Disillusions
Page 18
Dwight stopped and looked back. “I wouldn’t do anything to alert her that she’s still a suspect. Potential suspect. Anyway, the crime is done. Your granddaughter’s in no danger from Gwen Amiel or anyone else.”
Cunningham nodded but looked unconvinced. Both his children had been killed—now all he had left was his granddaughter. Why should he believe for one instant that she was safe?
Dwight was at the doorway when the old man called out. “Hawkins!”
He turned. Cunningham was hunched over his desk, resting his head on his elbows.
“You said you think the key to solving the murder is here in town. Why?”
“The choice of the ravine for the exchange,” he said. “It’s not exactly featured on tourist maps.” Gwen Amiel had been to the ravine only the day before—passing along that bit of information to Don Reeves had been pure pleasure. He didn’t often get the chance to show up the Feds, though in some unaccountable way he felt as if he was betraying Gwen Amiel.
Cunningham appeared to think this over, then returned to the papers on his desk. Dwight watched him a few seconds before heading for the reception area. Cunningham seemed satisfied with the lie. Or half lie—the choice of location did, in fact, suggest a local angle. But his conviction that the answer lay in Sohegan went deeper.
He nodded to the receptionist on the way out, wishing he could recall her name. He’d seen her in town a hundred times, knew her brother, Raymond something-or-other, quite well.
Whoever kidnapped Tess Lawrence and killed her mother was privy to something that only a local would know. No, not just a local but someone very close to the Cunninghams. Whoever committed those crimes had to know, or feel very strongly, that Russell Cunningham wouldn’t call the police the moment his granddaughter went missing. Few people outside of Sohegan could fathom the old man’s deep distrust of the police, few could guess the lengths to which he would go in order to keep them out of his life, even in a crisis.
But someone knew all about the Cunninghams, and Sohegan, and the uneasy, unavoidable relationship between them, Dwight was sure. And that someone had murdered Priscilla Lawrence.
Chapter 24
“I can’t even pity the old bastard,” Nick said as they drove back from the factory. “And I’ve tried, you know, I’ve really tried to empathize with his loss.”
Gwen turned and checked on Tess, who was sleeping.
“He doesn’t make it easy,” she said.
He’d driven directly to the factory along ugly, commercial Route 24. But he took the scenic route back to Penaquoit, a series of roads she’d never seen before. The Ondaigas were an acquired taste. The mountains themselves were appealing in a shyly unassuming way, more like large hills, really, and frequently invisible from the tree-lined roads. But the small towns nestled in the Ondaiga Valley, including Sohegan, lacked obvious charm. Zoning was nonexistent; gas stations were shoved between houses, and convenience stores sprouted like weeds along the main roads and smack in the middle of residential areas. The entire region seemed congenitally depressed, as if prosperity hadn’t deserted the valley so much as bypassed it from the get go.
And yet she was beginning to appreciate the area. The unpretentious frame houses, invariably with a rusted car or two moldering out back; the shabby but honest downtowns where parking, God knew, was never a problem; and especially the forests that climbed the sides of the humble mountains, darker and cooler than the woods she’d walked through as a child on Long Island, the odor of decay that much sweeter. The sun was bright overhead as they drove, but on either side of them the woods formed a wall of inviting darkness; she felt as if they were hurtling through a radiant tunnel amid a dense world of shadow.
“There’s something almost magical about these woods,” she said. “It’s easy to understand why the Indians thought they were full of spirits.” He didn’t respond. “How did you find this road?”
“I drive around a lot by myself, listening to music. There’s not much else to do.”
“No, I guess not.”
“I don’t think he’s ever stopped to consider what I’ve lost.”
Back to that. “Tess lost, too,” she said quietly.
He glanced at her, then nodded. “He loved the idea of Priscilla, not the reality. I don’t think he’s capable of making a genuine human connection. Now he loves the idea of Tess, his heir. That’s what today was all about. But when confronted with the reality of her—a one-year-old overdue for a nap and not terribly interested in decorative hardware—he broke a fuse.”
“Blew a fuse,” she said. He shot her a look and she changed the subject.
“What was your father like?” she asked.
He didn’t say anything for a while; he seemed to be answering the question silently. She concentrated on the dusky forest on either side of them, catching sporadic glimpses of distant hills.
“He was a genius.” Nick spoke softly, facing the road. “In every way—music, art, even athletics.”
“What did he do?”
He glanced at her and smiled. “He was a purchasing manager for a company that manufactured candy.”
An interesting profession for an artistic genius, she thought as she waited for him to continue.
“His father was a plumber. There was never any money for him to develop his talents professionally, nor any encouragement. He taught himself piano, drawing. Had no formal training at all. After high school he went to work as a handyman at the plant, in Landsburg, Pennsylvania, where he was born. He worked his way up to head of purchasing, but I don’t think he ever had much talent for supervising people. He trusted too easily.”
He seemed to think about this for a while.
“He was determined that I would get the training and encouragement he never enjoyed. I had private piano instructors, went to Julliard. He scraped together every dime he had to buy a Steinway—it took up our entire living room.”
He smiled at the memory as she envisioned the Cunninghams’ big Steinway parked in the middle of the living room at Penaquoit.
“Landsburg, Pennsylvania,” she said. “Is that near Philadelphia?”
“It’s near nothing,” he replied. “Though it’s not far from here, about two hours by car.”
“I have a hard time imagining you as a small-town boy.”
“That makes two of us. ‘You taut mebbe I was from da Bronx?’”
He was uncanny at accents. “Actually, you have no accent at all.” Or was the absence of inflection an accent in its own right?
“There’s a kind of twang you hear in eastern Pennsylvania, but my parents were determined that I never talk like a hick.”
“They did a good job,” she said as he turned into the driveway of the estate. He punched in the code to open the gates—6, 2, 3, Priscilla’s birthday—and drove in silence up to the mansion.
“Practice time,” he said with a sigh, but she wasn’t fooled. He glanced at Tess in the backseat. “Why don’t you let her sleep in the car?” Gwen rolled down two windows as he headed into the house.
The day was too glorious to waste indoors, and Tess would nap for at least another half hour. Gwen began walking around the property. Within minutes she heard the piano, the Pathetique again, third movement—she could hum the entire sonata by now. But that afternoon, Beethoven had to compete with mewling catbirds and squawking blue jays and the dolorous sighs of mourning doves. By the time she reached a neatly clipped hedge at the southern border of the lawn the birds had won.
It had never occurred to her to venture beyond the hedge; it looked impenetrable. But she noticed a spot where the foliage thinned out near the ground, creating a four-foot-high opening. An escape hatch, she thought. She ducked into the gap, stepping from manicured perfection to musky forest. The air felt ten degrees cooler, the daylight filtered by the dense foliage overhead. The contrast was disorienting; she’d never quite appreciated what an oasis Penaquoit was, never understood the effort that went into keeping the wilderness at bay.
The clearing was a riot of color, clusters of similar blooms straining toward the sun, as if competing for prominence with neighboring varieties. She stepped carefully among them, almost overcome by the confusion of color and shape. In one patch of velvety red flowers she noticed a green plastic stick, about six inches high, with a square of plastic attached to the top. The plastic contained a white index card on which, in Priscilla’s precise hand, was written Rose Campion. Below, in smaller letters, were two additional words, Lychnis coronaria, and a date from last summer, shortly after Tess’s birth.
Every other cluster of flowers was identified in exactly the same way, with the common name in large letters, the Latin name in smaller print, and a date in the lower right-hand corner. Most of the dates were from last summer, about the time Priscilla and Nick had moved back to Penaquoit with their new baby.
Gwen tried to imagine Priscilla creating the garden, tried to understand why she’d spent so much effort on this small, private place so soon after giving birth. And although she knew next to nothing about horticulture, she couldn’t help but wonder at how richly mature the garden was, given that this was only its second summer. Gardens take years to fully develop; this one was absolute, fully realized perfection.
“You’ve found the secret garden.”
She spun around. Nick stood at the entrance, watching her. How long had he been there?
“Priscilla created it not long after we moved back. Mett Piacevic had a small vegetable patch here, which she ripped out. She didn’t want anyone to come here, not even Tess.” He walked into the garden and yanked several purple thistles by their necks. “She died with one of these in her hand,” he said, holding them out. Gwen took the flowers and bent down to read the descriptive card.
“‘Thistle, Onopordum acanthium.’ Russell and Maxine know why she carried one of these to the ravine.”
“Why?” he said quickly.
“They won’t say. They claim they don’t know, but I could tell they knew something.”
He frowned and slowly shook his head. “She wouldn’t let Piacevic or anyone else near this place. She had the flats of flowers delivered to that opening in the hedge, no farther. They were always fully grown specimens. Cunninghams don’t wait for nature.”
“It’s wonderful,” Gwen said.
“I suppose…” He glanced around. “Sometimes she’d be driving along a back road and spot a group of healthy-looking flowers in someone’s garden. She’d knock on the door of the house and ask the name of the flower, how much sunlight it needed, when it bloomed. Usually the owner would offer her a cutting. Gratis, of course. But Cunninghams don’t wait for cuttings to take root and spread. Priscilla would offer them extravagant sums of money for the entire garden, then send Piacevic over to dig it all up.” He waved his right hand over the garden. “That’s what you see here, the healthiest specimens from Ondaiga County, paid for by Cunningham money and replanted by Priscilla Lawrence with her own hands.”
Gwen surveyed the garden again. The colors looked suddenly garish, almost cloying. Bought, uprooted, replanted—the lush growth seemed an abomination now.
“I don’t know what will happen to it now.” Nick absently snapped a dead bloom from a clump of yellow and white daisies. “Piacevic asked me whether he should keep it up, and I told him not to bother. I think Priscilla would have wanted it to revert back after she was gone.”
He looked around, as if seeking confirmation, then sat cross-legged on the grassy border, which was now seriously overgrown. He patted the ground next to him. She hesitated before sitting a few feet away.
“Then it all fell apart,” he said. It took her a moment to grasp that he was continuing the conversation from the car. “I was two years out of college—Julliard, I think I mentioned that—when my father was implicated in a financial scandal. He lost his job, and I lost my…chance.”
“What kind of scandal?”
“He was accused of taking kickbacks from some of the suppliers he used. Nothing was ever proven, and I know for a fact that he was innocent, but he never worked again.” His lips curled to an angry smile. “That’s when I began to work.”
“What did you do?”
“Whatever I could. I wasn’t trained for anything, had no skills other than music. I gave piano lessons, but that only goes so far. I was a messenger at one point, if you can believe it. And then I met Priscilla, and was able to get back to my music.”
He said this so casually, so innocently. Didn’t he realize that marrying Priscilla might be viewed as mercenary?
“You’re thinking—how convenient,” he said.
“How fortunate,” she replied. “For both of you.”
He looked at her a beat. “We were solidly middle class,” he said at length. “But my father gave me the best musical education money could by. He sacrificed everything…” His voice broke. “He’s in a nursing home now. He lost his will to live after the scandal. His mind’s been slipping ever since. I’d always hoped he’d watch me perform one day before he lost it completely—other than at Julliard recitals. But he never did.”
“You haven’t mentioned your mother.”
He glanced at her quizzically. “What about her?”
Gwen couldn’t conceal her amazement at his dismissal of her.
“Her name was Catherine,” he said after a brief silence. “She had no musical talent whatsoever. She died a few years after the scandal.” He looked at Gwen. “Anything else you’d like to know about her?”
A chill ran down her spine. “I guess not.”
Silence settled awkwardly between them. She focused on the flowers, imagining Priscilla seeking refuge in her secret garden, wondering what she was seeking refuge from. Father? Husband? The strangling knot of compliance and compromise that had defined her short life?
“We’re a pair, the two of us,” Nick said after a while.
“We’re not a pair,” she said quickly.
“We’re both trapped, though, you and me, in Sohegan.”
“I’m not trapped.”
“There’s no other reason for us to be here. I can’t leave because the old man will cut me off and take Tess away from me.”
“He can’t take your own daughter from you.”
He shook his head and scowled. “He’d find a way.”
“She’s your daughter.”
“Trust me, he’d find a way.”
How, though? What did Russell Cunningham have on Nick that would enable him to pry Tess away?
“Do you really see yourself spending the rest of your life here?” she asked.
“I try not to think about it.”
“But Russell Cunningham is at least seventy…”
“You think he’d let a little thing like his death stand in the way of running my life? His lawyers drew up a will that ensures Tess never leaves this place.” His voice dropped. “And I’ll never leave Tess.”
“I wish you could hear yourself,” she said, her voice suddenly rising. “You’re talented, you’re…attractive, you’ve got a beautiful, healthy daughter. You have no financial worries, you live…you live in this paradise, and all you do is complain about how tough you have it. Most people would sell their soul for the life you have, and they wouldn’t whine about their predicament afterward.”
He stared at her with cold eyes. She hadn’t meant to sound so harsh, but how dare he equate their situations? She was nobody’s victim, not anymore.
“What’s keeping you here?” he said after a long silence.
“Nothing’s keeping me here. I want to be here.”
“That’s bullshit,” he said. “You’re hiding out from something, or someone.”
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br /> She stood up and headed back to the path.
“I should check on Tess,” she said as she walked. She was several yards along the path when he grabbed her shoulders and twisted her around, kissing her lips as he held her to him.
For a moment she didn’t resist, though she didn’t actually respond. Contact with a man’s face and body felt at once so familiar and so alien, she almost swooned with confusion. When he pulled away he ran his hands along her shoulders and back.
“You’ve become…important in my life.” He was breathing heavily.
She shook her head and backed away. “I’m the baby-sitter,” she said, trying to disguise her own breathlessness. “Of course I’m important.”
“More than that,” he said.
“I can’t.”
“You can do whatever you want.”
“I don’t want to.”
He studied her, his eyes reflecting the sunlight like faceted emeralds. She looked away, knowing that he’d heard the lie in her voice.
“I have to check on Tess.” She turned and hurried down the path.
“Come back,” he called after her, sounding more petulant than hurt. She ducked under the hedge as he called her name, then ran the entire distance to the house.
Chapter 25
Dwight Hawkins glanced up at the limestone facade of 222 West 83rd Street, the Manhattan building where Gwen Amiel lived before arriving in Sohegan three months ago.
The fifteen-story building looked about seventy, seventy-five years old, with a green canopy in front supported by gleaming brass poles. In the five minutes he’d been standing there, three strollers had been wheeled out, two by black women pushing white babies, the third by a frazzled-looking white woman with gray-streaked hair pushing a sleeping white child. Nice family building, he thought. Nice family neighborhood—after parking in a garage a few blocks away, he’d noticed that the West Side of Manhattan was teeming with small children and shops that catered to them and their parents.
So why had Gwen Amiel left?