by Megan Goldin
Anne’s always busy organising one charity event or another. Matt sees it as generosity. He doesn’t get that it is ego. Pure and simple. Anne likes everyone to kowtow to her. That’s why she has a finger in so many charities. It’s ironic, because that woman doesn’t have a charitable bone in her body.
Mercifully, in the summer, Anne travels to Europe or stays at a friend’s house in Martha’s Vineyard. She says the weather there is more pleasant than the incessant humidity of home in the high summer.
Matt drives into her circular driveway and parks under a magnolia tree. We are on time for once so at least she can’t criticise me for not being punctual.
I’m wearing a wraparound designer dress. My nails are painted. Anne thinks that women who don’t polish their nails are uncivilised so I make sure to go to the manicurist before our monthly dinners, lest I give her extra ammunition to use against me. Anne lives in Greensboro, which is the only saving grace of this arrangement because it’s far enough away that we see very little of her.
Her house is a linen-white antebellum, impeccably restored and filled with period furniture. It’s beyond me why someone would live alone in such an enormous house. Anne insists that she has no need to downsize. It’s another reason why Matt shakes his head after every visit.
I ring the doorbell. Matt is on his cellphone and has lagged behind.
‘Hello Julie,’ Anne says as she kisses me coldly on my cheek. ‘What an extraordinary dress.’
To Matt’s ear, anyone’s ear, that is a compliment. In reality, it is loaded with venom. Anne knows how to cut me down to size. I am garish and so excruciatingly lower middle class. I overdress. I underdress. I try too hard. I don’t try enough. Usually all at the same time.
‘Thank you, Anne,’ I respond, ignoring her sarcasm. ‘You look lovely too.’
‘Alice, honey,’ I gently push my daughter forward. ‘Give your grandmother a hug.’
‘Oh, aren’t you just as pretty as a picture today,’ Anne says as she kisses Alice on the forehead. She takes Alice’s hand and escorts her to the couch in the formal living room. Pretty soon Matt joins us and it’s the three of them on one couch and me alone on a two-seater. Alice looks at me longingly. She wants to sit with me but Anne is holding on to her arm as if she will never let go. I give Alice an encouraging smile and gesture discreetly that she should stay with her grandma.
‘Matthew,’ Anne says, surveying her son’s appearance. ‘You look gaunt. You’re working too hard again.’
He’s too blockheaded to read between the lines and recognise that her comment is aimed at me. It’s my fault that he looks exhausted. And underfed. I don’t take care of him properly.
At least he won’t be able to take me to task over her grand-daughter’s attire. Alice is dressed in a crisp dress, perfectly ironed. I’ve plaited her hair in a single braid. Matt, on the other hand, could come in his underwear and Anne wouldn’t mind.
Matt can do no wrong. Except marry me. His one transgression. Anne was overseas when we got engaged. She arrived back two days before the wedding. I had the distinct impression she attended only because it would have caused talk if she’d missed her son’s wedding. Anne is very concerned about appearances so it would not have been a trivial matter.
The wedding was immediate family only. I had no family to invite. Or none that I wanted to attend. So it was a small wedding. Matt’s mother, his brother Stuart and his wife, and a couple of Matt’s cousins who I’d never met before, or since.
Anne made it clear she found the idea of our marriage to be distasteful. It was too soon after Laura died. I was too young for Matt. He’s twelve years older than me. She gave Matt a list of reasons as to why he shouldn’t marry me. Thank goodness Matt didn’t pay attention.
She and I have since fallen into a pattern of tolerance, but that doesn’t stop her from taking a stab at me whenever the opportunity arises.
‘Alice looks the image of Laura, don’t you think, Matthew?’ Anne says, smoothing Alice’s hair. Incidentally, Alice doesn’t have a hair out of place because I spent twenty minutes brushing it and tying it before we left the house. Me. Not Laura.
‘Mother,’ says Matt in warning. He knows I get upset when they speak about Laura as if I don’t exist. Laura gave birth to Alice, but I’m her mother now. I’m the one raising her. I deserve some acknowledgement. I deserve some semblance of respect from her grandmother. That’s what I told Matt after the last visit. He just nodded his head and said nothing to his mother. She’s the only person in the world that he’s afraid of. He will do anything to avoid upsetting her.
Anne swiftly changes the subject by asking Alice if she’d like to accompany her to a musical in New York over summer vacation. Alice says she’s not sure and then looks back at me for approval. It puts me in an awkward position, exactly as Anne intended. If I say no, I come out looking mean. And if I say yes, I’m sending Alice to New York with a grandmother who can barely stand me and would undoubtedly do her best to turn Alice against me.
Matthew is so blind to Anne’s faults that there’s not a word I can say to him about her behaviour without him somehow blaming me. I have no choice but to sit there and smile, enduring being picked at by Anne.
Did I mention that Anne keeps a photograph of Laura in a silver frame on a vanity cabinet in her bedroom? The photo used to be in the living room but I think Matt had a word with Anne and she moved it. He knows I get upset having Laura shoved in my face at every turn. Anne even has a framed photo of Stuart’s stripper wife wearing a demure lace wedding dress. That’s rich, given her tawdry past. I know all this, by the way, because I went into Anne’s bedroom once when they were all eating dinner and I needed the bathroom. There was an array of family photographs in various silver frames on her cabinet. I didn’t appear in any of them. There wasn’t even a photograph of our wedding. It’s as if Anne has decided that our marriage will be fleeting and there is no point keeping a permanent record of my existence.
Anne adored Laura. She was the daughter she’d never had. She invited her to join the boards of her arts charities. I’ve never so much as been invited to a meeting. It’s Anne who set up the scholarship trust in Laura’s honour. Even though Matt hasn’t said a word, I know it was Anne who decided that I shouldn’t attend Laura’s memorial scholarship dinner.
I’ve heard that Anne and Laura would meet for lunch every couple of weeks. They were by all accounts a mutual admiration society, which in my book says as much about Laura as it does about Anne. Though one doesn’t want to speak ill of the dead.
Tonight Anne snipes at me more than usual. Matt is preoccupied. He telephoned the medical examiner before we left home. It left him shaken.
I listened to the conversation on the other house phone, which I turned onto mute so that Matt wouldn’t know I was on the line. The medical examiner told Matt the DNA tests had confirmed that it was Laura’s remains they’d found in Kellers Way. The confirmation was expected but it was still upsetting. I heard Matt asking questions about Laura’s injuries. Would she have suffered? Where exactly had her body been buried? When would her body be released for burial?
As the medical examiner answered Matt’s questions about Laura’s body, how it had been found in an unmarked grave in the forest, I saw a blurry image of someone digging a hole with a shovel. When the person looked up, it was me. The image shook me so badly that I was silent for the duration of the drive over here.
I often tell Matt about my dreams. Matt says it’s therapeutic. I don’t tell him about this one, just as I’ve never again mentioned the recurring dreams of the dead man in the car, even though not a night passes when his image doesn’t infiltrate my sleep. Matt would undoubtedly tell me that my anxiety is creating false memories. He’d tell me it’s time to increase the dosage of my meds. He doesn’t know that I’m not taking them regularly. And there’s no way that I want him to find out.
The dining room table is set formally with Anne’s best china service and crystal glasses. An
ne’s view is that there’s no point having beautiful dinnerware if it’s never used. Her maid moves invisibly among us, serving us and taking away our dishes. I’ve never become used to being served by a maid. The only help we have at home is a woman who comes twice a week to clean and iron. Even that feels alien to me.
There’s a sadness about Anne tonight. Matt telephoned her right after the medical examiner’s call to tell her that Laura’s body had been identified.
After dinner, Matt takes Anne aside to talk on the rear porch. I move to an armchair near an open window so I can listen to their conversation.
‘Poor darling Laura. It breaks my heart all over again. Matthew, you look terrible; drawn and stressed. I’ve never seen you looking like this before. I’ll ask Emmerson to liaise with the police so you don’t have to carry this burden alone. That’s why we have a family lawyer, after all. You already have your hands full with your wife.’
‘No,’ Matt tells her. ‘I want to help the police as much as I can so they find the son of a bitch who did this to Laura.’
‘If you think that’s best,’ Anne sighs. ‘Maybe you should go to the lake house. Take a few days off.’
‘You know I can’t stand the place, mother.’
‘Of course, darling. I forgot,’ she says. ‘I just want the best for you. When I think how different your life would be if Laura was still alive.’ Her tone is wistful. I rush into the bathroom and run the water from the faucet to cover my sobs.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Mel
Angela Dellamore lived in a one-storey prefabricated house with rosebushes along the front lawn in lieu of a fence. It was the only well-tended house in an otherwise unkempt street marred by front yards with rusting furniture strewn among overgrown grass.
I called ahead to see if she was home. ‘I don’t go anywhere much these days,’ she said in response. I didn’t tell her that I wanted to discuss her time working as a babysitter for Laura West. I figured I’d get into the details in person. By the time Joe and I arrived at her front door, five horse ranches later, her house smelled like a bakery.
As far as Mrs Dellamore was concerned, cop or no cop, we were company. She set up her dining room table as if for bridge day, with a wipeable plastic cloth and her best napkins artistically folded in a porcelain holder. On the table was a jug of fresh lemonade, a pot of coffee, a platter of banana muffins and chocolate chip cookies still warm from the oven.
‘My mama told me long before you were born that it’s not polite to have company without anything to serve,’ she said when I told her she really didn’t need to go to all that bother.
I figured her for mid-seventies. Maybe older. Her hair was dyed a bright brown that seemed to emphasise rather than disguise her age. She was dressed for guests in a cardigan two-set and a pearl necklace.
Her house was spotless. It was furnished with sixties pieces that were in perfect condition and a lemon-yellow kitchen that dated from the same period. Metal bars on the windows were the only sign that she was living in a neighbourhood with the worst crime rate in town.
Joe and I sat at the dinner table while Mrs Dellamore hovered around us pouring our drinks. Joe beelined for the cookies. He might act like a tough teenager but put a plate of cookies in front of him and he’s all kid. So much so that I had to give him a warning look when he took his third cookie, just the same as I used to give him when he was a toddler.
The moment we were done eating, Mrs Dellamore disappeared into the kitchen and returned with a container of cookies for Joe to take home.
‘He’s a growing boy,’ she said, waving off my insistence it was unnecessary.
‘Now, you didn’t come just for cookies. What can I do to help?’ She showed me into the living room, where she lowered herself into a deep armchair covered with an embroidered throw cloth.
‘I’m investigating the Laura West murder.’
‘Laura West,’ she gasped. ‘Why, I haven’t heard that name for the longest time. It was such a terrible tragedy. There’s not a day that I don’t think about poor Mrs West and her beautiful baby being left without a mother. But I thought the police caught the murderer?’
‘I’m conducting a review of the investigation,’ I said quickly, trying to keep the details to a minimum. ‘I was hoping you might be able to tell me what happened the weekend she disappeared.’
‘Gosh,’ she said, rubbing her temples. ‘That was a long time ago. I’ll try to remember as best I can. What is it that you want to know exactly?’
‘Let’s start with some basic information. Can you tell me how long you were working for the Wests?’
‘I’d help out when they entertained, which they did quite frequently. Once the baby came, Mrs West sometimes asked ask me to babysit when their nanny was on leave.’
‘And that is what you were doing on the weekend that Laura West disappeared?’ I asked.
‘That’s right,’ she said. ‘Mr West was away if I remember correctly. Mrs West asked me to take care of the child. I believe she said that she had to work all weekend.’
‘Was it a longstanding arrangement? Or did she ask you at the last minute?’
‘Well, I don’t recall exactly,’ she said, closing her eyes as if trying to remember. ‘Mrs West usually booked me in advance.’
‘Tell me about when you last saw Mrs West.’
‘I arrived on Saturday morning. Early, just after breakfast. The baby was in her highchair and Mrs West was sitting opposite her, feeding her from a bowl of mashed fruit. When I came in, she asked me to finish feeding the baby while she dressed. She came down some time afterwards and left,’ said Mrs Dellamore, unwittingly recounting almost word for word the testimony she’d given to the police after the incident.
‘Did she telephone at any time during the day?’
‘I believe the police asked me that question at the time,’ she said. ‘Unless my memory is failing me, Mrs West called after lunch to check that the baby was sleeping. That was the last I heard from her. She was supposed to be back by 4 p.m. so I could go home and feed my cats. We’d agreed I’d return at 6 p.m. for the night shift so she could go out again. That didn’t happen because Mrs West didn’t come back.’
‘What did you do when she didn’t return?’
‘I waited. I assumed she was running late. After a while, I called her cellphone. It was turned off. I think I left a message. Eventually, I called Mr West.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘He said she probably got caught up in her work and lost track of time. He asked me to stay until she came home.’
‘So that’s what you did?’
‘I telephoned my neighbour and asked her to put out a tin of tuna for the cats. I slept that night on a couch in the baby’s bedroom. That sweet child didn’t even know her mamma wasn’t there.’
‘And the next morning? Was there any sign of Mrs West?’
‘No,’ she shook her head vehemently. ‘Her bed didn’t appear to have been slept in. I had the impression that she hadn’t come home at all. I stayed all day on Sunday. I called Mr West when she didn’t turn up or telephone by early Sunday afternoon. By then I was very worried.’
‘Was it unusual for her to disappear like that? Not to call, or check on the child?’
‘She did have a tendency to get immersed in her work, and she would sometimes forget to call. Or she’d come back hours late and would be very apologetic. That’s why I wasn’t too concerned at first. A little put out, but not worried,’ she said.
‘Do you recall what she was wearing on the day she disappeared?’ I asked.
‘Pants, perhaps?’ She looked at me inquiringly to see whether I was happy with her answer. I kept my face expressionless. ‘I’m not actually sure,’ she said finally. ‘I don’t recall seeing her when she left the house. Mrs West wasn’t one of those ladies who walked around in jeans or sports clothes. She was always well dressed. Even on the weekends.’
‘Do any of these items look familiar?’
I passed her photographs of the clothes we’d found on the Kellers Way body, which by then the lab had confirmed were Laura’s remains.
‘I’ll need to take a closer look.’ She turned on a lamp and put on her reading glasses to pore over the details of each photo. ‘I’m sorry. I couldn’t really say for sure.’
‘Did Laura say anything about where she was going when she left on that Saturday morning?’
‘She said she was going shopping and then she had to work. I assumed that she was working at the university but the police said afterwards that she hadn’t been there at all.’
‘Did you have much to do with her husband? Matthew West?’
‘A little,’ Mrs Dellamore said. ‘He drove me home once when my car was at the mechanic. He asked if he could take a few roses for Laura from my rosebush. It was in full bloom, covered with white roses. He said white roses were his wife’s favourite flower. I thought that was rather charming.’
‘How well did you know him?’
‘Not that well,’ she said. ‘I suppose it’s often like that. Taking care of kids and all, I usually see more of the mother than the father.’
‘What about their marriage? When you were around, did they argue? Was there tension between them?’
‘Their marriage seemed strong,’ she said. ‘Of course, one never knows what happens behind closed doors.’
‘Did Laura have any men in her life? Aside from her husband, of course.’
‘I used to help out at the parties they’d throw at the house in the summer and over Christmas. They were fine affairs with catered buffets, and a bartender in a tuxedo. Why, Mr and Mrs West were inseparable at those parties,’ said Mrs Dellamore, with more than a hint of nostalgia in her voice. ‘I never saw Mrs West show interest in any man other than her husband. Not at their parties, and not any other time.’
‘You’ve been very helpful, Mrs Dellamore,’ I said. ‘Just one last question for you. Do you recall seeing any changes in Mr and Mrs West’s relationship after Laura became pregnant? Or once she gave birth?’