You Made Your Bed: A Novel

by Cornelia Goddin

  This time I’m skipping the monkey house. Marvelous as they are, there’s really only so much a lemur can do. Instead I march with some pretend vigor over to Madison and then to the Frick. It’s my favorite museum, usually not crowded at all. I hear they’ve been putting on Mixer Nights lately, trying to get people in there that are under the age of sixty. Can you even?

  I am not interested in Egyptians. Or Greeks, or Romans, Etruscans, primitives of any stripe. What I want is something cultured and elevated. Something I can pretend I am part of, and would want to be part of.

  Possibly the sort of escapism I am looking for is found more obviously at the movies, but my nerves cannot take moving pictures. The few people at the museum are already testing me right to the limit.

  I wander through galleries, moving quickly if the art doesn’t meet my specifications. I’m praying hard that I do not run into anyone I know.

  You see my problem? I took an action to save the family, or so I thought, but it appears I may not get away with it. Ironically, this is not because the police are so sharp but because of Gordon’s insistence on hiring his own investigator, for reasons still not clear to me.

  I don’t know all of what Natalie has told Amory. I don’t know where the fucking Jamaican bracelet is. I don’t know how he knows what I’m positive he knows, and so am paralyzed to counter whatever evidence he thinks he has.

  Can you imagine the swarms of photographers, the reporters calling to interview me while I wait for my trial? Can you imagine the delight people will take in seeing someone like me brought low? Well, I say ‘brought’ as though it was done to me, not by me.

  There is nothing for me to do but wait and see. The die is cast and all that.

  All right. Yes. Here is what I was looking for: French Rococo. I enter a room and turn, seeing the enormous canvases of beautifully dressed women sitting under splendid trees, or pink-cheeked odalisques sprawled on rumpled beds. These women are happy. They are satisfied. I try to breathe in their essence even as the jeerlings mock me for my simplemindedness.

  Fleetingly, I wonder what a painting of the jeerlings would look like. I can’t get any image in my head at all—they have almost always only been words, a nearly constant stream of words, their lumpen bodies visible to me only in the rare moments when they are quiet.

  If this nightmare ever ends, I’ve been thinking about going to Paris for a long stretch, six months or longer, to see what it’s like to live on my own for once. No Marecita to bring me coffee and choose my coat. No Mummy wailing in the middle of the night. No Gordon. For a brief, silly few minutes, I allow myself to imagine not being there alone, but with Amory. Walking up and down the narrow paths in Père Lachaise, the rows of mausoleums stretching out on either side. Perhaps a cemetery walk is a morbid kind of daydream, but it’s fitting enough, wouldn’t you say?

  I study paintings of Watteau and Boucher. Then the Fragonard titled The Confession of Love. A woman in a sumptuous dress reads a book while perched on a wide column, while an exquisitely outfitted gentleman nestles his head on her neck and slides an arm around her waist. He is clearly gaga over her, and she just keeps on reading, though apparently accepting of his attentions.

  I could say that love is what got me where I am, though I do not expect you, or anyone else, to believe it.

  68

  Amory and Chub play racquetball once, maybe twice a week. Chub is an administrator at Columbia with some flexibility in his hours, so he can usually get away at the random times Amory is free. The men change into their raggedy sports clothes without saying much. Amory is anxious to talk about the case—he almost always uses Chub as a sounding board when he’s working something interesting—but he waits until they are in the court with the door closed. Sound reverberates but with the thwocking sound of the ball being smacked on other courts and the shouts and moans of other players, he is less worried about anyone’s ability to follow their conversation.

  “Case is getting interesting,” he says, hitting an easy one to start the warm-up.

  “Yeah?”

  “Legally speaking, I can’t one hundred percent prove that Wilson’s death wasn’t pure accident.”

  “But you think it wasn’t.”

  “No.”

  Long pause.

  “You may have been right about Caroline Crowe,” Amory says, dropping his voice.

  “Crazy bitch,” says Chub.

  “I don’t know.” Amory holds the ball while he stretches to one side, then the other. “She’s…it’s like, she’s crazy and not crazy, at the same time.”

  “Oh no, my friend. She’s a thousand percent crazy, believe me.”

  “There’s something about her…I mean aside from…”

  “Oh jeez. Listen, man. You remember Harry Whiting, a few grades above us?”

  “Yeah. At Goldman now?”

  “Sure, probably. Well, I heard he and Caroline hooked up at a party, at the Delevan’s, if I remember right. When Harry woke up, his clothes were all cut up and hanging in a closet.”

  “What do you mean, cut up?”

  “I mean like she took scissors and spent a long time shredding his clothes to ribbons. And of course when he looked around for her, Caroline fucking Crowe was long gone.”

  “You don’t know she was responsible.”

  Chub shakes his head. “Believe what you want. You’re a stupid cocksucker, you know that?”

  Amory bends over to stretch his hamstrings.

  “Now hit the fucking ball,” says Chub. “And I’ll just go on and say it—she’s like your mother.”

  “Oh, come on. That’s…you’re just making shit up now. Caroline is the opposite of my mother.”

  “Two sides, same coin,” says Chub.

  “No way.” He tosses the ball up and catches it. “It’s…there’s interest, I know it. I can feel it. But it’s like she’s behind a wall, where I can’t reach her.”

  “Great. A fucking fairy princess.”

  “Yeah, I know. But that’s what it feels like. Something…something is off about the whole thing. Some things I think I’ve figured out. But not everything. Ready?” He serves the ball and it comes back low, forcing Chub to dive for it.

  “Speaking of mushrooms, you ever partake?” asks Chub, already out of breath. “I loved ‘em, back in the day.”

  “Never had the chance.” They play out the first game. Amory is distracted and Chub wins easily, which is unusual.

  “You suck,” says Chub.

  “Yeah. Hey, you got a little time? Some things I need to talk through. But not here.”

  Chub agrees, aloft on his win, and quickly they are dressed and walking down Amsterdam in the bright January morning.

  “Pretty sure she killed her brother,” Amory says simply.

  “The fuck?”

  “Like I said, what I’ve got isn’t ironclad, though maybe it could be with the right prosecutor. But I…I’m pretty sure. Too many dangling threads, you know?”

  “No, I don’t know. Tell me.”

  “Number one, Caroline claims she hasn’t been to Berkeley since last April. But Wilson’s wife Rebecca gave me a bracelet she found in the bathroom of their house last week. Says it belongs to Caroline, that Caroline always wore it.”

  “She telling the truth?”

  “About Caroline wearing the bracelet, yes. About when and where she found it, I can’t say.”

  “Isn’t the spouse usually the prime suspect in a murder case?”

  “Usually. Overwhelmingly so.”

  “Well? Maybe the wife did it then. Not that I’m saying Caroline isn’t capable, because if anyone is batshit crazy enough to kill someone, it would be Caroline fucking Crowe.”

  “I think Gordon hired me hoping I’d pin it on the wife. I interviewed Rebecca for almost an entire day. She’s having a baby any day now, for one thing, not exactly your typical murderer profile. It wasn’t her. I don’t think she was in that relationship for the money, and she seems really heartbroken—no
t even for herself, not selfishly, but for Wilson. And besides…she’s not the one who gets the money.”

  “Let me guess—Caroline?”

  “Yep.” They walk half a block in silence.

  “Are you sure it’s her bracelet?”

  “Yep. Got a DNA match on a few hairs caught in the beads. It’s a cheap trinket, not what you’d think she’d wear, must have some sentimental value.”

  “How’d you convince her to give you a DNA sample?”

  Amory doesn’t answer.

  “You shithead. You took one, didn’t you? Please tell me you weren’t in bed with her at the time.”

  “I told you, I’m not involved with her.”

  “I didn’t ask if you were involved. Are you fucking her?”

  “No! And yeah, I got the sample without asking, exactly. Didn’t follow any protocol because I couldn’t, really. No gloves, chain of custody messed up, plus if I handed it over to the cops, I’d be screwing over my friend in the lab. Anyway, so I’m ninety-nine percent sure she was in California recently, but can’t really do much with the knowledge. Not legally, anyway.”

  “You gotta tell them. No way should you be holding back on this.”

  Amory shrugs. “What am I going to tell them? I might have some evidence you can’t use that doesn’t actually prove anything? Caroline will say the bracelet fell off months ago. Anyway, my first duty is to Gordon Crowe, since he hired me. And I signed a non-disclosure contract when I took the job, so legally, any evidence I come up with belongs to him.”

  Chub laughs. “Of course he had you sign a contract. Fucker. So now what? I’m guessing Crowe didn’t hire you to nail his daughter? I mean in the criminal sense.”

  “Like I said, I think he might want me to pin it on Rebecca, maybe to strip away what little she does inherit? The woman’s pregnant with his grandchild, but that doesn’t seem to bother him. The guy’s…”

  “A monster.”

  “Yeah. After what he did to my father, I wouldn’t mind…”

  “Forcing him to bend over? Thattaboy! Now you’re talking. So how close are you? You got any more leads?”

  “One other thing is that Wilson and Rebecca both got faked emails a few days before his death. The one to Rebecca invited her down to LA to visit a friend, but the friend hadn’t actually contacted her. Wilson got one too, another friend from out of town asking him to come visit—but that friend also claims not to have sent any email. So it looks like possibly someone setting up a robbery? But a little strange to happen the exact same time as Wilson eats those mushrooms, right?”

  “How easy is it to send email from another person’s account?”

  “Depends on how stupid the owner is. Some people will click on any phishing attempt no matter how lame.” Amory gives his head a quick shake. “I don’t know, man. The whole situation is tantalizing. I’ve got all these threads, like I was saying, but can’t quite weave them together. For one thing—and it’s a big one—what was her motive? Sibling murder is quite rare. Parents killing their children is way more common, for example.

  “And if she did do it? The girl is smart. I checked her laptop, looking for evidence of the email hacking, searches on mushrooms, anything like that—there’s nothing. Her history hasn’t been wiped but there’s nothing there but virtual trips to Bergdorf’s and articles about monkeys. It’s almost like she expected someone to be checking it out. She must have found some other place to find out what she needed to know. Also went through her credit cards, and she’s been to Paris twice in the last four months, but no flights to California. Wilson’s email had the same phony feel about it. No dirty laundry, no insulting friends behind their backs or ranting about anything. It’s like they’re CIA or something, practiced in keeping secrets.”

  “Maybe she mailed the mushrooms to him, telling him they were the fun kind?”

  “You’re devious. But then how did the bracelet get out there? And that would be an enormous risk, anyone could have eaten them, and seen who they were from.”

  “Devious but not smart enough, I guess. Look, I’ve gotta get back to work. You’ve convinced me, if that helps. Now get out there and find some goddamn probable cause or whatever. And listen,” he adds, “Don’t let that chick slide just because you want to fuck her. You know anybody in the Berkeley PD? Call ‘em. No joke, man.”

  Amory just shakes his head and keeps walking. The sun is streaming across the avenue and he squints against the glare, turning the facts of the case over and over in his mind, trying and failing to see how to fit them all together in a way that makes sense but does not lead to Caroline.

  If she was in California, how did she get there? Was the murder about the money, radioactive sibling rivalry, something else, something in addition? Something about the whole thing just doesn’t quite add up.

  He finds himself wondering whether she ever lets down her guard. If they were in bed, his weight on top of her, her legs wrapped around his waist—would her face stay so composed, her secrets still safe?

  Amory closes his eyes. He wants to pick Caroline up, fold her in his arms, take her someplace protected. Somewhere she can drop that mask, that disguise, and unload all the fear and pain he sees in her eyes.

  That afternoon Amory wakes from a nap with a jolt when his cell buzzes. Quickly he sits up, blinks hard, and picks up the phone, clearing his throat before answering.

  “Hey, Gordon,” he says, standing up to get some blood moving.

  “Amory. Just wanted to thank you and say that I’ve been very grateful for your help in this sensitive situation. I’ve just put a check in the mail for you. Now that the folks in Berkeley have finished up, the family and I are ready—painful as it is—to move on. I do hope you’ll come to the memorial service? Sorry for the short notice, but you know how these things are. It’s tomorrow at 12:30, here at the apartment.”

  “Gordon, I—”

  “Yes, I realize you didn’t know Wilson personally. But you’ve been an invaluable part of the team these last days. We’ve depended on you during a time of immeasurable stress, and you really came through for us. As soon as we hang up, I’m going to call your father to tell him so.”

  “I’m not finished.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “There’re…just a few things that I want to look at more closely.”

  A pause.

  “I hired you. If I wasn’t clear, I am as of this moment terminating your services. It is deeply, painfully unfortunate, but my son was felled by the accidental ingestion of poisonous mushrooms—that is what the medical examiner concluded, that is what the Berkeley Police Department is satisfied by, and that is what you will be satisfied by as well.”

  Monster, thinks Amory.

  “Well, if you’re sure,” he says.

  “I am. Look for the check. If there are any expenses not included, let my assistant know. And thank you again, Amory. I do appreciate all you’ve done.”

  Amory hangs up, dropping down on the bed. Without a pause he picks up his phone again and scrolls through, looking for the number of the Berkeley cop who called days ago, to arrange to give him the bracelet and the DNA report.

  Satisfy that, Gordon Crowe.

  69

  Scotty Franks has no trouble finding 744 Park Avenue, having taken the subway and a bus to get there from his cheap motel in Queens. He stands a half-block away, collar turned up against the cold, watching the stream of people entering the Crowe’s building for the memorial service.

  It’s the same deal for a lot of his cases, he thinks. It’s pretty goddamn clear who the bad agent is, and the trick is figuring out a way to prove it.

  AT&T will help. The billions she stands to inherit will help a little more. This Amory Porter who left a message, and wants to talk today—there’s potential there, too. But Franks only has five days of vacation left, and he’s in New York without the weight of the department behind him. He knows the quickest way to wrap this case up is for the girl to confess.

 
; It’s one of his specialties, getting confessions. Though this time he’s going to have to work his magic without an interview room, on the girl’s home turf.

  But eh, he shrugs. If I don’t get my chance today, I’ll stick around. Dog with a bone? Goddamn right.

  It wasn’t easy convincing Oates he should come to this thing. Franks had to spend pretty much the last chips in the favor bank to get him to say yes, and it’s going to mean indentured servitude for the foreseeable future, taking the worst cases, mopping up all the nastiest departmental crap Oates can throw at him. But worth it, thinks Franks, narrowing his eyes at an especially wealthy looking young couple coming down the block, their walk so assured, proprietary, like they own the sidewalk and everyone on it.

  And the sad fucking truth, he thinks—they do.

  Caroline stands in her bathroom, wearing a steel-gray bra and bikini matching set, her fingertips gliding in circles, rubbing moisturizer into her cheeks and around her eyes and lips. She reaches for blush, then decides a natural pallor is more suitable for the occasion. Instead, she uses brushes of several sizes and varying stiffness to make a dark smoky eye. Next the clamp of the eyelash curler. Then mascara, a darker color than usual.

  During the process, the jeerlings have been silent. She keeps waiting for the deluge of words, the wailing ululations, but thus far, for the entire day, nothing but a very occasional feathery jostling, once a short yip.

  Caroline knows they’re there, waiting. The silence is only a different form of torture.

  The nausea is beginning to fade now, and her stomach has become rounded instead of flat. As she pulls hot rollers from her hair, one hand goes to her belly and moves in circles, caressing.

  She dusts her face with powder and stands back to look at herself, but her eyes are dull with fatigue, having barely slept for yet another night.

  The apartment is decorated with flowers, as it always is, though Lillian has ordered cornflowers which were Wilson’s favorite, and told the doorman not to send up anything with lilies because they are too morbid. She stands at the door, brittle and benzo’d, shaking hands and cheek kissing one person after another, determined to not to allow her manners to fail even on this worst of all days.