“You got married after only knowing a man for two weeks?” Susan’s voice held no judgment. She’d met a man and married him after two weeks. Four weeks later he was dead.
“Wait till you hear the really dumb part,” Caley said. “I went back to Kansas City with him and life started. It wasn’t two years before he bumped into another gullible female who gushed over blue eyes and golden curls and dazzling charm. And that was only the beginning. I kept threatening to leave; he kept begging me to stay, promising never again. We had Adam and I threatened to leave. He begged and promised. We had Bonnie, same thing. Six years later, where am I? Ha. Hampstead, Kansas.”
“Why are you here?”
“Mat was transferred. He bought this house before I even saw it. We all moved in. I finally smartened up when he got into another affair. I threw him out. So far I’m standing firm. This place is so—” Caley put her face between her knees and mumbled to the floor as though reciting words she’d memorized. “It’s a great house. A little run-down, is all. It needs a little paint and cleaning, but it’s got six bedrooms and a basement for when it’s bad outside, and this town is a great place to raise kids. Wait till you see it.” She lifted her head. “That’s what he told me before I got here and saw this Addams Family house.”
“Mat was still with you then?”
“He moved us in and then I found out about the apartment in Kansas City. When I dropped by, a cute little brunette was with him. Don’t say it takes me forever to learn something.” She rested her cheek against her knees, wilting to the point of dropping over. “Even when he threatened to take Zach away if I went ahead.”
“Take him away?”
“Zach’s not mine. He was two when I married Mat.”
“Where’s his mother?”
“She died when he was a baby. Overdose of sleeping pills.” Caley started up the stairs.
“Let me help you.”
“Thanks, but I think I can make it.”
In the living room, Adam was sitting cross-legged in front of the television and Bonnie was singing to a doll while she changed its clothes.
“Hey, you two,” Caley said. “Did either of you take snapshots out of this album?”
“I didn’t,” Adam said without taking his eyes from the television screen.
“It was the evil prince,” Bonnie said.
“Why would he do that?” Caley asked.
“Because he wanted the numbers on the back, of course,” Bonnie said.
19
After calling her boss at the Basslight Music store, who heard the first croaked word and told her to stay home, Caley crawled back to bed and pulled the blankets over her shoulders.
Women were to Mat as air was to lungs. Not long after their marriage, Caley picked up signs that he was getting new air.
When she’d first met him, he claimed she was one of the loveliest women in the world, her hair was the color of dark honey with the sun shining through it, her eyes like finest cognac, her skin like porcelain, and her face like the sculpture of a goddess. When she looked in the mirror she saw chin-length light brown hair, clean and shiny but otherwise left to itself, hazel eyes, and a face without makeup. No goddess that she could see. It made her uneasy and put Mat’s credibility to question. It left her feeling one day he’d meet a real goddess.
And he did that very thing.
After those first two years, tokens of other goddesses in the Garden of Eden started showing up. Caley, being the innocent doofus that she was, was too dumb or too unwilling to listen to the inner voice that was both strident and panicky. In the beginning there was only the faint odor of perfume. It could be the woman at the coffee shop where he stopped every morning before going to work. Her hand brushed his when she left the check. Or one of the tellers at the bank. They probably had lunch together. He gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. The clerk at the convenience store where he sometimes stopped to pick up the paper before coming home. He gave one of his fellow employees a ride.
It was a long time before one persistent voice came through. Didn’t it seem a trifle odd that each and every one of these women wore the same perfume? And so lavishly it made her stink of it?
He’d started getting home later and later. Not something she’d notice in the ordinary stream of their life. He did the usual eight-to-five stint and got home around five-thirty. She didn’t get off at the sporting goods store until nine. The first time she’d called and didn’t get him she thought nothing, but after a second and third, the game started. Find the golden Easter egg.
None of this was concrete evidence, but her women friends began to look at her with wary eyes and shift knowing glances to each other. They’d been there, and their instincts were better than a bloodhound’s at finding the buried body.
The time finally came when Caley believed them. The truth must out. So one day when Mat told her he had to work late, she called in sick to her own job. The owner of the sporting goods store, a man, had his own radar, and it bleeped immediately. He wanted to know what she was so sick with; she didn’t sound sick. Cramps, she told him. She started telling him about her periods, the amount of blood and the color, and … He didn’t stay on the phone to hear the rest.
She sat and thought about transportation. They only had one car. Mat drove it, even though his job was closer. Would she want him to arrive at work all sweaty from pedaling a bicycle? She rode the bicycle.
Her neighbor in the next apartment had said she could borrow his car any time she needed one. She’d never taken him up on the offer for a couple of reasons—number one, he was weird, and number two, she didn’t know what he might want in return—but she couldn’t see herself pedaling madly in hot pursuit of Mat’s red Thunderbird convertible.
So she borrowed the neighbor’s old blue Chevy. In shorts and tennis shoes—they were easier to drive in than sandals—and oversized sunglasses, a six-pack of bottled water on the seat beside her, she sweltered in the afternoon heat, keeping an eagle eye on the Thunderbird in the bank lot. She fanned herself with the paperback novel she’d brought. It was too hot to read. Kansas City was bordering on hell, as far as she was concerned.
Seattle wasn’t like this. She tried to imagine cooling rain, but wasn’t very good at it.
As she waited, and sweated, she’d examined the glove box and found it stuffed with inflammatory pamphlets to overthrow the government that had taken away all our rights. The backseat had books on how to make bombs and destroy bridges. The slogans were “Burn ’em down” and “Blow ’em up.” The car, rust spots held together by primer, smelled like dirty socks. The smell and the sun were making her sick.
Bored, she tried to sleep sitting straight up. She didn’t want to lean back because the seat back was sticky and she didn’t care to find out what made it that way. After forty minutes, just in time to keep her brain from permanent damage, Mat came striding out of the bank, swinging his briefcase, yanking his tie loose to pull off, and unbuttoning his shirt collar. He tossed the tie in the passenger seat of the Thunderbird and took off. Bright red, not hard to follow in the afternoon sun. The dazzle almost blinded her even with dark glasses that kept sliding down her sweaty nose.
He drove south a while, then zigzagged west and came to an apartment building with two floors of apartments and apparently four apartments per floor. She parked on the other side of the street, oozed from the car like a bad spy, and slunk along in the direction he was going.
Mat, intent on seeing his paramour, didn’t even look her way. He trotted eagerly up the stairs to the second floor and rapped softly on the door of the second apartment. He leaned his head close to it.
Maybe he was whispering magic words like “Jack sent me.” The door opened and the Other Woman threw her arms around his neck with an octopus grip and pressed her lips plunger-style against his mouth. Her hair, cascading blond curls, swayed with passion.
Mat’s arms wormed around her; he walked her backward and kicked the door shut behind them. Well, now, wasn
’t that sweet? Caley climbed the stairs, albeit slower than Mat had, and checked the number. Two-one-four, with a card that read “Buller, T.” Caley was pretty sure the T didn’t stand for Thomas.
Buller, T. must read children’s books. Lined up against the wall were a small cement Snow White and, even smaller, three dwarves. The other four dwarves must not have made it yet. Probably hard for cement dwarves to climb to the second floor. She looked over the railing down to the parking lot at Mat’s shiny red Thunderbird.
Picking up Snow White, she hefted it in her hand and wondered if it would bash Mat’s head in. As a blunt object, it had a nice feel to it. It’s a good deed you’re doing, Snow White. She pitched Snow White down at Mat’s car. It hit with a satisfying clunk and bounced, leaving an okay dent in the red hood. She picked up a dwarf and studied it. She couldn’t actually tell who it was, but it looked like Dopey. They all looked like Dopey. Unless they were all Happy with a Dopey smile. She heaved it.
This time her aim was better. A starlike crack crazed one side of the windshield.
Some guy came barreling out of the apartment below. “Hey! Whattaya think you’re doing!”
“Don’t worry,” Caley yelled. “You’re safe.”
The door of apartment two-one-four banged open. Mat flew out, pants in hand, otherwise as bare as Adam in the Garden. He saw her, stopped, and stared at her, slack-jawed, goggle-eyed.
He seemed to be having trouble talking; all he could do was stutter “Ahahahah.” She could see his mind kick in and start to spin with explanations while he tried to pick one that he might throw out.
“It’s not what it looks like,” she said helpfully. “You can explain everything.”
He nodded and notched up a syllable to “Uhuhuhuh.” The blond, probably Buller, T., came out of the apartment clutching an airy filmy thing around her, blond hair in sexy disarray.
“You know how bad this looks,” Caley coached, “but I’m always jumping to conclusions and don’t always think.”
“Caley—”
She threw a Dopey-Happy, hoping to bash in Mat’s head. She hit his shoulder. Dopey landed on his foot, toppled over, and the head broke off.
“My gnomes!” Buller, T. knelt beside the decapitated blunt instrument and cradled both pieces against two large globes that Mat had, no doubt, recently had his hands on.
With Mat on her heels, Caley stomped to the last Dopey-Happy and grabbed it, trotted down the stairs, and smashed a star on the other side of the Thunderbird’s windshield.
Mat groveled, begged her forgiveness, swore it would never happen again. She let herself believe him. She turned out to be pregnant, and there was Zach, three years old. He wasn’t hers; he belonged to Mat.
Even at the best of times, love and pain were right up there vying for first place.
20
On Thursday morning Susan was working through two poached eggs, a sausage patty, and an English muffin at the Coffee Cup Cafe when Fran Weyland, her friend who owned the travel agency, slid into the booth across from her. “Have you packed yet?” Fran croaked.
“Ha, very funny. Did you tell me a month ago these tickets were nonrefundable? You sound terrible. What are you doing out of bed?”
“I’m better now. I said nonrefundable and it’s still true.”
“You don’t sound better.”
“Wait until you hear me tomorrow.” Fran had wild dark hair, large hoop earrings, and in honor of the season, had on a bright red sweater with white reindeer. She wore her usual bunch of silver bracelets that jangled when she moved. “You think there’s a chance you’ll make it?”
“I have ten more days. Miracles have happened in less.”
“I’m sorry. Have you told your parents?”
“Does that mean you don’t believe in miracles?”
“Correct.”
“I haven’t told them yet. Did Tim Holiday ever get any tickets from you?”
Fran shook her head, making the hoop earrings swing.
“I don’t suppose he repaired your furnace.”
“No. But I did see him one day. At least I think it’s the person you’re talking about. Looked a little like your average serial killer.”
“That’s the one.”
“I was slogging through the campus the other day getting my exercise and he and another guy were arguing. I probably only noticed because he looked spooky and the other guy was gorgeous.”
“Description of gorgeous,” Susan said, taking out her notebook.
“Blond curls, strong determined chin, straight nose, and a lush mouth with clear-cut, sensuous lips.”
“Eye color?” Susan said dryly.
Fran grinned. “I only glanced at him.”
“Ever seen him before? Since?”
“No. And I surely would have noticed.”
“Do you think he was a college student?”
“Maybe, but he was a little older than your ordinary student.”
“What were they arguing about?”
“That I don’t know, but Gorgeous was mad. ‘Half of it’s mine and I need it. If you don’t give it to me you’ll be sorry!’”
Susan raised an eyebrow.
Fran laughed. “Well, that was the gist of it anyway.”
“Give it to me again. Without the histrionics.”
“That is what he said. ‘Half of it’s mine. I need it.’ Or maybe ‘I want it.’ Then, ‘We worked on it together.’ The spooky guy said, ‘I paid for it.’” Fran looked at her watch. “I have to go. I’ll talk to you later.” She dashed off in a flurry of scarves and a jangle of bracelets.
Susan took a sip of coffee. Okay. It was Christmas vacation. Half the students were off and half the remaining ones were female. That left only twenty-five hundred or so to examine for blond curls and sensuous lips. She finished her cholesterol, paid, and left.
Hazel was already back at work, she noted. Going ever farther afield, Susan plunked a stack of phone books on her desk and started calling banks for a safe-deposit box in Tim Holiday’s name. There wasn’t even any assurance Holiday had used that name. Who knows what name he might have used? And the bank might be in Hong Kong. She yawned, took a sip of coffee. Would she ever get peons back on the job to do this kind of thing? Work was piling up to high-rise proportions.
Before she could get started, her phone buzzed and Hazel told her that Beth had called to say she was back to work at the library though she still sounded hoarse.
Susan punched in the library number. “Chief Wren, Beth. I’m glad you’re feeling better.”
“Well, at least I’m on my feet. Abby said you were here the other day. Is there something I can help you with?”
“Tim Holiday,” Susan said. “The dead man, yes, do you remember him?”
“Sure, he came in to read newspapers. Not local papers, but Dallas, Texas.”
“What interested him about Dallas, I wonder?”
“He wanted papers from twelve years back.”
That surprised her. Twelve years? “Do you remember the dates he wanted?”
“Sure do. Starting with December twenty-fifth and for some days after that. I don’t remember how many exactly.”
“Can you get me the same ones?”
“Well sure. Microfilm, actually, but it took a while before it got here.”
“Do the best you can.”
“I’ll give you a call when I’ve got it, okay?”
“Yes. Thanks, Beth.”
After a thought for twelve-year-old Dallas newspapers, she got back to the business at hand and made five calls.
On her sixth call, the voice on the other end said, one moment, please, and came back slightly longer than one moment later. “Who did you say this was?”
“Chief Wren in Hampstead.”
Muffled voices in the background, then, “Yes, ma’am, we have a box under that name.”
She was so startled she choked on a gulp of coffee. After a moment for recovery, she said, “I’ll be there this aftern
oon.”
The phone rang as soon as she put it down.
“Bad news,” Hazel said. “Another tragedy.”
21
Paramedics, patient strapped to the gurney, raced down the driveway, one squeezing an air bag. Susan was relieved to see that it wasn’t another death. At least not yet. She stepped aside to let them get past and joined Demarco, standing by the garage, waiting for Gunny to finish taking pictures.
“What’s going on?”
Demarco, uniform coat collar turned up, stood with his fingertips in his back pockets, looking impervious to the cold. A solid oak in a strong wind. “White female, aged eighty-three. Found lying on the cement walkway below the stairs. Railing down as though she’d put her weight on it and it gave.”
“You think it was something different?”
“It gave, all right, but the brackets anchoring it were loosened. You can see the scratches. She fell, was unable to get help, and lay there all night.”
Shivering, Susan jammed her gloved hands into her pockets.
“Her son tried to call twice last night, and when he still got no answer this morning, he came to check on her. He took one look at her lying on the cement and thought she was dead. The paramedics thought different.”
Gunny, who was getting a lot of experience this cold winter, didn’t look green this morning. Porch railings were a lot less messy than a corpse with the face burned away. “Where’s her son?”
“His name’s Roy. He’s inside, waiting for you.”
Roy Dandermadden, slumped on the Victorian sofa in the living room, stared down at the carpet as though memorizing the pattern of roses and leaves.
“Mr. Dandermadden?”
He started to get up.
“Please, sit.”
He sat straight, hands clenched on his knees.
She tried an easy chair and found it so comfortable she had to slide to the edge to keep from falling asleep. “What times did you call your mother last night?”
He rubbed a hand down his face. “Uh—I’m not sure—eight and eight-thirty, maybe. Yeah. I think so. I didn’t call again because it was getting late and I thought she’d be in bed. It’s hard for her to get up and down anymore, you know? I want her to get a phone by the bed, but she feels it’s an unnecessary expense. This morning when she didn’t answer, I got to worrying, you know? She isn’t as young as she used to be. Though she’d be all over me if she heard me say that.” He gave Susan a thin smile.
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