to listen to horrible things about your boss.”

  I waved his comment aside. “I asked, remember? It’s okay.”

  He shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “You said Joan met Don at church. That surprises me. I’ve never seen him there.”

  “He hasn’t come since Joan’s death. He says he’s mad at God for taking her, but he wasn’t coming very often before she died. I think he felt church was a good place to join when he first came to Amhearst, sort of like the country club or a lodge, somewhere you’d meet people and establish yourself in a new community.” He looked at me. “Sounds cynical, doesn’t it? And judgmental.”

  I nodded. But there was something about Curt that made me give weight to his words. Of course, I was the one who wanted to think Andy Gershowitz innocent, a fact that shouldn’t make me feel too confident in the character-analysis department.

  “I don’t know, Merry!” I jumped as Curt suddenly erupted from his chair and began pacing. “I’ve never said this to any person before tonight, and it’s been gnawing at me for years, but I think Don abused Joan.”

  My jaw dropped in absolute surprise.

  “I know, I know,” he said, looking absolutely miserable. “Sounds unbelievable, doesn’t it? Don, Mr. Nice Guy, Mr. Responsible, Mr. Community, Mr. Wonderful Husband. But I’ve struggled with this for years. And the truth is…well…” He paused, obviously unwilling to go on.

  “Well, what?” I prompted, almost wishing he wouldn’t continue. “What is it you don’t want to say?”

  “The truth is,” he said quietly, “I honestly think he killed her.”

  FOURTEEN

  I spent a wakeful night in Maddie and Doug’s newly painted guest room, tossing restlessly beneath their new teal-and-lavender quilt.

  “Go right to bed,” Curt had told me when he dropped me off. “You need a good, solid night’s sleep.”

  “I’ll probably read or watch TV for a while to unwind,” I said.

  “But not for too long,” he said with that exasperating I-know-what’s-best look. “You need a good night’s sleep.”

  And I said snippily to the man who had chased a murderer all over town for me, “Curt, I think I’m old enough to know when I need to go to sleep.” And I’d climbed out of his car, pulling my overnight bag behind me.

  I finally fell asleep for a few minutes just before the alarm sounded. I pulled myself from bed, feeling punch-drunk and woozy and crabby.

  See, Curt? I turned my light out, and a lot of good it did me.

  My humor didn’t improve when I discovered I’d forgotten my toothbrush. I went down to breakfast feeling like one of those people in the mouthwash commercials, the ones whose greetings cause everyone else to faint at the halitosis. I didn’t say good morning from behind my raised hand, but I felt I should. The upside is that orange juice tastes much better without Crest breath.

  Curt picked me up, and I smiled sweetly around the Life Saver I had found in the bottom of my purse. He drove me to the car rental dealer, who blanched when he saw me coming.

  “It’s okay,” I said quickly. “Your car’s okay. I just lost the keys.”

  “I don’t think I’ll ask how,” the man said. “I don’t think I want to know.”

  He was right. “I just dropped them in the snow,” I said, and left it at that.

  “Now, Merry,” Curt said as he dropped me at The News with the extra set of car keys clutched in my hand. “Don’t wander off by yourself today. Promise?”

  I hesitated. He wasn’t asking anything unreasonable, especially for the man who had been acting as my keeper. So why were my hackles up?

  Ah! He wasn’t ask
ing anything. He was telling, and I didn’t want any man to tell me what to do, not ever again.

  “Merry!” Curt was clearly exasperated by my lack of response. “You’ve used up several of your nine lives these last few days. Someone’s still trying to kill you! Don’t take irresponsible risks.”

  I could feel the stubborn set of my mouth. Who did he think he was? Jack?

  “Merry.” He placed his hand on my arm. “Don’t go anywhere by yourself. I mean it.”

  “Don’t tell me what I can and can’t do,” I snapped before I realized I was going to.

  He looked like I’d had the bad taste to burp out loud in church.

  “I just broke up with a guy who always told me what to do,” I said. “I’m very sensitive on that topic.

  “Touchy might be a better word,” he said coldly.

  “Whatever.” I stared stubbornly at him, knowing I was being ridiculous, knowing he was just being nice. Pushy, intense, overwhelming—true—but nice. We stared at each other, the temperature between us as chill as the air.

  Finally I said, “I’ve got to cover both Trudy’s and Pat’s funerals today. Certainly nothing’s going to happen to me in broad daylight among lots of people.”

  He nodded and smiled. “Okay. My exhibit closes at five. I’ll come for you then, and you can watch me tear everything down. You can be in on the really glamorous part of being an artist and help lug paintings and paraphernalia to the car.”

  I was ready to say, “That sounds fine to me,” but he continued. “I mean it, though, when I say just don’t go off alone, especially after dark. Now promise me.”

  I didn’t slam the car door, but I came awfully close. And I didn’t promise.

  By ten I sat in the largest church in Amhearst on one of many wooden chairs hastily placed along the back of the sanctuary to handle the overflow crowd. I felt like a soda left too long uncorked, slowly losing what little fizz I had left. I had to force myself to concentrate on what was going on around me.