Gaits of Heaven

by Susan Conant

  “Dear God! Is she all right?”

  “Yes. Her knee is sore. Fortunately, she fell on Dolfo, and he broke her fall. But the point is, Rita, that when I saw what was about to happen, I was screaming and running, but I got a good look at the expression on Wyeth’s face, and, Rita, I swear to you, he deliberately ran that car into her. For all I know, he intended to hit Dolfo, too. It was no accident.” I was tempted to tell Rita about the contents of the disc I’d removed from Wyeth’s computer. If she hadn’t been so exhausted, I’d probably have broken my vow to ignore information I had no right to possess. Besides, sneaking into therapy offices wasn’t an act of violence, and I was principally concerned with just that: violence. “After it happened,” I continued, “Ted and Johanna got into a raging fight about Wyeth. They were accusing each other of ruining him. With him right there! That was the word they used: ruined. So, if he wants to kill people, it’s no wonder. And the fight was verbal violence, if there is such a thing.”

  “There is,” Rita said.

  “Wyeth is on his mother’s side. She hated Eumie. So did Wyeth. And Eumie was inviting trouble in a family filled with rage and violence. She collected people’s secrets. She was married to Monty, Caprice’s father, and then to Ted. She knew their secrets. Eumie enlisted Caprice in ferreting out information about people. Including Johanna? Why not? So, I’m worried. Someone murdered Eumie. We know that Wyeth could easily have killed Ted and that he ran his car into Caprice. I’m worried about what’s going to happen next.”

  “I am, too,” Rita said.

  “Wyeth could kill someone.” I paused. “Maybe he already has.”

  CHAPTER 41

  With considerable difficulty, Wyeth Green parallel parks his Land Rover on Concord Avenue near Dr. Peter York’s office building, which is a three-story wood-frame house similar to mine. It, too, is set close to the street and has a small porch. At four o’clock in the morning, the streetlights are on, but Wyeth has no feel for the dimensions of his new car and ends up bumping the car behind it. When he gets out, he notices that he has parked more than a foot from the curb.

  Wyeth is unarmed; the bottle of Poland Spring water he carries doesn’t count as a weapon. Although he ends up on the front porch, my reconstruction shows him first making his way to the back door, checking it, finding it locked, and then checking windows, which are also locked. Only then does he return to the front of the building, climb the short flight of stairs, and uselessly try the front door. After that, he settles himself in a corner of the porch, removes the prescription bottle from his pocket, and swallows six ten-milligram tablets of a generic version of Valium. In twenty minutes, he falls asleep.

  About two hours later, he is discovered there, still asleep, by my cousin Leah, who is accompanied by Kimi. The two are returning from an early-morning run and have slowed to a walk to cool down before returning home. Never having seen Wyeth before, Leah does not recognize him; the young man whose shoulder she shakes is a stranger to her. “Are you all right?” she asks. “Kimi, leave it!” In using the word it, Leah does not, I should note, intend to refer to Wyeth as an object; the command is her equivalent of the musher’s On by and simply tells Kimi to mind her own business. Kimi, however, thrusts her wet nose in the boy’s face and begins to lick vigorously. Leah reconsiders. Dog saliva is, after all, a potent panacea. She allows Kimi to continue her ministrations.

  CHAPTER 42

  “Kevin was right about making me take my cell when I go running,” Leah said over breakfast. “I was glad I had it.” She took a bite of scrambled eggs and swallowed. “You should’ve seen Kimi! She was just determined to help him. And I must say that he wasn’t very grateful. When he started to come to, he shoved her away.”

  “Did you get any explanation?” I asked. “I mean, what was he doing there? Was he a street person? Was he drunk?”

  “No, he wasn’t drunk. There wasn’t any smell. There was a bottle next to him, but it was Poland Spring water. And he was wearing good clothes. Lands’ End or something. Good shoes. When the police and the ambulance got there, someone said something about pills.”

  “Good thing you had the sense to call nine-one-one,” Steve said.

  “Of course I did! I could see that he was breathing, but I couldn’t get him to wake up. And he was really pale. He was all flabby. I think maybe he has some kind of chronic illness, and he collapsed and crawled up onto that porch. The pills could’ve been something he was supposed to take if his illness suddenly struck.” Her tone was dramatic. “Maybe he felt his heart starting to flutter, but he took the medicine too late, and he fainted.”

  Caprice came downstairs just as Steve and Leah were leaving, so she missed the details of Leah’s account. I simply told her that Leah had been coming back from a run with Kimi when she’d found someone who’d collapsed on a porch down the street. Leah had called an ambulance, I said. After that, I went to my study to work, and Caprice left to do some tutoring.

  At ten minutes of eleven, Rita called from her office. “I thought you should know,” she said. Her tone was hurried and vaguely prissy. “Someone will probably call Caprice. Peter York tells me that Wyeth Green made a suicide gesture last night. Or early this morning.”

  “How is he?”

  “All he took was Valium. And not that much of it. If he’d been in bed, he’d probably have slept it off, and no one would’ve known. But what he did was go to Peter’s office. Someone found him there, on the front porch.”

  “Leah,” I said. “Leah found him. She didn’t know who it was, but it must’ve been Wyeth.”

  “What a weird coincidence.”

  “Not really. Peter York’s office must be right near here.”

  “It is.”

  “She’d taken Kimi for an early run, and she was on her way back when she saw someone curled up on a porch. She stopped to see whether he was okay, and when she couldn’t get him to wake up, she called an ambulance.”

  “He’s at Mount Auburn. This really was a gesture. To kill yourself with Valium, you have to take it with alcohol, maybe, or something else, and then fall asleep with your face in a pillow and suffocate. But the meaning of the suicide gesture is very serious, of course. Anyway, this is a heads-up. First of all, let Caprice know. And you need to be aware that Peter is knocking himself out to avoid having this boy hospitalized long term. I’ve been on the phone with Frank Farmer.”

  “I haven’t seen Frank for a few months,” I said. “The last time I saw him, one of his dogs went Best of Breed at—”

  “This is not about dog shows!”

  “I know that.”

  “Look, I have a patient any minute. Frank has agreed to meet with everyone on Thursday evening. This’ll be at Ted Green’s. Seven o’clock. You and Caprice will need to be there.”

  My Thursday evenings are sacred to dog training, but I knew better than to say so and, in fact, didn’t even want to say so. “We’ll be there,” I said. “Both of us. But Rita, there’s just one thing you might—”

  “My patient’s here. I’ve got to go. I’ll be at the meeting, too. Frank has roped me in. Holly, I’ve really got to go.”

  What I didn’t have a chance to say concerned Frank Farmer—well, not so much Frank himself as his basenjis. The basenji is, in my opinion, a short-haired, pint-sized African malamute, which is to say, a breed with a wild streak, intelligent, alert, energetic, and, as is said euphemistically, challenging to train for the obedience ring. Few handlers rise to the challenge of showing basenjis in obedience, and it’s probably an indication of the splendid state of Frank’s mental health that he was not among those few. He had shown dogs for ages, but strictly in conformation, where dogs are not judged on the extent to which they obey their handlers’ commands, which in the case of basenjis as well as Shiba Inus, for example, and, indeed, Alaskan malamutes, tends to be not at all. Furthermore, in saying that Frank showed his basenjis, I do not mean that he handled them himself in the breed ring; he used professional handlers. And it w
as a good thing, too, because his dogs never listened to a single word Frank said and, in their daily lives with Frank, were always flying around all over his house and bouncing off people. They didn’t bark. Basenjis don’t, or not exactly. But they sure can yodel. And Frank’s did. They were, however, perfectly beautiful and won a lot, deservedly so, and also had excellent temperaments, so Frank didn’t care how wild they were, and they were, after all, his dogs. Anyway, what I didn’t have a chance to mention to Rita was that although Frank was a legendary clinician, a genius with human beings, he was not, according to my own observations, any kind of expert in bringing a pack of wild creatures to heel. Rita would have dismissed my remarks anyway, and as it turned out, the point I’d have tried to make didn’t matter at all.

  But I am leaping ahead of myself. It wasn’t yet Thursday, the day of the great meeting of the Brainard-Green network, but Wednesday, when it was still being planned. I intended to tell Caprice about the meeting, but when she returned home at two in the afternoon, she already knew about it. After doing her tutoring, she’d kept an appointment with her therapist, Missy Zinn, who was planning to attend and who considered it vital that Caprice be there.

  “I hate the whole idea,” Caprice said. “I hate it!”

  For someone whose mother had just died, Caprice had, I thought, been peculiarly self-contained. When my own mother died, I cried for days. For weeks afterward, waves of grief would roll over me, and I’d again be in tears. My father had been in no condition to help me. As always, I had turned to our dogs, who needed me as much as I needed them. The joy and energy had gone out of them. All of us clung to one another. It was as if we’d all had an identical surgical operation that had removed the same vital organ from our bodies. The release of crying was, of course, unavailable to the dogs, but they found solace in simple physical contact, as I did, too.

  That Wednesday afternoon, Caprice had obviously been crying. Her fair skin was blotched, and her eyes were puffy. Still, resentment about the family meeting was triumphing over grief. After saying that she hated the idea, she went on to complain that instead of pooling resources to help Wyeth, everyone should pool resources to figure out who murdered her mother. “This is just one more way to let Wyeth make himself the center of attention.”

  “Caprice,” I said, “from what Rita tells me, the idea isn’t to focus on any one person. The point is to make the whole family system and the whole network the center of attention.”

  “The family system didn’t murder Eumie,” Caprice said, “and it isn’t fair that I have to go to this awful meeting because of”—she took a deep breath and spat out the name—“Wyeth.”

  “I haven’t had lunch yet,” I said. “Have you? There’s leftover chicken. You want a sandwich?”

  She accepted the offer. As I was making sandwiches—lettuce and tomato, no mayo, and no tactless green beans on the side—I thought over her angry assertion that the family system hadn’t murdered Eumie. In one sense, she was right: Caprice, Wyeth, Ted, Monty, Johanna, and, indeed, Dolfo had not held some secret conclave in which they’d schemed to administer an overdose of multiple medications to Eumie. In another sense, the entire way the family operated had set the stage for murder. Medicine cabinets were packed with prescription drugs, everyone had access to everyone else’s medication, interior and exterior doors were left unlocked, secrets weren’t kept secret, and so forth. Even the family dog, Dolfo, hadn’t been taught the distinction between indoors and outdoors and the corresponding rule about what was kept inside his body in one place and released only in the other.

  “Missy sounds nervous about it, too,” Caprice said.

  “Really?”

  “I think it’s this visiting conductor. Dr. Farmer. She’s in the position of some second violinist who joined the orchestra last week, and she’s afraid she’s going to play a sour note and have him single her out for ruining the music.”

  “Is that what she said?”

  “No! Not at all. That’s just the feeling I get. But I am glad she’ll be there.”

  “I’ll be there, too, Caprice, and I’ve known Frank Farmer for ages. He has dogs. I’m not afraid of him. He’s a perfectly nice man. And Rita will be there.”

  Caprice’s lips were trembling.

  I asked, “Is there something else?”

  She almost slapped her sandwich onto her plate. “It’s not supposed to be just about Wyeth. Of course! Let’s not make Wyeth take any responsibility for anything he’s done! God forbid! So, since it’s not going to be about Wyeth, it’s going to be about the rest of us. Including—” As she broke off, she reached down and stretched out the voluminous shirt she was wearing. Dropping it, she raised her right hand to her face, squeezed a substantial mass of flesh between her fingers and thumb, and pressed so hard that I couldn’t bear to watch.

  I grabbed her arm and gently removed it. “Caprice, I have never been to a meeting like this one. But I know Frank, and I know Rita, and neither one is going to let the focus shift to your weight. I don’t know anything about Frank’s professional life, but he has a fabulous reputation, and you can bet that it isn’t founded on letting people get away with that kind of ploy. And Rita? Rita is brainless about computers, and she’s brainless about dog training, but that’s because all her intelligence is devoted to understanding and helping people. If Wyeth or anyone else tried to transform this meeting into some hostile confrontation about your weight, Rita would see it coming, and she’d stop it.”

  At that inopportune moment, Caprice’s cell phone rang. She dug it out of her purse and answered. “Daddy?” She listened. “I don’t want to go,” she said. “I wish—” This time, she listened for at least thirty seconds. “Okay. If you’re going to be there, then I will. But I don’t want to.” After another pause, she said, “Yes, I understand. No one is going to chain me up and drag me there. It’s my decision. But you’ll be there? For sure?” Monty must have said yes. Caprice’s face brightened. Then she changed the topic. “I need you to talk to Ted. About Eumie. Mommy. He wants to do something so awful. She’s being cremated.” Another pause. “Yes, I know. It’s what she wanted. But then he has this awful idea about turning her into a coral reef. It’s grotesque. He e-mailed me. I can’t even manage to answer his e-mail. It makes me feel sick.” After that, she listened and murmured. The call ended.

  “Your father’s coming,” I said.

  “He doesn’t want to either. Dr. Zinn talked him into it. But I can change my mind. Even at the last minute. And I can always walk out.”

  “That’s true. And if things somehow get out of control or hurtful to you, Caprice, I will walk out with you. I promise.”

  “I have an idea,” Caprice said.

  “Yes?”

  “Could we take Lady?”

  “Lady?” I was thrown, so surprised that my voice registered my feelings all too accurately. India, Rowdy, or Kimi, yes. Any of the three would have been a solid choice as a symbol of protection and a source of powerful support. Sammy? I was starting to wonder whether his puppy brain would ever catch up with his maturing body. In the midst of a serious gathering intended to address the horrendous problems of the Brainard-Green family—problems including a murder and a suicide attempt, not to mention prescription drug abuse, obesity, and breaking and entering, to name a few—Sammy was more than capable of interrupting the proceedings by hurling Pink Piggy in the air, catching him, and repeatedly biting on Pink Piggy’s loud squeaker. So, Sammy would have offered the promise of comic relief. But Lady? She was the vulnerable one, the one least able to offer protection, the one in unremitting need of it herself. Still, Lady was the one Caprice loved most. “Of course,” I said. “We may not be able to have her in the meeting with us. I don’t know. But she can come with us. If you want her, she’ll be as close as my car.”

  “I know she’s fragile,” Caprice said. “I really do know that. I’ve been talking to Dr. Zinn about her. But Lady is a survivor.”

  “Yes, she is.”


  “And I am, too. Or I’m going to be.”

  “Yes,” I said. “Yes, you are.”

  CHAPTER 43

  If I could travel back in time, I know exactly where I’d choose to go: without hesitation, I’d pick the 1939 Morris and Essex Kennel Club Dog Show, which was held at the New Jersey estate of Geraldine Rockefeller Dodge. All of Mrs. Dodge’s shows were spectacular, but the Morris and Essex show of shows was the one in 1939. The pageantry! The bright banners, the tents, the rings, the sterling silver trophies, the famed foreign judges, the proud exhibitors, the 50,000 spectators, and the 4,456 gorgeous dogs! The goal of the newly revived Morris and Essex Kennel Club is the rebirth of the legendary Morris and Essex in all its glory, and it looks as if the club will succeed if it can do in its only serious rival, which, I regret to report, offers whopping competition. The pageantry! The splendid tents, the famed foreign academics, the proud parents, and the thousands of canine stand-ins resplendent in their flowing caps and gowns! Indeed, Harvard University Commencement!

  So, Harvard Commencement being the closest Cambridge offers to the Morris and Essex Kennel Club Dog Show, I make a habit of taking Rowdy and Kimi to the Square each June to enjoy the annual spectacle. Since we aren’t actually entered in the show, we are not allowed to wander in the show grounds proper, namely Harvard Yard, during Commencement Exercises, but we saunter around and take in the scene. The dogs sniff. I gape, especially at the famed academics, foreign and domestic, who, in their brilliantly colored and elaborately embellished caps and gowns, put even the best-dressed dog show judges to shame.

  So, on the afternoon of Thursday, June 9, Rowdy, Kimi, and I walked down Concord Avenue to Garden Street and into the Square, which was satisfyingly crowded with distinguished-looking people in flamboyant academic costumes. Obedient to tradition—it supposedly never rains on Harvard Commencement—the day was sunny and still, and the three of us had a lovely time, as we’d had in previous years. The only unusual event was minor, or so it seemed at the time. It was this: when we’d finished sniffing and gaping in the Square itself, I decided that instead of retracing our route, we’d go through Brattle Square and then take Brattle Street to Appleton, which would lead us home. When we reached Brattle Square, we crossed to the far side of the street and were approaching an emporium of expensive women’s clothing, a favorite of Rita’s, when Anita Fairley emerged from the store. I wasn’t at all surprised to see that she’d been shopping there; she always dressed in coordinated outfits that gave her a polished look. Furthermore, it was no surprise to see that she’d been spending money; extravagance was one of her characteristic vices. At the moment, she was carrying three large shopping bags emblazoned with the name of the shop. In several other ways, she did not, however, seem quite like herself.