Crooked Heart

by Cristina Sumners

  At this point James Robinson would probably have buckled in the face of superior force, but mothers are made of sterner stuff. Tita’s mother said coolly, “I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name?”

  “Holder. Tom Holder. I’m the Chief of Police.”

  “Yes, I heard that bit. Mr. Holder, do you have children yourself?”

  Across Holder’s mind there flashed the worst part of seven years, compressed into instants: the frustration, the doctors, Louise’s tears. “No, I don’t,” he admitted quietly.

  “What experience do you have in dealing with ten-year-olds?”

  Holder perceived that further assurance was going to be necessary. Of course he could just roll right over her objections and come anyway; he could even threaten her with Interfering with an Officer in the Performance of His Duty. But that wasn’t how you did things when you were dealing with respectable citizens, and it wasn’t Holder’s style, anyway. Furthermore, Mrs. Robinson had succeeded in stirring up an uncertainty he had so far kept submerged at the back of his brain.

  Children, to Tom Holder, were something other people had, and other people dealt with. They were small, incomprehensible beings who made clumsily adorable angels in the Christmas pageant, and damn nuisances of themselves when they played in the street. He had never had any conversation with one that had not been brief and trivial. So how was he supposed to pick the truth out of this kid’s brain, when it was so mixed up with imagination and a high fever that even her parents hadn’t believed her?

  An idea broke over Tom Holder like a great light.

  “Tell you what, Mrs. Robinson,” he said. “Suppose I bring along a special consultant.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Chief Holder’s special consultant, having no idea she was shortly to be cast in that role, was perched on her kitchen countertop, having a spirited disagreement with her housekeeper about predestination. Mrs. Warburton was calmly sticking slivers of garlic into a roast, and maintaining a position that Kathryn stigmatized as hopelessly Calvinistic. As Mrs. Warburton was a staunch Presbyterian, this was not altogether surprising, and was certainly nothing new; all the major doctrinal wars of the Reformation were regularly refought, with the greatest good humor, across the kitchen at 34 Alexander Street. The Rev. Dr. Koerney persisted in believing that Mrs. Warburton might have made a splendid Anglican, if only somebody had gotten to her in time.

  Mrs. Warburton, possessing the native shrewdness to have divined that her first responsibility as Kathryn’s housekeeper was to act as little like an employee as possible, serenely resisted conversion, together with half of Kathryn’s other ideas, and ran the household very much as she pleased.

  Her domain was a pre-Revolutionary house on the sleepy residential street that bordered the seminary campus; a completely unremarkable structure in itself, peering decorously through its maples at its more imposing neighbors, it was impressive only to those who happened to know the going rate for eighteenth-century houses on Alexander Street. Unfortunately, most of the members of St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church fell into this category.

  Kathryn, in whom innate good taste was hopelessly entangled with a lively dread of being thought nouveau riche, would have been appalled to discover that her house and its contents constituted one of the hot topics of parish gossip, and that an invitation to that house ranked as no mean status symbol. Had she known, she might have been sufficiently mortified to stop entertaining altogether, and that would have been a pity, for Helen Warburton regarded the elegant little dinner parties she was privileged to concoct as the high point of her job.

  She was busy being unimpressed by Kathryn’s excoriation of Calvin’s doctrine of Total Depravity, when the phone rang. Kathryn answered it. It was Tom Holder.

  Damn, Kathryn thought, what have I started? “Hi, Tom, what’s up?” He had never called her, and she couldn’t imagine any quirk of church business that would require him to; he must be making excuses to talk to her.

  Preliminary courtesies out of the way, Tom asked, “You teach the fourth-graders in Sunday school, don’t you?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Fourth-graders are ten years old, right?”

  “Most of them, yes. Why?”

  “I have to question a ten-year-old girl, and it’s a very delicate situation, and I don’t know a damn thing about kids. I’ve got a nerve calling you, I know, I’m sure you’re up to your ears, but I really could use some help and I can’t think of who else to ask.”

  “Ah, Tom, by ‘delicate situation’ do you mean she’s been molested?”

  “Oh, no! No, nothing like that. She’s a witness to something, and it’s really important.”

  Kathryn was both relieved and embarrassed. She’d been so sure she had troubled Tom’s serenity, attracted him, lured him into a flirtation. And now it turned out that the man was only doing his job. God, what an unbridled ego I’ve got, she thought, inwardly wincing. Aloud she said, “Why, sure, I’d be glad to help if I can, but you know that I know less about police work than you do about kids.”

  “I don’t think that’ll matter. Have you got some time right now?”

  “Astonishingly, yes; the scheduling gnomes at the seminary gave me Wednesday mornings off this semester. Shall I come up to the Cop Shop?”

  There followed a lively game of “After you, Alphonse,” Kathryn operating on the assumption that it would be more polite for her to traverse the three blocks to the police station than to ask Tom to venture out on such a dismal morning, Tom suddenly confronted with the opportunity to see the inside of the fabled house and feeling it would be presumptuous to invite himself. But on the other hand, wasn’t it rude to ask Kathryn to come trekking through the drizzle to do him a favor?

  Landing by some miracle on the alternative both actually preferred, they agreed that Tom was to be at Kathryn’s in ten minutes. Kathryn hung up the phone and turned, grinning, to Mrs. Warburton.

  “Warby,” she announced importantly, “I am about to entertain a man I genuinely enjoy, without his incredibly tiresome wife, thank you, and tea for two”—she paused to execute a little shuffling dance step—“would be appreciated.” She made a face. “Only he probably prefers coffee.”

  Mrs. Warburton smiled imperturbably. “Don’t worry, dear; if he comes often, you’ll have him trained in no time.”

  CHAPTER 14

  Tom Holder, feeling a twinge of disappointment to have the door opened to him not by the high-toned housekeeper of whom he’d heard awed reports but by his cheerfully informal hostess, relinquished his raincoat to her, and while she hung it in the hall closet, looked around him with a curiosity restrained by good manners. He noted a wine-colored Oriental rug on the hardwood floor and an Oriental runner of a different shade going up the stairs, before his attention was riveted by the most amazing mirror he had ever seen.

  It was half as big as a Ping-Pong table; the frame alone was a foot wide, and gold, and carved six inches deep with snaky tendrils of impossible trees; birds lurked among the curlicues, and cupids writhed coyly at the corners, holding the concoction together with garlands of carved gold ribbon. Holder’s work had taken him, from time to time, into some lavish homes, but even by Harton standards this thing was remarkable. He was utterly unable to explain to himself why he didn’t like it; he knew only that it reminded him vaguely of indigestion. Kathryn was watching him stare at it; he had to say something. He managed to get out, “That’s quite a mirror.”

  “My mother sent it to me,” said Kathryn neutrally.

  He looked at her expressionless face, then back at the mirror, then back at Kathryn. He took in the discreet pinstripe on a charcoal-gray suit with a two-button jacket and a full skirt, the gray clergy shirt topped by a stiff white collar, and the small gold loops in her ears. He was visited by a stroke of that intuition that was the chief reason Kathryn admired him. “You don’t like it,” he said.

  The deadpan look burst into a laugh. “I loathe it,” she confessed heartily. “But what
can you do? Mother sent it and said, ‘Just the thing for your front hall.’ ”

  “And she’ll give you grief if she comes and sees it’s not here.”

  “Oh, no, she wouldn’t say a thing. She’d smile and be charming and go away with her visit ruined.”

  She had led him into the living room, and he fairly blinked from surprise. There was not a single thing in the room that was grand or expensive-looking. The biggest item, not counting the sofa, was a tall cabinet-like thing of some pale wood—pine, he thought; the old paint had been removed and nobody had bothered to put on a new coat; the knotholes showed. Tom liked it. He liked the sofa and chairs, too, though they weren’t even a matching set.

  He didn’t know whether he was relieved or disappointed; Kathryn Koerney’s famous house!—and it was perfectly ordinary. He walked innocently across a carpet, the sale of which would have paid off the mortgage on his house, dropped into a chair that cost more than his car, and said approvingly, “Nice room.”

  His hostess beamed. “The fell hand of Mother has not come near it! Thanks, I’m glad you like it. Ah, here’s tea. Don’t panic, there’s coffee, too—” Kathryn paused in dismay as she registered the dazzle of silver that Mrs. Warburton was bearing. The pause gave Mrs. Warburton the opportunity to tell Chief Holder not to get up and Chief Holder the opportunity to get up anyway. Kathryn pulled herself together.

  “Warby, this is Chief Holder; Tom, Mrs. Warburton. Maker of the second-best mandelbrot in New Jersey, and oh, my, what a plateful we have here.”

  Mrs. Warburton, long accustomed to Kathryn’s exaggerations, set the tray down on the coffee table and extended her hand to Tom with a pleasant how-do-you-do. He shook her hand, wondering suddenly what this woman’s status was. In all those wealthy homes his business had taken him into, he had observed the nuances and conventions that governed the behavior of people with servants, and he knew very good and well that you don’t introduce your servants to your guests, your servants don’t shake hands with said guests, and your servants certainly do not call you by your first name—this woman was telling “Kathryn” that she would be in the kitchen if anything else was needed. Tom was confused.

  Kathryn was well aware that Mrs. Warburton was a presence not easily categorized, but she never offered any explanation. Having ascertained that Tom did indeed prefer coffee, she poured for him, supplied him with cream, sugar, and mandelbrot, kicked off her shoes, sat cross-legged on the sofa, and demanded, “What about this ten-year-old girl? I’m dying of curiosity.”

  Holder was noting but not appreciating the dexterity with which she had managed to assume a tomboyish posture without revealing so much as a knee. He decided that he didn’t like full skirts. But he had business to attend to.

  “Well,” he said, “if I start with the ten-year-old girl, you’ll think I’m crazy. I’ve got a sergeant thinks I’m crazy already. Mmm. Good coffee. Let’s start with Monday. You realize all this is confidential.”

  “I never heard it. Tom who?”

  “Right. Monday, ten p.m., a guy calls the station. Says he doesn’t know where his wife is.”

  He began a succinct, orderly report of Monday night’s events, discreetly referring to the people involved by first name only. At least when he started he was succinct. But soon it dawned on him that he might never get another chance to sit in Kathryn’s living room like this, acting as if he belonged there, and he began to include minute details and to succumb to digression.

  “Seven of the damn things, every size they made! Who would want seven different kinds of suitcase, I ask you?”

  Kathryn shrugged. “Somebody who wants people to know how much money they have.”

  Tom decided to take a chance. He leaned back in his chair and examined Kathryn through narrowed eyes. “Let me see. You have . . . four, I think, matching suitcases, five at the most, but you never use more than three of them at the same time because you don’t want to look like somebody who owns that mirror out there.”

  Her jaw went slack, and she stared at him for several seconds before saying, with quiet emphasis, “That’s scary.”

  Tom’s heart flipped over. He had gotten to her, seen inside her, and she hadn’t realized until then that he was capable of it. He looked into those solemn, slightly widened eyes and saw in them his credit rising like mercury in a thermometer that has been unexpectedly dropped into hot chocolate.

  But he had to say something. The moment was delicious, but it was lasting too long. It was getting heavy.

  “Scary, yeah,” he said, waving a dismissive hand. “We’re supposed to be scary in my business, they give us lessons in it.” He grinned at her.

  She laughed, and the moment was gone. But that was O.K. It had happened, and he had it, and he could keep it.

  Fifteen minutes later he was summing up. “So that’s all we got, Monday and Tuesday both. And you can’t take out a search warrant on somebody’s house just because he’s sleeping with the woman next door and he faints when he sees a cop.”

  “Search warrant? What, did he bury her in the basement, or something? Shades of Hitchcock!”

  “No, no.” Holder waved away Alfred Hitchcock and similar nonsense with half a slice of mandelbrot. “The search warrant is for evidence she was killed in the house and afterward her body was carried away in their van. You’re about to find out about that. What’d you say this stuff is? It’s like a cross between cookies and toast.”

  “You like it? Mandelbrot. It’s Jewish, and no, Mrs. Warburton isn’t Jewish, but her best friend is.”

  “I love it. Never heard of a Jewish woman with a best friend who was a Gentile, I thought the Old Testament wants them to hate us and the New Testament wants—well, provides lots of excuses, anyway—for us to hate them.”

  Kathryn whistled. “Tom Holder! Not one Christian in a thousand has noticed that the New Testament is full of anti-Semitism. I’m wowed.”

  Tom tried to look modest, and failed. “You’re a cop in Jersey, you get to be an expert on racism. Hang on, if you know that, too, why didn’t you ever say so in the adult Sunday school class?”

  “Oh, right. ‘Ladies and gentlemen of St. Margaret’s, the first thing you need to know about the Bible is that there’s a lot of crap in it.’ ”

  Tom choked on his last bite of mandelbrot, and pounded the chair arm with appreciative glee.

  “It’s not,” Kathryn continued, “the sort of thing you say to scaredy-cat Christians, of which there were about half a dozen in that class.”

  “See your point. I didn’t know anybody still said ‘scaredy-cat.’ ”

  “That’s what my uncle the rancher used to call me when I wouldn’t go into the barns because of the rats.” She smiled. “So he gave me his gun and taught me how to shoot them. Weren’t we talking about search warrants, and how you can’t get one?”

  “Oh, yeah. This is where you and the ten-year-old girl come in. Missing woman lives on Austen Road, ten-year-old girl lives on Dickens Street. Ring any bells?”

  “Afraid not,” Kathryn admitted, displeased with herself for not knowing the answer.

  “Austen is a Dickens of a writer? Dickens is an Austen-something writer?”

  Kathryn laughed. “Austen-tatious writer. Fancy your remembering that!”

  He thought, but did not say, I remember everything you say. Instead, he told her about James and Tita Robinson, and in conclusion picked up a zippered vinyl folder, opened it, drew out a sheet of paper, and with a bit of a flourish, handed it to her.

  CHAPTER 15

  This is a true and accurate account of the events of the night of Monday, November 7th. I was asleep in my bedroom. I woke up feeling hot. I got out of bed and opened the window and looked out at the backyard. There were suspicious sounds in the driveway of the house behind us. I put on my slippers and robe and went downstairs and outside. I climbed the back fence and looked over. I saw somebody back out our neighbor’s camper van from their garage, but they didn’t have the headlights on. He st
opped the van and got out and opened the back door of it. Then he went to the house and came back after a minute carrying the body of a woman. He put the body in the back of the van and backed the van out of the driveway, still with no headlights. I went back into the house and woke my parents up and told them to call the police.

  In the space at the bottom a careful childish signature had been written over the typed name, Elizabeth Dawes Robinson; under the name was the address on Dickens Street, then yesterday’s date.

  Kathryn wished the hollow feeling in her stomach would go away. Unwilling to play the squeamish female, she assumed a detached manner and said, “Now, according to your Sergeant Fischer, the girl’s parents don’t really believe she saw all this happen, but the father reported it because he promised the child he would.”

  “Yeah, one of Fischer’s problems is that he believes what people tell him.”

  “Ah. You think the father does believe it?”

  Tom chewed mandelbrot. “I think he half-believes it, and doesn’t want to believe it, and is making up excuses not to.”

  “Umm. And the two major excuses he’s got are, one, the kid is running a hell of a fever and is therefore delirious or dreaming, and two, this particular delirium or dream is brought on by a surfeit of Nancy Drew stories.”

  “A what?”

  “Excess of Nancy Drew stories.”

  Tom was pretending to rummage in his pockets. “I meant to bring my dictionary with me,” he muttered. Kathryn blew a raspberry at him, which delighted him hugely. “Yeah, however you say it. Those are the reasons he gives, and they’re both bunk. The real reason is that nobody is going to believe that one of the neighbors has croaked the woman next door unless you show them movies of it.”

  Kathryn, thinking of Professor and Mrs. Allanby next door, and wondering what evidence it would take to convince her that violence had taken place amid that clutter of sheet music and gardening catalogs, admitted that she saw the point. She added, “Thereis one thing, strictly minor. The kid’s supposedly dreaming about murders because she’s been reading Nancy Drew. There aren’t any murders in Nancy Drew.”