Adam and Evil

by Gillian Roberts

  Beth looked on the verge of tears again. “I think … I think she was afraid on behalf of her son. I think she assumed I understood that there were love letters. Something Ray could use to poison their son against even her memory.”

  “Then why the kitchen? Who’d hide love letters there?”

  Beth looked surprised, then she quickly opened another door and peered inside with excessive interest, examining its contents, which were paltry and sparse.

  “You? You have—you’re kidding, aren’t you?”

  “You don’t think I have a life, do you?” She turned to me, her lips pursed. “You don’t think I have a personality. The kitchen’s a perfect place. Everybody hides things in their lingerie drawer, so everybody knows to look there. Anybody with imagination would realize how much better kitchens are. Men almost never … well, Sam almost never goes into the cabinets. Ingredients don’t interest him.”

  I folded my arms across my chest and waited. It always worked on my students.

  “I use a half-full box of rice. Been using it for a dozen years. An old boyfriend had a resurgence of feeling for me about a year after I was married. I didn’t answer except to say I wasn’t interested, and I wasn’t—but all the same, I couldn’t throw them away, either, even though I knew they’d upset Sam if he found them. And about once a year the man still writes—as a friend—but he always says that in case I’ve changed my mind, he’s waiting.” She shrugged, bit at her top lip. “I can’t throw them out, but I wouldn’t want …” And she turned her back to me and continued pulling every bottle and box off the kitchen shelves.

  “So,” I said, “do you want me to … if, say, you were hit by a bus—”

  At which Beth grabbed a dishtowel and wiped at her eyes. “See? Yes. Because Emmy … that was the pact.”

  To think that for all these years a piece of my sister’s heart had lived in an old box of rice. Beth had always seemed to me the one truly serene woman in the world. No longer. I’d always accepted her at face value, but several times tonight I’d seen her smoothly pave over her features, give that face its desired value. It saddened me—not the knowledge that Beth was more complicated than I’d given her credit for being, but that I’d wanted to hold on to the idea that there was a thoroughly and perpetually contented woman somewhere on earth.

  “I don’t think Emmy used the pantry.” Beth’s voice was once again smooth.

  “I’ll check the bedroom,” I said. “That’s where I’d hide my secrets, even if it’s predictable and clichéd.” It depressed me to realize I didn’t have anything that would embarrass me posthumously except general clutter, and I didn’t know if that was because I was stupefyingly boring or so far gone that I didn’t give a damn.

  “Have you gone through her desk yet?”

  I hadn’t, because it was a stupid thing—a shellacky copy of one of those rickety, undersized stations where ladies in bustles wrote bread-and-butter notes with quill pens. Its surface was uncluttered, with nothing under the unmarked blotter pad. When I pulled open its single shallow drawer, the results were equally unimpressive and predictable. Pens, pencils, highlighters, a ruler, and a notebook, which I opened.

  Its contents were as close to clutter as Emily Buttonwood seemed to have gotten. The lined sheets had notes in a precise hand, the sort that would have pleased her teachers. Looking at it, though, I felt sorrow behind its tidiness, a desperate need to do this correctly. But I was undoubtedly reading into it what I already knew about her. I glanced at her notes, filled with abbreviations and signals for her computer course. I wondered where the computer itself had gone. A laptop would fit on this wee desk. And in Ray Buttonwood’s shopping bag. It was technically his, too, I suppose, but he still seemed a vulture in swooping it up.

  The binder paper’s notes were tidy, but the rest of the binder’s contents were a dramatic contrast to that tight, neat penmanship. It seemed as if every inch was filled with notes to herself on scraps of paper, some with adhesive backing, some clipped to pages, many to the front and back covers, and all trivial or unintelligible. Mostly they seemed the sort of reminders meant to be chucked as soon as the chore was completed. Emmy hadn’t believed in the chucking part.

  She had a housekeeping flaw. I felt a great wave of relief and kinship.

  I compulsively read the scraps and bits, looking at their various designs—angels and teddy bears, and FROM THE KITCHEN OF and DON’T FORGET, stamped across the tops. Lined and plain, pastel and deep hues.

  One had a list of books to buy or check out for her son: Cat in Hat, Pooh, I Can Reads, and another I assumed was for Gage as well: Trucks, esp. red. Couldn’t she remember that? Was she falling apart so much she needed such primitive reminders? I’d once read about a rare neurological disorder where the afflicted couldn’t “dump” temporal information. While the rest of us park our car in a structure and remember the space only until we reclaim the car, those poor souls can’t get rid of the information. They remember every laundry receipt and due date at the library until their minds must be pure clutter.

  Emily’s notebook seemed the written equivalent. Her notes were mundane, from recipe and dental reminders— Moussaka recipe/Terry, 12mo, VF, dent—to cryptic missives about friends (or at least I hoped they were friends; this woman needed people) or dates—Clark/Shoemaker/Buck95, Bauman knows?—to the totally unintelligible (unless this was her shorthand for CDs she wanted to buy): CDPP, CDDC, CDEDILL. One had been imprinted with the drawing of a finger with a string tied around it on top and, in her writing, Check/Bauman/Sabin/leaf, gutters. I had to assume she no longer paid the bills for maintenance on a home she’d left, so why hang on to this probably painful reminder? In fact, there were two more notes mentioning Sabin at other spots in the book. I thought of the fellow who had come up with the first polio vaccine. My aunt Lydia was convinced that Sabin, whose name was whispered reverentially, had personally, specially, saved her children from the dire disease that had killed her sister. It was impossible to visit Aunt Lydia without hearing that anecdote—Sabin hadn’t saved her from being boring.

  I amused myself with thoughts that the doc had given away the rights to the vaccine and had been forced to repair Emily’s gutters to make a living.

  Which was the point when I realized what a waste of time engaged me. No sleep, and stupid thoughts. I pulled a stickum off and carried it into the kitchen. “Does anything on here make any sense to you?” I asked my sister. The paper read Bauman/Sabin: AL: CDPP—17K, EAPMS95K—PMS?—medications for it? I wondered—CDEDil21K, and more of the same.

  She studied the paper and shook her head. “Sabin,” she finally said. “He developed the oral polio vaccine for Aunt Lydia, remember?”

  “Thanks a lot.” Emily Buttonwood, with no sense of what was important and what was not, had been a self-stick packrat. I put the notebook back into the drawer.

  This outing was my dry run for my ninth graders’ garbology assignment, reconstructing Emmy from her pitiable leavings. But even though I hadn’t finished, I’d already collected more for my students to work with than Emily’s actual life had provided Beth and me.

  Luckily, because I was fading fast, Emily turned out to be just as clichéd as I would have been. The letters were in her dresser, between slips and stockings, and tied with a blue ribbon. She’d read a whole lot of nineteenth-century novels. Too many, perhaps. “Hunt’s over,” I called out. “They’re here.”

  I handed the packet to my sister. She eyed them first, and then me. “What if they’re something else altogether? What if they’re from her dad before he died? I feel as if I’m violating her trust, but if she’d explained herself, I wouldn’t have to … I need to read at least one, make sure I’m not burning something Gage would want.”

  She sat down on the edge of the bed, undid the ribbon, and opened the top envelope. It had no return address. That was enough for me to believe they were from the ex-lover. But I couldn’t have burned anything without checking, either.

  Neither of u
s was motivated by anything as base as unwholesome curiosity, you understand.

  “Oh, jeez,” Beth said.” She had them in reverse order. This is the end. The last one. It’s like a legal document. So cold!“She cleared her throat and read.” ‘Emmy.’ Just that, no salutation. Afraid to even say ‘Dear’? ‘Emmy, this is the only possible scenario. Mistakes were made on both our parts, but it is time to resume our lives and places and minimize the harm we hold the potential to inflict.’ That’s it. Not even what I’d call a kiss-off. And only an initial. P.” She said the letter scornfully, almost spitting it out.

  Living as I did with a man with no apparent first or middle name, I couldn’t fault the letter writer for signing off with an initial. But I could on all the rest of his chilly, cut-the-ties-and-cut-out tone. “Know who P. is?” I asked.

  Beth shrugged. “It won’t help anybody to say it. His wife’s a good woman who never publicly acknowledges what went on.”

  “But what if—”

  Beth shook her head. “He didn’t kill Emmy.”

  “How do you—”

  She rifled through the packet to the one at the bottom. “Look here, he was writing to her a year and a half earlier. This wasn’t a one-night thing, and even this early one is careful and chilly.” She skimmed the rest of the letter, then checked the envelopes, all of which had been typed in the same no-return-address fashion. “I’m burning them,” she said. “How he attracted two such good women as his wife and Emmy, I will never know.”

  “He’s obviously heartless. Why are you so sure he couldn’t have—”

  “Because in truth he did have a heart, although not the way you mean. He had the one that pumps the blood around, and it failed him,” Beth said. “He reconciled with his wife—they’d never separated or anything—and had a fatal heart attack three months later. Is being dead enough of an alibi?”

  I nodded, sad on too many counts to list, but mostly on behalf of Emmy, who wanted to keep letters from a man as wooden and careful as that one sounded. Sad to have spent so long with him, tragic to have lost custody of her child because of that involvement. “It is something of a relief, though,” I said. “I was worried that old love letters could be criminal evidence. The police would want to know about passions that might have led to murder. Actually, even if he were still alive, I guess I could imagine her killing him for writing such constipated claptrap. But not vice versa.”

  “I’m burning them here. Now.”

  “The police will notice that the fireplace has been used recently.”

  Beth’s face was set and solemn. “So let them.”

  I thought she was being foolish, and I thought I’d be much better off sleeping before I faced another day, but I have learned not to argue with that jawline.

  She carried the small packet into the living room. “Five minutes, then it’s done. I’ve kept my promise.” She opened the glass door of the fireplace and bent to turn on the gas flame. “The logs are fake—I hope this won’t smoke up the place.” It didn’t. She put the letters into the flames, one at a time, and they flared and turned to carbon while she watched, stoking the pile now and then.

  As she bent over, a heart she wore on a silver chain dangled from her neck, and the pose clicked on my memory. “I did recognize her,” I said. “She was in the library. I saw her.”

  “What?” Beth asked, half turning. “What’s that?”

  “She was wearing a big silk scarf over one shoulder, bending over an exhibit case, near the cabinet with the cuneiform tablets. Adam scared her—he was walking toward her. When she saw him, she straightened up and left. Went somewhere else. But first I saw her necklace—” I lifted the photo from off the mantel. “This necklace, a long gold chain with black stones. It had been hanging the way yours just did, hitting the glass case.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Beth carefully placed the last letter in the fireplace. “Or who. Or is it whom?”

  I watched the last letter’s corner catch and glow. “Helena. Emmy’s sister. The one in that picture. Helena was in the library today. In the department where her sister works. Her sister was killed right outside of it.”

  “Oh, Mandy.” Beth’s voice was rich with sympathy and disbelief. “I understand that you’re twitchy, having been there and all. But first it was Ray you saw, now it’s … Helena’s never read a book, as far as I can tell. Coming to see where her sister worked doesn’t sound at all like her, so why would she be there? Why on earth?”

  “I have no idea.” That wasn’t completely true. I did have an idea. The idea that an oversized scarf could be used to strangle somebody.

  Eight

  I WALKED INTO THE LOFT AND HIT THE WALL. METAPHORICALLY, that is, although had there been a wall nearby, I’d have hit it headfirst. I had no more juice left in my body or brain or spirit or whatever else makes up a person. I headed toward the bed like a drowning victim spotting a distant atoll. I didn’t bother to check for messages, because Mackenzie wouldn’t have phoned this late. He might have e-mailed me, but in that case the message would say he wasn’t here and didn’t know when he would be, and I already knew that. I couldn’t see the point of detouring to the computer when the bed was just over the mountain, waiting. And if my mother had called, it would be to say either that she’d changed her mind and indeed, I should immediately marry. Or that she hadn’t changed her mind, and what was I doing about the rest of my life? I couldn’t consider touching either one.

  Getting into bed is too polite a term for what I did. Think instead of a tree with auburn hair. Imagine that final whack of the axe—and goodbye tree as it topples straight down. Two half ideas flew past my mental screen while I descended, fully clothed. One was to set the alarm clock, and the second was to find out how I could “accidentally” be in the same place as Helena Spurry of the scarves and chains. And then, not even an idea as eyes closed, more an echo inside my skull. The sound of a gravelly voice saying “bitch.” Saying it to Emily Fisher Buttonwood this morning. And then all the script said was fade to black.

  “OKAY,” I TOLD MYSELF SHORTLY AFTER DAWN. I SAID THIS and everything out loud, although Mackenzie was still away fighting crime. Talking to myself is a habit I like to pretend doesn’t exist. It smacks too closely of my future as a bag lady. But making noise gave the illusion of company. Maybe that’s why bag ladies do it, too.

  “We are starting this day with a positive attitude,” I told me. Instead of thinking about being jobless, out in the cold without an income or professional reputation, I’d make that damned glass be half full. I was about to have thrust upon me the chance to expand my horizons, and if I added my parents’ offer, then this was about the luckiest series of events that could happen to a gal.

  If I’d had enough sleep, if I hadn’t been obliged to live through the previous two days, I wouldn’t have sunk into smarm. But that was all I had left, so I tried to look toward the gorgeous—metaphorical again—sunrise and consider what this lucky person was going to choose to be, given that I had the option of any job in the universe.

  I felt so lousy now, so besieged and put upon. I wanted something that put me more in control of my destiny, but the only job that met my requirements was that of absolute monarch of a docile but wealthy country. I wondered how you applied for that and what master’s program prepared you.

  I poured coffee and took deep breaths, readying myself for Havermeyer’s gobbledygook. Would he, when he reached the you’re-fired part, say it clearly? If not, if he hid the news in a thicket of jargon, I’d pretend I didn’t understand. Only fair, because for a long time I’d been pretending I did understand.

  The phone rang. “Signin’ in,” Mackenzie said. “You din’ expect me last night, did you?”

  The note I’d left was still on the oak table. “Of course not,” I said as I ripped it up. “I knew where you were—well, not where, but why. And by the way, where are you? In the case, that is.”

  “Like I’d tell you of all people.” H
e was drawling and slurring and being charming. The sleepy smile in his voice made me melt on a cellular level, but I wasn’t going to cave in to this. He’d turned it on for me. I knew he used his roots— pulled sounds out of the primeval mush and covered his messages with them—to con Yankees, make them underrate him. But now it was obvious that the troops to be conquered and conned included me, and the knowledge rankled.

  Rankling grew old fast. I reconsidered. Charming and conning included me when he thought I was involved in a case and might impede his work. But I wasn’t going to let him know I understood. “Why not?” I asked briskly. “Afraid I’ll spill my guts to my gang? E-mail my chapter of Murder, Incorporated?”

  “Can’t fool you,” he said. “Not for one single minute, so here goes. No apparent motive. Nobody saw a thing. The kid’s still missin’, though his parents say he checked in, then left again. They say he’s not runnin’ from the law, and they’re not hidin’ him. I take it to mean they’ve either abandoned him to his own devices or they’re lyin’.”

  “Isn’t on the lam the scientific term for what he is?”

  “Oh, but you’re good at this. An’ you? Enjoy a quiet night with the cat?”

  “Mmmrph. Sorry—my coffee’s too hot!” I said. I hate lying to him, but I don’t mind evading the truth.

  “Hope you realize your suspicions were prob’ly accurate. That boy of yours—”

  “What I hope is that my stupid outburst didn’t push you so hard in that direction that you aren’t looking anywhere else.”

  “Meanin’?”

  “She was Beth’s friend—the one with the housewarming party Sunday. The one Beth wanted me to get into my book group, except my group was full and—” I don’t know how somebody can convey exasperation over the phone without making a sound, not even a detectable heavy breath, but Mackenzie did. “Beth’s friend,” I repeated lamely. “So I know stuff now. Like she was going through a really mean divorce— child custody fight and all. She had an affair, and that became his leverage. And her sister—” I stopped myself. How was I going to say that Emily Buttonwood’s sister had been in the library just before Emily was strangled, without having ever—legitimately—met or seen said sister? Did I want to risk Mackenzie’s wrath or at least extreme disapproval by mentioning Beth and my expedition to the dead woman’s condo?