Creeps Suzette

by Mary Daheim

  “Do they know anything more about what caused her illness?” Judith asked.

  “Not that I’ve heard,” Peggy said. “Fritz won’t get out of the hospital until tomorrow. I guess she wants to go to Dr. Moss’s funeral. She worked a lot of cases with him over the years.”

  “Tell them, Mom,” Kenneth said suddenly. “You started to, then you stopped. They ought to know.”

  Peggy looked blank. “Tell them what? Don’t you think they’ve heard too much?”

  Kenneth shook his head. “About how people get passed over or ignored in the family business. Especially you.”

  “Oh.” Peggy’s face fell. “That’s not…What the hell, why not?” She gave her son a feeble smile. “Kenny’s proud of his old lady. That’s nice, don’t you think?” she asked of the cousins.

  “My kids think I’m an idiot,” Renie said.

  Peggy’s glance at Renie indicated that she probably agreed with the Jones offspring. She made no comment, however, and began speaking of herself.

  “I’m almost two years older than Wayne. As the firstborn, I should have gone into the family business—except that I came along a generation too soon. When we grew up in the late fifties, women weren’t supposed to work outside the home.”

  “Bunk,” Renie muttered. “All the women in our family did.”

  Peggy ignored the remark. “I always knew I was smarter than Wayne. Oh, he’s not stupid, just average. You can’t be average and run a big corporation like Evergreen Timber. And you can’t be timid, either. You need nerve, and plenty of it. Wayne is inclined to be wishy-washy.”

  Peggy must have seen the look that passed between the cousins. She let out an exasperated sigh. “Good Lord, so you know about my brother and Sarah, too?”

  “Um…wel…” Judith mumbled.

  “We’re like termites,” Renie said. “We come into a house and eat up all the information like it was cheap wood.”

  “Worms would be more like it,” Peggy said, but this time there was a spark of something that might have been amusement in her blue eyes. “The liaison between Wayne and Sarah is no secret, at least not within the family. Dorothy’s put up with it because, believe it or not, she loves Wayne. Or did, until lately. Now she wants a fresh start, before she gets too old. I don’t blame her. She’s another rich woman who hasn’t been able to do what she wanted with her life because of social and family pressure. Wayne can’t deal with it, not when he’s up to his wire-frame glasses with Evergreen Timber troubles.”

  “I understand all that,” Judith allowed, “including the part about you being passed over because the fifties were a different era for most women. But what about Bop? He was actually in line for the corner office at Evergreen, and we know he’s got good business sense.”

  Peggy nodded. “That wasn’t the problem. Bop would have been ready to enter the business about seven or eight years ago, shortly after my father died. Wayne had recently taken over, and the company was already in trouble. I think Wayne looked down the road and didn’t want to saddle his son with the demise of Evergreen Timber. He’s never said so outright, but that’s the impression I’ve gotten over the years.”

  Judith gave Peggy an ironic look. “Nor did he want to admit you or even Bop might have done a better job. That’s really sad.”

  “Sad, but true,” Peggy said, biting off the words. “Excuse me, I’m going to try to catch Dr. Stevens before he leaves.”

  Kenneth laid back down in the bed. “Mom’s got it all together. I really admire her.”

  “That’s very sweet,” Judith remarked.

  “That’s very weird,” Renie said. “Say, what about Bev? Has she used up all her money?”

  Kenneth grimaced. “I guess so. She used it to finance her husband’s digs. Talk about pouring sand down a rat hole.”

  “That’s not fair,” Renie countered. “Tom Ohashi is doing important work.”

  Seeing an argument brewing, Judith intervened. “That’s good news about Nurse Fritz. I hope she can attend the funeral tomorrow if it means so much to her.”

  “Nurse Fritz,” Kenneth said in disgust. “She’s nothing but a money-grubber.”

  Judith was surprised. “How do you mean?”

  Kenneth laughed with a cynicism that ill-suited him. “She thought my grandfather would be so grateful to her for nursing him through his last illness that he’d leave her some kind of legacy. He didn’t. Somehow, Dr. Moss coaxed her into taking care of Grandmaman when she was sick with her gall bladder, but she wouldn’t come when Grandmaman sprained her ankle. I was really surprised to see her here yesterday.”

  Judith was silent for a moment, lost in thought. Fritz’s knowledge about Walter Burgess’s will obviously stemmed from personal interest. No doubt she had read the document after it had been filed for probate. Before Judith could comment further, Dr. Stevens appeared.

  “We’ll get out of the way,” Judith volunteered.

  Dr. Stevens smiled. “That’s fine. By the way, what are those tools doing outside the door?”

  With only a hint of embarrassment, Judith confided that she and Renie were going to try to get inside the top floor of the tower.

  “Why?” Kenneth asked, his eyes wide.

  “We like to keep ourselves occupied,” Renie responded.

  To Judith’s surprise, Dr. Stevens was looking almost as dumbfounded as Kenneth. “What do you think is up there?” the doctor asked in a voice that sounded strained.

  “We don’t know,” Judith said truthfully. “We’re just curious.”

  Dr. Stevens gave a single nod. “I see. Maybe I’ll join you as soon as I’ve checked out Kenneth here.”

  “Be our guest,” said Renie.

  Without speaking, the cousins trudged up the next two flights. They heard no odd sounds, felt no strange sensations. The bar across the solid oak door and the heavy padlock looked formidable. Judith went first, using the crowbar.

  “Oof,” she gasped. “This thing’s rusted to the wood.”

  “You try one side, I’ll use the hammer on the other,” Renie suggested.

  Judith pried and Renie swore. It occurred to Judith that her cousin couldn’t perform a manual task without swearing, a trait she’d inherited from her father, who had been a seagoing man.

  After the tenth or eleventh ear-scalding curse, Judith felt compelled to upbraid Renie. “Coz, please. These people are going to think we crawled out of the sewer.”

  Renie let out one more string of curses that would have made public access TV viewers blush. But even as she wound down, the bar came free at one end and fell to one side of the door.

  “Can I keep swearing?” Renie panted.

  Also out of breath, Judith could only nod and point to the axe. Renie waited a few moments to catch her breath, then let loose with a mighty swing.

  The axe made only a small dent. “We should have gotten a wedge from Jeepers,” Renie said. “Let’s try hitting the axe with the hammer.”

  It took several blows and a few more curses from Renie, but the door finally budged. Between gasps, Renie nodded to Judith. “Strut your stuff, coz.”

  Judith reached into the pocket of her beige slacks and removed a manicure kit. Dan McMonigle had had his own kind of life insurance: He had hidden away IRS notices, collection agency letters, promissory notes, and other incriminating pieces of paper so that Judith couldn’t find them and thus try to kill him. To preserve her sanity, which she’d succeeded in doing, and to save the house, which she’d failed to do, Judith had learned to pick locks and open safes. Like riding a bicycle, it was not a skill she would ever lose.

  The padlock was easier than she’d expected. The old Yale lock was more challenging, apparently because of the rust. It took Judith over three minutes to loosen the inner workings.

  The door creaked open, revealing a room like the other two in the tower, except that the dormer ceiling was at steep angles. There was another small fireplace, and the furnishings had been left intact. The air smelled stal
e and damp. Cobwebs and dust covered the single bed, the bureau, the dressing table, and two chairs.

  As Judith coughed, Renie sneezed. But the cousins approached the other door in the room and opened it. They assumed it led to an adjoining room, like the bedrooms on the second and third floors.

  They were wrong. It was a wardrobe, the far wall rounded to indicate that this was the other side of the tower. There were clothes hanging inside, moldy and dust-laden.

  Renie carefully pulled out a long navy blue dress. “The thirties,” she said in awe. “Ankle-length, lace collar at the neck. Goodness.”

  Judith reached for a more colorful garment, streaked with faded blues, reds, and yellows. “Haitian?” she breathed.

  Renie nodded. “Everything in here is sixty years old.”

  “So are we,” Judith remarked dryly. “Almost, anyway.”

  They turned back to the bedroom itself. On a small side table next to the bed was a tin plate, a tin cup, and several tin utensils.

  “Not the family silver,” Renie remarked.

  “Nor is this,” Judith said, bending down. “What do you think?” She held up a rusty chain that was attached to the wall.

  “Mother of God,” Renie whispered. “What went on here?”

  Dr. Stevens was at the door. “Have you found anything?” he asked in a not-too-steady voice.

  “Yes,” Judith said dumbly. “Come in.”

  With a tentative step, Dr. Stevens crossed the threshold. “Oh, my God!” he murmured. “What are you holding?”

  Judith jiggled the chain. “Do you think this was used on Suzette?”

  Dr. Stevens took two steps forward, staggered, and fell to the floor in a dead faint.

  EIGHTEEN

  “WE CAN’T CALL the family doctor when he is the family doctor,” Renie asserted as Judith bent over Dr. Stevens. “What’ll we do?”

  “He’ll come around,” Judith said hopefully, “unless you want to go fetch some smelling salts.”

  “No thanks,” Renie retorted, then gazed meaningfully at Judith. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”

  “I’m wondering why we didn’t think of it before,” Judith said in wonder. “Somehow, Theo Stevens is related to Suzette.”

  “Grandson,” Renie said. “What else?”

  Judith nodded as the doctor began to stir and groan. “I’m sure you’re right.” She touched Dr. Stevens’s forehead. “Are you okay? It’s us. The cousins.”

  Theo Stevens’s eyes began to open. He looked as if he were in pain. “My God,” he moaned. “I…what…why?”

  “Was she your grandmother?” Judith asked, supporting Dr. Stevens’s head with her arm.

  He gave a faint nod. “I shouldn’t have come to the tower.”

  “We shouldn’t have, either,” Judith admitted. “The Burgess clan won’t be happy about this.”

  “Damn the Burgess clan!” Dr. Stevens burst out. He sat up, his anger fueling his strength. “How could they? How could she?”

  “She?” Judith stared at the doctor. “Who? Mrs. Burgess?”

  Theo Stevens held his head. “Not Leota Burgess. Margaret Burgess. Walter’s first wife.”

  Judith gazed quickly around the room. There was fog outside the dirty windows; there was a different kind of fog inside, with its patina of dust and sad old memories. The cobwebs hung like the gauzy veil of a woman in mourning.

  “Let’s go downstairs,” Judith said hurriedly. “This place is playing havoc with my allergies. I’m all choked up.”

  “So am I,” Theo Stevens said in a plaintive voice. But he got to his feet and led the way down the steps, never looking back. “Kenneth is fine,” the doctor said in his professional voice as they passed the second-floor bedroom. “His nerves are acting up. He’s highly strung, like his sister, Caroline.”

  By the time they reached the library, Dr. Stevens seemed to have regained his composure. He apologized for passing out. “I knew,” he said with a shake of his head, “but I never saw that room until now. Aaron told me it was closed up. I guess I was afraid to see it for myself.”

  “Do you want to talk about it?” Judith asked after the doctor had settled in behind the desk and she was seated in one of the wingback chairs. “Shall I send for coffee—or something stronger?”

  “I’m all right,” the doctor replied. “And no, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Fine,” Judith said in a pleasant tone, then turned to Renie, who was sitting in the other wingback chair. “See if you agree, coz. Suzette—and I’m sorry I don’t know her last name…”

  “Saint-Etienne,” Dr. Stevens put in.

  “Thanks. Suzette Saint-Etienne came to this country in the early thirties, probably because the Americans had withdrawn from Haiti, and she—”

  “She came with Walter Burgess,” Dr. Stevens interrupted.

  “Really?” Judith said, wide-eyed. “Did they meet on one of his foreign travels?”

  “Yes.” Theo Stevens looked pained.

  “He must have taken to her,” Judith smiled. “Were they in love?”

  “He was,” the doctor replied. “Look, I told you I didn’t want to discuss…”

  Good-naturedly, Judith wagged a finger at him. “You don’t have to. I’m just putting forth my theory.”

  “You’re doing fine,” Renie asserted. “So Walter was smitten with the beautiful Suzette and brought her to Creepers, right?”

  “Exactly,” Judith agreed. “He gave her a position here as nanny to his children. Though perhaps there was only Peggy at first. I have to assume that Margaret Burgess was suspicious of the affair from the start. She must have hated Suzette, and after Wayne was born, I’m guessing that she had the passage between the master suites closed up. The marriage, in effect, was over.”

  “But no divorce,” Renie said. “That would have been scandalous in the thirties. Maybe Margaret was still in love with Walter. She must have been insane with jealousy. Literally.”

  Judith nodded, though she glanced at Dr. Stevens out of the corner of her eye. “I imagine. Who wouldn’t be, in her position? She was a young woman with a faithless husband. Her social position was secure, but he was in love with another woman. Not only was she of an inferior class, but she was foreign—and black. I can imagine how galling all that was to Margaret. Like so many people of her generation, particularly, of her social standing, Margaret must have been a bigot.”

  Judith glanced at Theo Stevens, who seemed to bristle at the comment. He remained silent, however, his face set in a hard line.

  “The final blow must have come when Suzette got pregnant,” Renie mused. “I wonder if she flaunted her condition in front of the mistress. Maybe there was a terrible scene. Margaret must have gone to Walter and demanded that Suzette be sent packing.”

  “No.” Dr. Stevens spoke quietly but firmly. “It didn’t happen that way. Or so Dr. Moss told me.”

  “What did happen?” Judith asked in a mild voice.

  Dr. Stevens’s shoulders slumped. He took a deep breath, edged forward in the chair, and folded his hands on the desk. “Margaret imprisoned Suzette in that tower room. It was a prison—you saw that for yourselves. Suzette stayed there until her baby was born. Then—” The doctor’s voice broke. “—Margaret murdered her.”

  “Dear God,” Judith gasped. “I’d never have guessed that.”

  Theo Stevens sat back in the chair. “According to Dr. Moss, Margaret strangled her. Suzette was weak from childbirth, and couldn’t fight back. Margaret was a tall, strong woman, and motivated by hatred and jealousy. The baby was given to Dr. Moss to do with what he would. He and his wife raised the child, and changed his name to Stevens.”

  “Saint-Etienne,” Renie murmured. “St. Stephen or Steven.”

  “Yes.” Dr. Stevens smiled faintly. “It wasn’t easy for a half-black boy to grow up in the all-white neighborhood that existed around Creepers sixty years ago. Dr. Moss had honored Suzette’s request that he be named Toussaint, for Toussaint L’
Ouverture, the great Haitian patriot. The other children called him Toast—for more than one reason.”

  “Kids are so cruel,” Judith remarked. “What happened to him later in life?”

  “Dr. and Mrs. Moss decided to send him away to military school,” Theo Stevens explained. “They thought it might be easier on him. It was, and he fell in love with the military way of life. He joined the army and rose to the rank of major before dropping dead of a heart attack at the age of thirty-eight, the same age I am now. As you’ve no doubt guessed, he was my father. Dr. Moss felt he had to tell me about my history, especially if I was going to practice here.”

  “I assumed you were the son,” Judith said. “Let’s see—you were fourteen. That’s a very bad age to lose a parent.”

  Dr. Stevens’s smile was ironic. “It is. At the time, we were stationed at Wiesbaden where I’d learned to speak German. My father was just four months short of putting in his twenty years, which meant that my mother didn’t get his full retirement. We moved back here after he died. It was a real shock in some ways. Growing up in Germany on the base, I was fairly insulated. Not that there still wasn’t prejudice—but as an army brat, there was also a sense of family. Except for the Mosses and my maternal grandmother, who was quite elderly, my mother and I had to start all over. It was hard. I was just entering high school, and though we’d moved into a racially mixed neighborhood, I was bused to a school that was virtually all white. It wasn’t easy fitting in, especially since I’d grown up in a foreign country. I wasn’t ‘cool’—I was merely strange.”

  “A stranger in your own land,” Judith murmured.

  “I’ve lived most of my life that way,” Theo Stevens said ruefully, “including out here by Sunset Cliffs. Maybe that’s why I’ll stay on. Not only do I owe Aaron a huge debt, but my real roots are here. I’m determined to finally fit in somewhere. Being of mixed race, at least in my experience, means you don’t belong as black or white. You feel like you’re in some never-never land.”

  “Was your mother mixed, too?” Renie asked.