Tina cleared her throat. “We had dinner on Friday,” she said.
“What did he say?”
“Sorry, Dear One, attorney-client privilege. I told him I knew the truth about Kettle Falls. It caught him by surprise. I told him I thought you two had never dealt with what happened. He brought up your DNA idea, I told him you’d already used it on me. Along with the clean-break speech. Which, by the way,” Tina added, “I think is nonsense. You don’t feel guilty over what you did. You gave up on Charlie for different reasons.”
“Please,” Brenda said. “It’s important. Never mind attorney-client privilege. Tell me what he said.”
“Yes, it’s important,” Tina said. “That’s exactly why I won’t tell you. I care about both of you too much. You and Charlie have to sort this out without third parties.”
“A good friend would tell me,” Brenda said.
“That’s called blackmail. What happens or doesn’t happen should not be influenced by me.”
“Thanks a hell of a lot.”
“It won’t work, Brenda. Get off the treadmill.”
“What treadmill?” She felt something like panic. “I have to talk to him. Why the hell did he go up there?”
“He didn’t say anything at dinner. I called yesterday afternoon, all I got was the message. My guess is, he wants off his own treadmill. That’s my word for avoidance. That’s my lay analysis.”
She had to act, but first Brenda felt a great need to reach Charlie Schmidt. To hear his voice. “Something’s going on down here,” she said. “I need to talk to him.”
“Well, dear, I’m afraid you can’t. In the recording, he says to just leave a message. His phone up there is turned off for the winter.”
It was crazy to her, it was irresponsible, cutting himself off like that. Charlie had described what it was like there in winter. Snowmobiles, deer, fishing shanties out on the ice. Even wolf packs hunting moose. She needed him. He was her sounding board, her source of common sense.
“What the hell did he go up there for?” she demanded.
“You can ask him when he gets back.”
Tina’s dog barked, always at her side. “Quiet, Sonny.” Again Tina cleared her throat. “One last thing, Brenda. Clichés are no way to run your life. Being a ‘grownup in the real world’ and ‘clean break’ are clichés. If you really want to live in the real world, stop making excuses and running.”
◆◆◆◆◆
She called his Milwaukee number. “Hi, I’m driving up to Minnesota for a few days. I won’t have phone service, so please leave a message. If you’re a tenant with a problem, please call the number you have for Milwaukee Residential.”
She called again to hear his voice. He had every right to do whatever he wanted, every reason. She ended the call and saw him in his pickup, driving up Route 2. That far north, the roads would be dangerous, piled high with plowed snow. He had said that in winter, sometimes chains gave way on log-haulers, and the loads rolled off like giant Lincoln Logs. He had gone back up to Kettle Falls to rub it out. To face something until it no longer mattered. Like saying in spades over and over.
But she still felt abandoned. Jilted. Fool, Brenda thought. You dumped him. In all the months since Kettle Falls, he had been her anchor. All these months. His voice on the other end of a call, or in his presence, she felt sane. Clear-headed. Better than herself.
Hilda Frieslander’s address drew her back to the laptop. In her photo, the woman looked reserved, the way Tina’s voice had sounded. In a few years, Tina Bostwick would lose her sight. She would eventually become bedridden, eventually incontinent. Maybe that was what Hilda Frieslander had faced.
He’s a cockroach, Ray said in Spanish. Some kind of pig. Why are you letting someone like that work for us?
It was after ten. Ray was at Wyndemere Golf Club doing a plumbing job. Rivera was stopped at Golden Gate Parkway and Airport Pulling Road. He watched the light and listened to his cousin. Squinted in the glare. He hadn’t slept well and didn’t want to talk about Dennis Stuckey. Feeling his bowels about to move, and fearing loss of the watch, Stuckey had defecated in the back of his van. Ray had arrived that morning at the All Hands office just as Stuckey was cleaning up the mess.
“Tell me you never had the shits,” Rivera said. “Give him a break, he had an accident.”
Fuck accident. When you have to go and there’s no toilet, you do it in the bushes. You don’t shit in your own van. I’m telling you, Quinto, it was not a turd, it was fucking Mount Everest.
“I’ll talk to him.”
Yeah, you talk to him. What it is, is all the vegetables. He’s shitting in a truck from too much fiber. I knock on his door, he calls just a minute. What do you think he is always doing?
“All right, Ray, I get the picture. Where is he now?”
I have a good idea. Where are you going?
“Naples Bath and Tennis. Aaron has a problem opening a ceiling access door.”
He can’t open a little door?
“In English.”
“You losing it, Quinto,” his cousin said. “This is not funny. This is a great business, and you going to shit on it, like Stuckey.”
“Trust me, Ray.”
“I trust you,” his cousin said. “I come to Naples with you, don’t I?”
“Everything with us is fifty-fifty, you know that.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But some of what I’m doing I need Stuckey for. You remember Bellinger?”
Ray groaned. “What an asshole.”
“Yes, Bellinger was an asshole. But do you remember that time fishing? What happened when you drove over the manatee?”
“AIDS,” Ray said. “Cancer. Terrorists. These people got all kind of thing to worry on. What they care about a dead sea cow?”
“Without Bellinger, what do you think would happen?” Ray didn’t answer. “I’ll tell you what,” Rivera said. “Without a native-born legal to take the ticket, no more All Hands on Deck. You think 9/11 doesn’t affect us? Without Bellinger, they’d know about me. I’d be back in Mexico, and you’d be picking tomatoes in Immokalee.”
Rivera pushed the button and dropped the phone on the passenger seat. Still the light didn’t change. Already he felt tired. It made him angry to need shiftless, no-class people like Stuckey. It’s Burlson, he thought. Stabbing you in the back. People said one thing and did another. Do what they wanted, they called you a guardian angel. A blessing. But when the chips were down, when push came to shove, that was a different story. Only now did Rivera fully understand what Kleinman had meant: never trust anyone but Ray.
Not even someone like Hilda Frieslander. Maybe her cold feet had nothing to do with the Kentucky Derby. Maybe she had talked to a priest or a doctor. Maybe she talked about you, Rivera thought.
At last the light changed. Turning onto Golden Gate, he shook his head. No more off-the-books. Not for a while. But he had not yet taken down the Haileys’ Christmas tree, and now Rivera knew why. The tree was part of the whole plan, the big picture. That’s why it was still up, why he hadn’t gone last night to take it down.
The tree would be his smooth-sailing guarantee. His alibi.
She glanced at the clock—12:50—and back to the car ahead. She had just crossed the bridge and was now on Marco Island, waiting for the light at Bald Eagle Drive. Hilda Frieslander lived in The Palazzo Bellissima. The GPS showed the high rise would be dead ahead, south of something called Tigertail Beach.
Brenda checked herself in the rearview. Lipstick OK, eye makeup OK. Hair never OK, but more or less under control. She had not known what to wear, how to present herself in a fancy retirement high rise. Shorts-and-polo casual, or something more like the woman in Wynn’s Market? What would Charlie say?
The light changed, and she moved forward in light Sunday traffic.
Before leaving, Brenda had Googled Hilda Frieslander. She had grown up in Amherst, Massachusetts, and graduated in ’46 from Amherst College. Her father had taught E
nglish at Amherst, specializing in the town’s most famous citizen, Emily Dickinson. Hilda’s mother had stayed home to raise the couple’s one child. After graduation, Hilda had gone to New York. She had made a successful career as an editor, working for several New York publishing houses. She had never married, but her mother’s sister had born a daughter, Hilda’s first cousin. She, too, had born one child, another girl. That meant her niece Holly Meininger was Hilda’s only surviving relative. Holly had gone to Europe in 2000. Any record of her came to an end there.
◆◆◆◆◆
A gold-leaf marble sign marked the Palazzo Bellissima’s entrance. No gatehouse or security guard—good.
Brenda passed under ornate grillwork and parked in the visitors section. She checked herself again before getting out. She had decided on the one fancy outfit packed for her trip, a dress of raw silk with big coconut buttons. The dress had traveled with her five years before, all the way to Micronesia, and she decided it would be Charlie’s choice. She owned no Jimmy Choo or Manolo Blahnik shoes, but had on decent flats.
She sat a moment and ran through her story. Knowing nothing of Hilda Frieslander’s death, she had driven to Marco Island. I’m the daughter of Reva Contay, she would say, Hilda Frieslander’s friend and colleague. I’m in Naples for a few days and thought I’d look up my mother’s old publishing friend.
She lifted the cold key lime pie off the passenger seat and got out. Surveillance cameras had been installed under the building’s second-floor windows. Someone would be watching as she approached the entrance.
At the door she balanced the pie, pushed the button, and looked through the glass. A guard seated at a desk waved to her, and the lock clicked. She shoved in. “Hello,” he called. “Can I help you?”
“Hi, yes, I hope so.”
As Brenda crossed the marble floor, she thought of James Rivera, how he would know when to use “can I help” or “may I help.” Electric candles flickered in wall sconces; potted palms and gilded French empire chairs stood along walls with fleur-de-lis wallpaper.
She stopped before the desk. “My name’s Brenda Contay,” she said. “I didn’t call ahead, and I’m completely ignorant of how things work here.” The guard glanced at the pie. When he again looked up at her, his face was that of a weathered cowboy. He wore a pilot’s shirt with epaulettes and a name tag, Dewey.
“Who’s the pie for?” he asked.
“She doesn’t know I’m coming, and I haven’t seen her in years, but my mother—”
The loud, nagging sound of a car’s security alarm started up in the parking lot.
“Damn.” Dewey got up. “That’s gonna be Mr. Dartell. He sets it off every time he pushes the wrong button on his key ring.” The guard started jogging for the entry. “Back in just a sec.”
As he went out, a bell dinged, and an elevator door opened. A woman stepped out, rummaging in her purse. She was more doll-like than anyone Brenda had ever seen. Tiny and frail, dressed in a pale-pink summer frock and white stockings, she looked like someone you had to protect.
“Gotcha!” She had found something in her purse and held up it up. An asthma inhaler. “Can’t go anywhere without this,” she said. “Red tide makes me miserable.”
“I have no idea what that is,” Brenda said.
“Nobody seems to,” the woman said. “They say it’s got to do with an algae bloom. Whatever that is. You start coughing, wheezing. Terrible.” Brenda shook her head. “Who are you here to see?”
“Hilda Frieslander. She and my mother…”
The woman clucked her tongue. Her face assumed a practiced look of sadness, and as though reproved, the horn outside stopped. “You knew Hilda?” she asked.
“My mother used to work with her. In New York.”
“I’m so sorry.”
“Is she sick?”
“She killed herself this past Thursday. They found her in her bedroom. She had this set of instructions with her on the bed. From the Hemlock Society.”
The woman closed her eyes. After a moment, she looked at Brenda. “We all loved Hilda,” she said. “She was so smart. She was our brain trust here, she knew so much. She ran our book club until her eyes started to go. Diabetes.”
Now she stepped close to Brenda. “She hated bingo,” the woman said, as though confiding a dangerous secret. “‘Bingo’s not my style,’ she used to say. Hilda’s style was books and horses. But she had macular degeneration and type 2 diabetes.” As she spoke, the woman’s expression had changed from socially correct to one of true loss.
“Were you surprised when you found out?” Brenda asked.
After a moment, the woman said, “I was and I wasn’t.” She thought about it. “As I say, Hilda was very smart. Perceptive. She had these strokes last year—” The woman frowned, searching her memory. She snapped her fingers. “Subarachnoid hemorrhages, Hilda called them. She had to have surgery.”
The front door clicked. The guard was holding it open for a man in his seventies or eighties. Head erect and shoulders back, the man didn’t look at them and crossed the lobby to the elevators. With his back to them, he pushed the button.
“Hi there, Mizz Duffy.” Dewey sat at the desk. “Remember your inhaler?”
She held it up. “I was just telling this nice young woman about Hilda.”
“Is that who the pie’s for?” he asked.
“Excuse me, I have Mass—”
The woman turned and walked for the entrance. Dewey watched until she was outside before looking at Brenda. “Depression gets ‘em before cardiovascular or cancer,” he said.
“Do you think that’s why Hilda Frieslander took her life?”
He shrugged. “Who knows for sure why someone does that? She liked to bet on horse races. She lost some money lately, but that wouldn’t do it.”
“You mean she was wealthy?”
Dewey rocked back in his chair and looked at her. “We’re right on the beach,” he said. “You don’t live here unless you can afford it.” He glanced again at the pie.
“Was she alone? Did she have company?”
“Jimmy Rivera was in earlier Thursday. He said she seemed okay when he left.”
“Who’s that, a friend?”
“He’s with All Hands on Deck. They do odd jobs for people. Drive people that can’t drive anymore. Take ‘em shopping. He’s a good guy. He came and did cooking for her, read her books. Her eyes were going.”
Dewey leaned forward on the desk. “She told him to bring a small turkey, and he should buy one of these plastic bags you roast ‘em in?” The guard leaned back. “That’s how she did it. With the bag.”
Heart racing, Brenda shook her head. She held out the pie. “It was for Hilda,” she said. “It won’t keep, and someone should have it.”
“Well, aren’t you nice.” He took the pie and set it carefully on the desk. “You and Jimmy Rivera are gonna get me fat,” he said. “On Thursday, he comes here, then he remembers Mrs. F is diabetic and lactose intolerant. He gave me a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia. He even had a plastic spoon. I told him, ‘Jimmy, you’re thinkin’ of everything.’”
Dewey reached below and opened a desk drawer. He brought up a plastic plate, a plastic knife and fork. Ready now to eat, he looked at Brenda.
“Do you know whether they performed an autopsy?” The guard frowned. “I just wondered,” Brenda said. “With suicides, they do that as a matter of routine in Michigan. That’s where I’m from.”
Dewey nodded and began unsealing the pie. “Here in Florida, you need consent of family first,” he said. “She has a niece, but no one could find her.”
As he ate, Dewey added details. We keep track of our residents, he said. When Hilda Frieslander didn’t answer her call button on Friday, Dewey had used his pass key just before his shift ended at eight. He had called the Marco police, then All Hands on Deck. As he cut another slice of pie, Brenda thanked him and left.
She headed back, feeling pulled in opposite directions.
Bullshit.
What tipped the scales for her was the Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. It had served the same purpose on Thursday as key lime pie today. Frieslander was diabetic, and Rivera, her caregiver, had to know it. And how convenient, having a spoon ready. He had planned the whole thing in order to ingratiate and familiarize himself with the guard. To create a bond free of suspicion.
Added to that was how James Rivera had re-invented himself. She had listened to him, watched him in action. Wasn’t her first impression unqualified? Completely favorable? The good looks and preppy clothes, the perfect command of English—didn’t it all make her feel proud of James Rivera? Legal or not, wasn’t he the embodiment of what America liked to think about itself?
But: if you stepped back from your first impression, if you treated Rivera as an individual, not as a poster boy for your conventional, liberal take on things, you began to wonder: Could there be something too impressive about Quinto Rivera? Too capable?
Or: if you doubted that a Mexican from the barrio could transform himself so completely before the age of thirty—wasn’t that just garden-variety racism?
◆◆◆◆◆
Back at the villa, she tried typing it all down.
Impossible. She closed her laptop. She wanted Charlie to hear it all, to help her know her own mind. All the talk of clean breaks no longer seemed grown-up to her, just cowardly. Kettle Falls didn’t matter, and clean breaks were nothing new. She hadn’t felt worthy of him, that was all. Whenever she got involved with a good man, she felt cornered. She turned all the men who mattered into commuter lovers, held at a safe distance. It had been that way since college.
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