by Susan Breen
“I have to get back to the salon,” Iphigenia said. “I’ll see you later.”
Doc Steinberg beckoned Maggie toward her inner office. Maggie had no choice but to follow, though she had the strongest possible feeling no good would come of this. Either there was something so physically wrong with her that it had struck Doc Steinberg between the eyes and she would be admitted to the hospital immediately, or something was wrong with Peter.
Hannah Steinberg had dated Peter a decade or so ago, as had many of the women in town. Maggie had been hopeful about the relationship because it seemed to her that if anyone was strong enough to set Peter on the right course, it was Hannah. Unfortunately, they hadn’t gone out for a month before Hannah dumped him and announced she was gay. After that he preferred women with less ambition and a good deal less sense.
“Sit down, Maggie,” she said.
She was brusque, but that didn’t mean anything bad, Maggie knew. That was just Hannah’s manner.
A striking drawing hung on her wall, a beautiful gold-threaded piece, which reminded Maggie of what she’d forgotten, that Doc Steinberg had gone to India some months ago to do volunteer work. She was wearing dangling Indian earrings.
“I forgot you went to India. Did you like it?”
“It changed my life,” Hannah said, sitting down. “Peter’s told you about the toxicology report on Bender?”
“No.”
“I talked to him yesterday and he said he was going to talk to you.”
“He didn’t,” Maggie said. She had spoken to him yesterday after church, but thought him drunk. “I’m sorry; I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”
Doc Steinberg shook her head. “He is such a fuckup.”
Maggie flinched.
The words were so harsh. The office was harsh, the walls dank with all the bad news that had been spoken there. Doc Steinberg’s diplomas bounced back the light. The wall hanging was beautiful but frightening, Maggie thought. She noticed a Rubik’s Cube on the corner of the desk, pictured Hannah twisting it back and forth with her strong hands.
“I talked to him yesterday. Told him there was going to be trouble and he should hire a lawyer. Told him he should talk to you about it, Maggie. Figured he’d want some support. I don’t think he can do this by himself and I can only get so involved. As it is, the medical examiner’s going to give me hell for talking to him about the autopsy.”
“Hannah, I’m still not sure what you’re talking about.”
Doc Steinberg frowned, punched some keys on her keyboard. Maggie smelled the faint trace of her floral perfume, a frilly aroma that belied her presence, a smell that reminded Maggie of her grandmother and home.
“Bender’s tox report came back. It showed the presence of MDMA.”
“What does that mean?”
“Ecstasy, Maggie. Bender died of an overdose of Ecstasy.”
Maggie felt a chill sweep over her. Ecstasy, the drug Peter gave warnings about in his role as DARE officer, the drug he was in charge of confiscating, the drug he had gotten in trouble over when he was young. Almost derailed his whole career. A bunch of kids out in the woods, having a party, all of them arrested and brought into the police station, but his record was sealed because he was a juvenile. Juliet hadn’t been with him that night, had been in Baltimore at a Model UN meeting.
“So Bender took drugs?”
She felt like she was in a fog. He didn’t seem the type, but what was the type? Then Doc Steinberg’s voice cut across her mind.
“No,” Doc Steinberg said. “He wouldn’t have taken this much. Seven grams? Not if he were a recreational user. Not by mistake.”
“So what are you saying?”
“Someone poisoned him, Maggie, and Peter’s the prime suspect.”
“Hannah.”
Doc Steinberg shook her head, turned toward her computer screen and again began tapping the keyboard and Maggie thought what an exceedingly annoying sound that was, like teeth chattering. How she missed her old Olivetti and the dings and bangs and outright noise of a regular typewriter.
“You know Peter,” Maggie protested.
“He had access and he certainly had motive. Bender wanted him put him in jail, and by the time he was done talking to Walter Campbell, he’d probably succeed.”
“All right, but half the town had access and motive,” Maggie said. “What about Mr. Laws? He must have access to Ecstasy.”
Doc Steinberg looked at her and Maggie flinched. She wondered how low she could go.
“Why did he try to cover it up, Maggie? Why didn’t he cordon off the crime scene and call Walter Campbell right away? Why was he so sure it was a heart attack?”
“I never said he wasn’t an idiot.”
Maggie slumped back into her seat. She’d dressed up for her visit with Hannah Steinberg, because you always did. No one went to her in sweatpants and so she had on her slacks and leather shoes and a white silk blouse.
She thought of her dear friend, so impulsive. How Peter had once almost set the church on fire because he’d been so excited to light the communion candle that he hadn’t notice his sleeve was on fire. She thought of how he’d come running down to her house from the police station, all passion and heart. A dog with a badge. She’d known, hadn’t she, that he shouldn’t have swept her inside so quickly. She was as much at fault as he was, encouraging him to protect her.
“This is Walter Campbell’s doing, isn’t it?”
“I’m not going to lie,” Doc Steinberg said. “Walter’s the one driving this. He’s the one who ordered that test. If he hadn’t done it, no one would ever have known Bender was poisoned. A murderer would have got away free. Bender would have been buried and that would be the end of it. It’s a good thing Walter knew his stuff and ordered that gas chromatography test. And there’s no question Walter hates Peter. But even so, you can’t say that he’s wrong. Peter screwed up and he better do something about it.”
Doc Steinberg’s face looked solemn. That was the thing about her, Maggie thought, that just when you thought she was brusque and uncaring, she’d show you a side of her that revealed in fact she cared all too much. Suddenly she was back on the Saw Mill Parkway, lights flashing, car mangled beyond recognition, the little blue car she’d love to go toodling around in, the stretcher, her daughter, Doc Steinberg alongside her, holding her up. “You’re going to have to be brave, Maggie.”
“They’re gunning for Peter,” Doc Steinberg said. “You better go to him and tell him to pull his head out of his ass.”
Maggie felt dazed when she left Doc Steinberg’s office and started walking toward her house. The river loomed in front of her, gray and implacable. Four hundred years ago Henry Hudson had sailed down this river, four hundred years from now it would still flow. She felt more afraid than she’d felt in a very long time. She knew she had to protect this boy, but she wasn’t sure she was up to it. It was so much responsibility, to hold someone’s life in your own. She had been responsible for her daughter and had failed her. A mother’s job was to protect her child; she shouldn’t have let her go out that night. She should have insisted she break up with Peter.
She stumbled down the street in the direction of her house. People said hello and she nodded, but didn’t hear. She turned the corner, onto the beautiful street on which she’d spent her life, and she paused for a moment on her lawn. In the stillness of the moment, she remembered how she’d sensed that night that there was something evil in her presence. She had breathed in that evil, and there was no way in this world that was Peter. Foolish boy. Misguided. Self-destructive. All of these things were true. But not evil. That she would stake her life on.
Chapter 17
Maggie called Peter the moment she walked into her house, but he didn’t answer his phone. She called his home phone, his cell phone, the police department. He’d taken the day off, they said. She left messages for him to call her back, but knew he wouldn’t. Based on more than thirty years’ worth of knowing and loving Pe
ter Nelson, she suspected he was off doing something stupid. But how stupid and where? Where would he be at 11:30 on a chilly Monday morning?
He wouldn’t go far, she knew. He preferred to contain his insanity within the confines of the town. He might be over by the docks, or on the rocks that bordered the river, or in the woods. She hoped it wasn’t the woods. That was a vast tract of land that stood on the eastern edge of the village. Acres and acres of forest filled with caves and streams and hidden places and hints of the old farmland this area used to be: crumbling stone walls and unexpected metal shovels and rakes that cropped up suddenly. He had certain favorite spots he liked to go to when he was a boy, but the prospect of her running around the woods screaming for Peter was not an appealing one.
Maggie tried his phone again. No answer.
Best place to start would be at his apartment. She’d find him, get him help. He was alive, after all. One thing she’d learned from her daughter was as long as you were alive, there was something you could do. Bender poisoned. Bender murdered. It seemed like something out of a book, a game. It didn’t seem like something that could really happen. Already it seemed ridiculous to think she’d been so mad at a person about a tree. Anger dissipated quickly. But when she was in the grips of it, when it had hold of her, she couldn’t break away. She’d been glad at that moment when she found Bender’s body. She’d felt he’d received the retribution she couldn’t give him. She’d assumed God struck him down, but what if it was Peter? Dear Peter, who devoted himself to her, who absorbed her love as his own. Her hatred as his own.
What would Peter do without his job?
He’d never wanted to do anything else, had never wanted to live anywhere but this village. Surely they’d give him a second chance, even if he’d made a mistake. He’d earned it, hadn’t he?
Peter lived in an apartment building at the bottom of Main Street. A brick building the village had restored some years ago so that people who worked for the village would have an affordable place to live. It was an elegant building, glass walls with ficus trees propped against them and beautiful river views. Peter’s window was immediately visible because of the Yankees flag hanging in the middle of it. The builders had been hoping for potted plants in the window boxes, but they’d relented after a certain amount of arguing.
She rang the doorbell.
No answer.
She hoped he wasn’t sitting in there purposely not answering the bell. She was beginning to get irritated when Mr. Cavanaugh and little Fidelio came walking out the door. Mr. Cavanaugh held a piano book under his arm. Music for Millions, Vol 1.
“Thank you,” she said, when he held the door open for her.
“He’s not there,” Cavanaugh said. “He ran out.”
“How long ago?”
His little dog barked, tried to paw at Maggie’s leg. He was a soulful little friend with huge pleading eyes. Cavanaugh’s eyes were less friendly, though the man himself was pleasant. He’d given Maggie lessons for years during a period of time she’d thought of using the pianist Alexander Scriabin as a character in one of her mysteries. She’d taken five years of lessons before she realized the idea wasn’t going anywhere.
“Calma, Fidelio,” he said. “Thirty-five minutes ago.”
“Was he really running?” Maggie asked.
“Yes. Police business, I assumed.”
That couldn’t be good. Had Walter Campbell called and demanded he report to the police station? But he wouldn’t run then. He’d dawdle. Peter made you wait if you were going to yell at him.
“He had on boots,” Mr. Cavanaugh said.
“Are you sure?” she asked, though there was no need. The man had a photographic memory, remembered the birthdays of every one of his students. She hadn’t taken lessons from him in years, but he still said “Happy birthday” to her every October 4. It wasn’t like he wrote it on a calendar either. He just remembered.
“Boots, a Windbreaker and jeans.”
“He’s going into the woods,” she said. She looked down at her own shoes. They were comfortable and clean. For now.
She hesitated for just a moment. She wanted to ask Mr. Cavanaugh why he spit at her tree, but that would have to wait. She needed to find Peter.
Chapter 18
Heading toward the woods. Heading toward a place that was dark, inaccessible and likely exceedingly muddy, Maggie thought. Oh joy. At least it was too early in the day for the coyotes to be out—wasn’t it? Last time she’d gone there she’d been sure she heard one baying behind her, though it wound up being a deer, though quite a scary-looking deer. People thought deer were harmless because they were vegetarians, but they are big creatures and surprisingly testy. Maggie didn’t want to mess with another one.
Driving to the woods would save her a few blocks’ walk, but then she’d only have to park the car, and it would take just as much time to walk to her house and get the car. Better to just do what she had to, she thought, as she started up Main Street, each cross street in alphabetical order. Past Alcott and Bryer and Carson and so on, all streets named for a family she had known.
As she passed the hair salon, Iphigenia waved. Past the police department. She was Sisyphus without the ball, a cranky lady going up a hill. She could actually imagine her fear as something separate from herself, something that weighted her down. The village smelled so sweet. There was always one day in April when spring erupted, when everything smelled alive and young. Past the bagel place and the dry cleaner, and the manicurist and the other manicurist and the real estate agent and a third manicurist, which reminded her that Bender had manicured nails. Her husband, who had not been the most macho of men, had always been disturbed by manicures.
She called Peter again on his cell phone as she trudged up Main Street in the direction of the woods. “Peter, this is ridiculous. We have to talk.”
She imagined him sprawled on his couch, drinking, sulking. “It’s not hopeless,” she said.
Up past the Chinese restaurant and the yarn store and then across Broadway and into the development of homes built on what had once been a cow pasture. Then farther up to a point where she used to go sledding when she was young. Suicide Hill, they’d called it, and she’d used it as a title for one of her mysteries. Then up past the high school and finally into the woods. Immediately the air changed, wet and promising. The ground was covered with dead leaves. A dog ran at her, closely followed by a man. “He’s friendly. Sorry.”
She kept going deeper into the woods. She heard peepers, coming from a pond a little bit farther on. She used to love to try and sneak up on the peepers, but they always stopped right when you got there. You couldn’t trick a frog. She used to love to walk around here when she wrote dialogue. People looked at you oddly when you spoke to yourself, particularly if you spoke in a French accent, as Inspector Benet did. But no one cared in the woods. The only other people who went there were dog walkers and they seemed accepting of foibles. She’d gone there for so many years she knew all the spots, the tulip tree cut in half by lightning, the shoe someone must have lost in the 1950s, the stream that went dry suddenly every summer, the weird bush that bit you with bristles when you went by.
She kept going, heading in the direction of the rock that she knew to be Peter’s favorite place. It was a giant flat rock in the middle of a stream, and he loved to sit there and think. He’d gone there as a Boy Scout, before he got thrown out. He’d been on track to be an Eagle Scout, but there was one last badge he’d refused to get and although his mother had begged him, he wouldn’t do it. She’d come to Maggie then and asked her to try, though it did no good. Poor woman was so tired, worn down by her son and misfortune.
Because of the storm a few days ago, the trails were wet, lots of branches were down. There was a wild energy to the whole place that made her feel like a party had taken place. Off in the distance, Maggie thought she heard a gun fire, but then realized that it was a branch crashing to the ground. She smelled something unusual. Not fire, but gasolin
e. An unexpected smell. There were no cars allowed in the woods and no room for them. She made her way toward the smell, assuming it was Peter, up to no good. She didn’t feel afraid. Not really. There was no danger in these woods beyond that of falling branches and the occasional deer hunter with a bow and arrow, and yet she felt unsettled.
“Peter,” she said aloud.
Now she definitely heard an engine noise and she turned toward a small clearing and saw that someone was on a dirt bike and as she watched, horrified, the dirt biker rode right into a rock and crashed to a halt.
She yelled, started to run toward it, but then the driver turned to her, waved, walked his bike back a few yards, got onto it and rode it into the rock once again. It was the Asian boy from the river, the one who had been on a skateboard, and was now trying to kill himself with a dirt bike. Or so it seemed. Back again and again. He crashed into the rock ten times.
Maggie sat down on a large log and watched him, horrified and amazed by the battering he was taking, until finally it dawned on her that this must be how he was learning to ride. It made sense. Without something solid in front of him, he could go careening into the woods. Better to go slowly and be stopped by a rock.
The air was cold, but watching this boy was warming and soothing, and he seemed to take pleasure in having her there. His helmet was huge and red, but she could see his eyes sparkling, could see him turn and look at her every time he got himself up. She began clapping and laughing and, encouraged, after the twentieth crash, he began to putt-putt in a circle. She’d never seen anything like it, such a concentration of power and grace. Such a perfect metaphor for life. Into the wall. Back on your feet. Into the wall. Back on your feet.
Finally he began to ride in a broader circle, weaning himself off the security of the rock. He rode in a slow, careful circle, round and round until before her eyes she could see him gain confidence. His arms were bent forward at a difficult balletic angle. Then he began to speed up. The air smelled sweet with oil, the sound surprisingly gentle, an urgent hum. He was dressed like a bird, in patterns of blue and red with a number 126 patched onto his back. Circling more quickly, crunch of tire over stick, the beauty of power and youth and suddenly Peter came pounding into the clearing.
