Hal sat down on the bed and started taking off his shoes. “Okay.”
I sat down next to him and kicked off my shoes too. “I’m also sorry I went into the personal corporation without discussing it with you. I should have, and we should have checked that out with Fred and Lorraine too.”
“I’m glad you said that,” Hal said. “It’s about time. I think I’ve always been a little resentful that you didn’t listen to me about that.”
“Listen to you?” I said. “You never said anything about it.”
“Yes, I did. You weren’t listening. Toni, we’ve been married seventeen years, and I should think we’d be communicating a lot better than this by now.” Hal wouldn’t look at me. “But we seem to be communicating less and less.”
Oh, the nerve of him! “Oh, right, you’re the big communicator,” I sneered. “That’s why you won’t tell me what’s been bothering you for the last few months. You just tell me to get off your case.”
Hal started unbuttoning his shirt. “That’s because there’s nothing bothering me, Toni, and I wish you’d stop nagging me about it.”
I pulled my tunic top off over my head and threw it on the chair. “If you’d tell me what it is, I wouldn’t have to nag.”
“Toni …”
“Okay, I’ll stop nagging. You don’t want to tell me, you don’t have to tell me. I can’t make you. But just let me say one thing.” My voice began to quaver. “I don’t want a divorce. I want us to be the way we were.”
Hal seemed startled. “Who said anything about divorce?”
By now tears were running down my face and my nose was clogged. I sniffed mightily and to no avail. “You did, this morning.”
Hal seemed momentarily bewildered. “This morn—oh, that.” His face cleared. “Actually, you were the one who mentioned it.”
“And you said, ‘Don’t tempt me.’” And if you loved me, you’d be comforting me right now.
He sighed and got up off the bed. He came over to me and put his arms around me. “Okay, so I was a little upset. But I don’t want a divorce either. Now can we go to bed and get some sleep?”
Well, that was a relief. But he still hadn’t told me what had been bothering him. We continued to get ready for bed, and when we finally got into bed, Hal leaned over and gave me a kiss. “I love you, honey. G’night.” He rolled over and turned out his light.
“Love you too,” I said; but I didn’t turn off my light. I read for quite a while before I grew calm enough to attempt sleep. Hal might think this discussion was over, but I knew it was just a temporary truce. Hal’s and my relationship had subtly changed in ways I couldn’t pinpoint. Whatever it was, I didn’t like it.
And I couldn’t help wondering if the damage Jay Braithwaite Burke had done would include the end of my marriage.
Saturday, December 13
Chapter 7
It’s well to be off with the Old Woman
before you’re on with the New.
—George Bernard Shaw
Saturday morning found us next door, sampling Elliott’s World Famous Christmas Eggnog, which was meant to be served at the party that Jodi and Elliott were having that night. It contained seven different kinds of booze and was so delicious that even I consented to partake.
As a small child, I had refused to eat eggs, so my mother had given me eggnog for breakfast. She made it herself with an eggbeater, so it was always sort of stringy and mucoid, and it wasn’t long before I consented to eat hard-boiled eggs just so I wouldn’t have to drink the disgusting stuff. But this was different. It was whipped and fluffy, almost like a milkshake, with no strings attached.
Jodi Maynard sighed with pleasure. “Yum,” she said. “I love this stuff. It’s a good thing we only make it at Christmastime, or I’d weigh a ton.”
I licked my lips. “It’s a heart attack in a glass,” I agreed.
Elliott refilled his glass. “How was the party?” he asked.
“Good,” replied Hal, holding out his glass for a refill too. “I never saw so many Christmas decorations in my life. And I thought Toni was bad.”
“What’s so bad about Christmas decorations?” I demanded.
“Nothing, except that you usually put them up in November and then want to leave them up until March.”
I was way too old to believe in Santa Claus, and the cost of any presents we gave each other came out of our own pockets; so the magic of Christmas was pretty much a nonstarter, unless I could find something else to ooh and aah over to create the necessary ambiance, and that only left the decorations and the music.
On those, I went all out.
It was important to me. Apparently, in my heart, I was still a child.
For someone raised in a Jewish home, Hal had adapted very well to the observance of Christmas, thank God, and I wasn’t too shabby on the Jewish holidays, either. For example, I knew that this year Christmas would fall on the fourth day of Hanukkah, and I celebrated both of them in my unique style.
Up until this year, Hal had always teased me good-naturedly about the lengths to which I took it. His parents were another story.
Shortly after we’d moved to Twin Falls, they visited us during Hanukkah, probably to make sure that their younger son was celebrating it properly and hadn’t been totally corrupted by that shiksa he’d married; but they were doomed to disappointment. When Ida Shapiro saw the Christmas tree with the lighted blue-and-silver Star of David on top, she started to hyperventilate, and then she saw the menorah in the center of the dining room table, with red candles in it, surrounded by holly leaves and shiny red balls.
That did it. As she lay artistically draped over the couch, moaning and clutching her chest, Hal and his father Max hovered over her solicitously, while I called her bluff and an ambulance, in that order; whereupon she miraculously recovered.
Just in time to see Hal’s dreidel in the center of the mantelpiece between the Christmas stockings.
This year, however, Hal’s teasing had an edge to it, as if he was really pissed off about it. I didn’t know why. All I knew was that it was spoiling the magic, and that pissed me off, so I attacked.
“And your point?”
Hal glared at me. “You know perfectly well what my point is. I’m Jewish, for God’s sake. You might consider my needs once in a while.”
Seriously? The man was scolding me for being so insensitive to his needs, like I didn’t know he was Jewish?
Needs, my ass. “Oh yes, and let’s not mention that you ate pork chops and potatoes au gratin over here the other night,” I remarked. “Talk about nonkosher! You’re a cafeteria Jew, that’s what you are!”
“All right, you guys, cut it out, already,” said Jodi, who had heard this argument before.
Hal folded his arms and achieved a martyred expression. “I will if Toni will.”
I threw up my hands in frustration. “Oh my God, this is so high school!”
Jodi threw her hands up too. “Oh my God, what is the matter with you two? You’re acting like children. Can we just change the subject and talk about the party? Can you manage to do that without killing each other?”
“Hmph,” Hal said. “Some party. All they wanted to talk about was that damn Jay Braithwaite Burke.”
Elliott clutched his head as if in severe pain. “Don’t mention that name in this house,” he said. “I hear nothing else all day, day after day. All I did was draw up his damn will. How can one person be so freakin’ much trouble?”
“How is he giving you trouble?” I asked.
“Drawing up that will was the dumbest freakin’ thing I ever did. And for what? A damn Ponzi scheme that went south and probably has no money in it for anyone to inherit.”
I hoped that Jay had at least paid Elliott for that will, but perhaps this was not the best time to ask.
“What’s a Ponzi scheme?” Jodi asked.
Elliott explained. “Someone gets everybody he knows to invest in something that guarantees a huge return because it takes advantage of some kind of loophole in the tax code or something, and he tells them they need to hurry up and get in on the ground floor before that changes. So they do, and they tell all their friends, and so on. As long as new investors keep putting money in, the old investors get paid, but if that stops and people start taking money out, it falls apart and all the new investors lose everything.”
“So if you really do get in on the ground floor, you should come out okay,” Hal said.
“Sure, unless you reinvest your profits. Then you could lose big-time, just like everybody else.”
“Ponzi?” Jodi asked. “Wasn’t he that guy on Happy Days?”
I giggled. Elliott ignored her. “Charles Ponzi,” he said, “made a fortune back in 1919, buying postal coupons in the US and selling them in Europe for a few cents more. He got all these people to invest, and the whole thing fell apart because for everybody to get anything out of it there would have had to be something like a hundred million postal coupons printed, and there were actually only twenty-seven thousand.”
“Jesus,” Hal said. “If we’d gotten into that fund back when we first moved here and it had already been going on for five years, we’d have lost everything.”
“Maybe Jay didn’t invest his own money in that fund,” I pointed out. “Of all people, he should have known what he was getting into. So maybe there is something to inherit, after all.”
“I told you that, Toni,” Elliott said. “Remember? Offshore accounts in his will?”
“Just because they’re in his will doesn’t mean there’s any money left in them,” I said.
“Maybe,” Elliott conceded, “but why the hell couldn’t he just leave everything to his wife and children and a few charities, and be done with it? Oh, no, he has to get all tricky and set up all these freakin’ trusts. It’s gonna be pure freakin’ hell to administer it. I keep getting all these phone calls, and I can’t tell anybody anything because you, Doctor Toni Freakin’ Day Shapiro, called his death a homicide.”
Well, hell, I wasn’t about to apologize for my autopsy report. “Who were the trusts for?” I asked.
“Now you know perfectly freakin’ well that’s privileged information. But one of them is that his secretary inherits on the condition that she moves in with the wife and helps her take care of the kids. If she moves out, she has to give the money to the wife. I could go on, but you get the point.”
“So that’s it,” I said.
“What?” Hal asked.
“That’s why Tiffany moved in with Kathleen,” I said.
“How’d you know that?” Hal asked.
“Rebecca Sorensen said so last night,” I said. “She thought it was so sweet. She said Kathleen treats Tiffany like a daughter. She also said Tiffany had a child by Jay.”
“That would explain why he set up a trust for her,” Elliott said.
“Who else did he set up trusts for?” I inquired, hoping to catch Elliott off guard.
It didn’t work. Elliott held up a hand. “Toni, you’re not listening. That’s privileged.”
“You told me about Tiffany,” I countered. “You know you can trust me not to spread this all over town. Don’t you?”
Elliott knew better than to argue with me. Even my Mum would say I could give any lawyer a run for his money in an argument. Sometimes she’d even wonder why I’d wasted my time in medical school. “The trusts are for some people that make no freakin’ sense,” he said. “I mean, they’re not related to him in any way that I can figure.”
“Hey,” I said, struck by a sudden thought. “Were all the other people women with small children?”
“Yes, they were, now that you mention it,” Elliott said. “What are you getting at, Toni?”
“What kind of conditions do they have to meet before they can inherit?”
“They have to be divorced from their husbands and not remarried. Why?”
“Well, Rebecca said he’d been cheating on his wife for years. Maybe they were all women that he had affairs with and got pregnant. Maybe all the children are Jay’s, and he set up trusts to make sure they were taken care of if their parents divorced.”
“It’s possible,” Elliott said. “But one of them was your radiologist.”
“Mitzi? Why on earth?” But even as I said this, I remembered Mitzi’d had a baby last year, at the age of forty-two, and as soon as he’d found out she was pregnant, her husband, Dave, left her. They subsequently divorced, and I’d always considered Dave a prize shit for walking out on Mitzi when she was pregnant. Dave and Mitzi had another child, Jeremy, who was ten. But suppose the baby wasn’t Dave’s? Suppose it was Jay’s?
Ridiculous. Not Mitzi. She wouldn’t be that desperate. Would she?
“What did all those women see in him?” I asked. “He was such a sleazeball and not the least bit good-looking.”
“Jesus, Toni,” Hal said, “why don’t you tell us how you really feel about him?”
“Ah,” Jodi said, “but he had The Voice. He could mesmerize you.”
“Not me,” I declared. “He just turned me off. Sort of like a pushy used car salesman.”
Jodi shrugged and turned away. I wondered if what I’d said upset her, but now wasn’t the time to ask. Could Jodi possibly have been involved with Jay?
No. No way. Jodi and Elliott were solid. She wouldn’t have given the likes of Jay a second thought.
“So, Elliott,” I continued, “I don’t suppose you can tell me who the other women were, could you? Seeing as you’ve already violated confidentiality by telling me about Mitzi?”
Elliott cleared his throat and turned away from me before he spoke. “I’d rather not,” he said.
“Oh, come on, Elliott,” I urged. “I’m a doctor. I’m real good at confidentiality.”
But Elliott just shook his head. “No, Toni, I’ve told you enough.”
I changed the subject. “I also found out that Jay had a partner. Lance Something. Did you know that?”
“I thought so,” Hal said. “I had occasion to drive by Jay’s office once, and the name on the sign was Burke, Braithwaite, Burke, Bartlett, and Brooks. It stuck in my mind because it was all B’s, and I wondered if that was a prerequisite for partnership, or something. So which one is Lance?”
“Brooks,” Elliott said. “The first Burke was Jay’s paternal grandfather, Braithwaite was his grandfather’s cousin, and they’re both long dead. And Bill Bartlett’s dead, too. Dropped dead at his desk at the tender age of forty-eight. Heart attack. Happened about ten years ago.”
“That’s scary,” said Hal, who was fifty-four.
“Tell me about it,” Elliott said. “I’m forty-eight.”
“Wait a minute,” Jodi said. “If Tiffany’s child is three, and Mitzi’s baby is only one, if they’re both Jay’s, that means he was fooling around with Mitzi and Tiffany at the same time. Do any of these women know about the others?”
Elliott groaned, clutching his head melodramatically. “Jesus freakin’ Christ, I hope not.”
“Were all of these women’s ex-husbands involved in Jay’s Ponzi scheme?” I asked.
“Yes,” Elliott said. “They were. Now do you see why this is one freakin’ hell of a mess?”
Not to mention an embarrassment of motives, I thought. Was there anyone left who didn’t want Jay dead?
Jodi cleared her throat. “Not to change the subject or anything, but does anybody want to guess who’s moving into the house across the street?”
Old Mrs. Merriweather, who’d lived across the street in a house older than she was and much too large for her, had died last year on Christmas Eve at the age of
ninety. I’d done the autopsy. The house had stood empty and decaying for nearly a year when the For Sale sign came down and the Sold sign went up. I hadn’t really given it much thought until Jodi mentioned it, and I wondered briefly why Jodi had chosen to mention it just now.
I didn’t have to wonder long. “Who?” I asked.
“Kathleen Burke,” Jodi said.
Holy shit, I thought. Rebecca told me Kathleen had sold her house and moved out, but hadn’t said where to.
Of all the places in this town she could have moved to, she had to pick the house across the street from me.
Looked like I was going to get involved in this case whether I wanted to or not.
Chapter 8
There’s a fascination frantic
In a ruin that’s romantic;
Do you think that you are sufficiently decayed?
—Sir William Gilbert
So, while Jodi took time out of her busy day preparing for the party and made a tuna casserole, I made a pan of brownies; and so armed, we crossed the street to make the acquaintance of our new neighbors.
Mrs. Merriweather’s house was Victorian, like ours, built at the beginning of the last century, when Twin Falls had consisted of just a few muddy streets. Originally Wedgwood blue with darker blue shutters, the paint had faded and peeled to an uneven, scabrous gray.
In the sunshine, the house would look friendly enough, but against the dark, gray winter sky, it loomed ominously, and the branches of the stark, leafless trees around it looked like skeletal fingers, arching over the roof as if to grab anyone foolish enough to climb up there. One could imagine them closing over the house at night, rather like the closing of flower petals, imprisoning its occupants until morning, when they would open again with the rising of the sun.
I was obviously channeling Hansel and Gretel.
As we climbed the sagging steps to the broad porch, I almost expected that Lurch would answer the door, intoning, “You rang?” But before we had a chance to knock, the screen door opened, and we came face to face with a stocky, dark-haired woman about my age, who took one look at Jodi and exclaimed, “Don’t I know you?”
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