by Susan Isaacs
“I mean, it was a high-school thing.”
“What was?”
“See, Courtney Bryce was always doing stuff. You know?” She took a long, noisy sip of tea. “President of every club. Helping out teachers. Courtney Bryce was the smartest, best, nicest girl in the whole school.”
“Right.” I stifled a yawn.
“Everyone always said, ‘Oh, Courtney, she’s wonderful.’” I waited. “Well, it’s like this: She was running the Crunch-Munch sale. Fund-raising. Candy bars. It was chocolate then. I think now it’s energy bars made from rainforest nuts and stuff. That’s what seniors do every year to raise money for a sit-down dinner on Prom Night.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. My back and shoulders began to ache for bed. I massaged the back of my neck.
“Courtney stole eight hundred dollars in cash from the Crunch-Munch sale. And got away with it.”
“What?”
“We had all this cash. I was treasurer. So I had to put it in a sealed envelope and give it to Mr. Cooper, the principal. And I did. Courtney was with me when we went to Mr. C’s office. And he opened the safe. It was late Thursday afternoon, like almost four o’clock, so he said he’d deposit it first thing Friday.”
“A wall safe?”
“No. This big heavy thing on the floor. And so his phone rang and he picked it up and Courtney and me were just standing there and I went to check out pictures of old graduating classes to see if I could find my dad. Courtney was looking at all of Mr. Cooper’s books. My back was turned to her. So was his. Anyhow, then he got off the phone and shut the safe. The next morning it wasn’t there. The cash.”
“Is it possible the principal took it?”
“Of course not! I mean, he did this every year, holding the money for the seniors because a lot of kids get it in late. He called Courtney and me down separately. Guess who got blamed?”
“That’s an awful story!” I said.
For a long moment, Ingrid was silent. Then she said: “Do you know what the worst of it was? He called Courtney down first. By the time I got there, he was totally, totally convinced she never would have done it. That I did it. No, the worst of it was, ninety-nine percent of the kids thought it was me, too, except Lacey and one other girl. Everyone else believed Courtney. The school made my parents pay it back and even my parents ... Water under the bridge, right? But my name was totally mud. And that kind of thing stays with you forever. I mean, I’ve never been invited to one class reunion. And I was volunteering at the county animal shelter. Well, one day I walked in—this was two or three years ago—and nobody said a word, but I knew somehow someone had heard the story. And then told it to everybody, and everybody believed it, people who’d always thought I was a good person. A story, a lie, from way back in high school!”
“Did Courtney avoid you the rest of your senior year?” I asked.
“Well, we never hung out. But whenever there were other kids around, she went out of her way to be sweet to me, like she was full of pity for my being such a bad person. Everyone thought, wasn’t it great of Courtney to be so fantastically nice to Ingrid after the terrible thing Ingrid tried to do—and almost got away with.”
Chapter Ten
A GIANT BROWN eye stared back at me from a magnifying mirror as I plucked my eyebrow. Cautiously. A few months after Bob died, I’d decided it was time to start looking like a human being again. I dug out my old tweezer. Alas. When I finished, one brow was so much higher than the other that for several weeks I looked inappropriately ironic. Soon after, I’d bought the mirror.
So there I was, bright-eyed at six A.M., hell-bent on an hour’s worth of self-improvement. What had wakened me? Rambunctious bird business outside my window, or maybe Courtney Loganangst. In any case, I showered and exfoliated enough to go down a dress size. Then, so intently was I concentrating on my eyebrow’s image in the magnifying glass, that when I lifted the portable phone from the edge of the sink, I didn’t catch the opening words of Steffi Deissenburger’s early morning conniption fit. However, it wasn’t necessary. Each time I tried to butt in she squawked: “How, how, how could you visit the Leedses’ house on my day off? How?” again and again, turning up the volume with every “how.”
I recalled Nelson telling me, a couple of decades earlier, of something he’d heard at a cop seminar: a technique for dealing with people who’d gone over the edge—something like Calming a Psychotic Who Has an Assault Rifle in One Hand and a Fistful of Plastique in the Other. The idea was not to be confrontational and say something like: What’s your problem, dipshit? It was to ignore the madness and pursue pleasant discourse. As in: Gee, you like the Uzi nine millimeter, too!
So I enthused: “Steffi! I’m glad you called. Too bad I missed you yesterday afternoon.” Only then did it occur to me that Steffi wasn’t behaving irrationally, that she had a right to be steaming. Plus that Nelson had muttered something about the congeniality tactic probably having only a thirty percent chance of working, and if it didn’t, you were dead (albeit good-natured) meat.
Just as I was about to beg her pardon and offer extravagant apologies, Steffi replied: “It would have been better if you telephoned.” Stress still vibrated her voice. Her German accent was heavier—“would have been” became “vut hof bean”—as if her last year in America had not happened. Nevertheless, she was no longer squawking.
“You’re right,” I said quickly. “Forgive me for not calling ahead. It’s just that I happened to be in Connecticut and thought I’d pop in and say hi.” In the mirror, my humongous eyelid flickered at this lie. “You know, I was wondering about something you said about Courtney.”
“Perhaps I did not explain when I spoke.” Steffi was now sounding only mildly snippy. “Courtney was my employer. I did not know her well.”
“You lived in the same house.”
“Yes, that is true. But when she was at home she was in her office nearly all the time. For hours. I was with the children. She was at the computer or on the phone. Her door was closed.”
“Just out of curiosity ...” I said (turning from the mirror so I didn’t have to see my crow’s-feet in the early-morning sun, which, magnified, looked deep as pterodactyl tracks). “How did you know Courtney was on the computer so much?”
“The light of the phone line.”
“She couldn’t have been talking to someone?”
“She could have been.” Her reply was still somewhat testy. Still, Steffi did not seem to have the heart to hold a grudge. An explanation quickly followed of how her boyfriend Stefan was studying economics in Dusseldorf and how they emailed each other several times a day and how difficult it was for her to get his letters with Courtney being on-line so long—How could she only be talking for hours and hours? Yet she insisted Steffi keep the other line free for incoming calls. Stefan looked a little like Dave Grohl. The drummer from Foo Fighters.
“He sounds wonderful.” I put my hand over the mouthpiece so she wouldn’t hear my yawn. And Steffi kept going. I was finally able to cut her off while she was still at the beginning of confiding Stefan’s carefully laid career plans. Nevertheless, her obvious loneliness, living in a foreign country on eight or so acres with a husband, wife, and two three-year-olds, saddened me. On the other hand, perhaps when she was on Long Island, her solitude had inspired fantasies about Greg Logan. Enough to make her want to murder Courtney Logan? That would be a nifty solution. Fancy Phil would be happy. The only problem was I didn’t think I could buy it. “Steffi and Stefan sounds like a great team,” I added cheerfully.
“Thank you.”
Now that we were pals again, I inquired: “By the way, Steffi, did Courtney work all day, every day? Didn’t she ever go out with friends or have friends over?”
“Yes. Now and again. Women friends.”
“Do you happen to know any of their names?”
“There was Kellye Ryan. She was a visitor many times. Have you seen her? Tall, thin, like a supermodel. Very beautiful. Fine, fine clothes. And nic
e. Very kind.”
“Anybody else?”
“Yes, three or four. I can’t remember their names. I saw them. They always said hello—they were nice women, although not so friendly to me like Kellye—but often Courtney would ask me to take the children someplace out of the house so with her friend, she could have a quiet talk.”
“I see. Oh, by the way, remember we spoke about Gregory Logan?” Steffi’s answer was silence. “That Courtney had said if he called while she was out to say she was shopping. Because she didn’t want him worrying about her: He had too much on his plate.”
“Yes.” Wary. She was stretching out the monosyllable as long as she could.
Phone to my ear, I stepped from the cold tile of the bathroom onto the comforting softness of the bedroom carpet. “Did you find Greg like that, under pressure?”
I waited. Well, I told myself, she sure doesn’t talk off the top of her head. I sat cross-legged on the bed, reaching behind me to prop up a couple of pillows against the headboard. I felt around my night table for a pen, came up with a long-lost lip-liner, and jotted a few notes about what Steffi was saying on a milk-mustache ad in Entertainment Weekly. At last Steffi spoke: “No. Mr. Logan seemed—I do not know exactly how to say it—like anyone else. Of course, I do not know American men very well, you understand. After Courtney disappeared, he was what you would call a man under pressure. Very, very unhappy. The police were visiting. Often he would call his father. You know about his father?”
“I think so,” I mealymouthed. “He’s supposed to be a gangster, right? Fancy Somebody.”
“Yes. Fancy Phil Lowenstein. A man with many jewels. Very friendly. Informal, I should say. He said to me, ‘Call me Phil.’ He himself often called me ‘honey,’ but I believe that was because he could not remember my name.”
“Did Greg Logan speak with anyone besides his father after Courtney disappeared?”
“His mother, I think. His sister. A friend from college. His lawyer of course.”
“Did he pay attention to the children during that time?”
“Oh yes. He was very nice with them. Always. Before and after.”
The early, pre-car-pool silence beyond my open bedroom window was broken by the screech of a jay, a stupid-sounding Waaa?, as if the bird couldn’t figure out what was obvious to every other creature. “You know, Steffi, from what I hear around Shorehaven, the police believe Greg had—well, a romantic interest in you.” She didn’t chuckle at the foolishness of such a notion, so I plunged ahead. “I suppose it’s one of the reasons why they suspect him.” Still no response. “You know, I have two kids not much older than you are. I can hardly imagine ... It must have been a terrible situation for you.”
“Yes.”
“I give you credit, staying there as long as you did.”
“They were good children,” Steffi explained. “With their mother missing ... It was very sad.”
“You were so devoted to them. It must have been tense in the house, I mean after Greg Logan ...”
“Yes. He was ... He watched me all the time. When I read to the children, or watched television with them—he allowed them to watch television. Courtney would not be approving of that.”
“But you knew his eyes were always on you.”
“Yes.”
“Awful. Did he ever actually touch you?” When she didn’t reply, I said: “I’m sorry, Steffi. It’s just that I feel protective. As if you were one of my kids.”
“He was crying one afternoon, about Courtney. I touched his hand, with pity, you understand, a light touch. He put his arms around me. He pulled me to him.”
“My God! What did you do?”
“I tried to pull away, but he would not allow me to. He kept saying, ‘I need ... I need’... but he was breathing too hard. I could feel his tears or maybe—Schweiss in English—yes, his sweat. I could feel wet on my neck. I told him, ‘You must stop this!’ but he did not. I said it louder, so loud I was afraid the children would hear, but I had to get away.”
“Of course! You did the right thing. And then did he let you go?”
“Yes.”
“But he kept looking at you.”
“He never stopped.”
I led her back to talking about Stefan. Within a minute she was cheery again, telling me of the hobby they shared, collecting Monty Python memorabilia. Beguiling though her tale was of Stefan’s pursuit of a Life of Brian T-shirt, I managed to get myself off the phone.
Downstairs in the kitchen, quartering an orange, I felt almost certain Steffi did not have it in her to shoot Courtney Logan twice in the head, then deep-six the body in the swimming pool. And as far as the he said/she said versions of Crying Greg, I didn’t see much in Fancy Phil and Steffi’s accounts that was inconsistent. Maybe Greg had put his arms around her, maybe not. Perhaps he was looking for solace, perhaps nooky (though my vote was for solace). In any case, the awkward moment had lasted less than sixty seconds. Were his eyes always on her after that? If so, it was impossible for me to know if the cause was lust or mortification.
When I noticed myself arranging orange pits in a row, I perceived my mind had meandered. I’d been going over the Zee Friedman timetable on Courtney. From what Zee had said, business hadn’t seemed up or down in July, yet she claimed Courtney had been “bummed.” But by early fall, she’d noted, Courtney was detached; her mind, according to Zee, was someplace other than StarBaby. She’d gone from trying to breathe for Zee to letting her wing it. I sauntered over to the refrigerator and retrieved a still-unopened container of no-fat pineapple cottage cheese I’d successfully avoided. I checked: seventy-two hours past its freshness date. Lacking courage to break the seal and confront what could be going on inside, I chucked it into the garbage.
Now that I thought about it, Zee’s assessment of Courtney’s September and October detachment had been backed up by Kellye Ryan: By September, Courtney’s mind was no longer on StarBaby. So what had it been on? Monkey business? Money business? Was she phasing out Greg, in love or lust with somebody else? Or had she simply moved on to some new, more sophisticated investment bankerish interest than StarBaby?
Since becoming a widow, I’d tried hard not to indulge in the lonely person’s Happy Hour: talking to oneself. About a year earlier, in the drugstore, I found myself befuddled, dithering between a condom rack and a display of batteries and was startled when I heard my own loud voice demanding: “Why am I here?” But now I gave in and had a chat with me.
That was because my kind of thinking never turned out to be pure reason. Instead, my thought processes were a mishmash of random ideas, intuition, and untoward meddling by my subconscious. What I wanted was logic, so I inquired aloud: “Is there any way to determine whether it was sex, money ... or absolutely nothing preoccupying Courtney?” One of the orange quarters smiled up at me. I ate it, then answered myself: “What have I learned about Courtney? That she was different things to different people. She was nice, very nice, really nice, having an affair, was asexual, was a poison-gas person. Oh, right, and a perfect human being. In death, she’s a Rorschach test. Was she that much of a cipher in life?”
I finished the orange and chomped on a petrified oat-bran pretzel while waiting for the coffee to drip. As I could not talk and chew at the same time I reverted to thinking. How had people reacted emotionally to Courtney? Steffi, who’d worked for her and lived in her house, appeared not just to like her but to revere her. Greg had either loved her (or liked her enough to stay in the marriage) or downright hated her enough to kill her. Not only was it easier for me to believe the love stuff, what with Fancy Phil having hired me to clear his son, it also was more comforting to picture the single parent of two young, traumatized children as another innocent victim of Courtney’s murder rather than as the monster who could execute such a crime.
My client, Fancy Phil himself, hadn’t liked his daughter-in-law. Yet he hadn’t seemed to hate her. He’d compared her personality to lukshen—the Yiddish word for noodles, i.e.,
something limp, bland, and tasteless—a description that could in no way be construed as a compliment. On the other hand, blahness did not seem enough of an affront to get a person on a mobster’s hit list.
Or on anybody’s hit list. So had Courtney Logan been truly blah, truly nice, truly the supermom and diligent young entrepreneur? Or had she hidden some aspect of her life from those who supposedly knew her best? Had her detachment meant a preoccupation with love or money, something that had led to another person wanting or needing to wipe her off the face of the earth? Or had she been heading for a quickie with her inamorato on Halloween night? Had he (or she, positing a jealous wife of said inamorato, or an inamorata of Courtney’s) murdered her? And if so, how come her body wound up in her own swimming pool? Had some meandering maniac decided trick instead of treat? “Beats the hell out of me,” I announced, and poured myself a mug of coffee.
But wouldn’t the killer have been taking a sickening risk? To transport a dead body back from wherever to the Logan house on Bluebay Lane, across a lawn, through the gate of a high, wrought-iron fence onto the deck around the pool? Or had the deed been done at or right near the Logan house? Wouldn’t two shots to the head in the garage or backyard, even with a silencer, have made some noise? And unfastening the tied-down-tight pool cover to shove the body into the water couldn’t have been easy. Okay, maybe it made sense to stow her there. Algae-killing chemicals in the water might prevent a god-awful smell, whereas burying a body in the wooded area beyond the backyard was the quickest way to make a Nassau County Police Department beagle look good. But think of the danger! Greg might have come home early. A trick-or-treater could have cut through the backyard. Steffi or Morgan or little Travis might have peeked out a window.
Okay, let’s say the killer had been lurking outside the house waiting for Courtney to return. She put the car in the garage and ... whammo! Except if she’d just come home from Grand Union, where were the apples she’d gone out for? Though it was certainly possible, I had trouble picturing a gunman shoving a gun back into one pocket, then four organic Winesaps into another.