Now my fingerprints are all over Daddy’s headstone. Everywhere you go, almost everywhere you breathe air, you leave your prints. Odourless, invisible, silent traces of yourself. So that, even when you’ve gone, a tiny part of you remains.
When Lindy died, a tiny part of her remained. It was my secret and I told no one, not even Jane, that I made-believe Lindy was still alive and still my friend. I’d tell her things. I’d sit on the porch swing with her. We’d discuss school and teachers and the other kids. Lindy never said a mean word to me. One day I thought that maybe I preferred this Lindy to the way she’d been when she was alive, fickle in friendship and unpredictable in response. I knew that was a bad thought and from then onwards I tried to banish the make-believe Lindy from the swing.
I hear a car. I turn back to the headstone. The air has the calm maturity of late afternoon now. The day has lost its heat like a fever which has passed.
‘Hi, Lucy,’ says a familiar voice and I don’t jump. I don’t turn around. Mostly I’m annoyed, maybe because, without really thinking about it, I’ve been waiting for him. He said I had given him a day’s work. Now, at the end of the day, here he is.
‘Hi, Mr Rougemont.’
He sounds friendly. ‘I sure wish you’d call me Michael.’
I shrug. I hear him scrambling into the sunken garden, his big feet slipping a little on the tipsy steps, the flutter of soil or stone minutely displaced.
I remember how he appeared on the night of Daddy’s death as a shadow, talking to Kirsty outside the kitchen. Even in the flesh he is the shadow of a man, impossibly thin and impossibly tall, taller than I remember. His long head is turned to Daddy’s headstone.
‘Looks recent,’ he says. ‘How long have you known about it?’
‘Not long. A neighbour and friend of Daddy’s, Joe Zacarro, has one too. So does another neighbour.’
‘Well, isn’t that interesting?’
I shrug. ‘It’s nice in an odd sort of way. I like feisty old men.’
Rougemont gives one of his Hallowe’en smiles.
‘What is this place anyway?’ he asks. He sits down on one of the cracked slabs of stone which Daddy set in the wall as seats. He stretches out one leg like a giant insect and looks curiously around him at the big rocks, bruising with his fingers a small plant which suddenly smells pungent as summer.
‘The sunken garden. Daddy built it with leftover rocks from the drive as a nice, private place to sit. And Mother’s dog is buried here somewhere.’
‘The one in the picture on the bureau?’
I pause. A photograph of Mother and Aunt Zoya with a small brown dog has stood on the bureau since I was a child but it has never occurred to me that this might be the famous Nickel Dog.
I concede: ‘Probably. He was called Nickel Dog because Daddy bought him for a nickel from some guy who didn’t want him.’
‘Did you like him a lot?’
‘I was very small…’ I close my eyes and for a moment sense something brown and yappy brushing past me, its coarse hair wiry. The sensation of wrapping my arms around a warm, yielding creature, which could have been my toy Hodges or Nickel Dog. ‘Jane told me he used to jump on me and scare me but I’m not sure if I remember that. I’m not sure if I remember him at all. I mean, it could be that I just remember Jane talking about him.’
‘Oh yes,’ agrees the detective, ‘oh yes, it’s easy to confuse what actually happened with things you’ve been told and things you’ve dreamed. It’s good, real good, that you recognize how unreliable memory is. But it seems to me that the sort of thing you could remember is Nickel Dog dying. I mean, feeling upset. Your mother’s unhappiness. Someone, I guess your father, burying him.’
I try to remember the demise of Nickel Dog, Mother weeping, Daddy looking grim with a spade, Jane white-faced, but the dog’s death is as elusive as his life.
He asks: ‘Did you ever sit here when you were a kid?’
‘Occasionally. But if I wanted to escape it was to the porch at the front of the house.’ As soon as the words are out of my mouth I want to reach out and grab them back from him. Rougemont’s body quivers a little as if he’s going to pounce.
‘What were you escaping from, Lucy?’
The air around here. When I came home from school and opened the door I could smell it. I could smell Mother’s unhappiness, Daddy’s absence, the house’s loneliness and my own.
‘Or,’ he adds, ‘should I ask, who were you escaping from?’
One of Rougemont’s legs has been folded up and now he stretches it out along with the other as he waits for my reply.
‘You’re probably wondering what I found out today,’ he says at last. ‘About your weekend.’
I am silent. I fix my eyes on Daddy’s headstone. It is a long time before he speaks again.
‘It would sure make my life easier if you’d talk to me, Lucy.’
When I maintain my silence he says: ‘I don’t just mean I want you to talk about the weekend although I sure wish you’d clear that one up. No, I’d like to hear about all the sort of stuff you don’t normally tell people because they’re not interested. A lot of people just do not have any interest in anyone but themselves. Let’s take, for example, Mr Jay Kent.’
I don’t let myself react. Not stiffen or start or move any part of my body.
‘Now, Mr Jay Kent is clearly one helluva businessman, I understand he’s going to head up one of the country’s biggest toy manufacturers in the summertime. But, no matter how intimate he gets with someone, I’m prepared to bet that he shows no interest in their past. Asks nothing about their childhood, reveals little about his own unless asked. But I’m different from Jay Kent, Lucy. I like to know about people and I’d especially like to know about you.’
I am watching him now, watching his lips stretch over the big teeth as he talks. I remain silent but a heat that comes from within, which I can’t control, is spreading up my body and soon it will reach my face and he will see it.
‘I spoke with him today,’ continues Michael Rougemont. He looks up into the foliage above his head. ‘Yes, I spoke with Mr Jay Kent not long ago.’
Evening in New York. Did Rougemont contact Kent at the office or at home where Kent was playing at being with his wife and wriggling baby? I catch my breath.
‘He wasn’t entirely surprised to hear from me although I wouldn’t say he welcomed my call.’
I watch the way the mouth forms its words, the way the eyes are hollowed by years of late nights and early mornings and worrying and pain. Life itself seems to have accumulated around his eyes. I touch my own face. It feels soft but it burns.
‘However, he wanted to be helpful. I’d even say he was anxious to help. Went off into a quiet room by himself where he could concentrate on my questions and answered them without the smallest hesitation. See, Lucy, I’ve asked a lot of people a lot of questions over a long time and I’ve noticed that very often they hesitate. They hesitate for different reasons: maybe because they’re formulating a lie but, in my experience, more often because they want to check it’s okay for them to tell the truth. They want to run through the truth in their minds and establish what the consequences might be, for themselves or others, of revealing that truth. Jay Kent had no such concern, Lucy. He had no concern for the consequences of his words. He just knew that if he answered my questions, he’d get me out of his life fast. So he didn’t hesitate, not once.’
Rougemont looks at me closely, so closely that I turn away. ‘You’re not in love with him, Lucy. Reassure me that you’re not in love with him.’
I say nothing but I find myself giving the smallest of half-shrugs. Rougemont takes this to indicate my indifference to Jay Kent. He sits back, nodding.
‘That’s good, I’m pleased about that. I believe you already knew how little he cares for you. He’s an acquisitive guy, in my opinion. You met him because you have a company that’s looking for a buyer. Thinking Toys, I believe it’s called. Thinking Toys is for sale, Lucy, but yo
u aren’t. You’re not the kind of woman a Jay Kent sort of a guy can acquire.’
I look straight into his grey eyes. I say: ‘Mr Rougemont, for someone who’s supposed to ask questions, you sure answer a lot.’
He laughs now, guffawing like a donkey.
‘Okay, Lucy, okay, I’ll stop telling and start asking. I’ll ask you about last Sunday. Mr Jay Kent was looking around stores with some untermensch from his empire. What did you do?’
When I am silent he delves into his bag. It’s a large bag which he wore on his shoulder until he sat down, the kind of shapeless black bag people use for carrying a computer and a lot of documents and a mess of leads. When his hand re-emerges, it holds a shoe. He waves it at me.
‘Wait, wait, just a minute. I can improve on that,’ he says. He delves a little more. ‘Yes… yes…’ He produces another, its twin, although this second shoe has no heel.
‘So, here’s my question. Do you recognize the exhibit?’
I am still standing by Daddy’s headstone. I reach out for its grey coolness. I look at the shoes. They are women’s shoes in soft black leather. Expensive, medium heel, ruined by contact with the wrong sort of ground. Red-brown dirt has insinuated itself into the leather inside and out.
‘Hmmmm…’ says Rougemont, examining them like a doctor. ‘Hmmmm, they’re kind of dirty. But, do you think they might just fit you?’
I shrug.
‘Would you try one? Just to see if it fits?’ When I remain silent he answers for me: ‘Sure you will.’
He gets up and, when he’s standing right by me, drops suddenly and surprisingly to a crouch. The headstone beneath my fingers supports my weight as he lifts my right leg a little. The place he touches me, around my ankle, feels warm. With great gentleness he pulls off the shoe I’m wearing and inserts my foot into the shoe in his hand.
‘Aha,’ he says. ‘I’d call that a fit! Wouldn’t you call that a fit, Lucy?’
I yield to his pantomime without participating in it.
‘And hey, this shoe I took of…’ He holds it up to eye level, twisting it to right and left. ‘Hey, the heel is worn a little more on the right side than the left. That’s because your weight isn’t distributed quite evenly when you walk: sometimes we favour one side of the foot, often we favour one leg.’
Click clack, click clack.
‘For example, this shoe I just tried…’ He wedges it off me in one deft movement and replaces it with my own shoe. ‘Yes, this other one is also worn in the same place but perhaps a little more, not much. So the owner of this shoe also favours the outside of her foot. What a coincidence! Unless…’ He looks up into my face and rolls his eyes comically. He’s playing the game show host again. ‘Unless of course… these shoes all belong to you.’
He stands up so he’s towering over me. I grip the headstone hard.
‘Shame about this one,’ he sighs, holding up the heel-less shoe. ‘Big shame.’
He takes the dirty shoes and sits down. The air is stiffened by the chill of early evening now and his voice cuts through it with a new crispness.
‘You’re a snail, Lucy. You aren’t too experienced at covering up your trail. It was so simple to follow that I began to wonder if you weren’t just trying to keep me amused. Late Sunday morning you hired a car and drove out of the city and you came up here to see your father. I’m not sure where you left the car. Somewhere it wouldn’t be seen. Somewhere which meant you had to walk over some pretty rough ground. You certainly didn’t want anyone to know you were here. I don’t know what you did but your shoes sure had a tough time. Walking through dirt. Maybe even running. When you got back to town they were ruined and you needed some new shoes. You bought a pair at the department store just about a block away from your hotel. Well, I told you it was an easy trail to follow. And I mean, it was a Sunday, the store wasn’t busy, the assistant remembers you. You put the old shoes in the box she gave you and threw them away in the hotel. That is, to you they were old. To the room maid they were a pair of beautiful shoes with the kind of price tag she could never afford, and which, if she squished her toes up, almost fitted her. So she took them home, intending to clean them up a little, stretch them a little, get a new heel put on, have herself a nice pair of designer shoes. Luckily, she didn’t do any of that yet.’
He watches me. His voice drones on, lower now because he knows how hard I’m listening.
‘I could hand them right over to forensic and ask them to analyse whether the dirt inside them comes from this immediate area. I could do that. But I won’t need to do that, Lucy, if you tell me what happened here last Sunday. I especially need to know what time you were here. I think it was early afternoon. Am I right?’
When I am silent he sighs theatrically.
‘I’m a generous guy.’ I steal a glance at his big face. Right now he doesn’t look generous but his expression is not unkind. ‘I’m a generous guy, Lucy, and I’m going to give you a few days because tomorrow I’m leaving town for a short while. And when I get back I’m going to ask you to tell me what you were doing here at your father’s house right before he died.’
He gets up and puts the shoes carefully in his bag.
‘I’ll see you when I get back, Lucy,’ he says softly. When I think he’s gone I turn around and find that he is standing at the top of the stone steps.
‘Goodbye,’ he calls. He’s still hoping that I’ll tell him what he wants to know but I say nothing. I don’t move until I have heard the hum of his car on the drive. I sit down on the cracked slab of the seat warmed by Rougemont and, leaves murmuring softly overhead, I remember Nickel Dog’s death. I remember Mother’s sadness distilled into a high-pitched and unnatural wail, Jane’s pallor, her fingers dancing nervously, Daddy holding with both hands before him the stiff bundle that was Nickel Dog wrapped in a blanket. And then I was running, past the old tow truck, around the bushes, in and out of trees, the thick grass bouncing me onwards. I ran until I reached a den we had made in the far corner of the yard under an overhanging bush. An old rug, some soft toys, and there, in the den, a friend waiting for me. Lindy.
24
When I’ve finished telling Seymour and Katherine everything I know about Daddy’s death they think for a long time.
‘Someone sure went to a lot of trouble to make it seem like Eric killed himself,’ says Seymour.
Katherine snorts. ‘As if he ever would!’
‘I mean, leaving his clothes on the beach and all that.’
‘Must be someone who doesn’t watch TV crime shows,’ says Katherine. ‘You only have to watch a couple to know that the police can tell if a body drowned or if it was dead before it went into the water.’
Seymour looks serious. ‘That should lead us to the guy. Since now we can eliminate almost everyone in America.’ And, despite the circumstances and our sadness, we smile at each other.
I look around the room. It is padded with books and piled high, with magazines. A few shelves are crowded with small, carved figures from Africa and South America and there is a mask which might come from some Pacific island. Everywhere there are the faces of smiling grandchildren and the primitive, blotchy pictures they have painted. Seymour and Katherine have led a full life and it’s here for all to see, pinned to the walls, tumbling from the shelves. I think of Daddy’s house where so much is hidden: in the barn, in boxes, in closets and in bedrooms which no one uses.
Seymour pours pale, brown liquid from a tea pot into tea cups.
He explains: ‘This is Lemon Rose Pouchong, the tea club selection for March. We belong to this club in England. Every month they send us a different tea.’
‘The woman from the police department liked it,’ adds Katherine.
‘An attractive girl,’ says Seymour. He is a small, bald, wiry man who played baseball back in the days when he had a full head of hair. Once, he played against Joe diMaggio. It’s a tale he has dined out on ever since: Daddy said he’d heard it at least fifty times and it was just a little bit di
fferent each time and Seymour said: ‘Well, I wouldn’t want to bore you, Eric.’
The tea is too hot to drink. I inhale its flowery aroma.
‘I wish you’d eat a cookie,’ says Katherine, pushing the plate towards me. ‘I just want to give you things, Lucy, you look like you need someone to do that.’
Ever since Daddy died even complete strangers, at some animal level, have recognized my grief. The clerk at the airport said: ‘I’m going to try to find you a good seat for your flight tonight…’ and she clicked at her keyboard until she had upgraded me. At the gas station the attendant looked slyly at my face while processing my credit card. ‘Ma’am, we have a new promotion of speciality china and I’d like you to take home a deluxe prize today.’ At the Russian bookstore I pass between the parking lot and Aunt Zina’s apartment I stopped to buy her a sumptuous edition of Pushkin to replace her torn and faded copy and the assistant suddenly produced from behind the counter a presentation pack containing an apron and a collection of carved wooden spoons. ‘Take this, please. We have a special gift for distribution only to the discerning buyers of Pushkin,’ she insisted.
I accept a cookie and ask Seymour: ‘Did you tell the detective about the discrepancy in the oil well payments?’ .
He turns his brown, nut-shaped head towards Katherine for a moment and. then back to me.
‘Well, no, I didn’t, Lucy. But Katherine and I think that maybe someone should.’
‘Why?’
‘First, let me explain what I found out, which isn’t much. Simms-Roeder is still producing. Smart Eric tied the company up in a watertight royalty agreement which keeps them paying and, believe me, if they could get out of it, they would. You’re right that the money didn’t go directly to Eric. It gets paid into another account.’
‘Where is that account? Do you have any details on it?’
‘Only the name.’
‘Which is?’
Seymour gets up and goes to the bureau. He pulls a piece of paper from beneath a child’s coiled ceramic. He reads: ‘The Marcello Trust.’
Summertime Page 22