Summertime

by Elizabeth Rigbey

  ‘He’s probably hanging around because of Gerry downstairs,’ says Jane. ‘There are always guys hanging around because of Gerry.’

  Gerry is absurdly attractive and has a complicated love life.

  ‘What makes you think he’s following Jane?’ asks Kirsty.

  ‘Last night she drove over to the Walrus House to check that everything’s okay for Tuesday.’ There is to be a buffet lunch at Daddy’s home after the funeral and the Walrus House is catering it. Their food is good, although Jane worries it may be too adventurous for some of the guests. ‘The guy disappeared when Jane left. Then, when Jane came back, he came back.’

  ‘How late did he stay? All night?’

  Larry’s eyes flick from side to side. ‘Well, I’m not sure what time he actually went. But of course he was gone in the morning.’

  Kirsty pulls out her notebook and asks Larry to describe the man. Tall, dark-haired, generally unshaven.

  ‘How old is he?’ I ask.

  Larry finds it difficult to judge the age of anyone under fifty.

  ‘Thirty?’ he suggests hopefully. ‘Twenty-five?’

  ‘Okay,’ agrees Kirsty. ‘We’ll take a look.’ Nothing in her tone indicates whether she shares Larry’s concern.

  ‘Don’t waste too much valuable police time,’ Jane tells her. ‘I’m sure Larry’s wrong about this and Gerry would never forgive us if we drove away an admirer.’

  ‘He has plenty of other admirers,’ says Larry.

  Kirsty reaches into her bag and pulls out a small plastic sack, half-covered by labelling, which I read upside down: case number, officer in charge, date…

  ‘You’ve found Daddy’s keys!’ Jane exclaims.

  The woman nods. She pulls them out of the sack and lays them on the table.

  ‘Take them. Tell me if you think they’re all here.’

  Jane picks up the ring. I recognize it as the kitschy key-ring I bought Daddy when he came to New York. It features a tiny Empire State Building. You can press the end and a light flashes at the top. It’s a flashlight and key-ring in one and I am absurdly pleased to find that Daddy used it every day. I want to touch it but Jane has spread the keys out evenly on the table around the ring as though we’re playing poker and she’s showing us a royal flush.

  ‘I don’t recognize them all…’ she says, ‘but this is the door, car, barn, our apartment, maybe a suitcase key… did he have a key to your house, Scott?’

  ‘Uh-huh, since I went to France last Christmas. It’s right here…’ Scott points at the key to the beach house. I didn’t know he’d been to France. I guess he went with Brigitte.

  Jane continues: ‘Not sure about that one. Or that one, but that one must be the tractor. Well, as far as I know, nothing’s missing.’

  ‘Where did you find them?’ Scott asks the detective.

  ‘With the kids who took the Oldsmobile from the Big Brim parking lot on Monday morning.’

  ‘Kids stole Eric’s car?’

  ‘Nice kids who live in Lowis and never stole a car before. One of them had a little brother who told.’

  I remember the boy who sat astride his skateboard, wheeling himself backwards and forwards with his feet flat on the ground, the one who glared at me from under his crewcut.

  ‘It wasn’t too hard to extract the keys. They couldn’t give us the note, though. They hadn’t kept that.’

  We look at her, waiting.

  ‘Note?’ says Jane at last. ‘What note hadn’t they kept?’

  ‘I can show you. We actually have our own copy.’

  She reaches into her notebook and pulls out a sheet of paper with a few lines printed on it. She reads: ‘To my daughters…’ I hear her voice as though I’m under anaesthetic and can feel no pain. ‘To my daughters. I’d like you to remember me as a strong man, not old and shuffling and helpless. So I’ve chosen to leave you now and I hope you’ll see that this is a brave act and an act of great love. Jane, Lucy, I love you both very much. If I’ve done my job properly then you should be fine without me. Lucy, when you feel very alone, I know Jane will be there for you. With much love, Daddy.’

  I look around at the shocked, pale faces. I guess I must be shocked and pale too. Jane’s fingers play some silent tune on the table top. Larry holds his beard tightly in one hand. Scott is motionless.

  ‘We should have known about this letter before,’ says Larry at last.

  ‘The copy in the stolen car was lost and we’ve only just accessed it on Professor Schaffer’s computer.’ She looks at Jane. ‘Thanks for all the passwords you suggested, none of them worked, but we finally got around it. This is what we found.’ Kirsty looks from face to face. ‘So, what’s your reaction to this letter? Does it sound like the Professor Schaffer you knew?’

  ‘Well… I guess so…’ says Jane.

  Larry nods gravely. Scott is silent.

  I take the paper from her and study it.

  ‘No,’ I say.

  The detective turns to me. ‘You don’t think he wrote it?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘What makes you so sure?’ Kirsty watches me keenly.

  ‘Well…’ He would have written us separate letters. I would have received a note with my name on it which was only for me, signed: Daddy. ‘Well, he just didn’t.’

  ‘Is it the words? The way he uses them?’

  I study the letter.

  ‘He didn’t write it,’ I say stubbornly. ‘This isn’t how he would have done it.’

  She turns to Scott.

  ‘What’s your reaction?’ she asks. She half smiles encouragement but he remains stony-faced.

  ‘Lucy hadn’t seen Eric in a long time,’ he says. ‘Maybe the Eric she left behind wouldn’t have written this but the Eric he became – sort of older, worried, burdened – well, I mean, it’s highly unlikely… but sometimes he didn’t say a lot. You didn’t know what he was thinking. Maybe this is what he was thinking in all those silences.’

  I shake my head but Scott does not look at me and the woman turns to Larry.

  ‘You have a certain professional insight here, I’d be grateful for your comments,’ she tells him. He moistens his lips a little with his tongue.

  ‘This letter has the kind of balance I’d expect from Eric. He’s perceptive about each daughter. He correctly assumes that Lucy needs extra reassurance and he correctly assumes that Jane will be there to provide this. He anticipates their possible reactions – angry, hurt – and tries to deal with them. He doesn’t dwell on the doubts or difficulties or fears he must have experienced facing death because the whole note is designed to alleviate his daughters’ suffering. I’d say the letter is the selfless and well-reasoned work of a selfless, reasoning man and therefore I think it’s genuine.’

  ‘Thank you. Jane?’

  Jane stares at the letter with red eyes. She opens her mouth to speak but instead she starts to cry. I watch, fascinated and shocked. I have seldom seen her cry and never like this. Her features are habitually still, even when she speaks, but now they are in motion. Her jaw pumps with a soundless rhythm, her eyes are red and her cheeks swell. When she throws her head back the tears run into her hair and ears. Sobs shake her entire body like electric shocks. I want to jump up and hug her but Larry has already put his arms around her.

  The detective watches dispassionately.

  ‘Are you crying,’ she asks, when the sobs finally begin to subside, ‘because you believe he really killed himself?’

  Jane, her voice transformed into something strange and tremulous, says: ‘Isn’t this proof?’

  ‘Oh no,’ says the detective, looking sharply around at all of us. ‘No, it isn’t. I don’t believe Professor Schaffer wrote this note or knew of its existence. It was the last document stored in his computer and it was dated 4.08 on Sunday afternoon. After analysing the keyboard, our forensic department said that whoever used the keyboard last, and it’s reasonable to assume that it was last used at 4.08 on Sunday afternoon, wore ordinary domestic rubber g
loves. We think it unlikely your father would have typed his suicide note wearing rubber gloves. So probably, although not necessarily, whoever killed Professor Schaffer was here, at this house, at 4.08 on Sunday afternoon.’

  There is a silence. I feel the hairs on the back of my neck bristle as though someone’s standing right behind me. Kirsty looks around at us to gauge our reactions. There is no reaction. No one moves.

  ‘Did Eric know someone was here on Sunday?’ asks Scott, his voice hollow, as though it’s not his real voice but an echo.

  Kirsty shrugs. ‘We don’t know what Professor Schaffer was doing Sunday afternoon.’

  ‘Didn’t anyone see anything on Sunday?’ Scott persists. ‘A neighbour, a friend…?’

  Kirsty looks at all of us but perhaps particularly at me when she says: ‘If they did, no one’s telling us about it.’

  I look at my watch, involuntarily, to calculate what time I hid on the deck on Sunday. Kent left the hotel at eleven, I went to the cemetery, drove to the valley, walked up the hill… maybe one-thirty. Less than three hours before Daddy’s killer. At four o’clock, the killer, displaying detailed knowledge of his victim’s life and family, was right here in the den typing a fake suicide note. I dig my fingernails into my palm. My knuckles are drained of colour.

  ‘Yes, Lucy?’ The detective is looking right at me. I jump a little. ‘Were you about to say something?’

  I shake my head.

  Kirsty continues: ‘You’ve asked me a few times how Professor Schaffer died. Well, we have good although not conclusive evidence that he was electrocuted.’

  ‘Oh!’ says a woman, her voice half a breath, half an exclamation. Did the oh belong to Jane or me? I look at Jane and she is staring intently at the detective. Kirsty seems to be inside my head, saying over and over, he was electrocuted. We have good but not conclusive evidence that he was electrocuted.

  ‘He was electrocuted,’ repeats Larry, and the word seems to reverberate around the room now. Jim Bob Holler who lived next door was electrocuted. He was only fourteen. His father didn’t wire the swimming-pool lights properly and he died when he dived into the pool.

  ‘It was an accident,’ I blurt out. Everyone turns to me in surprise.

  ‘When Jim Bob Holler got electrocuted in the swimming-pool it was an accident,’ I explain.

  Kirsty regards me with interest. ‘It’s hard to see how Dr Schaffer’s death could have been an accident.’

  ‘How sure are you of this?’ asks Jane.

  ‘Professor Rossi and the ME, Dr Angela Ball, are both prepared to stake their reputations on it.’

  Dr Ball. Fine perfume, jewellery which chatters softly like a whispering chorus as she moves among the dead.

  ‘Tissue analysis of a small blister on your father’s neck seems to indicate that it was the site of a massive electric shock. Professor Schaffer instantly had a heart attack.’

  Kirsty reaches into her bag and produces a small black box. She lays it flat in the palm of her hand and holds it out to us.

  ‘You’ve probably seen this kind of thing. Stun guns and tasers are widely marketed for self-defence purposes. You can buy them over the counter. This is a taser. You only have to touch someone with the probes and you can override their central nervous system. Their muscle tissues contract uncontrollably and for maybe thirty minutes they can see, hear and even feel but they’re incapable of carrying out any controlled movements. Tasers have a one hundred per cent drop rate. Stun guns are similar but more primitive. They shoot up to five hundred thousand volts into the body, which leaves the victim weak, dazed and confused.’

  We stare at the taser. It looks like a flashlight, or maybe an electric razor. Larry says, his voice stripped of its usual certainty: ‘Which was used on Eric?’

  ‘Probably a taser.’

  ‘So,’ says Larry, ‘Eric was touched with one of these things and left in the water. Unable to save himself.’

  Daddy, plummeting down the rocks at Seal Wash, feeling the spray, hearing the roar of the sea getting closer, the water closing over him, powerless to struggle or swim.

  ‘No,’ says Scott, ‘that’s what his killer intended. Eric would have drowned and his death would have looked like suicide. But the taser gave him a heart attack. Before he hit the water. That’s how you know it’s a homicide.’

  Kirsty nods assent. She looks around each of us in turn.

  ‘Do you have any questions?’ she asks. She smiles, not a broad smile but a receptive one.

  I don’t know how my face got covered with my fingers. I have to move them now to ask: ‘Does it hurt?’

  Before Kirsty can speak, Jane says: ‘Oh Lucy, probably electrocution isn’t too painful. And you know, death, any death, is almost certainly a pleasant experience. Imagine slipping away into total relaxation.’

  Larry says: ‘You’d probably be too stunned to feel pain.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ Kirsty tells him. ‘Certainly people report that tasers cause pain to the point of nausea.’

  I close my eyes.

  ‘Do you have any more questions?’ Kirsty repeats.

  We shake our heads. We don’t have any more questions. I get up.

  ‘I need some fresh air,’ I say.

  I go out to the deck but the air here is not fresh. It is stale and unmoving as though the valley just exhaled it. My eye follows the roads, the tracks, the orchards to find its usual landmarks but they bring no comfort.

  26

  When the detective has gone she leaves a silence in the house which is like a blanket. We work and eat and talk but the silence never fully goes away. It makes us edgy. We glance out of windows frequently, jump at small sounds and ask ourselves if that was really just the house creaking.

  ‘Does anyone know anything about the Marcello Trust?’ I ask at lunchtime. They shake their heads.

  ‘Did Daddy know anyone called Marcello?’

  Jane thinks and then shakes her head. ‘Doesn’t mean a thing to me.’

  ‘Try his address book,’ suggests Larry. Even he is subdued.

  ‘I have. I’ve tried the bank, the accountant, the phone book, a list of charitable trusts, Daddy’s files…’

  ‘Sorry. Can’t help,’ says Jane. Larry passes around more paella. We all compliment him on it again. I drop a fork. Everyone jumps. Scott asks a few questions about rocks and I snap at him then feel bad when he explains that he and Larry are trying to concentrate Daddy’s whole collection in just one place for the geologists Jane has invited from the university to inspect it.

  All afternoon we work in different rooms. The front door is double-locked. Larry sorts out boxes upstairs and, if they have rocks in, he pulls them into the hallway for Scott to move to the barn. Jane won’t let Larry lift rocks because he has back problems. She has started to sort through all the stuff in an upstairs bedroom near him.

  When I’m tired of bending over files in the den I make everyone a cold drink.

  I find Larry busy marking rock boxes with a red pen.

  ‘Thanks, just leave it there,’ he tells me.

  I linger at the door.

  ‘Why would someone be stalking Jane?’ I ask him.

  He looks up.

  ‘You might be asking for a rational explanation for disturbed behaviour,’ he tells me.

  ‘Maybe it’s some crazy patient from the hospital.’

  ‘Maybe. I just know we can’t take any chances right now, Lucy. I personally feel that the Schaffer family is under some kind of threat. Eric’s dead, the house has been entered. All we can do is stay alert and that’s why I want Kirsty to check this guy out.’

  Jane has closed the door of her old bedroom. I pause outside, watching the ice circling in her drink. When we were kids I was only allowed into Jane’s room if I knocked or if she asked me. I used to hang around outside hoping she’d invite me in. It was full of pretty things like a shell collection and a patchwork bed cover, and the shelves were stacked with books which had no pictures.

  I
knock. I don’t open the door until I hear Jane’s voice. She is standing among columns of fat cardboard boxes as though she’s lost in a forest.

  ‘I closed the door because of the dust,’ she explains.

  I squeeze in shyly. The bedcover’s still here, paler than I remember it, and, just visible between some of the boxes, I see the shell collection.

  ‘What have you found?’ I ask, passing her the drink.

  ‘Nothing but junk.’

  ‘What sort of junk?’

  ‘Oh, you know. Old High School yearbooks, diaries with no entries past January six, dolls with broken arms, clothes you thought were so great you couldn’t throw them away even though they were worn out, clothes you never wore at all, photos of people you don’t even remember, a camera which I meant to get fixed but never did, a leash which must have belonged to Nickel Dog… junk.’

  ‘Are you really throwing away your High School yearbooks?’

  She pulls a face.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What are you keeping?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘But won’t we want something to remind us? Just a few things? The Schaffer family won’t be here any more. Nothing of ours will be here.’

  Jane puts down the drink and begins to shuffle through the contents of the box right in front of her. She waves an old cut-out book that no one ever cut out. Pin the Clothes on the Doll.

  ‘I don’t need anything to remind me. There’s already too much of it inside my head.’

  I say: ‘I know what you mean. Stuff from the past, people, things that happened, it all keeps sort of jumping out on me like some crazy dog. Like Nickel Dog.’

  Jane giggles, a half giggle. She’s often told me how Nickel Dog used to jump on me. ‘He’d knock you right over but mostly he was being affectionate.’

  ‘I think I remember when he died.’

  ‘You do? I’m not sure how old you were.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘I just found him on the porch steps dead one evening and Daddy said he’d been poisoned. The Carmichaels around the hill were having big coyote problems and they’d put down some poison so we assumed…’

  I speak quickly. ‘I remember that, Jane. I remember Mother crying. Daddy had Nickel Dog all wrapped up in a blanket. He was carrying the body to the sunken garden. And I ran past the tow truck and down the yard to some den that I’d made with Lindy Zacarro. And Lindy was right there, too.’