by B R Snow
“I suppose I could ask the dressmaker to use Velcro,” my mother said. “You know, so it’s adjustable.”
“Funny, Mom. Are you here for a reason, or did you just stop by to harass me?”
“Harsh, darling,” she said, laughing. “Actually, I just wanted to give you an update on the photographer and videographer.”
“So, 60 Minutes turned you down?”
“You’re on fire today, darling,” she said, raising an eyebrow at me. “Since Max is back in town, I would have thought you’d have taken the edge off by now.”
“My edges are none of your business, Mom,” I said. “Would you like to stay for dinner?”
“That sounds wonderful,” she said. “Who’s cooking?”
“Chef Claire.”
“You’re making her cook on her night off? No wonder she feels like she needs a break.”
“She insisted,” I said. “She’s testing out a new recipe that she says is positively exotic.”
“Then I’m definitely staying for dinner,” she said. “You’ll be pleased to know I’ve finally found the perfect wedding dress for you. And matching bridesmaids’ dresses as well.”
“Thank you,” I said, glancing up at the ceiling.
“You’re welcome.”
“I wasn’t talking to you, Mom.”
“And I have an idea for entertainment,” she said. “But I need to run it by you first.”
“As long as it’s not a circus, I’m sure it’ll be fine. What are you thinking of?”
“I thought we should have some nice piano music at some point in the evening,” she said, choosing her words carefully.
“Sure,” I said, popping another bite-sized. “That sounds great.”
“But later on, people will probably want to dance,” she said, casually.
“It’s been known to happen at weddings,” I said. “I’m sure there’s a ton of wedding bands working around here.”
“Wedding band,” she said, scoffing. “Right. Like that’s going to happen.”
“Get to the point, Mom,” I said.
“I was thinking about hiring a popular band that everyone has heard of,” she said.
“Which one?” I said, cocking my head at her.
“L.E.N.,” she said, tossing it out for me to process.
“Summerman’s band?”
“Well, actually, I think it’s more his nephew’s band than Summerman’s these days. But, yes, that’s the one I’m thinking of.”
“A couple of issues do come to mind, Mom.”
“I’m sure they do, darling.”
“First of all, they’re one of the hottest bands on the planet, and I don’t think they get near a stage for less than half a million bucks these days.”
“It’s seven hundred thousand, actually.”
“Well, there you go. There is no way you are going to pay anybody seven hundred grand to play at my wedding,” I said, glaring at her. “End of discussion.”
“Of course not,” she said. “Do I look like an idiot? But Summerman has been kind enough to offer to do it for a considerable discount.”
“How much of a discount?”
“He’s offered to do it for free as a wedding gift,” she said.
“What?”
“It’s an incredibly generous offer,” she said.
“You got that right. I would have been happy with an autographed CD,” I said, baffled.
“Do you think Josie will be okay with it?”
“I have no idea,” I said, remembering how badly her brief but intense relationship with the musician had ended. “You didn’t agree yet, did you?”
“No, I told Summerman that I would have to discuss it with you and Josie.”
“Thanks, Mom,” I said. “So, he’s around?”
“He was,” my mother said. “But he said he had to head off somewhere for the next few weeks. But he wouldn’t tell me where. He’s so mysterious at times.”
“Yeah, mysterious. That’s the word for it,” I said.
Epilogue
I closed my book and set it on the nightstand, then snuggled close to Max who was making short work of the Patricia Highsmith mystery I’d recommended. I glanced at the clock, decided that six in the morning on a Saturday was way too early to get out of bed and closed my eyes.
“I saw the Hitchcock movie, but I can’t believe I never read the book,” Max said, draping an arm over my shoulders. “It’s great.”
“I know.”
“This guy Bruno is a total psychopath,” he said.
“Yup.”
“Reading about a train ride has got me thinking,” Max said. “We should take a train trip sometime. Maybe the one that goes up the Pacific coast.”
“That sounds like fun,” I said, yawning.
“You going back to sleep for a while?”
“I thought I might,” I said, draping a leg over his.
“Take a nap,” he said. “Then I’ll make you breakfast.”
“Pancakes?” I said, opening one eye.
“Whatever you want,” he said, gently squeezing my shoulder. “Yeah, a train trip sounds good. I wonder how much the tickets are.”
Completely at peace, I dozed off and dreamt of trains. And train movies. Then movies in general. Eventually, I found myself standing outside the entrance to a movie I desperately wanted to see, but I couldn’t find my ticket. And a man wearing a canary yellow tuxedo was blocking the door telling me that I couldn’t watch the movie without a ticket. No ticket, no movie he repeated over and over. I was just about to poke the guy with my cattle prod when I woke with a start and sat up in bed.
“Please, don’t do that,” Max said, clutching his chest with one hand as he reached for the book he’d dropped with the other.
“Sorry,” I said, patting his arm as I stared at the wall.
“What on earth is the matter?”
“He bought the tickets.”
“What?”
“He bought the tickets.”
“I’m marrying a crazy woman,” Max said, laughing. “Who bought what tickets?”
I climbed out of bed and did my best to explain my thinking as I got dressed.
“And you’re just going to drive there this morning?” he said, tossing his book on the bed.
“Yes.”
“You want me to tag along?”
“No, I think I need to do this by myself.”
“Maybe you should take the Chief with you,” he said, getting out of bed.
“No, he’s fishing today,” I said. “I can’t ruin his day off again.”
“Well, at least call him from the road,” Max said.
“That I can do. Where are you going?”
“To make coffee,” he said, pulling on his robe. “I’ll fix you a traveler.”
“Aren’t you sweet,” I said, giving him a quick hug and a kiss.
Fifteen minutes later, I was in my SUV and doing my best to fend off the early morning glare. I called the Chief and set my phone in its dashboard holder.
“Good morning,” the Chief said.
“Are you already on the River?”
“I am,” he said. “And I just finished doing battle with what must have been a ten pound Northern.”
“But you lost him?”
“Sadly, yes,” he said. “What’s up?”
I spent a few minutes telling him where I was going. He waited until I finished, then turned fatherly.
“Why are you doing this, Suzy?”
“You know the answer to that question.”
“Yeah, closure. I get it,” he said. “But I don’t think it’s a good idea. What happens if he gets scared and decides to do something stupid?”
“He won’t.”
“Because?” the Chief said.
“Because he’s no threat. And I’m going to convince him I understand what he’s been going through.”
“If you want to wait an hour, I’ll go with you.”
“No, you just enjoy you
r day,” I said.
“At least make sure he knows that people know where you are.”
“I will.”
“Call me when you’re done. And please be careful.”
“Will do. Later.”
I ended the call and focused on the road as I began formulating the set of questions I needed answered. I turned up the volume on the Keith Jarrett CD the Chief had given me, and his intricate piano work produced a touch of melancholy that seemed appropriate. An hour later, I saw the red truck in the driveway and pulled in behind it. I climbed the short set of steps that led to the front porch and knocked softly. Moments later, he opened the door and stared in disbelief.
“Suzy,” Bob Tompkins said. “What are you doing here?”
“I need to talk to you,” I said.
“Sure,” he said with a shrug and waved me inside the house. “Have a seat. You want something to drink?”
“No, thanks, I’m good,” I said, sitting down in an overstuffed chair.
He sat down across from me and draped a leg over his knee.
“How’s Bella doing?” I said.
“I’m afraid I’m going to have to put her in an assisted living facility soon. A couple of nights ago, she had something on the stove, forgot about it, and almost burned her place down.”
“I’m sorry to hear that,” I said.
“She’ll be better off there. And I’ll visit her every day. But she’s slipping fast,” Bob said through a wave of emotion. “For now, she still remembers who I am.”
“That’s so sad,” I said, feeling completely useless as I always did when offering condolences to the grieving.
“Yes, it is,” Bob said, then switched to a less painful topic. “I’ve been following what’s happening with the two clowns. The cops have been pretty good about keeping me in the loop.”
“I heard they’re out of the hospital,” I said.
“They are,” he said, nodding. “It looks like they’re only going to be charged with manslaughter.”
“That sucks,” I said. “Miguel is being charged with murder.”
“How do they decide who gets charged with what?” he said, frowning. “It seems very arbitrary at times.”
“Leave it to the lawyers, right?” I said, shrugging.
“What happened to his sister?”
“She’s working in Vegas and trying to figure out how to pay his legal bills.”
“Have you heard anything else?” he said.
“Apparently, the old man was in serious debt.”
“And he couldn’t afford to have Sammy walking around saying bad things about the circus or making threats,” Bob said.
“That seems to be the reason he had the clowns throw her off the boat,” I said.
“I wish I’d gotten a chance to have a little chat with him,” Bob said. “Did the people working at the circus really just head off and leave everything behind?”
“They did. Fortunately, several of Pontilly’s creditors showed up and hauled most of it away. Except for the elephant. We took her.”
“You kept the elephant?” he said, frowning at me.
“Yeah,” I said with a grin. “She’s great.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” he said, chuckling. “Okay, I’m sure you didn’t come all this way for a social chat. What’s up?”
“I’d like to ask you about the night Samantha’s dad killed himself,” I said.
“What about it?” Bob said, confused.
“This is going to sound incredibly insensitive on my part,” I said, staring at him.
“Forewarned is forearmed?” he said, now even more confused.
“Yeah, let’s hope so.”
“Go ahead,” he said, leaning forward.
“Nobody was too broken up when they heard he killed himself, right? Including you.”
He visibly flinched, then sat back in his chair and stared at me.
“Why on earth would you ask me that question?”
“Insensitive, huh?” I said. “I warned you.”
“Next time I’ll believe you,” he said, shaking his head.
“But nobody really grieved over his death, did they?”
“No, they didn’t,” he said after a long pause. “He was a deplorable human being who treated Bella and Samantha horribly. And he was universally disliked by pretty much everyone he came in contact with.”
“Was he abusive to Bella and Samantha?”
“He was. Especially when he’d been drinking,” Bob said, staring off as the memories returned. “And he drank constantly.”
“It must have been a terrible situation for them,” I said.
“The worst,” he said. “If Bella had been a bit more stable, they could have gotten out. I even offered to help them, but Bella was convinced she wasn’t strong enough to handle it on her own.”
“So, she decided to stay and just take it?”
“She did,” Bob said, exhaling audibly. “Even after she saw what was happening to Sammy, she still refused to leave.”
“What was happening to her?”
“She was turning into her mother,” he said. “And the more abusive he got, the more identical they became. It was like they’d made some sort of unspoken pact to show him exactly what he’d done to them. And when Sammy started doing that thing with her head, I freaked out. She scared the hell out of me.”
“You were having an affair with Bella, weren’t you?”
He flinched again and stared off into the distance for a long time. I waited it out, and he eventually made eye contact and slowly nodded his head.
“Yes,” he whispered. “But it was a lot more than that.”
“I can see that,” I said. “You’ve spent the last thirty years taking care of her.”
“I’d do anything for Bella.”
“I’m sure you would,” I said, nodding.
I stared at him then tossed it out with a whisper.
“Even kill her husband, right?”
He gave me a wild-eyed stare as he gripped the armrests with both hands.
“What?”
“Samantha and her mother were at the movies the night he died,” I said.
“What about it?”
“It was your idea for them to go to the movies that night, wasn’t it? You even bought the tickets for them.”
“How could you possibly know that?” he said, stunned.
“To tell you the truth, Bob, I have no idea where that one came from,” I said with a shrug. “But I’m right, aren’t I?”
“Yes,” he whispered.
“And after they left the house, you went over to see him.”
“I did,” he said, staring at me. “My plan was to confront him. I figured if Bella wouldn’t leave, maybe I could convince him to go. With him gone, I thought she and Sammy would have a chance.”
“Was he drunk when you got there?” I said.
“He was already passed out in his chair,” he said, the words coming easier now. “I stood over him and watched that sorry excuse for a husband and father snore and drool for several minutes. Then the idea just came to me.”
“You carried him out to his car, splashed some scotch around, then left him in the garage with the engine running and the door closed,” I said. “Then you went home.”
“Then I went home,” he whispered.
Then he broke down and began sobbing. Maybe after thirty years of silence and keeping his secret buried in the catacombs, he would feel better getting it off his chest and sharing it with someone. But he certainly wasn’t feeling better at the moment. I waited patiently for him to finish as a wave of sympathy for him washed over me.
And Samantha.
But most of all, I felt sorry for Bella.
He took a couple of deep breaths then wiped his eyes with his sleeve.
“Wow,” he said. “I can’t believe you got that out of me.”
“It wasn’t my intention to hurt you, Bob,” I whispered. “I’m very sorry.”
“I hope you’ll explain your intentions at some point.”
“I’ll give it a shot,” I said with a small shrug. “You thought if you got him out of the way, the three of you might be able to build a life together.”
“Yeah, that was my craziness making itself known,” he said.
“But you never got a chance to see if it would work,” I said. “Right after her dad died, Samantha ran off, and her mom’s problems started getting worse.”
“Pretty much. At first, Bella seemed a bit better, but it didn’t last long.”
“Did Samantha know about you and her mom?”
“I think she had her suspicions, but we never talked about it,” he said. “I was going to tell her as soon as she made her way home.”
“Bella doesn’t know what really happened that night, does she?”
“No,” he whispered down to the floor. “How did you know that?”
“It was the way she was talking to her dead husband the day the Chief and I were at her house,” I said. “She kept calling him a coward. Actually, it was more of a chant.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard that particular rant hundreds of times,” he said, then fixed a hard stare on me. “Bella can never know.”
“Okay,” I said, nodding. “Do you ever wonder if things might have turned out differently if you’d told her what you did?”
“Only about a dozen times a day,” he said with a sad smile.
“Sure, I get that,” I said. “So, you stuck around here all this time just to take care of her?”
“I did. I asked her a couple of times to marry me or at least agree to live together, but she wouldn’t have it,” he said. “I think she thought that was her best way to take care of me. You know, not letting herself get that close to anybody ever again given what was happening to her. If that makes any sense.”
“As much sense as anything else,” I said with a shrug. “You stuck around all these years out of love and guilt?”
“I guess when you boil it all down, that pretty much sums it up,” he said. “Quite a life I’ve carved out for myself, huh?”
“I think what you did is noble, Bob,” I said, then frowned. “I mean, taking care of Bella, not the murder thing.”
“What are you going to do now?” he said, again leaning forward in his chair.