“Are you sure you feel comfortable doing this?”
“I’m really quite rich.”
“You talked me into it.”
Franny polished off her gin, stood up, stuck out her hand. We shook.
“I’m doing this for Daphne, of course, but also for me. It makes me feel alive,” she said.
“That’s a wonderful feeling.”
“It’s what we all want, isn’t it?” She looked out at the landscape. “Suddenly even this tired old view looks fresh. Speaking of fresh …” She raised her glass.
As we headed inside she turned to me. “Do you know the secret of a happy old age?”
“No.”
“There isn’t one.”
Moose’s boat was just a small outboard and felt less seaworthy than Mad John’s raft. Especially when it was holding Moose’s close-to three hundred pounds, Zack’s two hundred pounds, and my … well, let’s not go there.
It was Saturday morning, we had just left the Sawyerville town dock. There was a wind up and the river was choppy, but Moose seemed to know what he was doing.
He cracked open a morning beer, took a slug, and bellowed, “Beer good, good beer.”
“Beer real good, real good beer,” Zack answered, chugging one of his own.
“Damn, I love being out here!”
“Me too, amigo—land, sky, water, old Mama earth’s three essences.”
“You left out a slight warming trend,” I said.
“Mama earth is pissed at us for fucking her over,” Zack said.
“Old Mama earth be ripshit at our fat polluting asses,” Moose said. They both roared with laughter.
Hey, in some ways I guess the end of civilization is funny.
Maybe.
It took about fifteen minutes to get over to the east bank. It was my first time crossing the river by boat and it was a blast—there were fisherfolk, kayakers, waterskiers. A huge tanker loomed in the distance, the banks rose up on either side, the towns and houses looked like they were in a model railroad set.
Then Westward Farm came into view, sitting atop its sweeping, unkempt lawn with the ruined garden and the romantic folly where Daphne had died.
“Can you bring her in over on the side there?” I asked Moose, pointing to a wooded swath just south of the house. I figured I could get close to the summerhouse under cover of the woods and then duck across the patch of lawn to reach it.
“Sure thing, baby cakes.”
Even beered up, Moose was a good skipper and brought the boat to the edge of a nice flat rock. I stepped out.
“Meet me back here in an hour,” I said.
“You sure you don’t want me to come?” Zack asked.
I hoped my little reconnoiter would be stealthy and silent. “This is a solo gig.”
Moose took off as Zack twisted open two fresh bottles of beer.
I crossed the train tracks that ran along the river from Manhattan to Albany and headed into the woods. I’ve never been rah-rah on woods—nothing to look at but more woods. They were fairly dense but there was an old path.
After a few uphill minutes I was in line with the summerhouse. I figured the odds were pretty slim that any of the mixed nuts up in the house would be looking, but just the same I dashed across the lawn and kept low.
Once inside the summerhouse, I took a good look around. It felt eccentric, Chekhovian, a tattered remnant of a long-ago dream—the perimeter lined with built-in benches, the floor inlaid wood, the domed ceiling crisscrossed by beams, dead wicker furniture. The only sign of recent occupation were two wicker chairs that had a small table set between them. There were birds’ nests in the rafters, wine bottles scattered around, the floor was a swirl of bird shit and leaves, everything was covered with a layer of grit. Damn, I should have brought a camera. I was a pretty half-assed private detective.
I climbed up on the wobbly chair that had been underneath Daphne. I guess she could have made it up on her own, thrown her belt around the beam, tied it, and then stepped off. But it no longer seemed very likely.
I began to scour the floor. I found what looked like a fairly recent cigarette butt: Parliament. I carefully wrapped it in tissue and pocketed it.
Time to get back into the house.
My heart was thwacking in my chest as I ducked out of the summerhouse, darted up through the garden, around the house, and through Daphne’s makeshift door. The parlor looked the same—none of the paintings or furniture had been moved, nothing had been cleaned up. In the foyer someone had taken a sledgehammer and opened up a hole between Daphne’s side and Godfrey’s. I crouched down, made my way over to the hole, peeked through. I saw Rodina bouncing on a couch, her lower face covered with chocolate, watching COPS on TV—on screen, an ancient gnarled nude guy in a blonde bombshell wig was bouncing up and down on top of a car in a Taco Bell parking lot screaming obscenities and whacking his pud. I love educational television.
I headed upstairs. On the landing, another hole had been smashed in the drywall that separated the two halves of the house. I made my way down the hall. In some of the rooms, the sheets had been taken off the furniture, revealing a Keno twins’ wet dream of chairs, tables, and armoires.
As I passed a room, a childish voice called out, “Wanna play Parcheesi?”
I looked in—Becky was sitting splay-legged on the floor with an old Parcheesi board in front of her.
Damn, I’d been busted. But considering Becky’s brain cell count, maybe all wasn’t lost.
“Not the best time for me,” I said, trying to sound nonchalant.
“This was my room,” Becky said proudly, sounding like an eight-year-old. Her meth-induced innocence was both touching and terrifying.
“It’s a nice room,” I said.
“My room,” she reiterated, slapping the floor possessively.
“Well, now you can have it back.”
She lowered her voice and said in an insinuating tone, “I saw you.”
“Saw me?” I said, laying on a little innocence myself.
Becky pointed to the window. “Down there. In Aunt Daf’s special place.”
“Oh. The summerhouse was Aunt Daf’s special place?”
Becky nodded.
“What did she do down there?” I asked.
Becky giggled. “Fun things.” She giggled again. “Bad things.”
I sensed she wanted to say more and so I said nothing. I knew from my days as a therapist that the best way to keep people talking is to shut up.
“She met the scary lady down there.”
“The scary lady …?”
Becky raked her fingers through her hair and then fanned it up over her head, opening her eyes wide and demonic.
“The scary lady has wild hair?”
“And big titties,” she said, giggling.
“They would meet down there? What would they do?”
Becky gave me a lascivious grin, held out her arm, and mimed shooting up.
“Did you see them?”
Becky nodded. “I went down. I wanted meth. I love meth.” She gave me a big smile. “Scary lady wanted to get it for me, but Aunt Daf said no. But now Aunt Daf’s dead and we’re rich and I get my room back.” Then she asked in a hopeful little-girl voice, “Play ’cheesi?”
“No, thanks,” I said, “maybe later.”
“Eat shit and die.”
I continued down the hall and reached Daphne’s room. It looked the same as it had the morning of her death. Even the tray with the toast and tea was still sitting on the bed. The toast had sprouted a healthy tuft of greenish mold. Yummy.
Then I saw something I had missed on my first visit: a tote bulging with clothes that looked like they had been hurriedly stuffed into the bag. I rummaged through it and found
a small plastic clutch filled with cheap cosmetics, toothbrush, toothpaste, hydrocortisone cream, Preparation H, and prescription bottles for Vicodin, Ambien, Xanax, Oxycontin.
I cased the rest of the room and the bathroom and nothing caught my eye. The whole place made me sad—for Daphne, for all the lost promise in the world. I headed back downstairs. As I tiptoed past Becky’s room, I looked in and saw that she had talked a hairless, one-armed doll into playing ’cheesi with her.
I was in the parlor when I heard cars pull up outside. Fuck! I ducked under a round table that had a worn old tablecloth draped over it. It was dark under there, it smelled like mold, and there was a small pile of what looked like fossilized cat shit.
“I have to be at Bard in an hour,” I heard Claire say as she walked into the room.
“I understand,” a woman’s voice answered. There was a pause. “Oh my God …”
“What do you think?”
“First of all,” the woman said, “you need to have all this inventoried and catalogued. The Livingston provenance will add tremendous value.”
“I realize that, but today I’d just like to get your initial impressions. Does anything leap out at you?”
“Everything leaps out at me.” I could hear the woman’s footfalls as she walked around the room, accompanied by quiet gasps and exclamations.
The threadbare fabric covering the table had disintegrated in places, creating small peepholes. I pressed my eye close to one: the woman was in her fifties and looked very Antiques Roadshow—coiffed and classy and bright, in an understated way. She was leaning in to examine a small picture. She lifted it off the wall and held it close to her face.
“This watercolor is a Church, it’s a study for Scene on Catskill Creek.”
Claire crossed to her. “Can you give me a rough estimate of its worth?”
The woman held the watercolor back, so that both she and Claire could admire it. “It’s so lovely, look at our valley back then, how pastoral it was. Look at the light, just up here—Church was the master of capturing our light.”
“It’s very nice. But can you tell me what it’s worth?”
The two women looked at each other.
The appraiser lowered her voice. “My husband and I collect the Hudson Valley school.”
“Do you?” Claire said, dropping her own voice.
“We do.”
“I see.”
“Yes.”
“So you buy?”
“We do … occasionally. It’s difficult, these days … the prices.”
“It’s all the middlemen, isn’t it?”
“It is, they drive everything up.”
There was a long silence, during which the two women admired the Church some more. When they spoke again, their voices were even more hushed and charged.
“Why don’t you take it?” Claire said. “Just as a short-term loan.”
“That would give my husband a chance to enjoy it.”
“I love the idea of it being appreciated.”
“We do have just the place for it. In the library.”
“It feels right for a library, doesn’t it?”
“It does.”
“When it’s eventually sold, it would be wonderful if it could stay here in the Hudson Valley,” Claire said.
“It belongs here.”
“It does.”
“All right, if you insist, I will borrow it, just for a month or two.” The woman gently slid the picture into her tote. “It will give me a chance to do a little research on Church’s latest sales.”
“Good. I better get going, I’m teaching today.”
The two of them moved toward the door.
“You teach American history, don’t you?” the woman asked.
“Yes.”
“Such a fascinating history.”
“There are really two American histories,” Claire said.
“Oh?”
“There’s the one we’ve been taught. And then there’s the truth.”
I waited until I heard the cars drive away before I crawled out from under the table. There was a bright little rectangle on the dingy wall, marking the spot where the Church watercolor had hung. Claire certainly wasn’t waiting to cash in on her inheritance. Interesting.
I hurried back through the garden, past the summerhouse, into the woods, and made my way down to the riverbank. Moose and Zack were waiting, sitting in the boat looking snookered.
“Hey, babealicious, how’d it go?” Zack asked.
From their bloodshot eyes and goofdaakus grins, I could tell they’d added reefer to their repertoire.
“Fine,” I said, as Moose steered us out into the river. “You guys catch anything?”
They both looked at me with stupid smirks and I could tell their lines hadn’t gotten wet. “We had a blast just tooling around,” Zack said.
“Boat goooood,” Moose said.
“Boat goody-good,” Zack answered.
“Boat groovy good.”
Zack stood up and bellowed to the heavens, “Groooooovy boat!”
They seemed to think this was the funniest line ever uttered—they hooted so hard that we almost capsized. When they finally wound down, they were both winded.
“Fucking fuck-fuck,” Moose said in exhaustion.
“Fucking fuck-fuck fuck,” Zack said, and they exchanged bleary smiles.
We were approaching Sawyerville. I thought of the Parliament butt in my pocket, of the packed tote in Daphne’s bedroom, what I’d learned from Becky about Daphne and Esmerelda’s rendezvous in the summerhouse, Claire’s surreptitious sale. There were a lot of new pieces—now I just had to figure out where they all fit.
“Fuck for real, dude,” Zack said in a whole new tone of voice, pointing to something in the water ahead of us.
There were two large pale orbs floating side-by-side.
“Looks like a couple of balloons,” Moose said.
We got closer.
“Those aren’t balloons,” I said.
“Holy shit,” Zack said, his eyes growing wide with shock.
I’d recognize Esmerelda Pillow’s boobs anywhere—even with her head missing.
BOATERS FIND HEADLESS BODY IN HUDSON
It was late Monday morning and I was sitting at my desk in the shop reading the Kingston Daily Freeman. I hated to see my name in the paper, but it was impossible to keep it out—it’s not every day a headless torso is found in the Hudson, especially this far north of the Bronx. After spotting Esmerelda’s breasts, I’d used Zack’s cell to call the police. The Coast Guard appeared about ten minutes later—plenty of time for Moose to toss his stash—and hauled in the body. On shore we were put through perfunctory questioning and sent on our way.
As for Esmerelda’s head, it bobbed ashore at Kingston Point beach on Sunday afternoon. Put a damper on more than one family picnic.
I put down the paper, fed Bub a piece of cantaloupe, and considered what my next move might be. Then the bell jangled and a butch black woman in her mid-thirties walked into the shop.
“Janet Petrocelli?”
“That’s me.”
“Chevrona Williams, New York State Police. I’d like to ask you a few questions.”
“You a detective?”
“Yes.”
“I’d like to ask you a few questions, too.”
She shrugged, took out a small notepad. She moved like a man and was pretty inscrutable.
“Esmerelda Pillow,” she said casually, and then she studied my face.
“What about her?”
“You found her body.”
“Yup.”
“Had you ever met her before that time?”
“I wouldn’t call t
hat a meeting. More like a near collision.”
“I’d appreciate an answer.”
“Don’t tell me you think I chopped her head off? By the way, was chopping the head off the cause of death?”
“It’s rare to survive decapitation,” she said.
I smiled at her but she didn’t smile back.
“Once again: had you ever met her before that time?” she asked.
I felt sweat break out under my arms. I fed Bub a piece of a cantaloupe. I petted Sputnik. I wondered if I should lie. I fed Bub another piece of cantaloupe. Then I fed Sputnik one. Lois hated cantaloupe.
“Let me rephrase the question,” Detective Williams said. “Your car was seen in the lighthouse parking lot before dawn last Wednesday. Esmerelda Pillow was known to be involved in the heroin trade and to use the lighthouse as a pick-up and drop-off point, often in the pre-dawn hours.”
“I’m not involved in the heroin trade. I don’t even smoke pot. I like wine, a little tequila now and then. Vodka once in awhile, at parties, that kind of thing. Champagne when I’m not buying. That’s it for me.”
Chevrona Williams took a step toward me. She was tall and lean and God did she have gorgeous skin and amber-brown eyes. Maybe I should just become a lesbian, a nice neurotic fem. We could vacation in P’town and join a softball league. It would make life so much simpler.
She scrutinized me, narrowing her eyes—I had the feeling she was a Clint Eastwood fan. But it worked.
“Okay, yes, I had met Esmerelda Pillow before, once, that morning, at the lighthouse. I was walking Sputnik, this is Sputnik, but you probably figured that out.” She just kept giving me that Clint look. “Oh, okay, I went there to meet her.”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Why?”
“Um …” I took a deep breath and exhaled. “Because I’m looking into Daphne Livingston’s death and Esmerelda called and told me she might have some helpful information.”
To the Manor Dead Page 8