Eventually, though, when the pace of the discussion has become comfortable and soft, I do allow myself this: “So. Tell me about Lia.”
We’ve moved from the kitchen to the living room, or whatever it might be called—the room where Roland keeps his Grammy and his coffee-table books. We’re sitting on sofas that are less comfortable but more artful than the ones in the video room.
Milo gives me a look that I know well. It means that he doesn’t mind my asking, but he’s not going to discuss it in any great depth.
“Lia’s nice,” he says, deliberately noncommittal. “I like Lia.”
I smile. “Okay,” I say. “I won’t push on this one.”
He shrugs. “It’s not any … it’s just what it is.”
“Right.” I watch him. I’m not going to insist that he elaborate, but I’m also not going to make things easier by changing the subject.
“She’s a beautiful kid,” he says, after a minute or two of silence. “Sometimes I see her, and I’m just amazed to think that I had anything to do with that. So if by some chance I don’t end up going to prison for the rest of my life, then yeah—I’d like to get to know her and maybe become something other than Uncle Milo. But I think it should be obvious that now’s really not the time.”
I nod and look away. I’m embarrassed that I brought it up, embarrassed that I made it seem, even for a minute, that I’ve forgotten how uncertain Milo’s future is. What I really want to know, I suppose, is not what’s going to happen next, but why Milo made the decisions he did about Lia, why he didn’t step in and become her father right from the start. Or no—if I’m being honest, what I really want to know is whether or not we can reduce it to simple enough terms that I can take the blame. In some perverse way, I want him to say that it’s because Chloe got pregnant so soon after he broke away from me and he didn’t want to be a part of any kind of family. Or because I gave him the idea that raising children was a burden. Or because the loss of Rosemary hurt too much for him to consider loving another little girl.
But nothing is simple, and it’s not always about me. And Milo’s right that there are more urgent matters to consider at the moment.
I get up to use the bathroom, and on my way back I stop to look at the table of photographs in the front hall. I’m drawn again to the one of Milo and Bettina sitting by the water in the midst of that strange, artistic debris. I look at Bettina, laughing and holding Milo’s hand, leaning her head against his shoulder. It’s a loss I’m just beginning to understand, what might have been if I’d known this woman Milo’s holding on to so tenderly. This woman who loved him as much as I do.
I look over the background setting again, thinking I should ask Milo where they were that day. Water and open pipes, columns and piles of rocks stacked haphazardly. And then I notice something I didn’t see before about the heavy slabs of marble and granite: some of them are carved. Carved like gravestones.
“Milo,” I call. My voice is sharp. I carry the picture back to where he’s sitting. “Where was this taken?”
He looks at it and sits up straighter. “The Wave Organ,” he says.
“What’s that?”
He doesn’t answer. He’s staring at the photo. “This is it. This is where I went that night.”
“What is it?” I ask again.
“It’s …” He lifts his eyes to look at me. His expression is urgent, almost wild. “It’s on the bay, near the Exploratorium. It’s this big sculpture that’s supposed to make music when the water hits the pipes at high tide. It’s, like, environmental art, or whatever they call it. It’s all made out of gravestones, from when they relocated some cemetery from the Gold Rush or something.”
“And you went there with Bettina. Well, obviously.”
“Yeah, once.”
“Was it … an important day? Like a first date or something?”
He doesn’t quite roll his eyes. “God, Mom. I don’t think I’ve ever been on a date in my life.” He looks at the picture again, and his face softens. “But yeah. I just … it was the day I knew I loved her.”
“And that’s where you went on the night of the murder? The place where you fell down and hit your head, after Kathy chased you away from the house?”
He nods. “Not sure how I ended up there. I wasn’t planning to go there specifically—I was just driving around aimlessly. But it’s not far from the house, and I guess I just saw the turn for the yacht club, which is how you get there …”
“Do you remember anything else?”
“Maybe. Let me think.” He studies the picture. “I was sitting right there,” he says, pointing to a chunky marble platform. “And I had my phone out, and I just kept pressing redial. And I was looking at the water, which was really rough, crashing against the rocks. It must have been close to high tide, because I remember hearing these noises from the pipes sometimes, kind of a soft howling … or no, that’s saying it too strongly. More like the inside of a seashell, but louder.”
I nod, wait for him to go on.
“And, God. I just felt like my life was over. Like if I couldn’t get Bettina back, then what was it all for?” He lifts a hand to scratch the back of his neck. “I wasn’t thinking about jumping into the water—really, it was nothing like that—but I remember looking at the bay and wondering how it would feel to just fall into it and let it pull me away. Wondering how far away it would take me.”
I tilt my head toward the floor so he can’t see my face. I close my eyes and concentrate on keeping my breathing regular.
“And then finally Bettina answered the phone. And we talked.”
I look back up at him, feeling a little steadier. “Do you remember any more about that?”
He’s quiet, thinking. “Not much. She was upset—I already knew that. And I apologized a million times and begged her to give me another chance. Also, I remember that it was right after I hung up that I fell down and hit my head. I think I might’ve been unconscious for a while. I don’t know.”
Behind us, in the entryway, the front door opens, and we hear Roland’s voice. “Hello, everyone! Look who I ran into at this wretched dinner party and brought round for a drink.”
Milo and I stand and turn to see Roland walking into the room with Joe. They’re both dressed up, wearing suits: Roland’s is dark and sleek, with a white shirt open at the throat, and Joe’s has a faintly retro cut, accented with a bright tie. I’m not prepared for the tone of the evening to shift so abruptly, and their sudden presence, cheery and glamorous, unsettles me.
“Hi,” I say, my voice a little too loud. “Chloe’s not with you?”
Joe takes off his jacket and throws it over the edge of a chair. “No, we couldn’t get a babysitter. She hates these kind of industry things anyway.”
Joe sits down on a chair next to the couch, and Roland heads toward the bar at the other end of the room. “What can I get everyone?” he asks.
In my mind I’m plotting a murder. I don’t have any idea if it’s the right one, the one that actually happened, but in the early stages of conception, it’s important to reserve judgment and let the story take you where it will.
Chloe hears from Joe that Milo and Bettina are getting married. She’s upset by the news, because she loves Milo or she hates Milo or she doesn’t want any other woman to have a claim on her daughter … something. She goes over to the house with the intention of disrupting things: confronting Milo, or maybe telling Bettina about Lia. But when she arrives, Milo’s not there, the engagement’s off, and Bettina already knows the truth. Bettina’s furious at Chloe, Kathy takes Bettina’s side, and … what? If Chloe’s goal is to cause friction between Milo and Bettina, then what motive does she have for murder, after she learns they’ve already broken up?
No, I don’t have it quite right. Not yet. But I’m not ready to toss it out entirely. I just have to find the details to make it work.
Roland carries glasses, sets down drinks. “So you two had a quiet night in?” he asks.
A
s I’m answering, Joe stands up suddenly. “Hey, Milo,” he says. “Can I talk to you for a minute?” I watch them leave the room, feeling uneasy. I don’t think Joe has looked at me once since he came in.
“I wonder what that’s about,” I say.
Roland shakes his head. “No clue.”
“So the dinner party wasn’t much fun?” I ask.
He makes a face. “Nah, they never are.” He takes a sip of his drink. “I was bragging about you, though.”
I look at him, confused. “What do you mean?”
He smiles. “Told everyone I had a best-selling author staying in my spare room. They were all very impressed.”
I laugh awkwardly; I think I may actually blush. “As well they should be. I’m very impressive.”
He laughs. “Indeed you are. The head of marketing at my record label had heard of you, and that’s saying something.”
I’m considering several possible answers, none of which are as witty as I’d like, when the boys come back in. They both look serious. My smile fades.
“Look, I’ll just ask her, okay?” Milo says to Joe.
“What is it?” I ask.
Milo hands me a couple of sheets of paper. “Joe found this in his house. Chloe says she printed it out from a Web site called FreeMilo.com.”
It’s the fake interview. “I know about this,” I say. “It’s not real. I never said any of these things. I’ve already put a statement up on my Web site saying I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Joe and Milo exchange a look. “That’s what I figured,” Joe says. “But then Chloe said that the two of you had had a lot of time to talk, and that you’d confided in her …” He trails off.
“Confided what? That I did an interview for this Web site?”
“No.” He looks down. “She said she played ‘Traitor in the Backseat’ for you, and you were really affected by it. And you told her a bunch of the things that it says here: that Milo always had a dark side, that he changed a lot after his dad and Rosemary died. And also that you were really upset about Milo’s keeping Lia a secret from you. And that if he could lie about something like that, then maybe he was lying about not killing Bettina.”
“No.” My voice is too loud; the word sounds like a small explosion. “I never said anything like that.” Joe’s staring straight ahead at an empty point in space. Milo’s looking at me, but I can’t tell what he’s thinking.
“Okay,” Roland says, holding up one hand in my direction and one in Joe’s. “Let’s not start throwing around accusations.”
I try to calm down. “Joe,” I say, more softly. “I don’t know why she’d lie, but it’s not true. She did play the song for me in the car—I was just telling Milo how much I liked it—but I never said that I thought Milo was guilty.”
Joe nods, still not looking at me. “Okay,” he says. “Well, maybe it was a misunderstanding.” His voice is skeptical.
“I’m sure that’s all it was,” I say, trying to sound warm. He loves Chloe; of course he’d take her word over mine. I still can’t quite read Milo’s expression, but he’s meeting my eyes intently, and he doesn’t look angry. His eyes narrow slightly, as if he’s trying to figure something out.
“When I was talking to Bettina,” he says slowly, “that last phone call. She was really upset, and she said that Chloe’s version of the story was kind of different from mine. Chloe told Bettina that she’d always wanted to tell her the truth but that I wouldn’t let her.”
I hesitate. “That’s pretty much the way she described the situation to me. That’s not true?”
He shakes his head. “I’m not saying I was dying to tell Bettina I’d cheated on her, but Chloe was kind of the one who convinced me. Once she and Joe were dating, she said that she wanted for all of us to be able to hang out together without Bettina thinking that she had to keep me and Chloe away from each other.”
I look at Joe. His eyes are moving back and forth between the two of us. He looks wary, even a little frightened. Roland’s sitting back in his chair, his expression intense but unreadable.
“Here’s the thing,” Milo says. “When we were talking, right after she told me Chloe had said that and I was telling her it wasn’t true, Bettina said, ‘Hold on, I’m going to go into the other room.’ And I heard someone say something to her in the background. I’m almost positive it was Chloe.”
“She was still there,” I say. “At twelve-thirty. Which is definitely later than what she told the police.”
“And if she overheard the conversation, she knew we were getting back together.”
“Wait,” Joe says, his voice sharp. “What are you talking about?”
“Chloe was at the house with Kathy and Bettina, right? What time did she come home?”
“No.” Joe shakes his head. “She wasn’t at your house then, she was there earlier, before you guys went to dinner. Remember, we both came by around six, because you and I were supposed to go over those pictures—you know, for that souvenir thing, for the tour? The program booklet or whatever. We both gave statements about how you guys seemed fine, and there was nothing unusual going on.”
“Yeah,” Milo says, “but Chloe was at the house later, too. She told the police that after we called from the restaurant, she wanted to come over to congratulate us. I’ve got a copy of her statement upstairs, if you want to see it. Remember, I called you around eleven, and you couldn’t come meet me because Lia was asleep and you were the only one home?”
“I know,” Joe says. “But that’s not where she was. She had a meeting with a potential client. Owner of a store who was interested in selling her jewelry. It was a last-minute thing—she checked her phone around nine and saw that this woman had left a voice mail …” He stops to think for a moment, and I see his face fall. “It was right after you called to say you were getting married.”
This is the moment where everything changes. Milo and I look at each other. I’m barely breathing. And there’s the first detail.
Chapter Seventeen
Ending a book is a nerve-racking proposition; at least, it is if you assume you’ll only have one shot at it. So many moments that could come last, but only one of them is right.
The next book I finish, two and a half years from this Saturday night in Roland’s living room, will not be a memoir, and it will not be an extension of anything I’ve written before. By then I will have packed The Nobodies Album away gently in a drawer, never to be seen by the world at large, and I’ll have made peace with my many endings, flawed though they may be.
By that time Milo’s case will be over, though it will take almost a year before the charges are dropped. It’s not a simple thing to clear an accused murderer and arrest a different suspect. The next year, and the two years that follow as Chloe awaits trial, will provide an interesting lesson in narrative structure, as the two contradictory stories about what might have happened the night Bettina died become fleshed out in greater detail.
Joe and Chloe’s house will be searched on Sunday morning. While Milo and I tire ourselves out by chasing Lia around Roland’s courtyard, detectives will seize several items, including Chloe’s laptop. A search of the computer’s history will eventually lead them to a password-locked blog containing excerpts of a novel-in-progress—subject matter unimaginative, prose merely competent—about a woman in love with a successful rock singer, who happens to be her boyfriend’s best friend. Police will also learn that three days after the murder, the computer was used to set up a new e-mail account ([email protected]), through which a person claiming to be me corresponded with the webmaster of FreeMilo.com. The clothes that Joe and Kathy remember Chloe wearing that night will never be found, but her car, in spite of obvious attempts at careful cleaning, will turn up traces of Bettina’s blood.
On Sunday afternoon Milo and I will make a trip to the Wave Organ, where police will later find Milo’s blood on a stone, and from there we’ll move outward, retracing the route to Milo’s house, until we come upon
a convenience store with a battered vending machine standing outside. Through the dusty, pitted glass, we’ll see the prizes available for a quarter: little plastic bubbles filled with shimmering pink jewels. We’ll also see that across the street from the convenience store, there’s an ATM—an ATM with a security camera, containing a tape that will reveal a shadowy Milo kneeling heavily in front of the machine and digging through his pockets for change at 2:09 a.m., which places his arrival home outside the window the coroner has determined for the time of Bettina’s death.
• • •
During those three years I’ll travel back and forth between Boston and San Francisco often. On one of those visits, Milo and I will take an afternoon to drive down to San Jose and visit the Winchester Mystery House, which was supposed to have been our destination the day after we went to Yosemite, all those years ago. It’s an exceptionally strange place, a work of evolving art—never finished, never intended to be—and it’s there that I’ll get the idea for my next novel. I suppose it’s not unclear why this particular tale should appeal to me; sometimes I’m more transparent than I’d like.
The history of the house is this: A woman, heiress to a fortune made from the manufacture of rifles, becomes terribly distraught after she loses her husband and her daughter. She becomes convinced that she’s the victim of a curse, that she’s being haunted by ghosts. That she’s being held responsible for the damage caused by the invention she’s profited from. She believes that if the house she’s building is ever completed, she’ll die.
She hires workers around the clock, every hour of every day for thirty-eight years. A reclusive widow living a solitary life, building room after room, sleeping in a different bed every night in an attempt to confuse the demons. The orders she gives the workers are often nonsensical; it doesn’t matter what they build, as long as they keep building. By the time she dies, the house contains nine hundred doorways. A stairway that goes nowhere. A window in the middle of a floor.
The Nobodies Album Page 29