Murder Never Forgets

by Diana O'Hehir

  Why, I ask myself, do I continue to butter up Mrs. Sisal? Do Daddy and I really want to stay on in this peculiar haunted establishment? If others can sue and leave, we can do that, too, can’t we?

  No, I correct myself, we can’t. I’ve got to stick it out here. I’ve started out to do something, and I’m going to do it.

  I half-smile at Mrs. S. I’m actually beginning to feel sorry for her. Which doesn’t change the fact that she seems like a good candidate for the title of Spider at the Edge of the Web, the one who waits until a quiver of the string tells her that a fly has landed in her structure of accident and circumstance, after which she races down and paralyzes him.

  Motive, opportunity, means, those are the qualifications you’re supposed to look for in choosing a crime suspect. The motive—well, in this case, what with the accidents, the motive has to be something about the operation of the Manor. Motive, she’s got. And opportunity—she has loads of that. Means is not so good. Means would be a knowledge of how to kill, and Mrs. Sisal doesn’t look to me like a neck-breaker. So you score two out of three, I think at her.

  I wish I could get a better handle on that motive question. Why all this chaotic mess, like tipping people out of windows? Is someone purposely trying to wreck the Manor? Or idiotically, publicizing the place? (So far, no; no news has leaked to the rest of the world.) Getting everybody to leave the Manor? Those accidents must have some simple, cohesive purpose.

  “It’s tuna casserole for lunch today,” I tell him, but he looks at me, one eyebrow elevated, and says, “Dear girl, I have no intention of subjectin’ you to this environment one single minute more. We are goin’ out, we are goin’ to Conestoga, which is ten miles beyond Green Beach and is the county seat, and we’ll eat in a real high-cholesterol restaurant with real plastic booths.” And he takes me by the hand and leads me out to the parking lot, to a small green Miata convertible.

  I owe Dr. Kittredge one for protecting Daddy from the sheriff. Lunch in Conestoga is okay.

  The Miata is a chunky little ostentatious tub with leather seats that cradle your behind and your back. It’s small enough that the bulky doctor has to squeeze himself in, inch by inch. “Like gettin’ a fat lady through a subway turnstile,” he winks at me. He manages to make the process look sexy.

  Half-fake and half-not, that sums you up, I think at him as we zip along the coast road with our hair flying.

  “Ah, darlin’,” he yells at me, and I say, “Where did you get that accent?” and he hollers, “From me mum, my darlin’,” which doesn’t explain why he doesn’t lose at least a little bit of it, living and working in California. He sounds like an old movie about the Troubles.

  In Bettie’s Beach Cafe he commandeers a back booth, red formica and red Naugahyde, and settles in proprietarily to stare at me. “Whatever yer heart desires, sweet one,” he says, and I tell him pancakes, and he says, “Good choice,” and he himself orders a hamburger and then leans back to sweet-talk Bettie, who arrives wide and blonde and tired. “Your hamburgers are the best on the whole north coast,” says he to her. “That’s a hamburger made with love,” at which Bettie comes to, giggling and with a spot of pink on each plump cheek. “A woman who knows what a man wants.” And so on and so forth. There’s nobody but me and Bettie here for him to flirt with, but he makes the two of us seem like a crowd.

  “And now,” he stops to put ketchup, mustard, onion slice, and lettuce shred onto his hamburger patty, “now, Goldilocks, what news from Sally Jean?”

  I ask, of course, “Who’s Sally Jean?” and he says, “Oh, sweetheart, did you not know?” and then fools around with enjoying knowing something I don’t. And finally elucidates, “That’s Sisal’s name. Sally Jean Sisal from Tulsa, Oklahoma. You’d not suspect it, would you?”

  So we do the routine where I say, certainly he knows her better than I do, why ask me how she is? I must admit I’m surprised that the S. J. in front of Sisal’s name in the Manor catalogue means Sally Jean. I would have thought she’d change it: Serena Jocelyn, Samantha Joy.

  “But,” I ask Dr. K., “why should I tell you what Mrs. Sisal is up to? Rumor has it you two are an item.”

  He manages to preen and look pleased and at the same time deny that anything obtains between him and Sally Jean. And I guess it doesn’t, not right now at least, because he really wants to know what she and I were talking about. “Kind of a long conversation you had,” he says. (How did he know; was he watching the door?) Finally I repeat our boring interview for him, and he doesn’t want to believe it. “That’s all?” No, he really isn’t in with her these days. He wishes she’d been circumstantial and told me how she feels and is she scared and what does she plan next for the Manor.

  “Ah, well, you’re in good with her, Goldilocks,” he says, “you played your cards just fine; you are some smart lady.”

  And he offers more pancakes. Coffee. The coffee is awful. “Tell me about how you went to Egypt,” he says unexpectedly, without preamble. “You were just a kid, was it fun? You’re smart, you’re literate, are you going to write about it?”

  Dr. Kittredge is not one of those people that you can feel straightforwardly one single way about. Here I was starting to get deeply bored with him, and now he asks this question which I’ve been dying for someone to ask: Can you talk about Egypt? Can you talk about a possible you after you leave the Manor? The old ladies are great on questions but they never come up with the right ones. Theirs are more like: Dear, are you getting enough sleep lately?

  So I start to tell him about Egypt and then about what I would write about from that time if I were writing it. (And he was bright to mention that, because I guess I’d really like to do that some day.) “The last time we were there I was fourteen, and it seemed hopelessly romantic,” I say, “even when it was dusty and hot and we were right in the middle of it. And an experience that you’re in the middle of doesn’t usually seem that romantic. In Egypt I got to see my father in action. He was different; that was his world, and he even stood differently when he was there. Only a couple of years off from starting his forgetting, but he was still okay. He was fun. He was decisive.”

  I begin to get excited talking to Dr. Kittredge about this and remembering that trip and thinking about Robbie being along and us at night around our fire and talking about everything with him: math, astronomy, poetry, death. “And Daddy was making notes for his last book,” I say. “The fourteen hieroglyphs one.”

  Dr. Kittredge has ordered ice cream sundaes. He is slurping his and watching me emote. “Yes, dear one,” he says. “I read it.”

  “You read what?”

  “Your dad’s book.”

  It’s a known fact that no one reads a book called The Coffin Lid Texts: Fourteen Hieroglyphs Reclaimed except another Egyptologist. Suddenly I’m cross; I’ve adjusted myself to too many people lately. I accuse the doctor of lying, and he laughs and says, “Ah. You look great when yer cross.”

  But when I say, “Jee-sus,” he undercuts me by asking, “An’ why should ya assume that all a doctor has is his med degree? He’s got to think about other things, am I right?”

  “Okay,” I tell him, not the least bit convinced.

  Dr. Kittredge, I am thinking, you are under suspicion; I suspect you of everything, I suspect everybody of everything. But, come to think of it, where were you when Mona’s neck was broken? They had to go looking for you, and no one ever told me where you were found, and who would be better than a doctor at neck-snapping ?

  “. . . back in med school,” Dr. Kittredge is saying. “A hobby of mine. I had a girlfriend who was crazy about that whole ancient Egyptian scene. I read about Ramesses III in between doing gall bladders. It’s interesting; there’s a characteristic odor that goes with . . .”

  I tell him, “Okay, okay,” and he goes, “Sorry, baby,” with a special smile that means he did that on purpose, and then he tells me, “So I knew about your dad before he ever got here. He’s a very challenging man.

  “Now, dea
r, you put that ice cream away all right, how about another one?”

  This doctor is obnoxious; I’m right to be suspicious of him. And of everybody else in the Manor; Sisal, Daddy’s aides Belle and Kellee, Rebecca the secretary, even my darling cross and peculiar old ladies. I’m suspicious of every single one of them. I wish there were somebody here who was smart and funny, and I didn’t have to feel wary of them.

  The doctor is back now into talking about Daddy, about just how daffy he is. (He uses the term confused.) Is it constant? Does it come and go? Affected by diet, temperature, phases of the moon? He pushes a bit on this. Have I seen signs that, if Dr. Day’s memory were tweaked a little, is there any chance that some memory would . . .

  I get mad. “Don’t talk like that. That’s a human being, my father, not some damn computer that you can stick a paper clip into, don’t you even think about tweaking.”

  And right away he’s apologetic, “I didn’t mean really . . . sweetheart, goddamn, no, I’m just interested in the mechanisms of memory, how it all works, speculating on what you’ve observed; you’re a damn good observer, y’know?”

  “Quit speculating.”

  “Oh, dear, we, that is we doctors, know so damn little.” Delivered with a big dose of aw-shucks charm.

  Damn right, you know so little. And lay off it about my father, everybody in the world is interested in him. “Hey,” I say, “you’ve got other Alzheimer’s patients.”

  All in all, Dr. Kittredge has proved to be an irritating lunch companion and has moved to first place in my list of people to feel edgy about. But just the same I have to stop myself, as we climb back into the Miata, from confiding in him about thinking Daddy’s at the center of all the action lately. I open my mouth to talk about this and, mouth half-open, think better of it, and don’t.

  Chapter 13

  Mrs. La Salle decides just from looking at me that I’m worrying too much. She stops me at the door to the dining room and caresses my wrist with a small manicured finger. “We’ve decided you need an escape. And so does Ed.”

  “My father has an escape. He escapes into himself.”

  She shakes her head, the one amethyst earring catching the light. “He needs to get away. We’ve discussed it.”

  We is the trio—Daddy’s fan club of herself, Mrs. Cohen, and Mrs. Dexter. “You shall have dinner out,” she proclaims. “Someplace away, far from all this.” A wave of her hand takes in the Manor scene—the sheriff’s interviewing team, still camped in the main lounge, the yellow tape scraps still dangling around the garden, the luggage in the main hall waiting for departing residents.

  “Justine’s Restaurant,” she says. “On the highway. Very elegant. I can get a reservation. I know many of the people in restaurants. From my gossip column.”

  I agree, “Yes,” remembering Mrs. La Salle’s glamorous past. But I tell her I’m not sure about this; I better think about it. Daddy’s and my last attempt at a party didn’t turn out too well, did it? Then I catch a wave of high-pitched sound from the lobby—irritated voices, luggage scrape, wheeled suitcase squeak—and after that another, different wave, this one of dining-room smell, not exactly bad, just starchy-bland, mashed potatoes and a whiff of that kind of gravy that stands up all by itself, and I think, Gourmet restaurant—classic food, deft, assiduous waiters—it’s been a long, long time. All the way back to Egypt, maybe. So I tell Mrs. La Salle yes, gourmet restaurant sounds great.

  I just tell him okay. I don’t want to start a long conversation for the old ladies to listen to.

  “I received another e-mail,” he says, and I agree, “Okay,” again, wondering, E-mail, where did he even pick up the term?

  “No secrets in the back,” Mrs. Dexter snaps in our direction.

  The cab belongs to someone named Henry, a potbellied gentleman in a checked shirt and beard, who tells us our outing is “A-OK. Good for you, get out and see the world,” although he thinks we should go to the Supersteak at the Conestoga Best Western. “This Justine’s has a real snooty reputation.” But he’s cheerful about pointing out sights: “Over there’s where the seals come.” “There’s where some English explorer discovered something. They left a sign, some kind of brass sign.”

  My father is interested in the brass sign. He tries to stick his head out the too-small window to see.

  Justine’s perches on a cliff out of sight of the highway and over an intensely blue Pacific; it’s a Neanderthal-Modern building with a white cement front spotted by oval portholes. Henry is astonished, “Jeez Louise, looks like the women’s facility at Santa Rita. You’d think a snooty place would do better about how it looks, huh?”

  Inside, an austere lobby stretches out, green glass on two sides, a hall where fish swim irritatedly back and forth behind pebbled walls. My father moves close, muttering something that sounds like “The horns of water.”

  “I have a duty,” he says. I’m alarmed and reach for his hand, but he’s okay. As we walk farther along, he stops to admire and tap and comment on a whiskered fish, “A scavenger, you know. Entirely necessary for the balance of their city, you know.”

  Beyond the lobby, the restaurant opens in a long prospect of thick white plaster and recessed alcoves with occasional lights and clumps of people.

  The whole thing looks like a spread from Architectural Digest—some Saudi Prince’s new scatter on an island off the coast of Africa, where, the caption says, “The integrity of the fabric resists the encroachment of the terrain,” meaning that the inside of the building is as different as possible from whatever is outside. At Justine’s the outside shows up only down at the far end of the room, where three large windows open onto a wild marine view: miles and acres of blue water and u-shaped huddles of cliffs, overwhelming, but hard to see because the windows are so deep.

  Mrs. Dexter squints into the restaurant and says, “Good God.” Mrs. Cohen squeaks, “Intriguing.” Mrs. La Salle calmly offers that, “The architect is famous, you know,” and Mrs. Dexter thumps the walker, “They always try to confuse things.”

  My father seems interested but maybe a little alarmed. He touches me on the arm. “It reminds me of something. What would that be?”

  I don’t say that I know what it reminds him of, but I do know. The inside of this building reminds him of a tomb. An old empty one. The kind we used to joke about, back in the Valley of the Kings, joking especially loudly if the place was spooky or damp or funny-colored, maybe green or that wavery acid blue. Robbie and I were way too cool to say haunted, but I at least half-thought it.

  I have my eye on those three window tables and am planning to ask in my most winning way if, possibly, we can sit there, when the hostess tells us to, “Follow me,” and, surprise, it is a window table she leads us to. Before we sit, I stop at the window to stare down and marvel at the direct drop, straight along the side of the building into a boiling ocean. Our table is the best one in the house; someone, Mrs. La Salle I guess, has tipped management a lot. Mrs. La Salle, with her on-target elegance, projects rich. Most of the Manor ladies project comfortable—once.

  The hostess smiles her struck-dumb hostess smile; she has a lot of wiry curls scooped to one side and held up by airplane glue. “My dear,” my father tells her, “you look like an houri.” She blinks twice; I’ll bet that’s a new one. Now she’ll have to go home and look up houri on the internet.

  Houris are beautiful virgins of the Koranic Paradise. I want to get Daddy away from these Egyptian associations, so I change the subject by spreading out his leather-bound menu and handing it to him, “Look, purple writing.” And this works. “Of course, my dear,” he says, “purple; in all the best hotels it’s always purple. I have forgotten the name of this hotel but that’s all right. . . . The purple writing,” he tells Mrs. Dexter, “is known as a hectograph process.”

  “An’ damn messy it was, too,” Mrs. Dexter agrees.

  So my father lectures about hectograph, and Mrs. Dexter and Mrs. Cohen reminisce about getting hectograph all over your ha
nds. And Daddy turns the crinkly pages of his menu, and although he looks kind of lost, we’re getting into the spirit of things. Mrs. Cohen says, reading the purple French, “Homard, that’s lobster, n’est-ce pas? Oh, my, lobster would be so wonderful, let’s all have lobster.”

  And Mrs. La Salle goes, “And a wine, white, very dry, two bottles,” and Mrs. Dexter asks if two bottles will be enough, and everyone thinks that’s hilariously funny.

  So I decide, okay; he’s forgotten about e-mails, this is going to be a happy outing after all.

  Of course, the ladies need to talk Manor gossip. “Mr. Rice is leaving,” Mrs. La Salle says, and, “No, I beg your pardon; he isn’t,” Mrs. Cohen says, and finally they’re down to some conversation about Mona, where I marvel again that nobody takes her murder seriously. Mona has become a historical figure, as if she had died a hundred years ago. “She had a false cupboard full of addictive substances,” Mrs. Cohen announces. Apparently that’s safe to say since nobody jumps or looks scared. I guess no one here is an addict.

  Mrs. Dexter talks a little about her childhood in these parts. “A beautiful place? I suppose so. Children don’t think about beautiful. Children think about each other. About their families. About whom they hate.”

  Mrs. Cohen giggles. “Louise, you’re being bad.”

  My father has been edgy ever since we came in; now he’s doing it again. He stares at the window and then back into the dining room. “Perhaps there was something over there?” he gestures into the receding set of white alcoves.

  Yes, I think. Maybe in a different time, a different country.

  The alcoves look like the abandoned tomb of the merchant Intep. Intep’s was the tomb next to our coffin-text one; it had recesses like these and that same heavy, hangs-over-you feeling. The tomb was empty; it had been stripped of treasure two thousand years ago. But very faintly on the walls you could see where the painter had inscribed part of the Declaration of Innocence: “I have not caused pain. I have not made to weep.” You didn’t usually put thoughts like that on your tomb wall; usually you had pictures of your happy life in the world, drinking wine, hunting birds on the Nile. “Poor chap must have had a guilty conscience,” Daddy had said as he deciphered the hieroglyphs.