“It’s probably for me, Chrissy. Kathleen was going to phone,” she called to her daughter, picking up the receiver. After talking to Rebecca, they had parted; Susan to buy groceries, and Kathleen to see if she could find and talk to Kelly, as Rebecca had insisted she do immediately. But Susan suspected that Kathleen’s conscience was bothering her; she had led Rebecca to think that she was looking for Evan professionally. Susan hoped that not charging Rebecca for these false services would make Kathleen feel more comfortable.
When she picked up the receiver, Susan was anxious for information about Kelly. But the caller was Seth St. John.
“Chrissy!”
“I’m right here, Mom. You didn’t have to yell.” Her daughter appeared behind her, three bags precariously balanced in her arms.
“Chrissy! You’re going to drop—” But the girl had everything placed on the counter and was reaching out for the receiver before she finished.
“It’s okay, Mom. Hi, Seth. Hang on while I take this upstairs, okay?” She handed the receiver back to her mother. “Hang this up when—”
“I know, Chrissy.” Susan took the phone with one hand and, returning to domestic concerns, started to pull groceries out of the bag with the other. How was she going to have everything ready for the party? She looked around her kitchen. She had stored so many staples along one long counter that it looked like a shelf at the grocery store. The liquor store had delivered her order; half a dozen cases of wine were stashed under the kitchen table and an equal amount of hard liquor sat on top. She sighed and glanced out the bay window at the bird feeder in the backyard. It was almost empty, and they were running out of seed. Jed had said something this morning about not having any clean shirts so she’d better stop at the cleaners on the way to the mall.
“Are you ready?” Chrissy asked from the doorway, pulling on a parka.
Susan looked at the phone still in her hand. “I didn’t hear you tell me to hang up.”
“Don’t worry about it. We didn’t talk. Seth decided he had to go when he heard that I was on my way out to buy his Christmas gift. We are on our way, aren’t we?” she prodded.
“Yes, we are. This minute, before anyone calls.” She would get back to Kathleen later.
“Great!” Chrissy smiled happily and picked up her purse from the counter. “I’ve decided what to get Seth,” she said.
“Wonderful. What?”
“A wall rack for his tapes. He has over seventy of them and, sometimes when he’s on the phone, I hear his mother yelling at him to put them away. What do you think? Not personal enough?”
“I think it’s a wonderful idea. If you want it to be more personal, maybe you could put in a tape of your song.”
“Our song! How 1950s. We don’t have a song, Mother. For heaven’s sake. What sort of dumb people do you think we are?”
Susan assumed it was a rhetorical question and changed the subject. “So what store do you want to hit first?”
Chrissy got into the car and considered the question. “Sam Goody. They’ll have what I need.”
She was right and, an hour later, they were on their way home again, the backseat of the car filled with bags from the record store. “What a good idea you had, Chrissy. Chad will love the carrying case I bought him, and your father is going to be thrilled with the Beatles CDs. What luck finding the wrapping paper with Jed and Chad printed on it. And I love the ribbon with glitter sprinkled over it.”
Chrissy seemed preoccupied. “Yeah. Mom …” she started, and then stopped.
“What, honey?”
“What do you think happened to Mr. Knowlson?”
“What do I— Oh, there’s the cleaners. I almost forgot about your father’s shirts. I promised him I’d pick them up.” She turned into the parking lot, nearly hitting a large gold Mercedes; the driver was backing out without bothering to check his rear. “What the … ?”
“Mother! It’s Mrs. St. John. Be careful!” Her daughter was apparently more worried about embarrassment than the consequences of eighty thousand dollars’ worth of foreign cars becoming a hundred dollars’ worth of scrap metal.
At the last minute, Barbara St. John checked in her rearview mirror and put on the brakes. She looked as embarrassed as Chrissy claimed to be feeling, and she pressed the button that rolled down the window near her seat and stuck her head out. “Sorry about that. I was just thinking about what I have left to do before Christmas.”
“Don’t worry about it. Everyone has a hard time concentrating these days. You know, I think what makes Christmas so difficult is that all the normal chores and errands don’t stop before the holidays: there’s still laundry, and cleaning, and car pools, and the routines that fill our time the rest of the year.”
“I know what you mean,” Barbara answered, looking over her shoulder at the car honking behind her. “Do I know the woman driving that car?”
“I think she wants us to move,” Susan said. “We’re blocking the entrance here,” she pointed out as the car honked again.
“Some people! No Christmas spirit!” Barbara St. John took the time to glare at the other driver before accelerating into the street.
Susan pulled into a nearby parking space, ignoring the sounds of the still-angry driver. “Is Seth a good driver?” she asked quietly.
“His mother didn’t teach him, if that’s what you’re wondering,” Chrissy answered, and then laughed. “Mr. St. John says his wife takes out all her hostilities on the road. Seth says that she didn’t learn to drive until a few years ago, and she had to take so many Valium to pass the driver’s test that she almost passed out while they were taking her picture for the license. He showed it to me; she looks dead.” Chrissy paused. “Mom …” she began again.
“Let me pick up your father’s shirts and then we’ll talk,” Susan said, noticing the change of tone in her daughter’s voice.
But after going into the cleaners, greeting half a dozen friends, paying for and picking up a dozen starched shirts and one silk blouse that she had forgotten about, she returned to the car—and a daughter who had apparently changed her mind.
“Nothing. It wasn’t important,” was all Chrissy would say when Susan started the conversation.
Susan was afraid she had lost another fleeting chance at making contact with her adolescent daughter. “You were asking about Evan Knowlson,” she prompted.
Chrissy had developed an apparently intense interest in the dozens of evergreens lining the sidewalk of Hancock’s small shopping area.
“Chrissy? Is something wrong?”
“No.”
“Kathleen is going to investigate Evan Knowlson’s disappearance,” Susan announced, deciding to introduce the topic herself.
“Oh?”
“If your friends know anything about it, they could talk to her. She would keep it confidential, I know.” Susan kept her eyes on the road, but she heard her daughter take a deep breath and then let it out.
“I heard you and Dad talking,” Chrissy stated. “You think that Evan’s dead.”
“I saw him sitting in Kelly’s living room. He had been shot,” Susan said as calmly as possible. “But his b— He disappeared after that. I don’t know what to think,” she lied.
Chrissy took another deep breath as her mother stopped the car for a red light. “Mrs. Knowlson—the second wife—I don’t know what her name is …”
“Rebecca.”
“What does she say about her husband’s disappearance?”
“She doesn’t seem to believe that he’s dead, but she’s worried. That’s why she hired Kathleen.” The light changed, and Susan started the car. She was choosing her words carefully, trying to keep Chrissy talking. She was afraid that asking a direct question could bring their discussion to an end.
“I don’t know Thomas and Travis. They’re seniors, you know.”
“I heard that.”
“Seth knows them a little, though. Thomas and Travis are on the varsity wrestling team and Seth is on J. V.
But they all work out together.”
“Oh?” Susan had to bite her tongue to keep from asking what Seth thought about the twins.
“The twins think that Mr. Knowlson is dead, too.”
“They said something at practice?” Susan had to respond.
Chrissy didn’t answer, and they were almost home. Susan searched for a way to prolong the drive. It was obvious to her that this was worrying the girl. “I need to go to the library and look up something in the reference department. Would you mind if we stopped over there?”
“No. I need some books to read during vacation anyway.”
Susan turned a corner and they drove through a large, rolling park toward the town library. Susan pulled into the paved lot provided for patrons and turned off the car.
“Mom, Seth says that he overheard Thomas and Travis in the locker room after school and they were talking about ‘Mr. Knowlson’s body.’ ”
“Did he hear any more of the conversation than that?” Susan gave up subtlety as her daughter appeared ready to confide in her.
“I asked him and he says no, he just heard the phrase ‘Evan’s body’—‘moving Evan’s body,’ in fact. He says that they were whispering, and when he walked around to the other side of his bank of lockers they shut up.”
“Oh.”
“Do you think I ought to call Kathleen and tell her?”
“It might be a good idea. I could do it, if you want me to.”
“Oh, would you?” Chrissy seemed relieved. “But you won’t tell anyone else about this? And Kathleen won’t, either, will she?”
“Not unless she has to …” Susan began.
“Mom, you can’t tell anyone. Not even Kathleen—unless you know that it isn’t going to get around. Seth would kill me.”
“I don’t understand.” Susan looked at he daughter straight in the eye.
“Because I promised Seth I wouldn’t say anything about it,” Chrissy said. “You see, he told me about it while I was at my locker at the end of the school day yesterday, and I didn’t think anything more about it, but last night he mentioned it to his mother … and she got really mad.”
“Mad?”
“Yes, Seth said that she yelled at him to mind his own business and not to repeat anything that has to do with Mr. Knowlson to anybody. And Seth didn’t want to talk about it when he called this afternoon.”
“So you want to be sure this doesn’t get back to Barbara,” Susan said.
“Yes.”
“I think we can be sure that Kathleen will be discreet. You were right to tell me, though,” she added, placing her hand on her daughter’s arm. “This is a very serious thing, you know.”
But her daughter was peering out the window at the group of high school students standing on the steps of the old red sandstone building.
TWENTY-ONE
Susan called Kathleen immediately after returning home. Once again, she found herself juggling the phone while cooking.
“It might just be Barbara. She’s like that, you know.”
“Like what?”
Susan put her hand over the receiver. “Have some more. Everyone else has already eaten.”
“What?”
“Oh, sorry, Kathleen.” She returned her attention to the caller. “I’m feeding Chad a late dinner. He had to stay after school to rehearse for the holiday concert tomorrow night. Hold on a second.” Susan put the receiver to her shoulder. “Would you like to eat in the study? You can watch TV.”
“Yeah!” Chad popped up from the table enthusiastically.
“Do you need help getting the food there?”
“No, I’m fine!”
Susan turned her back on her son and returned to her conversation. She didn’t want to be looking if the large bowl of beef stew hit the floor.
“I can talk now.” She heard the kitchen door swing shut behind her son. “What were you saying?”
“Nothing. You were talking about Barbara St. John.”
“And why she is so anxious for Seth to be quiet about what the twins were saying about Evan’s body. Well, I know it sounds significant, but it might just be Barbara. What people think of her is very important.”
“More so than the rest of us?” Kathleen asked.
“In a more superficial way … I hope. She’s very worried about class. You know, whether she does the correct upper-middle-class thing.”
“You’re not being bitchy enough.”
“What?”
“Susan, you’re being so nice and polite, and that doesn’t help me. Just tell me what you think.”
“I think that she thinks she married beneath her. I know she’s always worried about her husband doing the right thing. Jeffrey comes from Wisconsin or Minnesota, and she’s always talking about how she had to teach him to dress and what to eat. She even talked about selecting ‘power clothes’ for him to wear.”
“You’re kidding?”
“No. She says that she checks him out before he leaves the house each morning—otherwise he doesn’t look right.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty emasculating. Actually more than a little—because she also complains about him to her friends—even to me, and it’s not as though we’re all that close. I feel sorry for him … sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“Sometimes I think that it’s his own fault that she’s running his life. She not only picks out his clothing, she tells him how to be a father, how much exercise to get, when to go on a diet. She treats him more like he’s her son than her husband. I’ve even heard her complain about what she thinks he’s doing wrong with his business.”
“So maybe he wants a mother instead of a wife.”
“Exactly. She’s the same about Seth. Always making sure he does just the right thing.”
“So you think that maybe she doesn’t want Seth to say anything about Evan just because it’s tacky to gossip or something?”
“It’s possible. And, remember, she’s one of Rebecca’s best friends.”
“That’s interesting,” Kathleen commented.
“It is, now that I think about it. After all, it’s not like having an ex-secretary for a friend is exactly status.”
“Maybe Evan is status enough.”
“Maybe, but, you know, even though most people tried not to take sides after the divorce, many of us ended up closer to Rebecca or Kelly.”
“I suppose that’s inevitable,” Kathleen commented. “And Barbara came out of it more Rebecca’s friend than Kelly’s.”
“Definitely. Say, did you talk to Kelly?”
“Yes. She’s coming over to your house after dinner this evening. In fact, she should be there any minute now.”
“What?”
“I left a message on your answering machine. Didn’t you get it?”
“No. Probably one of the kids played it back and then didn’t bother to tell me.”
“Well, when I told Kelly that I wanted to talk to her, she agreed immediately, but asked that we meet someplace besides her house. She says she thinks it’s good for her to get out these days. I knew you would be busy cooking, but I did want you to hear this. We can just sit and talk while you work. You don’t mind, do you? I’ll be over soon.”
“Fine. I was going to make dips for the party tonight. You’re going to get to spend more time in my kitchen.”
“Just don’t let me eat anything. I can’t believe how much weight I’ve gained in the last two weeks.”
“Don’t mention weight. Claire has been driving me crazy— Oh, there’s the doorbell. It’s probably Kelly. Hurry over. I don’t know what we’ll talk about until you get here.” She hung up without waiting for a reply as Kelly entered the kitchen.
“Hi! You’re looking so much better. That was Kathleen on the phone. She’s on her way over.” Susan hoped she was telling the truth about that last thing. Kelly, in fact, didn’t look better. She looked terrible. Except for the dark circles under her eyes, her skin was pallid, a
nd even her lips were almost white. She wore jeans, a wrinkled linen shirt, and a pullover that must have belonged to Evan in his college days. It was the first time Susan had ever seen Kelly without discreet eye makeup and freshly washed hair. “Have a seat. Would you like some tea?”
“No.” Kelly sat down on a stool pulled up to the counter. “Or maybe I will have a cup. If it wouldn’t be any trouble.”
“Of course not.” Susan reached for the kettle and put it on the stove. “I have to get ready for the party, so we’re going to—to visit in here, if you don’t mind.” She prattled on while she made a pot of tea and got out mugs, sugar, and cream. Kelly didn’t say anything. She just sat on the stool and stared at the bunch of mistletoe that was sitting on the end of the counter.
“I bought that this afternoon—at one of those stands in the middle of the mall. I was going to hang it for the party, but I can’t decide on a place. Any ideas?”
When Kelly didn’t answer, Susan added, “You always have such good ideas about decorating.”
“Evan had all the ideas. I just carried out his wishes.”
“Kelly, that can’t be true …” Susan began, and was rewarded with the first spark of animation her guest had shown.
“But it is. Evan was the creative part of our partnership—even he used to say so. He decided how everything was supposed to look, and told me what to do, and then I did it. Do you know that, in all the years we were married, Evan made every decision. And you can’t imagine what a wonderful relief it all was.”
“A relief?” To Susan, it sounded like slavery.
“Yes. I didn’t have to worry and plan. Evan did it all. I can’t tell you how difficult it’s been since he died. I really don’t know what to do next.”
“Maybe you’ll enjoy making your own decisions,” Susan suggested gently, spooning tea into the china pot.
We Wish You a Merry Murder Page 15