Too Close to Home

by Andrew Grant

  “There’s no need. She’s already been cremated. There was a note in some papers she left with me for safekeeping, years ago, that explains how she had a horror of mortuaries and couldn’t stand the thought of her body being kept on ice for an extended period. It’s a little strange, but not the strangest thing I’ve seen over the years. All that’s left is to secure the house against intruders—and from the cold, since winter will soon be on its way—until you decide what you want to do with the place. Would you like me to send someone over?”

  “No.” I shook my head even though I knew he couldn’t see me. “I’ll go. I’ll take care of it myself.”

  * * *

  —

  Carrodus must have seen the look on my face, because as soon as I hung up the phone he hurried across to check on me. “You OK, Paul?”

  “I’m fine.” The reality was at odds with my automatic, conditioned response, and it took my brain a moment to take the reins from my tongue. “Actually, I’m not. That was bad news. Someone’s died. My…” How could I explain Mrs. Vincent to him? What word was big enough to describe the role she’d played in my life? My father’s housekeeper didn’t come close, yet I didn’t know what else to say. “Someone I cared about. There are some things I need to take care of, now.”

  “Take the rest of the day, Paul.” Carrodus took hold of my arm. “Take as long as you need. Go. Do what you need to do.”

  I shook my head. “It can wait till after my shift.”

  “That’s your grief talking.” Carrodus steered me toward the door. “Go. Be where you need to be. I’ll cover for you here.”

  * * *

  —

  I figured there was no particular rush—I’d been at the house on Sunday and everything seemed pretty well squared away—but I felt the need to be doing something. I started by heading to the brownstone and picking up the keys to the rental car that I hadn’t gotten around to returning. Robson offered to come to Westchester with me, but I told him to stay. Someone had to watch Pardew. And if Atkinson came through with the crime scheme photos, I wanted the envelope to fall into safe hands.

  I found myself passing the botanic gardens and realized I had no memory of driving through Manhattan, let alone heading up the Saw Mill. I wondered if I should have let Robson drive, after all. I was on autopilot, strangely numb, with a head full of weirdly practical thoughts. I’d be free to take the furniture from the house now. Where had my father’s car ended up? In California, with Mrs. Vincent’s friends? Who were they? Where did they live? How would I get it back? Would it be worth the trouble? They were all impersonal, trivial details, but they were tripping over one another in my head and degrading my ability to think.

  When I arrived at the house and climbed out of the car I was struck by how quiet the area was. There was no equipment roaring away in anyone’s yard. No traffic noise. No aircraft overhead. That was unusual, like the neighborhood was lying low in an instinctive show of respect. As I stood there it struck me that my mother had gone. My father had gone. And now Mrs. Vincent had gone, leaving me with no living relative or close human connection. The house was no longer a home without her. It was just a large wooden box full of memories. Most of them distant. Not many of them warm.

  I was right by the gate but found myself reluctant to go through. And as if I needed more reasons to hesitate, I started to worry that I wasn’t the best man for the job. What did I know about house maintenance? I’d only owned a house for a few weeks. If I wanted to blow it up and make it look like an accident, I could do that. If I needed to leave a body inside and stage it like a suicide, that would be no problem. If I had to wire the place for sound and pictures, that would be a piece of cake. But what do you do about shutting off the water? Dealing with the appliances? Do you need to close the drapes? Honestly, I was clueless.

  I pushed the negative thoughts away, opened the gate, and made a plan as I walked up the path. I didn’t need to leave everything in perfect shape. In a situation like this, good enough would do. I’d just make sure everything was locked and powered down. Take care of any flood or fire risks, and secure the place against intruders. Then we could locate Mrs. Vincent’s next of kin, unless Ferguson already knew where they were, and ship her possessions to them whenever it was convenient. The same thing applied to the books and the furniture. And maybe the kitchen stuff. That could all be shipped to the brownstone when I had more time to deal with it. Along with my father’s personal possessions, if there were any I wanted. There was no need for any drama. I should be in and out within ten minutes, maximum.

  I unlocked the front door and stepped into the hallway. It was a wide space with a high, angled ceiling that I was used to hearing echo with the sound of footsteps or voices or Mrs. Vincent’s radio. Today it was silent, as if the house itself was in mourning. I shivered and glanced through the doorway on the right. It led to Mrs. Vincent’s bedroom. I realized I’d never been inside. I pushed the door a little wider open. The air still carried a hint of her soap—she never wore perfume. The bed, with its head against the far wall, was neatly made. The closet wasn’t closed all the way. Inside, I could see spaces on the hanging rail and shoe rack, presumably left by the things she’d packed for her visit to the West Coast. Her bathroom door wasn’t closed, either, and I could see an empty toothbrush mug on a shelf above the sink. I crossed to the window, checked the lock, and pulled the drapes. I took another glance around, then went back out to the hallway. I checked the rest of the first-floor windows. Unplugged the TV in the living room, and the coffee machine in the kitchen. Opened the dishwasher a little wider, just in case Mrs. Vincent had been right about the mold. Then I headed up the stairs. Looked in my father’s room. And my old bedroom. I paused there for a minute. There were tiny marks on the walls from where the corners of my posters had been attached. I could still picture the way they were set out. I lay on my bed, and remembered staring up at the ceiling, all the nights I couldn’t sleep. I remembered thinking of Marian. But never about the army. Never about all the places in the world I’d end up serving in. And never about returning here under circumstances like these.

  I made it halfway back along the landing, and stopped. I’d checked every room except one. The room I’d always been forbidden to enter. The one where my mother had died. I was standing by its door. There was no one to tell me to stay out now. But the question was, did I want to see inside? Was it a picture I wanted in my head, after all these years? I reached for the handle, expecting it to still be locked. Then I could tell myself I’d tried. I’d have the opportunity to withdraw with my honor intact.

  The handle moved. The door opened. Before I could stop myself I stepped forward. The room was dark. The shades were drawn. As a kid I’d had little understanding of the reality of dying in childbirth, though it always conjured nightmarish visions of blood-soaked sheets, torn flesh, lifeless eyes. There didn’t need to be a lock to keep me out. My imagination did that job on its own. Horrible pictures rushed back, filling my head and making me hesitate to turn on the light. I took a breath. Reached for the switch. Flicked it up. And saw no evidence of carnage at all. Just a crib and a stroller that had been mine, lined up by the wall, ready to be reissued. Half a dozen cardboard boxes with the words Baby Clothes stenciled on the sides. And a bed. It was neatly made. There were no signs of blood or gore. Just an alarming 1970s turquoise flowery comforter.

  I crossed to the bed and stopped at the side, near the pillow, where you might stand to say good night to someone. Or chat with them. Or stroke their forehead if they were sick. My mother had died right there. So had my sister. I knew I should feel something for them, now that I was so physically close to the spot where they’d drawn their final breaths. I tried to feel something. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. They were theoretically two of my closest relatives, but in reality they were just ideas. I’d never known one of them. I didn’t remember the other. Not in any meaningful way. I was used to
living with the knowledge that they were dead. That was normal to me, like knowing that snow was cold or you get hungry if you don’t eat. I guessed that was sad, but there was nothing I could do about it now.

  The far wall in the room was dominated by a fireplace, with a mirror hanging above it and a closet on either side. I started with the one on the left. It was full of my mother’s clothes. Outdoor wear mostly—coats, boots, nothing too personal. I recognized a ski suit, from a photograph that had been in a frame on my father’s desk. That was the only picture of my mother he ever displayed. I’d often gazed at the image, growing up, so now it felt strange to see the outfit she’d been wearing, full-sized, hanging where I could reach out and touch it.

  The right-hand closet was filled with shelves, making it more like a bookcase with doors. They were lined with rows of bankers’ boxes. I picked one at random and lifted it down. It was full of books. They were my mother’s, from grade school. The other boxes held all kinds of other academic souvenirs, from her high school days through college. She’d gone to MIT and majored in electronics. Or so the documents showed. I’d had no idea. My father had never mentioned it, and I’d never asked him.

  It was strangely intimate to be suddenly poring over my mother’s things, like I was finally getting to know her through the items she’d chosen to keep. There were circuit diagrams. Articles. Research papers. Pages and pages of handwritten notes and sketches and ideas for inventions and projects and experiments. I couldn’t follow all the science—it was simultaneously outdated and too complicated—but it seemed like her specialty was sound engineering. She’d been working on new techniques for eliminating interference from live recordings, and had drawn up a bunch of detailed plans for fitting out some kind of advanced studio. Advanced for her times, anyway. Now I’d bet you could do more with your phone. I couldn’t help wondering how she’d have felt about that. And whether, if she’d had the chance to continue her work, my teenage years would have been spent sitting in on sessions with Lucinda Williams and Alanis Morissette rather than enduring lectures about profit and loss and cash flow from my father.

  I stayed in the room, reading for another hour, then repacked the boxes and put them back on their shelves. I closed the door I’d never expected to open, went back downstairs, and was about to leave the house when a final thought crossed my mind. It was too late to ask Mrs. Vincent about my father and whether he had tea on the night he died. But the next best thing was waiting for me in the kitchen. The cups, lined up in the cabinet. With a telltale space among them. Or without.

  The next morning Robson was in the kitchen when I came down. He was sitting at the table, drinking tea, with a sheaf of photographs in his hand. It reminded me of the days as a kid when we’d come back from a trip and my father would send his roll of film away for processing, then jump on the prints the moment they arrived in the mail. Only, the pictures Robson was holding were larger, and they’d come special delivery from the crime lab.

  “Seen these?” He held up the pictures.

  I nodded. “Looked at them last night when I got back.”

  “I just went through them again.” He shook his head. “There’s no sign of any cup, or any fragments of china. Not in any of the photos. And not in the inventory. I have to say, that doesn’t augur well for Pardew.”

  “That’s true. But I checked in the kitchen when I was up at the house. One of the cups is missing.”

  “That doesn’t prove his story. It could have been broken at any time. By anyone.”

  “In theory. But you have to understand how sentimental my father was about those cups. You had to treat them as if they were filled with weapons-grade plutonium, only more carefully. If you grew up in that house—if you spent any time there at all—you’d rather hack your own head off with a blunt potato peeler than chip one. Let alone break one.”

  “It’s still possible. Cups can break however much care you take with them.”

  “Maybe. But the theory’s moot now, anyway. We needed Mrs. Vincent to corroborate the details. If we’d been able…Wait. Pass me that photo.”

  Robson handed me the photograph from the top of the stack. “It’s not one of those magic pictures, you know. The image you want won’t appear if you stare for a while.”

  “I’m not looking for the cup.” I took out my phone and opened its magnifying app so I could study one section. “This is weird.”

  “What is?” Robson came around behind me and looked over my shoulder.

  “See the picture frame on the floor? It’s broken. The picture’s fallen out. It was of my parents, on a ski trip. It was cute.”

  “How can you tell? It’s facedown on the floor.”

  “I recognize the frame. And my father only had one picture on display in his study. He only had one anywhere. But that’s not the point. Out of its frame, you can see part of the photo is folded back. Why would he have done that?”

  “To make it fit in the frame?”

  “No. It actually looked too small for the frame. He made a cardboard surround to fill the gaps at the sides. I thought the picture must have been some odd ’80s format, or that they’d had it developed in Switzerland, or wherever.”

  “If those are your mother’s hands, it looks like she was holding a trophy. A big one. Could your father have been jealous?”

  “No. Definitely not. Jealousy wasn’t in his nature.”

  “Then I’m out of ideas.”

  “Look at this. It’s even weirder. See, there’s something engraved on the trophy? On the plate on its base.” I handed Robson my phone.

  “It says, ‘Women’s Downhill, Open. First Place. 15th August 1983.’ She won. Awesome. What’s wrong with that?”

  “What’s wrong is that in August ’83 my mother was seven months pregnant with my sister. How was she winning a downhill skiing competition?”

  “Paul, you caveman. Life doesn’t have to stop just because a person’s pregnant.”

  “Sure. Early on. If you’re talking about working. Driving. Swimming. But downhill skiing? At seven months? That’s recklessly irresponsible.”

  “You’ve been known to do the odd reckless thing yourself from time to time. Maybe it runs in the family.”

  “I’ve never been reckless when someone else’s life is at stake. And here’s another thing that doesn’t add up. I saw my mother’s ski suit yesterday, at the house. I recognized it from the picture. It was regular-sized, not maternity.”

  “You’re reading way too much into this, Paul. She could have had another ski suit from the same brand that she didn’t keep. The one suit could have been baggy enough for her to wear it, anyway. Not everyone swells up to the size of an elephant when they’re expecting a baby. I actually think it’s quite cool to ski one day, give birth the next.”

  “Except that my sister was stillborn, and my mother died in delivery.”

  “Oh. I’m sorry, Paul. I didn’t realize. No. That’s not cool. Maybe it’s why your father hid the trophy part of the picture? Maybe he resented it, if he thought the race played a part in the outcome.”

  “But why—” My phone beeped. Robson passed it back and I saw an email had arrived. From Harry. I opened it and quickly scanned the text. “All right. Forget all that sad stuff. Some news is in and it’s just what the doctor ordered. How do you fancy a trip to Albany?”

  “Have you got anything sharp I could stick in my eyes, instead?”

  “No, you’re going to like this. It’s going to be fun. Harry found something in Klinsman’s contacts. One of them did business with Rooney.”

  “The same kind of business Pardew did?”

  “Correct. So I’m thinking we should have…shall we call it an elevated discussion with the guy?”

  Howard Wilkinson was at his desk when I opened the door to his office on the twelfth floor of a clunky van der Rohe rip-off building, tucked into th
e elbow where State Street meets Broadway. He was adding numbers to a spreadsheet, and smiling greedily as he watched his projected profits rack up at the bottom of the screen.

  “Wrong office.” He barely glanced at me. “Get out.”

  “Right office.” I took one of the faux antique dining chairs from the mini conference table near the right-hand wall, moved it closer to the window, and sat down. “Wrong answer.”

  “I don’t know who you are”—his hand tore itself away from the keyboard and reached for the phone—“but I’m calling the police.”

  “Very good.” I nodded. “Very civil-minded. I like that in a felon. It’ll save them the trouble of calling on you. Again.”

  Wilkinson froze with the receiver halfway to his ear. Slowly, he replaced it.

  “Allow me to introduce myself.” I summoned a brief smile. “My name’s Paul McDonnell. I’m an attorney. I work with a friend of yours. Steven Bruce.”

  “With Steve? That’s excellent.” He was speaking slowly, playing for time. “I haven’t seen him in I don’t know how long. How’s he doing?”

  “Health-wise, he couldn’t be better. Professionally, not so well. In fact, to use a legal term, he’s in deep shit.”

  “Oh dear. I’m sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “To help Bruce? No. You know how resourceful he is. The process of him digging himself out is already well under way. But to help yourself? Yes. Absolutely. That’s actually why I’m here.”

  “I don’t need help, from myself or anyone else. I’m not the one who’s in trouble.”

  I shook my head. “Are you familiar with the term myopic, Mr. Wilkinson? It means shortsighted, which is what you’re being right now. Can you guess the nature of the trouble that Bruce is in? Its origin?”

  Wilkinson closed his eyes and sighed. “What do you want?”