Death of a Second Wife

by Maria Hudgins

  “If anyone did come up from the elevator or from the other direction, the snow would’ve wiped out any trace, like footprints or whatever.”

  “Right. Chet came back here sometime late that night and there’s no evidence of that.”

  “Maybe they’ll find something when the snow melts.”

  “After all their tramping around on top of the snow—helicopters and all—I doubt it.”

  Lettie thumbed the lid of her jar of age-reversing goo. “You know what’s bothering me? The way we’re all acting normal. Laughing, dropping bread in the cheese, kissing the man next to you. It’s not right! Two people are dead.”

  “Time out,” I said, making a T with my hands. “I didn’t kiss Chet. He kissed me. I could have slapped him.”

  “That’s not what I meant. I know you didn’t start it. What I meant was, it doesn’t seem right that we’re all going along our merry way, all cheerful, and acting like we don’t even care that Stephanie and Gisele are dead.”

  I plumped down on the side of my bed, opposite Lettie, our knees nearly touching. “Because we aren’t phonies, Lettie. That’s why we’re acting normal.” My mind flew back to a night ten years ago and a lily-draped casket. “I remember being embarrassed at my father’s viewing when I realized I was laughing too loud. I’d been crying for two days, dealing with morticians and organists—and my mother. I was cried out. At the funeral home that night, I saw friends I hadn’t seen for twenty years, and we started talking about stupid stuff we did when we were in school. It was still funny, so I laughed. What if I’d refused to laugh? What would that make me?”

  Lettie put the back of one hand beside her mouth. “A phony.”

  “Don’t you feel sorry for those poor folks they put on TV a couple of days after a tragedy and stick a bunch of microphones in their faces? If they don’t cry, everyone says, ‘They aren’t sad so they must be guilty.’ So they get this kind of forced quiver in their voice. But it’s phony.”

  “And people who really aren’t sad do that, too.” Lettie placed her jar of goo on the nightstand. “Did you notice how nervous Chet was tonight?”

  I pictured the dinner table, the fondue, the tension between Patrick and Brian. I didn’t recall noticing anything about Chet other than the amount he was drinking. Was he drinking to calm his nerves?

  “He got up three times and sneaked a peek around that partition between us and the rest of the room. Twice, he went to the bathroom, but he took the long route, through the restaurant instead of just down the hall. And he kept turning and peeking through the slats of the partition.”

  I thought about it. “Maybe he was looking for an alibi.”

  “An alibi?”

  “Chet was in LaMotte at the time of the murders. Drinking, I’m sure, so he was probably at a bar. Until he finds someone who remembers him, he has no alibi.”

  I took my toothbrush and face cleanser across the hall to the bathroom, leaving Lettie alone to think about my last statement. When I came back, her thoughts had moved on to another aspect of the murders. “Who was the real target, Dotsy? Stephanie or Gisele?”

  “Assuming one was the original target, and the other was killed because she saw what happened?”

  “Is there any other possibility?”

  I ticked off a few on my fingers. “Suppose Stephanie killed Gisele, someone saw, and killed Stephanie in revenge. Maybe someone saw her, tried to wrestle the gun away from her, and it went off. Maybe vice versa—Gisele killed Stephanie. No, that won’t work. Gisele’s hands had no gunpowder residue. Maybe a third person killed both of them and left the gun beside Stephanie’s hand to implicate her.” Unconsciously I had stood up and begun pacing the floor.

  “Then what happened to the shell casing from the bullet that killed Stephanie?”

  “The killer took it because . . .”

  Lettie looked at me and grinned. “Yeah. Won’t work, will it?”

  For the next half hour, Lettie and I reenacted various scenarios, using my Revlon “Natural” as the shell casing for the bullet that killed Gisele and Lettie’s Clinique “Raspberry Rush” for the one that killed Stephanie. We dragged a couple of chairs around to make a gap representing the open bunker door. We made too much noise, because Babs Toomey, looking like a duck in a yellow T-shirt and with orange toe-spacers on both feet, burst in brandishing a rolled-up Bride magazine.

  But our work was not in vain. We reached the conclusion that, barring a couple of improbabilities, the police were right. A third person killed both Gisele and Stephanie, and unless someone discovered evidence currently unknown to us, these murders would never be solved.

  Thirteen

  The next morning, Chet got the third degree from Kronenberg. His summons to the police van came as we all milled about in the kitchen fending for ourselves—toasting, brewing, and getting in each other’s way. He didn’t return to the house for nearly three hours. When he did, he merely paused on the stairwell landing and looked into the living room where several of us sat, reading or doing things on laptops, but said nothing.

  Patrick said, “You’re back. Good.”

  Chet didn’t react or respond. He turned and continued up the stairs.

  The day was warming up to the point that I opted to wear the jacket I’d bought in town other day rather than the heavy parka Juergen had lent me. I left by the kitchen door, climbed around the north side of the house and across the slushy meadow to the police van.

  I rapped on the door and heard, “Geben Sie.”

  Kronenberg snapped his feet off the desk and sat up straight. He seemed shocked that one of us would come here unbidden.

  “I simply can’t stay quiet any longer,” I said. “While you’re harassing all of us, the murderer is getting away scot-free! You need to be looking for someone who came from outside! Gisele was a local girl. How many people in LaMotte knew her? Was she seeing anyone? Stephanie grew up in Switzerland. How many possibilities does that suggest?”

  The pencil in Kronenberg’s hand bent with the pressure of his thumb and pinkie. “I am not ignoring those possibilities, Mrs. Lamb, and may I point out that you know nothing about what I am doing. But I assure you I am considering many possibilities that I have not discussed with you!”

  “Not in the last three hours, you haven’t.”

  “Oh! You’re angry with me for accusing your husband—ex-husband—is that it?” He stood up, looming over me. “For investigating his possible role in the death of his new wife?”

  The implication was clear, but it wasn’t as if I hadn’t expected it. I shot a glance toward the junior officer, working quietly in one corner of the crowded space. He looked as if he wanted to melt and flow through a crack in the wheel well.

  “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m simply pointing out that we have seven Americans in that house, two of whom never even met one of the victims. But we’re surrounded by hundreds of people who live here, who knew Gisele or Stephanie or both of them, and who aren’t even being considered.”

  “I promise you, I am considering everything.” Kronenberg’s pitch lowered, but his mouth remained tight. “Bear in mind, Mrs. Lamb, that LaMotte hasn’t had a homicide in more than twenty years. How many towns in America can make such a claim?”

  “You’ve been watching too many American movies,” I said. The voice in my head warned me I’d said just about enough. I opened the van’s metal door and stepped backwards onto the muddy wooden steps they’d placed at the threshold. As a parting shot I added, “We’re not all gangsters.”

  * * * * *

  On my return, I approached the house from the west, where a flight of stairs led up to a deck outside the living room’s sliding glass doors. I didn’t see Chet until my line of sight cleared the plank flooring. He stood facing the valley, both arms stiff, the balls of his hands pressed against the wooden railing. I wondered if he’d seen me coming and deliberately put himself in my path. Leaning into the railing, his gaunt shoulders jutted upward like two wings b
etween which his head nestled. I felt as if I might start crying in spite of myself. This, after all, was the man with whom I’d watched all 180 episodes of Seinfeld. The man who automatically sat on the left end of the sofa so I could plop my feet on his lap for my nightly foot rub.

  “Dotsy,” he said as I headed for the glass doors. “Come here a minute.”

  When I stepped up beside him I saw the glass of scotch in his left hand. “Bit early for that,” I said, eyeing my watch.

  “It’s five o’clock somewhere.” He squinted out toward the distant mountains. Noon already, the sun hovered over the southern peaks and shone straight into our eyes. I waited a full minute for Chet to say something. After all, he had called me over, hadn’t he? At last he said, “Why did you go up there? To the police van?”

  “I told Detective Kronenberg he might be well advised to look beyond this house for his killer.” I expected at least a grin for that statement, but I got nothing.

  “He thinks I did it.”

  I counted to three. “Where were you that night?”

  “In town. At the Black Sheep Bar.” He looked at his glass. “Drinking. I came back here about three o’clock and went to sleep on the sofa. I heard nothing. I saw nothing. I did not go up to my bedroom because I assumed Stephanie was there, and I didn’t feel like dealing with her mouth.”

  “Did you talk to anyone at the bar?”

  “Yes, but I’m damned if I can remember anything about him except that he was wearing a red ski jacket and he was from Ukraine—that’s Russia, isn’t it?”

  “It used to be part of the Soviet Union.”

  “He spoke English. I do remember that.”

  “Didn’t he tell you his name? Where he was staying? Anything?”

  Chet shook his head and took another mouthful of scotch. He swallowed and then crunched the ice in his mouth. His ice-crunching had always irritated me. It still did. “He might have, but I can’t remember.”

  “How did you get back up here?”

  “I took the elevator.”

  “Who let you into the tunnel?”

  “I had the key.”

  “How many keys are there? Juergen told me you had to call up here and someone had to buzz you in.”

  “Two keys. Only two. Juergen keeps one on his key ring and the other one is kept on a hook in the kitchen. He’s careful that no one makes copies.”

  “But didn’t he say a couple of other houses up here also use the elevator?”

  “They have the same rules, he told me. They’ve all agreed that each house will have only two keys—one for the owner and one for the house.”

  I thought about this. How nice it was that neighbors trusted each other so much. But still, trust can be broken. Someone could have made copies of the key to the tunnel.

  “I need help, Dotsy.”

  His words cut into my chest like rusty saw. I couldn’t look at him because I was afraid I’d see tears and I couldn’t handle that. “What can I do, Chet?” Please don’t tell me you need a hug!

  “I don’t know, sweetheart. But you’re a smart woman. Think.”

  Now, that I can do! I patted him on the arm and slipped through one of the sliding glass doors, walking determinedly past the decanter of brandy on the sideboard. I craved a stiff drink more than I ever had in my whole life, but it was a bit early for that.

  * * * * *

  From my bedroom window, I watched Juergen plod across the slushy meadow toward the police van. He carried something shaped like a book in one hand. He stopped, scanning the expanse from the bunker to the southern lip of the meadow where it plunged down and out of sight, as if he could still see Gisele’s body lying near the spot where he now stood. He crouched, planting one knee on the ground, and touched a green tuft peaking through the snow. He picked something small—a flower—and tucked it into his inside jacket pocket.

  Of all of us, only Juergen had known both Gisele and Stephanie intimately. But how intimately had he known Gisele? I suspected they may have been lovers, but I had no evidence. I recalled the way they had flirtatiously teased each other and the anxiety in his voice that night at bedtime when he couldn’t find her.

  A phone rang.

  I let it ring a couple of times, then realized it was the house phone. I’d grown accustomed to a variety of ring tones from our several cell phones, but I hadn’t heard the house phone until now. I doubted I could reach the kitchen before it stopped ringing so I stepped out into the hall, waiting for someone else to answer it, but no one did. After many rings, I found a phone on a wall in the stairwell. “Guten tag,” I said, surprised at myself for answering in German.

  The caller, logically assuming I spoke the language, launched into a long description in German of something that sounded like a serious problem and ended with, “Sie nicht?”

  “Por favor. Ich sprechen nicht Deutsch. Bitte,” I spluttered.

  “English?”

  “Ja. Yes.” There are few exercises in humility more effective than playing language roulette with a European.

  It turned out to be a florist in LaMotte, frantic to know what Mrs. Toomey wanted him to do with the truckload of flowers. His efforts to dump them in the church had been thwarted by Father Etienne, who told him the next service scheduled was a funeral and that the Toomey/Lamb wedding was canceled. I listened in horror.

  “I’m awfully sorry about this,” I told him. I took his number and promised to call him back with an answer. To the house in general, I yelled, “Is anybody here?” Apparently not. From the balcony over the living room I looked out to the deck beyond the glass. Even Chet had disappeared. His empty glass sat abandoned on the corner post.

  * * * * *

  I slipped into galoshes and went looking for somebody—anybody. Rather than hang around the house waiting for the poor florist’s next call, I set off along the trail leading east. If I ran into Babs, Erin, or Patrick I’d tell them to get this wedding straight and do it now. Decide. Call Father Etienne. Call the florist and whomever else they’d left hanging in limbo.

  I thought about Erin’s visit to my room the other night and the desperation in her voice. Why so desperate? Erin and Patrick loved each other; what was the big deal about waiting a few months? I felt, strongly it had something to do with Babs, but what? The wedding dress could be packed up and sent home. Friends who had already arrived in town—I understood most of them were staying at a youth hostel—could wish them well and go home. Postponed weddings happened, and this one certainly should be. No one would fault them for postponing a wedding because of a double murder.

  Might Babs have a fatal illness? Only a short time to live? Why wouldn’t she say so? Might she be determined to keep it a secret and not put a damper on the nuptial celebration? I could imagine Babs saying to little Erin, at age seven, eight, nine, “On your wedding day . . . If I live long enough to see you married . . . When you walk down that aisle . . .” ad nauseum. Little Erin might have grown up knowing that marriage was her mother’s idea of a young girl’s destiny.

  I thought about Stephanie’s phone pad note with the Chicago phone number. What did that have to do with anything? Cook County Bureau of Records? Births, marriages and deaths? Somehow, I knew there was a connection. Patrick and Erin had both lived in Chicago, but had they lived there at the same time? I didn’t know.

  I had to find Patrick.

  When I reached the boulder where Patrick and I had sat that first day, I ran into Babs and Erin. Somehow, telling them about the reason for my errand in the absence of Patrick seemed the wrong thing to do. Erin sat on the boulder, her knees pulled up and her arms folded tightly against her waist. Babs stopped talking as soon as she saw me coming.

  “Patrick?” Babs responded to my question. “He and Brian went that way.” She pointed ahead, where the trail stretched over a hill and disappeared.

  I thanked them and took off, bracing myself for a steep climb. I found my sons in a pretty little glen overlooking another valley. Telling Patrick about
the florist, I gave him my most disapproving scowl and ordered him to come back to the house with me. I led both of them back by a more westerly route in order to avoid another meeting with Babs and Erin. Before we did anything else, I wanted to call that Records Bureau again.

  I returned to my room and located my copy of Stephanie’s note, slipped down the stairs to Patrick and Brian’s room, and handed Patrick the note. “They open at eight forty-five, Central time. Checking my watch I said, “We’ll have to wait a bit.”

  “What’s this about, Mom?”

  “I don’t know. But as it stands right now, there’s a priest in town who’s planning on a funeral tomorrow and a florist who’s planning on a wedding, same time, same place. The flowers are on the truck. You’ve put it off too long, Patrick, and I have a feeling the shove you need is at this number!”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. But it’s the Cook County Bureau of Records—Chicago. I already called it, but they were closed. For whatever reason, Stephanie either called or was trying to call this number on the day she was killed.”

  “So?” Patrick almost sneered. His face reddened. In his whole life, Patrick had never used that tone with me. I felt my own face flush.

  Brian, who had been lying there on his bed all along without my noticing, said, “Bureau of Records, Patrick. Why does anyone call the Bureau of Records in a place they don’t live in?”

  “You tell me.” Patrick shot back. “I’m serious! You tell me.”

  “Make the call, Patrick.”

  I ticked off time zones on my fingers. “You’ll have to wait an hour.”

  “That won’t be necessary,” said a little voice from the hall behind me.

  I turned and saw Erin.

  “Patrick and I need to be alone,” she whispered.

  Fourteen

  Brian and I took a walk together, leaving Patrick and Erin alone. We decided to mosey westward along the trail Patrick and I had taken yesterday—the trail that ended near the high altitude landing strip. Patrick’s attitude was still on my mind. Did he actually know what Stephanie’s call was all about? Why was he acting so defensively? Brian kept his arm around my shoulder as we walked, throwing me off-balance every time he slipped on a patch of ice or slippery rock. Chet, he told me, had gone to his room and closed his door.