White Elephant

by Trish Harnetiaux

  “Authentic solid gold nautical compass!” shouted Captain Tiggleman. So far, everyone was really bad at concealing what they brought.

  Steve was like, real gold?

  And he said, “Real as a heart attack.” Then Mrs. Tiggleman elbowed him in the side and shot an apologetic look toward Henry. To which Claudine threw in a casual, “Don’t worry, it wasn’t a heart attack.”

  “I love it,” Jack said, wrapping it in his arms. “If everyone could just forget it exists, please.”

  Third was Mrs. Tiggleman. She was passive-aggressively complaining about how low her number was but still amped up at the same time. Claudine took this as a teaching moment, to remind everyone that there was always a chance they could go again later in the game if someone stole their gift. The beauty of the rules. A game with a second chance. Possibly.

  Mrs. Tiggleman went straight for the biggest box on the gift table. Not a shock. It was three feet tall and two feet wide. Simple green paper and a traditional red ribbon tied around its center. The present was almost as tall as she was. She picked it up, happy to find it was light, and slowly wobbled back to her seat. It wasn’t until this point that I clocked the flirting between Henry and Jules. She kept finding reasons to touch his knee. It seemed like one-sided flirting, which is always awkward. Then Claudine broke it up by sharply asking him to help Mrs. Tiggleman back to her seat. The tone of her voice wasn’t cool, but it looked like he was used to it by how fast he jumped up.

  “Nonsense,” Mrs. Tiggleman said. She was already there, her small hands moving fast, tearing at the paper with clawlike fingernails. The box was open in no time… only to reveal another box. She opened that box only to reveal another box. I joked to Henry that this must be the gift he brought, what with his penchant for hidden rooms and secret passages. Finally, in the fourth box, Mrs. Tiggleman found a long envelope. It was a little much. She opened the envelope, and it was a gift certificate. She gasped like she had just found out she had a secret twin or something.

  “No. It can’t be,” she said. “Is this real?”

  People were chanting, “Tell us, tell us.”

  “The Sanctuary package from the Remède Spa,” marveled Mrs. Tiggleman. It was obvious she’s the kind of person always on the hunt for the latest treatments or procedures.

  “It includes a cutting-edge new peel,” Intense John said like he was some sort of peel expert. Mrs. Tiggleman loved it and Captain Tiggleman told her she didn’t look a day over forty, then fed her a crab cake. I bet they feed each other at home all the time.

  It was Henry’s turn next. He chose a small dark green box wrapped with a single white ribbon. You could tell he didn’t like being the center of attention, he opened it quickly. Inside was a black velvet pouch; a pair of silver dice slid out.

  “These are nice,” he said, holding one up so everyone could see. “Aspen silver?”

  “That would be my guess,” said Rashida. “Not that I would know.”

  Next, Bobby Alpine, who looked exactly like his brother but slightly younger. He didn’t waste any time and stole the dice from Henry. “They’ll be perfect for downtime on the construction site,” he joked. Henry selected again from the table and from his initial reaction it seemed he hit the jackpot.

  “Well, look at this.” He almost looked happy. “A full day of fly-fishing with a guide on the Roaring Fork.”

  Bobby offered to trade back the dice and Henry was like, no way. But then Steve proudly said it was with one of the best local guides. That’s when Henry handed it over to Bobby and took back the dice. I’m not sure that was legal, but no one objected. It was amazing how much I was learning about the relationships between these people. I’d had the sense that there was some drama between Steve and Henry. This confirmed it. However, I figured it was a business deal gone wrong or something. It didn’t occur to me at that time that Claudine had had an affair with Steve. He was so gross and obvious, and Henry was so handsome and sweet.

  Next, Louisa hopped up, grabbed a gift from the table, and opened this beautiful tapestry. I kept waiting for someone to explain its origin. Then, from the corner of the room, Dave of all people said, “That looks Portuguese.” He looked embarrassed after he said it, like he’d meant to think it. He nodded to me apologetically and resumed a stoic pose against the wall. No one confirmed or denied if it was Portuguese. They were getting a little better, because I had no clue who brought it.

  It’s worth mentioning that Claudine had been collecting all the wrappings as soon as anyone opened a gift. But just as she was about to pick this one up, Pip grabbed it playfully with her mouth. They had a little tug-of-war, which Pip loved, Claudine not so much, and after an aggressive tug, Claudine won out. It was weird, but I cut her a break. What was I going to do, tell her to be nicer to my dog? After all, she’d pulled the night together at a moment’s notice at my request. And it really was lovely. But there was something that told me not to relax.

  It might seem strange to say, but now that I have a little distance, sometimes I like to rethink the night from Claudine’s point of view.

  It’s insane.

  Can you imagine being her? Not knowing that you were minutes away from the chaos that came after? Thinking you’re safe from the truth, only to have it all come out like it did? It’s sad, not romantic. Not like Claudine and Spider. At least that Claudine knew exactly what she was doing the entire time. Expected the police to come. Called them herself. Knew she’d have to face up. Endure a public trial. I mean, I know she wasn’t thinking about that when she pulled the trigger killing Spider cold, but it couldn’t have been too far from her mind. She wasn’t stupid. The two Claudines were very different.

  My attention was drifting; I was ready for the game to move a little faster.

  “Who’s lucky number seven?” asked Claudine.

  That’s when Natalie stood and walked to the table.

  Henry

  He couldn’t stop staring at Steve. It had been years since he had had the chance to look at his face this close up. It looked like an old softball mitt. He was older. Good. There was a frailness that even his bravado couldn’t mask. Also good. His jealousy didn’t surprise him, but the tiny splash of compassion for his old competition did. Sometimes he couldn’t blame him for falling for Claudine. She was irresistible, especially then. She was just like Aspen: beautiful on the surface but dangerous underneath. Steve felt his stare and he quickly looked away. The compassion didn’t last long, replaced by a sick feeling in his stomach.

  Sometimes he wondered what would have happened if he’d never brought Claudine up to see the property in the first place. If they would have built their first house on the bend of a river. Or in the middle of a meadow. A lesser plot. Everything about their lives could have been different. Would he have stopped drinking? He’d never thought about it like that. Would there have been another incident that made him stop? The drinks were coming so fast and frequent then, it’s hard to imagine that he’d come to the conclusion it had to end on his own.

  Natalie chose a large rectangle-shaped gift. It seemed a little plainer than the rest. No bow. She walked slowly with it, it had some heft. A theme of the night, she, too, was having a tough time opening it. The professional wrap jobs meant they were harder to open: way more tape. Henry was about to help her so Claudine wouldn’t snap at him again, but Bobby was closer and offered his Leatherman. She gratefully accepted. Slicing through the cardboard, she hit a wall of Styrofoam. It made a sharp, high squeak as the blade cut into it. Natalie got the top open and gave the Styrofoam a tug. It scraped the sides of the box as she pulled it out, bits of Styrofoam littering the floor. She split open the covering and, using both hands, lifted out a statue. Deep bronze in color, it stood around ten inches tall. A cowboy on a horse, a rifle raised to eye level, his face fiercely concentrating on the target.

  “The Lone Ranger?” Rashida joked.

  A small sound escaped Claudine, one Henry had never heard before. The glass of red wine slipped
from her hand, crashing to the floor, and quickly started spreading toward the white shag rug.

  PART FOUR The Murders

  Claudine

  The discovery of the land changed everything for Claudine. Over the next few months, she would drive up to see Mr. Miller every week. At first she’d bring small gifts: little pots of local honey, homemade marshmallows dipped in chocolate, sachets of dried rosemary. She didn’t expect him to be nice. The picture Henry had painted was of an evil old man toiling away on a mountain. That wasn’t the case at all. He was shy. Would say no, thank you, but take her offerings and close the door. Politely.

  Then one day Mr. Miller didn’t answer the door. Instead it was a young man.

  “You’re wasting your time,” he said in greeting.

  “Why, hello,” she said. “And who are you?”

  “No. Who are you?” His look and attitude said it all. She wasn’t welcome. “Nothing here’s for sale. You need to leave. The next time you come up here, I’ll have to call the police. Consider yourself warned.”

  This didn’t deter her. It motivated her. Made her work harder. She ditched her office attire of heels, fitted blazers, and cigarette pants for wellies and T-shirts and jeans. An attempt to seem more rugged, more like them. She brought more gifts. Better ones. Fancy smoked salmon, small-batch gin, an antique cribbage board. But the other man’s reaction was always the same.

  Get off the land.

  Stop coming here.

  I’ll call the police.

  One afternoon, carrying a batch of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies in an antique silver tin, she knocked on the door. A sharp whistle pierced the air from behind, making her jump. Turning around, she was face-to-face with the young man, who by this point she’d deduced worked and lived there.

  “You startled me.” She laughed. “Is Mr. Miller around? I have some delicious cookies I was wanting to drop off—”

  “This is the last time you come here,” he said. Each time they’d interacted, he’d grown bolder. Got closer. If someone hosed him off and bought him a suit, he wouldn’t be that bad. Strong, tall, cloudy eyes that could pass for sexy. The shotgun was at his side, his dirty fingers wrapped around the barrel. He smelled like a cow. A stench of dirt, shit, and death. “He’s not interested in selling. What don’t you understand?”

  “Oh, stop. Who doesn’t need an itty-bitty sweet treat now and then. It’s really no bother.”

  “You’re not hearing me,” he said, taking another step closer.

  “I’ve also brought some brochures for him to look at. Retirement options. Beautiful places, really.”

  “You need to vacate immediately.”

  She popped the top off the tin.

  “Chocolate chip cookie?” she offered. “Mr. Miller can tell me himself if he doesn’t want to see me. We’ve been having some real nice chats and I know he doesn’t get many visitors. Must get lonely up here.”

  The young man had raised the shotgun so it rested on his shoulder, a threat she didn’t plan on acknowledging.

  “Tell you what. I’ll just leave the cookies on the porch.”

  She wished him a nice day and was walking back to the car when the sound of the shot scorched her ears. Falling from the sky were pieces of the silver tin and bits of chocolate chip cookie. The bastard had blown up her offering like a clay pigeon.

  Henry

  Claudine had turned the dining room into a war room: property deeds and boundary outlines, weather forecasts and fabric swatches covered the table. She never thought for a moment they wouldn’t get it.

  If Bill Gates and Paul Allen could work out of a garage, they could work from home. Keeping a low overhead was fine with Henry; they ran off Claudine’s start-up energy, coffee, and hard-boiled eggs. (She wasn’t much of a cook.) Whatever way she wanted it was fine; he wasn’t interested in running a business the way she was. Would rather focus on actual work. Creating the perfect house. A home.

  The only hitch was Henry’s drinking. It hadn’t slowed down. It wasn’t so much a habit but an addiction.

  Yes, the affair was over. But they’d never once spoken of it. His choice as much as hers. It was better that they dove straight into this next stage in their lives. Calhoun + Calhoun. Still, Steve was never far from his thoughts. Living in a city of less than seven thousand usually meant running into everyone all the time. There were only slightly lower odds during high seasons when the population swelled to around twenty-five thousand. But if you really wanted to, you could make sure it didn’t happen. And he really wanted to. Henry managed to avoid Steve. There was no way he was going to subject himself to that level of shame. Feel like he was nothing. A talentless hack with an adulterous wife. The welcome numbing that came with each drink smothered the rage that built up whenever he thought about it for too long.

  He knew Claudine had been going to see Jonathan Miller too much. She was convinced she could get him to come around. The plan was to show him that at his age—he had to be in his late eighties—the property was more a burden than anything else. Didn’t a nice condo with all the amenities sound like the perfect way to finish out his years? Sell the land and buy the comfort.

  For the most part, he viewed her quest as a pet obsession. Something that would pass. She didn’t understand these sort of people. They didn’t care about comfort or money. It wasn’t realistic to think she could talk someone who had lived his entire life in that cabin, on that land, into giving it up. Even if she used all her powers of persuasion, which were plentiful. Henry kept hoping she’d find another spot on one of her epic drives. Everything on his end was coming together, and he was eager to make the final adjustments based on location. He wasn’t going to fight her on it, but he didn’t want her to feel like a failure. It was Mr. Miller’s stubbornness, not her lack of skills.

  “I think he just likes his cabin, Claudine.”

  “Not everyone likes everything to remain exactly the same—every day, day in, day out. Not all people are like you. You keep working on the designs. I’ll get the property.”

  Lately she’d been slipping insults in with normal conversation. Just that morning he’d gotten up a half hour after she did and got a “You certainly slept well.” He pretended like he didn’t hear her. Wine, whiskey, vodka. It hardly mattered anymore. It tasted all the better on the heels of one of her stingers. Her fixation was morphing her into someone he barely recognized. She’d exhausted every idea. Each time the hired hand shooed her off the property, the verbal assaults took off. This became his favorite time. He loved when she’d start insulting him more directly, more harshly. It was like handing him a free pass to start drinking no matter what time of day it was.

  Most times, he wedged himself in the built-in breakfast nook beside the kitchen, where he liked to work on sketches of the house. Claudine expected them soon, and usually by the third or fourth or seventh drink he was enjoying it. Having forgotten his inadequacies, he could get lost in the possibility of a high arch of an entrance or the curve of a banister at the bottom of a wide staircase. Through his work he was discovering a lot about himself. How flow was important to him. Getting from here to there. From one room to the next. He spent hours building solid philosophies behind each choice, not caring if the reasoning was apparent only to him. The very thought was a reminder that there was an art to it all. It wasn’t all bullshit. It was how he made sense of the world. He’d sit for hours contemplating what it meant to be deliberate versus instinctual, respecting that they each had their place, especially in relationship to design.

  Even though he was back sleeping in their bed, some nights he’d pass out in the breakfast nook. He knew he was drinking too much. It wasn’t good. For them as well as for his work. It was starting to feel like he was waiting around for Claudine to get sick of him. For her to say something. He couldn’t shake the disappointment in himself. And yet, during this time, amid all the insults she’d thrown his way, she never called him a drunk. She never said he should slow down or take a ni
ght off from drinking. Not once did she scold him about the booze. Other things, yes, but about that she let him be. He never understood why, not until many years later, until the night of his death.

  Claudine

  The night of the murders had been very confusing.

  She was sobbing when she burst through the door. Henry sat, drinking his fourth Manhattan at the dining room table, drafting. He looked up and dropped his pencil. Her face was bloody. Her right eye a theatrical mix of pinks and reds.

  “Oh my god. What happened?”

  “Jonathan Miller happened,” she spat. It was crucial she explain it all exactly right. “I’ve been working hard, so hard, to make this happen. For us. For him, even. Trying to get him to understand what a better life he would have if he sold the land.”

  “I know you have,” he said, focusing on her face. She knew it was swelling up before his eyes. She could feel it. The side of her head was bleeding. Snot dripped from her nose. She found a tissue and blew it noisily. Taking another, she blotted near the wound.

  Henry downed the last half of his glass. He dug an ice cube out and tried to press it against her head, but she pushed his hand away. Her breaths were quick and sharp. Attempts to regain control. Her balance was off. Wait: Which one of them was swaying? She could do this. Get through it. The only thing to do was to catch her breath and go on.

  “I pulled up and parked in front. Like I’ve done all the times before. Got out of my car. Expecting to be greeted; I thought, ‘He must be excited to have finally made a decision.’ Then I knocked. And he answered. The young worker wasn’t there. Initially I had a good feeling.”

  She started to cry harder. This must all be so upsetting for Henry; she never cried. When he reached out to touch her, she shrank back again.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  She sank to the floor, her back against the couch, unable to talk. Lightly touching her head in many places, seeking out other injuries, making sure she hadn’t missed anything. She needed her space. He sat on the floor too. Nearby, not speaking. Patiently waiting for her to find the courage to continue. Minutes passed before she found her voice. She wanted to be careful to explain each moment. Henry, listening with a glassy-eyed intensity, took a drink from the bottle.