Chapter 23
One half of the world cannot understand
the pleasures of the other.
—Jane Austen
Early Sunday morning I lay on the couch with Geraldine, a cup of coffee, and a book, watching the sun come up, reflecting on the fact that my first Christmas vacation in thirteen years would start the next day, and trying not to act put-out that there were eighteen people in my house for the occasion. If Ruthie hadn’t been in jail, there would’ve been nineteen. Ten of them were spread out all over the living room floor in sleeping bags at this very moment, most of them still asleep.
Fourteen of those folks were homeless. They deserved warmth, shelter, food, hot drinks, and love. They didn’t need a pissy, self-centered hostess. Ruthie, on the other hand, if she had actually done what the lab work suggested she’d done, deserved to be right where she was, rotting in jail.
Jodi and Elliott had vacated the couch and recliner and sat at the kitchen table having coffee with Hal, while Mum fixed herself a cup of tea.
Christmas was now three days away. I’d finished my shopping weeks ago, but now I had to think of what to give Bambi. What does one give a nineteen-year-old that one hardly knows? I sounded out Mum on the subject. She joined me on the couch, cup in hand. We talked in low voices so as not to wake the children, because once they were up we wouldn’t be able to hear ourselves think, let alone carry on a conversation.
“Just give her money, kitten,” Mum said. “That’s what I used to do with you when you were that age, remember?”
That brought up another problem. The fires at Kathleen’s, Ruthie’s, and Jodi and Elliott’s houses had destroyed their Christmas trees and all the gifts they’d bought. This meant that unless they all went shopping again, the kids would have no Christmas. I shuddered at the thought of shopping for eleven children three days before Christmas. The mall would be a nightmare.
I thought that God, or whoever saw to it that Hal and I didn’t have children, had probably done both of us a huge favor. Acquiring one that was already age nineteen didn’t really count. Neither did housebreaking puppies.
Mum must have read my mind. “Aren’t you glad that you and Hal didn’t have children, kitten?”
I looked around. “I suppose so. But it wasn’t our idea, you know.”
“I remember,” Mum said. “You told me that Hal’s first wife didn’t want children, and it was some kind of big deal because they were Jewish. But I can’t recall what that was all about.”
“Well, let me refresh your memory,” I said. “Jews don’t believe in an afterlife like we do. When you die, that’s it. You live on in your children. Without children, there’s no immortality.”
“Oh, yes,” Mum said. “And you went off the pill so that Hal could have his immortality.”
She sounded sarcastic, but nowhere near as sarcastic as she’d been seventeen years ago when we’d first discussed it. Back then, it had been an extremely emotional discussion, and Mum and I had had a major argument that resulted in our not speaking to each other for a month. Now I understood that Mum had acted that way because she was scared. She was terrified that I was going to throw away my career to be a mother—after all the work she had done to make sure I wouldn’t have to spend forty years doing a job I hated, like she had.
But she needn’t have worried. I never got pregnant. Not for lack of trying, though; Hal and I had been busy. Later we’d accepted the fact that we weren’t meant to have children, without trying to find out whose fault it was. But now, with Bambi showing up, the fault was obviously mine.
“It didn’t work out,” I said. “I couldn’t give that to him.” Tears came to my eyes at the thought, one that hadn’t occurred to me till now. “You don’t suppose he’s subconsciously holding that against me, do you?” I held my breath to keep from crying. “Because there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
Mum put her arms around me and pulled me close. “No, kitten, I don’t think Hal holds anything against you. He knows there isn’t anything you wouldn’t do for him, and you and I both know there isn’t anything he wouldn’t do for you. Both of you are too old now to even think of starting a family. It’s a moot point, as they say.”
“I suppose we could have adopted,” I said, “but it never came up. I didn’t suggest it, and neither did he.”
“Well, there!” she said. “Surely if he cared that much about having children, he would have mentioned it, don’t you think?”
Mum made perfect sense. I hoped she was right.
Breakfast consisted of cereal and Pop-Tarts. Even Hal cringed at the thought of trying to feed eggs, bacon, and toast to eighteen people.
By the time everyone was up, fed, and dressed, it was nearly noon. Bambi and Tiffany took the younger kids to the movies, while Jodi and Kathleen and the older kids went to the mall. Elliott went down to the police station to bail out Ruthie. That left Hal, Mum, and me … and peace, blessed peace—that is, until Hal turned on the TV to watch football.
What is it with men that they can’t stand to have silence for five minutes? Mum and I retired to the kitchen, where we fixed ourselves cups of tea.
Mum toyed with her teabag. “Well, kitten, did you and Hal get everything straightened out?”
“Mum,” I said, “why is everything so complicated?”
“How do you mean, dear?”
“Well, I’ve read books and magazine articles on the differences between men and women, and the message always seems to be that men generally say pretty much what they mean, and it’s the women who try to parse it for subtext, dissect and analyze and read things into it, and so on. And women say things to men that they really don’t mean, just to get a reaction, and it’s the men who take it literally and react appropriately, instead of trying to analyze it like a woman would do.”
“Yes, dear, I know.” Mum squeezed her teabag against her spoon and placed it in her saucer. “Women write scripts, and the men don’t learn their lines.”
“So here’s my husband, acting distant, and someone tells me about the existence of another female in his life, and that he was seen kissing said female. Therefore, I assume the worst, that he’s having an affair—and furthermore, that it’s somehow my fault. But when I ask him, he says it was nothing, and when I persist, he gets mad and tells me to get off his back about it, which I interpret to mean that he’s just confirmed that he was indeed having an affair, and so I could proceed to have one of my own.”
Mum sipped her tea. “Yes, my love, with the very available and horny Bernie Kincaid.”
“Right. But in actual fact, Hal was telling me the absolute truth, that there was nothing going on, and he would have been highly offended that I didn’t believe him. But being female, I found such a concept totally foreign.”
“Mmm-hmm,” Mum said. “It’s a wonder we ever get together at all, isn’t it?”
“So.” I leaned my elbows on the table. “Suppose I’d gone ahead and had an affair with Bernie Kincaid, and suppose Hal had found out. He would have been outraged, and rightly so. But I would have felt that I had avenged myself and not had any idea that I had totally wronged him. I would have felt completely justified, wouldn’t have even apologized. And if he had mentioned divorce to me, I would have divorced him first. Then he would have felt free to go ahead with his affair, and I would have too.”
“Yes, dear,” Mum said. “So, let’s take this a step further and say that Hal started having sex with Bambi, not knowing who she was. Suppose she got pregnant? She would have been carrying Hal’s grandchild as well as his child. When her pregnancy became common knowledge, the truth would come out that Hal had been fooling around with a student, which is bad enough but is also possibly statutory rape. How old is Bambi, anyway?”
“Nineteen, I think.”
There sure was a lot of pregnancy going on, or so it seemed�
��all Jay’s paramours, for example. Luckily for Jay, none of the women he’d impregnated were his own daughter. I shuddered. “Can you imagine what would have happened when Hal found out who Bambi’s mother was and that he was actually Bambi’s father and had been committing incest?”
I wasn’t sure that qualified as a crime in the legal sense, but in the emotional sense, it would be a loaded loose cannon. The shit would fly far and wide.
“I would imagine,” Mum said, “that Hal would certainly lose his job and probably be unable to get another at any college.”
“Yes,” I said, “and Bambi’s parents would no doubt sue him, and the punitive damages would sink him without a trace. Wow. We dodged a bullet there, didn’t we?” If we hadn’t been divorced by then, I thought, I could have been so deep in the hole I’d be looking up to see bottom.
Doctor Deep-Pockets, just ripe for the picking.
I shifted my thoughts to what I imagined Hal and Bambi must be feeling about what could have happened and what did happen. Had they actually been in love with each other or just in lust? How would it feel to find out that the person around whom one’s sexual fantasies had revolved was actually a person about whom such thoughts would be considered sinful?
I hoped they’d managed to talk it all out during the two days Hal had been gone.
“Darling,” Mum said, “there’s a lot of hoo-hah about the sanctity of marriage vows and committing adultery in your heart, don’t you know, as if it’s the exception rather than the rule. The truth is that men, married or not, will look at other women and think about what it would be like to have sex with them; and women, married or not, will look at other men, and do the same.”
“I suppose you’re right,” I said.
“Of course I’m right,” Mum said. “It’s what they do about it that buggers everything up, don’t you know.”
“I suppose that if it weren’t for that, there’d be no need for rules about it.”
It’s possible, I reflected, that right now what Hal and Bambi were feeling was mainly relief. I sure as hell was.
Hal came into the kitchen. “What are you two so deep in conversation about?”
“Just girl talk, Hal, dear,” Mum said.
“Of course. You were talking about me. Anybody ready for something stronger than tea?” He took a glass from the cupboard and the scotch from the bar and sloshed some into his glass. “Toni?”
“Okay, I’ll have some too.”
He fixed me one and sat down. “Now. What’s the subject under discussion? Besides me, that is.”
“What makes you think we were talking about you, Hal, dear?” Mum asked.
He shrugged. “Because that’s what women always do.”
“Talk about men, you mean. Well, my dears,” Mum said, “this is quite a rum situation we’re in, isn’t it?”
“That’s one way of putting it,” I agreed. “I wish I knew what’s going on.” Like, for instance, what the hell Mum was talking about now—the same subject or a new one?
“Well, you figured out that Ruthie had poisoned Kathleen and the kids, kitten.”
“Well,” I temporized, “I figured out that she could have. Whether she did or not is another thing.”
“But the police arrested her,” Mum pointed out.
“Yeah, for assaulting a police officer, not for poisoning anybody. All they wanted from her was a statement. If she hadn’t punched Kincaid in the nose, she’d have been home last night.”
“Well, then, who’s setting the fires, dear?”
Chapter 24
I met a lady in the meads
Full beautiful, a faery’s child;
Her hair was long, her foot was light,
And her eyes were wild.
—John Keats
“Up till now I assumed that the same person who did the poisoning set the fires, but that’s impossible,” I said. “If Ruthie did the poisoning, she couldn’t have set the fires. At least she couldn’t have set the fire last night because she was in jail.”
“Well,” Hal said, “by now the police have copies of both of Jay’s wills, so there’s no reason for the firebug to keep trying to destroy either one of them. So this attempt on Jodi and Elliott’s house would have to be for some other reason.”
“But what?” Mum asked. “What else could he possibly want?”
“Perhaps he was trying to kill the occupants,” I said.
“What for, dear?”
“Okay,” said Hal. “Let’s suppose someone wanted to kill the occupants. Who were the occupants? In Kathleen’s house, it was Kathleen and her family, Tiffany and her daughter. In Ruthie’s house, it was the same plus Ruthie. In Lance’s office, it was Tiffany and Lance. That makes no sense at all. Is there a common factor?”
“Yes,” I said. “Tiffany.”
“Who would want to harm Tiffany?” Hal asked. “And why?”
“Well, let’s see,” I said. “We have a choice of Lance or Kathleen. I think we can eliminate the children, don’t you?” I rushed on without waiting for an answer. “Okay. Was it Lance? Why? Why bother to start a fire in the office that could endanger him as well as her when he could just fire her and be done with it? And then when Kathleen had a fire, he was in the hospital, and then he died.”
“Kathleen makes more sense,” Hal said, “because her husband was having an affair with Tiffany.”
“But Hal, love, it can’t be Kathleen,” Mum said. “Why would she set fire to her own house and endanger her own children just to harm Tiffany? It’s daft.”
“Well, it’s got to be related to Jay’s murder, whatever it is,” I argued. “I seriously doubt that a firebug is going around setting random fires which just happen to include Jay’s office, his wife, his partner, and his partner’s wife.”
“It’s got to be love or money,” Hal said. “Or both. We’ve got all of Jay’s lovers who might benefit from Jay’s death. They might be trying to get rid of anyone else who might benefit from Jay’s death, like his wife, his children, and his current lover, Tiffany.”
“You think any of them would feel so strongly that they would kill Jay to prevent anyone else from having him?” I said. “The most likely candidate for that scenario would be Kathleen herself. The spouse is always the most likely suspect.”
“Nonsense,” Mum said. “If Kathleen killed Jay because she caught him in bed with Tiffany, one would expect her to simply shoot both of them on the spot and be done with it, rather than opt for slow poisoning.”
“But then she would already be in jail, awaiting trial for a double murder,” I objected. “The money wouldn’t do her any good, except maybe to pay for a lawyer.”
“Assuming she could actually be cold-blooded enough to poison him and leave him to die in his car on the interstate in the snow, where would Tiffany come in?” Hal asked. “Did she help Kathleen do it? Or did she even know that Kathleen did it? If Kathleen did it, that is. Or did Tiffany do it herself?”
“There were light-colored hairs on Jay’s jacket,” I said. “They certainly didn’t come from Kathleen, but they could have come from Tiffany.”
“Why would Tiffany want to kill Jay?” Hal asked. “Because he didn’t take her with him when he left? Or maybe it was just for money. She knew that Jay had provided for her and Emily in his will, right?”
“How much money are we talking about here?” I argued. “How many other women would she have to share it with besides Kathleen and Mitzi? Is Tiffany trying to eliminate Kathleen and her family so that there’d be more for her? If so, how did she get her hands on the Lovenox? Did Lance keep a stash of it at the office, or what?”
“Surely, kitten,” said Mum, “you aren’t thinking that she actually set those fires, are you?”
“Well, no, I hadn’t actually gotten that far,” I said. “I was just w
ondering who was trying to harm whom, and it just occurred to me that she’s the only one involved in all three fires, that’s all. Although I suppose it’s not impossible …”
“We really don’t know anything about her, do we?” Hal said.
He and I stared at each other. I felt as sure I knew what he was thinking as if he had said it out loud. Google her!
“I’m on it,” I said and headed for the stairs.
“Okay,” said Hal, and he began clearing the table. As I climbed the stairs, I heard Mum say, “Whatever are you two on about?”
We’re back, I thought happily as I fired up the computer and got on the Internet. I had just gotten Google up and had typed in Tiffany Summers, when Mum and Hal came into the office. Mum made herself comfortable in the recliner with her cup of tea, while Hal pulled his desk chair up to my desk and watched as I hit Search.
There were 2,580,000 references for Tiffany Summers, at least 2,579,995 of which were porn sites. Not that I actually went through all 2,580,000 of them; after the first few hundred, they began to repeat themselves. I did find a few for Tiffany with a different last name or Summers with a different first name, but I also found two rather poignant ones: a birth notice for a Tiffany Sue Summers, born July 3, 1978, in Duluth, Minnesota, and further down the page an obituary for the same Tiffany Sue Summers, born July 3, 1978 in Duluth, Minnesota, and deceased of leukemia March 29, 1981, at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. She was survived by her parents, Marjorie and Eldon Summers, and an older sister, Brittany Jo.
This was obviously not our Tiffany Summers. I bookmarked them both on the computer. I wasn’t sure why, but just in case we ever needed them again, they’d be easier to find.
I made a note to find out where our Tiffany was born.
“Poor thing,” murmured Mum sympathetically. “Have you tried spelling it Somers or Sommers?”
I tried it, with similar results—except for the birth and death notices.
“Well, I guess that’s that,” Hal said, rising. But I stopped him.
Too Much Blood Page 19
