by Ann Ripley
Thankfully, yesterday, the garden editor she had been talking to for months finally threw her a crumb by offering to buy an article on ferns and pay her $300 for it. Bill hadn’t been able to tear her away from the computer since. She was slipping fern plants furtively into the house—strange varieties he had never seen before. By the time the article was completed, he would know more about ferns than he ever cared to, and possess an inordinate amount of them, probably about $300 worth. Both of them knew it was a small first step toward the career she wanted.
Staring out the window, he said, “I suppose I could ask Hoffman to my neighborhood poker group; I’m the host in a couple of weeks.”
“You lucky sonofabitch: I haven’t played poker since I was in high school.”
Bill grinned. “I believe that. We met once already at our house. Had a lotta laughs. From then on, Louise has called it the Giggling Men’s Club.”
Paschen chortled. “You’re kidding. I love it. I bet you play rock crusher and shit like that.”
“You got it,” said Bill.
“I’m jealous.”
“Come out and play sometime. Nice bunch of guys. It’d do you good.”
“You know I’ll never take the time. But how about inviting Hoffman?”
Bill shifted the phone to his other ear and put his feet up on the edge of the desk. “Actually, they’re too nice for this Hoffman guy. On second thought, I’d rather ask him out to a dinner party. We can invite a combination of people, including some neighbors. I know what you want.”
“What do I want?” said Paschen.
“A nice, loose party for this guy to operate in. You want me to decide how big a bastard he is, what’s his capacity for embarrassing, what’s his capacity for becoming part of a first-class scandal, what’s his capacity for ruining the chiefs chances for a second term.”
“That’s it in a nutshell,” said Paschen, sounding pleased.
17
Bill
ONCE BILL REMEMBERED WHAT WAS BOTHERING him, he closed up shop at work and retrieved his Camry in the almost deserted underground State Department parking lot. Distracted with his own thoughts, he barely noted that he was passing most of the other cars on the crowded George Washington Parkway. Then a dark car loomed on his left, and with a start he realized it might be a policeman arresting him for speeding. But it was not. It was a proud-chinned young man in a Porsche, who paused a minisecond alongside Bill, gave his sedan a sidelong glance, and then spurted ahead. Bill smiled and relaxed his foot on the gas pedal.
He pulled into the carport and hurried up the front walk, a tumble of oak leaves crunching underfoot as he went. He frowned. Although he and Louise loved their wooded lot, he would have preferred something a little neater. Tonight he would get out with a broom and sweep the leaves from the walkway.
As he approached the front door, he heard a faint “yoo hoo” from the studio. He opened the door and entered the studio. There sat Louise, looking a lot friendlier than she had for the past couple of days. Her long chestnut hair was tousled, and she wore her winter season outfit: gray turtleneck, and garden pants tucked into her boots. She was sitting at her computer, books and papers spread out on the table. On the wail in back of her was a daybed with Navajo throw, and within reach was a small black woodstove, with embers glowing. On it sat her favorite beat-up aluminum coffeepot that she swore made better coffee than his Chemex. Her coffee mug stood near her left hand. On the other side of the room were two easy chairs, looking out the wide-windowed door at the end of the studio.
Without getting up, she reached her arms out to him. “Hello, darling. Give a little kiss to your working wife.” He went over and kissed her lightly on the lips, then pulled away from her embrace.
“It’s getting wild around here,” he grumbled. “The sidewalk is going to disappear completely with all the leaves you’ve thrown around this yard.” He saw her expression change to dismay and felt a pang of regret for his gruffness.
“What’s wrong, Bill?” Her eyes were round with concern. “Is everything all right at work?”
Bill sat on the nearby day bed. Louise swiveled around in her chair to see him. He sighed a heavy sigh but didn’t look at his wife. He was hunched forward, elbows on knees, holding his hat in his hands. Hat in hand. How many times does a man plead, hat in hand, for one thing or another? “Louise,” he said, “I am getting concerned, and I didn’t even realize I was.”
She looked alarmed. “About what?”
At last he raised his eyes to meet hers. “I’m worried about you.” She looked as if she were going to object, and he put up a warning hand. “No, don’t say anything yet. Just let me get my thoughts together.” He looked at the stove. “That stove sure gives off a lot of heat; I’m roasting.” He shrugged out of his coat and folded it beside him, putting his hat on top of the pile.
“You know what’s happened before with you; you’ve got yourself involved in things….”He spread his hands, as if she would immediately know what he meant.
“Involuntarily,” said Louise, her mouth set firm. “I have never meant to get involved. I’ve been in a lot more danger those times I was helping you.”
She was right. It was the agency’s belief that with a married undercover agent, it got two for the price of one. Louise had helped him on occasion, once with surveillance, a couple times as a courier, continually as a deft hostess who brought the right people to their dinner table where he could learn things. And once, in Turkey, he had put her in real danger, not realizing how her curiosity would overwhelm her caution.
He decided he had better change course. “Now look, honey, I don’t mean it’s been your fault, your doing, that got you into situations, but sometimes they were dangerous. It’s when you get too involved—well, take the Turk, that time … or even that young moving man, for instance.”
“You take him,” she snapped. “I don’t want him.”
“Now, Louise, I didn’t mean any harm.”
“So, what is your point?” Louise sat very straight in her chair, her eyes an angry barrier. “That I’d better stay out of trouble, right? Never inquire about how someone else lives—what harm can that do?”
“Louise, you’re already involved in something. That’s what I’m worried about: Those body parts you dragged into our yard—you’re involved whether you know you are or not.”
Louise sat back in her chair. “Have you been talking to Nora? You sound just like her. She’s really spooked about that woman who was murdered. Has some kind of premonition of evil, and she even writes poems about it.”
Then, with no bidding, the hollow terror she’d experienced in Nora’s living room that day came back to her in a rush. She sat unsteadily on her chair, giddy as a spinning top. Again, she could feel that heated, buried-alive feeling that nearly made her run from that room, Nora’s ominous gray figure, standing there like a blind soothsayer, warning of approaching evil.
She reached back and put a steadying hand on the table, hoping Bill wouldn’t notice, and tried to shut down those terrifying memories.
She had handled it then, hadn’t she, and she didn’t need to dredge it up again. Nora’s poetic predictions were just that. Practical people like her didn’t rule their lives with the hunches of poets with extrasensory perception.
To her relief, her voice, when she spoke, sounded normal. “And then,” she told Bill, “there’s those shadowy figures that she sees around our house—”
Bill jolted forward. “Around our house?”
“Bill, wait: I’m not sure if that’s real, or just her imagination—she has an imagination that won’t quit. In fact, I’m a little worried about Nora. She’s so otherworldly that—”
“Shadowy figures around our house, come on! When? Where around our house? Why in hell didn’t she tell us? I thought that woman was smart.”
Louise put a hand on his knee. “She did—she told me just the other day. But don’t worry: It happened way back, around the time Sam Rosen thought there
were kids in the yard. Well, Sam’s lights are on every night now, so I’m sure we’re much safer. I’m feeling better every day they don’t find the killer, because that means the crime is more and more distanced from us. You know what Mike Geraghty thinks—it’s an un-solvable kind of murder. It’s probably somebody we picked up in Washington.” Her eyes widened and she put a hand over her mouth and then burst out laughing. She laughed hysterically, rocking up and down in her chair.
Bill had to chuckle in spite of himself. He reached over and took her nearest hand while she recovered. “I’m glad you can make a joke out of it. I just wish you had more of a sense of danger.” He squeezed her hand and looked at her with pleading eyes. He made his voice very smooth and calm. “Louise, this is not really funny, although what you just said is funny. I love you and I don’t want you to be in danger.”
“Then what do you want me to do?”
“Well, first of all, just consider yourself out of this thing.” He put a warning hand up. “Don’t try to think it out. Let’s not have you investigating. Let Geraghty—Mike Geraghty as you now call him—run with the ball. I’m also worried that Janie may be snooping around with that boy, but that’s probably all right, because I sense it’s more the boy-girl thing than a real investigation. And that boy looks fairly sensible.”
In a quiet voice Louise said, “That ‘boy’ is almost voting age, and his name is Chris.”
“Chris. Whatever. But let’s get back to you. I want you to do some simple precautionary things: Stay in phone contact with me. Don’t take chances. Don’t even talk about this to the neighbors any more—”
“Bill.” He could tell she was getting angry again.
“Don’t get mad at me, sweetie.” He reached over and grabbed both hands this time. “I love you. I don’t know what I’d do without you. I want you to close your eyes—go ahead, close them. Now, think back on that woman’s body. It was hacked up with a power saw. Did Geraghty bother to tell you that? Blood went all over the place, somewhere. So what kind of a person do you think did that? It’s a crazy person who obviously doesn’t have any respect for life. If by some quirk he happens to come from around here, I don’t want him zeroing in on my wife just because she happened by accident to discover the body.” He raised her hands to his lips and kissed each one.
The expression in Louise’s eyes had changed from anger to tenderness. She leaned toward him. “Oh, Bill. I do love you. I’m really not doing any of those things. I’m not even very social. And from now on, I’ll just be sitting here writing about ferns. Trying to meet my deadline with the publisher.” She shook her head. “I am not a nosy housewife. I don’t intend to let my life be that limited again. I’m working. Not only that, I’m getting paid.”
“Sweetie,” said Bill, and pulled her over to him and sat her on his lap. He gave her a tender kiss. She returned it with interest, and they fell over onto the narrow bed and grappled, laughing.
Louise said, “I don’t think there’s enough room, and your coat’s in the way, but I certainly enjoy making up after a fight with you.” And she pulled him closer.
Bill nuzzled against that special place in her neck below the jawline, and was just going lower when he thought of something. “I suppose Janie’s coming home.”
They pulled apart a little. “Yes, but maybe we could hear her coming when she steps on those crunchy leaves.”
He groaned and sat up. “Knowing Janie, she won’t make any noise.”
She sat beside him. “And there is the reality of starvation,” she said, rubbing her stomach. “I don’t know about you, but I haven’t eaten anything but a Granny Smith all day. I need to start dinner.”
He held on to her arm, preventing her from getting up. “Before you go, tell me now what happened when they tried to hypnotize you.”
Louise slumped back comfortably against him. “Oh, I don’t know,” she said, in a dismissing tone. “Dr. Gordon essentially told me I was a failure as a subject. I politely told him to shove it.”
“Louise, you don’t talk that way.”
“I didn’t say it, I just intimated it.” She looked up at him. “Are you disappointed in me?”
“Disappointed? For not going under? Maybe a little. But I don’t blame you for it.” He smiled. “After all, it’s your subconscious.”
She smiled and poked him gently in the ribs.
He was serious when he continued; “But that’s the nub of it: The killer, if he’s around here anywhere, might believe, just like the police, that you know something you’re not remembering. So promise me: Don’t tell anyone they tried to hypnotize you.”
“Too late, I’m afraid.”
“Oh,” he groaned. “Louise, Louise! Who?”
“Only Nora and Jan and Mary. They phoned; I had to tell them. But I also told them it was no go.” She sighed. “There’s one thing that would keep me safe.”
“What?”
“Another dog.” She smiled up at him.
He rolled his eyes. “Oh, no, not another long-term commitment to a pooch. Dogs are like babies, but worse: They never grow up so you can have a decent conversation with them.”
“Bill,” she pleaded.
“But maybe a dog would be good. We could get a great big monster with a scary bark.”
Louise hugged him. “Oh, thank you! You know I’ve wanted a new one ever since Scruffy died! We’ll get one you like. He doesn’t have to be as wiggly and obsequious as Scruffy was.”
He picked up his hat off the top of his neat pile and twirled it around his forefinger. “Now, Louise, since I’m yielding on the dog question, how would you like to do me a big favor?”
“What?”
“A dinner party for about thirty people … and soon.”
18
Peter
PETER WALKED INTO THE LIVING ROOM, IMMEDIATELY drawn to the gold-and-white brilliance on the couch. He narrowed his eyes so he could focus more closely. His wife, Phyllis, sat with her legs tucked under her. To think he had once thought her chic. In fact, she was considered chic by most people, all the more so when he took her away from Washington for trips to New York or Paris. Tonight she wore white leather pants with a matte finish. Her sweater was a white angora confection sprinkled with gold objects of some kind. He knew he had paid dearly for it.
It had lain out on her bed one day and he had reached down and flipped the I. Magnin price tag over in his big hand, then bent down to be sure he was seeing correctly. “Holy Christ. Eighteen hundred dollars for a mere sweater? You could buy a designer gown for that.”
“Darling, it is a designer sweater. It’s a Sophie. You know how much Sophies cost.” At the time she said this, she had been doing aerobic exercises on the Ultrasuede mat in the bathroom next to the Jacuzzi. She didn’t even bother to escalate it to an argument, just kept on sawing away at her imagined cellulite excesses with muscles already too thin and hard.
Tonight he noticed something different about her hair. It had been colored this time not with the usual blond coloring, but a concoction with red and orange highlights.
It made her clash all the more against the refined Mies van der Rohe couch she occupied. He had chosen that couch, and everything else here. It was a tribute to understated good taste. She clashed not only with the couch but with the whole place, the pale marble-lined bathrooms, this room, with its white, taupe, and walnut coloration and its towering two stories of glass, even the kitchen, where, extraordinarily enough, her brassiness outshone the copper hood and hanging copper pots.
Just over a year ago, when he’d bought the place, he considered Phyllis gave it just the right amount of extra color, extra spark. They were newly married then. He had thought this marriage might be different. But it had gone sour, just like the other two.
As he stared at Phyllis, he realized she was sitting just the way Kristina had been sitting the night he had strangled her. Two women more different had never been born. One, gentle and loving—the one he had killed. Why hadn’t he …
“What’s the matter with you now, Peter?” Phyllis’s shrill words broke in, and he started. “You’re just standing there, staring at me.” She glowered at him. “You are so strange lately. What’s with you?”
“Sorry, Phyllis.” He had better be careful or he’d lose it. This was no time to lose it. “My thoughts were a million miles away.” No, he had to do better than that. Phyllis was a suspicious sort with a woman’s hypersensitive antennae; he used to admire her for that; he didn’t want it turned against him now. With a nonchalant stride he crossed the room and joined her on the couch.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I was thinking about our invitation.”
“To the Eldridges.”
“Yes. Did you know he’s with the State Department, EUR?”
“And EUR means exactly what?” She reached out a well-manicured hand to him, friendlier now that he was sharing the couch with her. He took it and absentmindedly examined it while they talked, then focused in on it closely. Examined its carefully tanned skin, its absence of freckles, its absence of innocence. He caught himself, dropped her hand, and felt a sudden sweat. His thoughts were out of control. Some fucking psychiatrist would probably tell him he was suffering from the Macbeth syndrome.
He’d had a couple of lapses like this lately, and he needed to do something about them. This was no time for lapses. There were lots of parties where he had to show himself off, a meeting with the president, two or three appointments where he was supposed to kiss ass with congressmen on the Hill. And then of course he had to manage all the little details necessary to keep the murder hidden, including Kristina’s mail, which was a hell of a lot more voluminous than he’d expected. Here he thought she had been a loner, and instead she had friends writing to her from all over the world. Handling a dead woman’s mail was a shitty job, and every time he laboriously answered a letter, it depressed him a little—and scared him, too, for any time he could make a misstep.