She fidgeted in her chair, knitted her fingers together, took deep breaths, and tried not to bawl. What had she done with Peter’s handkerchief? It wasn’t in either of the pockets of her sweatpants. Had she lost it? It was probably hand-woven linen, imported from Ireland. A twenty-dollar hankie, no doubt, and now it was gone, just like her mutual fund would be gone if she had to liquidate it to make bail.
Don’t cry, she murmured to herself, her new mantra. Don’t cry. When you get home, you can kick a ball.
She wasn’t sure how long she sat alone in the dismal room, since the Rockford Police were still in possession of her watch. The room had no wall clock. It was just a small, ugly space, vaguely reminiscent of the interrogation room at the Rockford Police Station except without the two-way mirror. However many minutes had ticked away since Peter’s departure, enough time passed for her anguish to build up a huge head of steam. She tried to focus on calming thoughts—a sunset on Cape Cod, her students at Hopwell discussing the necessity of freedom of the press, her beautiful daughter standing in her booth at the bank, counting and recounting twenties and wishing she were anywhere else.
Lainie wished she were anywhere else, too. Even a bank teller’s station would represent an improvement over this nasty little room.
At last the door opened and Peter entered, followed by . . . “Margaret?”
Her mother-in-law stormed across the threshold, dressed as if for a ladies’ luncheon in a summery pants suit with a flashy paisley scarf looped around her throat. She was partial to scarves because, she said, they hid her crepe-skinned neck.
“Elaine!” Margaret squawked, stopping short several feet from Lainie. “You look like hell.”
Why had Peter fetched Margaret? Not only did Lainie look like hell, she smelled like a bathroom in hell. And she’d just been arraigned on criminal charges. These things didn’t happen to people like her. It was an abomination, a humiliation, what her mother would call a shandeh. Lainie didn’t want to know what her mother-in-law would call it.
“Peter, why—?”
“Hush,” Margaret cut her off. “Your bail’s been taken care of. Let’s get you out of here. I can’t believe you showed up in court in workout clothes. Without even a touch of lipstick. Good lord.”
“They wouldn’t let me change my clothes after soccer practice,” Lainie said faintly—as if she would have taken the time to powder her nose and gloss her lips if Knapp had let her.
“Well, we’ll get you changed now. You’re going home.”
“Margaret.” Lainie’s voice had joined the pasta parade, growing wobbly and mushy. “Why are you here?”
“We’re family,” she said bluntly as Peter took Lainie’s hand and helped her to her feet. “Peter called and said you needed bail money. I have money. End of discussion.”
The discussion had indeed ended, at least for as long as it took them to leave the building. They stood blinking in the bright sunlight on Thorndike Avenue for a few precious seconds, and then Margaret angled her head toward the garage down the block. “I’m parked there, Peter. I’ll take Elaine home. You go do whatever you have to do to clear her name.”
“I will jump through hoops of flame,” he said with a gallant bow. Then he gave Lainie an encouraging smile and added, “Remember, I’m the best,” before turning and heading in the opposite direction of the garage.
Lainie and Margaret walked down the street, Lainie’s body gaining strength with each step. A petite woman with ramrod posture and a chin she could aim with laser-like precision, Margaret strode briskly beside her, her leather pumps tapping against the pavement.
“That man,” she said, “is a waste. So handsome, so charming—and homosexual. Women go to bed lonely at night, and he’s gallivanting with other men.”
“He doesn’t gallivant,” Lainie said. “He’s in a committed relationship.”
“Still a waste.” Margaret clicked her tongue. “So, they treated you badly, did they? When this is all behind you, you’ll sue the police department for their abusive treatment.”
“When this is all behind me, I never want to step inside a courtroom again,” Lainie said.
“Nonsense,” Margaret argued. “They owe you, Elaine. We’ll make them pay.”
In the garage, Margaret guided Lainie to her shiny silver Mercedes. Lainie was reluctant to enter the car; her slovenly, unbathed body didn’t belong on the dove-gray leather of the passenger seat. But Margaret slid behind the wheel, and if Lainie didn’t get in Margaret might just drive away without her. She got in.
“How much did Peter tell you?” she asked as Margaret zigged and zagged through the garage to the street.
“He said you naïvely befriended the man who’s been charged with Arthur Cavanagh’s murder, and that man put some little computer thingy that had belonged to the murder victim in your purse, and this incriminated you.”
Lainie waited for Margaret to say more, but that seemed to be the extent of her knowledge of Lainie’s situation. Good. Lainie wasn’t sure she was ready to relate the details of her blink-and-you’ve-missed-it sex life to her late husband’s mother.
“Peter is a superb lawyer,” Margaret added. “Roger always spoke highly of him. So handsome, too. Why are gay men always so handsome?”
“Maybe marrying women makes men lose their looks,” Lainie suggested.
Margaret considered that possibility for a moment. “Even after marrying you, Roger was gorgeous. And Henry hasn’t aged so badly.”
“The Lovetts have exceptional genes,” Lainie said. “Where are you taking me?”
Margaret didn’t have to answer. Lainie recognized the Harvard University neighborhood, with its red brick buildings, bookstores, and vegan eateries, and then the Brattle Street neighborhood where the Lovetts resided. The car turned off Brattle and up the small paved driveway to the rambling Victorian house Margaret called home.
An hour later, Lainie was showered, shampooed, and unfortunately back in her grungy sweatpants and shirt. Margaret tried to feed her some croissants and tea, but Lainie had no appetite. “Very well,” Margaret said. “Let’s get you some clothes.”
“Please, just take me home,” Lainie requested. “If you don’t want to drive all that way, stick me on a train.”
“And you’ll pay for your ticket how? You don’t even have a wallet, Elaine. We’ll buy you some clothes and then I’ll take you home.”
Buying clothes with Margaret was not simply a matter of ducking into Target and grabbing whatever fit. Margaret insisted that they travel to Copley Square for what she called “proper shopping.” Proper shopping included the purchase of a new outfit for Lainie to wear at Henry’s seventy-fifth birthday celebration at the club. Before Lainie could try on the elegant outfits Margaret had assembled for her, she needed clean underwear. “You can’t get a proper fitting while you’re wearing a sports bra,” Margaret pointed out. “That thing looks like a jock strap for breasts.”
“It is, sort of,” Lainie told her.
“Well, you need the correct foundation to try on dresses.”
The correct foundation led, ultimately, to the selection of a silk tea-length dress in hues that reminded Lainie of peacock feathers. She loved it, but never in her life would she consider spending so much money on a single dress.
Margaret had money not just for bail but for wardrobe enhancement. In addition to the correct foundation and the dress for Henry’s birthday party, she bought Lainie a new pair of khakis and a polo shirt in a shade of green Lainie associated with septuagenarian golfers. With that purchase, Margaret considered Lainie adequately outfitted.
They drove to Rockford in companionable silence. Lainie found it easier to fight back her tears when she was clean and groomed. She closed her eyes for much of the drive, lulled by the purr of the Mercedes’s engine and the delicate lilac scent of Margaret’s p
erfume. Only after they left the highway did she open her eyes, so she could direct Margaret to the police station. Much as Lainie loathed the idea of returning to that place, she wouldn’t be able to get into her house without her keys.
“You left your keys with them?” Margaret clicked her tongue again. She’d clicked it often enough that morning to have worn a groove into her palate.
“And my watch. They told me it was for my own safety,” Lainie said sarcastically. “I don’t know what they thought I could do with my keys. Obviously, I could have inflicted serious damage with the watch.”
“Elaine, these people could have pawned your watch by now. Just because they’re police officers doesn’t mean you should trust them with your jewelry.”
“It’s a cheap sport watch,” Lainie assured her. “I don’t wear my good watch to soccer practice.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear you have at least a modicum of sense.”
Lainie had to sign a form to gain possession of the yellow envelope containing her keys and watch. Margaret stood beside her, shoulders stiff and lips pursed with distaste. She seemed as relieved as Lainie when they left the building.
Margaret drove around the town green and onto Liberty Road. “God, I hate this little town. It’s too quiet. Everything is so clean. It’s unnatural.”
“If you look closer, you can see dirt,” Lainie told her.
“I don’t want to look closer. This place is too empty. So much space, so many landscaped lawns. And then someone snaps and fires a nail into someone else’s skull.” She grimaced and braked to a stop in Lainie’s driveway.
Lainie sat for a moment, flipping her keys over and over in her palm. She’d never felt particularly warm toward her mother-in-law, but at that moment she couldn’t help reaching across the console and hugging the woman. “Thank you,” she said. Speaking the words was like twisting a faucet; her tears began to flow again.
Margaret patted her shoulder. “Buck up, Elaine. Remember, what you’re going through now is a trifle compared to what you and I both went through two and a half years ago. If we could survive losing Roger, we can survive anything.”
Lainie wasn’t so sure of that, but she sniffled and nodded. “I can pay you back—”
“Nonsense. You’d never spend as much money on clothes as I spent on you. You’d come to Henry’s party dressed like a bag lady. Or like a fourth-grade teacher, which is just as bad. For heaven’s sake, use the money you would have spent on a dress for yourself to buy something new for Randall. I don’t want him showing up looking like a rap singer.”
“No—I mean the bail money,” Lainie said.
“No need to pay that back. The court will refund it to me after your trial.” She patted her shoulder again. “Your parents paid for the wedding. The least I can do is pay your bail.”
“Well. Thank you.”
“Go. I’ve got things to do back in town.” Margaret gave her a gentle nudge. “And keep me apprised of all developments. I want to have accurate information when I go to the club.”
Chapter Fifteen
NANCY VAN DOERR’S eyes glinted when Lainie entered the main office at Hopwell the next morning, wearing the khakis Margaret had bought for her. She couldn’t imagine ever again wearing the new black slacks she’d purchased for her fateful date with Stavik last weekend, so having a new garment she actually would wear was nice.
Not much else was nice in her life, but she was determined to remain upbeat, as much for her students as for herself. That she’d arisen that morning well rested helped to lift her mood. Exhausted from too many sleepless nights capped by her luxurious holiday in the Rockford Police Department’s Hotel On the Green, she tumbled into bed right after dinner and slept so deeply surgeons could have removed her appendix without anesthesia and she wouldn’t have felt a thing.
Over breakfast the next morning, she’d learned that while she hadn’t slept through abdominal surgery, she had slept through the ringing of the telephone.
“A guy called yesterday evening, about nine,” Karen had told her. “I wrote it down . . .” She’d sashayed from the kitchen table over to the counter where the phone was. Lainie had been pondering whether Karen’s skirt was too short when Karen had located the note. “Bill Stavik.”
“He called here?” Wasn’t he supposed to be in jail for murder?
“He wanted to talk to you.”
“I don’t want to talk to him. Ever.” Lainie had taken a deep swallow of coffee. “If he calls again and you answer, tell him not to call anymore.”
“What if you answer?” Karen had asked.
“I won’t answer.”
Letting her answering machine screen her phone calls was a trivial decision, but it gave her a feeling of control over her life. Returning to her beloved job at Hopwell after what she’d been through during the past twenty-four hours also gave her a feeling of control. Seeing Nancy’s leery yet oddly ravenous expression as she entered the office to check her mailbox and collect her attendance list gave her a feeling that her life was about to slip out of her control again.
“Frank wants to see you,” Nancy said.
Frank Bruno was the Hopwell principal. A beefy pink-faced fellow counting the days until his retirement, he rarely wanted to see any faculty member. Conversations with teachers might illuminate how ignorant he was of curriculum innovations and updated pedagogy. Lainie wasn’t sure he even knew what pedagogy meant.
“Does he want to see me now?”
“He said as soon as you came in.”
“Fine.” Not fine. Lainie slid the stack of memos back into the wall cubby that served as her school mailbox and strode down the narrow hallway to the principal’s office. She knocked on the door, then cracked it open. “Frank? You wanted to see me?”
“Lainie! Come in!” Frank’s robust cheer triggered alarms inside Lainie’s skull. She stepped inside the office, closed the door behind her, and turned to Frank.
He stood at his desk, his suit jacket straining over his shoulders and hanging open. No way could he have fastened the buttons over his portly torso. Strands of white hair stretched across his scalp in a feeble comb-over, and the overhead light glared against his eyeglasses, obscuring his eyes. “How are you?”
“Fine,” she said, although that was probably a lie. In fact, she realized, she was growing to hate the word fine.
“Lainie,” he said, then paused. She didn’t need Peter Cataldo standing beside her to know she should keep her mouth shut, so she did, allowing Frank to fumble with a pen on his blotter for a minute. Finally, he mustered the courage to say, “Lainie, you’ll have to take a leave of absence.”
“A leave of absence.”
“Paid, of course. Just until this thing blows over.”
She knew the answer, but asked anyway. “What thing?”
“Your arrest. Innocent until proven guilty, of course. I know that. And I have complete faith in you. Complete and utter faith. But until this thing blows over, we just can’t have you working with our children every day. The parents won’t stand for it.”
“Have you received complaints from parents?” she asked, amazed that news of her debacle had spread so quickly. Then again, with Nancy Van Doerr acting as the self-appointed town crier, Lainie shouldn’t have been surprised at all.
“We’re taking preemptive steps. It’s an awkward situation, Lainie. We feel that if you take this leave of absence, we can weather the storm.”
He could weather the storm. The school could weather it. But what about her? If he forced her out of her job, even if only temporarily, and even if she continued to draw her salary, she would find herself sucked right into the eye of the storm.
“I think my continued absence would be traumatic for my students,” she said, even though she suspected arguing with Frank would be futile.
�
�I think being taught by a woman accused of murder would be traumatic for them.”
“I’m innocent.”
“Until proven guilty,” Frank reminded her.
She wanted to smack him, but that would only give the police another crime to charge her with. “I’m trying to restore my life to normal,” she said. “The police made a huge mistake yesterday. If you don’t let me teach, you’ll be making a huge mistake, too.”
“You’ll receive your salary,” he emphasized with the sort of smile a dentist might wear while telling her she needed a root canal. “Consider it a paid vacation.”
She didn’t want a paid vacation. She wanted to stand in the front of her classroom and impart wisdom to her students. She wanted to finish the unit on giant squids, and continue the discussion on Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland. She wanted to help her kids with their writing portfolios and introduce them to a few words of Spanish and make sure they had fractions and decimals down cold.
“You’re going to feel awfully stupid when the police throw out the charges against me,” she warned.
“Better that than have crazed parents demanding to know why you’re teaching their children while you’ve got a criminal charge hanging over your head. You know how parents can be. This is a delicate situation, Lainie, and I’m not going to have the PTO breathing down my back because I allowed a possible murderer to teach their children.”
“Fine,” Lainie said. No, it wasn’t fine. She wasn’t fine. The hell with fine. Fuck fine.
“No need for you to come in to pick up your paycheck,” Frank called after her as she stormed out of his office. “We’ll mail it.”
SHE WAS TIRED OF crying. Physically tired of it, because all that wailing and sniveling made her ribs ache and her nostrils sting, but also emotionally tired of it. She had to find some other way to vent her rage.
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