“No, thanks. They’re still charging summer prices over there,” Lizzie said.
Ben let go of his ear and looked up. “How about one of Eden’s donuts? Make mine jelly.”
I left the office and headed across the street toward Eden’s Coffee Shop, a bacon-scented haven in a town that’s changed too fast for locals and not fast enough for Summer People, who want juice bars and gourmet takeout. I noticed a woman and two men emerge from a dark green Mercedes parked in front. They looked completely out of place. The woman wore a fur-trimmed black leather coat and heels. The men had on long, black cashmere overcoats with scarves at their throats. The shorter, silver-haired man locked the car and then ushered the others into the coffee shop while holding the door for them.
I paused as I recognized him. I hadn’t seen him in a few years—he was probably close to seventy now, still spry, though his thick mane had thinned. He was wearing his trademark black turtleneck under the sleek black coat. He’d always looked and dressed like Sean Connery. Whether cooking one of his exotic dishes for Hugh and me in his loft or massaging egos at one of his gallery openings, he was impeccably outfitted at all times.
“Abbas?”
Hugh’s longtime art dealer, Abbas Masout, of Chelsea by way of Lebanon, turned around and broke into a smile.
“My God, Nora!” he said, letting the door close behind his companions. “Dear girl, it’s good to see you.” He walked over and leaned in for a European “kiss kiss” exchange on both cheeks, then followed it with a hug, as he always did.
“Abbas, what are you doing here?”
“Taking some Paris collectors to Hugh’s studio for the afternoon. They are desiring a little local flavor first.”
A light in my brain clicked on. “That’s right. It’s Monday.”
Art galleries were closed on Mondays in the city, making it a big day for studio visits. I used to arrange Hugh’s schedule so Abbas could bring collectors and curators to view work on Mondays. That explained why Helene was in Pequod. She probably had my old job tending to Hugh’s potential buyers.
“I heard you are also living in this charming place,” Abbas said.
I got here first. “Yes.”
He peered at me with concern. “You are managing?”
I remembered running into him in the checkout line at Barnes & Noble after the divorce. He’d asked the same question before insisting on buying the book I held, as a gift to me. Abbas was macho, but kind.
I blinked. “Of course.”
“Excellent. You are looking wonderful, by the way.”
“Thank you.”
“I would invite you to join us,” Abbas said, lifting his palms in helplessness, “but Hugh and his little girl are inside . . .”
I couldn’t keep from glancing through the coffee shop’s window. The Parisian collectors were just sitting down at a table, blocking my view of Hugh and his daughter. One of the newspapers had mentioned her by name. Callie.
“And Helene is coming,” he said, apologetically.
“Right. Well, it would’ve been great to catch up, Abbas. But I’m late for work, anyway.”
Just then Helene pulled up in a silver Lexus. She spotted me and raised a haughty eyebrow. I felt myself beginning to vibrate. My blood started to cook.
“Nice to see you, Abbas. Take care,” I said.
“We must find a way to get together, dear girl.”
“We will,” I assured him, nodding and hurrying away. “We will.”
No jelly donuts for me and Ben. We were going to have to pay for pricey muffins from the market.
On Wednesday morning, I headed for Pilates again, hoping Helene had purchased her class card exclusively for the Mondays she’d be hosting visiting art collectors. But her Lexus sat in the parking lot. In my spot. I considered turning around. Instead I parked and walked into the alley, fighting the urge to go home with every step—until I saw Helene. She was chatting up Kelly like the two of them were best friends, and she’d already set her mat down in lane seven. My lane.
I didn’t make a scene. I didn’t pick up a bowling ball and pitch it at her head. I took a deep breath and made another promise: no matter how hard it was for me to be around Helene, no matter how much discomfort I felt, I wasn’t going anywhere. “You can feel your emotions without acting on them,” Dr. Feld had said. “If you bottle up anger, eventually it explodes. It’s called an emotion because it’s meant to move. Just breathe and let it.”
I was determined to let that inner river flow peacefully. To remain in the class and stay civil. I vowed to attend every Pilates class on the schedule, in fact. Helene already had my husband, my loft, and, arguably, the baby I hadn’t been able to conceive. I wasn’t about to let her take Pilates away. She wasn’t going to mess with my core.
I drove home after class proud of the dignified way I’d handled myself. But as I stopped at the end of my driveway and pulled a cream-colored linen envelope out of the mailbox, my composure shattered. I recognized Hugh’s handwriting instantly. Helene must have told him about joining the class on Monday. He’d always preferred letters rather than texts or e-mails for condolences or making amends. Had he written to apologize for Helene’s obnoxious presence? For their moving here? “I’ve made so many mistakes, Nora . . .”
Dear Nora,
I’ve been resisting writing because I know how angry you still are. But I can’t wait any longer. I’m putting together a retrospective. A comprehensive one. I’d like to include an early sketchbook along with the paintings—to show how the work has evolved. The sketchbook I gave you on your twenty-eighth birthday is by far the best. Those first studies of you are some of my strongest. I hope you won’t give me trouble on this. It’s only a loan—and after all, it is my work. Can’t you please try to let go of your rage at me, Nora? Hasn’t enough time passed? Say the word and I can have my assistant call FedEx and arrange to pick up the sketchbook. I still think of you fondly.
Hugh
For a moment, I could barely breathe. What a fool I’d been to expect an apology. Hugh hadn’t even acknowledged the distress his interloping had caused. He’d only written because he needed something. When would I learn? A little furnace in my belly fired up. Too damn bad! Hugh would have to do without his favorite sketchbook. I didn’t even keep the book at home. I stored it at Aunt Lada’s, along with other reminders of life with him. I wouldn’t respond to the letter. Wait. Should I write him back and tell him what a selfish bastard he was? Or should I let him borrow the book to show how little I cared about him anymore? I couldn’t decide which would be more satisfying.
Take your time deciding. You are not on his clock. And remember, you will not let this make you a bitter, angry woman.
The next evening, Kelly sent an e-mail canceling Friday’s class. She explained that she couldn’t arrange any other time for her sonogram appointment, and rescheduled us for Sunday morning.
Bleary-eyed after what felt like another poor night’s sleep, at 7:30 a.m. on Sunday I dragged myself out of bed to get ready for class. I went into the living room, picked up the remote, and clicked on the local news before starting to make coffee. The screen was filled with uniformed police and squad cars with flashing lights. What was up? Lots of local and county cops involved. That looked like . . . What did she just say?
No. It can’t be. Oh my God. Impossible. That’s . . . Oh God.
I sat on the couch, eyes locked on the television. Questions swirled around in my head so rapidly I thought I might faint. How? Who would do that? And why?
In the midst of my confusion, I have to confess I felt a teeny, tiny bit of relief—relief that if the report was right, I wouldn’t have to hate Helene and Hugh anymore.
Because Hugh Walker and Helene Westing Walker were dead. Someone else besides me had wanted them that way. Someone with a lot more nerve.
From the Pequod Courier
Tips for Living
by Nora Glasser
Where the Wild Things Are
&n
bsp; We know how it works. Pequod’s businesses raise their prices in summer to carry them through the slower months. Summer People expect it. They can afford the markup. The rest of us hold our collective breath until after Labor Day, when the town empties out. No more. We’re turning blue now that Summer People flock here on weekends off-season, stealing our parking spots and crowding our exercise classes. Prices stay inflated, and we’re paying a premium for our muffins. We return from the market stunned at how few groceries our money buys. We want to help our local businesses profit, but we also need to eat. So why not employ survival methods from long ago? Methods used even before the wandering tribes settled down to plant and harvest? Forget “farm to table” and “artisanal.” We’re talking precivilization. Hand to mouth. Put on your boots and stalk that wild asparagus. You’d be amazed at what you’ll find in that acre of woods the developers haven’t cleared. Go down by the creek and pull up leeks, ramps and sorrel. Learn to love chickweed. How about acorn mash? It’s nutty. Develop a taste for the “earthy,” but remember: choose those fungi carefully, or you’ll end up feeding the worms.
Chapter Two
I was numb. Everything had an aura of unreality. It was as if I were watching an episode of Murder, She Wrote. A small seaside community on a misty fall morning with stunned and sleepy citizens in robes and slickers gathered on the street in front of the victims’ residence, the police working the crime scene and stretching yellow tape across the drive.
I began to click through other news channels mechanically. None of them had live coverage—the major media hadn’t arrived in Pequod yet. I clicked back to the local station. With her windswept hair, orange rain poncho and exercise pants, their reporter was more the type you’d see covering the annual Bike for Breast Cancer race, not a murder. Or in this case, a double murder. While she addressed the camera, another woman in a hooded rain jacket waited nervously at her side.
“I repeat, police aren’t telling us anything except that two Pequod residents, the internationally known artist Hugh Walker and his wife, Helene Westing Walker, were killed,” the reporter said. “A neighbor confirmed that the housekeeper discovered the bodies around six thirty a.m. when she arrived for work. In fact, I have that neighbor right here. Sue Mickelson. Thank you for speaking with us, Ms. Mickelson. Can you tell us about what happened here this morning?”
Ms. Mickelson stepped forward and straightened her posture for the camera. She had an air of self-importance about her.
“Well, it was unbelievably awful,” she said dramatically. “It was still dark and I was walking Jupiter, my Lab, when I saw a figure running down the Walkers’ driveway into the street. She was screaming, ‘Dios mio! Los están muertos! Los están muertos!’ I know Spanish. She was saying, ‘My God. They are dead. They are dead.’ I called 911 on my cell.”
“You didn’t hear anything else before that?”
“No. We live next door.” She pointed off-camera beyond Hugh’s driveway. “But you can see there’s a huge stretch of woods between our place and theirs.”
“How well did you know them?”
“Sometimes on weekends our daughter has playdates with their little girl, Callie. I saw their car yesterday afternoon and realized they’d come out, so I called to try and set something up for the kids. Thank God Callie was staying in the city with her aunt last night or she’d probably be dead, too. It’s horrible. Just horrible.”
“Yes, it is. Thank you, Ms. Mickelson.”
The reporter did a recap and signed off so the regular news could begin. The facts were beginning to sink in. I felt panicky. Then another wave of disbelief washed over me. My mind wouldn’t accept the killings, even as my body was trembling. Was I in shock? Was that the mind-body split I was experiencing? I wanted to talk to Grace. Talking to her would help ground me. Had she heard yet? I tried her landline. No answer. I tried her cell, and then Mac’s. The same. Nobody picked up. Then I remembered that it was Sunday and sometimes the family went to an early church service with Mac’s parents and out to breakfast afterward.
I couldn’t just sit there. I should be doing something besides clicking the remote from channel to channel, shouldn’t I? But what? I finally grabbed my trench coat, pulled on my Wellingtons over my pajama bottoms, and got into my car. I had no idea where I was going.
It was a damp, cold, foggy morning. I could see my breath. British moor kind of weather. I drove fast, speeding past the entrance to the nature preserve. Then I remembered the police often lay in wait behind the bayberry bushes nearby. I slowed down.
The roads were nearly empty. I just kept driving and trying to absorb what I’d seen on television. What they were saying still didn’t seem possible. The man I met when I was twenty-five, the man I’d lived with and loved for more than twelve years had been murdered? Grief stabbed my heart. Then I remembered how Hugh betrayed me with Helene, and the jabbing stopped. The questions surfaced again: What kind of a monster had killed Hugh and the mother of his child? And why? I could practically hear Grace’s voice in my head saying, “Karma, baby. You can always count on karma.”
I reached into my pocket for my phone to try calling her again. But my phone wasn’t there. I tried the other pocket and came up with a crumpled five-dollar bill. Damn. I must’ve forgotten it.
I switched on the radio to hear more details on the crime. Static. Dense woods on either side of the road interfered. It began to rain and I turned on my wipers.
“What the hell?”
They were making annoying clicking sounds, like a desperate smoker flicking a Bic low on fuel, and they moved intermittently, maybe one stroke for the usual three.
“In four hundred feet, turn left,” my GPS ordered.
“Not now,” I said under my breath.
My Toyota was a lemon. I bought it used, and within a month the GPS jammed—it wouldn’t turn off. The electronic female voice gives me random instructions at random times. Fixing it would cost almost half of what I paid for the car, so I live with the malfunction. And now the wipers had decided to act up, too? I glowered as they made one of their irregular thumps.
“Turn left,” GPS lady ordered again. “Turn left.”
“Please shut up. If I turn left, we’ll drown.”
The woods had thinned out, and water appeared on my left. Dark gray water, stirred up and angry like the sky, which was now a moldy gray-green. The air began to smell briny, like sour pickles, as the road curved toward the bridge that connected the neighborhoods on this side of the harbor with downtown Pequod. Through my blurry windshield, I saw waves crashing into the harbor’s stone breakwater. The dozen or so sailboats that remained in the water late in the season rose and fell violently with the surf. Sirens screamed somewhere in the distance. Could the police be chasing down the killer? I tried the radio again and found better reception on WPQD, catching the middle of a report on Hugh:
“Walker became internationally famous for his unusual self-portraits. His most recent major New York show, Scenes from a Marriage, received stellar reviews last year. Stay with us. We’ll be speaking with Abbas Masout, Walker’s longtime art dealer, right after this message from Pequod Savings Bank.”
Abbas. Poor Abbas must be devastated. Hugh was one of the first artists he took on when he opened his gallery in New York. Originally, he made his reputation in Beirut selling modern art to visiting American and European collectors and movie stars during the city’s golden age. Then, in 1975, the Paris of the Middle East became a war zone, and Abbas spent the next five years struggling to survive. He finally managed to flee to the States and use his art world connections to set up shop, initially in Soho, then in Chelsea. He’d become one of the most successful dealers of the last decade. Collectors loved him for his charm. Hugh loved him for that, too, plus being tenacious as a terrier on his behalf.
“This is WPQD back with our breaking story on the murders of Hugh and Helene Walker. We have Mr. Walker’s art dealer, Abbas Masout, speaking to us from his loft in Lower Manhattan. Mr.
Masout, what can you tell us about this tragedy?”
“I can tell you a great American artist who was my friend is dead, and my heart is crying. What evil creature did this? I don’t understand. It makes no sense,” he said. “How could this violence happen in such a peaceful place? And why to them?” His voice broke. “I can’t speak anymore . . . I’m sorry.”
“I understand. Thank you, Mr. Masout. Repeating, artist Hugh Walker, and his wife, Helene Westing Walker, were found dead in their home near Pequod, New York, this morning. An apparent double homicide. The police do not have a suspect in custody. Stay with us here at WPQD for the latest on the breaking story. And now for national news.”
I pressed “Scan” on the tuner for another station. Nothing landed. I shut the radio off. On the other side of the bridge, I turned right, aiming for Eden’s Coffee Shop half a mile ahead. My head was beginning to pound. Caffeine withdrawal. I hadn’t thought to drink my coffee before leaving the house.
The sidewalks and most of the parking spaces were empty—Corwin’s Market didn’t open until 9:00 a.m. It was quiet. No double murderer in sight. No posse forming in front of the Laundromat, which is housed in a renovated nineteenth-century jailhouse. The plaque by the entrance says, “Three pirates captured by the whaling ship Cuttamonk were incarcerated here until they were hanged.” It looked like a typical rainy, off-season Sunday morning in a quaint resort town.
Abbas was right. Despite the recent changes, Pequod was still an improbable setting for a double murder. A local homicide is the kind of story that gets framed and hung on the wall of the Courier office, along with coverage on bank robberies and hurricanes. We only have one homicide clipping up there—from 1972. The body of a teenage girl washed up on Crooked Beach. She wasn’t even from Pequod. The tides brought her here. She’d been hit with a heavy object and dumped in the water, not drowned. Turned out her boyfriend caught her stepping out on him and smashed her head in with a skateboard. They called it “a crime of passion,” which sounded to me like a justification.
Tips for Living Page 3