by Lada Ray
Twenty minutes to the appointment. There was time to take a leisurely stroll around the property. I walked past well-tended flowerbeds surrounding the house, admired the neat rows of roses and marveled at the amount of work the gardener had to put in to keep this garden in such terrific shape. I glanced around, hoping to see who made this beautiful garden a reality and to compliment them on their hard work, but not a single soul was around.
Maybe, I thought, the gardener wasn't here every day. Actually, everything seemed awfully quiet. In a place this big I'd have expected to see some kind of staff. In fact, I've been half expecting a traditional English butler to spring up on me, bending at the waist as if there was a stick stuffed inside his suit and ready to take my coat and gloves - if I had any. But no, there was no one at all. The house appeared empty.
I already started having doubts that Peter Burns was home. I couldn't have mixed up the time or date of the interview. I did have it written down. Perhaps, Peter himself has forgotten our appointment? As I continued strolling to the front entrance, I bent down to smell a particularly beautiful looking tea rose, when I heard voices coming out of an open window. Good, someone was home!
As I got closer, the voices got louder.
“This is not the first time, Peter,” was saying a woman's voice irritably. “You always have an excuse. It's always some kind of accident, or I am confused, or I am unfair to you. But I know what I saw. The simple truth is that your fly is permanently open, figuratively speaking of course.”
“Please keep your voice down, will you,” hissed an annoyed man's voice. “Someone may hear you.”
“Who will hear me? Who? All servants have a day off,” said the woman dismissively.
“Still, you never know. Someone might,” the man said. “I do have an interview soon with this journalist, what's her name. She'll be here soon.”
“You are lying to me again, I know it! Just like you lied to me about her. As usual, this is just one of your many flings!” The woman was now almost yelling.
“Please, control yourself,” said the man in a disgusted kind of voice. “And keep it down!”
“I am so sick and tired of your games,” continued the woman, but now, apparently in an attempt to heed the man's advice, in a loud whisper that I could still hear through the open window. “If only you knew how tired I am!”
“This is not a game,” mumbled the man with a sigh of resignation.
There was a momentary silence, during which the woman seemed to recover her composure. “Here is my last word to you,” she started again in a frozen tone containing dangerous notes. “It's either her or me. You stop that adulterous affair right this moment, or I will take you to court and make your life extremely miserable for the next three years. I will make all your dirty affairs public, I am warning you!”
“Sheila,” said the man. “We have to talk about it some other time. I told you, I have an appointment. This journalist, Jade Snow, may be here any moment.”
“You are lying!” the woman snapped. “I just feel it. Is this another one of your affairs?”
“No, it's not,” said the man in a tired voice. “This is an official interview. They'll be doing a piece on me in the Stepford Post.”
“Stepford Post?” said Sheila suspiciously. “How come? What have you done to be interviewed? Why didn't I know anything about it?”
“They are interviewing prominent people in our community. And you would have known, if you were the least bit interested in me and my work.”
“Oh, so now I'm to blame!” Sheila started heating up again. “I simply like that! You are a saint and I'm to blame for everything! How interesting. How very interesting!” She paused, then went on in a menacing voice. “You seem to be forgetting that it's my money that is responsible for your so called prominence. But, you can't avoid the day of reckoning forever. And when it comes, you'll pay for everything.”
“I will take that under advisement. And now, could you please clear out? I have things to do.” The man's voice acquired steely notes as he started losing his patience. I didn't hear what the woman's response was, because at that moment I was already ringing the bell.
As Peter Burns opened the door, I put on my official smile and started saying, “Hello, I am Jade Sn...,” when I heard the noise of an accelerating car behind me. He frowned, and I spun around, managing to catch a glimpse of a slick black Mercedes drive out of the garage at lightning speed and disappear around the bend with an angry noise. Behind the wheel was Sheila, Peter's wife, whom I met at the Stepford Day Fair.
Peter Burns's face said it all as he watched his wife drive away. There was a look of intense distaste on it, yes, but there was also something more, as if he was seeing a poisonous snake that he was longing to squash. When he noticed me observing him, he quickly composed himself and invited me in with a glued-on smile.
He answered my questions politely and succinctly, his eyes absent, posture straight and official. A regular, no frills interview - indifferent and boring. Not a spark of human emotion, not a thing to sink my teeth into. Nothing like the conversation I've overheard earlier between him and Sheila. I was disappointed and ready to leave.
“Jade, can I ask you something?” he said all of sudden. “Do you ever regret your life's choices? Did you ever wish you'd made different ones?” His voice was bitter, with a tinge of melancholy. He seemed human now, even pitiful somehow and unexpectedly, I caught myself feeling sorry for him.
“I don't think so,” I responded slowly. “I believe, our choices, like our mistakes, are our own to make. Mistakes teach us valuable lessons and make us who we are today, stronger, better. They are a normal part of the complete human experience.”
He listened very seriously, nodding. “How's your husband? Is he still in Africa?” He caught me off guard with this question as well. And did I detect a genuine interest in it? That I didn't expect either. I was wondering now, who was interviewing whom?
“Yes, he's still there, but hopefully, he'll be back soon.” My lips stretched all by themselves into a blissful grin, as I recalled this morning's call from Paul. Peter Burns observed me closely with a subdued smile.
“I envy you,” he said quietly. “I envy your choices. And...” He paused, reflecting. “I can't help but wish that in my own life, I'd made different ones.”
Chapter 20
“Our knitting club members are dropping, like flies,” said Maria standing in my doorway, a large bag of fresh bagels clutched in her hand. The bagels smelled appetizing.
“Please, come in,” I said. “It's good to see you.”
“Thank you, dear. I thought I'd surprise you for breakfast. Bagels and cream cheese?”
I set the table for two, placing a variety of bagels, still warm, and two different kinds of cream cheese, Maria's compliments, on the table. To add an exotic element, I dug up the Tasmanian honey and the remaining stash of giant roasted cashews Rachel brought from New York. Then, I brewed some dragon pearl green tea to go with the spread.
“So, what brings you here?” I said, cutting my multigrain-nut bagel in half and smearing some raisin and cinnamon cream cheese over it.
“Well, I thought, if Mohammad doesn't come to the mountain, then the mountain should come to Mohammad.” Maria bit with gusto into crunchy pumpernickel topped with generous amounts of scallion and roasted pepper cream cheese.
“I see.”
“In truth, I wanted to find out what's going on,” she confessed. “It seems like some sort of odd epidemic. First Adelaide stopped coming, then Anne, now you. If it keeps up, at this rate I'll be the last man, or rather woman, standing quite soon.”
“It got a little crazy in the past few days. Sorry, I missed the last meeting.”
“You already missed two,” said Maria. “But who's counting.”
“Oh, right,” I nodded distractedly. “Two.”
Maria gave me a long, probing look. “What's going on with everyone?”
“Well, as far as I know, A
nne's involved in some research at work and Adelaide's not feeling well. And me - just a busy spell, that's all.” I paused. Hmm... some explanation. Although, I wasn't really lying - not technically.
“But I'm planning on attending next week,” I added brightly.
“If you say so.” Maria wasn't convinced. “If I didn't know any better, I would've thought... um...” She fell silent and took another generous bite of her bagel.
“What?” I said.
“Never mind, just a thought I had.”
“What was it?” I insisted. “What were you going to say?”
“All right,” she conceded. “I thought that it almost looked as if it was all related to Jason. At first, it seemed kind of improbable. I thought, you hardly knew him and Anne wasn't the type to be easily swayed. But then I remembered what you said when Nick Nordini let him go. Something about him having at least one friend - you. Then it occurred to me that Anne happened to disappear right after the Jason and Nick fight. At that point I started thinking that there's got to be some connection.”
She fell silent. I didn't interrupt.
“See,” she said quietly, “I used to count myself among Jason's friends. Then, the rape happened. I couldn't believe he would do such a thing, but the evidence seemed irrefutable. So, I changed my opinion of him, even though it pained me to do that. But now, I don't know what to think. I have these terrible doubts. What if Jason really didn't do it? What if he was framed?”
I sat quietly, letting the truth come out on its own.
“It occurred to me that you must know something that I don't. You must! Do you?” Maria gazed at me pleadingly.
I decided it was time to reveal certain things to her, because like Anne, she was someone I knew I could trust.
“Yes,” I nodded. “There are still many questions needing answers, but I can say confidently, Jason didn't rape Rebbecca.”
Maria breathed a huge sigh of relief.
“I am so glad,” she said, a happy smile spreading over her face. “So, I wasn't mistaken about that boy after all. Oh, this is wonderful!”
We continued our breakfast in silence. Then, she stopped abruptly, hit by a new thought. “But if he didn't, then who did?”
“That,” I said, “is a much more complicated question. For now we can assume that there were multiple attackers, possibly three or four. But I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that the identity of one of them is pretty much known.”
“One of them?” said Maria, curiosity all over her face.
“Yes.”
“But who is it? Can you tell me?”
“I don't think it's such a good idea. It's too early, and what if I'm wrong?”
“But... you said you knew!”
“I don't...” I started - then stopped. If I didn't know any better, I'd say that she was trying to pressure me into doing something I wasn't ready to do. The gentle, kind, always agreeable Maria? Just what was going on?
I looked her straight in the eye. “What's going on, Maria? Why do you need to know so badly?”
She returned my glance, then blinked once, twice, and... started crying. I stared at her in astonishment. Was it something I said?
“Are you all right?” I asked her. “What is it?”
“I... I don't know what came upon me,” she said, wiping her eyes with her breakfast napkin. “It's just... that I thought of all these ruined lives: Jason's, Rebbecca's, Adelaide's. All the slander and gossip, all the grief they had to endure.” She took a deep breath and continued in a totally different tone, “Oh, it makes me so mad that some sons of bitches have been getting away with it all these years! I want them brought to justice. I want to help!”
Now it was my time to blink. I didn't expect such forcefulness from this normally meek woman.
“So, can I help?” she continued insistently.
“I'd love to tell you, but I don't think I can, not yet.” I watched as profound disappointment spread over my breakfast partner's face. But what was I supposed to do? If we were dealing with dangerous and desperate people, as Adelaide believed, anything could set them off. It was enough that Anne and I were involved. I didn't want Maria, with her open and apparently passionate personality, confronting one of them in search for justice and paying for it. Of course, there was also another kind of danger, that of her deciding to spill the beans to our knitting club buddies. And that could ruin everything.
“I know why you are not telling me,” she guessed right away. “You want to protect me, but you needn't be concerned. I can take care of myself. And I could be of use to you. I hear and see things, I might remember something. And don't worry, I'll be discreet. I won't say a word to the knitting club.”
I was impressed. Not a word to the Gossip Central! Coming from Maria, it was a serious promise.
“Okay,” I made my decision. “I'll let you in on it. But you have to solemnly promise that you won't tell anyone.”
“I promise,” she responded eagerly.
“I don't know everything, but based on what I've learned, one of the people involved in the crime was Nick Nordini.”
“I knew it!” Gasped Maria, positively excited.
“Just remember,” I raised my hand warningly. “You promised. Not a word.”
“My lips are sealed,” she nodded energetically. “But what a scoundrel! Pretending all this time to be an upstanding citizen. To think that he wormed his way into the office of chief of police! And we all naively trusted him! What a scandal!” She shook her head, then, suddenly sat up, as if struck by a new idea. “But what about the others? Didn't you say there were three of them?”
“Well...” I started.
“They must be his buddies,” she went on in a convinced manner, disregarding my hesitation. “That would be logical, wouldn't it?”
Y... yes,” I said, starting to get amused at her habit of asking and answering her own questions.
“But you said three, right? Yet, there are four of them in total. So, which three or rather, which two in addition to Nick?” She was talking feverishly, as if on a verge of a major discovery and I thought with a smile that she too has caught the sleuthing bug, the one that little by little was infecting our knitting club. I wondered if the club might lose yet another member who was about to fall victim to the bug's relentless advance.
“Take, for example, Marc Catcham,” meanwhile went on Maria with great vigor. “What do we know about him? Very ambitious, has always been full of himself. His father always pushed him to go into politics.”
“Yes,” I said, letting myself be drawn into Maria's game in accord with my golden rule: the best information often emerges in a casual conversation. “Unscrupulousness plus ambition has been known to be an ugly combination.”
“That's Marc all right,” she agreed. “What about Jack? A nerd, generally pretty bad with women, quiet, keeps to himself. In my opinion, he is the least likely of the four to have participated in the rape.”
“Except, I was interviewing him the other day for the paper,” I said. “And guess what I've discovered.”
“What?” asked Maria, holding her breath.
“Well, Jack was showing me his private virtual reality project and by mistake, he showed me a program intended for no one's eyes, but his. Do you know that he is working on some very futuristic virtual reality stuff in his lab?
“No,” she shook her head. “What's virtual reality anyway?”
“It's a dreamed up world, a holographic simulation, like the holodeck in Star Trek. His project involves putting on a helmet with special goggles and when you do, you are transported into a virtual world. You see, hear and feel images that the program artificially projects into your mind. But of course, you can program it in any way you want. Ultimately, it's your fantasy. Perhaps, something you'll never be able to achieve in reality.”
“I see now,” nodded Maria.
“So, guess what! Jack's fantasy turned out to be Rebbecca. And in that fantasy, he was making love t
o her.”
“No!” she gasped.
“Yep! Of course, this in itself means nothing. So, he was secretly in love with her. Big deal! Half of her class was. This kind of thing happens all the time. But I was able to observe his behavior at various times. And you know, he is quite a passionate man, but is good at hiding it. Hardly anyone knows what he's really like, unless they are close to him. And he's careful about letting people near him. Also, he's been very successful at hiding his feelings for Rebbecca and yet, he still fantasizes about her. That aloof exterior he presents to the world is not his real nature. So, considering the circumstances we are discussing, he conceivably could have been a party to the rape.”
“True,” nodded Maria. “Who else? Oh, yes, Peter Burns. That one, as I told you before, had a major crush on Rebbecca in high school and he wasn't hiding it either.”
“Right,” I agreed. “Did you know, that he also has a mistress and that his wife has found out about it? I overheard their argument the other day.”
“Yeah,” Maria didn't seem surprised at all. “I thought that much. He's been a womanizer all his life. I always thought he married this woman, Sheila, for her money. The bank at one point was on the verge of insolvency and he and his daddy were desperate for a cash infusion. And then, Sheila comes along and she's loaded. So naturally, Peter turned on his usual charm, which he possesses in abundance, if he wants to and a few months later they're married, the bank's saved and everyone's happy.”
“All, except poor Sheila.” I said.
“She's not the nicest woman I've met, but you could say, she's got the short end of the stick. I always thought he cheated on her.”
“So conceivably, he also could be a part of the rape.”
“Right,” said Maria. “So, where does that leave us? Nowhere! They all could be in it together. Are you sure there were only three of them?”