Lovely, Dark and Deep (The Madeline Mann Mysteries)

by Buckley, Julia

  “It's nice to finally meet you,” he said. “I was starting to think Sally would never let me meet her friends.”

  “Well, your secret is safe with me,” I said absently.

  “I'm a little tired of secrets, actually,” he said.

  “Meaning what, exactly?” I dug my fingers into a dish of peanuts, then remembered Francis, and let them fall again..

  “I want Sally to make things permanent with me again.”

  Ever the matchmaker, I cried, “Are you going to ask her tonight?”

  Tommy laughed. “Oh, I've asked her several times. She's a slow decider.” He looked toward Sally, his eyes admiring. Then he dragged them back to me. “I understand you hate secrets, too. How clever of you to hunt for clues in Gatsby. Find anything?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Sally said you wanted to talk to me.”

  “Yes. I suppose you don't remember your days of teaching Rachel Yardley very well.”

  “Oh, I do and I don't. I remember her better as my colleague. We taught together for a couple years, before I got tired of the pay. Once in a while I still take a sick day from the regular job and sub at Roselle. Nice memories, and an easy one hundred dollars. Then I can buy presents for Sally, the way she's become accustomed,” he joked.

  I got the impression money was important to Tommy. Maybe no more than it was to most. “I have a crazy question for you. Do you remember Rachel, the student, ever calling you at home?”

  Tommy went for the peanuts, too, and rolled a couple on his palm before tossing them in his mouth. “That's certainly an interesting question. I doubt that any of my students ever called me at home. I had an unlisted number, and I didn't give it out to kids.” He shrugged apologetically. “Does that help you at all?”

  I shrugged back. Rachel had told her father she'd called her math teacher, who at that time was Tommy Watson. But of course she could have lied. She could have been talking to any man—Tag Taglieri, Thomas Fahey, or someone else. “Not really. But I'm used to dead ends,” I said.

  Jack and Juan walked back out on the stage, to much applause. “I've got to get back,” I yelled over the din. “Can I talk to you some more after? I might think of some—”

  “Sure,” he said. “Sally warned me to expect the third degree, but so far it's been painless. Even fun,” he added with a smile.

  “I'd love to have you and Sally over sometime,” I told him. Assuming you don't turn out to be a murderer, a tiny voice said in my head.

  Tommy nodded, and his dark hair fell over one eye as he dove toward the peanuts one last time, tossed some in his mouth, and claimed his beers with salty fingers. He dug in his pocket with his left hand, found a bill, and tossed it on the counter. “I got yours, too,” he said with a wink.

  I thanked him, surprised, and made my way back to the booth. I didn't know what to think of Tommy. I felt almost victimized by his charm. Maybe he was just a really delightful, handsome guy. Or maybe he was distracting me with his winking and his casual attention.

  I sat down, rather dazed, and slightly tipsy after only a couple of sips of my drink. I have no tolerance for alcohol, none. But once in a while it's fun to have a little something, to feel that warmth in the throat and belly, the slight dizziness. I felt even more of a floating sensation when Jack began to sing. He crooned one of my favorites, This Old Guitar, a John Denver tune, and I felt like crying. Must be the alcohol, I thought.

  They made their way through another folksy set: James Taylor, Carole King, Gordon Lightfoot, Emmylou Harris. Then, suddenly, I heard Jack saying my name into the microphone. I felt my family, and a lot of other people, staring in my direction as Jack pointed at me and said, “In the audience today is a very special woman named Madeline who will become my wife in two months. She's that beautiful blushing blonde over there, and this is for her.”

  They played that tune that had been haunting me for weeks of rehearsal, a familiar interlude. It was the introduction to Sister Golden Hair Surprise, an old America song that Jack and I both liked. It had extra meaning tonight, though, because I now had golden hair, and it had certainly surprised Jack, but he had come to like it, because he liked me, and when he sang the words “I just can't live without you, can't you see it in my eyes?” I felt hot tears running down my face. Fritz, in a rare moment of delicacy, handed me a napkin and patted me on the arm.

  I don't know that I've ever been that happy. I grinned at Jack until my face hurt, while they sang the final “Doo wop, doo wops,” of what was now my favorite song of all time.

  They ended with that tune, but were brought back for an encore and sang Desperado. The applause was thunderous, and the lights came back on. The men took a bow and walked into the back. I wiped at my eyes and chatted with my smiling family, accepting compliments on Jack's behalf. I was still clutching The Great Gatsby, so I shoved it back into my pocket. My mother disappeared, then reappeared a moment later. “I was going to go to the girls' room,” she said, “but the hallway was clogged. There's no getting through there right now.”

  I nodded, staring at her, while something tried to dislodge itself in my brain. No getting through. Clogged. Nothing would get through. I thought of the convent. Sister Joanna. What was it? There was something, something there in the back of my memory. I felt a little jolt, realizing that little things had been bothering me all along, things that should have come together, but didn't.

  Sister Francis, I thought. Her allergies. Her deep voice. Fran the Man. I was trying to unearth something in my brain, but so far, nothing. I thought of my visits to the convent. Sister Iris and her math award. SISTER IRIS! I stood up, feeling nervous. “I have to run.”

  My family members stared at me in surprise. Veronica piped, bleary-eyed, “I thought we were going out for ice cream!”

  Sandra laughed. “You need to go to bed. And Madeline probably just wants to find Jack.”

  “Right,” I said, giving a general wave. “Would you all excuse me?”

  I jogged to the wall next to the bar, dug a business card out of my wallet and leaned it against the paneling to write a note on the empty side. “You are the best, sweetest, sexiest singer in the world, and I have a new favorite song. And a special reward for you. Just have to make one trip and I'll probably beat you home.” I signed my name and headed toward the back.

  Sally stepped in front of me, stopping me cold. “Where are you going, young lady?” She still seemed tipsy.

  “Sally, I'm glad I saw you. Could you please give this to Jack? I have to run an errand, and I can't wait for all those people to congratulate him. I need to get going.”

  “But I thought we might go out—” she said as I ran past her.

  “I'll call you,” I yelled over my shoulder..

  I made it to the parking lot before someone else stepped in my way.

  “Madman,” Fritz said. “What the hell are you doing? I've seen that look on your face before, hence your nickname.”

  “Fritz, I'm not crazy. I just need to do something.”

  “And haven't yet noticed that you forgot your coat.” He held it up for me, and I grabbed it. “And your camera. And it's kind of odd that you wouldn't be in there, waiting to talk to Jack.”

  “I've got to go, Fritz. Please.”

  “Why do I have the feeling this is going to end up with you losing quantities of blood again?” he asked.

  “If you don't trust me, come along.” I'd found my car and was fitting the key into the lock.

  “I believe I will,” said my little brother stubbornly, waiting at the passenger door.

  So we drove to the convent together. Fritz figured it out after we turned at the weeping willows. “Why are we going to visit nuns at 10:30 on a Saturday night, sis?” he asked sarcastically. “You're leaving Jack to become one? You're getting thee to a nunnery?”

  “Could we not talk?”

  "Or are you thinking of exposing one of these old gals as Joanna's killer?

  “Fritz.” I sounded like my
mother: stern and final.

  Despite that, Fritz babbled on, amusing himself, and I didn't choose to answer any more. I pulled up close to the fountain, left my headlights on, and leapt out of the car. Fritz followed. “Mad—”

  I suppose I looked at him briefly, but I was really seeing something in my distant memory. I tried to put it into words.

  “Fritz. When I came here one summer, to interview Sister Iris, she showed me the fish in the pond. And she showed me how one of the rocks was hollow. Or she tried to—”

  I looked around desperately, and saw only a small metal crucifix inserted into a stand on the edge of the pond. I pulled it out and started bashing the ice. “The thing was, the fish all swam around it. They swam around it, and I know that Sister Joanna was tending the Mary Fountain when she was killed, and she had taken a bag of cocaine away from her brother—”

  Fritz's face looked pearl white in the light of the headlamps. “Coke?”

  “And when Mom said the hall was clogged, nothing could get through, it finally reminded me—the fish couldn't get through, it's not that they refused, it's that they couldn't.” I continued to pound away, chipping the ice above the rock that I hoped was the one I was looking for. A few layers down the ice was softer; it wasn't such a cold night. I chipped and hacked with my metal cross, trying to use the feet, and not the head, of Jesus.

  “I don't get it—you're saying there's coke hidden in that pond?”

  “It's the only explanation. It's been missing ever since. Ever since,” I repeated, digging my hand into the ice until it was numb.

  “This must be Sister Moira,” he said.

  I thought he meant that someone was walking toward us. I was concentrating so hard I didn't realize he'd seen a car until I heard the door closing, softly. Snick. Not a slam, just a quiet closing, like you'd do if a baby slept in the back seat.

  My numb hand, feeling and looking a bit like a potato, reached inside a hollow rock, under layers and layers of ice. “I feel it,” I said excitedly. “I feel it! I've got it!” I pulled it out and held it up, like a doctor delivers a child. It was a regular Ziploc bag, not too much the worse for wear considering the amount of time which had elapsed. Within was a large amount of white powder, frozen into a chunk but also apparently unscathed.

  “Madeline,” said my brother, who never calls me Madeline.

  “Fritz, I–”

  “I'll take that, Madeline,” said a voice behind us. Fritz had seen him, of course, but I'd kept my eyes on the dark ice. Now I turned, slowly.

  Mr. Taglieri stood there smiling. “You've solved a little puzzle for me. I looked in the pond at the time, of course, but I didn't know about the hollow rock.”

  I felt nothing but cold. Even my brain felt cold. I forced out a question. “Are you saying you killed her?”

  He looked insulted. “Of course I didn't kill her. I loved her. She was the only girl—” he shook his head. “Just give me the bag. We won't say any more about it. Come on, Madeline, you understand. You have sympathy for veterans, you know how it was for us. How it is.”

  I shook my head. “I'm sure your comrades would be insulted to hear you use that as an excuse for dealing to kids.”

  “They're not kids. They're young adults. They have to learn to make choices. They have that luxury. I was eighteen when I went to Vietnam, and I didn't have a choice. I never forced anyone to do anything.”

  “You're lame, man,” Fritz said angrily. “I thought you were a great teacher.”

  “I am a great teacher,” Taglieri said. “This has nothing to do with it. It's just a little hobby. Which I've stopped, by the way. But you're holding a lot of money in your hands, there, hon, and I may as well cash it in. I won't do it anywhere near Webley, okay?”

  I looked at my hands. I was holding a bag of cocaine in my left hand and a crucifix in my right. Always, religion juxtaposed with vice. “You should have just let me turn it in,” I said. “I would never have been able to prove it was you.”

  “I thought about it,” he said. “I didn't even know what you were up to, but I could tell after you spoke to Sally that something was happening. So I followed you. I sent Maria back with the others and I came after you. When I saw you turn in here, I knew.”

  Fritz stepped in front of me. “Well, you can't have it,” he said. “And you'll have to fight both of us to get it.”

  He laughed. “Come on, kids, it's getting cold out here. Just give me the bag. What if I promise not to sell it at all?”

  “I wouldn't believe you,” I said.

  Another car was coming down the winding driveway. “See, the sisters are coming home,” Fritz told him. “Make like the wind and blow.” Fritz seemed to fancy himself a hard-boiled dick all of a sudden.

  Taglieri looked a bit desperate now. “Listen, I don't even want the coke. I just want the bag for sentimental value.”

  I stared at him. “What?”

  “Give me the bag; it's not about the drugs,” he said.

  Fritz and I both looked at the bag. It was plastic. It was worth a couple of cents.

  Distantly, I thought I heard another snick.

  “Go ahead, Madeline, dump out the coke,” Fritz said. “If it's not about the drugs, then dump them out; let's see if he's telling the truth.”

  “Tell me what's going on,” I said, confused. A light snow had started falling on our strange tableau. The flakes were barely visible at first, then suddenly fat. I thought of the beginning of Charlie Brown's Christmas. Chubby flakes, like cartoons. Some of them landed wetly on my face, then turned to water and ran down my cheek like tears.

  “Listen,” Taglieri said. “I told you I loved her, okay? I loved her. And I always hoped she'd come to her senses and leave here,” he looked scornfully around him. “And come back to me. And then she died. And I didn't get to say goodbye. That was the last thing she touched,” he said, pointing with a trembling finger. “I want it. She never knew, never knew that car was coming when she held that bag in her hands. She always was a secretive girl, I'm not surprised, God—” he wiped at his eyes. It seemed like genuine emotion. I was reminded of Tom, in The Great Gatsby, when he cries for Myrtle, who is killed by the car. Tom grieved for her, his mistress, never acknowledging his own part in the tragedy, although of course it wasn't Tom who killed her. It wasn't even Gatsby, the man Tom thought responsible.

  It wasn't Gatsby who had killed her, but only Nick knew the truth. And Sister Francis had known, too.

  “Oh God,” I cried out. “Tag, did your wife know about you and Rachel?”

  He stared at me. “What—why are you—”

  “It wasn't Gatsby who was driving the car,” I said softly. “It was Daisy.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  “What are you suggesting?” he asked dully, but I could tell he was thinking.

  “Before Joanna died, she was asking questions, a lot of questions, probably about you. She thought you might be dealing. She was very disillusioned. Might she have spoken with your wife? Might your wife have guessed about the two of you?”

  “No,” he said.

  “Because Joanna asked her mother,” I said with a sudden realization. “A lot of questions about fidelity, and did the woman ever forgive the man, or the person he had an affair with. It was on her conscience. She was feeling bad, and I'll bet she was feeling bad about your wife.”

  “Maria doesn't know anything about it. She didn't know then and she doesn't now. Let me have—”

  “Did she get in any car accidents around that time?”

  He was getting angry. “Give me the bag and let me get out of here. My wife has never been in a car accident, except for one fender bend—”

  “Around the time Joanna died?” I asked.

  Fritz watched, fascinated. Taglieri wilted visibly. He opened his mouth, but said nothing.

  We heard footsteps approaching, muffled footsteps made quiet by snow. “Yes, it was around that time,” said a woman's voice. I turned toward it, but was blinded by
the headlights of my car.

  “Mrs. Taglieri?” I asked.

  “Maria, for God's sake, get out of here,” her husband said.

  She stepped closer, out of the glare of the headlights, but still in silhouette. “I did know about my husband and that girl. That woman who everyone worshiped as a saint when she died. No one knew she was a common slut.”

  “She was a girl,” I said. “A teenaged girl. It was your husband who had the greater responsibility, the greater—sin.”

  “Yes,” said the voice, “my husband.” She stepped closer to us, and we all saw her gun at the same time. It was large, that was all I knew. I pulled my brother closer to me, and in a sudden moment of grace I understood the love of Christ. I felt, in that instant, that it would be a privilege to die if I could save Fritz. I stepped in front of him. In a flash I envisioned him as a little boy, red-haired and mischievous, pouring out my mother's spices and using the jars to store sand. I'd stood before him, guarding him against my mother's wrath, just as I felt the need to guard him now. He put his arms around my waist, automatically. I think Fritz felt somehow immune to the danger. He watched over my shoulder, a head taller than I.

  “That's my gun,” said John Taglieri as he watched his wife raise it up.

  “I knew that the girl had feelings for my husband,” said Maria Taglieri calmly. “She hinted as much when she spoke to me about the drugs. And I read them in her journal after I—after she died.”

  “So you killed her?” I asked.

  “I didn't plan to. I came out here to confront her, because I'd thought about it, and realized the truth. And I saw her there, and I was just . . . consumed, by—I don't know. I just stepped on the accelerator. It felt so good, in that moment.”

  “Because you had decided she had once loved your husband?” I said. I wanted to keep her talking. I was trying to buy time, but I wasn't sure why.

  “What I didn't know until now,” Maria Taglieri said icily, “was that my husband had feelings for her.”