“Good night to you, Alice. But before you go, just tell me one more thing.”
I paused, my hand on the doorknob.
“The way I understand it, you make a living changing kitty litter. So just tell me,” he said. “Who the hell are you to go around interrogating us—about anything?”
I closed the door quietly behind me.
Chapter 9
The alarm went off—low but abrasive. I reached under my pillow, where I had hidden the miniature clock, and searched wildly for the off button. It seemed to take forever to locate the right little switch; the damn thing went on buzzing and brinngging and chiming. Meanwhile, I kept the clock smothered by the pillow, fearing that the noise would wake Beth next door.
Finally I got the thing turned off. I vowed to fling the precious brass travel alarm clock and its black leather case into the creek first chance I got. It had been a gift from an old friend who’d passed through New York last year, her way of thanking me for showing her the town. At least it had done its job. I’d wanted to get up around six in the morning again in order to catch Mrs. Wallace alone in the kitchen.
As I was dressing, a funny image came to me: my scrappy, paranoid cat, Pancho, running from room to room. I was hit by a sudden wave of guilt at not having made a single call to Basillio or Mrs. Oshrin in New York. My poor kitties must have thought I’d abandoned them. I would call to check on them later in the morning, I decided. Right now I had to prepare myself for the talk with Mrs. Wallace. Talk, interview, interrogation . . . whatever one wanted to call it, I knew Mrs. Wallace would be a fairly tough nut to crack. She was stubborn and mercurial and shrewd, but I wasn’t placing any bets that she’d killed Will Gryder just because of an argument over Hungarian goulash or the best way to roll pastry dough.
I sat on the edge of the bed to pull on my boots. I would have to be a little more careful in my dealings with everyone in the house. Mat Hazan had become very angry with me near the end of our conversation. Who the hell are you? He’d wanted to know what I thought I was doing, asking questions, investigating, snooping—who had given me the authority. No one had, of course. So I had to be more . . . well, if not circumspect, then certainly not confrontational, either. But then, Mathew Hazan had no idea that Roz and Ben and I had almost been killed—murdered—by some demonic puppeteer and his toy camel. Hazan had described Gryder’s murder as a “horror,” but obviously he didn’t know even half the story.
The chirping of the birds on the tree limb outside my window had intensified. Between the birds outside and the dynasty of mice inside, if my two beasts were up here they’d probably think they’d died and gone to cat heaven. No stirrings from any of the other bedrooms, though. It was all quiet on the second floor. Then there came a faint thudding sound from below. It was a dull, rhythmic chop chop chop—at one and the same time familiar, frightening, and inevitable. Even though I knew in my head it had to be Mrs. Wallace doing something or other in the kitchen, my heart and intuition were saying that everyone in this old house was in danger of being murdered—chop chop chop—one by one, or two by two, or . . .
Oh, my. I had been in Massachusetts only for a few days and already I was slipping into a Lizzie Borden mode. I began to laugh at myself, and tried to remember the old bit of doggerel:
Lizzie Borden took an ax,
Gave her mother forty whacks.
When she found what she had done,
Gave her father forty-one.
Or something like that. I knew I didn’t have the lines exactly right, but I was close enough. I remember thinking, as I walked down the stairs, that perhaps some perverse young playwright would one day do something interesting with the character of Lizzie Borden. I wouldn’t mind being offered the lead in that one.
I had already rehearsed my opening line to Mrs. Wallace. I was going to say, oh so sweetly, “I’ve just been waiting for a chance to have another one of your scrumptuous omelets, Mrs. Wallace.”
But when I walked into the kitchen to find her mercilessly severing the heads off countless bunches of turnips, carrots, and leeks, she announced immediately, “Not serving breakfast yet, dearie.” I detected the slightest hint of a smirk at the corners of her mouth. “There’s hot coffee if you want it,” she added.
Mrs. Wallace was a tall, substantial woman, perhaps still on the near side of sixty. Obviously she had once been shapely, but her figure had broadened. She was wearing a hooded sweatshirt that read BERKSHIRE MUSIC FESTIVAL over a long housedress. On her feet were furlined, high-back slippers over thick woolen socks.
“Muffins’ll be out in a minute,” she said, the slightest bit placating. “You can have one of those if you’re hungry.”
I poured myself a cup of coffee and searched the table for sugar, settling for a packet of the brownish “natural” kind I sometimes saw in the supermarket. I stole a quick glance at the cook, who was still busy chopping and peeling.
How should I proceed? I had to follow up on Mat Hazan’s comments about the cook’s hatred for Will Gryder. But he might just have been making a sardonic joke. Suppose he was only getting back at me for my suspicions about the women in the quartet? Suppose he was simply trying to make a fool of me?
The coffee was delicious and warming. I decided on the direct approach. “I understand, Mrs. Wallace, that you and Will Gryder didn’t get along,” I said, stirring my drink.
“Is that what you understand, miss?” she retorted at once. “Now, what little birdy told you that?”
When I didn’t answer she went back to her chopping, but she soon stopped, looking down at a potato she had already quartered.
“Well, the little birdy was right,” she said after a minute. “We didn’t get along in the least. Because he was a jackass. A troublemaker. The man complained about everything—everything. He didn’t like this soup, he didn’t like that bread, the tenderloin was overdone, the duckling was too fatty, the coffee was too weak—not at all like they make it in Italy . . . oh, nossir!”
She had started coring green and yellow peppers by then, heedlessly tossing their seedy innards around. So Mathew Hazan had not been joking: Will had made an enemy in Mrs. Wallace.
“Well,” she went on, a bit more reflective now, “he was a handsome thing—I’ll give him that. And those girls were crazy about him. Be sure of that. But that doesn’t change what he was: a vain, arrogant, violent man. Like I said, a jackass.”
The word violent jarred me. Miranda had said that Beth had been violent toward Will. But no one had characterized Will that way. Indeed, all I had heard about him seemed to call forth a pacific, pleasure-seeking man. Childish perhaps, willful perhaps, even promiscuous. But not violent.
I said as much to Mrs. Wallace, and asked, as gently as I could, if she was sure she wasn’t exaggerating a bit.
“Exaggerating!” I’d obviously managed to offend her. “You don’t know what happened here, dearie.”
“Tell me in what way he was violent,” I asked. “Exactly what did he do?”
She smiled ruefully and laid her paring knife aside.
“What would you say if I told you that on his second day here I saw him abusing Mr. Polikoff in the most terrible way?”
“And what way was that?”
“Why, he cursed poor Mr. Polikoff seven ways till sundown. And then he hit him across the face. Not once—three times—hard! And I saw it all. I was right here in this kitchen and they were out behind the storage shed.”
“What were they arguing about?”
“Did I say they argued?”
“But they must have been quarreling about something if—”
“Look, missy, I’m telling you what I saw. Exactly what I saw. I don’t know anything about an argument. I mind my own business.”
It was an unexpected revelation. And an improbable story. I just didn’t know what to make o
f it. But then, why would the woman lie?
Mrs. Wallace went in search of her favorite stew pot. I heard her humming under her breath. I finished my coffee and walked over to place my empty cup in the sink.
“Those muffins are ready now!” she called from the pantry, sounding like a dotty old granny in a TV ad.
“Thank you, no,” I said.
“They’re mighty good, dearie. Believe me.”
“I’m sure they are, Mrs. Wallace. Thank you for the coffee.”
***
I went into the still dark living room and sat in one of the big armchairs, drawing my legs up beneath me. I really hadn’t had quite a full night’s sleep. Before I knew it, I had fallen off.
A slammed door woke me. Mrs. Wallace had gone out. I sat up in the room, now quite light, with the sun struggling through the faded curtains. It was five minutes past eight. No one else had come down yet, but I could hear the shower going in one of the upstairs bathrooms.
The phone in the alcove was too inviting to resist. I sat down there fully intending to call Basillio in New York. But instead I dialed the local number I’d been given yesterday and stuck in the pocket of my jeans—Ford Donaldson’s home phone.
After a few rings, a gruff voice came on the line. It didn’t sound like Donaldson, but it was. I guessed that he was one of those bad morning risers who are difficult to deal with before they’ve had coffee and a shave.
“It’s Alice Nestleton,” I said softly. “Would you like me to call back later?”
“No. What can I do for you, Alice?”
I repeated exactly what Mrs. Wallace had told me about Will Gryder and the scene between him and Ben Polikoff.
There was a lengthy silence. I thought I heard some rustling noises. Was he getting out of bed now? Throwing on his clothes, excited by what I’d just said?
“Hello? Are you there, Ford?”
“Yes,” he said distractedly. “Yes, I’m here.” Then his tone became highly formal. “That was good information, good work. Thank you.”
Another extended silence fell over the line. Just as I was about to speak, he said, “I see you’re taking your part in this investigation very seriously.” And again I heard muffled sounds and movement.
“You mean I’m taking it a bit too seriously,” I said, becoming angry. “You really don’t think what I told you has any value whatsoever.”
“Not at all. It might turn out to be very valuable.”
“Then what—” It was then that I distinctly heard another voice in the background, a woman’s voice.
Oh, dear. Ford was in bed with someone. And I’d interrupted their early-morning revelry. I brought my thoughts back around in time to hear him saying something about the various elements of the case, and how I mustn’t jump to any conclusions.
“I’m not saying one of them didn’t do it, Alice. But there is something I want you to think about.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Remember Will Gryder’s body when you discovered it. That chisel was driven deep into his chest. To do something like that requires a powerful hand. And it requires a tough and brutal nature—experience with violence, in other words. Now if Will had been shot to death, it would be a different ball game. It doesn’t take a lot to pull a trigger—a little anger, a little too much to drink, maybe even a little curiosity. But to take a chisel and bury it in the breastplate of a living man—into a beating heart—well, do you see a violinist doing something like that, Alice? Or a gourmet cook?”
I wondered whether this gruesome disquisition had been offered to impress me or the lady at the other end. If this was the kind of pillow talk Lieutenant Donaldson enjoyed, he was even stranger than I’d initially thought.
“Well, thank you, Ford. That’s all food for thought, indeed.”
“Be in touch, Alice,” he said, and hung up instantaneously.
I went back into the kitchen and helped myself to more coffee. I’d completely forgotten about calling Basillio. And I ate two muffins.
Chapter 10
After that peculiar phone conversation with Ford Donaldson, I spent the remainder of the morning in a dreamy sort of state. It was almost as if I had determined to have some peaceful time in the country even if I had to steal it—even if I had to pretend that the awful things going on around the quartet weren’t really happening.
I spent some enjoyable minutes watching Lulu the Scottish Fold cat, who was seated on one of the wide window ledges in the living room staring out at the birds. She was making tiny guttural noises, imitating their babble. I don’t think it ever occurred to her that she was their natural enemy, their predator.
Watching cats watch something else has always been one of my pleasures. I have this rather eccentric belief that when you see a cat staring at something, say a bird in a tree, the cat has the ability to also see what has transpired to form the scene. In other words, not only is the cat seeing the bird in the tree at that instant, he is also capable of seeing the bird fly onto the branch, even though that happened in the past.
I once told my theory to a veterinarian. He laughingly counseled me to keep such views to myself, lest my friends conspire to place me in a psychiatric facility. Well, let the world scoff. I knew Lulu was seeing time past as well as time present as she looked out of the window. In fact, I know for certain that the reason cats are such spectacular hunters is simply that they can determine the direction of their prey’s next move, since they have the power to see into the past and discover the direction of the prey’s previous moves. It gets kind of complicated from there, my theory. But no matter—Lulu didn’t seem to give a damn about hunting, anyway.
Later in the morning I played the part of the audience while Darcy, seated at the piano, played backup for Beth, who was having great fun drinking Heineken from the bottle and belting out a medley of Bessie Smith songs.
“You wouldn’t think a white lady from Denver could get down like this, would you?” Darcy said to me over her shoulder. “I bet you can sing too, Alice.”
“Not me,” I assured her. “I sound like a bag of rusty nails.”
At one point Miranda drifted in and cattily requested her favorite Bessie tune: “If I Have to Play Second Fiddle, I Don’t Want to Play at All.”
Mathew Hazan dropped in after an hour session of weight-lifting in the attic. He drank Perrier from a quart bottle and entertained the group with some gossip about Zubin Mehta.
Then, just after lunch—rabbit stew, endive salad, key lime tart—Roz and Ben came home from the hospital.
***
As expected, the moment when the Polikoffs walked in was a happy one for the house. Roz and Ben were bruised but intact. There were two white gauze patches on Ben’s face and one on his hand. Their friends and colleagues rushed forward to greet and welcome them home, hugs and kisses all around. I made not a move toward them.
I felt a palpable sense of danger emanating from the two of them, as if any vehicle they occupied at any time would call down upon it the wrath of some anonymous killer. In fact, my feelings for the two were so negative that I gathered Lulu up from the windowsill and held her fast, as a kind of psychic protection.
As I watched the circle of friends, I was struck by the passion of their interaction. Gone was the petty squabbling. Gone was all the tentativeness. For the first time I saw what was really there: four handsome, mature women at the peak of their creative lives who needed one another to perform, and two of their male associates who needed the women for their emotional and financial survival. I saw the Riverside String Quartet functioning in their mundane, everyday life as harmoniously as they did in their musical life.
Ben Polikoff was smiling at me. “It’s nice to see you again, Alice. I’m so happy you’re all right.”
I dropped the cat back onto her perch and started to wa
lk into the circle of friends. But I couldn’t quite do it; I backed off. I still felt very much the intruder, the uninvited guest. I had a very chilling thought then: Could it be that Will Gryder had been murdered because he’d tried to penetrate this circle of intimacy? Had he taken some fatal liberty with this insular group of people? It was sobering to think so. I nodded pleasantly at Ben and sat down next to Lulu.
“I propose a celebration!” Mathew Hazan shouted joyfully. “A celebration because we’ve been reunited. And because it isn’t every day our first violinist comes home from the hospital looking better than when she went in.”
Roz leaned over and kissed Hazan’s lips.
“You are up to this, aren’t you, darling?” Ben asked her, sliding his hand around her tiny waist.
“Oh, phooey, Ben. Of course I am. Let’s have some fun.”
“Goody!” Miranda said. “Can we have a terrible party, Mat—like in Tender Is the Night?”
“We’ll come close,” Hazan replied. “But we are still in Massachusetts, you know.”
***
The house was buzzing with activity. Ben Polikoff waited until Mat was finished with his phone call to the liquor store and then cornered him.
“Maybe you ought to slow down a little, Mat. It’s kind of short notice for a party, isn’t it?”
“Nonsense!” Hazan said jauntily. “A party is a party. We’ll rope in some of the crowd at Smith. And get that poet whatsisname who lives in the town. Miranda has some dancer friends in Lee who’re probably sitting twirling their thumbs and would love to come out here. Whoever wants to come, will come.”
Darcy sailed by at that moment and sent up a cheer at Hazan’s words.
“We’ll need some music,” Hazan went on. “What should we do, Darcy?”
“Anything but rap!” Roz called as she climbed the stairs. “I want there to be lots of dancing at this shindig.”
“Reggae,” said Beth, who had come through the room carrying a newly ironed white shirt. “Definitely reggae.”
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