by Judith Ivie
I tried to imagine what it must have been like, hiding like an animal in the attic day after day and coming out to find food only in the dark. He would have had to be silent and nearly motionless after the accounting and development staff arrived on the second floor around nine in the morning and stay that way until the group residence staff left the building between seven and eight in the evening. Even on the weekend, he would have had to be alert, since every staff member had the security alarm code and a key to the building, and they often came in at odd hours to catch up on paperwork.
I settled on a can of chicken noodle soup from the stash Mary Alice kept in her desk drawer. While it heated in the microwave, I fought the urge to call Mary. I knew I should be notifying the police, but which police? The Hartford police, since the death had occurred there, or the Wethersfield police, since the body had been discovered there? Well, they could all wait half an hour until James got himself a bit more together, I decided.
I set a steaming bowl of soup in front of him. The napkin and spoon I put down beside it prompted a small smile.
“Nice,” he said, “a woman's touch.” His face contorted as he struggled with the powerful emotions he had kept bottled up for more than a week now. My heart went out to him, and I busied myself at the sink to give him time to regroup. When I turned back, he was spooning soup into his mouth steadily, his hand trembling only a little.
When he finished his meal, he placed the spoon neatly in the empty bowl and used the napkin. We regarded one another across the empty reception area. “Now what?” he asked, and I had to admit I hadn't a clue. “I did it, of course. I killed my brother Joseph. It was an accident, but I don't think anyone will believe that, especially since I ran away.”
“I believe it,” I told him honestly. Again, the briefest of smiles.
“Thank you. I appreciate knowing that. I've had a lot of time to think about it. I had endured Joseph's cadging and mooching, his endless requests for money and his failed business schemes, for years. Mary and I both had. After that, there was the terrible situation with Roberta, and then Patrick came along.” He dropped his head into his hands.
“I don't need to know,” I hastened to interject. “It's between you and Mary.”
“The police,” he added. “Mustn't forget about them. I've screwed up in the past, God knows, but this time, God himself can't help me.”
I decided my opinion on that subject wouldn't do anything to reassure James and kept quiet.
“Joseph lived in California, not far from Roberta. They were actually both members of the local chapter of the National Society of Certified Public Accountants and had met once or twice at functions. I needed a way to get money to Roberta that Mary wouldn't question, so I took Joseph into my confidence.” His face twisted at his folly. “Major mistake number two. At first, he seemed to do as I asked, although I had my doubts that everything I sent actually made it to Roberta for Patrick's care. Then one year, when I made my annual trip out west and stopped by to visit my son, Joseph answered the door.”
“He had married Roberta,” I said unnecessarily, since we both already knew that to be true.
“How did you know?”
“The police learned it during the missing persons investigation, which is what this started out to be.”
He nodded. “Of course, I forgot about that. All those years of trying to keep my hideous blunders under wraps, and now the whole world knows that I'm not only a fool but a murderer,” he summed up bleakly.
“You said it was an accident,” I protested. “That doesn't sound like murder to me.”
“I covered it up, or at least, I tried to. I took my dead brother's body out of a public place in full view of about a dozen witnesses and threw it in the river. I had some crazy idea that if it stayed in the water long enough, it would be so decomposed that the authorities would believe it was me, and Mary could at least collect my life insurance. I just had to stay out of the way, disappear from her life. How is that even possible?” he said in obvious bewilderment. “I'm a financial professional. That was the thinking of a madman.”
“Very likely,” I pointed out. “The plea of temporary insanity exists for a reason, James.”
He turned that over in his mind. “I don't even remember exactly how it happened. One minute, I was in the Education Office at the Wadsworth, where the caterer's staff kept the replenishment hors d'oeuvres and a big container of champagne punch. I was laying out the pieces of my Santa Claus suit. The next minute, there was Joseph, standing right in front of me, threatening to tell Mary everything if I didn't give him yet more money, but there wasn't any more money. He and Roberta had bled me dry. I took a loan against what was left of my retirement fund to give Mary one last trip, one good memory, before I confessed everything to her. I just had to acknowledge my son, you see. I couldn't stand not to do that any longer. But Joseph kept pushing, kept insisting. Mary was due any minute. I had to make him stop talking, just stop talking.” His expression turned fierce at the memory, then crumbled.
“We struggled. I hit him, and he fell. All I remember is bolting out of there. I wanted to find Mary before Joseph did, but I missed her in the crowd. I went back into the office to confront Joseph once and for all. That's when I found him slumped over the edge of the caterer's vat, face down in the punch. I dragged him out, but it was too late. He must have been unconscious when he went down, and he drowned.” He pulled his gaze away from the window and stared at me, his face a mixture of horror and incredulity. “He drowned in a goddamned vat of Christmas punch.”
Having gotten it all out, he sank back in the chair, his eyes empty and his hands limp on the desk before him. Clearly, it was time for me to take action, but what should I do? So I did what I usually do when I need a clearer head than my own. I waited for James to drag himself into the men's room, and I called Margo.
“Hey, there, Sugar. All ready for the big weddin’ tomorrow? John and I will be there to help you cope.”
It was symptomatic of my current state of mind that I had forgotten about the wedding for the moment. “Hard as it may be to believe, the wedding is the last thing on my mind at the moment,” I told her. “Is John home?”
“He came in from his racquetball game about an hour ago. He's upstairs as we speak getting’ all spiffed up to take his gorgeous wife out to dinner and a movie, the one we didn't get to see yesterday.” She giggled in anticipation.
“I'm afraid you might not be seeing it tonight either. Put John on an extension, will you? I need him to hear this, too.”
Margo heard the urgency in my voice and snapped to attention. “You bet, Hon,” was all she said. Within seconds, the three of us were connected, and I launched into a condensed version of today's events. James returned to his seat and sat quietly until I hung up the phone.
“Now what?” he asked again. “Are the police coming here, or do I turn myself in? More importantly, who's going to be with Mary while all of this is happening?”
“You are,” I told him and outlined the plan that Margo, John and I had concocted. As he listened, his eyes filled alternately with hope, regret, and finally anguish.
“You are all being so kind to me,” he choked. “It's overwhelming. You don't even know me. I hardly know myself anymore. This whole thing feels as if it's happening to someone else.” He wiped the welling tears from his eyes roughly.
“You haven't been yourself, James. That's what I've been trying to tell you. By the way,” I added, realizing why I hadn't quite recognized him during the music rehearsal at the Cathedral. “What happened to your eyeglasses?”
He reached into the pocket of his rumpled raincoat and produced a pair of ruined spectacles. One lens was shattered, and an earpiece was missing. “I don't even remember where this happened,” he said. He put them back in his pocket. “Can we go now? I want to get myself cleaned up a little before Mary sees me.”
I smiled inwardly at this reassertion of personal pride. It wasn't much, but it was a start.<
br />
On the way to Hubbard Plaza in Rocky Hill, just south of Wethersfield, we passed Catzablanca, which is when I remembered the ginger cat. I pulled into the hotel parking lot and called the vet's office.
“Not to worry,” Cindy assured me. “When we couldn't reach you at work, I called the house. Armando collected Gracie about half an hour ago. She's fine, by the way. No feline leukemia.”
“That's great news,” I told her. “Gracie?”
“Ditzy little blonde, you know, like George Burns’ wife, Gracie Allen. She's kind of timid at first, but I think she's going to be a real charmer, just the thing to give Jasmine a new interest in life.”
“Okay, Gracie it is,” I agreed and promised to make another appointment soon.
Hubbard Plaza is one of the nicer conference facilities outside Hartford's city limits. It offers a formal hotel with all the amenities, including a concierge and room service, in one building and extended-stay suites with kitchenettes and exterior entrances in several smaller facilities on the property. It was the latter that John and Margo had suggested for what I had in mind.
We arrived in the parking lot within minutes of each other. John pulled up next to my Jetta, which I'd parked beneath a lamppost to be clearly visible. Although it was not yet five o'clock, dark had descended.
John got out of his car, and James got out of my car to join him. “We're going to suite fourteen in building three,” John said to me, pointing to the structure at the far right of the lot. “Margo will be right along. Just knock.” I gave James what I hoped was an encouraging smile, and together, the two men walked across the lot and disappeared inside.
I turned on the all-news station for company but switched off the radio after the first two stories of brutality and senseless mayhem, preferring my own thoughts to the commentator's relentless yammering. I could not bear to think about the errand Margo had bravely undertaken and what Mary's reaction to the news of her husband's discovery must have been. Joy? Anger? Stoic acceptance, perhaps, after all that she had already endured and had yet to face. What would I do if it were Armando in that room with John right now?
Before I arrived at any conclusions, Margo's elegant little coupe slid into the space next to me on the other side. The imagery of being safely bracketed by Harknesses comforted me. She climbed out and came around to where I still sat behind the wheel, leaving Mary in her car's passenger seat.
“How did it go?” I asked in a low voice.
“I'm not really sure,” she answered with her usual candor. “No hysterics, no hissy fit. Not much reaction at all, come to think of it, just this eerie calm after I told her what had happened and where we were goin. ’ It was almost as if she had expected this. They would have had to put me in a straitjacket in her place, but she just excused herself and went upstairs to put her husband's shavin’ kit and some clean clothes in a suitcase. No muss, no fuss, and distinctly weird.”
I got out of the car and beeped it locked. “She's in shock. Come on, let's get this over with.”
A minute later, John answered our knock at the door of suite fourteen. “He's in here, Mrs. O’Halloran. He's a little worse for wear, but he's okay. His glasses are broken, and he hasn't had access to a razor in more than a week, but he's all right and very anxious to see you.”
Margo and I stood behind Mary, ready to catch her if she collapsed, but her composure held. “I brought him some things I knew he would need,” she said and held out the little suitcase she had brought with her. Her eyes searched the room beyond John, and he stepped aside.
James stood in the center of the room, still wet from a shower. He wore a terrycloth robe, thoughtfully provided by the hotel. His eyes were riveted on Mary where she stood at the door.
John took the suitcase she held out and put it on the end of the bed. “There's no point in trying to deal with the legalities tonight, so James has agreed to turn himself in to the Wethersfield police at ten o'clock tomorrow morning. There will be an officer parked outside this building tonight in an unmarked car.” He stopped talking, since it was clear that neither James nor Mary was listening to him. He looked at us and shrugged.
Margo gave Mary a little push, and she stumbled into the room. Her eyes never left her husband as she ran to him and grabbed him by both shoulders. John looked a little alarmed, but Margo shook her head at him.
“You stupid son of a bitch,” Mary said. Then she stood on tiptoe and hugged him fiercely.
We backed out of the room, and John pulled the door shut. We exchanged satisfied smiles as the promised police officer pulled up beside us to consult briefly with John. He took up his position in the first row of parking spaces and cut the engine of his unmarked vehicle.
“Poor guy,” Margo sympathized. “He has to sit there all night? What does he do when, uh, he has to use the facilities?”
“They're equipped to deal with that,” John told her without elaborating. “Anyway, he'll only be there for four hours. The duty will rotate among several officers.”
“What will happen to James, John? In his own mind, he's responsible for his brother's death, but it was an accident, a freak accident.”
John looked at me in the lamplight as if considering my ability to hear what he was about to say. “That part isn't really the problem,” he said finally, “or at least, it wouldn't have been if he'd busted out of that room at the Wadsworth yelling for help when he found his brother. No one in his right mind would have believed a man would deliberately try to drown someone in a vat of punch.” He shook his head. “No, it was what he did next that will turn a jury against him, if it comes to that.”
“You mean, trying to cover it up?”
John ticked off points on his fingers. “He fished his brother's body out of the punch and dressed it in a Santa suit. Then he put him in a garbage bag and wheeled the body out of the museum. He drove to the boat launch, tipped Joseph into the river, and carefully put his car back exactly where he had originally parked it. Finally, he hiked all the way across town to the UCC and made himself invisible for more than a week. He didn't come to his senses the next day and call somebody. He laid low for eight days, and who knows how much longer he would have been there if you hadn't figured it out.”
John's matter-of-fact summation made my blood run cold. “He wanted people to think it was he who had died so his wife could collect on his life insurance,” I pointed out in James’ defense.
“That was never going to work,” John said in disgust. “There are all kinds of physical evidence used to identify a body, like dental records, DNA, traces of medications. Besides, if he cared so much about his wife, did he consider how she would feel having to view the remains? She was pretty lucky Joseph had been in the water only three days when she saw him. After a week, they get … well.” He thought better of supplying details.
“So it's not so much Joseph's death but the cover up that's got James in over his head?” My words replayed in my mind. I clapped a hand over my mouth but couldn't contain an involuntary giggle at my unfortunate metaphor. Margo picked up on it immediately.
“Out of his depth?” she offered and snorted.
“Going down for the third time?” I choked, and we both howled.
“You two are sick,” was John's only comment.
“You're right, we're bad people,” Margo said. We pulled ourselves together. “Now, I believe someone promised me dinner and a movie.” She patted her husband's backside discreetly. I couldn't see in the dim light, but I was sure John was blushing. “What are you and your fella gettin’ up to tonight, Sugar?”
I had a sudden vision of Armando up to his elbows in a sinkful of dirty glassware while hungry cats yowled around his ankles.
“Oh my God, I've got to get home,” I blurted in a panic. I headed for my car at a trot. “Armando and Emma have been coping with the whole wedding thing by themselves all day, not to mention the new cat.”
“New cat?” Margo called after me.
“Gracie, you'll meet her tomo
rrow. See you then. You guys are the best.”
I started the car and tore out of the lot at an imprudent rate of speed, considering that two of Wethersfield's finest were watching me. At the first light, I checked my watch. Nearly six o'clock, and I had planned to be home to help in mid-afternoon. Well, at least I had a great excuse.
I pulled into the garage and ran up the stairs to the kitchen door. When I opened it, I fully expected to find pandemonium, but all was quiet. The kitchen was in surprisingly good order, and something appetizing simmered on the stove. I followed the smell of wood smoke into the living room, where logs blazed cheerfully in the fireplace. Armando and Emma sat companionably on the sofa, enjoying a glass of wine. They looked up when I came in and stopped dead in my tracks.
“Hi, Momma. We didn't hear you,” Emma stated the obvious, but I was too stunned to respond. I very nearly didn't recognize my own home. In the few hours I had been gone, the space before me had been transformed from a run-of-the-mill dining-living room into an elegant holiday setting for a wedding. The furniture had been moved to the walls to open up the space. Damask-draped tables formed a buffet on which crystal and silver gleamed. A small side table stood at the ready for the wedding cake.
What had been the pass-through from kitchen to dining room was now a fully stocked wet bar. Tasteful arrangements of white roses and baby's breath mixed with seasonal greenery now complemented the Christmas tree and a few other decorations that had been allowed to remain. A bridal garland on the mantel indicated where the ceremony would take place, and short rows of satin-padded folding chairs were arranged down the center of the room in front of the mantel. Very simply, the place was drop-dead gorgeous.
“How did you do this? Did the caterer's staff help?”
Emma gave Armando a thumbs-up. “Oh, they came by around noon and dropped off some glasses and silverware and stuff, and the florist delivered a lot of roses, but we pulled it all together. So you like it?”