She asked me about Lenore, and I told her what I knew. Too much, too little. “I think she was acting. She slipped up a few times, but they bought her story anyway. And when the D.A. asked her to demonstrate for the court what the voices sounded like, she couldn’t.”
“I have no sense of it now,” my mother said.
I frowned. “That’s exactly what Lenore said when she testified.”
“Mary Warren in The Crucible. That’s what Mary says on the stand when the judges want her to demonstrate how she faked hearing spirits along with Abigail and the others.”
Lenore’s favorite play, I remembered.
My mother asked about Zack. “I’m not pushing,” she said.
“I know.” I told her that I’d jumped to conclusions, that it was hard to trust. “But I’m trying. How did you know Dad was the right one?”
“I just knew.”
“I thought I knew with Ron. I thought I loved him.” Too much flash, I’d known even then. Too slick. But so full of life, so much fun.
We talked about other things. What did I think Mindy was having? How was my mom’s new book coming? Was she looking forward to classes in September?
When I dropped her off an hour later, our toenails and fingernails were buffed and polished and so were my spirits. Not bad for twenty dollars apiece plus a tip.
I stopped for a slice of pizza on Fairfax, then at a nearby supermarket where I filled a cart with enough groceries to last two weeks. At home I put away the perishables and stacked the cereals and cans neatly in my small pantry. I knew they wouldn’t stay that way.
I had forgotten my mail in the trunk of my car. I slit open the small envelopes first and scanned the notes. One from a man who loved Out of the Ashes. Another from someone who hated it and me and everyone who wasn’t pure white and hoped I burned along with every copy of my horrible book. One letter was from a young reader who hoped to be a writer someday and did I have any advice? Read, I would tell him. Read, read, read.
I’d been right about one of the larger envelopes. It contained a 467-page true-crime manuscript entitled Love Me, Kill Me, written by a woman I remembered meeting at a book signing over seven months ago.
The other envelope had no return address, but the letter inside was from Betty Rowan.
forty-two
There were pages accompanying the handwritten letter, which was dated Saturday, two days after Lenore died.
Dear Miss Blume,
Your probably wondering why am I writing to you, with my daughter just dead. I have been sitting here, thinking about my poor baby.
She was only twenty-six. She had a hard life, and she made mistakes. Which we all do, I think you’ll agree. But I think her story should be told, and I think you could be the person to tell it.
She liked you, Miss Blume. That day you visited with her, she enjoyed talking to you. I know because she told me.
Lenore wrote a journal, that she gave me just before she died. It tells her story—the good parts, and the ugly parts. She told me to ask would you be interested in writing about her life. Its one of the last things she said before I left her hospital room that night.
Your probably wondering, how can I be thinking about this write now with my daughter not even buried? Well, its hard, but it was important to my daughter, and I promised I’d ask. So here I am.
I don’t know if you will think this would make a good book, or maybe a movie, too. There’s parts in it that don’t make me sound so good, but its Lenore’s story, and she has the right to tell it the way she saw it.
I am sending you a few sample pages which I copied from the journal. There is lots more, where she talks about the trial. If your interested, let me know, and we can meet.
PLEASE DO NOT TALK ABOUT THIS WITH ANYONE!!
Betty Rowan
She’d sent me selected photocopied pages, the first dated a month after the trial. The bottom entry on the page, and several entries on the other pages, had been blacked out with marker. I suppose she hadn’t wanted to give away the barn.
Thursday, July 18
Dr. K says all his patients write journals, and I should, too. He says no one will ever see it but me, but how do I know he isn’t lying?
He lies, too.
Everybody lies.
Write that down.
He asked me if I think about the baby.
I told him I do, every day.
Write down what you think, he said.
Mirror, mirror on the wall.
Who’s the greatest liar of them all, you or me?
Monday, July 22
Dr. K assured me again that anything I tell him is confidential. Do you want to talk about why you lied on the stand?
I asked him if he was angry.
This isn’t about me, he said. You seem troubled, and I want to help you.
The truth will set you free.
Thursday, July 25
Dr. K won’t be happy until I tell him something, so I said I shook Max because I was exhausted and frustrated, and I panicked when I saw he was dead.
Tell me how you feel about that, he said.
Friday, November 15
Robbie brought me flowers and kissed me and
told me he can’t spend Thanksgiving with me. He said he
has to be with Maureen. I know Jillian will be
there.
Did you kiss her, too? I asked. Did you sleep with her?
I’ll not have your suspicion anymore.
Then let you not earn it.
Everybody leaves me, nobody stays.
I don’t know if I can stand one more month.
I don’t belong here.
I don’t.
Belong.
But I can’t tell.
Monday, December 9
I’m free at last—without the truth, Dr. K.
Where is Robbie? Why doesn’t he call?
The next entries were dated this year:
Wednesday, February 12
Robbie said filing for divorce is just for show. He needs Jillian’s father to invest in the company, and her daddy won’t do it unless his baby girl is happy.
You are my valentine.
It’s just for now.
My only valentine.
Promise.
Don’t tell.
Wednesday, March 7
The anniversary of our lie.
Wednesday, March 14
Nina’s baby sister drowned when Nina left her unattended in the tub for a minute. She blamed the Hispanic housekeeper, who fled the country.
Nina told me her secret, but I can’t tell her mine.
Yours and mine, entwined.
Promise, she said, don’t tell.
Wednesday, April 2
Dr. K says I have to let go of my fantasies of getting back together with Robbie if I want to get on with my life.
I told him it’s not a fantasy. Robbie loves me, too.
Get some sleep, he said. We’ll talk more tomorrow.
And I have many miles to go and many promises to keep.
Saturday, May 3
I told Robbie I’m tired of playing games. I’m tired of the lies, his and mine. He says he’s trying to work things out. These things take time, Lenore.
Suspicion kissed him when I did.
Nina heard me on the phone. I told her I know names to use if Robbie doesn’t stop the games and wrote them down. Robbie warned me that games can be dangerous.
I said, so am I.
I didn’t tell Nina the truth.
Promise.
Monday, June 9
Betty told me Jillian moved into our house. I think she enjoyed telling me, but I didn’t let on how upset I was. Betty knows. She guessed right away.
Sometimes I want to tell Maureen.
Shall I tell you what happened to your grandson?
You don’t want to know.
Only I know what I know.
And you, my love.
And I will tell,
I
promise.
Thursday, June 12
Jillian will be away, the rats will play.
Sunday, July 6
I phoned Jillian and told her, and she called me a liar.
I wore your nightgown and lay with him on your bed. I wear it every time. Ask him why.
Friday, July 11
They set a date! I told Dr. K Robbie has been lying to me all this time, and he said, did you really expect him to take you back, and I said YES! and that’s why I did what I did. YES! and he said it would be all right, we’d be together. Yes! Yes! Yes!
Dr. K figured it out. He asked me and I didn’t say no. I’m not worried because he can’t reveal what I tell him, but I could tell he was upset. What are you going to do, he asked.
Promise, don’t tell.
I think he’s going to terminate therapy.
He is leaving me, too.
Saturday, July 12
Robbie says he set the wedding date because the Hortons are suspicious. After the election he’ll tell Jillian.
Dr. K is worried. Do what you have to do, he said again, but I see the lie in his eyes.
I played him for a fool.
And Nina. She knows.
There is nothing like the sting of betrayal.
Rock-a-bye Baby no more.
The truth doesn’t set you free.
forty-three
I should have gone straight to Connors. I know that now. Instead I drove to Zena’s house. She had a pinched look around her mouth and was unhappy to see me. She probably regretted our last conversation and didn’t want to become involved, but she opened the door and invited me in. She was wearing an apron, which explained the wonderful aroma wafting in from the kitchen. Not apple this time. Peach, I think.
“I’m wondering if I could take a look in Mrs. Rowan’s house,” I said, standing in her tidy living room.
She wiped her floured hands on the apron. “Why?”
I explained that I was looking for Lenore’s journal. My guess was that Betty had made a copy, and had hidden it when she became frightened. She may have given the original to Saunders when he’d first asked her to get it. Or she’d handed it over to her killer, hoping to save herself.
“Shouldn’t you leave that to the police?” Zena asked, eyes narrowed.
“I intend to give it to Detective Connors if I find it. I’m anxious to see if it’s in Betty’s house.”
“A friend of Lenore’s came by here just yesterday and asked me to let her into Betty’s.”
“Nina?” I asked. My chest tightened.
Zena nodded. “We met one time before. She was in the car when Lenore came to see Betty. I happened to be there. She said she’d loaned Lenore a book, and Lenore may have given it to her mother, so she wanted to look for it. But I can’t let people in just like that. It’s not my place.”
“You can call Detective Connors,” I told her. “He’ll vouch for me.”
Zena thought that over, and I guess she decided it was okay. She left me in the living room and returned a minute later.
“My husband and I are leaving in five minutes to see a movie. Drop the key in my mailbox when you’re done.”
I promised I would.
It’s creepy entering a place when you know the owner’s been murdered. The house was hot and filled with dead air. I switched on a living room lamp and the chandelier in the dining room to dispel the gloom. Whoever had killed Betty Rowan had no doubt searched before me, but I checked behind crockery and glassware in the china cabinet and underneath the living room sofa and cushions.
Betty’s bedroom hadn’t been disturbed. The white eyelet coverlet, surrounded by blue and white pillows of different sizes and shapes, lay smooth on the bed. I unzipped the cases but found nothing. The dresser drawers were filled with packets of floral sachet whose cloying fragrance rose like ghosts when I touched them.
I had an uncomfortable moment as I entered the small, paneled den where Betty had been killed—an image of her struggling with her killer flashed in front of my eyes. I blinked it away. She had few photos. Most of them were in a cardboard box in a closet. Betty with Lenore’s father. Betty and Lenore. Betty and a series of other men, some more handsome than others. One photo was on a lamp table: Betty with Lenore and Robbie, her future secured.
She did have a dozen albums filled with pictures and articles she’d cut out from magazines of movie stars, old and new, and of Hollywood. Her true love. Some of the pictures and articles had yellowed beneath their plastic sheets.
I searched the rest of the house and returned to the albums. I opened one and flipped through the pages, and that’s where I found a photocopied page of the journal, inserted between a glossy, full-page head shot of Susan Sarandon and the narrowly corrugated backing that kept her from slipping. My heart thumped. I searched through each album, and when I was done, I had found fifty-four pages. I went through the albums again and searched behind every photo, but I didn’t find the list of names Nina had told me about, individuals Robbie had bribed and the amounts he’d paid them, and when. Lenore’s insurance.
I’d wondered earlier whether Nina had lied to send me down the wrong trail, but according to Lenore’s journal, it was Lenore who had lied to Nina. I didn’t tell her the truth.
What truth? And if Lenore wasn’t holding that list over Robbie’s head, what had she meant when she’d warned him that she was dangerous? What information did she have that, according to Darren Porter, would send Robbie to jail for the rest of his life?
In the next-to-last entry, Lenore wrote that Korwin had figured “it” out and so had Nina. But what had Korwin meant when he’d told her “do what you have to do”?
And why would Lenore tell Nina she’d planned to kill her child?
I sat down in the middle of the room on the carpeted floor and spread out the pages, which were out of order.
I found the first entry, the one I’d seen, dated Thursday, July 18.
Dr. K says all his patients write journals, and I should, too. He said no one will ever see it but me, but how do I know he isn’t lying?
He lies, too.
Everybody lies.
Write that down.
He asked me if I think about the baby.
I told him I do, every day.
Write down what you think, he said.
Mirror, mirror on the wall.
Who’s the greatest liar of them all, you or me?
I thought I knew.
I’d been looking at Lenore through Donna Bergen’s eyes. People had told me Lenore was obsessed with Robbie, that she’d do anything to hold on to him, and I’d taken a giant leap and assumed that she’d killed her child.
But maybe she’d lied for him.
I read the rest of that first page, the part Betty had blacked out on my copy.
Monday, July 22
Robbie loves me so much. When they took me, he came every day to see me, to tell me everything was going to be okay.
Remember Elizabeth Proctor, and this isn’t prison. I’ll be out in nine months at the most, maybe six, and then we’ll be together. The pills they watch me swallow make me drowsy, and sometimes I wonder what is real and what isn’t.
Tuesday, August 6
I was so angry when I phoned him at the office, and
A door opened.
I froze and stopped breathing for a few seconds. Maybe I was wrong. I strained, trying to detect something in the silence, but I couldn’t hear because my heart was pounding in my ears.
Another sound. The click of a door being shut.
“Molly?”
Saunders’s voice.
I’d locked the front door behind me and wondered how he’d gotten in, but then I remembered: This was his house, not Betty’s. He had a key.
There was a cordless phone on the small brown sofa. I stood, careful not to make noise, and walked to the sofa. My hand shook as I lifted the receiver to my ear.
No dial tone. The battery was dead. My purse with my cell phone w
as on the dining room table.
“Miss Blume? Where are you?”
I knelt on the carpet and gathered the pages, cringing at the explosion of rustling. There was an air-conditioning floor vent next to the sofa, against the wall. The door to the den was open, and I could hear his footsteps on the wood floor. Holding the pages in one hand, I removed the grate as quietly as I could and shoved the pages inside. I replaced the grate and was moving away from the vent when he stood in the open doorway.
“There you are.” He expelled a breath of what sounded like genuine relief, but I knew better. “For a minute there I was really nervous. Why didn’t you answer me?”
“Thank God it’s you,” I said, dancing the dance because I didn’t know what else to do. I placed my hand on my chest and felt my heart racing. “I didn’t recognize your voice. I was frightened.”
“I don’t blame you.” He took a step into the room. “Mrs. Lopost’s keeping an eye on the house for me. She phoned to tell me you were here looking for Lenore’s journal and wanted to make sure that was okay. She said Nina Weldon had been by to look for something, too, and I started worrying. This may sound crazy, but I’m wondering if she killed Betty and thought she’d left some evidence.”
“You may be right.” Terror was pinching my throat, and I found it hard to talk. “Nina seems extremely nervous and tense. I think she was jealous of Lenore’s relationship with Dr. Korwin. I think Lenore knew, and wrote about it in her journal. Maybe Betty blackmailed Nina with it. That’s why I was looking for the journal, but I couldn’t find it. I think we should phone Detective Connors right away, don’t you?” I made a move toward the door, but he just stood there, his large frame blocking the opening.
“Good idea.” His eyes were on the albums on the carpet, many of them still open. Vivien Leigh smiled at me.
My heart thudded. “Those are amazing, have you seen them? Betty has wonderful pictures of all these movie stars, she must have been a real fan.” I was babbling, and I hoped he didn’t hear the edge of panic in my voice.
“I have to hand it to Betty.” He shook his head in admiration. “I never thought to look there. You did. But I guess as a writer you have to have imagination. Where’d you put the pages?”
There was a door to my left, but I had no idea where it led. I took a baby step toward it. “I told you, I couldn’t find the journal.”
Blues in the Night Page 27