by Susan Breen
“She changed, Dove. Maybe you didn’t see it, but Winifred changed.”
“How do you mean?”
“She was really angry about living there, at the Castle, and it made her kind of crazy. She was bored and she wanted to have some fun.”
“So what did she do?”
“It started with Hal Carter.”
“Hal? What did Hal do?” Hal, the most romantic man in town. The man who took care of his mother for all those years and then married the beautiful young Gretchen.
“You know Gretchen’s mother lives at the Castle.”
“I didn’t know that.”
He nodded. “She’s lived there for a long time. She lives in one of the nice units, on the river.”
“Okay.” Maggie began to get a bad feeling.
“One day, Winifred noticed Hal Carter leaving her room. Late at night. She became curious, began watching, one thing led to another.”
“Hal Carter was visiting Gretchen’s mother?”
“He was more than visiting her, Dove. Turns out he’d always loved her. They’d been having an affair all the years his mother was alive. After she died, he got swept up with Gretchen, but he never stopped loving the mother. That’s what it all turned out to be.”
“That’s awful.” Hal Carter, she thought.
“So Winifred, you know Winifred, she had to say something to him. And then the next day, Hal came back with a bouquet of flowers and a bunch of steaks.”
“Steaks?”
“You know how Winifred liked a good steak. After that, every few weeks or so he’d show up with some steak.”
“Did she ask him for the steak?”
“No, but she sort of made it known that if she had the steak, she wouldn’t talk. Then she realized that a nursing home was a place where there were a lot of secrets, particularly if she had Arthur to help her.”
“Arthur was involved?”
“People talk when you’re massaging them. They tell you stuff. She had a whole list going. Small things. She didn’t ask for money, but she liked…gifts.”
Maggie thought of the new couch and the new rug. She’d never thought to ask how she’d paid for it.
“It became an obsession with her, Dove. She began looking into everybody. Not just people in the Castle, but in the village too. She got something on Doc Steinberg, but Hannah wouldn’t play along. Told her she could say whatever she wanted.”
“And what about Marcus Bender?”
“She was crazy about him, desperate to find out something about him. Because of you, Dove. She wanted to bring him down. That’s what we were arguing about. She wanted me to use the police computer to see if he had any history. You know how she could be if she thought someone had wounded you in any way. She wanted him to go to jail. To be perfectly honest, Dove, when I first heard that he was murdered, I was sure she had killed him. I thought maybe she’d had Arthur do it.”
Gentle Arthur. Winifred.
What shocked Maggie was how little shocked she was. So much made sense then. Winifred’s glittering eyes. How she always seemed to know everything. She must have known about Bender’s murder before Maggie even called her.
How had Maggie not realized? Was everything between them a lie? Maggie remembered how happy she’d been when Winifred came home to Darby after having been away for a decade. She’d looked defeated and wary when she first returned, following her disastrous divorce from Jerry, but soon enough she rebounded. She got involved with Fred Melrose and everything went back to normal. She was who she had been. She was who Maggie wanted her to be.
Winifred a blackmailer. That changed everything, didn’t it? It broadened the field. Now there were so many possible suspects. Maggie felt like her head was spinning. She began to hear pounding from the work being done on the Tappan Zee Bridge. She felt ashamed of Winifred. She felt pity for her too—poor Winifred, who wound up alone in a nursing home, unloved after all those husbands, so desperate for love. She must have turned her attention to the wrong person. Someone who didn’t trust that she’d be able to keep a secret. Someone with a secret so dangerous he couldn’t risk being found out.
“I wouldn’t do it, Dove. She asked me a bunch of times and I always said no. I knew you wouldn’t approve.”
“Forget about me, Peter. It was wrong. You knew that all on your own.”
She thought of her friend as she’d been as a young girl, so vibrant and wild, so willing to risk everything. Then she thought of herself, and how this whole horrible thing had begun with her anger at Marcus Bender. Maybe Noelle was right, she should have just let him move the tree. Or she should have tried harder to talk to him, anyway. She should have laughed with him.
“I’m sorry, Dove,” Peter said.
“Me too.”
“Are you going to tell Walter Campbell?”
“I have to, Peter. Frankly, I think we all need to grow up a little bit about this. But first,” she said, “first I think I’m going to talk to Arthur. Maybe he has a list of names. Maybe if we examine them I can figure out how big this is.”
He sank back in his chair. Sam Waterston pounced onto the screen; the first episode in which he appeared, so different from the later, ponderous man he became. This earlier iteration of Sam Waterston was flirtatious, boyish, handsome.
“I should have died that night,” Peter said. “Why did God save me and not her?”
There was only night, as far as Maggie and Peter were concerned. She knew exactly what he was talking about. Maggie didn’t answer. She didn’t answer because there was nothing to say. She didn’t answer because who understood God’s reasoning? She couldn’t believe God had chosen for her daughter to die. Nowhere in her imagination could she see God being so cruel. But she also didn’t answer because she was tired of talking about it. For twenty years they’d been going over the same territory and for the first time she felt like she was drowning in a swamp.
“I can’t talk about that now,” she said, and she left. She had to get to the Castle and talk to Arthur.
Chapter 31
But Arthur wasn’t there. Gentle, laughing Arthur had skipped town, or so the nurse said, taking some of the residents’ jewels with him. He wasn’t at the home address he had given. No one knew where he was.
“What a shock,” the nurse said.
It was a shock.
Dispirited, Maggie planned to turn back, but then she heard someone laughing and felt herself drawn toward it, as she’d known she would be the moment she got there. She followed the laughter toward an airy salon and there she found Frank Bowman in front of an easel, surrounded by his coterie of women, each of them in front of an easel. Before them stood a man with a black beret, standing next to yet another easel, on which was pinned a postcard. A tranquil Hudson Valley scene that they were all in the midst of reproducing.
“Why, hello,” Frank Bowman called out at the sight of her. Eight women glared and Maggie couldn’t help but feel a bit of pride that this man was so obviously glad to see her, this handsome man with his cool gray eyes, now crinkling up into a smile. He had on a plastic smock, and under that khakis and a striped, long-sleeved shirt. She imagined a pencil behind his ear—but no, that was Inspector Benet she was thinking of, who had that particular affectation. So that whenever he had an idea he could write it down. Benet didn’t trust technology, though it would have been helpful for him with his crime solving. Also, he didn’t have any scars. Winifred had wanted him to be missing a leg, but Maggie had fought her off.
“I didn’t expect to see you today,” Frank said.
He took off his white smock and walked toward her.
“Should we wait, Frankie?” one of the women called out.
“Better not,” he said. “Carry on without me.”
He tucked his hand into Maggie’s arm, and guided her toward the hallway. Behind her she could hear hissing, like so many balloons giving up air.
“But you look upset,” he said to Maggie. “What’s bothering you?”
/> Funny how quickly you can grow to care for someone, she thought. Funny how important it can be to have a pair of sympathetic eyes looking at you and to know that he would be willing to drop anything he was in the middle of to talk with you. She’d forgotten how special that feeling was. She had held herself away from the world for too long, Maggie thought. Winifred was right, in that one particular instance.
“Is there somewhere private we could talk?” she asked.
“Of course,” he said. “This way.”
She followed him past a nurses’ station, into an elevator that took them downstairs, to her surprise. Somehow she thought it would be up, but it turned out this wing was set closer to the river. The whole tone of the place changed. Here the Castle was like a regular apartment building, with amenities. People were reading newspapers and laughing, and Maggie and Frank kept walking, down a muted hall, and then deeper and deeper into the building. They passed by a pool, a gym and a quiet couple playing chess, and then around another corner, and then they were in front of his apartment. She almost cried out when they went inside, it was so magnificent. A huge window faced out onto the Hudson River. Maggie couldn’t help but notice a willow tree slightly blocking his view and felt a sudden tenderness for Frank for not insisting that the tree be cut down. The room itself was somewhat impersonal, like an upscale hotel, but there was a picture of an old lady in the corner. His mother, she assumed.
The kitchen was twice the size of her own, though he had as few things in it as she did. Not a cook, she thought.
“I’m just going to wash my hands,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
She sat down on the couch and noticed, on the coffee table, copies of all her books. Winifred would have given them to him, she felt sure. She felt both flattered and exposed. What had she written?
She hadn’t been alone in a room with a man in a long time, if you didn’t count Peter, which she didn’t. She’d forgotten how different a man’s room smelled, without the floral scents with which she was so familiar. Frank’s room smelled of toothpaste and she remembered reading once how there was coal in toothpaste. That’s how Colgate got its name, and she thought about her husband then, about the way his room had smelled, which was of old books. She’d been so sure of herself when she seduced him. She knew he desired her. She could remember how powerful she felt when she draped herself across that desk. “Oh, my dear,” he’d whispered, but then he’d surprised her with his strength.
She had no power now. No one had seen her naked in years, except for Doc Steinberg. She was 62 and yet people did marry at her age. She knew several. And there was Gretchen’s mother, who had to be Maggie’s age. Was that why she had come here? Maggie wondered. At the back of her mind, was she hoping Frank Bowman would sweep her up in her arms and carry her away from all these troubles. Would that be so wrong? Maybe Walter Campbell was right. Maybe she shouldn’t be involved.
“Now,” Frank said, walking back into the room, sitting down on the chair across from her, so close their knees were almost touching. “Would you like some tea?”
“No thank you,” she said. “I just really need to talk.”
“Of course.”
She told him everything. His eyes turned dark as she spoke, like storm clouds, especially when she got to the blackmail part.
“I know about that,” he said.
“You do?”
He smiled slightly. “Winifred went after me too.”
“Oh dear. I’m sorry.”
“I’m afraid that I was not completely honest about my sources of income when I filed my report with the Castle. As Winifred discovered, some of my investments come from places that are not, shall we say, Triple A rated.”
“You’re a crook?”
“No, I’m an aggressive investor, I would say. Nothing illegal. But close. To answer the question you want to ask, I gave her free accounting advice. She was harmless, Maggie. She was just bored.”
“Not everyone might have found her harmless. She could have come across someone who didn’t want to pay up. That fact is, I can’t make excuses for her. I don’t know what possessed her to go around blackmailing people. Nothing makes sense. I can see why someone might have wanted to kill Winifred. I can see why someone wanted to kill Bender. But I can’t see why anyone would want to kill both of them. There can’t be two separate murderers running around.”
She looked out the window, at the river, which had darkened. The waves looked like little sharks, swimming around in front of her.
“I feel so stupid,” she said. “I feel like someone’s laughing at me.”
He held her hand then. “Maybe Walter Campbell’s right. Why don’t you go to him and tell him everything and let him take over?”
“I tried that. He wasn’t impressed.”
Why was she even fighting this battle, she wondered. She hated Bender, Winifred had brought destruction down on herself and Peter would be in trouble no matter what she did. Maybe she should just give up. Hand it all over to Walter Campbell and devote herself to Frank Bowman. She finally had a moment of peace in her life. Why not enjoy it?…And yet, when he invited her out to dinner, she said no. She wasn’t ready to surrender just yet. She couldn’t give up, because there was someone out there killing people and she didn’t trust Walter Campbell to stop him, and the fact was, it was wrong. Even if the people deserved to die, it was wrong. It was evil.
She got back into her car.
“You sure you don’t want dinner?”
“I’ll see you Friday,” she said. “At the Thai restaurant.” She headed out, but was so distracted she wound up on the other side of the county, near Rye Playland. She parked her car and wandered around there for a bit, strolling across the beach and picking up shells. Being outside cleared her head, and after a few hours she got back in her car and drove home, where she found, on her front lawn, a body lying under her oak tree in the same exact position in which Bender had been.
Chapter 32
Another body. Maggie looked around, prepared to make a U-turn and leave the street behind, possibly forever. This time there would be no Peter to run to her rescue, but Walter Campbell, who would loom over her and ask questions. Was this some terrible loop of time forcing her to go examine her sins over and over again? she wondered. And then the body moved. Sat up. And shook out her hair.
“Oh,” Noelle said. “You startled me.”
Was it so wrong that Maggie didn’t want any of the Bender family on her lawn? Was it so much to ask? It wasn’t a big lawn, and neither was it such a big tree—on which, she noticed, now hung two little angels sitting on toilets. Maggie felt herself surge with aggravation.
It was like living next to Communists. They had no sense of personal ownership. What would Noelle do, Maggie wondered, if she went over to lie down on her lawn? But the discouraging answer was, she probably wouldn’t care. Would hand Maggie a blanket and say, Enjoy.
“I wanted to be near him,” Noelle said. “His spirit’s stronger here.”
Closer to Noelle, Maggie could see how red her eyes were. She thought of the many times she’d pulled over on the Saw Mill Parkway, parking in the spot where the accident had taken place, feeling her presence so much more strongly there, just as on the anniversary of Juliet’s death Maggie felt so much closer to her daughter. As though there were places in space and time where the connection between the living and the dead narrowed. Sometimes she felt so close to Juliet, she thought she could touch her.
“May I sit with you?” Maggie asked.
Noelle shrugged and Maggie crouched down alongside her. It was less than two weeks ago that she found the body and yet it seemed much longer. Even the oak tree was vastly different, now plumped up with the lushness of spring, two times its previous size. And yet, on this very spot Bender had lain, poisoned.
“How are you doing?” Maggie asked.
Noelle shrugged.
Best to just sit quietly. Best to just offer up her company and leave it at that. Off in the
distance she thought she heard a dirt bike. A woodpecker was frantically hammering at a tree. The grass felt dry and prickly. Noelle began running her fingers over a gold ring that glowed on her bare big toe.
“You’re a Sunday School teacher,” Noelle said, after a while.
“Yes.”
“You believe in God and heaven and all that.”
“I do,” she said.
Noelle shook her head, laughed softly.
“I take it you don’t,” Maggie said.
“My father was a Christian. Always on me about doing the right thing, but he wasn’t a good man. Late at night he would come into my room and he didn’t talk about sin anymore. He just had one thing on his mind then. When I took my job, everyone said it was demeaning, but it wasn’t. Not compared to that. I’d rather be with people who are exactly who they say they are. Who aren’t lying.”
“Fair enough,” Maggie said, “but I don’t think you can write off a whole religion because of one person’s actions.”
“It’s more than one. The church is full of hypocrites.”
“The church is also full of people who care. People who want to change the world. People who want to be better than they are, and who love God. Maybe you should give it another try,” she said, though even as she spoke, she thought about how angry she had been. Not exactly a welcoming voice for the church, though in fairness to her, she was just trying to protect her tree. She hoped God was keeping track of this whole thing.
“You would be very welcome,” Maggie said, but Noelle had moved on.
“Soon it will be two weeks,” she said. “And no arrests yet. I went to see that Walter Campbell and he said they were close. Why haven’t they arrested that policeman? I thought everyone was sure he did it.”
“There are other suspects. The police have to be sure.”
“He was selling Ecstasy.”
“No he wasn’t,” Maggie said. “He was at a party, he was trying to protect the children there. He was foolish. Stupid. But he’s not a killer.”
