She recalled how, earlier that day, two students had posed on the hillside leading up to the summerhouse. Liz remembered framing them in the larger scene. Did her photo include the summerhouse, too? Perhaps. It was a long shot, but what if the photo revealed Ali holding the object that had upset him?
Pulling off the road, she dialed the operator and asked for the telephone number for Wellesley College information and then dialed it. She was in luck. The person on information line duty at Wellesley College was a student. Although at first the student told Liz she was not supposed to give out telephone numbers unless the caller knew both first and last names, she relaxed when Liz said, “You know that hot prof Florrie’s nuts about? Well, I’m his TA. He asked me to get in touch with her for him.”
“Oh, well, if you’re his teaching assistant. . .” She supplied the number.
Fortunately, Florrie was thrilled to be contacted by a news reporter. Although the camera was not hers, she knew it was a digital model. She said she’d get in touch with her friend Ellen and ask her to e-mail the image to Liz as soon as possible.
It took almost an hour for Liz to reach the newsroom, where she accessed her e-mail. Sure enough, the Wellesley student had come through. There was the image of the two attractive young women in the topiary garden. Unfortunately, though, the camera angle did not take in the summerhouse. Liz should have remembered this, because when she stood in the shade at the edge of the Pinetum to take a backlit shot, she would have had to point the camera westward, not northward, up the slope. The wider scene Liz had framed included Lake Waban and the balustrade that defined the shore. Exhausted, Liz printed out the image on ordinary paper, folded it into her pocket, and drove home.
Too tired to fuss with the window shades, Liz left them open and went straight to bed. That meant she had a great view of Tom’s legs through her kitchen window when she awoke in the morning. She invited him in and, ruefully, he agreed to give Cormac Kinnaird the packet of evidence Liz had prepared, if the doctor came by to collect it while Tom was still there. Standing at her kitchen counter and gazing at the photo she’d taken in the topiary garden, she left a telephone message for Cormac, telling him about the bird’s nest find and adding, “I’m off to inform Olga about what I’ve discovered. I’d tell Erik in person, too—it seems the civilized thing to do to inform the family personally—but he’s in police custody. Perhaps we can do that together, later,” she added, as Tom’s expression darkened.
Chapter 29
Liz drove to Wellesley and parked on the college campus. She wanted to make her way to Olga’s through the Pinetum and topiary garden. The walk would give her time to consider how to break the news.
Liz’s beautiful legs felt leaden as she left the topiary garden behind and rounded the lake to Olga’s house. And yet she strode on purposefully. Approaching the house from the lakeshore, she walked directly toward the door of the mudroom. Standing slightly ajar, the door was caught by a gust of wind as she neared it, affording her the chance to look inside while remaining unobserved. Olga could be seen standing with her back to the door. For the first time, Liz thought how odd it was for Olga to work with her back to that view. Then, she thought, perhaps it was explicable after all, since the woman’s husband had died in those waters.
On Olga’s potting bench stood not one but three flower arrangements. On the floor to the left and right of Olga stood still more. As Liz ran her eyes over the arrangements, she realized Olga had executed eight different designs representing as many schools of flower-design technique. There was a formal French arrangement, strong on big, blowsy blooms, in a gilt pedestal-style container. It would have looked at home in a French château. At the opposite extreme was a minimalist Ikebana design. Dependent on one bamboo stalk, one striking bloom of Heliconia, and a spear-like leaf Liz could not name, this was a study in proportion and balance. Olga’s technically perfect but disparate arrangements looked unlikely to be useful in any single venue.
Olga turned. She seemed unsurprised to see Liz standing there.
“I’m missing Ellen,” was all she said. She waved an arm towards the arrangements. In her hand was a pair of florist’s scissors designed for rose cutting.
Entering the mudroom, Liz removed a coat from one of the hooks near the door and held it, her arms extended, displaying to Olga the manufacturer’s label, marred with the word “Ritz” stamped on it in hot pink ink.
“I see we shop in the same place,” Liz said. “Puttin’ on the Ritz. Excellent bargains there, don’t you think? Even during the week before Christmas, one can buy a new coat, even a complete new outfit, on sale.”
Olga said nothing.
“You didn’t care about the price, though, did you, when you purchased this coat in that shop last December? It was more the convenience that attracted you. Money would have been no object in covering up what you did. No, it was the convenience that attracted you, wasn’t it, Olga? The shop is right around the corner from your hairdresser.”
Olga shifted the scissors from one hand to the other. She said nothing.
“The neighborhood around your hairdresser is one you know well, isn’t it? You could almost call it a ‘haunt.’ You’ve had the same hairdresser for years, even decades, haven’t you? You usually park your car under the Prudential Center, where Lord & Taylor is. Or, on occasion, you park it in Newton and travel into town on the Green Line with your daughter—the wife of an environmentalist, after all.
“Yes, you know the area well, in every season. Not far from Lord & Taylor are the Boston Public Library and the Copley Square T stop for the Green Line. A quick taxi ride would deliver you to Back Bay Station and the commuter rail that runs all the way out to Wellesley: a convenient route to Wellesley if you go into the city by train—let’s say, to rent a car after an accident. There’s a car rental place on Boylston Street, just doors away from Puttin’ on the Ritz.
“You also know that, in the winter when there is a snowstorm, snow gets thrown up on cars so that they are entirely covered with the stuff. Sometimes vehicles sit there for days or weeks before the city digs them out and tows them away.”
Olga set down her scissors and picked up a rose from the potting bench. Peering at Liz over its tightly closed bud she tore off a blood-red petal and cast it on the floor at her feet.
Still, she said nothing.
“You knew if you rented a car in Ellen’s name some days after she disappeared, it would suggest she was still living, that she had exited her kitchen, if not voluntarily, at least alive. And covered with snow, the car might take some time to be found. You had your daughter’s purse, Olga, didn’t you? Her credit card, her driver’s license, even her fountain pen. You must have been bundled up when you rented the car, wearing a hood, perhaps. It was an awful risk to take but you were in luck, with a clerk who was more interested in painting her nails than in taking a good look at you. Perhaps she was lax, too, in providing you with a pen. You didn’t want her to look up from her manicure so you used Ellen’s fountain pen to sign the car rental agreement. The pen Erik gave Ellen to celebrate their anniversary. Not the anniversary of their wedding, but the anniversary of their meeting: August eighteenth.”
Olga tore another petal off the rose and dropped it to the floor. And another. Then another.
“The earlier phone call, on Veronica’s birthday, in June: Anyone could have made that call. Even a cabbie might draw that date out of a passenger while making small talk. Erik hardly dared hope it was Ellen who made the birthday phone call. But a call on August 18? Well, that was different. It had to be significant that a call arrived from Ellen’s cell phone on that date!
“But Erik and Ellen are not the only people who know that date’s import. You know it, too, Olga, don’t you?”
Olga raised the rose before her eyes and scrutinized it. Without a word, she tore off two more petals, dropping each to the floor.
“How convenient for you that Ellen’s husband had a cell phone that was identical in appearance to your daughter’s. One that doesn’t even reveal the phone’s own number when you consult it to find out the time. If you substituted it briefly for Erik’s, he’d never realize it was not his. And then, with your entrée to his house, you could easily retrieve the phone after you knew he’d made a call on it.”
Olga peeled another petal from the rose. She held the petal out before her on the palm of her hand and blew it off. It fell to the floor slowly, without a sound.
“You couldn’t know the bodies would be found while he had the phone in hand, though, could you? If you’d known they would be found then, you’d have made another wordless call yourself, wouldn’t you? The idea was to suggest she was alive, after all.
“And you couldn’t know he would phone me, of all people, could you? He might have called anyone, even perhaps the police. How bizarre that would have been! The most likely suspect in the murder of his wife phones the police on his wife’s cell phone—the very phone that has been used for months to suggest she is alive—to request information about the scene of the crime.
“But, in any event, he did not phone the police from Ellen’s phone. It was the trace on his line that led the police directly to the most likely suspect: the missing woman’s husband.
“You had to know the press would have a heyday with this, the perfect target. How could anyone help but think Erik had sought out the man with whom his wife presumably disappeared, and done him in? And after September eleventh, it is so easy to vilify anyone of Middle Eastern extraction. The public would support Erik’s wrath even as he was condemned for it legally.”
Removing the last three petals from the rose, Olga looked Liz directly in the eye with an expression that could only be read as challenging. Still, she said nothing.
“You don’t think I can produce any evidence, do you? Well, you’re wrong there. Remember, Erik phoned me—the one journalist who’s more concerned with the truth than with a sensational headline about a jealous husband, the one reporter who knows and cares about your daughter. When you found out he was on the line with me, you interrupted him, didn’t you? I heard him say ‘Oh!’ as if he’d been distracted. But it was the start of your name, wasn’t it? He was beginning to say ‘Olga’.”
Olga’s face came alive as she made a disdainful snort.
“You’re right, Olga. That would never convince anyone in a court of law. But, you see, there’s something else to worry about. After I received that cell-phone call from Erik, I went to see him. He showed me his cell phone. Yes, his cell phone, not your daughter’s. Sure, he might have hidden hers. But I know he didn’t, because when Ali came out to the summerhouse yesterday to revisit it after all those years, he found it in the hiding place there. He started to make a call on it—later, when he realized he’d nearly used an important piece of evidence to make a call to his boss, he said he “almost blew it.” But he stopped dialing when he recognized your voice calling to the dog.
“He replaced the phone and hid up there, behind the summerhouse. And he saw you retrieve the phone and heave it, like a dog’s toy, into the lake. Only this time you had Hershey on a leash, didn’t you? The dog strained to leap into the lake, but you did not let him.”
Olga picked up the pair of rose cutters. Centering the rose stem between two small bites in the blades, she closed the scissors and pulled the flowerless stem between them, shearing off the thorns, one by one. With little sounds like time ticking away, they hit the cold slate floor between Olga and her challenger.
“With Erik in police custody and the convincing suggestion made that he had been using the phone all along, that phone had no more usefulness to you. You’re counting on a jury to find such ramblings mere speculation. But that’s not all, Olga. I, too, was there yesterday afternoon, photographing two young women you would call ‘coeds’ in the topiary garden. You didn’t see me? Well, I saw you. And my heart went out to you when one of the young women called out the name ‘Ellen.’ But the photograph I took of those girls tells another story. You see, you and Hershey appear in that photo, too. Hershey is straining at the leash as the ‘toy’—no, Olga, the cell phone you had just tossed—is frozen by the camera in its trajectory into Lake Waban. I have no doubt police divers will be able to find it there.”
Olga considered the rose stem. Placing it between the flattened fingers of her two hands, she rolled it back and forth. A bit of thorn must have remained on it to prick her. At long last, the flower arranger flinched. And her blood flowed.
“The place where the bodies are, near Plymouth, that’s not the scene of the murder, is it? You killed your daughter in her own kitchen when you came upon her with the swarthy-skinned man. You feared Ellen would confront you—even broadcast to others—the secret you’d hidden for decades: Her father and your husband—Karl Swenson—was a pervert. When you saw the cabbie, you thought he was the boy, all grown up now, who witnessed your husband’s masturbating over his own daughter. The same boy who phoned you on the anniversary of that awful day, year after year after year after year in December. So you killed them both, Olga.
“I wouldn’t have thought you capable of murder, Olga. Not until I realized you were cruelly capable of feeding Veronica false hope by making that call on her birthday. And not until I saw that you would stoop to implicate the only parent Veronica has left. Not until I saw you cared more about your husband’s reputation and your own freedom than about the well-being of your granddaughter. I thought you loved your granddaughter.”
In a sudden movement, and with a sound like a snarl, Olga shoved Liz into the doorjamb and reached past the several coats that were hanging on the wall. She wheeled around, training a rifle on Liz.
“Veronica!” she cried out. “Don’t you dare tell me I don’t love Veronica. That’s not true! I did what I did to be here for Veronica. You think you’re clever, don’t you? But you’re wrong about Karl. He would never behave like that. Never!”
“You may deny it and you may kill me, as I think you did your daughter, but there are still two more people who know what happened that day by this lake: Ali himself, and Ellen’s pen pal, Nadia. The police will know you murdered to hide your family secret. Count on it.”
The gun moved in Olga’s shaking hands. “I believed my husband when he told me the tongue-tied boy had exposed himself to Ellen. I still believe it! When I arrived at Ellen’s house and saw through the window a man clapping a hand over my daughter’s mouth, I knew it was that boy grown up. He was saying the same strange words, like a tuneless hum. It had to be the same person! I went out to the garden shed, where I’d hidden the skeet shooter I’d bought for Veronica for Christmas, and I loaded it. When I came back to the house the man had my daughter pinned to his side, with his bloody hand over her mouth. I wanted to stop him but I’m no killer. I aimed for his legs and pulled the trigger. I closed my eyes on what I’d done.” Olga shuddered and hugged the rifle to herself, barrel pointed upward. “But when I opened them, there was Ellen, on the floor. She was dead.”
Heedless of the rifle butt, which was now pressed against the underside of her chin, Olga sobbed. Liz stepped forward, reached for the weapon, and very slowly put her hand around the barrel. Relinquishing the gun, Olga sat down hard on the cold slate floor. She picked up some thorns and rolled them in her palms, bloodying her hands as she spoke.
“I must have killed her. It was inexplicable but I must have! The man kept up that awful humming. I had no idea what to do. I wanted to shoot
the man, just to stop him humming. I wanted to run and run and run.
“Then the cookie ingredients caught my eye and I thought of Veronica. I couldn’t let her come home to this kitchen. I just couldn’t. I still had the gun. I could make the man clean the place up. First, we had to—to do something about Ellen. I looked around and saw the tree bag, the kind you use to wrap up a Christmas tree before you put it out for the trash. I made him put Ellen inside it. And I made him put the bag outside the back door. It was cold out there; it was beginning to snow. But how else could we clean up for Veronica? We came back inside the house then. I directed him to put on the rubber gloves that Ellen always keeps around. I told him to fill the dishpan on the side of the sink with water and some floor cleaner. I made him put the bottle of floor cleaner back under the sink. I made him use a sponge to wipe the floor and the wall behind where Ellen had—had been. While he was mopping, he knocked over one of the poinsettias. After it looked like he had done a pretty good job cleaning up, I made him carry the poinsettia into the living room. I wanted to keep his hands busy. I had to keep that man with me everywhere so I could point the gun at him.
“That’s when I saw Ellen’s purse in the man’s open backpack. There was no time to wonder what it was doing there. I pulled the purse out of the backpack and took Ellen’s keys out of it. Something fell out of her purse and when I bent down to pick it up, the Arab set down the poinsettia suddenly and flew across the room at me. He was reaching for the gun when the doorbell rang. Instead of grabbing the gun, he fled the room! You would have thought the man would have welcomed what we glimpsed through the window. It was two foreign-looking men, maybe Middle Eastern.
“I was afraid he would lunge at me again; I had to keep him under control. I followed him into the kitchen and kept the gun pointed at him. I wanted to stay in the kitchen and clean the counter where the cookie ingredients were, but he’s rattled me so! I was shaken. I put on my coat and grabbed Ellen’s jacket, too. I don’t know why I took the jacket. It just seemed like a good idea. Later I found Ellen’s purse and mine, and the Arab’s backpack, in the car, but I hardly remember putting them there.
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