The Nanny Murders

by Merry Jones

  But now, she was imploding. Coming apart.

  Susan looked at her hand and studied her wedding ring, her brow furrowed. I knew, by her expression, that there was more. She was deciding how much to reveal. “Go on,” I said. “What?”

  She looked up, all innocence. “What do you mean, ‘what’?” “What else?”

  “Nothing else. So,” she dodged, changing the subject, “how’s work?”

  “Work’s fine. Don’t change the subject.”

  “What subject. We weren’t talking about anything.”

  I didn’t know whether to press the topic or let it go, wasn’t sure what she wanted me to do. This was a new situation for us. Suddenly, I smelled flowers.

  “Ready?”

  No, not flowers. I smelled Gladys, the waitress. Her lily of the valley toilet water.

  Gladys didn’t like waiting and punctuated passing seconds by batting her false lashes. She had large hands with long, silver sculpted nails, silver rings on every finger.

  “Can I have a milk shake, Mom?”

  “Can we get onion rings?”

  Normally, it was Susan who ordered. She naturally assumed the alpha position. Top dog, head hen, queen bee. But now, even menu items were beyond her; she had no capacity for making choices. Gladys tapped her nails on the order pad, shifted her pen, rolled her eyes, and glowered until, finally, I managed to spit out the names of enough dishes and drinks to feed the four of us and probably half the people in the place.

  Gladys scribbled on her pad and snorted off.

  “I’m starving.” Molly whined. “How long till the food comes?”

  “Don’t whine,” I said. “You’re not starving. You don’t even know what starving is.”

  “Yes, I do. It’s dying of hunger. And I am.”

  I didn’t want to get into it with her. “Hang on. It’ll be here soon.” She complained some more but gave up after a while, when I didn’t respond. She and Emily began a hidden-word place-mat game.

  “I see one. P-I-G. That spells pig.”

  Molly had sounded it out. I kissed her as Emily, ever competitive, declared that she’d found D-O-G first. I returned my attention to Susan.

  “It’s really nothing.” It took a second to figure out what she was talking about. She’d picked up our conversation exactly where we’d left it.

  “What’s nothing?”

  She fidgeted with her silverware. “It’s no big deal, Zoe. I just don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Why not?” Obviously, she did. “Talking won’t do any good.”

  “Susan, please don’t say that to a therapist. It’s like telling a lawyer that suing won’t do any good.”

  “You’re an art therapist, not a talk therapist. I didn’t knock making pottery or mosaics.”

  “Okay. Don’t tell me.”

  “I’ve had some nightmares, that’s all.”

  “Nightmares?” Susan had my attention. I was, after all, an expert on nightmares, having had my share. I knew what it was to wake up sweating, caught in the talons of a bad dream.

  “All week. Since Claudia. I’ve just been rattled.”

  Except that Susan didn’t rattle. She dealt with murders and murderers every day. Reality, even brutality, didn’t shake her.

  “Dreams can seem more real than reality,” I said.

  She nodded. “I don’t sleep. That’s the main thing. I’m so tired.”

  I couldn’t help playing therapist. “Do the nightmares come only when Tim’s out of town?” “No. It’s not like that.”

  “Well, do you know what sets them off? PMS, maybe? Or the moon? Your diet? Trial dates?”

  “No, no. They just began the other night. After Claudia.” She stopped, irritated, wanting the topic to go away. “I really don’t want to talk about this.”

  “But if they’re so bad that you’re not functioning—”

  “It’s no big deal. It’s just temporary. Stress. I’ll manage. Let’s forget I brought it up? And, please, don’t repeat this—”

  “Repeat it? Why would I—”

  “I know you wouldn’t. It’s stupid to say that. But I have trouble enough being taken seriously around the Justice Center—I’d be finished if anyone knew about this. Not even Tim knows.”

  “Susan. There’s nothing shameful about having nightmares.”

  “Yes, there is. For a criminal lawyer, there is.”

  She glanced at the girls, making sure they were absorbed in their own banter. “See, they’re about the crimes. The victims.” Susan looked at her hands, studied her manicure. “They, uh, come back in the night. Every night, since Claudia disappeared. They’re after me, as if it’s my fault they’re dead. They blame me.”

  “Blame you? For what?”

  She looked at me as if I were addled. “For what. For defending their killers. For getting their killers off so they can go free.”

  “Oh,” I nodded. “That’s scary.” A macabre chortle slipped out my mouth.

  The girls, finished with the puzzles, began discussing what colors to make Arthur and his shirt and pants.

  Susan went on. “Zoe, they stalk me. They’re broken, cut, shot, slashed—however they were when they were found. That black kid who was beaten to death? He follows me—he just walks into my dreams with his head bashed in, leaking brains.”

  Okay. That was scary. “Jeez, Susan.”

  “This has never happened to me before, not in thirteen years of criminal defense work. Dealing with crime and grit is my job. I defend the accused, no matter how sleazy—guilty or innocent, violent or benign. I’ve seen it all, defended it all. But suddenly it’s coming back to haunt me. I see death, victims, corpses every time I doze off.”

  Susan’s voice was getting louder and higher as she talked. Emily and Molly stopped talking and watched her, and the two men in the booth behind her cocked their heads, listening.

  “See, in our country everybody has the right—and I believe that they should have the right, guilty or innocent—to be represented by counsel who present their best possible defense. That’s how our legal system works. But lately—”

  “Shhh—Mom, you’re shouting,” Emily shouted.

  Susan leaned across the table, whispering now. The men in the booth behind her leaned back, straining to hear. “Lately—Zoe— don’t tell anyone, but I want to see my own clients fry. I see what they’ve done to their victims and I can barely sit in a room to interview them. How am I supposed to argue for their defense?”

  I didn’t know. I reached over and squeezed her arm.

  “Zoe, you realize you’re the only one I can talk to about this.”

  Molly and Emily stared at her, twin wide-eyed expressions. One of the men behind Susan took our lull in conversation as an opportunity to turn around and gape. I met his eyes; he turned back and hunkered into his seat.

  “Susan,” I said softly, “maybe you’re burned out. Maybe you need a break. A sabbatical. Look at all the pressure on you. I mean, forget about the nanny situation. In normal circumstances, you’ve got three kids, a house, a traveling husband, unreliable child care, a job that people’s lives depend on. One minute you’re helping a kid with long division and the next you’re trying to save a guy from lethal injection. Most people make mistakes at work and so what? They have to retype a page or they lose a sale. But if you make a mistake, somebody goes to jail for years—or gets the needle. That’s pressure.”

  “It is, isn’t it?” Her voice was a subdued wail.

  “Maybe the dreams are your mind’s way of telling you to take a break and think about your own needs for a change.” I sounded confident and assured. It was easy to give advice, but my advice was pure fluff. Susan’s crisis had not been brought on by overwork or pressure; it had started specifically with Claudia’s disappearance. And it wasn’t going to stop just because she took some time off work or got a weekly massage.

  “Lisa wants to quit piano. And Julie’s begun to lie. About the stupidest things, like whether or not
she’s been to Disney World. Does she think I don’t know the truth?”

  “Yeah, Julie lies to me, too,” Emily chimed in, suddenly part of our conversation. Molly looked up attentively.

  “She does?” Susan’s voice was unimpressed.

  “Yesterday, she said there was a dead bird in the backyard, but there wasn’t. And she ate the last pudding pop and said she didn’t.” Emily continued coloring while listing offenses. “And know what? She said somebody’s stealing all the babysitters. Julie’s such a liar.”

  Susan became even more gray.

  “How can someone steal a babysitter?” Emily shook her head, as if the concept were ridiculous.

  “What, Mom? What did Emily say?” Molly tugged at my arm. “What did she mean, ‘somebody’s stealing babysitters’?”

  “It’s just a lie,” Emily declared.

  Susan fumbled for an answer.

  “Mom? Billy said Tamara went away. Did she get stealed?” “Stolen,” I said.

  “Did she? Will the stealer steal Angela?” “No, of course not—”

  Plates slammed the table. Gladys had saved me. “Tuna on rye, onion rings, hot tea, one diet, two vanilla shakes, two barley soups, BLT with, veggie burger with, two kids’ grilled cheese, two minestrones, half cantaloupe, side of slaw, side house salad, extra pickles. Anything else?” The check landed in a puddle of coleslaw dressing, and Gladys wheeled the cart away.

  Gladys didn’t believe in courses. Food was food. Soups, desserts, salads, entrees—they were all served in a simultaneous jumble. Molly grabbed the ketchup and a fistful of onion rings and attacked her dinner. The girls ate and chattered, distracted and happy again in their world and leaving us to ours. Despite what we’d ordered, neither Susan nor I had much appetite. Susan sat playing with her soupspoon and I fiddled with some pickle slices, and we yammered on about the Christmas Pollyannas at the Institute, the futility of New Year’s resolutions, the madness of pre-Christmas sales, and the drudgery of gift-wrapping— anything except what was really on our minds.

  NINE

  WHEN WE GOT HOME, MOLLY GOT INTO HER PAJAMAS AND snuggled under her covers. We read Amelia Bedelia, her favorite book, until she fell asleep. Exhausted, I got into bed and sank immediately into a deep, healing sleep. In the morning, I awoke refreshed. I’d slept so soundly that it took a while to remember that Tamara was missing, that Susan was a mess, that, as Charlie had warned, evil lurked close by. I had the sense that somehow dreams and reality had traded places, that daylight carried nightmares from which, by sleeping, I had temporarily escaped.

  But Angela arrived carrying warm fresh scones from the Pink Rose, complaining that some construction worker had gawked at her all the way up the street. It had to be a guy from Jake’s crew. Or Jake himself. I reminded her that those guys gawked at every woman; they considered it part of the job.

  “Yeah? Well, he wouldn’t look that way at anyone on my street,” she declared. “He did, somebody’d make sure he didn’t look at nobody else for a long time.”

  “Anybody else.” I buttoned my coat. “He wouldn’t look at anybody else for a long time.”

  Angela poured Molly’s milk, ignoring me. “The guy pissed me off, Zoe, you’ll pardon my expression. Don’t you listen,” she wagged a finger at Molly

  “What’s wrong about somebody looking at you, Angela?” Molly smeared raspberry jam on her scone. “I look at you all the time.”

  “It was how he looked at me.” Molly blinked at her. “How?” “Like he shouldn’t have.”

  “Like this?” Molly scowled at her. “Or this?” She tugged her lips and eyes diagonally with her forefingers. “Or this?”

  I left them to their discussion and hurried to work. Given the disaster of the previous session, I decided to assign a new project. I asked the group to close their eyes and picture a place that made them feel safe and peaceful. Then, distributing oil sticks, I asked them to draw these places. They responded well; apparently whatever had been plaguing them in our last meeting had been purged. At any rate, they quickly became absorbed in their work. Nobody bickered or wandered. I moved from easel to easel, discussing each work in progress, encouraging each effort.

  Amanda was drawing a castle on a steep hill by the sea. Eyelids raw without lashes, bald spots hiding under a kerchief, she explained that she visited this place sometimes in her mind. I felt a pang, realizing that the place Amanda felt safest and most peaceful was imaginary. But she seemed content forming moats and turrets, her hands for the moment too busy to pluck her remaining wisps of hair.

  Kimberly’s work was, as usual, a scramble of splotches and jagged lines, but so far she’d managed to keep her work within the confines of her paper. I asked her to tell me about the place she was drawing. Laboring on a purple zigzag, she replied without looking up. “Wails pills healing pillows mellow yellow marshmallows.” As always, I encouraged her and made a note of her comments. Sometimes meaning could be deciphered, sometimes not. Kimberly continued mumbling, drawing random markings apparently without effort or affect; not for the first time, I wished I could interpret the ideas she intended to articulate, see the images she intended to create.

  As I approached Hank’s easel, I caught a glimpse of a sun-drenched greenhouse, blossoms and green everywhere. But before I could look closely, he ripped the page off the drawing pad and crumpled it up. “It’s not right,” he repeated, tearing it. “It’s just not right.”

  I looked at the clock. Hank had spent a record twenty-three minutes working on a drawing before destroying it. I congratulated him on that, but, panting, Hank broke into tears. The flaws weren’t in the picture, he sobbed. They were in his compulsive need for perfection. He knew what it was. He recognized it but couldn’t control it. He sat on his stool, broad shoulders hunched, raw with emotion. I wanted to hug him and promise him he’d be okay. Instead, I handed him a tissue, and when he’d dried his tears, I took his hand, reminding him that journeys were made of small steps taken one at a time. I congratulated him on his progress; a few weeks ago, he hadn’t been able to describe his problems so clearly, hadn’t had the insight. He’d come a long way in a short time and deserved credit for that. We sat together hand in hand, and I felt his struggle pulsing through his body. Gradually, his breathing slowed, his muscles relaxed. I offered him another oil stick, and when he was ready, he took it. Pressing on, facing another blank page.

  Meantime, Sydney Ellis was also making a leap. Sydney was standing beside his easel, an oil stick clutched in his fist. He’d stood that way for the entire session. Although he hadn’t made a mark on his paper, he’d managed to join the group. In the last session, he hadn’t even noticed that there was a class, much less that he could become part of it. Now, he’d claimed a spot among the others. Small steps, I reminded myself, taken one at a time.

  When the session ended, I felt gratified. The group finally seemed to be responding to art therapy. I ran around the studio, humming “Standing in the Shadows of Love,” an old Four Tops song, as I stored supplies and unfinished pictures in the closet. Then, files in hand, I rushed out, and somehow slammed full force into a wall—or no—not a wall. Something softer, woollier—something charcoal gray? Rebounding, stunned and off balance, I let out a screech and tried to regain my footing. Arms reached out, grabbing at me. Reflexively, I swatted, slapped at them, letting papers, files, patient notes, everything fly from my hands as I backed away, tripping over an easel leg, arms flailing, falling flat on my back into the storage closet. Oh my God.

  Nick Stiles gawked in alarm. Panting, flustered, I tried to collect myself, rearranging my skirt so it would cover at least part of my thighs.

  “Jesus,” he said. “Are you all right?”

  My face got hot. My elbow felt broken. Not to mention my ego. “What were you doing, sneaking up on me like that?”

  “I didn’t sneak up on you.” Large hands grabbed mine and pulled me to my feet.

  “You should have said something.” I’d regained my balance if no
t my composure.

  “I thought you saw me come in.”

  “How could I see you? I was in the closet—”

  “You’re right.” He cut me off. “I should have said something. Sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you.”

  I blinked at him, sputtering but unable to go on. He’d admitted being wrong, agreed that he was at fault, even apologized. He’d escaped unscathed. How infuriating was that? His eyes twinkled. How high up had my skirt gone?

  “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  I nodded, still flushed, and began picking up my papers. What was he doing here? He knelt beside me, helping. His knee brushed my arm, just barely. He smelled fresh. Showered. A man in the morning.

  “I am sorry. Really.” He handed me a stack of files.

  “I guess I’m a little jumpy.” I managed a smile. We stood. There wasn’t much space between us, but he didn’t move away. If I did, I’d be back in the storage closet. My eyes came up to his lapel. I stared at it, didn’t look up. The moment was too long. People didn’t stand this close together unless they were going to kiss. This was absurd; women were disappearing and I was thinking about kissing the police detective? My face was hot again. I was embarrassed by my own thoughts. I didn’t know what to look at, where to point my face. If I looked up, my mouth would point right at his chin, kissing posture. Awkwardly, I turned my head, tilted it, and glanced at him sideways. He smiled. The smile was crooked. Not symmetrical. More like a half smile. A smirk.

  “Well, you saved me a phone call,” I said, my head still cocked. “I was about to try you again. You were out yesterday when I returned your call.”

  His eyes were ice blue. Very pale, outlined in navy. I hadn’t known eyes came in that color.

  “I got your message, but actually, I decided it would be better to talk to you in person, Ms. Hayes. Is there somewhere we can talk in private?”

  In private? About what? It had to be the finger. The missing women. Something too important for the phone. My mind raced, trying to figure out what.