by Amanda Cross
And with that their consultation ended, Harriet promising to visit Mama again and to try to work the conversation around to Reed’s kidnapping and the details thereof.
That evening, Reed and Kate were joined by Archie. Each had something to report. None of it was major, but all of it at least, as Reed noted, left them with the impression that they were getting somewhere. Reed had managed, as it turned out with only small effort, to learn that Dorothy Hedge had indeed come to Manhattan regularly—and, most significantly, on the day that Toni was attacked. Upon being corrected by Kate, Reed admitted that all he could accurately testify to was that Dorothy’s car had crossed the Henry Hudson Bridge on certain days and at certain hours. He also knew which toll lane she had entered, but that information, which he offered to Kate with a certain air of thoroughness, hardly signified. Kate stuck her tongue out at him.
Archie’s news, following Reed’s (which had followed Kate’s account of Bad Boy’s record and what Harriet had reported about Mama), was, if not riveting, certainly clarifying. He had obtained the result of police investigations in Toni’s office as well as in her home, a studio in the East Village. Neither place had yielded startling results, although Archie had been pleased to learn that Toni’s bank account had had a number of rather large deposits for which no source could be ascertained.
“Meaning?” Kate asked.
“Meaning that Toni or someone else made regular cash deposits into her account.”
“How did you find out?”
“Kate, my dear,” Archie said, as Reed had so often done, “your naïveté is charming. There is nothing in this age of computers anyone with a small degree of access and a knowledge of programs cannot discover. Anyway, the police found out at my suggestion, as it happened. Not that all this tells us much except that Toni was being paid for something neither she nor the payer wanted a record of. Also, and most important, the payments stopped after the attack.”
“I should think that would be obvious.”
“Perhaps to you.” Archie smiled. “Us more tedious types like to remember about coincidence and other contingencies, such as, for example, that Toni was collecting the amounts in person and couldn’t after the attacks, even if she was not attacked by the person who provided the money.”
“Unlikely,” Kate said.
“Perhaps.”
“Are you, therefore, combining all our discoveries, assuming that Dorothy Hedge attacked Toni?” Kate asked.
“It seems possible. Getting to her bank account was a little harder—”
“Really, Archie,” Kate said, “you make me wonder if there is any privacy left anywhere.”
“Save your wonder for better things. There is no privacy if anybody really wants to find out. The point, Kate,” Archie said, “is that people like us lead such open lives that we need not worry about privacy. Although some underhanded people are surprisingly careless. I had a client whose wife was divorcing him. He had met his ladylove in a hotel and paid by credit card. That would not have mattered, since he paid the credit card bills, with which he troubled his wife only if her charges were lamentably out of line. In this case, however, he left the credit card at the hotel desk, and the assistant manager kindly telephoned his home to tell him. His wife was at home and took the call.”
“He sounds like a particularly stupid assistant manager,” Reed said. “I doubt he will go far.”
“The really stupid one was my client. Lust draws blood from the brain. But getting back to this case, let me report that no sums comparable to those paid into Toni’s account were withdrawn from Dorothy Hedge’s.”
“She might have kept a large stash of cash,” Kate said. “Although I did notice that someone who came to pick up a dog while I was there paid with a check, if that means anything.”
“Everything may mean something if we can only figure out what,” Reed noted gloomily.
“We do know,” Kate said to comfort him, “that Dorothy could have attacked Toni; that someone, probably not Dorothy, was paying Toni for something; that Dorothy lied to me; and that Mama and Bad Boy are very nasty people indeed. Is there anything else?”
“Not much,” Reed said, in his pleasantest voice, “except who dreamed up the kidnapping scheme, why was Toni attacked, and who is behind the whole thing and why.”
“Don’t worry,” Archie said. “At least we can suggest that the Hedge woman had a motive, and a connection with a right-wing movement, which should let Harriet off from much more suspicion.”
“Did his wife divorce him?” Kate asked.
Archie looked blank.
“The chap with the abandoned credit card.”
“Oh, no. Finally she settled for a fair share of his stock options. They both figured out it was cheaper in the long run to stay together.”
“What frightful clients you have.”
“That’s why Reed could talk me into defending Harriet. All she was accused of was murder, and probably only manslaughter at that.”
Fifteen
THE next afternoon Reed was sitting at home listening to Bach and trying to organize the notes for a talk he had agreed to give in the spring at a time when the spring had seemed very far away. His thoughts were interrupted by the ringing of the house phone. He had to go into the pantry to answer it, wondering what on earth it could be. The doorman informed him that a Ms. Furst would like to come up. “Send her up,” Reed said, and went to the door to wait for her.
“Well, Harriet, if you’ve come to see Kate she’s not here. Gone to see a man about a dog—well, a person about a dog is what she said. That was absolutely all the information I was offered. Have you given up using the telephone?”
“Sorry to bother you,” Harriet said. Reed invited her to sit down in the living room, but she declined the offer. “I wanted to see Kate’s face when I told her,” she explained. “I can’t think why she isn’t here.”
“Told her what?” Reed asked, “or am I not to hear it until she does?”
“Perhaps I will sit down after all,” Harriet said, taking a seat in the foyer and thus indicating her intention of not staying long. Reed remained standing, his posture displaying modified curiosity.
“I found the baseball bat,” Harriet said.
“The baseball bat?”
“Reed,” Harriet said, rising to her feet, “you know I admire Kate—as Jonson said of Shakespeare—‘this side idolatry’; but I find her habit of repeating what one says extremely trying and I do wish you wouldn’t also take it up.”
“Sorry. What baseball bat?”
“The one that probably killed Toni, of course. I thought you had been paying attention to this case, Reed.”
“So I have. But the baseball bat was only a supposition, an impulsive guess. Where did you find it and why do you think …?”
“I found it in the room occupied by Bad Boy when he stays with Mama. She and I have become buddies, both of us supporting, as we do, the National Rifle Association, the bombing of abortion clinics, the death penalty, and the abolition of compassion as a government policy competing with growth. She left me alone to consult with someone at the door and I poked around in my usual fashion. The bat was in the closet of his room and had clearly been washed, but I suspect a crime laboratory could make it speak nonetheless.”
“Did you take it away?”
“I could hardly do that. I thought you might get the police or someone else to get a warrant or whatever it is you do when you think there is evidence. I think there is evidence that Bad Boy hit Toni over the head with the bat. Surely it’s worth investigating.”
“Surely it is,” Reed said. “But it seems strange. I can’t see Toni turning her back on a young man she didn’t know. That’s why I was so sure the assailant was a woman.”
“That is a problem, I admit. Perhaps Dorothy Hedge wielded the bat. A warrant would still be a good idea.”
“Are you sure Mama doesn’t suspect you spotted it?”
“Absolutely. We are meeting tomorro
w with a group of sympathetic students to fight against the Brady bill and encourage the government to do away with welfare as we know it, which seems to mean no more food stamps. I can hardly wait. Mama is very pleased to have an ally of her own sex and age; older women have sadly disappointed her on the whole.”
Harriet moved toward the door, which Reed opened for her. “I’ll tell Kate as soon as she returns or calls in,” he said. “You really are quite wonderful, Harriet, in your own particular way.” He kissed her cheek and promised to see about the warrant as soon as possible.
“If possible, before I have to go and take part in a public protest against welfare,” Harriet urged as she stepped into the elevator.
Kate, meanwhile, was on her way upstate, having had to wait on a line to pay cash since she did not possess an E-ZPass; she had purchased a token for her return trip, but fervently hoped that she would not again need to pass this way. She had spent her morning in endless conversations with members of the American Kennel Association, sounding to her own ears like a nutcase, but apparently she was a usual enough questioner to dog breeders. Her object had been to locate Marjorie, whose last name she did not know, let alone her address. Her first thought had been to ask Dorothy Hedge, pretending innocence about Hedge’s true allegiances, but Hedge would no doubt have warned Marjorie. Even if Hedge did not warn Marjorie, she would herself begin to worry about Kate’s intentions, clearly a result to be avoided.
And so Kate had got hold of a list of dog breeders in the area from the AKA—this alone had taken time—and had then called those in upstate New York, asking for the name of a woman who bred Saint Bernards. Eventually she had narrowed down her inquiries to two possibilities, one of whom turned out to be abandoning the breed and thus hadn’t had a litter in several years. The other was Marjorie’s Kennels, toward which Kate was now heading, having, however, given Marjorie no warning of her imminent arrival. True, some eager AKA type might tell Marjorie someone had been inquiring about a Saint Bernard breeder, but surely there were legitimate enough inquiries of this sort. Kate, of course, planned simply, upon emerging from her car, to say that she had been overcome with a need to see Banny. After that, well, Kate had left without telling Reed where she was going because he would have asked what she intended to accomplish and in fact she hadn’t a clue.
It did occur to her for one moment that she might be in danger, but Kate comforted herself with the fact that if someone, whoever that someone was, had wanted to kill her instead of kidnapping Reed, they could easily have done so already. Having reassured herself as she drove along the Taconic Parkway with such spurious arguments as these, she was feeling quite composed when she swung the car into Marjorie’s driveway.
Kate had, of course, expected to be accosted by Marjorie and asked sharply who she was and what she wanted. But by the time she reached the end of a rather long driveway, Kate had spotted only some kennels and a young woman who was cleaning them out. The young woman, being hailed, told Kate that the owner of the kennels could be found in the house, pointing toward it in a rather vague way.
Kate parked the car in an area marked PARKING and began to walk toward the house. But before she had gone far she looked up to find herself facing a woman with a gun, a rather long gun bent in the middle, as Kate put it to herself; she knew next to nothing about guns, but had the impression that handguns were most dangerous, and that everyone who lived in the country kept a shotgun about the place for protection. Kate had, in fact, picked up this piece of information, if it was information, from country neighbors in her childhood who lived in the country all year-round, and who used to tell Kate that their houses were never robbed because everyone knew that the owners kept guns.
The woman with the gun stood there, waiting for Kate to come closer. It did not for a moment occur to Kate that the woman might shoot her. The idea never even crossed her mind, as she later assured Reed. When the two women were a few feet apart, Kate stared for a moment and said: “Muriel.”
“My name is Marjorie now, Kate Fansler.” And the woman straightened the gun, snapping its parts together, and then held it facing down. “Come for Banny? Judith”—the woman called out to the young woman still cleaning the kennels—“bring Banny, will you?”
They stood there, like figures who, having been posed, were waiting to be photographed, until Judith returned with what was clearly, to Kate’s amazement, a large, loping Saint Bernard, who rushed up to Kate, then over to Marjorie, then back to Kate. I couldn’t possibly lift her now, Kate thought. She crouched on the ground and put her arms around the dog, who licked her face. Then Kate stood up.
“So the dog was part of the plot too,” she said.
“Of course.”
Kate looked at the woman, who if not recognizable as Muriel—for Kate could hardly recognize someone met only once after almost thirty years—still clearly was Muriel, though Kate hardly knew the reason for her certainty. Keeping them both in view, Banny lay down between the women as they stood there.
“So you’ve hated me all these years,” Kate said, when it was clear no invitation to enter the house would be forthcoming. “I was twenty-two, Muriel—Marjorie—and behaved like a fool, I admit it. It wasn’t my business to think up plots for my brother. He should have been left to manage his own life. But I would like to point out that you didn’t have to reject him the moment he seemed not so rich. You could have waited and watched, you know.”
“No, I don’t know. You’ve always been rich. You never saw my mother working night and day, worn out, or my father proud of his honest poverty. Honest poverty! He drank after work, and her work never stopped. I wasn’t going to live that life.”
“What did it take to stay angry for nearly three decades?”
“You exaggerate your influence. I hardly thought of you until recently. But you lurked in the back of my mind. And the hatred I felt three decades ago returned to me full blast. When I hate, I discovered, I hate forever.”
It occurred to Kate to say that they would not now be facing each other in this preposterous way if when Marjorie had loved she had loved forever. But Kate was beginning to realize that the woman facing her was hardly in a reasonable frame of mind. The barely concealed rage was making itself evident. Besides, Muriel’s love for William had hardly been comparable to this moment’s hatred.
“Marjorie,” Kate said, taking a step forward. Banny raised her head. “Could we sit down and talk about this, perhaps have some tea? I know what I did then was wrong. I can even understand your passion for revenge, and the form it took—kidnapping Reed, I mean, and the rest of it. But how could you have murdered Toni, or attacked her so that she died of injuries to her brain?”
“I didn’t attack her,” Marjorie said. “You’re still a fool. Well, I’m not a fool. I’ve no desire to spend the rest of my life in prison for murder, either of Toni or of you.” And she slightly shifted the gun.
“Then who?” Kate began. But was there any point in asking? At least she was not to be shot, or not at any rate murdered. It came over Kate with dreadful conviction that Marjorie/Muriel was indeed mad, in the sense of insane. Would the promise of not murdering Kate allow Kate to turn her back, get into her car, and depart? Somehow, Kate doubted it but was nonetheless near to deciding to try it.
“Toni was a fool,” Marjorie said. “She didn’t stick to the rules, or to her promises, or to the job she had undertaken.”
“She worked for you?” Kate asked. Understanding was dawning upon Kate, slowly but surely. She had already figured out—this was largely why she had come to see Marjorie—that Toni had been a double agent. But Kate had assumed that Mama and perhaps Dorothy Hedge had hired her. Had Harriet known or suspected? Kate dismissed that fleeting question. “She worked for you?” Kate asked again.
“For me and the others. We were working to restore sanity to our country and to your university. Only when I realized that you worked at the university did the chance to avenge myself on you dawn upon me. I’m not very quick, whi
ch as you so rightly pointed out was evidenced by my not hanging around after your dirty trick years ago and working to mollify your brother.”
“You are an admirer of Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson?” Kate asked, hoping to swing the conversation to a political shouting match which might attract someone’s attention—Judith’s, or perhaps that of someone else about the place, another visitor or prospective purchaser viewing the kennels.
“Of course I admire them, and all the others you liberal bleeding hearts despise. We’ve let so-called kindness eat away at this country’s guts. It’s disgusting what’s taught in college these days, and I hear that you’re one of the worst offenders with this feminist, multiracial shit. That was how your name came up. I must say when I heard it, it was like a revelation, like a religious conversion with light everywhere. I persuaded them to change their tactics a little. They didn’t care. You were as good a target as any—and you were too proud to take your husband’s name. Typical. If you had, I’d never have realized who you were. I only saw William one other time, and you weren’t married then. Hearing the name Kate Fansler, I nearly peed in my pants with delight.”
A thousand questions flooded Kate’s mind, and like the little Dutch boy, he of the finger in the dike, she struggled to keep back the deluge. Getting out of here seemed the wisdom of the moment. Kate took a step away from Marjorie, but Marjorie waved her back.
“Sit, Banny,” Marjorie said. The dog stood and then dropped its rear end to a sitting position. Banny looked at Marjorie for further orders, or some indication of what was happening. Marjorie raised her gun, did something Kate could hear to ready it, and pointed it at the sitting dog. Kate gasped, horror flooding in upon her.
Marjorie turned her eyes from the dog to Kate, but as the dog started to lie down again, Marjorie said: “Sit, Banny.” Banny sat up. “No,” Marjorie went on, “I wouldn’t murder you and rot in jail. My other little plot didn’t exactly work out, did it? Dorothy tells me you’re fond of this creature. Good. Then watch me blow her to bits with this shotgun. And don’t move. I don’t really mind if I have to shoot you in the leg, although shotguns are notoriously inexact. You need rifles for that.”