Unlawfull Alliances

by Felicity Nisbet

  “She’ll be in a house near the dance school with chaperones, won’t she?”

  “Oh, yes, strictly chaperoned. Still—”

  “I know.” He knew exactly what I was feeling. I loved him for that.

  “On with today. Tell me what happened with Scott.”

  “One of the parking attendants confirmed what Scott told us. He was using his own car the day of the mur— Jake’s hit and run and Amy’s death. It’s a good job he remembered.”

  “Yes, thank goodness.” I exhaled a pocketful of stored toxins and took a long sip of my tea—enough to warm me from the inside out.

  “You really like Scott, don’t you?”

  “I must, if I feel this relieved that he’s innocent and won’t be charged.”

  “So the police are convinced that Amy was driving the car. The case is closed.”

  “The case is closed?” Why was I having such a hard time grasping this? Because I knew it was a mistake?

  “You know what this means. You can go home and relax, get back to your family.” He winked. “And rest up for our next case.”

  I heard his words, but still, nothing inside of me felt complete. “The police are considering Amy’s death a suicide?”

  “They’re leaning toward an accident. They’ve concluded that she doped herself up to numb the guilt from having killed Jake, and then made a poor judgment to get into the Jacuzzi, and drowned herself unwittingly or not.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “Why not? All the evidence indicates—”

  “All the evidence was there.”

  “What?”

  “Oh, nothing.” I waved my hand through the air. “Just something my mother said.”

  “And what might that be?”

  “Remember when she accused you of having an affair with Mitzi Bancroft?”

  “The beginning of the end, it was.”

  “Well, when I saw her up at Winnie’s island, I told her that it wasn’t true.”

  “And now she wants me back?” Mischief twinkled in his eyes.

  I laughed, took a large bite of my scone and a small sip of my tea to moisten it. They hadn’t got Charlie’s recipe down quite yet. “Anyway, when I told her about my visit with Mitzi, she was stunned. She just kept saying over and over, ‘But the evidence was there.’”

  “Just like the evidence was there that Amy died by her own means.”

  “And that Jake and Amy were lovers. What if the evidence is wrong, Charlie? What if Jake wasn’t Amy’s lover?”

  “Then, it means someone else is mourning her loss besides Scott. It’s still over, luv. There’s nothing more we can do.”

  “But, Charlie, what if— I don’t know. It just doesn’t feel over. It feels incomplete. There are a lot of missing pieces to the puzzle.”

  “It’s a puzzle we needn’t worry about anymore.”

  “But what if Jake wasn’t Amy’s lover? Then why would someone have killed him?”

  “Jenny, it was Amy’s car that hit Jake. Remember? We have to assume—”

  “Nothing. Isn’t that what you’ve always taught me, to assume nothing?”

  Charlie smiled and unfolded his arms so he could take a sip of his tea. “Sometimes we have to.”

  “It just doesn’t feel right. Nothing does. For instance, if Amy had hit Jake, why did she ask me about the car that hit him? She obviously didn’t know the description.”

  “Maybe to throw you off.”

  “No, Charlie. She blurted it out in a very emotional state.” I could see Amy’s pale face now, tears staining her cheeks.

  Charlie massaged his chin with the back of his fingers, one of his thinking gestures. “There’s a perfectly good explanation why she asked about the car—to find out if the police had a description of it. Wouldn’t that be your first concern if you’d just run someone down with your car?”

  “That’s possible, I suppose. She could have been asking out of fear. And she had said it was her fault.” I closed my eyes and remembered. Amy had winced and gasped just before her hand had covered her mouth. Charlie could be right.

  “Now stop your havering, luv. It’s over. Go home to your family and get a good night’s sleep.”

  Easier said than done. I didn’t know what I was going to do, but I knew I was not going to give up—not until I knew for certain that he was right.

  * * *

  My analytical mind still wasn’t in high gear, so once again I turned to my intuition. It was all I had to guide me at the moment. Logic certainly wasn’t playing its part. Neither were my detective father and the Southpoint Police Department playing theirs.

  Two days after my tea with Charlie, and immediately after my morning artists’ circle met, I decided it was time to return Daniel Walters’ CD. Yes, of course I know there’s a post office six blocks from my house and a mailbox on my corner. Getting out of town now and then is good for me. So is going for long afternoon drives.

  I reached Daniel’s house right after he did. I watched him for a moment from across the street. He is indeed adorable, Mrs. Santee. You must have enjoyed teaching with him.

  Even with his slumped shoulders and his pale complexion, and his body reflecting a recent weight loss, he was a hunk. He was also in mourning.

  I gave him five minutes before I walked up the stairs of his chalet style home and rang the doorbell.

  “Jenny! What are you doing here?”

  “I brought back your CD.” He opened the door wider to let me in. “I didn’t want to rely on the postal service,” I offered.

  “I appreciate that. Can I get you something to drink?”

  “Sure. A cup of coff—” No, I was still catching up on my sleep. “Tea, if you have it. Herbal. Otherwise water would be fine.”

  He boiled a kettle of water and showed me his selection of teas. I chose the peppermint. He chose the jasmine.

  “So, why are you really here, Jenny?”

  “I don’t know. Just some unanswered questions, I suppose.”

  “I thought the case is closed, at least according to the newspaper.”

  “That doesn’t mean all the questions are answered.”

  I stood up and walked over to the piano, all the while watching Daniel’s body language. He was in pain. The memory of his wife playing this instrument provoked more.

  When I returned to my spot on the couch, I looked up at him and asked, straight between the eyes, as Charlie would say, “Daniel, were you having an affair with Amy?”

  He put down the mug that he was holding for warmth and leaned back in his chair. “No.” His eyes did not waver from their position.

  I believed him. The problem was, I couldn’t trust what I believed.

  “Why did she name her baby after you?”

  “She always liked my name.”

  I shook my head. He was going to have to give me more than this. A lot more.

  “Who left, Daniel? You or Amy?”

  He exhaled the weight of the world, his eyes leaving my face for a small dent on the table surface.

  “She did. She left.”

  “Why? What happened between you? You were so in love. You married so young. And then it was over. Why did you marry so young?”

  He looked up at me again, his mind taking refuge in happier times. “Besides the incredible attraction and not wanting to be apart?”

  I smiled. I could give him that.

  “And besides her wanting to get out of the slum where she lived?”

  “Right. Besides that.”

  “Wasn’t that enough?”

  “Was it?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, but closed it as quickly. Then he stood up and walked over to the window. When he turned back to me, I knew he had made a decision not to tell me the thoughts that were running through his mind. “That was reason enough.”

  Okay, if he wouldn’t go there, I’d take him somewhere else. “What happened between you, Daniel? Why did she leave?”

  “It just didn’t
work out, is all.”

  “Head over heels in love one minute, apart the next.”

  “It happens.”

  “Maybe. But it doesn’t happen the way it happened to Amy. You gave her something she’d never had before.”

  “What was that? Love?”

  “Joy. She let joy in when she was with you. But never again. She never again trusted life enough to let the joy in.” Even through the moisture in my own eyes, I could see his tears. “She couldn’t even allow herself to feel joy with her child, her baby son.”

  He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, as if that would stop the flood of emotion that my words had triggered. I sat in silence. He would tell me now. It might take a while, but I would wait. I had, after all, driven the distance for a reason.

  The back of his hand proved not adept enough, and he resorted to his shirt tails. When he was calmer, he again walked over to the window, then to the piano. His fingers ran across the top of it, finding comfort in the wood. They soon found their way to her picture, but did not stay there long. He was stoic now, winning the battle with the display of his feelings.

  “I think what hurt the most was that she didn’t even take the piano with her.” He was talking now. He would not stop. “You asked why I married her so young? She was beautiful. If you’d seen her then, you’d understand. I couldn’t keep my hands off her. I couldn’t go through a day without looking into those incredible eyes. And when she smiled, my God, life was worth living.” He smiled now, remembering. “You’re right, you know. I gave her joy. I did give her that. Even if it was only for one brief moment.” I could hear the guilt through that acknowledgment. “She was not a joyful person. She was too scared. Her mother had taught her that, you know. But she tried so hard not to be like her mother, so hard.”

  He set the picture in its place and returned to his chair and his cup of tea. “And you’re right about something else. There is another reason we got married when we did.” It came to me an instant before he said the words, and I spoke them with him. “Amy was pregnant.”

  “But I talked to her mother a couple days ago. She said nothing about—”

  “She didn’t know. Amy didn’t want to bring disgrace upon her. Her mother had already had a breakdown, you know. She’d never gotten over her husband’s death. That was what made it so hard on Amy. Amy carried the burden of her father’s death because her mother was unable to deal with it. It was always with her. She was never allowed to work through it herself, as a child should. It haunted her.”

  Even knowing the answer, I asked the question. “The baby, Daniel. What happened to your baby?”

  “We lost the baby when Amy was eight months pregnant.” He looked up at the ceiling, swallowing hard, fighting off the pain and the tears that came with it. “She was so excited about that baby. We both were, really, but Amy had built everything around it. We were a family. For the first time since she was seven years old, she was going to be part of a family.”

  “And after she lost the baby?”

  “She was hysterical. She got it in her mind that she was destined to lose everyone she loved.”

  “Is that why she left you? Because she was afraid something would happen to you too?”

  He ran his fingers through his hair, an anguished expression on his face, as if reliving the agony of that time. “She left me a note. All it said was, ‘I never again want to be afraid that someone I love will leave.’”

  So she went off and married someone she knew would never leave her and if he did perchance leave her for death, she had the consolation that at least she had not loved him.

  I was still picking up guilt. “It wasn’t your fault that the baby died, Daniel.”

  “No, but it was my fault that she left.”

  “Why?”

  “I couldn’t take it. She was hysterical all the time. It didn’t get better. Weeks of hysteria. She wouldn’t stop crying. I was young. I know it’s not an excuse. I made a bad choice. I was so stupid. So stupid.” Both his hands had found his hair and were frantically combing through it, threatening to pull it out at any moment as if this would appease his guilt. “Oh, God, if only I hadn’t—”

  “If only you hadn’t what?”

  “If only I hadn’t left. I went camping with some friends. For a week. I thought that maybe if I was gone, she’d settle down. You know, like with kids. If they don’t have an audience, the temper tantrum stops. Only it wasn’t a temper tantrum. She needed help. I should have made her get help. But she wouldn’t. She didn’t want to be like her mother. She didn’t want to need help. So I left. It was only for a week, not even a week, five days, I think. I had to get away. From her. From my own pain.” He took a ragged breath. “When I got back, she was gone. She’d left. She didn’t even take the piano. I didn’t know where she’d gone. Her mother didn’t even know. I’d hurt her that much that she never wanted to see me again.”

  “You didn’t know, Daniel. You had no way of knowing.”

  “I’ve never regretted anything so much in my life. If I had stayed, we could have worked through it. I could have helped her. Eventually.”

  “You did the best you could. You had your own grief to work through. You’d lost a baby too.”

  “But she trusted me. I had taught her to love life, to let herself feel, to be vulnerable. And then I failed her. She would never trust again. I had destroyed her. She’d have been better off never knowing me.”

  “No. Living a life with even a brief moment of joy is better than living a life with none.”

  He had given me my answer, the reason she had made the decision not to allow joy into her life. She might as well have written a contract to never again allow herself to fear the loss of someone she loved. “That’s what you meant when you said her greatest fear was loss.”

  He nodded.

  “How did her father die?”

  Daniel shook his head. “She would never tell me. I’m not sure, but— Once I looked up the story in the newspaper files. He was hit by a car, was all it said.”

  Hit by a car. Like Jake. Maybe Amy really had killed Jake. A self-fulfilling prophesy. Once again she had lost someone she loved, in the same way she had lost her father.

  “Where did it happen?” I asked.

  “According to the article, it was in front of their house. That made me wonder if she saw it. Or maybe she was involved somehow. Maybe he was saving her or something. Whatever it was, she carried it with her always. I could never ask her about it though. She suffered enough.”

  “And so have you, Daniel. You’ve suffered enough.” I took a last sip of my tea and stood up.

  He looked up at me with hope and gratitude in his eyes. “I’ve never told anyone what I told you.”

  “Don’t you think it’s time you forgave yourself?”

  He exhaled so deeply that I could feel a surge of pain from the past leaving his body.

  “When you’re ready, it might be good to put away some of these things.” I nodded toward the CD on the coffee table and toward Amy’s photograph that sat perched on top of Amy’s piano.

  I stretched my arms into the sleeves of my sweater and gathered up my purse. “Thank you for telling me what happened.”

  “I’m glad you came,” he said as he walked with me to the door.

  “So am I.” Before heading down the porch steps, I turned and looked at him. “Remember when I asked you if you thought Amy would ever cheat on her husband, and you said she’d do whatever she had to do to survive? What did you mean exactly?”

  “I meant that she’d have an affair if it kept her from being attached to someone.”

  “But if she weren’t attached to her husband in the first place—?” It didn’t make sense to me, unless Amy was feeling closer to Scott lately, and from my observations, that was not the case. Of course, we were dealing with her conscious mind here. The unconscious mind always had something else in mind.

  Just as I reached the bottom step, Daniel said, “You think
Amy was murdered, don’t you?”

  I turned and looked up at him. “Honestly? Yes.”

  But maybe I was wrong. Maybe it was time to let this case go. Maybe Amy had taken her own life, either consciously or unconsciously. Daniel had said she was determined not to be weak and fragile like her mother, and isn’t it when we try so hard not to be like someone that we become like them? And maybe the burden she had been carrying since she was seven years old had culminated in Jake’s death. If she felt responsible for the deaths of two men she had loved, and perhaps the death of an unborn child, that could have been more guilt than anyone could bear, especially someone who was liable to give up all hope of ever being able to find love and feel safe again. After all, wasn’t that what the man’s wife had done in her favorite movie, hadn’t she taken her own life when she thought he had lost his?

  Chapter 15

  The following morning, after getting up in time to fix eggs and toast for my husband and a yogurt, granola, fruit trifle for my daughter, I went to the club for some exercise. I might even indulge in a massage, and lunch, if Meredith was around.

  The club felt different, the aftermath of death haunting the playground. I wondered if anyone else felt it. Maybe they had gotten used to it, those who knew the victims. Others may not have even known there had been two recent deaths in the club family. Life goes on, they say. Some laugh with joy while others weep in sorrow. All in the same moment, as if disconnected from one another.

  Hush, Hamlet, no serious thinking allowed today.

  Exercise. That was what I needed. I hurried to join the aerobics class that was just starting. It would help get my thoughts off depressing subjects like disconnection and death and sorrow and suffering. But after five minutes, I realized that assumption was inaccurate. In fact, it brought suffering all too close to home.

  “I thought this was a low impact class,” I whispered to a fellow sufferer.

  “Changed the schedule last week. This one’s advanced torture.”

  “Oh. Lovely.” I really had to start exercising on a regular basis. The yoga was great, but I needed an all out pant and sweat routine. This class was definitely that. It took me ten minutes of sitting on the floor in straddle position, pretending to stretch, to be able to walk to the locker room.