Death by Surprise

by Carolyn Hart

  I moved toward the back of the library and stood by the fireplace and looked moodily into the fire. It crackled and hissed, smelling comfortably of hickory. But I wasn’t comfortable. I wanted to go home.

  Did I?

  My apartment would be chilly, no fire laid, no eggshell thin china cups holding superb coffee. Greg probably wouldn’t call or come by. I hadn’t, after all, given him much reason to.

  “K.C., will you pour, please?”

  Grace’s voice, so perfectly civilized, so right, brought me back to the room. I turned and crossed to the coffee service and began to pour. Amanda brought in a platter of cookies.

  As everyone settled into chairs or on couches. Mother began to talk.

  And I thought, oh wow, this is going to tear it for Kenneth.

  “. . . and I felt if we talked it over, among ourselves, we might come up with a solution. Kenneth, of course, can tell us what our rights are legally.”

  Coffee spilled over the brim of the cup, splashing onto the saucer Edmond held.

  “Hold up, K.C.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Here, Miss K.C. I’ll take that cup. Pour Mr. Edmond a fresh one.” As Amanda took the sloshing saucer, she bent near to me and said softly, “Don’t you pay her no never mind, Miss K.C. Your poppa he told me once, he said, ‘Miss K.C. will be the best lawyer of all, Amanda, you wait and see.’”

  “It doesn’t matter.” But I couldn’t resist the bitter comment, “It’s so damn typical.”

  Grace had called and asked me to come, even gone so far as to say I approached problems like my father, but when she needed legal advice, why, apparently only men counted as lawyers. Obviously, too, she hadn’t talked to Kenneth earlier. He looked stricken, then he rallied, “Aunt Grace, I’d be glad to help, but I’m afraid I don’t know what you are talking about.”

  Grace can be obtuse sometimes. She said impatiently, “Why, Kenneth, of course you know. It’s that Boutelle woman and that awful article she is writing about all of us. She told me she had talked to you.”

  For an instant, Kenneth looked grim and angry. Then he cleared his throat. “Oh. Of course. That reporter woman. I didn’t remember the name.”

  “But Kenneth . . .” Mother began.

  “As a matter of fact,” he interrupted hastily, “I talked to her very briefly. Very briefly. I declined to be interviewed. I could tell it was a scandal-mongering kind of thing and I told her I wasn’t interested.”

  A child of three could have seen that Kenneth was lying. Megan was no child. Her narrow face looked suddenly pinched and old.

  Grace continued to be dense. “But Kenneth, I thought . . .”

  “I warned her that the Carlisle family would not tolerate a libelous article.”

  Grace brightened. “So we can force her not to print it?”

  “No,” I said quietly, taking pity on Kenneth. “There’s no way, Grace. However, we can sue the socks off her if we don’t like it.”

  “K.C.,” Grace said sharply, “the point is, we don’t want it printed.”

  “I understand what you want, Grace. The point is, there isn’t a damned thing you can do to stop her.”

  “It’s blackmail,” Edmond said harshly.

  Everyone looked at him.

  “It’s blackmail, that’s all there is to it,” he said again.

  “We could buy the magazine,” Sue suggested.

  Edmond nodded. “It’s going to come down to that.”

  “What good will that do?” Travis asked. “She can just sell the damned article somewhere else.”

  Edmond shook his head. “Oh no, we will use a dummy company to buy the magazine, then instruct the editor to buy the article. When it is in his possession, we will destroy it. She cannot legally sell it elsewhere.”

  I poured myself a cup of coffee and thought what a wonderful thing wealth is. Edmond was so confident of what money could buy, but I had known a few people in journalism. The editor of Inside Out was probably not the most likable guy in the world or he wouldn’t work for such a destructive organ, but his hackles would flare at the idea of being bought off. One way or the other, the article would see print.

  “Fat chance,” I remarked.

  They all looked at me.

  “Sorry, friends, but I don’t think it will work to buy the magazine. Magazines aren’t hunks of cheese. You would never succeed in telling an editor what to print.”

  “If we own it, we can control it.”

  “If the editor is like some I’ve known, he will listen to you, mumble something in reply, print the damn article, and quit.”

  “But we can. . . .”

  I looked at Edmond with interest. “What can we do? Besides fire him and that will be too late.”

  “We have to do something,” Priscilla said throatily.

  “Pay up,” I said briefly.

  “But that’s . . .” Edmond began.

  “Blackmail,” I agreed. “But what else can you do, if you really don’t want her to write all these . . . interesting things about us?”

  It was very quiet and no one exchanged glances.

  “It’s quite absurd,” Lorraine said suddenly. She turned to Travis, “You haven’t talked to this woman, have you?”

  “No, I . . . uh . . . haven’t had the pleasure. Just as soon not, considering the bother she’s causing.”

  I recognized a particular tone in Travis’ voice, one of insouciance and carelessness. It was just the way he would answer Mother on those long-ago mornings when she would inquire what time he had come in the night before. “Oh, early on, Mater, early on.” I knew better. I glanced at Lorraine. She didn’t know her husband as well as I knew my brother. I wondered what Francine had on Travis. It could be anything from women to . . . anything.

  “It’s a lot of money,” Priscilla said baldly.

  Lorraine turned toward her. “How much does she want?”

  “She asked me for fifty thousand,” Priscilla said.

  Behind me, I heard a heavy sigh and then the tinkle of breaking china. I swung around. Amanda sagged against the wall. The coffee cup I had filled too full for Edmond lay in a shattered pile amidst a widening swirl of coffee on the parquet floor. Amanda held her hands tight against her chest.

  I hurried to her, slipped an arm around her shoulders. “Mandy, what’s wrong?”

  “The cup.” She tried to bend down to pick up the pieces.

  My arm tightened and I held her. “Amanda, are you sick? What’s wrong?”

  “My heart,” she whispered. “It . . . sometimes it does this. I have a pill. In the kitchen. It will be all right. But the cup . . . it is one of the Limoges. The pieces . . .”

  Megan came up beside us. She said over her shoulder to the others, “Amanda is ill. K.C. and I will see to her.” Then gently, “Amanda, don’t worry about the cup. I’ll get it. You go with K.C. and get your medicine.”

  Amanda and I moved slowly, together, toward the door. I wanted to kick and smash all the stupid priceless objects in the elegant room. They were killing Mandy. She was too old to have to work as hard as she had this evening, dinner for nine, then the clearing up, and still on duty bringing coffee and cookies to the library. Goddammit, how old did she have to get before Mother would let her rest? Or would she have a chance to grow old, to be the old, old lady I teased her about?

  We had to stop three times before we reached the kitchen. I helped her to her old black rocker.

  “The drawer. The little drawer.”

  I knew which one she meant. It was a tiny watchpocket slim drawer in an old chest that sat just inside the pantry. It was Amanda’s chest. Her personal chest. That had been clear to us as children. We could open the huge cupboards, rearrange the seemingly endless rows of pots and pans, but the chest was Mandy’s and we must be invited before we touched it. That very exclusivity made it the focal point of the kitchen, exciting our childish fantasies. What did the bottom drawer hold? Why was the second drawer so hard to pull out? The little dra
wer was the most magical drawer of all. It was there that she put special treats, candy shaped like coins and wrapped in gold foil, tootsie rolls, and ice mints, and, greatest of all, the pack of cards she used for telling our fortunes. Kenneth and Sheila and Priscilla and I would watch with huge eyes as her fingers, moving so swiftly, would slap the cards into rows and, softly and sibilantly, for Mandy had her own taste for the dramatic, she would tell our fortunes, grand and glorious fortunes of journeys over the seas and wondrous loves, of mysterious strangers and dark adventure.

  I pulled the drawer out and it was empty except for a vial of pills and her wedding rings which she always took off before she cooked. I hadn’t expected anything else, but it was like walking through a gate which had always opened into a lovely garden and finding only weeds and dust.

  I opened the vial and gave Mandy one of the tiny nitroglycerine tablets. She put it under her tongue then rested her head back against the rocker.

  She often sat in the rocker on somnolent summer afternoons. I could remember finding her there and the slow drowsy squeak of the rockers. Now she sat so still, looking so small and old, and the rocker never moved.

  Tears began to trickle slowly down her cheeks.

  I bent close to her. “Mandy, what is it? Do you hurt? Shall I call Rudolph?”

  She shook her head.

  I reached out and grabbed up her hands. “Mandy, I am going to call Rudolph. He will meet us at the hospital . . .”

  “No. No.”

  I could barely hear her.

  “No,” she said wearily, so wearily. “I will go up to bed.” Then she tried to struggle up out of the chair. “But the dishes . . . and the coffee. Your mother doesn’t like for the coffee to get cold. I must . . .”

  “Damn the coffee. And the dishes. I’ll take care of it. You need to rest.”

  “It’s all right now,” she said. “It’s better now. The pain is better.”

  The kitchen door opened behind us and Megan came through. “Amanda,” she asked quietly, “how are you feeling?”

  Amanda nodded heavily. “Better, Mrs. Carlisle. Much better.”

  “Oh, that’s good,” Megan said quickly. “I’ve talked to Jason. He called his wife and she is coming. They will take care of the dishes. You mustn’t worry about anything. The important thing is for you to rest.”

  “I think we ought to take Amanda to the hospital.”

  Megan nodded. “If she feels that she should go, then by all means. Although if it is angina . . .” Megan reached out and patted Amanda’s shoulder. “Is there still any pain? Any sensation of squeezing?”

  I looked from one to the other, remembering now that Megan was a volunteer at the local hospital.

  Amanda shook her head. “It’s all right now. The tablet always makes it go away. I’m just tired. So tired.”

  Amanda was insistent that we not call Rudolph. I gave way finally and she and I went upstairs in the back elevator that had been installed when old K.C. III’s gout kept him from climbing the stairs.

  Amanda was quiet as I helped her undress and slip into a white cotton gown and climb up into her high old-fashioned bed. Her room was on the third floor and looked out over the back garden. It was a nice room with an attached bath and it sparkled with cleanliness. I looked at the walls, covered with pictures of Rudolph and his family and of the four of us, Kenneth and Priscilla and Sheila and me.

  There weren’t many pictures of Sheila, of course. But there was one that suddenly caught my eye. I had never seen it before. That was odd. Had Amanda had the picture and not hung it until years later when I no longer came to her room? Or had it hung there all these years and I had not seen it? Refused, perhaps, to see it. I felt cold and sick. I remembered so well when that picture was made. It was just a few days before Sheila died.

  The picture showed Sheila sitting on the boat dock at the lakeside house. She was holding a crayon and pointing at the heavy white plaster cast on her leg. The leg that Kenneth and I had broken, in Grace’s view. I don’t know who took the picture. Whoever it was had stood too far away to get a crisp clear picture. It was fuzzy, a little out of focus, but you could see the squiggly markings on the cast. Everyone had signed it. Everyone but me. Sheila hadn’t asked me.

  It was frightful all these long years later to stand in Amanda’s room and remember those two children, so twisted by hatred.

  I had never admitted that before, but it was hatred that dominated our lives.

  I wondered now, looking back at it, why this had been so.

  Sheila hated me.

  Why?

  She was the golden child, the one my mother treasured. The rest of us paled in comparison. I never thought my brothers realized how little they and I actually mattered to Grace.

  Sheila knew.

  The picture was warped with age and it was black and white so it didn’t show how Sheila’s golden hair had glistened in the sunlight or the dark blue depths of her eyes—or the malice that peeked out of them at me.

  The sudden touch of Amanda’s hand on my arm made me jump.

  “That picture,” I pointed at it, “that picture, where did it come from?”

  Amanda peered at it. “I’ll take it down, Miss K.C., if it upsets you, but I thought it would be all right, after all these years. She was a sad child.”

  I looked at Amanda in surprise. Sheila a sad child? Surely Amanda didn’t mean that. Or perhaps it was only the pity of age for youth that never bloomed.

  “Where did the picture come from?” I asked stiffly.

  Amanda looked away, wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I found it,” she said, her voice oddly defensive, “when . . . when I was going through some old boxes in the attic.”

  I started to ask what had prompted her to sort through the past but then I held back. She was old and her heart ached and perhaps it cheered her to remember days when she could work without stopping and the house buzzed with noise and activity, my brothers in and out, Sheila and I and, later, Kenneth and Priscilla, racing up and down the stairs—so long as Grace wasn’t near.

  “I believe I will go to bed now. Miss K.C.,” Amanda said heavily, “it’s time you went back downstairs.”

  “They won’t miss me.” I helped her up into the bed and leaned over to plump the pillows behind her head.

  “Now, Miss K.C.,” and her voice was sharp, “you go right back downstairs. They do need you. You can think better than any of them.” She paused and sighed. “I knew your momma was upset but I didn’t know . . . I had no idea what had happened. This Miss Boutelle, is she trying to hurt the family?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know how much malice is involved. I’d say it’s just the way she makes a better than average living. On the surface, she’s an investigative reporter, but she’s willing to sell back whatever really hot information she discovers. It’s a nifty kind of blackmail.”

  “Blackmail . . .” Amanda moved restlessly and one hand plucked at the ribbon on her nightgown.

  I realized suddenly and damn late that this wasn’t the kind of thing I should be talking about. Here was Amanda, having an angina attack, and the best I could do was meander on about the Carlisles and their problems, most of which, to be brutally honest, they had created for themselves.

  “Don’t worry about it, Mandy,” I said briskly. “It’s not a life or death thing.”

  “Your momma, she’s scared to death. Oh dear Lord. It’s awful . . . so awful . . .”

  “Hush now.” I gently touched her lips. “You don’t need to worry. We’ll manage.” I shrugged. “If she prints it, it won’t be the end of the world.”

  “Miss K.C., Miss K.C.—” Amanda struggled to sit up. “I must tell you . . .” Then she sagged back against the pillows, a hand clutching at her chest, and gave a low moan.

  I was scared. “Mandy, be quiet now, be quiet. You are making yourself sick again. Look, this is too much. I’m going to call Rudolph. He will come.”

  She lay back on her pillow, breathing hard. I called
Rudolph and found him at home. When I told Mandy he was on his way, she nodded and rested with her eyes closed. I sat beside her bed, holding her hand, terrified that she was seriously ill, that she was going to die.

  Megan knocked on the door, then came in and asked softly how Amanda felt. I told her I had called Rudolph and he was coming.

  “That’s good,” Megan whispered. “K.C., they want you downstairs.” She was frowning, her eyes troubled. “I don’t understand what’s happening. Kenneth didn’t . . . tell me about this woman. He is refusing to have any contact with her and the rest of the family wants you to handle it.”

  Amanda opened her eyes. “You go on down, Miss K.C. I’ll be fine.”

  I didn’t want to leave her. She was all that remained of the best in my life. Dad was gone. I didn’t want to leave her, looking so small and ill on the big bed. “I want to stay and hear what Rudolph says.”

  “I’ll stay with her,” Megan offered.

  “You go down now.” Amanda spoke so wearily, as if she were a long way away. It was a sound I had never heard in her voice before. Was she frightened? Did she think she was going to die? Amanda was brave. I knew that. She had lived bravely. She wouldn’t despair at the end. I hesitated. Her dark eyes held mine for a long moment, then she nodded at me. I understood her unspoken command.

  “I’ll come back in a little while,” I said.

  I went downstairs because Amanda expected it of me.

  They were going at it hot and heavy when I came in. Everyone, of course, had a different idea as to what should be done. I quelled them finally, but I didn’t tell them what I really intended to do. I was going to handle Francine Boutelle, but I was going to do it my way—and not in a way I intended to publicize.

  “Give me until Thursday morning,” I insisted. “Put her off when she calls you, make some excuse, but don’t set up any appointments until the end of the week.”

  If they had followed my advice, a great deal of trouble would have been avoided.

  Edmond was skeptical from the start. “It will be ineffective to talk to that woman. The only solution is to buy the magazine.”

  I shrugged. “Start buying if you want to, Edmond, but keep your mouth shut about it. If Boutelle found out, she would just laugh and offer the article somewhere else.”