Hints of Heloise

by Laura Lippman

  Meghan can, has begun to. She has called three times since their meeting at the Starbucks. The first was a simple call of notification, left on the answering machine: “Brian’s dead, Heloise. It’s a horrible accident and things are in a state. Is there any chance you could send Audrey over to stay with the kids tomorrow while I tend to arrangements?” It wasn’t really a question. Heloise sent Audrey over and ran the office that evening.

  The second time, again on the machine. “I can’t believe how long the police were here on Saturday. It’s almost as if I were a suspect, when it’s so clear what happened. In fact, the autopsy came up with some strange findings, and it’s possible Brian had a ministroke just before he fell. At least, I think that’s what the medical examiner was trying to tell me. It’s all so much to take in.”

  Third time, one A.M., voice slurry with drink. “He was vicious, Heloise.” Visshus, Hell-wheeze. “I’m not saying he beat me, but you don’t have to hit someone to terrorize them.” Tear-ize ’em.

  Heloise picked up.

  “Not on the phone, Meghan. If you need to talk, I’ll come by tomorrow. I’ll come by now. But please, do not call me here at home and talk about this.”

  She starts to sob. “He was bad. He was, he was.”

  “Tomorrow.”

  But when tomorrow came and Heloise called Meghan to ask if she wanted to have lunch—which would mean a bit of shuffling in her schedule, because although the state legislature had ended, it was now cherry blossom time in Washington, and that was always a busy time for her, for reasons she had stopped trying to fathom—Meghan seemed surprised. “There’s so much to do,” she murmured absently. And then—“You weren’t here, were you?”

  “Not on the phone, Meghan.”

  “You’re a good big sister. Thank you.”

  “I’m coming over, right now.”

  They sat on Meghan’s deck, drinking coffee, two sisters enjoying each other’s company on a fine spring day.

  “There was a pillow . . .”

  “That he tripped on?”

  “No, although I did throw Melissa’s Crocs down the stairs. She was always leaving them everywhere, so it’s utterly plausible that he tried to step over them, then fell.” Meghan caught Heloise’s look, the intent, the judgment, and added: “They really do think he had some kind of brain function episode. He might have died anyway.”

  Uh-huh. “So what’s the thing about the pillow?”

  “It was from our bed.”

  “Why was it in the basement?”

  “Exactly. Heloise, I think someone came in and . . . made sure to finish what I started. I thought it might be you.” A pause. “I hoped it was you.”

  “As I told you that day, I charge money to sleep with men. I don’t kill them. I barely do bondage, and then only with customers with whom I have an established history.”

  “Then someone—”

  “Are you sure? Maybe Brian took the pillow down with him, planned to take a little nap or something.”

  Heloise knew she was groping and Meghan’s withering look confirmed it.

  “If it wasn’t you—”

  A large woman came out on the deck of the house next door and gave Meghan a solemn wave. Heloise was impressed by how much compassion the woman seemed to put into that small gesture. She was less impressed by the approximation of sadness on Meghan’s face.

  “I’m so sorry, Meghan. Let me know if I can do anything.”

  “Thank you, Lillian, but you’ve already done so much. I might not have to cook for a month, given all the food you and the other moms have brought me.”

  The phone rang, and they never finished that conversation. But Heloise remains uneasy with the calculus of it all: If Meghan is right, then someone knows Meghan’s secret. And Meghan knows Heloise’s secret, so she is drawn into this against her will. Her silence is a crime, and while Heloise’s business was built on violating several sections of the Maryland, D.C., and even Virginia penal codes, she is scrupulous about obeying other laws, keeping her nose clean. Here at Brian’s funeral, she still feels that grip of anxiety and fear, something she thought she left behind her when she got Val locked up for life.

  IN ALL OF MEGHAN’S FANTASIES of Brian’s funeral—and, to be truthful, there were several over the years—she had never thought to imagine her own children. Here they are, shattered, and she wants to . . . shake them. I did this for you. Okay, perhaps not directly. But if her marriage was going to end, it had to be in a way that would shield her children from financial harm, and she has accomplished that much. She has not only Brian’s life insurance but a whopping policy from his former company, which is still in force because of his six-month severance package. She has not sorted out all the financial implications—she has decided it would be a little unseemly to be too focused on such details, just yet—but it’s her impression that she and the children can live extremely well, if she’s prudent. She wonders if Heloise is smart about investments. She can’t be planning to be a whore forever, right?

  Meghan will marry again. The thought surprises her, for she knows that her next marriage will, in fact, have all the frustrations and irritations of her first. She has no illusions about the institution’s limits, about what it takes to live with another person. But—big but—she will be the widow of a beloved man. Her next husband will live in the shadow of dead Brian’s perfection and her eternal frailty. Her next husband will be permanently on notice, and she won’t have to say a thing. No pick up your socks, why are you late again, please rinse out the basin after you gargle and spit. She will simply look at her next husband—two years sounds about right—widen her eyes, and he will fold. It’s like rock, scissors, paper, and widow trumps everything.

  And what about the pillow?

  The thought is like some horrible corpse that cannot be buried, no matter how she tries to shove it down into its hole. It comes back to life again and again, often at the most inopportune times; Meghan needs enormous self-control not to have a physical reaction when it does. Here, at least, it’s not suspect when she begins shaking all over. There has to be a logical reason for the pillow, right? Not Heloise’s stupid supposition, but something similar. Still—why was it damp in the middle? Try as she might, she cannot remember if she locked the door on her way out, if she closed the garage behind her, and everyone in the neighborhood knows each other’s garage door codes anyway, and the garage door, the one that leads into the mudroom, is never locked. She really can’t remember anything about that afternoon. Temporary insanity is not a bullshit excuse in her case but the only plausible explanation. She went to Mark’s band practice, fury mounting in her until it was a fever, until the need to express it overwhelmed her. When the kids broke for lunch and Mark headed out with his bandmates, while parents were left with what the e-mailed schedule had called “lunch on your own,” it made perfect sense to drive home and confront Brian. But had she planned to push him, as she did? No, she couldn’t know that she would find him at just that moment, in that split second when he was lifting his right leg toward the final step, his posture unsteady because of the box. She saw an opportunity that might never have come again, and she took it.

  Meghan has never confided this in anyone, but she has long been susceptible to something she thinks of as “anger dreams.” She slaps people, she screams at them, she flails and she wails, she beats her fists on their chests like a cartoon femme fatale, and they . . . laugh. No one feels her blows, no one registers the pitch of her screams. The fact is, it has taken enormous self-control never to raise a hand against her children. She wonders if killing Brian will, at least, exorcise this demon, if the anger has been appeased.

  Or if it has simply whetted its appetite.

  The pillow—the thought hits her again, and it’s like a nudge from a cattle prod this time, goosing her so hard that she lurches forward and one of her brothers has to steady her. She’s going to burn that fucking pillow when she gets home. But that would probably draw attention, earn her s
ome sort of environmental citation from the county. She’ll just order new sheets instead. Porthault? No, better not. Too expensive, too impractical, especially given that Michael has been crawling in with her at night and—once, just once—wetting the bed. But something nice, something new, something in a purely feminine color and pattern to signal this new chapter in her life.

  I LOVE YOU, THINKS A MAN in the back of the church. I love you, Meghan. I can’t wait to be with you. And he reaches for his wife’s hand.

  FOUR

  The clichés about time, like the clichés about almost everything, happen to be true. It passes, it heals, it even flies. Especially, Heloise thinks, when the problem is not one’s own. Well, not strictly hers. In a legal sense, she is accountable. Her silence is a crime, a crime that protects her own crimes. She knows enough to realize that police might offer her immunity from prosecution if it ever came to that, but police cannot offer her immunity from the destruction of Scott’s life should the details of her business become public. Still, days go by when she doesn’t think about the compromising position in which Meghan holds her. Summer is an interesting time in Heloise’s line of work: while she loses many of her political regulars, the growing custom of summer shares, in which Daddy stays in the hot city while the family is at the Delaware shore, produces a nice, steady stream of income from nice, steady men. Oh, a few seem to think they should try to be more decadent than they really are, but they are clearly relieved to find out that not that much imagination is required. She puts the girls on a Monday-through-Thursday schedule, which everyone likes, and handles the few weekend kinkmeisters, as she thinks of them, longtime customers with specialized needs.

  On this particular Saturday night, for example, she’s meeting a seventy-five-year-old man who really could be happy with the services of a good reflexologist, assuming he could find one who agreed to work naked. All he wants is for someone to squeeze his toes in a very particular pattern, almost as if they were bagpipes or a cow’s teats. Easy money, and his feet are beautifully kept, especially for a man his age—the toenails freshly cut and only faintly yellow—but tonight he takes longer than usual to complete, and when he pays Heloise, he shakes his head sadly.

  “What happened to Veronica?” he asks. “The dark-haired one?” (And, yes, Heloise has a blond named Betty in her employ as well, and they often tag-team a man who insists on being called Archie. Unless he’s calling himself Gilligan, and then they’re Ginger and Mary Ann.)

  “I try to give the girls weekends off in the summer.”

  “The thing is—you look great, Heloise. Truly. For your age. But for me, it takes a younger girl . . .”

  “I understand,” she says, patting his hand. He’s not the first one to say this to Heloise in the past two years or so. The fact is, another cliché applies: this hurts him more than it hurts her. He only thinks it’s youth he wants. It’s novelty he craves, and she’s been taking care of him for more than five years. Some men like that, actually, love the groove, the pattern, discover a way to be monogamous twice over, with their spouses and their whores. But, obviously, some are going to get bored, even a man such as Leo, who doesn’t even open his eyes while he’s being serviced and does most of the heavy lifting himself. At forty, Heloise plans to continue taking calls for at least five more years, tops, and she doesn’t think she’ll lose that many customers along the way. But when she stops, she will have to hire two girls to take her place, and the way she sees it, every employee elevates her exposure to risk. Plus, it’s a bitch, managing other people.

  Still, she feels a little pang, leaving Leo that evening. For whatever reason, age or novelty, Heloise has been rejected, and she is unused to rejection, given that she eschews recreational sex, with all its irrationality and head games and confusion.

  Her cell phone throbs in its dashboard-mounted holster. “Meghan.” Speaking of people who are a bitch to manage.

  “You’re on Bluetooth,” she warns.

  “Is there someone else in the car?”

  “No, but—”

  Meghan’s voice rushes ahead, heedless. “He’s been in touch.”

  “Who?” Heloise is confused, and her mind rolls to Brian. Is Meghan having some sort of paranormal episode?

  “Pillow man.”

  “Humph,” she says. Then: “I’m on the way back. Why don’t I swing by?”

  “Heloise . . .” Meghan’s voice is urgent, needy, whiny.

  “I’m twenty minutes away.” More like thirty-five, but Meghan will keep talking if she tells her that. “No phones, Meghan.”

  MEGHAN LOOKS AT THE PLAIN PIECE of paper, mailed in the area and postmarked two days ago. She almost didn’t open it—the fussy handwriting looked machine generated, junk mail attempting to masquerade—but she saw at the last moment, before pitching it into the recycling container, that it was, in fact, real handwriting, just enormously fussy.

  Inside, a plain piece of paper, unsigned of course: “Remember the golden rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. I did my part. Now it’s your turn.”

  She tells herself that it’s not related, that it’s some sort of freak chain letter. There are some crazy Christians around here, although most of them home-school. It’s a coincidence, like that urban legend about the girls who prank-call various numbers—“I saw what you did!”—only to reach someone who’s just tidying up after a murder.

  Murder: don’t go there.

  Do unto others—what, exactly, has her correspondent done for her? Finished a job? Saved a man from suffering? Murder? Again, she tries to wall off that thought, but it’s awfully hard to avoid. She pours another glass of wine. She drinks less since Brian died, more proof that he was bad for her. But wine goes to her head faster as a result, and she worries that she’ll be a little tipsy by the time Heloise arrives. A car in the driveway—it’s her! A part of her mind detaches as it always does when Meghan sees Heloise, wonders at the sheer perfection of her sister’s appearance. Hair, perfect; nails, perfect; clothes, perfect. Heloise takes care of herself because it’s part of her livelihood. But might it not become Meghan’s livelihood, too, now that she plans to start hunting for a new husband? Can she afford to keep herself as Heloise maintains herself? Meghan has tried to work out the math, but it’s too discouraging. Sleeping with the same man, even a mere twice a week, over a couple of decades simply cannot produce as much income as Heloise’s thriving business does. Unless she lands a billionaire, and those aren’t found in Turner’s Grove. Equity millionaires, men with a lot of house under them, but no real money.

  Heloise comes to the front door and knocks, then waits to be admitted. Very unlike Meghan’s female friends, who push open the door with a cheery “hello,” sure of their welcome. Since Brian’s death, Meghan has paid special attention to how people enter her home. Was the door unlocked that day? Did she leave the garage door up when she left, shaking with adrenaline? Heloise, of course, is the one person who could not have sneaked back to kill Brian. Or wait—why not? Meghan went back to band practice. Who knows what happened in those intervening hours?

  But the fact is, she cannot imagine Heloise doing that for her, which makes her kind of sad. A real big sister would have done it, and Heloise is the older by six months. But then—a real big sister would have owned up to it, too.

  “Look,” she says, thrusting the note at her sister. “It was in the mail today. I thought—”

  Heloise takes her wrist, gently but authoritatively. “Let’s go out, to that wine bar on the highway. Talk there. You can leave the kids, can’t you? Melinda can look after them, right?”

  “Yes, but—isn’t it safer to talk here?”

  “It’s safer not to talk anywhere. But if we have to talk, let’s do it in public, where we’ll have to make an effort to be circumspect. Drive with me and we’ll agree on some code words.”

  Meghan is torn. She doesn’t want to be careful. She wants to let the pent-up words and emotion spill out. There’s no risk from the kids.
Kids never register their parents’ secrets, not unless those secrets affect them directly. At the same time, she likes the idea of a drink, on a Saturday night, in a popular place. The food is good, the wine list varied. There might be men there. And a drink with her sister in public—the normalcy of it has an appealing novelty. Perhaps Heloise even has some tips for how to meet men.

  “Just give me five minutes to change.”

  THE WINE BAR IS, IN FACT, called the Wine Barn, and it’s in a converted barn. Infelicitous, he thinks. Is he using the word correctly? It was on his word-a-day calendar last week and he liked the sound of it, but he’s not sure the usage is precise. “Regrettable” may be better. “Cheesy.” But it gets away with the hideous name because the interior décor is simple and chic, by the area’s standards, and because it is an unrelievedly adult place in a suburb where everything else is kid-centric. The Wine Barn allows children in the dining room, but they have to play by its rules, eat from its menu. No chicken fingers or other kiddie menu concessions. He never gets to eat here because his wife thinks that’s a kind of bigotry.

  Saturday is date night for the older folks here, cruising night for those in their twenties, the teachers and firefighters and other essential types who live in the townhouses and apartments at the outer ring of the burg. He used to have quite an eye for those teachers. But now, all he sees is Meghan. I’m your knight, he wants to sing out. Your knight in shining armor. I saved your life. You owe me everything. But it will be so much sweeter for her to realize this on her own, then do what he needs her to do, just as he has done what she required. Unbidden. Selfless. That’s true love.

  The sister is handsome, too, but a little self-contained and self-sufficient for him. Once, he saw her on the side of the road with a flat tire, and he offered to change it for her. It seemed the least he could do, given that he was the one who had deflated it back in the parking lot, during their sons’ soccer game. “I’ve already called Triple A,” she said with a polite but dismissive wave of her hand. “I’ll wait until they show up.”