“You sound—what’s going on?”
“I can’t really talk about …” Why not? Beth was as close to normal as anybody I knew. Beth was sane. “Remember the other night?” I said. “When you made up that excuse for not going home?”
“You mean about you and Mackenzie?” Her voice was merry. “Oh, gee—you know, I told you that, but—”
“You could use it as an excuse again tonight,” I said. “Difference is, this time it’s accurate.”
“I’ll be right over,” she said. “Buzz me in.” The merriness was so far gone from her voice it was hard to believe it had ever been there. I wanted to tell her about Adam, too. No matter what she thought about him in the abstract—because of how I’d poisoned her mind, she was a mother. She had to care about some other mother’s child living on the streets, not able to protect himself.
But she was on her way, sounding like someone who knew things, someone who would solve whatever was wrong. Everything that was wrong. She sounded like a big sister.
She must have been two feet away when she called, because the buzzer sounded before I had a chance to tidy myself up, and according to what I saw in the mirror, my attempts at thinking or avoiding thought both involved raking my hair. When I buzzed her back, brush in hand, I still looked like one of the Three Stooges.
She was wearing her suburban uniform: a blue blazer, white shirt, tailored khaki slacks, and proper low-heeled brown pumps. That, at least, hadn’t changed. And she immediately launched into a whole bunch of words, all of them sympathetic, supportive, and encouraging, even before she had the slightest idea what was going on.
Her actions were, in essence, the absolute opposite of mine with regard to Mackenzie. I wasn’t sure what Beth was saying, but the message was clear—I care about you, I care about you, I care about you.
Made me want to cry, but that would have provoked more sisterly mothering, so I controlled myself, and instead we exchanged further murmurs. It was a chorale of sorts, or a two-part invention. I was vague and sad and said “I don’t know” a whole lot of times, and she was sweet and concerned and performed several variations of “It’ll be all right.” Finally she stood up and said, “Enough. We’re getting nowhere. Brush your hair, put on lipstick, we’ll go to dinner and you’ll feel better.”
There were times when such pronouncements would have either raised my hackles or made me sneer at the sheer banality of my sister’s pattern of thought. This was not such a time. I was grateful for her direction and assurance, and I did as told.
I put on a fire-engine-red corduroy jacket that I liked to believe was so loud in its fabric merriment that wearing it made it impossible to be depressed.
Outside, it was all I could do not to search for Mackenzie. He’d needed air, he said, but he hadn’t mentioned what air, where. I hoped it was local air. He loved walking, and often tried to think through a case by taking a five- or six-mile walk, up and down the city streets.
That never worked for me. Sounded great, like what people did to work things through. But while I do get some exercise, my thinking takes breaks for window-shopping, passersby, traffic hazards, and noise—and winds up in an even worse tangle than it was in when I left home.
I found myself searching for Adam, too. I had missing men all over town.
“How about crabs?” Beth asked. “Isn’t DiNardo’s near here?”
“Around the corner. I feel crabby, anyway.” Mood-appropriate food, although it didn’t matter to me. My appetite had walked out along with the man.
Beth, however, was ravenous. We were seated in a large booth, and in the nautical dark of the restaurant, I watched her neatly dissect and devour half the Chesapeake Bay’s output while we did a catch-up on our parents, who’d been oddly quiet this week.
“Mom’s writing her memoirs,” Beth said. “She read that everybody’s selling memoirs these days, even kids in their twenties, so she’s hopping or at least crawling on the bandwagon. But apparently she got to a point and noticed that her adventures lacked a certain excitement. That a lot of her adventures are other people’s adventures. That which the other people call gossip, I suspect.”
True, but only to a point, so I wondered. I knew my mother had secrets she’d never shared with me and I’d never shared with Beth. I wondered if she was going public with those memories, which weren’t all that dull. And who knew what else there might be?
“So she’s reevaluating every choice she made—and to tell you the truth, every choice I made,” Beth said with a rueful shake of her head. “She can call it whatever she likes—I still call it nagging.”
“Welcome to the club. She’s spent years nagging me to be just like you. But something is definitely up, because this last call she changed her tune. Put the whole marriage machine in reverse.” I sighed. “It fed into everything that’s gone wrong. She offered to pay for grad school. To subsidize me if I go have adventures of the undomesticated kind.”
“Aha,” Beth said, again offering me a small, spice-encrusted claw. I shook my head, and she sighed and ate it herself. “Things begin to make more sense. Back in the loft, it was pretty much a jumble, but now I see….”
“Good, because I don’t.”
She looked at me, cracked yet another claw, and picked out the tender white meat. Then she looked at me again, this time with a smile. We had changed gears in some way. “So just because your life is in a complete shambles now, aren’t you going to ask why I called? I have news.”
“News?” I moved my mind back into the world. “Have you found out where Ray Buttonwood was that afternoon?”
She grimaced. “Who cares? Not that I didn’t try. And Sam reacted completely predictably. The client was late, but then they worked all afternoon, and yes, they took breaks, and no, he didn’t follow Ray, and why was I drilling him, anyway. So what can I tell you? He was and wasn’t under observation all day, just about. I do know they were taking the deposition one block from the library.”
“One block? My God, it’d be … What about the will? Did Sam find out how much money Emily was left?”
“Can we drop that subject? It creates problems for me, and I’m positive that a man doesn’t take a coffee break to go strangle his wife. It doesn’t make sense. And Helena—even if she were desperate about the money—Helena’s too … too fastidious to do a thing like that.” Beth cleared her throat, sighed histrionically, and folded her hands in front of her, behind the plate full of crab shells.
“Sorry,” I said. “I can’t shake the idea—and unless somebody else admits to killing her, my student is going …” My sister was plainly and simply not interested. “Tell me, Beth. What is your news and why are you here in town? Again. At this time of day—dinner, baths, bedtime stories.”
She raised her eyebrows skeptically.
“I am interested. Truly. Have you run away from home?”
“Not exactly. I’ve been working. Scouting locations.” She unclasped her hands, lifted a crab claw, smiled, and waited.
“Meaning what?”
“Meaning scouting locations.”
“Like for movies? Commercials? I don’t get it. Why would you? For whom?”
“I’m starting a business along with two other women. It’s called As Needed, and we’re supplying total party and event services.” Her voice sounded charged as she described what she’d been doing. “We have a stable of experts we can call on, people who can do everything a person might need. We’re catering, but we’ll provide music of any kind, decorations, flowers, entertainment—the whole shebang. And I’ve been looking at unusual places to rent. We want to have the best, absolutely most comprehensive—corporations, too, you see—and—”
If I’d been dumbfounded to find my sister in the city again, the idea of her becoming an entrepreneur left me speechless.
Her smile was a mix of smugness and pure glee. “Been working on the idea for a few months, but I didn’t want to tell anybody—except Sam, of course—until I knew it was really goin
g to happen. Look here.” She fumbled in her pocketbook, pulled out a slim card case, and presented me with a slick business card with a logo that looked like a shield with a whisk crossed over a note of music. AS NEEDED was in bold print, then a phone number, a fax number, an e-mail address, and the alphabetically-in-order names of three women: Sondra Cruz, Marilyn Goldstein, and Beth Wyman.
“The kids are growing up. Alexander’s in a preschool group and Karen’s in first grade. And Sam’s great about it. I don’t know how he’ll be when we get rolling—it’ll mean nights out and such—but he’s really pitching in now with the kids.”
“Where did this come from?”
She looked peeved. “I always knew I’d do something. Didn’t know what, but did you think I was going to be just like Mom?”
“You seemed so happy—so absolutely contented.”
“I was—am. I was lucky; because of Sam’s job, I was able to be there for those first few years. But I have this mother I love but do not want to emulate. Did you think that I, too, would use all my energy and brain power to overengineer my kids’ lives—and the life of anyone else who’d let me?”
Precisely what I’d thought, but despite my recent record for emotional cruelty, I couldn’t bring myself to say so. “I’m amazed. I had no idea. You’ll be perfect, too—your parties are always the most thought-through of any I’ve been to. You’re a natural, and it sounds like fun. Hard, but fun. Why didn’t you ever say something?”
“Why didn’t you ever ask?”
“Man, am I striking out in the human relations department today.”
“Not to worry. Now that I’ve got you feeling guilty, I can bore you to tears with what I’m doing. Like today I looked at five places, including a terrific gallery right here in Old City. I can’t say it was an original inspiration, though. Sam’s office had a reception honoring some political hopeful there last night.”
“Ray Buttonwood?”
She pursed her lips and shook her head. “He hasn’t officially said anything, Mandy. He’s waiting until …”
“Until he’s a properly respected, widowed single parent who then becomes engaged to some heiress who’ll help him, perhaps?”
“Oh, please.” Then she closed her eyes a second and exhaled, opened her eyes and sighed again. “That isn’t a bad scenario, actually, but I don’t want to think about it.”
She was silent long enough for me to think there was something—something about Ray—she was already thinking about. I waited while she idled with another crab claw.
“Actually,” she said after silent deliberation, “Sam pooh-poohed this, but you’ll understand: Ray Buttonwood was there.”
“He’s really taking his wife’s murder hard, isn’t he? Out glad-handing every night and all. He’s a natural for politics. No wonder he wants to run.”
She shrugged. “The thing is, he frightened me. Went out of his way to tell me that he’d gone back to Emmy’s building and verified you weren’t a resident.”
“I knew you shouldn’t have—”
“That isn’t the point. He acted like he was sure we’d gone to Emmy’s.”
“But we did.”
“But he wasn’t to know. Nobody was to know! And he acted as if he wanted to blackmail me, or at least threaten me, about it.” Beth shook her head, affirming her disbelief at the man’s actions. “He said—” She cleared her throat and pitched her voice lower, imitating him.” ‘I find it interesting how different your regard for the law is than your husband’s.’ He wasn’t making sense to me, and it must have showed, so he leaned very close and said, ‘Emily’s place. Before the police had a chance at it.’
“I said, ‘And you, Ray?’ And he said that she was still legally his wife, the mother of his son, so there was nothing odd about it at all, but we had no legal reason for being there. Kept asking what Sam would think of my expedition.”
“Is Sam going to be upset if this jerk tells him?”
Beth’s expression was cryptic—bemused and still a little annoyed. “Why would he be? I told him before I went.” I really did not know this woman who was my sister.
“But you said—”
“Oh, that. About making up an excuse for you? About your so-called breakup? That was for your benefit. I thought you’d be more likely to go with me if you thought I was sneaking behind Sam’s back.”
“Beth.” I frowned with disapproval, then couldn’t sustain it. She was right. I broke into a grin. I’d never have roused myself for a legal, Sam-approved expedition. “All that aside,” I said, “do you think Ray Buttonwood killed his wife? Would there be any reason? I did see that man in the pinstriped suit, and so did Emily.”
Beth tilted her head and looked sourly amused. “Reason?” she said. “Sure. Precisely what you intimated. That way, he’d be a sympathetic widower, not a cold-hearted man dumping his wife and leaving her penniless, and stealing her kid. This way, he can marry the money that would help his campaign, plus he can probably run on an antiviolence platform and be a shoo-in. So sure, there are reasons. But Mandy, I’m positive that Sam would testify that he was with him all the time.”
“He’d lie? Sam?”
She shook her head. “Never. But he truly believes he was with him, enough of the time to make any side trips for murder impossible. And frankly, so do I. And I can’t keep questioning him. He was really annoyed by my suspicions about his friend. He’ll clam up if I start acting like the Gestapo, asking for a minute-by-minute breakdown.”
I would have to find a way around Sam. “Were they still fighting about money?”
Beth searched for her credit card. “I don’t think so. I mean, Emmy was hard up and he was being a creep about it. He makes enough to be a whole lot less creepy. But I think she gave up the battle because her mother left money. Of course, she loaned it to her sister, to open that store, but when Helena paid her back, things wouldn’t have been that terrible.” The waiter took the gold card and the bill.
That troubled me in several directions. It was likely that Emily would have had money issues for a long time, because I’d seen Helena’s store and didn’t have much hope for its making a profit—legally—in this lifetime. And that would mean ongoing divorce-money issues. Both Helena and the bland blond Mr. Pinstripe kept their ominous auras.
“Beth, Helena’s business is pathetic. It’s a fake, whether or not she knows that. She’d never have been able to pay back the loan.”
Beth half nodded. “She insists on acting as if she were a rich woman, somebody’s pampered wife. I know that. But she told Emmy she was going to be in the money again soon.”
“I’m telling you, the store—”
“Not the store. A prospect. A financially affluent prospect.”
“A sugar daddy?”
“Haven’t heard anybody use that expression for a long while.” Beth’s tone was neutral. The subject seemed exhausted and she changed it. “You didn’t eat a thing, poor baby, but your appetite will be back soon, because this foolishness between the two of you is going to work out, you’ll see. You two have too much going for you to let … to just … Well, you aren’t going to listen to your mother for the first time in your life, are you?”
I’d never thought of it that way.
“I promise you, it’ll work out.”
She almost made me believe it.
Outside, the night felt like silk chiffon on the skin. It was the variety of balmy spring evening that releases endorphins into the air, forcing everyone who breathes to fall in love. Trust me to make it the night I break up.
Beth had parked a few blocks south, so we slowly walked down to Second Street, toward Market. Beth talked about her business, speculated as to how she’d manage family and work, about her partners, about what, perhaps, Ray Button-wood had hoped to accomplish with his quiet thuggery the night before. I listened, happy for her, but mostly lost in my still impenetrable thoughts.
We passed Christ Church’s iron-gated garden and graveyard, a place I like
to sit in on fine days. One would think repeated exposure to such reminders of time’s passing, of mortality—even the church’s ghostly presences of congregants Washington and Franklin and the men who signed the Declaration of Independence and came here to pray—would have given me perspective by now. One would be wrong.
We reached Market with me still surveying all points for Mackenzie and perhaps Adam, listening, more or less, while Beth thought out loud about how she’d arrange her schedule. The light changed to green, we stepped off the curb, and I, still scanning, turned my head just enough to see a set of headlights and a sleek, dark car tearing down Second and turning right, sharply, at top speed. Directly at us.
“No!” I screamed, grabbing and pulling her toward me. We fell together, landing in a heap of arms and legs half on and half off the curb as the car sped by, grazing Beth, who collapsed.
A woman across the street screamed—in tune, it seemed, with the sound of brakes being forced to outperform themselves—“That car! Stop that car!” although I wondered how anybody could stop a car. “Get its plate number! Call an ambulance!” The woman standing next to her watched, gape-mouthed, until she realized the last bellowed instruction had been for her. She got the idea, digested it, nodded, and took a cellular phone out of her pocket just as something—the immovable object of physics lore, judging by the protests of ripped metal, the shrieking brakes, the boom and tinkle of falling glass—did stop the car.
I lay there, my sister half on me. I thought perhaps Beth and I were dead or about to be. I couldn’t believe that the worst day of my life was going to be its last as well. I was sick of irony, and now was dying of it.
I tried to right myself, get up on my feet. I could already feel my coccyx protest, and my knees felt wrongly engineered. I was all-over wobbly but alive. I looked at my sister, who was still crumpled. A dark stain was next to her calf, and I could see the cut where her khaki slacks had a gash in them. “Beth! Say something! Oh, my God—”
Things had, impossibly, gotten worse. I lay back down and planned never to get up again.
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