"What do you think?"
I tried to erase the image of Hugo's purple face when he thought Anna had been attacked, and his anger over Guido's racist remarks; I only hoped he hadn't overheard any of the smutty comments that followed. And I hoped the rust bucket that had been spotted at Chiaramonte's nursery hadn't been Hugo's.
"None of his workers stays with him long enough to hate him that much. But who else could come and go unobserved?"
She nodded in agreement as she sliced her spoon into the Jell-O. "I haven't seen Felix in a while. You two have a lovers' spat?"
"I'm not even going to dignify that with an answer." I didn't bother protesting, since Babe seemed to know everything and probably knew about our aborted roll in the mulch. "I think he's in Mexico."
"That's a helluva commute."
"I don't know if he's coming back."
"C'est la vie. Stabbing," she said, taking another poke at the quivering dessert. "That's serious hate. That kind of hate takes time to develop."
With the spoon halfway to her mouth, Babe stopped and stared right at me. We'd had the same thought.
"Maybe years. Maybe forty to fifty years?"
CHAPTER 28
I didn't know how nervous to be. The next morning I got to Halcyon early. I jogged around to the back of the house and was relieved to find Hugo working on the pear trees near the stone wall. He saw me and waved me over, but I stood motionless, rooted to the terrace, watching the sun glint off Hugo's shiny new coa.
He sensed something was wrong and started toward me.
"What is it?" he asked.
"Do you know about Guido Chiaramonte?"
"I do."
"Hugo, where is Felix? And where were you yesterday?"
"I can't. En boca cerrado."
"Don't give me the boca cerrado line. This is serious. Hugo, you might be in a world of trouble."
He said nothing.
Hugo's well-known dislike for Guido, his unfortunate display of temper in front of the cops the day he thought Anna was attacked, the money owed, and Guido's salacious cracks about Anna. And now the squeaky-clean coa. I didn't believe he was capable of it, but the cops were going to treat Hugo, and possibly Felix, as suspects in the stabbing of Guido Chiaramonte.
The three Springfield police cars pulling in to the Peacock driveway confirmed my suspicions. Mike O'Malley walked straight over to us, barely acknowledging me.
"Hugo Jurado? We'd like you to come down to police headquarters to answer some questions related to the attack on Guido Chiaramonte. You have the right to remain silent. . . ."
He continued to read Hugo his rights, while I stood there in shock.
"Sergeant O'Malley, Hugo's English is not that good. Is there any reason I can't come along as a translator, before he retains counsel?" I asked.
O'Malley continued with his note taking. "Officer Guzman can translate." He turned to face me. "If that's even necessary. By the way, Mr. Jurado's vehicle has been identified as the one seen near the Chiaramonte nursery on the morning of the assault."
I was about to protest when O'Malley held up his hand to stop me, adding, "And his fingerprints were found on the weapon." That silenced me.
Finally Hugo spoke. "Ms. Paula, I will finish the espaliers on the wall when I return. Some of the wires are coming down; you should take a look at them. And, please, let my Anna know that I am all right, and I will call her as soon as I am able." Hugo was led away by the cops, and I was alone.
Not long after the cops left, I got a frantic call from Maybel Peńa, Ann's daughter. I barely had time to scribble down her garbled directions before she ran back to her mother's bedside. The Peńas lived in Somerville, a modest neighborhood of bodegas, hair salons, and storefront churches. Their apartment was in a tidy whitewashed building with colorfully painted iron gates on all the windows and seedlings growing out of lard cans on the steps.
Anna's daughter opened the door. Maybel was every Japanese businessman's dream date. Golden skin, soft curves, masses of ringlets, all wrapped in the white knee socks and seductive plaid uniform of St. Agnes's Girls School.
"I'm sorry to have bothered you, Miss Holliday. My mother is very upset. She's been like this for hours, and she won't tell me what's wrong." The kid broke down. "She keeps insisting only you can help her, so that's why I called—"
"You did the right thing. I'll talk to her."
Maybel led me through the kitchen, where her homework was spread out on the table, to a small bedroom in the back of the apartment. Anna was lying in bed, fingering a rosary and staring at the ceiling. I knocked on the open door, and she hoisted herself onto her pudgy elbows.
"Oh, thank God, you are here, Meez Paula. Maybel, sweetheart, go finish your studies. The grownups must talk alone. And close the door, like a good girl." She waited until her daughter was gone before continuing.
Anna Peńa had just found the perfect lace mantilla when the cops walked into Dona Maxi's Bridal Shoppe on Calhoun Street and escorted her to the police station for questioning. "Meez Paula, he didn't do it. The police don't believe me."
She spit out something in Spanish. "Dios mío, this will kill his mother. If I don't do it first. That silly woman. He is so superstitious—they both are. And now that I tell the police, he thinks it will bring him more bad luck."
"Worse than being arrested for attempted murder?" I asked thoughtlessly.
She rolled over and mumbled into her pillow, something I couldn't quite make out.
"Anna, I'm sorry. That was insensitive. What did you tell the cops?" I asked.
"The truth," she wailed plaintively, as if that was the dumbest thing she could have done.
The truth was that Anna had given Hugo a new set of tools, including the spanking-new coa, as an engagement present. And she talked him into going to Chiara-monte's the morning Guido was stabbed to collect the money Guido owed him.
"I never should have forced him to go. It's all my fault. But that was hours before they say Guido was stabbed. We were already downtown by then, getting the marriage license." She collapsed into tears again.
She recovered, and continued. "He didn't even tell the police, because he thinks it's bad luck if his mother isn't the first to know. So I told them and he was angry with me. What could I do—let him go to jail?" And now he was there anyway.
Anna told me how the happy couple waited seventy-five minutes for their number to be called at the license bureau. According to the cops, that was more than enough time for Hugo to drive back to Chiaramonte's, stab Guido, and return to the office in plenty of time to sign on the dotted line.
"Weren't there witnesses? There must have been a roomful of people if you had to wait that long."
"Have you ever been in love, Meez Paula? There was a roomful of people staring into each other's eyes. I couldn't see anyone else there but my Hugo. What if no one can identify him? The police say they will look, but I am scared. Meez Paula, he didn't do it."
"What can I do?" I said lamely.
She bolted upright. "You can help us. You must. That police officer likes you—he'll listen to you."
"He's liking me less these days. He's mad I didn't tell him about Hugo's car, so now he thinks I'm hiding something." She looked at me, pitifully. I'd dashed her only hope.
"I may know some other people who can help," I said.
CHAPTER 29
They both had gates to keep out undesirables. Otherwise, Chestnut Hill, New York, was as far away from Somerville, Connecticut, as you could get, the kind of place where every few years some yahoo caused a stir by trying to park his Cessna on his front lawn.
As I drove on, the houses got bigger and more elaborate. It reminded me of that old joke. A guy gets a flat in an upscale neighborhood. He doesn't have a jack, and it takes him a while to walk back to the last house to borrow one. It starts to rain, and he's muttering about his bad luck, his crummy car, and the undeserved affluence around him, and by the time he rings someone's doorbell, he says, "Screw you and
your jack."
An unseen person buzzed me through the wrought-iron doors that then swung closed behind my car. I continued around the well-tended circular drive to the front door of a huge Tudor house, where Hillary Gibson came out to greet me. She wore a blue cashmere sweater, a white shirt with the collar turned up, and wide-legged pants. She extended her hand.
"Ms. Holliday, please come in. I rather thought I'd hear from you sooner."
I left the car where it was and followed her up the short steps to the house. The center hall was large, with a sweeping staircase off to the right. To say it was simply decorated was an understatement. It was practically empty. Just a few Oriental rugs and lots of plants. She anticipated my reaction.
"I know," she explained. "Friends tell me I really need to get some furniture. My former husband's taste was so execrable that when he left I couldn't wait to get rid of everything. And I've taken my time replacing things. I like it sparse."
"So do I," I fibbed, thinking of my own tchotchke-crammed house.
Hillary's former husband had made a fortune in insurance. Dubious business practices had earned Randall Adams an eighteen-month stay in a minimum-security prison in Danville, Pennsylvania. As expected, Hillary stood by her man during the scandal, but they parted quietly shortly after his release. She kept the house, and a ton of dough, most of which was hers anyway; he got to disappear, probably avoiding further prosecution, with his twenty-three-year-old surgically enhanced secretary. Hillary didn't seem to mind and, in fact, couldn't wait to jettison the Adams name and have it chiseled off the stone pillar in the front of the house, which remained tellingly blank.
Her low heels clicked on the marble tiles as she led me through a garden passageway to a P-shaped conservatory overlooking a small stream. The conservatory was classic Victorian—all mahogany and leaded glass with solid brass handles and fittings. The roof vents were automatically controlled but had a manual override to let the air in on cool, sunny days. Hillary raised them as we entered.
The room held three enormous date palms. A bird's-eye maple vanity with a triple-paned mirror served as a sideboard, where tea and cookies were waiting for us.
"Please sit down." She motioned to a grouping of mis-matched faux bamboo furniture and, without asking, started to pour the tea.
"What a wonderful space," I said, taking the cup. "Doesn't the humidity ruin the furniture, though?"
"The green house hasn't really been used for years. It's been my sitting room. That may change."
"Well, it's lovely. Perfect," I added.
"Not quite," she said, "but almost."
I wondered what she thought was missing. "I see you're something of a gardener yourself," I said, eyeing the landscape outside.
"I've always enjoyed the peacefulness of the garden and the beauty, but not the work. Gerald was always the hard worker of the two of us."
Hillary's family had lived on the same block as the Peacocks for years; some distant cousins had even married. For as long as she could remember, though, it had just been the two women, Dorothy and Renata. As a child, Hillary was treated to the best side of her sometimes antisocial neighbors. She had the run of the gardens and the maze, which she'd mastered by the age of seven. Only the herb garden was off limits.
By the age of twelve, Hillary was old enough to realize others thought her friends strange, but she didn't care. Especially that summer, when Adonis appeared in their garden, in the form of Gerald Fraser. He was handsome, tanned, terribly serious, and, at fifteen, an older man. Despite her parents' protests, their friendship evolved, eventually deepening into love.
"Your parents didn't approve of Gerald?" I interrupted.
"He was poor and they were snobs," she said matter-of-factly. "Gerald worked harder and studied more than anyone I ever knew. He got a scholarship to study art abroad," she added with pride. "Gerald was all set to leave when his father had a stroke. Eventually, his father recovered, but Gerald's mother never did. She was as helpless as a child, didn't even know how to write a check. It took all the money Gerald had saved for the family to get back on their feet."
She took a sip of tea and broke off a small piece of cookie but didn't eat it.
"Dorothy Peacock pleaded with Gerald to take a gift or a loan from her, but his father wouldn't hear of it. So Gerald stayed here, helped his family, and commuted to Teachers College. Eventually I went off to Vassar." She sounded guilty, even after all these years.
"One day," she continued, "just before I left for school, Gerald and I were strolling through the maze, daydreaming about the future and what we might do. Exiting the maze at the white garden, we came upon Dorothy and Renata. They were . . . embracing. Only then did we realize why they'd been so reclusive and why there was this fiction about Renata's frailty when she always seemed perfectly healthy to us."
"So they were lovers. Ms. Gibson, do you know what happened to the real sister?"
"The real Rose Peacock was frail; she'd suffered from rheumatic fever as a child, and it weakened her heart. She never fully recovered. That's why it was so easy to convince people the woman they thought was Rose was sickly.
"As soon as Rose arrived in Italy, she fell ill and was confined to her bed. Rose never even learned of the accident that killed their parents; she died soon after.
"Renata was a wealthy English girl studying art in Florence. She and Dorothy were close before, but inseparable after Rose's death. When Dorothy decided to return to America, she convinced Renata to join her— as Rose."
"Why not as herself?" I asked.
"It was an accident, really. Renata used Rose's return ticket onboard ship. The purser knew, of course, but everyone else thought the two were sisters. They decided to continue the ruse after arriving in Springfield. That way they could live together and no one would suspect."
"Nobody noticed?"
"Their social circle was small. They didn't see the butcher and the mailman every day the way you or I would. And William was such a small child when Rose left, he wouldn't have known."
"And when they had their annual party," I added, "Renata stayed indoors, watching from the library." That part I'd read in the papers. "Which was the reason everyone believed she was sickly."
"Just in case," Hillary said. She took a deep breath. "Lesbianism wasn't chic in those days, the twenties were over and the seventies hadn't arrived yet. They said William was crushed when he found out. He was only a boy, fourteen or fifteen when he left Springfield, bitter, confused, and vowing to never return."
"Did he ever return?"
"He might have come back once—I can't say for sure. I was rather young at the time. The sisters always spoke so fondly of him. They kept thinking he'd show up one day, and then their little family would be complete."
"People seemed to think he went west."
"That's possible; a lot of people did in those days."
"It can't have been easy to keep up a charade like that for so many years. I feel rather sorry for them," I said.
"They had each other and friends, I believe, in other cities."
"That would account for the trips to out-of-town specialists."
"Yes. Everyone's life is different," she added a little sadly. "Don't feel too sorry for them. They brought each other a lot of joy. Not many heterosexual couples stay together for over sixty years." She straightened up in her chair, possibly thinking of her own unhappy marriage.
"There were some in town who knew, or suspected, but they kept quiet—after all, it's nobody else's business. It was courageous of them to defy convention like that at a time when most folks didn't." She briefly disappeared into her own thoughts.
"In any event, the sisters were wonderful to us, which is why Gerry and I don't like hearing the assumptions people are making."
"Ms. Gibson, something even more serious has happened. Guido Chiaramonte has been stabbed and Hugo Jurado has been arrested."
She hadn't heard.
"No one who knows Hugo would believe him cap
able of that. I think it's possible the baby I found may have something to do with Guido's stabbing." I trod carefully. "Since you don't think either of the sisters was the mother, have you any thoughts on who the mother might be?"
"I'll assume you're including me on your list of suspects, but you can cross me off. I can't have children."
I hoped I didn't look too disappointed. And I hoped she was telling the truth. "It sounds like not many strangers had access to the property, so it was very likely someone they knew," I said.
"Over so many years that could be a hundred people."
"A special friend or art student?" I suggested.
"Not that I can recall."
"Someone who worked there, maybe in the garden?"
"They didn't keep live-in help, but I couldn't say for sure. After all, I haven't been a local for almost thirty years."
"Oddly enough, that may be just the right time frame."
"Guido Chiaramonte." She shook her head. "A thoroughly disreputable man. I probably shouldn't say it, but it's a wonder somebody didn't stab him years ago."
Perhaps Hillary knew another candidate? "Did you see much of him when you lived in Springfield?" I asked, wondering if she could have been another of his old flames.
"I wouldn't say much. Let's see, I was away at school when he moved here, so I suppose it was when I was home on holidays. He always seemed to be there at the Fifields', hovering and leering. I don't think he suspected the sisters' true relationship," she said. "That would have been beyond his comprehension.
"I'll give it some more thought," she said, "but you should talk to Gerry. He has some very different ideas on the subject. I said as much to Sergeant O'Malley. He was here yesterday."
The sound of a vehicle crunching gravel in the driveway brought the interview to a close. "You'll have to excuse me now," she said, getting up. "That must be my architect."
"Thank you for seeing me. I will call Mr. Fraser."
She walked me to the door.
"It's a wonderful house," I said politely. "What are you having done?"
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