The Blue Death

by Joan Brady

  Helen gave the layout a quick glance and set to work.

  Her wedding request to David was that he teach her how to pick a lock. He’d been an expert by the time he was ten; after that, there wasn’t a secure home within miles of any foster parents willing to house him for a few months. For nearly two years after he got out of prison, he’d operated the business that Hugh had set up for him, designing and installing systems secure enough to keep him out. Helen was a diligent pupil, and she was showing progress. But as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says, there’s a Zen to the art of lock-picking. It takes years to master.

  At least this was an easy Yale and an old-fashioned deadbolt, the very locks she’d been practising on. It took her more than half an hour, and the pile-up of mail was so big that she had to throw her weight against the door to open it. And the moment she squeezed past it, the classes she’d been due to teach, even her fears for Becky, dropped out of her mind. This was the first time she’d broken into a real, live house, the first time she’d caught a glimpse of the thrill that David described: the first step on forbidden territory.

  The postmarks on the mail dated back to the first of June; the woman had been gone for months. Ugly furniture. Meagre belongings. Not too surprising in somebody on sabbatical. No laptop. Probably took it with her. Not much to cook with. Fridge with a few mouldy lumps and a dreadful stink. Helen shut it quickly. Bed sloppily made, but wardrobe reeking of money and fashion magazines. Same with the make-up and toiletries. Helen rifled through the papers on the desk: a couple of monographs Aloysia was working on. No hint of any of the lovers except for a supply of birth-control pills from England.

  The books on the shelves were texts of microbiology, hydrology, mathematics. Helen took out Studies in Water Flow. She’d never liked the subject much, but the equations are pretty. She flipped through a few pages. That’s when she found the postcard. The picture was one of those beautiful Mississippi riverboats that now serve as floating casinos. She turned it over to look at the message side, no salutation, no signature, just a single word in a childish script:

  The shock of it made her face tingle. She put the postcard back at once, shut the book, stared at it a moment, opened it again, took out the card, slipped it into her pocket. Then she started a systematic search, every paper, every drawer, every cupboard. When she was finished, she took a towel from the kitchen and wiped every surface in the house. It was evening by the time she dialled the Springfield Police station.

  ‘I want to report a missing person,’ she said.

  32

  SPRINGFIELD: The same time

  That single night of rest and fluids in Memorial Hospital was all it had taken to get Becky back in her own bed, propped up on pillows. She loved her bedroom. The floor was inlaid wood, plantation shutters on the windows, as little cloth as possible because of her many allergies. But photographs and books covered the walls and made the simplicity rich and warm. She could look around and see the Atlanta of her childhood, her son Hugh growing up in Springfield, the Old Capitol in stages of the reconstruction that her own Springfield Arts Society had organized and overseen.

  She held a clipboard in front of her; she’d spent the last hour on ideas for cartoons ridiculing Jimmy, his five-volume contract and his army of professional canvassers. Springfield’s artists supported the Coalition. They’d been wonderfully helpful with the protests against the Council vote, and many had volunteered for the campaign to overturn it – a cartoonist among them.

  She was so absorbed that she heard the knock only when it came a second time. ‘I’m busy, Lillian,’ she said through the shut door.

  ‘It’s Mr Mayor Jimmy Zemanski and another gentleman,’ Lillian called back.

  ‘I’m in bed.’

  ‘I told him. He says he don’t mind.’

  ‘It’s not his affair to mind or not mind. What’s he want?’

  ‘Miz Freyl, he says you done sent for him. You want me to tell him you ain’t seeing nobody yet?’

  Becky pursed her lips. She hadn’t sent for him. She was moving her legal affairs to Carrick & Kessler. Not that she’d told Jimmy. The referendum made dealing with Herndon Freyl & Zemanski seriously embarrassing, but it had only brought things to a head. A mayor must learn to delegate his professional commitments. Delays with her will had indicated an inability to do so. The first draft had demonstrated it. Her name was Rebecca Marianne Hogg Freyl, definitely not Rebecca Marilyn Freyl; there’d also been irritating punctuation errors. Which meant he couldn’t juggle the demands on him. He’d apologized abjectly – for the delay as well as the errors – and yet a week had gone by with no sign of the revision.

  On the other hand, the ‘incident’ at the Auction of Promises emphasized the need to ensure that David could not benefit from Helen’s inheritance. Becky needed a signed document on record quickly, and instructing a new lawyer is a lengthy process; she could always amend the will later. She’d just decided to admit Jimmy – get the job over and done with – when he burst past Lillian and into her bedroom.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Becky,’ he said. ‘I took on a new clerk last—’

  ‘Mr Mayor, I done asked you to wait,’ Lillian interrupted, following him into the room.

  ‘Hey, Lillian, lighten up, huh?’ he said. ‘I’m practically a member of the family.’

  ‘No you ain’t.’

  ‘Why are you so tough on me, old friend?’ He turned to smile at her. ‘You’d better get lost though. This is going to be kind of private.’

  Lillian stayed where she was. ‘Miz Freyl, what you want me to do?’

  Lillian was a beneficiary to the tune of half a million dollars. Becky certainly didn’t like the idea of her knowing that. ‘No, no, you may go,’ she said. ‘This won’t take long.’ As Lillian left, she noticed Jimmy’s companion. ‘I assume this is the person responsible for the shoddy workmanship represented here. He’s too old to be a clerk. No wonder he’s having trouble. Do you wish to apologize, young man?’

  Jimmy laughed. ‘You have to have a witness, Becky, and you can hardly ask Lillian to do it, now can you? I thought I explained all—’

  ‘I haven’t forgotten, Jimmy.’ Becky’s voice was icy. ‘Are you going to introduce us?’ she asked. ‘Or are you going to let us stare at each other like children in the park?’

  Jimmy turned to the other man. ‘Mrs Rebecca Freyl, this is LaFond.’

  Becky took the man’s hand. He was maybe fifty-five, a little plump, an easy smile, curly hair greying at the temples, a diamond ring on his little finger.

  ‘Mr LaFond,’ she said.

  ‘It’s Dr LaFond as a matter of fact,’ he said. ‘I’ve heard so much about you, Mrs Freyl.’

  ‘Thank you for coming, Doctor. Won’t you sit down?’ She turned to Jimmy. ‘Let’s see what you’ve produced this time.’ He handed over the pages, then sat beside LaFond. She scanned the will carefully, expecting errors but finding none. Most unlikely.

  She could almost always find errors in other people’s work. She thought irritably that Jimmy’s success this time was another sign of God’s sheer nastiness to the old. She read the draft again.

  ‘Clean enough for you, Becky?’ Jimmy said as she finished her third reading.

  ‘Surprisingly, yes. I sign here?’ Jimmy got up and leaned over the bed to point. Becky signed and the doctor signed after her. ‘Thank you, Jimmy. I’m grateful to you for coming along, doctor. Lillian will show you out.’ But Jimmy sat down again. ‘Is there something else?’ she asked.

  ‘Becky, I’m, er, I’m a little . ’ He trailed off, frowned.

  ‘Out with it. Out with it. I’m a busy woman.’

  ‘I’m worried about you.’

  ‘I beg your pardon.’

  ‘You probably don’t remember what, well . ’

  ‘Jimmy, you’ve been harping on and on about my memory, and I’m getting thoroughly sick of it.’

  ‘After your Auction of Promises, you and I had a very strange conversation.�
�

  Becky saw the two men exchange glances. ‘My decrepitude is no affair of yours,’ she said. Her tone this time was icy. ‘Jimmy, I apologize if in some way I have inconvenienced you. Now if you don’t mind . ’

  ‘Ah, come on, Becky.’ Jimmy shook his head sadly. ‘I love your granddaughter. You know that. I’ve loved her for years. Whatever else divides me and you, we’re as one on the subject of David Marion. If anything I’m even more anxious than you are to prise her away from him. But I also know how much she loves you. That makes your health hugely important to me, and I can see how much that whole business upset you. It sure as hell scared me. I was the one who insisted they get you to a hospital.’

  Becky picked up a pencil and tapped it on her desk. ‘This has something to do with why you brought Dr LaFond instead of your ill-educated clerk?’

  ‘You did need a witness, Becky, and we’d just finished a little business, so I thought—’

  ‘You thought you’d kill two birds with one stone, did you? Ever efficient Jimmy. All right, Dr LaFond, I assume Jimmy has given you the details of this “strange conversation”. I’m afraid he is correct in saying that I don’t remember it. But as you’ve clearly come to some kind of diagnosis on the basis of it, I think I’m entitled to know what it is.’

  LaFond put his hands together, an odd gesture a little like prayer, then clasped them. ‘Symptoms like these are often hard to make sense of, Mrs Freyl,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t want to jump to any—’

  ‘Fiddlesticks.’

  ‘You’re right. I do have a few thoughts about it. I’m interested that you don’t remember. Not at all?’

  ‘I woke up in an MRI machine.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I see.’ He nodded. ‘Mrs Freyl, sometimes as we get older—’

  ‘I do not need a gentle bedside manner, doctor. If you have something to say, say it.’

  ‘What you and Jimmy describe gives a clear picture of the early signs of dementia, and the—’

  ‘Lillian!’ Becky cried. She rang the bell beside her bed.

  ‘—primary sign is precisely what Mr Zemanski describes: a disorientation as to time, date or place. Forgetting your lawyer’s explanation of the need for witnesses is also relevant. This combination of lapses makes me certain that—’

  ‘Lillian!’ Becky cried again.

  ‘—the only way forward is an in-patient stay in a medical assessment unit with a view—’

  The bedroom door flew open. ‘What’s the matter, Miz Freyl?’ Lillian was breathless. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Where were you?’ Becky demanded.

  ‘In the garage. Got here as quick as I could.’

  LaFond turned to Lillian. ‘This is a private medical consultation, Mrs, er . ’

  ‘Draper,’ Jimmy supplied.

  Becky’s voice was Arctic now. ‘Show them out, Lillian.’

  Neither man moved. ‘Do forgive me, Mrs Draper, but without a full, in-patient medical assessment, we cannot be certain that Mrs Freyl is not in a life-threatening situation.’

  Lillian glanced at Becky, then surveyed LaFond and Jimmy. ‘You trying to tell me she could be real sick?’

  ‘I’m afraid so, Mrs Draper.’

  Lillian put her hands on her hips, shook her head. ‘You is full of shit, Mr Doctor and Mr Mayor. Now you two come with me or I call the police. Understand?’

  Less than an hour later an irritable David stood in the middle of Becky’s bedroom.

  ‘So?’ he said to her.

  He’d been working on the construction site, trying to figure out how one man – with injuries to his side – could complete the project on his own, when a call had come in from Lillian telling him that Becky wanted to see him at once. Now. Drop everything and come. Lillian had met him at the door; she stood beside him now. His half-open shirt stuck to him. The sling that held his arm was dirty. He had a streak of cement across his forehead.

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Becky eyed him in distaste. ‘You’re dirty and sweaty.’

  ‘Make it quick,’ he said. ‘There’s nobody watching the site.’

  ‘You don’t have to be impolite too.’

  ‘What do you want?’

  Becky turned her face away from him.

  ‘Just tell him about Jimmy, Miz Freyl,’ said Lillian. Becky turned back, eyed David as she had before, faced the wall again. ‘Miz Freyl, he can’t do nothing less of which you talk to him.’

  ‘I need protection,’ Becky said, still facing the wall.

  David was surprised. Amused too. ‘Oh, yeah?’

  ‘I fear I have annoyed some very powerful people.’

  ‘Lots of security guys in the Yellow Pages.’

  ‘Strangers are easy to buy off. Don’t you dare sit in that chair.’ Becky sensed movement and turned to face him. ‘All that sweat and filth will ruin the upholstery.’

  The chair had belonged to Becky’s grandmother. She’d hated seeing Jimmy in it. Watching David throw himself down on it – especially in such an unkempt state – was pure torture. ‘You want some help,’ he said. ‘That it?’

  ‘You’re . ’ Becky struggled to get her mouth around the word. ‘You’re family.’

  ‘First I’ve heard about it.’

  ‘Don’t you play obtuse with me.’

  ‘How much?’

  ‘How much what?’

  ‘I don’t come cheap. You know that.’

  When David first got out of prison, Becky had offered him a hundred thousand dollars to get out of town. He’d taken the money and stayed. When Hugh died, she’d hired him formally – he’d haggled her up to two hundred thousand – to find the killer. That time David had satisfied her terms as well as taken her money. Even so, she blamed Hugh’s death on him. She had no doubt whatever that if it hadn’t been for him, Hugh wouldn’t have died. And she blamed herself for failing to get rid of David because it meant she had played a role in her son’s death. Which only made David more bestial in her mind.

  Lillian harrumphed at the both of them. ‘Trouble with you two is that you is exactly alike. David, you behave yourself. Money ain’t a question here, and you know it. Miz Freyl, you talk to this boy. Ain’t nobody else you can trust.’

  With Lillian keeping peace, he heard Becky out as she described the visit from Jimmy and LaFond.

  ‘Nothing to do with me,’ David said when she finished.

  But that evening, David and Helen packed belongings into the Riley for the move into Freyl House to be on hand for Becky; Helen had had an apartment there before marrying David. He’d sworn to himself he’d never live in Becky’s house, and yet he preferred it to the self-conscious prissiness of the property he and Helen had rented near the construction site at Otto’s Autos.

  Becky herself had designed the apartment especially for her granddaughter, a duplex in a wing of the main house, cut off for privacy but not communication. The downstairs was one huge room with a butler’s kitchen in wood and stainless steel, panelled walls, books and pictures; a spiral staircase led up to a bedroom above. When Becky was a girl, what was known as a ‘conversation pit’ was all the rage, a dropped section of floor several feet below the rest; she’d installed one, just assuming Helen would like it. Helen didn’t. But a bank of windows went down to floor level there and looked out into a wooded area as dense as a forest at the rear of Freyl House. A big desk turned it into a study.

  Throughout the move from the rented house to the apartment, Helen argued that David had to hire somebody – a contractor, the architect who’d done the drawings, the engineer who’d made the calculations – to take over the reconstruction so he could concentrate on Becky. Helen was beginning to see UCAI as the machines from Terminator : monstrous size and illimitable power, crushing everything in its path. How could Jimmy have sold his soul to them? How many others did they own? How could she tell which ones they owned and which ones they didn’t? She hadn’t cried in years, but she burst into tears when she realized David planned to continue working on the house without anybody to help
him, not spend much time building up protection for Becky. They ended the move in silence, didn’t say a word as they carried their belongings inside.

  David unpacked groceries – onions, potatoes, a tin of corned beef – while Helen arranged her books in the conversation pit. ‘Hungry?’ he said.

  Helen didn’t look up. ‘Why on earth did you force her to plead for your help?’

  ‘Your grandmother?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘I enjoyed it.’ He was amused all over again.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s too fond of pushing people around.’

  Helen had always been mercurial, but she hadn’t had temper tantrums since her father died. She’d already had one this morning at the Catholic college because of Jimmy. Then she’d burst into tears in the car coming here. Now she found herself abruptly in the full swing of a second tantrum. ‘How can you say that?’ she shouted at David. He gave her a curious glance. ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ Her voice shot up a level. ‘Christ, you don’t love anybody. In all this time, you’ve never said a single word about love. Not one!’

  ‘Why are you shouting?’

  The calm of his voice made her angrier still. ‘I have a right to know.’

  ‘Know what?’

  ‘Why did you force her to her knees?’

  David considered a moment. ‘If I’d thought of it, I would have. She could use the exercise. I don’t see the point of shouting about it.’

  When Helen had done her shouting in the past, people ran out of the room or shouted back. How was she to cope with somebody who just got on with corned beef hash? David had worked for several years as a prison cook. The menu had hardly been exciting, and his interest in food remained slight; she couldn’t even scramble an egg. She watched his back as he heated a frying pan, then she flounced into the conversation pit, sat down at her desk and pretended to read.

  ‘Glass of wine?’ he said to her a few minutes later.

  She looked up in surprise, about to say she knew he’d rather have beer, stopped herself. Of course he’d rather have beer. He didn’t really like any other alcohol. Well, she thought huffily, it was about time he learned something about how to be a Freyl. ‘Sure,’ she said. ‘Sure, why not?’