“With Chip. His friend. A congressman’s son.”
“Ah. A congressman’s son.” Aggie wrote it down. “You saw them together, Mrs. Landon?”
“Together?”
“Chip and Buck.”
“Yes! Well, later I saw them.”
“Buck was here, about five o’clock,” said Rina mulishly.
Aggie waved her down. “Okay, we’ll worry about that later. I wonder if Mrs. Landon can tell me now why Mr. Spencer was dreadful?”
Rosamond, her mouth open to argue with Rina, was startled by the change of subject. “Dreadful?”
“You said he was a dreadful old man. You knew him?”
“No! Of course not! I never saw him in my life!”
“You spoke to him, though.”
“No! Who told you that, the Playmate of the Month?”
“She implied it,” said Aggie smoothly. Rina, bewildered, wondered who they were talking about.
“Well,she may have spoken to him. None of us did.” Rosamond smoothed her hair. “You can’t believe anything she says about us. That one has other fish to fry.”
“Okay, I’ll keep that in mind,” said Aggie cooperatively. “Now, Mrs. Landon, the police are talking to your son, but you say he’s not involved. So why are they talking to him?”
Rosamond pointed her chin at Rina. “Becauseher daughter’s trying to put the blame on him! Her daughter got into this terrible mess, and she’ll stop at nothing to shift the blame! Let me tell you, you’re right to be interviewing Mrs. Marshall. She’s the one who knows the truth. But she’ll probably give you nothing but lies!” Rosamond shoved past Aggie and out the door.
Rina said despairingly, “It’s not true. He was here. She’s just upset, trying to defend her son.”
“Yeah, I can understand that,” Aggie said. “But she might think a little more clearly if she weren’t reeking of alcohol. Who do you suppose the Playmate of the Month is?”
“You mean you didn’t know? I have no idea.”
“How about this Maria she mentioned? Is she a maid?”
“Yes. Nice Mexican woman.”
“Young?”
“No, maybe forty.”
“Not the Playmate of the Month, then. Well, we’ll figure it out. I have to go make a few phone calls now. But maybe tomorrow we could team up and talk to some people. You know the area and the people. It would be a big help.”
“Rosamond Landon would slam the door in my face,” said Rina ruefully.
“So we’ll save her till last.” Aggie smiled encouragingly. “Tomorrow, then, okay?”
Well, why not? “Okay,” said Rina.
She waved good-bye to Aggie with much more optimism than she had any right to feel.
The problem was that Will was just not sick enough to stay quietly in bed.
Ginny, already exhausted by late afternoon, was putting dishes in the dishwasher when she heard a blood-curdling scream from the front hall. Hands still streaming water, she sprinted to the front of the house, and discovered Will shrieking in purely psychological agony while Sarah hugged a very uncomfortable Kakiy to her chest.
Will was beyond coherence, but Sarah realized that some sort of justification was called for. “It’s my turn to hold Kakiy,” she explained, a hint of guilt in her brown eyes.
Ginny said, “Sarah, Kakiy looks squeezed. He doesn’t like to be held quite so tight.”
Sarah loosened her grip a little, and as Ginny had expected, Kakiy exercised his basic feline constitutional rights to life and liberty by writhing out of her arms and leaping away to the side of the room.
“Kakiy!” squealed Sarah, and dove unsuccessfully after him. Will continued to bawl. Ginny swooped up one child under each arm and marched out to the kitchen with them. They were both startled into momentary silence.
“All right, you two,” she said in her best Cagney imitation, settling them onto a pair of chairs. “You sit right there and don’t move! And have your milk and graham crackers. Because if you don’t, I’m going to throw you out the window so high that you’ll bump into the clouds.”
Will’s brown eyes widened in shocked apprehension, but Sarah gave a delighted giggle, and then he laughed too.
“No, no!” said Sarah. “You can’t throw us that high!”
“Well, then, I’ll throw you so high, you hit the moon!” Swiftly, Ginny was pouring two glasses of milk and getting out the remains of the graham crackers.
“No! You can’t!”
“Oh, dear. Let’s see. So high you hit a bird?”
“No!” They were eating gleefully now. Maggie’s red book had been right. If they get really awful, feed them, she had written. It was certainly working with Sarah. Will was a sour-face today, but he had real problems. At three and a half it’s hard to pinpoint the source of your unhappiness.
At sixteen too.
Maybe, thought Ginny, I ought to eat something myself. She made three peanut butter sandwiches and sat down with the children at the table. “How high then?” she asked, handing around the sandwiches.
“So high we hit an airplane!” suggested Sarah. They really were cute, the lively brown eyes fixed on her expectantly. Even Will looked momentarily adorable, his happy expression overriding the flushed and pimpled skin.
They continued this not overly intellectual conversation until the snack was finished. Then Sarah seemed to want some privacy and went into her own room, where she looked at books, happy and solitary, for an hour. Will was not so helpful. After a while he began to whimper, “Want Mommy!” Eventually Ginny managed to coax him back into bed.
The phone rang at about seven o’clock. Ginny answered in the upstairs study.
“O’Connors’,” she said, praying that it wasn’t the police.
“Hi, it’s Maggie. How’re you doing?”
“Okay. What’s happening there?”
“I met your family. No, no one recognized me. Your mom’s a terrific person, Ginny. One hundred percent on your side.”
“Yeah. She’s okay,” admitted Ginny. She stood in the study door, where she could see the children’s rooms.
“Your dad seemed very sensible. I only talked to him on the phone. He seemed worried about what this publicity might do to your future.”
“Yeah, he’s a little hung up on my future.”
“Typical of those of us who have already lived through a bit of our own futures.”
“Yeah.”
“I talked to your grandmother briefly.”
“What did you think?”
“A very frustrated woman. Loves you all, but feels degraded having to live on your parents’ charity.”
“Charity!”
“It seems that way to her.”
Ginny decided to think about that later. “What about Mr. Spencer?”
“I’m still fishing for facts. Talked to your grandmother’s friends, checked out the bridge party. I had an interesting talk with Buck’s mother. But if she knows anything about Mr. Spencer, she’s not telling.”
Ginny’s stomach was tight again. “God, Maggie, be careful! Don’t tell them I’m adopted!”
“I’ll be very careful. Mrs. Landon mentioned someone she called the Playmate of the Month. Who would that be?”
“Playmate of the—oh, yeah, Buck said his parents had a fight about her. You mean the assistant at Dr. Landon’s office.”
“I bet thatis who I mean!” said Maggie happily. “Thanks. Listen, how’re the kids?”
“Fine. Will is asleep already.”
“Has he been beastly today?”
“Well, he’s sick.”
“He has been beastly then. Sorry.”
“We’ll manage. Do you want to talk to Sarah?”
“Please.”
Ginny called Sarah from her room and handed over the receiver, and Sarah, sparkling, discussed her day with animation before handing the phone back to Ginny.
“Hello again, Ginny. I’m at the Adams Motel, 301-555-2343. Got that?”
“Yes, thanks. Listen, Nick called. Just to say hello.”
“He’s next on my list. Anything else?”
“I guess not.”
“Well, try not to let Will get you down. He’s really a pretty reasonable little fellow most of the time.”
“I know. I’ve seen him on better days. None of us do very well when we’re itchy and headachy.”
“Right. See you soon, I hope.”
“Me too. Bye.”
Ginny hung up, feeling suddenly desolate. She checked Will, who was still in an exhausted sleep, and then went into Sarah’s room.
“It’s time for gymnastics,” announced Sarah.
“Oh, Sarah, I don’t know how!”
But Sarah insisted, and they trooped up to the big top-floor room. Ginny soon found herself matching her little sister cartwheel for cartwheel and enjoying it. Her genes were the genes of gymnasts. After the workout she helped Sarah with her bath, and finally settled her down for a bedtime story.
“How aboutAlice in Wonderland?” Ginny asked casually.
“Okay.”
Ginny read three chapters before Sarah let her stop, and she wondered at the way the half-familiar words chimed softly in her memory. Mom and Dad had read it to her when she was small, she remembered now, and she had been fascinated because the girl’s name was Alice, like her own middle name. But the book had been put aside along with most of her other youthful books as she grew older.
With Sarah finally settled, Ginny went up to the exercise room to bring her sheets down to the sofa in the little study, so that she would be closer to Will in case he needed her at night. It wasn’t until she pulled off the quilt that she saw the cardboard box under the window, about a foot square and almost as deep, labeled “For Ginny.”
Inside was a pair of bookends and a photo album, and a note. “I’ve been keeping this scrapbook for you, in case you were interested. The bookends were a gift from your father. They’re for you, if you want them.”
She looked at them, little copies of Notre Dame Cathedral. From her young father to her young mother, in those happy months long ago. Those happy months that had given Ginny her existence, and her anguish.
Obscurely disturbed by them, she closed the box and took it down to the study along with the sheets. She made up a bed on the sofa there. Sarah was still reading to herself, and Will, hot and scabby, was still drowned in sleep. Ginny kissed her little brother’s roughened forehead, and left the doors ajar so she could hear him if he woke during the night. She got into one of Maggie’s nightshirts, looked hard at the box, and lay down. She wasn’t quite courageous enough to look at the scrapbook tonight.
She dreamed again of people who flew away from her.
Monday
September 17, 1979
XVI
Monday started early and didn’t let up.
At about six Will woke her, shaking her shoulder, demanding to go to the bathroom. He was smelly, whiny, and thoroughly disgusting. Ginny closed her eyes a moment, remembered the friendly little boy she had met Friday, remembered that he was her brother, and got herself up to help him. Luckily she had followed the advice in the red book to diaper him at night when he was sick; he was soaked, the caustic smell of staling urine like a pungent cloud around him. She decided to start him off with a bath. But while she was tending to the soaked diaper he jumped down from the toilet and ran downstairs, naked except for his pajama shirt with its unspeakable damp hem, and whined for breakfast until she gave in.
And so it went. She finished with his breakfast, got cleaner clothes on him, and realized Sarah needed breakfast too. She got Sarah off to school against the background of Will’s complaints, and finally got him into the bath. Halfway through the bath Zelle, in an anxious frenzy of barking and scrabbling, reminded her that she too needed a run. Those jobs completed, she figured out how the washing machine worked and had just started a load of Will’s foul-smelling sheets and diapers when the telephone rang.
“O’Connors’.” Will was whining behind her.
“Hi. It’s Maggie. Just wanted to tell you, I’m sending an express package. They promised to get it there this afternoon. It’s to Alice Ryan. I apologize, but I thought you’d better not sign your real name.”
“Oh. Okay. What is it?”
“Schoolbooks. I borrowed them from your mother. I saw Linda and Jan last night and got some homework assignments.”
“So you do want me to make better grades!” Ginny felt triumphant at exposing Maggie in a lie at last.
“I thought you deserved a choice,” came the mild reply. “I saw a few of your papers. You seem to have your precise level of underachievement down to a science. I didn’t want these few days to throw you off too much. Is that my son yowling in the background?”
“Yes. I’m not beating him, honest.”
“I know. He sounds just the way Sarah did two weeks ago. Ask him if he wants to talk to me.”
Will and Maggie had a serious conversation about how far away she was, and how many chicken pox pimples he had, and whether Zelle and Kakiy might catch it next. Then he gave the receiver back to Ginny.
“Tell me about Buck,” Maggie said.
“I’ve told you already. Did you see him?”
“I talked to him last night on the phone. He seems puzzled by the whole situation. Misses you. But I couldn’t get a lot of sense out of him. He was pretty high.”
“Yeah. He is, more and more these days. It’s a bore. Well, what can I say about him? You talked to him.”
“Would he take your scissors?”
“No. I mean, he might borrow them if he had a reason, but he wouldn’t have a reason.”
“Mr. Spencer and your grandmother were scolding him, you see. He was also stoned when he came looking for you, and he bumped into Spencer. Sassed them when they complained.”
“So that makes him a murderer? Come on!”
“Or your accomplice. You sassed them too.”
“Jesus!”
“I’m just mentioning some of the possibilities the police are probably considering. Buck went straight from your house to the library. Where the body was found.”
“God, Maggie.”
“You think he’d never pull a pair of scissors on someone?”
“Never.”
“Even when stoned?”
“Oh, hell, Maggie,” said Ginny in despair. “What am I supposed to say? I don’t know exactly what happens in his head. He gets happy, not mad, when he’s stoned. I don’t think he’d do it. Listen, I’ve been thinking, what if Mr. Spencer took the scissors himself? He could have. Then a mugger got them away from him! Doesn’t that make sense?”
“And then the mugger put them in Buck’s car?”
“Oh, hell.”
“Where does Buck get his drugs, Ginny?”
“I don’t know.”
“But you have an idea.” Ginny was silent, and Maggie added, “Look, this is murder we’re talking about. Maybe the drugs aren’t relevant, but maybe they are. It’s up to you, but we’re not talking about a rap on the knuckles for possession. You and Buck are in deep shit, kid.”
“Yeah.”
“His dad is a doctor.”
“No. The accounting system is too complicated. Coded.”
“You think he gets it from a regular connection, then?”
“Maggie, I never asked. I didn’t really want to know. But he does get an awful lot somewhere. I don’t think he was lying about his dad’s accounting system. But Buck gets enough to supply the football team sometimes.”
“Wow. Has he ever been in trouble with the cops?”
“No. Not officially, anyway. Some of the guys on the team are from pretty important families. Political appointments, senators, judges. The football booster club is like Who’s Who. So the school doesn’t hassle them much. I don’t know if the police would hassle them either, even if they knew.”
“I see. Buck’s father isn’t political, though, is he?”
“Physician to the stars, you know. And Chip Wilson is Buck’s best friend. A congressman’s son.”
“Chip’s the one who says he was driving home with Buck at the time Mr. Spencer was being stabbed.”
“Well, he probably was!”
“Yeah. Okay, thanks. I’ll call you again later.”
Ginny felt a moment of panic because Will was suspiciously quiet, but when she checked, he was all right. He was twitching his frog-shaped beanbag back and forth while Kakiy batted at it with his paws. Ginny started the dishwasher and, during the brief respite that Will’s game with Kakiy offered her, made a plan. Graham crackers would stay in the kitchen today. Baths would be at logical Ginny-determined times. She’d get things picked up and vacuumed and keep them that way. Will would take a nap, like it or not, and she’d get something done.
It was a good plan, except that while she was putting the diapers into the dryer Will helped himself to a peanut butter sandwich and dribbled globs of peanut butter and jelly all the way up the stairs, and while she was opening the door for the delivery man and signing “Alice Ryan” with a queasy feeling in the pit of her stomach, Will decided to take a bath on his own. She searched frantically for him all over the house before finding him standing next to a half-full tub of water.
“Will, for heaven’s sake, you’ll drown yourself!” Exasperated, she pulled the plug. Will’s little crusted face wrinkled, and he began to breathe in gasps that were clearly headed for all-out bawling. Demolished by this Excalibur of the small and weak against the powerful and logical, Ginny gave up her grand plan and sat down with him to read some moreAlice in Wonderland.
Kakiy observed them from Will’s sunny windowsill, serene and unruffled.
Mrs. Deaver’s house was brick with a white porch on one of the older streets of the suburb. The neighborhood had good-sized yards and mature trees. Once it had been inhabited by middle-class civil servants like the Deavers, but values had risen sharply. “We couldn’t afford it today,” Marie Deaver explained in response to Aggie’s question. “And the sad thing is, the rise in price doesn’t help me at all. I can’t borrow on it, because I couldn’t afford the monthly payments. And if I sold it, I’d end up like Delores, rent going up every year. No, the best thing for me to do is to hang onto it for Bobby. The estate can sell it for him, and invest the money so he can stay out at Shadyland.”
Bad Blood (Maggie Ryan Book 8) Page 19
